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Pipeline
for peace Go ahead
with Sahnewal |
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Punjab
dithers on reforms
Limits of power — A
Tribune debate
Astrologers
out for a duck
America’s
dangerous plan for Baghdad Legal
notes Lessons
from Einstein
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Pipeline for peace Those
who thought that it was unrealistic to hope for Iranian gas reaching India through the proposed pipeline via Pakistan need to think afresh. Despite US reservations, India and Pakistan have finalised an arrangement for the sharing of the Iranian gas with the Pakistan Cabinet’s Economic Coordination Committee putting its stamp of approval on it on Tuesday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Shaukat Aziz, discussed the issue extensively when the latter was in New Delhi earlier this month. How to share the piped gas supply from Iran was a major issue. It transpires that initially Iran would release 2.1 billion cubic feet of gas daily into the pipeline, for which construction may start next year. India and Pakistan will share the available gas equally till the supply is enhanced to 5.3 billion cubic feet a day when New Delhi’s share will go up to 3.2 billion cubic feet. The sharing mechanism has been devised obviously keeping in view the energy requirements of the two countries. The responsibility of construction of the pipeline up to the Iran-Pakistan border will be of Teheran and that of the stretch falling in Pakistani territory will be of Islamabad. This has been agreed to between the three parties and, hopefully, the pipeline may be in operation by 2012. The only problem that remains to be settled is of transit fee. India wants it to be calculated on the basis of the commodity price and not on the delivered cost. Determining the transit fee on the basis of the delivered price of gas will amount to double accounting. Iran has agreed to sell its gas to India and Pakistan at $4.93 per million British thermal unit (mBtu), a reasonable price, but it will mean $7 per mBtu for India if Pakistan is allowed to have its way. These glitches can be sorted out. The Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline will carry a greater meaning once it becomes a reality. It may work as a catalyst in the India-Pakistan drive for the normalisation of their relations. Rightly called the “pipeline for peace”, it will be the most visible symbol of the two countries developing their stake in shared growth and the common good. The agreement on the pipeline is also a major input into the peace process.
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Go ahead with Sahnewal Despite
persistent efforts of the previous Congress government, the proposed international airport at Halwara in Punjab could not take off. The Union Cabinet, it is reported, did not warm up to the idea following security concerns expressed by the Defence Ministry. Now the Punjab government has suggested an alternative site at Sahnewal village near Ludhiana where the required chunk of land is reportedly available. The Punjab Chief Secretary made this proposal public on Tuesday in the presence of an Executive Director of the Airports Authority of India. The location and viability of an airport have to be decided on merit after a feasibility study by a competent authority. Politics and regional considerations should have no role in this. Ludhiana and Jalandhar are two major towns which, no doubt, need air connectivity urgently, given their business and trade potential. The decision on the exact location of the proposed airport can be left to the experts. Much time has already been lost in unnecessary wrangling. The new government in Punjab has shown commendable urgency in taking up some of the pending projects, including the establishment of a nuclear plant. That airports also figure on its priority list is to be welcomed. One reason why this once-progressive state has lagged behind is inadequate infrastructure. It would be fitting if the same level of enthusiasm and urgency also go into speeding up the expansion of the airports at Chandigarh and Amritsar. The Punjab government is apparently faced with financial constraints. It has suggested to the AAI to involve Himachal Pradesh and Haryana in the modernisation of Chandigarh airport through a special purpose vehicle. The logic is that the two neighbouring states also stand to benefit tremendously if the City Beautiful airport is upgraded to the international level. This is another area where regional cooperation can help. It is not clear why the proposed expansion of Amritsar airport has been held up for so long. If resource constraint is a factor, then the private sector can be roped in. India’s smaller cities and towns, too, need facilities in keeping with the growth aspirations of its citizens.
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Punjab dithers on reforms Punjab
has failed to meet the March 31 deadline fixed by the Supreme Court for implementing police reforms. Along with three other states, it has sought a review of the court order, which, it claims, conflicts with the state police rules. What rules prevent the state from ensuring a two-year tenure to each officer from a DGP to an SHO? If there are any rules which come in the way of reforms, these should be amended or scrapped. Whether it is the separation of investigation from law and order or setting up a police complaint authority, Punjab and the other three states have no valid reason for not obeying the court directions. Haryana, incidentally, has complied with the court order. The actual reason for opposing reforms is that politicians and bureaucrats in Punjab do not want to let go easily their hold on the police. Over the years, successive ruling parties in Punjab have used the police to settle scores with political opponents and enhance their electoral prospects. Whichever political party comes to office, the first thing it does is to effect a police reshuffle, appointing its own favourites at key posts. The police is notoriously top-heavy. The state, a fraction of what it was before 1966 when there was just one IGP, today has as many as seven DGPs. Worse, the Punjab government plans to create three more police districts — Ludhiana (rural), Jalandhar (rural) and Amritsar (rural). The objective is not to improve the police functioning or meet the requirements of law and order, but to accommodate certain officers of the Punjab Police Service. There are more officers in the state than required for the work available. New police districts came up during the militancy days. With the return of peace, these should have been scrapped. But vested interests continue to prevail.
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Often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address. — C. W. Lewis
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Limits of power — A Tribune debate In
countries with a written constitution the reach of judicial power is almost unlimited — and it is in the wisdom of its exercise that the balance of the written constitution is maintained. The UK has no written constitution, but judicial activism still keeps rearing its head. This has prompted one of England’s leading lawyers to suggest that Lord Acton’s hackneyed phrase (“Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”) should be adapted in this day and age to read: “All judicial power is wonderful and absolute judicial power is absolutely wonderful”! This concept of judicial supremacy is subscribed to by some English judges, not all — it is also a characteristic of many Indian judges, though not all. On the other side of the Atlantic — in another great common law country (the US) — there is a more marked separation of powers. The modern democratic world’s oldest court — the Supreme Court of the United States — has a record of longevity (200 years) because its reach is constitutionally limited: not anything and everything comes before it, injustices are left to be suffered by giving finality to decisions of State courts as also of Federal courts; the writ of the US Supreme Court is not all encompassing. As was once said by a judge of that court: “the important thing we do in this place is — not doing”! At a recent meeting of the Chief Justices of the High Courts presided over by the Chief Justice of India, the Prime Minister voiced his concern about what he described as “judicial over-reach”. Obviously, what he meant was a lack of restraint on the part of some justices in not respecting the “territory” or domain of other organs of governance. If what he said was restricted to PILs he may have been right (in my view PILs are giving the judiciary a bad name). But the Prime Minister also did say, generally, that judges are going too far. On this general statement, I beg to disagree. Many do believe that written constitutions that give power to the courts to strike down legislation made by a country’s Parliament is undemocratic: it enables unelected judges (they say) to thwart the wishes of the elected representatives of the people in Parliament. There may be something to be said for this point of view. But it is too late in the day to complain. For more than 57 years we have been working a Constitution which is federal in nature with allocated subjects of legislation separately and exclusively given to the States and to the Union; there is also a chapter on Fundamental Rights: all laws and all executive action inconsistent with them are expressly declared to be “void”. Some authority then would have to be the final arbiter — in a controversy. That arbiter under our Constitution is ultimately the country’s highest court. It has been said that where there are no judicially manageable standards our courts should not interfere; they should leave it to the elected representatives of the people. In theory, this is correct. But 60 years after Independence and after 14 general elections to the Lok Sabha, and all the publicity that is given to proceedings in Parliament ordinary people, people who have voted their elected representatives in to Parliament, remain unsatisfied as to how they function: if and when they function at all! Almost every session of Parliament during the last few years has been marred by some dispute or contention of the moment — not of any grave national importance: there is hardly any serious debate on topics of all-India concern! For three successive years now an important measure like the annual Finance Bill has been passed in each House of Parliament in a matter of minutes, without debate or discussion — amidst din and shouting. There is something wrong somewhere. Since power grows by what it feeds on, judicial power also grows by accretion, by the sheer circumstance that other constitutional bodies and authorities set up to legislate and to pass administrative orders have failed when called upon to act. I suggest that the “judicial over-reach” the Prime Minister spoke about is the direct result of legislative and executive neglect or “under-reach”: poor performance in the making of laws and their execution. If judges need to introspect (I confess that they do), politicians also need to ask themselves whether they have fulfilled the aspirations of the people who put them at the wheels of governance. If judges are to get off the backs of parliamentarians, politicians and bureaucrats, those who claim the right to govern must come up with a much better record of performance: only when they do will the people of this great country give us back majority governments both at the Centre and in the states. The higher judiciary in India is set up under the Constitution to adjudicate on the laws passed by the elected representatives and to pronounce on the legality of actions of the executive branch of the government. That judges, even those in the highest court, are mortal and hence fallible, is no original observation. Fallibility of the individual justices must not be confused with the finality of the decisions of the court. The first is a human infirmity, the second a constitutional mandate. The question “Which is supreme under our Constitution — Parliament or the Supreme Court” is misconceived, and mischievous. The answer is “neither”. It is the Constitution and the laws that are supreme. And it is the Constitution that declares that the final interpreter of the law is the Supreme Court. Ministers of the government — and some Members of Parliament too — labour under the fallacy of moral populism, the inability to distinguish between the unexceptionable principle that political power is best entrusted to the majority, from the unacceptable claim that what the majority does with that power is beyond scrutiny or criticism. There is no disharmony between Parliament and the judiciary and no individual member of the government should claim to speak for that great institution. Disharmony between the government and the courts is a different matter — if there were complete harmony between them, this country would not be worth living in! It is the duty of the judges to interpret the Constitution and the laws and if this creates a clamour and controversy, well that is the price we have to pay for living in a democracy. As a great democrat, Edmund Burke, used to say: “The fire-alarm at midnight may disturb your sleep, but it keeps you from being burned at
night.”
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Astrologers out for a duck It
was not for nothing that George Bernard Shaw described cricket as a game that 22 fools played and 22,000 fools paid to watch. TV has added several zeroes to his audience figure. The game has the propensity of making a lot of people look very silly because of what the aficionados call its “glorious uncertainties”. In cricket, in relative terms, form and fitness count for less than luck and chance do. That tempts punters. Winning or losing against overwhelming odds can be wagered on. It may be a gamble, but would not be impossible. While no one would, for example, hazard a prediction of an Indian win against Brazil in soccer, and none will even attempt to fix such a match, people may still bet on Ireland beating Pakistan in cricket, equally bizarre on form and ratings though it may be. Fortune tellers, too, have enough leeway to practice their mumbo-jumbo. Bejan Daruwala who operates under the trade name Ganesha said, before the tournament started that, after “taking the charts of all countries participating and the foundation dates of respective boards, along with all the available data of their captain and coach,” both India and Pakistan would be among the Super Eight qualifiers. For the semifinals, South Africa, New Zealand and West Indies were certainties, with the fourth spot to be contested in the planetary oval by Australia, Sri Lanka and India. The higher one goes in the tournament, the more woolly his predictions become. In a review of ‘Today’s Strengths’, he places Matthew Hayden and Sachin Tendulkar at par! No astrologer could foresee India’s or Pakistan’s exit from the first round. One Anil Kumar Jain, predicted, “The planetary positions indicate that Pakistan will be in a position to register comfortable win over Ireland. Most of the Pakistan batsmen will excel and their performance will surpass expectations. They will outclass Ireland in batting, bowling as well as in fielding.” Another member of the fraternity, who appears regularly on the website of a national English daily, Anita Nigam, stated on March 23, “India’s stars are brighter in comparison to Sri Lanka’s,” though two days later she was reduced to advising people what colours to wear and how to invoke the Hanuman Chalisa to ensure Bermuda’s win over Bangladesh. But, they need not worry. People will soon forget that all astrologers fell flat on their faces with their World Cup forecasts. Their business is immune to such setbacks. Even the cricketers, though they may have gone into hiding for the present, will be back. Sports fans in India have no choice. In a field of 10 serious players, we will always be in the first 10. In which other game, barring kabaddi, are we so well
placed?
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America’s dangerous plan for Baghdad Faced
with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad – despite President George Bush’s “surge” in troops – US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter. The campaign of “gated communities” – whose genesis was in the Vietnam war – will involve up to 30 of the city’s 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq. The system has been used – and has spectacularly failed – in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country’s continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to “win” the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of “gating” areas under foreign occupation failed spectacularly during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory – again, with little success. But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanized brigades – comprising around 40,000 men – south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful – and potentially aggressive – American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year. The latest “security” plan, of which The Independent has learned the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas during which American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps – along, according to some reports, with at least four senior Israeli officers – participated in a series of debates to determine how best to “turn round” America’s disastrous war in Iraq. The initial emphasis of the new American plan will be placed on securing Baghdad market places and predominantly Shia Muslim areas. Arrests of men of military age will be substantial. The ID card project is based upon a system adopted in the city of Tel Afar by General Petraeus’s men – and specifically by Colonel H R McMaster, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment – in early 2005, when an eight-foot “berm” was built around the town to prevent the movement of gunmen and weapons. General Petraeus regarded the campaign there as a success although Tel Afar, close to the Syrian border, has since fallen back into insurgent control. So far, the Baghdad campaign has involved only the creation of a few US positions within several civilian areas of the city but the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi “support bases” in nine of the 30 districts to be “gated” off. From these bases – in fortified buildings – US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these “gated communities” and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, “visitor” registration and restrictions on movement outside the “gated communities”. Civilians may find themselves inside a “controlled population” prison. In theory, US forces can then concentrate on providing physical reconstruction in what the military like to call a “secure environment”. But insurgents are not foreigners, despite the presence of al-Qa’ida in Iraq. They come from the same population centres that will be “gated” and will, if undiscovered, hold ID cards themselves; they will be “enclosed” with everyone else. The senior generals who constructed the new “security” plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal – but officially “restricted” – field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24. While not specifically advocating the “gated communities” campaign, one of its principles is the unification of civilian and military activities, citing “civil operations and revolutionary development support teams” in South Vietnam, assistance to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991 and the “provincial reconstruction teams” in Afghanistan – a project widely condemned for linking military cooperation and humanitarian assistance. FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. “With good intelligence,” it says, “counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact.” But another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the “gated” neighbourhood project. “Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able,” he told The Independent. “They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the ‘gated communities’ to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Legal notes The
Himachal Pradesh High Court has come in for sharp criticism by the Supreme Court for adopting a practice of not citing any reason for refusing to grant leave to the state to file an appeal, when accused in criminal cases are acquitted. The court said that absence of reasons rendered the court order unsustainable. The apex court stressed that it had laid down, in numerous judgements, that on the plainest consideration of justice, the courts ought to set forth its reasons, howsoever brief, in their orders, indicating application of mind. This was more important when the judgements of the court were amenable to further avenues of challenge. The apex court said it that in its earlier judgements it had observed that failure to give reasons amounted to denial of justice. Reasons are the live links between the mind of the decision-taker to the controversy in question and the decision or conclusion arrived at. Silence on reasons will render exercise of the power of judicial review impossible. The strong observations came in a case pertaining to the acquittal of accused Mustaq Ahmed. The apex court referred another case back to the High Court for the same reason. The Himachal Pradesh Government is understood to have moved special leave petitions over at least 10 other cases, in which no reasons had been recorded by the High Court for denial of leave for filing appeals in the apex court against its judgements of acquittal. Help for poor litigants Nearly 3,000 members of the Delhi Bar Association (DBA) resolved at a seminar to offer their services free of cost to poor litigants. The commitments on behalf of the bar was made by DBA president Ved Prakash Sharma and its secretary R N Vats. In the wake of the cost of litigation increasing considerably due to high fees being charged by the
lawyers, Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan had asked advocates at the seminar to volunteer to provide free legal service to poor litigants, who could not pay any money. This would help in making justice accessible to the under-privileged sections of the society also, he emphasised, at the seminar on ‘Significance of the Bar and Bench in the trial courts’, organised by the DBA. Describing the trial courts as the main pillars of the justice delivery system, the CJI also asked the judges of the subordinate judiciary to make every effort to ensure that speedy justice is available to the common man and not allow adjournments in cases unnecessarily. Delhi High Court Chief Justice M K Sharma spoke about the steps taken by the high court administration to firm up the Delhi Legal Service Authority that provides free legal aid to poor litigants. He also gave details about the steps being taken to speed up the computerisation of the lower judiciary. Debt recovery for cooperatives In a boost to cooperative banks in firming up their drive against recovery of bad debts, the Supreme Court has ruled that they need not submit themselves to the jurisdiction of the Debt Recovery Tribunals as the Banking Regulation Act, 2002 will not apply to them. The Court made it clear that the cooperative banks, whether involved in the banking business within the state or in multi-state transactions, would continue to be regulated by the relevant cooperative bank Acts, passed by the states where such banks were registered. The field of cooperative societies cannot be said to have been covered by the central legislation by mere reference to Entry 45 of the List-I of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. The cooperative banks would be covered by Entry 32 of List-II of the Seventh Schedule for reasons that they were created under the cooperative societies Act in a particular state irrespective of the fact that they were involved in multi-state banking business. The judgement came on a bunch of appeals by cooperative banks having cross-country transactions, against the rulings of AP and Bombay High Courts, holding that the 1993 Financial Institutions Act applied to them for recovery of debts. The cooperative banks had resisted the reference of their cases to the debt recovery tribunals under the 1993 Act as it resulted in delay in deciding them.
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Lessons from Einstein Smart
folks are a dime a dozen. What truly matters is creativity. As Albert Einstein put it, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Given our focus on science and math we need to make sure we don’t forget this. We tend to teach by drilling knowledge rather than stimulating imagination. Einstein rebelled against rote learning, and that attitude helped make him the genius that he was. The oft-made assertion that Einstein failed math as a child is, to the disappointment of bad students and those of us who savor irony in history, not true. But he was slow in learning to talk. That was combined with a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one schoolmaster to send him packing and another to amuse history by declaring that he would never amount to much. These traits made Einstein the patron saint of distracted schoolkids everywhere. But they also helped to make him the most creative scientific genius of modern times. His cocky contempt for authority led him to question received wisdom. And as for his slow verbal development, it led him to think in pictures and to observe with wonder the everyday phenomena that others took for granted. His impudence and lack of deference to authority meant that he alienated all of his professors at Zurich Polytechnic. As a result, he was the only graduate in his section who was not offered a junior professorship. He struggled to find work, finally landing on a stool at the Swiss patent office in Bern as a third-class examiner. But lest we feel sorry for him, the job allowed him to do thought-experiments and encouraged him to be skeptical about conventional wisdom, unlike the well-heeled acolytes in the academy. Among his thought-experiments was one in which he imagined two lightning bolts, one striking at each end of a fast-moving train. For someone standing halfway between them on the embankment, they would appear to be simultaneous. But for someone standing halfway between them on the moving train, the strike in front would seem to come first because the observer would be racing closer to it as the light beams traveled from each strike. It was a simple insight: Two events that appeared simultaneous to one observer would not appear simultaneous to someone moving relative to him. So time itself was not absolute but was relative for people in different states of motion. Others had come close to that insight, including Henri Poincare and Hendrik Lorentz. But Einstein had a rebelliousness, a willingness not to conform, that they lacked. He alone was willing to discard the notion of absolute time, which had been a sacred tenet of classical physics for 216 years, ever since Sir Issac Newton in his “Principia” had declared that it tick-tocked along “without relation to anything external.” “Long live impudence,” Einstein proclaimed as a young man. “It’s my guardian angel in the world.” The writer is the author of “Einstein: His Life and Universe.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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