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Now, punish Passed at last |
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Sir Creek setback
Lanka needs peace
strategy
Primed for simplicity
Training media for growth Politics of name change in Karnataka Delhi Durbar
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Now, punish THE Lok Sabha committee headed by Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal deserves to be complimented on submitting its report with alacrity and recommending the expulsion of 10 MPs involved in the cash-for-questions scandal. That is the minimum punishment the men who brought Indian democracy to disrepute deserve. The House is expected to act on the recommendation fully and quickly. The evidence presented before the committee is incontrovertible and the excuses forwarded by the accused MPs were too convoluted to carry conviction. After all, you cannot defend the indefensible and what the whole nation saw on the television was too graphic and undeniable. As we have been saying all along, they should not only be thrown out but also barred for life from holding any public office, besides pressing criminal charges against them. If they had any sense of propriety, they would have resigned by now, but who has ever heard of values among present-day politicians? Since they would not do what is expected of them, the House has to intervene. One hopes the inquiry committee while looking into the second sting operation that exposed another five Lok Sabha MPs and two Rajya Sabha MPs will also show similar sense of urgency. They allegedly asked for bribes to release money from the notorious MPLAD scheme. Their deed is no less shocking and they, too, deserve just desserts. If there is something more shameful than the conduct of these MPs, it is the way some of their colleagues have jumped to their defence. All this talk in Parliament about demanding a probe into the motives behind the stunning media exposure and accusing the media of “trying to defame” the MPs and Parliament is so much of bull. It is not any outside agency which is attacking MPs. Rather, it is the black sheep among them who are discrediting the august House. The honest parliamentarians should themselves make sure that they are weeded out, instead of making a common front with them against the “outside forces”. The latter option will only strengthen the public perception that those caught on camera are not the only corrupt ones and, instead, the whole herd is black. |
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Passed at last THE Lok Sabha has passed the Constitution (104th) Amendment Bill, 2005, to reserve seats for socially and educationally backward classes, besides the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, in private unaided educational institutions. It is a feather in the cap of the Manmohan Singh government. The UPA government had to defer the introduction of the Bill earlier following the volte face by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which wanted the interests of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) to be taken care of in the institutions run by the minorities also. Though the Centre agreed that the OBCs’ interests will have to be safeguarded at any cost, it did not endorse the demand for reservation in minority institutions on the ground that they already enjoyed certain constitutional guarantees. Significantly, the amendment widens the scope of reservation by extending it to all aided/unaided private educational institutions, including schools. Equally significant is the fact that it will be treated as a model law as the state governments will have to enact enabling laws to enforce the amendment in any private educational institution in their states. The passage of the Bill reflects Parliament’s concern for social justice. Its importance should be viewed in the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s August 12, 2005, ruling that declared reservations in aided and unaided educational institutions as unconstitutional. The court order virtually gave a free hand to private institutions to set the syllabi, regulate the admissions and fix the fee structure. Clearly, the issue in question is not whether anyone has the right to run an educational institution either with or without the government aid. It refers to the larger context of the government’s constitutional obligation and responsibility to help the socially and educationally backward classes and improve their standard of living so that they can come up on a par with the advanced sections of society. The Supreme Court had maintained in August that Parliament could bring forward such legislation in the interest of social justice. This is what Parliament has done now. |
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Sir Creek setback THE failure to move forward on the Sir Creek issue and the Munnabao-Khokrapar rail link between India and Pakistan is a setback to the ongoing dialogue process. The brief joint statement issued after the talks in New Delhi gives the impression that Pakistan is yet to make up its mind on how to go about the joint survey of the Sir Creek. During the Islamabad talks in October the two sides had agreed to accept each other’s positions without reservations. It was also agreed that a joint survey would begin by the year-end so that the report could be discussed during the next round of the composite dialogue process. But on Wednesday Pakistan came out with a new and rigid stand that it could agree to a joint survey of the 96-km estuary between Gujarat and Sind only if it is accompanied by the demarcation of the international maritime boundary involving the two countries. India preferred a pragmatic step-by-step approach, as indicated during the October talks, but this was not acceptable to Pakistan. Pakistan’s attitude on the Munnabao-Khokhrapar rail connection shows that it has some reservations about allowing this facility to promote people-to-people contacts. Probably, Pakistan does not want Indian trains to enter its territory and vice versa. It wants the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus experiment to be the guiding norm in the case of the train service, completely ignoring the difficulties the passengers will face as those undertaking a train journey carry more luggage. This, in a way, amounts to discouraging the people from travelling by train. The setback suffered on both issues is bound to leave the impression that the climate of suspicion between the two neighbours continues. The differences of opinion on the Sir Creek question may delay the commencement of the next round of the dialogue process. However, one can only hope the problem will be sorted out sooner that later. |
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Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. — George Bernard Shaw |
Lanka needs peace strategy AFTER killing Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar in August, the LTTE has started targetting the Sri Lankan Security Forces (SLSF). The regime change in Colombo has set off the alarm bells. Almost no one sees any light at the end of the tunnel in which the Sri Lankan peace process has been interned. The election of a hardliner, Mr Mahinda Rajapakse, from the Sinhalese South as President, narrowly defeating Mr Ranil Wickeremesinghe, the architect of the ceasefire agreement and the peace process and regarded soft on the LTTE, has ushered in a new chapter in Sri Lanka’s domestic politics. The flawed ceasefire agreement blew up earlier this month following the Claymore mine attacks by the LTTE against the SLSF and the killing of rival Muslims in the north-east, the most serious breach of the ceasefire in four years. Nearly 220 persons have been killed, besides Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, during the ceasefire. A new paramilitary force allied to the LTTE, calling itself the Trincomalee Tamil People’s Consortium, has emerged, raising the ante. LTTE supremo Prabhakaran has put Mr Rajapakse on notice: to come up with a devolution package or face the music. The LTTE’s patience is obviously running out and their sense of isolation increasing. The Kadirgamar killing resulted from isolation, when ambassadors in Colombo were not permitted to meet the LTTE. Till recently, they had banked on the internal self- governing authority and P-TOMS, the joint mechanism for tsunami relief, both of which were killed by Sinhalese politics. Mr Rajapakse’s pre-poll alliance with the Sinhalese Buddhist parties, the JVP and the JHU, and the LTTE boycott of elections destroyed even the slim hope of reviving the peace process. The LTTE has put the ball in the government’s court to come up with a “reasonable political framework for the Tamils” by next year. To begin with, the ceasefire agreement has to be renegotiated. The LTTE has informed the Norwegians that it wants the agreement to continue. Sixty Nordic truce monitors called the SLMM have registered more than 3000 violations of the ceasefire by the LTTE and nearly 150 by SLSF. The ceasefire agreement has several holes: no policing is envisioned; the ceasefire is between the government and the LTTE and does not include other Tamils and Muslims; there is no separation of the ceasefire and human rights violations; the SLMM has no teeth and no verification mechanism. It is a subversive war in which the LTTE kills its rivals whoever they may be and the government allegedly uses paramilitary groups like the LTTE’s breakaway Eastern Province Commander Karuna and special intelligence units to target the LTTE. The killings have to be stopped by both sides. During Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe’s premiership, the Tamil paramilitary was not active. Karuna came to the scene after Ms Chandrika Kumaratunga’s party returned to power in 2004. Most Sri Lankans feel that Norway is biased towards the LTTE and blame it for the LTTE’s political and military misdemeanours. Both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government have asked Norway to act as the honest broker. In its defence, Norway contends it has done well and cites the case of Kosovo with two million people where 30,000 NATO forces keep peace. Sri Lanka, on the other hand, has 18 million people and only 60 SLMM. Norwegian interlocutors want fresh terms of engagement with the LTTE. They insist on access to Prabhakaran like they enjoy with the SLG’s top leadership and not be restricted to the LTTE’s military leaders. Norway will also insist that it is not blamed in future for SLG failures. An effective ceasefire agreement may also require separating the task of facilitation from that of monitoring. Mr Rajapakse’s offer of maximum autonomy within a united Sri Lanka has put the clock back. The Sinhalese have been unable to forge a consensus to deal with the Tamil problem — the point that the LTTE is exploiting. Two stories about fresh deals with the LTTE were doing the rounds in Colombo during the elections. First, that Mr Wickremesinghe, if he became President, had agreed to give the LTTE the internal self-governing authority provided the LTTE would get the Tamils to vote for him, as they did in 2001. Prabhakaran agreed, but when Mr Wickremesinghe asked for the commitment in writing the deal fell through. Many believe that the LTTE/Tamil boycott of the elections, resulting in Mr Rajapakse’s victory is part of another deal whose framework is unknown. Mr Rajapakse has not tried to understand the Tamil problem in all its complexity. Not the least, the military posturing. The new Army Commander, Lieut-Gen Sarath Fonseka, who held Jaffna together in mid-2000 after the Army’s catastrophic defeat at Elephant Pass, is being portrayed in the Sri Lankan media as a battle-hardened commander who is ready and able to lead a much better equipped army to take on the LTTE. Mr Rajapakse requires a strategy for peace, not war. Sri Lanka has been through wars for peace several times and level-headed Sinhalese realise that conflict is a recipe for more disaster. The LTTE has shown that once it feels isolated and trapped by the so-called “international safety net”, it takes recourse to the only option it knows. The series of Claymore mine attacks in Jaffna against the SLSF reflects despair and frustration. As in the past, this can spill over into Colombo with terrible consequences for the economy and polity of the country. The Sinhalese can no longer evade the political issue. The momentum of the peace process has to be revived and more inclusive preferably by taking the JVP and the JHU on board. Alternatively, Mr Rajapakse can call for a parliamentary election next year, seeking a mandate for peace without the support of the Sinhalese Buddhist and Marxist parties. Still another option is for a national government — the kind of consensus that Mr Wickremesinghe had proposed in case he won the election. There are at least three models of devolution on the table: first, the 1987 India-Sri Lanka Accord and autonomy package under the 13th amendment, which was only partially implemented. Second, there is the Kumaratunga proposal of August 2000. And third, Prabhakaran’s internal self-governing authority proposal of Ocotber 2003. Mr Rajapakse’s offer of “maximum autonomy within a united Sri Lanka” has to meet the Prabhakaran criterion of being “ a reasonable political framework”. Both sides have to create political space to assuage each other’s concerns and compulsions. None of these proposals will work without a Sinhalese consensus. Increasingly and ironically, the Sinhalese have begun to realise that without India’s help, a resolution of the conflict is not feasible. Sri Lankans, however, do not realise the limits to Delhi’s own powers of persuasion and dissuasion. India is, therefore, hardly likely to make any commitment to Mr Rajapakse when he visits Delhi on December 27, other than its oft-stated line that it will support the resolution of the ethnic conflict within a united Sri Lanka that is acceptable to all the people of the
country.
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Primed for simplicity THE wise old Kaa of Panchtantra no longer spreads its wings to soar high in the sky. Instead ghosts and goblins of Harry Potter and warriors of virtual world have taken over. Honest, hardworking woodcutter, who in the story was rewarded for his sheer truthfulness, is now a character best left to the musty books that have long ceased their shelf life. The woodcutter (a simpleton he was!) did not know that a gold axe does not come calling every day. If gold axe is returned by the conscience-smitten, it’ll be readily offered to a taker untrammelled by value-pangs; and therein would be born a new story, a new achiever revelling in gold-glory! Sincerity, hard work and honesty may still be grudgingly prized in a few quarters but they need qualifiers for sustenance. Hard grind yields no returns unless it is coupled with hard (read smart) sell. Honesty must make concessions for convenience. And sincerity is incremental; it has levels that include insincerity as yet another level of sincerity. Success is the yardstick of goodness. You are as good as your success. Sweet little princess with evil stepmother can no longer bank on fairy godmother to bail her out. The godmother may herself have spells of wickedness brought about by altruism-propelled repression. She may take recourse to psychobabble — evil shades off into good, and value-system is a constantly shifting continuum. Lazy she-sparrow (in the good old Punjabi folktale, she got the whipping she deserved), now with her cunning, receives accolades for her culinary skills. It’s the presentation that matters, and if you are sufficiently confident to appropriate things (be it porridge or position), you call the shots. Poor tortoise, with his slow and steady ways, gets lost in the haze of winners’ hype. When nanoseconds count, who is interested in a tortoise plodding on through the race? When a crafty hare can secure his position without even running the race, only a fool would waste time on the sluggish tortoise. But (and this “but” is amazingly persistent) why does the very mention of the tenacious-tortoise bring a flutter of hope? Why does a mother-crow feeding her young one warm the cockles of our heart? Why does a tiny squirrel scampering his way through trees planted in our not-so-friendly neighbour’s yard brighten up our mood? Why does the “fast-to-the-last-chocolate friendship” of children tingle our imagination? Why does the trust reposed in us by strangers raise our spirits? And why do we lap up stories of honest nobodies who fuss about fairness and truth? Perhaps, we are primed for simplicity. And nothing is simpler than truth, honesty and
sincerity! |
Training media for growth THE 73rd Amendment Act has not only given a new lease of life to the panchayati raj system in the country, but also provided space for women and marginalised groups as members and chairpersons of these institutions in local governance. In this context, the role of the media has become more important in exposing grassroots realities of local governance to the people in the right perspective. This role assumes greater relevance when we note that huge amounts of funds are now routed to and through these institutions. For example, the approved outlay for the Ministry of Rural Development for the year 2005-06 is Rs 24,480 crore, which is mostly to be spent through the panchayati raj institutions. Seeing the relevance of the media in rural development and empowering PRIs, the Ministry of Rural Development has taken up print media, electronic media and outdoor publicity for creating awareness about the programmes of the ministry and mobilising people for participatory development. During the year 2003-04 the ministry instituted 13 Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhayaya Fellowships for journalism in rural development with the view to building up a core group of journalists who can specialise in social sector issues and facilitate people’s participation in the development process through the PRIs. In spite of this there is a lot more to be done by the media in the context of PRIs and governmental schemes so as to make these effective in bringing about social change in the rural scenario. Generally, we have seen newspapers simply reporting that such and such things have happened in a particular gram panchayat or other PR institutions. This sort of reporting has no relevance unless and until an event is properly analysed. A large section of the mediapersons is virtually illiterate about PRIs and their relevance and role in rural development and thereby in the nation’s governance. The solution to this problem lies in imparting training to mediapersons about the various facets of decentralised governance, planning and development. In fact the media needs to be sensitised and motivated to write on those issues which address panchayats, their self-governance status, election process, etc in a villager friendly language. As a part of the training, the model of China’s peasants’ dailies is worth emulating. What Mr V P Gupta has said about these is worth recalling here: “...As a rule, every reporter and editor must spend at least two months in the countryside every year during which time they are expected to familiarise themselves with local peasants, their aspirations and difficulties. The paper engages 300 peasants as regular stringers and about 700 as irregular correspondents. The paper chooses the most typical letters for publication while referring the rest to relevant organisations. Very often, investigation groups are sent to the countryside if the letters touch upon matters of significance”. There are more than three million elected representatives of panchayats across the country at the village, block and district levels. Some of them may be given an opportunity and tested and tried as per the methodology of the peasants’ dailies of China. Besides, the folk media may also be used to make villagers aware about PRIs. The folk media was used for making people aware about the role of the panchayat and the Gram Sabha in the functioning of the decentralised governance in some villages of Haryana. Manju Panwar, who was instrumental in organising such awareness promoting programmes has this to say about the villagers’ reactions to the such programmes: “Most of them were very impressed. They told us that using the folk media would definitely help in bringing about a positive change in the attitude of the rural masses towards the role of the Gram Sabha and inspire people to participate in its meetings. The women, most of whom were illiterate, enjoyed the show very much. They said that lectures and discussions became boring after some time, but programmes like this could be watched for hours”. Evidently, and understandably, the traditional media has an edge over the modern media because of the former’s localised nature, personal touch, familiarity of the audience, economy, etc. Hence, media personnel should also be trained about various facets of the panchayati raj system to enable them to analyse the functioning of the panchayats in the right perspective with a constructive focus instead of merely reporting or exposing the good and bad happenings in the process of discharging their responsibilities as people’s
organisations.
The writer is an Associate Professor in the Haryana Institute of Rural
Development, Nilokheri |
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Politics of name change in Karnataka HERE’S what a blog on “Bangalore or Bengaluru” by K. Kumar has to say. “You guys want to know the reason for the renaming? An incompetent state government wants to show the renaming as its ‘achievement’. Here is an instance that highlights its incompetence: very recently it could not fully utilise the centrally allocated relief fund and has been forced to return part of it”. In the absence of any political resistance to the move to rename Bangalore and later another announcement that Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli, Belgaum, Gulbarga and Bijapur would also be renamed, it has been left to netizens and the business community to urge the government not to go on an indiscriminate name-changing spree. Though many people except a few corporate czars like Vijay Mallya have welcomed the name change to Bengaluru, most have been dismayed at the manner in which Chief Minister N Dharam Singh has announced that all tier-two cities in the state will also be renamed by November next year to coincide with the golden jubilee celebrations of the state. The manner in which the announcements have been made speaks of an underlying political motive rather than a broad consensus. In fact, no effort was made to arrive at a consensus. Both announcements were made during the Zila Parishad election campaign at Gulbarga, one week apart from each other. The Chief Minister announced that a suggestion to rename Bangalore had been made by writer U.R. Ananthamurthy during a meeting organised to discuss how the state’s golden jubilee coming up next year is to be celebrated. He announced the Chief Secretary had been directed to initiate the exercise even though the CS when contacted the same day, said he did not know of any such direction. The second announcement to change the names of tier-two cities was announced by the Chief Minister because “most of the ministers are in favour of the change”. The government, which says it is setting right wrongs committed by the British, has exposed itself to criticism. Two of the cities whose names are set to be changed — Bijapur and Gulbarga — are part of the cultural heritage of the Bahamani Sultans and reflect the heritage of the state. Already there are objections to changing their names. There is also the charge of following in the footsteps of states where regionalism holds the key to political fortunes. Karnataka has till now proved itself otherwise with “Brand Bangalore” having a cosmopolitan touch to it. It is in this context that the proposed name changes from Mysore to Mysuru, Mangalore to Mangalooru, Belgaum to Belgaavi, Hubli to Huballi, Bijapur to Vijapur and Gulbarga to Kalburgi are being looked at by many. The announcement has pitted those who want to retain the cosmopolitan image of Bangalore against Kannadiga writers and intellectuals who see the name changes as a victory of their culture. Kannada activists claim the new name for Bangalore is only the colloquial translation of the word into Kannadiga and that it was being spoken as such by locals anyway. Mercifully none wants to go back to the popular origin of the name of the city which is “Benda Kalooru”. This literally means “the town of boiled beans” after the name given by the Hoysala king Veera Ballala to the area when he strayed into it during a hunting expedition and was grateful for the meal of boiled beans he received from an old woman. |
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Delhi Durbar Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to induct former RBI Governor C Rangarajan in his Cabinet. The grapevine has it that Rangarajan is being brought to the Rajya Sabha. He currently heads the Economic Advisory Council holding the rank of a Cabinet minister. There is speculation that Rangarajan may be tipped for the Finance portfolio and P. Chidambaram may move to Home which he handled in Rajiv Gandhi’s time. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee may head the External Affairs Ministry and Shivraj Patil may be moved to Defence.
Scramble for free passes Disabled rights activist Javed Abidi and his team have slogged for almost six months to arrange Shah Rukh Khan’s concert at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium in the Capital on Christmas eve. And now they are flooded with requests from VIPs for free passes as the tickets for the show called Bollywood Concert Temptations 2005 are priced at Rs 5,000, Rs 2,500 and Rs 1,000. Abidi has appealed to the VIPs not to embarrass them with requests for free passes as they can afford the ticket money. The wheel-chair bound Executive Director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People says that they want to build the NCPEDP corpus through such fund-raisers.
Culture centres in demand Indian Culture Centres are proving popular abroad judging by the requests for them from various world capitals. In fact, within a fortnight of the Indian Culture Centre becoming operational in Tokyo, the External Affairs Ministry has received at least seven more proposals for such centres from Washington, Beijing, Warsaw and Tehran,
among others. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations has received proposals for opening such centres in Kathmandu, Bangkok and Kabul as well. The ICCR has established Indian Culture Centres in Jakarta, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Guyana, Surinam and Trinidad
and Tobago.
Parliament security breach Just the other day a bomb threat in Parliament House created chaos but after a thorough check of the sprawling complex it turned out to be a hoax. Now the presence of a private car without the mandatory security pass has raised questions and become a matter of debate among the members of Parliament. A black car is believed to have ferried the family members of a police officer in charge of Parliament security to the Mecca of Indian democracy. The watch and ward staff vehemently denied it was a security lapse on the plea that they knew the identity of the car as also its occupants. However, the MPs complained that if they were not allowed to bring their car without the mandatory parliamentary sticker, then how can a private car without a valid sticker be allowed to enter the complex? Contributed by Satish Misra, Tripti Nath, S. Satyanarayanan and Prashant Sood. |
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From the pages of Letter by Lala Lajpat Rai THE appointment of a Hindu as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary for India is an event of sufficient importance to justify the hope that a radical change is coming over the spirit of British Imperialism, and that adequate Constitutional changes may soon be introduced to give it a legal aspect, and an enduring one. The appointment of Sir S.P. Sinha (not S.H. Sinha as repeatedly stated in the daily press) would be devoid of any significance if it were a mere personal compliment, or a mere sop to Indian nationalism. The fact, however, that Mr Edwin Samuel Montagu is the only Cabinet Minister who retains his old post in the reshuffling consequent upon the British elections, gives us reason to think that Premier Llyod George is at least in general accord with Mr Montagu’s sentiments about the future Constitution of India, and that by appointing Sir S.P. Sinha as Under-Secretary he wants to strengthen Mr Montagu’s hands. — New York Times |
Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. —Mahatma Gandhi Pious fools and hypocrites pretending to be faithful believers may cause all sorts of degradation and corruption by their falsehoods, even without realising it, they are being mesmerised by their own facades. —Islam Do not scorn the weak, the poor and the suffering. The wise learn many lessons from them that they will not get elsewhere. —Sanatana Dharma Justice demands the chopping off the middleman’s hands; we obtain hereafter only in proportion what we give here out of her honest earnings. —Guru Nanak The fire of anger is fatal —Guru Nanak The flame of true repentance sear away all this sins. And the gateway to Heaven becomes visible to Man. —The Upanishads |
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