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Bonded in childhood Uncivil exam |
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DCs in the dock
60 years after light went out
Age is in the mind
To conservatives, McCain isn't right Global pressure to save Afghan student journalist Delhi Durbar
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Bonded in childhood THE recommendations of the Law Commission are what they are, recommendations. It is for the government to accept and act upon them. In its latest report, the commission has made some meaningful suggestions like a father too getting a share of his son’s property if he dies without a will, reducing the marriage age of boys from 21 to 18 and declaring all marriages below the age of 16 as void. It may appear going against the national and international trend when the age of consent of boys is reduced but it takes into account the ground reality. As the commission has pointed out, there is no logic in keeping a difference in the marriage ages of boys and girls, as is the case now. Even today the law does not accept child marriages. However, there have been several court judgments upholding such marriages mainly to protect the interests of the children born out of such wedlock. The commission has come up with the suggestion that while marriages below the age of 16 are totally unacceptable and therefore void, those between the age of 16 and 18 can be declared void if one of the spouses makes a plea for it. This will ensure the interests of the adolescents who may have been forced into a marriage they do not want. To believe that once the government accepts these recommendations and enacts the necessary laws for the purpose, child marriage will come to an end is to be naive. Even though child marriages are illegal, thousands of such marriages are solemnised in states like Rajasthan. The administration turns a blind eye to the social practice because it lacks the will to curb it. Child marriages are directly linked to ignorance and poverty. The problem is acute in states and communities where illiteracy is widely prevalent. Educated girls know that early marriages and the resultant early motherhood deprive them of the pleasures of childhood. An adolescent girl is not physically and psychologically prepared to cope with the pressures of marriage. That is why educated boys and girls prefer to marry late. The problem of child marriages can be solved once the government and non-governmental agencies, including religious and social organisations, make an all-out bid to spread education which alone can liberate people from meaningless customs and practices, not to mention superstitions.
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Uncivil exam THE more one gets to know how the HCS examination was conducted during the Chautala regime, the more one wonders why it was called the civil service examination at all. It should aptly have been called the “uncivil service examination”, meant only for the near and dear ones of the then Chief Minister. Something similar had happened in Punjab under a PPSC head called Ravi Sidhu also but Haryana has outdone its neighbour. The favourite few were given the job on a platter, even if that meant awarding them marks for five answers although they attempted only four. One has heard of discount sales where one can buy five items for the price of four, but one had never thought that a time would come when moral values would be discounted to such an extent that such scandals would take place in an examination conducted by a state public service commission. But then, one of the beneficiaries happened to be a close relative of the commission chairman. In a dastardly attempt to illegally favour a few, these shameless fellows destroyed the lives of many others. Among them was a Scheduled Caste boy who got good marks in the written examination in the general category but was given only 17 out of 100 marks in the interview. No wonder, he could not make it to the HCS, though he was selected as excise and taxation officer. However, he did not join in protest. So much for the so-called social justice! The naked dance of favouritism must have filled many rejected candidates with disgust. One of them later went on to top the IAS, as if to expose the farce. But there are many more who must have lost all faith in the system. The least that can be done to restore their confidence somewhat is to ensure that the perpetrators don’t go scot-free. There is need to put in place a foolproof mechanism against such frauds. One time is horrible enough.
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DCs in the dock IT is shameful that many deputy commissioners have frittered away Red Cross funds in Punjab. Though newspaper reports uncovering the scandalous use of public money for personal comfort are confined to four districts -- Patiala, Ludhiana, Sangrur and Nawanshehr -- the situation in the rest may not be different. A fair and independent inquiry can reveal the rot. How can any decent officer spend the money collected for the Kargil war and Gujarat earthquake victims, or even for mitigating the sufferings of the ordinary needy people on buying personal luxuries like ACs, refrigerators and mobile phones? While one deputy commissioner, who had earned national acclaim for controlling the killings of unborn daughters in Nawanshehr district, had donated his award money of Rs 51,000 to the Red Cross, others of his tribe used the money to decorate their offices or buy petrol for their cars. Barring such honourable exceptions, the bureaucracy in Punjab is highly politicised and corrupt. Their acts of omission and commission seldom evoke penal action because of the politico-bureaucratic nexus. Being as organised as any gang and wielding tremendous power, the IAS lobby gets away with anything and always comes to the rescue of its erring members who get caught. Thanks to the Right to Information Act, their misdeeds are increasingly becoming public. Despite the public outrage that the reports have evoked, the Punjab government has done pretty little to come clean. Ruling politicians, many of whom are themselves in the dock for corruption, are not known to punish their well-wishers in the IAS. It is in this context that the inquiry by the divisional commissioners concerned is being dubbed an eye-wash. The top-heavy administration in Punjab is notorious for extravagance and stinks of corruption. No government in the recent past, whether of the Congress or the Akali Dal-BJP, has put any senior officer in jail for misusing public money. The Badal government has a chance to change this perception.
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Custom reconciles us to everything. — Edmund Burke
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60 years after light went out
DURING the ongoing discussions on the 60th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom, several points have emerged, and merit greater attention than has been the case so far. Of the few that can be taken up in available space, the first is something of a paradox. The Mahatma’s assassination — at the hands of Nathuram Godse who acted on behalf of the hordes that, in the prevailing hate-filled atmosphere, held Gandhi solely responsible for Partition and its chilling aftermath — was a searing tragedy, and the global grief it touched off immeasurable. Yet, in historical perspective, the timing of his death did do a world of good to India that he had liberated from the British Raj. The mad and mammoth death dance in India and the two wings of Pakistan virtually halted when Jawaharlal Nehru climbed the gate of the Birla House to announce to a stunned world, “The light has gone out from our lives and there is darkness everywhere …”. The impact on Pakistan of Gandhi’s passing epitomised the power of his unique personality. The people of the newly born country may have had their reasons to dislike him during their struggle for a homeland, but they also had the highest respect for his steadfast adherence to high principles. They had witnessed that in the midst of the first Kashmir War, he had used the weapon of indefinite fast to force his own country’s reluctant government to hand over to Pakistan Rs 55 crore (a huge amount those days) that was owed to it under the Partition Agreement. In short, the cruel elimination of Gandhi contributed materially to the building up of secularism in this multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual country with bewildering diversities where no other pattern would have worked. But it is only fair to add that it was Nehru, not Gandhi, who laid the foundations of secular India. This perhaps explains why the exponent of Hindu nationalism, the BJP in its various incarnations, had no difficulty in adopting “Gandhian socialism” as its creed at one time but has hated Nehru persistently and vehemently. The Hindutva hotheads are frustrated because they cannot do to Nehru’s secular legacy what they did to the Babri Masjid. Godse’s ghastly crime shamed all votaries of Hindutva and deprived them of legitimacy so thoroughly that they could not re-establish a significant presence in Indian polity for at least four decades. Their revival was partly a result of the Congress party’s own misdeeds, particularly the Emergency. Participation in the Janata government that replaced the Indira Gandhi’s first regime gave the Hindu ultra-nationalists respect-ability. Yet, it is arguable that the BJP could rule for six years (1998-2004) primarily because of the leadership of Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a moderate man generally perceived to be in the Nehruvian mould. Having lasted in power for a mere 13 days in 1996, he could attract enough allies two years later. What Mr L.K. Advani might be able to do remains to be seen. There is, however, the flip side of the picture where secularism is concerned. If India today is not a “Hindu Pakistan”, it is because Nehru lived. But while the sapling he planted has surely grown into a tree, the very fact that enormous effort is needed to save it from being uprooted underscores that enough wasn’t done even in his time to nurture it. His successors have made things worse, enabling the Hindutva crowd to blame the Congress for “appeasing” the minorities, with an eye on “vote banks”. It was Gandhi who converted the freedom movement from a drawing-room exercise to mass politics. He launched a valiant mass movement against untouchability. But, alas, neither he nor Nehru ever thought of mass action against the bane of communalism of both the majority and the minorities. During his lifetime, many — even among his admirers, with Nehru in the lead — were irritated by Gandhi’s religious and spiritual approach to political issues and were critical of his use of religious idiom in political discourse. This brings me to the second point — that six decades on, there is greater appreciation of his point of view than could have been expected. The inter-faith dialogue, even fusion that Gandhi favoured — Ishwar Allah tero naam, et al — is the crying need of the hour. What is more, there is a surge of religion all over. Despite the 70 years of Soviet communism, religion is back in Russia with a vengeance. The mighty Chinese state is finding it impossible to check the spread of various religions. Evidently, people need religion. However, religion should be a personal matter and kept aloof from politics. In a pluralistic and secular country like India there cannot be a state religion. On the other hand, all efforts of the state and society should focus on ensuring that instead of religious conflict, religious conciliation prevails. All religions known to man exist within the Indian shores; all of them must be shown equal respect. Thirdly, Gandhi’s economic philosophy — doubtless arising from his vision of India being a loose confederation of half a million self-governing, self-sufficient villages — was woolly. Nehru paid no heed to it and did what he thought was necessary to modernise and develop India by building a sound industrial and technological base. Even so, the Indian “knights of globalisation” have no right to either deride the Mahatma’s spirituality or denounce Nehru’s socialism. But for the foundations built by the first Prime Minister, there wouldn’t have been today’s flourishing IT and other industries. The fourth and the final point, beautifully summed up by someone, is that Gandhi “is revered more because of his absence than his presence”. I would spell this out more bluntly. There is a plethora of ritual obeisance to the man who led this country from the slough of slavery into the sunshine of freedom, accompanied by an almost total rejection of what he stood for. Gandhi wanted to wipe every tear from every eye. Today there is a complete disconnect between this country’s super-rich with their vulgarly lavish lifestyle and the poor most of whom don’t get even two square meals a day. This often reminds me of a brilliant cartoon incomparable R.K. Laxman had drawn in the 1980’s when Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi was a run-away success around the globe. Laxman drew a group of Congressmen standing beside a big poster of the movie, with one of them saying, “I am told it is based on a real life
story”
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Age is in the mind
Forget
about the Dirty Thirties or the Naughty Forties. The Frisky Fifties are having the most fun by swapping the boardroom for the bedroom, pronounced a Britain based magazine which went on to extrapolate upto 2025 when people over 60 will outnumber the under 25s in the UK. Having benefited from a property boom, these 55s own 80 per cent of the nation’s disposable wealth. With the burden of bringing up children now lifted many have money to burn while enjoying greater longevity and better health; though the only fly in the ointment is that more and more of the older age groups are contracting sexually transmitted diseases. “How long will the party go on?” sighed my septuagenarian sociologist uncle who caught me unawares while I was reading this piece aloud to my wife. In no mood to let me off the hook, my uncle seized the initiative by declaring that India was different from the West and so it must stay. Citing chapter and verse he held forth. Mid-life crisis is more of a myth in our country despite the so called upwardly mobile class running a rat race to El Dorado. It is a Western construct which feeds on their youth-obsessed culture which makes a virtue of relentless pursuit of self-renewal unmindful of the cost to the family and society. If youth is a gift of God, age is a work of art. It is magnificent to grow old if one keeps young. It is rather foolish to resent growing old; many are denied this privilege! In fact you don’t grow old. When you cease to grow, in more ways than one, you are old. You truly should rejoice my son on your 50th birthday. Be happy that you have escaped your forties which are the old age of youth and are arriving at the age of fifty, which is the youth of old age! The one great advantage of growing older is that you can stand for more and fall for less. Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man like you has no time to form. Take it this way. A man is getting old when he doesn’t care what the new stenographer looks like — just as long as she can spell (her charm, I thought). You guys never tire of talking big of China where a person is not accepted as a mature adult until he is 40. An under-forty is not permitted to speak his mind in the presence of the wise, he chortled. Suddenly uncle turned sombre and said: “The misfortune is that body and mind, like man and wife do not always agree to die together. It is bad when mind survives the body, and worse still when the body survives the mind; but when both these survive our spirits, our hopes and our health, this is the worst of all. ” Unable to contain myself, I interjected, “Relax dear uncle, who said you are going to be eighty, you are four times twenty.” Guff and guffaws later, uncle dropped into a cool siesta. Here is wishing you who are tired, retired or re-tyred good luck, happy
tidings.
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To conservatives, McCain isn't right With
John McCain racking up delegates on a steady march toward the Republican presidential nomination, deeply conservative voters are at a loss. "We're in a political dilemma, as well as a personal dilemma," said Jessica Echard, the executive director of the conservative advocacy group Eagle Forum. "What will we do? What can be done?" Sit out in November? Unite behind McCain? Pressure the Arizona senator to change his policies? Demand a specific running mate? The debate, often biting, has consumed online forums, talk radio and conservative groups. Behind it all, a key question looms: Will conservative Republicans be selling out if they back McCain – or if they don't? "I keep hearing that we need to be loyal Republicans and support McCain if he becomes our candidate, but I question why we should have to be more loyal to the party than McCain has (been)," a caller told right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh. He interrupted her with enthusiasm: "That is brilliant! That is brilliant." Other radio hosts have taken to calling the Republican front-runner McLame, McVain or McAmnesty, a barb about his support for a bill that would provide a path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants in the country. On her show Wednesday, talk-show host Laura Ingraham played a clip of McCain saying he respects his Democratic rivals, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. "Oh, great," Ingraham interjected with sarcasm. "You're not going after Hillary for being a big fat phony?" Later, she spoke over other McCain audio clips: "Oh, come on!" or, "He's lying!" Conservative disdain for McCain runs deep, mostly because of his stand on illegal immigration. Other black marks: He voted against President Bush's major tax cuts, though now he supports making them permanent. He opposes a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. And he's not only willing, but expresses an eagerness, to work with Democrats in Congress. "I don't want to reach out to them. I want to defeat their agenda," one caller told Limbaugh. "Amen, bro," the host responded. "Amen." Off the airwaves, Republican voters expressed similar resentment of McCain. "He'll go as far left as he can. He's two-faced," Larry Duke, 51, said over lunch in Colorado Springs, a city at the center of the conservative Christian movement. A leading evangelical in Colorado Springs, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, tried his best this week to stop McCain's momentum by announcing – on Ingraham's show – that he'd rather sit out the election than vote for McCain. The anti-endorsement and similar remarks by conservative columnist Ann Coulter didn't stop McCain from notching victories Tuesday in New York, California and seven other states. McCain held his own among born-again Christians, one of Dobson's key constituencies. But the exit polls exposed his lack of support from the far right – a weakness that alarms many Republicans. "I'm worried we'll lose our base," said Adam Saffer, 20, a student at the University of Colorado campus here. "I can see him splitting the party." In state after state, McCain ran well among voters who describe themselves as "somewhat conservative," but poorly among "very conservative" voters. In California, for instance, he took 45 percent of the "somewhat" crowd but only 21 percent of the "very conservative" voters. To help close that gap, McCain asked right-wing radio hosts to quit tearing into him. One of his longtime adversaries, Hugh Hewitt, complied, telling his listeners Wednesday that it was time to accept their likely nominee. That left a caller from Colorado confused: "Today it's like a McCain love-in," she protested. Even with other radio hosts still fanning the anti-McCain fire, analyst Joe Sullivan predicted that acceptance would spread as the general election approaches. "If Hillary is the nominee, you'll see Republicans come together so fast, you won't have time to spit," said Sullivan, editor of the Southeast Missourian, which covers a conservative rural region. Voters hoping for reassurance about a McCain candidacy will be listening closely to his speech Thursday at a major conference of conservatives in Washington, D.C. Though the discontent ran deep, even veteran activists wonder how to translate it into action. Campaigning for a McCain rival would seem an obvious tactic, but radio-show calls and blog posts were largely quiet on that point. McCain has amassed nearly 60 percent of the delegates needed for nomination, and even his harshest critics said it was tough to imagine that any other candidate could prevail. There were no cries, either, to promote a third-party candidate. Last summer, several conservatives – including Dobson – floated that idea, but it's now widely seen as hopeless. Babbin said he intended to launch a campaign of letter-writing and speaking out at public forums to pressure McCain to pick a running mate acceptable to the most conservative wing of the party. Other bloggers intend to ask McCain to name his potential Cabinet – and stock it with political heavyweights from the right. Some would like McCain to offer the vice presidency to Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas and a Southern Baptist preacher who is still campaigning for the nomination after winning several states on Tuesday. Babbin, though, said Huckabee wasn't conservative enough because he approved a tax hike in Arkansas and he talks often about the need to fight global warming. "If (McCain) chooses a real, no-kidding, gut-level conservative to be vice president – and frankly, I'm not sure who that would be – he'd bring a lot of his harshest critics around," Babbin said. Then, abruptly, his upbeat tone faded. "It's not quite hopeless," he said, "but ... " Correll reported from Colorado Springs, Simon from Denver. Times staff writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Global pressure to save Afghan student journalist The
world's most powerful woman has added her voice to the campaign to save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student journalist sentenced to death for downloading material on women's rights from the Internet. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, promised on Wednesday to raise his case personally with the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, which would significantly raise the international pressure for his release. About 69,000 people have signed The Independent's petition to save Mr Kambaksh, who was sentenced to death under Afghanistan's strict blasphemy laws after distributing to his journalism class a document from the Internet that commented on Koranic verses about women's rights. His conviction by an Islamic courthas caused worldwide outrage since it was first highlighted in The Independent last week. Asked why the United States government had not spoken out over Mr Kambaksh's plight - especially after it won a stay of execution for a man who converted to Christianity in the country in 2006 - Ms Rice replied: "I'll certainly raise the case with President Karzai. This is a young democracy and I think it won't surprise you that we are not supportive of everything that comes up through the judicial system in Afghanistan." Ms Rice also hinted that Mr Karzai was aware of the growing furore over the student journalist's plight and that he may be willing to use his power of presidential pardon to rescind the death sentence. However, Afghan officials said that the case must first exhaust the judicial process, in line with the country's laws. But the support of Ms Rice, who is such a high-profile figure and is a public ally of President Karzai, for Mr Kambaksh's case may well be the best chance the student journalist has of avoiding execution. However, Mr Karzai's relations with the West are somewhat fraught at present, and he may not wish to be seen to bow to Western demands. In 2006, Ms Rice personally lobbied Mr Karzai over a death sentence that had been passed on a 41-year-old man, Abdur Rahman, for converting to Christianity. At the time, she urged the Afghan President to reconsider the sentence "in the strongest terms" and eventually, following a further personal appeal from President George Bush, Mr Karzai used his presidential pardon. Ms Rice is the most senior official to speak out about Mr Kambaksh. The UN's most senior human rights official, Louise Arbour, added to the international campaign by writing to senior Afghan officials last weekend, "reminding them of their responsibilities" under the country's constitution, which enshrines freedom of speech. In Britain, Mr Miliband, Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, and William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, have all backed the campaign. But in contrast to the US Secretary of State's stated intention to personally intervene, there was still no confirmation from the Foreign Office yesterday as to whether Mr Miliband intended to raise Mr Kambaksh's case directly with the Afghan President. The Foreign Secretary has said: "We are opposed to the death penalty in all cases and believe that freedom of expression is one of the cornerstones of a democratic society. We have raised the case as members of the EU and with the UN, and we support strongly the UN Special Representative's call for a review of the case." In recent days, there have been signs that the campaign is producing results. There was a dramatic volte-face by the Afghan senate, which retracted its endorsement of the death sentence last week. A senior Afghan official told The Independent this week that Afghanistan's judicial system will "avoid" the death sentence. But campaigners say Mr Kambaksh's position remains as precarious as ever because Mr Karzai is under considerable pressure from inside Afghanistan, where the limits of free speech are defined within Sharia law. Under Afghanistan's new constitution, the President is able to pardon condemned prisoners if their sentence is upheld by the Supreme Court. But privately, government sources have hinted that President Karzai would prefer to see the verdict overruled by an appeal court before it reaches his office. Life in jail is hell, day after day, says Pervez While the international campaign to free Sayed Pervez Kambaksh grows, life in jail for the 23-year-old student is, according to his family, "nothing but enduring hell day after day". He shares a cell meant for four people with 30 others at the prison in Balkh province where he has been held for more than three months. In that time he has been attacked by Taliban prisoners who have been told by officials that Mr Kambaksh is guilty of blasphemy. His food has been contaminated by guards, he has lost weight, and is traumatised. Mr Kambaksh, a student of journalism, has tried to explain to his fellow inmates that he is not guilty of the "crimes" he has been accused of, said his brother, and most believe him. But he remains under threat from other prisoners and guards in this deeply religious country, where apostasy is regarded by many as deserving execution. Yaqub Ibrahimi has been on the receiving end of official retribution and is now living at a secret address away from his home town. As a journalist he had written a series of articles in which he accused public figures, including an MP, of atrocities. Mr Ibrahimi had to be very careful when he visited his brother in prison, making sure that he was unannounced. The Afghan senate had backed the death sentence on Mr Kambaksh. However, it withdrew the ruling last week. The case has now returned to the courts, leaving Mr Kambaksh with the right to appeal. "President Karzai can pardon my brother and that is what we are praying he will do," said Mr Ibrahimi. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Delhi Durbar Though the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme may still be passing through teething troubles, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh feels it has already made a path-breaking contribution in creating awareness about the minimum wage in the country and has also helped in increasing it. Prasad feels that the Left parties, despite their pro-labour agenda, have not been successful in creating awareness about the minimum wage being an integral part of the NREGA. The wages under the ambitious programme vary among states in keeping with the minimum wage fixed by them. There have been cases of people moving from one state to another for work if there is a substantial difference in the minimum wage. Getting practical During its National Council meeting in the national Capital, the BJP demanded the waiving of farm loans to the tune of Rs 50,000 per family to save debt-ridden farmers from committing suicide. M Venkaiah Naidu argued that with a buoyancy in revenue collection, the government can afford to go in for such a one-time waiver which would cost about Rs 1,00,000 crore. If public sector banks can write off NPAs of industrialists and others to the tune of over Rs 200,000 crore, a farm loan waiver is very much justified. However, some party men want the BJP leadership to carefully assess the "practicality" of such demands and decide how the party would implement its own demand if it comes to power. Earthy humour Bhartiya Kisan Union leader Mohinder Singh Tikait reflected his earthy sense of humour at the press conference he addressed recently in the Capital on issues concerning farmers. Tikait said that those holding offices in Delhi had no idea of the problems of farmers. "They will put fish on the grass and the goat in water," he observed dead pan in his local dialect. He added that both the rich and the poor will suffer because of the government's policies. While the rich will die of over-eating, the poor will die of starvtion. Late invites
At the launch party of Air India's Delhi-New York direct flight there were dancers all the way from Broadway to entertain about 500 guests along with a lavish spread at a luxury hotel in the national capital. The media received the invites, perhaps, as an afterthought. And these too came courtesy Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel's press adviser Maushmi Chakraborty. Apparently, when the minister reached the venue he was informed that the media had not been invited. It was then that the ministry spokesperson got into the act to invite the media through frantic messages on mobiles. Contributed by Prashant
Sood, S Satyanarayanan and Girja Shankar Kaura
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They don't like McCain. They've tried, and failed, to stop him. So it was with growing frustration, and an unaccustomed sense of impotence, that many conservatives surveyed the electoral map on Wednesday.