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Courting trouble Modernisation in the air |
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Brand values
Vision for common future
The way to go
Document Revive Kashmir’s silk industry The how and why of consciousness
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Courting trouble THE Supreme Court’s directive to the Centre and the states to fill all vacancies of judges in the high courts and the subordinate courts has not come a day too soon. It has asked the governments to adhere strictly to the annual appointment schedule so that no vacancies are kept pending. Today, there are nearly 100 vacancies in the high courts and over 12,000 in the subordinate courts. Consequently, courts are unable to clear the huge backlog of cases, leave alone handle new ones. Steps like computerisation and setting up of fast track courts have been initiated to expedite the delivery of justice. However, reducing vacancies of judges continues to be a big problem. There is an elaborate procedure for the appointment of judges. But both the judiciary and the executive do not follow the time schedule. For instance, the rule that the proposal should be initiated before six months of the occurrence of the vacancy is rarely followed. Even when the Chief Justice of India expedites the consultative mechanism in the Collegium and sends his recommendation to the President, the Centre does not clear the appointment. Consider how much time the Centre took in clearing 17 vacancies in the Madras High Court recently. Chief Justice of India Justice Y.K. Sabharwal is in favour of a mechanism that would facilitate the swearing in of a judge within two months of the recommendation made by the High Court Chief Justice. This would be possible only if there is effective coordination between the judiciary and the executive. While addressing the conference of chief justices of high courts and chief ministers recently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised to work closely with Justice Sabharwal and his Collegium for speedily filling vacancies. He should keep his word. The chief ministers too should promptly process the proposals when they receive them from the chief justices of their respective high courts. The states have now been told to hold recruitment examinations for judicial officers on the lines of the pre-medical test (PMT) so that the vacancies in the lower courts are filled. Unless all the courts have adequate number of judges, speedy dispensation of justice will remain a chimera.
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Modernisation in the air FOR once, the government has displayed refreshing alacrity and has gone ahead with signing the operation, maintenance and development agreements (OMDA) for modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports with the two successful bidders. If that kind of quick action is unexpected, the reaction of the employees and the Left parties has been strictly along expected lines. They have raised their standard objections and more turbulence is but natural in the days to come. Whether it is only an inconvenience or it prevents the modernisation flight to take off will depend on the government’s strength and inclination to stand up to arm-twisting. It is exactly this kind of ifs and buts which have held up the modernisation of airports for so long. Things have come to such a pass that let alone being international airports, many are not even fit enough to be called airports at all. What the Left parties and the Airports Authority of India employees must realise is that the go-ahead to set things right is not the government’s unilateral decision but the fulfilment of the desire expressed by millions of harried air travellers, which they will be opposing only at their own peril. One does not have to be a votary of privatisation to concede that lack of infrastructure has been the Achilles’ heel for the country. In some respects, this country tends to be akin to banana republics. Airports in disgraceful shape cry out for modernisation. It cannot be brought about through government resources alone. If China can take the help of private enterprise, why cannot the same thing be done in India? Somehow, air travel has been saddled with an elitist image. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In a country of the size of India, air travel is a necessity. In fact, airfares have been ruling high mainly because there is not sufficient infrastructure. If just the cost of tens of planes hovering over airports because there is a long waiting list for landing is calculated, the money required for modernisation looks like peanuts. We just cannot have a modern India on the strength of primitive road, train and air networks. |
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Brand values Brand ambassadors are not a brand new phenomenon. They have been around — for promotion of products, services and causes — even before they were branded as such. UN organisations have had them for a long time, except that UNICEF, for example, would designate such an entity as a Goodwill Ambassador. But at a time when the label and cosmetics of a package count for more than what it contains, brand values have come to prevail over the intrinsic worth of a product. It was inevitable that the brand culture would spread beyond conventional commerce. So, it comes as no surprise that Himachal Pradesh, too, should have been bitten by the bug and appointed a brand ambassador to promote tourism in the state. What does come as a surprise is its choice of personality: none other than His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Henceforth, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader would grace posters of Himachal Tourism across the country and in foreign lands. Doubtless, the Dalai Lama is the best-known face of Himachal Pradesh and tourists come from all over the world to bask in the happiness he radiates. Rarely has an individual become a tourist attraction as the Dalai Lama is. However, Himachal Pradesh is not the first to pitch for a ‘spiritual’ brand. It is Bihar that showed the way, when Chief Minister Nitish Kumar decided to appoint yoga guru Ramdev as the state’s brand ambassador. Mr Kumar chose him for “awakening the people of Bihar” and his effort to make them “fearless individuals”. Now, if this trend catches on, Amitabh Bachchan, who was the first state brand ambassador — of Uttar Pradesh — and the other usual suspects for such assignments may well be overtaken by gurus and godmen and godwomen. With the states adopting this practice, political parties may also decide to follow suit.
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Common sense is the best distributed commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it. — Rene Descartes
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Vision for common future
Diehard members of the Pakistani establishment have been lamenting for the past year over what they say is India’s “insincerity” in resolving the Kashmir issue and in not responding to General Pervez Musharraf’s oft-repeated proposals for “demilitarisation”, “self-governance” and “joint management” in Jammu and Kashmir. Being a cautious and thoughtful person, not given to knee-jerk reactions, Dr Manmohan Singh was evidently waiting for an appropriate occasion to outline his vision of the future of India-Pakistan relations. In the meantime, a wide-ranging dialogue had been initiated with all sections of public opinion in J&K. One “roundtable” has been held and another such meeting is scheduled to be held in Srinagar in May when, hopefully, the increasingly marginalised members of the separatist Hurriyat Conference, who do little except faithfully endorse everything that General Musharraf says, will participate. With the November 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control holding and with a series of new initiatives like the re-establishment of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service and the Khokhrapar-Munnabao rail service being welcomed internationally, Dr. Manmohan Singh evidently saw the inauguration of the Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus service as an ideal occasion to spell out his vision for the future. While the bus service was inaugurated in India with great fanfare, the Pakistan side chose to treat the event in a very low key manner, without the customary welcome that one would have expected from at least Pakistani Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi. I have personally been witness since 1982 to Sikh pilgrims headed for Nankana Sahib being received by not only the Punjab Chief Minister, but also by Pakistan’s President and Prime Minister, along with “Khalistan” activists from abroad like Ganga Singh Dhillon, with gurudwaras in Lahore and Nankana Sahib full of posters and banners demanding creation of “Khalistan”. It is no secret that the family of Pakistan Muslim League President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain and his cousin Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi has for long been responsible for inciting Sikh pilgrims visiting their shrines in Pakistan. Why was the inauguration of the Amritsar-Nankana Sahib bus service virtually boycotted by high Pakistani functionaries? With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurating the bus service amidst tremendous enthusiasm in Punjab, it is evident that New Delhi is confident that Punjab, like the rest of India, is at the heart of the national endeavour for accelerated economic growth and that Pakistan cannot significantly exploit any residual separatist sentiments in the state. Pakistan evidently knows this reality, but still continues to harbour activists of terrorist groups like the Babbar Khalsa. In his address in Amritsar, Dr Manmohan Singh reflected India’s confidence in the strength of its pluralistic society when he spoke of encouraging “people-to-people contacts” and urged that through such contacts we should “explore a vision for a cooperative common future for our two nations”. The Prime Minister obviously envisages a peace process that is people-driven. But is such a process possible when our security establishment advocates rigid visa and police reporting procedures for ordinary Pakistanis visiting India, be they artistes, businessmen, academics or tourists? Dr Manmohan Singh will first have to persuade his security establishment and drastically change the existing visa and police reporting procedures, perhaps unilaterally, if we are to win the goodwill and understanding of ordinary Pakistanis visiting India. This, is easier said than done. Pakistan has reacted cautiously to the references made to the issue of J&K in Dr Manmohan Singh’s carefully crafted address in Amritsar. While rejecting his assertion that it “is a mistake to link normalisation of other relations with finding a solution to Jammu and Kashmir”, Pakistan has made generally positive noises about other proposals he made. While General Musharraf has spoken tirelessly of “self-governance” in Jammu and Kashmir, he has remained vague on what constitutes “self-governance” and whether “self-governance” will be equally applicable to both Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas. Dr Manmohan Singh has, however, come forward with the call that “both sides should begin a dialogue with the people in their areas of control to improve the quality of governance so as to give people on both sides a greater chance in leading a life of dignity and self-respect”. Thus, while General Musharraf has spoken vaguely of “self-governance,” Dr Manmohan Singh has spoken of “good governance,” of which “self-governance” is just one aspect. This thinking will hopefully be reflected in the next roundtable conference in Srinagar. General Musharraf will, perhaps, in the meantime, ponder over how he can move towards “good governance” in POK and the Northern Areas. Dr Manmohan Singh also responded in Amritsar to General Musharraf’s call for “joint management” of Jammu and Kashmir . He proclaimed: “I also envisage a situation where the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir can, with the active encouragement of the governments of India and Pakistan, work out cooperative, consultative mechanisms so as to maximise the gains of cooperation in solving problems of social and economic development of the region”. While General Musharraf’s proposal of “joint management” opens up touchy and irresolvable issues of sovereignty, the economist in Dr Manmohan Singh envisages a situation where borders and boundaries between India and Pakistan, including in Jammu and Kashmir, become as irrelevant as they are increasingly becoming elsewhere, in a world economic order facing the challenges of globalisation. But, given Pakistan’s inhibitions in even abiding by commitments it has made while signing the South Asian Free Trade Area agreement (SAFTA), will Islamabad show the necessary statesmanship to implement its commitment in Kathmandu to move towards a South Asian Customs Union and thereafter towards a South Asian Economic Union, where borders become increasingly porous and irrelevant? While there is scope for optimism now in moving ahead in the peace process with Pakistan, it would not be prudent for Dr Manmohan Singh to visit Islamabad without proper preparations that ensure a positive outcome for his visit. The Sir Creek issue seems to be moving towards resolution, with comprehensive surveys being carried out. The Siachen issue can be resolved if the agreement leaves no ambiguity about the existing ground positions and the precise areas to be demilitarised, along with foolproof procedures for verification. Given the fact that both General Musharraf and Dr Manmohan Singh appear to agree that there can be no change of the existing boundaries, it should be possible to find some common ground on issues pertaining to J&K, though one is still not clear what Pakistan’s end game is. In the meantime, one hopes that despite the large jihadi presence now in POK, General Musharraf will fulfil his commitment of January 6, 2004, not to allow any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used for
terrorism.
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The way to go AS he would sit on a bench after his walk, a squirrel would come out of the bushes, look around, climb up his walking stick, take the bread crumb from his hand and go back quickly. My wife’s grandfather, a special ordinary man of 90 years, had many friends and admirers among the morning walkers of the Rose Garden of Mohali. With a snowwhite beard and twinkling eyes, he was a Santa Claus of their own for the local kids. Two years ago his soulmate passed away. Soon after he developed pneumonia and had to be hospitalised. We were all standing by his bed. His three grand-daughters, all doctors, discussed the seriousness of his state in hushed tones while I looked deep in his eyes and quipped to the disbelieving trio “He will be fine in a few days.” He was a spiritual man, who saw One in everything and the one who could befriend a squirrel. Back home, he glanced at his wife’s portrait which he had adorned with two real earrings and a tikka after her death. “Maan Kaur has left me. She had come to live with me when I was 19. Its’ been 70 years.” Gradually he resumed his walk. Another year passed. One evening, his blood pressure dipped. Sitting in his bed he chortled about his failing eyes and ears,”The light stuff has been despatched; the heavy stuff I will take along.” “What life has revealed to you, Bapuji?” I asked him. “It is His will. In the short term, you sometimes see bad things happening to good people and evil people making merry; you cannot always understand the scheme of things. But He always pulled me by my arm whenever I swayed from the right path. I did not accumulate wealth, but my family has flourished.” He had been a trusted employee of the Maharaja of Patiala, then Mr Kairon, the CM and then one of the Governors of Punjab. He narrated with vivid detail, the strengths and the vices of the kings, the ministers, the advisors and how their generations had fared; I was trying to figure out a pattern and an hour passed. We both felt rejuvenated; his BP became normal without the tablets. Recently he had a dental checkup. The dentist advised him to have a new denture. “Let’s wait for two weeks, it may not be needed.” he said thoughtfully. Then I noticed him relaxing in the sun on a reclining chair, chin resting on chest and eyes closed. I told my wife he has made up his mind to go. Then one morning, he called my wife and said “I want to thank you; you were not required to do all that you have done for me. Early morning, I saw the light within, departing and merging with the light above. Now I am just a body.” The next morning he
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Document THE following is excerpted from the United Nations report ‘Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific, 2006’. A number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region are experiencing increasing inequality in tandem with high growth, and this is causing growing concern. Inequality emerges in a number of guises. The most obvious is income inequality. Perfect equality is probably unattainable. However, inequality becomes problem when differences in income across sections of society are deemed to be excessive (with the definition of “excessive” varying across countries and societies) or self-perpetuating. Also important are inequalities in the social sphere, for instance, unequal access to public services such as health and education, a problem compounded in many countries by gender, ethnic and cultural biases. Within countries, there is ample evidence of high rates of growth being accompanied by growing inequality. For example, inequality is increasing in the rapidly growing large economies of China and India, in the middle-income developing economies of the Republic of Korea and Thailand, in Viet Nam, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Georgia, as well as in the Philippines, Nepal and Sri Lanka. In some countries, such as in China, India and Thailand, the income gap has a significant urban-rural bias and these income differences have increased over the 1990s. Social inequalities, the most important being in access to health care and education, continue in many countries. Access depends on income, on rural or urban location and on gender. Although there have been some advances in extending primary education, the slow progress in reducing the gender divide in secondary education in South Asia remains a matter of great concern. At the current pace of progress, achieving the Millennium Development Goal of eliminating gender disparity in education by 2015 will prove a great challenge. Health inequalities are seen in the disproportionate numbers of poorer people who are affected by diseases and illnesses related to HIV infection and AIDS and smoking. Least developed countries in the region display only a quarter of the average income of all Asian and Pacific countries, despite the impressive growth of the region as a whole. No least developed country in the region has yet graduated from that status. Extending the fruits of the region’s development to the least developed countries is important for addressing the special needs of such countries, one of the targets of the eighth Millennium Development Goal. However, there are country examples of growth both with and without a negative effect on equality. Hence, growth and equality are not irreconcilable. The causes of the increase in inequality in some countries in the region include rapid population growth, trade and labour policies, the state of rural development and the lack of social protection mechanisms, in particular the inadequacy of public health and education services. FDI-led growth has widened the gap between skilled and unskilled labour in some countries, with the notable exception of FDI in the textile and apparel sub-sector. Rural areas have often lagged behind their urban counterparts in physical infrastructure and health and education opportunities and have received insufficient investment in agricultural research and extension services. The Asian financial crises of the 1990s had important longer-term negative consequences for equality in some of the countries affected. These include underemployment and higher school dropout rates at the primary and secondary levels. There can be little doubt that Governments need to adopt more robust measures to tackle inequality. Indeed, appropriate policy measures at both the country and regional levels could foster greater equality without sacrificing the benefits of growth. At the national level secondary schooling should be emphasized and should impart vocational skills that are relevant to the evolving globalized workplace. This would help to narrow gaps in knowledge and skills and reduce the income differences between skilled and less skilled workers. The rewards of secondary education are known to be large. It is particularly important to provide equal access to secondary schooling for girls. Adequate social safety nets are also necessary to provide coping mechanisms in the event of macroeconomic shocks. “Workfare” programmes, with sufficient credit and transfers, may be considered to enable the poor to return to employment. The health of the poor can benefit from the reduction or waiving of charges for health care and the provision of incentives to families for health check-ups for children. It is generally seen that the most effective way to ensure community health is by helping mothers and children directly. At the same time, tax systems should guard against excessive tax collection from the poor in the form of indirect taxes and high user charges for public services, in order to ensure that growth is maintained. At the regional level, true tariff- and quota free access for least developed countries to developed country markets will enable the poorest countries to share more equally in the benefits of globalization. While the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Hong Kong, China in December 2005, offered least developed countries greater openness in terms of market access and the European Union already permits unrestricted access, some of the most important tariff lines remain excluded in some major developed countries. Asian and Pacific countries can gain from greater sharing of information on best practices among themselves, as they often have similar issues and concerns. One of many relevant areas is the regulation and delivery of inequality-reducing social programmes, for example, pro-poor public-private partnerships in the delivery of public services.
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Revive Kashmir’s silk industry THE silk industry in Kashmir has a glorious heritage, which has eroded due to unchecked felling of mulberry trees during the past 16 years of militancy. The annual cocoon production has fallen from about 8 lakh kgs to only 2.5 lakh kgs last year. Efforts are now being made to revive the industry. Cocoon production is expected to touch the 3 lakh kgs mark, with a turnover of Rs 2.50 crore this year, with the introduction of incentives to the silkworm farms, scientific methods to increase the production, and better marketing. The rearing season of the silkworm egg begins in the Kashmir valley by mid-May with the heavy stocks of mulberry leaves coming in from farmers taking three-week’s time out from the paddy farming for cocoon production. A two-week-long mulberry plantation fortnight was inaugurated recently. Under the programme 6.7 lakh mulberry trees are being planted across Kashmir valley this year to boost the foliage, an important ingredient for cocoon rearing. The government plans to plant over 15 lakh plants under the Prime Minister’s package for the state. Better scientific and technical know-how needs to be utilised to boost cocoon production The plantation is being made at the 83 mulberry nurseries of the Department of Sericulture and the private land of farmers across the valley. At least 5270 families were associated with cocoon production in Kashmir valley against over 18000 such families in Jammu division. 29 silk reeling units were also working in Jammu and Kashmir, each providing employment to about 20 persons. At least 1.30 lakh man days were being generated in the plantation sector every year, while over four lakh man days were generated in the related silk weaving sector. Kashmir, like other States of Karnataka and West Bengal, has been known for the unique quality of silk production from its mulberry trees spread across the State, particularly in the rural areas in Kashmir. Against over 25000 metric tonnes annual demand of silk yarn at the national level, only 15,000 metric tonnes are produced in the country, according to officials here. Jammu and Kashmir, one of the few contributing States, produced 112 metric tonnes of silk yarn last year. That has been about one fourth of the production in the late 1980’s, according to official estimates. The import of cheap Chinese silk into the country over the past six years has also posed another threat to the growth of the indigenous silk industry in the country, having its impact in Jammu and Kashmir as well. The state government is pushing the programme in a big way. Inaugurating the Mulberry Plantation fortnight programme, the Minister for Agriculture and Cooperatives, Mr Abdul Aziz Zargar stressed the potential to revive the industry, and how it could provide employment opportunities to thousands, particularly women. He distributed cheques for Rs 10,000 each for 430 beneficiaries for constructing sheds, besides 813 rearing kits costing Rs 3750 each. Further, the central government, through the Central Silk Board, is funding a number of schemes for development of sericulture in the state. These schemes are covered under the Prime Minister’s package.
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The how and why of consciousness Consciousness has long been the third rail of biology: touch it and maybe you don’t die, but you are unlikely to get anywhere. Recently, however, the neurobiology of consciousness has become one of the hottest areas of research, along with genomics and stem cells. For centuries, philosophers pondered consciousness, although no one really expected them to come up with anything. Descartes’ renowned “I think, therefore I am,” for example, was modified by Ambrose Bierce thus — “I think I think, therefore I think I am,” to which Bierce added that this was about as close to truth as philosophy is likely to get! But now we have microelectrodes recording from individual nerve cells, computers modeling neural nets, functional MRIs and even newer 21st century techniques hot on the trail of how consciousness emerges from “mere’’ matter. Meanwhile, there is another side of bona fide consciousness research that has received all too little attention: Why consciousness exists in the first place. Evolutionary biologists find it useful to divide questions into two basic groups: essentially “how” and “why.” So even as the how of consciousness is being revealed, little progress has been made on why. “Why are we able to think about our thinking, instead of just plain thinking?” Isn’t it enough to feel without also feeling good — or bad —about the fact that we are feeling? Moreover, there are downsides to consciousness, such as the pain of reflecting on one’s inevitable death, or the paralysis of excessive self-consciousness, which makes us liable to trip over ourselves, whether literally — attempting to perform some physical act done best when in an athlete’s unreflective “zone” — or cognitively, because of the infamous, chattering “monkey mind” that disturbs our inner peace. Biologically, consciousness seems hard to justify, if only because it evidently requires a large number of nerve cells, the elaboration and maintenance of which is bound to be energetically expensive. What is the compensating payoff? One possibility — a biological “null hypothesis” — is that maybe consciousness hasn’t been an evolutionary development at all; maybe it is a non-adaptive byproduct of having large brains. A single molecule of water, for example, isn’t wet. Neither are two, or, presumably, a few thousand, or even 1 million. But enough of them result in wetness — not because wetness is adaptively favored over, say, dryness or bumpiness, but simply as an unavoidable physical consequence of piling up enough H(2)O molecules. Can consciousness be like that? Alternatively, maybe consciousness — an unfolding story that we tell ourselves, moment by moment, about what we are doing, feeling and thinking — really is adaptive, which is to say, it somehow benefited its possessors. As to why, my favorite theory is that consciousness evolved as a kind of Machiavellian intelligence, improving our ability to interpret how others are likely to perceive us. If, as sometimes suggested, character is what we do when no one is looking, maybe consciousness is an evolutionary gift, our anticipation of how we seem to others who are looking. Seeming too selfish, too cowardly, too uninformed, too ambitious, too sexually voracious and so forth would ill serve our ends. The more aware our ancestors were, according to this argument, the more able they were to modify others’ impressions of them, and hence, their own evolutionary success. If so, then genes “for” consciousness would have enjoyed an advantage over alternative genes “for” obtuseness. As for the ultimate “why” of consciousness? For now, no one knows. At least, not consciously. (Barash is professor of psychology at the University of Washington)
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From the pages of Pant: first flying premier
Mr Govind Ballabh Pant, Premier of the United Provinces, who arrived at Cawnpore by air, is said to be the First Prime Minister in India to adopt this mode of travel. In this Mr Pant can claim to have followed the example of a very distinguished person, namely, the late Mr Ramsay MacDonald who, when Prime Minister, used frequently to travel by air. An aeroplane affords a time-saving method of travel and there is no doubt that Mr Pant’s example will be followed by other Ministers in India. If they do that, they will not only save their own time but give a much-needed impetus to aviation in this country.
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One who avoids casting his eyes on any woman and considers her as sister or mother will not be devoured by death. — Kabir The law and the Lawgiver are one. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. — Mahatma Gandhi
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