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A criminal called MP Reforms in Punjab |
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Politics without Begums
Mumbai’s road outrage
Flight of the phoenix
Musharraf’s proposal America’s love affair
with guns Delhi Durbar
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A criminal called MP It was coming. The way criminalisation of politics was being allowed to spread, it was but natural that these people will use their new-found cloak of respectability not only for hiding their past, but also to further their criminal designs. Money-making was the sole aim of this unscrupulous lot and some of them took cash even for asking questions in the Lok Sabha. Some of them like the BJP’s MP from Gujarat, Babubhai Katara, have been carrying on a side-business like human trafficking. Old-timers may shake their heads in disbelief, but that is the pit where we have reached today. And to think that the unthinkable has been done by a BJP man, the party that swears by high moral standards! But then, this is not the first case of its kind involving a senior BJP politician. Former BJP MP Ganga Ram Koli was booked along with 14 others by the CBI in September 2004 for allegedly facilitating illegal visit of nine persons to the Netherlands by forging his own credentials and camouflaging their identities. Mr Katara,on his part, brazenly presented a Kapurthala woman and a Hoshiarpur boy as his wife and son and almost made it to the aircraft. During questioning, the detained woman, Paramjeet, has disclosed that the second-time Lok Sabha MP had taken Rs 30 lakh from her to send her to Toronto. All that shows that the Gujarat leader had a vast network to lure potential “customers”. It is a matter of record that he travelled abroad thrice in the past two years. Were these visits “clean” or just a ploy to indulge in what has come to be known in Punjab as “kabootarbaazi”? In any case, even if this was his first offence, it is simply unbelievable and unpardonable for a Member of Parliament who is supposed to serve the public. The BJP – and all other parties – owe an answer to the country as to how they can even think of giving party tickets to such people. He has been suspended by his party, but that is no punishment. Even expulsion cannot wipe away the collective humiliation. As long as the root of the problem – banking on criminals – is not removed, such dirty eggs will continue to burst in the face of the parties. It is said that things have to go horribly wrong before they start improving. That stage is already upon us.
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Reforms in Punjab Punjab now has a finance minister who seems concerned about the state’s fiscal decline. Despite being new to the job, Mr Manpreet Singh Badal apparently understands what ails the state’s economy and what needs to be done. In his first address to the Assembly, he noted with alarm the Planning Commission’s projections that backward states like Bihar and Jharkhand would outgrow Punjab during the Eleventh Plan period. Between 2002 and 2007 Punjab’s economy grew by just 4.8 per cent against the national average of 7 per cent. He was perhaps trying to prepare the House for some hard corrective action. Punjab’s financial mess is an undisputed fact. How to pull it out is a challenge that the new Finance Minister will have to meet head-on. There is a near consensus among experts on state reforms. The free supply of unmetered power to any section is widely opposed. Subsidies bleed the state exchequer and there is need to target them at the needy. According to the latest CAG report, Punjab’s 13 PSUs incurred a collective loss of Rs 3,934 crore and these need to be disposed of. The state’s top-heavy administration is a drain on resources. Administrative extravagance in Punjab is well known. The delivery system is riddled with corruption and red tape. The state spending on health and education is much below the acceptable levels. The political leadership in Punjab generally follows a populist approach. It is averse to implementing reforms. Mr Manpreet Singh Badal’s reported move to initiate a dialogue with the Congress on reforms is commendable, but first he will have to convince the leadership of his own party about the need to take hard decisions. His stand on free power and subsidies is in conflict with the known position of the Chief Minister. A Chief Minister who — like his predecessor Capt Amarinder Singh — can circumvent the law limiting the size of a ministry by raising a whole battalion of chief parliamentary secretaries is unlikely to let sound economics overrule his political considerations. |
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Politics without Begums First the world was told that former Prime Minister and Bangladesh Nationalist Party chief Begum Khaleda Zia had entered into a deal with the military-backed interim government to live in exile in Saudi Arabia along with her family members. Then came the news that another former Prime Minister, Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina Wajed, on a private visit to the US, had been barred from coming back to Dhaka. The “Minus Two” formula, a brainchild of the current rulers of Bangladesh, having enormous powers under the Emergency Act of 2000, provides an insight into what exactly they have in their mind. Bangladesh will not be a loser if they want to allow a “good new leadership to emerge instead of the old ones”, as one of the two legal advisers of the government, Mr Moinul Hosein, says. Obviously, the interim rulers are aware of the popular belief that politics with the two Begums, controlling both major political parties, had no future for the poverty-stricken country. Both had no qualms about cheating the poor voters. The governments they headed were known for rampant corruption, making the life of the common man miserable, but they were least bothered about this sad state of affairs. Their family members and those close to them did not allow any government scheme to be implemented without their palms being greased. Begum Khaleda Zia’s eldest son, Tarique Rahman, who reportedly amassed enormous wealth during the five-year rule of his mother, was considered the icon of graft in Bangladesh. The two leaders did not hesitate in promoting a culture of street violence. They also allowed religious extremism to strengthen its roots by forging alliances with religio-political parties if this helped them remain in power. What course the politics in Bangladesh finally takes will be interesting to watch. People will heave a sigh of relief if the emerging scenario enables Nobel Laureate Mohammed Yunus, who has floated his own political party, to occupy the space vacated by the two Begums. But this depends on the intentions of the non-political actors, including army generals, running the administration. They have not only postponed the parliamentary elections till the end of 2008 on the pretext of revising the controversial electoral rolls and cleansing up politics, but also declared that first of all local bodies polls would be held. Obviously, the political future of Bangladesh remains caught in uncertainty. |
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The thoughts of a prisoner — they’re not free either. They keep returning to the same things.— Alexander Solzhenitsyn |
Mumbai’s road outrage
TO describe the latest horror reported from Mumbai as outrageous would be the understatement of the century. A court in that “maximum city” has let off with six months’ “simple imprisonment” an affluent youth who allegedly mowed down to death seven migrant workers sleeping on a pavement. The accompanying fine of Rs 5 lakh, to be paid to the bereaved families, establishes the value of a poor Indian’s life at less than Rs 75,000. Is this what the booming, if not yet shining, India going to be proud of? Yet it would not be fair to blame only the court, for it was hampered by deliberately distorted investigation by the police. Moreover, seven of the eight witnesses turned “hostile”, withdrew their earlier statements and pretended not to recognise the man at the wheel of the luxury car. To compound this, the timing cited by police photographer for the phone call summoning him to take pictures turned out to be well before the ghastly “accident” had taken place! No wonder, the accused was charged only with rash and negligent driving, not with “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”. On the other hand, even for the milder charge the court could have awarded the culprit a harsher sentence. Or the judge could have ordered a retrial but inexplicably didn’t. For quite some time now the highest judiciary has laid down the wholesome principle that witnesses turning hostile should be automatically charged with perjury because they are obviously lying at one stage or the other. This hasn’t happed in the present Mumbai case. Nor, incidentally, has anyone punished the crass witnesses — including relatives of the persons crushed to death by a BMW-driving drunken super-brat in Delhi several years ago — who, after turning hostile, said they never saw a luxury car. The errant vehicle was a truck. As for the rank dishonesty of the Mumbai police, there is nothing surprising about it. Nor is the rot confined to the western metropolis, which brings me to a more painful question that needs some explaining. Shortly after Delhi began to forget the BMW killing spree, there took place the infamous cold-blooded murder of Jessica Lal at a society party held at a posh restaurant in the nation's capital. The principal accused, the son of a powerful Congress minister in a neighbouring state, was acquitted in the first instance, thanks to the usual cocktail of manipulated police investigations, destruction or distortion of evidence and witnesses turning hostile in droves. Then, suddenly and refreshingly, the Capital's articulate and influential middle class started agitating furiously against the blatant miscarriage of justice. The movement compelled the authorities to reopen the case. This time the man earlier let off was sentenced to life imprisonment against which he has gone on appeal. Under the court’s order, departmental proceedings were started against the bent cops who had messed up the investigations but nothing has come of these so far. In this context it is deeply troubling that there are no such protests in Mumbai or elsewhere. In response to the anguished cries of some Mumbaikars of conscience, the Commissioner of Police has doubtless announced that his department would appeal against the light sentence. But that is about all. Where are the candlelight processions and the nightly pontifications from the most powerful pulpit of our age, the TV anchor's chair? Is the country being told that from NOIDA’s Nithari to Mumbai’s Bandra, the poor can be slaughtered with impunity, but let no one dare touch the upper crust of the middle-class? Even this pales, compared with the Bombay High Court’s observations in a different case. A hardened criminal, it seems, was acquitted of several murder charges over the years. But when put to the “narco” test, he had confessed to all the crimes and claimed that he had extricated himself by bribing police officers. Indeed, he named names. The court now wants these officers to be proceeded against. There is little doubt that some kind of action would be initiated, but would anything actually change? Sadly, the problem is vastly more complex and much deeper than it might appear. Yes, the police are corrupt and craven. The judiciary, especially at lower levels, has its faults. Notwithstanding the empowerment of various sections of the dispossessed, India’s society remains essentially feudal. Nobody dares question the power of the privileged ones. Not to put any gloss on the ugly situation, the entire Indian system — political, bureaucratic, police, judicial, the lawyer community, et al — has become a massive conspiracy to thwart justice and rule of law, never mind equality before the law. Let us face it, for as long as the police remain the servants of the government of the day, not of the law, as is the case in all civilised democracies, there cannot be any justice in this country. The high and mighty, the rich and famous would dictate and a vast majority of the self-seeking police would happily obey. Every political party, when in opposition, protests against this, but happily exploits the system to its advantage when back in power. Consequently, there would not be any consensus here on the most needed fundamental reform in the system of policing. Only a few weeks ago, 10 state chief ministers — including those whose parties are constituents of the United Progressive Alliance ruling the country — expressed to the Supreme Court their inability to accept the pattern of police reforms the apex court had laid down, basing its verdict on the neglected reports of a succession of Police Reforms Commissions. The suggested system, they pointed out, was an “encroachment” on the rights of the states, for law and order was a state subject. No one is in a position to say boo to them. No wonder then that in the face of the Naxalite threat that menaces nearly a fourth of the districts in the country, there is no federal agency to deal with the problem. All right, far-reaching reforms of the system are not possible because of the current configuration of political forces. But what is the difficulty in carrying out so small and simple a recommendation that the investigation arm of the police force should be separated from that responsible for maintaining law and order? Why can't we make it compulsory to prosecute “hostile” witnesses, or cut down the absurdly frequent adjournments of criminal cases? Questions are endless. There are, alas, no
answers.
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Flight of the phoenix
They were enjoying themselves on the dance floor, a wiry old woman and her two daughters-in-law, one of whom my cousin. The latter was dancing to a Punjabi number with the youngsters — it was her daughter’s engagement ceremony — while the other two women were clapping with great gusto. For a moment, I almost forgot the harsh truth about the threesome — their widowhood. A few years ago, I had seen them in the dreaded white clothes, inconsolably mourning the loss of their loved one. Whatever it was called — God, destiny or simply death — it had mercilessly unleashed one tragedy after another on them. Barely six months after her husband’s demise, my cousin had lost her mother as well; her mother-in-law, already a widow, had seen two middle-aged sons pass away within a couple of years. What had they done to deserve such a wretched fate, they asked themselves as well as others, but got no answers that could explain or justify it all. Most people treated them merely as objects of pity, promising much help but giving very little. Stripped of the comforting cocoon of domesticity, these housewives had to willy-nilly face the big, at times bad, world almost single-handedly. The Kafkaesque nightmare seemed to have ended as I saw them now, resplendent in their salwar-kameez, their faces aglow with a happiness so elusive, so ephemeral. No wonder they were clinging onto it for dear life, hiding the scars left by their ordeals. With herculean determination, they had picked up the pieces of their shattered lives. These survivors reminded me of the phoenix, the mythical Arabian bird that meets its end in a fire and is reborn from its own ashes. My cousin asked me to join her for a dance, but I was more interested in watching her celebrate as if there was no tomorrow. Having found a suitable boy for the elder of her two daughters, she was well on her way to emulating my mother-in-law and late grandmother, who both endured widowhood to shape the destinies of their children. They had not only raised big families with modest resources but also warded off the wolves in sheep’s clothing who tried to deprive them of their few assets. Moreover, they had amply demonstrated that the female of the species is grittier than the male. “Frailty, thy name is woman!” lamented Hamlet, referring to his selfish mother Gertrude, who promptly remarried after her husband’s death. I think his opinion of the fair sex would’ve been entirely different, had he received the privilege of meeting these self-sacrificing
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Musharraf’s proposal There has been a lot of hype in the media about the four-point proposal of President Pervez Musharraf with specific reference to demilitarisation and joint control. We Indians get swayed in no time. The proposal was not critically analysed in the context of the prevailing situation in the valley. The Government of India waited for some time for public opinion to crystalise and then came up with its response that it was not acceptable to India. Our leaders rightly judged the pulse of the people and the ground reality in the Kashmir valley. There is no doubt that post-9/11, the attitude of the Pakistan President has changed from jihadist to diplomatic. He had said some time ago that “the way to liberate Kashmir is through jihad and not negotiations”. He reportedly told his close aid that “Pakistan’s biggest diplomatic challenge in the post 9/11 is to refashion its image as a responsible member of the international community which uses dialogue as a means to settle border disputes”. Pakistan tried to forcibly annex Kashmir through the tribal invasion in 1947, the Gibraltar operation in 1965, then Operation Topac, continuing the proxy war, the Kargil invasion and also through nuclear blackmailing. But it did not succeed. Hence a new phase of dialogue. Examine all the proposals. The bottomline is the annexation of Kashmir valley. It may be a trifurcation plan proposed by the Hurriyat Conference or a proposal by a Kashmir study group i.e. creation of a hypothetical Kashmir state comprising the Muslim majority areas, a sovereign state but without any international personality. Then is the Chenab formula. Now what is the joint control proposal? The Pakistan President’s proposal is to identify what makes Kashmir, demilitarise the identified region and then give self governance to the people under the joint control of India, Pakistan and Kashmiris. Who will represent the Kashmiris? It is the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. In an interview to Daily Times, he said: “I feel the true representative of Kashmiris is the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the APHC. We feel that there is a trilateral arrangement where Kashmiris become part of the dialogue process. Now the Kashmiris are the APHC and there are Pakistan and India. So once they visit us and they also talk to the Indian Government, which we will try to facilitate, we shall have a trilateral arrangement going.” The Government of India had never agreed to any such proposition that the APHC be made a third party to the Kashmir dispute. Now the General says India has conceded the Pakistani stand of trilateral dialogue on Kashmir. Everyone in India knows that the All Parties Hurriyat Conference is the forward post of President Musharraf in the valley. In other words, you are giving Kashmir to Pakistan on a platter. As suggested, if we demilitarise Kashmir, there will not be any need to request Pakistan to cooperate in ending cross-border terrorism because then jihadis and the APHC cadre would fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal of our security forces and hasten the completion of the diabolic plan of Pakistan to grab Kashmir. What an ingenious plan! Moreover, Pakistan has kept northern areas i.e. Gilgit and Baltistan out of any discussion as it is of strategic value to it. In this way we will lose Ladakh also. With the joint control, will it be possible for our security forces to pass through the valley? Is the international guarantee of any value? What is the most acceptable solution? Strobe Talbot rightly observes in his book “Engaging India” that “the more fundamental problem, as they saw it, was that Pakistanis, while claiming to want American arbitration, would have difficulty accepting the most obvious solution, which is to make the line of control a mutually recognised international border and give Kashmiris a significant degree of autonomy with in the Indian state”. Former US President Bill Clinton suggested a solution on the lines of the Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement. This agreement of April 1998 has three ingredients. One is the devolution of sizeable power from the British Government to the Northern Ireland. Secondly, it creates a broadly inclusive power-sharing arrangements providing for equal representation in the government for the pro-British (Unionists) and pro-Irish (Nationalists) communities. Thirdly, cross-border institutionalised framework linking British-governed Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. Since we are a democracy, a person has to be elected to become a part of the government. We can adopt the other two provisions i.e. devolution of powers and the cross-border linkages. As per this agreement, the North-South ministerial Council has been formed. It is comprised of ministers from the autonomous government of Northern Ireland and their counterparts from the Republic of Ireland. Its task is to explore and develop co-operation in those areas, which can yield benefit to both sides. On this pattern, we can, as suggested by Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, Chief Minister of J&K, work out a plan on collaboration in trade, tourism and water resources in two parts of J&K. Our Prime Minister has very succinctly summed up the issue in its totality: “Territorial disputes are very difficult to resolve and take a long time”…. “I do not know how long this process will take and I cannot predict where it will lead but each step that we complete will unfold new possibilities that we cannot see at this time. If Kashmiris from both sides are free to meet and talk to each other, they may come up with proposals that we can look at.” |
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America’s
love affair with guns
A tragedy of monumental proportions” was how Charles Steger, the president of Virginia Tech, described the slaughter at his university on Monday, the worst campus mass shooting in US history. But whether it is of sufficient proportion to dent America’s love affair with guns is quite another matter. Similar disbelief followed other mass shootings in recent years – from the 24 people gunned down in a fast-food restaurant in the Texas town of Killeen in October 1991, to the Columbine school massacre in Colorado in 1999, to the five little girls shot dead at an Amish school in Pennsylvania in October last year. But the practical effect has been very little. Gun control, along with abortion and same-sex marriage, has long been one of the litmus test issues defining the debate in the US between liberals and conservatives. Guns tend to be more common and more entrenched in the culture of southern, central and mountain states, which tend to vote Republican and where hunting is a popular sport. Gun crime is rife in big cities on the east coast too, which are invariably Democratic, but gun ownership among the general population is notably less common. The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, is one of the most powerful in the US and gun owners are a constituency no one wants to alienate. John Kerry, the thoroughly liberal Democratic presidential nominee of 2004, was careful to have himself pictured on a duck hunt in Ohio as that year’s campaign neared its climax. Many of the Democrat gains in the 2006 midterm elections came thanks to conservative candidates running in states traditionally dominated by Republicans. Amusement, rather than shock, was the general reaction earlier this year when an aide of Jim Webb, the shock Democratic victor in the Virginia senate race last year, was arrested when he was caught taking a gun owned by his boss into the US Capitol building. “I believe that wherever you see laws that allow people to carry [weapons], generally the violence goes down,” the strongly pro-gun Mr Webb told reporters afterwards. To which the tens of millions of US gun owners (by some calculations there are as many guns as people in the country) would say, Amen. The passionate feelings of the gun lobby may be traced to the second amendment of the US Constitution, enshrining “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”. Although the provision stems from the times when “well regulated militias” were deemed necessary to protect against a British attempt to regain the lost colonies, it is the default position of any argument against greater gun control here. As such, it has trumped every other consideration, not least the fact that on any given day about 80 people are killed by firearms, the vast majority by murder or suicide. Gun violence may cost $2.3bn (£1.2bn) each year in medical expenses, but it is a price, gun supporters believe, that is worth paying to protect a fundamental freedom. Virginia’s gun laws are fairly typical for what has been (until recently) a reliably Republican state, part of the old Confederacy. Non-Americans may be amazed, but a state law of the 1990s limiting handgun purchases to one per person per month was regarded as a step towards curbing Virginia’s reputation as a source of easily acquired “illegal” weapons used for crime. There is no sign of attitudes hardening. Despite the opposition of every police force in the land, Congress in 2004 allowed to lapse a 10-year federal ban on semi-automatic assault weapons, a particular favourite of violent criminals. The reaction was not exactly deafening. Even amid Monday’s shock, the initial calls were for stricter security measures on campuses – not serious moves to reduce gun ownership. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Delhi Durbar Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh rarely misses an opportunity to hit out at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Singh hopes to achieve his dream of becoming the Chief Minister of Bihar as his leader and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav has his eyes set on Raisina Hill. Singh frequently writes letters to the Bihar Chief Minister about the abysmal state of affairs in his home state. The number of letters has reportedly crossed the three-figure mark. With Lalu eyeing bigger stakes on the national scene, Singh believes he has a definite chance in Patna.
Tussle over OBC quota The Supreme Court stay on the OBC quota has become a cause of tussle between HRD Minister Arjun Singh and Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj with the former bent upon having his way and hardly ready to toe the legal advice tendered by the latter. Insiders say the differences virtually have turned into a showdown between the two as Singh wanted that Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam, who had argued the case earlier, be kept away when the government’s application for vacating the stay is to be presented before the court. Bhardwaj’s preference for Subramaniam is cited as a reason for this and Singh wanted the case to be handled only by Solicitor General G.E. Vahanvati. On the intervention of the PMO both law officers have now been asked to appear in the court. It has to be seen how they are able to cope with the situation and iron out the differences between the two ministers and convince the court for vacating the interim stay.
Much gas about oil meeting The much-hyped conference on oil and gas ran out of steam even before it started with the organisers announcing that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will not attend the meet. Just as the top bosses of the oil exploration companies from India and abroad could take the blow, another was to follow. Petroleum Minister Murli Deora, who had given a written confirmation of attending the conference, conveniently forgot the event and was not even in the Capital. So all the focus was on Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma. It was announced that he would read out the speech of his senior minister Mukherjee. Sharma vociferously shook his head and informed former Ambassador to the US Abid Hussain, who was chairing the inaugural session, “I can speak for myself.” Hussain had to quickly make amends that Sharma would speak for himself only. Contributed by S. Satyanarayanan, S.S. Negi and R. Suryamurthy |
You will not enter paradise unless you have reverence of Ishwara; and you will not complete your reverence till you love all creations of
Ishwara. — The Vedas God created Nature and pervades it. — Guru Nanak Do not hesitate to protect yourself from evil. — The Upanishads I am a sacrifice unto You, O You who dwell in Nature. — Guru Nanak |
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