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From Paris with love Repatriated at last |
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Ashes, Ashes
Limits of a third front
Gratefully yours
Not a worthwhile victory over Delhi tariff hike
Eat as much as you like Japanese worry about big govt
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From Paris with love INDIA'S relations with France acquired greater warmth on Monday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Jacques Chirac signing an agreement for cooperation in defence production and Paris agreeing to work for persuading the Nuclear Suppliers Group to ease the restrictions on the supply of nuclear energy technology to New Delhi for peaceful purposes. As a result, India will get much-needed six Scorpene submarines as part of a drive to upgrade the defence forces’ weapon systems. The deal is cheering not only for the Navy but also the Mazagaon Shipyards, where four of the submarines will be built with a view to ensuring the transfer of technology to India. The induction of the Scorpenes in four or six years will increase the submarine strength of the Indian Navy to 20 and fill the void to be created by the expected phasing out of four submarines in the near future. The French pledge to help India in its civilian nuclear energy programme is aimed at ultimately finalising a comprehensive pact for cooperation in this strategically significant area. India has got a similar commitment from President George W. Bush too, but it is always better to expand the sources of nuclear technology for meeting the country’s fast increasing energy demand. France is, in fact, best placed to help India as it meets nearly 80 per cent of its energy requirement from its nuclear power plants. Its power plant construction companies are among the biggest in the world. It has been giving nuclear fuel for Tarapur in the past. It is time to persuade the French not only to provide nuclear energy technology but also more nuclear fuel, which they have supplied in a reprocessed form to countries like Germany and Japan. It is not easy to procure nuclear fuel from anywhere else. France has no dearth of it because of having large nuclear reprocessing facilities. The French, of course, are tough negotiators despite their heart-warming gestures. But today they appear to be willing to oblige India in the area of nuclear power generation. India will have to seize the opportunity that has come its way.
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Repatriated at last A seemingly interminable wait has finally ended for 580-odd Indians and Pakistanis languishing in each others’ jails. They stepped across the Wagah border on Monday into the waiting arms of their overwhelmed family members. It was the fulfilment of their dreams for which they had been living all these years anxiously. Their tears of joy were tinged with tears of anguish of many others who still continue to be incarcerated in a foreign land. Among them are the Indian prisoners of war about whom there is no official word. Their predicament is made worse by the fact that Pakistan does not even acknowledge their presence, despite the fact that there is irrefutable proof about their being there in Pakistani jails. With bonhomie in the air, the Pakistani government should at least admit that they happen to be there since 1971. They have suffered untold pain all this while. The best confidence-building measure would be to let them rejoin their kith and kin. The Indian civilians dumped in Pakistani jails mainly belong to three categories. First, there are innocent people who strayed across the porous border. Among them are some deaf and dumb people who just could not comprehend that they had moved over to another country. Then there are fishermen who strayed into Pakistani territory due to bad weather or some other such contingency. Since maritime border is not clearly demarcated, their “crime” too happens to be minor. Then there are the most unfortunate ones who were duped by travel agents and pushed into Pakistan from West Asian countries. Pakistanis lodged in Indian jails are also victims of the adversarial relationship. They too have become a pawn in the avoidable rivalry. It is such innocent people who are worthy of a compassionate and humanitarian review of their cases. The people-to-people contact that both countries swear by will be meaningful only if these victims of fate are treated humanely. Destiny has dealt them a cruel hand. The neighbouring countries should lessen their tribulation.
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Ashes, Ashes THE return of the Ashes to England after 17 years is being hailed as the finest moment in English cricket. Indeed, the five match series which England won 2-1 witnessed some of the most exciting test cricket in recent years, and may well be one of the most watched around the world. Many records were broken, and the last four matches, including those drawn, witnessed nail-biting finishes. The sight of the Aussies going down was akin to a magnificent whale finally being harpooned and beached. Ricky Ponting’s nightmare of becoming the first Aussie captain in two decades to lose the Ashes proved prophetic. The Australians have been beaten before, and Indian cricket fans still savour the memory of the 2000-2001 three-test series, when India broke Australia’s continuous run of 16 wins with a stunning victory in the Calcutta test. But then this was only the final frontier (breached in a later series) and nobody questioned Australia’s kingly status. This time, when the Aussies lost the fourth test after following on for the first time in a staggering 191 tests since 1988, many made bold to declare the end of Australian supremacy. This is notwithstanding the fact that the Aussies are still on top of the championship tables, and nobody dares believe that the Ashes are safe in English hands in 2007. One of the series’ most enduring images would be that of the 36-year old Shane Warne, bowling over after over in what was essentially a lone battle to save the Ashes. In an unfair twist, Warne, notwithstanding his 40-wicket haul and some gritty batting, would forever be considered to have “dropped the Ashes” when in the last test he grassed a catch from Kevin Pietersen, when the batsman was on 15. Kevin went on to score a match-saving 158. The English are given to believing that the best cricket in the world is played on their soil —remember Warne’s so-called ball of the century 12 years ago. But no one would grudge Vaughan’s and his men’s joy in this victory. Well played, mates.
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Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t. — William Shakespeare
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Limits of a third front INDIA'S electoral data provide flawless logic for a third front. The persuasive crux of that logic is that a third front is necessary if India’s parliamentary democracy is not to remain meaningless for large sections of people. But the irony of it is that the same data also support a different logic: that a third front itself cannot survive unless parties which aspire to use that platform learn to behave differently from the way they do, and of that they have given no proof as yet. The results of the most recent Lok Sabha elections support both sides of the case. There is a way out of this quandary. In fact, there is more than one way out. But few parties have shown willingness to take them. Take first the following facts. Neither of the two leading parties was able to capture even a third of the votes cast in the latest Lok Sabha elections, and even the two together polled just about half the vote. A government formed by either party could claim the proven support of less than a third of those who had voted. Various brands of Maoists and Naxalites could claim the rest as their own happy hunting ground, and as the whole country knows by now the claim is not hollow. The reason why such a situation arises at all is that with so many parties in the fray, none gets the chance to have a majority support on its own, and over time all of them lose that sense of responsibility which comes with the feeling that you may have to be in power next. But the number of parties cannot be arbitrarily reduced, because that would deprive some sections of society of their right to be represented in the colour of their own identities. Given the huge number of identities in our society, and the desire of most of them to have parties of their own, we are inevitably sucked into an era of complicated coalitions. Each coalition is aggregated around one or another of the two main parties. But all of them face the dilemma that the larger the number of parties whose support you need for making up the required numbers the less coherent the coalition becomes, and the more it gets frayed at the edges the more it is thrown open to poaching. Hence a number of rules and conventions have been framed for ways in which a coalition must be formed if it is to win recognition from the concerned legislature, and how parties may join or leave the coalition. But as yet there are no such rules for parties which, for whatever reason, cannot join a coalition or decide not to join one. They become a non-descript third front, and such a “front” remains only a basket full of leftover pebbles which rattle away, each on its own, without trying or even claiming to be a voice in an identifiable chorus. Therefore, each pebble becomes a mindless piece which can be, and often is, picked up by a bidder on the Treasury or the Opposition benches. The successful bidder may experience a sense of its own power and, therefore, a sense of its increased responsibility. But not the pebble. Each “third front”, by its very name and definition, remains away from both the leading parties and, therefore, away from the rejuvenating glow of the prospect of sharing power. Therefore, there are no rules as yet either for its recognition on the floor or for its formation before or after the election. It always remains vulnerable to the agents of both the first and second parties, which run after it in search of easy pickings like schoolboys chasing butterflies in the park. Its constantly undefined and ad hoc nature deprives it of any chance to play a well thought-out role in the legislature, deprive it also of any incentive for devising a strategy for playing such a role. The two main communist parties have a long tradition of retaining a sense of their power, relevance and responsibility even after decades spent on Opposition benches. Therefore, they remain active members of third fronts and most often are also their leaders. But most other parties either disintegrate or flit from front to front until they disappear. With that ends the role a party can play as a member of a “third front” , that is give to the millions who may have voted for it a feeling that they too have a member up there on his legs who is fighting for their rights in this great democracy. It follows from the foregoing that just as there are rules, or at least the beginnings of rules, which a coalition must follow for it to have the rights and privileges of being a coalition, including the right that all its members must be counted for deciding whether it can play a part in the formation of a government, similarly there must be rules which a third front must follow, on the floor and before and after an election, if it wants that the vote of all its members must be counted as a block in the making or unmaking of governments, and in deciding how any member or members may opt in or out of the block. Better still are rules which have been advocated for years for ensuring that all voters and all those who are elected remain relevant throughout the life of the legislature when it comes to making and changing governments. The essential principle of these rules is that a candidate should be declared elected to the legislature only if, may be after a second round of balloting where necessary, he has polled more than half the votes cast, and similarly a government should be elected or unseated only after a majority vote of confidence or lack of confidence. But the problem here also is that while it is not difficult to formulate good and effective rules, it is becoming more and more difficult to inculcate among people the willingness, let alone the habit, of playing the game by the rules. This game or any
other.
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Gratefully yours
EVERY time I meet Radhe Shyam Sharma, Director of Haryana Sahitya Akademi, I get the jitters. He usually has bad news for me. He is now my only link with Bhopal, where I worked for about three years in the 1970s. We have many common acquaintances and he keeps me posted about their welfare. At a wedding reception on Monday, Sharma gave me the startling news that my editor at The Hitavada, Bhopal, N. Rajan, was no more. I wondered how I had missed the news, which, he insists, appeared in some newspapers. The last time I saw Rajan was when a television channel interviewed him on the change of government in Madhya Pradesh. He had aged but had lost none of his agility. Rajan had begun his career in the Nagpur Times, where his trade union activities cost him his job. He shifted to The Hitavada, “Central India’s largest circulated English daily”, originally published by the Servants of India Society. Gradually, he stepped into the shoes of the late A.D. Mani, who combined the paper’s editorship with membership of the Rajya Sabha. The folklore in Bhopal had it that Mani dictated his editorials on the trunk line from Parliament House. By then the Bhopal edition of The Hitavada had fallen into the hands of Vidya Charan Shukla, who found in Rajan a trusted editor. In his heyday, he was calling the shots at the Centre as Information and Broadcasting Minister. Shukla had earned notoriety for canning Kissa Kursi Ka, a satirical movie on Indira Gandhi, and for the vigorous censorship he had imposed on the media. Juicy stories of his adventures in Bollywood spread faster than the stories he sought to suppress. As part of disciplining the Press, Shukla forcibly merged PTI, UNI, Samachar Bharati and Hindustan Samachar to form one agency called Samachar. The high-water mark of Rajan’s career was when Shukla nominated him as a Director of Samachar. He also helped him get an out-of-turn allotment of a Priya scooter from the Bajaj stable. Suddenly, Rajan was in the big league, attending Samachar board meetings in Delhi and other places. He had a problem at hand. Who would write editorials in his absence? He was not in the best of terms with the Assistant Editor, Yashwant Argarey, who, he suspected, would not be able to overcome his political affiliations while writing editorials. So when he asked me to start writing editorials, I found it a godsend. “You can write on any subject except the Congress”, he told me while leaving Bhopal for a few days. The Emergency did not last long; Samachar was split and the glory days of The Hitavada were over. By then, I had a small file of published editorials, which helped me clinch a job as Assistant Editor in another newspaper. Rajan stayed on in Bhopal while The Hitavada was eventually closed. The paper had created a record of sorts when, for months together, it used only capital letters as it had run out of small fonts. Its multi-storeyed building was taken over by the Housing Board for non-payment of dues. On the personal front, the loss of a son wrecked him. A few years ago, he sent me his autobiography, which was basically a compilation of his old articles, for review in the Indian Express. The book editor rejected it out of hand. I could have done a review myself but it would not have shown him in a good light. Besides, it would have been ungrateful to my Editor.
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Not a worthwhile victory over Delhi tariff hike WHAT began as a legitimate concern expressed by some Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) in the later part of July 2005 against the tariff hike announced by the Power Regulator in Delhi has snowballed into a political scrabbling among politicians, bringing sheer mockery to the informed and responsible debate that should have been the case. It is not surprising that RWAs are not fully aware of the regulatory process in determining the tariffs by the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) and started a campaign for asking a rollback of the 10 per cent hike for the domestic consumers. While the intention of the RWAs may have been genuine, their approach was misguided and bypassing of the legal remedy of which, one assumes, they could not have been unaware. Unlike the RWAs, the Government of NCTD knows fully how the power tariffs, are to be set up by DERC annually on the basis of the projected revenue requirements of the discoms. Initially perhaps, the government accepted the proposed increase in the tariffs but when the politicians seized the opportunity to corner the CM, all parties started fishing in the troubled waters. Politics once again scored over the long-term benefits of the reform process in Delhi. It needs to be reminded that at the time of privatisation, the government committed financial support of Rs 3,450 crore for a five year-period from 2002-03. This was to protect the revenues of TRANSCO for the expenses incurred on supplying power to the distribution companies. DERC and its former Chairman Mr V.K. Sood utilised the financial support for bridging the revenue gap in the last three years and was able to give a cumulative tariff increase of only 15.55 per cent as against 33 per cent. Consumers are not aware that even after the past tariff increases, the regulator has left the gap unabridged by creating a regulatory asset, which is in the form of deferred tariff increase. It is unfortunate that the Delhi Government should have announced a subsidy of Rs 182 crore under political pressure and thus unwittingly politicised the power reforms in Delhi. A healthy debate on the concerns about the progress made by the discoms and the regulatory process in tariff determination will be a welcome sign of a mature citizenry in a democracy. But the entire debate has been highjacked by the political class, which has a different agenda and not really the core concern voiced by the RWAs. When privatisation of the DVB was announced in 2002-03, it had received wide support, although even then some vested interests had opposed it. But the consumers of electricity had hoped that the endemic problems they faced from the DVB era would end and quality supply would become available to them from the three discoms (NDPL BYPL, BRPL). It was one of the main objective of the reforms to bring down the huge T&D losses by each of the three discoms, which were extremely high on account of thefts and other inefficiencies. In the well-to-do areas of Delhi with the two Reliance discoms, the AT&C losses were as high 42.07 per cent. The new model was considered pragmatic and bound the three discoms to a trajectory for reduction of losses and collection efficiencies and improvement in the supply of electricity. The tariffs were regulated by DERC and the entire process of tariff determination has given experience of three years. The sad part of the entire reform process is utter lack of interest by the various NGOs like RWAs and other stakeholders in the proceeding of DERC and also effective response to the issues that go into the tariff determination. It is estimated that 1 per cent improvement in the loss level over the accepted bid level generates an additional revenue of Rs 90 crore annually at the current level of tariffs and sales. The present increase in the domestic tariff by 10 per cent was justified or not, depends upon how one looks at the cross subsidisation from industrial and commercial consumers. The regulator was faced with the uncovered revenue gap of Rs 320 crore, which was to be met through an increase in tariffs. The cross-subsidisation needs to be phased out but it requires an informed debate with consumers and stakeholders, including the Delhi government, which is a shareholder as to how much of cross-subsidisation should be reduced and how gradually it should be done. Apparently, the regulator has reduced the cross-subsidisation enjoyed by the domestic consumers. Partly this was the factor that impacted on the domestic consumer and which went unnoticed or its implications were not appreciated by the Delhi government. The public ire is not so much against the domestic tariff increase as an expression of discontent with the service providers after privatisation. It is a new awareness which will force the utilities to focus more on consumer interface to attend to the problems of metering and inflated billing. But this awareness will be meaningful if it is sustained and translated into active participation in the public hearings on the annual ARR of the discoms and some form of collaboration on boosting customer confidence.
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Eat as much as you like WHAT would happen if, instead of eating three modest meals a day, we ate one big one? Or, instead of snacking between meals - “grazing” - we consumed all our calories once every 24 hours? A study is now under way at America’s National Institute of Aging, in Washington. Two groups are being fed identical diets of the ordinary foods - burgers, ice cream and so on - eaten by the average American. One group is required to eat all they need between 4pm and 7pm, and then nothing until the same time the following day. The aim is to find out whether consuming all one’s daily calories in a couple of hours is better for health. Dr Mark Mattson, chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the Institute and the man leading the research, says it is only recently, in evolutionary terms, that humans have eaten three meals a day. Our ancestors were fortunate to eat once a day and often went for days without food. From an evolutionary point of view, our bodies are accustomed to feasting and fasting rather than grazing. Three or more meals a day may be good for young people, but not for adults. This idea - that we need to pay attention to the frequency of our eating as well as the amount consumed - was popularised in America in The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler, in 2002. It is based on the idea that we should eat like early humans, consuming all daily calories in the early evening. The Warrior diet is now a major brand in the US, used to market books, products and seminars. But it has received no attention in the UK. Its website (www.warriordiet.com) proclaims: “Humans are primarily destined to follow certain feeding cycles and physical activities. In accordance with the ‘Thrifty Genes theory’, scientists speculate that humans have adapted to survive better during cycles of feast and famine, action and rest. The current epidemic of obesity, diabetes and impotence bears testimony to the fact that humans today have betrayed their biological destiny.” Even if you think this is nonsense, it is surprising that something as obvious as meal frequency and its impact on health has never been systematically tested. Many religions practise fasting. During Ramadan, which lasts one month, Muslims do not eat between the hours of sunrise and sunset, consuming most of their food in the evening. Blood samples taken before, during and after Ramadan show that skipping meals has a beneficial effect on heart-disease risk by reducing cholesterol and the stickiness of the blood caused by platelet aggregation that leads to blood clots. Dr Mattson is carrying out the first controlled study of what is, in effect, the Warrior diet. Two groups of adults of normal weight, aged between 40 and 50, get identical diets based on three meals that reflect what the average healthy American eats. One group, however, is required to eat all three meals at a sitting. Both groups attend the National Institute of Aging every afternoon. The first group are served a three-course evening meal, which might consist of soup and bread, roast chicken and vegetables followed by fruit. They can eat all they want.
— The Independent
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Japanese worry about big govt A government bureaucrat, Kazushige Nobutani, acknowledged that he might have been signing his own pink slip when he joined the avalanche of Japanese voters who backed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Sunday’s vote. But Nobutani, 39, said he saw no other choice. “Koizumi wants a smaller government in Japan, and I realise my own job may at some point be in danger,’’ said Nobutani, who works for the Economy Ministry. ``But Koizumi is a strong leader determined to reform Japan, and the people are behind him. I don’t think we have another option. It needs to be done, and Koizumi is the only one who can do it.” An overwhelming number of voters agreed, handing Koizumi and his Liberal Democratic Party their biggest win in almost 20 years in Sunday’s election. The party added 84 seats to its majority, winning 296 seats in the 480-seat Diet, the lower house of parliament. Japanese are worried about how the world’s second-largest economy will afford increasing pension costs, health benefits and other programs associated with the country’s rapidly growing retirement sector. The long-stagnant economy has been on the mend since 2003, but sustaining growth has been a national preoccupation for Japan, which faces competition from the red-hot economy of neighboring China. Reacting to Koizumi’s landslide victory, the Nikkei stock index surged to a four-year high Monday. The government also reported that the economy grew by 0.8 percent in the second quarter, far more than had been projected. Koizumi’s mission—shrinking the government, streamlining bureaucracy and shifting more of the nation’s finances from the public to the private sector—inspired a surprising number of voters. But the mission will not be easily accomplished, in part because Japan’s public sector, statistically speaking, is not as bloated as many believe. There are an average of about 38 public servants per 1,000 people in Japan, compared with about 79 in the United States and about 97 in France, according to the Japan International Labor Organization Association and government statistics. Koizumi has already resolved major financial problems in the aftermath of Japan’s economic decline in the early 1990s. His banking reform effort, for instance, reduced by more than half the value of bad loans on the books, which stood at $480 billion in 2002. That leaves Koizumi with fewer obvious targets in his second wave of reforms, beyond his immediate focus—the massive postal service. Japan Post functions as a bank, insurance company and savings and loan institution, with $3 trillion in deposits, more than Japan’s four largest private banks combined. Its 380,000 employees account for more than one-third of the central government’s total workforce. Waste at the agency and use of its coffers often for politically motivated public projects became the core target of Koizumi’s campaign. He contends that privatization, which he hopes to push through parliament in the weeks after it reconvenes on Sept. 21, would sizably decrease the public payroll, eventually funneling billions of dollars worth of deposits into the private sector. But even though Koizumi is likely to win approval for privatization, it will be a slow process that will take more than 10 years to phase in. And there is no guarantee that depositors in Japan Post, including many rural retirees who are conservative with their savings, will rush to put their funds into private sector investments.
— LA Times Washington Post
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From the pages of CURZON”S DISSERVICE TO EMPIRE
Among Englishmen in India who have something to do with Government there are many who believe that the progress that the country has made in education during the past 50 years or more is responsible for the present discontent throughout the country, and they think that it could be lessened or removed by curtailing the educational facilities at present enjoyed by the people. They resent criticism of any kind, and they regard the native press as something venomous. They go so far as to say that the educated classes are seething with disloyalty. The state of affairs cannot be sufficiently deplored in the true interests of the country, and we are of opinion that it constitutes the greatest of the many disservices done to the Empire by Lord
Curzon.
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It is not enough for a King to build up his armies to crush the enemy. He must learn about the foe’s strengths and plan out strategies to exploit his weaknesses. —The Mahabharata To be happy is not the purpose of our being, but to deserve happiness. —Book of quotations
on Happiness
And do not argue the case of those who deceive themselves; for God does not love the treacherous and evil. —Book of quotations
on Islam There is six alligator—lust, anger, avarice and so on—within you, in the “soul’s fathomless depths.” But protect yourself with the turmeric of discrimination and renunciation and they won’t touch you. —Ramkrishna Buddhism allows each individual to study and observe Truth internally and requires no blind faith before acceptance. Buddhism advocates no dogmas, no creeds, no rites, no ceremonies, no sacrifice, no penances, all of which must usually be accepted on blind faith. Buddhism is not a system of faith and worship but rather it is merely a path to Supreme Enlightenment. —The Buddha Success is just a matter of attitude. —Book of quotations
on Success
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