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Whiff of change Future of the girl child |
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Death for Sharma
Why Amartya Sen is worried
Moments of bliss
Civil society strengthens employment scheme Putin lays ground for succession New ties bring China, Japan closer
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Whiff of change IF all goes well, the announcement by Bangladesh Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to launch the Nagarik Shakti (People’s Power) to contest elections may change the course of politics in that country. His decision has come at a time when people of Bangladesh are yearning for a healthy alternative to the two leading parties — Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s Awami League and Begum Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party — which have been brazenly practising the politics of power. Widespread corruption and fundamentalism have prevailed during their years in power. They showed little interest in working for the well-being of the people and improving the quality of governance. The result is a political logjam, a state of uncertainty and an impending crisis in Bangladesh. President Iajuddin Ahmed had to impose an emergency on January 11 with the elections scheduled for January 22 getting postponed when 34 people died in street battles between hoodlums belonging to the two parties. People may heave a sigh of relief with the arrival of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner on the political firmament of Bangladesh. Professor Yunus had made up his mind to take up the political challenge last year after hearing the views of leading members of civil society at a gathering in Dhaka, but he did not make it public. Since then, perhaps, he had been weighing the pros and cons of his forays into politics. Recently he sought the people’s opinion through an open letter, and their response was “enormously positive”, whatever the views of the run-of-the-mill politicians, who are always cynical about well-meaning people joining politics. The experience of Mr Yunus as the pioneer of the micro-finance movement (Grameen Bank) in Bangladesh, meant to empower women, may prove to be an asset in translating his political dream into a reality. The vast network he has to reach out to the people with his new message may help him in turning out as their man in need. There is the possibility of his Nagarik Shakti emerging as a third front with influential Bangladeshis approaching him with their offer of support. They have had enough experience of the exploitative and feudal rule of the parties headed by Sheikh Hasina (for eight years) and Begum Zia (for 14 years). Mr Yunus will, however, have to ensure that those who join him have a clean background with a commitment to serve the people. They must share his creed and political philosophy. But he must be prepared to face a challenge from the familiar political operators, who might sneak into his party’s ranks and wreck it from within. His strength will be in lining up people behind him. |
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Future of the girl child DESPITE the stiff punishment and fine that anyone killing the girl child before or after birth faces, the situation has not improved much. Far too many girls are still dying in some states and the sex ratio is falling alarmingly. To tackle the problem, the Ministry of Women and Child Development has proposed setting up an orphanage for unwanted girl children in every district across the country, where parents can leave their daughters if they don’t want to bring them up. As Woman and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhary explains it, “What we are saying to the people is have your children, do not kill them. And if you don’t want a girl, leave her to us”. Under the scheme proposed to be taken up during the 11th Five-Year Plan, the government will bear the cost of upbringing. Parents who give up their children will have the option of taking them back if they want to, later on. While the scheme has come in for criticism in some quarters for the possibility of its encouraging families to abandon their girl children, it can indeed help those families living in penury. But to make this option viable, the government will have to ensure that the orphanages are run properly and not like some of the neglected institutions already in existence. Even otherwise, this menace is widespread not only because of poverty. Girl children are killed even in well-to-do families. Somehow, they are treated as lesser beings. Perhaps even the mothers know that the fate of their daughters will be worse than death if they live, what with extreme prejudice against them within the family, and the demand for dowry once they come of age. That is why they agree to extinguish the life that grew in their wombs. Unless this attitude prevalent in society changes, the girl child will not be safe. |
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Death
for Sharma THE Delhi High Court has rightly upheld the trial court judgement of 2003 awarding death sentence to former Delhi Pradesh Youth Congress president Sushil Sharma for killing his wife Naina Sahani, former general secretary of the Delhi Mahila Congress, in 1995. Clearly, the manner in which Sharma killed his 20-year-old wife, cut her body into pieces and then tried to burn them in a tandoor shook the country’s conscience. Undoubtedly, it fell in the category of rarest of rare cases, warranting the death sentence. A Division Bench consisting of Justice R.S. Sodhi and Justice P.K. Bhasin rightly ruled that it found no mitigating circumstances to reduce the sentence from capital punishment to life imprisonment as sought by Sharma. The death sentence in this case will act as a strong deterrent to criminals who do not recognise the value and dignity of human life. Naina Sahani’s murder was an act of extreme depravity by a “power drunk” husband. Sharma chose to eliminate his wife whom he suspected of having affairs with other mighty people. He was so cruel that he eliminated her, thus pre-empting any likelihood of her being able to tell the world about her relationship with others. He thought that because of his powerful political connections he could evade justice and get away with the murder and butchery. Significantly, the same High Court Bench which convicted Manu Sharma and Santosh Kumar Singh for killing Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Matoo respectively, lauded the media’s role in highlighting the tandoor murder case. It dismissed the contention of the defence that over-coverage of the case by the media prejudiced the trial court verdict. Politicians are expected to act as role models and it is the media’s duty and responsibility to expose their acts of omission and commission. If they go astray, they must be tried and punished in accordance with the law and they deserve no compassion, mercy or sympathy. |
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History is fiction with the truth left out.— American proverb |
Why Amartya Sen is worried NOBEL-LAUREATE Amartya Sen is the friend, philosopher and guide of the informal Kolkata Group that meets in the metropolis once a year to discuss one socially relevant issue. The members, who come from heterogeneous fields like academics, civil society organisations, politics, government and think-tanks, use the forum to share their ideas and experiences and, above all, to listen to the “argumentative Indian” Professor at Harvard University. Listening to Dr Sen is enriching as he does not rely only on textual knowledge but also on the rich experiences he has gained through engagements with people as diverse as captains of industry, statesmen, university dons, slum-dwellers of Kolkata and fish-sellers of Dhaka. Self-deprecation comes naturally to Dr Sen, who, recalling a comment, compares himself to a Victorian woman, who lists only grievances. Dr Sen is conscious that there is an element of repetitiveness in what he has been saying but he is not bothered. The world has changed and so has India, but Dr Sen’s concerns have remained the same. In fact, he is candid in remembering that the first article he wrote for a mainstream newspaper was on the neglect of education as far back as in 1956. Fiftyone years after the ‘Calcuttans’ read Dr Sen’s lament over the neglect of education in The Statesman, they heard him speak on more or less the same theme on February 13. Dr Sen is one of the rare economists who does not ask how the economy is doing. He would rather ask how the poor are faring and how the children and women are taken care of. Small wonder that he is not overtly impressed by the nine-plus growth rate of the economy. Nor does he care whether India will catch up with China or whether India will become a “developed nation” in a couple of decades as predicted by some. This is not just because he knows, as an economist, how shady such predictions are. Of course, Dr Sen does not want to minimise the progress the country has achieved in various fields. In fact, he is proud of it. However, he is not over-influenced by such events as the Tatas acquiring Corus and Lakshmi Mittal buying Arcelor to emerge as the world’s largest steel producer. He knows India has only regained its superiority in metallurgy it demonstrated in making and erecting the iron pillar at Qutab Minar. Instead, he is worried about whether the nation has been meeting the nutritional and educational needs of its children. Unfortunately, comparisons with other countries and studies about the condition of children in many states in India do not make this welfare economist happy. With overflowing foreign exchange reserves and government income increasing exponentially, Dr Sen no longer hears complaints about resource crunch. But what is lacking is “the visionary use of public money”. He values investment in infrastructure but questions the lack of similar enthusiasm in investing in human resources. He does not want to get into the nitty-gritty of whether primary education is a fundamental right or what exactly the Supreme Court has pronounced on the subject. He simply does not want any Indian to remain illiterate and undernourished. Dr Sen is at his passionate best when he argues that development in the strictest sense of the term will remain a far cry if massive investments are not made in providing free and compulsory education to all the needy children. Primary education was an integral part of the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) that transformed Japan into a world power. “As a result, there was no illiteracy in Japan by the year 1910. And by 1930, Japan began publishing more books than Britain”, says Dr Sen. He has only contempt for those who believe that economic development itself will take care of all the needs of the country like education and public health. Those who want India to attain the kind of development the US and Europe have already achieved do not realise that as part of their development bid they had made schools accessible to all their children. “Don’t think that the traditional modes of education have failed in India. How can they fail when those modes have not even been attempted? If they can succeed in Japan and China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, why can’t they succeed in India?” Education is not his only concern. When he says undernourished women beget underweight babies, who will become stunted children, he is conscious that a majority of the 200 million children who fail to reach the full potential of their growth belong to India. He has the figures of the third National Family Health Survey, whose findings were released recently, on his fingertips. During the seven-year period between the second and the third surveys when India recorded the highest-ever economic growth rate, nearly half of all Indian children remained underweight. A comparison of the condition of Indian children with the condition of their counterparts in other South Asian countries does not show the former in a good light. India has the lowest child immunisation rates in South Asia. “The proportion of children without BCG vaccine in India is twice as high as in Nepal, more than five times as high as in Bangladesh and almost 30 times as high as in Sri Lanka!” India produces 30,000 doctors a year but it has not been able to achieve higher rates of child survival than any of its neighbours with the notable exception of Pakistan. “Almost any ‘summary index’ of these child development indicators would place India at the bottom of the list of countries”. Money is not a substitute for commitment. Dr Sen often cites the case of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Infant and child mortality rates are significantly lower in Bangladesh. “While Bangladesh had a much higher infant mortality rate than India in 1990 (91 and 80 per 1,000 live births, respectively), today the positions are reversed: 56 per 1,000 in Bangladesh compared with 62 per 1,000 in India. India has been leap-frogged, that too during a period when economic growth was much faster in India than in Bangladesh”. Similarly, child immunisation is virtually universal in Sri Lanka in sharp contrast with India where this is still a distant goal. Among the states which are fast catching up with Kerala, which is a benchmark for public health and primary education, are not the prosperous Punjab and Haryana. One state that stands out in this regard is Himachal Pradesh where school attendance rates in the 6-14 age-group were as high as 99 and 97 for boys and girls respectively, compared with 97 per cent in both cases for Kerala. Dr Sen is tired of hearing the argument that over a period of time everything will be sorted out as after all Rome was not built in a day. His only hope is that the problems of the children of India will be attended to more quickly than the one century the Romans took to build their capital. When it comes to children and education, the septuagenarian thinker is passionate and does not hide his impatience. And that is what attracts some of the finest minds of India to make that annual trip to Kolkata to listen and interact with Dr Amartya
Sen.
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Moments of bliss
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am sure that by now most of you must have forgotten some of the good resolutions you had made on the last New Year’s Eve, lying cosily in bed, as I was, or if you still have the fire of youth in you, lustily singing Auld Lang Syne in some club or hotel or gaily festooned disco. I must confess that although I was tucked up in bed at the hour of midnight on December 31- January 1, I was lost to the world, both this one and the next, assuming that such a place exists. Lest you think that before retiring for the night I had imbibed more than a moderate quantity of the amber liquid that never fails to cheer me, let me say that I had been wafted into a dreamless sleep on the wings of Chinese philosophy. And let me add that the words of wisdom that had acted as an opiate on me came from the mouths of the Chinese who lived hundreds of years ago. And now let me share these pearls of wisdom with you. The great impressionistic critic of the 17th century China, Shengi’an once amused himself and his friends by enumerating the happy moments of his life. A hot day in June, breathless and with not a bird to be seen in the air. Perspiration flows down his body and flies rest on his nose. Suddenly, there is the sound of thunder and the sky fills with black clouds. Then rain pours down the eaves like a cataract. The perspiration stops. The flies disappear. He sits down happily to his bowl of rice. A friend he has not seen for ten years turns up unannounced. He quickly goes inside and asks his wife if she has a gallon of wine in the house. She has not, but she rushes out with her only gold pin and sells it. The proceeds are enough to keep her husband and his friend in wine for three days. ‘Is this not happiness?’ asks the philosopher. I shall not disillusion you, and him, by telling you what reply my wife would have made in similar circumstances. To hear the children recite the classics fluently gives the philosopher untold joy— “like the sound of pouring water from a vase” — he says. The classics no longer find a place in school curricula but to hear children recite nursery rhymes in Indo-English gives me a pain in the neck. To sit behind closed doors and scratch one’s body to one’s heart’s content is bliss. I sincerely hope that it wasn’t fleas that were causing the itch! A friend is in sore straits and comes to the house to borrow money but feels awkward to broach the subject. The philosopher, guessing his plight, takes him aside and asks him how much he wants. He gives him the money and says that if he is not in a hurry to pay his creditors he should stay and have a glass of wine. One glass leads to another. When the friend departs the philosopher asks himself, “Ah, is this not sheer happiness?” You may be sure that if I had been within earshot I would have said: “It’s plain damned stupidity,” not that anyone with a grain of sense would dream of touching me for a loan. It is usually the other way
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Civil society strengthens employment scheme ONE
year has passed since the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was enacted and implementation began. The working on the ground has been challenged with problems regarding awareness, sale of registration forms, distribution of incomplete job cards, low percentage of work demand, delay in providing employment to the applicants, and so on. There have been various efforts by civil society groups to assess the status of implementation, spread awareness about the Act and its provisions, and suggest possible recommendations for strengthening the implementation of the Act. These efforts took the form of surveys, rallies, padyatras, jan sunwais (public hearings), sammelans and dharnas. Despite its shortcomings, the Act has provided the first ever right of ‘work on demand.’ The Act also gives an opportunity to the rural women to obtain employment. During a padayatra in Dungarpur district of Rajasthan in April 2006, it was observed that of the 1.5 lakh workers at the 1700 odd worksites, about 70-80 per cent were women. People’s struggles have forced the administration to pay heed to the implementation of NREGA. For instance, in Gujarat a group of community based organizations under the banner of Sabar Ekta Manch filed an appeal in the Gujarat High Court against non-payment of minimum wages. The
Court directed the Department of Rural Development to inquire into how many such persons are working in the Sabarkantha district of the state, and to produce statement showing actual wages being paid to the workers. In West Bengal, a survey in the Paschim Mednipur district, Binpur 2 block brought to light many irregularities in NREGA implementation. Thereafter the administration took many positive steps towards effective implementation. These included improvement in the systems of collecting and providing information on NREGA, meetings to emphasize steps for publicizing the provisions of NREGA, the starting of NREGA works in all the Gram Panchayats, and receipt of wages of Rs 68 per day paid within a week or atmost within 15 days. In Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh, after sustained struggle by civil society groups, 79 differently-abled persons were gainfully employed under works in the NREGA. They were motivated and the administration was simultaneously sensitised towards the inclusion of the physically and mentally challenged. These 61 men and 18 women are spread across 27 villages of the Barwani district. Social audits and muster roll verification exercises have also been conducted in different part of the country. These have been duly submitted to the district and state authorities for action. One such instance of state action took place in Chhattisgarh. Based on the survey reports of Bageecha block in Jashpur district, presented by an independent research team, the state took the stringent action. The Junior Engineer, Rural Electrification Services, was suspended and notices were issued to Sub-divisional officers and other Junior Engineers wherein irregularities were found during the muster roll verification exercises In Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh, 1574 persons were paid unemployment allowance for periods upto one month. The Total payment amounted to Rs 4,75,386. There are several hurdles to the implementation of the Act. One is the absence of worksite facilities in most states, such as safe drinking water, shade for children and periods of rest, first-aid equipment, and the like. Some reports from the field including Orissa (Kalahandi district), Chhatisgarh (Jashpur district), Jharkhand (Palamau district), Madhya Pradesh (Jhabua, Khandwa and Umaria district) , Gujarat (Sabarkantha district) have reported a complete lack of facilities at the worksites. But in Dungarpur district of Rajasthan it was heartening to note that medical kits were found at most worksites. Another problem is that of contractors. They are increasingly becoming a threat to the NREGA. Though it does not seem very apparent from the surface, the private contractors are slowing finding their way into the system. The Act clearly states (Schedule I, section 11), that no contractor is permitted in the implementation of the projects. Reports from the states of Chhattisgarh and Orissa point towards this emerging problem. It is a rare thing to find the muster rolls at worksites. Reports across the NREGA districts show that kuccha muster rolls/attendance sheets are being maintained by the mates at the worksites. Roughly kept notebooks, diaries are being used for marking attendance and making wage payments at worksites. Launching of the Act has not been accompanied with appointment of additional staff for its implementation, thus burdening the existing staff. At the panchayat level, the Guidelines had specifically advised appointment of a ‘rozgar sevak’. Disappointingly, this has not taken place so far. Such dearth of staff is having an adversarial impact on the working of the NREGA. A survey at Jashpur block of Chhattisgarh district found that sub-engineers were being burdened with the task of maintaining job cards which implies that their primary tasks suffer. Delay in wages has always been a matter of concern in previous employment programmes and continues to plague NREGA. Wage payments are delayed for weeks and sometimes for months. In many states, workers are not earning minimum wages. For instance, in Sabarkantha district of Gujarat the paid wages are as low as Rs 4 to Rs. 7, in Kalahandi district of Orissa, workers are earning wage between Rs 40-50, whereas the minimum wage is Rs 55. Women are getting paid even less, about Rs 30 per day. –Transparency Features |
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Putin lays ground for succession RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has carried out a radical government reshuffle a year before he is due to step down in a surprise move aimed at safeguarding his political legacy. Judging by Mr Putin’s appointments, post-Putin Russia will look very much like it does today and be run by a man with a similar background and worldview. The reshuffle, that took Russia’s political élite by surprise, promoted Sergei Ivanov, the Defence Minister, a man whose CV looks remarkably similar to Mr Putin’s, to the influential position of First Deputy Prime Minister. Mr Ivanov, a former KGB spy, is well travelled and an able linguist, and, like his mentor, a strong proponent of a confident, resurgent Russia. As Defence Minister he oversaw a huge increase in military spending and made a name for himself by criticising Nato’s eastwards expansion. More recently, he bitterly opposed American plans to build parts of its missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Like Mr Putin, his CV contains “grey areas” and it is unclear in which countries he served when working for the KGB. Mr Ivanov’s elevation was universally interpreted in the way that Mr Putin obviously intended: as the unofficial start of Russia’s presidential election campaign. The world’s largest country faces parliamentary elections in December and a presidential ballot next March. The question on everyone’s lips is who will be the next Mr Putin? The Russian leader enjoys popular support of around 80 per cent and is such a strong figure that many Russians find it hard to imagine anyone else in the Kremlin. The reshuffle that pushed Mr Ivanov, 54, into the limelight was widely seen as a stage-managed move designed to give Russians a chance to get used to Mr Putin’s possible successors and digest the idea that he is really stepping down. Under the Russian constitution, Mr Putin, who has been in power since 1999, is not allowed to serve a third consecutive term. Loyalists have practically begged him to change the constitution to allow him to do just that but he has been adamant that this is not something he is prepared to do. However, he has made it clear that whoever succeeds him will, in effect, be a chip off the old block and will be charged with safeguarding the internal stability and economic success that he has engendered. “It looks like Putin is putting in action his own solution to the 2008 [election] problem,” wrote the pro-government daily newspaper Izvestia. “He has said there will be no single hand-picked successor and that Russians will have to choose between several equal candidates.” Mr Ivanov’s promotion put him on par with the only other publicly identified contender for the presidency, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. Mr Medvedev, 41, is often described as “Putin-lite” representing more of the same but in a softer, more liberal package compared to Mr Ivanov’s more nationalist hawkish rhetoric. He does not have the same silovik (security services) background as Mr Ivanov and he has said that he sees Russia as being part of the European community sharing its democratic values. Izvestia argued that the reshuffle set the stage for the two men to battle it out for the Kremlin over the next year from positions of equal strength. Both come from Mr Putin’s native city of St Petersburg, have worked closely with him before he became president, and are part of the ruling élite. Another key part of Mr Putin’s political legacy is likely to be Chechnya and the reshuffle also appeared to be an attempt to protect his own controversial vision of the war-torn republic. In a move that alarmed human rights activists, he promoted Ramzan Kadyrov, the Russian-backed prime minsiter of Chechnya, to become the republic’s acting president. A former rebel who fought against the Russians, forces loyal to Mr Kadyrov are accused of kidnapping, torturing and murdering anyone who gets in his way. Human rights group said Mr Putin would live to regret his choice. By arrangement with |
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New ties bring China, Japan closer ANYONE seeking signs that China and Japan are working hard to get their fraught relations back on track should consider this: After a four-year ban, the Chinese have agreed to resume eating Japanese rice. China cut off rice imports from Japan in 2003, ostensibly because Beijing said it had found insects in a shipment. But the move smacked more of politics than health concerns, coming as the two Asian powers were intensifying criticisms of each other that would strain political ties, spawn anti-Japanese riots in several Chinese cities, and fuel growing nationalist assertiveness in Japan. Yet, all the while, new ties were binding them. The booming Chinese economy was lifting Japan out of a recession it hadn’t been able to shake for 15 years. The Chinese were realizing that their best hope for cleaning up their foul air and toxic waters lay with Japanese technology. Chinese and Japanese consumers were discovering a fondness for each other’s books and movies, electronic games and pop songs. Faced with awareness that they govern countries that have forged a mutual dependency, Japanese and Chinese politicians are talking again. Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing was in Tokyo last week to lay the groundwork for an April visit by Premier Wen Jiabao, repayment for the courtesy call paid last October by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shortly after he took office. Wen’s visit will be the highest level Chinese mission to Tokyo since 2000. The two countries have a host of combustible quarrels that could flare at any time, from Japan’s informal coziness with Taiwan to tensions over undersea energy deposits in contested waters, and the raw emotional wounds from a century of bloody history between them. But at the moment, Japanese diplomats say they can’t recall a period of such warmth and ease with their Chinese counterparts. The improved mood has been made possible by last September’s retirement of Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, on whose watch relations sank so low that Chinese leaders refused to meet with him even on the sidelines of international conferences. Koizumi had angered Beijing’s leaders with his visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a controversial Shinto memorial to Japan’s war dead, including World War II war criminals. The Chinese saw the pilgrimages as an attempt to recant responsibility for Japan’s imperial history, which included the invasion and occupations of parts of China. In April 2005, anger at a new Japanese history textbook that glossed over war atrocities sparked riots and attacks on Japanese properties in Shanghai and Beijing. Yet even as Koizumi was shrugging off Chinese demands to stop visiting Yasukuni, Japanese business leaders were quietly warning Tokyo that the hard-line diplomacy was threatening their ability to do business in the hot Chinese market.
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