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Power play in China Karunanidhi’s
kite-flying |
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Man from Malerkotla
Coalition constraints
Taming the audit boys
Behind the tragedy in Africa When mediocrity prevails Delhi Durbar
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Power play in China President
Hu Jintao of China has emerged as the man in total control of the Communist Party of China (CPC) after the conclusion of its 17th congress on Sunday. He skilfully ensured the removal of his formidable rival, 68-year-old Vice-President Zeng Quinghong, from the powerful Central Committee of the party. The other two key leaders who have also lost their coveted positions are security chief Luo Gan and Anti-Corruption Bureau head Wu Guanzheng. But the primary target of Mr Hu was Mr Zeng, known for his skill for political manoeuvring. Mr Hu faced little difficulty in showing the three Central Committee members the door because of the acceptance of the idea promoted by him that those nearing 70 years or having crossed this age limit should be made to quit the key seats of power. Mr Hu has succeeded not only in getting rid of the man who could have posed a serious challenge to his authority as the top leader of the CPC but also in ensuring the acceptance of his favourite programme of promoting a “scientific outlook on development”. This reflects China’s worries relating to the excessive use of the available resources, environmental degradation and the yawning rich-poor divide as the country marches forward with double-digit economic growth. There is increasing realisation that the problems of the people left out by China’s economic boom — like those living in the rural areas, low-wage workers and migrants — have to be given serious consideration. One can notice in the new lineup an effort to ensure that Mr Hu’s development programme continues to get the desired attention even after he ceases to be in the commanding position. The reconstituted nine-member Politburo Standing Committee includes the names of two leaders — Mr Xi Jinping of Shanghai and Mr Li Kegiang of Liaoning, a northeastern province —considered as successors for Mr Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao after five years. They are in their early fifties with an excellent reputation for their administrative abilities. Mr Hu, however, may not find it easy to implement his scheme of things if the new leaders controlling the levers of power fail to provide a government that is more responsive to the aspirations of all sections of society, and not only in the central provinces which are moving fast.
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Karunanidhi’s
kite-flying Tamil
Nadu
Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s
suggestion for a new Constitution to carry forward the cause of federalism
would appear to be motivated more by the need for grabbing public attention
than advancing the cause of state autonomy. He argues that the era of
coalitions calls for a new Constitution. Few are likely to see any merit, political or constitutional, in the case he has made out for this. Neither the experience of regional parties nor the coalition experiments at the Centre in the last 30 years justify the need for a new Constitution. The country has had coalitions, in one form or another at the Centre, beginning with 1977 when the first non-Congress government took office. The Janata Party was essentially a coalition of its constituents such as the then Jana Sangh, the Congress (O), the Swatantra Party and the Bharatiya Lok Dal and was supported by the DMK, too. The reasons for the failure of the experiment had little to do with the lack of federalism. Similarly, the short-lived coalitions in 1989 and 1990 of Mr V P Singh and Chandra Shekhar, too, did not collapse because of infirmities in the Constitution. The experience of the so-called Federal Front of the regional parties with Mr H D Deve Gowda, and later Mr I K Gujral, at the helm of the United Front government was, again, instructive that coalitions need to be rooted in the unity of purpose, policy and programmes. In contrast, some coalition governments at the Centre and in the states have been able to complete their term in office, underscoring that it was not the Constitution but the political climate and the men who try to manipulate it that are at fault. During all these coalition experiments, regional parties, including the DMK, were preoccupied not so much with issues of federalism but solely with the share of power they could wrest for securing their own — and not their state’s - interests. There can be many flaws in the Constitution, but there is enough scope for the states to have their say in its working. The limits of the present Constitution are yet to be tested before it can be stated with any certainty that it is out of tune with federal aspirations.
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Man from Malerkotla Whenever
an Indian leaves the country’s shores, one dream recurring in his mind is to make it big in the foreign land. Not many get to make it true. Well, Bobby Jindal did, by becoming the Governor of Louisiana in the US on Saturday. Naturally, there is a sense of elation, especially in his home state Punjab and his native village Khanpur near Malerkotla. It does not matter that he was born and brought up in the US by an engineer father who migrated to the US nearly four decades ago. For everyone back home, he is the son of the soil who made it big abroad. After all, he is the first non-white to become Louisiana’s Governor since the end of the US civil war, that too from a party that historically suffers from a white-only syndrome. That is the highest US political post any community member has won. When he takes office in January, the staunch supporter of President Bush will also be the nation’s youngest Governor in office. Earlier, Bobby Jindal has had two successful terms as a member of the Lower House of Congress. He is only the second Indian-American to serve in Congress after Dalip Singh Saund. This achievement has come about after overcoming many racial hurdles. The Rhodes scholar has systematically clawed his way up in one of America’s poorest, unhealthiest and most backward states and won admiration for his administrative capability. Some may crib that the success has come his way because he converted to Roman Catholism and spent time in attacking the theory of evolution and abortion rights. But the central point of his campaign was anti-corruption. Political corruption, racism and backwardness are rampant in the southern state and he has put fighting all these on his agenda.
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The living need charity more than the dead. — George Arnold
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Coalition constraints
Whatever
the ultimate fate of the Indo-US nu-clear deal, the contentious debate between the Congress-led coalition and the Left parties that support it has had two consequences. The element of trust that has existed between the two sides has evaporated and, despite statements to the contrary, it seems highly unlikely that the coalition arrangement can drag on till 2009. There has been an element of give and take between the Congress and the Left, with either side giving in to, or acquiescing in, policies not to the liking of the other. This has been most noticeable on such economic issues as the privatisation of state units and labour laws. But the shrillness of the pitch of the Left on the nuclear deal and its ultimatum to the government, which seemed to have ended in a dramatic tactical retreat by the Prime Minister, has metamorphosed into mixed signals. The truth is that the government is still seeking ways to save the deal, with the American political calendar imposing its own compulsions. If the Cong-ress attempt is to drag on discussions on the deal with the Left parties till a more propitious time, the country is in for some more surprises. Not only is the Left implacably opposed to the deal but it has also smelt blood — given the opportunistic opposition to the deal by the Bharatiya Janata Party and a wide section of public opinion, including some coalition partners. On the face of it, the government cannot live with the tail-wagging-the-dog situation for long for its own good and the health of the country. The question before the main parties in the coalition is when they will agree on a propitious time to call it a day. The current betting is that elections will be held in February or in the autumn next year. The Left parties have their own calculations to make but, given their implacable opposition to the nuclear deal, they cannot set the election timetable although they will have some flexibility in withdrawing their support while not immediately voting out the government in Parliament. Quite apart from the merits and demerits of the nuclear deal, the present crisis has some object- lessons in running a coalition at the Centre, lessons political parties can neglect only at their peril in an era of coalitions. The coalition dharma Congress president Sonia Gandhi talked about recently is an omnibus phrase that needs to be defined. The BJP, for instance, prides itself on completing a full term in office and being adept at running coalitions. But their claims have been punctured somewhat with the acrimonious divorce they have had recently with the Janata Dal (S) in Karnataka. Indian coalitions are, in a sense, curiosities inasmuch as they are alliances of convenience unguided by common approaches. The traditional coalition represents areas of common interests and approaches. The rallying cry of coming together to oppose the alleged communal policies of the BJP carries less conviction today because many of the regional parties have no compunction in going to bed with the BJP when it suits their interests. Another bogey of Indian politics is the formation of a Left-leaning Third Front allegedly equidistant from the BJP and the Congress. But here one comes up against the absurdity of the Left parties — the strongest of them, the CPM — has regional strongholds but little other worthwhile support across the country — teaming up with regional outfits with their narrow focus, despite the secularism they might shout from the housetops, often to snag Muslim votes. The communists themselves cannot claim that they are equidistant from the Congress and the BJP because they have often acknowledged the “good elements” in the Congress and by the very fact of their propping up the Congress-led coalition. Besides, the Left has never exercised as much influence over policy making as at present, given their patchy countrywide support. The communists are, of course, not alone in doing so. Look at the pound of flesh the DMK is extracting out of the Congress, removing and installing Cabinet ministers in Delhi. The much-wonted BJP-led coalition was similarly afflicted, with a Cabinet minister summarily removed at the behest of the Shiv Sena and then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee was a mute spectator in accepting the choice of his successor. The Left parties have their own common minimum programme with the Congress but its outline is vague and full of platitudes and it is spurious on their part to justify their opposition to the nuclear deal on occasions on the ground that it does not figure in it. Both the Congress and the BJP are waning parties in their national reach, with the former having an edge although its decimation in large areas of the populous Hindi-speaking belt in recent years is apparent. The BJP’s representation in the South is patchy and its strident association with the Hindutva creed sits ill in states such as Tamil Nadu, with their own dynamics and folklore. However, it is to the credit of the BJP that it has been trying hard to improve its representation by striking up an anti-communist rhetoric in Kerala, wooing the Telegu Desam party in Andhra and achieving its most impressive showing in Karnataka — all the greater reason that it has been bitter about losing the chance to lead a coalition government in the state. The BJP’s consolation in Tamil Nadu is that one of the two main Dravidian parties gravitates towards the Congress or the BJP, depending upon the other’s alignment at the Centre. The short point is that outside of the Congress and the BJP, no other party has countrywide credentials and hence there is no prospect of an end to coalition governments, which must align with either regional parties or the Left whose national reach is limited. That is precisely the reason that the emergence of Ms Mayawati as a potential national factor is meeting with much interest and foreboding. The UP Chief Minister has made it plain that she has national ambitions and, given the countrywide nature of the Dalit vote, her aggressive reach into other areas of northern and western India holds a threat to both national parties. It would be an exaggeration to say that Ms Mayawati will define the future shape of Indian coalition politics, but her advent on the national scene has the potential to disrupt the Congress and the BJP methods of playing coalition
politics.
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Taming the audit boys NO one has been able to fathom the self-righteous mindset of the Audit Department of the Government of India over the past 150 years, much less to reform and bring its officials to heel. Their obtuse logic, though at times hilarious in hindsight, must surely be galling to those at the receiving end. Gen Sir John Adye placed one such example on record in 1863; “An old officer called and requested me to give him a certificate of his being alive, as the audit department refused to give him his pension without it. He seemed to be well and lively and I therefore complied at once, and as his visit was in August, dated it accordingly. On looking at it, he remarked: ‘Ah, you have dated it August. That is of no use. I have already sent them one of that kind, but what they require is a certificate that I was alive in July’.” Lord Curzon, a well read and must travelled man who was perhaps the only Viceroy with a post-graduate university degree from Cambridge, found the ways of the audit agency in India very antiquated. He was to record that in this department he found, “red-tape, officialdom of the most rampant kind and an utterly vicious system of department finance”. So when Lord Kitchener arrived as the C-in-C of the Indian Army around 1901, Lord Curzon urged him to reform the military department as a priority task. For one thing, by any yardstick the department was too amorphous and for another, the Audit agency was also a component of it. Where reforming the audit branch was
concerned, Kitchener felt defeated and admitted in disgust that the office-bound methods of the department were so absurd that he set his aides-de-camps to pounding up their files into papier-mache to make mouldings for the ceiling of the palatial dining hall that he was adding to his official residence at Shimla. The audit branch was quick to smell blood and wanted an explanation how a new dining hall was added to the C-in-C’s existing official residence, at public expense without prior approval of the competent sanctioning authority! This was the beginning of a wider and an ugly controversy which embroiled the Viceroy and his C-in-C, leading eventually to Lord Curzon’s resignation from viceroyalty. But I have known at first hand one incident where an unassuming truck driver of the Indian Army had completely outwitted a team of auditors. The annual visit to army units by the auditors is a fairly dreaded manifestation. On this particular occasion, the unit had parked its vehicles in the meticulous military fashion and spent wakeful days and sleepless nights in checks and cross-checks lest there be any “audit-objections”. An auditor on one three-ton truck at random for scrutiny. The driver was asked to produce the logbook which is a remarkable encyclopedia of records of running
repairs, periodic maintenance, engine overhauls, daily mileage run, fuel consumption and replenishment, so on and so forth. The auditor looked at the latest entry of the total mileage run by the vehicle. He then moved to the instruments panel on the dash-board of the vehicle. To his amusement he found that it showed 75 km less than the entry in the logbook. Now was not the auditor happy that in a trice he had unearthed embezzlement of fuel equivalent to the consumption during a 75-mile run? The driver was given a chance to explain the variance in the two figures. With a straight face the driver said that certain drivers who were inept in reversing the vehicle were imparted training till they perfected this skill. In the event the mileage record meter also functioned in the reverse which led to this anomaly! For once the auditor had found a
match.
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Behind the tragedy in Africa But, last week, he was barred from speaking at London’s Science Museum after claiming that black people are naturally less intelligent than whites. Like Winston Churchill (who regarded Indians as inherently incapable of self-rule, declaring, “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion”), Watson’s limitations as a man are revealed by his attitude to race. The 79-year-old said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours n whereas all the testing says not really”. He issued an apology and admitted that his views had “no scientific basis” after public outrage curtailed the promotion of his latest book, and he has now been suspended as the chancellor of a prestigious US research institute. But his remarks can’t be dismissed as the rantings of a destabilised old man, being consistent with a series of prejudicial statements he’s made: that women should be allowed to abort homosexual babies; that poverty is the result of stupidity; and that women should be genetically designed to be more beautiful. The only people he doesn’t regard as being in need of improvement are privileged, affluent, heterosexual white males. Questioning the intelligence of a race is to dispute whether those people are fully human and worthy of basic rights, compassion and humane treatment. The pseudo-scientific libelling of Africans was a 19th century justification for slavery, its proponents arguing that black people were uniquely suited for it because of their “primitive psychological organisation”. A leading physician of the antebellum South, Samuel A Cartwright, even diagnosed runaway slaves as suffering from a mental illness, drapetomia, the onset of which revealed itself in their being “sulky and dissatisfied” n unsurprising sentiments in a slave, you might think. The treatment he proposed for slaves displaying such symptoms was, “whipping the devil out of them”. Cartwright also diagnosed dysaethesia aethiopica, a theory of negro laziness, characterised by an insensitivity of the skin. His prescription was to anoint the toil-shy black “all over in oil, and to slap the oil in with a broad leather strap; then to put the patient to some hard kind of work in the sunshine”. Flogging was the cost-effective remedy offered by scientists for the exhaustion, rage and desire for freedom of the enslaved. James Watson’s defamatory remarks have put him in the unique position of being a man who shares a podium with the titans of science – such as Darwin, Oppenheimer and Bohr – while having one foot on a soap-box with Cartwright and other distasteful cranks. His assertion that genetics, rather than political and economic conditions, is the cause of Africa’s malady was a glib, inhumane refusal to recognise the historical context of Africa’s condition and the responsibility the world has towards it. Africa’s plight isn’t unique, and has nothing to do with race. More people live in poverty in India than in Africa; 40 per cent of India is illiterate, and the subcontinent is home to almost half of the world’s malnourished children. But India has had 60 years of relative political stability, without external interference, enabling the emergence of a strengthening economy that is now in the grip of a technology boom. How would Watson account for the disparity between the Bangalore whizz kids who manage the computer system of the New York Stock Exchange and the famished, empty-eyed rural millions who live in conditions identical to those associated with sub-Saharan Africa? Would race explain that too? And how would he account for the hugely different conditions in which the people of South Korea live compared with their former compatriots in the North? Is it DNA, or is it the political situation in which they live? Politics underlies the problems of the developing world, both the internal political systems of developing nations and their power relations with richer ones. In the middle of the 20th century, most of India’s and China’s populations lived in a state of pre-industrial subsistence, and both countries experienced famine until the 1960s. But both are organic nation states, whose territorial boundaries cohere with their historic ethnic groupings. While both have suffered enormous upheavals, they have managed to arrive at stability because neither country inherited the post-colonial turmoil that Africa did, with different, often historically opposed ethnic groups forced to live within artificial borders drawn by imperial masters. African tribes were split between colonial powers or crowded into states, where, as in Rwanda, one tribe was privileged over another, causing resentment and hostility that has escalated into conflict to the present day. And unlike the fractured mini-states of Africa, the vast size of India and China gives them the economies of scale attractive to inward foreign investment and the power to deter Western bullying. India and China run a massive trade surplus with the West, exporting consumer goods or providing an outsourced back-office for multinationals. But the West doesn’t dare punish them for it, let alone force them into the unfair trade agreements – such as in agriculture – that it applies to disunited, disorganised and easily manipulated Africa. The West invests billions each year in Indian and Chinese capital and infrastructural projects, while its relationship with Africa is solely as an exporter of primary resources. Indians and the Chinese increasingly work in factories and offices built with Western money, but Africans continue to toil in mines and farming crops. James Watson stupidly stated that the West’s social policies in Africa fail because Africans have a low intelligence. But the only social policy the West has is indifference or the exploitation of the continent’s weaknesses. Watson’s remarks have attracted scorn for their racism, but they should also have reignited discussion about the real reasons why the dysfunctions of Africa have proven so intractable. But the causes are too complex and guilt-inducing for the likes of Watson to address, and the media fell into apathetic Africa fatigue long ago. The West owes Africa a huge moral debt: its political chaos, and the corruption and economic uncertainty that arise from such chaos, has its roots in the greedy, reckless colonial scramble that carved up the continent more than a century ago. The West will probably never make good on that debt, but the very least it can do is treat the continent with some fairness and decency, and never blame its problems on any deficiency in its people.
By arrangement with The Independent
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When mediocrity prevails Raktabija, the demon who could replicate himself ad nauseum with every drop of blood that fell from his body, was a formidable adversary in the fight between the armies of the Devas led by the Mother Goddess, and the mighty Asuras. Of all the merchants of malevolence and patrons of evil, Raktabija stands apart. Shiva’s strange gift to him - the power of instant regeneration and copious replication – made him almost indestructible. His foes found out to their cost that they could strike at him, only to create more of him. Like a stuck photocopier or a printer in a logjam, there were hundreds, then thousands and soon, millions of Raktabijas where a few seconds ago only one ugly demon stood. Each of his clones was more evil, more violent and more destructive than the original. Thus, whole new armies of doom were created by the unstoppable Raktabija with drops of his blood. So it is with mediocrity. It is auto-regenerating and causes entire systems to fail. It affects production, slows down deliveries and results in breakdowns. Mediocrity along with its more famous cousin, corruption, is also accused of ruining our nation’s image as an investment destination. Thus it is that we have growth centres that, fungus-like, exude decay. We have centres of excellence that boast of no other credo than mediocrity. If corruption results in injustice, subversion of rights and denial of dues, mediocrity epitomises poor quality of service, lacklustre processes and dismal results. You can strike at corruption because it is a visible foe, an enemy with a face, a name, a voice, an address or a bank account. How do you rant and rave at something that just about works? How do you contain something that is everywhere – above, below and around you? Mediocrity kills initiative, for it abhors innovation. It detests dynamism, for it hates change. It breeds with fecundity because it suits almost everyone to work less. Sullen approaches to customer care, bad professional etiquette or inefficient delivery of services result in an unsatisfactory work ethic that directly impacts on productivity. One reads of the costs of corruption. A corrupt practice costs the victim as much as the bribe or the kickbacks he had to pay. But has anyone computed the costs of mediocrity? Every organisation can tell you the costs of delay or failure to deliver. Loss of goodwill and organisational image is now calculated in money terms, just as opportunity losses can be quantified. Mediocrity costs us far more than even corruption does. It is the deadly marriage between mediocrity and corruption that further accentuates the problem and ensures that excellence just does not stand a chance. The Mother Goddess Herself was the creation of collective enterprise whereby each Deva contributed to her strength by transferring to her possession a weapon, a power or an attribute. It took Her some innovative thinking to realise that she could not stop the demoniac drops of blood from sprouting new monsters. Her creative genius conjured up a Chamunda, whose terrible visage and blood-lapping tongue were custom-designed to ensure that every drop was lapped up before it touched the long suffering earth. With courage, intelligence and intrepid genius, the Devi struck as Chamunda lapped. Soon, a wounded demon sapped of his lifeblood was liquidated, as the Gods in heaven showered flowers on the victor and Gandharvas sang paeans of praise to Her strength and stratagem. If we are to prevent mediocrity from succeeding, we must first accept that we have a problem. Many organisations have problems conceding that they could indeed work better. Our system with its punishment orientation further compounds the rot. We accept the investment philosophy that greater risk brings greater rewards, but stagger under the weight of the time-honoured, when it comes to our organizational ethic. Woe betide anyone who is unfortunate enough to make a mistake. The poor experimenter is rarely given a chance. This, when the collective wisdom of mankind accepts that there is no greater teacher than failure, and no greater school than trial and error. Let’s ask ourselves: how many people get it right the first time, every time? We tuck into sumptuous offerings from the management menu with relish. We study ‘Best Practices’ and draw up ‘Next Steps’ with fiendish zeal. We have monitoring schedules and mid-program reviews. But, somewhere in a sea of jargon, we have forgotten the proverb ‘If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well’. Mediocrity has assumed mammoth proportions and organizations must take deliberate and effective steps to battle it. Else, we will have Raktabija the ogre, running amok, wearing Mediocrity as his Battle Armour, and contributing to our Gross National Shame. The writer is a civil servant
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Delhi Durbar Former
Attorney General K. Parasaran, whose help has been sought by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to bail out his government from the OBC quota imbroglio in the Supreme Court, has not let him down. The 80-year-old constitution expert raised the argument to a level rarely witnessed now a days. Parasaran, belonging to the old school of jurists, argued on various aspects of the new quota law for three full days with a spirit and vigour surpassing young lawyers, and showed no signs of being tired. Advocates of all age groups and a large number of law students made it a point to attend the court on all the three days to learn a lesson or two from the veteran from Chennai, who also had a dig at the media for presenting a one-sided view on the issue of
reservations.
Deshmukh in trouble Politics in Maharashtra has suddenly hotted up with union power minister Sushil Kumar Shinde lobbying hard with the Congress high command for taking over as the Chief Minister of the state. According to sources, Shinde, who did not find favour for nomination to the high office of President, is not keen on staying put in Delhi. He wants to return to his home turf of Maharashtra as Chief Minister and is leaving no stone unturned to please Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Shinde had roped in Sonia Gandhi to inaugurate three projects, including one in Arunachal Pradesh and another in Jhajjar in Haryana, which is being seen as an attempt to please the Madam. On the other hand, the present Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh is doing everything to save his kursi. Deshmukh, who met Rahul Gandhi in the national capital recently, is understood to have sought his help to thwart Shinde’s move.
BJP’s internal
turf war in HP As the BJP gears up to take on the Virbhadra Singh Congress government in Himachal Pradesh, the saffron party’s two stalwarts Prem Kumar Dhumal and Shanta Kumar have unwittingly entered into an internal turf war to edge out each other in the race for the leadership of the hill state. This is becoming a cause for concern for the BJP high command. If media reports are any indication about the kind of activism shown by Dhumal after the announcement of the election schedule, he seems to be making every effort to impress upon the party’s central leadership that he will be a better choice. On the other hand, Shanta Kumar, known for pursuing principled politics, is also active. But his media management has remained subdued. The battle for leadership between the two BJP leaders in Himachal is being watched with interest in Congress
circles.
Contributed by S.S. Negi and
S. Satyanarayanan
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