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Budgeting for growth More judges for SC Cleaning up canals |
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Pakistan after polls
Visitor from Hamburg
Cricketing values at stake The bloody diamonds of Sierra Leone Delhi Durbar
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Budgeting for growth THIS being the last full-scale budget before the general election, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is widely expected to rain sops and tax concessions. Since there may not be any more tax or surcharge hikes or any new cess in keeping with the UPA’s political agenda, he may widen further the gap between the government’s earnings and expenditure. Though the FM may boast of meeting the 2007-08 fiscal deficit target of 3 per cent of the GDP, the fact is the government hides the real figure by excluding the state deficits and off-budget items like bonds issued to oil companies and the losses of the state power boards. The actual fiscal deficit, according to the IMF, may come to an alarming 8 per cent of the GDP. This is bound to have an impact on the economy affecting both the rich and the poor. The Central and state governments take huge loans and then splurge on freebies that are intended to fetch votes for the ruling parties. People feel the pain of direct tax hikes but do not mind if governments accumulate debt. India’s public debt is at a whopping 75 per cent of the GDP. Loans are good if the money is spent on boosting agricultural or industrial output or on providing better access to the deprived to food, shelter, clean water, education and health. But subsisides are generally either misspent or swallowed by middlemen. The FM’s compulsions are understandable but he should not allow himself to get carried away by a purely political agenda. Instead, he should face the challenges, which are formidable. A vast majority is without any social security, pension or health insurance. The rural employment guarantee scheme, being extended to all 600-odd districts in the country, requires massive funds and efforts on the ground. The Sixth Pay Commission report is due. States too will revise staff salaries. With the prices already rising by the day, the burden and the threat to inflation will be awesome. The US slowdown and soaring oil prices will also hit the economy. The rupee rise has decelerated exports. The spurt in food prices is bound to push up inflation, which could undo all the goodwill that the UPA hopes to generate through a please-all budget. The rosy picture the Finance Minister has been projecting may not turn out to be so actually.
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More judges for SC THE Union Cabinet’s decision to increase the strength of the Supreme Court judges from 26 to 31 was long overdue, given the huge backlog of cases and consequent problems faced by the litigants, the lawyers and the judges. Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan said the other day that there are nearly 60,000 cases pending in the apex court itself. The situation is no better in the country’s 21 High Courts and subordinate courts. While the latest decision will, certainly, ease the apex court’s burden, efforts need to be stepped up to tackle the problem of vacancies in the High Courts and the subordinate courts also. Unfortunately, the strength of judges in India is far less compared with other major democracies — 13.05 judges per million people as against the US (130 per million), the UK (100 per million), Canada (75 per million) and Australia (58 per million). The Law Commission of India’s recommendation for increasing the strength of judges to at least 50 judges per million population has not been implemented. Despite the Supreme Court’s directives, the selection process for the appointment of judges has not been expedited. The slow pace with which the Centre and the states handle the matter has exacerbated the problem. The Chief Ministers take a long time to peruse the files and politics do intervene in the recommendation of names. The selection process can be expedited through advance planning even before a vacancy arises. The modus operandi should be such that a person is appointed to the post just the day after the incumbent judge attained superannuation. Along with population explosion, industrial growth and construction boom, people’s problems have also multiplied; the crime rate has also increased. The courts can work efficiently and effectively by organising themselves better. Specialised benches can deal with civil, criminal and commercial cases and the larger bench of nine judges should deal with constitutional matters. The ultimate goal should be to help every court function to its full strength and ensure speedy justice to the litigants. Mere appointment of more judges will not be enough. Judicial procedures also need to be changed to cut delays. The effort to provide speedy justice has to come from both the executive and the judiciary. What we see is the blame game – each wing accusing the other for arrears.
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Cleaning up canals THE repair of a canal normally would not have attracted much notice but for the fact that it is for the first time since Independence that a government in Punjab has undertaken to revamp the dilapidated canal system. The embankments along a 25-km stretch of the Patiala feeder, which irrigates large parts of Patiala, Sangrur and Mansa districts, have been strengthened and 4-5 feet of silt has been removed from its bed within just three weeks at a reduced cost of Rs 25 crore. It shows that collective effort and can-do attitude with right motivation from the top can work wonders. The canal network in Punjab has been in bad shape for long. Because of high levels of silt accumulating over the years and broken embankments, the water supply in the canals has sharply reduced. As a result, the area under canal irrigation has come down from 42 per cent in 1990-91 to 28 per cent now. The farmers at the tail-end of the canals are the worst sufferers. They have to depend more on tubewells, particularly in view of the increased cultivation of paddy. Besides, seepage from the ill-maintained canals has aggravated the problem of water-logging in the Malwa region. Political posturing and social conflicts over water issues notwithstanding, not much has been done either in Punjab or Haryana to preserve the existing water resources. Lack of funds due to Punjab’s precarious financial condition and the non-levy of user-charges due to policies of appeasement have hit canal maintenance work. Realising the gravity of the situation, the Punjab government has formulated a Rs 3,243-crore plan to repair canals, check water-logging, control floods and recharge ground water. This is commendable, but is not enough. A mass movement is required to conserve and revive water resources, harvest rainwater and encourage the use of sprinklers and drip irrigation to overcome water shortages in the long run.
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You can never be too rich or too thin. — Duchess of Windsor
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Pakistan after polls
AS politicians wrestle to shape the future after a famous victory and President Pervez Musharraf frets, where is Pakistan headed? Two things are clear. The election results have brought down the curtain on the Musharraf era and the political class has been given another chance to revive Pakistan's version of democracy. The manner and timing of General Musharraf's departure remain to be determined as also the politicians' seriousness in pursuing their democratic option. But there are heartening aspects of the electoral exercise. The leadership of the two mainstream parties having been permitted to contest on a less slanting field have emerged victorious and the religious parties have gone under without official support and the prop of the cobbled king's party fattened with defectors. Efforts by the two main parties to form a coalition government will take time and bargaining and will face attempts by the Musharraf lobby to divide them. Already, differences between Mr Asif Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower now enjoying the title of the People's Party co-chairman, and Mr Nawaz Sharif, the Muslim League (N) leader, on how soon to send the retired General packing are well advertised. The logic of Mr Sharif's insistence on the reinstatement of the sacked judges of the Supreme Court as well as Mr Zardari's foot-dragging is clear. Once they are back in office, President Musharraf's re-election will be called into question. Of greater import for Pakistan and the world will be the answer to the central question of Pakistan's polity. Do the election results represent the familiar cycle of civilian and Army rule alternating, with the side exercising power losing popularity after a time to yield place to the other. Historically, starting with the Ayub Khan era, the Army has never entirely left political power. It has been the arbiter and has come to exercise veto power over issues of foreign and security policy relating in particular to Kashmir and nuclear arms. One rather recent development is the Army's entrenchment in economic activity. Hanging over this portentous question is the third “A” of the famed three “As” of popular parlance, America – the other two of course are Army and Allah. How long will the United States stick with Mr Musharraf, with its traditionally narrow focus of its “war on terror”? By all accounts, the Bush administration still favours the retired General to any other person or entity although the depths to which his popularity has sunk in his country is no secret. One would hope that with the latest period of extended military rule, the politicians would have learnt the veracity of the old saw about hanging together or separately. But old habits die hard and the inducements are many. It would take a determined effort by the political class to surmount the hurdles to embracing healthy party politics. The election results would seem accurately to reflect the following of the various parties. The PPP is the most popular national party; the PML (N), the more conservative party, has a solid Punjab base; the PPP again has support in Sindh outside of Karachi, the bastion of the MQM, and the National Awami Party has reasserted itself in the NWFP. The picture in Balochistan is less clear. Logically, government formation at the federal and provincial levels should be relatively simple if all parties are willing to make trade-offs. Mr Sharif has, indeed, made a concession in deferring his proposal to oust Mr Musharraf until after the National Assembly meets. But men of the king's party, the Muslim League (Q), humiliated in the election, will be tempted to muddy the waters. Most of the party's leaders have lost and they must either bide their time or bolt from it. Which brings one to the key “A” in Pakistan's polity, the Army. The new Army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, has been discreet and has been making the right noises in wanting to get Army personnel seconded to run civil institutions back to soldiering duties. But the Pakistan Army is governed by collegial rules, usually enforced by the corps commanders. The Army would be loath to give up power in key areas nor would it want to forgo the perquisites of the economic empire it has built up. It is easier to see the Army abandoning the retired General if he increasingly brings the institution into disrepute by hanging on to a depleted presidency. President George W. Bush's partiality for Mr Musharraf is self-evident. Despite the Pakistani's ability to adjust America's "war on terror" to his own rhythm and interests, he provided sufficient support and delivered a supply of Al-Qaeda and Taliban men to Guantanamo to assuage Washington's feelings. Besides, the Bush administration is not certain that another general would have the chutzpah to fight America's war while preventing his home constituency from rebelling. Given Mr Musharraf's level of unpopularity at home, the US State Department is conducting contingency plans. It is ironical that the US administration and the majority in Pakistan have contradictory aims. Despite messianic declarations on spreading democracy around the world, President Bush would rather say that the Pakistanis have less democracy and let Mr Musharraf remain President, despite his rigged re-election after sacking most judges of the Supreme Court. For the same reason, Washington would prefer the sacked judges to stay stacked; their reinstatement would imperil the Musharraf presidency. Friends of Pakistan will hope that its politicians will surmount the hurdles to put in place the first building blocks of democracy. After the coalition is formed and the political career of Mr Musharraf ended, Pakistanis must devote attention to putting together a genuinely democratic constitution. Significantly, Mr Sharif has emerged as the hero of the election in shepherding his party to a creditable performance and in his consistency in asking Mr Musharraf to go. But the task of laying the groundwork for a democratic constitution lies with politicians, in particular of the two main parties. If the Army must have a political role, it is best to define and circumscribe it in a constitution. Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party's success in democratising its country, with its Army entrenched in the state structure, should be an inspiration to Pakistanis in search of a new
polity.
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Visitor from Hamburg THE Central Library in Sector-17, Chandigarh, had just opened when I stepped into the reference section. I noticed a middle-aged European engaged in animated discussion with the assistant librarian. The visitor was asking for a book titled “Arctic home in the Vedas” authored by Balgangadhar Tilak. The staff was finding it difficult to locate the book. I intervened and suggested that the author’s name could be Lokmaunya Tilak in library catalogues. The book was located. The visitor thanked me and introduced himself as Hans Schrader, a German from Hamburg. He could speak Sanskrit and English and was associated with Max Muller institutions in Germany. He asked me to assist him in finding suitable place in library where he could go through the reference book. The book was a middle size one. Tilak had compiled this historic book in prison while Max Muller and other friends sent him supporting documents from Germany and other places. After a small preface the author straightway came to his main theme of establishing that Indian Aryans travelled and stayed in the broad belt between Arctic, Germany, Iran and India. It was interglacial period. Dr Hans Schrader showed me the quotation in the book from Rig Veda wherein it is stated that “in the land we have stayed there are long days and long nights and the sun rose from the South”. He took photographs of the pages with his mini camera and was visibly excited. He explained about the severity of weather today in North Pole as compared to interglacial period 8000 years ago when weather was quite mild and pleasant there and humans on foot crossed the Bering Strait to walk into Canada from Europe and reach Mexico to spread their Mayan culture and build magnificent structures. In his excitement he hugged me and smilingly remarked that if this line of research materialises one day Indians could be considered as direct ancestors of Germany who consolidated Vedic thoughts during their long travels from India between Iran, Germany and the Arctic. Parsi holy book ZENDA AVESTA glorifies Aryans. Dr Hans also revealed that as hinted by Tilak the Uttarayana Phenomenon as seen in northern Sweden witnessed these days by thousands of visitors is exactly similar to as described in the Vedic scriptures. The long nights and long days situation was the same then as today. So much concentrated knowledge in such a short time surprised me. The visitor’s warmth and erudite scholarship had overwhelmed me. He bid me goodbye at the library gate while I stood still dazed! He was leaving Chandigarh the next day. He invited me to meet him that night in his hotel and gave me his visiting card which I slipped into my pocket. Reaching home, from his card I realised that he was a senior research director of international level. The card was without local address. I had lost
him!
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Cricketing values at stake
THERE are clearly mixed reactions to the impending Indian Premier League (IPL). Real international cricket is a five-day contest, extending equal opportunity to batsmen and bowlers. One-day cricket has been and still is a tabloid version of the game – conceived and executed out of economic necessity. 20:20 was originally contemplated to be an entry level format to fit the limited appreciation of Americans, so as to lure their big bucks. This, shortest form of the sport was piloted in England in 2003 and proved to be a huge success. Such an impact influenced the International Cricket Council (ICC) to hold an inaugural “World Twenty20” in South Africa last September. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), in fact, opposed such a hosting tooth and nail at ICC forums; and was virtually dragged kicking and screaming to participate. Indeed, the Indian side, with no previous experience of 20:20 and with stars like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid opting out, not to mention others being rested, was nothing but a half-heartedly constituted unit. Consequently, the exultation of the BCCI that followed was not only disingenuous, but its response completely disproportionate to the achievement. Winning a 20:20 tournament by no means made India world champions. Besides, to reward the winners with extraordinary riches, where the epic win in a Test match on a fiery wicket at Perth has gone unremunerated, reflects a stark absence of cricketing values. Fixation with 20:20 can have the same debilitating affect on Indian cricket as the obsession since 1983 with one-day cricket had – with India’s performance in the 1990s transpiring to be utterly humiliating. Indian players have, since, creditably risen to number two in the test rankings and continued success in this sphere could make them genuinely world champions. Anyhow, borrowing ideas from the United States, England and Australia the BCCI created IPL, franchised eight teams, who then bought players at an auction. If the IPL has drawn inspiration from the English Premiership League, then it needs to be stated that no club in England would ever pay more money to a novice as compared the world’s highest rated player! Such inconsistency was an insult to some of the cricketers. If potential non-availability was the cause of the comparative lack of interest in the Australian superstars, Ricky Ponting and Mathew Hayden, then why did Andrew Symonds fetch such a hefty sum? Did he mislead his buyers by assuring them he would play in the IPL rather than tour Pakistan? It has since been pointed out to him that he would be in breach of his contract with Cricket Australia, if he did so. The six week schedule of the IPL clashes with international cricket in the West Indies and England, as well as the English county cricket. This means, West Indians, New Zealanders, Sri Lankans and Australians will, partly, if not wholly, be preoccupied during the tourney. English cricketers were not listed in the auction in any case. If Australia eventually undertake a trip to Pakistan, then the Pakistanis may also be constrained to take part initially. In short, without an ICC-approved window, the IPL could struggle. And the ICC cannot justifiably set a precedent of carving out space in the calendar for a domestic event. In other words, notwithstanding the attractions of the Indian big-hitters, will there be enough public interest in matches which do not possess sufficient international flavour? Also, while it is reasonable to expect inhabitants of a city to root for this metropolis’ team, such support cannot be taken for granted. On the other hand, the novelty of three hours’ evening entertainment in a cricket stadium – as opposed to a cinema hall – could spur ticket sales. It takes decades to establish a loyal supporters’ base. Neither Manchester United nor East Bengal conjured this overnight. Anything short of packed houses for matches will transmit failure. Furthermore, lower than expected television audiences will curtail advertising rates. Most importantly, will the franchisees be able to recover their significant investments? They will, of course, receive a handout from the central pool. But each may be required to earn around US$20 million from six weeks’ sponsorships and ticket sales and otherwise merchandising. A loss for Reliance would be small change. In any case, both it and United Breweries can allocate such shortfalls as brand building or marketing expenditure. A respected marketing guru in Mumbai says most of the others “are likely to lose big time.” Ashis Ray is writing for The Tribune on the current Commonwealth Bank Series in Australia.
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The bloody diamonds of Sierra Leone ALMOST unnoticed by the world, a trial for Crimes Against Humanity is taking place at The Hague. From a shiny modern courthouse, a medieval story is emerging – one where the poorest people in the world were invaded, raped and mutilated, just to seize some shiny stones for the richest people in the world to wear. The evidence and testimony at the trial of the former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor over the past few months has stretched beyond the court’s tight remit to determine his own personal cruelty. Instead, the witnesses are finally revealing the inside story of the biggest diamond heist in history – one that killed 75,000 innocent people, crippled an entire country, and left a trail of blood that runs right to your local jewellery store. This story begins and ends with diamonds. Sierra Leone is a tiny West African country blessed with four and a half million people and cursed with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds. As soon as the glistening chunks of carbon were discovered by the British imperial occupiers in the 1930s, they became a locus of conflict as the desperate locals swarmed with picks and hammers to chip away their own fraction of the fortune. By the 1950s, De Beers – who had been granted exclusive rights to exploit the diamonds by the British – were paying private companies to litter the country with landmines to keep the natives out. But it was in the early 1990s that the most ambitious – and apocalyptic – plan to grab the diamonds was hatched. A man called Foday Sankoh was at its centre. He had once been a soldier in the Sierra Leonean army, but he was by then biding his time as a television cameraman. With several of his Liberian friends – including Sam Bockarie, a hairdresser and nightclub dancer – he decided to launch a wildly ambitious, wildly violent attempt to seize Sierra Leone’s diamond fields and run them as a private criminal empire. He scrambled around for support from a string of dictators: Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi provided training, while Liberia’s Taylor provided arms and some of his own battalions. With this, Sankoh raised a private militia, giving it the grand-sounding name of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). He clothed it with the bare minimum of revolutionary rhetoric, plagiarising a few phrases from Mao. This was enough to begin recruiting men from the ghettos of West Africa, promising them a job, food and “liberation”. He decided to recruit children: a nine-year old with an AK47 was more use to him than a 40- year-old. Everything was now in place to mount a “rebellion” – a de facto invasion – in eastern Sierra Leone, where the diamonds waited. The RUF’s policy was simple, and summarised in the name that Sankoh gave to one of his military manoeuvres: Operation Kill Everything. The aim was to impose maximum terror on the civilian population immediately, to drive them out and make sure nobody ever tried to come back. They soon developed a trademark tactic: they would chop off the hands of any civilian they stumbled across. Helen K was a typical young woman found by Human Rights Watch in the RUF’s wake. She explained she had lost her two children after an RUF attack and had no idea where they were. “They captured me and said to lie on the floor,” she said. “I was reluctant; they cut me on the neck with a machete. I was cut by a small boy. Then they put my hand on a stone and cut [it off]... I had to bury my own hand.” The child soldiers were hyped-up with drugs before being sent out to slay. Douglas Farah’s account of the war, Blood from Stones, says: “One thing the children do remember vividly is the preparation for what they called ‘mayhem days’, sprees of killing and raping that lasted until the participants collapsed from exhaustion. They said they were given coloured pills, most likely amphetamines, and razor blade slits near their temples, where cocaine was put directly into their bloodstreams. The ensuing days were a blur.” It worked. Soon, two million people were homeless and the RUF had its diamonds. And here is where we come in. The international diamond industry was waiting with its chequebook open. Charles Taylor was the middleman, taking a cut from the cutting. The diamonds were shipped via Liberia to Antwerp in Belgium, where they were snapped up by the diamond companies. A few saw a PR disaster looming – De Beers wouldn’t touch them. But many others handed cash to the RUF, and the stones were soon on sale across Europe and the US. Ian Smillie, a diamond expert who served on the UN panel investigating the pillage, explains: “There is no way the war could have happened the way it did, and carried on for 10 years, without rich Westerners buying the diamonds. The RUF had very little support anywhere. It had no tribal base in the country, it had no other governments supporting them apart from Taylor.” The RUF soon stepped up the supply, to the diamond industry’s delight. It was a simple causal relationship: so rich Westerners could have a glistening choker, poor children were choked. But corporate criminals routinely get away with murder. Literally. Taylor is alone in the dock. The diamond dealers who knowingly paid him for his services are free and fat on the profits. If you or I paid a known murderer to go and rob somebody for us, we’d go to prison. But if a corporation does it on a massive scale, there is no punishment. This is almost invariably the case with corporate human rights abuses: Union Carbide has paid no price for killing 5,000 people in Bhopal, Shell has paid no price for its role in the decimation of the Niger Delta, and on, and on. The diamond industry has been allowed to act as though rape and mutilation are an acceptable part of its supply chain. Sure, it eventually developed a system for certifying diamonds as the slaughter was ending anyway (and even that is filled with holes). If corporate criminals are not charged and jailed, they will carry on committing crimes against humanity. It is glorious to see Charles Taylor in the dock. But this should be merely the first sentence of justice for the people of Sierra Leone – and the victims of profit-driven slaughter everywhere.
By arrangement with The Independent
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Delhi Durbar CONGRESS party’s ace trouble-shooter, external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, has little respite from nagging domestic issues even when he is travelling abroad. During his visit to South Africa last week, he was inundated with frantic telephone calls from Port Blair to inform him about the deteriorating health of Congress MP Manoranjan Bhakt, who was on an indefinite hunger strike to protest the Centre’s apathy towards the A&N islands. Mukherjee promptly put aside all his work and called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, home minister Shivraj Patil and AICC general secretary Mohsina Kidwai, to draw their attention to this problem. Not just that, Mukherjee also issued an appeal to the starving MP, all the way from Johannesburg, that he call off his hunger strike. He promised that he would personally ensure that Bhakt gets an appointment with the PM and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Cunning plan Congress may not have weighty leaders in a number of states but in Madhya Pradesh, it has a problem of plenty. As it happens, the impressive line-up of Arjun Singh, Digvijay Singh, Jyoiraditya Scindia, Kamal Nath and Suresh Pachouri has only served to complicate matters for the leadership. The latest story emerging from the state is how all senior leaders have sunk their differences to push for Kamal Nath’s son’s candidature for the upcoming Betul by-election. But it is not as simple as it sounds. Once he gets the ticket, the plan is that all factions then work together to ensure the official candidate’s defeat with the sole purpose of undermining Kamal Nath’s clout in the Chindwara region. Surely, you cannot get better proof of the Congressman’s diabolical psyche.. Bag man Union ministers Pranab Mukherjee, Priyaranjan Dasmunsi and Santosh Mohan Deb were the most sought after campaigners for the Congress in the recent Tripura assembly polls. While Mukherjee’s popularity was attributed to his seniority in the party, Dasmunsi was in demand because of his oratorial skills and his sharp attack against the CPM, which is the Congress’s main poliitcal opponent. Santosh Mohan Deb, on the other hand, is not known for his fiery speeches but he remains a hot favourite with the local Congressmen. Reason: he is always loaded with bags and plays a generous Santa Claus. Poor turn-out Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chattterjee’s session-eve meeting with NDA leaders turned out to be quite a low-key affair. The BJP contingent was represented by leader of opposition L.K.Advani, his deputy V.K.Malhotra and Santosh Gangwar while former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee could not make it because of poor health. Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Braja Kishore Tripathi was the sole non-BJP NDA representative. All the others stayed away for a variety of reasons. The Speaker was apparently quite amused at the poor turn-out, which also led to considerable speculation about the unity in NDA ranks. Contributed by Anita
Katyal, S Satyanarayanan and Prashant Sood
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