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Confrontation won’t do Prisoners of the past No end to ragging |
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The crucial decade
Imported cows
World of high finance can help poor children Defence notes Dateline
Washington
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Confrontation won’t do FOR the second time in a week, protesting traders brought Delhi to a standstill on Tuesday. Irked over the Supreme Court’s insistence on sealing the commercial establishments running illegally from residential areas, they did what they know how to do best: inconvenience the public to the maximum extent possible. Being smart people, they did not target the Supreme Court as such, but vented their anger on the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Fortunately, there was less violence this time. It is not as if better sense had prevailed. It is just that after a lot of reluctance, the administration had fallen in line and had even deployed the Rapid Action Force to keep the mischief-makers at bay. Still, there was no dearth of incidents of violence. The botheration that it caused to everyone in the national Capital was palpable. Even school children had to miss their classes for fear of violence. More than that, what suffered the most was the image of the country. The agitation adds insult to injury, really. First, the traders defied the law, putting common citizens to a lot of inconvenience for years. And when they were finally taken to task for this illegality — not by the administration but by the courts — they started taking the law into their hands. Such defiance of constitutional provisions amounts to transformation of a democracy into a mobocracy where a handful of mischief-mongers can hold a city — or a country — to ransom. Things have come to such a pass merely because the government is not at all willing to catch the bull by the horns and the political parties — whether ruling or in the Opposition — cannot think beyond their electoral gains. This is dirty politics at its worst. Thankfully, the apex court has stuck to its guns. It simply cannot allow the impression to grow that the judiciary can be made to yield to the mob bent upon confrontation. The court has got to do its duty to the Constitution.
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Prisoners of the past POLITICS is said to be the art of the possible. The same can be said about diplomacy as well. Today’s enemy can be tomorrow’s friend and today’s friend can be tomorrow’s enemy. The only constant in diplomacy as in statecraft is the nation’s interest. But, unfortunately, there are sections of public opinion who are so stuck in ideological moorings that they cannot reconcile themselves to the changed scenario. It is these sections who were in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s mind when he said such political posturing was not in the nation’s interest. His immediate provocation could have been the response of some political parties to the nuclear deal with the US. The deal amounts to a quantum jump in India’s relations with the US. But some parties in the Left are unable to digest the deal as they still see the US as the villain of the Cold War era. Much water has flowed down the Potomac and the Volga as is borne out by the fact that Communist China’s biggest trade partner is the US. But for the Communists of the desi variety the US still represents hegemony and all that is bad about capitalism. Small wonder that the Left has been in the forefront in dubbing the nuclear deal as a total sellout to Uncle Sam. It is oblivious of the technological and scientific advantages that would accrue to India once the deal sails through the US Congress. Ditto for the BJP, which was the principal advocate of a turnaround in Indo-US relations when the party was in power at the Centre. But once it was pushed to the Opposition benches, it suddenly realised that its bread is buttered best by opposing anything that the government does. This kind of posturing can, indeed, cause harm to the interests of the country when the whole world is turning into a village. Those who feared that the opening up of the crucial sectors of the economy would result in multinationals gobbling up Indian companies know only too well today that it is the Indian companies which are taking over European, Korean and American companies. If the economy is able to sustain a 10+ per cent growth rate, such takeovers will be replicated in dozens. Political parties will do well to realise the implications of such changes and adapt accordingly, rather than remain prisoners of ideology.
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No end to ragging THE Supreme Court’s directive to the Union Human Resource Development Ministry to set up a committee headed by former CBI Director R.K. Raghavan to check ragging in educational institutions is welcome. A Bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat observed that a high power committee had become necessary as ragging continued in many colleges and universities despite the Supreme Court ban in 2001. Very recently, a first year B.Sc (Agriculture) student of the Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, Bhubaneswar, suffered serious spinal injuries and broke both legs after he was reportedly pushed off the hostel terrace by his seniors. He has been flown to Bangalore for a major operation. Surprisingly, the university authorities have not yet taken action against the students involved in this heinous crime. In another incident, a first year student of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, died on October 17 following “torture” in the hostel by his inmates. In response to a public interest litigation, the Bench consisting of the then CJI Justice R.C. Lahoti and Justice Brijesh Kumar had ordered in 2001 that a university could consider stripping a college of its affiliation if it failed to curb ragging. It even gave the University Grants Commission the freedom to choke funds to such institutions. It had asked institutions to mention in their prospectus that ragging was banned and could be punished with expulsion, suspension or a fine. Students and parents, it said, should be made to sign an undertaking too. It is open to question how many institutions have implemented these directives. The Raghavan Committee would do well to get to the roots of the problem while finding out ways to check ragging. Specifically, it should find out why the Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997, and the 2001 Supreme Court ban have not been enforced in letter and spirit. Clearly, the failure to prevent this menace should be construed as an act of negligence in maintaining discipline in the institution. Responsibility should be fixed on the management, the principal, hostel wardens and superintendents.
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One man is as good as another until he has written a book. — Benjamin Jowett
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The crucial decade THE nineties were the best of times and the worst of times. The decade deserved the first compliment because it saw the initial steps being taken towards economic reforms, which were to break the shackles of the snail-paced Hindu rate of growth and free the country’s entrepreneurial spirit. But it was also the worst of times because some of the most retrogressive steps were taken during this period. These were the handiwork of the communal and casteist elements, which had remained suppressed during the long years of the freedom movement. The struggle for independence had ensured that no divisive ideas came to the fore to disrupt national unity. In addition, the intensity of the battle had largely eliminated self-serving politicians from public life. As a result, this domain was dominated by honest and dedicated individuals. The phrase criminalisation of politics, so common now, would have been unthinkable before 1947 and for several decades afterwards. Although the standards of politics began to decline from the
seventies, the prevalence of communalism and casteism was not as evident as at present. Few among the politicians would have flaunted their religious or casteist identities as brazenly as it is done today. Instead of saying “Garv se kaho hum Hindu hain” (say with pride I am a Hindu), a politician would have emphasised his overall Indian identity. Similarly, no leader would have said, as Ms Mayawati has done, that she was looking forward to becoming the first Dalit Prime Minister with the focus on her elevation being a momentous event for her community. In an earlier age, someone like her would have been modest enough to say that her achievement was a tribute to Indian democracy where a member of the previously untouchable community could rise so high. So much emphasis is placed nowadays on castes, communities and, as a result, on individuals belonging to these groups that the country is rarely mentioned. Jagjivan Ram, too, undoubtedly harboured the ambition of becoming Prime Minister. But, towards the end of his career, he resented being regarded as a Harijan leader — the term in use in his time — and projected himself as a leader of all Indians. This approach to politics, which rises above narrow considerations, can be seen in the choice of Dr Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister not because he is a Sikh but because he is considered the best man for the job. It may not be an exaggeration to say that the Congress remains the only party at the national level which doesn’t take a crudely segmented view of politics although it is not above occasionally playing the communal and casteist card. Even the communists are not immune to such sectarianism since they regard the proletariat as the chosen class and the rich as their “class enemy”. What is regrettable, however, is the failure of the Janata Party to live up to the promise of being the second pole of a two-party system along with the Congress. This hope, which was widely expressed when it was formed in 1977, was blighted when it fell apart only two years later and all its offshoots became either casteist or regional in nature, whether it was the Rashtriya Janata Dal or the Janata Dal (United) or the Biju Janata Dal or the Janata Dal (Secular). The person responsible for turning the nineties into the worst decade is undoubtedly Mr V.P.Singh, whose Mandal card first boosted the casteist and then, as a reaction, the communal forces. The country has paid a heavy price because of the subsequent Mandal-kamandal duel. Bihar provides an example of how low a state can sink so far as the social and development indices are concerned because of the preponderance of the OBCs while Gujarat shows the plight of the minorities in a Hindutva “laboratory”. No one knows how long it will take for the poison of conducting politics on the basis of upper caste vs lower caste or Hindu vs Muslim concepts to be eliminated from the system. An almost surefire antidote lies, however, in the acceleration of the economic reforms whose foundation was also laid in the nineties. It is inevitable that as the country prospers as a result of a growth rate of eight per cent or more, an increasing number of people will develop a stake in social and political stability, which shuns casteist or communal confrontation. A hint of this is available even in Gujarat where Mr Narendra Modi seems to have realised that development is not possible if two communities are at loggerheads. If the nineties were crucial because of the growth of sectarian forces, the present decade is no less so, for only a continuation of the reforms will act as a counter to these divisive elements. Any backsliding will be fatal for India’s future. If anyone wonders why there should be any reversal of the present high growth rate, he is unaware about the peculiarities of the political scene. For a start, there are the communists who do not seem too enamoured of the present healthy economic trends. Not all the communists are disheartened, of course, but mainly the “rootless intellectuals” based in Delhi whose electoral experience is confined to JNU student union polls. Fortunately, there are others, like West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, who are a votary of reforms. But Mr Bhattacharjee is considered a heretic by orthodox Marxists since he is courting the Tatas and other capitalists in defiance of Marx’s dictum that “capital comes into the world soiled with mire from top to toe, and oozing blood from every pore”.
Given this attitude, it is not surprising that the outspoken Ashok Mitra, who was Finance Minister in the Jyoti Basu Cabinet, has taken a dig at him by saying that “it is the obligation of the committed Marxist to optimise the interests of the working class. Were he to believe otherwise, should he not rather join openly the bandwagon of the bourgeoisie?” Mr Mitra is not the only one who is displeased by the entry of the market economy. There are politicians even in the Congress who are unhappy over the abandonment of the earlier Nehruvian socialism. Listening to them, one feels that they earnestly long for a return to the days of autarky when the country grew at the rate of 2.2 per cent in the sixties and 1 per cent during the seventies, when the number of people below the poverty line was 54.9 per cent in 1973-74 and 51.3 per cent in 1977-78. Incidentally, the percentage now is 22.1. Thankfully, these diehard socialists are not very vocal now presumably because they have realised that the wind has turned against them even in their own party with Mrs Sonia Gandhi reposing her faith in the reformers led by Dr Manmohan Singh. What is more, the chief ministers of the mostly bankrupt states have realised, like Mr Bhattacharjee, that the only way they can make a dent in the unemployment situation is through investments by domestic and foreign capitalists. At the same time, greater efforts will have to be made to alleviate agricultural distress through investments in rural infrastructure, especially in power, for agro-based industries and cold storages, providing more effective credit facilities and opting for contract farming and crop diversification. Once a direct assault is made on poverty, the menace of casteism and communalism, which thrives on distress and ignorance, can be
eliminated.
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Imported cows EVEN a hardened and habitual India baiter will concede that the country is largely self-sufficient in wiseacres who come up with zany ideas with an amazing zip. The latest idea to be making the rounds is to import cattle from Europe and distribute them among dairy farmers and give a boost to the country’s milk production. It is quite possible that this idea will catch on and the State Trading Corporation (STC) using its clout, will muscle in on the act and become the sole importing agency for Belgian bulls and Dutch heifers. I have been talking to a senior STC official about the mechanics of the operation. “We’re all set,” he said enthusiastically. STC is fully geared to import cattle from Europe and we’re only waiting for the green signal from the Commerce Ministry to go ahead and tie up the nuts and bolts details. “Starting December 1, managers of our European offices will fan out and start rounding up stray cattle blocking busy morning rush hour traffic on the Geneva-Strasbourgh super expressway and Frankfurt-Cologne autobahn.” “Do cattle in Europe block roads like they do in India? I asked incredulously. “Yes, of course,” said the STC official irritably,” cows are the same everywhere. Okay, after rounding up the animals, our managers will drive them to a central collection point set up on the champs Elysees in Paris opposite the French President’s mansion.” “Will they then be put aboard specially air-conditioned ships for onward transport to India?” I asked. “No,” said the STC official, “our managers will drive them thru’ Germany, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and thru’ the Khyber Pass into Pakistan and entering India at the Wagah check-point and to speed up the movement, they’ll be prodding the animals with bamboo sticks.” “So that’s what you mean by canalising the imports thru’ the STC?” I said. “Yes,” said the STC official,” and after the cows reach India sometime during the latter half of the 31st century, they’ll be distributed among progressive Indian dairy farmers. “Do you think importing cattle from Europe makes sound commercial sense?” I asked. “I’m sure it does,” said the STC official knowledgeably “according to the Union Animal Husbandry Minister, each European cow yields 30 litres per day.” “30 litres of what?” I asked incredulously, “milk?” “No, urine and as a happy spin-off from the deal, dung from the cows being imported and therefore naturally superior, will be sold at cost to pavement dwellers who use public walls to splatter cowdung cakes and I’m sure it would warm the cockles of your heart to hear Indian dairy farmers excitedly telling one another. “Have you heard the latest about my Spanish bull?” and “You ought to come over and see my Danish heifer!” “I’m sure it will,” I said, “but has the STC given a name to the deal to import cattle from Europe?” “Yes,” said the STC official, “we propose to call it Operation Bullsh
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World of high finance can help poor children Financial
markets are not usually associated with saving lives. That is about to change. A bond that uses long-term financing to help pay for vaccines will ensure that millions of children in the poorest countries have a fighting chance at a healthy life. This facility will significantly increase predictable resources for development and ignite a broader debate around innovative ways to raise and spend donor dollars, both public and private, on global health. Financing techniques to deliver existing health interventions, as well as to promote research and development on new tools, could become a powerful force in the fight to end preventable diseases over the coming decades. Two to three million children under the age of five die every year from diseases for which we have, or soon will have, a vaccine. The Gavi Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) was created in 2000 to address this appalling situation. With an initial pledge from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gavi has immunised more than 115 million children against such diseases as hepatitis B and yellow fever, likely preventing 1.7 million deaths. Yet each year, nearly 30 million children still miss out on essential immunisations, leaving them vulnerable to devastating illness or death. That is why innovation is desperately needed to overcome funding constraints and provide more resources in a shorter period of time, while ensuring a better predictability of aid flows. The launch of the first Iffim bonds will help save some of these children by giving Gavi new funds to expand its immunisation work, by starting to bridge the gap between the money that is available and the money that is needed. Long-term, legally binding aid commitments from six donor countries - the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain and Norway - have been made to Iffim, which can use that funding stream as collateral to raise money in capital markets right now. It will deliver an extra $4 billion to Gavi over the next 10 years. This means we can immunise 500 million children against vaccine-preventable diseases before 2015, saving some 10 million lives. And we can get one step closer to eradicating polio, just as we have done with smallpox. Front-loading these resources not only saves lives now but also reduces the spread of disease. Without front-loading, investing this $4bn over 15 years, would save only 2.5 million lives and leave millions more at risk from infection. In September, at the UN, a new programme was kicked off to raise money to buy drugs for Aids, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria as cheaply as possible on behalf of the poorest countries. Unitaid, the agency overseeing the funds, expects to raise $50 million this year and $300 million next year, largely from a tax on airline tickets. That is a significant increase over current funding. France proposed the idea, and now 19 countries have indicated their support. As with Iffim, the benefit of this new scheme is not solely the amount of the resources but their predictability, which then allows for the negotiation of cheaper prices for these lifesaving drugs. We hope other schemes will be equally creative. New approaches to financing can also elicit more and better research and development (R&D) around global health. One way is through product-development partnerships, which fund and manage portfolios of new candidate drugs, vaccines and diagnostics for diseases such as malaria, HIV and TB. With the help of more than $2 billion from the Gates and Rockefeller foundations and governments including the UK and the Netherlands, 15 new partnerships with universities and private companies have put more than 40 products into clinical testing in less than 10 years. That contrasts with the mere 21 medicines out of 1,500 that were approved for treatment between 1975 and 2005 specifically for tropical diseases. Another promising way to encourage R&D is to create a credible market for new products. An Advance Market Commitment (AMC), whereby donors supplement the purchasing power of the poorest countries, could provide strong commercial incentives for companies to accelerate the development of new and improved vaccines for diseases such as pneumococcus and malaria. We need more donors to join these financing initiatives. We need more minds devoted to finding creative solutions. By matching the power of medical advance with innovative finance we can fill the gap between what we are capable of and what we are willing to do - and unleash the power of human ingenuity and goodness to save millions of lives. As Mahatma Gandhi once said: “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” The writers are the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chairman of Microsoft
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Defence notes THE first batch of IAF personnel, including pilots, were recently sent to Israel for getting operational and maintenance training on the Airborne Early Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. This is ahead of scheduled delivery late next year of the first of the three aircraft ordered by India. The planes are being customised by Israel on Russian platforms. Under a 1.1 billion dollar deal, Israel is mounting three Phalcon radars on Russian IL-76 aircraft. In the run up to the induction of the AWACS, the IAF has been gaining familiarity with the system through a number of bilateral air exercises, with other forces featuring the system. IAF had first got exposed to the technology when it held exercises with France about two years ago. Then, last year, even the US had brought their own AWACS to be used over the Indian skies during exercises. Fighting cancer The first collaborative meeting of the Task Force on Cancer Management Guidelines in India was recently held in Delhi. Inaugurated by Surgeon Vice Admiral V K Singh, Director General of the Armed Forces Medical Services at the Army Hospital, the meeting took into account the ground realities which exist presently in the country. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Indian Armed Forces Medical Services (IAFMS) have come together to formulate this Task Force to create guidelines for cancer management and treatment. Dissemination methods of advanced techniques, particularly in the late stages of cancer, were discussed NCC’s gesture Over 15,000 cadets from the National Cadet Corps (NCC) donated blood in 170 centres all over the country to aid patients suffering from two major diseases to hit the country recently, dengue and chikungunya. The drive was inaugurated by the new Defence Minister A.K. Antony, who also met the NCC cadets. Director General of NCC Lt Gen Prakash S Chaudhary and other defence ministry officials were also present for the one day camp. Movie on IAF After Vijeta and Agni Pankh, which depicted the life of IAF personnel, work is soon to begin on another film featuring the force. Unlike the earlier two movies, which were realistic about the lives and day-to-day problems of the IAF personnel, the latest venture would be a thriller. Being made by the IAF in collaboration with the National Film Development Corporation, this venture would be on the lines of the Hollywood superhit Top Gun. The new film is being made to coincide with the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of the IAF and would be an effort to glamourise life in the IAF, like Top Gun did for US Navy pilots. Word is that efforts are being made to rope in top stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Sharukh Khan, Rani Mukerjee and Sushmita Sen.
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Dateline
Washington
A Democrat-controlled United States Congress may put the brakes on the passage of the U.S.-India civilian nuclear deal on Capitol Hill. Democrats need to win six seats in the Senate and 15 in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections held on Tuesday to snatch control of both chambers of Congress from the Republican Party. According to political analysts, if the Democrats gain the majority they would be less than enthusiastic about giving President George W. Bush, a Republican, the satisfaction of achieving a key foreign policy goal - the importance of which members of the administration have frequently underlined. Some Congressional analysts predict Democrats may seek to wrest more concessions from India, but others point out that Democrats in the House voted overwhelmingly in support of the bill in July, and the party’ s key members in the Senate openly support the bill. Admitting there is a “very good chance” that the Democrats will take control of both houses especially if there are no “Florida-like voting irregularities and the weather holds,” Sumit Ganguly, Rabindranath Tagore professor of political science at Indiana University in Bloomington, said, “I do not know that they would seek more concessions unless the nonproliferation community in Washington, D.C., goes into high gear.” Prof. Ganguly told The Tribune the nonproliferation lobby has been “doing all they can to try and falsely link India’ s case with the North Korean case while shamelessly eliding over Pakistan’ s organic links with North Korea.” He was referring to the proliferation concerns raised after North Korea tested a nuclear device last month. The fate of the bill will also depend on the length of the so-called lame duck session that is scheduled to start on November 13 and, should the Democrats gain a majority, on the will of the Republican leaders in Congress to push the deal through in what will be their last days on the job. When Congress meets in the lame duck session key priorities will be the passage of legislation creating permanent normal trade relations status for Vietnam, a victory Mr. Bush wants to tout when he travels to Hanoi to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit on November 18 and 19. The proposed legislation is an essential step in normalizing relations between Washington and Hanoi and making possible Vietnam’ s accession to the World Trade Organization. Another priority is the passage of the domestic terrorism surveillance bill. Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, told The Tribune “the size of the shift on Capitol Hill after the elections,” will be a big factor determining the fate of the nuclear deal this year. “The bigger the turnover in the House and Senate, the harder it could be to take up unfinished business from the
outgoing Congress,” Mr. Krepon said. Sanjay Puri, executive director of the U.S.-Indian Political Action Committee, contends that if the deal does not go through in the lame duck session “it means sometimes politics overrides everything else.” Mr. Puri was referring to the hurdles some analysts expect Democrats to erect in front of the Republican administration’ s initiatives in the last two years of Mr. Bush’ s term in the White House. However, Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state in President Bill Clinton’ s administration, while criticizing the exceptions the Bush administration has made for India, last week predicted that the agreement would be “the law of the land at some point of the lame duck session.” If the Senate does not vote on the bill before the end of the year both Senate and House versions of the bill will lapse and the process of debating new legislation will have to start from scratch in the 110th Congress in 2007. The Indian American community has lobbied hard for the passage of the bill. Mr Puri believes the deal will easily pass in the Senate if it was brought to a vote in the lame duck session. “We have the numbers,” he said.
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He who forgets the holy Word, behaves like a constantly sick man. — Guru Nanak We have all been created for greater things—to love and a person without any conditions, without any expectations. — Mother Teresa What works a man should do is determined by his natural abilities, his education and his training. — The Bhagavadgita
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