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Vendetta
against Venugopal Gorshkov
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Putin’s
Russia
When Punjab is
overtaken
Salute
the railways
A beautiful couple Russian public mood
is with Putin Inside Pakistan
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Vendetta against Venugopal THE Supreme Court has taken the Central government to task on the humiliation of All India Institute of Medical Sciences Director Dr P. Venugopal. In stopping the government from appointing his successor till the court disposes of the matter, the court has inflicted a body blow on the government. It is not much of a consolation for the government that the court has not stayed the operation of the AIIMS (Amendment) Act under which the retirement age of the Director has been fixed at 65. Obviously, the apex court did not want to strike a discordant note when the law passed by both Houses of Parliament and given assent to by the President has already come into force. It also did not want to be seen questioning the right of Parliament to enact a new law. The question that has been raised in this particular case is the mala fide intention of the government. As we have argued in these columns, the government is justified in fixing an age limit for the Director of AIIMS. But by enforcing the law with retrospective effect and thereby ejecting Dr Venugopal from the post, it has behaved in a blatantly partisan manner. The whole purpose of the new law seems to have been to teach the Director a lesson. The egregious nature of the Health Minister’s conduct can be gauged from the fact that he camouflaged his bias against Dr Venugopal as his desire to have a new, younger person at the helm of AIIMS. It is a pity that MPs were led up the garden path by the minister who has not shown such alacrity in handling situations like the death of so many children on a single day in a hospital in Andhra Pradesh. Obsessed as the minister is by his hatred for Dr Venugopal, he paid scant regard to all administrative and legal norms in dealing with him. It remains to be seen how the Centre will explain to the court that the Act is not single person-specific in the reply it has to file by early January. Until then Dr Venugopal, who is one of the finest cardiac surgeons and who strove to protect the autonomy of AIIMS, will remain outside of the premier medical institution. For behaving in a questionable manner and causing disrepute to the UPA government, it is the minister who should have been shown the door of the Cabinet. Justice demands restoration of the status quo ante in AIIMS.
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Gorshkov aground RUSSIA’S staggering demand of an additional one billion US dollars plus on a $750-million contract to retrofit the Admiral Gorskhov aircraft carrier is finally being met with firm resistance. Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta has not only recommended that the government not renegotiate the price on a done deal but, in an unprecedented statement, has even called upon New Delhi to “think where our relations with Russia are going.” While stories about delays and price escalation demands have been breaking for a while now, the government had preferred to play it down so far. But with Russia’s attempts at strong-arming India only growing in consequence, the time had come to say enough is enough. The Navy chief is perhaps doing so with the government’s tacit approval. Price escalations are part of many contracts but the Russian demand is patently unreasonable. Russia’s willingness to literally rock the boat of defence cooperation with India is very disturbing. This, coupled with the fact that several expensive deals are online with the Russians, explains the establishment’s discomfiture. As the Admiral points out, Russia will only be emboldened on the other deals, covering everything from aircraft and tanks to submarines and missiles. Indeed, reports have indicated that Russia has already managed to wrangle price increases on a couple of major projects. India has sunk in more than $500 million on the carrier. While the cost India is paying is only for the retrofit, with the carrier itself coming free, the money from India has served to modernise their shipyards.The Russians have got richer over the last few years and their priorities have changed.Workforce has been diverted away from the retrofit to other projects.This is indeed a serious breach of contract and a fundamental betrayal of the long standing Indo-Russian relationship. Even if Russia only intends to create a crisis as a bargaining chip, and ultimately is made to deliver, there is no doubt that ground realities have changed. The delay has already cost us, and from here, India should do anything but give in.
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Putin’s Russia THE results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Russia are on expected lines. By sweeping the polls, President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia has underlined the fact that no political organisation in Russia is in a position to pose effectively a threat to his pre-eminent position. Mr Putin’s growing popularity has weakened the opposition parties so much so that only 11 of Russia’s 23 parties could muster courage to join the race for the State Duma (parliament). And only four have succeeded in crossing the 7 per cent threshold to get a parliamentary seat. This is despite the fact that the elections recorded the highest turnout of voters compared to those held in 1999 and 2003. Russians have voted overwhelmingly for United Russia mainly because of the image President Putin has acquired as the man suited for a country struggling to regain the position it held at the global level before the 1990s, when the former super power collapsed. During his eight-year rule, the people’s living conditions have improved considerably with the Russian economy getting rejuvenated. Mr Putin is credited to have made proper use of Russia’s energy resources not only to infuse a new life into its economy but also to improve its international standing. United Russia’s victory may help it remain on the development path. But the way Mr Putin has projected his own image, giving secondary importance to his party, has given rise to speculation that he may try to perpetuate his rule through remote control. He has to step down in March next year after serving for two terms as President. But he may try to control Kremlin by getting a pliable loyalist elected in the coming presidential poll. This is a cause for concern among many of his party colleagues, who want only a deserving party man to be allowed to succeed Mr
Putin.
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A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. — George Eliot
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When Punjab is overtaken Punjab
is continuously losing its leading position both in terms of per capita income and social indicators at the all-India level as well in relation to the neighbouring states of Himachal Pradesh and Haryana. Haryana left Punjab behind in terms of per capita income in 2004-05, and Himachal Pradesh will do so in a year or two. In terms of social indicators like literacy, mean years of school, the infant mortality rate and life expectancy, Himachal has already left Punjab much behind. Even in terms of fixation of targets, Punjab is lagging far behind. Against the national target, annual growth rate of 8.5 per cent for the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-12), Punjab has fixed the target of 5.8 per cent annual growth rate which would lead further downward the ranking of the state in the country. The states like Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka are expected to leave behind during this period. The downward slide in per capita income ranking is taking place due to the incapacity of the state to push its investment rate from 23-24 per cent of the state domestic product to match the national level of more than 30 per cent of the GDP. The government is unable to devise a fiscal policy for this purpose. The state is one of the lowest taxed states in terms of tax-state domestic product ratio. No efforts are in sight to curb the urge of Punjabis towards ostentatious consumption. Any serious effort in this direction can increase the household saving rate and consequently investment. By raising the tax-state domestic product ratio based on taxes collected by the Punjab Government from the present 5.73 per cent (1999-02) to Tamil Nadu’s level of 8.63 per cent or Karnataka’s level of 8.18 per cent and channelisation of these resources into investment would raise the state’s capital formation by an equivalent amount directly and an equal amount indirectly, and make the state perform at the level of national economy. The ruling leadership for the last two decades is not allowing this to happen. Some of the recent reports at the national level have brought out some disturbing facts about the Punjab economy. The Report on the Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihood in the Unorganised Sector by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (2007) has made a distinction between the extremely poor, marginally poor, poor and vulnerable sections of population. The extremely poor are those who have monthly per capita income per day expenditure up to three-fourths of the official poverty line (an average of Rs 8.9 per capita per day). The poor are those between extremely poor and up to the official poverty line (average expenditure
of Rs 11.6 per capita per day). The marginally poor are those with per capita per day expenditure 1.25 times the poverty line (Rs 14.6 per capita per day) and the vulnerable have a per capita per day
expenditure Rs 20.3. The report brings out that while the percentage of population below the poverty line has come down yet 77 per cent people in India remain vulnerable with per capita per day consumption below Rs 20. A vast majority of the population of Punjab continues to be vulnerable. Of the total workforce of the state, 90.9 per cent is employed in the unorganised sector where there is no social security cover. Agriculture employs 66.9 per cent of the total workforce in the state (2004-05) consisting of cultivators and agricultural labourers, all them remain unprotected. Among them are agricultural labourers, and marginal and small farmers constituting 85.5 per cent of the total agricultural workforce with per capita per day income below (Rs 20.3) this level. The remaining of the workforce is engaged in non-agricultural activities and is largely (72.8 per cent) composed of unorganised workers. The average wages/earnings level of these workers was less than Rs 63.0 per day for SC workers, which is far less to cross the vulnerable level with a family of four or five members. This implies that three-fourths of Punjab’s population consists of the vulnerable and needs to be protected through social security measures. Education is the only other means (other than the ownership of production assets) which can ensure upward mobility of individuals and their families. It is brought out by the report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector that 10.2 per cent children (9.4 per cent males and 11.3 per cent females) were out of schools in 2004-05 and 2.1 per cent of the children in the age group of 5-14 years were engaged as child labour. It is a well-known fact that education in rural areas has collapsed and students from rural schools are not in the position to reach higher levels. A well-quoted study by Punjabi University has documented that there are only 4 per cent students on the campuses of the universities in Punjab and Chandigarh against 66 per cent population living in the rural areas. A recent report from the Pratham Resource Centre, Mumbai (2007), in its Annual Status of Education Report (ASER 2006)-Rural provides clue to the absence of the rural students on the campuses of the universities in Punjab. It is brought out that quality indicators of the students in both government and private schools are very poor. A simple test of quality in reading, writing and arithmetic problems related to subtraction and divisions were given to students. A sample of 522 villages from 18 districts of Punjab has brought about very disturbing results. As many as 53.5 per cent students of the fifth standard could read the text of second standard and the remaining 46.5 per cent were unable to do so and 36.6 per cent could not solve two word problems. In arithmetic, the situation is more deplorable. Only 42 per cent students could divide a simple sum and 58 per cent did not know how to divide. This implies that 58 per cent of the rural students are bound to drop out as and when they are promoted to the sixth standard where compulsory examination is involved for the promotion to the next class. Contrary to the popular perception that private schools perform much better than government schools in learning levels, the report brings out that the difference between government and private schools in the rural areas of India is over 10.8 per cent. And in all the states it has decreased by 3-4 per cent except in Bihar, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. These disturbing facts are eye-openers for any well wisher of Punjab and more so for enlightened sections of the population. The state government must take immediate cognisance of these aspects and go in for corrective measures. But public policy in the state is apathetic to these disturbing facts. In fact, it is so deeply involved between the cobweb of freebies and non-tax collection. Of the total tax collection, around Rs 10,000 crore, one-third, is given as electricity subsidy, subsidy on the Dal-Atta scheme and compensation to urban local bodies for the abolition of octroi. Another one-third is spent on debt servicing of the mounting debt burden. The one-thirds of the tax revenue is not enough to pay salaries and pension to retired employees. Practically the state depends entirely on public borrowing for its annual plans and partially to meet current account expenditure. The device of handling over rural schools to the corporate sector under the Adarsh School Scheme would lead to land grab by corporate houses without improving education. It is the same story which has been the about corporate hospitals having no meaning for the health of the common man in Punjab as they are beyond their access. The disturbing facts about the Punjab economy require that the government gives a serious thought to making public intervention in critical areas for making Punjab assume its lead position among the states in India. This would require a professional approach to tax collection, expansion of the tax base and merger of the taxation department with the Department of Finance. At the same time, there is need to rationalise the subsidy allocation restricting it for weaker sections only. The planning department, especially the State Planning Board, needs to be strengthened so that it can act as a think tank in the matter of public policy for economic development. Given the present level of per capita income in the state, at least 15-16 per cent of the state domestic product needs to be collected through taxes and a major part of it be used for development activities and some part can be earmarked for the welfare of weaker sections. The weaker sections need to be empowered through quality education and better health facilities rather than making them chronically dependent on government doles. The government policy has to change from being apathetic to a responsive policy suited for the requirements of the common
people.
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Salute the railways After
spending my entire annual leave tending to my ailing father at Trichy, I reluctantly left on 24 Jun 1977 for Nasirabad, via Madras and Delhi. Telephone and rail communications were not so good then. At Madras I got into the Tamilnadu Express at 7.10 am and it sped towards the first halt, expected Vijayawada: expected time of arrival 12.45 pm. I did not even realise when it reached Vijayawada, as I was buried in a book from the train library, in seat no 58 of AC Chair Car. Suddenly, there was a flurry of activity and a railway employee (a Muslim, as I could read from the name- plate) in uniform asked me if I was Major Surya-narayanan. He told me to follow him; simultaneously ordering a porter to pick up my luggage and rush to Ganga Cauvery Express for Madras on opposite platform. En route, he told the catering staff to recognise my face and bring my lunch to the other train; thrust a platform ticket in my hand and took the responsibility for library book and refunding the balance to me. Then he told me that my father had passed away at 7.10 am, (the exact time when I had left Madras!) and I could speak to the guard and pay the fare. I burst into tears and he said: “Sir. You are indeed lucky that we stopped this prestigious train for a few extra minutes for you. It must be your Father’s spirit!” A kind ticket collector, a Christian, hearing my plight from the other employee, allotted a berth and spoke about life, death, God etc. At Madras, I had to rush to another station for a train to Trichy. There, a Tambrahm ticket collector, who I thought would be equally considerate, was not only rude despite my narration, but refused to allow me in the three-tier sleeper coach! I travelled the night by the unreserved bogie, but reached home well in time to see my father’s body. The fact that despite his ill health and old age (82), he had come up to the gate to see me off just 32 hours earlier brought more tears to my eyes. But what would I have done but for the Great Indian railways? I salute
them!
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A beautiful couple
The
Alvas – Joachim and Violet – were a unique couple. They are the first husband and wife team I had come across who were both gifted journalists. Nearly forty years later, we had T.N. and Sevanti Ninan, both colleagues in the Hindustan Times in the 1970s. Like the Ninans, the Alvas, too, were from different linguistic communities, Joachim was a Mangalorean, while Violet a Gujarati. Sevanti is a Bengali-speaking daughter of an Andhra cadre IAS officer settled in Hyderabad, while TN is from Kerala. Parliament is celebrating the Alvas’ centenarian status – Joachim being the senior spouse by three years – by having their portraits unveiled in the Central Hall in the first week of December. Joachim had been a Congress member of the Lok Sabha from Mangalore for three terms (1952-57; 57-62; 62-67), besides a five-year term (1947-52) in the provisional parliament. In addition, he was in the Rajya Sabha as a veteran from 1968-74. Violet was a Rajya Sabha member who held important positions as Minister of State for Home Affairs and Deputy Chairman of the House. I have a special reason to rejoice at the event because I owed my introduction to journalism to Joachim in 1945. On the basis of articles I had contributed to FORUM, while being a student, he called me over from Vizianagaram. F ORUM was a highly popular English weekly being edited by him from Bombay. Vizianagaram, especially in 1945, was a one-horse town in north Andhra Pradesh. He asked me to join his team on a princely salary of Rs.100. Instead of worrying about managing on a paltry income, with a widowed mother and two brothers to support, while keeping body and soul together in Bombay, I felt elated at the prospect of being a journalist. But Joachim was not insensitive to my plight. He tried to help me in finding accommodation in Matunga, ‘the Mecca of Madrasis”. He had two commandments for me, the first not to ‘sir’ him but to call him Mr. Alva; secondly, to tuck the shirt in the trousers. Living up to be a ‘journalist’ was no child’s play. Writing emotional articles on patriotic and anti-imperialist themes was like chalk to the cheese of catering to the needs of the prestigious magazine. Violet was a great help in the matter. She put me in touch with the librarian of the unique Royal Asiatic Society, a veritable treasure house of books. It was a stone’s throw from the FORUM office and was open till 8 p.m. Some of the cover page articles I had done remain etched on my mind. They include one on the national postal strike, which lasted about two weeks. There was ample historical background in the library, from the origin of the postal system and its growth and travails in England, where also they had a strike. Another was on the Travancore sisters, Padmini and Ragini, with ‘mouth-watering’ pictures sent by a correspondent. It made a beautiful cover page. Joachim would usually either set the topic or amend one suggested by Violet and but rarely made major changes in the copy, which was invariably anonymous. A few months later both Joachim and I seemed to have mutually got tired of each other. So we parted on a petty issue like making personal calls on the office telephone I went away to Madras to become the correspondent of a Telugu daily Janmabhoomi, launched by Dr. Pattabhi Sitaraamayya from Vijayawada. Soon after Madras was shaken by a sensational incident. Justice Buyers, puisne judge of the Madras High Court, panicked when a group of students surrounded his car, shouting “Vande Mataram, Quit India.” He took out his pistol and shot one of the demonstrators dead on the spot. As soon as the news broke Joachim sent me a longish telegram asking for a full story with pictures. The police promptly cordoned off the students and escorted the judge home. But that was not the end of the matter, only the beginning. Indian officials like the Commissioner of Police, Patro, and a high court judge, Justice P.V. Rajamannar, got formal prosecution launched against the erring senior judge. The Chief Justice, also a European, resisted. It became a conflict between the departing Europeans and Indians with a growing sense of national pride. Ultimately, of course, Justice Buyers was packed off to where he came from. Before then the Indian official top brass – both police and judicial – made him sweat. (Incidentally, one does know why the institution of puisne judge between the chief justice and the judges has been done away with.) As my luck would have it, both Patro and Justice Rajamannar being Telugus, interaction with them became “pally.” I got the full dope from them and an enterprising photographer led me into the Madras Club, an exclusively European habitat, where he clicked a photo of Buyers going on his morning walk. The story with the pictures pleased Joachim. He called me back and I was to keen to return too. With the advent of Independence, Joachim branched off into active politics. He passed away in July 1979, when I was PIO – Principal Information Officer to the Morarji Desai Government. My last act of homage was to lay a wreath at the electric crematorium for him. Violet predeceased Joachim by nearly a decade. The eldest of the two sons of the Alvas, Niranjan, is a lawyer. He is Margaret Alva’s husband. The second son and daughter-in law are both journalists.
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Russian public mood is with Putin In
Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Russia, Vladimir Putin’s party won by a landslide. The coerced turn-out was, not surprisingly, high. And now Putin is preparing to use this manipulated vote of confidence, as indeed he intended all along, to wangle a third term in power. What a travesty of the democratic process! What conclusive proof that Russia is rushing towards authoritarianism! As the final results came in yesterday, this was pretty much the international consensus about Russia’s elections, as indeed it was about the campaign. Yet in several key respects it is quite wrong. Yes, Putin’s party won by a “landslide”, in the sense that it substantially increased its share of the vote. While its majority is now sufficient to amend the constitution, however, this changes less than might be thought. So many groupings and individuals voted with United Russia in the last Duma, that the correlation of parliamentary forces remains quite similar to what it was. Second, the turn-out – for all the incentives and threats reported to have been applied to increasing it – was not especially high. At just over 60 per cent, it was more than four years ago, but hardly at 99 per cent communist-era levels, nor yet at the 80 per cent level of recent European elections. If this is the best United Russia can do with all the Kremlin’s resources at its disposal, what would the turn-out have been without that effort? Let’s hear it for the almost four in 10 Russian voters who defied all the pressure and stayed at home. Let’s also ask whether a low turnout that discredited the whole process n sub-50 per cent, say n might have been what had worried the Kremlin all along. Third, the prime purpose of these elections was to elect a new parliament, as required under the constitution. The timing was not within the Kremlin’s gift. Of course, Putin, like any leader, has an interest in vindicating his time in office and, of course, the distribution of forces as revealed, however hazily, at these elections can be projected forward to suggest the likely outcome at the presidential election next March. But none of this necessarily means that the whole exercise was an attempt by Putin to find a quasi-legitimate way of hanging on to power. Shorn of these misconceptions, the implications of Sunday’s elections may be rather different from those drawn by an international consensus that habitually presupposes the worst. If the elections were, as they were bound to be, a referendum on Putin’s eight years in power, the judgement was strongly positive. But given Russia’s strong economic indicators, Putin’s undisputed personal popularity, and the sense of national dignity his presidency has helped to restore, the result was unlikely to be otherwise. A strong swing against Putin would have been more suspicious than the vote of confidence United Russia obtained. The elections may not have been as free, and certainly not as fair, as they should have been, but the result is not out of line with Russia’s public mood. By concentrating on the – predictable – size of United Russia’s win, however, the headlines have tended to obscure one of the less predicted, and most disappointing aspects of these elections: the extent to which the post-Soviet political process has ossified. The parties represented in the new Duma, and their leaders, will be essentially those that have dominated the past decade of Russian politics. Those who hoped – and Putin was one of them – that Russia would soon develop a multi-party system have been confounded. What is more, the early pro-Western reforming parties have withered away faster than the parties of a more conservative disposition. Russia’s electorate remains more cautious and less enamoured of the Western example than is often understood outside the country. Finally, the fact that United Russia has a majority sufficient to amend the constitution and keep Putin in office does not mean that it will do so. Putin has repeatedly stated that he will not serve another term. As president, he says, he has a duty to uphold the constitution, and this means complying with its term limits. The parliamentary elections may have made his decision more difficult, but the underlying principle remains. If Putin is still president after March 2008 n or even if he becomes, as he has half-suggested, prime minister n Russia’s flawed democracy will be compromised further and Putin will have missed his historic opportunity. The magnitude of the change that lies ahead cannot be overestimated. Russia has never yet experienced an orderly, constitutional, transfer of power. After Sunday’s elections, the candidate selected by United Russia at its coming congress is almost certain to become Russia’s next president. The party’s temptation will be to stick with Putin. For Russia’s sake, Putin must resist. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Inside Pakistan PPP leader Benazir Bhutto and PML (N) chief Nawaz Sharif met in Islamabad on Monday to chalk out a common opposition strategy for the coming elections. Ms Bhutto represented the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and Mr Sharif the All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM). They have decided to present to President Pervez Musharraf a charter of demands for ensuring “free and fair” elections. They may boycott the polls if their demands are not met, as newspaper reports emanating from Islamabad say. But many analysts in Pakistan believe that Ms Bhutto may ultimately find a way to participate in the elections. A report in The News (Dec 4) has it that “Benazir said she told the APDM that if the opposition parties did not take part in the elections, the government would not need to rig the polls. To expose the government’s rigging plan they have to participate in the elections.” At the Press conference after meeting Mr Sharif on Monday, she listed her demands met by the government. Among these demands were the fixing election date as January 8, the announcement for lifting the emergency and retirement of General Musharraf as the Chief of Army Staff. Both she and Mr Sharif fear that under the circumstances fair elections are not possible. The PML (N) leader is citing the rejection of his nomination papers as the latest proof why the elections cannot be expected to be a credible democratic exercise. Mr Sharif’s party is divided over the boycott idea. A report in The Frontier Post (Dec 3) says that even Mr Nawaz Sharif’s brother Shahbaz Sharif is not in favour of boycotting the polls. Those not in agreement with the PML (N) chief feel that the poll boycott will amount to helping the PML (Q) led by Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain to win the maximum seats from Punjab. That will result in fewer members in the National Assembly belonging to the Opposition, making it easier for President Musharraf to run the show the way he wants. For a ‘neutral’ President President Musharraf seems to have devised a strategy to prove wrong those who claim that the elections cannot be fair with the emergency and the curbs on the media remaining intact. A report in The News (Dec 3) says that he has “decided to distance himself from the PML (Q) led by Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain and has sent a message across that he would remain neutral.” The News adds quoting highly placed sources in the President’s camp, “President Pervez Musharraf is prepared to meet Mr Nawaz Sharif and Ms Benazir Bhutto together or separately provided the desire is expressed by the other side for such an encounter.” Complaints regarding the elections are being gathered to see to it that the stakeholders have confidence in the process. Nowadays, President Pervez Musharraf’s main worry seems to be two-fold: the polls must acquire credibility and the PPP and the PML (N) are not in a position to challenge his authority. The idea of maintaining a distance from the PML (Q) he has himself created may be aimed at deceiving the Opposition. He has already weakened the Opposition by dividing it and sowing the seeds of distrust among its leaders. Musharraf’s support base What is President Pervez Musharraf’s support base that will help him politically survive when he has finally hung up his army uniform? The obvious answer is that he continues to have the backing of the Pakistan army headed by a loyal general and US President George W. Bush. But that is not the complete answer. As Kaisar Bengali says in an article in Dawn (Dec 3), the military tops the list of Musharraf supporters. But, besides the US backing, “Yet another relatively recent source of external support for the regime is that of international financial interests. These interests have acquired a near monopoly of Pakistan’s financial markets, rendered possible on two counts: “One, privatisation of the banking sector to foreign investors and, two, explicitly pro-financial market monetary policies pursued by the military coterie of economic managers led by a middle-level career bank officer, Mr Shaukat Aziz.” That is, perhaps, why President Musharraf is the first General who has shown courage to relinquish direct army control in his plan to perpetuate his rule.
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