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Mulayam should bow out HC cracks whip, rightly Bread and batter |
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PC made easy
Buck up, Salman
Declining defence budget Do you look your age? Ponderables for White House
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Mulayam should bow out UTTAR Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has no right, moral and otherwise, to remain in power after the 2:1 verdict of the Allahabad High Court in a case relating to the status of the 40 rebel MLAs of the Bahujan Samaj Party. The court has held that former Assembly Speaker Kesrinath Tripathi’s rulings validating the 2003 split in the BSP were given “in undue haste and in violation of the principles of natural justice”. The matter has been referred back to the Speaker, who has to decide afresh whether the desertion of the MLAs from their parent party, not in one go, amounts to a split in the BSP. Under the circumstances, their support cannot provide legitimacy to the Samajwadi Party-led government. The spirit of the court ruling goes against the UP ministry. Mr Yadav too must be realising it that his government now finds itself on a slippery ground. On Tuesday, he hurriedly went in for a confidence vote and won it. But this could not have been for prolonging his stint in power. This appears to be a tactic to ensure that he remains in an advantageous position. It would not be a surprise that he recommends dissolution of the Assembly and holding of snap elections to remain a caretaker Chief Minister and make use of the advantages that come with it. There are chances of his being upstaged too. It is being argued that the Opposition can call for a no-confidence vote even after the confidence vote that went in Mr Mulayam Singh’s favour with all the members belonging to the Opposition staging a walkout. The 207 votes cast in support of the government, in a House of 402, must have included those of the 40 MLAs whose status remains undecided. But four of them, including two ministers who resigned on Wednesday, have rejoined the BSP. The Mulayam Singh ministry’s survival depends on the support of 15 members of Mr Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal. It would be natural for the Congress to make efforts to persuade him to leave the company of the SP leader. It is again the time for hard bargaining in the politically most important state of the country, now headed for a period of instability.
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HC cracks whip, rightly TUESDAY'S arrest of 21 lawyers follows the Delhi High Court’s contempt proceedings against them for vandalising the Tis Hazari court complex on February 24. All of them have been remanded to judicial custody for 14 days. The five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Markandey Katju was forced to take this tough stand because of the irresponsible and unprofessional conduct of the lawyers. What happened on February 24 was shameful. It brought the entire legal fraternity to disrepute. The striking lawyers simply behaved as hooligans. They entered the judges’ chambers, broke the furniture and tore the papers as if they are a law unto themselves. Lawyers are officers of the court. And if they behave as they did, they must be punished with the contempt they deserve. The lawyers have been continuing their illegal strike since January 2 in protest against the opening of a new district court complex at Rohini. They are also opposing opening of a mediation cell, which they allege, is funded by a foreign foundation and is outside the existing legal framework. However, on both counts, the lawyers’ objections are unsustainable. They fail to appreciate that the Rohini court will ease backlog in the Tis Hazari court and help the residents of West and North-West Delhi. Similarly, the mediation cell is no taboo: it will encourage out-of-court settlements and help reduce litigation. Only the citizen is the gainer. In their own interest and in the larger interest of the judicial system, the lawyers would do well to call off their strike unconditionally and apologise before the judges for their misbehaviour. The lawyers are protectors of the law and at no point should they act in a manner that is unbecoming of the noble and exalted profession. More important, litigants will suffer if the lawyers do not attend the courts. If the lawyers are adamant, they must be proceeded against in accordance with law. And this is what the Delhi High Court has done now. The Bar Council of India also needs to cancel the licences of the recalcitrant lawyers. They do not deserve the privilege of appearing in the court.
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Bread and batter WHISKY, soda, ginger pop/ Idli-dosa mix is on top. This could well be the signature jingle for the Budget session of Parliament this year. Thanks to Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, the excise duty has been reduced on soda and ready-made dosa batter along with cuts on other processed and packaged foods. This sure does add a lot of fizz to the Budget he presented, though the aam aadmi may be inclined to complain that this is all bubble and no substance. But, Mr Chidambaram is not only in the business of presenting the Budget. He also has to sell it to the voters. So some amount of gas is only to be expected be it a small reduction in the duty on soda or ice cream. By the way, air (or gas) accounts for 80 per cent of the ice cream. For those in Haryana, it is a double bonus: the cut in excise duty on Indian Made Foreign Liquor will ensure availability of whisky at lower prices to accompany the soda. Although B S Hooda’s decision is for local reasons, that’s, at least, one cheer for PC. Roti, kapda aur makaan for every one of the one billion plus may still be a long way, but those who feed on dosa, rather than roti, can take heart that the ‘daily grind’ has been somewhat eased. No longer will the idli-dosa eating population have to rise early to grind the batter for the morning meal; they can simply pick up the ready-mix brand from the nearest store, which they had hitherto hesitated to do because the packet was too pricey. Perhaps, with increased off-take, the price too will keep coming down in every budget, may well be the popular expectation. Those who are not used to idli-dosa need not despair. They can opt for pasta on which excise duty has been altogether abolished — for whatever reasons — and round off the meal with a yummy ice cream, which too has now been made duty-free. Talk of just desserts.
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Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. — Noam Chomsky
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PC made easy THERE is a lot of creative detail in the UPA budget. Coastal mega power projects on imported coal, rail metros, special towns around functional or knowledge areas (as the original planner; Sardar Sarovar’s Kevadia around water systems?), higher priority to the National Highways, funds for building lower-level canal systems in a farmers participatory irrigation mode (PIM), an expert body to be set up for taxation and other benefits for gem and jewelry export, 25 textile parks, PPPs for Bharat Nirman and the clusters project are all tailor-made for states on the go. Being the founder or friend of the clusters and PIM NGOs, I am happy. The slew of concessions for petrochemicals, oil exploration and refining, man-made fibres, plastics and drugs will help private industry and they are smiling all the way to the bank. Not all states will be equally happy, but the social programmes and the EGS will help them. The Finance Minister is obviously not playing federal politics. We are growing now at around 7.5 per cent. There is reasonable price stability, although consumer prices are rising faster than the wholesale prices the Finance Minister quoted. This budget seems finally to exorcise the ghost of fiscal deficits. The numbers are not too good. The Central government’s deficit is estimated lower this year, but March 31 is yet to come and the estimates for next year may have to cope with much larger outgo on, say, the EGS, the demand for employment being high, as preliminary reports say. The Economic Survey clarifies that the combined deficits of Central and state governments, the only meaningful figure for macro-discussion, have gone out of the window, but the government is not perturbed. Another conundrum is the sops given to FIIs, not FDI. Even the RBI sings a different tune. Having to sterilise the inflationary effects of buying “barren foreign cash”, they are not too hot on more FIIs. They also hint at the volatility aspect of some of these flows, particularly the shorter more fickle ones. In my occasional visits to North America, if I brave the threat of a body search, almost guaranteed if carrying a diplomatic passport, my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, invites me to give the usual seminar. My teacher Nobel laureate Lawrence Klein comes to the Wharton building and cajoles us to canvass for direct investment and be careful of FIIs. Old-fashioned virtues though are at a discount. The budget is weak on agriculture. To be happy with a grain production of 209 million tonnes, achieved many years ago, is saddening. The best way of handling the flack on the “import of grain” was to face it. This writer had argued at the Abu Congress Chief Ministers’ Summit that diversification had to come from improving productivity in foodgrains and releasing land for cash crops, animal husbandry and trees. Importing wheat with empty granaries, the policy makers prejudice opposes supporting the grain farmer. The subsidy on short-term interest rates on loans up to Rs 1 lakh, which fixes the effective rate at 7 per cent, will really help the farmer to compete. Apart from an interest rate of 7 per cent, which covers around half of the competitiveness gap of our farmers with those subsidized abroad, a tariff rate of around 30 per cent for lint cotton with an automatic drawback for textile manufacturers and an increase in edible oil- oilseed tariffs were important. Cotton did well last year, but prices are falling in a big way and last year the Finance Minister promised a road-map for crops. He should deliver now. The Economic Survey cleverly avoids these issues by excluding lint cotton and edible oilseeds from agricultural import figures and taking credit for falling imports. The diversification bit is becoming a tiresome empty mantra, since no concrete efforts are there to raise profitability of cash crops. Importing wheat, the fallacy in ignoring grains is coming home to roost. Neither the Economic Survey nor the budget show any understanding of the current crucible of Indian agriculture, which is bad since we now actually have the resources to solve our problems. Market solutions should also apply to grains and so quality differentials and structured support for the new technologies must be the order of the day. The farmer producing extra-superior rice or the Durham wheat must get his reward. A committee report on a WTO compatible agricultural policy for India that this writer chaired gives the road-map, but in spite of the Information Act, none of these proposals are opened up for public discussion. The grain belt of North-West India must be supported for the next round of technology. In the rainfed regions paddy is growing. But public market support is not there to accelerate it. There is a lot of money in the budget for technology institutions in agriculture, but if the economic climate is not good, we know from experience in earlier agricultural stagnation epochs in the seventies and eighties that the farmer is not able to take the advantage of these and that is the weak point of the budget. A number of “missions” and “research” institutes are set up with support running into hundreds of crores. Support to research is good, but by itself it can create sinecures rather than productivity booths. The framework of profitability in which technology is taken advantage of is not there. Consumer prices are rising more than wholesale prices but the budget does not worry about this. The Finance Minister correctly hinted that the Rangarajan Committee’s hike in energy prices is yet to come, but that it will not impact on poor consumers and producers is not said; also that this is not quite the time to talk of fertiliser price rise since demand has just picked up. The art of the possible needs to be pursued. I am an advocate of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and, returning after chairing an RGF delegation to China, waxed eloquent on the public supply of irrigation water to the village outlet level and private initiative below. Not only metro airports, but backward areas also need PPPs. But now all problems are left at the altar of PPPs. Rural roads and electricity, for example. Errol deSouza of the IIMA has shown that this amounts to an abdication of public responsibility and anyway won’t work since the comfort level needed will be impractical. An expert group could clarify. When we said in the mid-nineties that we were growing at 6 per cent for over two decades, critics, who wanted desperately to show that they did better than the earlier periods, did not like it. But now Goldman Sachs, the IMF and the CIA say so, this is orthodoxy. From 6 per cent to 8 per cent is a step (jump?) we have taken and there is no going back. The eighties were to them the decade of fiscal irresponsibility, but things are much worse now. If we are prudent, it is too early to talk of 10 per cent, but having said all this, stand tall, your country has
arrived. The writer, a noted economist, is a former minister and member of the Planning Commission.
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Buck up, Salman
I
have never forgiven Salman Khan for killing a black buck in Rajasthan. What an insensitive and stupid thing to do, despite playing a street-smart person in so many films! If at all he was so very keen on shikar, he should have had the basic commonsense to go to Gujarat or Delhi instead. The events would have unfolded in an entirely different manner then. Here is the most likely scenario: Salman Khan and his other actor friends go for a shoot one night and are seen by hundreds of people while killing black bucks. They try to run away, but are apprehended along with their jeep, a gun and dead animals. A case is filed against them. The enraged eyewitnesses depose against them and the police records their confession on tape. Hearing begins against them in right earnest. Surprise of surprise, the purported CD of the confession is found to have transformed itself into a pirated version of an old Salman starrer. The jeep allegedly seized by the police is untraceable. Half of the witnesses now say they have never ever been to the site of the alleged crime and their earlier allegations were made under police duress. The other half says the actors are actually great animal lovers who even tried to save the injured black buck when he was on deathbed. When there is a hue and cry in the media, senior police officers give an undertaking that they will ensure that there is no dereliction of duty and the case will be probed properly. A special investigation team (SIT) is constituted. After seven years of hard labour, which involves talking to hundreds of eyewitnesses, they piece together the various details of the incident to conclude that: The deceased black buck was a known bad character, who was engaged in a gun-running racket. He and his accomplices had links with terrorists as well. He had recently stolen a gun from the house of Salman Khan. The gallant actor and his friends trailed the deer to his hideout and took him by surprise. Cornered, the black buck picked up the stolen gun, aimed at them and fired at close range. But the actors ducked in self-defence. The bullet ricocheted off a rock and injured the deer badly. They tried to save the gasping black buck but their efforts went in vain. They even observed two minutes’ silence in memory of the departed soul, followed by a soul-stirring sad song. That is when some persons mistakenly apprehended them. Conclusion: Salman Khan innocent. Black buck guilty. His accomplices to be hauled up and tried under various relevant sections of the
Cr.P.C.
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Declining defence budget In the Finance Bill introduced in Parliament on February 28, the budget estimates (BE) for defence have increased marginally from Rs 83,000 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 89,000 crore for 2006-07 — a rise of about 7 per cent. With inflation ruling at 4 to 5 per cent, the real increase in current rupees is only of the order about 2 per cent. This is grossly inadequate to undertake any real modernisation, especially because the annual rise in international prices of weapons, ammunition and defence equipment is usually 10 to 12 per cent. If the rupee fails to hold its own against the US dollar and the euro in the year ahead, the situation will be worse confounded. By whichever parameter one examines the allocations made for defence, the results are found to be dismal and are sometimes depressing. As a percentage of the GDP, which itself grew at the breath-taking pace of 7 to 8 per cent per annum for a country of India’s size and population, the defence budget steadily came down from 3.59 per cent of the GDP in 1987-88 to 2.30 per cent in 2004-05 and appears to have now stabilised at about 2.5 per cent. China and Pakistan, India’s major military adversaries, with whom India has unresolved territorial and boundary disputes, both spend 5 to 7 per cent of their GDP on national security. The 11th Finance Commission, a constitutional authority, had suggested that defence expenditure should go up progressively to at least 3 per cent of the GDP by 2004. Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence had recommended in the mid-1990s that defence expenditure should be raised to a level of 4 per cent of the GDP for serious modernisation efforts. The average defence expenditure was pegged at 16.48 per cent of Central Government expenditure during the decade of the 1980s. This share came down to 14.63 per cent in the next decade up to the turn of the century. Similarly, defence expenditure as a ratio of total (Central plus state) government expenditure came down from 10.5 per cent during the 1980s to 7.75 per cent during the 1990s, a period during which the rupee depreciated against the dollar from about Rs 16 to a dollar to Rs 46 to a dollar. Taking inflation of 7 to 8 per cent also into account, the defence budget declined in terms of constant rupees by over 10 per cent per annum. Quite obviously this led to a decline in India’s conventional defence capability and preparedness and emboldened Pakistan to launch its ill-fated intrusions into the Kargil sector of Jammu and Kashmir in May 1999. The request for allotment of funds projected by the three Services every year is routinely pared down by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in the projections that the MoD makes to the Ministry of Finance (MoF). The MoF treats the projections as a wish list and reduces them further by an average of almost 25 per cent. During 2004-05, the Services projected a requirement of approximately Rs 103,000 crore; the MoD reduced it to about Rs 87,000 crore; the MoF’s BE allocation was Rs 77,000 crore, a shortfall of 26 per cent. This reduction is effected arbitrarily and without consultation so that almost till the day of the budget, the Services are uncertain of their likely budgetary allocation for the next financial year. It is unbelievable that such a situation should exist after half a century of experience with five-year plans and defence planning. It is clearly indicative of the disinclination of successive governments to closely involve and integrate the senior leadership of the armed forces in national security decision-making and does not augur well for long-term perspective planning. The worst impact of the steadily declining defence budget in terms of inflation and foreign exchange fluctuation adjusted constant rupees is on the modernisation plans of the armed forces and the replacement of obsolescent weapons systems and equipment. The ongoing revolution in military affairs (RMA) has passed the armed forces by. The Indian Army, for example, is a first-rate fighting force that is armed with second-rate equipment — ready to fight battles of the early 20th century. The Army desperately needs new 155 mm self-propelled and towed guns and the Air Force must replace its obsolete MiG-21 aircraft with more modern fighter-bombers. As if this was not bad enough, a large chunk of the funds earmarked for capital expenditure, which goes towards modernisation, is surrendered year after year due to bureaucratic red tape and the fear of strictures being passed by the Central Vigilance Commissioner for tardy procedures. An average of as much as 14 per cent of the budgeted amount, varying between Rs 5,000 and 9,000 crore, remained unspent every year from FY 1999-2000 onwards till this was arrested in 2004-05. This year, 2005-06, the revised estimates (RE) figures are lower than the BE figures by the unspent amount of Rs 1,300 crore. The only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that the successive Finance Ministers have been using the defence budget as one of the tools to manage their fiscal deficit. The steadily declining defence budgets in terms of constant rupees are gradually degrading national security capabilities. The continuous involvement of the armed forces in various operational commitments and the almost complete lack of genuine modernisation are undermining preparedness for war and eroding their conventional edge. With the economy growing at the compound rate of 7 to 8 per cent annually, surely the nation can afford to invest 3 to 3.5 per cent of its GDP as an insurance premium for national security, especially when a huge amount of over Rs 100,000 crore is earmarked for wasteful subsidies that seldom reach the poor for whom these are intended. The governments of the day, whether it was the previous BJP-led NDA government or the present Congress-led UPA government, have failed to show the concern and political courage necessary to safeguard national security interests by making adequate financial provisions for the modernisation of the armed forces. This can only be termed as gross dereliction of
duty.
***** The writer is Director Security Studies, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.
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Do you look your age? IT'S such a dirty word, ageing. Very few of us embrace the process, many deny it and most try to cheat it in some way. It can be hard to guess someone’s exact age. A range of factors may leave marks on our appearance: how happy we feel, how much sleep we’ve had — even the way we dress and our view of ourselves. The good news is that just as these factors can add years on to your appearance, it follows that they can also take years off. We don’t always have control over some of those social factors that can make us look younger, but there are other steps we can take to try to stop the ravages of age. Last month the University of Southern Denmark published a report, The Influence of Environmental Factors on Facial Ageing, which showed that how we live can affect how old we look. In it, 1,826 twins were photographed and then ten female nurses aged between 25-46 years were asked to guess how old the “models” were. The results were intriguing. They showed that belonging to a high social class can make us look up to four years younger and many other lifestyle factors were shown to affect the way we look. Having children was found to make men look a full year younger, though it had no effect on women, and having four or more children cancelled out the benefit. Depression and sun exposure were the biggest factors in making you look old before your time. Depression added up to three and a half years to a woman’s perceived age (and 2.4 years for men). Sun exposure piled on at least an extra year. Smoking put on six months for a woman and a year for a man. Meanwhile, having a high BMI (body mass index) was found to take a whole year off for both men and women. “If you are not depressed, not a smoker and not too skinny, you are basically doing well,” says Professor Kaare Christensen (married, three children, non-smoker), one of the report’s authors. Professor Christensen’s report concluded that it was more dangerous for our health to look a year older, than to actually be a year older. This is possibly the biggest change we can make fairly easily. Vicki Edgson, nutrition consultant and co-author of The Diet Doctors Inside and Out says there are four main factors that prematurely age us: smoking, too much alcohol, lack of fresh fruit and vegetables and insufficient protein intake. Alcohol can make us all think we look great, while we’re drunk, but if you want to look younger, it’s best to avoid it. Even moderate but regular drinking can make you look older than you are. One ageing effect that drinking has is to dull the whites of your eyes. This is because alcohol can raise the blood pressure and burst tiny capillaries in the eyes, making them appear bloodshot. The same goes for the complexion, although this is more of a long-term effect. The really big, quick-fix, though, is eating more fresh fruit and vegetables. The skin is the last organ to benefit from the nutrients you eat — the likes of the brain, heart and lungs all get first share. If someone’s diet is lacking in fruit and veg, the skin will become dehydrated. Sufficient protein is vital to stay looking younger because protein provides the building blocks, in the form of amino acids, that are essential for our body to repair and heal itself; a process it undertakes when we’re asleep. Without adequate protein intake you lose muscle tone. “It’s important to have a well-balanced, medium — not high — protein diet including all lean animal protein and a variety of vegetarian proteins. Apart from soya, no vegetarian sources of protein contain all eight essential amino acids.
— The Independent
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Ponderables for White House WHEN US President George W. Bush holds talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi’s Hyderabad House today, there are certain ponderables for the President and his team. The first and foremost is that the Bush administration should realise that there is a strong sense of national sovereignty in India which is non-negotiable. Making the nuclear agreement with its accompanying restrictions the centerpiece of the visit was emphatically wrong. The Indian negotiators would not have been more ill-advised to keep the nation in the dark on the nuclear deal until the Prime Minister made a suo motu statement in Parliament on February 27. India’s nuclear capability is sacrosanct. It is an issue of national sovereignty, security and independence in all its aspects. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was timed and constructed to keep India out of the nuclear club. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was hijacked from the Geneva negotiations through the backdoor to the UN. The US and China were in partnership on both occasions. The US push now to limit India’s nuclear weapons capability, a matter of security for India in a threatening nuclear environment, is not acceptable. The US conditions, if accepted, stand to destroy India’s indigenous capability to emerge as a self-dependant nuclear weapon and energy power. According to many Indian analysts and nuclear scientists, India’s hope to emerge as a global power would be debilitated permanently if New Delhi were to conform to Washington’s “goalposts”. This is true, if the issue is taken out of the Indo-US straitjacket and considered in the matrix of at least Asia. China’s multi-polar world theory does not apply to Asia. Beijing is working towards a uni-polar Asia with China as the only pole. If the US wants to change the Asian balance of power for a free order, it must visit the past and introspect how it connived with China to create this situation. Therefore, India’s security threat is not decreasing, but increasing rapidly along with its encirclement. Can India, under these circumstances, afford to mortgage in perpetuity its indigenous capability? It is against this backdrop that the Prime Minister’s February 27 announcement in Parliament that India would place 65 per cent of its installed nuclear power capacity on the civilian list under IAEA safeguards. The question of energy security is very important for both India and the US. For India, it is a question of development. For the US, it is a question of at least maintaining its developed status. Both sides must agree during the Bush visit to put this agreement on the upper levels of the agenda. The realm of dual use technology transfer defence sales to India are issues which have been overshadowed by the nuclear issue. Little or no movement has been seen from the US side. The cold warriors in the US see even a screw driver as a strategic military transfer. Yet, they swallowed China transferring the US super computers meant for civilian use to military use. On the defence side, India has emerged as one of the biggest importers in 2005. The US has been offering third generation F-16 fighter aircraft, which India does not need. Why not the F-15F or the Joint Strike Fighter? These issues must be impressed upon President Bush. Apart from the basic and sectoral issues, the overall relations must be addressed. The US cannot accept a relationship of equals. Mr Bush must understand this policy has to be changed when dealing with India. India cannot be a junior ally or a domino. In his address to the Asia Society prefacing his visit to India, the President made two disturbing observations. One was hyphenating India with Pakistan. The other was India as a US partner to promote democracy in other countries. Neither will wash. India has never been, nor will it be, a scavenger for another power. If a serious partnership with India has to be created, it will have to be on equal and independent terms.
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From the pages of Trick on Dr Kitchlew It is necessary to find out who sent to Dr Kitchlew the telegram to which prominence is given in a Free Press message published yesterday and with what object it was sent. As neither the Secretary to the Students’ Conference, in whose name the telegram was purported to have been sent, nor any other member of the Students’ Union or Conference knows anything about it, it ought to be someone’s business to find out its author and deal with him according to law. It may or may not have done any great harm in the present case, though it undoubtedly caused much inconvenience, but it is easy to imagine cases in which such dirty trick can do a world harm.
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