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Voters’ day in Haryana Faster with telecom |
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Ruling on compensation
Landmark elections in J&K
Battle of permanency
Pakistan: what lies ahead? The Sari Shop is ‘best first book’
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Voters’ day in Haryana The high voter turnout in Thursday’s Assembly elections in Haryana is commendable. The fact that the overall voting percentage exceeded 65 per cent is an eloquent tribute to the wisdom and maturity of the electorate. Significantly, the tentative voting percentage in Adampur, Yamunanagar, Sirsa, Kurukshetra, Jind and Hisar exceeded 70 per cent. The turnout in Panchkula, Ambala, Karnal, Panipat, Rohtak, Sonepat, Fatehabad, Rewari and Mahendragarh was equally impressive. Elections are sine qua non of a democratic form of government. It is only when the voters turn up in large numbers and exercise their franchise in a free and fair manner that the new government would acquire a truly representative character. And herein lies the quintessence of democracy. Political scientists and psephologists attribute a low turnout at some places to voters’ apathy and alienation. This may be true, but the answer to these problems lies in increasing the voters’ participation in the elections and not in their keeping away from the democratic exercise. The turnout in the first phase of polling in Bihar and Jharkhand was about 55 per cent and 45 per cent respectively. The low turnout was, perhaps, because of the Naxalites’ call to boycott the elections and the increasing lawlessness. It is a moot point whether the voting percentage would improve in the subsequent phases of polling. It is, however, shocking that the two states witnessed violence that claimed 18 lives. In Bihar, nine persons were killed and several injured in Naxalite encounters. And the first-ever elections to the Jharkhand Assembly opened with a landmine blast that killed eight policemen near Daltonganj. In view of the tense situation prevailing in Bihar and Jharkhand, the Centre and the states should step up vigil and intensify security so that violence is checked during the remaining phases of polling. More important, the people of the two states should refuse to be cowed down by the Naxalites’ threat and come out in large numbers to vote. This is the only way to teach the Naxalites and the CPI (Maoist) activists a lesson. See how the people of Jammu and Kashmir responded to the terrorists’ threat in the just-concluded municipal elections there. |
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Faster with telecom Implementing the Budget promise, the Union Government has raised the foreign investment limit in telecom to 74 per cent, apparently after reaching an understanding with the Left parties that have publicly voiced their opposition to the announcement. The new policy brings transparency to foreign holdings in telecom companies. Earlier, the companies seeking foreign investment up to 74 per cent had to seek permission of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board and investment was made through holding companies. Now all that is not required. Easier access to cheap foreign funds will hopefully lead to a sharp expansion of the telecom services, particularly in the rural areas. For security reasons, restrictions have been placed on telecom companies seeking foreign investment up to 74 per cent. The chairmen and CEOs of such companies will have to be Indian residents. Foreigners can contribute money, but cannot run a company directly. The telecom networks in India cannot be repaired or maintained by foreign companies. This may create operational problems as all such networks are imported and Indian companies lack expertise to carry out vital maintenance work. Another condition stipulated is at least 10 per cent equity in such a company must be held by an Indian promoter. This will create problems for the promoter who cannot sell or reduce his stake and may not have enough funds to keep his holding at 10 per cent in case the company decides to raise more money. All these restrictions, it seems, have been placed to allay the Leftist fears on telecom security and may not be implemented rigorously. The government could have gone in for a TRAI-like watchdog equipped with latest technology and expertise to keep an eye on all telecom networks and maintain security. The telecom revolution in India could have spread faster and wider had the government not fragmented the national market into circles and not created too many hurdles in the smooth flow of foreign capital and technology. China has very few curbs and has witnessed a steep growth of telecom services in the recent years. |
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Ruling on compensation The Supreme Court has rightly directed the railway authorities to pay a compensation of Rs 18 lakh with interest to the family of a passenger who was killed while travelling by the Goa Express due to the faulty vestibule system in October 1995. Even though it is an interim order, the ruling assumes significance because of the serious issues it has raised. In particular, the apex court makes the railway administration accountable for its failure to ensure foolproof safety in the vestibule system provided in the train in question. It also underlines the fact that the Union Government and the Ministry of Railways cannot afford to be callous in their conduct and indulge in meaningless litigation to deny reasonable compensation to the affected party. The fact that the authorities have been contesting the compensation claim of the victim’s kin for the last nine years on one ground or the other at various forums speaks volumes for their attitude towards the common people. Unlike in the West, compensation cases in India have been dragging on for years, that too, with little success. The litigants do not get justice, some of them even in their lifetime, mainly because of the irresponsible and unhelpful attitude of the government. In some cases, the compensation awarded by the authorities is too meagre. Consider the fate of the 20-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy victims. Victims in any industrialised country would have got much more than what those in Bhopal got. Against a demand for $3 billion, the Government of India settled for a mere $470 million with Union Carbide. There have been large compensation awards for accident victims in the past. But these were rare cases. The highest so far — Rs 10.8 crore — was awarded to Patricia Jean Mahajan, the American wife of NRI doctor Suresh Mahajan, who was killed in a road accident on the Delhi-Jaipur highway in 1995. Not surprisingly, even for this award, the Supreme Court had to intervene. It is a tribute to the sagacity of the Indian judiciary that without its intervention, the poor litigants cannot hope for justice at the hands of the government. |
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Politics are usually the executive expression of human immaturity.
— Vera Brittain |
Landmark elections in J&K
The conduct of municipal polls in Jammu and Kashmir after 27 years constitutes an important landmark. No surprise that it should have been marked by boycott and violence by some within the state and those across the border who fear democracy and representative government. The campaigning has been enthusiastic and voter turnout in the first phase of town committee elections and the second phase of the elections to the Jammu and Srinagar corporations, especially in so-called separatist strongholds like Handwara, Kupwara, Baramulla and parts of Srinagar, indicates that people are seeking to rebuild their shattered lives and have opted for participative governance and development in preference to empty jehadi rhetoric. The third phase of the remaining town committee elections in the valley and Jammu will be completed by February 16 while polls to the Hill Development Councils in Leh and Kargil are to be notified later. The local body elections are poised to transform the political scene. They manifest a bottom-up choreography with new players scripting a new agenda going beyond the tired declamations of partisan politics and coteries. This is likely to rejuvenate the whole political process. A clear message goes out from these elections. People are bent on redesigning the meaning and purpose of self-determination. They want to improve their own lives and environment through civic action and not by the gun, which has failed and only brought grief. In fact, they have defied the gun, thereby once again showing up the irrelevance of the jehadis, the no-no men of the Hurriyat and their handlers in Pakistan. Elections to halqa panchayats were conducted in 2000 but in view of disturbed conditions and intimidatory violence, almost a third of the seats were unfilled. Given their six-year term, these panchayats have another 18 months or so to run their course. Meanwhile, the newly elected state administration introduced amendments further to empower the panchayats to bring them more or less on a par with the norms prescribed in the 73rd Amendment that prevails in the rest of the country. In view of these considerations, the present PDP-led government has been considering cutting short the life of the halqa panchayats and ordering fresh elections. There is merit in the proposition though it might seem a partisan tactic as the National Conference holds a preponderance of seats in the existing bodies. Whether the panchayat elections are held sooner or later, local body empowerment is the process and the agenda that the nation must back. The nagar palikas and panchayats could indeed be further empowered to execute grassroots development and provided the administrative and financial wherewithal to do the job. This will make it possible to translate aspiration into achievement and, given the right to information, ensure transparency and accountability against the kind of thievery and rent seeking that characterises top-down development. There should be no hesitation in using Ordinance-making powers to effect the required changes. A state Finance Commission should be constituted to devolve funds to the local bodies and endow them with financial sinews and, separately, provision made for direct elections to the zila parishads. This is a time to move forward on both domestic and international dimensions of the J&K question. The first and highest priority is clearly action on the domestic front. Economic packages and civic elections are no more than enabling measures. They have to be converted into multi-layered programmes of action. Tourism has revived and will receive a fillip with Srinagar being declared an international airport though there is no reason whatsoever for limiting flights to Air-India. The “security” bogey that is so readily trotted out is bogus. Transmission lines to the valley need to be constructed/completed on a priority basis even as hydropower projects are brought to fruition. The delay in commissioning the Jammu-Udhampur railway has been unconscionable and there is every reason to press forward with the further rail connection from Udhampur to Baramulla from both ends. Repatriating J&K’s wholesale trade in horticultural produce to the state would also give a considerable boost to local farming and value-addition through the construction of cold storages and refrigerated transport and food processing. On the political side, local body elections have set the stage for the devolution of autonomy to the districts alongside a meaningful and time-bound dialogue on Centre-State relations. The Government of India has sensibly announced its willingness to open talks with all sections of the populace on state autonomy. These should now proceed and none should be permitted to exercise a veto. In practical terms, the gap between what obtains and what is sought is narrower than what is made out and, as the State Autonomy Commission itself clearly recognized, is limited by financial viability. The differences are more emotional than real and some of what has been done in the Northeast could well be applicable here. On the other side of the LoC, people in the Northern Areas have long protested the total denial of any real democratic rights. Furthermore, there has been growing resentment over induced demographic changes in the region to achieve Sunni dominance. The very initiation of discussions on greater autonomy on the Indian side is likely to impact political sentiments not merely in the Northern Areas but also in PoK. More generally, Pakistan’s federal and minority relations have long been in disarray and Balochistan and Waziristan in the Tribal FATA area are currently on the boil. In this situation there is no reason for India to insist on a passport regime for movement between Uri and Muzaffarabad across the LoC. Indeed, this is the time to press for the opening of the Jammu-Sialkot, Kargil-Skardu and other routes as well. This will add greatly to the comfort level of the populace on either side of the divide. Leave it to Pakistan to negative these overtures if it so desires and explain why it should be fearful of greater contacts and even trade across the border. Jehadis do not need official facilitation to move clandestinely in furtherance of their nefarious purposes. Not too much need be read into the recent Pakistani firing across the LoC even if it was staged by jehadis or intended to muddy the water. It is as well that India did not rise to the bait. Nor is there need for any great anxiety over the reference of the Baglihar project to the World Bank. Pakistan has consistently tried to block any water resource development in J&K within the ambit of the Indus Treaty and its latest stance is in keeping with a posture that regards development, elections, further local autonomy and any kind of progress and normalcy in J&K as inimical to its interests as an intruder claiming more. A resolution of the J&K question is going to be possible only if dissociated from any transfer of territory or further vivisection of India. Many positive and innovative lines of rapprochement and cooperation suggest themselves within such a framework. These lie not in altering boundaries but in transforming relationships across them so that the character of the boundary itself metamorphoses from a barrier to a
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Battle of permanency
First you try to join the government. By hook or crook. You are not qualified. And yet you succeed. You are kept on probation. Which means that you have to put your best foot forward. One small slip, and you are gone. No notice required. As long as you are on probation, the government can terminate your services without any notice. So, see to it that you complete your probation period smoothly. Again, by hook or crook. Once that period is over, you become a regular. And then nobody can government, always in the government. That is the law of our land. In Pakistan, that is the law of permanency. I will elaborate that. But first let me tell you something which I read long time algo in a beautiful magazine called Coronet. A little boy goes to a gun-shop along with his father. There, he spots a gun and tells his father: “Dad, I would like to have that gun.” Dad tells him that he is too small for that. The kid persists. Finally, dad gets angry and tells the kid: “Look, my dear boy, as long as I am the head of the family, I will not let you have that gun.” The kid, born in America, where kids start playing with guns before they are born, rubs his eyes and asks the dad: “Afraid of me?” “No, “says the dad. “Then let me tell you,” says the kid, “as soon as I get that gun, you will cease to be the head of the family.” Now return to probation. There is a column in every government servant’s character roll. It is called integrity. Even if the bloke does complete his probation period successfully, his services can be terminated if his integrity is not certified as good by his boss in the integrity column. If the boss writes “doubtful”, the bloke goes. But then the question arises: who is the boss? Has his own integrity been certified? Who has certified it?” Now shift the scene to Pakistan. When Benazir was the Prime Minister there, she used to produce a baby a year. Some wag in the Press christianed her permanently pregnant premier. Briefly, that meant PPP which also stood for Pakistan People’s Party, the original PPP which her illustrios father, Z.A. Bhutto, had founded. Bhutto was hanged by the military. Benazir exiled. In between, there was Nawaz Sharif. He, too, lives in exile. In magnificent Dubai, of course. For years now, the world has been putting up with another PPP in Pakistan. He is our very own Delhi-born Pravez Musharraf. He perpetually carries a gun in his hand. and he has proclaimed himself as the Permanent President of Pakistan, another PPP. And he has the powerful backing of America. Benazir wants to return to Pakistan. But then Benazir is PPP. So is Musharraf. You can’t put two swords in one sheath. The battle between the two PPPs goes on. Who wins? The Lord alone
knows.
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Pakistan: what lies ahead? For the near future, Pakistan will be a state-union lodged between a weak democracy and a benevolent autocracy. Can it remain in this uneasy position indefinitely? Barring a cataclysmic even (a nuclear war) or a conjunction of major crises such as a military defeat, a serious economic crisis, and extended political turmoil, the failure of Pakistan as a state can be ruled out. However, failure can still take place slowly or in parts. Pakistan may be unable to maintain minimal standards of “stateness”: its taxes could go uncollected and its borders undefended; health, education, and nutrition could suffer; and decent government could be notable by its absence. Many of these trends can be reversed with concerted and effective policies. On the other hand, the possibility of more extreme scenarios - civil war, separatism, authoritarianism, or the triumph of Islamic radicalism - should not be discounted. Pakistan’s own history provides grim evidence that its government can make fundamentally wrong choices. Failure can also be defined in terms of aspirations and expectations. In Pakistan’s case, these hopes relate to a particular idea, which has met with at least partial failure. It took a leap of faith to create Pakistan: a state without a shared historical experience, divided along many ethnic and linguistic lines, and split geographically by a thousand-mile expanse. The failure lay with a lack of imagination in expecting the two wings, united only by opposition to India, to remain together without Indian cooperation. That cooperation was not forthcoming. Indians, including the liberal, secular Nehru and most of his successors, fully expected Pakistan to fail, and when it did not, they blamed the West for Pakistan’s success. Obsessed with and angry at Pakistan, some Indians wanted Pakistan to fail more than they wanted India to succeed and were willing to accept the costs of competing with Pakistan, where it is most evident in the army, the Pakistani institution with the longest memory but least foresight. Perhaps the most interesting debate now raging in Pakistan is that between competing ideas of Pakistan, with the Quaid’s original vision pitted against Islamist conceptions. With the rise of Islamism and a new Islamic sensibility, this debate, once a sideshow of interest only to academics and theologians, has moved to centre stage. Without meaningful democratisation, political accountability, equitable economic development, and in recent years, growth the ruling establishment finds it increasingly difficult to neutralize the demands of the fundamentalists. Rather than reorient the society by returning to Jinnah’s secular vision, or emulating the Turkish or even the privately admired Israeli model, Pakistan’s establishment bought time by co-opting the Islamists’ agenda. Without question, Pakistan must transform the “Islamic” component of its identity and bring the idea of Pakistan into alignment with twenty-first-century realities. This does mean adjusting them to the modern world. In the words of one distinguished Urdu journalist-commentator, Mahmood Mirza, Islam needs a reformation - and Pakistani Islam in particular needs to be reconciled with the modern world. “Unless there is a movement such as Martin Luther’s and a reinterpretation of Islam,” he adds, “Muslim societies will remain backward and continue to create problems for themselves and others.” Given the omnipresence of the military, moreover, Pakistan will likely remain a national security state, driven by security objectives to the neglect of development and accountability and unable to change direction because of a lack of imagination and legitimacy. The performance of Pervez Musharraf as both army Chief and president over a four-year period has left much to be desired. It is hard to see how five more years of Musharraf’s leadership will dramatically change Pakistan’s future - but then it is hard to envision any other leader doing much better. Balancing this, Pakistan has a number of assets. It size, its Islamic ties, its nuclear capabilities, and its location make it important to many powers. When approaching other governments for assistance Pakistani governments invariably cite one or more of these qualities: in recent years they have also argued that the failure of Pakistan would be a multidimensional geostrategic calamity, generating enormous uncertainties in a world that craves order and predictability. Further, Pakistan does not lack for ability and expertise. Even though its educational system is crumbling, it has produced trained professionals, administrators, scholars, thinker, and religious leaders of a very high order. Though prevented from practicing their profession, many of its politicians are highly qualified. Even Pakistan’s generals, some badly misinformed about the modern world and their own country, are widely regarded as competent - their special problem is that they have wandered into the minefield of politics without proper training or equipment. In summary, the human material is there to turn Pakistan into a modern state, but it has been systematically squandered for three generations by an elite persuaded that Pakistan’s critical strategic location would be enough to get it through difficult times. Now the distant future has arrived, with Pakistan unequipped to face a fast-changing world while coping with new and mounting domestic problems. Excerpted from “The Idea of Pakistan,” published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Price: Rs 495. The writer is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at Bookings Institution, Washington DC. He has been writing extensively on South Asia. |
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The Sari Shop is ‘best first book’ “The Sari Shop” has also just been given the Best First Book Award, 2005, in the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: Regional Winners section for Eurasia. While the final world-wide Commonwealth Writers’ Prize will be announced much later, after further short listing, Rupa is already rubbing shoulders with previous Eurasia Region winners, Vikram Seth, Githa Hariharan, Vikram Chandra and Salman Rushdie. She will also get £1,000 for this prize. Earlier, it was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 2004. “I just write. I don’t have a style,” says Rupa who has shown a rare talent of bringing out the colours of life as seen from a macro level. In “The Sari Shop” she focuses on Ramchand, the young protagonist, and explores the world around him through him. The poor young man’s vulnerabilities, a brief flash of the underbelly of life, resourcefulness of individuals, presented in a rather matter-of-fact way, all contribute towards a freshness that is lacking in much-hyped works. The readers see a varied and multi-layered community through the employees of the shop, its owner and its customers. The world of glamour and glitz is seen in the wedding of a customer. A soft-spoken girl, Rupa clings mightily to her idea what is right and wrong. She is sharply critical of intellect without moral integrity and guards her privacy fiercely. The milieu that she has worked in would not be thought of as conducive to creativity. Amritsar, does not even have a good book
shop, people don’t understand how you can be a writer (but what else do you do), and electricity failures make it impossible to work on computers for long. She is hard at work on her next book, and is tight-lipped about it, except to confirm that it is a “work of fiction, a novel”. Rupa says she does not discuss her book with anyone while she is working on it, but does show it to some friends after it has been written. Asked if writing comes easy to her, she says that it is a very difficult question, and sometimes it is very easy to write, whereas there are times when some particular passage, or paragraphs may have to be written so many times before they come out right. Is writing a second book more difficult than the first one? In some ways, yes. “Before the first book I thought that the second one would be easier, since one knew what to do, one had practised writing and one knew the traps, where one can go wrong.” However, in the second I have to be careful about not repeating myself, and it is as difficult, in fact it’s like starting from scratch.” Rupa says that it is a humbling experience that readers in Italy liked a book about a story about Amritsar. Why did she set the book in Amritsar? “I started with a character. Ramchand, not a place or a setting. I had seen life as I grew up in Amritsar. If you write honestly, you will write about what you know of.” |
Envy becomes the whole-time companion of the man who desires material satisfaction. Whenever he cannot get the things he wants he is envious of those who have them. His jealousy binds him to the efforts that others may have put in or the costs they may have borne. —The Bhagvad Gita Look at the shining visage of the great warrior, his eyes bright with intelligence, his strong shoulders and broad chest. Now do you question his lineage when he stands before you in all nobility? Did ever a she-deer breed tordly tigers in her humble little lair? —The Mahabharata What is needed preeminently is stauch faith in God and the habit of feeling His presence in each and everything. — Guru Nanak We don’t need to look for happiness. If we have love for others, we’ll be given it. It is the gift of God. —Mother Teresa The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. —Mahatma Gandhi There are some who only wish to indulge their senses. All the time they seek pleasure. They are immoderate in food, drink, sleep, work and play. Do they not know that all these can come to an end any moment? Like the drunk, they can’t differentiate between the eternal and the temporary. —The Buddha  |
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Twenty years ago Pakistan was spoken of as the next major middle income country. Recently it was thought to be on the verge of collapse or rogue status, although there are signs that the downward trend in some areas is halted. In the long run, the lack of economic opportunity, the booming birth rate, the youth bulge, intensive urbanization, a failed educational system, and a hostile regional environment could leave Pakistan with a large, young, and ill-educated population that has few prospects for economic advancement and could be politically mobilised.
It was a first novel of an unassuming Amritsari girl. “The Sari Shop” has been a huge success both in terms
of sales and critical acclaim. The young author has won Italy’s prestigious Grinzane Cavour award, for which she will get €5,000 at a ceremony scheduled for June 18 at the Grinzane Castle, Turin, Italy. The book is in its fourth edition now.