This is not the first time that such insensitivity has been shown to her. Three months ago, when she was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the country's second highest civilian honour, and could not make it to the presentation ceremony because of her disability, the sarkari babus decided to send the award to her by post, despite the fact that her Hauz Khas house in New Delhi is hardly a 30-minute ride from Rashtrapati Bhavan. Only when a hue and cry was raised in the media that the Home Secretary visited her house to hand over the award to her.

It was obvious that the objective was to target Tehelka and cripple its functioning. Besides, the government also wanted a quick exoneration of Mr George Fernandes so that he could return "honourably" to the Cabinet. But when Justice Venkataswami failed to submit his report within four months as stipulated, a desperate Fernandes used pressure tactics to reoccupy the Defence Minister's chair. Needless questions were asked about the authenticity of the tapes when every person caught on them had admitted to having committed moral turpitude. Experts in the UK also vouchsafed for the genuineness of the tapes. All this while, innumerable cases were slapped on those behind Tehelka sapping all their energy. And when Justice Venkataswami accepted an additional job from the government, he himself came under a cloud. It was under these circumstances that Justice Phukan stepped into the commission. But even before he could complete his job, he gave an interim report exonerating Mr Fernandes.

But the government’s hands are tied. Even if it tries, it cannot help the unemployed beyond a point. First, no one knows precisely how many are without work. There are some 40 million registered unemployed. The number of uneducated and unskilled jobless is anybody’s guess. Few, however, disagree that unemployment is rampt. Secondly, the flabby Central and state governments have fewer jobs to offer. They expect jobs to come from industry. But industrial growth itself is uneven. The Prime Minister hopes to promote labour-intensive units. But with labour laws unchanged and the Prime Minister ruling out any policy of hire and fire in the absence of a social security net, fresh foreign/domestic investment is unlikely to flow in this area.

At present the position is that 217 cases (involving 1600 persons) are being investigated under POTA and 116 of them are being tried (involving 500 people). Many of them have been in jail for over two years but the trial has not yet even commenced. How does one tell them that the UPA government, though proclaiming its opposition to POTA in the past, now feels that all the pending cases should continue to be tried subject to being reviewed by the Central Review Committee (which was set up by the NDA government), and until it finds anything in favour of the detainees they must remain in jail? What a demonstration by the UPA government of its secular commitment and safeguarding of civil liberties at the threshold of its governance.

What prevents the UPA government from straightaway withdrawing all cases considering the immediacy shown in withdrawing the case against Raja Bhaiya of UP even when POTA was in existence?

A large number of objectionable features of POTA have been retained by a not-so-clever exercise of amendments made in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 through an Ordinance.

The blanket power to the government to declare any association as terrorist has been retained, but the remedy in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 to have the matter inquired into by a sitting High Court judge on facts has been dispensed with by providing for a limited jurisdictional remedy — a Review Committee consisting of a majority of officials, though headed by a sitting or retired High Court Judge.

The definition of unlawful activity is common to both the 1967 Act and the Amendment Ordinance to mean an association which either by words spoken or otherwise acts so as to disrupt the sovereignty and integrity of India. The offence being the same but the remedy being less favourable under the Ordinance as against that provided under the 1967 Act, no court can uphold such patent discrimination and the unfettered power of the Central government to pick and choose between two associations accused of the same crime. Such action is totally illegal.

By Section 7 of the Amendment Ordinance, new Chapter IV, V, VI and the Schedule of POTA have been bodily lifted from the repealed POTA and incorporated in the 1967 Act. The result is that a terrorist organisation declared by the NDA government as such is accepted and continues to be treated as such by the UPA government. Is it not tragically amusing that the governmental mantle makes the fearful opposing political parties think and behave in the same manner against common citizens?

There has been so much clumsiness in drafting that though the provisions of admissibility of evidence collected through the interception of electronic messages have been bodily lifted from POTA, the procedural safeguards put in POTA (which, in fact, were necessitated under the compulsion of judgment earlier given in a PUCL case filed by us challenging telephone tapping) are missing. The Supreme Court upheld the legality of telephone tapping but subject to certain safeguards. Unexplainably, these safeguards have been omitted.

Further clumsiness is that while incorporating a requirement of the order of a competent authority permitting interception to be supplied to the accused before trial, the definition of “competent authority” as given in POTA has been omitted. The result is that this provision is unworkable because no interception can be legally done unless with prior authorisation by a competent authority, and as no competent authority has been provided by the Ordinance any interception will be illegal and inadmissible; the whole purpose of this provision will remain a dead letter. Moreover, in POTA there was a review committee formed to review the order of the competent authority. This also is omitted in the Amendment Ordinance.

I do not know what is the thinking of the government in omitting this chapter. As the Supreme Court upheld the power of interception subject to safeguards so as to comply with the requirement of Article 19 (Right of Privacy), the deletion will make all such interceptions unconstitutional and inadmissible. It is to be noted that without such safeguards, the power of the government to abuse this power was so prevalent that government agencies used to intercept communications of even former Prime Ministers and Central Ministers as noticed in the PUCL case. Does the UPA government wish to go back to such arbitrary police powers?

A very objectionable feature in POTA of permitting the court to keep the identity of witnesses a secret has been retained and incorporated as such in the Amendment Ordinance. Such a provision has been held to be unconstitutional by the Inter-American Human Rights Court and evidence thus obtained is not admissible. Even the Supreme Court has accepted in the PUCL case challenging POTA that keeping secret the identity of a witness is a deviation from the usual mode of trial — still the Amendment Ordinance retains this provision, thus denying fair trial to the accused, the very accusation made against the provision in POTA by the UPA constituents.

Of course, credit must be given to the government for keeping the inadmissibility of a confession before the police in the same way as a general law of the land, but then again it will not benefit the existing detainees who will continue to be governed by the objectionable law of POTA which the government itself feels denies safeguard to the detainees to defend himself/herself.

No credit need be taken by the government in purporting to suggest that the accused can apply for bail in the first year. This position was laid down by the Supreme Court while disposing of the PUCL case challenging POTA that even under POTA it was open to the accused to apply for bail in the first year. As a matter of fact, the Central government had conceded this position before the Supreme Court. No relaxation has, therefore, been made and the government cannot take any kudos in this behalf.

There is an ancient maxim that how clever you may try to become but the reality will always catch up with you. Yet governments continue to ignore it at their own peril.

Agreed sir, he had forced himself upon a little girl. The heat of youth, sir, a flush of desire caused by those Hindi fillums. But he also thought of marrying her like any decent fellow and settle the issue neatly, just like in those fillums. A happy, happy ending.

But, would her ambitious parents have appreciated his sentiment, sir! Never. Instead, she would have been tortured by everybody. He realised this, a bit late perhaps, and ended the girl’s misery by strangling and stabbing her a few times decisively. Just for this, to hang him by the neck — of all things, the neck, sir! How barbaric, in this, our 21 st century.

Look at the fate of girls in our society, sir. A poor, polio-stricken teenage girl from Chindwara wrote to the President a month ago requesting him to either arrange treatment of her tumour “causing unbearable pain “, or allow her to die. Look at female foetecide, dowry cases, and policemen raping those very women seeking their protection. Whom do we hang for all this? Why this discrimation against my friend?

Has hanging Shri Billa and Shri Ranga prevented Gaganji and Rajinder bhai from kidnapping and killing eight-year old Heena and her six-year old brother Abhishek in Jullundhar four years ago? They were given death sentence recently, though the wise lawyers had pleaded that Gaganji, the only male member of the family, was just 19 and “could be reformed”. Of course, while demanding the ransom, they had made a technical mistake by covering the children’s faces with the suffocating polythene bags.

Honourable sir, please remember that many young ones have died imitating the great Dhananjoy hanging show. And how much public sympathy was generated for his family! If my friend is hanged, some political party will make his wife fight the elections on a sympathy wave. She will win, thanks to our highly enlightened but emotional public. It will inspire ambitious ladies to cheer their husbands all the way to the gallows. What a mess!

According to a recent report by New York-based Human Rights Watch, “the political rights of Afghans are not being adequately protected or promoted.”

“The warlords are still calling the shots,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Many voters in rural areas say the militias have already told them how to vote, and that they’re afraid of disobeying them.”

Senior officials in U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration and the U.S. military have said Afghanistan is heading into a dangerous period leading up to the October 9 elections.

John Sifton, an Afghanistan researcher with Human Rights Watch, said in an interview from New Delhi that although many of the minimal requirements for a democratic election have been met, the overall process has been severely affected by the overriding atmosphere of threats, harassment and fear.

“An undeterminable number of politically active people have decided against taking part in the process, and many voters are simply not free to enjoy their political right to vote… they are afraid to vote as they wish,” said Mr Sifton.

The Human Rights Watch report says while many observers inside and outside Afghanistan continue to focus on the Taliban as the main threat to human rights and political development, in most parts of the country Afghans said they are primarily afraid of the local factional leaders and military commanders — not the Taliban insurgency.

“Far from a Taliban problem, most Afghans tell us that their main fear is of jangsalaran — the Dari and Pashto word for ‘warlords’,” the report noted.

Peter Tomsen served in the first Bush administration as the U.S. special envoy to the Afghan resistance from 1989 to 1992. “The warlords want to keep their independent authorities in their strongholds,” Mr Tomsen explained. “They don’t want other larger warlords or still others to affect their domination in their local areas.”

“This personal pursuit of power is their main goal,” he said.

But, Mr Tomsen added, “Afghans do not want the Taliban back.”

“The people of Afghanistan are fed up with civil war,” said Masooda Jalal, the only female presidential candidate in this male dominated society and election.

Other key candidates include Yunus Qanooni, a Tajik who played a prominent role in the Northern Alliance and who has the backing of Defence Minister Mohammed Fahim. Mr Karzai dropped Gen. Fahim as his running mate in favour of Ahmed Zia Massoud, the brother of slain Mujahideen commander Ahmed Shah Massoud and the son-in-law of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

Another contender, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, in July stepped down as military adviser to Mr Karzai.

Manizha Naderi, New York-based administrative and community outreach director for Women for Afghan Women, said people in Afghanistan don’t feel safe with the warlords in power. “These are the same people that destroyed Kabul and brutalised the people. They raped women and destroyed Afghanistan,” Ms Naderi said. “Now they are ministers and governors.”

“These people have no place in government,” Dr Jalal agreed. If she comes to power, Dr. Jalal says she will appoint “specialists and professionals who are democrats and believe in democracy” to her Cabinet.

Human Rights Watch warned that if the international community does not take urgent steps to disarm the warlords and provide adequate security for average Afghans, serious human rights problems could disrupt next year’s local and parliamentary elections.

“The signs are ominous,” said Mr Adams. “The Afghan government and its international allies have to act fast. What’s needed is a significantly increased international security force and U.N. human rights monitors.”

Ms Jenelle Bonnor and Prof Varun Sahni, the co-conveners of the Australia-India Security Roundtable, have stressed the need to move beyond discussions and focus on practical cooperation.

Their study “Australia-India Re-engagement: Common security concerns, converging strategic horizons, complementary force structures” was released by the Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute.