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Voting from abroad Outright dishonesty |
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Justice in lifetime!
What ails the tiger?
Just a ‘Namaste’
Dateline Washington Bush rewarding the callous
and the cruel Delhi Durbar
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Voting from abroad The government’s plans to give voting rights to NRIs fulfils a long-standing demand of the Indians living abroad and is likely to be welcomed within the country as well. Over the years, millions of Indians have settled down all over the world, but somehow their heart always remains Hindustani. Most of them take keen interest in the happenings in the country of their birth and want to be an active participant in it. That is why they had been seeking a right to vote here. They deserve a chance to participate in the process of governance of the country which has all along been goading them to invest their money here. The new facility can act as another strand of the emotional thread which binds them to the homeland. The profile of NRIs is so wide and varied that it is unlikely that any particular party will benefit from the move. In is unfortunate that some leaders have looked at the move from such a narrow angle. In any case, the proposal was mooted by the previous NDA government and has come to fruition at the time of the UPA government. That is all the more reason why it is likely to be supported unanimously in Parliament which may take up the Bill in the monsoon session. Certain practical difficulties are foreseen in the implementation of the ambitious scheme. Postal ballot facility is already provided to those working in Indian missions abroad. But making arrangements for millions of people is going to be a different ballgame altogether. Since the gap between the date of withdrawal of candidates and the date of election is fairly short, it will be a major undertaking to rush postal ballot forms to them from their constituency so that they can send these back in time. At the same time, the Election Commission will have to ensure that there is no bogus voting or an attempt to rig elections — even abroad.
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Outright dishonesty IN the politics of petrol, reason has no place. The circumstances in which the Manmohan Singh government increased the price of petrol by Rs 4 and diesel by Rs 2 per litre are well known, the international price of crude oil having crossed the $70-mark. It was with hesitation that it increased the prices as is borne out by the fact that LPG and kerosene prices have not been hiked. In absolute terms the increase may seem the highest ever but there were occasions when petrol prices were increased by nearly 100 per cent as in the late-seventies. There is a political consensus, as reflected in the decisions of the previous NDA government, too, that whatever the increase in international prices of oil, it should be passed on to the consumer. On the same principle, there were instances when petrol prices were reduced, though marginally. Seen against this backdrop, the agitation against the price hike is difficult to comprehend. The most vocal in the protest are the BJP and the Left parties. What they overlook is that they are in a position to reduce the burden on the people on whose behalf they supposedly speak. Petroleum prices have a sales tax component levied by the states concerned which varies from state to state. For instance, Haryana and Punjab are neighbouring states but there is a huge difference in the prices of diesel in these two states. It is cheaper by over Rs 2 per litre in Punjab because the state subsidises it in the name of the farmer. If anything, this shows that the states are within their rights to reduce the prices of petroleum products. For instance, the CPM does not need anybody’s approval to reduce the sales tax in West Bengal and Kerala, particularly the latter, where the petroleum prices are the highest in the country. Similarly, the BJP governments can follow in the footsteps of Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu where the governments have taken the initiative to cushion the impact of the petrol-diesel price hike. Instead, the party is busy organising bandhs as in Kerala last week. The Left is also playing a double game when states under its control increase their revenue by way of sales tax while protesting against the increase by the Centre.
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Justice in lifetime! The Punjab and Haryana High Court’s directive to the government to pay pension to a 92-year-old former Army officer is most welcome. The case, highlighted in The Tribune (June 12), not only demonstrates the higher judiciary’s humane face but also its concern about the inhumane treatment given to the officer, Major Gurdit Singh, despite his dedication and devotion to duty. How callous and inhumane the Army authorities were can be gauged by the fact that his repeated appeals to them for grant of pension fell in deaf ears in the last 59 years. Prior to India’s Independence, he was an officer of the Royal Indian Army. When he rebelled against it, he was court-martialled and dismissed from service. Worse, his heart-rending plea for pension was rejected on the ground that he had been sacked! The issue in question is, should an officer have been punished like this for having taken an anti-British stand and fought for India’s freedom? His torture, despite his unflinching loyalty to the nation and campaign for India’s Independence, is a typical example of the bureaucratic mindset that refused to see the humane face and look beyond the official jottings. The judgement, delivered by a Division Bench headed by Justice H.S. Bedi, the Acting Chief Justice of the High Court, is bound to reinforce the people’s abiding faith in the judiciary as also boost the morale of the jawans, serving and retired. The court has ordered that Major Gurdit Singh should be given pension from May 1991 within a period of thee months. According to the judgement, he will also be entitled to interest rate of 6 per cent per annum on the amount from May 1991. Pension is a legitimate right which cannot be denied to any officer. However, pension alone, now ordered by the High Court, is not enough for all that Major Gurdit Singh has done for the country. The Army needs to have another look at its rules and procedures which can at times be cruel to the men who serve it.
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Content is disillusioning to behold: what is there to be content about? — Virginia Woolf
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What ails the tiger? Nobel
laureate Milton Friedman had once remarked, “If a government were put in charge of managing the Sahara Desert, within five years, they’d have a shortage of sand!” Well, that pretty well sums up the Government of India’s most inept handling of tiger conservation in recent years. Admittedly, it has taken a lot longer than the predicted “five years” to reach the present crisis situation. The journey of the Indian tiger through the last 200 years of history illustrates deceit perpetrated by man on the one hand and downright incompetence displayed by him on the other. The king of our jungles has been cheated by those who pretended to be protecting him. There is only one yardstick to measure the effectiveness of all our efforts to conserve the tigers since the launch of Project Tiger. After 33 years of the project and an expenditure of billions of rupees, today we have a fewer number of tigers than what we had started with in 1973. While there are many factors that are acting against the interest of the tiger, there is only one factor that is more important than all the others and this has to be tackled on a war-footing. This is poaching! Poaching of the tiger itself. Poaching of the tiger’s food species and poaching of timber, thereby destroying the tiger’s home. In order to understand the severity of the threat, it would be relevant to understand its background so that appropriate counter-measures can be adopted. What started as a clandestine small trade of supplying only tiger bones to China and other Far Eastern countries for making traditional medicines has over a period of time developed into a major clandestine industry with elaborate procurement channels following different trade routes, processing houses and thereafter a well-developed system of export. First noticed around 1985, by about 1993, tiger poaching for trade was well organised and thriving. Even at that point of time, the government had refused to accept that there was a problem. Tiger populations in parks with terrain and conditions that suited the modus operandi of these marauding tribals were decimated. Reserves with a lax management were specifically targeted. The years 2003 and 2004 were probably the worst in tiger’s history in India. Sariska was completely ravaged. Ranthambore, which was only beginning to recover from an earlier major poaching assault, was attacked once again and severely “mauled”. Populations crashed everywhere. Panna, Bandhavgarh, Satpuda and Melghat tiger reserves were hit with a severity that had never been seen before. Yet the authorities maintained that all was well with the tiger. It would be interesting to see that while this was going on, what was the proportion of the total budget allocation for Project Tiger that was spent on hardcore protection. What were the priorities of Project Tiger during this period? Census or protection? And has the focus shifted in favour of the latter even now? Currently, the dwindling of the prey base species is probably the second most serious threat to the survival of the tiger in India. All tiger areas without exception are grossly deficient of prey base and cannot support the number of tigers that are reported to live in them. The problem is further compounded by the indiscriminate poaching of the prey species that is rampant on the periphery of even the best managed parks. While it can be said that the poaching of the tiger is only done by specialists, poaching of the prey base is done by all. The tribals living in the forests are the worst offenders. They kill anything and everything for not only their own protein needs, they freely sell the meat in nearby towns as a matter of routine. Similipal, the Tiger Reserve in Orissa, proves this point. While the quality of the forest in Simlipal is still probably among the best in the country, there is hardly any wildlife left in the reserve. The shortage of the tigers’ natural food results in their preying on domestic livestock and that leads to a man-animal conflict wherein the tiger is the loser once again. Why are our so-called protected areas so weak in providing protection? A common tendency among critics is to hold park managers responsible for everything that goes wrong. While this may not be unfair criticism in most cases, the constraints faced by the park managers merit consideration. An acute shortage of staff, vehicles, radio sets and other tools of management, all add up to their performance falling much short of the expectations. Today, the management infrastructure at almost all parks is entirely inadequate. The training of the forest staff in providing protection is extremely poor. And most importantly, the authority invested in the forest personnel of most states does not support the adoption of strong measures even against the violators caught in the act. The personnel of the Forest Department are invariably left to defend themselves in prolonged court cases that follow shoot-outs in which poachers may be injured or killed. Such attitudes cannot do much for the morale of the field staff, who serve under the most trying conditions. Therefore, the following steps are recommended:
The above recommended actions will not address all the adverse factors. But they will be able to counter some of the more destructive ones. Factors like man-animal conflict and insurgency will still need to be tackled. In any case, insurgency is not something that can be addressed by the Forest Department officials who are neither trained nor equipped for such tasks. Insurgency will have to be addressed at the level of the state and Central governments. Available records indicate that India had about 300,000 sq km of tiger habitat at the time of Independence in 1947. In 1973 when Project Tiger was conceptualised, nearly 14,000 sq km of prime tiger breeding areas were brought under its fold with the hope that as the population increases it would occupy the neighbouring areas. Today, in the 21st century, the total tiger habitat available is less than 150,000 sq km of which about 40,000 sq km has been placed under Project Tiger. Though theoretically the area under Project Tiger has increased, practically less than half of it remains a viable tiger habitat because of various factors. And some prominent people, supported by a few tiger “experts”, now propose that the tiger must share even this remaining area with the tribal population! If the government is still unwilling to tackle the problem on a war-footing and the politician does not desist from trading the tiger’s future with vote bank politics, the time for our great country to get poorer has
arrived!
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Just a ‘Namaste’
Recently, I have stopped shaking hands with people. No, not because of any loss in self-esteem. I have begun to love India’s traditions and greet people with folded hands — a “namaste”. Some years ago, Dr Richard Krause from the USA, while on a visit, was highly impressed by the Indian namaste. He observed that if everybody in the world stopped shaking hands and took to the namaste; contagious diseases would not spread so easily. My own reasons for adopting the namaste are personal, apart from the germ factor. Handshaking episodes — or to be more precise just refusing to do so — are printed in my memory never to be erased. Several years ago, as a teenager, having won the Lions’ Club Essay Competition prize, I had to shake hands with the president of the club. Soon this elderly gentleman became a family friend. Every time he met us, he offered a handshake. It was impolite not to shake an offered hand, but the handshaking episodes were unnecessarily getting more and more frequent. One day I decided to play stubborn and ignored the offered hand. The embarrassed man finally looked at his hand to see if anything was wrong with it and withdrew it slowly. Our greetings later on were not as warm as they used to be but at least in the next few meetings no hand was offered to us fortunately. A few years ago an acquaintance of mine never missed an opportunity for handshaking, except when his wife accompanied him. One day I was noting down something with a one-foot pencil brought from the South. In came this guy, removed his hand glove and offered a handshake. Peeved as usual, I thought he should be told to mend his habit, but politeness came in the way. So holding on to the farthest end of my weapon — the great saviour, I offered him the whole length of the pencil in lieu of my hand. He fumed and swore under his breath. I excused him saying, “Oh my hand may be infectious since I’ve been handling some germs!” I don’t know what went in his mind but the message got across. I am not against a handshake. It is a way of touching people’s lives and charging the atmosphere with warmth and happiness. But shaking hands with sinister motives should be discouraged. These days I am not the first to offer a handshake. People, who meet me for the first time, wonder whether or not to offer a handshake. Reading their mind, I instantly solve their problem by just folding my hands into a namaste and they follow suit! I really give a big salaam to
namaste!
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Dateline Washington As
the Iran nuclear crisis simmers, the Bush administration has turned up the heat on Pakistan to allow U.N. inspectors to question Abdul Qadeer Khan. The disgraced nuclear scientist, currently under house arrest in Pakistan, is believed to hold vital information about Iran’s nuclear programme which his underground network purportedly aided. Part of the renewed American push came in the form of a recent congressional hearing in Washington. Congressman Ed Royce, a California Republican, chaired a discussion in the House International Relations subcommittee on international terrorism on Khan’s nuclear blackmarket. Pointing out that the Khan network has been described as the “Wal-Mart of private sector proliferation,” Mr. Royce said, “Its handiwork has helped deliver to us two of the most threatening security challenges we face: North Korea and Iran.” David Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security, agrees the U.S. would not be facing a nuclear crisis with Iran if Khan’s smuggling ring had not helped Iran’s nuclear program for over a decade. “Armed with a catalog filled with everything from whole gas centrifuge factories to nuclear weapon designs, this network helped outfit nuclear weapons programs in Libya, Iran, and North Korea and possibly aided Al Qaeda in its quest for nuclear weapons before the fall of the Taliban,” Mr. Albright told the Congressional panel, adding a warning: Remnants of the network may yet help other nuclear weapons programmes and terrorist groups. Khan ran a sophisticated and clandestine nuclear blackmarket which provided advanced nuclear enrichment technology and expertise to countries including Libya and Iran. In October 2003, Italian authorities seized sophisticated centrifuge components bound for Libya aboard the BBC China, forcing the government of President Pervez Musharraf to confront the scientist. Khan’s network has done incalculable and potentially catastrophic damage to international security, said Mr. Royce. He noted that U.S. policy “rightly attempts to work with, and pressure, the Pakistan government on counter-terrorism, proliferation” and said the fact that there have been no Pakistani prosecutions of the network’s members and that Khan himself was pardoned by Gen. Musharraf sent a very unfortunate signal to would-be proliferators. The London Sunday Telegraph over the weekend quoted Gen. Hameed Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, as saying: “They want to squeeze Dr. Khan to use his statements as evidence for the upcoming meeting of the UN Security Council. Support from Beijing and Moscow would only be possible if the U.S. is able to provide ample evidence, and Dr. Khan’s words could be instrumental.” Speaking in Washington recently, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nuclear Non Proliferation, Andrew Semmel, said the Bush administration is engaged in a “continuous, deep-seated, serious effort” to unravel the Khan network. Renewed U.S. pressure is in sharp contrast to Washington’s reaction three decades ago. According to former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, the Netherlands government was prepared to arrest Khan in 1975 when he was caught spying at the Urenco enrichment facility in Almelo, but the CIA asked the Dutch government to let him go so that more information about his activities could be obtained. Leonard Weiss, a former staff director of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said in the late 1980s Khan had made arrangements with Iran to transfer centrifuge technology for Iran’s clandestine work on uranium enrichment. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry announced that the Khan case was closed and insisted the man the nation hails as the father of the Islamic nuclear bomb would remain off limits to foreign investigations, despite requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.S., and others to interview him. Pakistani lawmakers also recently passed a resolution that ruled out handing over Khan for interrogation. However, the case is far from closed, say analysts and some members of Congress. Many questions remain about what Khan and his associates supplied other countries, particularly Iran. Information shared by the Pakistani government with the IAEA also appears to be incomplete. “Unraveling the activities of the network and ensuring that it remains shut down require the Pakistani government to provide more assistance to investigators, including giving the IAEA and affected governments direct access to question Khan and his associates verbally,” said Mr. Albright, adding, “Greater cooperation from Pakistan would allow the IAEA and affected governments to conduct more thorough investigations, to pursue more effectively criminal prosecutions of individuals involved in the network, and to recover physical remnants of the illicit procurement network that have not yet been found and that could provide the seeds for future, secret nuclear weapons programs.” Author Andrew Koch noted that two years after President Bush said international investigators have “put an end to his criminal enterprise,” it appears that portions of Khan’s network remain intact and possibly in operation. Some question whether the Khan network is truly out of business, asking if it’s not merely hibernating, said Mr. Royce. “We’d be foolish to rule out that chilling possibility.”
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Bush rewarding the callous
and the cruel IN response to the Haditha massacre in Iraq, where United State Marines murdered 24 civilians, including children and infants, U.S. government officials quickly reverted to the “bad apple” theory. It’s a tempting theory, and not just for the Bush administration. It suggests a vast and reassuring divide between “us” (the virtuous majority, who would never, under any circumstances, commit coldblooded murder) and “them” (the sociopathic, bad-apples). It allows us to hold on to our belief in our collective goodness. The problem with this theory is that it rests on a false assumption about the relationship between character and deeds. Yes, sociopaths exist, but ordinary, “good” people are also perfectly capable of committing atrocities. In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a famous experiment. He told subjects to administer electric shocks to other people, ostensibly to assess the effect of physical punishment on learning. In fact, Milgram wanted to “test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.” Quite a lot of pain, it turned out. Most of Milgram’s subjects continued to administer what they believed to be severe and agonizing shocks even when their “victims” (actually Milgram’s assistants) screamed and begged them to stop. Milgram’s subjects weren’t sociopaths. On the contrary, most expressed extreme distress about administering progressively more severe shocks. But almost all of them did it anyway. Milgram’s basic findings have been extended and confirmed since the 1960s. It’s depressing, but experimental evidence and historical experience suggest that even the gentlest people can usually be induced to inflict or ignore suffering. There are several key factors that lead “good people” to do terrible things. The first, as the Milgram experiments powerfully demonstrated, is authority: Most ordinary people readily allow the dictates of “authorities” to trump their own moral instincts. The second is conformity. Few people have the courage to go against the crowd. The third is dehumanization of the victims. The Nazis routinely depicted Jews as “vermin” in need of extermination, for instance. Similarly, forcing victims to wear distinctive clothing (yellow stars, prison uniforms), shave their heads and so on can powerfully contribute to their dehumanization. Orders, peer expectations and dehumanization need not be explicit to have a powerful effect. In adversarial settings such as prisons or conflict zones, subtle cues and omissions — the simple failure of authorities to send frequent, clear and consistent messages about appropriate behavior, for instance — can be as powerful as direct orders. Of course, individuals still make their own choices. Most of Milgram’s experimental subjects administered severe electric shocks — but a few refused. If Marines are proved to have massacred civilians at Haditha, they should be punished accordingly. But let’s not let the Bush administration off the hook. It’s the duty of the government that sends troops to war to create a context that enables and rewards compassion and courage rather than callousness and cruelty. This administration has done just the opposite.
— By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar Union Road Transport and Highways Minister T R Baalu is a smart politician. He was aware that the majority of questions at the press conference scheduled after the inauguration of the fly-over on the Delhi-Gurgaon stretch last week would be related to delays in the ambitious Golden Quadrilateral and other highway projects. He chose, therefore, to also have mediapersons present at the National Highways Authority of India presentation following the ceremony. He made good use of the opportunity, posing uncomfortable questions about delays in the project to National Highways Authority of India officials and others concerned. It turned out to be an interesting session with the various parties trying to pass the buck around for delays in the project. But he stopped them short before too much was revealed to the media. And after the session, he turned to media persons smiling and observed: “I don’t think there is any need for a press conference now.” The change of regime in Bihar has led to some diminishing of interest about the state’s affairs in the capital; but the state continues to generate unwelcome news. Bihar has the largest number of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) blacklisted by the Council for Advancement of People’s Action (CAPART). CAPART officials said recently that of the 362 NGOs blacklisted by them so far, 113 are in Bihar. Also, Bihar, which badly needs land reforms, went unrepresented at a recent conference of state revenue secretaries on land reform programmes held in the capital. Smooth
traffic When Delhi Metro Rail Corporation chief E Sreedharan sought the cooperation of the traffic police in the capital to regulate traffic in some sections where the world class metro was being built, an Assistant Commissioner of Police was blunt in saying that putting his men on duty at these spots would add to the woes of the public. Considering Sreedharan’s reputation as a no-nonsense person, the ACP suggested that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation recruit its own people for regulating the traffic. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation did just that and the net result was that the flow of traffic remained smooth.
***** Contributed by S S Negi, Vibha Sharma, Prashant Sood and R Suryamurthy
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From the pages of Reorganisation of States
With the appointment of the Reorganisation of States Commission our country enters upon a very delicate state in its political evolution. The question of the reorganisation of States is highly controversial and capable of arousing strong passions. Whatever one’s views on the subject of linguistic States, one cannot deny that the manner in which Andhra Desh was created was most unfortunate. The redefinition of State boundaries is a problem requiring careful study in a scientific and objective spirit. We have to create the right kind of atmosphere for a dispassionate understanding of the problem and for a judicious weighing of the conflicting claims and competing interests of the various parties concerned. No commission, whatever its composition, can perform its functions in a proper way if the atmosphere in the country is surcharged with violence or passions. It is the duty of all parties concerned, therefore, to help in the creation of the right atmosphere and to present their claims with moderation and restraint. The Commission consists of persons known for their integrity, intimate knowledge of public affairs and detachment from part politics. They represent a combination of scholarship, objectivity and long experience of public service. For anyone to criticise the personnel of the Commission is tantamount to prejudicing the issues which the Commission has to decide.
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Faith is not like a delicate flower which would
wither away. Myriads of sins are dispelled in a moment by the Almighty God.
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