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Belated wisdom NRI wed(lock) |
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Walk to freedom
The Indian decade
The lingering smile
Strike fast and hard Artificial blood
coming to the rescue Delhi Durbar
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Belated wisdom ANY step to arrest the prices of essential commodities is bound to be lapped up by the common man. The Union Cabinet’s decision on Thursday to address this problem gives hope to the people who have been hit hard by the increasing prices of wheat, pulses and sugar. All these items have virtually gone out of the reach of the poor. This cannot be attributed solely to the inflationary pressures on the economy. In fact, the price trends suggest certain fundamental flaws in the system of procurement and supply of foodgrains. It is surprising that at a time when pulses are in short supply and their prices are skyrocketing, export of the precious item has been going on. Similarly, the government had not taken timely decision to import wheat to prevent its prices going beyond the reach of the ordinary people. Hopefully, import of wheat and sugar and the ban on export of pulses will have an immediate impact on the price situation. But much will depend on how quick the government is able to have the imported wheat and sugar supplied through the distribution system. There is little doubt that the Food Corporation of India clearly bungled in procuring wheat this year. While private traders were able to procure quality wheat at a price slightly higher than the minimum support price declared by the government, it could not procure it in adequate quantity. As a result, the buffer stock has been depleted. In spite of all this, there is unwillingness on the part of the government to admit that production of foodgrain this year had not kept with the requirement. In other words, food sufficiency is no longer a reality. Once this fact is accepted, it will help the government to plan better for the future. For the present, the state governments should chip in by coming down heavily on all those who would be taking undue advantage of the shortage. Suggestions that pulses, which are perhaps the only source of protein for a large section of the population, should be distributed through the ration shops need to be acted upon. The government should constantly watch the situation and take timely remedial action so that there is no situation of starvation in any part of the country.
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NRI wed(lock) An NRI match is considered a prized catch, particularly in North Indian families. Such potential bridegrooms rush to the country of their birth in the climatically suitable winter months and grateful parents of girls of marriageable age fix up the weddings at double quick. Often, the dreams of innocent brides do not take long to turn into nightmares. They are shocked to find that they were no more than “holiday brides”, with the “suitable boy” having been either already married or out to grab dowry or property from the gullible girl. Even if she makes it to the house of her partner, she finds that she is no more than an unwanted burden. Abandonment and brutalisation become her daily companion. It’s not as if only girls are so targeted. Even boys have been cheated by unscrupulous “brides”. Such fraudulent marriages have become such a big racket that at last the citizens concerned and even the government are waking up to the harsh reality. The NRI cheats manage to hoodwink people only because of the inadequacy of the existing arrangements. There is need to have in place comprehensive legislation so that their crime does not go unpunished. Registering NRI marriages, scrutiny and verification of documents being provided are some of the suggestions which can be incorporated into the proposed law to curb the menace. However, to be safe rather than sorry, the first line of defence will be for the girls or boys desirous of getting married to NRIs to not rush into marriages with spouses who say they can be here only for a week or a fortnight. Just as the antecedents of those in India are checked thoroughly before saying yes to matrimony, it is imperative to be even more careful in the case of an NRI match. It is unfortunate that despite hearing of so many cases of harassment, gullible persons continue to fall headlong into the traps laid by fake travel agents and phoney spouses. |
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Walk to freedom JUNE 23, 2006, will be a red-letter day for many undertrials as they are expected to walk to freedom following the enforcement of the much-awaited Criminal Procedure Code Amendment Act 2005 from that day. It stipulates that an undertrial, who cannot be awarded death penalty, will be released if the person has already served half of the prescribed period of imprisonment for a particular offence. The amendment also provides for the release of undertrials who have served a period longer than they would have served if they were punished for the offence they committed. Essentially, this is an ennobling provision in the absence of which the undertrials were forced to spend decades in the jails with no hope of justice. There are cases of those booked for petty offences languishing in the jails for years. This is not only a mockery of the criminal justice system but also a gross abuse of human rights. While the enforcement of the amendment is a progressive move by the Manmohan Singh government, there is a need to speed up the trial of cases. Why should the accused be forced to undergo mental and physical torture in the jail without trial and punishment? Moreover, early trial would help decongest jails. At present, most prisons are overcrowded. Of the total jail population of 2,57,000 prisoners, around 73 per cent or 1,82,000 are undertrials, many of whom were booked for petty offences. If vacancies in the courts are a problem, why cannot the Centre help states fill up the posts of judges? Similarly, special courts or fast track courts can be set up to expedite the trial of criminal cases. At the recent conference of chief justices and chief ministers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had assured the Supreme Court that the Centre would help speed up judicial reforms. Clearly, the ball is in the Centre’s court. Without bureaucratic hassles, it has to release funds to the states on priority for infrastructural development and technological upgradation. More important is the political will to expedite trial and mitigate the hardship of undertrials. |
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No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. — Eleanor Roosevelt
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The Indian decade
Last year had been one of ferment on the understanding of Indian growth. That India has been growing from the eighties is now accepted. But it is interesting that the fulcrum of that growth, the policy initiatives of the decade of the eighties, are neither fully understood nor causally related with the growth upsurgence. Technology as the major source of growth, strategic economic reform at home and with the rest of the world as the instruments and decentralised local government and widespread agricultural growth in the panchayati raj and agro-climatic scheme as the overarching paradigms have largely been the policy initiatives that have succeeded since. Later coalition policy regimes with little that was new to offer and some in borrowed “reform” attire and comparatively lacklustre performance, deliberately underplayed and some ravaged the legacy. First there was the carefully crafted, but incorrect paradigm by some academic and most official economists in the nineties that growth in the eighties was slower than in the nineties, that it was unsustainable and that it was without a vision. Yet when the growth argument was empirically refuted, the corollaries were not. During the last year we have seen with very talented NRI economists — Arvind Panagriya, Nirvigeker Singh, Meghnad Desai and now the political economy of Atul Kohli — alternative explanations of the “Growth in the Eighties”. Each one of them carries their doctoral thesis flavour and misses the essential aspects of the story. Nations grow even in a globalising phase with their own inheritance and history. The ones that don’t understand this land up in the dustbin of history. Arvind Panagriya is as usual solid and most readable on Hindu vs. reform-led growth. He has set at rest the characterisation of the eighties by asserting that “in contrast to the isolated ad hoc policy measures taken to release immediate pressures prior to the 1980s, [the eighties] taken as a whole, constituted significant change and an activist programme. For example, by 1990, approximately 20 per cent of the tariff lines and 30 per cent of imports had come under OGL. .. import licensing on many other products was eased up”. However, growth in the eighties, he argues, was “fragile and volatile.” Actually, growth in the eighties and nineties was far more stable than in earlier decades. The difference is between the earlier period and the last two decades rather than within the decades themselves and that may give a different perspective to the process. But before all this it is interesting that while the growth story has been known in India for almost seven years, it is now being globally discovered. In 1997 in my inaugural address to the Indian Society of Labour Economics at Trivandrum, I had comparing the period since the late Seventies with the earlier period and argued “in the decade of the fifties, GDP growth was less than 2.8 per cent in 50 per cent of the years and in the remaining years, it was more than 5.7 per cent In the decade of the sixties, this behaviour persisted and growth was less than 3.1 per cent or negative for fifty per cent of the years and in the remaining years it was more than 5.1 per cent. However, from 1975-76 to 1996-97, a growth performance of less than 3.1 per cent was there in only three of the 21 years. There are therefore two characteristics of growth in recent years. It is higher. It is more stable.” This was followed by Arvind Virmani, Nagaraj, Mahendra Reddy and others, but caught fancy only after the IMF and Harvard discovered it a couple of years ago. As regards the “causes”, Meghnad Desai sums up the dominant argument outside India: “Opening out the economy to foreign borrowing on official account in the 1980s was the beginning of an admission that self-reliance was not a successful strategy, that the Indian economy was trapped in a low growth equilibrium.” Therefore, “A lifetime of living off tariffs and subsidised interest rates has inured the big business classes against the virtues of competition.” The argument that the policy systems of the eighties were designed to establish a cozy relationship between the capitalists and the establishment through tariffs and directed credit is factually incorrect. By the mid-eighties, around two-thirds of Indian industry was out of domestic controls on prices and output, and to a large extent on investment. Policy broke the back of the one-to-one link between the bureaucrat and the capitalist and was very clear that global reform was to come next. Industry had to cope with domestic competition and, as Panagriya brings out, prices were regulated by tariffs and a major churning took place. Priority was on domestic reform in the first phase. Rodericks and Subrahmnanian in their IMF paper say that growth in the eighties was on account of a regime which was dominated by business. They do not look into the strategic nature of the policy-making setup in the eighties. The development of industry-level rules rather than firm-level interventions, dual pricing for equity reasons, of competition at home to lay a transition for the later reform and the use of trade and fiscal policies for these objectives have been extensively described elsewhere. Recent converts to Indian growth were wrong when they said India was not growing. They are wrong now when they say it was growing but attribute the growth to the wrong reason. The policy regime India was experimenting with earlier got attention in the policy debates of the alternate kind. Lance Taylor described a multifaceted price system as a “transition from an administered one towards a market regime,” and gave the Polish and Indian examples and complimented the Indians for transitional regimes “developing effective multi-tiered pricing systems for their nationalised firms and even in agriculture (Alagh,1991).” Robert Wade in his well-known “World Politics Paper on East Asia’s Economic Success” was to quote Indian perspectives on South Korea in his famous justification of “strategic trade theory”. Wade begins and ends his paper with a reference to an Indian description of South Korea’s policy perspectives in the early phases of industrialisation. The reference by Wade to a South Korean perspective from the present authors view from South Asia in the ADB’s Asian Development Review became a widely cited part of the strategic trade theory literature. Later, John Stopford was to place this experience in a larger strategic global political economy perspective in a Carnegie Mellon piece and draw management implications for the global firm from it and even gurus like Kenichi Ohmae were to learn from this stream. After the Asian meltdown it is no longer fashionable to deride a strategic view on reform. The World Bank changed, but Indian, particularly NRI Indian, perceptions didn’t. It is argued that growth of the eighties was not sustainable since it led to fiscal deficits, and policy has corrected this in the nineties. But the combined fiscal deficit of Central and state governments was 9.4 per cent of GDP in 1990-91 and is 9.9 per cent of GDP in 2001-02, the last year for which comparable estimates have been given in the Economic Survey. Also borrowings in the nineties were and are increasingly for consumption. The revenue deficit of the government of India which was 49.4 per cent of the fiscal deficit in 1990-91 went up to 59.2 per cent in 1995-96 and was 71.1 per cent in 2001-02. No wonder, fiscal sustainability is the task at hand of the present government and not a great achievement of the nineties. India we are told had to sell gold, because it had splurged. But 1990-91 was a very unusual year. The Janata Government of 1990 was explicitly against growth. The Eighth Plan Approach Paper they brought out was the only one not to have a growth target. With the level of short-term debt we have today, wouldn’t we have a crisis of confidence if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s closest economic advisers, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, M.S. Ahluwalia and Governor C. Rangarajan, instead of talking growth, PPPs and convertibility, constantly kept on saying that growth was not an objective of policy and deriding Indian achievements? It is time to set the record straight so that the future sights are
clearer.
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The lingering smile
It was the usual morning rush hour. I was negotiating one of the steep slopes of Shimla, panting and huffing my way up to the roadhead when suddenly my speed was arrested by two school children: a girl and a boy. The girl may be seven or eight, was navigating her whining brother on the climb slowly and tenderly. He seemed to have got a good smacking from his mother, if one could guess from his sobs and his unwilling steps. He presented the perfect picture of Shakespeare’s schoolboy with “shining morning face/ creeping like a snail, unwillingly to school.” His sister, however, was cajoling him and looked an epitome of tenderness and patience, though she was not much older to the boy. This picture is not something unusual, though. What struck me at that moment was the hindrance to my speed and my hurry to get past them. The road was narrow and with the two children carrying their huge bags it was as good (or as bad) as the traffic jams. Not sure what to do I simply uttered “Come on, children! Let’s have a race and walk faster to see who wins — you or I”. Suddenly, there was a kind of flurry. The girl almost dragged her brother and in a minute they were way ahead of me. I increased my speed and nearing them said just by way of encouragement, “So! You have won the race.” The girl looked back, smiled; the boy just frowned. And suddenly I felt the flash of that smile go right through my heart. It was probably one of the best smiles I encountered — those sparkling innocent eyes; those newly sprouted bunny teeth, and the joy of winning on her child-face. Somehow, the girl came to my mind oft and on that day as a representative of the girl child in general. Tender and loving to her brother, almost motherly, happily going to school, giving an exuberant smile for a small compliment! Very soon, she would be helping her mother in household chores and her brother would be off playing and people would say with the customary shrug, “ Oh! Boys would be boys, after all.” My thoughts wandered, focusing in general on the girl child — an endangered species: a victim of foeticide; for whose safety and existence advertisements are flashed in the media. And yet, it is the girl who brings in innate joy to the household. It is she who is worshipped as “Kanyaka” (Kanjak) twice during the Navratras. And suddenly, I remembered a short story by Mrinal Pande, “Girls”, in which the seven-year-old child resents the second-class treatment meted out to her vis-a-vis her male counterparts and rejects the offer to be worshipped. “ I don’t want to be Devi,” she yells as she dashes out in
tears.
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Strike fast and hard Exercise Sanghe Shakti, held over one week in Punjab in May 2006, was designed to test the Indian Army’s new concept for offensive operations in the plains. This was the most recent in a series of annual exercises that have included Poorna Vijay (2001), Vijay Chakra, Divya Astra, Vajra Shakti (May 2005) and Desert Strike (November 2005), all of which were all aimed at concentrating and coordinating firepower and fine-tuning Army-Air Force joint operations in a strategic setting that was premised on operations in a nuclear environment. The COAS had said during Exercise Vajra Shakti that it had been conducted with a nuclear backdrop, and that battle procedures had been refined and ‘high synergy’ had been achieved with the IAF. The offensive doctrine prior to Operation Parakram was to employ massive Strike Corps combat potential to advance deep into Pakistani territory to capture strategic objectives, and to bring to battle and destroy Pakistan’s Army Reserve (North) and Army Reserve (South), so as to substantially degrade its war machinery. This concept was evolved in 1981-82 and tested in Exercise Digvijay when General Krishna Rao was Army Chief. It was further refined during the famous Exercise Brass Tacks IV in 1987 by General K. Sundarji as Army Chief, and was accepted as the army’s offensive doctrine for war in the plains. After India’s nuclear tests of May 1998, there have been several attempts to refine the army’s doctrine so that it is suitable for offensive operations with a nuclear backdrop. The Indian Army’s new concept of offensive operations is a combination of “cold start” – the ability to launch quick strikes across the International Boundary (IB) without prior warning by moving rapidly to battle positions from the cantonments – and integrated “battle groups”. These are offensive forces formed at divisional level to penetrate across the IB over a wide front but not necessarily too deeply. The new doctrine is in marked contrast with the old concept of launching massive Strike Corps operations for deep strikes across the IB as Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is perceived to be low. Achievement of the military aim in the next war in the plains, while ensuring that operations do not escalate to nuclear exchanges, poses a unique strategic challenge in the planning and conduct of defensive and offensive operations. The need to be able to mobilise quickly (“cold start”) and launch multi-pronged offensives deep into Pakistan, as well as the need to mass firepower rather than forces when planning to fight in a nuclear environment, prompt the need for some fresh thinking about force structures for offensive operations. As is well known, India has three Strike Corps. Because of their massive size, the present Strike Corps are difficult to concentrate, side-step, deploy and manoeuvre and this virtually rules out surprise and deception. During Operation Parakram the Strike Corps had taken too long to move to their concentration areas. However, if the Indian Strike Corps are going to be employed only to achieve small, operational or even tactical-level gains, why have them at all? In the coming decades, Indian military genius will lie in finding a suitable via media for launching meaningful offensive operations as well maintaining strong countervailing forces. If a fleeting opportunity is to be exploited, the strike formations must be capable of launching an offensive operation from a cold start. Within 72 to 96 hours of the issue of the order for full-scale mobilisation, three to five strike division “battle groups” must cross the IB straight from the line of march. They should be launching their break-in operations and crossing the “start line” even as the holding (defensive) divisions are completing their deployment on the forward obstacles. Only such simultaneity of operations will unhinge the enemy, break his cohesion and paralyse him into making mistakes from which he will not be able to recover. One of the options that the army is reported to be considering is to split the three Strike Corps into several division-size, integrated “battle groups” of the size and capabilities of Russia’s famed OMGs (operational manoeuvre groups), that were designed to be launched after a “break-in” had been affected. While one “battle group” each could be allotted to the holding (pivot) corps for providing an offensive punch to them, the others will need to be so structured that they are capable of independent action. These could also be designated as theatre and Army HQ reserves. Each one will need to be specifically structured to achieve designated objectives in the terrain in which it is expected to be launched and yet be flexible enough for two or more of them to fight dispersed under a corps HQ to bring to bear the combined weight of their combat power on a common military objective deep inside enemy territory. Hence, at least two out of the three Strike Corps HQ must be retained and should be capable of taking under command strike battle groups at short notice to achieve laid down military objectives. The “pivot” or holding Corps have been provided significant offensive capability that is now integral to them. According to the COAS, “they have been assigned roles, which are offensive as well as defensive… The decision-making has been left to theatre commanders, depending on their assessment and evaluation of the situation.” If the peace time locations of offensive army formations can be changed to areas that are closer to the western border, these will be in a better position to launch trans-IB operations from the line of march to achieve surprise even as the pivot Corps to which these belong is still in the process of deploying in its defences. Only innovative measures of this type will lead to success in short and sharp future Indo-Pak conflicts that may spill over to the plains. The art of generalship will lie in achieving India’s military aims quickly without crossing Pakistan’s nuclear threshold, before the international community blows the whistle for a cease-fire. The writer is Director, Security Studies and Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. |
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Artificial blood
coming to the rescue It’s
difficult to store, it’s often in short supply – and there’s always the
possibility that it could carry a deadly infection. Could a synthetic version
of blood become the lifesaver of the future? Scientists are on the verge of a seismic development in their knowledge of blood – producing a synthetic substitute that mimics the life-giving properties of the real thing but is guaranteed to be free of deadly infections such as HIV. Artificial blood has the potential to solve a huge range of problems: shortages caused by falling donations; the need to ensure that only blood of the same type as the patient is transfused; the difficulty of transporting and storing supplies; and the risk of infection transmission in countries with high rates of AIDS. Blood transfusions are now routinely given when someone has lost 40 per cent of their own supply and their vital organs are at risk of not receiving adequate oxygen. But while the process itself is now simple and safe, there are problems with the safety - and supply - of the blood used. Blood cannot be stored indefinitely; it needs to be used within 30 to 35 days and around 10 per cent of all donated supplies are not used. It also needs to be refrigerated and is therefore difficult to use in life-or-death situations such as at the scene of a car crash or on a battlefield. Which is why the American military first started researching the possibility of developing a synthetic blood substitute during the Vietnam war. While blood has a number of important functions, the biggest problem during surgery or after an injury is the fall in oxygen being carried to the organs. So the challenge was to create a substance that could mimic haemoglobin, the molecule that transports oxygen and gives red blood cells their colour. Early attempts at creating “fake blood” were unsuccessful and caused toxicity when tested during animal trials, but the researchers learnt by their mistakes and have made huge advances in the last five years. Haemoglobin can be extracted from out-of-date donor blood, cow’s blood and even plants and fungi. It is then modified to ensure it remains stable when injected into the body. Because it does not contain the cells that make blood into different types, the same haemoglobin substitute can be used on all patients. It could be kept indefinitely and could be stored at room temperature, making it easy to transport. While European researchers are focused on haemoglobin-based products, the Americans are turning to another source for artificial blood - a Teflon-type group of synthetic liquids called perfluorocarbons (PFCs). PFCs are capable of dissolving large volumes of oxygen, are cheap and easy to make and are simple to store. But for them to work, patients need to also be breathing 70 to 100 per cent oxygen through a mask, meaning that their use outside a hospital environment is limited. Some products are in the last phase of clinical trials, when they are tested on humans, but have been shown to produce flu-like symptoms in some patients. And unlike the real red stuff, both haemoglobin and PFC alternatives only work in the bloodstream for a few days, so they are only useful in the short term. However, they do offer real potential for reducing transmission of infection as well as offering a possible alternative to people who object to blood transfusions on religious grounds. — By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar With India backing senior UN official and well known author Shashi Tharoor for the post of Secretary General of the world body, the spotlight has been on him during his visit to the Capital. Tharoor says that there is a change in the mindset among the 191-member United Nations as officials from within the organisation are finally being called upon to take on the task of implementing its Charter, rather than looking beyond for rank outsiders. Sources in the External Affairs ministry emphasise that Tharoor has won 50 per cent of the battle on his own and appears to be in with a very good chance as China is believed to have conveyed to India that it will support New Delhi’s candidate. However, the dark horse for the UN Secretary General’s post can be Singapore’s former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong as the other aspirants from Sri Lanka, Thailand and South Korea are not much of a challenge.
Rakhi’s day out Mumbai based dancer Rakhi Sawant’s meeting with the National Commission for Women Chairperson Girija Vyas evoked curiosity amongst its staffers and mediapersons. As word spread that Rakhi was arriving in the forenoon, a large number of mediapersons assembled at the Commission. In search of justice to restore her dignity following the alleged molestation by Punjabi pop singer Mika, the young dancer appeared jittery in front of the media. Rakhi asked for water and told the Chairperson that her hands were trembling. In the glare The
Mika-Rakhi Sawant “smooch” controversy has come as a blessing in disguise for the
BJP, which had been reeling under the media scanner over the Rahul Mahajan issue. Thanks to the Rakhi Sawant episode, the media focus, especially that of the TV news channels, shifted away from
Rahul. As one of the BJP leaders put it: “We have been spared for some time at least.”
Aiyar’s agenda He may have propagated Panchayati Raj in all parts of the country but Union Minister of Panchayati Raj and Sports Mani Shankar Aiyar has apparently not been able to make a thorough personal assessment of working of PRIs in his home state. The minister, who does not exactly enjoy a cordial relationship with former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, has not been able to extensively tour villages in the state. Now, with a change of regime in Tamil Nadu, the minister has decided to tour villages in Nagapattinam which was severely affected by the tsunami in 2004.
Visiting NRIs Gursharan
Kaur, homemaker and wife of the Prime Minister, keeps a rather low profile and is extremely selective about the functions where she makes a public appearance.
Her curiosity was aroused when a youthful brigade of NRIs in the Contributed
by R Suryamurthy, Tripti Nath, Prashant Sood and |
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From the pages of CHINA’S BELLICOSE MOOD
As a rule the Prime Minister does not make a statement in Parliament on foreign affairs unless the compulsion of circumstances is irresistible. What Mr Nehru gave to Parliament on Friday morning was vital information about the continuing crisis over relations with China. The story unfolded by him makes grim reading and will only increase the anxiety felt in this country over China’s continuing warlike postures. Apparently the Government is not yet in a position to speak with certainty about the motives which inspire Peking to indulge in unfriendly acts towards India. The obvious reason, of course, is the Chinese interpretation of India’s attitude to the recent developments in Tibet as unfriendly, though even there the hangover of China’s resentment has proved to be much longer than would be ordinarily regarded as justified. A more specific reason perhaps is the continuing irritant of the Dalai Lama’s presence on Indian soil. But the Chinese should know by now that, however irritated they may feel, India has no intention of ordering the Tibetan visitor out of the country in the hope of winning back Peking’s friendship. |
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