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Volcker report Justice without
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New green norm Centre’s project clearance plan good, but… The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has taken the right initiative in streamlining the process of environmental impact assessment of projects, big and small. Its draft notification, duly vetted by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, seeks to hasten the process of environmental clearance of all projects and make it smooth, transparent and time bound.
Two anniversaries
No escape this time
Rot in the society
has affected Services too Villain makes way
for “cool” baddie Delhi
Durbar
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Justice without delay The
new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Mr Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, has rightly stressed the need to clear the huge backlog of cases in courts at all levels. The fact that there are about three crore cases pending in the country speaks volumes about the functioning of the courts and the dispensation of justice. The courts’ inability to give justice without delay is making people lose faith in the judiciary. Even the amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure and the Code of Criminal Procedure by Parliament did not ease the situation in the courts clogged with arrears of cases. What stands also in the way is the fixed mindset of the advocates and judges who are prone to readily giving adjournments. Mr Justice Sabharwal’s plan to segregate petty offences from major crimes and appointment of special magistrates to dispose of cases for which the punishment is only six months’ jail can itself reduce the courts’ burden. This will save the precious time and energy of the judges, lawyers and litigants. Same is the case with crimes like terrorism, corruption and rape which will be put on fast track for day-to-day disposal under the supervision of the High Courts and the Supreme Court. Review petitions and indiscriminate issuance of stay orders are also affecting the courts’ functioning. In this context, the CJI’s plan for automatic vacation of stay after four or six months and a limited period for interim injunctions is reasonable. Mr Justice Sabharwal aptly said that there was no need for new legislation to speed up the disposal of pending cases and that the judges themselves could set a time-frame for finishing arguments, filing written submissions, furnishing evidence and its examination. But vacancies of judges — 188 in the High Courts alone — have severely affected the functioning of the judiciary. The CJI should take up the matter with the Centre as the Supreme Court Collegium sent the files to the Union Law Ministry long ago. Mr Justice Sabharwal, who enjoys tremendous reputation, will be remembered if during his 14-month tenure he can make the courts give justice to those who have been hoping for it for a long, long time. |
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New green norm The
Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has taken the right initiative in streamlining the process of environmental impact assessment (EIA) of projects, big and small. Its draft notification, duly vetted by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, seeks to hasten the process of environmental clearance of all projects and make it smooth, transparent and time bound. It seeks to monitor the enforcement of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, through well-defined regulators at the Centre and in the states. These regulators will examine the legitimate need for imposing restrictions and prohibitions on new projects or activities. The Expert Appraisal Committees (EACs) at the Centre and in the states will screen the projects. Significantly, public consultation — at the project site and on the web — will form an integral part of the EIA. Efforts will also be made to clear the EIA of a project within four months. While the new policy merits a fair trial, it remains to be seen as to what extent it would be implemented on the ground. This is because neither the Centre nor the states are generally known to appreciate properly the genuine concerns of the environmentalists and the problem of displacement. In Orissa, a controversy is raging over the proposed Posco steel plant at Paradip and a bauxite refinery project in Kalahandi. Though over 700 hectares of forest would be destroyed in the bauxite and mining project, why was forest clearance not taken in accordance with the ministry’s rules? Similarly, the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam continues to rise, but various environmental safeguards are yet to be implemented by Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. In Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, the governments hardly look at the environment angle while sanctioning projects. Clearly, no project should be given clearance unless all the mandatory EIA studies are completed. Conditional clearances should be an option used extremely frugally. The new green norm indeed gives an opportunity to the Centre to prove that the Ministry of Environment and Forests is not vulnerable to pulls and pressures from vested interests and other ministries. |
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What I tell you three times is true.
— Lewis Carroll |
Two anniversaries BY a remarkable coincidence the death anniversary of Indira Gandhi and the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel fall on the last day of October. The observance of the first and the celebration of the latter give one an opportunity briefly to review the yeoman services these two children of Mother India, belonging to different generations, have rendered her. The passage of time makes a difference, sometimes huge, to the nation’s perception of the past leaders whose memory is still alive. Let us begin with Indira Gandhi, much closer to our time than Vallabhbhai. Not only immediately after her death but also for long years afterwards it was virtually impossible to say a good word about Indira Gandhi at any gathering of Indians where academics, mediapersons, multinational executives and all those collectively called “intellectuals” were present. This has changed materially in recent years. The yawning gap between the chattering classes’ hatred and the masses’ reverence for her has narrowed, contributing materially to the Congress revival. Time has lent perspective to even such climacteric events as the Emergency of the mid-seventies. To those who suffered during it the Emergency remains a nineteen-month nightmare. But nearly half the Indian population today, born after 1975, is not bothered. More pertinently, while the Emergency would continue to be a blot on Indira Gandhi’s otherwise shining record, today it doesn’t appear such a monstrosity as it did for nearly two decades. Of the numerous reasons for this, let only three be mentioned. First, now that a dispassionate view is possible, it is clear that neither Indira nor Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) alone can be blamed for what happened. Both must share the responsibility almost equally. Having lost confidence in each other’s good faith, both stretched democratic norms to such an extent that something had got to give. What saintly JP was spearheading was not legitimate extra-parliamentary agitation but anarchy. Indira’s answer to anarchy was abuse of power. Secondly, and more importantly, today more Indians than ever before appreciate that Indira, entirely on her own, had lifted the Emergency as abruptly as she had imposed it, and, on losing the elections, had surrendered power gracefully. After fighting valiantly the Janata government’s vindictive actions against her and her favourite son, Sanjay, she was back in power at the Centre and in most states in 30 months flat. Only a couple of months ago — on Independence Day — in an opinion poll conducted by a major newspaper, readers had voted Indira Gandhi as the “greatest leader” independent India has had. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru shared the second place. In my view, this was a lopsided judgment resulting probably from the predominance of the youth among those polled. But it just shows how radically opinion about Indira has changed. In the glittering galaxy of the titanic leaders of this country, the Mahatma, Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel are surely ahead of Indira Gandhi, who takes precedence over everyone else, of course. For much too long have the Sardar and his great contribution to consolidating Indian freedom and unity been ignored. It was nice, therefore, to see the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, pay homage to him, together with the leader of the Opposition, L.K. Advani. This practice ought to go on. Justifiably called the Iron Man, in the first post-Independence government, Patel was Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister. Unquestionably, he was the only man ever to be Nehru’s near-equal. And it is no exaggeration to say that from August 15, 1947, until December 15, 1950, when Patel passed away, he and Jawaharlal ruled India together. Such a situation has never recurred since. Nehru and the Sardar were very different in outlook, ideology and temperament. Nehru had a massive hold on popular affection, Patel a complete grip on the party machine. Personal angularities and frictions aggravated their uneasy equation. Their differences were acute on the “communal issue”. Above all, Nehru was a Leftist, committed to socialism and social justice; Patel an unrepentant rightist, and a determined defendant of private property and captains of industry and trade. Under the circumstances, conflict between the two colleagues of towering stature was inevitable. In the event it erupted at the start of 1948 in full fury over the range of and the limitations on the Prime Minister’s authority. Nehru contended that as head of the government he had a supervisory role over all ministries and a right to interfere where necessary. Patel argued that subject to the Cabinet’s collective decision each ministry had the right to function on its own. The remarkable feature of this heated dispute was that neither Nehru nor Patel wanted to push the other out of the Cabinet. Instead, each was insistent that he would resign in favour of the other. This was a touching variation of Lucknow’s charming custom of “pehle aap”. Eventually, the matter was referred to Gandhi who ruled that neither should quit, both should continue in the government and “pull together”. Since the Mahatma had given this verdict only minutes before he was shot dead, it became a binding directive to both. The correspondence exchanged between them a few days after Gandhi’s death oozes with mutual respect and warmth. This did not prevent fresh differences from arising, however. Particularly serious were those over Hyderabad. Vallabhbhai wanted quick Indian action to terminate the Nizam’s intransigence. Nehru, backed by C. Rajagopalachari, then Governor-General, did not want to act in haste despite provocations by the Nizam and his cohorts. The war in Kashmir was still on. In retrospect, it seems that Nehru was right in waiting until both India and Pakistan had accepted the August 13, 1948, resolution of the United Nations
Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) before ordering the Police Action in Hyderabad. Nehru was certainly miffed when Patel saw to it that in the election of the Congress president, his candidate, Purushottam Das Tandon, whom Nehru disliked because of his obscurantist approach, defeated Nehru’s nominee, Acharya Kripalani. But not only Nehru but also everyone else applauded exuberantly when Patel — changing his earlier view that India should occupy East Pakistan because the Hindu minority was being driven out from there — vigorously defended the somewhat unpopular Nehru-Liaqat Agreement on the subject. In short, Nehru and Patel, despite their many differences, were convinced that they were both yoked together in the service of India, rather like the two bullocks in the Congress party’s first election
symbol.
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No escape this time
LESS than a week after his maiden novel The
Unspoken Curse was published, V.K. Madhavan Kutty passed away. He
would often mock at death, having escaped two major accidents. But on
Wednesday death came in the form of an illness and he could not escape
it. He was fond of joking that those who knew him feared travelling
with him as colleagues like K.S. Ramaswamy of the Times of India
and Union Minister Mohan Kumaramangalam died while he escaped to do a
detailed "from the wrecked aircraft"-datelined story in
1973. When senior journalists counted the names of the countries they
visited, Kutty counted the number of times he visited each country.
Those days he accompanied every prime minister and president when they
went abroad on state visits. He remained a journalist for nearly half
a century, mostly in New Delhi, first as Bureau Chief of the Mathrubhoomi
and later of the Malayalam television channel, Asianet. He had an
amazing ability to strike friendship with political leaders and
literary figures. He was so close to V.K. Krishna Menon that he not
only wrote his biography but also played a leading role in
perpetuating his memory in the Capital by way of a statue. One day he
happened to mention to then President K.R. Narayanan that one of his
relations was ill. Within a few minutes security men surrounded his
house. They told him that some VIP was about to visit his house.
"Who else is coming? Mr Narayanan has just come and gone",
he told the police, who had no clue that the President had already
visited his home. He was not known for any ideological position but
he hated "imposition" of Hindi on the South. "Before
they teach us Hindi, let them first teach Hindi to the illiterate
masses in their area" was his refrain. He also disliked any
reference to the English media in the Capital as the "national
Press". He was an excellent storyteller as his friends realised
when he took to writing fiction after his virtual
"retirement" from journalism. His first book in this genre, The
Village Before Time, was a candid portrayal of his village
Paruthipully in Palakkad district. As luck would have it, I read it in
original when it was serialised in a Malayalam weekly. His village
was a mini Kerala, where high caste Brahmins practised untouchability
but did not find the votes of Dalits untouchable and where people
stood up as one man to oppose the arrival of electricity just as they
oppose the express highway now. A memorable character in the book is
the postman. A Syrian Christian from southern Kerala, he sets up home
in the village. Soon, more members of his family join him and they
"grow gold" in the virgin soil. Another memorable villager
is the beautiful Nair girl, Subhadra, who falls in love with a
low-caste man, elopes with him, hires a room and sleeps with him. When
they are caught, she returns to the village nonchalantly. There is no
trace of remorse or shame in her. Remember Subhadra was ahead of her
time and even Simone de Beauvoir and our own Amrita Pritam in
exploring the frontiers of sexual freedom. He had that innate ability
to tell a story in simple but evocative language. Had he not
excelled in journalism, there was still a career in writing for
Madhavan Kutty. But he remained the quintessential reporter even as
editor of the Mathrubhoomi. |
Rot in the society has
affected Services too Three
officers of the Indian Navy have recently been dismissed for unauthorised disclosure of classified information from the Naval War Room to commercial agents for a “consideration”. These officers, one of quite senior rank and the other two just one rank junior, were not dismissed after trial by court martial but by withdrawal of the President’s “pleasure” to their continuation in service. This is a perfectly valid procedure and ensures that speedy disciplinary action is taken. It is not as if the exercise of this prerogative is arbitrary or without due process and application of mind. In all such cases of deliberate malfeasance, punishment must be seen to be swift, severe and sufficiently deterrent, so that the community gets a clear and unambiguous message. The facts of the case have figured in the media often enough and do not need repetition. The information passed on was not too sensitive and did not compromise operational plans or force development projects. So, this was not the really serious issue. What was more damaging was the fact that it had been passed on by officers who had been positioned in their offices not just for their professional competence but equally, for their integrity. That they could compromise it so readily, for returns which were petty by any standards, is even more humiliating. By their acts, they have brought shame to the vast and preponderant majority of their erstwhile colleagues for whom loyalty and integrity and pride in their service are absolutely sacred attributes of their work. So, if they have been thrown out like the rotten eggs that they proved to be, they have received their just desserts. A question is often asked, especially of those who have been in uniform earlier if this kind of moral degradation was always there or if a new trend is being seen. There is no doubt that petty corruption existed in earlier days too and this, often, manifested itself in things like misappropriation of funds, wrongful sale of canteen goods, acceptance of gifts etc, but selling classified information for a price was so rare that I did not hear of it in the Navy through four decades in uniform. Something is happening in the officer corps which is making it susceptible to this most dastardly of all crimes. To begin with, it is an offspring of our society and must, therefore, reflect, at least to some extent, the general dilution in honesty and integrity that the parent is suffering from. But the majority of our people are not busy selling the nation’s secrets, whatever these might be. So, there is more to this than meets the eye and there is need for the military hierarchy to do some introspection. Increasingly, one gets the feeling that those in senior positions are getting distanced from the “rank and file” so to speak, and concern for their personal comforts, sometimes taken to the extreme, is corroding the core. Add to this, visibly unacceptable things like arriving for personal and private commitments in official cars, complete with flags indicating their “high” ranks, and it is not surprising that they are slowly becoming the object of snide remarks, if not of scorn. All will be saluted, and most may command loyalty and obedience, which is their right, but not many are likely to get respect, an attribute which is to be deserved and can never be ordered. The scale of hospitality being sought by senior officers, whether directly or through more subtle suggestions is also well beyond what is desirable or was in vogue in the years gone by. Egotism is high as can be seen by the several functionaries in the Capital declaring their residential houses as “Sappers House”, “Infantry House”, etc. In earlier times, only the chiefs could mark their houses as ‘Navy/Army/Air House’ in the Capital and, at Command Headquarters, only the C-in-C could have an equivalent nomenclature. Not to be left behind, heads of para-military forces are also following suit. All these things together, have actually degraded the stature of the military hierarchy rather than enhance it. Senior officers who drive to private functions in their own cars, as many frequently did some years ago, actually deserve and get much more respect than those who arrive in a blaze of flashing red lights. To be fair, there are those who follow the old practices even today but their numbers are not large and may even be dwindling. What does this have to do with three naval officers, charged with safeguarding the secrets entrusted to their custody, selling them for a pittance, is a question that can be legitimately asked. The answer is nothing and yet, everything. Their disgraceful act cannot be seen as a “one time” exception or aberration, to be brushed aside or ignored in the naïve belief that the system continues to retain its purity and that such acts cannot or will not recur. Such a view will be naïve and simplistic. These people were part of a larger community and it is not possible that there are not others in it who will not, equally easily, succumb to temptation and do exactly what they did. There is need to recognise the changes that are taking place in our society, good and bad, and to adapt our recruitment and training programmes suitably so that moral values and ethics receive a much larger focus than has been the case so far. In the years gone by, these issues demanded little or no structured attention because the environment did not require it. Times have changed. Training syllabi for the younger officers do cater for them in various ways but there is need to bring more senior officers on board as well. Finally, moral values will flow from what the seniors are seen to be and not from any classroom instruction. War rooms in the military are better known for their businesslike functioning and secretive functioning rather than for subterfuge and for wheeling-dealing. By doing what they did, the dismissed officers have done their Service and their colleagues great disservice and brought them shame. At the same time, they have presented an opportunity to the hierarchy of the three Services to take a hard look at themselves and to take corrective measures before events of greater magnitude beset them. There is not much time to be lost. The author retired as Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command. |
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Villain makes way for “cool” baddie Like Hollywood, Bollywood too is re-inventing the bad guy and it’s
all been good. The recent death of Amrish Puri marks the end of an era in
Bollywood — the end of the bad villain. Starting from hits such as Gyan
Mukherjee’s Kismet, Raj Kapoor’s Awaara, to Ramesh Sippy’s
Sholay, popular Indian films constantly depicted the struggle of good
triumphing over evil and the social order, disrupted by the actions of
villainous people, ultimately restored by the power of goodness. There has
been a shift in the morality play of Indian cinema. The bad villain has been
replaced with, what I call, the cool bad guy. Credit for this transition goes
to Sanjay Dutt. From Hathyar to Munnabhai MBBS, he has made
villainy both gruesome and funny and, as an effect, complicated and
obliterated the linear view of the bad. While Sanjay Dutt is more a veteran,
John Abraham is the new cool baddie on the block. Karam did not fare
well with the masses but it is in this film that Abraham epitomised the
complexities behind the cool badness. Abraham’s appeal is that he is an
intensely physical performer, one whose jumping muscles and athleticism often
express the inner workings of his characters, more plausibly than any scripted
line. A combination of wheels (or motorcycles in Dhoom), jewellery, and
sunglasses has made Abraham’s cool badness utterly appealing to
filmgoers. The best of Dutt and Abraham are brought out by Sanjay Gupta who
is emerging as one of the new breed of directors hell bent on unshackling the
nature of villainy altogether (Ram Gopal Verma counts as the other). Gupta’s
films are filled with visceral, frenetically violent scenes but ravishingly
charming visuals, characterised by an attention to surface details. His heroes
often are typically anguished and existentially lonely heroes who straddle
between good, bad and ugly. His films like Musafir, Kaante, and Karam
are the sort of expressionistic gambit that make the case that movies
create meaning both with what’s on the scripted page and heartbreaking
beauty that is on the screen. Gupta is often described as a cynic, but
sentimentality in Mumbai movies is such a cheap commodity that his acridness
is practically a balm. This director has outdated the old moustached, rural
dacoit and the heavy-drinking, moll-loving smuggler with the urbane, complex,
and impeccably dressed bad guy. Cool! |
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Delhi Durbar Was
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad kept in the dark about the impending announcement that he is being despatched to the sensitive border state as the Chief Minister and that Mufti Mohammed Sayeed is not being asked to stay on as the political head in keeping with the Congress-PDP arrangement agreed to in 2002? It seems so because on the day the announcement came, Azad was attending a meeting of the Union Cabinet in the Capital. It appeared that a snap decision about the change of guard in J and K was taken by Congress president Sonia Gandhi which caught Congressmen, including Azad, by surprise. On his part, Azad had been consistently saying, especially in Srinagar, that a Congress Chief Minister will be in place on November 2 when the three-year-term of the Mufti expires. From all indications, the Mufti was not averse to staying on as Chief Minister for a longer spell but declined to hold fort for another six months to a year. The Congress, on the other hand, felt it is advisable for them to take over the reins of leadership in J and K and work in a manner that it proves advantageous to them during the 2008 assembly elections. Clearly, the Congress is banking on long-term strategy. Indo-Pak
consultates There is palpable excitement that after a decade India and Pakistan will be reopening the consultates in Karachi and Mumbai, respectively. The job of the Indian Consul General is going to be both delicate and challenging. There are several career diplomats whose names are in contention for being sent to Karachi. These include Navdeep Suri who is at present Joint Secretary, West Africa. He was earlier in the Indian missions in London and Washington. Also on the short list are two 1984 batch officers. Apparently, the list has been sent to External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh and the announcement is anxiously awaited. Mamata is agitating Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has assumed Communist overtones much to the chagrin of the Left Front in West Bengal. She has put the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya government in a tight spot. The reason is that Mamatadi has been campaigning hard against foreign investments in her home state. She has threatened to lay down her life in an agitation to stop the West Bengal government from giving farmlands to an Indonesian group for industrial and housing purposes. This comes at a time when the West Bengal Chief Minister has been warning trade unions against bandhs. The question doing the rounds is whether CITU will stand and watch or put on its thinking cap in blunting the image of Mamatadi. Unease in BJP
camp The Sangh Parivar would have everyone believe that BJP President L K Advani dominated the three-day brainstorming session of the RSS in Chitrakoot. This was necessitated by Advani’s observation that there was a need to reconsider the BJP-RSS equation. The RSS maintained that it still held sway by laying down guidelines for all its swayamsevaks. The Sangh thundered that the swayamsewaks should be committed to ideology, individuals, organisation, cadre training and communication. Implicit is that the RSS has reaffirmed returning to its avowed way of life since the BJP’s debacle in the 2004 general elections. Contributed by Prashant Sood, Satish Misra, R Suryamurthy and S Satyanarayanan. |
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From the pages of “RED WAR”
Forestalling the action of the Powers by a few hours and before peace could be actually concluded between Italy and Turkey, Montenegro has declared war on Turkey and heavy fighting took place on the 7th instant between nine battalions of Turks and Malissoris at Tuzi, on the Montenegrin frontier. The Montenegro representative at Constantinople has been ordered by his Government to quit that city and has handed his passports to the Turkish representative in Cettinje. King Nicholas of Montenegro and Prince Mirko have started for the army headquarters at Podgoritza amid scenes of wild enthusiasm. Bulgaria, Servia and Greece have as yet taken no action but there is very little doubt that their Governments will follow Montenegro’s lead. This deal made against Turkey, first by Italy and now by the Balkan Confederacy, will profoundly move the Moslem world.
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I Praise the Creator, says Guru Nanak. Whatever pleases him is the only good there is, and he is the only one who is formless and eternal. — Guru Nanak Vanity sits ill on a person who claims to know the Supreme, for what he knows is but a drop in the ocean. — The Upanishads Do good wherever you can. Do not hesitate in helping others. The person who does good without looking for a return is at the highest stage of self-realization. He does not need any yoga. He does not need any other form of prayer or renunciation. — The Mahabharata Christ’s love is always stronger that the evil in the world, so we need to love and be loved: It’s as simple as that. — Mother Teresa |
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