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Race for power in
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Merger in the air Indian, Air India gear up for competition The initial government clearance to the merger of Indian and Air India has come rather late in the day. Although the Cabinet is yet to give the final go-ahead, the merger talk started some 20 years ago. That a fairly sensible proposal should take so long for implementation speaks of the functioning of the successive governments.
A squalid crisis
Wedding reception
DOCUMENT Delhi
Durbar
US puts on brave
face over British pullback
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Mature response Not
surprisingly, India has declined to hold a joint investigation into the February 18 Samjhauta Express blasts near Panipat. The demand raised by Pakistan’s National Assembly for a joint investigation just does not square with the track record of Pakistan, which still harbours terrorists like Dawood Ibrahim, Syed Salahuddin and Hafeez Mohammaed Sayeed. At the same time, India has given an assurance that the findings of the investigation would be duly shared with Pakistan. After all, the idea is to nab the culprits, not to make a show of conducting the investigations jointly. What matters more is that both have underlined the need to keep the peace process on track. That has been a casualty of recrimination many times in the past. Perhaps, what has helped ease matters on this particular occasion is the fact that the victims are from both sides of the border. With the general restraint shown by the political leaders — with an odd exception here and there —this bond of pain can lessen the traditional animosity. The foreign ministers of the two countries have not only completed their talks in a congenial atmosphere, but they have also supervised the signing of an agreement on reducing the risk from accidents relating to nuclear weapons. It is a measure of the acrimony between the two neighbours that even this simple agreement had been hanging fire for nearly a decade. It first came up for discussion between the then prime ministers, Mr I.K. Gujral and Mr Nawaz Sharif, way back in 1997 but could never reach fruition. Such gestures can be the best confidence-building measures. Quibbling over even minor issues has not helped either country. The problem is that posturing indulged in with a view to pleasing the domestic audiences injects so much bitterness in the relations that the leaders find it impossible to backtrack later. The mature and measured response this time has been heartening. Those disappointed by the slow pace of the peace process so far may expect that this will become the norm in future diplomatic engagement. |
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Merger in the air The
initial government clearance to the merger of Indian and Air India has come rather late in the day. Although the Cabinet is yet to give the final go-ahead, the merger talk started some 20 years ago. That a fairly sensible proposal should take so long for implementation speaks of the functioning of the successive governments. The prolonged uncertainty did take its toll on the efficiency and finances of the two government airlines. Only recently Indian Airlines changed its name to Indian and the merged entity will again operate under a new name. At a time when firms spend heavily on building brands, such adhocism should be avoided. Competition from low-cost domestic carriers and world-class global operators has dented the image and profitability of both Indian and Air India. If all goes as planned the merger may take three months and the new mega airline will still be not big enough by international standards. With 120 aircraft, it will figure in the world’s top 30 and Asia’s top 10 airlines, and will have to be lean and mean to survive in a fiercely competitive business. The ageing fleet will have to be phased out along with the inefficient work culture. The merger adjustments may create some resistance in some sections of the staff, but the employees will have to work for the larger interests of their airline. The synergies of human resources, infrastructure and aircraft will come handy and result in a saving of about Rs 1,200 crore in three years, no doubt, but it is service and punctuality that today’s demanding customer looks for while choosing an airline. Given the shortage of pilots, the salaries and work culture will have to be of global standards to attract and retain talent. Privatisation as an option, it seems, has been laid to rest for the time being.
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Whatever sceptic could inquire for;/ For every why he had a wherefore. — Samuel Butler |
A squalid crisis WITH the announcement of the dates for the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the imposition of President’s rule there has become extremely difficult, if not impossible. But this hasn’t diminished the Congress party’s collective urge to send the UP Chief Minister and Samajwadi leader, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, packing. It must be regretting, therefore, that it did not act earlier. Now it seems too late. To be sure, Mr Yadav is not a prepossessing paragon of political and administrative rectitude. He must sometimes wonder why almost all political parties, except the Left Front, are baying for his blood, politically speaking. The BJP that is at loggerheads with the Congress at every step, and even the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Mr Karunanidhi — an inveterate critic of Article 356 under which President’s rule is imposed, and of which he has been a personal victim twice in the past — were in favour of Mr Yadav’s summary dismissal. Yet, if the Congress hesitated, it was not because of any qualms about constitutional and political proprieties or public opinion but owing to two strong deterrents. The first was the apprehension that — in the light of the Supreme Court’s judgments in the Bommai, Jharkhand and Bihar cases - President Abdul Kalam might not endorse the Union Government’s proclamation. The second, and more powerful, deterrent was the unrelenting opposition by the Left Front, especially the CPM, to the use on this occasion of the “most misused” Article 356 that they want amended. No amount of cajoling by top Congress leaders could persuade the CPM general secretary, Mr. Prakash Karat, to change his stance that the UP Chief Minister must be given an opportunity to prove his majority on the floor of the state assembly on Monday next. Nor was he impressed by state Governor, T.V. Rajeswar’s reported finding that Monday’s vote in Lucknow would lead to “horse-trading”. Mr Yadav’s retaliatory demand for the recall of the Governor he and many others consider “biased” was only to be expected. So was his withdrawal of support to the United Progressive Alliance government in New Delhi that would make no difference to its stability. However, what happens to him is not relevant to my main theme, which is that while every party and faction is busy pursuing politics of expediency in UP, nobody is paying the least attention to the root cause of why, thanks to disgraceful trade in political loyalties, crass chicanery and sordid manipulation have become the rule, not an exception, in this country’s political process. The bitter truth is that UP became the battlefield for a no-holds-barred political war only because of the defection in August 2003 of 13 BSP MLAs to Mr Yadav’s ranks, enabling him to form a government, an undertaking in which the Congress had collaborated fully and shamefully. And what a reflection on the Indian system it is that it has taken three and half years to disqualify the disgraceful thirteen. The key question, therefore, is: why and how has this shocking state of affairs arisen? Sadly, the answer lies in a serious, indeed fatal, flaw in the anti-defection law that, at the time of its enactment in January 1985, just after Rajiv Gandhi’s mind-boggling sweep in the December 1984 general election, was cheered to the skies and passed without a single dissenting voice. It did not take very long, however, for this joy to turn into dismay. For, the country discovered that the much-acclaimed law was, in fact, a classic example of the remedy being worse than the disease. While banning defections by individual MPs and MLAs, Parliament had to make an exception for a split in a party. It provided, therefore, that for the split to be valid, at least a third of the party’s total membership in the legislature must part company with it. The Election Commission was the most obvious and appropriate authority to determine whether a split was lawful or not. But the framers of the law, for reasons best known to them, assigned this delicate task to the Speaker of the legislature concerned. This was the original sin from which have followed disastrous consequences in many states but nowhere so squalid as in UP. As far back as 1997, 10 of the then 60 BSP MLAs had defected to the BJP to sustain this party’s government, headed by Mr Kalyan Singh. The then Speaker of the assembly, Mr Kesrinath Tripathi, held that the BSP “split” was perfectly legal, and got away with it. Interestingly, the same Mr Tripathi — a BJP stalwart who currently adorns the saffron party’s provincial pantheon — was the Speaker when Mr Yadav needed the 13 BSP defectors to form a government. Speaker Tripathi completely ignored the clamour for the immediate disqualification of the defectors who formed but a tiny proportion of the BSP’s strength in the assembly. He waited until another 24 BSP legislators had defected 10 days later (about them the apex court has said nothing explicit yet), and held the “continuing split” to be kosher. Why has no political party moved a little finger to remove the dangerous distortion in the anti-defection law? In all fairness, Mr Tripathi is not the only errant Speaker. Before him his counterpart in Manipur — to say nothing about other states — had delivered an equally perverse ruling over defections and then arrogantly challenged the Supreme Court’s authority to question his judgment on matters that were his “exclusive preserve”. Eventually, he was made to realise that he must not be too big for his boots. Tragically, two Speakers of the Lok Sabha, long before Mr Tripathi in Lucknow, had also opined that a split in a political party was a “continuing process”. Mr Tripathi can claim that he was acting upon their words of wisdom. It is imperative that the Constitution’s Tenth Schedule, incorporating the law against defections, is amended without delay to transfer the authority to determine the legality of party splits from presiding officers of legislatures to the Election Commission that has given an excellent account of itself and won the public’s respect. The commission should also be left undisturbed to conduct the UP poll as efficiently and impartially as it has done in other states. For his part, Mr Yadav must realise that the model code of conduct having come into force, he can no longer play ducks and drakes with the state
administration.
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Wedding reception I love wedding receptions. The venues with their vast stretches of manicured lawns and trees festooned with little lights, are veritable fairy gardens. The music is always delightful - be it foot-tapping Punjabi pop or the soft mellifluous semi-classical songs that steal gently upon your mind. Then, of course, there are the people, thousands and thousands of beautiful people elegantly and gorgeously attired, bejewelled and perfumed, exuding an air of total control by the sheer wealth that their clothes and jewellery represent. The liquor and the food are the high point of these receptions. Every variety, every brand of alcohol is available - some that I have only read about or seen in movies and some so exotic that I have never heard of them. But it is all, always there and I look forward to the opportunity of sampling brands that I did not know existed. The food comes in endless variety and each reception seeks to outdo the last with the quality and variety of food. I have no fads in food, and unfettered by any strong likes or dislikes. I am able to experiment with the new dishes on offer. In its lavishness both in cost and in quantity, the food at each reception could feed an entire slum colony. But what I like most about wedding receptions is the sense of anonymity that I am able to enjoy in the thronging thousands. Occasionally I meet someone I know. But after the perfunctory greetings, the exchange of a word or two, I return to being alone nursing my drink and enjoying the pleasure of looking at the beautiful people. Sometimes this anonymity can be disconcerting. I once went to a reception and tried desperately to find someone I could hand my gift to. After half an hour of futile effort I made my way to the bar. Four delightful drinks later I came face to face with the bridegroom's brother and tried to offload the gift on him. “Sir, I’ll get hold of Tinku - you can give it to him yourself." He never returned and I came back with my gift. The thought came to me that a total stranger could easily walk into a reception, make the most of the hospitality and come away without anyone being the wiser. That I was not alone in this thought was borne out by a news item I read recently. A vegetable vendor with a hankering for the good life, borrowed fashionable clothes from his friend the laundryman and gatecrashed on all the wedding receptions he could. All went well till he was recognised by one of his regular customers, who happened to be the bridegroom's uncle. The masquerade was exposed, the vegetable vendor arrested. Ever since, an additional edge has been added to my pleasure in attending wedding receptions. I carefully observe the parade of guests and wonder which of them are genuine guests and which are vegetable vendors disguised in borrowed
finery. |
DOCUMENT Corruption
is an important manifestation of the failure of ethics. Anti-corruption interventions so far made are seen to be ineffectual and there is widespread public cynicism about them. The interventions are seen as mere posturing without any real intention to bring the corrupt to book. They are also seen as handy weapons for partisan, political use to harass opponents. Corruption is so deeply entrenched in the system that most people regard corruption as inevitable and any effort to fight it as futile. This cynicism is spreading so fast that it bodes ill for our democratic system. There are two, somewhat contrary, approaches in dealing with corruption and abuse of office. The first is overemphasis on values and character. Many people lament the decline in values and the consequent rise in corruption. The implicit assumption is that until values are restored, nothing much can be done to improve the conduct of human beings. The second approach is based on the belief that most human beings are fundamentally decent and socially conscious, but there is always a small proportion of people, which cannot reconcile individual goals with the good of society. Such deviant people tend to pursue personal gain at the cost of public good and the purpose of organised government is to punish such deviant behaviour. If good behaviour is consistently rewarded and bad behaviour consistently punished, the bulk of the people follow the straight and narrow path. However, if good behaviour is not only not rewarded, but is actually fraught with difficulties and bad behaviour is not only not punished, but is often extravagantly rewarded, then the bulk of the people tend to stray from the honourable path. In the real world, both values and institutions matter. Values are needed to serve as guiding stars, and they exist in abundance in our society. A sense of right and wrong is intrinsic to our culture and civilisation. But values need to be sustained by institutions to be durable and to serve as an example to others. Values without institutional support will soon be weakened and dissipated. Institutions provide the container, which gives shape and content to values. This is the basis of all statecraft and laws and institutions. While incentives and institutions matter for all people, they are critical in dealing with the army of public servants – elected or appointed – endowed with authority to make decisions and impact on human lives and exercising the power to determine allocation of resources. Public office and control over public purse offer enormous temptation and opportunity to promote private gain at public cost. Therefore, creation of institutions and designing of incentives are of utmost importance in promoting ethical conduct of public servants. In our society, corruption and abuse of office has been aggravated by three factors. First, there is a colonial legacy of unchallenged authority and propensity to exercise power arbitrarily. In a society which worships power, it is easy for public officials to deviate from ethical conduct. Second, there is enormous asymmetry of power in our society. Nearly 90 per cent of our people are in the unorganised sector. Quite a number of them lead a precarious existence, depending on subsistence wages with no job security. And nearly 70% of the organised workers with job security and regular monthly wage are employed by the state directly or through public sector undertakings. Almost all these employees are ‘educated’ in a largely illiterate and semiliterate society and economically even the lowliest of public servants are better off than most people in the country. What is more, their employment in government comes with all the trappings of power. Such asymmetry of power reduces societal pressure to conform to ethical behaviour and makes it easy to indulge in corruption. Third, as a conscious choice, the Indian state in the early decades after Independence chose a set of policies whose unintended consequence was to put the citizen at the mercy of the State. Over regulation, severe restrictions on economic activity, excessive state control, near-monopoly of the government in many sectors and an economy of scarcity all created conditions conducive to unbridled corruption. In addition, many state subsidies and beneficiary-oriented programmes in a situation of asymmetry of power converted the public servant into patron and master and reduced most citizens into mendicants. This at once enhanced opportunities to indulge in corruption and reduced the citizens’ capacity to resist The experience of the past six decades in our country and elsewhere offers us valuable lessons. It is generally recognised that monopoly and discretion increase the propensity to corruption while competition and transparency reduce corruption. This has been dramatically witnessed in India in the wake of economic liberalisation. As competition came in and choice expanded, corruption plummeted. Telephones, steel, cement, sugar and even two-wheelers are among the many sectors, which have seen enhanced supply and choice, reducing or eliminating corruption. Similarly, wherever technology and transparency have been introduced, corruption has been significantly contained. Computerisation and access to information have made many services from railway reservation to issuing of driving licenses increasingly free from corruption. A factor which increases corruption is over-centralisation. The more remotely power is exercised from the people, the greater is the distance between authority and accountability. The large number of functionaries between the citizen and final decision-makers makes accountability diffused and the temptation to abuse authority strong. For a large democracy, India probably has the smallest number of final decision makers. Local Government is not allowed to take root and power has been concentrated both horizontally and vertically in a few hands. The net results are weakened citizenry and mounting corruption. It is well recognised that every democracy requires the empowerment of citizens in order to hold those in authority to account. Excerpted from the fourth report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission,
“Ethics in Governance”. |
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Delhi Durbar Women
and child development minister Renuka Chowdhary is making waves in the run up to the 2007-08 general budget. She is underlining the need for child-sensitive budgeting. The fiesty minister is knocking at the doors of the Finance ministry and the Planning Commission for Rs 10,000 crore for children’s schemes. Chowdhary has also written to the state governments underlining the need for child budgeting. The ministry in its annual report noted that as children under the age of 14 constitute more than one-third of the country’s population, the needs of the children to grow, develop and build capabilities to serve them in adulthood must be accorded priority. She regretted that adequate funds were not being given to children’s schemes. The expenditure on child development schemes in 2005-06 was about Rs 3550 crore which was only 0.69 per cent of the
total spending. It is anybody’s guess if union Finance minister P Chidambaram will treble the amount faced as he is with a plethora of demands and runaway inflation being a huge cause for worry.
Marxists too chase Mulayam The Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Prakash Karat is zealously protecting the interests of the Samajwadi Party. He is fighting against the imposition of President’s rule in Uttar Pradesh and the dismissal of the Mulayam Singh Yadav government. Though the battle is couched in ideological terms and is very well camouflaged, the centre of his interests are intensely political, a university friend of the Marxist leader confided. Karat is very sure that it is only the political guile and poll management
techniques of Mulayam Singh Yadav that can help the CPM spread its political base in the Hindi heartland. To gain a foothold in the biggest state is
after all critical and it does not really matter if the party has to make a compromise with a casteist outfit like the Samajwadi Party, which is also not shy about keeping the company of industrialists like Anil Ambani and Sahara Chief Subrato Roy.
Case of the dubious ‘advisor’ The case of a leading PSU bank handing over a large sum of money to the conman after he allegedly spoke in the voice of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is still fresh in the memory of many. Decades later, in the era of consultants and advisors, there is one Dr M.V. Rao, who has been describing himself as Advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. So overwhelming has been his presence and influence that the Prime Minister’s Office itself has warned against dealing with him and instructed the relevant agencies to identify “Rao” and take necessary action. Contributed by S Satyanarayanan, Satish Misra and R Suryamurthy |
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US puts on brave face over British pullback The
Bush administration yesterday hailed Britain’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq as proof of success, even as it braced for further pressure from war opponents to follow suit and announce steps to scale back US forces in the country. The most ringing statement of faith came from Dick Cheney, the vice-President and ever the most doggedly optimistic of Mr Bush’s top officials, however bad the news from the ground. Far from undermining the coalition, Mr Cheney asserted, Mr Blair’s announcement was proof that “in parts of Iraq ... things are going pretty well.” As for US troops, they would complete their mission “with honour” – an implicit rejection by the vice-President of any timetable for a pull-out. Speaking in Berlin, the Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, also struck a defiant note, dismissing suggestions that the British move leaves the US even more isolated in Iraq. Thousands of British troops would remain in southern Iraq even after the new pullout, she said. “The coalition remains intact.” But there was no concealing here that America’s most loyal ally in Iraq was scaling back its presence in Iraq, even as the US was increasing its force with the deployment of 21,500 more troops to Baghdad and al-Anbar province, stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. Some commentators even wondered aloud yesterday why the British troops being removed from the Basra region were not being sent north to help US and Iraqi government restore order in the capital. The White House privately accepts however that domestic politics realities make any such step inconceivable - even for Mr Bush’s most faithful ally. The real fear is that the British drawdown could provide cover for other countries with troops in the ground to do the same. There was no official comment yesterday on Denmark’s decision to pull out its 470 troops, leaving a token helicopter force behind. The main challenge to Mr Bush will come from Democrats, who last week used their new majority in the House of Representatives to force through a resolution opposing the ‘surge.’ Only arcane procedural rules prevented a similar move by the Senate, which voted 56-34 to debate the surge, but fell foul of the rule whereby 60 votes are needed to prevent a filibuster. Britain’s move now seems bound to encourage new efforts when Congress returns next week to tie the President’s hands over troop deployments – either by imposing minimum leave requirements for combat units or some other logistical restriction – and thus force radical changes in overall Iraq policy. “It is long past time for the administration to change course, to begin the hard work of diplomacy with Iraq and its neighbours, and redeploy our forces,” Senator Edward Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat and a ferocious opponent of the war from the outset, said yesterday. Many Middle East experts here also dispute the White House argument that Britain’s troop drawdown is a sign of success – let alone of a success that can easily be repeated elsewhere in Iraq. The withdrawal would merely play into the hands of Iranian backed Shi’ite militias who effectively run much of the region, according to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies here. “The British cuts in many ways simply reflect the political reality that British forces ‘lost’ the south more than a year ago,” he said. Moreover, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution pointed out, the overwhelmingly Shi’ite south was a much easier political environment than the capital, gripped by sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shi’ites. “Some of the Pentagon rhetoric about ‘success’ may be partially true, but it
doesn't give you any great confidence about Baghdad.” If anything, he noted, any tactical success in solidly Shi’ite Basra strengthened the argument for a partition of Iraq, or a loose confederal structure of the country. But that in turn would run up against the reality of a capital divided on sectarian lines, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. By arrangement with
The Independent |
Renouncing work is certainly not the way to self-realisation. The great sages have understood this. So instead of secluding themselves from mankind, they have lived and preached among the people. — The Bhagvad Gita Union with God cannot be attained through ego and argument. The blissful name is received by tendering one’s mind to the Lord. — Guru Nanak Worshipped by us with our homage, Ishwara, accepts each prayer of ours. Placing ourselves under your protection, O most Beloved, accept our all pure desires. — The Vedas The mettle of each warrior must be well tested before he is elevated to the post of commander. It is not enough for him to be well skilled in weaponry. He must have strength of will and fortitude too. — The Mahabharata |
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