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Limits of power Not by shouting |
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Gold finger
Managing diversity
Better late than never
Misery and anger Mulayam exploring all options Leading retailers battle it out in China
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Limits of power THE Union Cabinet’s decision to reject President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s suggestion for a comprehensive legislation on the office of profit issue and present The Prevention of Disqualification (Amendment) Bill, 2006, in its original form again before Parliament as well as the Presidential advice have kicked off an avoidable controversy. Clearly, the President’s powers are very limited under the Indian Constitution. While Dr Kalam was well within his powers to return the Bill to the Cabinet for its reconsideration in the first instance, he has no alternative but to give assent to it if Parliament passes the original Bill again and sends it to him. Dr Kalam wanted Parliament to enact a uniform law that would be just, fair and reasonable and applicable to all the states and Union Territories. This was a sound and legitimate suggestion. However, Parliament, being the chief repository of people’s will, is the supreme lawmaking body. Only it has the final say over any piece of legislation (unless, of course, held void by the Supreme Court by virtue of its power of judicial review) and not the President whose powers are limited. Moreover, under the constitutional scheme, the President acts on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers. He cannot take any independent decision like even referring the Bill in question to the Supreme Court for its advisory opinion under Article 143. Consequently, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s plea to the President on Monday in this regard is not in tune with the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Parliament and the Union Cabinet, if they so desire, can follow the prescribed drill and refer the Bill to the Supreme Court for its advisory opinion. Having referred the Bill to Parliament once, the President has only one option: to go along with Parliament’s wish. The constitutional scheme is delicately balanced. It would be worthwhile if all the wings of the Constitution function in close cooperation with each other. No wing or functionary should try to overstep its limits as mandated by the Constitution. There is a need to follow healthy conventions and maintain the fine but delicate constitutional equilibrium. Also, Rashtrapati Bhavan should not be dragged into controversies for partisan ends.
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Not by shouting PRICE rise and Mumbai blasts are matters of grave concern to the people of this country. Their elected representatives have every reason to be agitated over these issues that affect every citizen. There is no better forum to raise them than the two Houses of Parliament. The Opposition is within its rights to seek a debate on these and other related issues so that the government can be persuaded to take remedial action. On its part, the government should be prepared to listen to criticism, even bitter criticism, and come up with its own arguments to convince the Opposition and the people that it would never be found wanting in addressing issues of national concern. Unfortunately, on Monday when Parliament’s monsoon session began, neither of them conducted itself with dignity and in the best parliamentary traditions. The conduct of the members forced the presiding officers to adjourn the Houses for the day without transacting any business. They shouted slogans and crowded in the wells of the Houses when they should have been quietly listening to or participating in the debate. Arguably, Parliament is the best debating club in the country. Arguments, backed by facts and figures, are what the members are supposed to unleash in Parliament, either to corner the government or defend it. In no case should the strength of the vocal chords and the fists be the determinants when issues of public interests are discussed. Millions of people are watching the proceedings of Parliament directly or indirectly through various media and they expect nothing but informed debate. The nation spends a huge sum of money to keep Parliament sessions going and it will be a criminal wastage of public money if the presiding officers are forced to adjourn the Houses because of unparliamentary practices. Many items of mass consumption have gone out of the reach of the common man because of the staggering price rise. Similarly, nobody is sure when the next terrorist attack will take place and where. The government cannot escape responsibility for both. The Opposition should rightly pin it down. For both to happen, Parliament should be allowed to function normally. Neither the Opposition nor the government has the right to do anything that does not enhance Parliament’s prestige in the eyes of the people.
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Gold finger WITH a scintillating series of hits in the final of the air rifle World Championships at Zagreb, Abhinav Bindra has secured for India its first ever world championship gold medal in shooting. The Chandigarh youngster went into the final head to head with two others, and held his nerve to come out on top. It was the stuff of sporting magic as the gold rested on his last shot, and he made sure that it was fired home. National coach Prof. Sunny Thomas was justly proud of his ward, as can be the city of Chandigarh and the entire country. Bindra’s achievement is all the more creditable for having been fighting a back problem in recent months. Reports suggest that he is considering surgery in Germany. He has been in the sport for a long time, and was the record holder for the junior championships. He had made the final with a similar performance in the Athens Olympics, but could not win a medal. With Sunday’s performance, he is on target for the coming Olympics, and he will be looking to put his injury worries behind him in a quest for the big medal. India has been doing particularly well in shooting events of late. In the recent Commonwealth Games, CISF inspector Samresh Jung had won five gold medals, almost winning the six which would have broken the record for maximum gold medals in that event. He became the first Indian to receive the outstanding athlete of the games award. Bindra was a teammate too for the Commonwealth Games as were other excellent shooters like Vijay Kumar and Gagan Narang. And of course, there was Samresh’s wife Anuja Jung, and Olympian star Lt. Col R. S. Rathore. They have inspired many others to take up shooting as a sport, and it is becoming increasingly popular around the country. Expect more bull’s-eyes for India.
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Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place. — Samuel Johnson
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Managing diversity AS Bombay recovers from the latest terrorist attacks, as London continues to tackle with the fallout caused by 7/7, and as West European democracies grapple with real or imagined problems caused by their diverse peoples, some 14 per cent of whom are migrants from foreign countries, what lessons can be learned from the ways in which India, the world’s largest democracy, has handled its cultural, ethnic and linguistic complexity? Hindus comprise 82 per cent of India’s population, Muslims 14 per cent, Sikhs and Christians around 2 per cent each. Every community is divided by class; Hindus, Muslims and Christians may also be divided by language. Hindus are further stratified by caste. No language is spoken by a majority of the population. In a country of 22 official languages, Hindi, the language spoken by the largest number of Indians, is the mother-tongue of only 40 per cent of them. Communalism and cosmopolitanism are contradictory faces of Indian society and politics. Occasional outbreaks of communal violence tend to hit the international headlines and seem to solidify an image of India as a hopelessly divided and disorderly society, but there has been no backlash against any community because of terrorist attacks. Does the “other side” of India, its composite culture, merit attention? The political dispensation reveals the strength of a pluralist nation forged by democratic consensus since Independence in 1947. India may be the only country in the world in which the President, (Mr Abdul Kalam), the Prime Minister, (Dr Manmohan Singh) and the Chief of the Army Staff (Gen J.J. Singh) belong to minorities. Ms Sonia Gandhi, President of the ruling Congress party, is a Catholic and an Italian-born Indian citizen. Of India’s 10 former presidents, two were Muslim, one a Sikh and five were from the non-Hindi speaking provinces of southern India. These trends are visible in every sphere of the Indian government and society. All Indian citizens are equal before the law, and the Indian state does not identify with any religious or regional group. The religious or cultural majority is distinct from the political majority, which represents citizens of all communities. Most all-India parties have on the whole steered clear of the politics of the nation-state, in the literal sense of an alignment of ethnicity and territory. British officials who disliked Nehru’s anti-imperialist nationalism admitted that political stability after the partition of British India in 1947 owed much to his ruthless suppression of violence by his Hindu co-religionists. In contrast, some of the worst communal violence in recent years has erupted in the western state of Gujarat while the BJP has been in office. An analogy can be drawn with neighbouring Sri Lanka where the congruence of the state with Sinhalese majoritarianism has led to a seemingly intractable civil conflict between them and the Tamil minority. The practice of secularism has usually won the Congress votes from minority communities. Communalists gained ground, especially after the 1970s, because the post-Nehru Congress leadership did not strengthen the secular platform and at times used religion to mobilise political support. The history of communal violence in India shows that ordinary people only take the law into their own hands if the government fails to protect their lives and property. Wittingly or unwittingly, the government’s ability to safeguard human rights of citizens is viewed by citizens as the litmus test of its sincerity to act impartially and preserve and strengthen the peace. India and Britain reveal that “civil society” is not necessarily a magic wand for communal harmony. In the name of religion, civil society groups have sometimes contributed to the damage during communal riots in India . And precisely because religious and political majorities are not synonymous, frustrated Hindu communalists have resorted to violence, for example, destroying the Babri mosque in 1992 or instigating violence against minorities in different parts of India. Moreover, some British-born Muslims supported the London bombings in July 2005. On the whole, though, ordinary Londoners displayed tolerance, and so far, Bombayites have lived up to their multicultural ideals. “Education”, even in a liberal society, is not a panacea for defusing tension over linguistic, cultural and religious differences. Communal — like racist — violence is often instigated by educated people, including some politicians, academics and sections in the media; sometimes it is condoned or justified if it involves members of their own communities. This only intensifies communal ill-will. In one sense, democracy is about the expression of individual uniqueness. Individual, religious and national identities can coexist with one another. Cosmopolitanism literally means “of being of many cultures”. Ideally, education should inspire the practice of tolerance, discourage stereotyping and victimisation, and place individual dignity on a par with the right to freedom of expression in everyday life. As more and more people are brought together; voluntarily and involuntarily, by the integration of markets in the wake of globalisation and the continual advances in telecommunications and transportation, the challenge for India — as for West European democracies — is to forge political and social practices through which cultural, intellectual and political diversity can best be articulated, tolerated, reconciled and celebrated. The crafting of an inclusive nation through democratic dialogue is a continuous process reflecting political choices. It is the best defence against terrorism. Communalists, like racist politicians, choose to propagate ideas and act in ways that trigger violence. Perhaps liberal societies need to do more to put into practice the values they believe
in?
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Better late than never
Procrastination
is our national trait and all of us are very much attuned to it. “Don’t bother about time” seems to be the only imperative to be followed in our country and people are totally oblivious of any discipline where binding for a time schedule and urgency for punctuality matters. Whether it is the submission of telephone and electricity bills or the school fee of their wards, they will only wake up on the last due date. Carefree people keep on repeating this “feat”. In my city (Ludhiana), parties and other social functions are famous for their late take-off. People of other cities who get an invitation to attend a function to be held at 9 pm here, are well advised to relax and read it by adding two more hours to it. Though this “late-latif” syndrome has many varieties, its best form is found in abundance in the “sarkari” offices of our country. The honour of the office demands that you must be made to wait for the man concerned to be in his chair at any suitable time of his pleasure. While chasing a file, the luck should also be on your side if you are not told to come tomorrow. In colleges, the first period shows maximum absenteeism where young recruits of this cult reach late and cool off themselves by wandering outside their classrooms. The list is endless. It is usual for us doctors to receive phone calls from patients at a time when we are about to leave our clinics at night. “Doctor sahib, tussi haige o?” — which literally means asking whether you are alive. Many of them are habitual latecomers and enter our chambers feeling out of breath as if they are just coming from a marathon. Reaching late and to be adept in the art of inventing stories like “traffic jam” and “snag in vehicle” are very common to some people. To the contrary, I know a few people who by adopting a fad for time and discipline are not only very punctual in their routine but are a constant source of discomfiture for their family members. Many times they cause embarrassment to their hosts by reaching the functions on “time”. One of my uncles is also such a freak. About to touch eighties and still active, he always remains so obsessed with punctuality that it gives him little time to think of other niceties of life. There are many events like the bhogs and the kirya ceremonies in our country which start and end at fixed time, but somehow we cannot emulate their examples to other engagements of life. Shut between two extremes, I really wonder what this whole concept of punctuality means. Wise persons tell us that moderation in life is the best policy and I think we should settle down to adopt this approach towards time and discipline
also.
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Misery and anger THEY are in the schools, in empty hospitals, in halls and mosques. They are arriving in Sidon by the thousand, cared for by Sunni Muslims and then sent north to join the 600,000 displaced Lebanese in Beirut. More than 34,000 have passed through here in the past four days alone, a tide of misery and anger. It will take years to heal their wounds, and billions of dollars to repair their damaged property. And who can blame them for their flight? For the second time in eight days, the Israelis committed a war crime yesterday. They ordered the villagers of Taire, near the border, to leave their homes and then – as their convoy of cars and minibuses obediently trailed northwards – the Israeli air force fired a missile into the rear minibus, killing three refugees and seriously wounding 13 other civilians. The rocket that killed them is believed to have been a Hellfire missile made by Lockheed Martin in Florida. Nine days ago, the Israeli army ordered the inhabitants of a neighbouring village, Marwaheen, to leave their homes and then fired rockets into one of their evacuation trucks, blasting the women and children inside to their deaths. And this is the same Israeli air force which was praised last week by one of Israel’s greatest defenders - Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz - because it “takes extraordinary steps to minimise civilian casualties”. Nor have the Israelis spared Sidon. A heap of rubble and pancaked walls is all that is left of the Fatima Zahra mosque, a Hizbollah institution in the centre of the city, its minaret crumbled and its dome now sitting on the concrete, a black flag still flying from its top. When Israeli warplanes came early yesterday morning, the 75-year-old caretaker had no time to run from the building; he died of his wounds hours later. His overturned white plastic chair still lies by the gate. The mosque is unlikely to have been used for military purposes; a school belonging to the Hariris, Sidon’s all-powerful Sunni family, stands next door; they would never have allowed weapons into the building. Not that Hizbollah - which killed two more Israeli civilians with their rockets in Haifa yesterday - have respected Sidon, whose population is 95 per cent Sunni. They tried to fire Iranian-made missiles at Israel from the seafront Corniche and from beside the city slaughterhouse last week. On both occasions, residents physically prevented them from opening fire. The multimillion-dollar Hariri Foundation - created by the former prime minister, Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated last year - has helped 24,000 Shia refugees out of the south and on to Beirut but its generosity has not always been happily received. One group of refugees sheltering in a technical school in Meheniyeh punched and taunted Hariri workers. Elsewhere, the foundation’s staff have been cursed by fleeing families. “They are telling us that we are working for the Americans and that this is why we are taking them out,” said Ghena Hariri - Rafik’s niece and a Georgetown graduate. “It is something that drains our energy. We are working 24 hours a day and at the end of the day they curse us. But I feel so sorry for them. Now they are being told by the Israelis to leave their villages on foot and they have to walk dozens of kilometres in this heat.” It’s not difficult to see how this war can damage the delicate sectarian framework that exists in Lebanon. One group of Shia families - housed in a school in the Druze mountains of the Chouf – tried to put Hizbollah’s yellow banners on the roof and members of Walid Jumblatt’s Druze Popular Socialist Party had to tear them down. Their act may have saved the refugees’ lives. Yet many of the Shia in this beautiful Crusader port have learnt how kind their Sunni neighbours can be. “We are here - where else can we go?” Nazek Kadnah asked as she sat in the corner of a mosque which Rafik Hariri built and dedicated to his father, Haj Baha’udin Hariri. “But they look after us here as their brothers and sisters and now we are safe.” These sentiments provoke some dark questions. Why, for example, can’t these poor people be shown the same compassion from Tony Blair as he supposedly felt for the Muslims of Kosovo when they were being driven from their homes by the Serbs? These thousands are as terrified and homeless as the Kosovo Albanians who fled to Macedonia in 1998 and for whom Mr Blair claimed he was waging a moral war. But for the Shia Muslims sleeping homeless in Sidon there is to be no such moral posturing - and no ceasefire suggestions from Mr Blair, who has aligned himself with the Israelis and the Americans. And what exactly is the purpose of driving more than half a million people from their homes? Many of these poor people sit clutching their front-door keys, just as the Palestinians of Galilee did when they arrived in Lebanon 58 years ago to spend the rest of their lives as refugees. Yes, the Shia Muslims of Lebanon probably will go home. But to what? A war between the Hizbollah and a Western intervention force? Or further bombardment by the Israelis? The Sidon refugees now have 36 schools in which they can shelter - but they are the lucky ones. Across southern Lebanon, the innocent continued to die. One was an eight-year-old boy who was killed in an Israeli air raid on a village close to Tyre. Eight more civilians were wounded when an Israeli missile hit a vehicle outside the Najem hospital in Tyre. And during the morning, one of Lebanon’s journalists, Layal Nejib, a photographer for the magazine Al-Jaras whose pictures were also transmitted by Agence France Press, was killed in her taxi by an Israeli air strike near Qana, the same village in which 106 civilians were massacred in a UN base by Israeli artillery shells in 1996. She was only 23. — By arrangement with
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Mulayam exploring all options THE National President of the Samajwadi Party and Chief Minister of UP, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, will have to face a tough general election for the State Assembly early next year. The growing challenge of the Bahujan Samaj Party is bothersome for him. The Jan Morcha Alliance led by V.P. Singh will also queer the pitch. Ajit Singh’s Lok Dal is at present a coalition partner in the government, but the tensions have grown between the two leaders. The effort of some Muslim leaders to create a separate platform of Muslims has already started, and this is claimed to be a direct fall-out of the utter disillusionment of the community with the Samajwadi Party. The Congress Party is trying hard to resurrect itself in UP, and Rahul Gandhi is its trump card. However, as the exchange between him and the Samajwadi Party’s Amar Singh showed, he is not ready to mount any kind of challenge to crafty politicians like the General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party. The party does not have a leader of stature in the State. The BJP, however, is only a shadow of its former self. From more than 50 out of 85 UP seats in the Lok Sabha, the Party has fallen to only 9 seats. Its share in the vote has also gone down from 38 per cent to 32 per cent to the present 22 per cent. The magic of Hindutva is almost over. The RSS cadres are demoralised. During the six-year rule of the National Democratic Alliance, all the campaign promises relating to Hindutva were kept on the back-burner. Now, they have lost steam. One indication of the reduced influence of the BJP and its communalism is the effort of the Muslim leaders to float a party of their own, on an All-India basis. They are not afraid of the emergence of communal polarisation which could help the BJP only. Their politics is no longer driven by anti-BJP sentiment. Earlier, these leaders used to draw up a charter of demands and submit it to all secular parties and their candidates, as well. That strategy has not been repeated. The success of the People’s Democratic Party in Assam has emboldened them, for, in that State, the BJP could add only two seats to its existing strength in the Assembly while the PDP gained 9 seats as compared to the BJP’s 10. The BSP, on the other hand, has managed to retain its hold on its vote bank, and has made it a practice to put up large number of candidates from other communities, particularly Muslims. It has held successful conferences of the Brahmins, Rajputs and Vaishyas. Acutely aware of the rising strength of the BSP and its leader Mayawati who has amassed sufficient financial backing for her Party, Mulayam Singh Yadav has started to make new political friends. Former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, whose leadership of the Janata Dal (Secular) has been seriously challenged by all the secular-minded elements in the Party, is his new ally. His other “acquisition” is George Fernandes, convener of the NDA. This gentleman has earned the dubious distinction of obtaining only 25 votes out of 438 in his bid for re-election as President of the Janata Dal (United). In the history of democratic party politics, this is indeed a record. His position in his Party is much worse than Deve Gowda’s. These two party leaders are the allies of the BJP. Is Mulayam friendship with them an indirect route to friendship with the BJP? Several political observers believe that after this development, whatever opposition he mounts against the BJP would only be shadow-boxing. His close meeting with the RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan also is no secret.
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Leading retailers battle it out in China URUMQI, China – In this remote region along the old Silk Road, Paris-based retailer Carrefour is on the march. They have already opened two stores here, one in the northern end where many ethnic Chinese live and another next to a mosque in the Muslim section populated by Uighurs. Wal-Mart and Carrefour, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 retailers, have stepped up their expansion in China in recent years, virtually matching each other, store for store, in many locales. But the nearest Wal-Mart to Urumqi is 1,400 miles to the east. This fall, Carrefour will open a third mega-store in this city of 2 million, selling groceries alongside its other goods. What about Wal-Mart Stores? “I can’t imagine they will come here,’’ Christian Roquigny, who manages Carrefour’s Uighur store, said as he walked past a golden-domed mosque, nodding to men coming out after Friday afternoon prayers. Roquigny boasted that his store sold no pork and was certified as halal, or permissible under Islamic dietary law. Wal-Mart managers, he said, aren’t given the same flexibility to adapt. As the world’s leading retailers battle for new markets around the globe, they are increasingly setting up in places like Urumqi, where Carrefour’s average checkout total is just over $5. Carrefour’s operation in this western city demonstrates why the French company has raced ahead of those of its multinational rivals in the world’s most-populous nation. By joining with Chinese partners, adapting to local culture and employing a supply chain that includes 18-wheel trucks and three-wheel bicycles, Carrefour has become the biggest foreign retailer operating in China. It operates 79 stores in 32 Chinese cities compared with 60 locations in 30 cities for Wal-Mart. Last year, Carrefour’s sales in China totaled $2.2 billion, compared with $1.2 billion for Wal-Mart, according to the Commerce Ministry in Beijing. “Carrefour’s management is quite flexible and their localisation is better,’’ said Huang Guoxiong, a business professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing. Localization is an industry term for adapting a store to local tastes and preferences. Wal-Mart is accelerating its store openings in China – it plans to open at least 18 this year, six more than Carrefour – and analysts are reluctant to bet against the Bentonville, Arkansaw-based discount retailer given its enormous resources. Its global sales last year reached $285 billion, triple that of Carrefour’s. Wal-Mart bought $18 billion in goods from Chinese manufacturers last year. But as a retailer in China, Wal-Mart is a small fish. Its strategy of offering tian tian ping jia, or “everyday low prices,’’ hasn’t had a big effect on Chinese mom-and-pop shops that are used to cut-throat pricing. Wal-Mart beat Carrefour to China by a few months, sending executives to the Middle Kingdom in 1994. But it wasn’t until two years later that Wal-Mart opened its first super-center in Shenzhen, an industrial city that borders Hong Kong. Carrefour, meanwhile, bypassed Beijing and cut deals directly with local governments. “They would go to the local mayor, the (Communist) party guy and say, “I’ll bring you a Carrefour store, pay taxes, create jobs, pay rent,” French said. Local officials were thrilled. Beijing later caught on and slowed Carrefour’s growth, but by then the retailer had already locked up some of the best sites in cities such as Shanghai. Wal-Mart opened its first store in Shanghai last year. — By arrangement with
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From the pages of The “Mulki” rule THE Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court has struck down the Andhra Government’s order prescribing domicile
(mulki) qualification for appointment to subordinate services in the Telengana region. Whatever the Constituent Assembly might have been thinking, the word “State” has no stable meaning in the Indian Constitution. Parliament, may, by law, increase the area of any State or diminish it, after it or even abolish the State altogether. In other words, the States of the Indian Union are not indestructible. They have mobile frontiers. It is this which has enabled the creation of linguistic States from time to time. If the law stands in the way of implementing the Telengana safeguards, the law must change. The alternative is to make Telengana a separate State. There is no other way out. The people of Telengana may cut their own throats. Their objection is to their throats being cut for them by the people of coastal Andhra.
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An insulted person may be quiet during the day, busy with the numerous chores of life. It is at night, in the lonesome quite, that the emotions torture him and insult rankles as new in his bloom. — The Mahabharata Won’t he who can hear even the sound of the anklet on the appendage of the ant, hear your prayer? — Kabir Are you one who continuously looks for faults and weakness in others? How much time have you spent in looking at your own faults and weakness? — The Buddha The courageous person resists his passion and does not fly from danger like a coward but, before he takes any step, he looks to the remote consequences of his action. — The Koran Do not enter into a dispute, by speaking ill of any one. — Guru Nanak
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