 |
|
Attack on liberalism Display of intolerance |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Lack of political will
Threat from SEZs
Yesterday once more
Son and substance Lessons for Brown from across the Atlantic India’s inconvenient truth
|
Attack on liberalism IT is the height of illiberalism that a student of fine arts of M.S. University of Baroda had to remain in jail for a few days for no other fault than giving a free rein to his creative instinct while doing an assignment. The paintings the students did were not for public display but for peer review and assessment by the teachers. But this did not prevent some Sangh Parivar activists from barging into the campus and creating a ruckus. Instead of taking action against them, Mr Narendra Modi’s police slapped some charges under the Indian Penal Code on the student, Chandramohan, and put him behind bars. It is unfortunate that the magistrate, who allowed his incarceration, did not bother to think about the injustice involved in the treatment meted out to him. Worse things followed when the Dean of the faculty to which the student belonged refused to close down the protest exhibition the students organised. For his uprightness, the Dean was suspended. All through, the university authorities seemed to dance to the whimsical tunes of the Parivar activists. It is an axiom that art and artists can flourish only in an atmosphere of freedom where there are no restrictions on creativity. History is witness to the fact that works of great artistic worth were created only in liberal societies. The relatively peaceful Elizabethan period in England and the Gupta period in India saw the profusion of art and literature. On the contrary, fundamentalist societies cannot tolerate works of art, as was manifest in the blasting to smithereens of the centuries-old Buddha statues in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Valley. Since time immemorial, India has remained a haven of artistic freedom as is borne out by the temple carvings in places as far apart as Konark and Khajuraho. It is nobody’s case that the nation is turning into a fascist citadel but incidents like the hounding of M.F. Husain, just because he painted some deities in the nude, the ban of a book on Sivaji and the highly unreadable Satanic Verses, the attack on the shooting of the film Water and the ritualistic attack on shops selling Valentine cards suggest that things are not hunky-dory on the liberal front. As the Baroda incident denotes the high-water mark of illiberalism, it needs to be protested by all those who want art and culture to flourish in the country without let or hindrance. |
|
Display of intolerance The
bloody clashes between the supporters of Dera Sacha Sauda and those of various Sikh organisations in Bathinda on Monday which left a large number of persons injured were only the spillover effect of the tension existing between the two sides ever since the Sirsa-based dera issued an edict to its followers to vote for the Congress in the recent Assembly elections in Punjab. This cost the Akalis quite a few seats in the Malwa region and left them sore. Under the circumstances, the “provocation” caused by a controversial advertisement inserted by the dera in various newspapers grew larger than life. What is worse, both sides engaged in a free for all, which was uncalled for, to say the least. A similar instance of an avoidable display of intolerance was SAD (Amritsar) chief Simranjit Singh Mann’s protest at Jalandhar over the installation of the statue of former Chief Minister Beant Singh. The problem is that Punjab has just come out of a very difficult phase of terrorism, which too began with similar clashes and tension. The situation should not at all be allowed to go out of hand yet again. The Great Gurus are too exalted to be aped or mocked by anyone. If taking offence at the dera chief dressing himself in a long robe was a case of over-reaction, so was the offence taken by the dera followers over an attempt to burn the effigy of their head. Democratic forms of protest cannot be silenced through unlawful means. In this case, it is not a question of who was right and who was wrong, but only that of who was more wrong. While committed followers of a sect or an organisation tend to be partisan, the police has to maintain strict neutrality. Equally significantly, it must be doing its duty diligently. Had it anticipated the tension that was in the air and taken preventive steps, no-holds-barred clashes may have been averted. It must recover lost ground and ensure that no one is allowed to take the law into his own hands, irrespective of his or her denomination or political dispensation. |
|
Lack of political will The
Prime Minister has promised incentives to states that will increase spending on agriculture — from the present 3.5 per cent of their outlay to 6 per cent — and make state-specific strategies to lift agricultural growth. To raise economic growth to 10 per cent, agricultural growth has to be at least 4 per cent. This is what the Eleventh Plan has proposed. How can it happen? The National Commission on Farmers headed by Mr M.S. Swaminathan has produced a five-volume report on what is wrong with agriculture and what needs to be done to make the Second Green Revolution a reality. However, the Centre is addressing only a part of the problem. The Union Budget for 2007-08 has doubled farm credit, cut interest rates on farm loans to 7 per cent and earmarked more funds for irrigation. The Prime Minister’s package for distressed farmers included the waiving of interest on loans and rescheduling of repayments. Now the Prime Minister has tried to rope in states by dangling sops. That may not work to the desired extent. The quality of leadership and governance in most states is unfortunately poor. Incentives alone will not lure them to perform better. The Centre needs to be a bit tough with them. Now that a study of the Indian Institute of Public Administration has established the advantages of power reforms, the Centre must ask the states to implement the Electricity Act. Growth is dependent heavily on power and there is an urgent need to generate more electricity and a foolproof distribution network. Water management and rainwater harvesting are the key to promoting dryland farming and expanding the area under wheat and pulses. Lack of quality inputs results in low productivity. Rural connectivity, linkages with markets, contract farming and supplementary income-generating avenues too should be on the agenda. What rural India needs is a specific, workable plan for agricultural growth through central and state coordination. Essentially, what is required is political will which is lacking both at the Centre and in the states. |
|
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
— William Blake |
Threat from SEZs
The
programme of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) has resulted in much agitation and confusion. The SEZ policy has undergone rapid changes. After the agitation in Nandigram, an Empowered Group of Ministers (eGOM) was set up to go into the matter, but it simply suggested a middle path which has left the concerned parties dissatisfied. Opponents of SEZs feel the idea has not addressed their core concerns while the corporate people feel their interest has not been adequately protected. If only a few SEZs were planned, perhaps, it would not have mattered. But hundreds of them are slated to come up all over the country. They have the potential of displacing substantial numbers of people. This would be on top of the ongoing displacement due to the many projects coming up (or planned) in the country like steel plants, power stations, airports and their expansion and road networks. The proponents of SEZs suggest that displacement is a necessary cost of development/ industrialisation. It is argued that SEZs are necessary to achieve high rates of growth, high levels of investment and for employment generation. Are these arguments valid? The SEZ policy has been implemented since 2006 with the notification of the rules. As per the official data, the economy prior to 2006 had already achieved a high rate of growth of 8 per cent and had shown record rates of investment at about 32 per cent of the GDP. Thus, SEZs are not necessary to achieve high levels of growth. Alternative policies can result in rapid growth. Another argument is that SEZs will result in a faster increase in exports. But even before they have come up, exports have risen rapidly in the last many years. So, they are not the only way to achieve this objective. Some have argued that they will provide the market that may otherwise narrow down and, therefore, help sustain the growth momentum. However, the world economy is slowing down. Dependence on exports from SEZs may result in a problem rather than a solution. If the export market remains at the expense of the home market, then the problem would persist and perhaps aggravate even if the world economy does not slow down. This is probed further in what follows. The SEZ policy is based on giving large concessions to the business community (foreign or indigenous). Concessions are proposed in corporation tax, income tax, customs, excise, services tax and sales tax. Land is being made available at cheap rates, etc. Thus, SEZs are guaranteeing a high rate of profit to their developers and the entrepreneurs setting up units there. This will lower the share of wages in the economy and adversely impact the mass consumption markets. Exports and investments will have to overcome this tendency of the market to contract. Exports may or may not rise given the uncertainty in the international market. Thus, much will depend on what happens to investments. Clearly, investments will rise in the SEZs due to the concessions being offered. However, at least a part of this will be at the expense of the existing investments in the rest of the economy. First, the existing assets will be destroyed on the land on which SEZs will come up. Like, in the case of agricultural land acquired to set up an SEZ, the investment in wells, irrigation, bunds, etc, would be lost substantially. Once agriculture in an area declines, the capital invested in related agricultural activity will also be wasted like in storage, transportation, oil-crushers, black-smithy, carpentry, etc. Apart from the loss of these tangible assets, there would be breakdown of a community and a way of life which is never valued. Second, given the incentives, capital from the non-SEZ areas would move to the SEZs to take advantage of the concessions. Factories would simply be shut down because a shift is not allowed. Earlier investment would be written off. In brief, due to these two reasons, the net investment would rise less than the gross investment would. These two aspects of loss in the capital stock would also substantially impact jobs — employment associated with them would also be destroyed. The impact on jobs would not just be the number of jobs created by the SEZs but also the number of jobs that would be lost due to them. Further, since the new industry in the SEZs is likely to be much more capital intensive than either agriculture that it would displace or the industry that would shift to the SEZs, the number of jobs likely to be created in the SEZs would be less than the jobs they would eliminate. Thus, unless investment rises by a very substantial amount, there would be a net loss of jobs. This would be in keeping with the trend of falling net number of jobs in the organised sector during the last seven years in spite of 65 per cent of all investment going into this sector. Could it be the case that those whose land will be acquired will receive compensation and they will invest and create jobs? This is unlikely since small industries are facing increasing sickness. Further, in this era of `core competency’, when businesses are going for specialisation and giving up their side-businesses, how feasible is it to expect agriculturists to suddenly become businessmen? A large part of the compensation may simply be blown up. Thus, the claim that jobs and the investment level would rise substantially is unlikely to fructify. If employment falls in the net, the market cannot grow unless investment grows substantially. But, as suggested above, net investment will not increase much. Thus, growth would not pick up and would be hard to sustain. The policy then amounts to giving concessions to the corporate sector and trying to achieve growth at a higher cost with all the costs falling on the farmers, tribals and workers. This will lead to a dramatic rise in disparities in society that are already getting accentuated due to the relative stagnation in agriculture and with growth concentrated in organised sector industry and services. Is taking the middle path, as the eGOM did, the correct thing? Not when the policy is unsuitable for the majority. Gandhiji argued that the policy-maker should `look at the last person’. Marginalisation of the marginalised cannot be right since that can only create further inequity. Already, there is much dissatisfaction in the country. Rather than douse the fires, the SEZ policy will only fuel them.n The writer teaches at JNU, New Delhi.
|
Yesterday once more
Every
now and again, I create a rumpus in my house making everyone search for my spectacles. This ends when my servant tells me that he can see them sticking out of my shirt pocket. It’s the same with “lost” keys, or forgetting the due dates of electricity and telephone bills or the birthdays and wedding anniversaries of my children. Senile decay? Maybe, though my doctor assures me that such memory lapses affect most people in my age group. In fact, an intriguing game that I play in my idle moments is trying to recall the names of my former colleagues and close friends whom I have not seen for many years. Sometimes, it takes me a minute or two to do so; at others, days later, when I am not making a conscious effort in this direction the name pops up by itself. In happy contrast to these spells of forgetfulness is my capacity to remember faces, names, places and events that took place several decades ago with the utmost clarity, down to the minutest detail. In the 1920s, when I was what would now be called a “teen-ager”, we lived in an old house on Nicholson Road just behind the northern portion of the city wall, the location of much carnage during the upheaval of 1857. Five minutes’ walk from our house brought me to the bazaar in Mori Gate (originally Moira Bastion) where lived that renowned Anglophile, Nirad Chaudhri. Near his residence was a bookseller, J.M. Jaina, whose shop I visited every Saturday to buy, for four annas, the latest issue of a magazine which contained, in serial form, the exploits of the super-sleuth, Sexton Blake and his stooge, Tinker. On Sunday evenings, escorted by our cook’s son, I was allowed to see a silent, English film at Delhi’s only cinema, the Elphinstone Picture Palace on Queen’s Road which led to the Old Delhi railway station. Tickets to the 2nd class cost eight annas. The projectors were powered by a gasfired generator in the compound which occasionally broke down whereupon the disappointed audience were told to line up at the ticket office and obtain refunds. My escort was greatly shocked at the kissing that went on in the films. I took great pains to explain that this was a form of greeting, like shaking hands, in Western countries and that there was nothing immoral about it. I don’t think I was able to quite convince him. Among my favourites on the silver screen were Douglas Fairbanks who made his mark with “The Thief of Baghdad” and his wife Mary Pickford who was also his leading lady, Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino, considered to be the handsomest male actor in Hollywood. He died in August, 1926. I went into mourning and eschewed sweets for a week! And, of course, there was the little man in baggy trousers and a bowler hat, the king of comedy, Charlie Chaplin. In his autobiography Chaplin says: “Through humour we see in what seems important, the unimportant, in what seems rational, the irrational. Because of humour we are less overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of life.” I dare say, today Chaplin’s brand of humour would be called “corny” by our young people. More’s the pity. It certainly brightened my little
world. |
Son and substance The
brothers Maran had it coming. They were getting too big for their boots. They forgot the simple fact that the boots, given by the DMK, can also be taken away by the DMK. Which is what patriarch Muthuvel Karunanidhi did when he had Dayanidhi Maran dropped from the Union Cabinet. The shoe on the foot of the other brother, Kalanidhi, has also begun pinching. Being well heeled is not enough to prevail in the DMK. Money and media power should be matched with political savvy, too. The Maran brothers were savvy as corporate honchos are, not in the gritty way of hard-bitten politicos. So, while Karunanidhi earns no cheers for keeping the party within the family, there may be few tears for Dayanidhi being dumped. Even for one who has been minister for information technology, Dayanidhi will find that it is not easy to reboot and start up again. He has no password to login to the DMK dialog box. He has been denied access. This is not the only irony. For a man who claims he made information technology and communication cheaper and easier across the country to attribute his fall from grace to “misinformation” is a bit rich. And rich as the Maran brothers are, the DMK will not be any the poorer for discarding them. The party, and the family interest to which it is dedicated, will be better served with Dayanidhi being made an example of what lies in store for anyone who steps out of line. At 84, Karunanidhi, who just celebrated 50 years as a legislator, has one overriding ambition: to see his son M K Stalin succeed him at the helm of the party and government. The party is Karunanidhi, and his family. But for his iron grip the party may not have overcome the many threats it faced, particularly from the time of the Emergency, to survive as the force it is today. Having withstood undemocratic dismissals from office, splits, defections, desertions and periodic machinations by Central agencies and the Congress party at the Centre to break the DMK, Karunanidhi is very proprietorial about the party. Through these various periods of crisis, a few stalwarts such as K. Anbazhagan and Arcot Veerasamy have remained steadfastly by his side. The late Murasoli Maran, father of Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi, was close to Karunandhi, and despite the latter’s affection for him, there were times when he was sidelined or kept out of the decision-making loop. When it comes to his political interests, Karunanidhi is most uncompromising. It is no secret that Karunanidhi favours Stalin as his political heir. Yet, Stalin unlike his brother M.K. Azhagiri is a politician in his own right. His political spurs were won in the dark days of the Emergency when he was put behind bars, where DMK activists were among the worst victims of torture. He was persecuted by successive AIADMK regimes and was Jayalalithaa’s special target. A former mayor of Chennai, he fought his political battles, emerged unscathed from the corruption cases foisted on him and never flexed his muscles as his father’s son. His low-key approach and deference to the stalwarts who struggled to make the DMK what it is today has gained him a large measure of acceptability across sections in the party. In contrast, Azhagiri is seen as a bit of a loose canon and was once expelled from the party. He represents ‘muscle’ power and has been a thorn in the side of Karunanidhi. However, while he could be “managed” within the party, he could be a source of greater trouble if kept out. With great difficulty Azhagiri has been kept in check in order to pave the way for Stalin. Such a fine balance that keeps the peace between the conflicting ambitions of his sons and in tune with party expectations is hard at the best of times. It is harder when he takes on the responsibility to build up the sons of his nephew Murasoli Maran. Dayanidhi was a political cipher until the DMK sent him to Parliament and the Union Cabinet. The fact that his portfolio could serve the interests of the Maran family’s media empire was ignored, thanks to Karunanidhi. Marans’ media business, with Sun TV as its flagship, has flourished because of the DMK’s patronage and Dayanidhi’s position. Unlike Karunanidhi’s sons who toil in the rough and tumble of state politics, Maran’s sons are on velvet. Flashy and fashionable, their lifestyle and conspicuous living were the cause of much resentment in the party. The proverbial last straw was the Maran family-owned daily, Dinakaran, publishing a poll that showed 70 per cent support for Stalin as Karunanidhi’s successor. Azhagiri, whose men went on a rampage, was provoked not by a meagre 2 per cent wanting him as Karunanidhi’s political heir; he was enraged that the poll gave him a mere 6 per cent in Madurai, which he sees as his fiefdom. To make matters worse, ‘Others’ in the survey ranked below Stalin and ‘Others’ was a euphemism for Dayanidhi. This upset the family, which closed ranks against the Maran clan. The poll was viewed as a deliberate ploy to stir fresh hostilities between Azhagiri and Stalin; and as a sign of the Maran brothers taking a deeper plunge in politics with Dayanidhi openly coveting the chief minister’s post. This was, doubtless, “detrimental to the interests” of the party, the interest of the party being the interest of Karunanidhi. Any queering of the pitch for Stalin, particularly by ambitious insiders, needed to be crushed swiftly and surely. The message – that the high profile, media power and financial clout of the Maran brothers do not give them any right to meddle in party politics – had to be driven home. Much to his peril, Dayanidhi presumed otherwise. Kalanidhi is on the block. Whether he has got a breather or this is just the pause between two acts has to be watched. |
|
Lessons for Brown from across the Atlantic
Who
could this be? He was convinced of his destiny from an early age and prepared for it by immersing himself in the small print of politics. He clambered effortlessly up the mountain of power. Then suddenly, with the summit at last in sight, he was overtaken by a slicker rival. Too decent to fight, he settled for an uneasy relationship with the victor, and a long, brooding, wait. Or this? At a time when his contemporaries were enjoying family life, his own was struck by tragedy. Never enough of a showman to enjoy the performance, he faltered repeatedly on the campaign trail and allowed himself to be talked into gimmickry. Everyone said he was much nicer, and wittier, in private. Watching British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown launch himself into this pretend-campaign for the Labour leadership, are you not struck by the resemblance? The Chancellor, with his new haircut and broader-shouldered suit, is a dead-ringer for the man who now introduces himself around the world as “once the next President of the United States”. Al Gore seemed a safe bet to succeed one of the most gifted American politicians of the 20th century. The assumption was that he would be carried safely to the White House in Bill Clinton’s slipstream. But his ambition was thwarted. Personally, Gore was never comfortable promoting himself. His constant image changes during the 2000 election campaign projected a man uncomfortable in his skin. He could not master the autocue either. Clinton’s assured genius eclipsed him. Gore was politically unlucky, too. Even when he and Clinton had ceased to be rivals, Clinton managed to blight Gore’s career. His big mistake – his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and his lies about it – resulted in impeachment. But he remained in office, largely because so many Americans forgave him. The real price was paid by Al Gore. Overnight, his years as Bill Clinton’s loyal vice-president turned from asset into liability. Instead of trading on his eight-year association with Clinton’s policy successes, Gore had to keep a distance. But he was not so convincing as President in his own right that his election was secure. Tony Blair set Gordon Brown a similar dilemma – the mistakes being plural and led by Iraq – or he would have done, if there were a real contest for the leadership. Even in this non-contest, Brown is constrained by the Blair bequest. ABC (Anything But Clinton) was the unspoken motto in the US 2000 elections. The subtext of Gordon Brown’s launch speeches is nothing so much as ABB. Everything is “new” – after a decade in which Brown has been the most senior member of the Blair government. Anything that has been inherited is unique to him – his manse upbringing, his “moral compass” and his running of the economy. In his launch speech, Brown even co-opted, in mutant form, one of Clinton’s most satisfying phrases – “there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right with America”. The Brown version – “there is no problem too big in Britain that cannot be sorted out by what’s best in Britain” – hardly has the same ring, but you get the idea. Might Gordon Brown have made a better Prime Minister 10 years ago? Then again, would such a clumsy campaigner have been electable without the Blair years? In the US, nostalgia for Gore has been a recurrent theme of the past 10 years. In one crucial respect, Brown is more fortunate than Al Gore. He has the practice-run of this non-contest before he must face the real thing. In 2000, Al Gore had to be anti-Clinton and anti-Bush at once. Even without his distaste for campaigning, he would have struggled. With luck, Gordon Brown can exorcise the demons of Tony Blair before preparing his assault on David Cameron’s green and pleasant land. If he has to fight on both fronts at once, he may find himself on the climate change circuit – his fate linked again with that of the once “next” US President. By arrangement with
The Independent |
|
India’s inconvenient truth The
star of this year’s Oscars was neither Martin Scorsese (who won for best director) nor Clint Eastwood or a host of Hollywood luminaries sitting on the front rows of the Shrine Auditorium. This year’s star was a man who likes to refer to himself as, “I used to be the next President of the United States.” It was Albert Gore, Jr. As Gore has said repeatedly, he did not set out to win an Oscar. Instead, after the disputed presidential elections of 2000, he set out to convince the world of an issue he cared deeply about, what he called An Incovenient Truth (also the title of the documentary for which he won the Oscar). Two years ago, global warming was still considered a fringe issue to many. Thanks to Al Gore’s film which has now grossed six million dollars worldwide, the issue has taken centerstage in world politics. While Gore has added star power to debates about global warming, Indian documentary filmmakers have been making movies on climate change for years. From the human and environmental disaster of Narmada valley project to melting of the Himalayan glaciers, our own homegrown filmmakers have been tackling these thorny topics long before Gore’s entry into the world of cinema. “People in India, unlike the West, don’t understand the seriousness of the issue,” said veteran documentary filmmaker Mike Pandey in a recent interview to Frontline magazine, “They think global warming is a fantasy. Indians are using fossil fuel like never before. We have constructed oven-like buildings and spend enormous energy cooling them.” Pandey laments about his own film, Global Warming, which went largely unnoticed when it was released in India a few years prior to An Inconvenient Truth. Limited funding sources, fewer venues, and apathetic audiences do not encourage good filmmaking about a troubling issue like climate change. In spite of handicaps, a handful of filmmakers in the subcontinent continue to do ground-breaking work. Chandigarh-based journalist Manmohan Singh’s recent film, The Wailing Glaciers, narrates how the glaciers in the western Himalayan region are melting at an alarming rate. Naresh Newar, a journalist from Nepal, whose film, Meltdown in Nepal, is a brilliant look at the melting of one of the biggest glaciers in the Solukhumbu region. Sanjay Kak’s documentary, Words on Water, is a thoughtful account of the human cost brought about by poor developmental planning and climate changes. Few in India know of a festival held in Bristol, UK, euphemistically referred to as the “Green Oscars” where filmmakers, from around the world, gather each year. Funded by the British government and World Wildlife Federation, films awarded at this festival are about environmental conservation, wildlife, and global climate change. While Indian filmmakers are ignored at the Oscars in Los Angeles, films from India, like the ones by Pandey and Kak, have won several “Green Oscars.” |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
