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Dera dispute Britain turns Brown |
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Maya’s riches
Emergency, 32 years on
With a tear in the eye
A Nandigram in the making near Bangalore This wasteful business of a business class Delhi Durbar
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Dera dispute IT is unfortunate that things on the Dera Sacha Sauda front have not been sorted out. Worse, the situation has deteriorated. The Sikh clergy has rejected the new apology given by Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on the technical ground that it resembled a Press note and had not been signed by him. The earlier apology was not accepted because it was to Guru Gobind Singh and not to Sikh Sangat. The clergy’s decision has disappointed all those who expected an early end to the controversy created by the Dera chief’s religiously questionable conduct in dressing himself like the last Guru of the Sikhs and baptising people in His manner. It is with anxiety that people are watching how the situation would eventually turn out. What is worrying them is the decision taken by the Punjab government to permit arrest of the Dera chief. The police, which registered an FIR against him, has been empowered by the court to arrest him subject to the proviso that the government grants it the necessary permission. The court knew the implications of ordering his arrest and that is why it made the arrest conditional. The Parkash Singh Badal government has by permitting the police to arrest him created a problem for neighbouring Haryana. That is because the Dera chief’s headquarters is at Sirsa which is in Haryana. Whatever problems are there in effecting his arrest would have to be faced by the Haryana police. And to compound the state’s problem, the Sikh clergy has also decided to hold a Panthic rally at Ratia in Haryana. The intention is clearly to shift the battleground to Haryana where the Congress is in power. It is to state the obvious that the Haryana government should not fail in its duty to ensure that law and order is not affected in any manner while arresting the Dera chief or when the Panthic rally is held. As for a solution, there is need for an all-party committee, like the one which managed to extract an apology from the Dera authorities, to sort out the matter to the satisfaction of all the groups concerned. In no case should anyone be allowed to take the law into his own hands on any pretext. Politicians who are trying to fish in troubled waters should realise that they are actually playing with fire and the earlier they stop it, the better it will be for both Punjab and Haryana. |
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Britain turns Brown THE much-awaited change of guard at 10 Downing Street in London has finally come about. British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has taken over as Prime Minister, replacing Mr Tony Blair, the longest-serving Labour Head of Government. With his popularity rating going down considerably, Mr Blair had to voluntarily step down as Labour Party chief, which also meant giving up the most powerful position in Britain. His Iraq policy proved to be his undoing despite the fact that Britain saw sustained economic growth during his 10-year rule. He will also be credited with having solved the Northern Ireland problem, which had been defying solution for decades. He was, however, charged with misleading the public by claiming that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction, which was proved hollow after the Iraq war. Ultimately, he had to bow out of power. Mr Brown mentioned in his first public remarks after becoming Prime Minister that “I have heard the need for change”. He, however, avoided a reference to Iraq, though he does not consider the invasion of Iraq wrong. It remains to be seen how he conducts his Iraq policy amidst growing demands to withdraw the British troops from Iraq. His statement that Britain’s relationship with the US will remain “solid but not slavish” shows that London may not follow Washington blindly. India, however, can hope for better relations with the UK as Mr Brown has always been an admirer of Indian democracy. The new Prime Minister is known for his measured approach on any issue of national and international significance. Thus, no U-turn should be expected in any area, including foreign policy. It is difficult to presume what he has in his mind when he says that he will launch a mission so that “Britain can be the great global success story of this century” or that he will begin a “new era in British politics”. Perhaps, he will concentrate more on domestic issues like those related to the economy, health, education, housing, etc. After all, he knows better than anybody else how to manage the economy without fuelling inflation and adding to unemployment. |
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Maya’s
riches UTTAR PRADESH Chief Minister Mayawati’s latest declaration that she has assets to the tune of Rs 52 crore raises serious questions of propriety and probity in public life. Her claim that the money was not her per se, but given to her by party workers from across the country is unconvincing and does not hold water. Her statement that “everything is mentioned in the income-tax returns and the tax is paid” is only an excuse for evasion. The question remains: how did she grow 450 per cent richer in just three years? While filing her nomination from Akbarpur in Uttar Pradesh for the 2004 Lok Sabha election, she had declared her assets at around Rs 11 crore. And now, in a sworn affidavit, she says it is around Rs 52.5 crore! Mayawati does not belong to a princely family to have so much wealth. She was a school teacher in Delhi and her father retired as a clerk in the Posts and Telegraphs Department. The “real growth” in her wealth in the past three years has come from property investments. She has acquired some prime pieces of property at Connaught Place and Okhla in New Delhi’s and on Sardar Patel Marg, also in the Capital. Those in public life, like Caesar’s wife, are expected to be above suspicion. Thus she owes to the nation an explanation on how she acquired such property. Most politicians, who acquire wealth through shady deals, refer to the party fund whenever they declare their assets or their properties are put under the scanner. If Mayawati’s wealth was indeed a result of the contributions made by her poor party workers, as she claims to be, these donations should have been credited to the party account instead of to her personal account. With an ever-obliging UPA government and the CBI in tow, it may be difficult to bring her to book. Mercifully, owing to a pliant Governor’s refusal to give sanction, she scraped through prosecution in the Rs 175-crore Taj Corridor scandal. Also, the CBI case of disproportionate assets against her involving Rs 28 crore had been put in “deep freeze”. Mayawati may have won the Assembly elections with a thumping majority, but she continues to be under a cloud. |
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At every word a reputation dies.
— Alexander Pope |
Emergency, 32 years on COME the last week of June and thoughts of many Indians turn to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency whose 32nd anniversary fell of Tuesday. It was, unquestionably, a hammer-blow to Indian democracy and a nineteen-month nightmare for those who had to live through it. With a single stroke of a pliable President’s pen, the world’s largest democracy was converted into a tin-pot dictatorship. Repression across the land, particularly in North India, was harsh and humiliating. At least 100, 000 people, including almost all Opposition leaders and some Congressmen, were hauled to jail without trial. All fundamental rights were in abeyance, including the right to life. Niren Dey, Attorney-General of that day, chillingly told a stunned Supreme Court bench that as long as the Emergency lasted, there was no remedy “if a policeman chose to shoot a citizen”. Sadly, there was no dearth of judges willing to be suborned and safe. As for the performance of the Press - there was no private TV channel then - Mr L. K. Advani’s famous taunt, “you chose to crawl when you were asked only to bend”, says it all. My starkest memory of the day the heavy lid of the Emergency was clamped on India is that there was not a squeak of protest against it. The Cabinet, kept in the dark about the event, met very early the next morning meekly to endorse the fait accompli. What a startling contrast this was to the crescendo of noise, lasting many months, that those agitating for Indira’s removal had been making. The rallying point of the seemingly powerful agitation was the respected Gandhian leader, Jayaprakash Narayan, better known as JP. He, all Opposition leaders and their serried ranks were confident that after the Allahabad High Court’s judgment and its “conditional stay” by the Supreme Court, she had no option but to throw in the towel. They eloquently said so at a public meeting in Delhi on the evening of June 25 at which excitement ran sky-high. Hours later, when they were roused from their beds and hauled to prison, they did not know what had hit them. Surprisingly, the Emergency remained reasonably popular for quite a while or was submitted to with varying degrees of sullenness. Deep anger against it, though no great resistance to it, began only after city slums started to be demolished and their inhabitants “resettled” far away. Infinitely worse was Sanjay Gandhi’s drive to control the population by coercing men of all ages to undergo vasectomies, especially in Delhi and northern states. In the words of a U.P. Congressman during the 1977 poll, the vasectomies had become for the Congress the “greased cartridges of 1857”. The country hailed Indira Gandhi’s defeat — both she and her son Sanjay lost personally, too — as a “revolution by the ballot box”. If so, it turned out to be the revolution that was devoured by its children. The Janata Party that replaced her regime had come to power amidst tremendous goodwill. But so abysmal was its performance and so deadly the dissensions within it, that the Janata fell like ninepins and Indira Gandhi was spectacularly back in power in 33 months flat. However, she may have regained the people’s vote but the Indian intelligentsia remained bitterly and irreconcilably hostile to her even after her No wonder then that year after year, on the Emergency’s anniversary, she was lambasted in the strongest possible terms. Even two years ago on June 26, Mr Advani not only lashed out against her but also alleged, rather absurdly, that the United Progressive Alliance government of Dr Manmohan Singh was developing an “emergency mindset” and might declare one soon. To his great embarrassment, Mr George Fernandes, the convener of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, and Mr Chandra Shekhar, who also spent the entire Emergency period in jail, flatly contradicted Mr Advani. This was the first major indication of the gradual change in the public’s view of the Emergency and Indira Gandhi that has since escalated. In public opinion poll after public opinion poll, she has been voted the “best Prime Minister India has had”. Could this have happened had the Indian intelligentsia remained as critical of the Emergency as it used to be? Doubtless, the perspective on the Emergency has changed materially, and for good reasons even though some might yet dispute this. The most important reason is that two-thirds of today’s Indians were born in and after 1975. They know little about the Emergency and care even less. Secondly, the entirely polemical and partisan writings on the Emergency that held sway for long years have yielded place to some sober, scholarly work. Consequently, while not forgetting the unmerited and often horrible sufferings inflicted on people, thinking persons have begun to recognise that if Indira Gandhi was sinning, politically speaking, she was also being sinned against. Even some of his admirers have started accepting that saintly J P was wrong in appealing to the Army and the police to disobey the Indira government. Objective and eminent historians such as Bipan Chandra have quoted chapter and verse to prove that both the Prime Minister and J P were equally responsible for the imposition of the Emergency and what happened during it. Each had lost confidence in the good faith of the other completely. Both stretched the democratic norms, from different ends, so hard that something was bound to give. In 2000, the leading sociologist, Andre Beteille, one of the staunch opponents of the Emergency, disputed the view of the “large sections of the intelligentsia” that Indira was the “villain” of the Emergency, and JP its “hero”. He argued instead that the “anarchy” promoted by J P in the name of “total revolution” and the “abuse of power” by the Prime Minister and her son Sanjay were but the “two sides of the same coin”. There is much greater acceptance of his view today than then. Three other factors are even more crucial. First, Indira Gandhi redeemed herself by ordering elections in 1977, entirely on her own, and gracefully yielding power after losing them. Second, ugly though the Emergency was, India in 1975-77 was not at all comparable to Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, China under Mao, or Pakistan under Zia or even Musharraf. Overriding all this is that the Emergency just cannot be re-imposed. For, 1975-77 proved that India would be governed — to the extent it can be governed — democratically or not at
all.
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With a tear in the eye
Retirement
is a phase that all of us are bound to reach one day. Even the most energetic self-employed professional or businessman knows when it’s time to hand over the baton to someone who is younger, though not necessarily more capable. For a government servant, the day when he has to lay down his pen is pre-ordained, barring a sudden revision in the official age of retirement. Chandigarh is no longer only a city of the retired. It also offers one an opportunity to come across many known figures from yesteryears who wielded immense power in their time, and who had retired gracefully from service. What one does notice is that while the old gleam in the eye is still there, along with the booming voice (in some cases, a not-so-booming one), there is a perceptible change in attitude. Government service certainly has its highs, and many officers enjoy extraordinarily vast influence within and without their sphere of authority. Retirement somehow transforms that authoritative presence into a milder, amiable and friendly manner. But it is not the retiree who is at “fault” for this change; it is our society. The last of the sycophants deserts an officer who no longer commands respect by virtue of his post. His “true friends” turn out to be turncoats when an officer ceases to be in service. People even start looking the other way, and the venerable figure starts feeling the pangs of being no longer even half as popular as he used to be. Invitation lists no longer include his name. Even his last “loyal” official servant makes his excuses and moves to “greener pastures”. We who are still in service are the ones most to blame for the sinking feeling that a retired official may have. A cup of tea and undivided attention may not be essential for a serving colleague on a visit, but at least an offer of the same should be really necessary in case a retiree happens to enter one’s room. A recently retired officer found to his discomfort that his last immediate subordinate had suddenly stopped addressing him as “Sir”, and had started calling him by his name, albeit with the suffix “sahib” attached. Feeling upset, he called up a retired colleague and told him of his plight. The latter listened to him for a while and then cut him short with the words, “Be grateful that he speaks to you at all. My former colleagues have started avoiding my calls altogether.” A retired officer may indeed have a tear in his eye at such treatment, for the pride is still intact within. But the queues of people waiting to meet him have been replaced by unending queues of which he now finds himself a part. Such are the ways of our
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A Nandigram in the making near Bangalore NANDAGUDI (Bangalore Rural) — Two years ago all was quiet in villages in this block with the gold rush apparently confined to Devanahalli, around 20 kilometres from here where the upcoming International Airport is located. A single announcement – setting up of an SEZ on 12,500 acres spanning 36 villages has turned life on its head for nearly 70,000 farmers of this region. Even as farmers are coming to grips with the changed situation, there is despondency in the air as they do not seem to have benefited from the apparent “gold rush”. As their land is earmarked for the proposed SEZ, there are no takers for it even as adjoining land is selling for Rs 50 to Rs 60 lakhs per acre. A few months ago land in this belt, known for vegetable cultivation and sericulture, was selling for around Rs two lakh per acre. This, as well as the apparent callousness of the Karnataka government in earmarking 7,800 acres of farming land for the proposed SEZ without any consultation with the farmers is all set to start an agitation on the lines of Nandigram in West Bengal. The genesis of the problem rests in the “new” policy of the Janata Dal (Secular) led government which says it will not acquire land for SEZs but leave the promoters to “convince” farmers and buy land directly from them. The government, which has 4,700 acres of its own land in the area, has however passed a resolution for setting up an SEZ in 12,500 acres of land. The promoters – Skil Infrastructure Limited now have to buy the remaining 7,800 acres of land from the farmers to go ahead with the project. “This is indirect coercion and aimed to rob us of our land”, says Shamanna, a farmer of Banahalli village while talking to this correspondent. This view is echoed by farmers in other villages including Nandagudi and Hindignala, who say they will not give up their land come what may. Most are not swayed by promises, including a job for a member of each family who loses his land. “They will give us a job of Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000 per month keeping in view our qualifications. However we can earn more by continuing to grow vegetables and fruit trees besides the well entrenched sericulture tradition which is hundreds of years old”, says Muniswamy, another farmer of the area. Taking this correspondent around village fields in this block, the villagers pointed out that judicious use of water has ensured that 80 per cent of the land was irrigated and supported vegetable cultivation besides mango and guava orchards. They said however any SEZ proposal would hit the severely depleted water resources and harm agriculture production in the neighbouring areas. Meanwhile what has come as a surprise is that the State cabinet has decided to go ahead with the project despite opposition from government departments. The Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) in a letter in March this year to the Industries and Commerce department said that since integrated townships had already been proposed for Nandagudi, Solur and Ramanagaram, it would not be appropriate to set up SEZs in these areas. Part of the area earmarked for the SEZ comes under the Bidadi Integrated Township project for which the government has already selected a private agency through open The Revenue department in a letter through its Principal Secretary has also told the Industries and Commerce department that since areas around Bangalore fell under the category of prime land it would not be feasible to give large tracts of government land on lease basis to Skil for its SEZ. The State Water and Sewerage Board has made it clear that it cannot extend its services to the project as it is located 35 km away from its jurisdictional limits. Finally the company – Skil, is under a cloud with its intentions being questioned after it divested 10,000 acres it had received for development of an SEZ in Navi Mumbai to Reliance. Opposition Leader in the Legislative Council, H. K. Patil, whose party is set to lead protests in the area next month, asks - what is the guarantee that the same will not happen in Nandagudi? The Opposition leader claims that according to the records available with the State government, Skil Infrastructure recorded a profit of only Rs 6.63 crore in 2006. “The government is trusting such a company with 4,700 acres of its own and also asking it to take over a direct investment of Rs 15,000 crore”, he said alleging the SEZ sounded more like a real estate investment. Even the as the battle knives are being sharpened with other organisations also set to agitate against the move, developers are already on a land buying spree in the neighbourhood of Nandagudi where the Outer Ring Road to cater to the International airport will come up. Land prices in the neighbouring blocks of Kasaba and Sulebeli blocks have already reached the Rs one crore per acre figure ensuring times will never be the same in the region. |
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This wasteful business of a business class HOW much would you pay to enjoy six hours away from your fellow humans, in a chair that reclines? $1,500 an hour – or even more? And if someone invited you to spend $9,000 to pass a long afternoon in a fairly cramped lounge, munching peanuts and reading airline magazines, would you accept? How desperate are you to have access to 15 movies you never would pay to see in a theater, instead of 11? I often think that the airline executive who came up with the idea of business class should get his name on an endowed chair at the Harvard Business School – and his face on a most-wanted poster. These seats somewhere toward the middle of planes are where airlines make most of their revenue. But for passengers, they are the place where the laws of reason, much like the laws of gravity, no longer seem to apply. To fly business class from New York to London can cost $9,600 on British Airways, and to fly first class costs more than $14,000. A coach seat will set you back roughly $500. Look at those figures again. Who in her right mind would pay $9,000 for six hours – or eight, if you include time in the airport – of slightly elevated comfort? Someone who is not paying for her own travel, perhaps, and longs to be a little closer to those billionaires and movie stars who dropped the full $14,000 to be a few extra feet away from the riff-raff. On the ground, a traveler might expect to pay $100 to get 24 hours of extra comfort in a hotel’s upgraded suite or an executive floor room. But as soon as we take to the skies – and become a kind of captive audience – we will pay $9,000 for a little more of the food that we gladly would have much less of. The age of airline deregulation has brought a carnival of “luxury discount” carriers, genuine discount carriers, frat-boy parties in the heavens and fly-by-night operations that change their names or colors before you’ve got a boarding pass. But what it’s really brought us is the worst side of globalism, in compact form. It begins with the inequity of prices. Those paying thousands for the upper deck of the jet effectively set up a gated community in the air, in which people from other classes are not even allowed to visit their restrooms. It continues with the startling inequality of services – and the unsurprising fact that the countries that often score highest for quality of life (Singapore, Australia, New Zealand) also are the ones that offer the most comfortable coach habitations in the sky. It turns upon the dividedness that moves some people to fly across Europe on EasyJet for less than the price of a bus ride, while others strap themselves into Virgin Atlantic Airways Upper Class seats for more than the price of a new car. And it ends with perfect chaos. I got a choice of 60 movies in an Asian carrier’s economy class section last year, and, only a few weeks later, in an exorbitant business class seat of a U.S. airline, got just five. The end-of-the-line luxury logic: You pay much more to get much less. The individual details are less important, though, than the economic assumptions behind the scam. Better seats should cost maybe 20 percent more, or (for movie stars) 50 percent more. But 1,900 percent? You don’t have to be a philanthropist to realise that by enduring slightly more human company for six hours, you could build nine homes in Burundi, each big enough to house 10 people with the money left over. And even if you want to keep the savings for yourself, with $9,000 extra you could take five weeklong, all-inclusive tours to Southeast Asia, for the price of just an afternoon’s greater comfort en route to London. Globalism is something most of us have to accept. But as we look to our summer vacations, maybe some of us can make a small bid for justice, or prudence, or just the pleasure of taking 19 trips for the price of one. These days, common sense can be found mostly in the back of the Airbus. The writer is the author, most recently, of “Abandon,” and a set of essays about travel, “Sun After Dark.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Delhi Durbar Even
though the Congress has appointed new AICC office-bearers to replace those leaders who had joined the cabinet, the party is likely to shift focus to organisational matters only after the presidential election. The new office-bearers too have their task cut out for next month and they are visiting their respective states to see that the UPA-Left candidate Pratibha Devisingh Patil gets full support from the party MLAs. Reshuffle and expansion of cabinets in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh will take place after July 25 when the new President would have assumed office. The party is also contemplating appointing a new PCC chief in Haryana to counter any possible mobilisation of non-Jats behind former Chief Minister Bhajan Lal, who had resigned as PCC chief.
Lost in translation Former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, who rose to second the political resolution at the two-day meeting of the BJP National Executive, introduced earlier by party's senior leader Sushma Swaraj, literally stumped her when he pointed out some serious flaws in the English translation of the resolution. Swaraj, who had prepared the resolution in Hindi, was taken aback and defended herself saying that she was given the English translation only when she was coming up to the dias. Sinha, who was not keen to press the point, said that the problem lies with the translators in the party who had translated the ‘lighting of the lamp’ as ‘lightening of the lamp’. His comment eased the tension for Swaraj.
Cross-talk While Congressmen are openly behind the UPA-Left Presidential nominee Pratibha Patil, they are beginning to feel a trifle uncomfortable and circumspect about the erstwhile Governor of Rajasthan. This is particularly so after her controversial veil remark and her claims that she had divine premonition of greater responsibility after speaking to a spiritual guru who died nearly 40 years back. In private, Congressmen are feeling squeamish that a lot of things are now coming into the open even though they are quick to assert that Pratibha Patil's comfortable win in the upcoming Presidential election is not in doubt.
Ga ga over FM radio Minister for Urban Development Jaipal Reddy likes to give himself a pat on the back for the success of FM radio in the private sector in the country. Speaking after the release of the UNFPA State of the World Population report, Reddy dwelt at length upon the fact that urbanisation is inevitable. In this context, he said that when one visits NRI friends one finds that they have a hectic schedule on weekdays because they spend so much time commuting. He said that long commuting hours have contributed to the revival of the radio. Contributed by Prashant Sood, Satish Misra, S. Satyanarayanan and Tripti Nath |
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