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Advantage India Pension issue on the boil |
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Stop talking of talks
In Zia’s footsteps
Scientific research
Strengthen Panchayati Raj to tame
khap menace Dawn of “second nuclear age” Legal notes
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Advantage India ENGLISH is the language which some regional chauvinists love to hate in public. It is another matter that they themselves send their children to best English-medium schools in India or abroad. Thanks to their short-sighted and parochial outlook, even those schools which used to teach the language in primary classes have done away with English. They are suffering because the blinkered ban has denied their students better opportunities of higher education and even employment. It is good that the National Knowledge Commission has boldly recommended making English compulsory in the school curricula across the country from Class I. This is one suggestion which must be accepted immediately if India is to retain its language-skill advantage. One field where China finds India in an advantageous position is the availability of English-speaking workforce. It is struggling hard to bridge the gap. There is no reason why India should fritter away its edge. No more than 1 per cent of Indians use it even as a second language. This base can be built up only if more and more children take up the language at the earliest. The parents of the children are more than willing. Just look at the mad desire to get their wards admitted to English-medium schools. It is narrow-minded politicians who play the villain. To say that the burden of learning this “foreign” language is too much for young minds is humbug. At that age, there is so much spare capacity that children can pick up languages in a jiffy, if only they are given the right environment. In fact, the exercise also helps in understanding other subjects better. Nine states have already introduced English as a compulsory subject from Class I. Others will be postponing this decision only to their own disadvantage — and that of their students. Let us in India not spurn a chance to play our part in the global society emerging in the 21st century. |
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Pension issue on the boil AS the Union Government prepares to finally take up the controversial Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill in the coming Budget session of Parliament, the ruling UPA will have a tough task in converting the Leftist allies to its viewpoint. The CPM central leadership has decided to stick to its known stand of opposing the Bill in its present form. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been counting on support from West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, but the Leftist leadership has directed its three Chief Ministers in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal to oppose the pension reforms. The first test that the pension Bill faces is at the proposed meeting of all Chief Ministers on Monday where the Prime Minister is expected to extol the virtues of the new scheme. Dr Manmohan Singh has already made it known to the Leftist leaders that the Chief Ministers of 17 states have agreed to implement the pension scheme. The government is ready to consider positively some of the amendments the Left leadership has suggested to the pension Bill. These include the investment of 100 per cent pension funds in government securities and having public sector officials as fund managers. However, the crucial issue on which there is a difference of opinion is the Leftist insistence on a guarantee by the government to pay at least 50 per cent of the average of the previous three years’ salary as pension to the employees. This means if the investment of pension funds fails to fetch the required returns, the government should meet the shortfall. This obviously is unacceptable to the government. While the Left leaders have suggested the creation of a national infrastructure fund to park pension funds, the Centre is open to other options and is trying to evolve a consensus. The UPA government is, once again, keen to avoid confrontation with the Left. But how much backward it will have to bend to accommodate its outside supporters remains to be seen. |
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Stop talking of talks GIVEN ULFA’s depredations, the “doors are still open for talks” refrain is sounding not only tired and farcical, but is also an affront to the victims of the violent group, who fall regularly to its guns and bombs. That Prime Minister Manmohan Singh felt compelled to say this even while sending out a message of “no compromise” is puzzling and can only be put down to his personal good intentions against all provocation. But it has been clear for a long time that ULFA is not serious about peace negotiations. Whatever strategy the Centre may have been following over the last couple of years, including the formation of the “People’s Consultative Group” (PCG), has only ended in failure. It is time for a shake-up. The PCG has had a few rounds of talks, and this group, which includes interlocutor Indira Goswami, was intended to be a facilitator for direct talks with ULFA leaders. How seriously ULFA has taken these talks can be gauged by the fact that when a round was announced last year, it was immediately followed by violent attacks in Guwahati and other places. This group, and the government mechanism that permitted this charade to go on, must share in the blame. The PCG has served no purpose and should be wound up. That ULFA does not have any mass support in Assam by itself is no cause for complacency. Such groups have their own agendas, and the mere fact that the people are no longer with them and do not support their stated aims and goals, is only seen as one more obstacle in their violent path. ULFA’s sovereignty demand is today without meaning or relevance, and its unwillingness to yield on that ground shows that it has no real interest in peace. And external parties interested in fomenting trouble in India like it that way. All talk of talks should now stop. Firm and decisive operations to root out militancy appear to be the only course left now. |
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I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.
— Samuel Johnson |
In Zia’s footsteps
EVEN after an oppressive check at the Delhi airport, Pakistan Airlines frisks you through its own security personnel before you can board the plane. It is cumbersome, but underlines Islamabad’s fear of terrorist attacks. The frisking has continued since the days of General Zia-ul Haq, who himself introduced terrorism to diplomacy and politics to get “dividends”. Pakistan is paying the price for it. Yet what one remembers about General Zia more than terrorism is that the election he promised within 90 days of his takeover was never held. And he stayed on for 11 years. President General Pervez Musharraf is following in his footsteps. He has been in power for seven years. He too had vowed to take off the uniform by the end of December 2004 but has not done so. He has the National Assembly’s “sanction” to go on till November 2007 but that is a “managed” one. What is disconcerting is that he looks like having another five-year term with the jackboots and the khaki uniform on. Knowledgeable persons in Lahore told me that he would get himself re-elected by the present National Assembly and the provincial legislatures since there was no constitutional bar. True, but it would look odd that the assemblies which end their tenure in November 2007 should elect the President who continues till November 2012. Some experts point out that he will require a constitutional amendment if he wants to occupy two offices -- those of the President and the Chief of the Army Staff. This eventuality may be difficult to get over but not impossible, knowing the helplessness of national and state assemblies. Another reason is that the Opposition is divided and dispirited. The main political party in the National Assembly, the Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), also known as the King’s Party, has already announced its support to his re-election. The alliance of religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), is opposed to the idea, but it may cave in as it has done in the case of women’s legislation, which was amended to shift the blame for rape on the perpetrator of the crime in place of the victim, the earlier practice. The MMA had threatened to resign from the National Assembly and the NWFP government, which it controlled. The MMA even collected the letters of resignation but did not submit them to the respective Speakers. Apart from the usual diffidence, it is believed that Ms Benazir Bhutto also advised them not to quit the assemblies lest it should provide the military junta a pretext to postpone the elections. Whatever the considerations, the fact of military is too stark to ignore. This is also because of General Musharraf’s daily obiter dicta, which newspapers and TV networks carry dutifully with his photograph. People also annoyingly find that the best of civil jobs continue to be filled by serving or retired military officials. They occupy large tracts of land which is the reward given to them for “service” in the military. In fact, the military is the new feudal face of Pakistan, a land-owning class, in league with other vested interests. People mince no words when it comes to criticising the military. Yet they talk about it within the four walls of their houses and even check whether someone is watching them. They have adjusted themselves to the reality of military rule, which it seems to have become a habit of sorts. It should not come as a surprise because out of a span of 60 years, they have had 50 years of military rule. It does not look that things will change even after the 2007 elections. One, they might be rigged as before. And, two, whatever the outcome, the military is there to stay. The scenario would change if Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif were to return. A Nepal-like situation could take place with lakhs of people coming out on the streets. For this, both will have to fix a firm date and make it public. Many in Pakistan are sure that General Musharraf would not be able to arrest the two or send them back after the announcement of the election schedule. However, there is a deliberate effort to create a cleavage between Ms Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif. The impression spread is that General Musharraf is talking to her through back channels so as to have someone other than Ms Bhutto from her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) to head the next government. Earlier in the year, when I met her in London, she categorically denied having any truck with the army. What is surprising me is the military junta’s effort to reach some “understanding” with liberal forces in Pakistan. Persons like Dr Mubashir Husain, Finance Minister in the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Cabinet, have been sounded. Mr Shahbaz Sharif, former Punjab Chief Minister, was reportedly approached. But he refused to part company with his brother, Mr Nawaz Sharif, who was intractable on any rapprochement with General Musharraf. He said in London that the Pakistan military would have to be like the Indian Army, apolitical and engaged only in the country’s defence. General Musharraf’s dislike for Mr Nawaz Sharif is not a secret. He would like to make a dent in Mr Nawaz Sharif’s support base since it is mainly the erstwhile Muslim League which is behind him. What General Musharraf seems to have in mind is to have an alliance with non-religious parties to fight against religious elements whom he himself supported in the last election. It has dawned on him, though belatedly, that the Frankenstein of terrorism which he resurrected may destroy Pakistan as well. The American support, his asset, is there. But he has realised that the more fight he puts up against terrorists, the more acceptable he will be to the US. (When I was in Lahore, the US forces destroyed a madarsa, killing several people and proving once again that the US could do anything in Pakistan to serve its “interest.”) And while he has that equation with President Bush, General Musharraf can get away with the potshots he takes at India. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s just concluded visit to Islamabad may begin the process of conciliation. But both countries have a long way to go before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s dream to have breakfast at Amritsar and lunch at Lahore comes
true.
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Scientific research
A
reader, writing to the “letters” column of a national newspaper has said that the principle reason for the continued brain drain from the country is that peons in India enjoy a better status and are paid more than scientists. The All-India Confederation of Peons has deplored the tone and tenor of the letter calling it “lacking in perspective”, “biased against peons” and “motivated.” Briefing newsmen, a spokespeon said: “We peons have been at the receiving end of malicious attacks for far too long and it’s about time we took a stand and let the people of India know that we’re also engaged in path-breaking research and we’ve made several epoch-making discoveries. Let me briefly elaborate without in any way blowing our own trumpets and seek cheap publicity.” “Visitors to government offices would have noticed peons sitting motionless for hours on end on rickety wooden stools. Actually, this is part of an ongoing and well-funded research in three-dimensional structural analysis of dead load-bearing elements whose objetive is to develop one-legged stools. Just imagine the savings in scarce and valuable wood that would result from the successful conclusion of research to develop one-legged stools!” The spokespeon continued: “Our quest for knowledge is unending and we’re into Human Psychology and Behavioural Sciences. We let people who call at govt offices to transact legitimate business with prior appointments wait endlessly and under controlled clinical conditions, we study the effect of suppressed rage and frustration over human psyche. I ask you, have Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung done any research work in these greenfield areas of human psychology? We peons are doing it and what do we get in return? Not bouquets but brickbats.” “No aspect of science is beyond our interest,” said the spokespeon. “it might surprise you to know that we’re also into Textiles and Artificial Fibre Chemistry. We wear the same dirty khaki uniform continuously for upto nine months and then study the chemical effect of human sweat on artificial clothing fibres. Eventually, we hope to develop sweat-resistant textiles and artificial fibres. We’re quite sure that no other country in the world is doing research in this virgin field of scientific research.” “You’ll also be interested to know that Indian peons are conducting advanced medical research. We fetch coffee and tea for the “babus” every 15 minutes and under controlled laboratory conditions, we study the effect of caffeine on the human body. We’ve observed marked languidity and lethargy in clearing important files, but greater alacrity in applying for casual leave, LTC passes and demanding dearness allowances and city compensatory allowance at enhanced rates. We’ve submitted learned articles to The Lancet and the British Medical Journal and they’re being held over for publication.” The spokespeon concluded: “So you can see for yourself that peons in their own humble way, are contributing their mite to pushing back the frontiers of science and knowledge.” |
Strengthen Panchayati Raj to tame
khap menace THE khap panchayats of Haryana are once again in the news, for all the wrong reasons. The Sheoran Khap has expelled a Punia couple from Jevali village of Bhiwani district for violating the traditional norms for marriage. Earlier, it had decided to boycott 36-odd Punia families on the same ground. The khap panchayat agreed to revoke the boycott only after these families, including the parents of the bridegroom, gave an undertaking that the couple would not be allowed to enter the village. A senior officer of the Home Department of Haryana, in an affidavit before a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, had submitted that the State Government does not recognise the self-styled khap panchayats and it would not allow their illegal activities. This was during the hearing of a public interest litigation petition, filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Panchkula Chapter, challenging the illegal action of a khap panchayat annulling an inter-caste marriage. The Haryana Institute of Rural Development (HIRD) had organised awareness workshops at various district headquarters for the sensitisation of the elected representatives of the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) on this issue. They were told at these workshops, organised from July 7 to July 26, 2006, in the Jat-dominated districts of Kaithal, Jind, Sonepat, Rohtak, Jhajjar, Hisar and Bhiwani, that the khap panchayats were relevant only when there was no Constitution, no government, no administration, no judiciary, no police and no constitutionally based and elected Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). Khap panchayats have become wholly obsolete in the present constitutional, political, administrative and judicial context. This is all the more so after the establishment of the constitutional and democratically elected PRIs in the state. Simultaneously, khap panchayats were also warned that their participation in illegal activities could land them in trouble under the various provisions of law. But it appears that the undertaking given by the Government of Haryana in the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the awareness workshops organised by the HIRD have not made any appreciable difference in the illegal activities of the khap panchayats. This is glaringly discerniable from the Jevali episode. This failure on the part of the state government, besides some other reasons, may be mainly ascribed to the persistence of the weakness of PRIs. These have neither real powers nor any substantial backing of the district administration, the police, the bureaucracy and technocracy. Moreover, till recently, the elected representatives of these bodies were not given the needed honorarium to enable them to perform their role well. The Government of Haryana has now provided for the honorarium, enhanced the financial powers of the PRIs and authorised them to engage private engineers for their building and repair works. It has yet to issue a gazette notification, however, for the implementation of the document on activity-mapping, for the devolution of function, functionaries and funds pertaining to the departments of Food and Supply, Health, Public Health, Social Justice and Empowerment, Irrigation, Women and Child Development, Animal Husbandry, Agriculture and Forest, issued on February 17, 200, on the PRIs. Despite the letters and the reminders from the Financial Commissioner, Development and Panchayats, most of the state-level heads of these departments have not issued the necessary instructions to their district and sub-district level officers in this regard till now. Moreover, the district planning committees have neither been constituted in the spirit of the 74th Constitutional Amendment nor been made functional in the real sense of the word. The efforts of the state government in the direction of the mobilisation of support of the Nehru Yuva Kendras and Mahila Mandals, for strengthening the PRIs and for the streamlining of the Gram Sabha that constitutes the base of Panchayati Raj, however, are praise-worthy. But these steps are not adequate for their real empowerment which continues to elude them. Various efforts, like that of HIRD for capacity building of the elected representatives of the PRIs, through a state-wide training campaign (2005-2006); the programmes for interface between the elected representatives of the Zilla Parishads and the officers of the line departments; the training programmes of the state community development centre at the district and block levels ; the panchayti raj sammelans organised by it at the state, division and district levels; and the holding of meetings with the elected representatives of PRIs by the Chief Minister of Haryana, could not lead to their genuine empowerment. This was because it has not been matched with the requisite devolution of powers to them. If the Government of Haryana is keen to tame the khap panchayats, it will have to ensure the real empowerment of the PRIs through a gazette notification of the document on activity-mapping, as also by ensuring a change in the mindset of the district administration, the police, the development bureaucracy and technocracy, towards the elected representatives of the PRIs.
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Dawn of “second nuclear age” AFTER five years of international headlines about growing turmoil in the Middle East and international terrorism, we now have climate change and oil insecurity driving countries to seek nuclear power, bringing with it new dangers of proliferation in volatile parts of the globe. The Doomsday Clock, devised by the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947 at the dawn of the nuclear age, will make official what most thinking citizens feel in their bones – that the world has edged closer to nuclear Armageddon than at any time since the most precarious moments of the Cold War in the early 1980s. Simultaneous events will take place in London and Washington at which the symbolic clock will be moved forward from its present seven minutes to midnight, where it has stood since 2002. The reasons for the time being advanced five years ago were crumbling arms control treaties and a terrorist threat brought into shattering relief by 9/11. At the start of 2007, not only is the picture darker on both those scores, the nuclear threat has also acquired an added and unquantifiable dimension, thanks to global warming - prompting the Bulletin to warn of a “Second Nuclear Age”. The existing dangers could not be more obvious: the problem is where to start. What about Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, and the thinly veiled warnings from the undeclared but assumed nuclear power Israel that it will strike first to remove what it sees as an existentialist threat comparable to the Holocaust? Or the nuclear test last year by North Korea, a member of George Bush’s “axis of evil”, which could have neighbouring Japan and South Korea seeking protection with nuclear weapons of their own? Or the nuclear arsenal of unstable Pakistan, where Islamic extremists have staged several assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf? Or – perhaps the greatest danger of all – that having visited conventional terror on an unprecedented scale upon New York City on 11 September 2001, al-Qa’ida or some similar organisation will either get hold of a ready-made nuclear device or build one of its own, and then use it? And why not? And in this new nuclear age, the deterrence doctrine of “mutually assured destruction”, or MAD, that kept the Cold War cold, would not apply. The US and Russia may have 2,000 launch-ready weapons between them – but these would be of no more use against an amorphous terrorist group than Israel’s nuclear arsenal against the Palestinians. Even so, a threshold would have been crossed and a regional, even generalised nuclear war, would become conceivable. Global warming, argues the Bulletin, indirectly increases this risk. Civil nuclear power, which directly produces no greenhouse gases, is back in fashion and hundreds of nuclear reactors will be built soon. In this Second Nuclear Age, there will be more of these deadly commodities around. Small wonder the hand on the Doomsday Clock will move towards midnight. By arrangement with
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Legal notes IN an interesting case on the status of a temple in Rajasthan, over which Hindus and Jains were at loggerheads each claiming it to be their shrine, the Supreme Court has held that the Hindus have no right over it. It has come down heavily on the state government for taking a contrary stand, despite the issue being adjudicated earlier. The court said when the issue had been settled once and for all, it could not be allowed to reopen. But on the dispute of ownership between two Jain sects – Swetambers and Digambers – the court refused to give a verdict, saying that it did not call for consideration when the dispute was between Hindus and Jains. The ancient temple is located in Mewar and the descendents of Maharana Pratap had been managing it, before it was taken over by the state under a trust. Though the initial litigation started between Swetambers and Digambers in 1962 before the Rajasthan High Court, it turned into a dispute between Hindus and Jains after the state government intervened in the case to claim that it was a Hindu temple with Jains also having a right to worship. After many rounds of litigation, a single-judge Bench of the High Court ruled that it was a Jain temple; a Division Bench reversed the verdict in 2002, accepting the government stand. This was challenged in the Supreme Court, which gave its final verdict.
Judgement on dowry irks women A
recent judgement of the Supreme Court has got sharp reactions from some women organisations. The court held that a demand for money on account of some “financial stringency” or meeting some urgent domestic expenses, or for purchasing manure by a man from his in-laws, could not be termed as a demand for dowry as the definition of dowry is normally understood under the law. The verdict was given by a Bench of Justice GP Mathur and Justice RV Raveendran, while deciding an appeal of Appasaheb, a farmer from Maharashtra, who claimed to be innocent in the case of dowry death of his wife, Bhimabai, in 1991. She died due to the consumption of poison in mysterious circumstances. But some days before her death, she had told her parents that she was being harassed for a demand of Rs 1,000 to 1,200 from them for meeting household expenses and the purchase of manure. Though the court acquitted Appasaheb due to lack of evidence, it at the same time propounded the law that such demands did not fall under the definition of dowry. Both the deceased and her husband belonged to a poor section of society. The women organisations claim that the malaise of dowry was so deep in our society that it does not spare even those who don’t have any means to pay their daughters and, therefore, the law in such cases should be enforced strictly.
International marital and custody disputes The problem faced by NRIs in settling marital and child-custody disputes was once again raised vigorously at the recent Pravasi Bharatiya conclave here. Speaker after speaker demanded that the Indian Government should enact laws to resolve this vital issue as the verdicts of Indian courts, even that of the Supreme Court, on these cases were not recognised by the courts and authorities in foreign countries. The problem is compounded by the non-registration of marriages in many of the states in India despite the Supreme Court making this compulsory. This results in multiple marriages by NRI youths, particularly by inducing girls for a “short liaison” during their visit to India and then leaving them in the lurch in many cases with a child. Such liaisons, now termed as “runaway” marriages, were creating a lot of hardships to such brides in the absence of the government not coming up with appropriate legislation to address the problem. The abandoned wives and children of such short liaisons had become a serious problem today with a 25 million NRI population, and needed to be address on priority. The speakers urged Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi to find a solution to it. Ravi had earlier said that India has decided to sign the Hague Conference on private international laws so that the verdicts of its courts in civil cases are implemented abroad. |
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