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The wrong doctor sacked Tackle price rise |
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Back to talks
Games nations play
The “Maula Baksh”
People first Reactor tech upgraded to 700 MWe Delhi Durbar
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The wrong doctor sacked Union Health Minister Anbhuman Ramadoss seems to think that he is an all-powerful dictator in some banana republic. That is why he nonchalantly said “off with his head” while showing the door to a heart surgeon of the stature of Dr P Venugopal, the AIIMS Director. One of the country’s foremost professionals was not even given a fair chance to present his case in keeping with the principles of natural justice. So much for the autonomy of this premier institution! The way he was made to wait outside while the minister and his men decided his fate was a matter of shame. Small wonder that the medical fraternity is extremely agitated, and there is a total strike at the AIIMS. And to think that the Prime Minister has been talking about a “knowledge society”! Surely, this is not the way in which we are going to nurture excellence for India of the 21st century. The issue could have been settled amicably if the minister had not made it a prestige issue. Dr Ramadoss was apparently acting under the dictats of his own ego and got even by removing Dr Venugopal, whom he considered to be a party to the anti-reservation stir. In the process, he merrily subverted procedure. It is now for the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet to undo the damage by not endorsing the minister’s draconian order he personally pushed through the AIIMS governing body. In fact, if anybody deserves the sack, it is Dr Ramadoss who has mishandled the situation from the beginning and the Prime Minister will be doing a great service to his government by showing the Health Minister the door at the earliest. The minister’s bias is also obvious from the way he withheld the salary of the doctors for the strike period, unmindful of the assurance the government had given to the Supreme Court that no “punitive action” would be taken against the doctors on strike. The dressing down that the government received on this account from the Supreme Court was fully earned. Politicians like Dr Ramadoss have already made a mess of things in a large number of government institutions. They should not be on the governing boards of the few islands of excellence like the AIIMS that the country still has and whose autonomy needs to be respected.
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Tackle price rise Discussing the price rise in Delhi on Wednesday, the Chief Ministers of the 14 Congress-ruled states tossed around the usual ideas for tackling the situation, but there was hardly any acceptable concrete proposal. None accepted responsibility for the failure to monitor prices and take timely action. They returned with party president Sonia Gandhi’s directive to take on hoarders, create a chain of fair price shops and monitor the public distribution system (PDS). Some of them blamed the price rise on a decision of the NDA government taken on February 15, 2002, allowing traders to buy, stock and sell any quantity of foodgrains. The NDA decision was aimed at creating a single common market in the country. Although it apparently helped traders and the BJP was then, as now, seen as appeasing its vote bank, farmers also benefited since they got better prices for their produce from private buyers. There is an obvious clash of interests: if prices rise traders and, to some extent, farmers benefit and consumers suffer; if prices fall, then farmers need to be rescued. The tricky situation calls for a strategic balance as well as urgent steps. Another suggestion was to regulate commodity trade to curb speculation. The commodities market merely reacts to the possibility of a scarcity or a glut in future. It cannot be blamed for production shortages. As is well known, the present price rise is due to low procurement, crop diversion and a steep hike in the oil prices. The solution is to make imports, wherever necessary, through government or private agencies and cut down the taxes on petrol and diesel. None of the Chief Ministers offered that they would cut levies on oil as desired by the Centre. For the long term, there is need to build panchayat-managed foodgrain banks to meet the local needs. The PDS has been too much misused and needs to be better managed. The price rise situation called for a certain degree of anticipation on the part of the authorities—both at the Centre and in the states—and pre-emptive steps that have unfortunately not been taken.
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Back to talks Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran’s two-day visit to Sri Lanka amidst the worsening Tamil-Sinhala conflict is significant, including for the international community. Rarely since the Norway-brokered peace process began, or broke down in 2003, has New Delhi embarked on a mission such as this. At a critical time when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have revived their war-like posturing and terrorist strikes, the two countries are in agreement that there has to be activity not only on the security front but also on the political one. This is an unmistakable signal of New Delhi’s resolve to see that tensions are brought down and the dialogue between Colombo and the LTTE carried forward. Lest the LTTE miss the force of the message, Mr Saran underscored the need to halt the spiralling violence in Sri Lanka as intensification of the conflict would have “consequences”. For good measure, but in measured words, he has made it plain that India would do “whatever (we can) to bring tensions down”. This must be heartening to Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapakse, who, regardless of the LTTE’s violent provocations, has refused to be detracted from his efforts to persuade the Tamil separatist guerrillas to return to negotiations. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s message, conveyed by Mr Saran, that India remains committed to the island republic’s unity, territorial integrity and sovereignty is supportive of Colombo but meant to make both parties resume talks. For its part, the Government of Sri Lanka has set up a multiethnic committee to advise President Rajapkase on autonomy and power sharing in Tamil-majority areas. This comes soon after India suggested “special efforts” to end the violence and is outside the two committees to be convened by the All Party Conference. The LTTE is yet to show any sign of returning to talks. On the contrary, they have asked Norway to get EU truce monitors Sweden and Denmark out of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission by September 1. How Norway deals with this unreasonable, if not untenable, demand would be watched with interest by all those interested in resumption of talks between Colombo and the LTTE. |
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If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. — Giuseppe di Lampedusa
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Games nations play
There is understandably a lot of consternation in the country on two espionage cases — one relating to the Naval war-room leakage and another on the breach of cyber security in the National Security Council Secretariat. There are demands for stringent action to track down and punish those culpable as also for a thorough overhaul of the security systems to prevent the recurrence of such instances. In the first case, the allegation is that it was perpetrated by Indian personnel, including Naval officers, in collusion with certain arms dealers. In the second case, there is evidence that it is a case of US intelligence agency penetrating into our system by subverting the staff in the National Security Council Secretariat. There have been comments on the US agency engaging in this espionage activity even as Indo-US relationship is sought to be enhanced and there have been even warnings about the perils of cooperation with the US. The earlier instance of a joint director of R&AW, Rabinder Singh, being given asylum in the US after his defection has been recalled. And so also the case of an Additional Director of the Intelligence Bureau, Sahgal, having to be retired for his improper association with a US intelligence official. The cases of Coomar Narain and his network and the Larkins brothers are not forgotten. In the seventies and eighties the countries that carried out espionage against India and got caught were France, Poland and the Soviet Union. The Soviet cases were always handled with great delicacy and very quietly. The Soviet Union, though a close friend of India and the largest supplier of defence equipment to this country, was still involved in espionage as it wanted data on how the equipment was handled in India, what its performance was and how the Indian armed forces rated them. That would show that espionage is carried out not only by hostile countries but also by friendly ones. In espionage there are with very, very rare exceptions no friends and foes. The only exception to this rule is perhaps the relationship between the US and the UK since they have a pact going back to World War II to share espionage data. Even that came under strain when the US found that there were highly placed spies in Britain who operated on behalf of the Soviet Union such as Philby, Burgess and McLean. The US and Israel are closest of allies with arrangements to share espionage data. Yet Israel recruited an American Jew employed in satellite imagery interpretation to know more about the Kahuta enrichment facilities in Pakistan. The person, Jonathan Pollard, was caught by US counter-espionage personnel and sentenced to life imprisonment. All pleas of successive Israeli governments and powerful Jewish lobbies to get him released have not succeeded so far. The French have complained that the American National Security Agency eavesdrops on France and records conversations and e-mails, though France is a NATO ally. The French charge that the US misuses the data obtained through military means to supply information to their big commercial firms to be utilised to their advantage. The US has expanded its capabilities to monitor e-mails worldwide since these days jehadi terrorists use modern technology for their communications. The US has a particular interest in the Indian cyber security since a number of US defence firms have outsourced their IT work to Indian firms. Therefore, there is no question of India discontinuing its cooperation on cyber security with the US without risking hundreds of millions of dollars of business. India should now learn to play the espionage game as a world-class player and not as an amateur. When the Indian armed forces went into Sri Lanka at the request of the friendly Sri Lankan government they were not equipped with adequate data to operate effectively against the Liberation Tigers since our intelligence network did not pay adequate attention to friendly Sri Lanka. This has happened to other intelligence agencies as well. The Allied Forces did not have adequate data on Normandy beaches prior to the D-Day landings. In the intelligence game the more effective one’s counter-intelligence is, the more it will be respected. But that involves a lot of effort. The mighty CIA and FBI were penetrated and so also the KGB. Aldridge Ames and Paul Hanson worked for years for the Russians before they were caught. The Americans were able to subvert the UN Undersecretary-General, a Soviet national. There have been expulsions of 100 diplomats from the Russian mission in the UK and retaliations by the Russians. The Americans bugged the presidential aircraft China ordered from the Boeing Company. The Chinese had to completely rip all interior fittings to debug the aircraft. The Soviet Embassy in Washington and the US Embassy in Moscow were sought to be embedded with hundreds of bugs during construction. Both sides had to carry out extensive dismantling and rebuilding to ensure that the buildings were “clean” to their knowledge. But the countries concerned took them all in their stride with exchanges of strong protest notes. The issue today in India is not just these two espionage cases: such things have happened before and will happen again so long as human beings are weak and liable to be tempted. After all, the entire profession of intelligence, based on human intelligence, is premised on taking advantage of weaknesses of human beings. The question that has not been addressed is whether India has the intelligence organizations of the quality and strength needed for the country to play the role of a global balancer. Though sections of our elite aspire to play a global role, do they realise what it involves in terms of international diplomatic and intelligence efforts? Obviously the system which changes the Director, R&AW, and the Director, IB, every two years cannot be entertaining visions of global roles for such organisations. They are all run mostly in a spirit of generalism. The dedicated effort for intelligence collection through technical means has been initiated grudgingly only in the last few years. The abandoned intelligence assessment process is just under revival. As India prepares to play a global role, there has to be a fresh look at our external intelligence requirements, including modern technical intelligence collection, internal intelligence needs, especially in the light of the rise of terrorism — religious, ethnic and ideological — and criminal and counter-intelligence capabilities. Such capabilities cannot be created overnight. But a road map to reach the goal needs to be drawn up at the earliest possible. Will the NSC pay some attention to
it?
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The “Maula Baksh” Who was the one who said that the difference between a “student” and a ‘pupil’ was that the latter sat with folded knees before his teacher and paid obeisance in a proper way? Well, maybe it was my primary school teacher, Ustad Rustum Ali Khan, in a nondescript village of Chakwal district in Pakistan. Ustad Rustum Ali Khan exacted this obeisance through his “Maula Baksh”, a thick, round wooden ruler lying on top of his desk. To the trembling child, this ruler had a life of its own. It was as if it was looking threateningly at the errant student who came late to the school or did not bring his homework. So, that was a “pupil”! What about a “student”? Having taught in India for over 40 years at the college and the university levels, I might have thought differently, but it was an eyeopener for me when I came to the US. The first day I went to the university, to teach - what might be called in India, the undergraduate-level students, I had a shock waiting for me. I found 20 or so “students” waiting for me, fresh school graduates from inner city “black” schools of Washington D.C. It was more of a cross between a club and a classroom. There were girls in their shorts and low-cut blouses which left nothing to imagination. Some had their small makeup kits out. Today I have completed 15 years of teaching in the US and I am retiring a second time. I have learnt some never-to-be-forgotten lessons. The first one is that there are men and women, but no students in the classroom. Since they are all African-Americans, (the word “Negro” is an anathema, and “black” is considered an insult) they are there to while away their time. It is the State that pays their school fee and other expenses. And since the State does it over and over again, they continue over and over again, unless they drop out to be on the streets again selling drugs or what have you! This is much more true of “boys” than girls. The girls, some grandmothers at the age of 32 or so, are rather more serious, trying to catch up with what they left unfinished when, at the age of 15, they had their first pregnancy. Are there any “pupils”? Well, no. For one, there is no ‘Maula Baksh”, even in the schools. Physical punishment is a culpable crime and a teacher might not only lose his or her job, but may even see a jail term if he resorts to it. What about the university level? Well, you can’t object to anything - repeat anything - in their behaviour, including the term “sweet heart” which they often use sarcastically to the face of the teacher, the term being not insulting, but endearing. Where is the Maula Baksh of Ustad Rustum Ali Khan extraction, I often
wonder?
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People first India’s 80 million tribal population, the largest in the world, is also India’s most exploited and disadvantaged community. Tripura’s forest department has reportedly identified 43,215 tribal families as being in illegal occupation of 14,000 ha of forest land in violation of the Forest Conservation Act of 1980. They face eviction, as has been the fate of countless thousands of others in an ongoing process of rendering traditional homelands and related livelihood habitats as “reserved/protected” forests or national parks/sanctuaries for the conservation of wildlife and biodiversity. Conservation is vitally important to preserve and sustain the nation’s dwindling natural resource base against mounting demographic and developmental pressure. Yet people matter and must remain at the centre of our concerns for they are the ultimate custodians and beneficiaries of Planet Earth. India has to reconcile the apparent conflict between conservation, development and the tribal people. Tribals have suffered almost 150 years of historical injustice as they have been increasingly confined to shrinking homelands or enclaves. They continue to face acute insecurity from concepts of habitat and livelihood that tend to exclude them by default. Town and country, industry and agriculture, are established categories of national habitat and livelihood. But this political and development discourse tends to ignore forests, which traditionally hold the same meaning for tribals and other forest dwellers. These rights or interests, though admittedly competing at the margin, are not irreconcilable. Confrontation most often stems from the extreme positions taken by impatient conservationist and development fundamentalists who have unthinkingly failed to take a holistic and inclusive view that comprehends tribal rights and constitutional obligations. Fortunately, there is now opportunity to right ancient wrongs and end an ongoing and ruinous internal “clash of civilisations” through the mediation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, 2006, vastly improved as a result of the exertions of a Joint Parliamentary Committee. The Bill is scheduled to come up in the forthcoming monsoon session of Parliament and merits wide support and early passage. This will not only go a long way towards rolling back the historic injustice done to tribal India by arbitrary forest reservation but could indeed promote both conservation – by recognising the symbiotic relation between tribals and forests, of which they are the prime guardians – and growth through a new development paradigm. The Indian Forest Act, as a colonial hangover, sees “reserved” forests and national parks as official property for purposes of extraction and earning revenue or species conservation. Tribals are regarded as illegitimate intruders and encroachers, despite Fifth and Sixth Schedule constitutional protection, whose traditional livelihood rights have been curtailed to some “concessions”. Moreover, the tribes have suffered neglect, poor governance and development support, despite budgetary allocations, on account of exploitation by contractors, rent seeking officials, weak administrative delivery systems and widespread graft. The Report of the Expert Group on “Prevention of Alienation of Tribal Land and its Restoration” (October 2004) speaks of land and rights alienation, even of minor forest produce and corporate intrusions into tribal domains to exploit its forest, mineral and water wealth, as constituting unequal bargains with inadequate compensation or poorly implemented R&R. It concludes that this has given rise to what it calls the Tribal Dilemma: “Submission to ‘nationalism’ through ‘mainstreaming’ would lead to ‘sub-infeudation’ and ‘bondage’ while more vigorous assertion of their rights through ‘sub-nationalism’ leads to falling a victim to the lures of ‘radicalism’ and even to ‘irredentism’”. Indeed this is what has happened with the spread of Naxalism on the one hand and insurgency on the other. These are not mere “law and order” problems, though violence has to be put down, but have deeper and long-gestating socio-economic and cultural causes that have simply not been understood or been wilfully swept under the carpet. The country can no longer continue on this destructive path and faces hard choices in correcting past wrongs. The Tribal Forest Rights Bill rejects the theory that forests are wilderness areas rather than traditional tribal habitats. Therefore their stewardship under law offers the best hope of conserving and sustaining the nation’s forest wealth. For this they must be restored their rights and empowered to discharge their obligations. Conservation must lead to integration not exclusion. There is no dichotomy between tribes and wild life or bio-diversity. The JPC includes tribes living in or proximate to forests and non-tribal “encroachers” (who have been officially resettled in or around forests) within is protective ambit. It would restore the habitats of evicted peoples within a cut-off date of December 2005 (when the Bill was introduced) and substitute “core areas” in relation to wildlife protection with a concept of “critical wildlife habitats”. The definition of minor forest produce is expanded and its collection and processing de-nationalised. Tribals are sought to be made partners in natural resource exploitation through industrialisation, and the gaon sabha empowered as the basic democratic entity for consent to and regulation of development decisions affecting tribal rights for proven “public purpose”. This is a Bill that the Tribal and Environment and development ministries should jointly work with enlightened public opinion to see enacted as it accords with the nation’s best interests. |
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Reactor tech upgraded to 700 MWe The
Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) is enhancing its reactor technology towards building future pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR) of 700 MWe capacity – a new milestone in Indian nuclear power capability. The success in building PHWRs of 540 MWe– Tarapur 3 and 4 – ahead of schedule and commissioning it in record time, has paved the way for this reactor technology enhancement. The first indigenous 540 MWe PHWR Tarapur 4 was made critical on March 6, 2005, ahead of the stipulated time, and went commercial on September 12, 2005. It has been generating electricity without a flaw after being synchronized to the grid. The 540 Mwe Taps-3 unit went critical on May 21, 2006 – seven months ahead of schedule – and has been undergoing pre-commissioning trials smoothly. It is likely to be synchronized to the grid in October this year. The chain of 12 PHWRs previously built by the Indian nuclear establishment is of 220 MWe capacity. NPCIL presently operates 15 reactors, including the 540 MWe Tarapur 4 unit and Tarapur 1 and 2, the American built, boiling water type reactors using low- enriched-uranium as fuel. Installed nuclear power generation capacity is now becoming sizeable. With the commissioning of the 540 MWe Tarapur 4 reactor, Indian nuclear power capacity has reached approximately 3500 MWe and will cross the 4000 MWe mark when Tarapur 3 reactor is commissioned in October. Another 2000 MWe nuclear power capacity will be added on completion of the two 1000 MWe capacity light water reactors being built at Kudankulam with Russian support, scheduled to be completed in 2008. Another big jump in nuclear power is planned in the next round of reactors that NPCIL is to undertake. The in-principle approval of the Government of India has been obtained in respect of sites for four new large capacity power stations at Kudankulam, Kakrapar, Rawatbhatta and Jaitapur (Maharshtra). These four new power stations will be of 6800 MWe capacity, taking Indian nuclear electricity generation to over 12,000 MWe capacity – a sizeable quantum. These constructions will bring India to the target of 20,000 MWe well before the planned year 2020. Indian nuclear power planners are keenly watching for early clinching of the Indo-US nuclear accord to enable induction of American and French advanced light water reactors along with the accelerated Indian indigenous PHWR construction. This event will give a big uplift to Indian nuclear power capacity, taking this country to the forefront of nations engaged in nuclear power programmes. Alongside acceleration in nuclear power construction, 2005-06 has been one of the best for India’s heavy water industry. Production of heavy water at the six heavy water plants operated by the Heavy Water Board (HWB) was excellent during the outgoing year, with production exceeding the scheduled target, and achieving further reduction in production costs. The heavy water plants that the HWB operates are at Baroda, Hazira, Tuticorin, Thal, Kota and Manuguru. HWB has made further advances in setting up a solvent extraction facility for production of uranium from phosphoric acid at Talcher, and in developing a Centralised Uranium Conversion facility at Tarapur and Kalpakkam with recyclable uranium oxide manufacturing capability. It has also embarked on the distillation route for production of heavy water at 99.8% purity. In the last five years, India has exported as much as 135 metric tons of heavy water to South Korea.
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Delhi Durbar Reports about Chief of Army Staff Gen J. J. Singh having written to Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh about the decline in the percentage of Punjabi youth joining the Army has provided fodder to the latter’s critics in the Congress party. With drug abuse being widely seen as a reason for the decline in the number of Punjabi youth joining the army, supporters of party leader Jagmeet Singh Brar have questioned the priorities of the state government, insisting that it is not doing enough for increasing avenues of employment in rural areas. Vijay Saathi, a former MLA from Moga, has written a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi expressing concern over the easy availability of drugs and intoxicants in the border state. The letter alleges that some priorities of the state government were misplaced and party workers with mass base had been kept out of policy planning and programme implementation strategies. Aiyar wins The proposal of union Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar to revive the “Nyaya Panchayats” to deal with cases at the village level seems to have prevailed over union Law minister H R Bhardwaj’s idea of setting up mobile Gramin Nyayalayas. These mobile units were intended to dispense with petty offence cases or minor civil disputes in each block in rural areas. The government is understood to have shelved Bhardwaj’s proposal and is seriously thinking of reviving the concept of Nyaya Panchayats which existed in many states prior to the 1986 amendment to the Panchayati Raj Act. Condoms in press kit At a recent press conference by UNAIDS and NACO, a veteran journalist was startled to find a condom pack in the press kit. During the question round, he asked the NACO Director General, Sujatha Rao, as to why condoms had been put in press kits distributed to journalists. Rao replied that the condom offers the best protection from HIV/AIDS. She observed it was important for Indians to shed inhibitions and give up hypocrisy as sexual permissiveness and promiscuity are rampant and exist in all classes. The only protection is to use condoms. Cut-off from college With more than 1000 students having scored more than 90 per cent in class XII examinations, the prospect of getting admission in the University of Delhi has become bleaker than before. The fact that there are over one lakh aspirants for the 43,000 seats has prompted college authorities to raise the bar for getting in. Some students who have scored well but are unable to make it to colleges or get admission to courses of their choice, thanks to the sky high cut off marks, remarked that unless the colleges drop the prerequisite marks by more than a couple of notches, they will literally be “cut off from college education.”
***** Contributed by Prashant Sood, S S Negi, Manoj Kumar, Tripti Nath and Smriti Kak Ramachandran.
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From the pages of Preventive detention
Preventive detention is viewed in the West as representing a diminution of individual freedom, which can be justified only during the periods of emergency, such as war. We in this country, however, have to realise when quoting the western precedents that conditions here are materially different from those prevailing in the West. We have yet to achieve complete national integration, banish poverty and ignorance which make the voter easily moved by inflammatory speeches and insidious propaganda, and develop public spirit in all walks of life. Freedom tends to degenerate into licence and national unity is gravely undermined when fissiparous forces —communalists, regionalists, secessionists and linguistic fanatics — arouse violent passions and anti-social elements subordinate the national interest to personal acquisition and exploit economic difficulties for self-aggrandisement.
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Man is emancipated only when God so wills. He enables him to attune himself to the instruction of the Guru and cherish firmly his devotion to him. Never seek to stain a woman with deep and dire disgrace. Her ill will and her curses can destroy a hundred brothers and all their sons. Everything is swining: heaven, earth water, fire, and the secret one slowly growing a body. I saw that for fifteen seconds and it made me a servant for life.
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