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Friday,
August 1, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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The Supreme Court is right Award for courage Delayed MSP hike |
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Shades of 1984
Better to lose your life than your wife
Self-publishing is
no big deal now
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The Supreme Court is right BY
upholding the two-child norm envisaged in the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act for candidates to hold any post in the panchayati raj bodies in the State, the Supreme Court has given a major blow for population control. The well-meaning provision was sought to be circumvented on the specious plea that the legislation violated the religious freedom of the Muslims. The court has dismissed over 200 petitions mainly on two grounds. One, that religious freedom guaranteed under the Constitution is subject to public order, morality and considerations of health. And, two, that no religious scripture or authority has been brought to the apex court’s notice which provided that marrying less than four women or abstaining from procreating a child from each wife in case of permitted bigamy or polygamy would be irreligious or offensive to the dictates of the religion. The population of the country has been growing exponentially and any disqualification conceptually devised to curb it cannot be called arbitrary, unreasonable or discriminatory by any stretch of the imagination. What has also been pointed out is that no petitioner had disputed the legislative competence of the State of Haryana to enact the law. Going a step further, the Supreme Court has also plugged the loopholes through which many sarpanches and panches may try to circumvent the provision. It has specified that even if a person had given away the third or fourth child in adoption to some other person, he could not claim the benefit of being not covered under the law. It is common knowledge that such a stratagem was devised by many people only to pull the wool over the eyes of the law. A panch or sarpanch — any community leader for that matter — has to be a role model if he has to persuade villagers to popularise the family planning programme. Anyone who has five or six children has no moral right to sermonise before others. The impending disqualification of 108 sarpanches, 25 panches, 15 members of panchayat samitis and three members of zila parishads will send the right message across that the government is serious about defusing the population bomb. The ruling will also pave the way for the enacting of similar laws applicable to MPs and MLAs. That is the only way that the country can hope to overcome the socio-economic problems thrown up by increasing population. |
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Award for courage FEW others deserve the Ramon Magsaysay Award as eminently as Chief Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh. He has won the prize for his "convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in India." The citation could not have been more apt. Heading a commission entrusted with the responsibility of holding elections in the largest democracy of the world is in itself a commendable achievement. He was a copybook bureaucrat, known for his honesty and unassuming nature within a small circle of friends, until he was picked up for this prestigious assignment. It is said that challenges bring out the best in a man. His performance as the CEC has proved this dictum beyond a shadow of doubt. What is especially noteworthy about him is that he went about his job in a quiet, dignified manner unlike one of his predecessors who enjoyed hogging the limelight with thunderous statements. But no one in the past had faced the kind of problems Mr Lyngdoh faced, the Gujarat elections being a case in point. The riots that followed Godhra were among the worst since Independence. They caused a religious polarisation in Gujarat which made free and fair elections almost impossible. And to compound the problem, there were political parties which were keen to harvest the hatred. An easy option would have been to let the state government, which created a constitutional crisis by dissolving the Assembly to force the commission's hands, have its way. It required extraordinary courage to stand up to such pressures, particularly when his own visit to the state revealed that the atmosphere was far from conducive to holding elections. It should be said to his credit that he stood his ground and was not rattled by even the bitterest personal criticism. It is a different matter that when elections were finally held in an impartial manner, even his worst critics turned around to praise him. But Mr Lyngdoh did not rest on his laurels as a greater task awaited him in Jammu and Kashmir. After all, terrorists from across the border and their agents provocateurs inside the country were determined to disrupt the polls. Propaganda that India would not be able to hold free and fair elections in the state was in full blast. References were often made to the questionable methods adopted in the past to rig the electoral outcome. It was against this backdrop that the commission allowed every news organisation from anywhere in the world which wanted to cover the elections access to all polling booths. What is more, Mr Lyngdoh also allowed all diplomats who wanted to study the polls in the state such liberty that they had never enjoyed. Finally, when the truth came out in bold print and on television screens, the world realised that democracy in J&K was not only alive but also kicking. Needless to say, Mr Lyngdoh's image did play an important role in the success of the elections. The nation expects a lot more from him as he prepares for the Assembly elections due later this year. |
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Delayed MSP hike THE
Rs 35 to 55 increase in the minimum support prices (MSPs) for oilseeds, announced by the Centre on Wednesday, is obviously intended to encourage farmers to get out of the paddy-wheat rotation cycle and turn to oilseeds instead. But the purpose will not be achieved, at least in this season. This is because farmers have already sown kharif crops. No one will shift to oilseeds just because a higher MSP has been announced. Thanks to a good monsoon this year, the country can expect bumper kharif crops. Oilseeds are favoured when there is a possibility of less rain or a drought because these require less water. The bad timing of the MSP announcement, therefore, has rendered the government initiative towards crop diversification ineffective. The MSP-led support for diversification will not work for long. Farmers grow what gives them maximum returns. Not many are bothered about the declining underground watertable, problems of foodgrain storage or crop diversification. Oilseeds and pulses are not widely grown for purely economic reasons. There are not enough marketing facilities for these crops. In the post-WTO scenario cheaper imports are a deterrent too. It all boils down to this: if you are not efficient and competitive, you cannot sell your produce without government help. With small land-holdings, outdated farming practices, costlier credit, lack of infrastructure and quality farm inputs, Indian farmers cannot be expected to compete with Western agriculturists. Hence, the need for subsidies and MSPs. So far the returns have been the highest from paddy and wheat, and their disposal is not very troublesome. By keeping the MSP for paddy unchanged, the Union Government has sent across the message that paddy cultivators should no more expect the government to absorb the yearly increase in the input costs. Government support for paddy and wheat will either remain unchanged or may decline in the years to come unless there is a drastic change in the foodgrain glut situation. By raising the MSPs for oilseeds and pulses every year, the government could create an unrealistic price structure and raise expectations, which cannot be sustained for long. Market forces will determine the demand and supply for any produce, and fix prices accordingly. Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool. — Rudyard Kipling
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Shades of 1984 THE
first question about any “prophet” is whether and how far he proved false or true. So, too, it is with George Orwell. This centenary year of the celebrated author will doubtless witness many more debates about his prophetic powers. These may have been inconclusive so far, but the centenary comes at a time and in a context that promise or, given the gloominess of his prophecies, threaten to settle the issue in his favour. Any attempt at answering the question must begin with a visit again to the Orwellian world. To the two Orwellian worlds, in fact. The first and the more familiar is a futurist world. Less talked about is the world of a past that led to his famed fantasies. Did the two worlds together foreshadow a third in the making, or was it all only “an Orwellian nightmare” as the clichéd phrase calls it? Prodigiously prolific as Orwell was, his reputation as a futurist relies almost entirely on two novels, “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-four”. The first, an allegory and a fierce indictment of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, set the stage for the second that portrays a “dystopia” (as opposed to a utopia) with a distinct Stalinist dimension as well. On these two works, too, rests his reputation as a right-wing ideologue. Even a cursory visit to the world behind this comi-tragic world should suffice to deliver Orwell from this undeserved reputation. As Orwell himself wrote, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.” His essays are testimony to the anti-colonial outlook the India-born writer acquired as an officer of the Empire. Memorably moving is his account of how he was forced to shoot an elephant in Burma (now Myanmar), only to avert “native” ridicule of a representative of the Empire. “Animal Farm” is Manor Farm renamed after a revolution. That it is an allegorical account of the Russian Revolution and its betrayal and transformation into totalitarianism is unmistakable all through the tale, and no reader could possibly fail to recognise Josef Stalin in Pig Napoleon and Leon Trotsky in Pig Snowball driven away by dogs loyal to Napoleon. “Animal Farm”, founded on principles, including the one that says, “All animals are equal”, falsifies itself when a later law lays down that “some animals (pigs) are more equal than others”. Unmistakable, too, should be the fact that the book is no indictment of the revolution but only its betrayal. Immediately recognisable, too, is Karl Marx in the shape of Major the Pig who teaches all the animals on the farm about their treacherous exploitation by humans and gives them a vision of glorious freedom to fight for. The story ends with the profounder transformation of the pigs themselves in the process: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Deleted, thus, is the line of a “socialist”-“capitalist” divide. The story is carried forward into a distant future in “Nineteen Eighty-four”. Stalinism is one of the elements that go into the making of the Empire of Oceania, but is only one of them. The Big Brother of Orwell’s magnum opus, a presence much more than a person, is also much more than a magnification of Napoleon. The system is built upon three slogans (besides, of course, the repeated warning, “The Big Brother is watching you”): “War is peace”, “Freedom is slavery”, and “Ignorance is strength”. As un-hero O’Brien is brainwashed into not merely not hating but loving the Big Brother, a future of the most frightening kind is revealed to the reader, fragment by stifling fragment. The most common critique of Orwell as a prophet has been that “Nineteen Eighty-four” was not a nightmare that had come true by 1984. It is also the silliest. The same pointless point can be made also against Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odessey” or many literary and other looks at the twentyfirst century. It could be that futurists often expect a faster forward in history than can happen in reality. This, however, does not take away from their trend-seeing abilities. Orwell, who completed his novel in 1949, in the aftermath of World War II, may have expected even more rapid changes than the rest of his tribe. The trends he glimpsed are, however, more important than the mere 35-year period he gave for their full manifestation. The validity of a futurist’s theory can also consist in its value as a warning. Thomas Malthus may have proved false in his prophecy that the increase in food production would fail to keep pace with that in population growth. His theory, however, can hardly be denied his share of the credit for the technological answer found to the trend against which he sounded the alarm. Orwell made no secret of the cautionary motive behind “Nineteen Eighty-four”. He wrote it, he said, “to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society they should strive for”. Then there are others who talk of Orwell’s technological prescience. British writer Phil Harvis, in his centenary tribute, for example, mentions the role played in “Nineteen Eighty-four” by “the telescreen, a universal information portal. A universal information portal that couldn’t be shut off and was used by the Thought Police to spy on (and broadcast to) the people of fictional Oceania.” In other works, Orwell envisaged central heating and hand-held data devices, and once speculated on a way to “alert someone who is on the phone that another caller, perhaps a mistress, is imminently trying to phone them”. He also mused, says Harvis, that a modern society’s entertainment could devolve to the point where its “dramas” would feature “those who willingly humiliate themselves and risk serious injury whilst doing so”. Does not that make one think immediately of the so-called World Wrestling Federation (WWF) shows on the television? Most of this, however, is futurism of the science-fiction kind. It is only peripherally linked to politico-social projections that have given Orwell a prophet’s status. The perils of a privacy-denying, power-obsessed political system, which the prophecies of “Nineteen Eighty-four” are concerned with, were not going to cease with Stalinism, as the author saw it. The writer, who pulled up H. G. Wells for playing down the Hitler threat and at the same time refused to serve the British Empire as a wartime propagandist beyond a brief stint (when he felt like “an orange that has been trodden upon by a very dirty boot”), could not have seen it that way. The most notable prophecy in “Nineteen Eighty-four”, was the development of Newspeak, a language with its own grammar and capacity of grotesque misrepresentation of the political reality and monstrous suppression of the people’s voice. A medium, in which the powers-that-be used words to express the exact opposite of what was meant. Like the contradictory slogans of the Oceania quoted before. The Orwell centenary year has opened amidst deafening sounds of a Newspeak, even if not identically the same as Orwell envisaged. The world’s ears are being assailed with rhetoric that makes “liberation from dictatorship” of a country synonymous with its invasion and “winning hearts and minds” with its indefinite occupation. A “coalition against global terror” means a super-power alliance aimed at scaring smaller nations out of their wits and coercive means are openly employed in the making of a “coalition of the willing”.
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Better to lose your life than your wife “Sada suhagwati raven (may your husband always remain alive)” — that is what the girl’s mother tells her daughter blessedly as the girl leaves her maika for her sasural. In earlier times, the mother also used to say “satputri hoven (may you have seven sons).” That second blessing is no longer showered. Apparently, boys, if they come cheaper by the dozen, are, like everything else, subject to the laws of diminishing returns. What is it that girls and their mothers don’t do for the long life of hubbies? The festival of karvachauth is celebrated throughout Punjab, as well as elsewhere in Northern India, with downright solemnity. On that day, married women don’t eat anything. Late in the evening, dressed like brides, with thalis containing sweets, flowers, lighted little lamps and all that in hand, they perform their community husband puja. They break the fast at night only when they sight the moon. Sometimes, the moon does not oblige because of clouds. In such situations, they consult one another, these days on the internet, and if anyone has seen the moon, the rest assume that they, too, have seen it. Hunger and husband are spelt differently. How do the husbands reciprocate their wives’ great concern for their long life? They don’t have any such thing as karvachauth for men. And despite all the advances women have made in so many walks of life, husbands remain husbands, roof and crown of things. They realise the importance of their wives only when the ladies choose to go ahead of them in their journey to the ultimate. During the last one year, four of my friends from old days have lost their wives, one after the other. It so happens that the sons of all of them are settled in the US. Back home in Delhi, they are left on their own. “How do you manage?” I asked Amarnath. “The part-time maid,” said he, “comes once in a day and cooks food for both times and deposits it in the fridge. I eat it as it is. I take it cold. I have become used to it.” “Why don’t you go to the US and live with your son?” I asked him. “I can’t ,” said he, “the last time I was there, his American wife wanted to push me off to an home for the aged.” Two of the other four friends have something similar to tell. East or West, home is the best. They believe in that dictum. But they also realise in their heart of hearts that without their wives, home is not home. The poignancy of this shattered me one day last month when I learnt about Shunna, my classmate in Peshawar. I had attended his wife’s funeral. And he had told me at that time that he was going with his son to America but only for a few weeks. He was to come back quickly. “This telephone is no longer in existence.” That was the recorded response that I got from his telephone week after week. Then one day, his brother-in-law rang me up for something. “Hasn’t Shunna returned from the States?” I asked him. “Don’t you know?” said he, “he could never go there. He died of heart attack almost immediately after my sister’s death.” The moral of all this, to my mind, is: It is better to lose your own life than to lose your
wife. |
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James Lyngdoh— a defender of democracy HIGHLY
unobtrusive while displaying a steely, unwavering resolve, Chief Election Commission James Michael Lyngdoh has been bestowed the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award, which is considered the Asian equivalent of the Nobel prize. A man of few words, he does not hedge from calling a spade a spade. The citation of the Magsaysay award says it all. Mr Lyngdoh has been honoured for meritorious government service and in recognition of his convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in a strife-torn India. The Khasi tribal is not one to bask in the limelight. It is good for the institution of the Election Commission of India (ECI), a creation of the Constitution. There is a discernible change in the ECI’s overall sytle of functioning. During Mr T N Seshan’s term as CEC from 1990-96, there was a marked tendency of activism in Nirvachan Sadan. Mr Seshan’s successor, Mr M. S. Gill, strove for consensus and democratic decision. Mr Gill adopted a different approach and often tried to explain the ECI’s stand, besides propounding his own ideas. After Mr Krishnamurthy retired in 1998, Mr Gill as the CEC assumed the mantle of being the sole voice of the ECI, while the other two Election Commissioners — Mr Lyngdoh and Mr T S Krishnamurthy — kept a low profile. With the expected elevation of Mr Lyngdoh as the CEC on June 13, 2001, after Dr Gill’s retirement, the penchant for the CEC’s holding the spotlight has somewhat taken a back seat. The former IAS officer of the 1961 batch belonging to the Bihar cadre emphasised that he considered himself a representative of the ECI and not a separate entity. This is particularly so as the ECI consisted, besides the three Commissioners, a number of others involved in its decision making process. Though the other two ECs — Mr T S Krishnamurthy and Mr B B Tandon, also an IAS officer who was earlier Secretary, Ministry of Personnel, have shunned publicity for themselves, they do not shy away from the media. It was the controversial sytle of functioning of Mr Seshan as the single member ECI that led to its being made a multi-member one for ensuring checks and balances in its functioning. Mr Lyngdoh’s tenure as CEC is till February, 2004. (The CEC’s term is for five years, or until the completion of 65 years of age, whichever is earlier.) Mr Lyngdoh’s term as CEC, which will be less than three years, has been eventful and it is unlikely that he will hold the election to the Lok Sabha if the present House constituted in October 1999 completes its five-year term. With electoral battles in the states becoming increasingly contentious and aggressive, the ECI’s role as an impartial umpire in the superintendence and conduct of the democratic process has received a great shot in the arm in the manner the assembly elections were conducted in Jammu and Kashmir and Gujarat last year. Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy wondered what more could he say than the recognition bestowed on Mr Lyngdoh. “He (Mr Lyngdoh) is certainly a nice and fair person. We enjoy working with him. It is the ECI’s job to see that every election is as free and fair as possible. We try to keep up that tradition,” Mr Krishnamurthy added. When the lithe and sprightly Mr Lyngdoh was appointed Election Commissioner by the H D Deve Gowda government in 1997, few had taken notice of the man from the land in the clouds, Meghalaya. It was widely believed that Mr Deve Gowda had picked him to appease the neglected Northeastern region. He was then a Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat. He maintained a low profile and assiduously kept away from the media glare. Mr Lyngdoh’s peers and those who have worked with him insist he has never been a push-over. Not one to be swayed by pressures or influence from any quarter, the erstwhile civil servant is known for his integrity, principle, competence and no-nonsense style in the discharge of his duties and responsibilities. As one of the seniormost bureaucrats, Mr Lyngdoh was offered the post of Cabinet Secretary, which is the dream of any civil servant. He declined on the ground that he did not believe in superseding seniors. However, after retirement he was appointed an Election Commissioner. Hailing from a matriarchal society, Mr Lyngdoh is unorthodox as is evident from the fact that he has taken his father’s surname. Coming from a family of bureaucrats, his father was a judge of the Meghalaya bench of the Guwahati High Court. He detests sycophancy, has no political leanings and rarely loses his temper. He hates being reported or being splashed in the media. He is clear that he is not a politician and is never going to be one. He acknowledges that as an upright and correct IAS officer in backward Bihar, there were many transfers and quick turn-arounds in every posting. As he took his work seriously, the political leadership was not happy and out he went. An intensely private person, he attended St Edmunds school and college in Shillong. Later, he went to Princeton University. Apart from being a black belt in karate, he is fluent in French and German. He is only the second Khasi tribal after former Union minister P A Sangma to hold a constitutional office. |
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Self-publishing is
no big deal now THE
joy of writing a book is that the materials are so inexpensive. All you need is pencil and paper. Similarly, there’s nothing magic about publishing. `I used to think,’ says Bertie Wooster in `The Artistic Career of Corky’, `that publishers had to be devilish clever fellows, loaded down with the grey matter, but I’ve got their number now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work.’ Quite so. Before the IT revolution, the obstacles to publishing were technical but now anyone with an Apple Mac and a kitchen table can produce a book that looks as good - better in some cases - as the volumes produced by the professionals. What’s more, having done this, the self-publisher can turn to any one of a number of specialist distributors to get the book into the shops. The realisation that technology is now on the side of the writer has had some interesting results. Until quite recently, self-publishing (emphatically not vanity publishing, a different thing altogether) was seen as the defiant act of the eccentric, the paranoid and the self-deluded. It was also risky from a professional point of view. Some years ago novelist Timothy Mo, became so disaffected with his publishers, whom he regarded (I am not exaggerating) as little better than upper-class thieves, that he severed connections with his agent and his publisher and went out on his own, launching his recent work himself, through his own imprint, the Paddleless Press. Elsewhere in the commercial jungle, Stephen King flirted with self-publishing his work on the internet, failed to reach his usual audience and reverted to a more conventional publishing strategy. Still the DIY dream prevails. Writers who believe their vision is too singular to attract the interest of a mainstream imprint continue to prefer to go it alone. The latest of these is the Reverend Graham Taylor, a self-publisher who is, it must be admitted, more unusual than most. When he completed the manuscript, Taylor was advised that no regular publisher would be interested in a parable, set in the eighteenth century, about Christianity and black magic, so he published it himself for $5,500. Then he struck gold. Because he had written for no one but himself, ignoring the calls of the marketplace, he wrote something that was truly original. And because it was truly original it excited readers. Soon, his book was attracting the attention of the very people he had been advised would not touch it with several bargepoles: the London publishing community. The rights to Shadowmancer were snapped up by Faber & Faber and when they published the book earlier this summer it began to shoot up the children’s bestseller lists. But just as Graham Taylor’s story becomes the stuff of fairytales, so the dark shadow of worldly corruption falls across the happy scene. Enter the Americans. Last week, the powerful US conglomerate Penguin Putnam paid $500,000 for American rights to Shadowmancer and two other as yet unpublished volumes. Graham Taylor has nobly said that he will donate 10 per cent of his earnings to his church.
— The Guardian |
There is no protection except in the Lord. Asa, 439 He who enjoys the protection of the True Lord, is beyond the reach of the Regent of Death. Malar,
1284 Do not be angry with the Lord but drink the nectar of His Name; since we are not to live for ever in this world. Guru Nanak, Ramkali 931. He who associates himself with the evil-doers, is destroyed. Being fed on poison, his life goes to waste. — Prabhati, 1343 No one is purified without inculcating Truth. — Ramkali, 946 What is the use of wandering about? Inculcation of Truth alone can effect purification and contemplation of the True Word alone can earn emancipation. — Ramkali, 938 If the mind is unclean, it cannot be purified by worshipping stones, visiting holy places, living in forests and wandering about like ascetics. He alone acquires honour, who cherishes the True Lord. — Dhanasri, 586 |
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