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A homoeopathic dose Deaths in Tihar |
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Ensuring food security
The sword of Damocles
Bush’s support to Mush pushes Pak towards crisis J&K needs more roads Legal Notes
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A homoeopathic dose Building
a house in new colonies of Punjab will become more expensive as Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal has extended the change-of-land-use charges, applicable hitherto in the periphery of Chandigarh, to the entire state. The buyer of a house, however, will breathe a little easier as the stamp duty has been reduced a bit from 6 per cent to 5 per cent. One more blow: the tax on state lottery draws has been doubled. Only snuff-users have a reason to be happy as the minister has waived the 12.5 per cent VAT to help those with stuffy noses. These are some of the main features of Mr Manpreet Badal’s maiden Budget, which had raised high expectations and could have been bolder. In his first address to the assembly and also during his frequent interaction with the media, the young Finance Minister had been painting a dismal picture of the state’s finances he had inherited. One thought he was preparing the ground for some tough measures and had some innovative plans to pull the state out of the fiscal mess where it had landed due to years of political profligacy and populism. The Budget does not offer any new roadmap for either industry or agriculture to move forward. There is neither any rescue plan for sick PSUs nor any mention of their disinvestment. But his hands seemed tied due to political compulsions of his party leadership. Although it is difficult for a young, new minister to roll back populist policies and cut a bloated babudom, he has in his own idealistic way proposed a voluntary cut of Rs 1,000 a month in the salary of the Chief Minister and the Cabinet ministers as well as a cut of Rs 1,000 a year in the salary of all Class-I officers in the state. This may be a nice gesture, but the need is to do much more to tackle administrative expenditure that requires more a massive surgery than a homeopathic dose. If the minister wants to cut administrative expenses, he can press for the abolition of the posts of Parliamentary Secretary and winding up of all unwanted and unproductive departments and offices. The minister blames the previous Congress government for leaving unfunded liabilities. The non-release of funds received from the Centre as well as the outgo on salaries, pensions and interest payments has complicated the financial situation. “The position is so grim”, he rues, “the state has no resources of its own for funding the plan….” For private investment not coming to Punjab he blames Central tax concessions to Himachal Pradesh, Uttarkhand and J and K while the real reasons for industry staying away from Punjab are red tape, corruption and poor infrastructure. Lack of power is largely holding back industrial and agricultural resurgence. Blame it on competitive populism. Earlier, free power to farmers and sections of the poor had drained state resources. Now the dal-roti scheme will cost the exchequer Rs 527 crore. The Budget has the stamp of Mr Parkash Singh Badal. There is a 43 per cent higher allocation for agriculture and 22 per cent for irrigation. There will be a social security fund getting money from a 5 per cent cess on the electricity duty and 3 per cent additional stamp duty on urban land transactions. While the ban on recruitment will continue with some relaxation, a new department of employment generation has been created. Infrastructure has got some attention: there is a 64 per cent increase in funds for roads, 55 per cent for education, 40 per cent for health and 15 per cent for power. But earmarking more money does not automatically mean a better outcome, especially when the system is so badly leaky and creaky. The Planning Commission has predicted that Punjab’s growth will be slowest in the country during the 11th Plan period. Mr Manpreet Badal himself admits this much. But he needs to sharpen his ideas. The Budget does not show any clear way. Haryana has a smaller tax base, but it collects higher revenue than Punjab. The state needs a specific plan to conserve water, harvest rainwater and rejuvenate ground water if agriculture is to sustain. Education needs to provide skills in demand. It all boils down to political will and governance, and the Finance Minister alone cannot do much about it. |
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Deaths in Tihar Tihar
Jail in New Delhi, Asia’s largest prison, was once recognised as a role model for prison reforms. Today, its reputation has plummeted. The jail authorities are not bothered even though seven prisoners died last week. They maintain that the inmates died of various reasons like stomach pain, dysentery, dehydration, kidney ailment or brief illness. The Delhi High Court, the Lt-Governor of Delhi, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and some NGOs have voiced concern about the deaths, but it is not clear what measures the Delhi government is taking to improve jail conditions. Lt-Governor Tejinder Khanna has ordered a magisterial inquiry. The NHRC has also sent a fact-finding team to the jail. The Medical Superintendent of the nearby Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Hospital has said that the intense heat might have contributed to the deaths. One cannot overrule this factor. However, the deaths of seven prisoners are a cause for concern and warrant a thorough probe. Serious action should also be taken against all those responsible for bringing things to such a sorry pass. Overcrowding is, certainly, a big problem. Even though Tihar Jail can accommodate 6250 prisoners, it currently has over 13,500 inmates. Apart from low-roofed barracks, and poor lighting and poor sanitation, there are inadequate medical facilities and doctors. The authorities need to explain the reasons for the steady deterioration of services in the premier jail. The Delhi High Court has sought an explanation from the administration. As a first step, it has ordered the release of 600 inmates held for petty offences. Why is the Delhi government not expediting its plan to decongest Tihar Jail? One does not know whether it is serious about its plan to start the construction of another jail at Mandoli, near Nandnagari. What happened to its proposals to construct jails at Baparaula, near Dwarka, and Pappan Kalan in outer Delhi? Owing to the increasing incidence of crime in and around Delhi, the government will have to explore ways and means to decongest Tihar Jail urgently. |
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Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave/ When they think that their children are naive.
— Ogden Nash |
Ensuring food security
Pricked
by the perceived foodgrain shortage and the dismal rate of growth in the agriculture sector, the Central government has woken up to provide Rs.25,000 crore for boosting farm production in the country. It is a welcome step, and the right line of action for the states will be to chalk out their specific programmes for the purpose. In order to qualify for this Central assistance, the states have to make their base-line provisions. This will not let the states go complacent on the provision of their own funds. Yet, such improvements in productivity and production cannot be realised with money alone. For rendering right prescription, the problem must be diagnosed to its roots. First, the foodgrain shortage is not that serious as has been drummed up in order to justify imports. We had 4.6 million tonnes of wheat and 13.2 million tonnes of rice on the reckoning date of April 1, 2007. Wheat this season is a bumper crop, estimated at 74 million tonnes by the Ministry of Agriculture itself. Yet, fixing of ambitious procurement targets indicating restlessness on the part of the government and the announcements to build up wheat stocks through imports created sentiments of scarcity in the domestic market. Banning of exports, disallowing future trading in wheat and allowing zero-duty imports, further fuelled the sentiments of scarcity. This sensitised the global market also and grain suppliers started quoting higher prices on the tenders floated by the government. The process became self-feeding and bigger farmers started holding back their produce and dealers and grain handlers began hoarding, which affected the arrivals in the domestic market. Government stipulations to supply weekly information on the stocks held beyond 50,000 tonnes strengthened the sentiments of scarcity. Instead of a “handle with care” approach, the inept handling of the double-edged weapon of food policy and mismanagement of food stocks landed the country into the situation in which it is today. Given that food production has to be put on a sustainable higher growth path from the point of view of food security for fast increasing population and changing consumption patterns, policy makers have to realise that today agriculture is suffering from several shades of fatigue. The first is the technology fatigue. No doubt, various agricultural universities and research institutes are releasing new varieties of crops, including cereal crops, yet the claimed yield increases have remained only marginal and often with no improvements at the field level. No technological improvement of the type that was achieved in the mid-sixties in wheat and in the early seventies in rice has been witnessed to sustain the process of the Green Revolution. Genetic engineering has succeeded in the development of Bt cotton and GM crops like Soyabean and maize. Yet, safety considerations are slowing down the adoption of crops other than Bt cotton. GMO research has not made any impact on wheat and rice as yet. There is a vast scope for research on GM technology. We have been using fish gene to improve cold tolerance and shelf life of tomatoes. Even virus genes have been tried to promote growth, and bacterial genes have been incorporated for pest resistance. Hundreds of plant genes have been validated in various research institutes that hold tremendous potential for crop improvement. For instance, the Institute of Himalayan Bio-resource Technology has found a plant — named potentilla — in alpine region and validated the gene that has high-degree tolerance to below minus 40 degree temperature and remained active at more than 50 degree high temperature. Thus, even within the plant kingdom, there is tremendous scope for crop improvement through genetic engineering. Therefore, the first priority must go to strengthening of research in biotechnology, molecular biology, GM technology and informatics in order to relieve the technology fatigue and make a leap-frog progress on increasing agriculture productivity through these innovative techniques. In order to put the national research system on long-term sure footing, important agricultural universities and research institutes must be helped to build up their corpus funds to at least Rs 500 crore each through a period of five years. These funds may be dedicated to the respective state governments. The institutions should use the interest accrued on these corpus funds to finance research on cutting edge technologies, futuristic research and high-end education courses. Straightjacket ad hoc provisions, with no flexibility granted to the institutions, lead to huge wastages with sub-optimal results. Soil fatigue is another major problem from which agriculture suffers in the irrigated areas of the country through intensive cultivation of exhaustive crops like wheat and rice. Soils need to be rehabilitated and the cropping pattern changed to put production in these areas on a sustainable growth path. Irrigation water is becoming scarcer by the day. The Green Revolution that depended on an assured higher level of irrigation has played havoc on the water balance of high productivity areas, and underground water tables are receding at an alarming rate. Crops and production patterns as well as agronomic practices must get modified that are attuned to consume less water. Rain-fed crops are the major source of instability in agriculture and food production. This sub-sector in agriculture must receive due attention in the thrust on increasing farm production. The recent decision to create the Rain-Fed Agriculture Authority with a liberal budget is the right step taken by the Central government, though quite belatedly. Another aspect is the yawning gap that exists between the genetic potential of crops and animals and the experimental/laboratory results, and also between experimental/laboratory results and field-level achievement. These gaps can be bridged only through focussed research and effective extension education reach to the farmers, which is not so easy at this stage. Extension workers suffer from lack of mobility and there is not much of accountability placed on them. Yet another important aspect is that instead of whipping the tired horse of intensively cultivated irrigated areas of the country, the emphasis should be on yoking in of the high potential areas of gangetic plains to boost foodgrain production through developing the needed infrastructure, improved technology applications and market clearance incentives to farmers. The intensively cultivated areas should receive emphasis on crop diversification that improves soils, lowers irrigation-water requirements and improves the incomes of farmers. Thus, the provision for funds alone will not achieve the desired results on a sustainable basis. Even the district-level planning, envisaged with right intentions, will end up in a routine as it happened with the block-level planning earlier. The underlying constraints in different agro-ecological zones have to be identified and the needed infrastructural investment, research reorientation, extension system revamping and the market reach with the system’s conduct and performance have to be synchronised through a holistic policy approach before the country can hope to put its agriculture sector on the intended higher and sustainable growth
path.
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The sword of Damocles
The
journey of the thought associated with the sword of Damocles began long ago. One was not aware of the facts and figures behind it; one only knew it was a legend or a story from Greek mythology on some such thing. The thought associated itself with a ceremonial sword, which was more or less never used, then disposed of when the time came. A new one arrived, presented by a well-meaning friend and kept by as a precious gift. The thought then manifested itself in a song of the famous Razia Sultan who had to use the sword. It became a representation of a fear which could or needn’t be overcome. It became a weapon of the warrior queens who taught that those who live by the sword die by the sword. It became a monkey on the back all the time. If you succeed it’s great, if you don’t it bites. Most of the time it’s an irritant. The sword then found its answer in self-help books, doctors and counsellors, who weren’t of much help, as you had to follow your own gut feeling. It found itself in Gandhi’s teachings, who taught the passage of truth, and more so, your own truth. He also taught to do or die. So, it was either the frying pan or the fire — “agni path, agni path, agni path” — to quote the late Harivansh Rai Bachchan. It became the long forgotten ghost of Hamlet — to be or not to be. It more or less vanished when one chose a role model — one who was inevitably necessary. It resulted in following one golden rule — when in doubt say no, go on saying no, no, no all one’s life and become a big zero — stop being a hero, its less complicated. The sword completely vanished when one chose the penultimate, a favourite God, who promised to save one’s miserable life. Or did He — for He was also the one who taught — don’t love your enemies, fight them. The sword was
back. |
Bush’s support to Mush pushes Pak towards crisis LAHORE— Pakistan is on the brink of disaster, and the Bush administration is continuing to back the man who dragged it there. As President Pervez Musharraf fights off the most serious challenge to his eight-year dictatorship, the United States is supporting him to the hilt. The message to the Pakistani public is clear: To the Bush White House, the war on terrorism tops everything, and that includes democracy. The roots of the crisis go back to the blind bargain Washington made after 9/11 with the regime that had heretofore been the Taliban’s main patron: ignoring Musharraf’s despotism in return for his promises to crack down on al-Qaida and cut loose the Taliban. Today, despite $10 billion in US aid to Pakistan since 2001, that bargain lies in tatters; the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and al-Qaida’s senior leadership has set up another haven inside Pakistan’s chaotic border regions. The problem is exacerbated by a dramatic drop-off in US expertise on Pakistan. Retired American officials say that, for the first time in US history, nobody with serious Pakistan experience is working in the South Asia bureau of the State Department, on State’s policy planning staff, on the National Security Council staff or even in Vice President Cheney’s office. Current and past US officials tell me that Pakistan policy is essentially being run from Cheney’s office. The vice president, they say, is close to Musharraf and refuses to brook any US criticism of him. This all fits; in recent months, Pakistani opposition politicians visiting Washington have been ushered in to meet Cheney’s aides, rather than taken to the State Department. No one at Foggy Bottom seems willing to question Cheney’s decisions. Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, for one, has largely limited his remarks on the crisis to expressions of support for Musharraf. Current and retired US diplomats tell me that throughout the previous year, Boucher refused to let the State Department even consider alternative policies if Musharraf were threatened with being ousted, even though 2007 is an election year in Pakistan. Last winter, Boucher reportedly limited the scope of a US government seminar on Pakistan for fear that it might send a signal that US support for Musharraf was declining. Likewise, I’m told, he has refused to meet with leading opposition figures such as former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf has exiled. Meanwhile, Boucher’s boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, demands democracy and media freedom in Venezuela but apparently deems such niceties irrelevant to Pakistan. With Cheney in charge and Rice in eclipse, rumblings of alarm at the Defense Department and the CIA can be heard. Both boast officers with far greater expertise than the White House and State Department crew. These officers, many of whom have served in Islamabad or Kabul, understand the double game that Musharraf has played – helping the United States go after al-Qaida while letting his intelligence services help the Taliban claw their way back in Afghanistan. The Pentagon and the CIA have been privately expressing concern about the lack of an alternative to blind support for Musharraf. Ironically, both departments have historically supported military rulers in Pakistan. They seem to have learned their lesson. It’s a pity that those calling the shots have not. What is at stake? Quite simply, the danger of a civil war or the country unravelling even more dramatically than it did when it lost Bangladesh in 1971. The establishment that has sustained four military regimes is deeply divided. The judiciary and the legal system are out in the streets, demanding an end to military rule. They are backed by the country’s gleeful federal bureaucracy, which resented being shunted aside by Musharraf, and joined by civil society organisations and opposition parties. The protesters’ ranks have also been swelled by poor people protesting increases in the price of food and other necessities and shortages of electricity during an already blistering summer. These dissenters have been joined by an increasingly influential media. On the opposing side stand Musharraf’s remaining allies. The most important is the powerful, brooding army. Musharraf is also supported by the business community, which has experienced economic stability and rising investment from the Arab world during his regime. He also retains – for now – the backing of a motley group of politicians who came to power after the military rigged elections in 2002. Running parallel to this domestic political crisis is the growing problem of radical Islam; the Taliban and al-Qaida are now entrenched in the tribal border belt adjacent to Afghanistan. They are now coming down from the mountains to spread their radical ideology in towns and cities. Musharraf promised the international community that he would purge pro-Taliban elements from his security services and convinced the Bush administration that his philosophy of “enlightened moderation” was the only way to fend off Islamic extremism. But Pakistan today is the center of global Islamic terrorism, with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar probably living here. Indeed, the Bush administration’s policy of sticking by Musharraf if fast becoming eerily reminiscent of the Carter administration’s policy of sticking by the Shah of Iran. Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is the author of “Taliban.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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J&K needs more roads The
Working Group (WG) on economic development of the terrorism ravaged Jammu and Kashmir has asked the government to accord high priority to development of the road network and also take steps to remove the huge inter-district variations in road density, so as to open the landlocked areas. The WG headed by C. Rangarajan was one of the five Working Groups on Kashmir appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Roundtable Conference at Srinagar in May last year. The Working Group was hopeful that by taking these steps J&K would be in a position to remove the unique economic disadvantages arising out of remoteness, poor connectivity and inhospitable terrain. It has stressed that the rural roads should be the focus area of the state and all efforts must be made to leverage the funds available under the Bharat Nirman and other such schemes of the centre. Despite several central agencies including the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and CPWD maintaining a network of roads in J&K, the state government has miserably failed to meet the challenge of constructing new roads in the backward districts. Grants were also being received under the Central Roads Fund (CRF). Liberal grants were also coming from the NABARD for rural roads. The J&K government appears to have failed to learn a lesson from the neighbouring Himachal Pradesh with a similar topography, where good road connectivity has brought prosperity in the remote areas. A task force appointed by the Prime minister had also suggested that the government focus on improvement of roads to cut the high cost of transportation, a major drawback as distances here were long and the population was scattered. The WG has recommended a special package of Rs.1750 crores for development of roads in the state. It has suggested that the centre should relax the norms for unit cost of road construction in J&K as estimated for the rest of the country. The cost of land acquisition should be included in the road construction projects. It has also asked the centre to revise the norms of Bharat Nirman scheme that aims to connect every habitation of 1000 in the country with a road, to a population of 500 in J&K. To improve the road connectivity with the frontier region, the centre recently declared the 500 kms long Srinagar-Leh road a national highway. The Mughal Road project to link Rajouri and Poonch directly with the Kashmir valley was also receiving liberal aid from the centre. However, the WG and the task force have expressed concern on the poor road network in the remote areas. The WG has pointed out in its report that J&K was connected with rest of the country with just one highway and within the state there was huge disparity in road density. The vital Jammu-Srinagar highway frequently gets closed due to landslides at Panthal and Ramban. |
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Legal Notes The
annual conference of the Chief Justices of High Courts called by Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, to firm up the judicial administration, has declared dissatisfaction with the existing norm of linking the number of judges with the burden of pending cases. They felt that such a linkage, of increase in judges’ strength in the higher judiciary with the disposal of cases, had failed to bring about the desired results in reducing the huge pendency of cases with the high courts. After detailed deliberations on the issue, the chief justices resolved that the increase in judges’ strength should depend both on pending cases and the filing of new ones. The conference was held in April, but it took some time to give final shape to the resolutions adopted by it on various issues confronting the judiciary, by a three-member panel comprising Chief Justices of the high courts of Himachal Pradesh, Madras and Delhi. The CJs were also against the policy of appointing ad hoc judges in a routine manner. They have recommended that they should only be appointed in extreme emergency, in those high courts where the number of regular judges was less than 25 per cent of the sanctioned strength. But it was decided that with regard to the already recommended appointments of ad hoc judges by some chief justices prior to the conference, the process could continue.
The grand success of the ‘evening shift’ courts in Gujarat in providing speedy justice and helping in disposal of a large number of pending cases has encouraged several states to follow the model, with Andhra Pradesh implementing the scheme, albeit with a twist, by setting up morning courts instead. The reason was the geographical location as the morning begins in the East a bit early and people start their day's work early. The morning shift courts close their shift by 10 a.m., the official national time for opening of the offices. As per the Chief Justice of the AP High Court, the experience has been quite successful and initially all petty offence cases have been transferred to these courts. The Chief Justices of the Delhi and Jharkhand High Courts are also much encouraged with the Gujarat model and have been discussing with the state governments and bars, the modalities of starting evening courts. In Gujarat, the evening courts in 2007 had disposed off over 62,000 pending cases, which by any standard was considered to be a grand success. Though all the states were keen to imitate the Gujarat experience, high courts in most of the states have cited ‘shortage of power’ as the biggest impediment.
Pending rent laws The fate of rent laws concerning Punjab and Delhi is hanging fire, in spite of the President assenting to their implementation nearly a decade ago, and the high courts of Punjab and Haryana and Delhi issuing clear directions to the two states to notify the legislations. Successive governments in Punjab had tried to brush the issue under the carpet eversince the then President K. R. Narayanan had given his assent to the new Punjab Rent Act in 1998, while the Delhi Rent Act has again been referred to Parliament by a standing committee. Congress, BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal, the main players in both the states, have not been taking decisions on implementing these laws when in power, fearing political repercussions, as they do not want to antagonise both landlords and tenants. As a result, rent related disputes in Punjab are governed under the old East Punjab Rent Act, 1949 though its legality in respect of Chandigarh has received adverse verdict from the Supreme Court. The Badal Government during its earlier tenure had mooted an idea of framing a new “model” Rent Act whereas the previous Amarinder Singh government simply sat over the matter. The associations of landlords and tenants are skeptical about any favorable solution to the issue as they see the stand of political parties as nothing but a "vote bank" politics. The 1995 amendments in the rent laws of the two states were aimed at providing relief to both landlords and tenants. |
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