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Debt relief The UGC radar Poor and fat |
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When losers are victors
A bull run and a bear stroll
A simple lesson from the Kargil War PEOPLE
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Debt relief THE winds of economic change have brought no windfall to the farming community during the last few years. On the contrary, they have been harbingers of bad news, so much so that nearly 300 farmers have committed suicide this year in Andhra Pradesh alone. In fact, the growing disillusionment among the farmers has been a major contributor to the BJP's electoral reverses. Realising the gravity of the situation, the new government has come up with a package for the agriculture sector even before the Budget. Its sheet-anchor is the enhancement of low-cost institutional credit to farmers. Besides, there will be a debt-restructuring package for distressed farmers and 50 lakh additional farmers will be brought under the borrowing system. The measures will, hopefully, free them from the clutches of moneylenders. Farmers will also get Rs 25,000 crore by way of subsidies in the 2004-05 financial year. The steps are substantial enough to make life a little easier for the harried farmers. What is creditworthy is that the Finance Minister has not buckled down before the Left parties, which were demanding waiver of loans. That might have solved the immediate problem but would have set an unhealthy example for the future. The burden of these measures is to be borne by commercial banks, Nabard, rural banks and cooperatives. That causes sneaking worries, because if all the banks are not enthusiastic about extending loans, the well-meaning scheme may come a cropper. Even otherwise, the experience is that the loans are rarely disbursed as smoothly as they are promised. The government has offered a total flow of Rs 105,000 crore farm credit from all lending institutions in 2004-5, which constitutes a 30 per cent jump over the Rs 80,000 crore in 2003-4. Hardboiled managers are bound to question the viability of lending to farmers without collaterals. But a healthy sign is that recoveries from self-help groups happen to be as high as 96 per cent. |
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The UGC radar ON the face of it, the University Grants Commission’s system of assessing the performance of universities through a method called the “performance radar” is interesting. The radar seeks to focus on three thrust areas of university education — academics, research and governance. The main objective is to evaluate the quality and standards of teaching, examination and research. The “performance radar” is also called the “health radar”, implying that the UGC is also concerned about a university’s financial health. Accordingly, in tune with its Tenth Plan guidelines, one-third of its funding is linked to the performance of an institution. The criteria for assessing the performance of a university include, among other things, academic achievements of teachers in terms of qualifications, inter-disciplinary research and the number of working hours put in by them in teaching and research, introduction of new degree courses, examination reforms and frequency of syllabi revision. While all this appears to be rosy in theory, the picture is entirely different in practice. In the first place, where is the monitoring mechanism at all to assess the performance of a university teacher? One can speak of any number of radars but monitoring is virtually non-existent in the universities today. This is the main reason for the systemic decay in most universities. While the teachers waste time and don’t upgrade their knowledge, education for the students has become mercenary and utilitarian. The universities have become cesspools of corruption, favouritism and maladministration. Given the shoddy functioning of its members, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) hardly inspires any confidence. They assess the performance of an institution not on the basis of its quality but on the kind of the reception given to the visiting team by the teachers. There is need for a foolproof mechanism to plug the functional loopholes and monitor the performance of each and every teacher who must be made accountable for what he or she is doing. Only then can one think of restoring some semblance of order and discipline in the so-called modern temples of learning. |
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Poor and fat VARIOUS government agencies report that poor Americans are more likely to be fat than the non-poor. Threadbare analysis has spotted the villain. Commercial establishments call it fast food, but food analysts say it is junk. Junk food comes cheap. Now the problem has raised its head in developing societies, and India is one of them. According to a recent report, more non-rich Indians are spending money on “eating out” than on home-cooked food. That is the primary reason why they are more likely to join the global population of the poor fat people. Of course, the Congress abandoned the “gharibi hatao” agenda for reasons that are not associated with the emerging trend. Ring the alarm bells before the problem becomes as acute as it is in the US, Japan and other rich countries. Studies show that the poor people in India, China and Brazil — all emerging economies — are now at a greater risk of suffering from heart problems, diabetes and cancer than they were before the process of globalisation popularised the junk food culture. After the identification of the source of the “poor fat people” syndrome, the American health authorities have introduced damage control strategies. India should use their data for combating the menace. Many of the stereotypes about fat people, besides being cruel, are myths. Medical research has conclusively shown that being overweight is not a sign of prosperity. It is a sign of poor eating habits and wrong food preferences. The poor getting fat in India is no laughing matter. It is linked to their past when they were poor and starving. The body has a natural defence against starvation. It slows down the body's metabolism to make less food go further. However, if even the inadequate quantity comes in the form of junk food it is informed intervention by the State, wedded to the welfare of the people, that can nip the problem in the bud. Timely help can prevent it from becoming a full-blown catastrophe like AIDS. |
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Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
— Richard Steele
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When losers are victors AS a cub reporter in the early seventies, I found it quite thrilling interviewing Mr P.M. Sayeed, who had just been elected for the first time from Lakshadweep. And a few years ago, when he visited our village as the chief guest at a church's centenary, I had a special reason to etch it in my memory as the church was set up by my grandfather who was a priest. For these reasons, I have always been keeping track of his political ups and downs. Though Lakshadweep had become synonymous with Mr Sayeed and most people saw the Hundred Thousand Island, known as the coral capital of India, as his pocketborough, discerning observers have been noticing that his lead in successive elections had been coming down. While everybody remembers that in the last elections he lost by a wafer-thin margin, few care to know that he won the previous elections by an equally narrow margin. The point that needs to be remembered is that his popularity had been on the wane. Obviously, the voters of Lakshadweep were not impressed by his stewardship of the 13th Lok Sabha in his capacity as the Deputy Speaker. Whatever may be the reason, they no longer wanted him to represent them in the Lower House. The greatness of democracy is the fickleness it invests on political power; today one can be an all-powerful Cabinet Minister and tomorrow a humble citizen. But Signora Sonia Gandhi was bitten so much by the loyalty bug that she paid scant regard to the verdict of the Lakshadweep islanders and got Mr Sayeed inducted in the Union Cabinet. At the swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, he was honest enough to admit that his inclusion was as much a surprise for him as his defeat a week earlier. But then he was not alone as Mr Shivraj Patil, whom the voters of Latur had rejected, was already at the high table as the Home Minister. Their induction is tantamount to 10 Janpath thumbing its nose at the verdict of the voters. In doing so, the Congress chief cared two hoots for her late husband's policy of never rewarding those who lost elections except after what he called a "cooling off period". Worse, she has been systematically rewarding the "losers" with cushy jobs and prestigious assignments. The voters of Amritsar and Churu are yet to recover from their surprise at Mr R.L. Bhatia and Mr Balram Jakhar getting better jobs than those whom they voted for. Similarly, Mrs Sukhbans Kaur Bhinder, who lost for a third time from Hoshiarpur and Mrs Kiran Chaudhary, who could not defend her Assembly seat in Delhi, to name just two, have been fielded in the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha. To be fair to the Congress, it is not the sole villain of the piece. The original sin, to borrow a Biblical expression, was committed by the BJP when it appointed Mr Pramod Mahajan and Mr Jaswant Singh as ministers despite their losing the elections. And when the first opportunity arose, the party brought them into the Rajya Sabha. Small wonder that the BJP has not found anything amiss in Mrs Gandhi's decision to bestow favours on her
favourites. On its part, the BJP has been busy accommodating all its prominent leaders who lost the elections like Mr Murli Manohar Joshi and Mr Yashwant Sinha in the Rajya Sabha. Even the Janata Dal is not far behind as Mr Sharad Yadav, who lost to Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav in Madhepura, is all set to win a Rajya Sabha seat from Bihar. When it comes to protecting their self-interests, there is little distinction between the ruling party and the Opposition. They follow the dictum: "You scratch my back, I will scratch yours." Whatever politicians may say about one another, they are one when it comes to protecting their flanks. The legislators are the only ones who can increase their own salaries and perks and they always see to it that such Bills are passed without any hitch. The rare unanimity they showed in increasing the MP local area development fund is a case in point. Come to think of it, all political parties are controlled by a small group of people, who will not let any fresh blood flow into the party veins. Thus Dr Murli Manohar Joshi has to be in the Rajya Sabha even as his successor needs a walking stick to keep secularism erect in the HRD Ministry. By rewarding people like Mr Bhatia with a gubernatorial post, the political leadership sends out a message to all the losers that there is no point in nursing their constituencies and regaining the voters' faith. They would, instead, do well to curry favour with their political masters. A former colleague, Mr Manvendra Singh, proved in the deserts of Rajasthan that a defeat was not the end of the road for a budding politician. After his abortive attempt to become a member of the 13th Lok Sabha, he virtually shifted to his constituency and identified himself with the voters so much so that this time he won with the maximum margin in the state. But that is old-fashioned politics. Politicians have found ways to get around even constitutional obstacles to get into the Rajya Sabha. The people of Madhya Pradesh will have great difficulty in pronouncing the name of Mr S. Thirunavukkarasar but he will represent them in the Rajya Sabha. For starters, he is a former Union Minister from Tamil Nadu, whom the BJP could not field in the last elections because of opposition from Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. It is not the first time the BJP in MP has played host to rank outsiders. Former Minister O. Rajagopal, who has been unsuccessfully contesting elections first on the Jan Sangh and then the Janata Party and BJP tickets from Kerala, got into the Rajya Sabha from Bhopal, more to strengthen his base in Kerala than to plead the case of Madhya Pradesh in New Delhi. While veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar's petition questioning the constitutional validity of the amendment enabling people living anywhere in India to contest a Rajya Sabha seat from any state is pending before the apex court, it would be worth pointing out a scenario, which at the moment may appear far-fetched. If a single party under a dictatorial leader comes to power at the Centre and he decides to pack the Rajya Sabha with his own henchmen from his own state, he will be able to do so. The Upper House will become a House of his state than a House of the States. It was to rule out such dangerous situations that the founding fathers of the Constitution had introduced the domicile clause for Rajya Sabha elections. A conspiracy among politicians sought to undermine this basic feature of the Constitution. Even regional parties which are supposed to espouse regional and state-specific causes did not protest this frontal assault on the Federal character of the nation. They know only too well that those who live in glass houses cannot throw stones at others. |
A bull run and a bear stroll SENSEX has turned into insanesex. The bull has floored all matadors and toreodors who waved red to it. Jumped the red light, say. For an ignoramus, I can’t make out a bull run from a bear stroll. Whether its the snort of the rampaging bull or the hammering, post a bear hug, I walk on arcane territory. The early nineties, when a bull ran amok, and after he was caught by the horns, set the pattern. “Double ready forward”, he moved scattering stock, share and moral all over the place. Neither the wiseheads of that august institution, the Bank which maintains its Reserve, nor, the formidable Securities General Sir Ledger could see what was happening. We — the tax payers — are still not clear who created the blackhole which gobbled all the light, all the wisdom, all the money. I learnt that hedges were not the growth at the edges of lawns, and that, derivatives were not formula derived from fundamental laws, as we students of science had all along understood. And what are kerb deals, pray? My suspicion was they were the kind of deals which, ahem, ladies with overcoats of paint made on dim lit footpaths. One stock expert was shocked at the prurience stocked in my mind. And coming to basics what are stocks and what are shares? “Like a bottle of water and a pool of water from which the water is bottle”, a stockman tried to explain. I found myself at the deep end of that pool, as he pontificated on the theme. I thought he was taking “badla” for the long sermon which I had given him the previous day on the concept of the individual soul and the universal soul! “No, not badla, it’s futures now”, said he reading my thoughts. And when Demat came I was absolutely flummoxed. When I was a student in primary, we had to literally “demat” our classrooms! Our school had housed, in the Raj days, a stable for the mules of the Royal supply Corps. It had plain compacted earth as its fundament. Mats were spread on it for the children to sit on. Every Monday, we had to “demat” the classroom, sweep the floor and reinstate the mats “de novo”, as a secretariat baboo would put it. Only then could begin the collective chant of “two, twos are four”, in front of the cane wielding class teacher! The Dow Jones, Heng Seng, Nasdaq, Wall and Dalal Streets, Nifty, Sensex are words of choice for my friends who speak of market sentiment and bull runs. For me, its — you guessed it — all bull and his important morning
product! |
A simple lesson from the Kargil War
INDIA won the Kargil conflict in 1999, but it is in the news again. We have to be grateful to the media to have brought out the hidden aspects of this war. That there was intelligence failure is well known, but there seems to be a lack of proper assessment and analysis not only on part of the brigade headquarters but also at the divisional and corps headquarters. The first report of the presence of Pakistani troops on these heights was given by the shepherds on May 3 that year. However, the Corps Commander was talking in term of a limited number of Pakistani intruders even after one full week of this report. It was only when a patrol led by an officer was ambushed that various heads took a serious note of the situation that was developing. Close reconnaissance should have been ordered along the LoC immediately after the first reports had come in. We have a large number of helicopters and light aircraft for this purpose. It seems to have been a lack of understanding and coordination between the Army and the Air Force, which resulted in the delay in getting air support, a fact that has been brought out by the media only now. It seems that the Air Force was sent the request for air support on May 8, 1999, but it was still considering the request for a week or so after that before forwarding it to the Ministry of Defence with the recommendation that the IAF should not be used. The ministry considered the request for 12-13 days and cleared it only on May 25 when the Army chief pressed for it. There is a notion in India that the use of the Air Force escalates the situation. This gives the Air Force as well as the government all the reasons to delay the use of the Air Force, which can carry out reconnaissance and support the ground operations. It is not a new situation. Even in the 1965 war, as General Harbaksh Singh, a capable Commander, has stated his book, A Soldier Remembers, "the IAF did not give full support to the Army operations." And he should know, for he was commanding the operations both in Jammu and Kashmir and in Punjab. However, the Air Force has its point, too, in that when large-scale operations are planned, the Army Commanders do not consult or discuss the plans with the Air Force. Both wings of the armed forces need to look into the problem carefully. In the Bangladesh War in 1971, the IAF gave full support to the Army. Some analysts remark that the success was partly due to complete air superiority that the IAF had achieved in campaign and partly due to Field Marshal Manekshaw, who was more or less acting as Chief of Defence Staff then. There is a need for the Chief of Defence Staff System in India. During the Kargil operations, our aircraft took off from various airfields after briefing and bombed the Pakistani positions directly. There were no air-control teams on the ground to guide the pilots to the targets. An air-control team consists of officers from the Army and the Air Force with proper communication to direct the pilots. It only shows a lack of training for air support at high altitude. It is time that we accepted this reality and learnt lessons for the future. The Pakistani generals claimed victory in the Kargil War and blamed the-then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for ordering the withdrawal of Pakistani forces. There is no doubt that General Musharraf's plan to occupy stealthily the heights overlooking Kargil was a tactical success. However, strategically, it was a complete failure, for it overlooked the fact that India would react in full strength and throw out the Pakistani forces. In the end, Pakistan lost face in the world and also the battle. Pakistan was obviously not prepared for an all out war with India and had no alternative but to fight as best as it could on those bleak heights. Meanwhile, the blame being thrown on Nawaz Sharif is not borne out by the evidence that is now emerging. General Zinn, former Commander in Chief, US Central Command, in his book, Battle Ready, writes that General Musharraf was the one who got Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to agree to the Kargil withdrawal under pressure from USA. However, pulling back to the LoC was a serious setback for the Pakistan Government and its generals. Besides, it provided the generals with the necessary excuse to withdraw. The truth, however, was that the Indian forces, fighting against all odds, had recaptured all the important Pakistani-held positions. However, myth persists in Pakistan that its generals were forced to withdraw by Nawaz Sharif under pressure from the USA, particularly President Clinton. On this side, 3 and 8 Infantry Divisions fought bravely to throw out the intruders, but there was no Corps headquarters to coordinate their operations, particularly in the use of long-range guns like Bofors. The Corps Commander used to visit the two divisions, but it is not the same thing as having a Corps HQ. The Corps HQ remained in the valley. A Corps HQ is designed, equipped and trained to move forward a tactical HQ to control the operations, while the main Corps HQ functions under its Chief of Staff, who holds the rank of Major General. Despite all this, the Corps Commander was decorated at the end of the Kargil War. We did not cross the LoC, which got us international acclaim, but it cost us heavy casualties. There's a lesson in it for both countries. |
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PEOPLE MANY people in West Bengal are starving. The government, as usual, is debating whether they are dying of starvation or malnutrition. Help is coming only in trickles. But private initiative has come from an unexpected source. Perhaps finding a resonance of their own pathetic lives in the hunger deaths, sex workers have been among the first to open gruel kitchens in a starving village. "We find a strange affinity with these people. Like us, they too have been shunned by society," said Deepali Dutta, a former sex worker supervising free meals for sick children and rickety men and women in the tribal village of Amlasole. "We have come with a plan to stay here for a week," said Putul Das, another former sex worker. Wearing aprons with the slogan "only rights can stop the wrong", the sex workers wake up early in the morning and prepare breakfast. But the villagers are worried that the free meals won't continue for long.
Naseer as a playboy
But then he had done a romantic role in Rai's earlier "Tridev" as well. After all, Rai gave him the two real boxoffice hits in his entire career of 250 films. "The 'Asambhav' role is quite different from what I have done before in terms of characterisation and appearance. I have dyed my hair blonde. I have worn a lot of cool clothes. I play a cheerful, witty character. My character is slightly wicked, who of course turns out to be good in the end," says Naseer. But the great actor is not really changing stripes. He has also done two totally unglamorous roles as well. In the first film, "Akooni", he plays a crazy Parsi guy. The second film, called "Farzania", is about a Parsi family caught in the midst of riots.
Move over, horses!
In a race between man and horse, back the horse. That has been the iron rule for the first 24 years of the annual "man versus horse" marathon in Llanwrtyd Wells, mid Wales. But natural law was broken last week. Huw Lobb, an IT management consultant and mere biped, out-ran four-legged Kay Bee Jay to make a giant leap for mankind and giant hole in the accounts of bookmaker William Hill, who had promised £ 25,000 to any human who could do it. Lobb, 27, from Bedford near London, said: "I was the fourth Briton to finish the London marathon this year, so I have been in training for a long time. But the race is very different I have been up and down mountains today." Some 47 horses and riders lined up against nearly 500 people and relay teams in the gruelling 22-mile race in what claims to be Britain's smallest town. No human running alone had ever been able to defeat a horse in the quarter century of the competition. The closest was four years ago when Mark Croasdale came within 90 seconds. Lobb, however, smashed the equine hegemony by more than two minutes. |
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. — Saint Francis of Assisi You heed, watch and pray; for you know not when the time is. — Jesus Christ The happiest moments we ever know are when we entirely forget ourselves. — Swami Vivekananda God, the spouse, enjoys on His couch the love of only the chaste and righteous brides. — Guru Nanak The conjunction of the day and the night is the most auspicious time for calling on God. The mind remains pure at this time. — Sri Sarada Devi |
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All his life, Naseeruddin Shah has done realistic, unglamorous roles. But for old friend Rajeev Rai's forthcoming "Asambhav", he is playing a "flamboyant, playboyish character".