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Rebuilding
Bihar Save the Chiru |
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Enter Angela
Minority rights are indivisible
A helping hand in a foreign land
Dateline
London ‘Drunken consent to sex is still consent’ Delhi Durbar
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Rebuilding Bihar FOR Mr Nitish Kumar, the real battle began when he took over as Chief Minister on Thursday. Appleby might have at one time described Bihar as “the best administrated state” but it has for a long time been a basket case. Fifteen years of “rule” by Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife, Mrs Rabri Devi, has made the condition of the state worse. Take any indices of development, Bihar will always be at the rock bottom. A state where social justice has been preached from the house-tops day in and day out for 15 years, it has the lowest literacy and highest poverty levels. The task before him can be gauged from the fact that just to catch up with the rest of the country in terms of growth rate, an investment of Rs 38,500 crore per year would be required for the next 15 years. Bihar is too pauperised to find resources for such investments. Mr Kumar has promised that providing “good governance” will be his first and foremost task. The state is woefully short of infrastructure, be it roads or electricity. And with the creation of Jharkhand, it has lost much of its mineral resources. It has huge untapped hydro potential, which only helps inundate vast tracts of arable land from time to time. On the plus side, the state has immense agricultural potential because of the plentiful supply of water and the high fertility of land. It can meet the growing demand for organic food within and without the country. More important than all this is the availability of a large resource of qualified people, who completed their higher education outside of the state. Together, this constitutes a great asset the Chief Minister can bank upon as he begins the task of reconstruction. Casteism has always been a bane of the state. The just-concluded elections show that the people have risen above their caste considerations to vote for development. In the past, no government could afford to overlook the caste factor while taking decisions, which in its wake promoted corruption. There is no need for Mr Kumar to be stymied by the caste factor. His announcement about his determination to restore the rule of law is bound to be lapped up by all the law-abiding citizens. The NDA leader has all the goodwill of the people to set Bihar in order. The whole of India waits with bated breath to see how Mr Nitish Kumar lives up to the challenges facing him.
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Save the Chiru THE
international craze for shawls made of Shahtoosh, “the wool of kings”, will
make the Chiru (Tibetan Antelope) extinct in a few years. The Supreme Court’s
directive to the J&K government to ban the manufacture and trade of
Shahtoosh products has thus come not a day too soon. In effect, a ban already exists – it is a question of enforcement. The J&K government in 2002 had amended its wildlife act to include the Chiru in Schedule I, thus prohibiting hunting of the animal and trade of its parts. The Wildlife (Protection) Act of India (1972) also protects the Chiru under Schedule I. The Chiru is mostly found in the Tibetan Plateau, often straying into Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim. Its gossamer wool, extremely fine and warm at the same time, is far superior even to the famed Pashmina. The shawls are sold at rates ranging from $1000 to $15,000. The Chiru’s wool cannot be shorn like in sheep. The animal has to be killed, and three to five animals are slaughtered to make enough wool for one shawl. The wool is smuggled into J&K and the master weavers of Kashmir then turn it into highly desirable objects that adorn the shoulders of film stars and fashion celebrities around the world. Before becoming an international fashion craze, it was evidently a prized dowry item in Northern India, available to a privileged few. The Wildlife Trust of India, which moved the PIL in 2003 resulting in the Supreme Court directive earlier this week, has estimated that 1000 to 2000 shawls are available for sale in New Delhi on any given day. A worldwide campaign has been started to educate people about the source of the Shahtoosh shawl, on the lines of the anti-ivory and anti-fur campaigns, so that the demand is reduced. The trade has flourished even when the Chiru is protected not only by national laws in India, China and Nepal, but by international treaties. The J&K government should act now to cut a key link in the trade. For weavers and buyers, there is always
Pashmina.
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Enter Angela THERE are many firsts as Germany’s new chancellor, Ms Angela Merkel, assumes office. She is the first woman and the first from erstwhile East Germany to rise to the high office. She is also the first, in over 40 years, to lead a grand coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Yet these distinctions are unlikely to make her task easier. On the contrary, the several weeks of hard bargaining, which preceded her taking office, suggest that the road ahead could be just as difficult. Given the many challenges confronting her, especially differences in perception and over policy between her CDU and the SPD, Ms Merkel could learn from the Indian experience in managing coalitions. The most daunting task Ms Merkel faces is revival of the economy, the largest in the European Union. Faced with an acute economic crisis – stagnation and 10 per cent unemployment — Germany is no more the powerhouse of Europe that it was. While no one differs on the diagnosis, the public and political parties are deeply divided over the remedy. The situation calls for massive cuts in jobs and welfare benefits, though such measures will increase unemployment and reduce social security when it is most needed. However, she has had to dump her proposals for labour and tax reforms in return for the SPD’s support. The differences between the SPD and the CDU also extend to foreign affairs, especially relations with the U.S. and France. As coalition experiments in India have shown, success benefits the leading party more than the other constituents, but failure can hurt all partners. Therefore, the SPD could be more effective – and serve its own interests – by negotiating the utmost within the coalition. If the grand coalition fails, then, as outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said, “the entire political class will make an absolute fool of itself”. And that’s a sobering thought which gives Ms Merkel slightly an upper hand.
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Painting is silent poetry, poetry is eloquent painting. — Simonides |
Minority rights are indivisible THE August 8, 2005, judgement of a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court in the Bal Patil case (CA 4730 of 1999), written by Mr Justice D. M. Dharmadhikari, has not received the critical attention it deserved. Perhaps, it may be due to the Jains being a relatively small minority with a population of about 4.2 millions (2001), which is not much in the news or wields little political strength even in five states where more than five lakh Jains live. The Jains have been counted as a separate religious community, since the first decennial census in 1871, with the distinction that they are not recognised as a religious minority by the same government which holds the census. The judgement rejects the Jain plea to the Central Government to notify the community as a minority under Section 2 (C) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, basing itself on the 11-judge Bench decision in the TMA Pai case, which related to the scope of Article 30 of the Constitution. The majority opinion speaking through the then Chief Justice Kirpal was that since the reorganisation of the states in India has been on a linguistic basis, the unit for the purpose of determining a linguistic minority be the state and not the whole of India. But the opinion goes on to apply illogically the same yardstick to religious minorities, though the states were not organised on “religious basis, and comes to the conclusion that “religion and linguistic minorities, who (sic) have been put on a par in Article 30, have to be considered state-wise”. The Central Government found it convenient to take shelter under this illogical presumption and refused to exercise its statutory power under the Act, thus making it redundant. The interesting point is that the Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and even the Parsis (a minuscule community with less than 0.1 million population) had been notified by the Central Government under the provision of the same Act, but the guillotine has fallen on the Jains. Thus, refusal is a clear of discrimination against the Jain community. The Constitution, in Explanation to Article 25, recognises the existence of the Jain religion but brackets it with Buddhism and Sikhism for the limited purposes of one section of the Article dealing with a common social aspect. Only five days after the promulgation of the Constitution, the then Prime Minister Jawarharlal Nehru, through the letter of June 31, 1950, signed by his Principal Private Secretary, had assured a Jain deputation that the Jains are a district religious minority and there was no reason for apprehending that they would be considered as Hindus. Thus the judgement is constitutionally unsound and violates an explicit assurance of the executive. The appellants have decided to seek a review of it. Having summarily disposed of the Jain demand, the judgement devotes another 12 pages to what can only be called obiter dicta or the personal views of Mr Justice Dharmadhikari. He gives his version of the history of the freedom movement, in particular, the effort for resolving the communal problem in terms of the constitutional safeguards as demanded by the Muslim community and conceded in stages by the imperial power. Finally, there was no communal settlement culminating in the Partition of 1947. His historiography is full of flaws; it confuses the sequence of events; it describes India Wins Freedom as the “personal diary” of Maulana Azad and attributes to him the role of a “mediator” between Nehru and Patel on the one side and Jinnah and Liaqat Ali Khan on the other. In effect, the obiter dicta reduced the complex course of negotiations between the Congress and the Muslim League, over 20 years, in which Rajendra Prasad, Nehru, Subhash Bose and Gandhiji all participated (it is doubtful if Azad was directly involved at any stage) for finding a mutually acceptable settlement to a one-shot event! Eminent jurist H. M. Seervai is quoted to place the responsibility for Partition on Gandhi, Nehru and Patel for having destroyed the (Cabinet Mission) Plan. It is true that Azad did his utmost to prevent Partition but failed to persuade Nehru and Gandhi not to accept it. But this relates to the very end of the sad chapter. Secondly, Justice Dharmadhikari’s thesis states that in order to ally the fears and apprehensions in the minds of the Muslims and the Christians, the Constitution provided them special guarantees and protected their religious, cultural and educational rights in the form of Articles 25 to 30. This is an absurd reading of the Constitution. Articles 25-28 relate to the freedom of religion and are universal in their application to all citizens. Articles 29 and 30 relate to cultural and educational rights of minorities. Both sets distinct from each other, both in scope and purview form part of the Fundamental Rights. Then the obiter dicta says that only Muslims, Christians, Anglo-Indians and Parsis are recognised as religious minorities at the national level and attributes the size of the Muslim and Christian communities to the duration of Mughal and British rule! It hints as if the objective of the Mughal State and British rule was conversion. This is far from the truth. The obiter dicta describes the Sikhs and the Jains as “so-called minority communities,” which have “throughout been treated as part of the larger Hindu community”. It seeks to reduce them to sects or sub-sets of the Hindu religion. The fact is that in making the Constitution, the Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis all were recognised as minorities. But the real purpose of Mr Justice Dharmadhikari’s travel into the uncharted terrorities, without a compass, becomes apparent when he identifies Jainism with what he calls Hindu Vedic religion, though the Jains reject the Vedas and the Brahminical philosophy, as their Tirthankaras and specially Mahavir have charted their own spiritual course like Budhism. Then he comes to his final conclusion: “Hinduism can be called a general religion and common faith of India.” He thus elevates Hinduism above other religions of India and equates Hinduism with Indianness. This is an anti-thesis of the constitutional principle of equality of all religions which implies that religions, whatever the number of their followers, are equal before the law and that no distinction can be made among them on the ground of origin, i.e. where they were born! This projected superiority of Hinduism is not only a denigration of Jainism, Buddhism and Sikkhism but also an affront to the status of Islam and Christianity and “Other Religions” which are recorded in every Census. Having wandered though philosophy and religion, Mr Justice Dharmadhikari propounds his constitutional thesis for redefining the status of various religious groups as minorities and conferring it only to those which had to be re-assured of their religious and cultural rights in the background of Partition “in order to maintain the integrity of the country”. He opines that the process of the Constitution did not contemplate any addition to the list of religious minorities other than those the identified in the course of independence negotiations or those which are materially well-off. He seems to think that recognition of the religious identity of a group by the State is a favour, a privilege, a prerogative of the executive or the legislature in accordance with the political compulsion at a given time. Obviously, he has not studied the Constituent Assembly Debates. Dr Ambedkar forcefully argued for the recognition of the absolute rights of the religious minorities. And the first right of a minority is the right of recognition, followed by the right to equality before law. The Fundamental Rights, the finest crystallization of political thought and constitutional theory, are independent of time and place. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights had an impact on our Constitution but the International Covenants and, above all, the UN Declaration of Rights of Minorities, 1993, all reflect what the Constitution gave to the religious, linguistic, racial and cultural minorities. Today minority rights are universally accepted as indivisible from and essential to human rights, because almost every nation-state is multi-religious, multilingual and multi-cultural. But Mr Jutice Dharmadhikari sees assimilation in Hinduism as the alternative and desirable goal of religious groups in India while the international community recognises multi-religiosity as the natural state of things. Any majoritarian pressure to erase the identity and to absorb and assimilate their distinctive personality goes against the concept of freedom and equality. Constitutional safeguards under the Constitution and in international law shall be reduced to zero if the district identity of any religious group, howsoever small, is denied and any group is forced to relate to Hinduism as a sect or
sub-sect. The writer, a retired IFS officer, is a former Member of Parliament.
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A helping hand in a foreign land
I
was in the land of kangaroos and koalas. The brown of the marsupials merged with the brown landscape for it was a parched country when we first set foot in this land. Gradually the brown earth gave way to fresh green as the bulbous clouds finally brought the much awaited rain. Miles and miles of hilly landscape donned the green mantle. On a beautiful sunny afternoon we decided to take a walk in our new station, Castlemaine, a fairytale of a place with smoking chimney houses and quaint, small otherworldly eating shops. It was while coming back from the market that we discovered that the eucalyptus and maple trees dotting the various roads were the same. In short, we were lost. The four of us, or let us say, the three of us for we shared the toddler between ourselves kept trudging one road after another. The sparse population which was a welcome change from the densely populated home country was a hurdle now for we could not spy anyone on the empty roads. Soon the roar of a car attracted our attention. A red two seater was about to move. I told our predicament to the old gentleman. He said he had a vague idea and told the spouse to sit in the front seat to find out about the address. After ten minutes they came back unsuccessful in tracing the house. He told us to keep walking in the same direction. Dejected we carried on totally at sea (land) about our destination. The clouds had covered the sky and now slowly anxiety and tension was building up. Soon, we saw another couple in front of their house. Before we could get to them the familiar red two seater came. The elderly gentleman parked the wagon and declared triumphantly that he had found the place. He first drove me and the kids to the place and then delivered the spouse safely. When I muse over the incident many questions knock the mind. What made the Australian gentleman look for more than an hour for a address for strangers, foreigners ? Was it our helplessness or tiredness? Did the children remind him of his grandchildren? The answer floated in with the mild drizzle outside. When the heart is open, colour and difference of culture do not make a difference. What binds humanity together is empathy, the silent chord that knots not only humans with humans but also the animal world. The flute is a hollow piece of bamboo till air is breathed into it, and then it emits the most beautiful of melodies, so also humans live only when they feel for others , their pain and try to remedy the same…. otherwise it is a flesh and bone
story.
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Dateline
London
Eminent American scientists gathered at the State University of New York at Buffalo, USA, recently, to pay tributes to Prof Om P. Bahl, who died earlier in the year, and recall his contribution to biological sciences. Prof Bahl was a distinguished Professor of biological sciences best known for his fundamental work on the pregnancy hormone, HCG, which led to the development of a reliable home pregnancy test, used by millions the world over. He was honoured with a Padma Bhushan for his scientific achievements. Prof Bahl had also got several national and international awards. I had known Bahl since we were together in DAV College, Lahore. He was senior to me. I lost touch with Bahl, who hailed from Layalpur in erstwhile Punjab. I caught up with him again after a gap of about 30 years at the Central Cottage Emporium, New Delhi. He had taught for a while at the Ludhiana Government College and went for his post-doctoral work to the USA. He worked at the University of Minnesota, UCLA and the State University of New York at Buffalo. Prof Bahl’s research was informed and shaped by his awareness of the social context for his work. According to one his contemporaries, Bahl understood the problem of population growth in a world of finite resources, and the necessity to find causes and cures for complex diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis. Population control was India’s problem and Mrs Indira Gandhi and her advisers showed keen interest in his research. Prof Bahl was greatly respected in the scientific community. Anyone would be proud of tributes paid to him at the conference. Among those who read out papers at the commemoration conference were Dr Sylvia Christacos, Professor, New Jersey Medical School (Om Bahl’s influence on her research related to vitamin D endocrine system: its function and regulation; Dr William Moyle, Professor, R W Johnson Medical School; Prof Steven Birken of Colombia University, Dr Irwin Goldstein of University of Michigan; Dr Jack Lippes, Professor Emeritus, the University at Buffalo. The others who spoke included Dr Uday Sukhatme, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, University at Buffalo, Dr SV Balasubramaniam and Dr John Boot (both professors at Buffalo); Dr Vanita Bahl, University of Michigan and Mr Vic Bahl, Sun Microsoft Systems. For the past few years I had the good luck of spending some quality time at the India International Centre, in New Delhi, where we both stayed for a few days every winter. During our walks through the Lodhi Gardens, I discovered that beyond his scientific pursuits, Bahl had deep interest in literature. He could talk for hours on different religious philosophies. His interest in contemporary India was immense. He would go to any length to assist Indian scientists in their pursuit of research placements.
Natwar Singh issue The news of involvement of an Indian minister, Mr Natwar Singh, his son, some of his friends and the Congress party in kickbacks in the UN-supervised oil deals in Iraq has shocked no one familiar with the manner in some political parties and individuals fill their coffers. What shocked many, however, was the way the ruling coalition handled the affairs. One expected Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who enjoys the reputation of being an honest bureaucrat and a politician, a rarity in developing countries, to ask his Foreign Minister to put in papers. If the latter had refused, he should have sacked him. Instead, Mr Natwar Singh has been allowed to retain his Cabinet post. He was earlier Foreign Minister, now he is a minister- without portfolio. There are suggestions that by accommodating Mr Natwar Singh the Prime Minister did not do him much favour. After all, he was not the only person or entity whose name was mired in this scandal. The Congress was also named in the UN report, which uncovered this scandal. In my view this was not a way of handling the affair. Mr Natwar Singh should have been asked to go. Once the investigating committees had exonerated him, he could have been reinducted into the Cabinet. Boosting the party coffers through various kinds of contracts with national and international dealers has been a standard policy to boost the party’s and party men/women’s coffers. And it is not only in India that such scandals surface. Some individuals and political parties in Germany, France and the US are known to have been involved in such scandals. The only difference is that while in India tainted ministers go unpunished, in western democracies errant ministers are duly punished. Many of them serve years in jails. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett had to resign, first because he facilitated his lover’s nanny’s residence visa and second time for not declaring in time his interests in a company during a short period that he was not a minister. A senior Indian bureaucrat was aghast that Mr Blunkett had to resign in these flimsy grounds. The Election Commission, parliamentary standards watch dogs and several other checks are in place to punish crooked public servants or ministers. Even journalists accredited to Parliament are required to divulge their financial interests other than working for their paper or magazine.
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‘Drunken consent to sex is still consent’ Women cannot complain of being raped while they are too drunk to remember what happened, a British High Court judge ruled on Wednesday. Judge Roderick Evans said that “drunken consent is still consent” after the rape case of a student was thrown out of Swansea Crown Court. A university security guard was found not guilty of raping the drama student because the alleged victim was too drunk to remember if she agreed to have sex. Judge Evans directed the jury to return a not guilty verdict, “even if you don’t agree”, after the prosecution made it clear it was offering no evidence. Huw Rees, barrister for the prosecution, said: “The prosecution has taken stock, in light of the evidence revealed in cross-examination. The question of consent is an essential part of the case. She said she could not remember giving consent and that is fatal for the prosecution’s case.” Ryairi Dougal, 20, from County Donegal, had denied rape and insisted sex was consensual. During the case, the 21-year-old woman said she was unconscious during sex and could not remember whether she had consented. She told the court she was attending a party at Aberystwyth University. “I was in an awful state. I have never been that drunk in all my life,” she said. Before the party, the student bought a bottle of vodka and several fruit juices from a Co-op store in Aberystwyth, she told the court. She drank two small vodkas and a glass of wine before leaving for the party, where she joined friends posing for photographs before heading for the top floor. After another glass of wine, she said, she began to feel ill, and vomited and slipped over in the ladies’ toilets of the University arts centre. She told the jury: “My dress was in a state and I wanted to leave the centre. I then went out onto a patio for some fresh air. I was losing all focus and was feeling very dizzy.” She told the court that a woman approached her and insisted she should be accompanied home. Mr Dougal, a stranger to her and part-time University security guard, was asked to do so. The student said she recalled looking for her keys outside the door to her flat and then remembered lying on the floor inside. She said, “I could feel that something was happening.” Two days later, she spoke to a university counsellor, and Dyfed- Powys Police were called in to investigate.. Mr Dougal was questioned and claimed they had consensual sex in the corridor near her flat. That was the first time the alleged victim became aware that she had had sex. The student told the court: “If I had wanted to sleep with him I would have taken the few steps to my bedroom.” Despite her continued insistence, however, the judge agreed with the prosecution when it decided not to continue with the case. Judge Evans warned the Crown Prosecution Service to take more care in reviewing rape cases before going to trial. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that someone who is asleep or unconscious will not be taken as having consented to sex.
—The Independent
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Delhi Durbar JD (U) leader Nitish Kumar has achieved his dream of becoming the Chief Minister of Bihar, albeit after some false starts. The NDA has a comfortable majority far beyond its own expectations. That does not mean that Nitish will be free from intra-party bickering as his party colleague Sharad Yadav is gearing up for a spat in the power stakes. Sharad did not stop himself from observing that the road ahead is strewn with struggle. Then Nitish’s ideological differences with the BJP are no secret. It is evident that Nitish will wear a crown of thorns as the political executive of backward Bihar, though he has promised to rid the state of lawlessness and get cracking with the urgent task of development.
Parliament on DD Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee is not just worried about the smooth conduct of business in the House but ensuring viewership of the two Doordarshan channels telecasting the proceedings of Parliament. Somnathda wants to spruce up the content of these two channels as few in the country want to watch the antics of our parliamentarians trying to use all their lung power to catch the attention of the Chair. In place is the Speaker’s new media adviser, former DD chief Bhaskar Ghosh. Cable operators insist there is hardly any viewership for the DD channels telecasting parliamentary proceedings. A bird tells us that the revamp exercise is now under way and involves sourcing debates from the archives and telecasting them. The biggest challenge is to keep the interest in the channels alive when Parliament is in recess. There will be educational capsules on the history of Parliament and so on.
No one to greet PM Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in Parliament on Wednesday on the opening day of the winter session without anyone to receive and present him the customary bouquet. The new Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi was conspicuous by his absence. Considering his spartan style and not one to stand on ceremonies, the Prime Minister arrived in Parliament and walked in briskly. He did not fail to greet the battery of photographers and wave to them before moving on without the slightest fuss. The protocol gaffe raised eyebrows all around.
Transparency in MoD? Is the word transparency alien to the Ministry of Defence? Scribes covering the beat find it difficult to elicit information. Now it has been made all the more difficult with Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee directing that neither the MoD nor the three service headquarters will hold media briefings when Parliament is in session. This is apparently to ensure that no embarrassing details are divulged inadvertently. Contributed by S Satyanarayanan, Satish Misra, R Suryamurthy and Tripti Nath |
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From the pages of Slums of Calcutta IN connection with the schemes for the improvement of Calcutta we have certain interesting details of slum life furnished by the Improvement Trust authorities. Mr E.P. Richards says in his report that Calcutta possesses a far higher percentage of slum area than can be found in any city of Great Britain or of America. There are 784 acres of what may be called “lead slums,” and it is necessary to remove them in the interest of sanitation. The two of any normal building and street bye-laws and the great scarcity of internal main roads and lack of efficient suburban main roads. As a result of overcrowding, says Mr Richards, the death rate of the city is as high as 35 per mille. He calculates the cost of demolition at £2,800,000. Then with every demolition project, rehousing work must be undertaken, otherwise the existing house-famine will be made desperate. As this becomes very costly Mr Richards thinks “slum-repair” is the only practical and possible system in Calcutta. We think that there are other cities whose death rate is higher than that of Calcutta with its slums and any scheme of improvement must be based to some extent on the ability of the masses to sustain a better standard of life and improved sanitation. |
To become great one must be humble. The tree laden with fruit always bends low. — Ramakrishna There can be no worse torture than hopelessness. It is hope that keeps life flourishing. Though the way dark and the road difficult, never give up hope. — Sanatana Dharma |
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