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Hooda for Haryana Unwelcome proposals |
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Cry for freedom
Lobbying in Washington
Writer’s bond
Panchayats keep watch on schools Aviator completes historic flight BBC: governors to go but licence fee stays
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Hooda for Haryana THE Congress won a record number of seats in Haryana. But that did not allow it the luxury of installing a new government quickly, with that honour stolen by Jharkhand, where it just did not have the numbers. In Haryana the situation was diametrically opposite. It had MLAs in abundance, but also had claimants to the top post in record numbers. Each one of them had certain factors to recommend him or her and flaunted these with full force. In normal course, it is the legislators who should have decided the leader but such “normalcy” is alien to the Congress culture. So the choice was left to the supreme leader and she took her time to weigh the pros and cons. Fortunes swung widely as in a Bollywood masala film. Mr Bhajan Lal was the front-runner till he was made into an also-ran, despite having a fairly large number of legislators to back him. Apparently, caste considerations played a major role in swinging the decision in favour of Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Mr Bhajan Lal must be sulking, despite the carrot of a Cabinet post reportedly dangled before his son, Mr Chander Mohan. Other contenders may get coveted ministries but it is not going to be easy to keep all of them in good humour. That is worrisome for the Congress. These fissures will have to be taken care of if the party and the government are to pull in one direction. The numerous “CM-material” leaders can hope to give the State the kind of administration that they have been promising only if they get over their ego clashes. Mr Om Prakash Chautala has left his dubious stamp on all branches of governance, be it appointments, transfers or contracts. His family had its fingers in every pie and every dish prepared by it bears an unpalatable taste. The first priority of the new government will have to be to undo this mess by weeding out corruption and nepotism. The electorate of Haryana has outrightly rejected the Chautala brand of governance by throwing him and his sons out on a limb. Exasperated voters have become impatient with leaders who rule the State as a privately owned company. The voters can be equally unforgiving if the Congress does not prove to be radically different. Mr Hooda starts with a clean slate and plenty of goodwill. He will be a success if he can rid Haryana of the corruption and extortion it has lived through during the Chautala raj. |
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Unwelcome proposals THERE are two new taxes in the Union Budget that have been roundly opposed. The Finance Minister too agrees that something has gone amiss in an otherwise appreciable exercise. One of these — the 0.1 per cent tax on cash withdrawals of Rs 10,000 a day or more — appeared so illogical that it appeared that Mr P. Chidambaram had deliberately included it to divert attention from the unpleasant tax doses he had quietly administered. From his post-budgetary utterances it appears that he genuinely believes that those with black money keep it in banks. Now, all that he is ready to concede is raising the cash withdrawal limit to Rs 50,000 or so. The tax is not confined to cash withdrawals only; it extends to other financial instruments like the demand draft. In fact, the Finance Ministry hopes to raise Rs 4,500 crore from this tax. The second, the fringe benefit tax, has spoiled Indian Inc’s celebration of a cut in the corporate tax. As one financial daily has calculated, this tax will force the corporates to shell out Rs 25,000 crore or so. Naturally, the business bosses are vociferously opposing it on TV channels. On this issue too, the Finance Minister has developed cold feet and agreed to have a second look. The tax would not have aroused such squeals of protest had it not crossed the limits of reasonableness. After all, who would pay taxes, if the corporates don’t? Where Mr Chidambaram has blundered is in casting the net too far and wide. Had he confined to liberal fringe benefits like foreign holidays that tycoons enjoy with their families or fat perks that are dished out to corporate executives to avoid income tax, the opposition to the move would not have been that widespread. Taxing office telephones at home, Divali gifts or scholarships for employees’ children only shows Finance Ministry mandarins got foggy about the whole concept of perk taxing. Similarly, advertising for business promotion and travelling on office work can hardly be called fringe benefits. It is hoped the Finance Minister and his team would return to reason. |
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Cry for freedom THE US is right. There is no justification for Syria to continue to control the reins of power in Lebanon. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria knows that the time has come when Damascus must withdraw from Lebanon, and hence his assurance to call back his 14,000 troops from there. This should have been done immediately after the 1989 Taif agreement. The accord had a troop withdrawal clause, but Syria flouted it on one pretext or another. It had no intention to end its presence in Lebanon once Syrian troops gained entry under the cover of maintaining order in 1976. Syria even did not bother about a UN resolution calling for all foreign forces to leave Lebanon. The Lebanese had been quietly suffering economic hardships and the loss of personal freedoms all these years. Any Lebanese ruling politician who tried to take an independent line was forced to resign. The most prominent case of this kind was that of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who died in a bomb blast recently. But his death sparked off a series of protests in Beirut, leading to the resignation of pro-Syrian Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami. The developments evoked the attention of the world with US and French officials declaring that Syrian troops and secret services must leave Lebanon so that “good democracy has a chance to flourish” there. Syria, however, has a point. Once its troops depart from Lebanon, the Lebanese may start fighting among themselves as they did during the civil war that began in 1975. Israel, which withdrew from Lebanon in 2002 after buying peace with the Hezbollah group of extremists, may play some mischief to distract world attention from the Israeli-Palestinian problem. But this is where the UN has to play a role. The UN will have to ensure that law and order in Lebanon remains under control after the Syrian troops leave that country. |
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Good luck is the result of hard work and preparation
— Unknown
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Lobbying in Washington LEADING lobbyists in Washington make a beeline to New Delhi whenever the embassy’s lobbying contract expires. Press reports suggest that Ambassador Robert Blackwill, who has moved from the White House to a leading lobbying firm, is among those in the fray this time. His sheer competence and his record as ambassador of India are likely to weigh in his favour in the minds of the decision-makers in New Delhi. The need for lobbyists and their role in promoting India-US relations should also be under review at this time. Lobbying for foreign governments is certainly permissible in Washington, but it has to be done by open contracts, which have to be registered. The services rendered and the fees paid are spelt out in the contracts. The firms are normally headed by former Congressmen or Senators and manned essentially by lawyers and former congressional staffers. They facilitate meetings rather than argue the case of the government concerned. Their value is in identifying the decision-makers, making the right contacts and arranging meetings. The lobbyists themselves are present in some of the meetings, but they are witnesses rather than participants in the conversations. If the conversations do not go well, they apply correctives at the right places to ensure that the next conversation is more productive. Foreign governments hire Washington lobbyists to win friends and influence people in the Capitol, the White House, the State Department, and most important of all, the aid agencies. Paying to the lobbyists a portion of the aid received is a habit with small countries. Generally, it is the medium and small countries that have lobbyists in Washington as the major powers have sufficient resources within their own missions to do lobbying. Even major missions hire lobbyists on occasions when there is an issue to be promoted or suppressed. Lobbyists have a particular role in the US Congress as the members of the Congress and the Senate are bound by ethics that restrict interaction with foreigners. Congressmen can attend parties of diplomats only if the guest list exceeds at least a dozen people. They have to pay for their own meal even when they dine with diplomatic representatives. The India caucus in the Congress, now exceeding 150 Congressmen, is our biggest lobbying stronghold. Their co-chairmen like Congressmen Frank Pallone, Bill McCollum, Gary Ackerman and Ed Royce have done more lobbying for India on the Hill than all our lobbyists put together. But the same cannot be said about all the members of the caucus, some of whom may have signed up to please someone, without knowing much about India. Some of them see no contradiction in being a member of both the India and Pakistan caucuses. These Congressmen need to be constantly briefed about developments in India and in the Congress so that they vote with the rest of the caucus on India-related issues. A senior State Department official told me once that lobbying by India and Pakistan on the Hill was so evenly balanced that the US policy towards the two countries could not be amended beyond a point. This is an exaggeration since the India caucus is larger and older than the Pakistan caucus, and the Indian community is more active than the Pakistani community. But what he meant was that the lobbying firms of India and Pakistan were evenly matched. Pakistan, being a recipient of massive U.S. assistance, can write off part of it as lobbying charges. India has no such advantage, but it matches Pakistan’s efforts by hiring first-rate lobbyists. Pakistan has two “desi” lobbyists in Washington, GS Aulakh of “Khalistan” and the representative of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). They generate letters, remarks and legislation on the Hill for their causes, which challenge the integrity of India. Although such activities that seek to subvert friendly nations ought to be disallowed, they flourish in the name of freedom of speech, and the self-styled champions of human rights encourage them. Aulakh, an impressive Sikh, donned in colourful turbans, walks around the Capitol with a sheaf of papers, allegedly containing facts and figures of police oppression in Punjab. It is not unusual for some Congressmen to be misled by him into signing letters to the President asking him to advise India to be more tolerant of dissent. The letter will be worded in such a way that it may not look anti-Indian at all. To quash these moves before they gather momentum, the embassy needs to have people on the Hill, who will alert the embassy in time. The JKLF too has a number of Congressmen, who routinely write letters about “atrocities” in Jammu and Kashmir. The lobbyists have the necessary contacts and resources to trace these activities. India’s lobbying efforts were redoubled after the nuclear tests of 1998. The personal views of the lobbyists are not relevant in such cases as they are expected only to package the product and not to analyse it. It is not unusual, however, that the advice of the lobbyists is coloured by their convictions. One of our first lobbyists, who had acquired a certain expertise on India, was personally convinced that the tests would damage India-US relations and felt that it was better for the embassy to lie low rather than campaign actively to gain support for the tests. We rejected his advice and he did not last long as our lobbyist after the tests. But, as a rule, lobbyists support the case of their clients, right or wrong, just as lawyers take up criminal cases. The need for professional lobbying support for the embassy in Washington is beyond question, but it could well be secured by the embassy directly hiring experienced lawyers, who have expertise on the Hill or in previous administrations. The revolving doors in Washington send out some of them to the job market from time to time. Star-studded firms tend to be very expensive, even though middle-level or lower functionaries do most of the work. By hiring them directly, the embassy can secure their loyalty and put them to use very effectively. With the money that we allocate to hire firms, it should be possible to deploy more people than the concerned firms employ to handle the India account. Major embassies hire experts from the market directly while aid recipients go for major firms, whose expenses can be debited to the aid account. India should be in the big league in Washington.n
**** The writer is a former Ambassador of India. He has also represented India at the UN. |
Writer’s bond NOT having fulfilled my lifelong desire to be a celeb writer; I haven’t done too badly as a fan. My passion to communicate with literary idols — perhaps, stems from the secret hope that some talent would pass on! While the latter is yet to happen; I do now have a priceless collection of some handwritten letters from top writers. The first letter that I received was from who else; Ruskin Bond, the gentle soul who muses from the mountains and writes with old world charm. I had mailed him a copy of my book on trees. Happily enough, after a few days there was an envelope in my mailbox addressed with beautiful, calligraphic handwriting. Inside was a letter written quite thoughtfully on the backside of a beautiful picture postcard of a banyan tree. The letter, just like the writer, was bonded with warmth, friendship and puckish humour. wishing me luck as an aspiring writer he wrote, “May your pen run away with your heart...” It has ever since. Literary luck came again my way after a few years. I had reviewed the famous essayist and novelist Pico Iyer’s book Sun after Dark and mailed him a copy. For months there was no response. But one day I received an envelope with handwritten address on Time magazine’s stationery. Quite intrigued I opened it with suspense. To my utter delight — there was a long handwritten letter from Pico Iyer! It was as the person is — sensitive, emotional, laced with philosophical overtones and penned with a very neat hand. “Responses like yours are what make all the hours at the desk seem worthwhile...especially at a time when the word seems to be giving way to image! “Responding to my request for giving me his email address he had written, “My monastic soul hardly ever ventures out to the computer...and it’s such a joy to open envelopes such as yours. “ Thanks Pico, for reminding me of this fading joy. My crowning glory with literary epistles came recently, when I persuaded even a hard-to-get Nobel laureate like V S Naipaul to write. As a great coincidence, this too was handwritten. Although brief, its value lies in the great effort taken by Naipaul in writing it; in his current state of ill-health. “Hope you will excuse my handwriting. My wrist became tired 20 years ago, after all the writing; and now won’t obey my brain. It won’t stay on the paper as it should. It slides away to take the pen with it...” Don’t worry, Sir Vidia, even your scrawl is worth literary gold for me. As I savour these memorable words on paper and ink; it’s a writer’s bond. Thanks for not emailing
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Panchayats keep watch on schools
THE World Bank report, “Resuming Punjab’s Prosperity” makes a startling revelation: on any given day 36 per cent of Punjab ‘s government primary school teachers are absent. This rate is well above the 25 per cent rate for all India. The report points out that absenteeism among school teachers in the state is the third highest in the country after Bihar and Jharkhand, which tops the list. Compounding the problem is the finding that even when teachers are present, only half (49.8 per cent) are teaching. This is below the all India average of 59.5 per cent. And this is not mere data. The ensuing ground reality is for any one to see. Government schools in the state are the least preferred institutions where parents want to send their child to study. Anyone who can afford to teach his child in a private school is doing so. This is true of not only the urban areas but also of rural areas. Private schools run in houses, sheds and halls have mushroomed in almost every large village in the state. Offering English-based education, these schools have found a market in the rural middle class. According to the Punjab School Education Board, the number of requests for affiliation coming in from the rural areas is at least one and a half times of similar requests from the urban areas. Only the poorest of the poor are sending their children to Punjab government schools. While the government is quite aware of the grim situation, the spotlight remains on employing more teachers. Do we need more teachers? If the number of students studying in government schools falls at this rate, soon we would have teachers without students. The government, instead of focusing on how to get more teachers, should instead find ways to get work out of those already employed. It is often said that if you offer peanuts, you will attract monkeys only. Are school teachers under-paid? No. In Punjab, government school teachers are the most well-paid set of employees in the entire nation in the same category. The median salary of a government school teacher is as high as Rs 18,000 a month. Compare this with what private schools pay to their teachers. Starting at Rs 2,000, the highest pay is Rs 20,000. And mind you, these teachers do not just teach, they show results also. The Punjab government school teacher has become the proverbial white elephant which is draining the coffers dry. If it is a problem of governance, what is the Education Department doing about it? With 19,000 government schools in the state, the education department has given up on the issue of absenteeism. Raids by district education officers are considered ineffective since punitive measures are rarely taken. The village panchayats do keep a tab on what is happening in the village school, find it easier to “employ” a fresh college graduate from the village, pay her Rs 2,000 a month and ask her to teach in the school. An entirely informal arrangement which is working rather well in many villages. Teachers, particularly women, often absent themselves from duty because their place of posting is far from their place of residence and commuting is not easy. Educationists suggest a solution: the government, instead of recruiting school teachers in one big drive and later posting them across the state, should recruit teachers district-wise. A suggestion recently implemented by the Education Department was to appoint over 3,000 teachers for imparting computer education. A written test was conducted and teachers were selected district-wise. Teachers employed in the district of their choice were made to go through a counselling session during which they were asked to choose the school where they wanted to teach. Depending on the rank of the teacher on the merit list, school-wise vacancies were filled. The high scorers obviously got not just the district, but also the school of their choice. A similar proposal has been made by the government as part of the decentralisation of powers to panchayati raj institutions in the state. The Zila Parishads will be asked to engage teachers in their districts through a recruitment committee. The earlier this proposal is implemented, the better. How does the government tackle those teachers who do go to school but don’t teach? Lack of infrastructure like rooms, laboratories, chairs, tables, black-boards etc is the most common excuse given by these teachers for not teaching. But a more important cause is the absence of self-worth among school teachers. The availability of infrastructure can only make a good situation better but how does one make teachers realise the importance of their work? How does one make them feel that what they do or do not do is in the long run responsible for the future of the entire nation? Peddling innocuous facts before fertile brains is just one aspect of the criminal harm that these teachers are responsible for. Instead of encouraging and showing by example that if there is a will there is a way, these teachers are passing on to an entire generation of Punjab’s youth their own sense of hopelessness, dispiritedness and cynicism. |
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Aviator completes historic flight Fossett stayed awake by drinking a dozen chocolate protein milkshakes as he broke what his supporters consider the last great aviation feat. His mission of some 23,000 miles set several world records, registering as the fastest nonstop flight around the world. “That’s something I’ve wanted to do for some time,” Fossett, 60, said, shortly after squeezing out of the tiny cockpit before a raucous crowd of about 5,000. “I’ve achieved my ambition.” After landing, Fossett exchanged high-fives with British billionaire Richard Branson, a long-time friend who financed the project and commissioned legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan to build the catamaran-shaped plane. It was powered by a single jet engine. “Can you walk?” Branson asked Fossett before spraying him with champagne. The flight marked the second major privately funded aerospace event since the fall with a Rutan design. In October Rutan’s SpaceShipOne rocket soared into the edge of space on a suborbital flight and back with a single pilot, claiming a $10-million prize. By contrast, Fossett’s round-the-world solo flight was done for the technological and human endurance challenge, with no prize money involved. The first plane to circumnavigate the globe nonstop and without refueling was another designed by Rutan, the Voyager in 1986. But that aircraft was powered by two propeller engines and flown by two pilots taking turns. And it took nine days to fly around the world. Fossett began his journey Monday at 6:47 p.m. CST when the Star Trek-lookalike craft, with a 114-foot wingspan took off from the Salina Municipal Airport with 18,000 pounds of fuel — or about 82 percent of the aircraft’s weight. To break the world record,Fossett had to fly the craft more than 22,858 miles, or the same circumference as the Tropic of Cancer, and pass a dozen waypoints. During the flight, Fossett kept to drinking protein milkshakes, which minimized bowel movements while providing nutrition. He also took half a dozen catnaps of about one to three minutes. A millionaire and former options trader in Chicago, Fossett has broken 60 aviation records, competed in triathlons and the 1,100 mile Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska. In 2002 he became the first pilot to make a solo, nonstop hot air balloon around the world in 13 days and 8 hours . Beside the fastest and the longest records Fossett has broken, the Tennessee native also set the world record for the slowest swim across the English Channel, completing the 21-mile ocean swim in 22 hours. “Steve is a different animal than most of us,” Rutan said. At 1:48 p.m. CST, Fossett landed the GlobalFlyer on the same runway where he took off 67 hours, 2 minutes and 38 seconds earlier. The gas tank caps and the cockpit door still had the same adhesive tape that been applied before the flight as a way a way to verify there were no surreptitious refueling stops. The trip wasn’t without tense moments. Problems with some equipment jeopardized the mission at the onset and toward the end. In the early part of the flight, Fossett had to rely on directions from mission control because of problems with the aircraft’s global positioning system, which provides near precise geographic location of the aircraft. Then toward the end, as he flew past Japan and began the trek across the Pacific, gauges showed that the airplane was low on fuel. Fossett decided to continue after the airplane picked up strong tailwinds of up to 160 miles per hour.
— LA Times-Washington Post |
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BBC: governors to go but licence fee stays THE BBC has been told to stop chasing ratings and making copycat programmes as part of wide-ranging government proposals for the future of the broadcaster. The Green Paper published on Thursday also proposed that the BBC’s board of governors be abolished in favour of a new trust, which it said would be more accountable to licence fee-payers. The trust will be responsible for ensuring that every BBC service meets a public interest test. The Culture Secretary said that change was necessary because the dual role of the governors as “cheerleader and regulator” of the BBC lacked clarity, transparency and accountability”. Tessa Jowell promised that a new structure at the top of the BBC, comprising a board of trustees and a separate executive board, would create “much-needed daylight” between the two roles. The Secretary of State added that the current chairman Michael Grade, whose term runs until 2008, would be the first head of the new trust. The Government rejected the proposal of an independent inquiry led by Lord Burns, that the BBC should be regulated by an external watchdog with the power to top-slice the licence fee to fund other public service broadcasters. Under the proposals, the BBC’s future will be secured until 2016 under a new royal charter and the licence fee is guaranteed for another 10 years. At the time of digital switchover in 2012, the Government plans to conduct two reviews into the funding of the BBC and other public service broadcasters. Ms Jowell insisted that the reforms set out in the Green Paper would make a “fundamental difference” to the running of the BBC. “The present board of governors operate on the basis that their dual function of managing and regulating the BBC are substantially in one body. “That will end and will be replaced by a complete separation of the management of the BBC and the oversight of the BBC vested in the board of trustees. The BBC trust for the first time will be principally accountable for the licence fee and to the licence fee-payer.” The Green Paper said focus groups had revealed “a marked perception . . . that the standards of BBC TV programming were declining” and warned that the BBC should avoid derivative formats, ensure that all of its journalism is “fair and precise” and should not compete aggressively against other broadcasters. It set out five new standards that all BBC services must meet: to promote citizenship and education, to stimulate creativity, to represent the whole of the UK and its nations and regions, and to take the UK to the rest of the world. In addition, the BBC should be in charge of “building digital Britain” and more production should take place out of London and be commissioned from independent suppliers. Although the licence fee was “not perfect”, the Green Paper concluded that it was the best funding model for the time being. Towards the end of digital switchover, however, there are to be two reviews, one looking at alternative methods of funding the corporation such as advertising or subscription and another which will consider whether other public service broadcasters should be given a share of the licence fee. The BBC was quick to back the proposals. Mark Thompson, the director general, who will head the new executive board, said “very few people set out to make derivative programmes” and added that later this week he would present plans for a creative review of BBC programmes. Mr Grade welcomed the proposals as “the biggest change in the governance of the BBC for 77 years”and admitted that his reform of the board of governors had been “more behavioural than structural”. He said: “The Government has taken a view in this Green Paper that behavioural change is not enough, it’s got to be future-proofed.” John Whittingdale, the shadow Culture Secretary, described the reforms as largely cosmetic. He said: “The Government appears content to merely tinker at the edges of the existing structure while essentially allowing the BBC to continue for another 10 years with business as usual.” Don Foster, the Liberal Democrat culture spokesman, agreed that the changes did not go far enough and backed Lord Burns’s call for a new independent regulator. He said: “The proposal for a board of trustees is a move in the right direction, but it perpetuates the serious conflict of interests that existed under the governors.”
— By arrangement with The Independent, London |
Meditate on the oneness of the self with God, the one blissful existence , the One I am. — Sri Krishna God does and would do what pleases Him. None can say what He should do. — Guru Nanak
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MADCAP aviator Steve Fossett glided his GlobalFlyer to a picture perfect landing at Salina in Kansas (US) on Thursday 67 hours after taking off, becoming the first pilot to circle the globe nonstop, alone and without refueling.