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Averted showdown Post-poll Iraq Regulator for aviation |
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Politics on the box
Fantasy
Human Rights Diary Delhi Durbar
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Averted showdown AFTER conjuring up the possibility of a showdown with the Election Commission, Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala has stepped back from the battlefront almost at the last minute. Actually, he has not pulled back on his own but has been made to do so by a determined bureaucracy which refused to toe his line on fresh appointments. The legal authorities also supported the bureaucrats’ stand, much to the chagrin of Mr Chautala. However, this withdrawal is not full and final. The Chautala ministry has asked the Election Commission to lift the ban on regular appointments within 48 hours. Once the deadline expires, the ministry can still defy the ban, paving the way for a constitutional standoff. That possibility will be discussed and awaited animatedly in the corridors of power in Haryana, although one does not think Mr Chautala will be stubborn enough to precipitate such a crisis. There are no prizes for guessing why he is so desperate to make the new appointments. Those who think he is doing so only to ensure that he does not fall foul of courts have another guess coming. Unfortunately, his anxiety to see the appointment letters in the hands of the select few is in direct contravention of the model code of conduct. Mr Chautala is not just on a weak wicket, there is no wicket at all. He has all but accused the bureaucracy of defying orders but he should realise that the babus have saved him from a great embarrassment. What he perceives as an insult happens to be sage advice. How one wishes the bureaucracy shows the same firmness and sense of fairplay even when the model code of conduct is not in operation. It is supposed to carry out instructions of the political bosses faithfully, provided these are perfectly legal. In all other cases, it is supposed to tender its advice frankly and fearlessly. But it happens to have an inglorious history of prostrating when asked to bend. |
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Post-poll Iraq THE Iraqis in general should be happy with the election results. They will now have a representative government. The sapling of democracy planted after much bloodshed will, hopefully, grow stronger with people getting a government of their choice. There is a sea of difference between the wishes of the majority Iraqis and what the US and its allies want. That is why Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiah party, enjoying American blessings, finds itself at the third position, winning just 13.8 per cent of the votes polled. Contrary to this, the United Iraqi Alliance, backed by pro-Iran Grand Ayatullah Ali Sistani, secured about 48 per cent votes. The emerging scenario is disappointing for the Americans, because the coalition government that is going to be formed will be dominated by anti-US elements. The National Assembly, which will draft a permanent constitution for holding fresh elections in December, may try to dilute the basic structure of the interim constitution finalised by pro-US leaders. However, this does not mean that the new government will be able to function according to the whims and fancies of Ayatullah Sistani’s men. The interim constitution has inbuilt provisions to protect the interests of the minorities like the Sunnis and the Kurds. The Sunnis, who had been holding the reigns of power till the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, have been marginalised. At many places they had boycotted the elections. But their participation in government formation is a mandatory requirement under the interim constitution. The Sunni leaders are prepared to accept the invitation but only after the withdrawal of the US troops. Most Shia members of the National Assembly may agree with their demand and hence mount pressure on the US forces to leave. This also suits the new Bush administration, which had been looking for an exit route. But the new reality may force the US to change its strategy to a partial withdrawal. It cannot afford to leave its interests unprotected after having invested so much with over 1200 lives lost. |
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Regulator for aviation AFTER telecom and insurance, civil aviation will have a regulator. A Bill to set up the Civil Aviation Economic Regulatory Authority will be moved in the Budget session of Parliament. Civil aviation is one sector which has been growing rapidly. Air fares have become affordable for more and more people. Establishing new airports and expanding the existing ones, adoption of an open sky policy, more flights to and from ASEAN countries and allowing private airlines to fly to SAARC countries are some of the recent policy initiatives in this sector. These are in line with the changing economic profile of the country. The job of a regulator has so far been vested with the Airports Authority of India. Since the airports are owned and run by the AAI, it becomes a stakeholder. Besides, the AAI has no clear mandate to settle disputes. A regulator, on the other hand, has to be independent and is expected to enjoy the confidence of all players, particularly private operators. It is supposed to fix tariffs, levy parking and user charges, issue guidelines to service providers and settle disputes, if any. Initially, the proposed single-member regulator will oversee the airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. While creating another authority, the Civil Aviation Ministry needs to shed flab elsewhere. There are too many separate wings that can be scrapped or merged. To manage the growth in airline services and business, it should function under a single command so that decisions are not delayed. Funds can be another constraint since this is a capital-intensive industry. Civil aviation is also a fiercely competitive area and the customer's expectations are sky high. He wants world-class services and facilities, and is ready to pay for it. Not just to maintain growth, but also for sheer survival, the Indian airports and airline services have to be upgraded to the Singapore level. And that is possible. |
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The best government is that which governs the least. — John L. O’Sullivan |
Politics on the box
With India in the throes of another round of elections, the role of television in campaigning and seeking to influence the outcome is coming into sharper focus each day. A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words, and a television shot of a leader addressing a rally is worth its weight in gold. Having graduated from the staid monotonous days of Doordarshan to a veritable feast of private channels, television reigns supreme today. Political party leaders have learned that it pays to be television-savvy. Sound bites are important and the greater one’s ability to engage viewers’ attention on TV, the more exposure one receives. A born made-for-television leader is Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav, with his cultivated folksiness and gift for bon mot and his ability to wear a designer sweater on his kurta with nonchalance. No wonder, he is a favourite of television crews. They know that he is likely to create news by his gestures, if not his views, and 24-hour news channels have a voracious appetite. Exit polls have become a staple diet of news channels, and although they can go quite wrong, they are an important fixture because polling is often staggered over several days and exit polls are sounding boards for party strategists to alter their tactic in subsequent rounds. Increasingly, the telecast of exit poll programmes has become an elaborate affair, with psephologists pronouncing their verdicts by extrapolating trends, and other pundits dipping into old records to draw new lessons. In a sense, the television medium is ideal for staging these shows. There are large audiences avid to grasp every scrap of information they can gather on their candidates and parties and in these days of coalitions at the state as well as central levels, foreknowledge helps in planning strategies in order to maximise a party’s gains. No wonder, even newspapers have taken to recording the varying results of TV exit polls. Indeed, television election coverage is now planned in the manner of a war strategy, impacting as it does on ratings and hence attracting commercials. The essential ingredients are to make it informative and entertaining, with the all-important caveat of retaining viewers’ interest. Humour is an ingredient often tapped either through an acid tongue or animated puppets, exaggerating the characteristics of each leader, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee being particularly susceptible to lampooning on his poetic propensities. Mr Laloo Prasad is always good for a laugh. There is no school for politicians to teach them television campaigning, but many Indian leaders have an innate ability to pick up the finer points of being effective on the box, barring Mr Vajpayee’s long silences or other leaders’ individual quirks. Each political party has earmarked television spokesmen who are unleashed on important occasions, the big guns reserved for major spots. Mr Arun Jaitley and Ms Sushma Swaraj are effective spokesmen for the Bharatiya Janata Party as is Mr Ashok Singhvi for the Congress. Not fielding men or women ready with instant reactions is to lose out in television election battles. Political leaders and television channels are playing it by ear because no scientific study has been made on the correlation between exposure on television and the number of votes won by a candidate or party. Advertising’s rule of thumb is that the more a message is repeated, the greater the impact. And the greater the exposure a person or party receives, the greater should be the appeal, assuming that the party’s representative does not put his foot in his mouth or put off people by other angularities. Each country has its peculiar mix requiring attention. In India, the oral tradition is strong and among a relatively large unlettered population, the power of moving images speaking directly to the viewer cannot be matched by the print media. Mr Laloo Yadav, for instance, makes good use of his rally appearances by imitating the “ping” sound the electronic voting machine makes on a vote being cast, often to the delight of his audiences. These rallies, covered on television, are magnified countless times. News channels are breaking new ground by adopting the format of town hall meetings challenging candidates by representative groups of voters, following a reporter’s trek through a swath of country, engaging in more cerebral debates in a sitting room mode — in short, any innovation that would attract attention. Since voting in one election or another is an almost perennial feature of Indian political life, new formats and tricks are ways to guard against losing audiences. An imaginative approach taken by one channel is to subject sitting legislators seeking re-election to a grading test. Reality television has caught the imagination of Western audiences and the more bizarre the show, the greater audience it draws. In India, there would seem to be little need for reality television because election coverage, from the filing of nominations to campaigning to exit polls and the actual results, is a recurring reality show. The candidates are as varied as the country and, with some luck, there are often sufficient humorous or bizarre morsels to bite on. But India’s channels must guard against the risk of television election coverage becoming an “in” thing, a preserve of candidates, political parties and the experts. So frequent have elections become that there must arrive a saturation point for the average viewer, outside of the formidable audience besotted with the never-ending soap opera serials. Can the ingenuity of our television programme planners in devising new ways of covering elections prove equal to the task of keeping viewers engaged? We still seem to have a distance to go because some elections excite much curiosity and there are a growing number of voters who are asking pertinent questions in relation to states such as Bihar. Why should one return a party to power if the state’s dire needs are so cavalierly disregarded? There cannot be much room for boredom in such situations. The scale of crassness of a political party or group can trump caste and class divisions. There is scope yet for politics on the
box. |
Fantasy
George Orwell had this to say to aspiring novelists: “Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-striken by their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.” Not even my worst enemy would call me an “orthodoxy-sniffer” and so, about 30 years ago, I took it into my head to write a novel. I felt quite sure that with serialisation, a paper-back edition and film rights, it would make me a fortune. I described my hero as ‘tall, slim, good-looking with a soft, pleasant voice’. A trifle abrupt, you might say, but I am a strong believer in economy where words are concerned. Likewise, I dismissed the heroine’s charms in a single sentence: “She was extremely pretty with large, heavy-lidded eyes and full lips that curled delicately at the corners of her mouth.” The two meet at a party in the house of a mutual friend. From the very first moment an electric current seems to flow between them, drawing them together. But the situation is not as simple as it looks. While the girl, considerably younger than the man, is free, my hero is happily married to a wife who adores him and has borne him two children. Summer arrives and the man’s family goes up to the hills. The girl, who works in a firm of interior decoraters, stays in Delhi. The man takes her out to dinner and then to his house to listen to western classical music on his steriophonic record player. There are a few more evenings like this and soon, the two are having an affair. Life becomes complicated for them when they discover that they have fallen in love with each other. My hero, unlike Orwell’s successful novelist, suffers from a conscience. He realises that he has wronged his wife but he doesn’t know what to do. Should he break his relationship with the girl, or should he make a confession to his wife and ask her to give him a divorce? That, as I have said, was 30 years ago. I found myself as stuck as the hero. Then, a few years later, I came across what I had written and I found a way to end my hero’s misery. I tore up the manuscript and consigned it to the
WPB.
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Human Rights Diary Why harass Geelani after his exoneration? by Kuldip Nayar
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am surprised at the Delhi police complaint that it was not immediately informed about the attack by the gun on Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani, Delhi University lecturer. This is a sad commentary on the credibility of the force. Nearly all those present at the scene had the needle of suspicion pointed towards the police. Therefore, it never occurred to anyone to run up to the
than a or reach the telephone to make the complaint. Similar is probably the explanation of Geelani why he talked to the Press before he made the statements before the police. He had little faith in the force. It is natural for him to have felt that way because he had found policemen in plain clothes following him even after his acquittal in the case relating to the terrorist attack on Parliament. Was it fair on the part of the police to have harassed him after his exoneration? Such an act violates the very tenets of personal liberty and violates human rights. Geelani’s family blames the Delhi Police for its “intimidating behaviour” towards him and for having him under “surveillance” all the 24 hours. The credibility of the Delhi Police must be low because even Union Home Minister Shiv Raj Patil “ is not averse” to a probe by the CBI. Civil rights activists have gone to the extent of demanding a judicial inquiry. The police is itself to blame for its bad image because its entire functioning creates doubts and suspicions. That the Supreme Court has asked for a report on the incident comes as a relief. I believe that the National Human Rights Commission was thinking of intervening suo motto in the matter but gave up the idea after finding that the Supreme Court is at it. Why every encounter is suspect and why the worst of the motives are attributed to the police, not only in Delhi but all over India, is the question over which the force should be pondering seriously. The government should also be worried because its instrument to maintain law and order, that is the police, has got blunted and rusted over the years. The force has become a laughing stock. No amount of my pleading for police reforms can be of any use because I have been making the point for many decades. Even the recommendations made by the Dharamvira Committee in 1980 have remained unimplemented. The government is simply not willing to carry out reforms because of the nexus which has developed between politicians and the police. It is true that they use the police for their purpose. But it is equally true that the force is on a loose end and can indulge in any excesses. This happened openly during the Emergency and it is happening now in every state under the other name. Why the police should always be brutal, suppressive and oblivious of human rights? Every police officer and jawan owes an explanation to the nation which has suffered at their hands for decades. One way to change the attitude of the police is to overhaul its academies. They are breeding grounds for barbarities. The introduction of human rights as a subject, as it has been done in police academies, cannot change things. The very temperament of policemen has to be changed. But this has not happened since the days of the Raj when people were treated as subjects and vassals.
A controversial
appointment
To find a police officer as an arbiter of human rights violations exasperates me. Retired CBI Director P.C.Sharma, is still the part of the National Human Rights Commission. Worse is that he continues to be a member of Interpol. Why the Congress-led government is persisting with the blunder committed by the BJP-led government is beyond me. I can understand that the present government cannot do anything about his appointment which is a tenure post. But why allow him to be a member of Interpol? This does not make sense even from the National Human Rights Commission’s point of view. New facts have come to light about Sharma’s appointment. When his name was proposed to the National Human Rights Commission, the Chairman objected to it. Deputy Prime Minister L.K.Advani agreed with the Chairman. The proposal was dropped. It was revived, probably when the CBI withdrew its allegations against Advani regarding the demolition of the Babri Masjid. It was quid pro quo. Advani, otherwise preaching morality, has not offered any explanation, much less apology, for appointing Mr Sharma as a member of the National Human Rights Commission. The appointment has been challenged legally but it awaits the decision by a larger Bench of the Supreme Court. The two-judge Bench could not concur. While Justice Y.K.Sabharwal ruled against the appointment, Justice D.M. Dharmadhikari upheld it. Justice Sabharwal has emphasised in his order, the National Human Rights Commission is a high-powered statutory body functioning as an instrument to protect and promote human rights, and “the credibility of such an institution depends upon (a) high degree of public confidence”. His arguments are worth noting: “An individual police officer may be very good but his participation in decision making as a member of the Commission is likely to give rise to a reasonable apprehension in the minds of the citizens that he may sub-consciously influence the functioning of the Commission. Such reasonable perceptions of the affected parties are relevant considerations to ensure the continued public confidence in the credibility and impartiality of institutions like the National Human Rights Commission”. There is, nevertheless, even at this interim stage, a lesson for the government. For, even if the legal procedures in this appointment were followed, it still does not absolve the government of its responsibility, in this case as well as in future cases, of ensuring that such appointments are above board, and more importantly, seen to be above board. Public confidence is clearly nowhere at the top of the government’s agenda — neither the Central Government’s nor the States’. As Justice Sabharwal’s order says: A police officer may be a very good investigator. He may have vast experience in respect of the nature of commission of crime and consequently its prevention. But, for the present purposes what is relevant to be borne in mind is that a number of cases reported to the National Human Rights Commission relate to acts of omission and commission by the members of such forces. |
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Delhi Durbar With barely a fortnight to go for the presentation of the UPA government’s first full Budget, there is an air of expectation in the corporate world.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, in his earlier stint during the UF regime, was credited with unveiling major tax reforms, including the amnesty scheme VDIS. Not many are expecting another VDIS scheme, though some measures are expected to rein in the perpetual tax evaders. The other day when an industry captain told Mr Chidambaram: “Yeh dil maange more”, the Finance Minister’s response was less punchy but more loaded with content. “I hope I have enough friends after 18 days”, he remarked. Needless to say, everybody was left guessing.
After Girija, who? It’s barely been a few days since AICC media chief Girija Vyas was named the new Chairperson of the National Commission for Women (NCW), but Congress circles are already rife with speculation about her possible successor. AICC General Secretary Ambika Soni, who was the Chairperson of the AICC media department before Ms Vyas, is tipped to get back her old charge. Although Mrs Soni has denied these reports, several senior AICC leaders have started lobbying for this high-profile post. Party spokesperson Anand Sharma, who is hoping to get into the Cabinet whenever the next reshuffle takes place, is learnt to be keen on the job.
Shotgun Sinha in trouble Filmstar-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha has always been a source of embarrassment for the BJP. He first earned the party’s ire when he let it be known that he would be projected as the next Chief Minister of Bihar. Shotgun Sinha has landed himself in trouble again when he recently criticised the BJP President’s announcement projecting Janata Dal (U) leader Nitish Kumar as the NDA’s chief ministerial candidate in Bihar. Furious BJP leaders, however, point out privately that if Shotgun was so keen on the Chief Minister’s gaddi, he should have hit the campaign trail at least six months ahead of the poll.
Pilot’s kisan lunch When Congress leader Rajesh Pilot was alive, he hosted what he described as a “kisan lunch” every winter on the sprawling lawns of his Akbar Road residence. The lunch was meant exclusively for mediapersons and given Rajesh Pilot’s popularity with the press, it was always a well-attended do. The charpoys and cane moodas strewn on the lawns and the menu of “sarson ka sag”, “makki” and “bajra roti” along with “gur” and “chhach”, all added to the rustic ambience. After a long gap, the tradition has now been revived by his son, Sachin Pilot. —
By Gaurav Chaudhary, S. Satyanarayanan and Anita Katyal |
From saints we learn upon His Name to pore, the love for God shall open each blessed-store. Who can satisfy lust? One after another they fly thick like a cloud of locusts, picking on the harvest of man, leaving the field bare and denuded. The man who knows this and avoids lust is wise. Renouncing work is certainly not the way to self-realisation. The great sages have understood this. So instead of secluding themselves from mankind, they have lived and preached among the people. The king who aspires to monarchy must look after his subject’s needs and wants. He must be unto them like the raindrop nourishing the thirsty ground or like the wide armed tree shading them with its canopy.  |
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