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Coalition dharma Murder of infants |
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Poetic justice Politicians like Amarmani need to be in jail THE life imprisonment awarded by a Dehradun special court to Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh Minister Amarmani Tripathi, his wife Madhumani and two others for having murdered poetess Madhumita Shukla is the least punishment they could have got. All of them were found guilty of snuffing out the life of a young poetess in Lucknow four years ago.
Govt attempting to control IIMs
The Himank roadsigns
EC makes Microsoft climb down A trillion dollar war Legal Notes
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Coalition dharma PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh would have found quite a few sympathisers when he spoke about the difficulties a fractured mandate throws up. His own discomfiture over the government’s inability to operationalise the 123 Agreement with the US would have provided the backdrop for his public expression of anguish. Those who know the dynamics of coalition politics would not have been surprised by such reverses, which stem from a lack of consensus. Coalitions become necessary because no single party is in a position to form a government. When parties, which are ideologically poles apart, join hands to form a government, they can work only on the basis of a common agenda. Any deviation from such an agenda is possible only if the dominant party is ready to take the others into confidence. When Dr Manmohan Singh himself claims that the 123 Agreement is of far-reaching importance for the nation, it was incumbent upon him to have built a consensus on it. The responsibility of keeping the allies in good humour invariably falls on the dominant party, the Congress in the case of the UPA and the BJP in the case of the NDA. It is not the first time that rollbacks and reverses have happened. Earlier, the UPA government itself had to put on hold its decision to disinvest in the Neyveli Lignite Corporation when the DMK protested against the decision. During the NDA regime, the Finance Minister was even nicknamed the Rollback Minister. Coalition governments are no longer new. Forget states like West Bengal where a coalition has been in power for the last 25 years, even at the Centre coalitions have been ruling for more than a decade. Yet, smaller parties blackmailing larger parties and larger parties forcing their decisions down the throats of smaller parties happen because the parties concerned do not follow the coalition dharma. The dharma stipulates that all coalition partners should treat one another as equals and no major decisions are taken without first evolving a consensus over it. It is because this golden rule was not followed in the case of the nuclear deal that the government had to face embarrassment. It looks like Dr Manmohan Singh is still keen on seeing the nuclear deal through Parliament. A smooth passage of the deal would require greater political skill than the Congress has displayed so far. Indifferent handling of the coalition partners has spoiled a good case for the nuclear
deal.
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Murder of infants THE number of infants who die before they complete one year in Punjab is disturbingly high at 44 per 1,000 births. Though the infant mortality rate has come down in the state from 52 in 2001, it is still worryingly high when compared with the country’s top performer, Kerala, which has reduced it to 14. The figure is already lower than the level of 30 that India is committed to achieve by 2010. The position of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh is worse than that of Punjab but the poorest performers are the BMARU states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Smaller states like Delhi, Goa, Mizoram and Manipur take better care of their infants. So do the financially fast-growing states of Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Maharashtra. However, economic well-being has no relation with reducing infant deaths. Otherwise, how could Sri Lanka do a better job than India, and Sweden than the US? Kerala has been able to reduce infant mortality by providing nutritious food in schools and recreation centres in cooperation with voluntary agencies. The mass media was used to spread literacy and awareness. Education has empowered women. The position of woman in the family and society in Kerala is very strong. This shows where mothers are respected and given nutritious food and medicare, chances of infant and child deaths get drastically reduced. Punjab and Haryana score poorly on the Kerala model. Both are notorious for female infanticide. Despite economic advancement and spread of literacy, families show a marked preference for sons and feel no sense of guilt in aborting a female foetus or choking their newborn daughter to death. The model adopted by Punjab’s Nawanshehr district shows that this barbarian practice can be controlled. People have to stand up against the evil practice and learn to respect human life. They need social and state support. Both Punjab and Haryana have to make concerted efforts to get rid of the nasty stigma.
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Poetic justice THE life imprisonment awarded by a Dehradun special court to Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh Minister Amarmani Tripathi, his wife Madhumani and two others for having murdered poetess Madhumita Shukla is the least punishment they could have got. All of them were found guilty of snuffing out the life of a young poetess in Lucknow four years ago. The murder not only evoked nationwide outrage but also brought to the fore the diabolical games of sleaze, betrayal and murder politicians like Amarmani play. The love affair between the politician and the poetess was well known. Once it became too hot for him to handle, the couple got rid of her without the slightest compunction. Surely, the punishment will strengthen the common man’s faith in the judiciary. It also serves a warning that no person, irrespective of his status, can get away with murder. Madhumita’s family members have been fearing threat to their life from Amarmani and his goons ever since the poetess was murdered in May 2003. Using his clout and influence, the former minister tried every possible stratagem to scuttle justice. He even threatened them with dire consequences if they deposed against him and his wife. This forced the Supreme Court to shift the case from Lucknow to Dehradun earlier this year to ensure a free and fair trial. Of course, Amarmani may exercise his right to appeal against the sentence but it may be difficult for him to prove his innocence because of the incontrovertible evidence stacked against him. Nearly 79 witnesses appeared in the case. Moreover, the DNA sample of the foetus carried by Madhumita matched with that of Amarmani. Handwriting experts have also proved the authenticity of the love letters exchanged between the two. The crucial lesson to be learnt from the sentence is that people should outright reject criminals and malcontents like Amarmani Tripathi in the elections. Clearly, they are a serious threat to society. If criminals like him and Mohd. Shahabuddin of Siwan in Bihar become MPs, MLAs and ministers, it will have a debilitating effect on the system and the polity. Consequently, the best place for Amarmani and company is jail.
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What pity is it/ That we can die but once to serve our country! — Joseph Addison
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Govt attempting to control IIMs
Recent
reports in some sections of the media have mentioned that the government is planning to set up a committee to review the functioning of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and that the real intention behind this is to “control” the prestigious centres of management education. The ministry issued a “clarification” the very next day, suggesting that the new law is meant to “empower” the IIMs to “award” degrees that they cannot do now. This was followed by a letter to a national daily by the Minister of HRD himself, asserting that “since my taking charge of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, there has not been a single instance of subversion of the autonomy of our institutions of higher learning, including that of IIMs.” The outgoing director of one of the leading IIMs said in an interview a couple of days later, “We could not take a lot of action because the government would not let us,” adding that increasing control over the institutes of higher learning by the Union HRD Ministry has been “counterproductive” in promoting and protecting their interests. The government’s intention to control the IIMs is not surprising but is certainly disturbing. The increasing eagerness of successive governments to control the functioning of the IIMs is amazing, indeed. Even under the Memoranda of Association under which the IIMs have been functioning since the inception of the first two at Calcutta and Ahmedabad, government nominees are in a clear majority on the Boards of Governors (BoGs) which is the highest decision-making body at every IIM. In addition, the government has had the exclusive power to appoint the chairpersons of the BoGs. In earlier years, the government had veto power over the appointment of Directors, which it has abrogated to itself over the last 10 years or so, through the process of creeping usurpation. The IIMs, particularly the ones set up earlier, have done well due to a combination of many factors, two of which were a benevolent nurturing by the government and a deft management of the government by the people who were running the institutes. But those were the days when the government seemed interested in really creating institutions, and there was no electronic media making all kinds of people hungry for media exposure. Today the benevolent nurturing is gone and we are in the era of competition in all walks of life, which makes media exposure very desirable. Two other reasons for the earlier IIMs doing well have been the selection of students for admission entirely on merit with no interference whatsoever from any quarter, and the unfettered selection of faculty members. It is not that attempts at interference in the admissions process have not been made, at times from the highest levels of the government and political establishments, but they have all been steadfastly and quietly resisted. If, as was reported in the media, the government ends up controlling the selection of faculty, and forcing the institutes to extend facilities to politicians and bureaucrats, as in government-run PSUs, these two characteristics will also go. This will make the IIMs just like most of the universities, particularly state universities, and will completely eradicate their capacity to respond to the needs of industry, which is what has made them known in major parts of the world. The reports also link the timing of the move to make the new law to the appointment of new directors in the three older IIMs, expected to be announced soon, so that there is “least resistance” from these institutions. This seems quite plausible, particularly given the process of appointment of directors which has been followed beginning with the last appointments made five years ago. Some information that has trickled through from the on-going selection process of directors is revealing. It seems the chairman of the BoG of one of the institutes, who was the only one in the committee connected to the institute, did not make it to the interviews. In another institute, the chairman of the BoG wanted executive powers to run the institute himself. The entire faculty of one of the institutes conducted an internal process where those faculty members interested in becoming director made presentations giving their vision, and came up with one unanimous choice. This particular candidate was reportedly given a hard time in the interview precisely because he was the “faculty’s candidate”. The ministry issued an advertisement in the print media asking for applications for the posts of directors of various institutes, one of which reportedly attracted something like 700 or so applications. It is interesting to see this in contrast to what happened in one of these institutes about 20 years ago at the time of the appointment of a director. When a suggestion to advertise the position was made to the then chairman of the BoG, he said that people who applied for the position in response to an advertisement were not appropriate for the appointment and what the institute needed were people who would need to be persuaded to take up the position. Appointment of committees is, of course, a well-known and age-old device which serves several purposes, including delaying and postponing a decision, and creating an ostensibly independent justification for a premeditated action. Our government is also consistent in selectively implementing only those recommendations that it wants to implement and forgetting the rest. This is what it does pretty much to the reports of all the committees --- the last committee which reviewed the working of the IIMs, the Kurien Committee, and the Fifth Pay Commission being just two of many examples. So far as the government’s generosity in empowering the institutes to award degrees is concerned, this issue has come up occasionally during the last years. It used to be much more frequent in the early years, in the 1960s and 1970s, when the IIMs were still new, and not being able to award degrees was considered a handicap. As the IIMs established themselves with their graduates doing well and earning recognition in the market place of jobs, and getting accepted in the world’s best doctoral programmes becoming tenured professors in some of the leading business schools of the world, the issue became irrelevant. To the best of my recollection, it last came up about 10 years ago when the government proposed to make the IIMs degree-granting institutions and asked them to prepare the draft of a Bill to be passed in Parliament. The matter seemed to have been allowed to then die a natural, peaceful and dignified death. The tendency of the government to get a tighter and tighter grip on the working of the IIMs seems to have become progressively stronger in the last 10 to 15 years, almost in direct proportion to the increasing reputation and fame of the IIMs. What really needs to be done is to leave the older and well-established IIMs alone to do best what they have been doing for the last over 45 years without foisting pliable chairpersons of the BoG and directors on them, but that is not likely to happen since “the political class is hell-bent on destroying education”, as Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Centre for Policy Research has written. Academics aspiring to bask in the glory of being administrators will collude with the political class in this, but it is left to the non-administratively inclined academics and other interested people and groups to resist this with all their
might. The writer is a former Dean and Director-in-Charge of the
IIM, Ahmedabad.
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The Himank roadsigns THE National Highway between Manali and Leh , maintained by the Himank project, is one of the most daunting engineering projects human beings have ever attempted. Every spring, chunks of ice, sometimes many kilometres in length, slide down the mountains and wipe out long stretches of the road. As a result this road has been in a perpetual state of construction ever since it was first built. The work has been perilous and hazardous and claimed many lives amongst the workers. As you sit back and take in the majesty of the landscape, you catch sight of little memorials on the roadside, built to the memory of workers who lost their lives. Immediately all other thoughts and feelings leave your heart and mind as you absorb the awe-inspiring fact that a stranger laid down his life to enable you to travel safely on this road. The powers that designed the road are probably aware of this because almost at once a roadsign flashes past and as you read it, your mood is lightened and the awe, which could have turned sombre and darkened the remaining part of your journey, is quickly dissipated. These signs caution against over-speeding and reckless driving, and do so in terms that are creative and imaginative. One set of signs emphasises how reckless driving could be fatal: “Speed Thrills/But Kills” “Driving Faster/Can cause disaster” “Slow Today/Alive Tomorrow” Most of these are couched in standard terms but once in a while you have gems like: “Overtaker beware/of undertaker” Then there is the second set of road signs which caution against speed in less apocalyptic terms “Driving in the Mountains is a pleasure/If it is done at leisure” “This is a highway/Not a Runway/Drive slowly” “You are not in a rally/ Enjoy the valley.” Another set of signs warns against driving under the influence of alcohol “Drink and drive/you won't survive.” “Drive on Horsepower/ Not on rum power” My own favourite in this category is the rather pithy and alliterative: “Don't Drive Drunk” Another set of signs reminds you of those waiting for you at home. “Drive carefully/somebody is waiting for you.” “Safety on road/Is Safe Tea at home.” Then there are signs which display a rather roguish tongue in the cheek humour. “You will enjoy my curves/If you take them slowly” “Love Thy Neighbour/ But not while driving" “I love you dear/But not when you are fast.” There is a beautiful balance between the engineering skills and sheer hard work involved in the maintenance of the road and the ingenuity displayed in these road signs — both work together to make this long, drive a truly memorable one. In conclusion I offer the road sign which has appealed to me the most. “It is better to be Mister Late/Than the Late
Mister.
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EC makes Microsoft climb down
WHO wants to share confidential information that would enable competitors to compete better? Almost no one, and certainly not Microsoft, which has been resisting attempts by the European Union and earlier by US regulators, to make it part with technical information which other software makers need to make their software work with Microsoft products. The biggest software company in the world has a history of vigorously opposing all such attempts, but it has climbed down before the European Commission’s demands for Microsoft to provide its competitors better information that allows them to make products that will run well with the Microsoft operating systems or MS Windows. This move against a perceived monopolistic attitude of this multinational company is seen by some as downgrading of intellectual property rights (IPRs) as seen against the rights of the consumer. However, it has also been widely welcomed and it will, in the long run, affect every consumer since it will make software markets more competitive, which often translates into better products at cheaper rates. The nine-year battle started in December 1998 when Sun Microsystems, an American software company, complained to the European Commission (EC) that Microsoft was not giving it the inter-operability information which was necessary for its server software to inter-operate with servers that run Microsoft’s operating system (OS) or Windows. An estimated 70 per cent of the servers used worldwide run on Microsoft OS. Incidentally, more than 90 per cent of PCs run on Windows. The complaint triggered the anti-trust investigation against Microsoft and on March 24, 2004 the EC ruled that by not giving competitors in the server OS market the information that would enable their products to work with Windows, Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the PC OS market. It also ruled that by bundling or tying Windows Media Player with the Windows OS, Microsoft has thwarted competitive products. The company was fined 497 million euros and it was ordered to improve its behaviour. Microsoft challenged the ruling, calling it “fundamentally flawed in fact and reasoning.” Later, it brought out a version of Windows without the Media Player, but did not do much to tackle the issue of sharing information with its rivals. The Windows without the Media Player did not sell well at all. The case continued till on April 2006 when the European Court of First Instance heard Microsoft’s challenge, and reaffirmed the original decision. It later imposed on Microsoft a new fine of 280.5 million euros for non-compliance with its obligations. Later, on March 1, 2007 Microsoft was told by the commission that it would face more penalties – up to three million euros per day because of its unreasonable pricing of the inter-operability information. Following negotiations between Ms Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for competition policy and Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, the pricing has become remarkably reasonable, as even Microsoft’s critics will acknowledge. The company has dropped its demand for a royalty of 2.98 per cent of the money made from software developed using Microsoft protocols. It will now accept a one-time fee of 10,000 euros. It has also slashed the original demand of 5.95 per cent of product revenues for a worldwide patented licence to just 0.4 per cent. Microsoft has been accused at various points of time in many countries of exploiting its monopolistic position and violating anti-trust laws. That its rivals, American companies like IBM, Red Hat and Sun have approached the European Union to bring up their anti-trust charges shows how geographical location of multinational companies has ceased to matter as they compete for global consumers. Even in the US, Microsoft has faced anti-trust charges. In 1994 Microsoft agreed to the U.S. Justice Department’ s demand to cease making computer-makers pay a fee for every PC sold, whether or not it contained Microsoft software. In 1998, Microsoft was sued by U.S. Justice Department and 20 states which charged it with stifling competition to extend its monopoly. Later the same year, the Justice Department alleged that Microsoft had violated the 1994 agreement by making computer makers bundle Internet Explorer along with Windows. It had settled the cases in 2002 and signed a “consent decree” with the Bush administration. The US Justice Department maintains that the consent decree has served its purpose, and Microsoft has worked hard to implement the decree’s requirements and has changed its business practices as a result. However, some US state governments have said they will seek to extend the requirements of the decree till 2012. Microsoft will certainly be battling on various legal fronts, as will other MNCs. American companies that complained against Microsoft to the EC did so because they hoped for a more favourable response from the commission than they had got within their own county. Right now, the EC is seen as the most aggressive anti-trust body and as such it is attracting more and more cases. Even as the US Justice Department recently announced that it would not be investigating complaints against Intel’s business practices, EC regulators are looking into whether Intel urged Media Markt, the largest consumer electronics retailer in Europe, to exclude computers that used chips made by AMD, its rival. Google too has recently addressed EC concerns over its plans to buy the online advertising company, DoubleClick Inc. Clearly, the EU has filled into a vacuum that existed in regulating large multinational companies, and for many American corporations, this is not quite the way they expected globalisation to go.
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A trillion dollar war There are also disturbing signs that Bush is preparing an attack on Iran during his remaining months in office. He has demanded $46 billion emergency funds from Congress by Christmas and included with it a single sentence requesting money to upgrade the B-2 “stealth” bomber. By wrapping his request in the flag of patriotism, the President has made it very difficult even for an anti-war Congress to refuse the money. He was accompanied by the family of a dead US Marine when he made the request for funds on Monday. The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has attacked the President’s priorities saying: “For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year.” “The President is happy to put the military spending on the national credit card,” said Steve Kosiak, a vice-president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent, military-policy research institute, who said that the $1 trillion figure will soon be passed. The full amount requested for this fiscal year is now $196.4 billion. The US is on course to spend a total of $806 billion fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than on any war it has fought since the Second World war. With interest payments this tops $1 trillion. Despite their expense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are less of an economic burden (at 4.2 per cent of GDP,) than earlier wars. The 1990-91 Gulf War cost $88 billion, the Korean War cost $456 billion (12.2 per cent of GDP) and the Vietnam War, $518 billion (9.4 per cent of GDP). By comparison the Second World War cost more than 40 per cent of GDP. Mr Kosiak also points out that the military is using the cover of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to get funding for all sorts of projects. The upgrade of the stealth bomber is one of those projects. The Pentagon wants to upgrade its fleet of stealth bombers so that they can deliver 30-tonne, satellite-guided bombs. The planes would be based on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia where hangers are being specially upgraded. These “bunker-buster” bombs are six times bigger than anything used by the air force and designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction facilities underground. Diego Garcia is also much closer to Iran than Missouri, where the bombers are based. This weekend Vice-President Dick Cheney stepped up the rhetoric, warning of “serious consequences” if Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium and said the US would not permit it to get nuclear weapons. Iran denies that the enrichment is linked to a nuclear weapons programme and says it is entirely peaceful. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who was in Washington for talks with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday would not be drawn on Mr Cheney’s remarks. Bush’s request for an extra $46 billion in funds by Christmas has angered Congress, but it is expected to be approved. This year’s request for extra military spending is already the largest since 11 September 2001 and rising fast. The lion’s share of the money Bush has asked for is for the Pentagon. Some has also been earmarked for UN peacekeeping in Darfur, emergency food aid in Africa and sending oil to North Korea as part of a deal to end its nuclear weapons programme. The US State Department has been harshly criticised for failing to oversee the private security companies it relies on in Iraq. An internal review found poor supervision and accountability for companies such as Blackwater USA as well as DynCorp. An audit of DynCorp says its record keeping is so poor that the State Department cannot account for $1.2 billion it paid the company since 2004 to train Iraqi police officers.
By arrangement with The Independent
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Legal Notes From
his day-to-day experience of handling hundreds of cases pertaining to the violation of citizens’ rights, Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan has asked the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and rights panels in the states to buckle up and expand their educative programmes to every nook and corner of the country. The NHRC needs to set an agenda for the state commissions and lay down proper guidelines for NGOs working among underprivileged people, to make them aware of their basic rights. The CJI felt that the NGOs were rudderless organisations and definitely need to be backed up by the NHRC and the state rights commissions. The values of human rights have to be imbibed with the local ethos and social needs as it could not necessarily work in ‘mechanical’ way, and merely be based on modern day definitions and foundations like the Magna Carta and the French Revolution. Since many rulers in India had also set their standards for protecting the lives and liberty of citizens, which developed into good traditions, we also need to draw inspiration from our cultural history, the CJI said, while participating in the 14th anniversary function of the NHRC here recently. NHRC Chairperson Justice S. Rajendra Babu, in his report card, said that despite various hurdles, the rights panel has done a commendable job. Its reports, though recommendatory in nature, were now being taken seriously by the central and state governments and most of them were implemented promptly, he said.
Slugging it out on Ram Setu The Sethusamudram issue, which initially was confined to a spat between the BJP and DMK, has altogether taken a new turn into a full-fledged legal battle between the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu. The AIADMK is using it as a cover to launch an offensive against its arch rival, the ruling DMK. The AIADMK moved two petitions in quick succession, first questioning the legality of the ‘state sponsored’ bandh, and then a contempt petition against Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, Union Minister T.R. Baalu and top administrative functionaries. In the wake of the severe indictment of the state government by the Court for not enforcing its order banning the bandh, the contempt petition in particular seems to have rattled both the DMK and the UPA Government at the Centre. Their anxiety was evident from the fact that when it was merely mentioned before the Court, DMK lawyers were more eager to argue even before a Bench, headed by Justice B N Agrawal, asked AIADMK lawyers what they wanted to say. This rarely happens in hearing at a mentioning stage, unless a caveat is filed. On AIADMK lawyers’ objection to such an intervention by the other side, the Court also did not approve it. Since the hearing has been deferred, the matter is being watched with intense interest in Tamil Nadu political circles.
International arbitration With the globalisation of the economy and flow of investment, several jurists, including Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj, have felt the need for redefining international arbitration rules to reduce long drawn legal battles in commercial deals. While Supreme Court judge, Justice Ashok Bhan, was of the view that there should be minimum interference by courts in arbitration matters, noted lawyer Fali S. Nariman felt that there should be a separate international court for handling business disputes. According to Justice Bhan, arbitration has to be accepted as an alternative to courts as a speedier remedy to settle the disputes arising out of commercial agreements, which normally take a long time in courts. However, Bhardwaj was for a more cautious approach in signing bilateral and multilateral commercial deals to avoid legal wrangles later. In this context, he referred to the collapse of Enron’s agreement with Maharashtra for settling up the Dabhol power project. It proved to be a hard bargain for India to resolve the matter through arbitration, according to the Law Minister. The central government had to put a lot of effort in resolving the dispute to ensure that state power companies did not suffer huge financial losses. These views of jurists representing three important segments – executive, judiciary and the bar – emerged at a brain storming session on international arbitration organised jointly by FICCI, ICA and IFCAI, in the national capital.
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