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Why Lone alone? Pre-Budget blues |
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Spit and polish India and China should compete Since India and China are already locked in a race to lead the Asian century —that is if the American century comes to an end — it is essential that they attend to every aspect of development.
Saudi King as R-Day
guest
Hat trick!
Farmers driven to
despair Bribing the
legislators Delhi
Durbar
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Pre-Budget blues Finance
Minister P. Chidambaram has revealed quite a bit of the coming Union Budget. It will focus on the common man (relief on personal income tax?), spread the net wider for tax evaders, keep intact cooking gas subsidy, will not effect any radical cuts in the duties on petroleum products and, much to the consternation of India Inc, will not scrap the controversial fringe benefit tax (FBT). Though the Left parties, faced with assembly elections, will press for a populist budget, having forced the government to shelve the proposed cut in the food subsidy, the Finance Minister hopes to push the non-navratna selloff to raise resources for the government’s ambitious projects for rural India. Tacitly admitting that the fringe benefit tax introduced in the last Budget was complicated, Mr Chidambaram hopes to simplify it. In their pre-Budget parleys with the FM, industry representatives have unanimously called for axing the FBT and even offered to accept instead one or two per cent rise in the corporate tax. Mr Chidambaram has his own compulsions. He is expected to raise money for Bharat Nirman and the rural job guarantee scheme. Besides, the revenue from personal income tax has risen by 20 per cent this year. This is credited to the FBT as companies reduced perks and increased the taxable income of their employees. This also works against the argument for dropping the FBT. The steady rise in economic growth, now being pegged at 7 per cent for 2006-07, has contributed higher revenue for the government. The Budget will naturally continue the thrust on growth with more tax breaks. The change in slabs and lower rates of personal income tax are seen as contributing to higher compliance. Some 12 lakh more people are reported to have filed tax returns in the 2005-06 assessment year till October, 2005. Middle-class India is on a spending spree and, with more income in hand, the process would only accelerate. Corporate India need not crib about the FBT, their profits would swell if the overall growth remains on track. |
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Spit and polish Since
India and China are already locked in a race to lead the Asian century —that is if the American century comes to an end — it is essential that they attend to every aspect of development. True, China’s chairman can never be our chairman, because India is a democracy and the neighbour is not. In terms of military and nuclear might, China remains a challenge, but India is not far behind; it is as much a recognised nuclear power as China. No longer does anyone in Kolkata catch a flu when a comrade in Beijing sneezes, which attests to not just the improved state of public health but also to political maturity. In terms of economic muscle, India is fast catching up, and both have a gargantuan appetite for steel, cement, oil and gas to power their growth. However, in one aspect China has just overtaken India: it has vowed to eradicate five examples of “boorish behaviour”, including spitting and littering the streets. Now, here is something that Indians have in common with the Chinese though it is unlikely to be a healthy contribution towards people-to-people relations between the two countries. Spitting in public and littering the streets is something Indians revel in; nobody cares, as long as the dirt is outside the walls of one’s own house, and public places don’t belong to anyone. India might do well to take a leaf out of the Chinese book and see if we too can literally clean up our act; if not before the 2008 Beijing Olympics then at least before the Commonwealth Games scheduled to be held in Delhi. If the country of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution can reform the people of such distasteful habits, there is no reason why it cannot be accomplished in a bourgeois democracy.
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The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. — Dr Martin Luther King Jr. |
Saudi King as R-Day guest
NEW DELHI’S decision to invite King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to be the guest of honour at India’s Republic Day celebrations is not off the cuff but a considered one. In the past, that country has been a source of irritation, if not trouble, to this country on several counts. In 1974 Riyadh went so far as to threaten to cut off oil supplies if India did not close down the Israeli consulate in Bombay. Indira Gandhi paid no heed; the Saudis backtracked. In other words, mutual stakes of the two countries in each other usually did prevail. In recent years the trend has strengthened. Both sides have been trying to improve their relations — a development to be welcomed and promoted, considering the crucial importance of Saudi Arabia as a key country in a region vital to India. Moreover, 40 per cent of the oil we need comes from Saudi Arabia, and more than one and a half million Indians live there. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina have a powerful attraction for Indian Muslims. Add to all this Saudi Arabia’s mind-boggling wealth and the state of its economy that — according to a detailed survey by The Economist — “is doing almost too well for its own good”, and that country’s colossal clout becomes manifest. For their part, the rulers of Saudi Arabia have been watching with interest rising India’s great and growing significance in the world order. They could not have failed to notice that the U.S. Secretary of State, Ms. Condoleezza Rice considers India — along with the US, European Union, Russia, Japan and China — a part of the six-nation “balance of power” for peace and stability. Even so, it would be naïve to expect that Indo-Saudi relations can ever be so close as those between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The extraordinary strength of the Riyadh-Islamabad connection is best indicated by the Saudi capacity to broker a deal between General Pervez Musharraf and the elected Prime Minister he overthrew in 1999, Mr Nawaz Sharif, now in comfortable exile in Jeddah where he must stay for another four years. The Saudi Defence Minister, Prince Sultan, is the only foreign dignitary to visit Kahuta in Pakistan, apart from the Chinese scientists whose nuclear assistance was needed. The reason for this is not far to seek. Saudi Arabia is rather possessive of the armed forces of Pakistan, which have never hesitated to serve it whenever required. Next only to the United States, on which Saudi Arabia’s reliance for its security is almost total, Pakistan is its most dependable military ally. Yet, even if Indo-Saudi relations can never be on par with the Saudi-Pakistan ties, there is absolutely no reason why this country’s relationship with Saudi Arabia cannot be rescued from the inimical effect that Pakistan has had on them for a very long time, bilaterally and at the OIC. For this purpose, King Abdullah, who ascended the throne only a few months ago, is unquestionably the best bet. Even as Crown Prince during King Fahd’s prolonged illness, he had made a mark as a ruler devoted to stability. He was the author of the modus vivendi with Iran that he has stuck to even after it seemed threatened by the victory in the recent Iranian elections of the hardline Mr Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. On ascending the throne, King Abdullah added to his already considerable popularity by releasing prominent dissidents, declaring the kingdom’s little-observed National Day a public holiday, and issuing the decree that no one should kiss his hand any longer. Conservative clerics considered these as signs of “creeping secularism”, but the Saudi people loved them. Above all this, Crown Prince Abdullah (as he then was) played the leading role — helped by his brother, Prince Nayef, the kingdom’s Minister of the Interior since 1962 — in repairing the crippling damage done by 9/11 to the overridingly crucial relationship with the United States. The Americans were enraged because 15 of those who converted civilian aircraft into missiles to destroy the twin-towers were Saudis. Since the spring of 2003 Saudi Arabia itself has become the target of terrorists. This has surely helped insofar as most Saudis have begun to be critical of jihadi terrorism though the situation is not as simple as that. The complex reality is that total opposition to jihadi terrorism is incompatible with the long-held Saudi conviction that jihad is an integral part of Islam. King Abdullah is trying hard to clear this confusion, and this is clearly the nub of the matter. Since 9/11 the U.S. has not leaned on Pakistan hard enough to end cross-border terrorism against India whatever the Pakistani record of help to the Americans in the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and even in the tribal land of Waziristan on the Pakistan-Afghan border. But the weapon of American support in pursuit of its anti-India objectives is no longer available to Pakistan. In such circumstances, the Saudi backing to Pakistan assumes the greatest importance. In fact, without the Saudi money, even the ISI-sponsored jihadi terrorism cannot make much headway. It should not be forgotten that the 9/11 Commission in the US, in its report, had devoted a full chapter to Pakistan, recommending that the US policy should be to ensure that Pakistan does become a “moderate Muslim State” and asking the President to submit to American Congress a detailed plan towards that end in six months. That was duly done in July and awaits Congressional action. Incidentally, there was in that report a chapter on? Saudi Arabia, too, but the bulk of it was inked out in the published report, which is understandable in view of the delicacy of the US-Saudi relations after 9/11. It is in this context that King Abdullah’s discussions with his Indian hosts, especially the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, would be of the prime importance. It should not be difficult to come to an agreement on no one helping terrorism irrespective of where it emanates from and on what pretext. There is room also to ask for Saudi investments in this country. Saudi Arabia that has invested a gargantuan sum of a trillion dollars in the United States has hardly any investment worth the name in Indian industry or infrastructure. A huge amount of Saudi money has gone, however, to madrassas and mosques here. The needs of the Muslim community here might be better met if Saudi charity is directed to the minority institutions of modern
education.
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Hat trick! The
Haryana Home Department finds itself in a piquant situation on having to dispose off the thousands of bobby type hats which have become surplus following the changeover of police headgear and it has acted in the finest bureaucratic traditions by setting up a high-power committee of Secretaries to “study” the problem and make suitable “recommendations.” One of the secretaries has been informally talking to newsmen. “We’ve started our exercise in right earnest,” he said, “and several possible options are emerging on ways to dispose off the surplus police hats without causing a loss to the state exchequer. “We’re thinking of recommending that the redundant police hats be supplied to all the district and taluka treasuries where they can be used to store dud Haryana Govt accounts payee cheques for Rs 5 and lesser amounts which have bounced due to insufficient funds. This will release a large number of gunny sacks which are currently being used to store bum government cheques for use as doormats. We estimate that each bobby type hat can hold bounced cheques of cumulative value Rs 50 lakhs”. “We’re seriously looking at the possibility of selling the surplus police hats on a no-profit, no-loss basis to all the state legislatures and the national Parliament in Delhi where they’ll come in handy as protective headgear when microphones, paper weights, order papers, furniture and other impedimenta start flying thru’ the air during a discussion on the law and order situation”. The secretary continued: “Another viable option open to us to get rid of the surplus hats would be to sell them at attractive discounted prices to politicians who, in the heat and excitement of a poll campaign, have rashly vowed to eat their hats if they failed to check the price line, solve unemployment and root out corruption. These politicians can eat the wholesome and nutritious police hats for breakfast, lunch and dinner and reduce the pressure on the public distribution system. “We’re also in close touch with the Haryana Water Supply and Sewerage Board to see if they would be interested to lift the surplus hats in bulk. The board can use the hats to store water produced by rains caused by chanting of mantras and conduct of yagnas.” The secretary concluded his briefing: “But the most attractive option open to us to dispose off the surplus police hats would be to sell them to simple, austere, Gandhian ministers and legislators for, after all, these dignitaries are ‘high
hats’!” |
Farmers driven to despair SUICIDES among farmers is a countrywide phenomenon. The cases of suicide by farmers have been reported from several states of India, including Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tripura. The central and state governments have been trying to downplay the suicides by farmers as only about 7,600 suicides by farmers have been owned up during the last five years while actually the figure is much higher. In Punjab there have been over 200 suicides by farmers in Sangrur district alone during the past three years. The Punjab Government has officially admitted 2,116 cases of farmer suicides since 1988. The phenomenon of committing suicide by farmers is a unique product of psycho-socio-economic conditions prevailing in the countryside. These cannot be taken as common suicide cases, which may be a result of specific circumstances prevailing with each individual victim. No doubt the internal factors, individual or family specific, have their own role in instigating the process towards this end. But mainly the external factors force farmers into a peculiar vicious circle that gets them entrapped into such a socio-economic situation from where farmers are unable to come out. Farmers are forced to fall in this trap laid by many agencies like the government, the local administration, the police, banks, panchayats, the political leadership, moneylenders, commission agents and landlords. The suicide cases are not only confined to the head of the family alone but has engulfed the whole family system. There are instances when all members of a family, including children, have tried to commit suicide or where both the husband and wife had resorted to the heinous action. Again, it is not only the male head of the family that ended his life but solitary cases are there when the female head of the family, unable to bear the socio-economic pressures, committed suicide in farming families of Punjab. A majority of those who have committed suicide were marginal, small or medium farmers, having less than 10 acres of land. The family size of the victims is invariably large which required more resources to maintain it. It normally varies from five to 10 members. Land holdings get fragmented into small pieces, hardly sufficient to make both ends meet. The trend of having unitary families has further aggravated the problem. In Punjab about 50 per cent of the farmers have less than two hectares of land (Statistical Abstract of Punjab- 2004). The annual income of a family owning two hectares of land comes to Rs 42,180 (A PAU study-2000). Illiteracy is also very common among such farming families. An I.D.P. study (2003) has revealed that whereas nobody was found to be a graduate among the suicide victims, there were only 5 per cent farmers who had studied up to the secondary level. Unemployment among their family members made them entirely dependent on their meagre holdings. The farmers earned less than a peon in a government job. They could not provide proper education to their children and their youth also remained idle. Declining opportunities in non-farm activities have further aggravated the crisis. The farmers are a self-respecting people with pride in their work. Due to their mental reservations, they shun doing menial jobs or labour in the fields of other farmers. Thus, they even become alcoholic, drug-addicts, litigators, etc. Litigation has become a way of life among farmers due to divisions of land, water resources, machinery, etc. Thus social amity, which is necessary for bearing economic shocks, gets disturbed. It, sometimes, leads to murders among them. The I.D.P. investigation has estimated the average annual per capita income of the victim farmers in the state at Rs 13,296.12 only. Farm income is also adversely affected by natural calamities like inclement weather, floods, drought and attack of insects, pests and diseases, which the poor farmers are unable to overcome. The decline in income due to the attack of American boll worm in the cotton belt of Punjab for seven consecutive years is an example. The worst part of the story is that they don’t get proper institutional support from the government, banks and marketing agencies. There is a near total breakdown of institutional credit as far as marginal farmers are concerned. They have to depend upon the unorganised sector for meeting their credit needs where interest rates varying from 36 to 60 per cent a year. This gives a telling blow to the poor farmers. At the very onset lending agents deduct six to 12 months’ interest and the poorer the farmers, the higher the rate of interest. Thus the capacity of farmers to repay the loan is drastically reduced, the loan amount gets accumulated and they fall under the load of indebtedness. Today the farmers are under loans of Rs 10,000 crore, of which major share is of the unorganised sector. There are about 25,000 arhtiyas (commission agents) in Punjab and their share constitute 55 per cent of the total debt on the farmers. The trap laid and forced by the exploiters, be they administrators, the police, lending agencies, marketing agencies, local landlords or arhtiyas, becomes complete. Farmers are unable to bear the socio-economic burden and feel trapped and get psychologically beaten. They do not find any light at the end of the tunnel and finally resort to the only alternative left — suicide. The human life is lost. Not only the government, but also the whole society is responsible for the forced fall of farmers in the country. We must strive to save the farmers and recognise the need to allow them a dignified living. The principle of mutual recognition of human dignity should be accepted by society at large and the government in
particular.
The writer is the Director, Institute of Development and Planning, Amritsar.
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Bribing the legislators Scandal
followed scandal. Gaffe piled on gaffe. The ruling party, utterly invincible in the last election, overnight became the symbol of incompetence and corruption. Carefully launched plans and programs fell flat. Legislators were caught taking bribes in brown envelopes. Meanwhile, the party leader hunkered down in his office, controlling all contacts with the media. No, I am not talking about the Republicans in 2005 and 2006. I am talking about the British Tory party in 1996 and 1997. True, the rules of politics are different here and there. Also, the Tories had been in charge of Britain for 17 years, longer than the Republicans have controlled Congress, and their crackup was more spectacular. But—having been a member of the British press corps throughout the prime ministership of John Major, the last Conservative leader of Britain—I can tell you that the dynamics of these two great political collapses nevertheless feel strangely similar. Certainly the behavior of politicians in both eras made clear the relationship between perceived electoral invincibility and petty corruption: The longer you’ve been in office, the less you fear the voters’ wrath, the more likely you are to bend the rules. The ``cash for questions’’ scandal of 1995 Britain—legislators took bribes for presenting questions in Parliament—in that sense resembles the Jack Abramoff scandal of 2006 Washington. Relatively speaking, huge sums of money weren’t involved—just a few thousand pounds here or a golfing trip there—but it was enough to make life more bearable for the underpaid career politician, one who thinks his electorate has become too stupid to notice what he does in his spare time. And enough to fall afoul of the law. Both eras also illustrate the old maxim that political failures always beget more political failures. Only months after John Major made the unfortunate decision to link the British currency to the European exchange rate mechanism—a predecessor of the common currency—a clutch of hedge funds (led, incidentally, by George Soros) forced sterling out. Tory economic reliability, once the heart of the party’s appeal, never recovered. Among other things, that meant that when the Tories launched a perfectly sensible pension reform, nobody took it seriously. A White House that acquired a record for incompetence and mismanagement in Iraq, New Orleans and elsewhere will recognize this phenomenon, particularly where it concerns pensions, which we call Social Security on this side of the Atlantic. Once lost, credibility is never regained. Finally, both eras also tell us a lot about what happens to political ideas, even good ones, in the hands of complacent politicians. At different times, both British and American conservatives have lambasted uncontrolled government spending, unbalanced budgets and the ``waste, fraud and abuse’’ that seem inherent in large government programs. And yet, at different times they appeared to tolerate, even to encourage, all of the above. I’m not sure I’ve ever understood the psychology of this—if balanced budgets were so good in the 1990s, why don’t they matter in the 2000s? —but it seems, again, linked to power: The longer you stay in charge, the more tempting it becomes to put things off. Today you’ve got to build that Alaskan bridge to nowhere or add that drug benefit to Medicare to get reelected. You can always balance the budget tomorrow. Right? — LA Times-Washington Post |
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Delhi Durbar The
UPA government is actively considering upgrading an Indian Air Force base in Punjab for war games and exercises with their counterparts from other countries because of West Bengal’s unfavourable stance with regard to using the Kalaikunda base for these exercises. The last time the Americans were in this country for air exercises, the Left Front government expressed its helplessness in controlling the law and order situation in West Bengal. The Centre took strong objection. The exercises went ahead without a hitch with Left protesters using their lung power along with watching the
exercise. West Bengal’s loss may well be Punjab’s gain in the near future. Calculating Metro timing It is easy to calculate how much time it will take to travel from one station to the other on the swanky Delhi Metro. Just multiply the number of stations the metro will cover en route by the figure of two and deduct “one” out of it. For example, from Connaught Place to Dwarka, the Metro covers 20 stations. So 20 multiplied by 2 is 40 and minus 1 makes the total journey time between CP and Dwarka 39 minutes. Trust Metro chief E Sreedharan to keep things simple. Inaugurations by VIPs Metro inaugurations have always been the time for the party in power at the Centre to gain political mileage by taking credit for the success of the mass rapid transportation system in the Capital. Except for the time when the Election Commission played the spoilsport when the Inderlok-Ritahla stretch was inaugurated by the oldest serving official of the DMRC, P K Gupta, on March 31, 2004. All other stretches on Lines1, 2 and 3 have been inaugurated by those who matter the most. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee inaugurated the stretch between Tis Hazari and Indralok on October 3, 2003. The one between Central Secretariat and Kashmere Gate was opened on July 2, 2005, by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi. And the newest Line-3 was given the green signal by Dr Manmohan Singh on December 30, 2005. Kashmiri food festival The Kashmiris want to take their culinary delicacies beyond India’s borders to neighbouring Pakistan during the festival of Basant. As a prelude to that a 15-day food festival is under way in the national Capital, thanks to the Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Development Corporation’s effort to popularise Kashmiri cuisine and culture. The campaign is to attract tourists to the state and promote Wazwan. Similar food festivals are being organised in Bangalore and Mumbai also. The Kashmiri food festival in Lahore will be organised in March and the culinary extravaganza will travel to the Gulf and Europe in the near future. The average sale at the food stall is Rs 80,000. Contributed by R Suryamurthy, Prashant Sood and Vibha Sharma |
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From the pages of Khaddar and Swaraj
It is sometimes said that if only we can make Khaddar a success, we shall have brought Swaraj almost to our door. We ourselves believe in Khaddar as at once a purifying agency and a great and powerful means of social and economic regeneration. But let us not deceive ourselves. Khaddar cannot be at once a political and an economic weapon for any ultimate purpose. It can be a political weapon in that sense only by holding out to Lancashire the prospect of our abandoning or modifying the present movement, the moment Swaraj is given to us. On the other hand, its ultimate efficacy as an economic movement depends essentially upon its comparative permanence, certainly upon its not being dependent for its progress upon the accidents of our having or not having Swaraj. There are many among us who point to the perturbation caused by a fall in the imports of cloth to Lancashire workers as a decisive proof of the success of the Khaddar movement. It is undoubtedly such a proof, but only within limits and subject to the reservation we have already referred to Khaddar is an element in the problem of Swaraj undoubtedly, because self-reliance and self-dependence as regards one of the most important necessaries of the life cannot but be helpful to Swaraj.
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My greatest worry is the ignorance and poverty of the masses of India, and the way in which they have been neglected by the classes, especially the neglect of the Harijans by the Hindus. — Mahatma Gandhi Practising self-torture to subdue desires, only wears out the body. Even the mind is not subdued through fasting and penances. Nothing, indeed, equals God’s Name. — Guru Nanak Avarice is a dog, falsehood a scavenger; and cheating is like the eating of carrion. — Guru Nanak Rarer still is the man who can face the truth with courage. — The Upanishads |
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