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Assam outcome Congress back, but needs help THE ground has shifted from under Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s feet, but not perhaps as much as he might have feared.
Nepal at the crossroads
That was Galbraith
Adapting to a changing Punjab News analysis Saying “no” to our own genes
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No interviews THE exploitation of Orissa boy Budhia, who was made to run from Puri to Bhubaneswar, rightly exercised many minds recently. Lakhs of tiny tots undergo similar mental trauma every year in the name of interviews for nursery classes. Moved by their plight, the Delhi High Court has ordered that no private school in Delhi will conduct such interviews. This is one order which deserves to be implemented all over the country, given that the interviews are tantamount to burdening young minds. These intellectually torture not only the children but also their parents. The stigma of rejection that sticks to the children who fail to make the grade rankles them for life. Teachers themselves could not be too happy about them, because except for child psychologists, few can claim to separate grain from the chaff by grilling them for 10 or 15 minutes. Ironically, while the interview system has been dispensed with, there is no clarity on what the alternative will be. All schools are swamped with applications. Whether they admit children by draw of lots or on a first-come-first-served basis, there are bound to be complications. These ticklish issues cannot be avoided and a uniform policy must be evolved to avoid heartburn. To make matters worse, influential persons always manage to jump the queue. The root cause of the problem is the acute shortage of good schools. That is why there is such a mad rush at the few good ones that there are. Elementary education is every child’s birthright. That this has to be good education goes without saying. The scramble will end automatically if more quality schools are opened. It is this aspect which has somehow escaped the government’s attention all these years.
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Green signal for Reds ALTHOUG few doubted that the Left, particularly the CPM, would win the assembly elections in Kerala and West Bengal — despite the extended phases of polling — the sweep of their success is surprisingly impressive. This is more so in Kerala. The general pattern of the incumbent being voted out placed the Left Democratic Front (LDF) ahead of the United Democratic Front (UDF) at the very start of the electoral race. The major glitch was the initial omission of the CPM stalwart V.S. Achuthanandan, seen as a potential Chief Minister, from the party’s list of contestants. The protests provoked by the exclusion made the Politburo intervene to field him, thereby putting a question mark on the assumption that state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, painted as a reformist, would take charge after the elections. Once the issue was resolved, the party closed ranks, if only to ensure that dissension did not dilute its advantages. In the event, the results have panned out better than expected. The LDF has bagged 98 of the 140 assembly seats — 58 more than what it had — leaving the UDF poorer by exactly that figure at 42. Actually, that’s not the surprise in the story. The bigger success of the LDF is that it has ended the dominance of the Muslim League and shown that the latter’s stranglehold over the Malabar region can be broken. The Muslim League, a leading constituent of the UDF, could hold on to only seven of the 23 seats it contested, losing as many as 16 seats to the CPM. In the last assembly the League had 16 members. While the numerical outcome strengthens the LDF, it appears that sections of communal forces have switched loyalty to the CPM. This development can be a source of undesirable pressure on the party, and its state leadership, and is fraught with deeper implications for coalition politics and partners. Secondly, like it happened in Bengal, in Kerala, too, there is bound to be a tussle between “reformists” and “Stalinists”. Ground realities and pragmatism favour reforms — political as well as economic. In this regard, the Kerala unit can learn much from the Left Front’s strategy in Bengal, where it adopted the reform agenda and sold the line that the only alternative to the Left Front is a better, reformist Left Front.
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Assam outcome THE ground has shifted from under Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s feet, but not perhaps as much as he might have feared. No party has managed a majority in Assam’s 126-member Assembly, but the ruling Congress has got close enough to be confident of forming a government again, with the help of the Hagrama Mohillary faction of the Bodoland People’s Progressive Front. Some Independents will not be averse to extending support either. The dozen odd successes of the newly formed Asom United Democratic Front (AUDF) in the Muslim minority areas, which formed a last-minute alliance with the Brindaban Goswami-led Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), was not enough for the regional AGP to get anywhere close. The Badrudding Azmal-led AUDF was a reaction to the Supreme Court scrapping the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act last year. The Muslim community had felt that the Congress did not defend the act sufficiently. The act had made it very difficult to deport illegal Bangladeshi migrants, and the Assamese have been against it. The foreigners issue continues to be a sore point, and the AGP-AUDF pact was thus quite startling. The BJP is out on a limb, but the fledgling AUDF can be expected to become a significant player in the state in the future also. As for the AGP, it will have to reinvent its regional politics, and its losses put a question mark on both its leader Brindaban Goswami and the much touted “third front”. The Congress had been careful not to project Tarun Gogoi as a chief ministerial candidate, but the electoral losses of many heavyweight dissidents and challengers have strengthened his hand. The legislative party meeting on Saturday will decide his fate. If back, he will have little time to celebrate. ULFA is still around as a problem awaiting a serious State response one way or another, and there is plenty to be done on the development front, the plank on which he fought the elections. With the polls out of the way, the people will be hoping that the new government gets down to the business of governance soon.
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As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live. — Pope John Paul II
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Nepal at the crossroads IN
Arthshastra, Kautilya wrote, “A king who flouts the teachings of the Dharmashastras and the Arthashastras, ruins the kingdom by his own injustice.” King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev of Nepal, never so popular with his praja, did just that. Two years of direct, personal rule wherein political leaders were arbitrarily dismissed and arrested, civil rights movements and media throttled and the economy messed up, caused the Nepalese people to take to the streets in anger. With much of Kathmandu in flame, the King offered to hand over power to a Prime Minister to be nominated by the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) without suggesting changes in his monarchial role. That was too little and too late! Despite a weak Indian Government support to that offer, the Nepalese political parties and people rejected that till the King agreed to their terms. The King and his courtiers failed to comprehend the public mood. With the RNA by their side, they remained in gilded cages, oblivious of the ground realities and royal unpopularity. There are four major players in the political great game that will now unravel in Nepal. These are: the King, the SPA and Maoists, the Royal Nepal Army (RNA), and India. Let me analyse their compulsions and options. To be fair, the public dissatisfaction with Nepalese monarchy — Vishnu Avatar — started not with King Gyanendra but after the palace assassination some years ago. For such a thing to happen in the 21st century was an embarrassing and humiliating experience for the Nepalese public. In a conversation with me, a former RNA chief recalled that as “the lowest point in our recent national history”. That King Gyanendra after accession attempted antiquated, brutal ruling practices shows how far removed is the Nepal monarchy from progressive political and public awareness. In his April 21 TV proclamation, he gave no indication whatsoever that he accepted the real substance of constitutional monarchy. There was no hint of giving up authority to dismiss elected leaders arbitrarily or his control over the RNA. He praised the security forces that were battling the people in the streets but had no words of sympathy for the unarmed civilians who died due to firing. This confirmed public suspicion of the royal mindset. The Nepalese people, particularly the youth, would not accept anything less than the King’s abdication of political powers now. The new constitution of Nepal, whenever framed, would definitely diminish the role of the King as given in the 1990 Constitution. In sum, the role of monarchy is over and that of multiparty political system is yet to develop fully. Thus, the SPA-Maoists is not a potentially strong political platform yet. It has considerable squabble potential. A common adversary appears to have brought the Maoists and other political parties together. In the Nepal Congress Party and its many offshoots, there are too many old leaders who have not got along in the past. Initially, the Maoists were reluctant to accept restoration of the dissolved Parliament and nomination of a Prime Minister. The fragility of the SPA-Maoists combine to govern the country cannot be ignored: it is a political challenge for them as well as to India. The newly sworn Koirala ministry must represent not only consensual political opinion but also the Nepalese geographical and demographic profile. The Nepalese politics has been slow in reflecting the aspirations of the youth and women in governance. Besides, armed and the unarmed political parties do not make good governance partners. Will the Maoist give up their arms voluntarily? If not, who will disarm the Maoists, and how? I cannot visualise anyone other than India bringing about a minimum consensus within Nepalese politics. The Indian political establishments’ response to send a person like Mr Yechury to Nepal instead of another Indian royalty with his four-point plan was a correct move. India has an important role. If it does not play a careful constructive role in Nepal now, it will face a messier situation, which would inevitably lead to greater foreign influence on the situation. The Indian role would need our own political consensus. The present and future role of the RNA, the last governing instrument of the state, is critical. The present political crisis would not have occurred, if its role had been clearly delineated in the 1990 Constitution. As per that Constitution, Nepal accepted a sort of constitutional monarchy. But it let the RNA remain a Palace Army. The RNA chiefs seldom took orders from their elected prime ministers. Some went to the extent of denigrating them publicly and the King took no action against them. In recent years, the RNA has increased substantially in numbers but has lost in quality. Its operational capabilities are suspect. The privileged officers go on UN missions abroad and the not so privileged are left guarding the Palace, battling the Maoists and the agitations. The RNA does not have the military capabilities to take on the Maoists. How will the RNA react in the emerging political situation? Its alienation with the rest of the Nepalese public in the recent past should be a cause of concern. There were reports that while the RNA soldiers stood guard on the King, their wives and parents participated in street agitations. The SPA-Maoists combine must prepare a comprehensive constitutional role for the RNA, which has a vital role in Nepal’s stability. India is in a position to advise the Nepalese on the correct command and control of the RNA. It must do so unambiguously before resuming further operational support. India needs to work out its political and economic support to Nepal carefully. The Maoists in Nepal are our backyard problem. They can no longer be ignored. If they are to be part of the Nepalese political system, they need to be politically engaged by us immediately. India must remain perceptive and pro-active on
Nepal. The writer, a former Chief of Army Staff, is currently President, ORF Institute of Security Studies,
New Delhi.
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That was Galbraith COMBING the Christmas long weekend with seven days’ leave granted to me in 1963, I made haste from Gangtok to join my wife at Chandigarh. We had planned to trek in the Solang valley which leads up to the Beas Kund. Borrowing my father’s Fiat we could only make to the PWD rest-house at Palampur the first day. There was no fuss about prior reservation in such establishments those days especially for the serving officers. The chowkidar promptly ushered us to suite number 1. Its centerpiece was the double bed. We stood transfixed not by its antiquity but by its enormous eight-foot length! We learnt from the chowkidar that a few months earlier the Galbraiths had chosen to halt there for the night on their drive to Manali. Knowing that Ambassadar Galbraith was over 6 ft 6 in tall and his wife almost six foot, the Punjab Government had worked overtime to especially fabricate this bed! My next brush with Ambassador Galbraith was in the sand dunes of the Thar desert in Rajasthan. I was out on training manoeuvres in the close vicinity of the Indira Gandhi Rajasthan Canal. By January 1973, the canal had attained only half its intended length and construction work was afoot at a high pitch. The main work-horse was the camel cart which ferried water, food, bricks, cement etc to the site round the clock. The carts had the traditional wooden wheels, sans ball-bearings. Over these sand tracks the camels could haul no more than 30 per cent of the designed capacity. Ambassador Galbraith, on a routine diplomatic visit to the canal, was appalled both by the wasted cart capacity and the extra strain on the camel. That is when in a flash, the centuries-old camel cart wooden wheel got replaced by the discarded balloon tyres of aircraft. Mounted over an axle with ball-bearings the camels hauled even more than the intended capacity with the look of utter nonchalance! The canal was brick-lined on the inside but its outer banks with a motorable track atop, were of compacted sand. The desert wind is known to erode any sand structure faster and deeper than even rain. So desert grasses and shrubs were planted on the outer slopes of both banks to minimise erosion. Two rows of trees on either berm of the top carriageway would provide shade and their roots keep the sand trapped in place. And at the base of both banks another row of trees up to 20 feet deep was to act as the wind-breaker. This was a grand design but imagine the irrigation needs of plants and trees in the hostile desert environs in the first at least 10 years. Once again it was the camel cart with water tanks that moved over the canal road irrigating as it ambled on. It is not hard to visualise how soon the water tank would be decanted and each cart would go back to the replenishing station. Astonishing as it would appear in hindsight, it was again the innovative mind of Ambassador Galbraith which came up with a brilliant irrigation contraption. A portable, diesel pumpset was fixed to a wooden platform which was floated on the canal and hitched to a camel’s harness. And you had the finest, highly efficient and the most economical mobile irrigation facility. So today we have perhaps the longest canal in the country with a flourishing ribbon-forest along both its edges, home to countless, desert living
forms.
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Adapting to a changing Punjab THE Punjab government is pushing through privatisation of various institutions and departments, notwithstanding denials, in a clandestine, back door manner. The modus operandi is the contractual system. Here is a recent case: 1195 rural dispensaries have been handed over to the Panchayats, each to be run each by a doctor who will be on contract for three years, on a lump sum payment of Rs. 30,000 per month. The state health department will provide medicines worth Rs 7500 every month. Administrative expenses, including the employing of two subordinates in the dispensary, will be by the doctor, to be paid out of his contractual money. In-service doctors are protesting, but they do not realise why the government had to go in for the contractual mode of providing health services in rural areas. The wretched condition of dispensaries with virtually no medicines, and absenteeism of doctors and para medical men, pushed the government to resort to an alternative system. Since the present staff is comfortably ensconced over a period of time in their position with a tag of permanent service, they are perturbed and take the new system as an assault on their right to permanent cadre service. Be that as it may, privatisation under the cover of the contract system has come to stay and ultimately may pave way for the corporate sector to become a big player in looking after the health of the people in Punjab. Another case is the handing over of hiring and managing subordinate staff to a private agency in the newly created district of S.A.S. Nagar. The subordinate staff will not be on the pay roll of the government – they will be men from an agency serving various government departments in the district. In the farm sector, a contractual experiment was made a few years go for growing tomato crop by the farmers under a contract with an MNC firm. But the arrangement ended in a fiasco as the MNC men disputed the quality of the crop and refused to lift the produce, leaving the farmers to fend for themselves. Certain big wigs in the government who are ardent votaries of privatisation are contemplating the entry of industrial magnates in the farm sector, to meet out the pulls and pressures of the World Trade Organization regime. But the government needs to tread the contractual system path cautiously. About 80 per cent of the farmers in Punjab are of small and marginal variety. They are mostly peasant proprietors. Any touch of alienation from their land, how so ever small, will create chaos. They have to be nurtured gently by the corporate sector. In the education sector, given public complaints over the deteriorating quality of education, teacher absenteeism, and the phenomenon of contractual deputees, employed by permanent teachers to work in their places, the government actively contemplated the handing over of government schools to private management committees and councils. But looking at the strong opposition from the teachers who came out on the streets the government has put the proposal on the back burner. An attempt was made to reform the structure of the Punjab State Electricity Board, which is a monster like body with huge strength of staff. It also eats up a big chunk of government revenue due to whopping losses. The employees, who got the wind of the government’s move took it as a step towards privatization, and rose furiously against it. The government had to retract and pretend that the move was only for ‘nigmikaran’ of the board, separating generation, transmission and distribution into autonomous units. Even that is still being worked out. Given the evident wish of the government to ease itself out of governance and servicing the people of Punjab, through the contract system, it will be no wonder if the maintenance of law and order is one day given to a private agency. I am reminded of an incident during terrorism days in Punjab. Some old army stalwarts gathered at a bhog ceremony at Patiala, and seriously discussed shooting off a letter to then Chief Minister Darbara Singh. They wanted the government to give a contract to them, and they will “control the monster of terrorism and bring the boys to their senses within a month”. In the construction sector, big builders from major metros and abroad have landed in Punjab. They are actively engaged in erecting malls, modern housing colonies, luxury hotels, restaurants and other ultra modern recreational joints in big towns and around Mohali by purchasing land at abnormally high prices. In the flush of the construction work a belief is gaining ground with land owners that the price of land, however high, will be squeezed back by the glare of luxury joints set up by those builders, thus leaving the farmers deprived of their land high and dry. The farmers as such are becoming wary of parting with this land. It would therefore indicate that there is some thing drastically lacking in the approach of the government. In a democratic set up, the orders, ordinances and government fiats do not matter much. The concerned people have to be convinced and taken along before launching a new system. A period of time is needed to introduce any change, to ensure adaptability. This is where the government is lacking.
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News analysis BEYOND the electoral success of the Congress in emerging as the single largest party bagging 53 seats of a total 126 to head the next coalition, the outcome of the Assam assembly polls may have far reaching consequences in shaping future minority politics in India. While the Congress Legislative Party would meet in Guwahati on Saturday to elect its new leader in the presence of AICC observers and former MP Chief Minister Digvijay Singh and Chandan Bagchi, the formation of the coalition government is a foregone conclusion with the support extended by 12 MLAs of the Bodo People`s Progessive Front (BPPF), led by the chairman of the Bodo Terrotorial Council (BTC) Hagrama Mohilary. The Congress-BPPF combination will now comfortably cross the magic figure of 64 in the 126 member assembly as they together command 65 seats. Chief Minister Mr Tarun Gogoi has also claimed the support of a few independents too. The Congress`s failure to cross the magic figure of 64 on its own this time was primarily because of its decision not to succumb to the pressure brought on it by minority Muslims, in particular to enact a new law after the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) (IMDT) act of 1985 was struck down by the Supreme Court last year. The IMDT, which was only applicable in Assam for 20 years between 1985 and 2005, was primarily meant to detect and deport the foreigners residing there. In the rest of the country, it was, however, the Foreigners Act, which is being used for the purpose. The IMDT was enacted as part of the Assam Accord of 1985 following seven years of Assam agitation under the All Assam Students Union(AASU). Contrary to the Foreigners Act, in IMDT, the onus was on the complainant to prove that the accused was a foreign citizen and not vice-versa. But once the IMDT was struck down by the Supreme Court last year, the minority organisations demanded a new law to protect them, failing which they had threatened to teach the Congress a lesson. The Congress initially did try to work out an escape route by exploring the possibility of amending the existing Foreigners Act, but could not do so in the face of vehement opposition by the BJP, as well as due to the reported opposition to any such backdoor move to appease the minority by none other than the Congress President Sonia Gandhi. This prompted 13 fragmented minority organisations in Assam, for the first time in the history of Indian Politics, to open a political front in the name of Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), which had a loose seat arrangement with the Asom Gana parishad (AGP) , the official faction of the AGP led by Brindaban Goswami. The minority community has always been an important factor in Assam politics as they, particularly in lower Assam and the Barak valley, bordering with Bangladesh, have a sizeable population. The fast changing demographic character of Assam, where original Assamese citizens were reportedly getting reduced to as a minority day by day owing to unchecked infiltration from across the Bangladesh border, is another pointer to the threats posed by minority politics to original Assamese citizens. The AUDF, in its debut, not only has won 10 seats, but damaged the Congress in as many as 15 other seats going by the initial findings. The Congress could have easily romp home with its own majority had it succumbed to the pressure brought on it by the AUDF to enact a new law replacing the IMDT. The polarisation of minority votes under AUDF to a large extent was obviously much to the discomfort of the BJP as there was no such backlash from its so-called Hindu vote-bank. The party had to remain satisfied with 10 seats only, against the eight bagged by it in the 2001 polls. This was despite the best foot put forward by the late Pramod Mahajan who was in charge of Assam. On the contrary, irrespective of the prevailing fragmented Assamese society on religious, tribal and other lines, the Assamese people, by and large, voted judiciously this time, in the name of development, which helped the Congress to remain within the striking distance to form the next government. After all, the former Assam minister of state, Himanta Biswa Sharma, was right in claiming that the financial health of the state had improved considerably during the five years of Congress rule, which had bailed out the state from the vicious debt trap which it had inherited from the previous AGP government led by Prafulla Kumar Mahanta. For the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), its failure to challenge the Congress effectively was primarily because of the infighting between its founder President Prafulla Kumar Mahanta and its present president Brindaban Goswami. Mr.Goswami, who heads the official AGP faction, had expelled Mr. Mahanta who formed his own party. But the Mahanta faction too failed at the polls. But the danger of “communal polarisation” under AUDF could be assessed from the single fact that despite having a divided AGP, the Congress could not cross the majority mark on its own. The AUDF leader Hafiz Rashid Chowdhury, along with the AGP President Brindaban Goiswami, was reportedly in Kolkata recently to have a closed door meeting with Samajwadi party general secertary Amar Singh and TDP Chief Chandrababu Naidu. The purpose was obviously to explore the possibility of a third front, as AUDF now was reportedly aspiring to experiment with the same formula of combining fragmented minority organisations in other parts of the country too, including UP and Bihar, to polarise minority votes.
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Saying “no” to our own genes THE German public was recently shocked to learn that 30 percent of “their” women are childless — the highest proportion of any country in the world. And this is not a result of infertility; it’s intentional childlessness. Demographers are intrigued. German nationalists, aghast. Religious fundamentalists, distressed at the indication that large numbers of women are using birth control. And evolutionary biologists (including me) are asked, “How can this be?” If reproduction is perhaps the fundamental imperative of natural selection, of our genetic heritage, isn’t it curious — indeed, counterintuitive — that people choose, and in such large numbers, to refrain from participating in life’s most pressing event? The answer is that intentional childlessness is indeed curious — but in no way surprising. It is also illuminating, because it sheds light on what is perhaps the most notable hallmark of the human species: the ability to say no —not just to a bad idea, an illegal order or a wayward pet but to our own genes. When it comes to human behavior, there are actually very few genetic dictates. Our hearts insist on beating, our lungs breathing, our kidneys filtering and so forth, but these internal-organ functions are hardly “behavior” in a meaningful sense. As for more complex activities, evolution whispers within us. It does not shout orders. People are inclined to eat when hungry, sleep when tired and have sex when aroused. But in most cases, we remain capable of declining, endowed as we are with that old bugaboo, free will. Moreover, when people indulge their biologically based inclinations, nearly always it is to satisfy an immediate itch, whose existence is itself an evolved strategy leading to some naturally selected payoff. A person doesn’t typically eat, for example, with the goal of meeting her metabolic needs but to satisfy her hunger. For more than 99.99 percent of their evolutionary history, humans haven’t had the luxury of deciding whether to reproduce: simply engaging in sex took care of that, just as eating solved the problem of nutrition. But then something quite wonderful arrived on the scene: birth control. Because of it, women (and men) can exercise choice. Add to this another important observation from nature. Behavioral ecologists distinguish between what are known as “R” and “K” strategies among living things. Thus, “R” strategists — such as mice and rabbits — breed early and often, producing large numbers of offspring that suffer high mortality. “K” types —such as elephants and whales — breed later and relatively rarely, producing fewer offspring (with lower mortality) and investing more in each. Neither elephants nor whales send their children to college, although they indulge in the animal equivalent. Pre-technological human beings are comparatively “R” in their reproductive style. But with improved socioeconomic conditions — especially, better educational and vocational opportunities for women — comes the demographic transition, whereby “R” gives way to “K” and infant mortality plummets along with birthrate. It is notable that child-wariness is not only characteristic of highly developed Germany (and northern Europe as a whole), but that it rises from 30 percent to more than 40 percent among German women who are college graduates. When it comes to our behavior, evolution is clearly influential. Of this there can be no doubt. But only rarely is it determinative, even when something as deeply biological as reproduction is concerned. Indeed, the trend toward childlessness is neither particularly German nor strangely “un-biological” but profoundly human.
— By arrangement with
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From the pages of Hindustan—Pakistan Plan The pride of Asoka and Akbar and of good and true Britons themselves, the unity of India, has been planned to be broken. The A.P.I.’s forecast of H.M.G.’s final Indian scheme implies the crowning of the joint disruptionist efforts of British Imperialism and Muslim Leaguism with success. India is to be split up. Our motherland, after centuries of able-bodied and full-blooded existence, is to be dismembered. And even we, who have been confirmed believers in the unity of India and enraptured dreamers of its future greatness and glory as a unite deliberated country, accept it as an alternative to continued communal wrangling and throat-cutting and confusion and chaos. But we must say that it offers no permanent solution of our problem and we must add that in our long and chequered history to-day is the worst and saddest day. The position is this: British Imperialist Chanakyas gain and we fools lose all along the line.
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If you want that no harm should come to you, make sure that you harm no one. If you want that no evil should befall you, make sure that you do no evil to another. If you want no one to hate you, be sure not to hate anyone. If you want only good to happen to you, do good to all who come into contact with you. — The Bhagvad Gita When a king invites his kinsmen and friends to pay homage at his court, he must receive them with due honour. When honour is smiled, a friend becomes — The Mahabharata I stand in a market-place and desire the welfare of all; I am neither related to anyone nor am I
anyone’s enemy. — Kabir
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