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Sonia outwits the BJP Airlines’ merger Flintossed |
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Rich and poor in India, China
A teacher’s reward
CPM in a mess in Kerala Signs of global warming in garden Delhi Durbar
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Sonia outwits the BJP IN a masterly political stroke, Congress President Sonia Gandhi has all but flattened the Opposition that was gunning for her. By resigning from the Lok Sabha and as Chairperson of the National Advisory Council (NAC), Mrs Gandhi has once again invoked the mantra of renunciation to snuff out the clamour over her holding an office of profit – as NAC Chairperson – while being an MP. This has not only taken the steam out of the campaign for her disqualification as a member of the Lok Sabha but left the BJP leaders with egg splattered on their face; and made redundant their representation to President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Mrs Gandhi’s action also exposes and discredits those in her party who were planning to have an ordinance issued to protect her from the anticipated disqualification. She has outwitted the the BJP-led Opposition as well as her own partymen; and thrown on the defensive the nine Left MPs, including Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, a CPM member, who have been accused of holding such offices of profit. The move to pass an ordinance, after curtailing the Budget session of Parliament, was both ill conceived and avoidable. This only provided fresh ballast to the Opposition, which after the unseating of Mrs Jaya Bachchan from the Rajya Sabha, was determined to use the same weapon against Mrs Gandhi and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. What was at best a legal conundrum that could have been taken care of by introducing a Bill in Parliament, especially as it was in session, snowballed into a political confrontation. The BJP moved in for what they thought would be the kill by going to the President. What they did not reckon with was Mrs Gandhi seizing the moment to turn the tables on them. This she has done to stunning effect in a remarkable replay of the moment when she renounced the Prime Ministership after the Lok Sabha election results in 2004. She has also reminded her audience that she is not “in politics and public life for selfish ends” but to “serve the people”. Shrewdly enough, Mrs Gandhi has also announced that she will again contest for the Lok Sabha from Rae Bareli. She can thank the Opposition for providing her with the opportunity to outsmart them, by exercising self-denial without the sacrifice of political advantage that can accrue to her.
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Airlines’ merger PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh has asked the Civil Aviation Ministry to present the Cabinet a roadmap for the merger of Air India and Indian in two months. In the ministry’s briefing to the Prime Minister on Wednesday, two other options — synergising operations of the two airlines and having a holding company— were not found suitable. The merger is favoured chiefly on the ground that it would raise the competitiveness of the government-owned airlines against private carriers. The ministry, which hopes to carry out the merger in six months, feels a combined carrier will get a better valuation from the market and help it raise the required resources for growth. In a competitive world, size does matter. These days big is considered beautiful. Only recently Jet Airways decided to acquire Air Sahara to beat the government-owned Indian in size. Air India, which operates on international routes, has 42 aircraft and plans to buy 68 more from Boeing. Domestic airline Indian has 60 aircraft and is awaiting 43 more Airbus aircraft. Even after merger, the public sector airline will be no match to global giants like Singapore Airlines and British Airways, which have a fleet of more than 400 planes each. However, the merger will move the airline up in the international league, and the future appears promising. There are some other advantages of merger. Right now the two airlines unnecessarily compete with each other on certain routes to West Asian and South-East Asian countries. The integration will ensure hassle-free, connecting flights to passengers and may arrest the declining market share. Air India makes profits (Rs 96 crore for the year ending March, 2005), but Indian is in the red and their finances can improve with some cost-cutting. Despite such positives, the marriage may face opposition from employees fearing retrenchment.
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Flintossed THE toss, certainly, is not everything. The captain can win it or lose it, decide to bat or bowl, but the game is won or lost with all 22 out there, playing. That said, Rahul Dravid’s decision to field first in the final test against England at Mumbai was so wrong that it invited universal expressions of surprise and derision. England was, of course, delighted. In the run up to the match, everyone was saying that the only chance for England to square the series on the Wankhede pitch, known to deteriorate rapidly, was for Andrew Flintoff to win the toss and put up a good first innings total. Flintoff lost the toss. But India’s decision handed the match right back to him. After the first day’s play, most were predicting an England win. Captains fool around with the toss at their peril. Sourav Ganguly fielded first in the 2003 World Cup, a decision judged right by the “experts,” when every taxi driver in Australia knew that their team was vulnerable chasing. Australia put up a thumping 359, and India lost. More recently, in England during the Ashes, Ricky Ponting fielded first in spite of the absence of Glenn McGrath. Australia lost, paving the way for the 2-1 defeat that saw the return of the Ashes to England after 17 years. If you win the toss, bat. You have to have a very, very good reason to field. Anyway, cricket is played with a bat and a ball, not a coin. The bowlers, both newcomers like Munaf and Sreesunth and old guard Kumble, did their job. The less said of the Indian batting, the better. Sachin is a pale shadow of what he was, and V.V.S. Laxman was sorely missed. Flintoff and his boys did a great job. A rookie captain with an odd ball bunch that included more rookies, not to mention a 37-year-old, off-on, off-spinner, showed that theirs is a team that is more special than it looks.
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If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. — Harry Vaughan
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Rich and poor in India, China FOR quite a while it has been fashionable to compare the achievements of India and China. From this unending discussion, two diametrically opposite conclusions usually emerge. On the one hand, there is the belief that though China is at present much ahead of this country, the rising India would catch up with it, and perhaps exceed it, in not too distant a future. The contrary view, on the other hand, is that the gulf between India and China is already so wide that it would be hard to narrow, leave alone bridge it. After all, China’s per capita GDP, measured on the purchase parity basis, is nearly twice that of India. Its trade surplus with the United States alone is more than India’s exports worldwide. With burgeoning foreign exchange reserves, it has invested in the US, the richest country, $800 billion. Furthermore, China attracts every year foreign direct investment (FDI) 10 times larger than this country does. And, in respect of every index of human development, China leaves India far behind. However, my purpose in mentioning all this is not to crystal-gaze and decide which of the two prognostications is likely to prove correct. I have been constrained to raise the subject because of strikingly different events in the two countries in recent days. These do little credit to the ruling classes in democratic India but, in all fairness, entitle China’s one-party authoritarian regime to some kudos. There was something utterly unseemly about the egregious jubilation in the Indian media and among the insensitive middle class over the Forbes newsmagazine’s discovery that the number of billionaires (in dollar terms) in India had increased over the last year. The jumping with joy over the journal’s concomitant comment that Indian billionaires were “richer” than their Chinese counterparts was worse. The drumbeaters were unimpressed even by two biting cartoons hammering home the point that the American magazine could as well have underscored that the hundreds of millions of poor in this country were poorer than their Chinese opposite numbers. Upward mobility of anyone is doubtless welcome. But must it blind us to even the existence of the poor? While the new Indian billionaires were being serenaded, the news also appeared that one of those luckless debt-trapped peasants often driven to taking their own lives, decided instead to use the help-line thoughtfully established by the state government. The result was catastrophic. A revenue inspector appeared at his door with alacrity and demanded a bribe. The desperate farmer realised that killing himself was his only escape. He was promptly taken, not to hospital, but to jail for committing the crime of attempted suicide. No one gave a damn about this, nor has anything happened to the bribe-demanding inspector. In any case, by this time the media and the mindless middle class, obsessed with the rich and the famous, had found another cause to be hysterical about. Two graduates of two IIMs, offered jobs by multinationals overseas, were promised salaries that were astronomical by Indian standards but absolutely normal for rich countries of the West. While these crudities were in full swing here, China had something entirely different on its mind. For 10 days from March 4 to March 14, that country’s 2,280-member National People’s Congress concentrated on just one problem: how to reduce the gap between the wealthy seashore and eastern provinces and the poor and discontented countryside in the interior. China’s Prime Minister, Mr Wen Jiabao, set the tone. So overwhelming was his focus on the need to build a “new socialist countryside” to redress the woes of the rural poor that he was terse on so important a subject as the defence expenditure for the next year. Mr Wen announced an increase of over 14 per cent in the rural expenditure in the coming year. This would enable the Central government to scrap agriculture tax, to extend an experimental health insurance scheme to 40 per cent of the countryside, and to eliminate, by the end of next year, tuition and other fees for rural students receiving compulsory education. By comparison the annual increase in the defence expenditure (14.9 per cent) is somewhat higher than that in the rural outlay (14.2 per cent). This has had dual consequences. First, nobody outside China believes the Chinese official figures of spending on defence. Foreign experts reckon that the actual expenditure is at least 40 per cent higher. The US Secretary of State, Ms Condoleezza Rice, had been voicing concern over China’s “excessive” military build-up even already. Now she has sharpened her criticism. Secondly, critics of the Chinese government, both at home and abroad, are saying the extra provision for the countryside is no big deal. Some of them speak about “European cities and African countryside” in China. This is clearly an unfair exaggeration. Not even shining Shanghai equals the major European cities. And with all its undoubted problems, the Chinese countryside does not have anything like African-style deprivation. What really alarms the Chinese rulers is the possibility that legitimate criticism of the rural-urban disparities could encourage the airing of more general opposition to China’s “embrace of capitalism”. That is where China’s policy of landownership, in conflict with its overall economic approach, comes in. Under the Maoist doctrine, land belongs only to the village collective and is given to individuals for cultivation on lease. Beijing had to give up its plans to amend the law to introduce property rights because critics had protested that this would be not only unconstitutional but also against the teachings of Marx. Had China had even a modicum of democracy in its system, it would have been easier for it both to be aware of the urban rich- rural poor divide and to take remedial action. In this country, protest, especially by the government’s Leftist “supporters from outside”, sometimes becomes irrational and obstructs economic reforms. Even so, the people are at least able to let off steam. India and China will try and bridge the great and, in our case, growing gulf between the rich and the poor, each in its own way. But this country might learn something from the proceedings of the Chinese NPC where, the demand for a better deal for the countryside was accompanied by a call for austerity in the lifestyle of the rich and a halt to corruption. Here the page three culture and obscene worship of Mammon is apparently the order of the
day.
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A teacher’s reward THE biggest reward of being a teacher is the frequency and regularity with which former students crop up at the most unusual times and the most unlikely places. On a domestic flight there was a “boy” who sat across the aisle and kept staring at me and then looking away when he caught my eye. I remembered his name and his house and was trying to remember the year he passed out before I spoke to him. Suddenly he was standing besides me. “Excuse me, sir — you must think me rude for staring at you but you look so much like my English teacher.” “You bloody idiot, I am your English teacher.” I had been trying desperately to cancel my credit card. I had cut it up and sent it back to the company but I continued to receive a monthly account statement. The local office would only react by asking why I wanted to cancel it. In total despair I finally called up the head office in Delhi and explained my predicament to the girl on the line. “Good Lord. You’re U.D.” That was the nickname by which I was known. “Do you remember me, sir? I am Anamika. You did so much for me at school. What can I do for you?” I told her, and needless to say, I stopped being plagued by the monthly account statement. The most unexpected encounter took place in Oxford — I had gone into Dillon’s to make a small purchase so that I could take back their bags — I knew it would excite my children to see the similarity to their surname. It was Penguin’s 60th year and they had brought out 60 titles at 60 pence each. At the other end of the store was a young couple agonising over which of these titles to buy. “Can’t we take them all?” the lady said. “Oye, are you mad?” Even after all these years there was no mistaking the peculiar and unique inflection of these words. The abrupt turning of my head towards him must have caught his attention because he saw me and came across the store, a broad smile upon his face. “God — how wonderful to see you sir. Do you remember me?” Of course I remembered him! But the sweetest encounter was on a train journey. I remembered his name then, I do not now. I am always troubled by airconditioners on trains and the blanket provided is never enough. On this occasion, too, I tossed and turned and then a strange warmth stole over me and I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke in the morning I found that he had covered me with his blue tartan-lined trench coat. I looked for him and then realised that his station was to come in the middle of the night and he must have disembarked. I have it still and on cold evenings I draw it close and am warmed again as I always am when I meet my former
students.
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CPM in a mess in Kerala CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat has talked about an international conspiracy against his party and its poll prospects in West Bengal and Kerala. He also claimed that all the reports of a faction feud in his party in Kerala were the imagination of a section in the media who are partners in this conspiracy. Well, Mr Karat is not as unintelligent as he pretends to be. It is another matter that many of his party members will not mind to be unintelligent and pretend to believe that everything is fine with their party in Kerala. But then the truth is that the Kerala unit of the CPM is in a mess and a lot of it is the fallout of party leaders, over the years, pushing ideological issues under the carpet and orienting the party in just one thing: To wrest power and enjoy that for five years. And this is a tendency that was seen in Kerala as early as in the mid-eighties. In 1986, for instance, the party expelled M.V.Raghavan. His crime was to have insisted, inside the party, that the CPM would not condemn the Indian Union Muslim League and that an alliance with the League would help weaken the hold of fundamentalists on the Muslim community. The party refused to accept this argument, expelled Raghavan with hundreds of others who held the same view and watched helplessly the growth of fundamentalist outfits such as the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) floated by Abdul Nasser Maddani. In less than a decade after all this, E.M.S.Namboodiripad advocated a political alliance with the League; it was too late by then and the IUML is now a rump of what it was. It will now require a lot of effort to reinvent the democratic political space among the minority community in Kerala. While Raghavan was thus eliminated from the party and thus from being a contender for the Chief Minister’s post, a section in the party played foul again in 1987. Ms K.R.Gowri, the legendary communist from the Allepuzha region and also a communist leader from the Backward Castes (an Ezhava by birth and a communist, by conviction) was paraded by the party as the prospective Chief Minister in that year’s assembly elections. The party won a majority too. But refused to make Ms Gowri the Chief Minister and in due course, she too was expelled from the party. Both Raghavan and Gowri are now in the Congress-led UDF. And if the party sustained itself in all these years, it was because the ranks, the hundreds and thousands of party workers, believe and insist that the CPM is free from petty squabbles and that its leaders are a selfless lot and do not hanker for power. They are no different from the hapless lot who believe in god-men and god-women performing miracles. They are innocent people whose faith in the party is so absolute that they would bare their chest before a battalion of armed policemen. They are the ones who are willing to give up their today for the cause of the party! Well, this generation is on its way out. And they are being replaced in the CPM Kerala unit with young men and women who “dedicate’’ themselves to the party because they find the scope for a comfortable life by being there. With the wealth that the party possesses today, it can ensure a comfortable life for its whole-time workers. They now travel across Kerala in air-conditioned cars, halt in government guest houses and can afford to fly whenever they have party work outside of the state. And all this will be lost if they refuse to back the charge against Pinarayi Vijayan - that he caused losses to the state government by awarding a contract to SNC Lavalin, a Canadian consortium — or that M.A.Baby, for all the venom that he spews against the US, was in Chennai recently and running from pillar to post to manage a US visa. He had wanted to combine a casual visit to the US along with an official visit to Venezuella. Baby was invited by Hugo Chavez to visit Venezuella and express solidarity with the anti-US sentiment that is dominant in that Latin American Republic! And hence official! These party members and activists also know the fate that awaits them in the event they express solidarity with V.S. Achutanandan. They know that they will meet the same fate as the hundreds of comrades who expressed their views in support of M.V.Raghavan. A number of snakes that were kept in a farm where medical research was conducted and snake venom was extracted (for treating victims of snake bite) were killed and several monkeys were roasted alive by the CPM faithful in Parsinakadavu (near Kannur) because the farm was controlled by Raghavan! And they also know that they will end up in prisons and a life of suffering by speaking out against Pinarayi Vijayan now. They all know of insecure life they have to live if they stand by Achutanandan. They also know that Achudtanandan is not another Karunakaran, who has the means and the wealth to take care of their needs. They know that the CPM is not another Congress party. And that the leadership will not swallow all bitterness and negotiate Achutanandan’s re-entry as is happening with Karunakaran now. As for the election scene and the prospects, the CPM is most likely to win this time. It may not be a sweeping victory as it was in the May 2004 Lok Sabha elections. For the Congress party and the UDF are not as weak as they were a couple of years ago. But the faithful lot in the CPM can look forward to winning power in Kerala once again. And when that happens, the party will expel Achutanandan and get the police department to reopen criminal cases against him. Let it not be forgotten that the CPM had thrown out Nripen Chakraborty, its legendary leader in Tripura and such dynamic leaders as Saifuddin Chaudhry, Nepaldev Bhattacharya and C.P.John in the past and yet survived to capture power. As for Prakash Karat, he should remember that the Punjab unit of the CPM was decimated and destroyed when Harkishen Singh Surjeet faced a rebellion from the state unit when he was the General Secretary of the party. Likewise, Karat will now have to prepare himself to live and watch the Kerala unit losing its glory built on a tradition of selfless sacrifice and dedication by its members and associates.
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Signs of global warming in garden WHAT event defines the spring for you? Maybe it’s the first primrose. Primroses traditionally appear around Mothering Sunday. But last year the countrywide average date for the first primrose was 28 February. And even in these climatically challenged times, February is not many people’s idea of spring. How about frogspawn? Well, if you live in Cornwall, frogs start to feel the urge around Christmas time. By the time spring comes to the south-west, garden ponds are full of tadpoles. Rooks cawing from the treetops? Well, rooks have become early birds. Many are finishing off their colonies by the end of January. By the time of the traditional spring the eggs are in the nest. First cuckoo anyone? Well, the cuckoo at least is fairly reliable. They still arrive, from Africa, at the traditional time in mid-April. It is not so much that the cuckoo has abandoned spring, but that spring has abandoned the cuckoo. In recent years mid-April marks not the coming of spring but the arrival of the first heatwave. Besides, fewer and fewer of us are lucky enough to hear a cuckoo. Since the 1960s, the number of these birds visiting our shores has dropped by more than half. We can be precise about all these things thanks to the UK Phenology Network. Phenology is about recording the dates of natural events, whether they be the first primrose, the appearance of frogspawn or the first flowering of purple lilac. The network is even monitoring the first time we mow the lawn. The results enable us to see how wildlife responds to changing seasons. And in these days of concern over global warming, it also tells us exactly what is happening as wild animals and plants struggle to adapt themselves to new conditions. The work of the UK Phenology Network has become well-known thanks to BBC Television’s Springwatch programme. Last year, in the company of Bill Oddie, Kate Humble and Simon King, we watched the various signs of spring sweeping across the country. Some 70,000 volunteers took part in the survey via the network’s website, many of them contributing records from their own back gardens. In a sense the lawns and garden ponds of suburbia have become Britain’s makeshift outdoor laboratories. The first primrose is no longer just a date. It is data. According to the network, Britain is 1.3C warmer on average than in the 1960s. The average March temperature is 5.6C now, compared with 4.2C then. This may not seem a big increase, but its effect has been to move spring forward by 19 days. Early butterflies such as the holly blue and orange tip appear three weeks earlier than 30 years ago. And the growing season is extending. The network says we used to mow our lawns for the first time around 1 April. Now many gardeners are getting out the mower in March or even February. In winter 2003-2004 a third of Phenology UK’s recorders cut their lawns before 1 April. But isn’t warmer weather good for wildlife? Not necessarily. The problem lies in “synchronicity”. Like us, wildlife relies on the calendar. Birds time their nesting to coincide with plentiful food. Woodland flowers appear within a narrow window of opportunity when the soil is warm but before the ground is heavily shaded.
— The Independent
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Delhi Durbar WHILE the entire media gave wide publicity to the demonstration of strength by expelled BJP leader Uma Bharti, who unleashed her “Janadesh Rally”. The other day in the capital, the man who ensured that the rally became a success did not figure in media reports. K.N. Govindacharya, an RSS ideologue and former BJP National General Secretary, who had to quit the saffron party after dubbing Atal Bihari Vajpayee a “Mukhota” of the BJP, had been working ceaselessly from conceptualising various political moves, including yatras and rallies, ever since the fiery Sanyasin was expelled from the BJP. Retiring Elders
look back The Rajya Sabha members due to retire on April 2 put behind them all the heated exchanges of the past in their goodbye speeches to the sitting members. CPM member Nilotpal Basu apologised to all those members who might have been at the receiving end of his acid tongue. Jamnadevi Barupal (Congress) said that Chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had often scolded her to improve her speech and added that a grandfather is fully justified in scolding his grandchildren. BJP back-bencher Kirpal Parmar said that the only difference between a school and “this pathshala” (Parliament) is that in school the teacher would ask them to stand up on their benches and in Parliament, the members are asked to resume their seats. Farooq works on a book Farooq Abdullah no longer chases the dream of moving into Rashtrapati Bhavan. He now spends time compiling his book, a compendium of all that he has gone through. His tell-all book has even managed to keep him from his favourite game of golf. And to unwind, instead of heading to the greens, it is now music and films for him. Mulayam’s
socialism Mulayam Singh Yadav is doing his best to undo the harm done to his party image by Raj Babbar. While disassociating himself with the party, Babbar had described Yadav and Amar Singh as corporate socialists. On the birth anniversary of Ram Manohar Lohia on March 23, the UP Chief Minister laid the foundation stone of the Jai Prakash Narain Awadh International Kendra in Lohia Park in Lucknow. To add to his Socialist image, he invited George Fernandes as the chief guest. Viplove’s
strategy Himachal Pradesh PCC chief Viplove Thakur, who was eventually given the Rajya Sabha nomination from Himachal Pradesh, downplayed her candidature during the days the high command was weighing factors in favour of various candidates. Even in the last few days, when it was getting clear that she would be the chosen one, Ms Thakur kept saying that PCC chiefs were not preferred for the Rajya Sabha as the high command wanted them to work in states. For Ms Thakur, it was also the case of being a candidate at the right time. Being a woman from the Kangra region helped her cause.
***** Contributed by S.
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From the pages of Nehru and the snake The Superintendent of the Dehra Dun Jail has made a statement to the Associated Press as regards the discovery of a living snake in Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s cell. The Superintendent’s version of the deplorable incident corroborates in all material particulars the report already published in “The Tribune”. The Superintendent, however, appears to be anxious to minimise the gravity of the peril from which the Pandit had a providential escape. It was only “a small reptile, about 20 inches long,” says the Superintendent. The relevance of the length of the reptile is not quite clear, though the fact that the Superintendent gives the measurement in inches, and not in millimetres, is somewhat amusing. The Superintendent adds that a post mortem examination of the snake showed that “it did not possess the usual signs of a poisonous variety.” Does the Superintendent mean to convey that deadly snakes could not get admission to Pandit Nehru’s cell?
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If a man slips from the path of yoga, then he is born in a prosperous family and starts again his spiritual practice for the realisation of God. — Ramakrishna We pray to God when we are in trouble. How many of us pause to remember him in times of joy? — Sanatana Dharma Hereafter, caste and power do not count; for, every soul appears there in its true colours. — Guru Nanak The wise man gets most from other wise men. His mind is open and ever sensitive to words of truth. Like a sponge, he absorbs the knowledge. — The Buddha
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