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Friends apart Armed Forces Act Cops as criminals |
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Educating India
A close look at the gallows
Globalisation redefines sovereignty – again UN commission targeting Israel “exclusively” Water crisis hits the Andamans
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Friends apart SHIV SENA’S decision to support UPA candidate Pratibha Patil has not caused any surprise, as indications to this effect were aplenty. For a regional party which espouses Marathi cause, it would have been difficult to oppose a candidate belonging to the state and that too a woman. Party chief Bal Thackeray had at the outset made a distinction between Mrs Patil and Mr Shivraj Patil, who was a frontrunner for the UPA nomination, making it clear that the Shiv Sena would not support the latter. The 22,000 odd votes the Shiv Sena brings to the UPA kitty would prove very valuable as the difference in the voting strengths of the UPA and the NDA is only 1 lakh votes. What is more significant about the Shiv Sena decision is the impact it will have on the party’s traditional relationship with the BJP, which predates the formation of the NDA by more than one and a half decades. Mr Thackeray has clarified that the Shiv Sena-BJP ties are not in for a rupture. Even so watchers of the political scene would not be able to overlook the strains in their relations particularly in the light of reports that the Nationalist Congress Party has been coming closer to the Sena in the belief that together they would be a formidable force. If regional interests can be allowed to overtake ideological interests, surely Thackeray and NCP chief Sharad Pawar would be able to cohabit. In supporting Mrs Patil, the Shiv Sena has pooh-poohed allegations of misuse of cooperative sugar mill funds. While she may indeed be innocent, it would have been in the fitness of things if Mrs Patil had herself explained her position, rather than allowing Congress leaders to dismiss the allegations as of no consequence. For the NDA candidate and Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the Shiv Sena’s decision is a major setback. His victory is possible only if there is large-scale cross-voting in his favour from the UPA and the Third Front, which has not yet decided whom to support. This being the case, the loss of Shiv Sena votes, which, in the ordinary circumstances, should have been his, is difficult to make up. In trying his luck, Mr Shekhawat is dependent on his personal appeal and rapport with political leaders cutting across political divides. Whether this would be sufficient to defeat Mrs Patil is what bothers his friends and the NDA camp.
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Armed Forces Act THE recommendation of the Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) that the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act should be scrapped would be welcomed, and not just by the people in the North-Eastern states. This recommendation of the ARC, headed by Mr M Veerappa Moily, in its fifth report on ‘Public Order’ submitted to the Prime Minister on Monday comes as no surprise. The Act, in the words of the Justice B P Jeevan Reddy Committee — which called for its repeal two years ago — is “a symbol of oppression, an object of hate and instrument of discrimination and high-handedness”. Given this view of the Act and the alienation it has engendered in Manipur and elsewhere in the North-East, it is high time the law was scrapped. Unfortunately, despite demands from various sections of civil society, including the unforgettable hunger strike by the young Manipuri poet, Irom Sharmila, the UPA government — which appointed the Jeevan Reddy Committee and the ARC — is yet to act in keeping with the sentiments and expectations of the people on this issue. In fact, the government has not even made public the Jeevan Reddy Committee’s report. In the six months since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated that the Centre is working on amending this draconian act, there has been no progress towards undoing this Act. The demand for scrapping the Act altogether is bound to gather more force with the ARC lending its weight to what is a felt democratic need. Another equally significant recommendation, though in the ‘interventionist’ mode, is that the Centre should assume sweeping powers to deploy its forces in the state in case of “major public order problems”. This is fraught with questions that are unlikely to be easily answered. Many states may be opposed to it as it violates the spirit of the federal principle. Regional parties, which are gaining in clout at the Centre, may also resist the move for its “centralising effect”. Much as there are situations when Central intervention becomes necessary, this is a political hot potato. Yet, the essential question is not of its necessity or desirability even with restrictive conditions, but its acceptability and feasibility in the prevailing political climate.
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Cops as criminals THE late Justice A.N. Mulla’s observation that the police force in Uttar Pradesh was an “organised gang of criminals” fits the Punjab police very well. Even if one disregards unreported cases of policemen’s criminal activities, the figures collected by the police itself and produced in the Punjab assembly recently are shocking. As many as 115 policemen, caught in just three months, currently face trial for various charges — some as serious as dacoity and bank robbery. The figure of crime by men in khaki could have been higher had the police acted honestly and professionally. Policemen are notorious for protecting their wayward colleagues. The reasons for so many policemen breaking the law they are supposed to uphold are not far to seek. Politicisation of the police is one. Many officers from the level of DGP to SHO have their links with politicians. Whatever party comes to power, it installs its own men at key positions. Political protection encourages policemen to take the law into their own hands and in case they are caught, they get away with mild punishment. It is either suspension, that too for a limited period, or transfer, usually to the police lines. Influential ones even get away with murder. Since 2000 there have been a minimum of seven custodial deaths and a maximum of 24 in one year. Unless punishment is assured and deterrant enough, the situation is unlikely to change. In December last year a Delhi court awarded the death sentence to a police officer for a custodial death. The political leadership and the police top brass will have to adopt a zero-tolerance policy towards criminals disguised in uniform to make society civil and crime-free. The days of militancy are over and the police mindset must change. The Punjab government’s dithering in implementing the police reforms ordered by the Supreme Court shows it does not want to easily let go its hold over the force.
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Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world. — Samuel Johnson
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Educating India
SIVAJI, THE BOSS’, the latest AVM production with Rajnikanth in the lead, is a resounding box-office hit. He is the second most popular actor in South Asia, the first being Jackie Chan. Small wonder that when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Tokyo in December last, he referred to his popularity in Japan for his stellar performance in the film Odoru Maharaja (The Dancing Maharaja). Why does a non-Tamil like this writer find the film absorbingly entertaining despite all the stupid things Rajnikanth does on the screen, wooing a girl in the most ludicrous manner and destroying dozens of huge cars with his SUV, which at the end suffers only minor dents. It is partly because he could empathise with Sivaji for the travails he has to undergo in setting up a medical college for the poor. At every stage, from the plan’s approval to the construction of the college building to recognition from the Medical Council, he has to grease the palms of officials and politicians, who all begin their negotiations with the seemingly innocuous question: “How much is the total cost of the project?” They expect a percentage-wise bribe, which goes up to 25 per cent in the case of the minister concerned. At the end of all the bribe-giving, Sivaji is a pauper and his project is in a shambles. Of course, he being an actor with a script woven around his idiosyncratic personality, he can afford to take on every one of his tormentors, set up the college as desired, educate poor students and help India become “a member of the Group of 10 nations”. But that is not the case with ordinary philanthropically inclined people who want to set up schools and colleges to bring education to the doorstep of the poor and the needy. Even 60 years after Independence, there are thousands of villages where children have to walk long distances to reach schools. The concept of neighbourhood schools is yet to become a reality in the countryside while schools that can provide affordable education to the poor even in the towns are few and far between. There are those who rile at Muslim children going to madarsas but they do not realise that it is more a reflection of the non-availability of good schools in their localities. A study conducted by Pratichi Trust, set up by Dr Amartya Sen, found that in Muslim-majority Murshidabad district, government schools either lacked proper buildings or teachers or both. In one school, the male teacher would ask a student to pluck his grey hair while he slept in the class like Kumbakarna. The dropout rate in the district is one of the highest in the country. The average per-student cost the government incurs in running its own school is much more than what an average private school spends on a student. Yet, when it comes to results, the performance of government schools is abysmally poor. There are exceptions like the Kendriya Vidyalayas and government model schools, whose results compare with those of the best in the private sector. But, then, allowance has to be made for the fact that their students are drawn from middle classes which value education the most. However hard the government tries to universalise primary and secondary education, it cannot complete the task without the active collaboration of the private sector. However, private schools have their own limitations as most of them are run on business lines which ipso facto exclude students from the weaker sections of society. It is the voluntary, non-governmental sector which alone can provide quality education to the poor, but does the government encourage it? The answer is in the negative. There are umpteen rules that militate against setting up and running of schools. Every state has an Education Act, whose only objective seems to be to encourage corruption. It is never known to have encouraged dissemination of knowledge. In Delhi, for instance, if a group of philanthropists come together and set up a school with the express purpose of educating the poor, they will have to comply with the provisions of the Delhi Education Act. It stipulates that the school should have a certain number of classrooms of certain specifications, toilets of certain number, a library with a specified number of books, playground of certain dimension etc. Incidentally, government schools do not fulfil these conditions. Even if these conditions are fulfilled, the school will not get recognition until the teachers are given government salaries. Once such high salaries are given, the cost of running the school will go up and the philanthropists will be forced to charge higher fees. The victims will be the poor students for whom the school was originally thought of. It is perfectly legitimate for the government to insist that the minimum wages should be paid to all employees. But why should it insist that government salary should be paid to the schoolteachers? There is no such insistence on those who start a restaurant. If the food is of good quality and the price reasonable, it will have customers. The same is the case with schools, which will attract students if the education imparted is good and the fees reasonable. Think why is it that government schools are the last resort of even poor students? When this problem was brought to the notice of the then Education Minister of Delhi, his solution was simple. He gave the exact number of private schools in the Capital where teachers are paid lower salaries but are asked to give receipts for higher salaries. He did not have any qualms of conscience when he asked all the NGOs concerned to follow this time-tested formula, which is in practice in hundreds of schools in Delhi. While the Act prevents students studying in unrecognised schools from appearing for CBSE examinations, it does not prevent private schools from charging over a lakh of rupees per year per student and producing snobs, who are fit to live only in Scandinavian countries. They advertise that in their schools, only mineral water is served and everything, except the football ground, is airconditioned. However, the Act does not insist that the teachers should be paid such salaries that they can have their own houses “fully airconditioned”. In other words, the Act discriminates against the poor students. In Haryana, a private school has to produce a certificate that it conforms to the land conversion rules. Those who have tried to get such a certificate know only too well how much money has to be paid under the table to procure it. Little surprise, thousands of schools have been denied recognition. What is true about Haryana and Delhi is true about almost all the states, where the Education Acts are more or less the same. As India’s milkman Dr Varghese Kurien once eloquently mentioned, nothing would happen to Indian agriculture if Krishi Bhavan in New Delhi was bombed out of existence. Rather, education in India will improve if the Education Act, which is a major source of corruption, is dispensed with. The case of the Information Technology sector is worth mentioning. When N.R. Narayana Murthy and others began writing software from dingy rooms and car garages in Bangalore, they did not have to seek permission after permission from government agencies, which had no clue what those young men and women were doing. Thanks to such freedom, they could fulfil their dreams and thereby make India an IT giant. Imagine what would have happened if a Karnataka Information Technology Act was in existence insisting that entrepreneurs pay government salary to their employees! There is need to tap all the resources in the country to remove the stigma of India being the country with the largest number of illiterates. For that, the Education Acts need to be consigned to where it should belong — in the dustbin.
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A close look at the gallows
I
was around ten when Mahatama Gandhi fell to Godse’s bullets with ‘Hey Ram’ on his lips. Even at that age, I wondered at the circuitry of human brain. After all, how could anybody think of killing a man who wished everybody well? So, Nathu Ram Godse had to be taken as an arch criminal for killing the Father of the Nation. Yet, it was also a fact that he did not assassinate him for any personal gain. You could not treat him as a lunatic either, because he exactly knew what he had done and why. Thus, the history has to remember the man as some sort of a criminal of conscience. So, when I joined D.A.V. College at Ambala, I strangely felt fascinated by the central jail of the city where Godse was hanged. Once I decided to have a look at this jail. I thought if the jail officials did not allow me to enter I shall settle for a look just from outside. What a luck, the front portion of the jail at the time happened to be under repair and the jail activities were then confined to the back of the complex only. As I entered, there were no jail officials to take permission from. With nobody to check me I went ahead. To the right, there was an isolated structure looking like a jail within the jail. I entered this triangular enclosure to find myself in front of the condemned prisoners` cells each divided in three portions — the cell, a covered verandah and an open compound with high boundary walls. I entered some of these cells where some unfortunate beings must have spent their last days in great unease till it was time to take them to the gallows at a corner of this awful triangle. The gallows consisted of a brick-lined square pit with a narrow staircase on one corner for the executioner to go down to deal with the dead or the dying. Over the pit was fixed a sturdy beam on two strong columns on the sides. This beam had three pulleys to deal with three convicts in one go. On two sides of the pit were hinged two wooden boards that were pulled up and joined together securely with a heavy steel bar with teeth that got pushed into the brackets on the boards. The bar itself was connected with a lever which when pulled by the executioner made the planks fall to the sides with a thud. The boards at the mouth of the pit formed the final platform for the condemned beings to spend the last few minutes of their lives behind the nooses. The other end of the ropes went over the pulleys to be tied to an iron beam fixed a few yards behind the gallows. The ropes are left with sufficient play for the condemned fellows to fall and hang in the pit by the neck till death. After witnessing this awful power of the State to deal with life and death, I quietly moved out of the jail
unnoticed.
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Globalisation redefines sovereignty – again THE next globalisation battle lurks over the horizon, but you can already guess its contours. It will be shaped by two revolutions in finance and business: the growth of vast government-controlled investment funds in the world, and the muddled progress toward shareholder democracy in the United States. Taken together, these changes will give foreign governments a say in how corporate America is run. The rise of government investment funds suddenly preoccupies financiers. US Treasury officials who never before gave a thought to these outfits now want them on their speed dials. Five years ago, governments were sitting on $1.9 trillion in foreign currency reserves, which was roughly what they needed to stave off financial crises. Now they have $5.4 trillion, way beyond their prudential needs and more than triple the amount in the world’s hedge funds. Increasingly, this cash is being moved into “sovereign wealth funds,” which have come from obscurity to manage assets worth an additional $1.6 trillion. These reserves are likely to keep growing. A big chunk of the expansion has occurred in energy-exporting states, and the prices of oil and natural gas show no signs of falling. High energy prices explain why Russia’s government, which had negative assets at the time of its default in 1998, now has reserves worth $315 billion, plus an investment fund worth $90 billion. They explain why Nigeria, which pleaded poverty and secured debt relief as recently as 2006, is now sitting on reserves of $80 billion. The Kuwait Investment Office is rumored to manage $500 billion, and the United Arab Emirates has an investment fund worth perhaps $1 trillion (the Arabs won’t disclose the real numbers). The second motor behind sovereign funds is the global trade imbalance. East Asia’s exporters rake in dollars that they convert into domestic currency, and the dollars wind up in the region’s central banks: China has accumulated an astonishing $1.2 trillion in foreign currency reserves and Japan around $900 billion. Even though the U.S. trade deficit is starting to shrink, it remains huge by historical standards. The flip side is that East Asia’s trade surpluses will persist, and the region’s central banks will bulge with more money. When central banks amass reserves, they park them in U.S. Treasury bills and risk-free bonds issued by other rich governments. But the buzz about sovereign wealth funds signals that this is changing. The newly wealthy governments are following forebears that grew rich a generation back – the Gulf states, Singapore, Norway. They want a better return on their savings than they can get from Treasury bills, so they are going to invest in companies. This need not be sinister. As former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers argues in the new book Sovereign Wealth Management, a government that fails to invest excess reserves in corporate assets is irresponsible. Sovereign wealth funds can professionalise the management of national wealth, argues the book’s editor, Jennifer Johnson-Calari of the World Bank. A generation ago, the government of Sao Tome might have hidden its oil revenue in Swiss accounts. Today it is consulting the state government of Alaska about sound and transparent management. But the political backlash is already beginning. China just bought a $3 billion stake in Blackstone Group, the American private-equity firm that sold a chunk of itself to outside investors last week. Blackstone’s IPO was controversial even without the China connection – private-equity firms are already viewed as the engines of ruthlessly competitive global capital, and now they are allied with the engine of ruthlessly competitive global labor. Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia., raised the predictable red flag. Blackstone may own firms with sensitive national-security information, the senator maintained; therefore, the Chinese investment in Blackstone should have been delayed by regulators. Imagine Webb’s protests if the Chinese do what they say they will do: emulate one of Singapore’s national wealth funds, Temasek Holdings, which buys direct stakes in foreign companies without going through a middleman such as Blackstone. Chunks of corporate America could be bought by Beijing’s government – or, for that matter, by the Kremlin. Given the Chinese and Russian tendency to treat corporations as tools of policy, you don’t have to be paranoid to ask whether these would be purely commercial holdings. But the final straw may be that even the least threatening form of investment – the purchase of publicly traded equities – will not escape controversy. This is because of that second upheaval: the advent in the United States of something approaching shareholder democracy. As Alan Murray writes in his new book, Revolt in the Boardroom, companies are no longer controlled by all-powerful CEOs. Instead, chief executives increasingly live in fear of activist shareholders and directors. Bosses from Harry Stonecipher of Boeing to Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard have been ejected from the corporate suite in a manner that would not have been conceivable a generation earlier. What if the Chinese are seen to have a hand in the firing of some future Fiorina? The more shareholders exercise power, the surer the backlash against governments that buy up chunks of the stock market. By arrangement with
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UN commission targeting Israel “exclusively” WHERE does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it’s grown sick and cynical – partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values. At a session in Geneva last week, the council – established a year ago to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission – listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both “rapporteurs” in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a “consensus” in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord. While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” In other words, Israel (or “Palestine,” in the council’s terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That’s in keeping with the record of the council’s first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticised any other government. Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia – and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements – will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction. The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting “a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole,” frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed “the worst of the worst” by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations. The regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir, which is responsible for at least 200,000 deaths in Darfur, didn’t just escape any censure. Sudan was a co-sponsor on behalf of the Arab League of the latest condemnations of Israel, adopted last week. This record is far darker than Kofi Annan’s “shadow.” You’d think it would be intolerable to the democratic states that sit on the council. Sadly, it’s not. Several of them – India, South Africa, Indonesia – have regularly supported the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement in their assaults on Israel and defense of Cuba, Belarus and Sudan. The council’s chairman, who rammed through last week’s decisions without a vote, is a diplomat from Mexico. The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council’s 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council’s attention on the world’s worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union “has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions.” At one point before last week’s meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe’s
representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel “is certainly not ideal ... we have a basis we can work with.” What about Western human rights groups – surely they cannot accept such a travesty of human rights advocacy? In fact, they can. While critical of the council, New York-based Human Rights Watch said its procedural decisions “lay a foundation for its future work.” Is there a point at which a vicious and unfounded campaign to delegitimise one country makes it unconscionable to collaborate with the body that conducts it? By arrangement with
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Water crisis hits the Andamans
PORT BLAIR — The Union Territory of Andaman & Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal has introduced stringent rationing of drinking water, despite receiving 3000-3500 mm of rainfall each year. On June 4, the Lt. Governor, Bhopinder Singh, announced that water would be supplied every 96 hours through pipelines. However, residents of Port Blair receive water for about ten minutes every fifth day. The fire brigade authorities are making efforts to pump water from the Dhanikhari Dam, the main source of municipal water supply, to the main chamber from where water flows to the treatment plant. The level of water in the dam is not high enough to flow under gravity. If the Dam does not receive rainfall soon, the situation may deteriorate even further. Supply may have to be effected through tankers since the water pressure would be inadequate to ensure supply through the pipelines. Curtailment of water supply was introduced from January 1 this year when water was supplied every third day. In the beginning of May, the Islands received short spells of heavy rains, which prompted the authorities to increase the supply of water. However, the optimism was short-lived and the clouds passed over. Mr Sher Singh, Chairman, Port Blair Municipal Council, puts the daily demand at 30 million litres per day (mld) for daily supply. Even during the rainy season, the Andaman Public Works Department cannot supply more than 15 mld, hence supply is restricted to every few days. Despite the warning signs, no freshwater projects were cleared over the months. A proposal to set up a Reverse Osmosis Plant on Build-Own-and-Operate basis that can supply three lakh litres a day has been pending for many months. Sources state that the proposal was sent for approval by the Andaman Public Works Department in February this year, when the water crisis was at the initial stages. Local observers blame the administration for the negligence. Many attribute the shortage to large wastage in the overflowing of water from the consumers’ tanks. While the authorities put the wastage at five percent, many believe it is to the tune of nearly 40 percent. Denying the wastage figures presented, Mr Sanjit Biswas, Executive Engineer (Water Works), PBMC, attributes these losses to old and rusted pipes resulting in underground and over-ground leakages. He revealed that NBCC was working on replacing the old lines with new ones and constructing new storage tanks. He expects the situation to improve once this work is completed. Other factors also play a role. Illegal connections are provided by corrupt employees – even main pipelines are not spared. Tankers are also a potential source of malpractice. Small pumps are being used to fill overhead tanks, depriving others in the vicinity. The officers are unable to take action as those in power step forward to protect the wrongdoers. — Charkha Features
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As great as God himself is, so great are his gifts and bounties. — Guru Nanak If a man has sincere love for God, then all come under his control—the king, wicked persons and his wife. — Shri Ramakrishna He is truly a man to whom money is only a servant; but, on the other hand, those who do not know how to make a proper use of it, hardly deserve to be called men. — Shri Ramakrishna
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