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Suicides in Vidarbha Govt cannot ignore the causes THE recent spate of suicides by farmers in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region is shocking and warrants a fresh look at the whole phenomenon. The Prime Minister’s package, announced after his visit to the area in July last, does not seem to have offered much respite to the distressed farmers.
Scrapping Constitution
Faith and fortune
Target practice in the
final frontier Musharraf persists with stale promises Banks excluding chhota admi
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Witness to untruth THE manner in which two key witnesses to the murder of Professor H.S. Sabharwal turned hostile in Ujjain District Sessions Court on Monday once again raises disturbing questions on how witnesses continue to make a mockery of the criminal justice system. In a sudden turnabout, Komal Singh Sengar and Manohar Singh Dondiyal, two peons, refused to identify the accused in the court. Sengar said he had seen a mob attack the professor but could not recognise the assailants. It was on the basis of his original statement that six leaders of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), including Shashi Ranjan Akela and Vimal Tomar, were arrested. The activists brutally assaulted Professor Sabharwal on August 26 last year in protest against his decision to cancel the students’ union elections. The professor later succumbed to the injuries. Dondiyal said he reached the scene after the attack. The issue in question is: how can the two key witnesses try to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes when the television channels have duly covered the attack on Professor Sabharwal? These channels continue to show clips of Shashi Ranjan Akela and Vimal Tomar threatening him of dire consequences on that day. Defence counsel Surendra Singh’s claim that the witnesses’ statements on camera don’t stand in the court and that these should have been made under oath before a judge is erroneous and misleading. In the context of the Supreme Court’s various rulings, witnesses in this case deserve to be punished for retracting their statements. The ends of justice will be met only if Professor Sabharwal’s killers are tried and punished expeditiously. The trial court would be committing a grave error if it releases the six accused ABVP leaders and others on the ground of lack of evidence. This is what happened in the Jessica Lall, Priyadarshini Matoo and Best Bakery cases. Fortunately, after retrials, all the accused are now behind bars. On his part, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, who initially dubbed the professor’s death “as an accident and not a murder”, should uphold the rule of law and refrain from creating stumbling blocks in the speedy trial and conviction of the accused. |
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Language of justice THE public criticism of high court judges in Tamil Nadu by state Electricity Minister Arcot N Veerasamy in the presence of Chief Minister M Karunanidhi reflects poorly on the relationship between the executive and the judiciary. Politics and personalities apart, institutional equations would be imperilled in the state where the DMK government wants the high court proceedings to be entirely Tamilised. From the time, in November 2006, when Mr Karunanidhi declared that the government would take the necessary legal steps to make Tamil the sole language of the Madras High Court, the political climate has deteriorated sharply. Mr Karunanidhi needs to adopt a more statesman-like approach and ensure that the delivery of justice is not subordinated to linguistic parochialism. For nearly 145 years, from the time it was established, English has been the language of the Madras High Court. In the federal system that obtains in the Indian Union, high court judges are transferred across linguistic borders and English, more than Hindi, is the language that links the judiciary through the country. This has enabled high courts in every region to benefit from the services of judges from other regions, and upheld the quality of justice. Mr Karunanidhi is right in that there is provision to enforce Tamil as the sole language of the Madras High Court. Nevertheless, such a move would be not only wrong but also unhealthy as it would violate the federal spirit. The very suggestion has activated parochial elements to demand that only Tamils should be appointed to the high court bench; and, if the move is persisted with, linguistic chauvinism will vitiate the atmosphere not only in Tamil Nadu but also other states where fanaticism might be triggered. The judiciary is there to deliver justice and not serve the narrow interest of one linguistic group or the other. What is important is the language of justice and not the language in which justice is delivered. |
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Suicides in Vidarbha THE recent spate of suicides by farmers in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region is shocking and warrants a fresh look at the whole phenomenon. The Prime Minister’s package, announced after his visit to the area in July last, does not seem to have offered much respite to the distressed
farmers. While the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, which claims to speak on behalf of the indebted farmers, says the situation has worsened, the official response suggests a softening of the suicide trend with the number of farmers killing themselves in this cotton belt declining after the distribution of aid amounting to Rs 5,000 crore. The causes of farmers’ suicides vary from case to case. It is not always debt, poverty, crop failure or the agrarian crisis in general that drive a peasant to end his life. The government view is that most suicides are on account of alcoholism, family problems and social tensions. That is why of the 1,452 suicides reported last year, only 686 cases were found eligible for the Rs 1 lakh compensation. A recent book on farmers’ suicides in Yavatmal district also noted a tendency to blame suicides conveniently on debt and poverty when the actual reasons in many cases were found to be unrelated to farming. The Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti blames farmers’ woes on state policies, Bt cotton seed, WTO and globalisation.The Centre and the state government cannot ignore the suicides, whatever be the causes. Agricultural slowdown has engaged the attention of the leadership at the Centre and in states. The Finance Minister has promised some concrete action in the coming Budget. The governments concerned need to coordinate their efforts to raise productivity, strengthen irrigation, make institutional credit available, improve rural infrastructure, health and education and ensure direct subsidies and remunerative prices for farm produce in keeping with the rise in the cost of farm inputs. |
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He that dies pays all debts. — William Shakespeare
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Scrapping Constitution THE DMK's plea for rewriting the Constitution to negate the Supreme Court's verdict on the Ninth Schedule sends a disturbing message about the Indian political class. For a start, it shows a casual, even frivolous, attitude to what is no less than a sacred document. As has been widely acknowledged, the Indian Constitution is a marvellous product of the wisdom of the Constituent Assembly, the outcome of animated deliberations over a three-year period by some of the wisest men and women of the period. It is necessary to remember that the people in public life at that memorable turning point of the country's history were of a higher calibre than their successors of today. One can understand, therefore, why the Constitution has stood the test of time, notwithstanding the 90-odd amendments, which are a part and parcel of normal political progression. What is outrageous, however, is the DMK's peremptory demand to throw it into the wastepaper basket. Had the party called for an amendment, it might have been able to present a credible case. But by trashing the entire document, the DMK may have revealed more about its own blinkered vision than about the frailties of the Constitution. It may have also known that its self-induced myopia cannot be cured by a mere tinkering with the constitutional provisions, but required a petulant wrecking operation. The DMK also probably hopes --- and subsequent events have shown it to be partly right — that there are enough narrow-minded politicians in the country to cheer it on during its destructive mission. Whatever the party may have in mind, what its demand has shown is the danger posed to an established and successful system by outfits motivated by nothing other than casteist sentiments. As is known, the law about which the DMK is worried relates to the 69 per cent reservation for the backward castes in Tamil Nadu, which violates the apex court's obiter dicta that the percentage of quotas should not exceed 50. The placement of this Tamil Nadu legislation in the Ninth Schedule had insulated it from judicial scrutiny so far. But now that the Supreme Court has ruled that it can examine whether such laws violate the fundamental rights, the
M. Karunanidhi government is concerned that its long-standing cynical ploy of extracting political mileage from sectarian policies may no longer work. Although the DMK hasn't called for the abolition of the judiciary, its preference for another Constitution carries the hint that it will not like the new document to entrust the judges with the task of determining the legal validity of legislative enactments. Instead, it will be the MPs and MLAs who will perform the twin task of passing a Bill and declaring it to be legally valid, as in any "people's democracy" where the courts play second fiddle to the ruling establishment. It is evident that any such step will pave the way for the end of parliamentary democracy. Even if it doesn't usher in a dictatorship --- whether socialistic or fascistic --- the marginalisation of the judiciary will spell the doom of the separation of powers which constitutes the bedrock of all democratic systems, whether parliamentary or presidential. What is worrisome is that the DMK's outlandish proposal has received a measure of support from parties like the CPM and the Janata Dal (U). These are organisations which, like the DMK, do not have an all-India presence and have their main bases of support among segmented groups like the trade unions in the case of the Marxists, and the backward castes in the case of the Janata Dal (U). But the fact that these two parties belong to two rival political formations --- the UPA and the NDA --- shows that when it comes to the accumulation of power in their own hands, the politicians of all hues have no trouble in uniting. They know that by robbing the judiciary of its authority, the legislature and the executive will enjoy a free run, untroubled by any restrictions on their vote bank-driven actions. Thus, a law validating illegal constructions can be merrily enacted without inviting the opprobrium of the Supreme Court calling it "invalid", as in the context of the demolition of unauthorised additions to houses and shops in Delhi ordered by the judiciary. Or Parliament can pass without any qualms what the legal luminary Fali S. Nariman called a "lawless law" to pardon the MPs holding offices of profit with retrospective effect.
An emasculated judiciary will be not unlike a "committed judiciary", a phrase which gained notoriety in the days before and during the Emergency of 1975-77. A communist-turned-Congressman, Mohan Kumaramangalam, was fond of using it with probably Stalin's legal system in mind. Now another communist, Prakash Karat, whose party supports the Congress at the Centre, has detected in the judiciary a seemingly un-Marxist tendency to accept the values of liberalisation and privatisation, which, he says, is against the spirit of the Constitution. As such, he believes that the ruling on the Ninth Schedule may bring the courts into conflict with the "will of the people". While Janata Dal (U) chief Sharad Yadav doesn't support the DMK's demand, he is nevertheless against the judges taking the place of the "members of Parliament and replace Parliament". This is not the first time, of course, that the politicians have found themselves constrained by the existing constitutional arrangement. The most direct assault on the Constitution was during the Emergency when civil rights, including habeas corpus, were suspended. Kumaramangalam's former party, the CPI, was a supporter of these measures although not Karat's CPM. Around that time, suggestions were made for a switch-over to the presidential system in the belief that it represented a more authoritarian form of governance, which would be in tune with the concept of anusashan parva or era of discipline (in Vinobha Bhave's words) associated with the However, the idea of tinkering with the Constitution remained
alive. One of the BJP's first tasks on the assumption of office in the late
nineties was to set up a commission to review the Constitution. But when its chairman,
M.N. Venkatachaliah, a former Supreme Court Chief Justice, announced that he had taken charge on the understanding that the basic structure of the Constitution would not be touched, the saffron brotherhood lost interest in the proceedings, for its purpose was evidently to set in motion a process to undermine the secular basis of the document. As much is clear from the submission made by the RSS to the commission which stated that in the new Constitution for "Bharat", the legislature, the executive and the judiciary should function under the aegis of a Guru Sabha. In a way, this is not unlike the theocratic Iranian model of a Guardians' Council comprising the ayatollahs which oversees the operations of parliament and the judiciary. What is evident in these proposals from the DMK, the CPM, the Janata Dal (U) and the RSS is that the political class (the RSS can be included in this category) is yet to come to terms with the parliamentary system and is not averse to undermining it, each one of them for its own political purpose. All of them want to remodel the Constitution to bolster their own specific vote banks without considering whether the country will suffer as a result of their self-serving, divisive
antics.
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Faith and fortune
THE idea of India begins to unfold as one walks past the multitude along the banks of the pious and perennial Ganga-Yamuna confluence at Allahabad. Diversity of dress, language, region and ritual becomes all too apparent to a discerning eye. Dig a little deeper and you come face to face with the class divide. It is not as many Indian tourists as our teeming Bharatvasi believers who have descended on the sangam sands to grace the ongoing Ardh Kumbh. An unending queue of faith-bathed pilgrims proceeding to the ghats to take a holy dip and then immerse themselves in the elaborate rituals within waters and without, impelled the sceptic in me to think afresh about the physical and the metaphysical. To them it is still the Ganga maiya which will wash them of all their sins, discharge of upstream tanneries and sewage notwithstanding. A triumph of faith over reason, nay reality. I noticed small groups of desi and videshi visitors, watching the believers with awe and admiration, but joining them eventually. Those who were able to suppress their herd instinct chose to view the spectacle from a pan-India prism pointing out that Kumbh Melas were also held at the far-flung Hardwar, Ujjain and Nasik besides Prayag, thus envisioning unity in diversity and at the same time, diversity in unity! If the have-nots put their faith in the mythical Kumbh (pitcher), fortune rains into the real kumbhs of the haves of the establishment in cahoots with the contractors, so much so that the moolah starts overflowing and gets noticed by the vigilante. How else will these hard pressed (for money?) officials be able to expend Rs 170 crore budgeted for the 45-day-long event which, they guesstimated, would be visited by seven crore pilgrims? The more the merrier. Much like war losses! Who knows that instead of counting the heads, they go by the total number of dips registered in the holy waters. It stands to reason because most of the pilgrims make multiple dips in the name of their kin who, much as they wished to come, could not make it to the Mela. Never mind, the telepathic State did know that they would come in droves and, therefore, laid out a spiritual feast for the potential seven crore! If the seventh-century Buddhist king Harsha used to give away everything he had, to the saints and his subjects at the quinquennial fair at Prayag, the modern times stand mute witness to the taxpayers’ money flowing in the reverse direction. Ganga has really gone maili. And before we venture to clean these rivers, we would do well to clean our collective
conscience.
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Target practice in the
final frontier THEY warn us of approaching storms. They allow us to make emergency phone calls on mobile phones. They’re the digital conveyor belt for global commerce. In some countries they help police and ambulances reach their destinations when every minute counts. And the US Pentagon relies on them to provide their forces with intelligence, communications and targeting information. Satellites, it seems, have become our lifelines. Still, it’s easy to take satellites for granted – easy, that is, until the People’s Liberation Army crashes a missile into one of China’s aging meteorological satellites, as it did last month. It was a crude show of strength, which the PLA will do on occasion when it wants to make a point. In 1995, for example, Beijing sent a fusillade of missiles in Taiwan’s direction, a blunt reminder to think twice about independence. This time around, the PLA’s message seemed directed at the Bush administration and the Air Force, which has adopted a “space control” doctrine that endorses the use of weapons in, from and through space. The debris from China’s missile blast could travel in space for much more than a quarter-century before burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s a long time, but not longer than the debate over weapons in space has raged, beginning with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Having prying eyes overhead is unsettling enough, but it is not nearly so worrisome as weapons circling overhead, ready to fire. What the Air Force euphemistically calls “offensive counter-space” capabilities - use of the terms “space weapons” and “space dominance” is verboten – does not have a broad constituency of support in the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill. The notion of turning space into one more war zone offends many sensibilities, from those of devout believers who don’t think the heavens should be sullied by weapons, to those of pragmatic soldiers who realise that, if satellites become fair game in warfare, their other missions will become even harder. President Reagan couldn’t dent these concerns with the Strategic Defense Initiative, his 1983 proposal to use space-based weapons as a shield against nuclear attack. So far, the Bush administration’s testing in space appears limited to demonstrations of multipurpose technologies: For example, a recent test maneuvered a small satellite to make close passes at U.S. space objects. These techniques could ultimately be used to help with satellite docking or monitoring. The Air Force’s new doctrine and the Bush administration’s refusal to discuss, let alone negotiate, anything that could limit U.S. freedom of action in space – along with the traditional secrecy surrounding military space programs – has gotten China’s attention. Last September, press reports indicated that China had “painted” a U.S. satellite with a laser. It is unclear how often this has occurred, or whether the United States has carried out similar practices against Chinese satellites. Shining lasers on satellites can be used for space tracking and monitoring, as well as for temporarily blinding a satellite, among other uses. Now that Beijing has in turn gained Washington’s attention, the competition in space is likely to heat up. An old US-Soviet-style space race seems unlikely – after all, we live in an era of asymmetric warfare – but it doesn’t take an arms race to mess up space, as the PLA just proved. These days, “lasing” and jamming are the preferred Pentagon means for dealing with satellites that could threaten U.S. combat forces. Initially, however, the Pentagon considered nuclear detonations as a way to destroy satellites, even deploying (but never launching) two nuclear-tipped rockets for this assignment after the Cuban missile crisis. The Kennedy administration learned that this was a bad idea after one particularly powerful atmospheric nuclear test in 1962 damaged every U.S. satellite – and one Soviet satellite – in low Earth orbit. The United States and the Soviet Union turned next to space weapons that killed on contact. The U.S. military conducted dozens of such tests, but only one, in 1985, was like the recent Chinese test, with the Air Force blowing up an aging meteorological satellite. Fourteen years later, a piece of debris from this test came within one mile of the international space station. It took three additional years for this lethal hazard to clear out of low Earth orbit. The recent Chinese test has produced a much larger debris field at a higher altitude, meaning that the resulting hazard to spaceflight will be much worse. During the Reagan administration, many were concerned that the Kremlin had achieved strategic and military superiority and might exploit its advantages - including the use of futuristic space weapons. Now, the focus is squarely on China. The recent Congressionally mandated report “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China 2006,” from the defense secretary’s office, covers many Chinese military innovations – including a new doctrine of modern warfare and the purchase of more advanced weapons systems – but failed to predict a “hit to kill” anti-satellite test. It is perhaps fitting that some of the best information and analysis on weapons in space would be found in, well, cyberspace. The Space Security Index 2006, issued by the research consortium SpaceSecurity.org, offers a detailed overview of these issues on an ongoing basis. And among the bloggers, I would recommend Leonard David of Space.com, as well as Jeffrey Lewis, who keeps perhaps the leading blog on nuclear proliferation and arms control, ArmsControlWonk.com – where he broke the Chinese anti-satellite test story on January 17.
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Musharraf persists with stale promises IN the months after Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was a new and shaky U.S. ally. He decided to side with the Bush administration against al-Qaida, but there were persistent reports that elements of his army still supported the Afghan Taliban. He was an autocratic ruler who had seized power in a military coup against a democratic government, but in a televised speech to his nation in January 2002, he promised to turn Pakistan into a tolerant, “moderate Muslim” society. Largely because it had little choice, the Bush administration decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Five years later, little in Pakistan has changed. Musharraf is still promising a moderate and tolerant regime – but there are still reports that his army is quietly helping the Taliban. He’s also still promising democracy – but just as in 2002, he’s preparing to rig Pakistan’s upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections to ensure that his term is extended and his power unchallenged. What has changed is the response of the Bush administration. Five years ago it portrayed itself as giving Musharraf a chance to perform. Now it defends and apologises for the general, despite his chronic failure to deliver. The most recent example of this came a week and a half ago, during a visit to the country by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Gastright. Islamabad was in an uproar over the news that Musharraf intends to seek a new five-year term next fall in a way that most of the country’s civilian politicians consider undemocratic and unconstitutional. The other subject of conversation was legislation passed by the Democratic-controlled U.S. House during its “100 hours” blitz. It would condition future aid to the Pakistani military on Bush’s certification that Pakistan “is making all possible efforts to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control.” The House measure, backed by the new Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, California’s Tom Lantos, was a logical response to recent reports by U.S. commanders that the Taliban leadership is based in Pakistan and that cross-border movements of insurgents are increasing. But Gastright rushed to assure Musharraf’s government that the administration opposed it. “The president can certify that,” Gastright said of the Taliban metric without explaining the basis for his confidence. “The issue is, he shouldn’t have to.” Gastright went on to endorse what he said were steps by Musharraf to promote press and political freedom ahead of the elections: “That’s an impressive track record,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. Then he said the administration was pleased with Musharraf’s handling of the greatest criminal proliferator of nuclear weapons in history, A.Q. Khan, who was quickly pardoned in 2004 and then shielded from U.S. or U.N. interrogation. Musharraf had “a superb record addressing the legacy of the A.Q. Khan network,” Gastright said. Whatever his performance or lack of it, the argument goes, Musharraf is better than the alternatives in Pakistan. In Musharraf’s case it’s particularly perverse. That’s because the second most popular leader in Pakistan behind Musharraf, according to polling by the International Republican Institute, is not an Islamist but former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the moderate and pro-Western Pakistan People’s Party. Bhutto and her party have made it clear that they would be willing to accept Musharraf in exchange for fair parliamentary elections and an end to criminal charges that keep Bhutto in exile. The PPP and the Muslim League party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have formed the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy; they are the obvious partners for a government that genuinely aims to modernize the country and marginalize Islamic extremism. Only Musharraf refuses to deal with them. His supporters say he intends to extend his mandate by staging a presidential vote by the existing parliament and provincial assemblies – which make up Pakistan’s equivalent of the electoral college – though they were elected in the rigged balloting of 2002 and their terms expire on the same day as the president’s. For that maneuver he won’t need Bhutto or Sharif or their parties - and so he won’t have to meet their demands for fair parliamentary elections. In private, the Bush administration has been urging Musharraf for some time to come to terms with Pakistan’s moderate democrats. And they’ve been asking him for years to stop allowing sanctuary for the Taliban. He’s not responding. So what’s wrong with Congressional conditions? They might just produce what’s been missing from Musharraf the past five years: results.
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Banks excluding chhota admi ARE the banks performing? Yes, but only for those with money. With the introduction of computer technology, Internet, ATM’s and other gadgets, banking services have become more smart and efficient. With the private banks coming into the field, competition among banks for securing deposits, loans and other business is abundantly in evidence. But for people with no money, the banks’ branches are like 5-star hotels where a man with empty pocket will not dare enter. Recently at a forum of economists, bankers, industrialists and social scientists, C. Rangarajan former R.B.I. Governor and Chairman of Prime Minister’s economic advisory council, revealed startling facts about the inadequacy of Bank’s services. He said that less than a third of India’s populace is connected to the banking systems and that the picture is worse in the lower income groups and in the rural sector where the proportion of institutional credit to total credit, decreases while non- institutional credit, say from money lenders, increases. According to another study there are only 300 million bank accounts for over a billion people. Even after adding the savings accounts with Cooperative banks it comes to 4 out of 10 persons having a connection with banks. The question arises as to how and why even after 37 years of nationalisation of banks and attendant huge growth of the banking industry, from 10000 to over one lakh branches, and whopping deposits, its over-all coverage is badly wanting. No doubt after nationalisation the bias shifted towards the small man, small industries, small businesses and agriculture, poverty alleviation schemes under 20 point programme of the Prime Minister, et al. It did bring a mass of people on banks’ books, but it failed to translate them into real coverage. Since the implementation of the 20 point programme was under a compulsion the banks did carry it out willy-nilly, but their experience proved to be very bitter. Most of the loans so given became bad debts which had to be written off. The banks thus got scared away from the small man. Also, in this stalemate, the banks’ workers’ unions grew tremendously strong and started dictating to the managements little bothering about the business and least of all about the small man entering the bank. The problem of ‘less coverage’ by the banks may be solved if it is made mandatory that each branch has to bring on its books each and every house-hold, whether as a depositor or as a borrower in the specified area the branch operates. Bankers fear the small man and his financial capabilities. Here lies the real challenge for the bank. They should assist the man by way of loans for the work he is engaged or help him to start a new venture to enable him to become self-dependent. Only when such initiative and drive is practiced by the banks, will the overall coverage of banks widen. |
It is only by recognising God in our innerselves that He blesses us with his grace and cleans our minds of our sins. Ishwara has blessed him who has recognised the existence of suffering, its causes, its remedy and its cessation. He has fathomed the true nature of earthly existence. Envy becomes the whole-time companion of the man who desires material satisfaction. Whenever he cannot get the things he wants he is envious of those who have them. His jealousy binds him to the efforts that others may have put in or the costs they may have borne. From a little money, a man goes crazy... when the terror comes, his face shrivels. In time he’ll learn that his nectar was indeed poison and that he has been cheated.
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