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Mantra of growth Politicising
outsourcing |
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Stupid
Cupid
Dalits’ place in
private sector
Forgetful grandma
No end to travails
of kidney patients Delhi
Durbar
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Mantra of growth THE damage widespread joblessness can cause is unimaginable. And when a report prepared by Mckinsey in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industries says that “India is sitting on an unemployment time bomb ticking very fast”, the nation has to sit up and take remedial action. After all, the future of the country is at stake if the problem is not solved in right earnest. The report has spoken about the need to create at least 75 million jobs by 2010 to keep unemployment under control. At the present rate of growth, only 25 million jobs would be created by that year leaving 16 per cent of the labour force without jobs. They are bound to create social and political problems unless their energy is channeled properly. However, this is easier said than done. If there is an easy solution to unemployment, it would not have been a problem in developed countries like the US. For a country which wants a smooth transition from command economy to market economy, economic growth is the only antidote to unemployment. The government can no longer be the provider of jobs and the public sector undertakings a haven for the unemployables. That is what economic reforms are all about. It is true, as the report has pointed out, that the reforms which have brought about large-scale deployment of technology have resulted in displacement of labour also. This is not surprising as every country that went in for such reforms also experienced similar transitional blues. But then while many industrial sectors have been hit, new sectors have also come into being throwing up job opportunities. What is, therefore, required is not to blame reforms but to strengthen them so that more jobs are created than are lost. It would be instructive to compare India and China, which set themselves on the reforms course within a space of a few years. China has been able to attract $50 billion worth of foreign direct investment (FDI), which is 10 times more than what India has received. While FDI is not a panacea for India’s economic ills, there is an urgent need to strengthen reforms in sectors which have remained immune to reforms so far so that there is no impediment to creation of jobs. If China can achieve a10-per cent growth rate, there is no reason why India cannot. Let that be the loadstar to tackle unemployment. |
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Politicising outsourcing When elections approach, economic sense often takes a back seat. In this regard, politics in the US is no different. Small wonder that outsourcing has become a major issue in the coming US Presidential election. Union Communication Minister Arun Shourie may be right when he says that the rhetoric over outsourcing may taper off once the US presidential polls are over. However, the US Senate has approved a Bill that seeks to ban Federal contractors from "offshoring" their work. Thus, the anti-outsourcing lobby has scored even though it is widely accepted that outsourcing is the most efficient way to ensure that a job is done well, in a most cost-effective manner. While businesses, including General Electric and Gillette, support outsourcing, political leaders look at their voters and the union support, which have a considerable influence on American politics. Various Bills are pending at different levels of American legislative bodies, all seeking to penalise companies that outsource, little realising that outsourcing is in their own economic interest. Till now, the Bush Administration has not supported such measures, though it is believed to be using it to seek trade concessions. An estimated 2.5 lakh jobs are linked to US outsourcing. Outsourcing is not just an information technology issue, it also affects auto part manufacturers and other industries. Outsourcing is a business necessity in countries where labour is expensive. However, money is not the only issue. Equally important are other reasons like having the ability to scale up IT services as and when needed, and handling projects with more discipline. Even though it might be tempting to just dismiss the outsourcing hullabaloo as political histrionics, there is no doubt that the atmosphere has been vitiated and this is having a negative impact on even the American relations with countries like Canada, China, India and Israel, which are used by US companies for outsourcing. The votaries of free market economy would be well advised to follow their mantra in its entirety, warts and all. |
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Stupid
Cupid Love would not be love if it followed a socially approved script. Still, Cupid must have lost his marbles when he wrote the story of a Chandigarh man with six children eloping with a women who had two of her own. While the cuckolded husband went into hiding, the abandoned wife displayed more motherly concern than wifely outrage over what her spouse of nearly 15 years had done to her. She was worried about her husband not having remembered to carry the feeding bottle of the youngest of the eight children in the elopement party. If the lovers believe they can now claim an entry in Ripley's or Guinness, they would have to produce 13 children to beat the existing world record. The famous rib-tickler "Yours, Mine and Ours" was not fiction. The filmmakers had to face the legal wrath of Frank Beardsley and Helen North Beardsley. Fact turned out to be stranger than fiction. Between them, the Beardsley had 18 children when they walked to altar on September 9, 1961. They added two of their own to the army of kids they had brought with them. The Chandigarh couple would at best get an Indian entry for their crazy adventure. However, in a country the size of India there can never be a dearth of strange love stories. For instance, 56-year-old Shivdan Yadav of Rajasthan took a pledge to marry his child fiancee after passing the Class X examination. That was 38 years ago. The girl's parents waited for three years before finding an academically less ambitious spouse for her. As for Shivdan, he is still at it. If that is not bizarre enough, then visit Jharkhand where poor families have turned marriage into a lucrative enterprise. The same couples get married as many times as they are not detected to claim the financial benefits of a crazy official scheme for couples below the poverty line. |
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Thought for the day A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinion and uncommon abilities.
— Walter Bagehot |
Dalits’ place in private sector For some time there has been a persistent demand from the Dalits that law should provide reservation for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in business enterprises and in works funded by the government and the public sector. This question has assumed urgency because of the undesirable haste by which the public sector is being dismantled, with the inevitable consequence of loss of opportunities for employment for a large segment of the Dalits. It is no longer disputed that because of the caste system a large portion of the population in our country has been deprived of the equality of opportunity in various walks of life. The Supreme Court has emphasised that the Preamble to the Constitution, which directs the State to secure to all citizens justice, will remain a myth unless first economic justice is guaranteed to all. Employment — whether private or public — thus is a means of social levelling. A deliberately conscious effort to secure it to those who were designedly denied the same in the past is an attempt to do social and economic justice to them as ordained by the Preamble to the Constitution and also in accordance with the mandate of Article 16. However, the opponents of social transformation mischievously spread the canard that to legislate on a quota or reservation in the private sector would be impermissible in law, a proposition totally unsound in law. Article 14, when it talks of equal opportunity, does not forbid reasonable classification. Therefore, if any provision is made to give some part of business or contracts which are funded by the government and the public sector to the Dalits and the backward classes, this will be justified on the grounds of reasonable classification inasmuch as it was to give benefits to a class or society which has been deprived of opportunities for hundreds of years and which can only be redeemed by providing for it special provisions. A similar situation arose before the United States Supreme Court in Fullilove vs Klutznick. There was a “minority business enterprises” clause in the Public Works Employment Act of 1977 which contained a provision that 10 per cent of the federal funds granted for local public works projects must be used by the state and local grantees to procure services or supplies from the businesses owned and controlled by “minority group members”, the latter being defined in the Act as those United States citizens who are “Negroes, Spanish-speaking, Orientals …” This provision was challenged as denying an equal protection clause provided under the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution from which Article 14 of our Constitution has been adopted. The court, while upholding the law, relied on official reports which were to the effect that the effects of the past inequities stemming from racial prejudice have not remained in the past, and the reality was that past discriminatory practices have, to some degree, adversely affected the present economic system. The court upheld the validity of the piece of legislation as it contained provisions designed to uplift the socially and economically disadvantaged persons to a level where they may effectively participate in the mainstream business activity in the US. The argument raised as to why the private contractors should be compelled to limit their choice in this particular manner as to wherefrom the supplies will be received and whom they will sub-contract was given short shrift by clarifying that it is not as if these contractors are being held responsible for any violation of the anti-discrimination law. This legislation was enacted to prohibit practices which perpetuate the effect of the discrimination being practised, with a view to eliminating those barriers and ensuring that the minorities were not denied an equal opportunity to participate in the federal grants to the state and local governments, which is one aspect of equal protection of the laws. Thus, it is fallacious to say that if a similar law was made in India, non-Dalits will be thereby discriminated against because as the US Court said, “It is not a constitutional defect in this program that it may disappoint the expectations of non-minority firms. When effectuating a limited and properly tailored remedy to cure the effects of prior discrimination, such “a sharing of the burden” by innocent parties is not impermissible. The legislation was held to be only an attempt to remedy the ingenious and pervasive forms of discrimination against the Negro where “the position of the Negro today in America is the tragic but inevitable consequence of centuries of unequal treatment.” The same principle aptly applies to the position of Dalits in India. The non-Dalits cannot in law complain of being deprived of an equal opportunity. It is a settled law that equal protection requires affirmative action by the State towards unequals by providing facilities and opportunities to them. As Justice Homes of the US Supreme Court said, “If the law presumably hits the evil, where it is most felt, it is not to be overthrown because there are other instances to which it might have been applied.” The Supreme Court of India has held that “economic empowerment of the poor, in particular the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, as is enjoined under Article 46, is a constitutional objective as the basic human and fundamental right to enable the labourers, the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, to raise their economic empowerment.” A look around will show the horrendous deprivation in the matter of employment, notwithstanding the Constitution providing for reservation for the Dalits and the backward classes. The backlog of vacancies for the Dalits is appalling — 70 per cent in Group A, 45 per cent in even group D, and 88 per cent in the public sector. The backlog of appointments of the SCs and the STs is reported to be about a million in various government services. Even now in many places the country tea shops have two tumblers outside, and the Dalit is expected to wash his own tumbler. Such humiliating inhuman behaviour is there because the Dalits do not possess the financial clout to assert their constitutional rights to equality and non-discrimination. Poverty is so enveloping among the Dalits that of the agricultural labour force, about 49 per cent belong to this section. They are being denied dignity because without land ownership there is no respect in the rural areas. It is for this reason that it is time when similar legislation like that in the US is made to give the desired status in society to the Dalits. Political parties must be compelled to make an election promise that they accept this principle and will effectuate it — that of the funds spent by the Central and state government local bodies or the public sector in connection with public works, etc, will carry an in built-clause that at least, to start with, 15 per cent (though on the population basis it should be 22 per cent, just as the US provided 10 per cent, that being the proportion of the minority population) will be used to procure the services or supplies from the businesses owned and controlled by the Dalits and the most backward classes. This commitment will alone entitle the parties to seek Dalit
votes. The writer is a retired Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi |
Forgetful grandma AS a Headmaster I have come across cases of startling forgetfulness by parents and relatives vis-a-vis their children but the case of the forgetful grandmother takes the cake. She came in to my office through the staff entrance and I was a little irritated by this but when I put on my glasses to get a better look at her my irritation vanished. She was charming, attractive and well groomed and she had a warm smile on her face. Only when she sat down did I realise that the smile was a little too fixed. She said she had come to see her grandson. “What is his name?” I asked, keen to be helpful. “Biloo.” ‘Biloo? What is his proper name?” She looked fixedly at me, the smile faded from her face and her brow was creased with her effort at concentration. “I think its Gurbaksh — no, no, that’s the other one. Hartaj? Harpreet?” She tried each name for a moment before discarding it. “Oh dear, “she said, “there are so many of them” it’s difficult to remember.” Her sheer helplessness was disarming. “Which class is he in?” Again there was the frown of concentration. But this time she did not try a guess. “I am afraid — I just can’t remember.” We seemed to have reached a
dead end. We stared at each other and the fixed, leery smile gradually returned to her face. I just did not know what I was going to do. Then suddenly her eyes came alive. “I know,” she said. She pulled out a pair of jeans from her bag. “If you have the boys line up and ask them to try out these jeans, Biloo will be the one who fits into them.” I had a difficult time keeping a straight face. Once again we looked at each other in deep silence. This time it was my turn to get a brainwave. “Has someone come with you?” “My driver” I sent for the driver. “I have only been in the job 10 days.” He said “Even getting here was a problem. She did not remember the name of the school. We were fortunate that someone in Kalka told us that there was a boarding school near Kasauli.” I was desperate now. I had visions of spending the rest of my life, just staring at the lady, willing her to go away. This despair produced another brainwave. “You know your master’s telephone number?” I asked. “Yes,” he said and there was a smile of relief on his face. He pulled out a cellphone from his pocket and called a number. “Sahib, please speak to the Headmaster Sahib,” he said and handed me the cellphone. “Hello, Kabir, how are you?” said a warm hearty voice at the other end. “No, I am not Kabir. I am Dr Dhillon. The Headmaster.” “Dr Dhillon? The Headmaster?” There was deep consternation in his voice. “What happened to Kabir?” “Nothing happened to Kabir. He is the Headmaster of Bishop Cotton School in Simla. I am the Headmaster of The Lawrence School Sanawar. Your mother is sitting in the wrong Headmaster’s Office.” And I was, at last, able to get rid of the forgetful
grandmother.
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No end to travails of kidney patients
Fortyeight-year-old Kamal Singh of Hoshiarpur is battling for life. She suffered a third renal failure in December, 2002, and since then has been carrying on by getting a regular dialysis at a hospital in Amritsar. Once a robust Punjabi, Ms Kamal was detected with renal failure in April, 1995. It was then that she underwent her first transplant from an unrelated donor. However, a life-saving drug that she was put on to in the post-operative stage reacted, and her kidney failed again. Within six months, a second operation was performed, this time with her mother donating her kidney. As ill-luck would have it, the second transplant provided relief only for seven years and Ms Kamal suffered a third renal failure in December, 2002. Says the patient’s anguished husband, Mr Onkar Singh, ‘‘During the past one and a half years, she has had a dialysis for over 150 times, been in and out of hospital, and is now permanently confined to a hospital for a regular dialysis. I have burnt all resources to see her regain health, but it seems a difficult prospect’’. Then why not go in for a renal transplant yet again, you may ask. After all, with all advancements in the field of medicine, renal transplant is the best bet. And since she has had two transplants earlier, a third one should not be a problem —especially when a donor has already been arranged for. Ms Kamal lost her father several years ago, has no siblings and neither her husband's nor her sons' blood group matches with hers. So an unrelated donor has been arranged for again. ‘‘If there is further delay in conducting her surgery, it could prove fatal’’, says Mr Onkar Singh. He has now moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court for relief. For the past two years, kidney patients like Ms Kamal Singh have been falling victims to the "after-effects of the busting of the kidney scam". It was in September, 2002, that the Amritsar police claimed to have unearthed the infamous ‘‘Rs 100 crore kidney racket’’, allegedly being run by Dr P.K. Sareen at Ram Sharan Dass Kishori Lal Kakkar Hospital, Amritsar. Even as the police is still fumbling with investigation in the ‘‘biggest kidney racket ever’’, it is patients like Ms Kamal Singh, their families and, the science of nephrology itself, that are suffering. With most hospitals specialising in renal transplant surgeries in Punjab now refusing to conduct kidney transplant operations on patients having unrelated donors, and the three authorisation committees in Punjab (which give clearance for conducting the transplant operations in accordance with the Transplant of Human Organs Act, 1997) unwilling to clear cases of renal transplant involving unrelated donors, the transplant operations in the state have gone down by almost 70 per cent. As compared to 35 operations conducted each month in Punjab, before the ‘‘scam’’ was unearthed, mere 10 operations are now conducted each month. Says Dr Navdeep Singh Khaira, Secretary of the Punjab Nephrology Society, ‘‘The nephrologists in the state have sought legal protection in case they conduct transplant operations from unrelated donors. Several hospitals in Punjab — Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, and Christian Medical College and Hospital, both at Ludhiana, and Kidney Hospital, Jalandhar — have taken a policy decision not to conduct any operation where the donor is not directly related to the patient. With the powers-that-be indulging in ‘witch hunting’ nephrologists on the pretext of unearthing ‘kidney sale rackets’, we feel threatened and have decided not to risk our career and reputation’’. With nephrologists in Punjab being put under the scanner for any alleged "kidney rackets" and being booked for charges as serious as "murder" in case of death of a patient or his donor, the doctors have written to the state authorisation committee at Amritsar as well as the Director Research and Medical Education, Punjab, who is also the appropriate authority for transplant in Punjab, demanding legal protection. Informs Dr B.S. Shah, Secretary of the Dayanand Medical Teachers Association," Dr Sareen was slapped with a murder charge when Sudesh Yadav, an unrelated donor of his patient, MR Goyal, died because of post-operative complications. Before the "scam" tainted the renal transplant business in Punjab, including Amritsar (which alone accounted for over 65 per cent of the total cases), the state was considered the best bet for patients all over the country, not only for quality treatment, but also for the lowest price. In Delhi, Nadiad, Chennai and Mumbai a complete package for a transplant job costs Rs 2.50 lakh to Rs 4 lakh. It was available in Punjab for Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1.5 lakh. Now with typists unwilling to type affidavits stating that the unrelated donor is donating his kidney out of love to the recipient, magistrates unwilling to certify the affidavits, the authorisation committees reluctant to clear such transplants and nephrologists refusing to conduct operations, there seems to be no end in sight to the sufferings of renal patients who cannot find any relative to donate a kidney. |
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Delhi Durbar The Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet at its meeting on Tuesday took the extraordinary step of conveying the good wishes of all the NDA leaders to Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani for his “Bharat Uday” yatra. When Advani left for Thiruvananthapuram on
his way to Kanyakumari, present at the VIP lounge at the airport, among others, were BJP leaders Pramod Mahajan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Information and Broadcasting Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. They were soon joined by Congressman and former minister Kamal Nath. Most of the BJP leaders asked him if he was joining Advani’s yatra. An embarrassed Kamal Nath informed his BJP friends that he was flying in quite the opposite direction.
Arif Khan uneasy Arif Mohammed Khan, who recently joined the BJP with the blessings of RSS supremo K Sudarshan, is already feeling somewhat uneasy. He was asked to contest for the Lok Sabha from Gujarat. Khan, who had campaigned for the Congress candidates as part of Ramvilas Paswan’s political outfit Lok Janshakti Party, feels rather awkward contesting from a place where communal riots took place after the Godhra carnage. When khan came to know that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendara Modi was trying to gain legitimacy through him, he became guarded as well as a trifle circumspect.
Jayaprada on SP bandwagon An erstwhile cine star and virtual mascot of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam party, Jayaprada, has switched loyalties and joined Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party amid much fanfare in Lucknow. The TDP had brought Jayaprada to the Rajya Sabha and over a period of time, Naidu and company lost sight of her. During her term in the Rajya Sabha, she and SP General Secretary Amar Singh became friends. Jayaprada is obviously trying to
resurrect her political career after parting ways with the TDP. She will campaign for the SP. A bird tells us that Jayaprada might contest for the Lok Sabha from UP on the SP ticket or might be biding her time to enter the House of Elders again. Amar Singh has the knack of coming to the aid of those who have fallen on bad times.
Najma and Congress Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairperson Najma Heptullah finds that the Congress does not want her even though three generations of her family have been associated with it. She regrets that differences of opinion are
construed as dissidence. Her alienation with the Congress started in 1999 after her election as the President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The BJP has been wooing Najma Heptullah for the last three years and giving her the space to decide for herself.
Plight of women Former CPM MP from Kanpur Subhashini Ali is determined to expose the BJP-led NDA
government on its failure to adopt meaningful measures to ameliorate the lot of women in the country. In a satirical attack, reminiscent of humorist Jaspal Bhatti’s launch of the feel-good party, the CPM has decided to observe a women’s day on March 16 in Kanpur by giving symbolic titles as Miss Beemari (disease), Miss Dahej Peedit (dowry victim), Miss Ashikshst (illiterate) and Miss Call Girl to highlight the deplorable condition of women in society. Contributed by Satish Misra, R. Suryamurthy, S. Satyanarayanan and Tripti Nath. |
The human soul draws near to the Divine by contemplation of God’s power, wisdom and goodness, by constant remembrance of Him with a devout heart, by conversing about His qualities with others, by singing His praises with fellow men and by doing all acts as His service. — Dr S. Radhakrishnan Even if the nights be dark, the white remains white; even if the day is bright, the black remains black. — Guru Nanak Trifles make perfection and perfection is no trifle. — Michelangelo The greatest difficulties lie where we are not looking for them. — Goethe |
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