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Two faces of police Judicial misadventure |
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Sops for taxpayers
Not by de-recognition
Spellbound
Rise of Asia will be a challenge
for policy-makers in India, US New strain of TB a major threat Inside Pakistan
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Two faces of police THE involvement of three senior police officers in the killing of a Muslim couple in a fake encounter in Ahmedabad two years ago shows the ugly face of the police. However, there is a positive side to the story. The arrest of D.G. Vanzara, who headed the Anti-Terrorist Squad of the Gujarat police, and two other officers would not have been possible but for the painstaking effort of two police officers, Geeta Johri and Rajnish Kumar Rai. While the gutsy lady officer withstood all political pressures and prepared four reports which exposed the fake encounters, Rai picked up the thread from where she left it and went ahead to slap murder charges against the three IPS officers and have them arrested. The very fact that relatives of some of those who were killed in “encounters” in the past have come forward to demand an investigation into their killings shows the confidence these two officers have generated in the police system. The problem is that the black sheep among the policemen have been multiplying with such rapidity that they outnumber all the other sheep, white or grey. There are reports of police chiefs causing a shame to the system when they face charges that they laid greater emphasis on lining their pockets with ill-gotten wealth and building palatial houses wherever they had a posting than doing honest police duty. A senior police officer in Orissa is accused of shielding his son, a fugitive from the law, who had been found guilty of raping a foreign girl. The gruesome Nithari killings would not have happened if the beat police had done their duty and their boss had not enjoyed the hospitality of the man in whose house in Noida, the killings were carried out. Membership of the Indian Police Service entitles the officers to security of tenure, assured promotions and reasonable comforts of life, both during and after service. At the time of their induction into service, it is dinned into them that they do not have to fear anyone and have to obey only the Constitution. Yet, many of them have no compunction in throwing the rulebook and their sense of duty to the winds and do the unthinkable as in the case of Vanzara. It is they who cause disrepute to the police, who are otherwise the custodians of law. The earlier they are weeded out, the better it will be for the police. |
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Judicial misadventure FRIVOLOUS litigation has been the bane of judiciary. Of late, it has reached endemic proportions, especially in the subordinate courts. Unfortunately, the judges concerned do not apply their mind properly while admitting petitions. Why should they admit complaints that do not need any interpretation of the law and adjudication at all? By doing so, they are not only wasting their precious time and energy but also of the courts and the litigants. The ruling of the Jaipur Chief Judicial Magistrate directing the police to arrest Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty for the kissing episode is an example of judicial misadventure. Surely, the magistrate had far more important things to do than admitting a frivolous complaint and then ordering the duo’s arrest. A number of cases have also been filed against Mandira Bedi’s controversial sari with flags of different nations and against Rakhi Sawant for dancing in a skimpy dress. The problem is not confined to the subordinate courts alone. Consider how a single judge of the Allahabad High Court, in response to a petition, ruled that Muslims in Uttar Pradesh did not constitute a minority. In view of the importance and sensitivity of the matter, the judge should have refrained from entertaining the petition and pronouncing his verdict. Luckily, his order was overruled by the High Court, but the message is clear that he did not do his homework. The courts are bursting at the seams with pending cases. The judges ought to work hard to clear them and expedite the pace of justice. The suggestion that there should be a judicial code of conduct to check instances of misadventure needs to be acted upon. Public interest litigation is another area that merits attention. There is no check on the increasing abuse of PILs. The Supreme Court has framed certain guidelines for governing the management and disposal of PILs. Why are these guidelines not being enforced? The courts must ensure that the petitioners are bona fide and they have no axe to grind. |
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Sops for taxpayers EMPLOYEES living in accommodation provided by their employers along with cement consumers are the major beneficiaries of the tax relief announced by Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday before the Lok Sabha passed the Finance Bill. The government has reduced the value of the employer-provided accommodation for tax purposes depending on the population of the city where it is located. What is more, according to some reports, this benefit will be available with retrospective effect from 2005-06 when the existing perquisite tax rates were introduced. That this could lead to complications has not weighed much on the Finance Minister, who is not known for simplifying things. Another instance of Mr Chidambaram’s complicating matters comes from the imposition of a dual tax structure on cement. The aim of having a lower tax on cement sold at or below Rs 190 a bag was to encourage manufacturers to reduce the cement price to avail themselves of the tax benefit. The FM’s move to contain inflation backfired as the cement manufacturers passed the higher tax burden on to the consumer by raising the cement prices. Since the demand for cement outstripped its supply, consumers were ready to pay more. Now yielding some ground, the FM has cut the tax, which could lower the price of cement by Rs 6 a 50-kg bag. Mr Chidambaram has also announced changes in the tax calculation norms for the employee stock options (ESOPs). Again, it is not a simple relief. Now, ESOPs will be valued for taxation on the date on which these are given to employees, not when employees encash them. There is confusion on tax calculations if the company share price falls on the date of selling the stocks. The fine print may clarify matters, but why not be simple and direct? It is now widely accepted that tax compliance increases manifold if the tax procedures are simplified and the tax rates are low and reasonable. Mr Chidambaram, hopefully, knows that. |
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Who finds a faithful friend, finds a
treasure.— Jewish saying |
Not by de-recognition
TO derecognise or not to derecognise — that is not the question. It, certainly, is not the real issue raised by the infamous compact disc (CD), which records the unwritten manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the ongoing Assembly elections in the country’s most populous and therefore politically most important State of Uttar Pradesh. At the time of writing, the Election Commission has reserved its ruling on the issue. It has done so after hearing the legal luminaries doubling as the leaders of the BJP and the Congress, besides others. The former, who leave all crude propaganda to compact discs and similar other devices, have taken a lofty stand against the commission deciding questions of ideology like secularism. They have also taken the technical plea that a party cannot be derecognised for such a minor delinquency as violation of the non-enforceable model code of conduct. The Congress, for its part, has combined its demand for derecognition of its main rival at the national level to one for a public apology for the offending disc. The contents of the disc, meanwhile, have received far wider dissemination than the cadre of the BJP and the “parivar” (the far-right “family”) could have given them in the sprawling State. For those who take an elevated view of our electoral exercises and disregard sordid details such as found in reports on the disc, it presents issues of fundamental importance to the party in a dramatic format. It depicts the threat from a terrorist minority in diverse and dire forms. Without mumbling about “members of a certain community”, as “pseudo-secularists” may do, the disc has identifiable Muslims impersonating Hindus and committing heinous crimes and sins like killing cows and stealing girls of the majority community. It also talks of the Muslims engaging in rapid reproduction in order to reduce the Hindus to a minority. And, of course, it tags them as the “terrorists” who Given the poisonous potency of the package, the mention of the Babri Masjid demolition would appear to be its only milk-and-water part. The immediate response of the BJP to the revelation of the contents of the CD, released officially, was to disown it and attribute it to outside conspirators. After its chief-ministerial candidate, Mr. Kalyan Singh, spoke up in defence of the disc (“nothing wrong with it”), the party has also moved to the aggressive mode. Elder non-statesman L. K. Advani even saw “an Emergency-type situation” developing as a result of the demand for action on the disc! The party-political debate may continue until the cows come home (unless ambushed by those minority miscreants). Some of the basic facts about the BJP’s poll propaganda, however, are yet to figure in the debate, and unlikely to do so. The first of these facts is that the disc really says nothing different or new. It only uses a new technology to repeat the traditional poll-time message of the “parivar”. No reporter, who has covered any election campaign of the BJP or its parent Jan Sangh at the grassroots, can really be shocked at the electronic version of the same. Election after election, strident calls for arms against the “enemies within” have been issued in street-corner rallies, without provoking so much as a mention of any model code of conduct. Another basic fact, which media apologists for the BJP are trying hard to fudge, is that the disc’s contents are not just a crude version of the party’s policies. A “liberal vision of democracy”, according to this line of defence, demands that the disgust at the disc should not be allowed to obfuscate the serious issues it poses, even if in an inelegant manner. The argument cannot be more absurd. It is the party’s policy, its propaganda that represents a crude distortion — or communalisation — of serious issues before the country. Nobody can deny, for example, that terrorism is indeed a serious issue, but it is only communalised when presented as nothing but a product of pampered “minorityism”. Even cow protection can be propagated as the need to preserve milch cattle, as done by Mahatma Gandhi who blamed Indians as a whole for neglecting this national resource. Or it can be communalised, as done by the disc and devotees of Godse, by portraying the Muslims as indulging in a massacre of cows just for some “jihadi” fun. (It is hard to see any serious issue behind the dramatic scene in the disc that depicts some Muslims having non-“jihadi” fun with a Hindu girl. But, the party propagandists may see it as the “masala”, the spice, needed to sell the party’s serious message.”) Just as the medium is the message in modern advertising, crudity is indeed the content of such propaganda. What devices like this disc are designed to promote is a debate that generates not mere heat, but murderous hate. The BJP remembers how the Babri Masjid demolition and its bloody trail helped transform it from a two-member party in the Lok Sabha into the main Opposition. The party is also proud of the way it used a pogrom to polarise the vote and score a major electoral victory in Mr Narendra Modi’s Gujarat. It is trying a similar track in UP. More absurd than other arguments in defence of the disc and the BJP is the claim that equates such a rude, utterly uncultured campaign with “cultural nationalism”. If the disc has little to do with culture, the divisive propaganda has even less to do with a nationalism that sees a need for the Indian people’s unity. The anti-minorityism that finds an obscene display in the disc is actually a policy against the interests of India’s majority in any but the sectarian, religious sense. It is a doubtful if the disc will lead to the BJP’s de-recognition. Even if the party faces some other legal action, it will have little effect on the electoral campaigns of the “parivar”. Mr Balasaheb Thackeray of the Shiv Sena was disenfranchised for six years for his communally inflammatory speeches during a Maharashtra Assembly byelection campaign in 1987. Can anyone claim that this turned the Fuehrer of the country’s financial capital into a practitioner of more tolerant politics? Not legal derecognition of the party, but a clear political recognition of its ideological character is what the contents of the BJP’s disc call for. No such recognition is evident, alas, in the Congress counter-campaign, the main highlight of which in UP has been a bratty boast about a former Prime Minister’s role in “breaking Pakistan”.
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Spellbound SPELLING Bee is a popular American competition in which participants have to spell words most people haven’t even heard of, such as “cephalalgia” or “onomatopoeia”. Precocious teenagers of Indian origin are among those who rack their brains for the right answer before time runs out. Watching the stimulating contest on TV took me two decades back, conjuring up memories of my history teacher in Class IX who loved to point out spelling mistakes in his students’ answer sheets. I was in his good books not for my answers but for the low number of misspelt words in my sheet. His prime target was one bona fide back-bencher. The latter, who came from a rural Punjabi background, looked like a fish out of water in our English-medium school. Almost every day, this boy was asked to spell common words like “battle” or “empire”. He got most of them wrong, much to the amusement of our teacher and the entire class. The constant embarrassment — by today’s hypersensitive standards, it would amount to harassment — ultimately became intolerable for the victim. He sought my help in giving the teacher a taste of his own medicine. “Find me a really difficult word,” he implored. “I’ll ask him to spell it.” He wasn’t a close friend of mine, but still I agreed, anticipating a mouth-watering showdown. I searched the dictionary, and the toughest word I could find was “plebiscite”. My classmate wrote it down several times in his notebook to memorise its spelling, hopeful that it would do the trick. The next day, before our teacher could begin the oral test, the sitting duck stood up and declared in broken English, “Sir, today me ask you to spell word.” The “spell-check” was taken aback by this audacity, but he quickly regained his composure. “Why not? Go ahead, young man,” he said. “How you spell ‘play-be-sit’?” the boy asked, barely pronouncing the word properly. Pat came the retort — “I doubt whether you know its spelling yourself.” “Me do very well. What about you?” With 50 pairs of eyes fixed on him, our teacher had no choice but to take up the gauntlet. He picked up a piece of chalk and wrote PLEBISCITE with bold strokes on the blackboard. “I hope I’ve got it right?” he asked smilingly. “Yes, sir,” came the wry reply from my deflated partner-in-mischief. After the class, he wondered why the hell had I chosen such an “easy”
word! |
Rise of Asia will be a challenge
for policy-makers in India, US
INDIA, like the United States, is entering a complex geopolitical environment that is likely to survive for at least another two decades. This environment will be characterised by the continuing dominance of the United States in the global system. However, the center of gravity in international politics, which is certain to shift from Europe to Asia, will produce at least four candidate great powers that could challenge Washington over time: Russia, Japan, China, and India. From this list, however, only China-for various reasons explored in the lecture-is likely, not certain, to materialise as a peer competitor to the United States in the future. The American response to this possibility currently does not comport with either the classical Realist, the conventional Realist, or the Liberal internationalist prescriptions in their pure form: The United States rejected the option of preventive war that would be advocated by classical Realism. It has also demurred from implementing a containment strategy that would be advocated by conventional Realism. And, it is uncertain whether the solutions of democratising China or tightly increasing economic interdependence with Beijing-the solutions issuing from Liberal internationalism-would prevent future geopolitical rivalry between the two countries. Washington’s current approach to the emerging challenge of Asian geopolitics, therefore, reflects its own heritage of American exceptionalism, which combines elements from both the Realist and the Liberal traditions. First, it emphasises not constraining Beijing but engaging it, while simultaneously increasing the strength of other states on China’s periphery. Second, it seeks to protect the American capacity for sustained Third, it continues to invest in the technological bases for ensuring military superiority and uninterrupted access to the Asian continent. Fourth, and finally, it endeavors to adapt its existing alliances to meet future challenges, while concurrently building new strategic partnerships This multifaceted strategy is driven fundamentally by the conviction that the emerging Asian geopolitical environment will not be characterized solely by strategic rivalry - as was the case with the Soviet Union - but rather by different kinds of security competition that will coexist with deepening economic interdependence. The presence of growing economic interdependence among states that might otherwise be political rivals implies that a country will aid its competitors in producing the very national power that may be used against itself, just as its competitors, in turn, would contribute to the production of that very national power which could be used against themselves as well. This peculiar reality implies that India, like the United States, has to cope with a new Asian geopolitical universe where strategic threats are diffuse and attenuated, but never disappear and, more importantly, where the very forces that increase one’s prosperity also contribute to the increase in the dangers confronting oneself. In such circumstances, New Delhi will be confronted by three unsettling certainties. First, India, like the United States, will not have the freedom to pursue simple and clear strategic policies, but only complex and ambiguous ones that will leave no single constituency – foreign or domestic – fully satisfied. Second, India, like the United States, will have to perform a delicate juggling act which involves developing deep and collaborative bonds-political, economic, strategic-with a set of friends that are likely to be of greatest assistance to it (in relative terms), even as it seeks to pursue deepened interdependence with its prospective competitors. Third, and finally, India, like the United States, will have to develop the organisational and psychological capacity for diplomatic, political, and strategic agility because of the perpetual course correction that will be essential for geopolitical success in a globalised world. The above is a summary of the writer’s address delivered after receiving the Professor M.L. Sondhi Prize for International Politics for
2006. |
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New strain of TB a major threat
MOSCOW – A virulent strain of tuberculosis resistant to most available drugs is surfacing around the globe, raising fears of a pandemic that could devastate efforts to contain TB and prove deadly to people with immune-deficiency diseases such as HIV-AIDS. Known formally as extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB, the strain has been detected in 37 countries. It arises when the bacterium that causes TB mutates because antibiotics used to combat it are carelessly administered by poorly trained doctors or patients don’t take their full course of medication. Rather than being killed by the drugs, the microbe builds up resistance to them. At least 50 percent of those who contract this strain of Tuberculosis will die of it, according to medical experts. In trying to stop the spread of the disease, which can be transmitted through coughing, spitting or even speaking, health officials have imposed sometimes extreme controls on infected people. Robert Daniels, a 27-year-old dual Russian-U.S. citizen, underwent months of treatment for TB in Russia, where he often led a homeless existence. After telling people he was feeling better, he flew from Moscow to New York on January. 14 last year, then on to Phoenix, Arizona. In fact, his disease had not disappeared. The microbe causing it had mutated, apparently helped by his failure to complete a drug regimen in Russia. Weeks after arriving in Phoenix, Daniels was again coughing, feeling weak and losing weight. Doctors in Phoenix diagnosed his illness as the new resistant strain of Tuberculosis. Daniels again failed to follow doctors’ orders, authorities say. So health officials got a court order, and he was locked up in the prison wing of a Phoenix hospital, where he has spent the past nine months in hermetically sealed isolation. “It’s not right,” Daniels said in a telephone interview. “I’m not a criminal.” Daniels has become a case study in the bleak choices society faces in dealing with the new strain and attempting to balance protection of individual rights with protection of the public. Even in the antibiotics age, Tuberculosis has remained a scourge in poorer countries and communities. Today, one in three people globally is estimated to be infected with dormant Tuberculosis, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Most will never get sick, but in one in 10 cases the bacterium becomes active when the host’s immune system is compromised. Worldwide, an estimated 1.7 million people die every year of the disease. The CDC survey was followed by a report from Yale University researchers that the superbug had raged through a rural hospital in South Africa in 2005 and early 2006, killing 52 of 53 who contracted it, including six health care workers. The victims, apparently infected by airborne transmission of the virus, died on average just 16 days after diagnosis; most of them also had HIV. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Inside Pakistan THE North-West Frontier Province, already suffering from the depredations of Al-Qaida and the Taliban, is in for another kind of crisis. It is related to the NWFP’s oil and gas reserves. The tribesmen, particularly in two districts, Karak and Kohat, have launched a drive against the government in Islamabad to expose its discriminatory policies with regard to the natural wealth of the poverty-stricken areas. There is no gas supply to Karak and Kohat from the fields located in the two districts whereas areas in Punjab are benefiting from it considerably. According to researcher Raza Khan (The News, April 29), Kohat district’s Nazim and 20 other Nazims have approach the Peshawar High Court, which has issued a stay order, “restraining the Oil and Gas Development Company Limited and the Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited from supplying gas to Punjab from Gurguri, Makori and Chanda fields” in the NWFP. These companies, however, argue that the court has “only admitted the case to full hearing”. Massive oil and gas exploration activity is on in Kohat and Karak districts and some other NWFP areas, and there are chances of discovering more reserves. However, the local people are not happy with what is going on. They are frustrated because of the “denial of their legitimate rights”. They are also disappointed with the provincial government of the MMA as it has spent little on the two districts from the 2.5 per cent share of the proceeds from the oil and gas fields it gets annually. Though independent observers do not see a “parallel of Dera Bughti (Balochistan) at present” in the situation developing in the two NWFP districts, provincial political parties like the Awami National Party and the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party have jumped into the fray. They cannot ignore the “serious problem” gradually turning into a Pakhtoon vs non-Pakhtoon issue.
Shaky agreement A product of Pakistan’s ill-advised move for strategic depth, the Taliban continues to be a tormenting factor for the government in Islamabad. Taliban-related terrorism in Afghanistan is the main cause for the deterioration in Islamabad’s relations with Kabul. While Taliban activists continue to attack their targets in Afghanistan by using their bases in Pakistan’s border areas, the government in Islamabad denies its involvement. The US, which has developed considerable stakes in the region, refuses to believe Pakistan obviously because it knows the reality: the ISI’s clandestine support to the Taliban. Under mounting international pressure, President Gen Pervez Musharraf and President Hamid Karzai have held two meetings outside their own countries, but the situation remains unchanged. The latest meeting between them was organised in the Turkish capital, Ankara, a few days back, but it turned out to be “a non-meeting” as The Daily Times commented. The paper said: “Shockingly, the Press reported that Musharraf and Karzai, who traded harsh accusations ahead of the meeting – including the Pakistan President calling his Afghan counterpart a ‘liar’ – did not shake hands as they appeared before the media. Instead, they stood on either side of Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who held and raised their hands as they posed for photographers.” Former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Najmuddin A. Shaikh in an article in Dawn (May 2) quoted a Turkish diplomat as saying, “the very fact that they managed to agree to a joint declaration is itself very important”. But in Shaikh’s opinion, “Unfortunately, in most ways the Ankara declaration is an example of ‘plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose’ - or the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Business Recorder has pointed out in a recent editorial that “whenever there is a crisis situation in a country, the economy is bound to suffer. It may sometimes be the case that adverse consequences are not immediately apparent.” This is contrary to the view expressed by Mr Ashfaque Hasan Khan, Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Pakistan. He says the economy’s base has broadened and industrial growth was about 10 per cent during the first eight months of the current fiscal against the year’s target of 12 per cent. “However, the optimism of the Economic Adviser with regard to the impact of the current judicial crisis on the economy appears to be largely misplaced. It needs to be remembered that the impact of such events is usually not instantaneous. “For instance, foreign investment, to which he referred to in the briefing to make his point, may have been committed many months before the judicial crisis or prior to March, 2007. Similarly, other activities in the economy do not stop at the drop of a hat but are influenced gradually and sometimes grind almost to a halt if the situation is allowed to deteriorate over time”, the Recorder rightly pointed out. |
In Ishwara's realm keep yourselves far from envy and anger because these eat up and take away good actions as fire eats up and burns the wood. —The Vedas My greatest worry is the ignorance and poverty of the masses of India, and the way in which they have been neglected by the classes, especially the neglect of the Harijans by the Hindus. —Mahatma Gandhi |
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