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Wednesday,
September 24, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Harvesting hate A bout of sulking |
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Jaya’s
arrogance POTA, a potent weapon in the hands of a potentate THE manner in which Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa has threatened to invoke the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) against Union Minister of State M. Kannappan for his statement in support of Sri Lankan Tamils is most unfortunate. This is yet another example of her arrogance and abrasive style of functioning. Parliament enacted POTA with a view to tackling terrorism.
Childhood
in chains
It’s
all in the contract! Sportspersons
may lose promotions
Punjabi University
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Harvesting hate THE punishment awarded to Dara Singh and 12 others in the case of burning alive of the Australian missionary, Graham Staines, and his teenage sons, Philip and Timothy, is unlikely to surprise anyone. The District and Sessions judge who heard the case had already found them guilty. Since Dara Singh, who masterminded the entire operation, was tried separately, it is not astonishing that he was given the death penalty while others were awarded life imprisonment. These days the death penalty is given only in the rarest of rare cases. Obviously, the judge felt that this case fell in that special category. What is noteworthy about the case is the elaborate precautionary measures the police had to take every time Dara Singh and the co-accused were brought to the court. Fortunately, there was no untoward incident at any stage of the hearing or later. Needless to say, the police could not have overlooked the fact that they were not a small bunch of hate-filled men working in isolation. It is true that, as a CBI officer contended, Dara Singh is a petty criminal. Now the point is, how could such a petty criminal think of not going in for an appeal against the judgement and even hint at embracing martyrdom? An answer to this will explain the rise of the Dara Singh phenomenon. A semiliterate from the badlands of UP, he grew up in an atmosphere of hatred. When it was dinned into him and he, in turn, dinned into others that their religion was in danger and the only redemption lay in taking up arms against those whom they thought were disturbing the traditions and cultures of the area, they lost their innocence. No longer could they appreciate a situation whereby a missionary forsook his comforts to work for the welfare of the leprosy patients, who are, otherwise, treated as the scum of the earth. Such is the power of hate that even at this stage there is no remorse, no sense of guilt among them. What’s worse, there is now a so-called Dara Sena ready to follow in the footsteps of their idol. At one time, there was even talk of fielding him as a candidate in the Lok Sabha elections. The forces that encouraged Dara Singh to commit two more heinous crimes even after the Staines’ killing are still at work. It is they who threaten civil war at the drop of a hat. Come to think of it, most of those sentenced to life imprisonment in this case did not have any criminal background. They were simple, uneducated men who fell prey to false propaganda. There is no mistaking that so long as preaching of hate is encouraged, Dara Singhs will continue to rise from among the ranks of lumpens. It is time instigators of crime are dealt with as severely as the criminals. |
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A bout of sulking MR Murli Manohar Joshi is drawing more attention after resigning as Human Resource Development Minister than he did when he was in the Union Cabinet. A concerted effort is being made to persuade him to withdraw his resignation. Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee asked him to maintain the status quo till he returned to the Capital. But Mr Joshi refused to attend office. Emissaries have been meeting him regularly. The urgency for making him withdraw his letter — faxed to the Prime Minister when he was in Turkey -- is understandable. One, his step may put Mr L.K. Advani in a tight spot in case a higher court sets aside the Rae Bareli court verdict and charges him (Mr Advani). To that extent, Mr Joshi's step is a masterstroke. Two, Mr Joshi has also put co-accused Uma Bharati, the BJP's candidate for Chief Minister in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, in an embarrassing position. Chief Minister Digvijay Singh has already said that she is not eligible for high office unless she is cleared of the present charges in the Babri Masjid demolition case. But Mr Joshi remains adamant. Perhaps his sulking is genuinely caused by the "anger and hurt" over the treatment meted out to him by the party. But by displaying his anger at this stage, he is damaging his own image as also that of his party. He may see a sinister plot by some party colleagues to marginalise him but others attach a more uncharitable explanation to his annoyance. They allege that he had announced that he would resign if charged by court only to force the hand of Mr Advani. At that stage, nobody had anticipated that the latter would be absolved. Now that his gameplan has come unstuck, Mr Joshi is worked up. Even if this is not the real reason, that is how many are likely to view the whole episode. The salvo fired by Mr Joshi has exposed the friction and groupism in the party. Things have reached a stage where he may not find it prudent to withdraw his resignation. If he does, he may have to voluntarily step down from the high moral ground that he has sought to occupy. The left parties have even threatened to boycott him a la Mr George Fernandes if he goes back on his "quit" word. Joshi loyalists want to see him as party president. But that will be last thing that Advani followers would like to happen. The coming few days may see a lot of fur flying. |
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Jaya’s arrogance THE manner in which Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa has threatened to invoke the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) against Union Minister of State M. Kannappan for his statement in support of Sri Lankan Tamils is most unfortunate. This is yet another example of her arrogance and abrasive style of functioning. Parliament enacted POTA with a view to tackling terrorism. But here is a Chief Minister who has the audacity to misuse the law to settle scores with her political opponents. Clearly, there is no let-up in her drive against LTTE-enthusiasts. She first rounded up MDMK leader Vaiko and then Tamil nationalist Nedumaran. Just as Vaiko was arrested under POTA for a speech he made, Mr Kannappan is also being charged for a statement he made at a book release function in Chennai on September 16. The Union Minister is believed to have stated that the MDMK will continue to extend its “moral support” to the LTTE in its fight to safeguard the interests of Tamils in Sri Lanka. He, however, clarified that the MDMK never supported the LTTE’s “violent activities” on the Indian soil. A close look at the statement will suggest that Mr Kannappan has not delivered a speech that can be dubbed as anti-national. But then, Ms Jayalalithaa has her own ways of dealing with her political opponents. And POTA has come in handy for her to fix them. The unsavoury episode is bound to affect the Centre-state relations and put the ruling BJP in a tight spot as the MDMK is a constituent of the National Democratic Alliance which runs the government at the Centre. Ms Jayalalithaa’s warning to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that she will go ahead with her action even if Mr Kannappan is not dropped from the Union Council of Ministers smacks of constitutional impropriety. Needless to say, there has been no change in Ms Jayalalithaa’s style of functioning. Remember how she rounded up Union Ministers, Murasoli Maran and R. Baalu, in Chennai two years ago when they resisted the arrest of DMK leader M. Karunanidhi in a pre-dawn swoop? Authoritarian and dictatorial to the core, she has never shown respect to representative institutions, democracy and dissent. She always considers her word as the law and she is not the one to follow constitutional niceties, protocol and propriety. It is a pity that the Centre has not provided adequate safeguards in POTA to check its blatant misuse by the likes of Ms Jayalalithaa. |
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Thought for the day After such knowledge, what forgiveness? — T. S. Eliot |
Childhood in chains AN important question, raised by the Munir-Ranjit episode, has already been asked. It was good that 13-year-old Pakistani boy Munir was released from an Indian jail on August 8 and 19-year-old Ranjit Kumar after four years in Pakistani prison three weeks later. But should this have been an India-Pakistan issue at all? Should children have been victims at all of the vicissitudes of relations between the never-at-peace neighbours? Is it not abnormal that release of child prisoners should need a campaign for inter-state normalisation? No one, mercifully, has answered the question in the affirmative. In a brief television debate after the exchange of child prisoners, even Mr Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, no enthusiastic supporter of the normalisation, was quick to agree that national security could never require children’s incarceration. No one argued that interpretations of international law could vary on this issue or that the United Nations conventions lacked any clarity on this count. Further questions, however, were not asked. No one asked, for example, how many more Munirs and Ranjits continued to languish in less known prisons, beyond regular media beats, in the two countries. The Pakistanis released another lot of such prisoners on September 5, but no one sees this as the end of the sad story. There is little credibility to the unstated official claim on either side that their jails had disgorged the last of juvenile offenders of a cross-border kind. This was, after all, not the first instance of its kind. In 1999, more than a mild ripple was caused by cases of child internees brought to light by rights activists in both countries. It was reported that four-year-old Shaminder Kumar and his elder brothers Amar (6) and Ajay (9) had spent three years in the Landikotal jail in Pakistan’s Khyber Agency with father Ashok Kumar, who had tried an inexpensive though illegal route to Europe in search of a livelihood. The disclosure led to talks for an “exchange” deal: the Indian government claimed that two “minor” Pakistani detainees had just been returned, but 13-year-old Mohammed Yousuf had already served a six-month sentence for sneaking into India in order to meet his idol Shahrukh Khan. No one asked for complete lists of captive children of this category in both countries. No one also asked for an assurance from either government that there will be no more Munirs and Ranjits. And none was forthcoming. The question indeed seemed inappropriate, if not impertinent, when the two governments were being complimented so profusely on their gracious gestures. Then, of course, there was the biggest question of all that need to be asked on this side of the border. Some ordinary observers, as distinct from security experts and strategic analysts, suggested that India could have, unilaterally and without anyone demanding such a step, released Munir. The assumption was that the idea of children in dungeons was incompatible with Indian democracy. Is our record compatible with the self-righteous notion? How many Indian children are there in Indian prisons? To the innocent Indians who believe that the assumption is natural, the answer must be breathtaking. According to official statistics, children (defined as boys below the age of 16 and girls below 18) account for no less than 25 per cent of the country’s total prison population. This means that over 75,000 children are growing up or suffering a retardation of their growth in prisons that, according to a five-month-old report of the National Human Rights Commission, houses 31 per cent more than its capacity of inmates. We can spare the reader sordid details about what living in heavily overcrowded jails with a majority of adult and hardened criminals can mean for children. What makes all these childhoods in chains an even worse fate is the fact that nearly 70 per cent of the under-aged prisoners belong to the category of conveniently so-labelled undertrials. It is, again, hard to believe but borne out by the NHRC that over two-thirds of the total prison population of over three lakhs consists of this category of inmates left, in a large number of cases, to languish in captivity for long years and denied any recourse to the due process of law. The percentage of children among undertrials is likely, if anything, to be larger, for two major reasons. In the first place, a sizeable number of children in our prisons (especially for undertrials) are there, literally, for no crime of theirs. There are at least 800 very young children including infants — in the age group of six months to six years — with convicted or undertrial mothers in prisons across the country, according to the Indian Council of Legal Aid. There are no reliable figures about children born and bred in captivity and their rate of survival. There is no way children weaned on jail food can emerge psychologically unscathed into adolescence and adulthood. Either the entire childhood in the prison or early and forcible separation from the mother is their lot, and neither is a recipe for anything like normal growth. The second reason for the generational imbalance inside our prisons is that the single largest source of “undertrials” is the section of India’s urban population callously labelled “street children”. Projected as vagrants, orphans, and either petty criminals or potential ones, these working children are really victims of parental and social neglect and exploitation. A comprehensive report by the Children’s Rights Project of the Human Rights Watch, released at the end of 1996, presents a picture of widely practised cruelties to “street children”; which mirrors today’s reality no less meticulously. Noting that India has the largest population of “street children” (18 million in 1996), engaged in occupations ranging from minor auto repair and food-vending to shoe-shining and rag-picking, the report based on extensive research paints a pathetic picture of their suffering as victims of a police “raj” that runs parallel to our parliamentary democracy. The picture is one of the “street children” as “easy targets” for the police, with lower personnel picking them up periodically in order to meet unspecified quotas of arrests and present flattering records of their law-keeping. The large number of individual cases, detailed on the basis of interviews in the report, cannot be dismissed as “kid stuff” by anyone to whom democratic rights are an important issue. For an idea of the grimness of their fate, one need go no farther than the glossary in the report, which includes the following “frequently used” terms and their definitions: “Ladam position: A position in which a child is made to sit with legs outstretched and hands tied behind the back. Lathi or danda: A police baton, frequently carried by the Indian police. It is approximately one metre in length, two to five centimetres in diameter, and usually made of wood. Murga or cock position: A position in which a child is made to sit or squat with the arms under the legs and the hands holding the ears.” Lest this article is denounced as anti-national, let me hasten to add that Pakistan fares no better in its treatment of children, especially those to whom the street is the school. Equally, if not even more, hair-raising is the picture of the prison-bound children across the border presented in a report of the same Human Rights Watch in 1999. This, however, can be solace only to pseudo-nationalists. For the rest of us, it should be obvious that all the affection showered on a Noor cannot make it up for the Munirs in our prisons. Or a Children’s Day and talk of Chacha Nehru for the under-aged convicts and
undertrials. |
It’s all in the contract! BEING Sunday, said Sugreev Singh the chowkidar, he was a bit free to show us round. We had just chanced upon that newly set up institute for training contractors. Suave and sure-footed, Sugreev seemed rather well educated for a chowkidar. He explained things about the residential course in fluent English while we moved past a few students of varying shapes and sizes. “How do we obtain application forms etc?” “Sugreev named a town a hundred kilometres away.” The forms reach there through a network of sub-contractors. You will understand how professional we are right from stage one”. Everywhere we found small posters , placards etc, quoting famous men especially on business and money matters.” Quotations, sir”, he chuckled, “are the life-blood of our tender-hearted contractors. You understand sir, tender, tender…nothing is a wonder…if only you pander…” Additional hostel rooms were under construction. We were puzzled to see about 10 labourers standing shoulder to shoulder. Single bricks passed from one hand to another. “Isn’t it silly ?”, I asked. “No, no,” nodded Sugreev sagely,” each one in that line is employed by a different sub-contractor. That is how costs could be kept up — after all, government agencies are funding the construction..” The institute offered various specialisations broadly divided into private and public sector works. There was an overwhelming demand for admissions to courses on defence and other public sector contracts. “Especially in areas of building and construction works, including roads and bridges,” said the chowkidar with satisfaction. An elderly instructor who joined us there led us to a “temple” on the campus. Its walls and roof were badly chipped and seemed about to collapse. In the corner was a huge mound of sand with agarbattis, flowers and bananas stuck into it. “Sand is the soul, sand is the very breath, and all sand is for contractors. Even this very temple was built with little cement and lots of sand……” We ran out for our dear lives, even before he was through with his discourse. But the podgy, determined fellow quickly caught up with us — like breeze from a garbage dump. “We also give our boys courses in health. As contractors they should be hawk-eyed with a sound night vision for carrying out many crucial operations. They are also taught liver-toning techniques. After all, you can’t make your client sozzled — without yourself licking the golden drops! Ha! Ha!”. He must have seen our puzzled expression — and faced us squarely: “Look, irrigation is the central mantra — right from pocketing a contract to getting your bills passed. Keep irrigating the client with the holy liquid now, and liquid cash later”. “How come you remain a chowkidar”, I wondered aloud. “Only now, sir, after I had flunked in a series of contracts. By the way sir, a tenner should clear your conscience — after all, you have used my
time…”. |
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Sportspersons
may lose promotions
THE reversion to substantive ranks, loss of seniority and other fringe benefits stare in the face of 350-odd outstanding sportsmen and women working for the Punjab Police as out-of-turn promotions given to them over the years in recognition of their performance are threatened to be withdrawn. This unsavoury controversy has started at a time when sports in the country in general and Punjab in particular has started looking up. Intriguingly, its timing also coincides with the participation of the Indian hockey team, with several key players from the Punjab Police, in the Asia Cup Hockey Tournament at Kuala Lumpur later this month. It is not difficult to imagine the state of mind of these Punjab Police players, who otherwise are expected to give out their best at the Kuala Lumpur event. India’s performance in Asia Cup will have a direct bearing on its future with regard to major events like the 2004 Olympic Games and the 2006 World Cup. At present, the Punjab Police employs nearly 350 outstanding sportsmen and women in ranks ranging from constable to Deputy Superintendent of Police. To name a select few — Harbhajan Singh (cricket), injured Jugraj Singh, Kamalpreet Singh, Gagan Ajit Singh, Tejbir Singh, Baljit Singh Dhillon and Daljit Singh Dhillon (hockey), Bahadur Singh, Suita Rani and Manjit Kaur (track and field), Palwinder Singh Cheema (wrestling), and Gurmeet Singh and Harpal Singh (boxing) — have been star performers for the country in the recently concluded international meets. Unfortunately, no other government department or public sector undertaking has any policy of recruiting sportsmen and women in Punjab. Earlier, some of the public sector undertakings, including the Punjab State Electricity Board, Pepsu Road Transport Corporation, Markfed and the Punjab Mandi Board used to employ sportspersons. The problem that has cropped up now is two-fold. One, the High Court order of 1998 directing the Punjab Government to set aside all out-of-turn and unjustifiable promotions ordered in the Punjab Police. Two, there are out-of-turn promotions ordered by the previous Director-General of Police, Mr M.S. Bhullar, during the last few months of his tenure. While some of the out-of-turn promotions ordered by Mr Bhullar have already been reviewed and set aside, the problem is of implementation of the Punjab and Haryana High Court orders.
An old practice Recruitment of outstanding players as constable and their subsequent and instant promotion to higher ranks, up to Inspector, has been a practice followed by the Punjab Police from the days of Mr Ashwani Kumar, a doyen of Indian sports. There are only a handful exceptions to this mode of recruitment-cum-promotions in the 75,000-strong force. For example, the previous SAD-BJP government in the State had taken some posts of Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) out of the purview of the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) to offer jobs to Test cricketer Harbhajan Singh, middle and long distance runner Sunita Rani and hockey player Gagan Ajit Singh. After Mr Ashwani Kumar left the Punjab Police in the 60s, the hold of Punjab on national sports in general and of the Punjab Police in particular, started waning rapidly till Mr M.S. Bhullar was posted in the Punjab Armed Police at Jalandhar in various capacities, including Inspector-General, Additional Director-General and then Director-General. He not only revived the policies of recruiting outstanding sportsmen and women but also introduced various incentive-based promotional avenues. As such, the Punjab Police started regaining its lost glory in sports, both in national and international competitions. In the last Asian Games, if Indian athletes cornered glory, it was primarily because of players from the Punjab Police. Fortunately for the Punjab Police, another officer with a sports background, Mr Rajdeep Singh Gill, started emerging on the sports horizon of the country and is considered another Ashwani Kumar in the making. After Mr M.S. Bhullar was made the Director-General of Police by the new Congress government in Punjab in March last year, Mr Gill was entrusted with the onerous responsibility of carrying forward the good work started by Mr Bhullar at the PAP’s sprawling sports complex at Jalandhar. Naturally, after Mr Bhullar superannuated in July this year, the sports fraternity started looking up to Mr Gill, who in the meanwhile, was shifted out of the PAP to the Wireless and Computerisation Cell at
Chandigarh. The Punjab Police sports family now feels headless. The sportsmen and women of the Punjab Police have been left bewildered as the fruitful and youthful years of their sporting career given to the Punjab Police appear to have gone waste. For many of them, a fresh beginning, especially when their sporting careers are nearing an end, may be hard to imagine. Many may end up as “jobless” and others will have to compromise and to accept reversion to lower posts, which in many cases will be constable and head constable. A handful of them, with a still long way to go in competitive sports, may be re-employed at higher ranks in accordance with a suggested policy subject to approval by the Council of Ministers. But they, too, will have to lose their previous service as well as seniority. They have been reprimanded and punished severely for no fault of theirs. Perhaps that is the way the state wants to treat its national heroes.
Ad hocism to blame “The out-of-turn promotions given to outstanding sportsmen and women over the years were in the interest of the State,” says the Director-General of Punjab Police, Mr A.A. Siddiqui. The problem has arisen because no rules and regulations were followed either at the time of recruitment or promotions. For example, after recruiting an outstanding sportsman as a constable, he was given exemptions and ad hoc promotions without getting the condonation regularised. “Unfortunately, the 1998 directives of the Punjab and Haryana High Court over out-of-turn promotions were followed everywhere in Punjab but in the Punjab Armed Police (PAP), Jalandhar. We have been given more time to file our reply,” reveals Mr Siddiqui. “All affected by the 1998 order will have to be reverted,” he says, maintaining that “this will be a big blow to sports in Punjab. We are suggesting to the government a number of steps so that the suffering of our sports family is minimised. Besides suggesting new guidelines for recruitment of sportsmen as per their potential, we are also proposing to the government for one-time special exemption so that sportsmen once reverted can be re-employed at higher positions as per their sporting achievements. “The root cause of the problem has been total ad hocism in recruitments and promotions of players leading to a lot of heart-burn and jealousies in the rest of the force,” he adds. “We have to file an action-taken report in the court to avoid inviting contempt proceedings. Now the government has to take a decision in the interest of the sports to save these 300-odd sportsmen,” concludes Mr A.A. Siddiqui. |
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Punjabi University AS students in DAV Higher Secondary School, Patti, we were often exhorted by the Principal to emulate the example of a former student, Swaran Singh Boparai, who was the first, and still perhaps the only one from our school, to make it to the IAS. After holding nondescript postings and projecting the image of a low-profile honest officer, Mr Boparai would have retired into oblivion, had Capt Amarinder Singh not brought him into the limelight by offering him the hot seat of Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University. After the damage that a former IAS officer had done to the reputation of Punjabi University through his questionable dealings, few, perhaps, thought that the Chief Minister would hand over charge of the university to another IAS officer. But the tag of “IAS” makes one look more suave and competent than the more common place title of “Professor”. It is not clear whether it was the lure of office or a trait in the personality that led Mr Boparai to take up the challenge. But the way he has handled, or rather mishandled the strike, has rubbed a dirty patch on his otherwise unblemished career and it hardly gives us — the ex-students of his ex-school — any reason to feel proud of him, as we once did. The sharp hike in the university fees is a serious matter as it has the effect of limiting higher education to those with money, and may be merit, but leaving out those possessing only merit. Almost all state governments in this region have either cut or frozen grants to the universities, which are passing on part of the burden to students. The Punjabi University VC could have simply given a sympathetic hearing to the agitating students and conveyed their feelings to the state government. Instead, he chose to assert his authority. By temperament, youngsters tend to defy authority. A seasoned teacher could have easily pacified and won over the students. Instead of acting as a compassionate head of the family, the VC over-reacted. He closed the university and ordered the hostelers to leave, causing much inconvenience to the students, particularly girls. The Chief Minister contributed to the mess by deputing a politician to broker peace between the two sides, both equally adamant. Boys are boys, but a VC is expected to behave like a grown-up. Mr Boparai’s unwarranted reaction to Mr Badal’s statement, his attempt to rake in the issue of sacrilege and insistence on extracting a “sorry” from the students, who did not want to go beyond expressing “regrets”, and finally settling on “remorse” reflect poorly on Mr Boparai’s administrative skills. Incidentally, has the VC regretted the inconvenience caused to the girl students? The easiest way to end a strike is to accept the demands of the
protesters. This is what the Punjab Home Secretary did finally. This is what could have been done prior to, or right at the beginning, of the agitation. The message given out is: your demand, no matter how genuine, will not be accepted unless you shout and strike work. How long the settlement lasts or peace prevails on the campus is a matter of conjecture. The VC-Pro-VC tussle can resume any time. The Pro-VC too has displayed a marked tendency to jump into a confrontation with the VC whenever he revives his spirits and has no other engagements to spend his energies on. But the university students are the real losers. Who will like to recruit youngsters from a strike-prone institution? Why should any talented teacher choose to work in such a politicised university? The teachers’ role during the agitation has been far from positive. University teachers are expected to provide intellectual leadership to society. But, divided into factions, the Punjabi University teachers maintained a studied indifference while their institution was in trouble. They need to do some introspection. |
Some see goodness in others and appreciate it, some see only fault and use it for slandering them. There are still others who dwell entirely on the Word. All these are God’s own gifts. Hence all glory and victory goes to Him. — Guru
Nanak According to one’s actions, according to one’s conduct, so one becomes — the doer of good becomes good, the doer of evil becomes evil; a man becomes virtuous by virtuous action, sinful by sin. — The Upanishads Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit. — Mahatma Gandhi From food the creatures come into being, from rain food is grown, from sacrifice comes the rain, sacrifice is born of work. — The Bhagavad Gita |
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