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Ordeal by fire Oh deer |
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SC on daily wagers
From commission to council
Smiling out of life
Run, Condi, run! There is no alternative to big dams India’s stake in Baluchistan
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Ordeal by fire The inferno of the kind that claimed the lives of over 440 people in Mandi Dabwali in December, 1995, and killed 90 school children in Kumbakonam’s Lord Krishna Higher secondary School in July, 2004, revisited Meerut on Monday, resulting in the death of at least 50 persons. While an official enquiry has been ordered to look into the circumstances that led to the tragedy, preliminary reports are unambiguous that this was a calamity waiting to happen. Synthetic material was used to construct three halls for the Brand India trade fair at the Victoria grounds, which caught fire in no time and rather became a death trap. Since the halls were airconditioned, they had only single entry/exit gates. That was the main reason why many people could not escape when the fire broke out. It is not clear whether the fair had fire and security clearance. Either way, it was an invitation to tragedy. Apparently, no lessons had been learnt from the previous disasters. It is unfortunate that despite recurring tragedies, safety measures in the country tend to be scandalously lax. Nobody seems to be bothered about the risks to which the public is exposed thanks to the criminal neglect of the organisers. It should be compulsory for them to seek clearance from the firebrigade and other such agencies before they get the permission to hold an event where large crowds are expected. It should be mandatory to have an adequate number of fire tenders and ambulances at hand to take care of every eventuality. In a majority of such cases, fire breaks out because of shortcircuits. Yet, electricians tend to be extremely casual about fire hazards. There is need for keeping a close eye on the quality of wiring and connections. The standard procedure of just joining two wires without so much as putting an insulation tape on them is common. Unless we react with horror to the shoddy work done routinely by most technicians, this sword of death will be always there over our heads. Essentially, the district authorities are at fault who don’t think it is their duty to inspect the arrangements and enforce safety measures. They don’t mind if Brand India suffers and people die. |
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Oh deer Bollywood actor Salman Khan being sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment for killing a rare species of deer – chinkara – in 1998 does not come as a surprise. What is shocking is the unexpected and unwarranted response of sections of the film industry, and some others who ought to know better, defending Salman Khan and criticising the court judgment because the guilty is a “celebrity”. These sections appear to be more outraged at Salman being sentenced than his crime(s); their pointing to the accused in other cases, such as the Jessica Lall murder, getting away is self-serving. The fact that some other criminal was not brought to justice is not acceptable as a point of either law or common sense. All are equal before the law, be they celebrities or plebians, and it is best that Salman and his defenders face the facts. The actor killed a rare animal protected under the Wildlife Protection Act, which provides for a sentence up to seven years and a fine up to Rs 25,000. This is not the first or only case in which Salman is the accused. The same court in Jodhpur had on February 17 this year convicted and sentenced him to one year’s imprisonment for poaching black bucks on September 26, 1998, which he has appealed against. The present sentence is the second case, and there are two more cases against him that are yet to come to trial; one of these is for killing two black bucks and the other for being in possession on unlicensed arms. The law should take its course regardless of the social or economic status of the offenders. The film industry’s panic can be attributed to the fact that other Bollywood characters, namely Saif Ali Khan, Neelam, Tabu and Sonali Bendre are co-accused in one of these four cases, besides Fardeen Khan and Sanjay Dutt who are also facing charges. The industry is more concerned about the hundreds of crores of rupees that are staked on these actors in big budget productions. The one development more shocking than the film pack rallying to Salman’s rescue is that even lawyers are citing grounds to create sympathy for Salman Khan. |
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SC on daily wagers MONDAY’S Supreme Court judgement directing the state governments not to regularise daily wage earners even if they had continued in the same job for years without any break is significant for various reasons. The ruling by the five-member Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice Y.K. Sabharwal is bound to affect the lives of lakhs of daily wagers employed by the state governments. However, a significant feature of the ruling is the court’s disapproval of the arbitrary manner in which the state governments have been recruiting people as daily wagers and then, getting them regularised after some time. The Bench has now put an end to this practice of providing jobs through the backdoor. Instead, it wants the state governments to follow a proper method of selection and appointment of employees, without having to subvert the due constitutional scheme. Any appointment and subsequent regularisation in government service will have to be in conformity with the procedure as laid down in the law and not otherwise, it said. The ruling came in response to the Karnataka Government’s petition challenging a series of the state High Court’s orders directing it to regularise employees who had worked on daily wages for 10 years in various departments uninterruptedly. The apex court’s order cannot be interpreted as anti-labour. For, all it wants is regular recruitment to regular jobs and not conversion of irregular employment into regular employment, short-circuiting the normal method of selection and recruitment in an open and transparent manner. In a similar case in connection with Karnataka in November 2005, the apex court had asked the state governments to maintain proper records of services rendered by daily wagers, countersigned by officers. This would obviate litigation and pecuniary liability of the government, it said. Close on the heels of its ruling that a state government can retrench employees if it decides to close down any agency on grounds of financial losses or administrative restructuring, the latest ruling underlines its desire for a flexible labour law regime. Earlier, its refusal to bail out those found guilty of sleeping during duty hours, and abusing and assaulting their seniors suggests the court’s desire to enforce discipline and order in government offices. |
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Tragedy ought really to be a great kick at misery.
— D.H. Lawrence |
From commission to council Adonkey is a horse designed by a committee”, so goes the lament, often heard in the conference rooms of the United Nations, when one delegation or another finds its proposal totally deformed in the dynamics of negotiations. The United States went further and voted against the resolution on the new Human Rights Council, which it had championed, in the company of its client states, Marshall Islands and Palau, and its close ally, Israel. Venezuela, Belarus and Iran were dissatisfied for other reasons, but decided to abstain, rather than go along with the US. The rest of the membership overwhelmingly supported the brand new Human Rights Council, which was nothing but the old Human Rights Commission with minor modifications. The “credibility deficit” of the commission was suddenly discovered a few years ago, when, by a method of group endorsement on the basis of geographical rotation, Libya became the Chairman of the commission in Geneva. Questions were asked for the first time whether countries with a record of human rights violations could serve on the commission and even serve as its Chairman. For years, countries, which were accused of human rights violations by the commission were happily sitting in judgment over the others without being noticed. Libya’s chairmanship did not cause any great harm to the commission’s work, which went on predictable lines, but an idea of possible criteria for membership of the commission gained ground. The High-Level Panel of the UN Secretary-General, which examined this question as part of its reform proposals, was categorical in its assertion that “the proposal for membership criteria has little chance of changing these dynamics and indeed risk further politicising of the issue”. The panel’s prescription, on the other hand, was that the commission should be expanded to universal membership, with an Advisory Council of 15 independent experts. It also suggested upgradation of the commission into a council at a future date. But the Secretary- General, presumably at the instance of the United States, proposed a smaller Human Rights Council, with members elected by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly, on the pattern of the Security Council. He did not suggest criteria for election, but stressed that those elected should abide by the highest human rights standards. The proposal for a Human Rights Council became a red rag for the developing countries during the reform negotiations and it was hard even to begin a discussion. A similar situation had developed in 1993, when, after the Human Rights Conference in Vienna, a proposal to create a post of a High Commissioner for Human Rights came to the General Assembly. Finally, like in 1993, the developing countries decided to accept the concept, with the determination to be tough on the terms of the new body. The United States held other reforms and even the UN budget hostage to the creation of the council. In New Delhi, President Bush referred to the proposal for the Human Rights Council as a greater priority than the reform of the Security Council. India was among those who strongly opposed giving teeth to the new council while not objecting to tinkering with the composition of the commission. In its final form, the commission became the council with a smaller size (47 members instead of 53), but nothing more of substance was changed. The demand that the members of the council should be elected by a two-thirds majority, making it difficult for some countries to get elected, was rejected. So was the demand for setting up criteria for membership. But it was agreed that members of the council could be suspended by a two-thirds majority if a particular country was guilty of “gross and systematic violation” of human rights. This was found far from adequate for the US, whose objective was to prevent countries like “Nepal, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe”, not to speak of Cuba, Venezuela and Iran. While voting against the resolution, the US stated that “half reform” in the expectation of gradual evolution was not acceptable and that repressive states will continue to be represented on the council. It objected to continuing the practice of simple majority, linked to rotation and making it necessary for a two- thirds majority for a member to be suspended. In other words, none of the major objectives of the US was met in the negotiations. But it made sure that the minor gains of the negotiations were not lost and agreed to cooperate with the council. The real test, it said, would come in May, when elections would be held to the council. The US is not unaccustomed to the “salami approach” in reform, a few inches each time, as painlessly as possible. The good news from the UN, though, is that the “supreme power” is not so supreme in the General Assembly and that even the champions of human rights like Canada and the European Union were not prepared to stick to the US position. India, which stood accused for its Vienna vote, did not think it was necessary to move towards the US position on this issue. But the bad news is that the council, having acquired some autonomy, will be more intrusive in its consideration of human rights than the commission. India has nothing to lose, though the new rule that a member cannot be re-elected more than once consecutively will keep us out of the council on and off. After the futile efforts of Pakistan to censure India for its human rights record in Jammu and Kashmir, there has been no attack on India in the commission. The situation will not be very different in the new
council. The writer is a former Ambassador of India to the United Nations, Vienna.
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Smiling out of life
Death holds two horrors. One, of course, is that life comes to an end and thus, the “fear of the unknown” factor comes into play. Bravery and wisdom lie in coming to terms with this reality so as to die just one death. The second element is that the process of dying is also often painful. My mother was a lady of faith and firmly believed in life after death.
So, the end of one life did not mean the end of everything to her. Some 25 years back she died in the manner of a person falling asleep. Long back, I had made a promise to her that when I grew up and settled down I would purchase a car and take her on pilgrimage to
Badrinathji, one of our celebrated “dhams” located in the upper reaches of
Himalayas. The promise at that point of time was like a child telling his mother that he would purchase a Private jet one day to take her places. Though my mother never doubted my sincerity she felt that I was promising moon out of my innocent immaturity. My sentiment had its seeds in the religious zeal or perhaps a streak of adventure in my grandmother. Every year or so, she would leave for places like Badrinathji, Kedarnathji and Gangotri etc in the company of some like-minded ladies and return after weeks with swellings and blisters. When we heard her stories I could see a distinct wish in my mother’s eyes to be able to make to some of these places herself some day. Pilgrimage to Badrinathji always appeared to be the uppermost on her mind. Nearly 30 years after my word to her, I was able to manage a secondhand Fiat car. Possibly, it had covered much more distance than what its milometer indicated. The surface below its engine-head had turned like a cricket pitch on the fifth day, so much so that water from the radiater would mix with the circulating engine oil. Threadings were also worn out in many of its grooves to spring surprises on me at regular intervals. But I was in a hurry to redeem my undertaking to my mother. So, ignoring the suspect roadworthiness of my car, I left with my mother for the promised pilgrimage. Driving a worn-out Fiat over mountainous roads, specially in the unsettled Belagachi area where massive melting of a mountain face had taken a heavy toll of human lives only the other day was a real adventure. Sometimes the gear lever with worn-out threads would suddenly pop out, another time the engine oil pipeline would get detached spraying the oil over the engine block and once the drain-cock of the petrol tank was hit by a stone and whole of petrol got drained. Finally, however, we made it to the shrine. I do not know what I prayed for at the place. Surely, however, if I were to pray for anything today I would like to smile out of life the way my mother
did.
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Run, Condi, run! She was actually able to muster yet another charming smile when I asked to take her picture again in the company of another journalist. This time the camera wouldn’t work (honest, it wasn’t me). Would she mind trying again? She didn’t. So I have seen the softer side of Condi. It has been on display a great deal in the past few weeks. This is the former Soviet scholar who, as George Bush’s national security adviser, was a fierce advocate of the war on Iraq who repeatedly warned of the danger of a “mushroom cloud” from Saddam’s purported nuclear weapons. But now, we have learnt how the US Secretary of State gets up at 4.30am to work out. We have been shown the video. In Blackburn and Liverpool, we saw how she turned potentially disastrous anti-war demonstrations to her advantage by saying that they are part and parcel of democratic life, and that it would be unfortunate if she only visited places where everybody agreed with her. She seized the opportunity to argue the neo-con line that she wished everybody in the world had the same “God-given right”. We have learnt about Condi the sports buff, who gamely accepted a Blackburn Rovers No 10 shirt before being given a platform by the BBC to debate the benefits of liberal democracy. We saw how Condi the magnificent slept on the floor after giving up her cabin bed to Mr Straw who hitched a lift on her plane to Baghdad. In the latest deliberately placed story, this time in The New York Times, we are told that Ms Rice, an accomplished pianist, is giving up valuable time to play with members of an amateur string quartet. And then there was our lunch, of course. There is a narrative to Ms Rice’s life which is now unfolding in the public domain. It starts with her formative years in the segregated Deep South, where she spent the first 13 years of her life without a white classmate, and where three of her schoolmates were killed in a terrorist bomb. British foreign secretary Jack Straw has told readers of his local Blackburn paper of an unforgettable moment at a Foreign Office press conference, when Ms Rice, speaking about building democracy, said: “When the Founding Fathers of the US said in the Declaration of Independence, ‘we, the people’, they didn’t mean me”. “Blimey,” Mr Straw went on. “They didn’t mean her, Colin Powell, or anyone else who was black, because their predecessors were all slaves who had no rights at all.” So what are the chances that Ms Rice’s narrative carries her all the way to the White House? The recent leaks that have shown her kinder, gentler side, seem to be pointing in that direction. She, of course, denies that she is running for anything, as the background noise about her suitability to become the first black woman president of the US reaches a crescendo. We hear that she’s not hungry enough for political office. She even let slip the other day that she fully expected to be back at Stanford University supervising dissertations on the “thousands” of tactical mistakes the Americans have made in Iraq. Her mentor and friend Colin Powell fell at the first hurdle. Although the opinion polls had him riding high as a prospective Republican candidate while President Clinton was still in office, he withdrew after his wife, Alma - who hails from the same area of Birmingham, Alabama as Ms Rice - voiced concern about his safety. But Ms Rice, who is personally closer to President Bush than General Powell ever was, has handled herself with more professional consistency than her predecessor as Secretary of State. It remains to be seen whether she is prepared to have her personal life placed under the journalistic microscope. Can we take Ms Rice’s denials at face value? Senator Hillary Clinton herself used to deny that she was interested in the top job. More to the point: could a black woman from a southern state have a serious chance of becoming President with the blessing of the Republican Party in 2008? Why not make it a contest against a woman hailing from Chicago, who is every bit as divisive a character as Ms Rice, running for the Democratic nomination? Both are strong-willed women who can speak their own mind, even though they have had to tone down their stridency. Ms Clinton has been moving to the right to make herself more palatable to the mainstream, while Ms Rice has been out to demonstrate that there is more to her than the Cold War warrior and crusading neo-con than we might suspect. What a contest that would be. Run,
Condi, run! By arrangement with The Independent
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There is no alternative to big dams Medha Patkar’s fast in the heart of Delhi and her forcible removal on medical grounds, amply illustrates an unavoidable duty of the State. Many social activists in the country are ironically out of tune with the grassroots reality they claim to be fighting for. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) agitation has now been hogging the limelight quite unnecessarily for many years. With every increase in the height of the dam, an NBA dharna immediately follows suit in full view of TV channels. When regulars like Arundhati Roy, who should be doing more writing than agitating, Nirmala Deshpande, always ready to invoke Gandhi, and activist actress Nandita Das squat on the streets of the nation’s capital, any concerned Indian has the right to question the motives of these self-appointed champions of social justice. Are these moves another push for self-aggrandisement and publicity, or is there more to it? Why are their efforts only restricted to one area or one part of the country, and why is it that they have not thought it fit to turn their
attention to farmer related issues like debt solvency and suicides, which are a more serious
affair? The advantages accruing from the irrigation and thermal power that will follow from the Narmada dam are too well known to be repeated here. As regards the rehabilitation of the evicted, even though the Narmada Award enjoins arable land to be provided in lieu, at some other location, the fact that has to be accepted is that there is just no land available in the three affected states to redistribute. Incidently, the process of cash
payment in lieu has been operative in this case now for many years, and with no forest lands permitted
to be apportioned for agriculture, land for land transactions will not be possible. On another plane, may one raise the example of the Bhakra Dam which came up in North India after independence, and how thousands of the displaced families never got any land in lieu, even though the land availability ratio then was much better than today? If the Punjabees could live with their displacement at Bhakra, why is there a special dispensation necessary at Narmada, is a question many will ask? This emotional blackmail by a few celebrities needs to stop, and the government should stop acting like a headless chicken and concentrate more on optimum rehabilitation under the circumstances, by providing more job opportunities and alternative housing to the affected. Does Ms Medha Patkar know of any alternative strategy, which is financially viable on a national scale, where water for cultivation and electricity for the tubewells and threshers, can be provided to the farmer, without building dams? |
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India’s stake in Baluchistan American observers critical of General Pervez Musharraf’s half-hearted efforts to put down Al-Qaida and Taliban forces in the Waziristan area of north-west Pakistan, attribute the unabated tribal insurgency in Baluchistan for it. As many as six Pakistani army brigades or a quarter million regular troops plus paramilitary forces are deployed in Baluchistan. The ‘Baluch Liberation Army’ waging guerilla warfare in the Kohlu mountains and the surrounding areas is said to be giving the Pakistan army, one of the best of its kind among standing armies, a good run for its money. The Pakistan Human Rights Commission, bearing the stamp of its doughty leader, Asma Jehangir, has alleged that Pakistan had been using US supplied Cobra helicopter gunships as well as US F-16 fighter planes against Baluchi civilians in its indiscriminate attacks on the guerrillas. It also put fatal casualties at over 200 non-combatants in recent weeks. If the human rights activists expected the U.S. Government to be outraged by the ‘excesses’ of the Pakistan army against Baluch insurgents they would have been disappointed. The U.S. Under-Secretary of State, Nicholas Burns, visiting Islamabad in the run up to President Bush’s official visit last March, had washed Washington’s hands of it, saying that it was Pakistan’s ‘internal matter. American and other supporters of the Baluch struggle for autonomy argue that the US has a “major strategic stake in a peaceful accommodation between Islamabad and Baluch leaders.” But it does not seem that Washington is inclined to heed such advice. Meanwhile, the Baluch leaders seem to have read the writing on the wall, that in a situation of virtual isolation, they should opt for autonomy within a multi-ethnic Pakistan rather than harp on secession from Pakistan. In the last forty odd years, the strategic importance of Baluchistan has grown perceptibly, particularly since China started building a state-of-the-art port at Gwadar, close to the Strait of Hormuz, with a projected 27 berths. At the same time, ethnic Baluch sentiment has been on the rise with Baluchis living in eastern Iran making common cause with their fellow tribesmen across the Pakistan-Iran border. There was also a nascent Baluch rebellion of sorts against the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime in Teheran. Observers in Pakistan expect the US to involve itself in the Baluch imbroglio in the larger interests of safeguarding American interests in the region. For the record, India has been ambivalent towards the Baluch aspirations for greater autonomy within Pakistan. The days of vocal support to the Baluch tribal revolt of the 1960’s are over. Still, Islamabad lodged a formal protest to New Delhi last December alleging “moral and material” support to Baluch insurgents. India, for its part, denied the charge. The Baluch area is rich in oil and other mineral resources, including natural gas, uranium and copper .So the Pakistan Government is rather cagey about allowing greater autonomy to the State. Interestingly, General Musharraf had readily allowed a jatha lead by former external affairs minister, Jaswant Singh (of the BJP) to undertake a tour of Sindhi and Rajasthani pilgrim places deep in Baluchistan in the last week of January, including Singh’s family deity Hinglaj Devi. The visit and the interest it evoked in Sindh and Baluchistan, not to mention the border areas of Rajasthan, did not receive much media attention. The media is so obsessed with BJP baiting, while eulogising Sonia Gandhi’s ‘sacrifice’ that they have no eyes for a grass-root level non-political event which stirred the peoples of our two countries deeply. |
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From the pages of BOSE & FORWARD BLOC Not for the first time did Mr Subhash Chandra Bose seek to justify the formation of the Forward Bloc in his speech at the Pabna District Political Conference. That the formation of the Bloc amounted to a virtual split in the congress camp. Mr Bose made no attempt to deny, but his position was that a split was not undesirable or harmful in all circumstances and that the present split would rather help than hinder the cause of ultimate unity. He said: “It pains me to find eminent intellectuals in our country repeating ad nauseum that a split must be avoided under all circumstances and unity must be preserved at any cost. It is necessary for us to distinguish between a split that divides and weakens and a split that paves the way for synthesis and unity.” This is a view that we have ourselves repeatedly expressed in these columns.
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Even if one is the most sinful of all sinners, one shall yet cross over the ocean of sin by the raft of self-knowledge alone. There is no purifier in this world like the true knowledge of the Supreme Being. One discovers this knowledge from within in due course, when one’s mind is cleansed of selfishness by selfless service. The house of God has many chambers. He has created as many rooms as there are his children on earth. Your place in eternity is reserved. So, do not make your life a living hell by worrying.
The law is God. Anything attributed to him is not a mere attribute.
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I had lunch with Condoleezza Rice the other day, towards the end of her whistle-stop tour of Blackburn and Liverpool in England.
What was she like, close up and personal? As you might expect from a woman in her position, she was articulate, poised and personable. Did she mind if I took her photograph? She smiled graciously. Would she mind if I took her picture with a journalist colleague? She posed again. Would she mind if I took her picture with another journalist colleague? She did so with equal grace.