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Tasks for Badal Assets or liability? |
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More for
education, health
Battle
for the heartland
Courting
troubles
Where
the innocent die everyday Diplomacy
gets a chance to resolve Iran issue Delhi
Durbar
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Assets or liability? THURSDAY’S directive by the Supreme Court to the CBI to probe the charges of disproportionate assets against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and his family members is a serious setback for him. The ruling by the Bench consisting of Justice A.R. Lakshmanan and Justice Altamas Kabir comes at a time when the state is in the election mode. The Samajwadi Party supremo’s continuance as Chief Minister has also become untenable as the Bench ruled that Mr Yadav, “holding a high post in a large state like Uttar Pradesh should not function under a cloud”. The Bench rightly rejected his argument that the allegations whether he had acquired assets disproportionate to his known sources of income should not be decided on the basis of arguments made in the court. Having taken such an unacceptable stand, Mr Yadav sought to question the court’s right to probe charges against those holding high offices. If the courts should not enquire into allegations of corruption against politicians and bring them to book, who will? A politician, more so a chief minister, is accountable for his acts of omission and commission. He is expected to be above suspicion. If he is charged with corruption, it calls for a thorough probe and judicial scrutiny. This is the quintessence of the rule of law and every citizen —be it Mr Yadav, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati or Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav — is bound to follow it. No leader can claim immunity from accountability and judicial scrutiny for his/her actions. Unfortunately, political corruption has assumed alarming proportions. Ms Mayawati’s involvement in the Rs 175-crore Taj Corridor scam (which the CBI is investigating following the Supreme Court’s directive) and the order on Mr Yadav underline the magnitude of the problem. According to the PIL, though Mr Yadav’s assets were worth less than Rs 1.3 crore when he became the Chief Minister for the first time in 1989, these are said to be over Rs 100 crore now in addition to his other immovable properties. Surely, he and his family members could not have amassed so much wealth without resorting to corruption. It would only be fair for the CBI to probe the charges and take further action in accordance with the law. |
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More for education, health With
the allocation of 34.2 per cent more money for education and 21.9 per cent more for health, the 2007-08 Union Budget stands out for its thrust on the country’s human development profile, which is poorer than some of the smaller neighbouring countries. The additional 1 per cent education cess on all taxes is estimated to yield Rs 5,500 crore, which will be used to fund secondary and higher education apart from expanding the intake capacity of premier Central institutions like the IITs and the IIMs to provide reservations to other backward classes (OBCs). With the success of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Mid-Day Meal Scheme as also increased awareness among parents to educate their children, competition for college and university admissions has become very stiff. Due to inadequate fund allocations by the government, colleges and universities have been forced to hike the fees, thus shutting their doors on some of the brightest students from families of modest means. The Finance Minister has announced scholarships for class 9 students onward to enable them to pursue higher education. The Mid-Day Meal Scheme has been extended to upper primary classes in 3,427 educationally backward blocks. Besides, five lakh classrooms will be added and two lakh teachers appointed. These steps will help overcome infrastructural constraints to some extent. The Budget has also laid emphasis on integrating various health schemes, providing better medicare to children and mothers, preventing communicable diseases, HIV/AIDS and eliminating polio. The states, too, will have to pitch in for improving health infrastructure and sanitation, and providing clean drinking water in the rural areas. The shortage of the health staff and medicines at the village level is acutely felt. The rising prices of medicines have limited their reach to the better-off. The states, hopefully, will follow the Central lead in education and health. The leaky delivery system also needs repairs to ensure that the taxpayers’ money does not get lost in transit. |
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We haven’t got the money, so we have got to think!
— Ernest Rutherford |
Battle for the heartland With
the race for power having come to an end in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Manipur, political players will now try their luck in UP. Going by the voters’ verdict in the two northern states, the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) is bound to be under tremendous pressure. Yet its morale remains unaffected, thanks to the Congress party’s ill-advised drive to dislodge Mulayam Singh Yadav from the seat of power when the UP Assembly’s term had almost come to an end. A far-sighted approach could have saved the Congress from the embarrassing experience it had to undergo. As if that was not enough, the Congress suffered a major jolt in Punjab and Uttarakhand. What a quirk of fate for the party! It could never have expected that it would be entering the UP political arena under such circumstances. What happens in UP can have its ramifications at the Centre too. The Congress predicament began with President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam hinting at non-cooperation in a plan which could never be justified. Obviously, he had in his mind the unsavoury controversy caused by the use of Article 356 in Jharkhand and Bihar. The Congress claim that the disqualification of 13 BSP MLAs by the Supreme Court provided a valid ground for imposing President’s rule turned out to be hollow. Mulayam Singh proved his majority on the floor of the Assembly, the right forum to do so in accordance with the apex court’s ruling in the famous Bommai case. In a way, the opposition parties themselves helped him by their failure to put up a united fight when the BSP provided such an opportunity by seeking the resignation of its 63 MLAs. The Election Commission’s announcement for seven-phase elections in UP, too, came in the way of the Congress plan to have a sympathetic administration during the coming polls. The commission’s decision was made known while the Congress was weighing the consequences of dismissing the Mulayam Singh government. There was no longer much attraction in having
Governor's rule. After all, the basic idea behind staggering the elections over a month is to ensure that no party controlling the levers of power is able to misuse the state apparatus for promoting its electoral prospects. However, if the Congress still fears that Mulayam Singh may misuse the government machinery to ensure the victory of his party’s nominees, it is not entirely unjustified. The SP leader is capable of doing this. But, then, such a charge can be levelled against any party that is in power during elections. The Congress, too, was trying to be in a similar position through Governor’s rule. Though the Congress remains at the fourth position in UP politics, it is confident of improving its performance this time. Its new-found confidence is based on last year’s civic elections. The SP suffered reverses at many places, but the Congress did fairly well, as was the case with the BJP too. The BSP, considered the most formidable challenger to the SP, did not participate in the civic polls officially, but the number of Independents who got elected with the BSP support was higher than the victorious candidates belonging to Mulayam Singh’s party. The Congress believes that if it can do well in the civic elections it can do so in the coming battle of the ballot also. But this is not being realistic enough. The voters in the rural areas, who constitute the majority, had nothing to do with the last year’s polls. The SP, no doubt, remains the number one contender for power in UP. It has a wide support base with the MY (Muslim-Yadav) factor as a major source of strength. This factor has got weakened a little in the wake of the Rajindar Sachar Committee’s revelations. But it remains to be seen how far the panel report helps the Congress to make inroads into the SP’s Muslim following. Yet the SP is worried about its minority vote bank. It must be devising a strategy to cover up the loss of Muslim votes it may suffer. The SP also seems to be heading for a serious setback in the Jat-dominated areas in western UP. The state government is accused of having neglected the problems of the farming community and this may work in favour of Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal. The Jat leader, whose father the late Chaudhary Charan Singh enjoys an iconic position in western UP, recently snapped his relations with Mulayam Singh by withdrawing his party’s support to the SP ministry. Since he is aspiring for chief ministership, the only party that suits him most to forge an alliance is the Congress. But the Congress may try till the last moment to rope in Mayawati’s BSP not only to show Mulayam Singh the door but also to prevent the BJP from taking the advantage of a division of “secular votes” (read anti-BJP votes). In Uttarakhand, the Congress and the BSP had almost come close to having a post-poll alliance. The election outcome in the hill state is bound to influence UP politics. But Mayawati, whose party enjoys the number two position, has serious reservations on having any understanding with the Congress in UP. The reason is that this entails the risk of a dent on her following because those who constitute the BSP vote bank, like that of the SP, were earlier Congress supporters. That is why she is afraid of a pre-poll alliance with the Congress. Even otherwise, she prefers contesting elections without such an arrangement. Her argument is that she can get her votes transferred to an alliance partner, whereas this advantage may not be available to her from the other side. A four-cornered contest, therefore, remains unavoidable. In such a scenario, the BJP may be a gainer, as it happened during some previous elections. The SP may also be a beneficiary of such a scenario after the polls. The BJP may not be averse to helping the SP, as it did in August 2003 when Mulayam Singh formed his government, if this goes to harm the interests of the Congress. After all, politics remains the art of the possible. In UP, as in other states in the Hindi heartland, caste and community loyalties still influence the thinking of the voters considerably. But this is not a worrying factor for Mulayam Singh. His problem is the poor performance of his government, particularly on the law and order front, whatever his explanation. The anti-incumbency factor may become stronger with the Supreme Court ordering the CBI to enquire into the case involving the acquisition of assets disproportionate to the SP leader’s known
sources of income. But Mulayam Singh’s loss is unlikely to be the Congress party’s gain. The reason: voters nowadays talk of the crippling prices of essential commodities more than anything else. Their ire may hit the electoral prospects of the Congress, which cannot escape the blame for the price rise as it heads the UPA government at the
Centre.
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Courting troubles The
other day stopping at a busy intersection, I saw a couple on the scooter. The man was dutifully nodding his head to his wife who was chattering away unmindful of the fact that her husband had his head (and obviously the eardrums) well protected by helmet. That is what husbands do. They pretend more than they listen to their wives. Perhaps that is why women speak three times more than men, according to a recent survey. Well, I am not that type. I actually listen to my wife. Only she thinks otherwise. The other day reading newspaper over morning tea, I heard her saying, “They are opening Biz Schools for young women in Russia.” “Good. Business is growing by leaps and bounds there. They need fresh talent to meet the growing demand of manpower, er.. woman-power.” I said. “That’s the problem with you.” She complained and became silent. Feeling uneasy I asked, “You aren’t suspecting that I did not pay attention to what you said?” “No. I am sure about it.” She said sourly. “I heard it alright, dear. In fact, I was wondering that instead of opening exclusive B-schools for Russian women why don’t they send them to our IIMs. It would brighten up the atmosphere in the campuses.” I said. She gave me a sharp look but said nothing again. What is wrong with her, I thought and putting down the newspaper said, “Okay dear, I’m all ears! Say again what you were talking about.” “I was saying they are opening BITCH schools!” She said stressing the bitchy part. “Oh, sorry! It sounded so much like Biz schools. Anyway what are they going to teach there?” I asked. “Bitchology!” she said. “And what is that” I asked trying to be serious. “How to tame men and keep them under the tight leash.” She said angrily. “Why, it comes so naturally to women.” I said. “But the Russian women need the competitive edge because there aren’t enough men for the number of women there.” She said, and then added contemptuously, “Soon we’ll need similar schools for prospective husbands in India.” “Why?” I said a little amused. “So that they can learn how to court a lady. You are lucky mister. But with sex-ratio declining sharply the coming generations of males won’t be so. And the first lesson they would need to be taught is to pay attention to a lady when she speaks.” She said and left me in a
huff. |
Where the innocent die everyday This
is a story with a caution. Eighteen teenagers were killed on Monday at a football field east of Baghdad. On Sunday, equally young students fell victim to a suicide bomber. It has become a routine, at one and the same time more horrible and more normal each day. Only two years ago, a suicide bomber drove into an American convoy in Baghdad, killing 27 civilians, half of them children taking sweets from American soldiers. What price innocence? Well, as usual, nothing is as it seems in Iraq. Within hours of the mass deaths in Ramadi yesterday came a disturbing statement by the US military. They knew of no deaths in Ramadi, although – and here was the sinister part of the whole thing – it was true, the Americans said, that 30 people had been “slightly wounded” in Ramadi when US troops set off a “controlled explosion” near a football field. “I can’t imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing,” an American officer announced. Quite so. Then he apparently half-acknowledged that there was another explosion near the soccer field, a “barbaric crime” by al-Qa’ida. The police said it was a car bomb. The American-funded Iraqi television service said it was a roadside bomb. A local tribal leader said that of the 18 dead, six were women - not, presumably, football players. In Iraq, as we all know now, they go for the jugular. The old, the young, pregnant women, infants, soldiers, gunmen, murderers. They all die violently, the innocent along with the guilty. One of the insurgents’ principal financial supporters – we had met in Amman, of course, not in Baghad – put it very succinctly to me. “A decision was made that we have to accept civilian casualties. If we attack the Americans, the innocent will die. We know that. What do you people call it when you kill women and children? Collateral damage?” But exactly what happened in Ramadi remained suspiciously unclear. The football stadium where the 18 youths were reported to have been killed was near a US base. But there are no American troops on the campus at Mustansiriya. There was talk yesterday that a local Sunni imam in Ramadi had denounced al-Qa’ida – which operates in loose co-operation with Sunni insurgent groups – and that this might have prompted a revenge attack by the organisation. But such is the level of violence and anarchy in Iraq today that all such events are filtered through pro-American Iraqi security officials or through the US army or through insurgents’ websites. Insurgents’ victims are claimed to have been killed by the Americans, civilians killed by US troops are said to have been murdered by insurgents. Who knows if that did not happen in Ramadi? In fear of their lives, Western journalists can no longer investigate these atrocities. The Americans like it that way. So, one suspects, do the insurgents. Accurate information in Iraq is like water in the desert: precious, rare, often polluted. Ramadi is a no-go area for every Westerner, including most US troops. So who set off the truck bomb near a mosque in the city which killed 52 people on Saturday? Or the ambulance outside a police station near Ramadi, which killed 14 people on Monday? Shia militiamen seeking further blood in their war on Sunni fighters? Sunni groups trying to implicate Shia? Al-Qa’ida? Or the other shadowy groups who have affiliations with the American-supported Iraqi government, with the ministries of interior or health or “defence”? The reality is that Iraq’s war now exists in a fog through which we can see only vague figures. They may be insurgents or they may be soldiers. Or they may, for all the Iraqis know, be units from the 120,000 – yes, 120,000 – Western mercenaries now believed to be operating in Iraq for any number of legal and quasi-legal organisations. These hired gunmen constitute a force almost equal to the entire US contingent in Iraq. Who do they work for? What are their rules? The answer to the first may be “everyone”. The answer to the second question? None. Besides these great mysteries, what did the lives of 18 teenagers matter to the world yesterday, let alone who killed them? By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Diplomacy gets a chance to resolve Iran issue
Iran
has agreed to attend this month’s planned regional security conference on Iraq that will see its representatives sit down with US officials – a new beginning between Tehran and Washington. US participation in the talks was confirmed by Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, to Congress earlier this week. Yesterday officials from the Iraqi government, which is organising the meeting, said that Iran too would be attending, although the immediate response from Tehran was more cautious, that it would attend “if it was expedient”. A first session at the level of ambassadors is expected within the next 10 days. If all goes well, a full-scale ministerial conference will take place in April, probably in Istanbul. There, Ms Rice will sit down with her opposite numbers from Iran and Syria – with whom Washington has also refused to deal, accusing Damascus of supporting terrorism and meddling in Iraq. The very fact the US has agreed to take part marks an abrupt shift in policy by Washington after months of refusing to have any truck with Tehran – despite strong urgings to that effect by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) and many Middle East policy experts. But officials here play down any expectations of major breakthroughs between the two rivals. US representatives for instance will not discuss Tehran’s nuclear programme, the other big bone of contention. Washington remains firm in insisting Iran must first suspend uranium enrichment before any contacts can take place, and is keeping up pressure for tougher United Nations sanctions on Tehran to secure that. Despite Mr Bush’s public commitment to a “diplomatic” solution to the nuclear crisis, he refuses to rule out air strikes against Iranian installations. Washington meanwhile accuses Iran of supplying sophisticated bombs to Iraqi Shia insurgents, used to kill US troops. Finally, administration officials stress these will be anything but direct bilateral talks. Not only will Iraq’s other neighbours and regional powers such as Egypt take part, along with Iran, but the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council as well. As for Iran, its guarded formal response reflects a wariness bred by what happened the last time it engaged in serious talks with Washington in late 2001. Only a few weeks after those apparently constructive discussions on Afghanistan, Mr Bush used his January 2002 State of the Union address to label Iran a member of the “axis of evil” along with North Korea and Iraq. But the ground is shifting on both sides. By all accounts, the financial and banking quarantine imposed by Washington is being felt in Tehran. Despite the relentlessly defiant rhetoric from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he appears to be under pressure from parts of the regime to soften his stance. The US for its part seems to have woken up to the virtues of diplomacy. “Better late than never” was the reaction of Leon Panetta, a senior Democratic member of the ISG, whose recommendations were mostly brushed aside by the White House. In the past few weeks Ms Rice has thrown herself into a new round of Middle East diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinians, albeit with scant result. Then the White House agreed to a nuclear deal with North Korea not very different from the 1994 agreement reached by President Bill Clinton but criticised by the Bush administration. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Delhi Durbar Minister
of state for external affairs Anand Sharma was clearly a worried man following recent media reports that former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor, who lost the race for the UN secretary-general’s post, could be
accommodated in the foreign ministry. After spending several sleepless nights, Sharma was able to relax only after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally told hi, when the two met in the Rajya Sabha last week, that there was “no truth in these malicious reports.” The buzz is that these stories were circulated by his own party colleagues, who were clearly unhappy that the former Congress spokesperson hogged the limelight as chief organiser of the recent international conference on
satyagraha.
Zest for life The leading light of the international feminist movement, Gloria Steinem, reflects age-defying charm and optimism. The American writer and journalist who spent a couple of hours at the Indian Women's Press Corps (IWPC) early this week, left young and middle-aged journalists overawed with her optimism, candour, sense of humour and zest for life. The 72-year old feminist writer has often stated that she wants to live till the age of 100. This is despite the fact that she has dealt with several personal setbacks, including being diagnosed with breast cancer and the death of her husband David Bale in 2003, three years after their marriage.
Left behind Soon after the Congress lost power in Punjab and Uttarakhand, the CPM was quick to blame the party’s “anti-poor economic policies” for its defeat. But its own Left ally, the CPI, which enjoys a tense relation with its Marxist colleagues, was equally quick to put the CPM down. Having recorded gains in Manipur, CPI leaders wondered if West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s economic policies were responsible for the blank drawn by the CPM in Punjab and Uttarakhand. For a change, the otherwise articulate CPM leaders were left speechless.
All for good Tourism and culture minister Ambika Soni was apparently unhappy that her Congress colleagues made it difficult for her to campaign more vigorously in the recent Punjab assembly polls, by denying her the use of a helicopter. Her detractors in the party are now saying that her inability to canvass outside Hoshiarpur was probably for the good, as the Congress has been virtually wiped out in this area! Contributed by Tripti Nath, Prashant Sood and Anita Katyal |
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