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Unwarranted panic Young MPs |
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Abu Ghraib shame
Perils of public interest litigation
Tourist eyescape
NEWS ANALYSIS The rise and fall
of Mamata
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Unwarranted panic FOREIGN institutional investors have misread the present Indian political and economic situation. Otherwise, they would not have been jittery about the new government's direction on reforms. They have overestimated the Leftists' capacity to hurt the economy by slowing down or stalling reforms. The 793-point fall in the BSE sensex early Monday was the biggest ever in its history and its subsequent recovery was only natural as neither reason nor statistics justify the massive slide. Carried away by certain Leftist leaders' irresponsible utterances on TV, they have chosen to withdraw, causing unnecessary turmoil in the stock markets. One should not forget that it was Dr Manmohan Singh, the seasoned economist and likely Finance Minister, who had embarked India on the path of reforms in 1991. Foreign institutional investors, who invested close to $10 billion in the Indian stocks last year, had high expectations from this country. Most had believed in the continuity of the reforms with the BJP-led NDA's projected return to power. The surprise win of the Congress and its allies did end fears of a hung Parliament but the party's dependence on the Leftists for survival has unsettled their calculations, triggering the pullout. The proposed raise in US interest rates has fuelled the flight of the capital. Dr Manmohan Singh's reassurance to investors on Friday and threat of action against the speculators on Monday helped salvage the situation to some extent. The Left's best-ever performance in the recent elections has given its leaders a renewed confidence. Some have forgotten the value of silence and started voicing publicly their opposition to the privatisation of profitable PSUs. Many in the Congress also share this view. The present perception is that the new government is unlikely to encourage the sale of stakes in government banks, privatise Air-India and Indian Airlines and deregulate the oil industry. The real picture will emerge only after the common minimum programme is made public and the Budget is presented. It remains to be seen whether the government raises the oil prices in keeping with the global trends or succumbs to the Leftist pressure. |
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Young MPs A NOTEWORTHY aspect of the recent elections is the remarkable performance of the youth. Many of them have made it to the Lok Sabha defeating veterans like Union ministers Jagmohan and Ram Naik. Statistically speaking, it is the second instance in the history of the Lower House of political greenhorns representing the people. Obviously, the first Lok Sabha had more faces that were new. The average age of the members of the new Lok Sabha should reflect the silent revolution that has taken place. Credit for the change should go to the young set of voters, particularly those who exercised their franchise for the first time. That is only a minor point of interest. The more significant development is that most of the members in the 25-40 age group are qualified professionals. In other words, they have made a conscious decision to give up promising careers for an opportunity to serve the nation. However, it is not only the young voters who expect the youthful representatives to improve the level of debate and discussion in the House that in the past decade has seldom risen above the banal. True, a substantial number of the young faces come from political families. Most of them belong to the Congress. In at least two instances, their candidature itself added a few inches to Mrs Sonia Gandhi's growing political stature. Rajesh Pilot and Jitendra Prasada had challenged her leadership. A petty leader would have ignored their families. However, the Congress president saw in young Sachin Pilot and Jitin Prasada the spark to serve the people. The BJP and the Samajwadi Party too have introduced some new faces. The notable among them are Akhilesh Yadav, Dushyant Singh, Manvendra Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu. The young members have a huge responsibility on their shoulders. They must not let down the nation. The negative traditions of the past would beckon them. However, they must set new benchmarks of conduct for strengthening the people's faith in parliamentary democracy. |
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Abu Ghraib shame US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his senior colleagues are in the dock following reports that they allowed the use of degrading and humiliating interrogation techniques to extract information from the inmates of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. They knew of what was going on in the notorious jail because they had put their stamp of approval on the unconventional methods, or the way the prisoners were tortured. It is not easy for them to dismiss this as "outlandish and conspiratorial". The latest expose on the subject has come from no less a person than noted American journalist Seymour Hersh. They must pay for violating the Geneva Conventions. The maltreatment of the Iraqi prisoners has led the Bush administration to order many enquiries into the sickening happening to punish the guilty. The US has also promised to plug the loopholes in the prison administration system, particularly with regard to the interrogation of the inmates, so that what happened at Abu Ghraib is never repeated. The enquiries and the pious promises are, however, aimed at pacifying the angry American public. In fact, an attempt is on to deflect the people's attention from the real issue. The Republican administration has launched a drive against the media and the Democrats, accusing them of overreacting after the shameful development became public. Such tactics cannot help the Bush regime. It is faced with another serious charge that around 70 per cent of the Iraqi prisoners had committed no serious offence though they had been routinely abused for months by the occupation forces. This is what the Red Cross report on Iraq says. Many of these unfortunate Iraqis are women. All this points to not only wilful disrespect for recognised international conventions but also a leadership failure, as the US General whose report led to the global firestorm over the treatment of prisoners has asserted. Mr Rumsfeld and his guilty colleagues must resign to salvage the US image in the eyes of the global community. |
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You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art. |
Perils of public interest litigation An indiscriminate recourse to public interest litigation can damage a cause instead of advancing it. The latest example is the Supreme Court’s rejection of a petition filed by a scientist and two others against the University Grants Commission’s decision to introduce astrology as a subject of study in educational institutions. There is much to be said in favour of their contention that the UGC’s move is a “giant leap backward” as it would undermine science and encourage irrational behaviour. But no point of law was involved in the matter. No crime had been committed, nor any public or private rights violated. A petition of this nature, therefore, stands on a shaky legal foundation. This is exactly what the apex court pointed out when it agreed with the Union government’s argument that there was no compulsion on the students to take up the course. It was only an option before them. It can be argued, of course, that there has to be a limit on options as well. Once astrology is accepted as a legitimate subject, all other similar topics — palmistry, vaastu shastra, a study of tea leaves, tarot cards, feng shui, pranik healing, even tantrik rituals of the kind in which a Union Minister of State participated with snakes around his neck — might claim a place in the university syllabi. Although critics might regard “studies” of this nature as hocus pocus, a negation of such “options” might be regarded as an encroachment on individual rights and practices, which cannot be outlawed as long as they do not disturb public order. Clearly, this is a matter which cannot be settled in court. Subjects such as these concern a person’s belief, somewhat like religion, and cannot be arbitrated like a property dispute. There will be pros and cons which the two sides can point out endlessly in a futile debate. The rationalists, of course, can — and should — present their case much more frequently in open forums, including the media. Once the courses are introduced, they can seek permission from the university authorities to try to convince the students that the claims of the astrologers and others of their kind can never be proved, as a scientific thesis can be. But to involve the courts is inadvisable because even a judgment which does not directly refute the petitioners’ case, as in the present instance, will be regarded by the defendants as a victory. The most instructive case in this regard is the one relating to the Supreme Court’s verdict on Hindutva as a “way of life”. It was immediately seized by the BJP and the Sangh Parivar as a vindication of their philosophy. Yet, it was a misjudgment on the petitioners’ part to believe that they could win a legal battle of this kind which, again, was not a property dispute but a matter of religion, culture and, above all, politics. Little wonder that the Chief Justice of that time, Justice J.S.Verma, later regretted that the judgment was put to political use. The petitioners’ failure was to draw a distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva to counter the saffron camp’s attempt to equate the two. Arguably, the two were identical concepts 20 or 30 years ago when Hindutva would have been interpreted as “Hinduness”, although Savarkar’s book, “Who is a Hindu ? Essentials of Hindutva,” was published half a century ago. But it was not widely known. It is only in the last 10 years or so that it has come into the public domain. However, the fact that the word Hindutva is not a synonym for Hinduness is obvious from a perusal of two sentences on the cover of the book. The first one says: “A Hindu means a person who regards this Land of Bharat Varsha, from the Indus to the Seas, as his Father-land as well as his Holy-Land that is the cradle land of his religion”. The other sentence is from the Rig Veda. It says, “Who delivers this our Nation of Sapta-Sindhus, who endows us with wealth, do thou O ! Lord, hurl they mighty thunder-bolt to destroy our enemies - the Dasas”. Both sentences have a nationalist rather than a religious content, thereby underlining the difference between Hinduism (“not a dogmatic creed, but a vast, complex but subtly unified mass of spiritual thought and realisation”, to quote Radhakrishnan) and Hindutva. Evidently, this is not something on which the judiciary should be asked to give its obiter dicta. Yet, the petitioners blundered into this mistake to the delight of the Hindutva lobby, just as Dr Murli Manohar Joshi can now draw enormous satisfaction for the affirmative nod given by the Supreme Court to the introduction of one of his pet subjects. The same mistake was committed by a group of over-enthusiastic petitioners when they took their complaints about the alleged bias in the new NCERT textbooks to the Supreme Court only to find an unresponsive judiciary. Like the subjects of astrology - a science or mumbo-jumbo? — and Hinduism/ Hindutva, it’s extremely difficult for the courts to find their way through the thicket of arguments and counter-arguments. Bias, like belief in horoscopes, is not easily identifiable. It’s a viewpoint or an interpretation in accordance with a person’s assessment of historical facts and events. Consider, for instance, the jizya tax imposed on Hindus by Aurangzeb more than a century after its abolition by his predecessors in the Mughal empire. Most people see it as a confirmation of Aurangzeb’s anti-Hindu policies. Yet, there are others who point out that Aurangzeb took the step after three successive years of revenue deficit, which was bankrupting his administration. While searching desperately for untapped sources of revenue, he saw in jizya an easy option. It has to be remembered that the 17th century was not a time of enlightenment. There was no concept of minority rights. If Aurangzeb’s ancestors still did not levy the jizya, it was because they were ahead of their times. Clearly, Aurangzeb was not. But it is also true that the number of Hindus in his employment was higher than at the time of Akbar, the most forward-looking of all Mughal emperors. But these are not subjects on which a court can pronounce a verdict. It’s a matter of debate among academics. By looking for a legal solution to such controversial topics on which no final word can be said, the secularists have been harming their own cause. One of the reasons why they may have been banking on the judiciary to buttress their case is that they haven’t always been too successful in articulating their views with vigour in public confrontations with the Hindutva lobby. It’s a deficiency which they will have to
overcome. |
Tourist eyescape He was here from Sydney to experience the thrill of trekking in the cool environs of Himachal Pradesh but was leaving the shores of India disenchanted and disappointed. This is how the Australian seated beside me on a Chandigarh-Delhi train handed out his introduction. His tale of misadventure went thus: A hotel in Shimla arranged a guide to take him trekking. The guide, however, turned out to be a confused and clueless local who took trekking to be directionless wandering in an inebriated state. Feeling cheated, fleeced and totally at the mercy of his escort, this foreigner considered himself lucky he was brought back to Shimla after two days of aimless travel. The bitterness with which this tourist spoke about his experience took me back four years ago, to Jaisalmer. There I had met Lucy, a Londoner, who had been vacationing in the desert town for four months even though she had a string of grievances to dole out. She complained about touts getting into the act right from the taxi stand outside the airport. White skin meant nothing but dollars to them, she said. And, they pestered and followed you till you opened your wallet. Perturbed by the talk, I visited the local tourism office to learn more about the complaints. A tourism official said just 50 per cent of the complaints get settled, as it was difficult to follow up cases after the complainants left the country. One particular protest in the complaint register — which was inundated with accusations like overcharging for accommodation, overpricing the camel safaris and penny-pinching on the promised fare — caught my attention. Made by a woman (Donna Cabell) from the US, it read: "People need to be educated on how to show manners to tourists. Children mock at tourists. They should not be allowed on streets without adult supervision. Shopkeepers or any other men should not be allowed to stand outside doing nothing. In other countries, they are arrested for loitering." This one grouse seemed misplaced to me. India appears alive due to the animation of its street life. Unlike western and European countries, the Indian bazaar has a vibrancy that remains matchless. In old cities, where there is little to demarcate shops from residential dwellings, it is commonplace to have children fooling around on the streets and men exchanging gossip or simply staring into nothingness over bundles of bidis. While many foreigners may find this liveliness too informal and odious for comfort, many others return to India again and again for its warm familiar touch. My thoughts jerked back to the Australian, as he brought up his hand to cover his nose. He couldn't bear the stench welcoming us to Delhi. He also couldn't bear to look long at the slums. There was little I could say to explain away the poverty, dirt and squalor. I only hoped, he would be able to savour the real India some
time. |
NEWS ANALYSIS
It is for the first time since Independence that the Left parties have secured more than 60 seats in the Lok Sabha. Although they were the principal opposition party in 1952, this time their strength will help the Congress party to come to power. Apart from granting stability to the Congress-led Union Government, the CPM will have to reconsider its moves to ally with the century-old party considering the fact that they are bitter rivals in the Red bastion — West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. In Bengal the Left Front has bagged 35 of the 42 seats and in Kerala it has won 18 of the 20 seats. The CPM, the largest party in the Left coalition, has bagged 43 of the 69 seats it has contested in the general election. It has created a history of sorts by winning Kolkata (North-West) after a gap of 48 years and Kolkata (North-East) after 20 years. The Leftists’ most unexpected showing this time came from Kerala, a traditional stronghold where they simply swept away the Congress, winning 18 of the state’s 20 parliamentary seats. The Communists have never managed to get the majority seats from this southern state in the Lok Sabha poll since 1967 and the CPM for the first time won the Manjeri seat, a stronghold of the Muslim League. Outside its traditional Red bastion, the Left parties have done well in this general election by entering into a strategic alliance in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand. In Tamil Nadu, together with the Congress and the DMK, the left has picked up four seats. Last time, the CPM had only one seat from Tamil Nadu. In Andhra, the Left worked together with the Congress and the Telengana Rashtra Samiti and picked up two seats. In Jharkhand, the CPI had an alliance with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Rashtriya Janata Dal. In its campaign the CPM focused on bursting the BJP’s “India Shining” balloon and projected the negative impact of economic reforms followed by the NDA. The hammer and Sickle party did not spare the Congress for the ills faced by the people of the country. The CPM manifesto said: “Congress policies and record of government contributed to the present plight of the people and the country. Its failure to strengthen the foundation of democracy, secularism, federalism and its anti-people policies laid the basis for the rise of the BJP and its coalition government. The Congress has not learnt lessons from the past. The Congress advocates economic policies, which are not different from the BJP.” Despite the differences with the Congress on the economic front the CPM entered into a tactical understanding with the century-old party to defeat the immediate menace of communal politics being propagated by the BJP. Though the Congress has also proclaimed its commitment to secularism, in practice it had compromised on this issue in the past. But, in the present situation, the CPM believes that the Congress would work for a secular polity in the country. As the third largest group in Parliament, the Left, specifically the CPM, has an important role to play in changing the course of India’s future — a new direction for the country in the 21st century. This is the second time in less than a decade that the party has an opportunity to be part of the government. The party regretted its “historical blunder” not to join the government in 1996 when veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu had the Prime Ministership of the country on his platter. With a thundering mandate, the party has the option of joining the government or extending outside support to the Congress in running the government. Can it join the government and support the Congress, which initiated economic reforms in the country that have hit the pesantry and working class the hardest? Another issue of concern is: what will be the impact of such an unholy coalition which may cut the support base of the party? Considering that the reform process is irreversible, the Communists have to tread a delicate path. What the CPM government has been doing in West Bengal can provide some clues. The Left Front government in West Bengal has itself embraced “liberalisation,” arguing that it is following the China model. The state government has established special economic zones at Faalta and Salt Lake where the labour laws do not apply. And Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya has attacked the trade unions, saying that workers must learn discipline and forego strikes if West Bengal is to be able to secure investment. In some ways it may suggest that the party is following the same economic policies as the Congress. What the CPM and others will insist is formulating a common minimum programme, which takes into account the interests of the exploited sections of society and ensures the economic reforms are pursued with a human face. The party may try to protect the interests of the working class by opposing disinvestment of profit-making public sector undertakings, give an increasing role to state enterpreneurship and restore the “right to strike” through legislative measures. |
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The rise and fall
of Mamata
The party’s founder members — Mamata-loyalist Sovandeb Chattopadhyya and rebel Sudip Bandopadhyya — doubt the party’s survival and wonder if it would be merged with the Congress — an idea Siddhartha Shankar Ray has been propagating for the past few years. Already, on the eve of the elections, a large number of Trinamool Congress leaders and workers had come out in the open to throw their lot with Sonia Gandhi. Party insiders say a large number of TMC MLAs in Kolkata and around — including Mayor Subrata Mukherjee, Saugata Roy, Sadhan Pande, Subrata Bakshi, Tapash Roy, Paresh Pal and Tarak Banerjee — are willing to return to the Congress. The rebel leaders like Ajit Kumar Panja and Sudip Bandopadhyya are also ready to return to the Congress and they have been waiting for a “call” from the Congress leadership in the state. Some TMC workers and supporters at the grassroots level have rejoined the Congress. The party, which was floated in 1997, faces its doomsday, though some leaders close to Mamata claim the party would soon be reorganised after reviewing its poor performance in the poll. They claim Mamata will soon be back in form and follow her policy of “Ekla cholo rey”, if deserted by her party leaders and workers. In the late nineties, the honesty, integrity and boldness of the “young” political leader had attracted a large section of the middle class to counter the Marxists. However, Mamata’s arrogance, high-handedness, whims and political adventurism have led to her downfall. Mamata’s meteoric rise in Bengal as well as national politics had been a cause for concern. At one time, she was even more popular than the Marxist supremo, Jyoti Basu, a fact the CPI(M) leadership has also acknowledged. The Bengal people noted with wonder and admiration that Mamata was the lone political leader who had the guts to resign as a minister on issues, small and big. She first resigned during Narasimha Rao’s prime ministership on June 21, 1991, when she held the portfolio of Sports as a state minister. She walked out of the Vajpayee Cabinet leaving the coveted Railway ministry on the Tehelka issue on October 13, 1999, with which neither she nor her other party colleague in the government, Ajit Kumar Panja, then the state minister for external affairs, was linked in any way. She admitted at a later stage that the decision to leave the NDA on the eve of the state assembly elections in 2001 was a disaster for her and her party. The CPI(M) leadership is happy that the election has wiped out the BJP from the state. But the leaders are happier that they have got rid of Mamata Banerjee as well. |
God is attained only when man gets established in one or other of these three attitudes: All this am I; All this art Thou; Thou art the Master and I am the servant. — Sri Ramakrishna Enter your closet, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret; and your Father who sees you in secret shall reward you openly. — Jesus Christ Strength is the one thing needful. It is the medicine for the world’s disease. And nothing gives such strength as the idea of Monism. — Swami Vivekananda The wise God knows everything. — Guru Nanak |
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After the debacle in the Lok Sabha poll, the future of Ms Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress hangs in the balance. The party, which had an overwhelming presence in the Marxist-ruled Bengal, now stands in tatters. And none but the leader herself should be held responsible.