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On Record Need to contain India’s
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Profile Reflections Kashmir Diary Diversities — Delhi Letter
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On Record
Legal luminary and Member of the Rajya Sabha Fali S. Nariman is one of the top constitutional lawyers of India. He commands respect in the country and abroad for his immense knowledge of the law. By virtue of his articulation on the subject, contribution to jurisprudence and forging greater cooperation between Indian bar associations and lawyers’ bodies abroad, he has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha. As an MP, he has introduced private member’s Bills on some very important issues like disqualifying a charged person from contesting elections and setting up of the National Authority for Judicial Statistics to ensure transparency in the functioning of judiciary. In an exclusive interview to The Sunday Tribune, Nariman talks on these issues as well as the proposed Lok Pal Bill. Excerpts: Q: What are your views on the proposal to bring the President and the Prime Minister under the purview of the Lok Pal? A: No. It will not be proper to bring these top constitutional offices under the Lok Pal. I am totally opposed to the idea. The two offices should never be included in the Lok Pal Bill. Then you are making the Lok Pal higher than the President and the Prime Minister. It will be disastrous for democracy. Q: How will it be disastrous? Will it not act as a check on corruption? A: Any little whisper by the Lok Pal about them will make the country’s political system unstable. The Prime Minister should never be under the Lok Pal. He is answerable to Parliament and can be removed through a no-confidence motion if he does something wrong, or ousted in the election. Otherwise, he cannot be removed. It will be too great a risk. Why should you assume that the Prime Minister will be corrupt? If the Prime Minister is corrupt, then the whole nation is hopeless. I don’t agree with such a provision even if the proposal has come from the President and the Prime Minister. Q: What should be the nature of the Lok Pal? A:
It should be a trinity, multi-member body. It should not be headed by one man. It should be a body like the Election Commission. We cannot give too much power to one person. There must be a balance in the institution itself. Q: What do you say about the criminals’ entry into politics in large numbers? How can this menace be tackled? A: It is sad that people with criminal background are getting elected in large numbers. But democracy functions like this. I have introduced a Bill providing for disqualifying a person from contesting an election if charges have been framed against him for an offence punishable with a minimum imprisonment of five years or more. Such persons should be disqualified to contest election till they are acquitted by the courts. Q: Will political parties enact such a law? A:
It is for the political parties to answer. But the Law Commission, in its 170th report to the Government on electoral reforms, has made wide-ranging recommendations about amending the Representation of People Act, which also includes disqualifying a person against whom charges are framed. If this law is enacted, the measure will help in de-criminalising politics to a great extent and cleansing public life. Q: What was your aim behind the Bill on the National Authority for Judicial Statistics (NAJS)? A: The whole object of the Bill is an attempt to bring on par the obligations of the great organs of the state to share information about their functioning with the public. So far as the executive and legislature are concerned, they are made accountable to the people by way of asking questions in Parliament and if we don’t get the answers, there is provision for filing PILs in the High Courts and the Supreme Court. But the judiciary by and large keeps things to itself, specially in the High Courts and the lower courts. Q: Will it make the functioning of judiciary transparent? A: To a great extent. The Bill provides for enacting a law for setting up of NAJS, State Authority for Judicial Statistics (SAJS) and District Authority for Judicial Statistics (DAJS). It provides for collecting information as how long a particular type of case has been pending in the courts and why it has taken so much time in deciding it. In a way, it would make the judiciary accountable to the people. Q: In the Bill, there is a provision for collecting separate data on criminal, civil and constitutional matters and the judge who handled them. How will it help? A: It will help assign the judicial work to a judge, who has the expertise in a particular field of law and ensure that his knowledge is properly exploited to the advantage of the judiciary and public cause. For example, if a judge has expertise in labour laws he can be assigned that job. Q: How will the judiciary be benefited by collecting such information? A:
This will help the Chief Justice of the High Court very much as he can bring some improvement in the judicial system. We have a three-tier judicial system and the object of the whole exercise is to have some data about its functioning at every level. The collection of separate data about criminal, civil and other matters would focus attention on whether the cases of a particular nature were sufficiently pushed or need to be pushed further for early decision. Q: In what way the information about adjournments in a case is relevant? A: Decisions in the cases are delayed due to unnecessary adjournments and such information will show who had sought the adjournment, were they given for no reason, or only because the advocate was not present. It will be a very bad position if adjournments are given due to the lawyer’s absence. The experience is that in civil cases adjournments are given for a period of two years or more. Even the criminal cases are not disposed of so quickly. Why should the cases not be pushed for early decision? The Bill aims to achieve this. Q: In the absence of transparency, isn’t the public aware of the judiciary’s functioning? A: The delay in deciding the cases indicates that there is something wrong in our system. What is the remedy for it, people must think about it. Q: What are the views of political parties on your Bill? Have you interacted with them about it? Are you hopeful of the passage of the Bill? A: My Bill is a private member’s Bill and I am doing my duty as an MP to bring this problem to the government’s notice. The government has to get interested in it and see that the Bill is passed. I have raised the issue before a forum available to
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Need to contain India’s
expanding population THE need to focus serious attention on population control for a developing country like India is of paramount importance. As India with the second largest population in the world fights valiantly to overcome a historical legacy of social and economic backwardness, a steep population growth not only negates the little achievements but also puts tremendous pressure on our already overloaded system. The growing imbalance between the available resources and accelerating pace of population growth is frightening. As per a United Nations projection, the world population by 2025 AD will cross 850 crore and a major chunk of this growth will be recorded in the countries of Africa and South Asia. It should be a matter of concern for us that India, occupying a meagre 2.4 per cent of the total world area, has 16 per cent of its population and with each passing year a staggering 1.8 crore people is being added to our already bloated population base. At this rate of adding one Australia to our population each year, India is surely going to overtake China by 2040 AD. India was the first country to adopt a National Family Planning Programme (NWFP) in 1951-52). Developing countries like Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand that followed suit have successfully stabilised their population growth, but not India. Our family welfare programme has had a mixed success as the crude birth rate has fallen considerably from 41.7 per thousand recorded in 1951. The success of the programme has been particularly impressive in States like Goa, Tamil Nadu and Kerala where the crude birth rate have crashed to below 20 per thousand. As an integral part of the NFWP, the Universal Immunisation Programme and Maternal and Child Health Programme have helped reducing the infant mortality rate immensely. The NWFP has, undoubtedly, been the fulcrum for creating health and family welfare infrastructures in rural India. Though the creation of community health centres, primary health centres and sub-centres for providing basic healthcare to the needy in rural areas is a significant achievement, a lot more needs to be done to make India a lean country in respect of population in the foreseeable future. The four big states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar account for approximately 40 per cent of the country’s total population. They still have an alarmingly high crude birth rate. Unless someone bells the cat keeping politics aside, the demographic profile of the country cannot improve. A close review of our programmes reveals that a key weakness has been the absence of a holistic approach on population control. Clearly, population control goes beyond the family welfare and social factors like female literacy, child marriage, female employment, status of women and their general economic development have a close nexus with the success of containing population explosion. There is a dire need to make a distinction between family welfare and population control schemes. Illiterate people in rural areas particularly will be more prone to accept the message of a small family if their infants survive and some sort of employment guarantee is provided. For successful implementation of these programmes, the importance of political will and administrative support along with an enthusiastic mass movement is absolutely essential. Perhaps it is time for us to shift from the voluntary nature of the population control programme to a compulsory process. Though everybody is painfully aware of the growing menace of population explosion, somehow the authorities are showing a lackadaisical attitude in taking the right approach to tackle the problem. For example, family planning advise and assistance could be extended if all doctors and health workers felt a social responsibility in bringing it to the notice of the patient though the purpose of visit might be different altogether. Lady doctors, in particular, should undertake greater responsibility in tackling this situation that requires drastic measures. The government should look into the following aspects for achieving a stable population in the near future. As there is a co-relation between female literacy and fertility rate, the government needs to sustain efforts to improve female literacy. The quality of health and family welfare services should be improved and their outreach increased. A new package of compensation or incentives can be introduced to reduce the actual birth rate. Younger couples should be the targeted section for promoting the message of small family. A completely different strategy needs to be undertaken for the 90 districts of the country where the crude birth rate is abnormally high especially in the states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana. We need to launch new programmes for the reduction of child mortality rate and initiate a practice for safe motherhood. More research work is needed for a breakthrough in new techniques in contraceptive technology. Decentralisation of communication strategies like information and education keeping in view local socio-cultural ethos with special emphasis on inter-personal communication is a must. The inter-sectoral coordination machinery at the Centre, state and district levels with close involvement of higher authorities must be augmented for strict implementation of the population control programmes. Through procedural simplification, more voluntary and private agencies should be involved to make the programme a success. The influx of illegal immigrants at an alarming rate from neighbouring countries will have to be checked at any cost in the light of the Union Home Ministry’s frightening report that such immigrants have been traced in large numbers to every corner of India. In fine, population control should be kept above petty politics so as to make it a subject of national consensus. Political controversies need to be avoided and religious leaders representing all the religions must be involved in it on a war
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Profile
He was inducted into the high-power Congress Working Committee and given the charge of Karnataka. Barely after 11 months, he is back in his sprawling office in Mumbai's Mantralaya, the state secretariat. Vilasrao's name for the top post was nowhere in the reckoning. It looked as if Sushil Kumar Shinde would get the second term. But there are many slips between the cup and the lip. The party High Command at the last moment decided that a Maratha (Vilasrao) as the Chief Minister and not a Dalit (Shinde) was the need of the hour. Vilasrao is also known to be a Sharad Pawar baiter and, possibly, it was thought that another Maratha leader was needed to check his rising clout. The experiment of having a Dalit leader as CM had, after all, failed and the Congress' tally did not improve in the recent Assembly elections. It was realised belatedly that Vilasrao's replacement in 2003 was a mistake and he should be brought back. Thus, the wheel has come a full circle for him. From a village Sarpanch in the drought-prone Latur district to a second term as the Chief Minister has been a long journey for the 59-year-old Vilasrao. He hails from the economically backward region of Marathwada. A minister in various governments in the state from 1982 to 1995, he held such diverse portfolios as revenue, co-operation, agriculture, home, industries and education. His long stint in the government enabled him to gain wide administrative experience. He lost the 1995 Assembly elections but bounced back to the centrestage very fast. Politically, Vilasrao was groomed by Shankarrao Chavan. He is said to be close to Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. His equations with Pawar has been strained. His first term was marked by the Shiv Sena-BJP combine's attempt to poach independent legislators and brought the government on the brink of collapse. A long-drawn suspense followed during which legislators of the ruling coalition were taken to Bangalore and lodged in a hotel to prevent further defections. In the final act of the verve-wrecking drama, Deshmukh managed to retain his majority in the Assembly, but it was a narrow escape. His problems began in 2002 when the Congress got fewer votes than the NCP in the Zilla Parishad elections. The NCP secured 29 per cent of votes as against 24 per cent by the Congress. Since then, his detractors mounted pressure on the Congress High Command, arguing that he could not lead the party in the Assembly elections and needed to be replaced. Even though Vilasrao faced flak from his party, he had taken some sound administrative decisions. He constituted the Kurdukar Committee to probe lapses in the deal with Enron and the Dabhol Power Company. He also cancelled the Maharashtra Electricity Board's contract with the DPC, saving crores of rupees for the state. During his second term as the Chief Minister, Vilasrao faces many challenges, the first and foremost being running a coalition in which NCP holds many key portfolios and Sharad Pawar's party has more MLAs than the
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Reflections
I
watched all the three presidential debates as most Americans did. It was like our Ramayana serial days back home when at certain part of the serial, it became a 'must see' and we rushed home. During the first debate, I found myself nervous. For I am clearly for one of the two! And I have my very strong reasons for the choice. But I am not going to disclose which side I am. I will wait to share one day. As I saw the Presidential debate I wondered, on many counts. As there was an ongoing comparison with the Assembly elections in India. And I was watching the coverage on the Zee TV and the NDTV (New Delhi TV) via the Internet. There was a huge contrast and it became more and more obvious. For me the comparisons were only the press of a button away. Channel 10 or Channel 504. The election rallies in Mumbai whenever addressed by senior and central political leadership were to really huge rallies, compared to the corner, restaurant or town hall meetings the presidential candidates were holding. Also not visible were any Black Cat kinds. They were obviously invisible. But what was clearly evident was the fearlessness and candid questions asked. The extent to which the presidential candidates were being grilled was no one's envy. They were put in the spot, to literally bare their views. Even how many times they had voted in the Senate for what inclusive of their attendance sheet was fully accounted for! To me this was democracy in practice in many greater respects: Giving the voters the right to know, to some extent, what and whom they are voting for, well before they would actually cast their vote. And to me this was the optimum use of the television and the Internet technology in the exercise of right to information. Let me share some of the questions, which the candidates were grilled on before I suggest what the Indian system could pick from here, for the future, to make our democracy transparent and more intensively engaged, prior to the casting of votes. The questions that were thumbed up and by the preceding town hall meetings and the third and final presidential debate were:
The results of the public perceptions were instant too! Within minutes the viewers knew it. The figures flashed instantly. It was the popular vote with the formal vote to follow. How about a similar exercise in India? Imagine questions of this kind? Including the criminal violations and cases before the courts on records of many. As a recent survey reveals. Or will these be put away subjudice? And the huge wealth declared or not, in many cases. The family roles with specific facts and figures. Questions on farmer suicides, health services, access and quality, employment, power, schools, transport, water, slums, crimes, pollution. And many others we all talk of but never ever does an ordinary voter get to ask on 'one to one' in full public view ever. Something the voter can revert to on record any way. The majority voters in many cases are perhaps the farthest from the leader during the rallies for many reasons. Yet they go in the biggest numbers. And which candidates will answer these? And when? Will it be voluntary? Or will this be judiciary driven through a public interest petition? And will this mark the maturing of Indian electorate and Indian democracy? More informed? More Participative? More accountable? I am hopeful it will happen during the lifetime of my generation. We look forward to seeing the desi debate sooner or later. We the people, willing and
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Kashmir Diary POOR General Musharraf. Considering the historic import of what he has recently proposed regarding Jammu and Kashmir, he must be sorely disappointed by the responses from this side of the border. In an ironic sense, however, he has got his comeuppance for the media coup he managed at Agra in July 2001. There, he scored with straight-from-the-shoulder frank talk. This time, the same sort of openness has landed him in an uncomfortable corner. He has severely limited Pakistan's bargaining position by stating publicly what the two countries might finally agree to. And in the bargain, he has handed his domestic opponents a hefty stick to bludgeon him with. The General must have been particularly unsettled to read the reaction of Mr Jaswant Singh, who rejected on behalf of the BJP and the National Democratic Alliance any change of borders in the search for a resolution. Now Mr Singh was at various times the Foreign Minister, Defence Minister and Finance Minister in the NDA government and a solution very close to one of those that President Musharraf mentioned had apparently been discussed when that government was in power. The then National Security Adviser, Mr Brajesh Mishra, had reportedly held secret negotiations with his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Sartaj Aziz, during the first three months of this year. Some of the most senior leaders of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference — who had simultaneously been engaged in talks with Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani - told me soon after those talks that such a solution had been discussed between the two countries. According to what they had heard, the Gilgit plateau and the adjoining areas that Pakistan collectively refers to as the Northern Areas would be merged with Pakistan while Ladakh was merged with India. The remaining areas - the Kashmir valley, the Jammu region and what Pakistan refers to as Azad Kashmir - would get a large degree of autonomy a little short of sovereign independence. Sovereignty would either be jointly exercised by India and Pakistan or, more likely by each country on either side of the Line of Control. In order to give these areas a sense of integrity across the Line of Control, a joint sitting of the two assemblies would be held at least once a year. Although President Musharraf spoke of a variety of options for a solution, this was apparently the one he was really putting forward. Other suggestions like United Nations control are a non-starter since the UN already has too much on its plate and Secretary-general Kofi Annan has stated that the UN resolutions are no longer applicable and that the two countries must sort out the tangle to their mutual satisfaction. Both the UN and the US have taken the position that they can only facilitate the search for a solution if both nations ask for such assistance. Of course, Pakistan has sought such assistance since the beginning while India has always contemptuously rejected it as interference and worse. Now, the General appears to have landed in the very sticky position of beginning negotiations from what was meant to be the final offer. That, of course, is the difference between a soldier and a politician. His confidence appears to be based on the meeting he had with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September. No doubt, he feels he is dealing with another man who does not belong to the murky world of politics and who, like a true academic, goes by the facts. If that is true, there are two factors that President Musharraf ought to have considered. One, Dr Singh has spent many years as a very successful bureaucrat and, even if he is uneasy with the ways of politicians, he is an old hand at official negotiations. The second point is even more important and might just have slipped both men's apolitical minds. If indeed Dr Singh intends to reach a historic solution of the Kashmir imbroglio, he might just make his political mentor, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, deeply unhappy. It is easy to forget how hastily the Congress withdrew support to Mr Chandra Shekhar's government in March 1991 — over two Haryana constables who had apparently been keeping watch outside Mr Rajiv Gandhi's residence, the very one incidentally where Mrs Gandhi still resides. One of the real reasons for that withdrawal of support was the initiative by Mr Chandra Shekhar to resolve the Ayodhya tangle. He had appointed a committee of three chief ministers — Mr Shekhawat, Mr Pawar and Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav — to talk to the religious leaders on both sides and find a solution. The political heavyweights who back such politically weak prime ministers as Mr Chandra Shekhar and Dr Singh do not take kindly to bold initiatives that hold the potential to send the image of the incumbent prime minister soaring sky
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Diversities — Delhi Letter THE week has been packed. Luckily, instead of hearing and seeing and interacting with the same lot, there had been a change. Two interesting characters I had met. One was quite by chance on the IIC lawns — Kashmir Valley's well known scholar Agha Ashraf Ali, better known as the late rebel poet Agha Shahid Ali's father. I had interacted with him in Srinagar earlier. He spoke on "Religion in the 20th century". He banked heavily on what the so-called world leaders - political and spiritual — have said about religion. Though he is almost 84 years old, he was rattling off quotes and extracts. He lamented that 35 minutes were not enough for a talk on religion, that too, in the broad span of the entire century. An optimist, he stressed on the positive. That probably explains how he is managed to survive in the turmoil-stricken Valley. Though I have been suggesting that he should put his thoughts in a book form, he brushes it off them with a gentle smile. This brings me to write about a young writer, Amardeep S. Dahiya. He is Chandigarh-based, but visits Delhi often. This time, he was armed with his manuscript — 17 short stories — with a rather off beat title Four fingers and seventeen nails. While he informs that this collection of short stories would hit the stands early next year, there are more books coming from his end. Dahiya writes with a certain uncomplicated and unaffected flow in each of his stories. That's the way he speaks. In fact, that afternoon when he spoke, I kept thinking I have heard someone else speak in a similar way. I was happy when his publisher Vivek Ahuja of UBSPD told me that Dahiya belongs to the same village in Haryana as Kapil Dev. Sahitya Akademi’s
golden jubilee The opening of the golden jubilee celebrations of the Sahitya Akademi at the Vigyan Bhavan. One striking factor was that the main speakers fitted Urdu couplets in their speeches. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Akademi President Gopi Chand Narang, Akademi Secretary K. Satchidanandan and even I&B Minister S. Jaipal Reddy used an abundance of shairs in their speeches. One of them aptly pointed out that one can convey and express so much more through these shairs. It was well attended take off and a whole list of events in the months to come. What I find of great significance is a symposium on Kashmiri poetry to be held in Hyderabad. It goes to the Akademi's credit to focus on the lesser known and to bring in a mood to connect one region to the other, through the best possible way — verse. Michael Moore’s
film on Bush Michael Moore should have been 'More'. Last Sunday, one viewed his much-hyped film on US President George Bush at Shabnam Hashmi's ANHAD office. Now with the re-election of Bush for another term in the White House, Moore should have been more explicit and
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Krishna is the greatest of the great: No one can surpass his opulence. He possesses all fame, all beauty, all strength, all knowledge, all wealth and all renunciation. He manifests the material and spiritual universes simply through his energy. — Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu If you have patience, then you will never have any enemy. — Lord Sri Rama I `ave neither any fear of death nor any craving for life. I only seek You, O Lord, who cherishes all and in whose will we breathe and survive. — Guru Nanak The Buddhas do but tell the way. It is for you to swelter at the task. The Buddha Of all vain things excuses are the vainest. — Buxton |
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FOR almost a year Vilasrao Deshmukh sat in a secluded corner of the AICC office at 24, Akbar Road, New Delhi. His tiny room, unlike those of other office-bearers, was not crowded. His callers included partymen from Maharashtra and Delhi-based correspondents of some Marathi newspapers. Soon after his unceremonious removal as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra in January 2003, Vilasrao was virtually thrown into political wilderness.