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Putin and power Father-son drama |
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No “Shagun”, this
Antony’s sudden awakening
The house by the brook
The menace of Article 356 Focus of climate meeting questioned Delhi Durbar
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Putin and power President
Vladimir Putin of Russia, who has held the country’s top post for two consecutive terms, has to relinquish power in May next year. But he does not seem to be ready to remain away from the power structure. He has announced that his long-time protégé and First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Mr Dmitry Medvedev, a reformist, will contest the presidential elections in March as his United Russia party’s nominee. Mr Putin’s open backing for Mr Medvedev means sure victory for the former law professor and St Petersburg bureaucrat, who has risen to power outside the KGB apparatus. The incumbent President is said to enjoy the support of nearly 80 per cent of the Russian voters. This became clear after the recently held parliamentary elections, swept by the United Russia. Reports suggest that Mr Medvedev will be the President only in name. The real power could still rest with Mr Putin, who has been offered the post of Prime Minister. He may accept the offer, though that will amount to technically being a subordinate to Mr Medvedev. However, Mr Putin is working on a new and better idea. He is likely to clinch a deal for the merger of Belarus with Russia. This will be hailed as another major contribution of Mr Putin to the cause of restoring the Russian pride, punctured after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The birth of a union of the two former republics of the USSR is considered as Mr Putin’s novel scheme possibly to get himself installed as the President of the unified state of Russia and Belarus. If he succeeds Russia will be in a better position to bargain with Western Europe with regard to energy supplies and other aspects that have become important in East-West diplomacy. In that situation Mr Putin will have control over the gas pipelines that pass through Belarus. Russia under Mr Putin has gained enormously in terms of its stature in the comity of nations with its earnings from its energy resources multiplying considerably. It will gain further with the birth of a new and powerful state of Russia and Belarus. Next few months will decide what position Mr Vladimir Putin comes to enjoy in the political dispensation that may emerge in Moscow. The West, it seems, will be happy if Mr Putin remains a key decision maker, whatever his designation.
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Father-son drama FORMER Kerala Chief Minister K. Karunakaran’s possible return to the Congress is unlikely to set the Bharatapuzha on flames. The homecoming of sorts has been brought about by circumstances beyond his control. His gamble in forming the Democratic Indira Congress (DIC) just before the Assembly elections failed when his candidates, barring a single exception, failed to win. A section of the Left Democratic Front, with which he wanted a formal alliance so that he could enjoy some spoils of office, saw to it that the Front did not touch him even with a barge pole. The veteran leader could not have but known that in the highly polarised politics in Kerala, it was difficult to plough a lonely furrow. The merger of the DIC in the Nationalist Congress Party about a year ago was mainly aimed at keeping himself and son K. Muralidharan afloat in politics. Never in his life could Mr Karunakaran have felt so uncomfortable as when he remained without a say in either the government or the Opposition. Also, he would have learnt that whatever be the factionalism in the Congress, he had no political career outside of the party. It was this realisation that forced him to think of returning to the Congress. And when he accepted the leadership of party chief Sonia Gandhi and regretted the “mistake” of leaving the Congress, the grand old party could have only accepted the prodigal son. Son Muralidharan and his supporters insist that they would stay put in the NCP and not follow Mr Karunakaran into the Congress. Those who know the wily leader do not discount reports that the father-son duo is following in the footsteps of H.D. Deve Gowda and H.D. Kumaraswamy when they publicly parted company only to keep power in the family’s grip. It would not be surprising if Mr Karunakaran’s decision to join the Congress and Mr Muralidharan’s opposition to it were all part of a political game. Whatever be the case, the impending arrival of Mr Karunakaran in the Congress is certain to revive groupism in the party, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary.
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No “Shagun”, this IF ever a manual is compiled on how to ruin a well-meaning scheme, the Punjab Government’s “Shagun” scheme to help the poor girls at the time of their marriage must definitely figure in it. Typical official apathy, inefficiency and bungling have deprived a large number of genuine beneficiaries of this gesture since the time it was started in 1997. The “shagun” amount has been raised from Rs 5,100 to Rs 15,000 but what use is the increase if it is not to reach the right people? What has almost destroyed the scheme is the decision in between to do away with the condition of obtaining an income certificate from the designated authority. When the previous Congress government changed the tag to “Ashirwad” and issued instructions that an affidavit regarding income by the beneficiary family would be enough, claimants emerged out of the wood, as it were. Earlier, there used to be only about 1,000 applicants per month. Suddenly, the number jumped to 5,000. When the SAD-BJP government reintroduced the condition of obtaining an income certificate from the SDM or other designated officers, the number of beneficiaries again came down to the old level. It is necessary to check whether some people got the money by making false claims. After all, it is the public money which is being doled out. That is not the only way that the scheme was done in. At some places, the cheques were made but just not distributed. At other places, these were retained by the office concerned for such a long period that the cheques had to be revalidated. This despite the clear instructions that the cheques must be given to the parents of the brides at the time of marriage or a few days before the marriage to enable the family to meet financial requirements. Whether this was done due to the usual sloth or to coax the beneficiaries to part with some “speed money” needs to be looked into. Either way, those who made a mess of the scheme deserve to be punished severely – and urgently.
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No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there. — F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Antony’s sudden awakening
During
his recent visit to Nathu La in Sikkim, Defence Minister A. K. Antony was evidently taken aback by the stark contrast between the Chinese and Indian infrastructure along the border, or the Line of Actual Control, between the two Asian giants. Indeed, his body language on TV suggested as if he had had a sudden awakening. He said as much to the accompanying media. “We must do something to fill the gap”, he declared, or words to that effect. Several nagging questions arise. The first is that this seasoned and respected former Chief Minister of Kerala may be new to the Ministry of Defence, but surely he has been there long enough to be briefed adequately on the unsatisfactory state of our management of the border with China. In recent years several former Army Chiefs, in particular General Ved Prakash Malik, have been bemoaning publicly the constant, comprehensive and brisk upgrading of the border infrastructure by the northern neighbour, while the condition of our border roads, such as they are, communications, helipads, airstrips and so on remains depressing, often appalling. More important, the painful problem is not new or of recent origin. Sadly, it dates back to the creation. To make matters worse, the inability of the Indian state to implement decisions it takes itself at the highest levels gets inextricably intermixed with unfailing misperception of Chinese actions and intentions. Let me try to sum up the tragic tale from the beginning. In 1950, when the Chinese army had not yet marched into Tibet that until then was a virtual buffer between the two countries but was expected to do so, the government in New Delhi appointed a committee, headed by the then Deputy Defence Minister, General Himmatsinhji, to suggest the measures needed to meet the challenges that were bound to arise in the high Himalayas. In its two reports, speedily submitted, the committee made sound recommendations, which the Union Cabinet accepted with alacrity. It also directed the state governments and Central agencies concerned to buckle down to their assigned tasks, especially the building of border roads, extending the administration up to the frontier and establishing intelligence and security posts wherever required. Some six years later Jawaharlal Nehru discovered to his dismay that hardly anything had been done. The road-building programme was in a shambles, obviously because the responsibility for it had been given to the CPWD. That was when the country’s first Prime Minister decided to set up a separate Border Roads Development Board. He also sent round a hand-written note about his deep disappointment to all concerned. The position improved somewhat but not enough because the Army did not want the roads to reach right up to the border. It argued that such roads, if constructed, would prove useful to the Chinese. Consequently, the peculiar edict of the army top brass often was that in case of a Chinese attack, the invaders should not be met at “impossible Himalayan heights” but taken on when they reached the foothills or the plains, with their lines of communication and supplies “overstretched”. No one bothered to ponder what would happen if the Chinese just sat tight on the areas they claimed and did not descend further. Accompanying this dubious doctrine was the unstated but widely prevalent notion that the Chinese were 10 feet tall and were best left alone. General K. S. Thimayya, one of India’s most popular army leaders, had seen the Chinese army in Korea (where it had nearly defeated the legendary US General MacArthur). At top-secret official meetings first and later in a magazine article in July 1962 he articulated the view that the Indian army by itself could not take on the Chinese in a “big war” because the Soviet Union would back China to the hilt. Ironically, Nehru was the first world statesman to foresee the Sino-Soviet split but such was the structure and style of governance that his ideas never trickled down to the military and civilian bureaucracy, with disastrous results. Nor, sadly, has the state of affairs changed much even today, the National Security Council and an array of advisers on national security notwithstanding. A succession of events in 1959 — the Tibetan revolt, the asylum given to the fleeing Dalai Lama and the incident at Kongka-la where the Chinese first drew blood - drove home the message that precious little had been done to withstand aggressive Chinese “incursions” though, strangely, Nehru convinced himself that while border skirmishes and patrol-level clashes would continue, the Chinese would “do nothing big”. No one with a say in policy dared dissent. However, a rapid programme to establish border posts, especially in the Ladakh sector, was launched hurriedly. This country alone could have been so thoughtless as to name this plan to strengthen defences on Indian soil “Forward Policy” — an expression that has had a different connotation since the British days. In sharp contrast, the exaggerated trauma of the 1962 border war also magnified the impression of China’s overwhelming might. A corrective to this came only in 1987 in the form of General Sundarji’s Operation Chequerboard in Sumdourongchu. For this, paradoxically, he was much criticised! Meanwhile, in 1971 B.N. Mullik, the intelligence czar of this country almost all through the Nehru era, published his book, The Chinese Betrayal. In it, he defended the government’s rather poor record on the border infrastructure on the ground that it would take time to overcome the virtually “insurmountable difficulties” of terrain and resources in this respect. Evidently, 36 years have not been sufficient for this purpose. Under the circumstances, going by past experience, the question is whether anyone would carry out the Defence Minister’s current exhortations. An across-the-board decline in the Indian administration’s capacity to deliver on its promises or to carry out the directives of the higher authorities makes the situation a lot more bizarre. The failure of the powers that be to punish the guilty has aggravated the messy situation. Against this bleak backdrop, what greater irony can there be than that, speaking in a different context only the other day, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had to quote his Chinese counterpart, Mr Wen Jiabao, to the effect that implementation was of the essence? The best of policies would mean nothing if they were not enforced. The Prime Minister, in fact, wanted Premier Wen’s speech to be made compulsory reading for Indian officials. Even if they do read this speech, would they heed its
message?
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The house by the brook
Years
ago, in the first couple of days after joining college, I met a girl who was quite unusually beautiful. She had the kind of natural, radiant beauty associated with people who manage to look stunning even at the end of a hot, sweaty, summer day, or straight after they have woken up after a particularly nasty hangover. Nearly four decades later, we are still good friends. What I also clearly remember was her answer to our confused question after initial introductions, “Is your name really Coonoor? What does it mean?” Her answer was, “I was born in Coonoor, the Queen of Hill Stations.” What I didn’t know then was that destiny had planned that I would be a frequent visitor to this “Queen of Hill Stations”! Each time I’m there, I realise Coonoor, the person, was really aptly named, as like her, Coonoor, the hill station, is beautiful at all times. Nestled in the bosom of the Nilgiris, just a couple of hours drive from Coimbatore, is Coonoor, a small but popular hill station. It rubs shoulders with Wellington, of The Defence Services Staff College fame, and around 45 minutes away from the far better known Ooty, short for Ootacamand, now Udhagamandalam. The nearest railway station that connects Coonoor to the plains is Mettupalayam. From here, you chug along in a “toy” train or drive through betelnut groves, then up 14 hairpin bends hugging verdant forests of eucalyptus and conifers, wild flowers and rhododendrons, and past many tea plantations, till you reach Coonoor. “Brookside” is the name of a house that belongs to a firm of tea auctioneers and used to accommodate its visitors. It is named after a brook that gurgles and gushes, much lower down the hillside. You can’t see the brook from the house but you hear it, through the day and the night, comforting in its continuity, making quite a racket during the monsoons, flowing softly with a friendly ripple, during summer. Once a doll’s house sized cottage with two tiny bedrooms and a drawing and dining room, Brookside was rebuilt some five years ago. Always bright and cheerful, it is now a spacious and gracious house surrounded by eucalyptus and pine forests and tea plantations. Early in the morning, you smell the refreshing scent of the eucalyptus, you see the mist rising till it melts away as it meets the rays of the sun, you hear bird call and you savour a hot cup of morning tea. Then breakfast, served in style, dosas, eggs and bacon, puri, aloo - whatever you want! Brookside’s charm partly lies in the efficiency and care provided by its staff. Francis, who retired a few years ago after decades of cooking delicious meals, charmingly served; he passed on his legacy of high quality care to his daughters, Mary and Metha, and son-in-law, Samuel. Even the gardener, who tends to the pocket sized garden in two levels, works like a silent, well oiled machine. His efforts are evident in the gleaming pots with colourful asters, fuchsias and marigolds, the carefully trimmed hedges with bursts of blue and purple flowers, and the beds of seasonal blooms. My husband, our daughters and I, and almost all the members of both sides of the family and many friends have spent many restful and cozy holidays in Brookside, thoroughly spoilt by Francis and his family. When our children were small, their friends and they used to climb down the winding, rocky path to the brook with a picnic basket. Now, the path is littered with glass from bottles thrown by callous tourists. The population of Coonoor has doubled - perhaps trebled - over the last two decades; housing colonies hungry for “a view” are resulting in denuded hillsides and decimated tea bushes. Water is scarce, heavy downpours lead to long hours without electricity, roads are rutted. Yet, the inhabitants of Coonoor are content and happy, they all say in some way or another, that it is “heaven”; they are kind and hospitable, convivial company, have many social gatherings, and they wouldn’t leave Coonoor for love or money or for that matter… bright city
lights.
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The menace of Article 356 IT is an era of coalitions. The centre and many states have forged alliances of different parties to cobble together a majority. The undertaking reached is that even if certain partners are not in the cabinet, they will support the government in its decisions. A coalition would be difficult to run if supporters were to change their mind in the midst of negotiations on important matters. The CPM is one example. Its secretary-general Prakash Karat has violated that understanding. He has threatened the Manmohan Singh government by asking them to wind up the discussion on the Indo-US deal by the end of December or face mid-term polls next year. The Left, particularly the CPM, had at one stage stalled the government’s talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) because to them it meant the operationalisation of the Indo-US nuclear deal. But then the Left suddenly allowed the government to have talks with the IAEA provided it got the Left’s approval on the agreement reached. How can CPM ask the government to end talks when it is in the midst of them? How illogical is Karat’s threat? The talks can last till December 31 but they cannot spill over to even a day in January. If the CPM was not willing to wait till the end of discussions, it should not have agreed to the government’s representatives going to the IAEA in the first instance. The party is having second thoughts because of the reported information that the IAEA is coming round to India’s viewpoint. The CPM’s stand has, however, made the Prime Minister say that narrow political considerations, based on regional or sectional loyalties, can distort the national vision and sense of collective purpose. But he should realise that “the national vision and sense of collective purpose” cannot be sacrificed for the sake of economic or technological gains. I am referring to independent foreign policy. Many people are indifferent to the nuclear part of the deal. But they do not want to be part of America’s “strategic alliance”, nor do they share Washington’s obsession with Iran. The Left’s stand would have gone down better if it had confined itself to the foreign policy. Coming back to the coalition, Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi has expressed a strange viewpoint. He wants the Constitution to be amended to give legal sanctity to coalitions. How can a coalition, a temporary arrangement, be given a permanent Constitutional status? A coalition means that at a particular time there is no single party in the lower house to form the government on its own. This does not suggest that there will never be a political party with a majority. A coalition of today can be a single-party government tomorrow. True, after the Congress rule at the centre for 30 years a conglomeration of political parties, the Janata, came to power. But then Mrs Indira Gandhi’s return was that of the Congress party. Her son, Rajiv Gandhi, did better when he won the party a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha. Yet, during the same period, some states were run by coalition governments. Should we have separate Constitutional provision for the states? It looks as if the centre will not have a single party rule for many years to come. But it is not beyond the realm of possibility that some party may get a majority before long. Should we then change the Constitution again? Manmohan Singh has complained more than once that his government cannot move in certain fields because of coalition compulsions. Karunanidhi’s DMK has some 15 ministers in the central cabinet with some of the best portfolios, which have the maximum scope for
making money. In the Atal Behari Vajpayee government, the Telugu Desam got whatever it wanted. Thousands of tonnes of food grain would be directed to Andhra Pradesh at its asking. What has happened in Karnataka is a long story of deceit, deception and dreadful pressure
for power. What India really requires is an amendment to the Constitution to do away with Article 356 which gives powers to the centre to dismiss an elected government. The Constitutional authority, the President, is authorised to take over the functions of a state government on receipt of the governor’s report that there is a “failure of Constitutional machinery.” A word by the governor who is appointed by the centre, generally from among the ruling party members, is enough to dismiss the elected government. Naturally, the centre’s appointee looks towards the ruling party at New Delhi as to how to “act” and when. The contact is constant whenever there is a crisis. In 1977, the Janata government dismissed Congress state governments when it assumed power after the emergency. In turn, Mrs Gandhi dismissed non-Congress governments when she became prime minister in 1980. Since power is all that motivates political parties, Article 356 will continue to tempt the centre to get rid of a state government of a different ideology. Karunanidhi had S.S. Barnala appointed as governor for the second time. He is pliable and Karunanidhi realises that ultimately the governor’s report would save him. Barnala has done it many a time. What has somewhat curbed the centre is the Supreme Court’s judgment in the S.R. Bommai case which says that under no circumstances should Article 356 be used for political gain to the party in power in the Union government. The court says that it has been recognised that democracy and federalism are the essential features of the Constitution and part of the basic structure. The Supreme Court has said that the power under Article 356 must be used sparingly and only when the President is fully satisfied that a situation has arisen where the state government is not functioning according to the Constitution. Yet the fact remains that the President is a nominee of those in power. Dr BR Ambedkar, who piloted the Constitution, himself admitted: “I may say that I do not altogether deny that there is a possibility of these articles being abused or employed for political purposes. But the objection applies to every part of the Constitution which gives power to the centre to override the provinces. If at all they are brought into operation, I hope the President, who is endowed with these powers, will take proper precautions before actually suspending the administration of the provinces.” The Bommai case has, no doubt, laid down that a judicial review after the President’s dismissal of a state government is in order and favours even the revival of the dismissed government if the act is found male fide. But the court cannot do anything if the governor is motivated. When New Delhi has not even implemented the Sarkaria Commission report on centre-state relations defining the norms for appointment of governor, where is the guarantee that Article 356 will not be misused?
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Focus of climate meeting questioned 1. Start with 30 new nuclear power plants around the world. 2. Add 17,0000 wind turbines, 400 biomass power plants, 2 hydroelectric dams the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam, and 42 coal or natural gas power plants equipped with still-experimental systems to sequester their carbon dioxide emissions underground. 3. Build everything in 2013. Repeat every year until 2030. It’s an intentionally implausible plan presented this week by the International Energy Agency to make a point: For all the talk about emissions reductions, the actual work is way beyond what the world can achieve. As delegates from 190 countries gather here on the island of Bali to negotiate a “road map” for the successor the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming, some experts are questioning whether the meeting has lost touch with the reality of fighting climate change. So far, the thousands of delegates have consumed themselves in a debate over setting caps on emissions of greenhouse gases that are the primary culprit in climate change. The United States and China – the world’s two biggest carbon polluters, each accounting for about 20 percent of worldwide emissions – have opposed hard caps. While the debate continues, the most fundamental question of what it will take to achieve meaningful reductions largely has been forgotten. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in its landmark reports in 2007 that annual worldwide emissions must be cut at least in half by 2050 to avoid the most serious consequences of global warming, such as severe sea-level rise and The recipe from the IEA, a Paris-based energy research group, is one way to get there while still meeting the world’s rising demand for power. But no one is banking on its implementation any time soon. “When the governments or the people in the negotiations decide on such a target reduction as 50 percent by 2050, they have to realize the implications,” said Nobuo Tanaka, head of the IEA and a top energy authority. The talks in Bali are built around the idea that reductions would be driven by a international trading system for greenhouse gas emissions. The system would essentially be a stronger version of Kyoto, which expires at the end of 2012. Countries would be assigned caps on their total emissions. If a country polluted below its quota, it could sell its surplus allowances on the market. If it exceeded its cap, it would have to purchase allowances. Over time, as caps were lowered and the price of allowances rose, it would become cheaper to invest in carbon-cutting technology and clean energy alternatives than to keep polluting the air. But some economists said that the trading scheme is too weak to generate the massive investments needed to divert the world from fossil fuels. To begin with, there is no easy way to enforce such agreements. “Nobody is going to invade France, Russia or the United States, or break off diplomatic relations or boycott a country,” said Thomas Schelling, a University of Maryland economist who studies environmental policy. Japan, Canada and most of Western Europe are not on pace to meet their relatively modest targets established
by Kyoto. “I can’t imagine anything effective coming out of Bali,” Schelling said. “Frankly, they just don’t know what else to do.” Schelling said that countries must begin to focus on ways to encourage the development of new cleaner-energy technologies. He and 36 other experts, including three Nobel lprize winners, recently called upon the U.S. government to increase spending on clean-energy development from $3 billion to at least $30 billion a year in an effort they likened to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space program. “We went into World War II with biplanes and came out with jet fighter planes,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at Stanford University and co-author of the petition. “If we took this problem seriously, a decade from now there would be no need to make cars that emit (carbon dioxide) into the atmosphere.” James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, countered that private investment now funds a sizable chunk of research in the U.S. He also pointed to recent government investments in wind power, as well as billions of dollars the government has spent over many years trying to develop nuclear fusion. Tanaka said the IEA did not consider the possibility of clean fusion energy because the technology seemed unlikely in the next 30 years. But he added: “Who knows what will be the new technology breakthroughs? Maybe 2050 is still
a little early for fusion, but it is possible.”
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Delhi Durbar Members
of Parliament are expected to highlight and resolve the problems and difficulties of the poor or the common man. But sometimes MPs themselves could be in difficulty. BJP MP Avinash Rai Khanna and SAD MPs S.S. Libra and Rattan Singh Ajnala are understood to have made a peculiar request to Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. They want state government cars deployed in Punjab Bhavan in the national capital to pick them up and drop them to railway stations and airports. They have pointed out that they face a great deal of difficulty in commuting from the station or the airport to either Parliament House or their residences, as they do not have any vehicles in Delhi. It becomes cumbersome to look for taxis or auto rickshaws. These MPs have requested the Punjab Government to extend the pick up and drop facility as has been done by a number of state governments to their MPs, including neighbouring Himachal Pradesh. Only when their (MPs) difficulties are over, can they work towards removing the peoples’ difficulties!
Potential party suitors By holding an impressive rally to mark the launch of their new party, Kuldeep Bishnoi and his father Bhajan Lal have attracted many potential suitors. The leaders of the Haryana Janhit Congress (BL) can now do some hard bargaining with the BJP and BSP, the two parties which are likely to make efforts to get the former Chief Minister on their side and forge an alliance. There is no unanimity on who will suffer the most with the presence of a new party in the fray. While political observers feel that former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala’s INLD would face an uphill task to regain power in the state due to the presence of the new party, the Congress will also have to bear the fallout. The muddled scenario looks promising for potential candidates who now have more options in the political firmament.
Faith is individual Even as the Congress steers clear of issues pertaining to religion, sometimes to avoid confusion about its firm stand on secularism, its spokesman Shakeel Ahmad has been forthright in expressing his opinion. He says a truly religious man cannot be communal in his thinking as all religions teach love and compassion. Citing the example of Mahatma Gandhi who was religious and also deeply secular, he feels that religion and secularism can go hand in hand at the level of an individual. Asked repeatedly about the existence of Lord Ram during the debate sparked by the controversial ASI affidavit, the Congress had maintained that religion was a matter of individual
faith.
Contributed by S. Satyanarayanan and Prashant Sood
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