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From Russia, with love
Polity under strain
Love and be loved
Putin preparing for a 2012 comeback Crying wolf over the nuclear deal Delhi Durbar
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Bridge with people VEHICULAR traffic in some parts of the country was disrupted on Wednesday when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other affiliates of the Sangh Parivar protested against the Sethusamudram project on the southern coast. The VHP has been opposing it on the ground that the dredging would destroy Adam’s Bridge, also called “Ram Sethu”, which is an underwater formation across the Palk Strait. It claims that the bridge-like structure photographed by a NASA satellite is the remains of the bridge Vanar Sena had built to rescue Sita from the clutches of Ravan. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has in an affidavit filed before the Supreme Court claimed that there was no historical basis for such claims. While doing so, the ASI should have refrained from commenting on the historicity of Ram and other characters in the Ramayana. The government has rightly decided to amend the affidavit. BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani, who had famously argued that the existence of a “Ram temple” at Ayodhya was an article of faith for the Hindus, was politically motivated when he jumped in to characterise the ASI affidavit as blasphemous. The VHP, which is a party to the case, is well within its rights to file a counter-affidavit to prove that the underwater structure was indeed “Ram Sethu”. It is for the apex court to decide whether work on the prestigious project which was, incidentally, initiated by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government of which Mr Advani was a member, to avoid ships having to circumnavigate Sri Lanka to move from, say, Kolkata to Surat, should be stopped on pseudo-religious grounds. As for the BJP, it seems to believe there is a big electoral issue to exploit in the Sethusamudram project before the next election. Even 15 years after the Babri Masjid was demolished at the end of a powerful political campaign launched by the BJP, the wounds caused by the demolition have not been healed. The “Ram Sethu” campaign is sought to be made emotive with Mr Advani not realising that it can go out of control. The BJP will be shortsighted if it believes “Ram Sethu” can help the party come back to power. As it should have known by now, rousing passions does not pay dividends in the long run. There are many political and economic issues on which the BJP can put the UPA government on the defensive, build bridges with the people and seek votes in the next elections. There is no need to exploit the religious feelings of the people.
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Abe goes Japanese
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe surprised everyone by resigning on Wednesday as he was expected to stay in power to carry on his reforms programme. Three days back he had threatened to quit if he failed to extend the Japanese Maritime Defence Force’s refuelling mission in the Indian Ocean to continue his country’s support for the international counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, a project criticised by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan. But nobody could believe that he would go to this extent on an issue less significant than many other problems faced by Japan. He is also reported to have said that he found it futile to continue in his present position as the prevalent political climate would not allow him to promote his structural reforms agenda. It is possible that Mr Abe was upset by a story in a popular tabloid carrying graphic details about massive tax evasion by him. Whatever the actual reason for his unexpected departure, the right time for him to go was when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-led ruling coalition lost its majority in the Upper House after suffering major electoral reverses in July. His LDP has a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives and may choose within a week Mr Abe’s successor. But that will not be the end of the LDP’s problems. The opposition is forcing for an early general election for which the LDP is ill prepared at this stage. The LDP-led coalition government has been rocked by many scandals since Mr Abe replaced Mr Junichiro Koizumi last year as the youngest post-World War-II Prime Minister. The government’s popularity dropped below 30 per cent after the unearthing of a pension fund-related fraud. The various financial scandals led to the resignation of four ministers and suicide by one. Mr Abe has, no doubt, succeeded in improving Japan’s relations with China and South Korea, but his country’s economy is in a bad shape today. His successor will have to work overtime to bring the economy back to its normal health.
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From Russia, with love Revolutions, as they say, never cease. Ninety years after the last one, which came unstuck some 20 years ago, the Russians are in the throes of a new one. This has little to do with Marx, Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky. In fact, the impulses of the ‘new revolution’ are rooted in man’s basic instinct — for conjugal company. Doubtless, Indians and Russians are or were natural allies. May be, a new basis of getting closer is to be evolved by India and Russia. Faced with a declining population and a shortage of marriageable men, a Russian feminist writer and TV personality, Maria Arbatova, has suggested that the solution may lie in importing Indian men for marrying Russian women. Apparently, a well-considered suggestion coming from a friendly country cannot be easily turned down. These ideas that can make for lasting ties of togetherness in an angst-ridden world of alienation are, after all, well-meant. More importantly, such propositions can be mutually beneficial to the individuals as well as the countries involved in cross-cultural bonding. It would address the demographic concerns of both Russia and India. The Russian population is shrinking at the rate of one million every three years, and fewer women, even if they can find the men to marry, are giving birth. In India, despite its huge population, the sex ratio is skewed. In Punjab and Haryana, for instance, the lower female population is driving men to desperation. They have to hunt far and wide within the country for brides. Now here is a classic situation of demand — for bridegrooms in Russia — and supply that can be met by India. Besides, Russian women who have married Indians are gung-ho about Indian men being ideal for their family and children. While the population pressure on the land is immense in India, the 142 million in Russia are spread thinly over a country five times the size of India. So, what are Indians, especially men in Punjab and Haryana, seeking brides, waiting for? Time to get going with the formalities of passports, visas and air tickets without waiting for the Government of India to establish a ministry for overseas marriages.
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To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilisation. — Bertrand Russell
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Polity under strain
A
mature electorate and an independent Election Commission are two big assets of Indian democracy. However, there is no healthy party system to sustain and enrich it. Proliferation of political parties may reflect India’s vast size and diversity, but this has proved to be a bane rather than a boon. There is so much indiscipline among the political parties that no one seems to be bothered about the damage it is causing to democracy. Organisational elections are not held regularly. Party funds are not audited and submitted to the Election Commission. Consequently, political party reforms and regulation by law are necessary for any meaningful electoral reforms. Addressing the Fourth National Seminar on Electoral Reforms in Lucknow recently, which this writer attended, Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami said that there were now as many as 909 parties. Of them, six are national, 45 state and the rest just exist for namesake. Most parties have one chair, one table and one room. The fact that the commission receives three applications every week for registration suggests how politics is considered as a lucrative profession in the country. The big problem is that there is no financial discipline and transparency in the political parties. Mr Gopalaswami cites the typical example of “Paramarth Party”. Its activists got it registered with the commission only to get tax rebate. Its leaders had a one-point agenda — to invest in shares and debentures. When the commission put its foot down and objected, they started following the same practice with a new name, “Matrubhakt Party”! The political parties are required to file every year their returns with the Election Commission indicating the donations and contributions they have received in the year. They should also file their annual returns of income under the Income Tax Act. Surprisingly, these rules are followed more in breach than in practice. Worse, the information given by most candidates in their affidavits filed before the Returning Officers don’t match with the tax returns. Some NGOs like the Association for Democratic Reforms have been demanding that political parties should disseminate information to the general public about their donations and tax returns for scrutiny. The suggestion for putting them on the Internet is sound and reasonable. The Election Commission, too, has asked the government to pursue it to its logical conclusion. However, the government has been keeping mum. The commission has said that if the government gives information to it about the tax returns, it can be shared with the public. There is a need to enforce financial transparency among the political parties. If a donation to a party is above Rs 20,000, details must be given to the Election Commission. Subsequently, this information should be placed in the public domain and made available in the commission’s website for closest scrutiny. The formation and functioning of political parties should be regulated to ensure internal democracy. The Representation of People Act mandates each party to maintain annual rolls of its members, the subscription fee paid by them and to submit the same regularly to the Election Commission. This Act also requires that the internal constitution of each political party, so recognised by the commission, has explicit provisions for regular election of the office-bearers of the party and these are regularly carried out and reported to the commission. Unfortunately, most political parties revolve round either a family or an individual. Inner-party democracy is bound to suffer if elections of the president and other office-bearers are not held regularly and if those elected are not accountable to the members at large. Even where elections are held, the leaders are pre-determined a la Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav’s election as the RJD president. Strangely, the political parties treat the Election Commission’s queries seeking details about the organisational elections, etc. with disdain and contempt. Their stock reply to the queries is, “the president will decide”. According to the Chief Election Commissioner, some have even questioned the commission’s courage in writing letters to them about the party elections. The Law Commission and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC) have examined this problem in their reports. But successive governments have not implemented them. The NCRWC, for instance, has recommended a comprehensive legislation regulating the registration and functioning of political parties or alliances of parties. The proposed legislation should provide for compulsory registration of every political party or pre-poll alliance. It should lay down conditions for the constitution of a political party or alliance and for its registration, recognition, deregistration and derecognition. Most political parties have become fiefdoms in which family and business interests dominate. Office-bearers and candidates for elections all strive to promote their leader’s business interests. It is this lack of internal democracy in political parties that has led to the criminalisation of politics. Criminals and armed cadres become office-bearers, contest elections and then become MPs, MLAs and ministers. The N.N. Vohra Committee and the Indrajit Gupta Committee have referred to the increasing criminalisation of politics and the need to contain it. Clearly, criminals must be thrown out of the system. If the political parties don’t rise to the occasion, the Election Commission needs to crack the whip. In its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in July 2004, the Election Commission had recommended that any person against whom a court had framed charges of serious criminal nature should not be allowed to contest elections. However, little has been done in this regard. The political parties’ argument that the charge-sheets against most candidates are politically motivated is illogical and unconvincing. When some of them have been charged with repeat offences (some for even 10 times or more), how can one call it politically motivated? Far worse is the case of absconders against whom non-bailable warrants have been issued. If the police cannot execute an NBW against a person, he is presumed to be not staying in his residence. Consequently, the District Magistrate and Returning Officer should strike his name off the electoral rolls. The recommendation of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice headed by Dr E. M. Sudarsana Natchiappan that the District Magistrate should issue a notice to the absconder before debarring him is illogical and meaningless. The government should show no mercy to criminals and absconders who have no respect for the law and the system. If political parties continue to give tickets to those with criminal antecedents and get them elected, the presiding officers of Parliament and state legislatures should not allow them to attend the House. If criminals are barred from taking part in the proceedings of the legislatures as a matter of policy, it may deter the Prime Minister and the Chief Ministers from including them in their respective councils of ministers. As openness, transparency, accountability, disclosure and democracy are indivisible, we need an effective legislation to regulate the political parties’ conduct in respect of norms in membership, leadership choice, funding and choice of candidates for various elective offices. There is no short cut to
democracy.
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Love and be loved IT is in the nature of human beings to love and be loved. The feeling that you belong to someone is highly gratifying. Our folklore and the scriptures abound in examples of supreme and unselfish love. These examples of divine love had inspired many a poet in the past to write great epics. Sage poet Tulsidas can be cited as one such example. He was so deeply in love with his wife that he could not bear the pangs of her separation when she left for her parent’s house for a few days. So agonising was her absence that he craved to unite with her immediately. The fact that the river was in spate and no boatman was willing to risk crossing it in the darkness, did not deter him in any way. He saw a floating log in the river and climbed on to it to cross it. On reaching her abode, he climbed up to her room with the help of a rope that he noticed hanging from a tree. She was shocked beyond belief on seeing him there. So blinding was his love for that he did not even notice that the log he rode on to cross the river was a floating dead body and the rope he used to climb to her room was a snake hanging from the tree. The wife chided him that had he shown similar single-minded devotion and love towards God, he would have attained divinity. On hearing this, he left the house for good and became an ascetic. He rose to great spiritual heights and wrote Ramcharit Manas, a highly revered epic. It is a mythological lore and may not appeal to a rational mind. Still, the earthy men of today’s turbulent world are no less capable of experiencing such extreme emotions. People struck by personal tragedies or those focused spiritually, experience these emotions rather easily. Despite being conscious that what is destined is bound to happen, for that’s how God has willed it and also that there is no alternative or option but to accept the inevitable, it is nearly impossible to do so. Guru Nanak showed it practically how one could overcome the shackles of Karma. Despite remaining deeply immersed in meditation, he continued to meet his social commitments concurrently without any conflict or desire for returns. This was his way of showing how one could be a doer without being interested in the fruits of one’s actions. One could thus become free of all human bondages and break out of the cycle of birth and death. But can the lesser human beings like us ever achieve such sublime heights and selflessness? Our proclivity towards strong human bonds and yearning for returns make all this almost impossible. At times, I wonder where has the strength of character, fortitude and the tenacity to cope with adversity gone now? During the years in the uniform, one saw the dead and the dying every now and then without being unduly stirred. The life carried on uninterrupted as if nothing much had happened. Then why am I at my weakest now; not being able to extricate from the depth of sorrow? Is it because this time it was a part of me that had been wrenched away? She shook her head to say that the game was over before taking her final curtain call. All our visits to gurdwaras for prayers, family guru for blessings and the beseeching ardases were of no avail. Perhaps, her time as destined was up already. How to keep the melancholic existence going at its minimum level at least is the struggle
now.
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Putin preparing for a 2012 comeback
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin has nominated a longtime associate who is a largely anonymous figure to be the country’s new prime minister, scrambling predictions about who will be the Kremlin-backed candidate in next March’s presidential election. Viktor Zubkov, 65, was chosen by the president hours after Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov resigned. Zubkov, chairman of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service, a body that investigates money-laundering, must be approved by the lower house of parliament, or Duma, which invariably approves Kremlin initiatives. Fradkov, a colorless technocrat who loyally followed Kremlin orders, said he was leaving his post so Putin would have a free hand to create a new government in the run-up to the presidential election, as well as parliamentary elections scheduled for December. Putin, accepting Fradkov’s resignation, sounded a similar note to explain the government reshuffle, and also hinted that Zubkov may be around for a while. “We all need to think about how to build up the structure of power and governance so they are better suited to the pre-election period,” said Putin in televised remarks from the Kremlin. He added that “we need to prepare the country for the time after the parliamentary election and after the presidential election.” Putin himself was first appointed prime minister in 1999 six months before President Boris Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve, catapulting his young charge into the Kremlin. Putin is required under the Russian constitution to step down after serving two consecutive terms but would be free to run again after a successor served as president. Many analysts here had expected Putin to follow the same scenario as Yeltsin and appoint a premier who could burnish his presidential credentials in a compressed time frame that would give little opportunity for damaging political crises or blunders. Zubkov, however, wasn’t on anyone’s radar. For months now, Sergey Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev, both first deputy prime ministers, have been seen as the two leading figures competing for Putin’s nod for president. The Russian newspaper Vedomosti confidently reported Wednesday that Ivanov, a former minister of defense, would be appointed prime minister. The appointment of Zubkov baffled analysts, and some found it hard to believe that he could eventually become president. “Really, it’s a very weird appointment,” said Yevgeny Volk, head of the Heritage Foundation in Moscow, in a phone interview. “Zubkov doesn’t seem like a candidate fit for the presidency. This may be to divert the public from the real candidate for the moment. But Kremlin-watchers now have a lot of food for thought.” Zubkov is a close ally of Kremlin officials Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, who are among the leaders of former military and security services officials, known as the siloviki, who people the government and state-controlled companies, according to a report last March by the Center for Current Politics in Russia. Viktor Ivanov and Sechin helped Zubkov move to Moscow from St. Petersburg, where in the early 1990s he had served under Putin on a foreign affairs committee in the mayor’s office. In the 1990s, Zubkov and Putin were also neighbors in a community of country homes outside St. Petersburg where much of Putin’s circle first coalesced. The Center for Current Politics described Zubkov as a “henchman” of Viktor Ivanov’s and a “protege” of Sechin’s. He has “preserved the reputation of a man from the president’s private circle,” it said in the report. The center noted that Zubkov has been invited to Putin’s very exclusive birthday parties. Zubkov’s son-in-law Anatoly Serdyukov is Russia’s minister of defense. “They are all buddies,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, head of the Department for the Study of Elites at the Institute of Sociology in Moscow, in a telephone interview. Zubkov was born in the Sverdlovsk region of central Russia. A Communist Party functionary, he graduated from the Leningrad Agricultural Institute in 1965 before being named general-director of a group of collective farms. In 1999, after Putin became prime minister, Zubkov became deputy minister of taxation for the Russian Federation. That same year, he ran for governor of the Leningrad region but only got 8 percent of the vote. He later became deputy minister of finance and chairman of the body in charge of stamping out money-laundering, a post where he largely avoided publicity. “Sometimes the press sounds a note of disappointment because, they say, the Financial Monitoring Service cannot boast any high-profile cases,” he said in a rare interview this year with the Russian weekly Argumenty I Fakty. “I am convinced that this is good. We don’t even recommend using our documents in court or for investigation. Our purpose is to quietly force dishonest participants out of the market and make the financial sector more transparent.” Despite his closeness to Putin and his ties within governing circles, Zubkov had no political profile until Wednesday. In that, he may fit into a political scenario about which there has been endless speculation here: that a caretaker president would keep Putin’s seat in the Kremlin warm until he returns in 2012 or sooner. The Russian constitution would allow Putin to run again in 2012, or earlier if the successor president resigned ahead of schedule. “I believe Viktor Zubkov is an ideal candidate for the presidency,” said Victor Ilyukhin, a communist deputy in parliament, speaking on Ekho Moskvy radio. “He is a very close friend of Putin. He is loyal, controls all financial flows, and he is not young. He will be 66 soon, so it looks like the Kremlin is implementing the scenario of Putin coming back in 2012. The fact that he is not young is very important: They have chosen somebody who definitely will not have any ambitions, whereas if there had been somebody younger he might say: `Well, why can’t I work for a second term?’ “ With the Kremlin’s ability to control the critical broadcast media and marginalise any opposition, Putin’s choice for president is likely to coast to electoral victory next March – even if he is little-known now. The president’s choice will also be able to exploit Putin’s huge popularity, and Putin has said he will eventually let voters know whom he would like them to vote for. “Perhaps he is the successor, but he doesn’t look like a successor,” said Boris Makarenko, a political analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, in a telephone interview. He said Zubkov’s term as prime minister could also be a sop for Viktor Ivanov and Sechin if Putin chooses someone outside their circle for the presidency, because they would be working with a prime minister who is in essence their man. Or, he said, Zubkov may indeed be the presidential place-holder, allowing Putin to return, which is reportedly the fervent wish of the siloviki. “Until further notice, either scenario is possible,” Makarenko said. By arrangement with
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Crying wolf over the nuclear deal Indian
political parties, nuclear scientists, analysts and other opinion makers have made a very useful contribution to the negotiation of the fine print of the 123 Agreement that will give effect to the Indo-US nuclear deal. Now that the country has got the best possible deal that it could, many of them protest too much! The remarkably stubborn Left Parties, the ambivalent BJP leadership and the analysts who are crying wolf are plumb wrong. Why do our analysts and apparatchiks of the Left Parties so meekly assume that we will play a subaltern role and act as pawns to further US “imperialism” and hegemony? What did we get from 50 years of non-alignment anyway? It had, in any case, tilted rather sharply towards the Soviet Union. A few decades ago we were down on our knees – crippled by famines, droughts, Fabian socialism, the license-permit Raj and sanctions. We were almost forced to sell the family silver. Yet, we did not bend to the diktats of the sole superpower (remember Charles Krauthammer exulting in “The Unipolar Moment”?!) and its allies and refused to sign the NPT and the CTBT despite all their entreaties, threats and cajoling. Now with our economic and military power looking up, with the US economy and military power progressively declining and with the leaders of the world’s major powers making a n annual pilgrimage to Delhi, what weakness of character makes these pessimists worry so much? The Indo-US nuclear deal is a win-win arrangement for both India and the US. It is a positive development for international non-proliferation. It will get us much needed nuclear, space, defence, medical and agricultural technologies. In the form of FDI, it will spur the infusion of large amounts of capital that will lead to jobs and prosperity. Since strategic analysts have worst case scenarios etched on their souls, let us assure them that we can walk out of the deal when we want to – with our strategic weapons programme, honour and dignity intact. The nuclear deal will further unshackle our locked up potential to alleviate poverty and really free our people. Let us not sink under the weight of our own doubts and misconceptions. Let us be clear in our thinking: no power on earth can tell India what to do. We will decide what is in our national interest. We will be the masters of our own destiny. Let us take the opportunity with both hands and make the best of it. Let us rise to lead the world.
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Delhi Durbar Janata Dal
(United) President Sharad Yadav’s threat to burn the wheat being imported on arrival at Mundra port in Kutch, Gujarat, should not come as a surprise to those familiar with socialist opposition to foreign goods and companies. In 1993, when the then Narasimha Rao government promised 15,000 acres of land to Cargill, an American multinational company, to produce salt, George Fernandes (then with Janata Dal) launched an aggressive campaign in Kandla port, Gujarat, which compelled the company to withdraw its project. Around the same time, Karanataka farmers led by the late socialist leader Prof. Nanjundaswamy ransacked the multinational Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet and the Cargill office in Bangalore. Their grouse against Cargill was that it was trying to lure Indian farmers by promising them high-yielding seeds in Bellary. Fernandes organised a solidarity rally under the banner “Samajwadi Abhiyan.” On March 1, 1994, Fernandes waged a war against Pepsi, Coke and the GATT. The movement has witnessed daily court arrests at the Parliament Street police station. In 1978-79, when Fernandes was Industries minister, he forced IBM and Coca Cola to pack their bags.
A metro ride Chattar Singh Durbar, the BJP MP from Dhar, a reserved constituency in Madhya Pradesh, surely knows how to keep his constitutents in good humour. Last week, Durbar was seen buying 63 tickets from the Central Secretariat metro station to take prospective voters from his constituency for a free ride on New Delhi’s wonder transport. The man behind the ticket counter smiled when the MP asked a constituent to be sure of the head count lest they be asked to deboard midway their destination. Later Durbar said that he had taken the group to the Lok Sabha and out for lunch.
Sedentary scribes About 40 per cent of Delhi journalists in the age group 30-50 years have high cholesterol and triglyceride levels that puts them at risk of high blood pressure and coronary artery disease. Ten per cent of those who came out from a health camp were diagnosed with diabetes. Dr Narender Saini, Delhi-based clinical laboratory consultant who helped the IMA organise the camp at IMA headquarters, with help from the Batra Hospital, says that the reason for hypertension and high lipid profile is sedentary lifestyle and intake of oily food.
Classic channel During Parliament sessions, the Lok Sabha channel has the highest TRP ratings from the scribes and MPs. However, the channel has resorted to an old formula to catch the attention of viewers during the inter-session period. It is telecasting classic plays and award winning films in both Hindi and regional languages. For the fans of Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Govind Nihalani and others, it is the channel to watch. Contributed by Tripti Nath and
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