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On whose side is
Lalu? Fighting terror Bharat Ram |
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Bounced cheques and
the bereaved
Living through the
summer
High price for
dithering on wheat imports US combat veterans
reveal Iraq atrocities Delhi
Durbar
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Fighting terror Australian
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson’s visit to India could not have come at a more ‘delicate’ time – when a doctor from Bangalore, Mohammed Haneef is being held in Brisbane for the aborted terrorist attack in the UK. Yet, Mr Nelson who was in New Delhi to sign a strategic defence accord, did not shy away from dealing with questions that are agitating Indian doctors, especially those aspiring to work in Australia. The first such visit in 20 years — for signing an agreement on maritime cooperation for security in the Asia-Pacific region — is an important milestone in India-Australia relations. And, security was very much in focus, although they related to concerns arising out of Indian suspects being detained. In the event, Mr Nelson made it clear that there would be no general clampdown on the issue of visas to Indian doctors in the aftermath of this incident. The signal is that as a community neither doctors nor Muslims from India would be viewed with suspicion. This is as it should be when reason prevails. However, this may well have been dictated by practical considerations: the Australian health care system like the one in the UK is heavily dependent on Indian doctors. Mr Nelson, himself a physician and a former president of the Australian Doctors Association, has asserted that there would be no screening of Indian doctors going to Australia on grounds of race or religion, but solely on the basis of medical standards. He went further to place on record that Australia’s health care system is of very high standards due to hard work, dedication, professionalism and sacrifices of Indian doctors. With this statement, Mr Nelson has not only reassured India and Indian doctors but also served the interests of Australia by seeking to ensure that the country’s health services do not suffer as a result of the terror plot that has been uncovered.
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Bharat Ram Well
into his nineties, Bharat Ram would stride into the greens of the Delhi Golf Club for a game, just like he strode as a colossus across the landscape of Indian industry for several decades. Though born into the family business founded by his father Lala Sri Ram, he saw well ahead of his times, becoming a votary of free enterprise and a strong critic of the Licence and Permit Raj that stifled Indian industry, business and innovation, in the years after Independence. He became DCM’s chairman and managing director in 1958, and under his forward-looking leadership, it grew into a top 10 conglomerate, diversifying from textiles and sugar into electronics and chemicals. He even put an elected worker on the DCM board, much to the surprise of his peers Bharat Ram embodied the type of industry doyen who closely involved himself in all areas of social activity, from education to medical care to sports. Ganga Ram Hospital, the Shriram College of Commerce, Lady Shriram College and other institutions in the capital like the Delhi Golf Club itself, stand testimony to this commitment. The simple lifestyle that he adopted, with none of the extravagance and ostentation that mar some of the new stars on the industry firmament, became an example to all. He led industry federations and chambers of commerce like FICCI with great distinction, and can be considered one of the founding fathers of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). He was also the first Indian president of the International Chamber of Commerce based in Paris, in the 1970s. In his condolence letter to Bharat Ram’s son Vinay, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed that “the institutions he helped establish and develop have set standards of excellence which are benchmarks for the future. He was also a deeply humane person who believed in using wealth for noble causes. His contribution to our nation would be remembered for many generations.” His legacy will continue to shape Indian industry in another era. |
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Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
— Albert Einstein |
Bounced cheques and the bereaved AN utterly outrageous incident that would almost certainly have triggered a storm of protests in any civilised society has just gone virtually unnoticed in this heartless country. Let the facts speak for themselves. A cheque of Rs 10,000 was belatedly bestowed on the bereaved family of one of the hundreds of farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra that are driven to committing suicide every year. Unsurprisingly, it “bounced”. All that the relevant authorities in the state did was to inspire media reports that this had happened because the Prime Minister’s Office had “not released the necessary funds in time”. The PMO’s denial of the dreary exercise in passing the buck was prompt, unambiguous and mildly angry. Thereupon the culprits executed a remarkably swift U-turn. A Maharashtra officer of the rank of a commissioner — no minister bothered even to take note of the squalid episode — appeared on the TV meekly to acknowledge that the PMO had indeed given all the funds in good time, but “unfortunately the cheque got issued against an account in which there was no money”. But, pray, did the flawed cheque materialise out of thin air or did some crass functionary write it? You can rest assured that the wrongdoer would never be punished. Even if the bounced cheque were a stray aberration it would have been unacceptable, especially in a grievously suffering region where the Prime Minister had personally gone nearly a year ago and announced a generous relief and rehabilitation “package”, accompanied with a vow to implement all ameliorating measures speedily. But it was not a stray event. Such things have happened before and many sufferers of various tragedies and outrages, mostly poor and illiterate, are holding on to crumpled cheques that are not worth the paper they were written on. Many of these luckless persons are the victims or heirs and successors of victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and what is inadequately called the Bhopal gas tragedy. Ironically, in the case of the ordinary mortals the government has made it a “cognisable” offence to write dud cheques. Ministers and officials are, of course, above the law. No wonder then that more Vidarbha farmers have committed suicides after the Prime Minister’s visit to the stricken region than before it. The bitter and shameful truth is that governance in India has gone to the dogs. The entire ruling establishment, with very few honourable exceptions, that bends over backwards to carry out the wishes and whims of the rich and the powerful is disgustingly callous to the plight of the poor and the hapless. It cheats and exploits them mercilessly. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the Indian system has become a gargantuan cesspool of an intolerable combination of corruption and incompetence, but, alas, the country goes on tolerating it. The police, supposed to protect the people, has become their worst oppressor for the simple reason that, under the Indian Police Act, circa 1861, every police force, state or central, is the servant, not of the law, as in all advanced democracies, but of those in power at any given time. Things have reached such a stage that it would be easier to get a collective declaration of atheism from a conclave of cardinals than to persuade Indian political parties to give up their ironclad control of the police. It was no accident that after the Supreme Court recently issued a sound and wholesome directive on police reforms, based entirely on the hitherto ignored reports of several police reforms commissions, the trade union of state Chief Ministers refused to accept it, on the specious ground that it “encroached” on the rights of the states. Similar recommendations of the first Administrative Reforms Commission — at one time presided over by Morarji Desai — were consigned to the dustbin ages ago. There is nothing to show that the fate of the new ARC, headed by the former Karnataka chief
minister, Veerapa Moily, would be any different. It is not in cases like that of Vidarbha that funds meant for the sufferers of natural disasters and other misfortunes are siphoned away. The country has to face the stark reality that politicians and bureaucrats, in collusion with unscrupulous businessmen in the private sectors, are looting the public funds meant for almost every project and purpose with virtual impunity. The public distribution system, for instance, was started shortly after the 1966 devaluation of the rupee when prices began to rise, and was expanded vastly in the seventies when the afterglow of the victory in the Bangladesh war began to yield place to acute economic discontent across the country, but with what result? At least half a dozen times every year, TV channels show the trucks of the Food Corporation of India, ostensibly on a mission to replenish the stocks in PDS shops, making a beeline for the black market where they disgorge much of the supplies for a consideration. No wonder then that holders of the “below-the-poverty line” cards cannot get anything at the shops supposedly meant to serve them. The government is now thinking of issuing food stamps to protect the poorest consumers. But in a country where Telgi could make thousands of crores of rupees through forged stamps meant for huge property deals, where is the guarantee that fake food stamps would not flood the market? What is done to foodstuffs is done also to other items, especially petroleum products. If there is massive adulteration of petrol and diesel sold at petrol pumps, one of the reasons is that a lot of the output of oil companies, both public and private, is first offloaded elsewhere. At least one official of an oil company in UP trying to combat this evil was murdered some years ago. The same fate befalls other whistleblowers also. All such vile practices were both widespread and deep-rooted even during the long years of the single-party rule. Since the dawn of the coalition era, applauded by many, these have multiplied. Only the other day, the Prime Minister had publicly lamented that corruption relating to the construction of highways and roads was mounting steadily. But sadly no corrective action has been taken or can be taken. Why? Because everyone knows where the fountainhead of graft and grab in this sector is located, but it apparently has complete immunity because of what can only be called one of the “compulsions of coalition
politics”.
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Living through the summer With
the onset of summer, my thoughts go back to the days of my youth when there were no such facilities as fridges, air-conditioners and desert coolers to see one through the scorching months of May and June. And yet, we did live through them, as some do even today, the millions who do not have the means to provide their homes — or hovels — with these electrical marvels. Two things were in our favour. One was the complete absence of power failures in the Capital. A small, private company operating from the Rajghat power house supplied the household needs of fewer than three lakh citizens and also provided them with cheap transport in the shape of trams which ran up and down Chandni Chowk to Sadar and Qutab Road. The other blessing that affected youngsters like me was that schools and colleges had morning hours, from 7.30 a.m. to 1.30 p.m., leaving us free to enjoy a post-luncheon snooze. I see them now in my mind’s eye; a small band of itinerant workers on the lawn, deftly interlacing dried sprigs of “khus” to make screens which fitted into doors and windows. The job was usually completed by the end of April and from May till the monsoon arrived it was the duty of the houseboy or the full-time mali (A luxury I cannot afford now!) to splash water on the “khus tatties” so that our old, high-ceilinged house stayed cool all day. It was not until my college days that my father had a network of perforated lead pipes fitted all round the house, fed continuously from the garden tap. It was our first step towards “modern living”. Sleeping at night was no problem. One could choose between the freshly watered lawn or the flat roof to lie on a charpoy communing with the stars while the heady scent of “raat-ki-rani” filled one’s nostrils. Drinking water, never in short supply, came straight from the tap. Domestic water purifiers had not been invented, but a few grains of “pinky” were occasionally dropped into the large, clay “mutka” in the pantry. Ice, bought from the nearest factory, wrapped in gunny, was added to it after washing it under a tap. With ice-boxes coming on the market we became a bit more “refined”. The ads said that it was unhygienic and highly dangerous to drink water that had come into contact with “baraf-khana” ice. We took to drinking water that had been boiled and poured into empty whisky bottles to be taken out frosted from the ice-box. Icecream was a real treat. My own favourite was the “pista kulfi” sold in the bazaar, the “shahi halwai” in Chandni Chowk having the largest clientele. One could actually chew the pista or the almond if one preferred its flavour. But buying icecream in the bazaar had to be done on the quiet. Even at that time milk-borne diseases like cholera and typhoid were common. And so, for most of the time it had to be icecream made at home in a wooden pail containing a metal freezer whose handle was turned painstakingly by the cook’s mate (we could afford one those
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High price for dithering on wheat imports The
government has decided to import 5 lakh tonnes of wheat and has placed an order with three firms – Cargill, Toepfer and Riaz Trading – at a price 54 per cent higher than what was given to Indian farmers. Bids were invited last month to purchase 9.2 lakh tonnes of wheat and seven firms participated. None of the US firms could bid due to the high quality norms. The government, however, approved the import of only 511,000 tonnes of wheat. Does India need to import wheat? This question is asked every time wheat is imported. Last year India procured 55 lakh tonnes from abroad. The FCI had failed to meet its procurement targets. Due to the demand-supply gap, speculators and traders mopped up stocks, leading to a hefty price rise. This year the situation is a little better. The government agencies have procured higher stocks of wheat: 10.75 million tonnes compared to last year’s 9.2 million tonnes. The price being paid for imported wheat is quite hefty: Rs 13,162 per tonne. If wheat from Punjab or Haryana is to be delivered at Chennai or Mumbai, the whole cost, including the handling and transportation charges, works out to be Rs 11,000 a tonne. Here is another miscalculation. Some weeks ago the government had cancelled the import of 10 lakh tonnes of wheat because of high prices quoted in the tenders. It was felt that the government should wait for prices to cool after the harvests in Australia, Europe and the US. However, the wheat and freight charges went up instead. If the wheat prices quoted are high, it is partly because of the absence of US firms from bidding. The US wheat does not meet the quality standards set for Indian imports. The US has questioned India’s norms for importing wheat. US Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez has complained that his country’s wheat is exported to 110 countries, including China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, and such quality norms are “unheard of”. Speaking at a function organised by the US-India Business Council in Washington recently, he said because of the Indian barriers to the US wheat, the Indian consumer ended up paying a higher price. In reply, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has said that India will rather pay a higher price for quality wheat than import weed-laden US wheat. While major wheat producers like Australia, Canada, France and Russia were able to meet the Indian quality standards, the US could not participate in the bidding process. Its wheat was found to have unacceptable levels of exotic weeds. Since Indian farmers tend to use imported wheat as seed also, there is a danger of foreign weeds finding root here. Indians have paid a heavy price for unwittingly importing from the US a weed popularly known as the congress grass along with the PL 480 variety of wheat. Mr Gutierrez should understand that given the past experience, India cannot compromise on quality standards. It is, no doubt, true that if allowed to participate in bidding, the US wheat could dampen the global prices to India’s benefit. In view of the warming up of relations with the sole super power, an Indian delegation had gone to the US to resolve the issue, but returned disappointed with the talks remaining inconclusive. The main point of difference is: who should clear the US wheat of weeds and bear the cost, which comes to $5 per tonne? Obviously, the producer and the exporter. But the US wants India to install the cleaning facilities at its ports and foot the bill. Now that is quite unreasonable. Wheat production in India had peaked at 648 tonnes in 2002. The country was then faced with a problem of plenty. To cope with the situation of surplus, the government almost dumped wheat abroad – at prices which were lower than the production cost. Buyers mostly used it as cattle feed. To cut storage expenses, the government raised wheat allocations to deficit states and to below-the-poverty-line beneficiaries. Besides, the grain was offloaded in the open market for bulk buyers. The reckless wheat dumping and the dwindling stocks led to the price rise. Encouraged by last year’s price rise, traders and even farmers, according to reports, are holding back stocks. The government resorts to imports to contain prices. If it pays the same price to Indian farmers that it pays for imported wheat, there may not be any need for imports. Last year the wheat prices had surged to record levels due to poor harvests in major wheat-producing countries like the US, Russia and Australia. This year, going by the future prices, the situation is expected to be better as fresh wheat arrivals are expected to soften the prices. Though the government is importing wheat, the demand-supply mismatch may remain. This could drive traders to exploit the situation of scarcity to their advantage. Secondly, the quality of imported wheat is suspect. A Green activist recently moved the Supreme Court against wheat imports, alleging the wheat imported last year was unfit for human consumption. Besides, 53,000 tonnes of already contracted wheat was lying unused at ports. Since pulses are already in short supply and if the wheat price too soars, the poor would be at the receiving end again and the government’s food subsidy bill would balloon. The food subsidy, which was Rs 9,200 crore in 1999-2000, swelled to Rs 26,000 crore last year.
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US combat veterans reveal Iraq atrocities It
is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Aside the odd bad apple in Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances. That perception has taken a severe knock with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with fifty combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the United States. In thousands of pages of typewritten interviews, veterans described in stark detail the everyday acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity. The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities – such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005 – but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses through the testimony of veterans of the war in Iraq. “It’s not individual atrocity,” said Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armor Battalion, “It’s the fact that the entire war is an atrocity.” A number have themselves returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many war veterans interviewed have come to actively oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the United States that views the war as futile. Journalists and human rights groups have published numerous reports, drawing attention to the killing of Iraqi civilians by US forces. The Nation’s investigation has for the first time presented named military witnesses who openly back those assertions – some participated themselves. Through a combination of gung-ho recklessness and criminal behaviour born of panic, a narrative emerges of an army that frequently commits acts of cold-blooded violence, with innocent civilians often bearing the brunt. A number of interviewees revealed that the military frequently attempts to frame innocent bystanders as insurgents, often after panicked American troops have fired into groups of unarmed Iraqis. The war veterans also provided disturbing evidence that the troops involved would round up any survivors and accuse them of being in the resistance while planting Kalashnikov AK-47 rifled beside corpses to make it appear like they had died in combat. Any civilians who survived such shootings were sent off to jails like Abu Ghraib for further interrogation. There were also deaths caused by the reckless behaviour of military convoys. Sgt. Kelly Dougherty with the Colorado National Guard described a hit and run incident in which a military convoy ran over a 10-year-old boy and his three donkeys, killing them all. “Judging by the skid marks, they hardly even slowed down. But, I mean, that’s basically – basically, your order is that you never stop.” The worst abuses seem to have occurred during raids on private homes when soldiers were hunting insurgents. Thousands of such raids have taken place in Iraq, usually in the dead of night. The veterans point out that the overwhelming majority are futile and serve only to terrify the civilians whose homes were invaded, while generating sympathy for the resistance. Sgt. John Bruhns, 29 of the Third Brigade, First Armour Division, who raided nearly 1,000 Iraqi homes while serving in Baghdad and Abu Ghraib during 2003 described the casual brutality of a typical encounter. “You want to catch them off guard,” he explained. “You want to catch them in their sleep... You run in, You go up the stairs. You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. You put him up against the wall...Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds. You’ll ask the interpreter to ask...: ‘Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda?’” “Normally they’ll say no, because that’s normally the truth,” Sergeant Bruhns told The Nation. “So what you’ll do is you’ll take his sofa cushions and you’ll dump them. If he has a couch, you’ll turn the couch upside down. You’ll go into the fridge, if he has a fridge, and you’ll throw everything on the floor, and you’ll take his drawers and you’ll dump them...You’ll open up his closet and you’ll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it.” And at the end, if the soldiers don’t find anything, they depart with a “Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening.” Sergeant Dougherty described her squad leader shooting an Iraqi civilian in the back in 2003. “It was just, like, the mentality of my squad leader was like, ‘Oh, we have to kill them over here so I don’t have to kill them back in Colorado,’” she said. “He just, like, seemed to view every Iraqi as like a potential
terrorist.” By arrangement with The Independent |
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Delhi Durbar A website has this interesting piece of information that J.B. Bowman is the solitary Indian Civil Service officer alive. The 90-year-old ICS officer of the 1938 batch lives in Mumbai. Bowman stayed in India after independence and served the Maharashtra government till 1962 as Collector of Thana and Bombay, Transport Commissioner, Chief Electoral Officer and Secretary of Urban Development and Public Health department. R.K. Patil, ICS of the 1930 batch and former member of the Planning Commission, died at the age of almost 100 in Nagpur recently. Soft power While the vigour of Bollywood and the success of NRIs has contributed to India’s soft power, the acclaim earned by spiritual leaders and yoga masters has also enhanced the country’s appeal on the global stage. Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar already has an international following and Yoga exponent Swami Ramdev is now getting honours abroad. He recently began his five-nation foreign tour from the US, and has been honoured by the legislature in New Jersey. The Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey, in a joint legislative resolution, praised Swami Ramdev for “his remarkable history of steadfast commitment to improving health in mind, body and spirit and to enhancing the well being of people from all social backgrounds, races and religions”. Earlier, the Nassau county in the US had declared the last day of June as “Swami Ramdev Day.” The timing of the pull-out from the coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir has helped Jammu and Kashmir Panthers Party get the national spotlight. Days after the pullout, done ostensibly with next year’s assembly polls in mind, Panthers Party chief Bhim Singh announced support to Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat in the July 19 presidential poll. Since the Panthers Party, with only four MLAs, was the only party which had broken from the UPA and supported Shekhawat, its president Bhim Singh was given a lot of prominence by the NDA. Bhim Singh has embarked on a nation-wide tour to get support for the NDA-backed independent candidate. Population woes Madhya Pradesh Governor Balram Jakhar stirred a bit of controversy at a function organised in the national capital in the memory of former Madhya Pradesh finance minister Ajay Narayan Mushran. Jakhar puzzled the audience by hailing the late Sanjay Gandhi for his family planning measures, at a lecture on the role of Indian agriculture in the emerging economic scenario. Jakhar explained: had the family planning measures been implemented effectively since Sanjay Gandhi’s days, there would have been no population explosion in the country. He believed that the population explosion was the main cause of shrinking farm holdings which has made farming uneconomical. Contributed by R. Suryamurthy, Prashant Sood and S. Satyanarayanan |
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