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Indian
Fallen Service Ayurveda in the dock VATwagon |
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Beyond the rhetoric
Bano Bazaar Chaat
Fiscal management in Haryana The GDP cult gives way to “growth with equity” Delhi Durbar
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Indian Fallen
Service One venomous comment about India is that the biggest export from this country is that of illegal immigrants. A little exaggerated perhaps, but the conclusion is not entirely wrong. We have “earned” the reputation. You can find Indians in the most demeaning positions in all parts of the world without necessary documents. A fair idea of why such human trafficking goes on full steam can be had from the fact that now it has been found that even an officer belonging to the venerable Indian Foreign Service was engaged in it. We have heard so many tales of corruption in high places that our capacity to feel outraged has considerably diminished, but this incident is too shocking for words. If even a Special Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs is to be engaged in such nefarious activities, what is left sacred? There is, of course, a Punjab connection to the racket, because the illegal immigrants were being sent in the garb of Punjabi cultural troupes. One would like to believe for the sake of one’s sanity that it is just a one-off case but it would be no surprise if it is found that many other equally high-ranking officials are engaged in similar rackets. After all, notorious travel agents have been having a free run all this while. That could not have been possible if they were not in cahoots with senior officials who could ensure immunity. It is thanks to such unscrupulous persons that almost every visa application by an Indian is seen with suspicion. It is thanks to them that even genuine travellers are put to a lot of inconvenience. The most unfortunate consequence is that many illegal immigrants seek political asylum falsely by painting the country of their birth in a bad light. The fate of the case against the IFS officer will be keenly watched. Any laxity in taking the culprit to task firmly and quickly will only strengthen the impression that instead of there being just a few black sheep in high positions, the entire herd is beyond redemption. |
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Ayurveda in the dock At last, the government has realised the necessity for setting standards for ayurvedic preparations, used by millions without knowing much about their contents, quality, side-effects, expiry period, etc. For the first time, the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia Committee in the Department of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Unani, Sidha and Homoeopathy) of the Union Ministry of Health is going to standardise 100 commonly used and highest selling ayurvedic formulations. The idea is to associate one laboratory with every major drug manufacturing company for conducting tests for the safety and efficacy of a medicine. Now ayurvedic drug manufacturers will have to observe the norms fixed for the purpose. More medicines will be taken up for standardisation in the course of time to bring an otherwise highly admired system to scientific scrutiny. The step should have been taken much earlier, soon after India won Independence. But we have the habit of ignoring such requirements till it becomes unavoidable. The government has woken up to the need for standardisation only after the dangerous toxic effects of the heavy metals used in many ayurvedic drugs have been highlighted through a Harvard study, as carried in an issue of the Journal of American Medical Association. For a long time the ayurvedic system of medicine has been abused by both its practitioners and drug manufacturers. Most ayurvedacharyas (doctors) do not believe in giving a prescription to their patients, who have no idea of what they are consuming. The manufactures hide more than what they mention on the label or the wrap of a medicine. Surprisingly, there has been no decline in the people’s faith in the system even if they have been suffering because of the absence of transparency and quality control. The government too is to blame for allowing the situation to come to such a pass. The time has come to stop it from playing with the lives of unwary patients. Quality control is a must, no doubt. But there is also need for promoting transparency at every level. |
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VATwagon THE VAT story has always illustrated that politics and economics don’t mix very well. Thankfully, various institutional mechanisms are functional enough to ensure that good economics eventually prevails over politics. The five BJP-run states of Chhatisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have announced their intention to implement VAT from this fiscal, after a year-long drama of the Opposition. Only Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh are still holding out. While Tamil Nadu may be waiting for its Assembly elections to be over, traders’ protests notwithstanding, one hopes that statements like “UP will never implement VAT,” courtesy Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, are consigned to the dustbin of rhetoric. The Central Sales Tax phase-out issue, around which the BJP found it convenient to peg its opposition, is still far from resolved. The CST phase-out was supposed to start from this fiscal, with a reduction to 2 per cent from the existing 4 per cent, with a total phase-out next year. The Empowered Committee on VAT is seeking full Central compensation for CST losses. The CST collections this fiscal are expected to be around Rs 18,000 crore and reduction to 2 per cent means a loss of Rs 9000 crore. But economists can take heart from the fact that while the Centre had budgeted about Rs 5000 crore for VAT compensation to states last fiscal, the states have incurred a loss of only around Rs 3000 crore. In deciding rates and exemption lists, all parties should remember that VAT is not just about revenue, but about more efficient allocation of resources in the economic chain of value-addition, distribution and consumption. The earlier system was economically inefficient, and enabled easy tax evasion. For manufacturers, traders and consumers to benefit, politics has to be kept at a minimum, or creeping distortions will obviate gains. And there are more tussles ahead. VAT, after all, is only a point in the roadmap towards a comprehensive goods and services tax. |
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Those who never retract their opinions, love themselves more than they love truth.
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Beyond the rhetoric
Notwithstanding the influence which the Left wields in public life and the academia, it is worth noting that it has always been a marginal force at the national level. Not only that, its influence is perceptibly on the wane. Percentage-wise, the two communist parties together have never crossed the figure 10 in all the general elections. It is obvious, therefore, that the Left is trying to exert pressure on national politics far in excess of its actual strength. Consider the percentages which the CPI and the CPM have been securing since the 1952 parliamentary poll. Starting with 3.3 in that year, the percentage of the undivided CPI shot up to 8.9 in 1957 and then took a further jump to 9.9 five years later. Significantly, that is the highest the comrades have ever secured. It is a peak the two communist parties haven’t climbed again. The year, 1962, represents, therefore, the high watermark of their achievement. In the four decades since then, it has been all downhill for the commissars. One reason for the decline was the split in the communist ranks in 1964, as a result of which the 9.9 per cent, which the undivided party secured in 1962, was neatly divided into 5.1 per cent for the CPI and 4.4 for the CPM in 1967. Evidently, up to that year, the CPI was still the Big Brother, being marginally ahead of the CPM. But it was a position which the CPI would relinquish in 1971, when it secured 4.7 per cent and the CPM five. In the post-Emergency 1977 elections, the CPM’s percentage dropped to 4.3 and the CPI’s to 2.8 while in 1980, the CPM’s share rose to 6.1 and the CPI’s slipped to 2.6, making up a total of 8.7 per cent. The two would maintain this total of eight and a little more for a decade and a half till 1996. Their total was 8.4 in 1984, 9.2 in 1989, 8.8 in 1991 and 8.1 in 1996. Then, their forward march hit a road bump as the combined percentages slumped to 6.9 in 1998, 6.8 in 1999 and 6.8 again in 2004. That is where the Left stands at the moment, very much a minor player in national politics although a casual observer wouldn’t believe this if he saw the amount of space which the CPI and the CPM occupy in newspapers and the way their leaders dominate the TV news channels. There are, of course, two reasons for the Left’s present clout. One is the Congress’s dependence on it at the Centre and the other is the influence of the communist parties, mainly the CPM, in their bases in West Bengal and Kerala. But in these two states also, the percentages carry an interesting tale. In West Bengal, the CPM’s percentage has always been lower than that of the Congress. In 1991, the Congress won 36.6 per cent against the CPM’s 35.2. In 1996, the Congress’s percentage rose to 40.09 against the CPM’s 36.7. Significantly, even after the Congress broke up with the emergence of the Trinamool Congress, their total vote still remained ahead of the CPM’s. For instance, in 1998, the Congress’s 15 per cent and the Trinamool’s 24.3 added up to 39.3 when the CPM’s was 35.3. Why, then, does the Left win in West Bengal all the time? The reason is that the vote of the combined Left parties fighting under the banner of the Left Front is always more than that of the Congress and the Trinamool together. In 2001, the Left Front’s percentage was 48.9 against the Congress-Trinamool’s 38.9 while the CPM’s was 36.5. The story in Kerala is different. Here, the Left alliance and the Congress-led front alternate in almost every election in winning. In 1996, the percentage of the United Democratic Front under the Congress was 43.9 while that of the Left Democratic Front was 46.7. Five years later, the UDF went ahead to secure 49.3 per cent while the LDF dropped to 43.7. The point, therefore, is that not only is the Left’s influence limited at the national level, even in the states which are regarded as its bastion, the hold of the communists is not as secure as is presumed. Given this less than substantial nature of their clout, it is worth pondering whether their present policies will help or hinder them. There are two issues on which the commissars are making their presence felt — the economic and foreign policies. On the economy, the Left is facing a situation of high growth which the country has never experienced before. Yet, their tactics have remained the same as in the periods of low development (the so-called Hindu rate of growth) and high destitution — 51 per cent below the poverty line in 1977-78 and 36 per cent in 1993 compared to 26 per cent at present. Even more significant than the decline of the figures of poverty is the mood of buoyancy in the economy, which conveys a sense of hope to the unemployed that the conditions are likely to improve. It is this mood which the Left appears to have missed, or chosen to ignore, with the result that their rhetoric continues to be as gloomy as in the sixties and the seventies. The result is that the communists are seen as curmudgeons who are alienating the 300
million-strong middle class, many of whom were once their supporters. Arguably, the Left’s emphasis on the problems of deprivation might have made an impact if its image in the states where the communists have been in power had been bright enough. But as their performance in West Bengal and Kerala has shown, they are regarded as no better or no worse than their opponents. It has to be remembered that their earlier gains were based on the perception that the communists were a better breed of politicians and that their ideology represented a new hope for the poor. But the years in power have eroded that image. As in the economy, in foreign policy, too, the Indian communists are following a path they trod decades ago. Their opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal is obviously based on a visceral anti-Americanism which not only harks back to the Cold War but even fails to take into account the post-Cold War scenario. For instance, although nominally the US is the sole super power of today, it is weaker than is normally believed. Not only is its economy burdened with high deficit and lack of technological innovation, as the surrender of its once-famous automobile industry to the Japanese shows, the Americans have proved to be incapable of defeating even a band of insurgents in Iraq. It is fatuous, therefore, to be scared of the grizzly bear’s hug, as the nuclear deal has been described by its detractors. There is another matter which the Left seems to have ignored. It is that anti-American sentiments are not as widely prevalent as it presumes. They may exist at the moment among a section of Muslims because of Washington’s Iraq policy, but the vast majority is not bothered. In fact, they will be pleased that the US is doing away with the earlier parity between India and Pakistan. By pursuing a line, therefore, which seeks to fit the past into the present — Iran in lieu of Vietnam, for instance — the Left is courting the danger of further reducing its already limited influence in the
country.
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Bano Bazaar Chaat
The subject in the message of my mailbox was “Bano Bazaar Chaat”. The sender was some Tauheed. What could it be? I couldnot recall the name Tauheed. Was it some advertisement or some new “chat” group misspelled “chaat”. Curiously, I opened it. It was a fond little note from a pretty middle-aged lady I had encountered at the Bano Bazaar Chaat shop some time ago in Lahore. Now, Bano Bazaar is the name of a shopping market meant for women in Lahore’s famous Anarkali. Name the thing a woman may need and it can be found in this bazaar. It has rows and rows of charming shops across a maze of lanes and one can never tire of seeing the interesting wares sold here. There are refreshments available for women who may shop themselves tired. Most famous is a little chaat shop in the heart of the bazaar selling plates of delicious chaat. In a delegation of women poets on their way to recite their poems at a mushaira in Gujranwala, we too partook of the delicacy. This pretty woman across started chatting. Learning that we were a bunch of bards from India, she was very pleased. “I love literature and wanted to write but that was not to be. Instead, I worked as an accounts officer. My one wish is to see Amrita Pritam,” she gushed. She did not know that the famed poetess had passed away the previous year. We talked a little and then parted ways with a “Khuda-Hafiz”. Half an hour later, she traced us at a curio shop and insisted that we came to her place for dinner. We declined because we already had a dinner appointment. However, e-mail addresses were exchanged. Much later, there was this e-mail with a reminder of the Bano Bazaar Chaat rendezvous. First, she wanted to know where she would be able to get an Amrita Pritam book in Shahmukhi. Then she revealed that she remained single and took care of her parents. But now with both of them gone, especially her mother, she was depressed. The story seemed familiar and I told her that I went through the same when I lost my mother some years ago but overcame it by writing about her. Why didn’t Miniya, for now we were on a nickname basis, try the same. Some days later she sent me a poignant poem written in memory of her Ammi: ‘Sham dhale paon se poochhti hoon din ki thakan, Aur soone ghar mein aati hai ammi ki awaz, Aa gayi bitiya…”. So the Bano Bazaar Chaat has the power not only to forge crossborder friendships but also inspire cathartic poetry.
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Fiscal management in Haryana The Congress government in Haryana has, for the second time, produced a ‘soft budget’, with its provisions for the fiscal year 2006-2007. Fiscal prudential norms have been redefined in favour of profligate public expenditure. The budget speech did not mention what economic growth rate is being aimed at, but the situation can be retrieved and a growth of 10 per cent per annum aimed at during the next couple of years. The runaway annual growth of slightly over 9 per cent in the tertiary sector and a modest 8 per cent growth in the GSDP, we must remember, are accompanied with no growth in employment. Indeed, it is a case of jobless growth. This is borne out by three facts. First, within the tertiary sector, it is the residual “others” segment that has grown exponentially. This segment is the most exploited in terms of wages and other work related remunerations, be it rural or urban. Secondly, the burden of salary wages as a ratio of GSDP has come down sharply in the past few years. Thirdly, five districts out of twenty, that is a quarter of the state in terms of administration, have been identified for implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act programmes. The value adding industrial sector activities unfortunately have been sluggish and appear to be either stuck at a 26-28 per cent barrier in terms of share in GSDP. The visualised future growth path has put all manufacturing industrial activity eggs into the basket of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). This is fraught with high-risk as the state stands to loose all leverage for a sustainable development framework. Regional disparities will also widen. Hasn’t Haryana learnt any lessons from the Gurgaon and Gohana incidents? Indeed, knowledge should be the engine of growth in contemporary times. But we cannot drive this engine if the vital Ctrl+Alt+Del buttons are permanently kept depressed. Many of these critical keys have been already identified in the economic survey that accompanied the budget speech. Agriculture will remain the mainstay in the state for employment although her share in the GSDP is fast declining. Two in every three farmers in the state belong to the marginal and small category. The sad part is they cultivate one in every five hectare of the cultivable land. The level of indebtedness and therefore vulnerability of this majority should find serious engagement in the budget. Market operators across the board exploit them. The ploy of WTO compatibility is used to harm farmers. Haryana is the most exposed. The Seed Bill, Integrated Food Law, Model Agriculture Market Reform Act, Disaster Management Act, different types of intellectual property rights statutes and the National Biodiversity Act all have immediate deleterious effects on the livelihood options of the farmers. A welfare state must protect this defenceless segment. The actual expenditure on agriculture and allied activities during the Ninth plan period amounted to a mere Rs.295 for every hectare of cultivated land. Notably, the approved outlay for the agriculture and allied sector in the Tenth plan period on the per hectare basis works out to about Rs.1490 in comparison to Rs. 1906 during the preceding plan period. These numbers immediately demonstrate how inadequate budgetary support, either plan or non-plan, fail to address the WTO threat. Lack of funds is neither a valid justification nor a ruse to invite FDI or private capital infusion. There is an unabashed spiraling of land prices across the state. The 2006-07 budget takes a few bold initiatives like registration of property dealers and providing more weight to the DC’s rates for land and wage labour. The moot point here is to explore what rates are factored into the cultivation costs. Should the farmers get the raw deal of lower imputed value, determined historically? Diversification is the mantra for the agriculture sector. The budget could be bolder in extending some innovative support to agriculture. We must remember here two axiomatic truths. That agriculture is a state subject and that after the Hong Kong WTO ministerial, de minimis support, both in the product specific and non-product specific categories, are outside the reduction commitment purview. The FM has to make the first move. Agriculture requires the state finance minister’s initiative towards rewarding farm practices that will influence and sustain environmental balance. A reading of the National Biodiversity Act 2005 and the diversification attempts do clearly indicate urgency in this respect. It is not difficult to design and implement conservation programmes in a participatory mode with the farmers’ community, now that about ten departments have been decentralised to the panchayati raj institutions. However, the “centralised decentralisation” approach is certainly bound to fail. The marginal propensity to consume in a high-income growth state like Haryana is expected to be high. While the rural households spend over 55 per cent of their income on food items, the VAT led growth in revenue receipts does indicate that high income-elasticity can be fruitfully utilised by the public exchequer. This same principle is forcefully applicable in the matters of excise taxes as well. A simple calculation shows that with a little reengineering with the duty structure, revenue receipts equivalents to Rs. 2000 crores instead of Rs 1200 could be generated during the 2006-07 fiscal. This will be about four-fifth higher than the estimated grants-in-aid from the centre. And the budget deficit will become history. Indeed, the trade-off is between the autonomy of the state and conditionality imposed by the centre. Haryana can set a new benchmark in fiscal management. The opportunity is here and now. —
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The GDP cult gives way to “growth with equity” For perhaps half a century, the central preoccupation of economic policy has been to promote growth. Until 1980, the reasons for this were evident: Expanding national output boosted everybody’s living standards. Yet the cult of gross domestic product is now open to question. Because of rising inequality, growth is a less reliable provider of higher living standards. And a new area of research, blending psychology and economics, challenges the assumed connection between income and happiness. Despite headlong growth in rich countries since 1950, there has been no rise in the share of people who describe themselves as “happy’’ in opinion surveys. So what, you might say; how can people accurately report on such a fickle and subjective mood? Well, self-reported happiness can be cross-checked by asking friends and colleagues how happy someone is, and neuroscientists have figured out how to measure the experience of good feelings in the left front of the brain. People who say they are happy do turn out to be objectively happy. The stature of this new science was recognized four years ago when one of its founders, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, received a Nobel Prize in economics. The evidence from this new science is unsettling for advocates of growth. It shows that as nations escape poverty they benefit greatly; progressing from African-style penury to the condition of South Korea or Portugal entails huge jumps in happiness. But once nations pass the $10,000-per-person mark, roughly a third of today’s level in this country, the happiness payoff ceases. An impressive range of thinkers, from Benjamin Friedman, a former chairman of Harvard University’s economics department, to British economist Richard Layard, has accepted this critique of growth. We would not go as far as they do. There are many reasons to care about growth. The first comes from Friedman: It’s that as Americans get richer relative to their past, forward momentum makes them optimistic and tolerant: They expect life to get better, so they act more generously toward racial minorities, immigrants and the poor. Perhaps if France were growing more robustly, it would not have experienced the riots and demonstrations of the past few months. The other argument for growth is a particularly American one: To exercise global leadership, the United States needs financial clout. A loss of economic pre-eminence would be crippling—both for American statecraft and for the enlightened causes that it defends. The world relies on the United States to secure the world’s sea lanes, lead the push for trade liberalization, fight international diseases, contain terrorism and stabilize failed states. The rise of China, with its vast population and illiberal values, underscores the importance of U.S. vitality. In sum, the case for economic growth remains convincing, but policymakers need to balance its pursuit with a concern for equity. Friedman’s argument—that growth can cause a society to feel more optimistic—depends on the sharing of its benefits. Equally, our sense that higher incomes expand the range of human experience, even if they don’t expand the sum of happiness, carries weight only if the boost to incomes is broadly shared. The policy challenge, therefore, is to promote growth while also promoting equity. By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar As the senior most officer on the IAS civil list, Reva Nayyar, secretary, Department of Women and Child Development, is in line for the post of Cabinet Secretary, which falls vacant in June. If appointed, the Haryana cadre officer will become the first woman to be elevated to this coveted post. Other front runners for the post are World Bank executive Dhanendra Kumar, Home Secretary V.K. Duggal and Finance Secretary Adarsh Kishore. Also in the race are National Highways Authority of India Chairman Santosh Nautiyal, Health Secretary P.K. Hota and Department of Personnel and Training Secretary Pratush Sinha. Lobbying for the top job has begun in right earnest and the men in the civil service are not exactly happy at being overtaken by a woman. However, service tradition requires that the senior most officer be considered for the job.
In search of a venue There appears to be a jinx on the Janata Dal (U) plans for its plenary session. It had initially decided to hold the session in Rajgir in Nalanda on March 25 and 26 but had to postpone it as the entire state machinery was busy with President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s impending visit. Nalanda was the party’s first choice as Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar represents this constituency. It then decided to hold the session in Patna on March 31 but its plans coincided with the week-long camp of Swami Ramdev. The party was hard put to accommodate its delegates as all the hotels and guest houses were all sold out, thanks to the Yoga guru’s huge following. It has now rescheduled the session in Patna on April 11 and 12. Party managers are, however, hoping that nothing unforeseen happens this time round to upset their plans.
Aiming for ministership Having finally made it to the Rajya Sabha, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi apparently has his eyes on a ministerial berth for which he has already started wooing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. As evidence of this, party circles point to how he got Dr. Singh to release his book at the PM’s official residence last week. While several senior ministers, including P. Chidambaram, were among those present, Congress president Sonia Gandhi was conspicuous by her absence. This has prompted his detractors in the party to remark that Mr. Singhvi had forgotten the party chief now that he has been elected to the Upper House. They also recall that his wife’s music cassette was released by Mrs. Gandhi at her residence last year. But then that was before his election.
Government in exile Having hammered the UPA government on the office of profit issue, the BJP had some explaining to do when the NDA government in Jharkhand rushed through a Bill, amid unruly scenes, to ensure that its legislators were not disqualified under this same clause. Subsequently, virtually all members of the ruling coalition, headed by the chief minister, left the state on a collective pilgrimage to Rajasthan in an apparent effort to prevent independent MLAs from slipping away — the NDA enjoys a wafer-thin majority in the House. The Congress duly hit back at the manner in which the Jharkhand Government had abdicated its responsibilities, closed its offices and moved en masse to another state. Parliamentary affairs minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi was quick off the mark, remarking that this was first case of a “government-in-exile” in Independent India. —Contributed by Tripti Nath, Prashant Sood and Anita Katyal |
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From the pages of No sign of Bhakra project
The prosperity of the Punjab is mainly due to its wonderful system of canals. But there are some districts in the eastern part of this province which have been totally neglected so far. The land in these districts is barren; there are no means by which it can be irrigated. Famine conditions are perpetually in existence there. Many years ago a scheme, called the Bhakra Dam project, was devised for the purpose of supplying water for irrigation of the land in those districts. But that scheme has been all this time lying in a state of suspended animation. Whenever the question of undertaking this project was raised in the Punjab Council, the Government, while profuse in its sympathies for the poor agriculturists, pleaded its helplessness to pursue it on account of certain difficulties. |
As it is unlawful for one person to lay hold of another’s substance wrongfully, so is it also unjust to sell thing of an inferior quality. — Islam Acquiring transcendental knowledge is superior to any material sacrifice such as giving charity. Purification of mind and intellect eventually leads to the dawn of transcendental knowledge and self-realisation, which is the sole purpose of any spiritual practice. —
Bhagavadgita It is she who
creates and preserves the world, who always protects her children and who grants whatever they desire: dharma, artha, kama, moksha. — Ramakrishna |
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