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Musical chairs
One more minister |
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Epic star
The tussle in Turkey
Meaning of “Secular”
Farmers besieged Kashmiri women yearn for lasting peace Delhi Durbar
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Musical chairs WITH only a year left for the UPA government to complete its term, Sunday’s Cabinet reshuffle did not evoke much enthusiasm. The induction of seven new ministers and dropping of six others can only be described as a cosmetic exercise. The very fact that many senior ministers and Opposition leaders did not attend the ceremony shows how poorly thought of the whole reshuffle was. The induction of Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia and Mr Jitin Prasad is to give representation to the youth in the party. It is a surprise that the Congress could think of them only when the government is preparing itself to face the next election. Why some of the ministers were dropped and why some were taken in their place is a rigmarole only Congress President Sonia Gandhi and, to a lesser extent, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can explain. If the exercise was to give the government youthful vigour, the people could not have overlooked the irony of entrusting youth welfare and sports to septuagenarian M.S. Gill. It is well known that Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar had no liking for the Sports Ministry as was manifest when he made some critical comments on “wasting resources” on the Commonwealth Games India is hosting. He also had a running feud with the captains of various sports federations which, more than the ministry, controls sports. Mr Gill’s success in the ministry will depend to a large extent on how he manages the KPS Gills and Suresh Kalmadis who control various sports bodies. Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s comment that her son Rahul Gandhi refused to become a minister will only evoke laughter among those who know that she believes her son is cut out for bigger assignments. With this reshuffle, the UPA has virtually foreclosed the option of giving the Cabinet a new look. There are ministers holding key portfolios like human resources and home who have proved their incapacity to win popular elections. Yet, they survive because the leadership is scared of asking them to give way to better talents in the party. This kind of approach is unlikely to pay dividends in an election year when the people expect better performance from the ministers. The UPA leadership has missed an opportunity to equip the government to face the challenges the elections pose. |
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One more minister SUNDAY’S assassination of Sri Lankan Highways Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle and 13 others by a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber shows that the separatist forces have not lost their capability to strike at will. The killings occurred even as Sri Lankan armed forces continued their military offensive on the northern strongholds of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). More than 120 LTTE fighters were reportedly killed in the military action till last weekend. According to official figures, this takes the number of those killed since January this year — when Colombo pulled out of the Norwegian-brokered peace process - to 2653. The Defence Ministry maintains that the number of security personnel killed is 155. Regardless of the accuracy of official figures, which are disputed by the LTTE, the fact remains that both sides are now engaged in a fight to the finish. The LTTE may be reeling under Colombo’s military offensive but, as the latest killings prove, it can unleash death and devastation even as it is on the run. Fernandopulle is the second minister to be killed this year. Earlier, in January, the Minister for Nation Building, D M Dassanayake, was assassinated in the same district of Gampaha. Sri Lankan security forces seem to have scored major military successes against the LTTE in recent months. This appears to have made the LTTE more desperate. The militant organisation is known to step up terrorist attacks especially when it is under pressure. While the LTTE may have provoked the ongoing war and the government has to meet the military challenge, Colombo seems to have frozen any attempt at a political resolution of the Tamil-Sinhala conflict. In the past, even amidst armed conflict, efforts for negotiations were never given up. The exercise of the military option as the only way forward against the LTTE is bound to extract a heavy price affecting all sections of the island’s population. |
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Epic star DURING a stupendous career spanning 60 years, Charlton Heston starred in over 100 films, most of which were larger than life. Small wonder that he himself enjoyed an image which was larger than life. Whether he played Moses, Ben-Hur or Michelangelo, Heston lent his own persona to these historic characters. The commanding screen presence he had is one of the strongest childhood memories of a whole generation. His death at the age of 83 to Alzheimer will no doubt be mourned by millions of his fans around the world. How he remained so down to earth despite so much of adulation is the stuff legends are made of. The epic roles he did had made him an immortal in his lifetime itself. The mystique will only grow now. As he himself used to say, “I have played three presidents, three saints and two geniuses. If that does not create an ego problem, nothing does”. It didn’t, for the simple reason that he was not only a great actor but also a good man. That is why Frank Sinatra joked once: “That guy Heston has to watch it. If he’s not careful, he will get actors a good name”. The Oscar winning actor will, of course, be remembered by historical films like “Julius Caesar”, “Ten Commandments”, “Ben-Hur and “Antony and Cleopatra”. But he was equally imposing in disaster movies like “Earthquake”, “Skyjacked” and “Airport 1975”. That is not to forget all-time great sci-fi motion pictures like “Planet of the Apes” and “The Omega Man”. His most impressive role was in real life, as a family man and a staunch opponent of gun control. As president of the National Rifle Association from 1998, he fought tooth and nail against the government’s attempt to infringe on a constitutional guarantee -- the right to bear arms. One of the most enduring images on the mind screen of his admirers is Heston delivering a speech at the NRA’s annual convention in 2000, waving a replica of a colonial musket above his head and shouting “I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands”. Men of such valour are becoming scarcer and scarcer. |
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Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds.
— Socrates |
The tussle in Turkey THE
political tempest in Turkey shows no sign of abating, with the tussle between the aggressively secular traditional establishments of the Army, the judiciary and westernised elite pitted against the socially conservative supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) taking on dangerous proportions. The AKP has numbers on its side while the secularists believe that a religious-minded party is dismantling the secular state of Kemal Ataturk. The Army, the self-appointed guardians of the secular state, carried out four coups in the last half-century, the last against the forebear of the AKP. But it has found the present political rulers a harder nut to crack. Neither side seems willing to compromise, with the AKP pursuing its objectives more aggressively. At present, there is little meeting ground between the guardians of secularism and those who wish to satisfy the urges of a more conservative newly urbanised empowered urban class more observant of Islamic precepts. Only last year did Turkey suffer a major crisis over the country’s presidency, with the AKP insisting upon proposing its Foreign Minister, Mr Abdullah Gul, for the post. The Army views the presidency as a bastion of secularism because although the President does not enjoy many political powers, he has an important say in judicial appointments and can exercise discretion in crises. And the Army could not stomach the horror of horrors: the President’s wife wearing the Muslim headscarf. The parliamentary votes ended in a stalemate and the Constitutional Court was brought into the picture. More ominously, the Army gave a midnight warning of a possible intervention on its website, which set everyone’s nerves on edge. It was the Constitutional Court that was employed as an instrument to bring the previous Islamic Welfare Party to heel. Elements of Welfare had actually come together to form the AKP. This time around, instead of bending, the AKP called early elections to return to power with a bigger majority. The AKP poked a finger in the Army’s eye by re-nominating Mr Gul, married to the headscarf-wearing Mrs Gul. The resulting strains were papered over by Mrs Gul absenting herself from the installation ceremony and the Army chief of staff taking his time to make a formal call on the President. After its famous election victory, the AKP seemed to be under some pressure from its observant supporters in the Anatolian heartland to undertake other steps more in line with their thinking. A matter of frustration and irritation for observant Muslims was the law enacted in the 1980s (after the Army’s unpleasant experience with the Welfare Party) banning the headscarf in universities. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s wife wears the headscarf and he had sent his daughter for higher studies in the United States because of the Turkish ban. The government recently brought in an amendment in Parliament rescinding the university ban, the measure passed in view of the AKP’s strength and rules were framed to permit the headscarf. The fat was in the fire and the Army and the secular establishment could hardly stomach a second insult. The country’s Prosecutor filed a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court seeking a ban on the AKP, Prime Minister Erdogan and other politicians for undermining the constitutional separation of religion and politics. The court has now accepted to consider the lawsuit. There are other aspects in this contest of wills. Having enjoyed undisputed power since Ataturk set up an ostentatiously secular state, large numbers of middle classes are concerned over the AKP’s future course of action fearing that it is a road to the imposition of Sharia law. Women supporters of the AKP say that it is a matter of personal freedom whether to wear the headscarf, but other groups declare that many women would feel peer pressure to wear the scarf, despite their own feelings. In a broader sense, many women’s organisations, basking in the rare freedom Muslim women enjoy in Turkey, are fearful that the AKP is taking them to a more constricting life that is the norm in most Muslim countries. Signs of a more conservative sensibility are apparent in AKP-ruled Istanbul, with a new dispensation seeking the removal of posters of bikini-clad models from city streets. According to one account, supporters of the Muslim headscarf say that asking a woman to remove her scarf is tantamount to asking a bareheaded woman to strip. Indeed, AKP supporters tend to be observant Muslims used to the conservative ways demanded by religion and custom. It will take the Constitutional Court months to consider the lawsuit it has accepted, but the political tensions and uncertainty it is likely to create will take the focus away from other important matters. Turkey’s enthusiasm for joining the European Union is waning in the face of the opposition of France and Germany and others to taking in a large Muslim country into what is essentially a Christian club. The reform process in Turkey has stalled in the meantime, with the government still to delete the offensive “insult to Turkishness” clause in the Constitution. Turkey’s businessmen and industrialists are worried over the impact of political uncertainty on direct foreign investment and the viability of their new ventures. The Turkish lira plunged on the day of the Constitutional Court’s ruling. And the impetus the pursuit of European Union membership had given the government to alter laws to conform to European requirements and bring down the Army’s influence in the process has all but disappeared. Before the lawsuit was filed, the AKP government had said it was working on an amendment to make it more difficult for the Constitutional Court to ban a political party. There could be a legal hurdle in enacting such a change in the new circumstances. In essence, the struggle between the old and the new is over power and two versions of fulfilling personal and societal goals. Although the AKP leadership says that it is for a secular Turkey, its real goals do not fit in with the secularism practised in the country. The Ataturk model is too rigid for the country’s new
rulers. |
Meaning of “Secular”
Every year on Gandhiji’s death anniversary the media routinely debates the meaning and implications of “secularism”. So it was this year, too, and as inconclusive as always. Which aspects of religious beliefs and practices should a secular state be “neutral” about? We still do not seem to have a clear answer. Curiously, it is the term’s usage in the Hindi which could help make sense of what the concept should mean in English. This insight I owe to Lakshmi Mittal Singhvi, who passed away last year. Notwithstanding his atrocious sartorial taste, which included a penchant for the pin-striped bandh-gala suits that he sported as India’s High Commissioner to the UK, he was a man of great erudition; a jurist, parliamentarian, diplomat and Sanskrit scholar, all rolled into one. I once heard him narrate that in 1976, when the country was under an “emergency” and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was on her populist spree, she decided to introduce the words “socialist, secular” in the preamble to the Indian Constitution. Actually, she need not have done it because the first is a matter of whatever is the current economic policy, and is presently being whittled down anyway. And the second is guaranteed by a host of other provisions in the statute. But she thought such a step would win her popular acclaim. Inserting the two words in the English text between the phrases “sovereign” and “democratic republic” required no great lexical skills. Even their inclusion in the official Hindi version was not considered too much of a problem, because the word “dharmnirpeksh” was commonly considered, and is even today generally used as, the correct translation of “secular”. However, as a matter of abundant caution, Mrs Gandhi sent the Hindi text of the modified version to Dr Singhvi for his comments. He said that he promptly rejected the proposed phraseology and told the Prime Minister, “If you want to express neutrality between different faiths and religions, ‘dharmnirpeksh’ is not the right word. ‘Dharm’ stands for morality and ethical conduct. If ever a question of ethics arises, one should never be neutral. We cannot be ‘non-aligned’ between morality and immorality. What you have in mind are the different faiths distinguished by their rituals, mythologies and beliefs. If you want to be neutral between them, that is perfectly alright, but for that the correct expression is ‘panthnirpeksh’.” Dharm is universal. Its precepts are found in all religions and include injunctions that inveigh against violence, falsehood, greed, cruelty, deceit, selfishness, vulgarity, discourtesy and so on, and are unexceptionable. Rituals, mythology, beliefs, superstitions, modes of worship, and other observances that distinguish one religion from another belong to the domain of panth. Between different panths, the state has to be neutral. Consequently, this was the term inserted in the Hindi version of the amendment to India’s constitution and officially we are now a “panthnirpeksh”, and not a “dharmnirpeksh”
nation. |
Farmers besieged Farmers
are upset with the Centre’s reported “ban” on corporate buying of wheat in Punjab and Haryana. The protest is misdirected. There is no official ban. Food Ministry officials had only verbally told some corporate representatives to stay away from the two states to help the FCI mop up stocks required for the public distribution system. Last year when a similar “ban” was imposed, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had taken up the issue with the Centre. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had then flatly denied there was any such ban. Not that private companies are greedily eyeing Punjab and Haryana for foodgrains. Cargill, ITC, Britannia and Delhi Flour Mills are the main companies that buy wheat in the country. They deliberately avoid Punjab and Haryana due to high taxes and pick up their requirements from Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat, where the levies on food purchases are low. The Punjab and Haryana governments charge 11 to 12 per cent taxes on wheat while the levy is only 1 per cent in Gujarat and Bihar, 1.5 per cent in Maharashtra, 2.2 per cent in Madhya Pradesh and 3.6 per cent in Rajasthan. In Punjab and Haryana a private player has to pay 2.5 per cent commission to a “kacha arhtiya”, 1 per cent to a “pakka arhtiya”, 2 per cent market cess, 2 per cent cess for rural development, 4 per cent VAT and 3-4 per cent expenses on labour, freight and loading and re-loading. This season the Punjab government has imposed another 2 per cent cess on foodgrain purchases to raise money for repairing canals. Cess is the latest tool governments employ to raise money for specific purposes. However, the money is not always used for the desired purpose. The CAG has pointed out the misappropriation of Rs 934.53 crore collected as the rural development cess in Punjab during 2001-05. It has also found that in some cases 85 per cent of the rice procured for the FCI during 2000-05 was unfit for human use. Malpractices apart, the inefficient manual handling of food-grains, pilferage, poor storage and wasteage as well as middlemen and the taxes raise the cost of food for the ordinary buyer. In the past one year (April to December) the wheat price has shot up by 88 per cent in the country. Though the government has raised the minimum support price for wheat to Rs 1,000, it is still below the market rate and far below the global prices. The MSP, which has been introduced to prevent distress sales by farmers, is now used to buy produce cheap. The government keeps farm prices low through various curbs on the plea that it subsidises farm inputs. Actually, the Central and state governments waste huge funds on subsidies, which benefit middlemen more than the targeted needy. Free power helps large farmers more than the small ones. The fertiliser subsidy goes to inefficiently run chemical companies, which have an assured market. The Rs. 60,000 crore loan waiver announced in the 2008-09 Union budget with fanfare will leave out many needy farmers. The government buys foodgrains cheap also on the ground that it has to feed the poor. But the public distribution system is corruption-ridden and the protesting farmers want it to be scrapped. The food delivery for the poor needs to be better administered to avoid misuse. It can be useful to look around how others help the poor. Perhaps India can follow the Brazil example. There the government gives direct cash to the poor if they get their children vaccinated and send them to school. Some experts suggest food stamps to help the poor buy food from wherever they want. Farmers too benefit little from bailout packages. Suicides have continued in the backward districts despite the Centre’s relief. That is because the sources of distress – mismatch or input-output costs, crop failures, lack of irrigation or expensive loans from private moneylenders - have remained intact. The worst-sufferers of the government policy to buy foodgrains at the MSP are small farmers. Sixty per cent of the country’s farmers own less than one hectare and many of them are forced to sell all their produce to repay their loans and meet social commitments. They are forced to buy food for personal consumption later in the year when prices are high. Large farmers and traders hold back their surplus stocks and dispose them of as prices rise. The most pragmatic way to help farmers, big and small, is to let them sell their produce wherever and to whomsoever they want. The government must compete with private players and pay the market rate to lift food-grains. Future trading curbs are unwarranted. Farmers can get to know food prices in advance through futures trading and choose their crops accordingly.
They naturally go in for crops which give the maximum returns. Had farmers been allowed to enjoy the benefits of high global commodity prices, they would have cleared their debt, paid all bills and brought more area under wheat and other paying crops to meet the growing demand. If the government can import wheat by paying 54 per cent higher price to farmers outside the country, why it can’t pay the same price to domestic farmers? It is time the Centre and states redefine their interventional role. The government role should be limited to building social and physical infrastructure, connecting villages to markets, spending on research and extension services to raise agricultural productivity, encouraging crop insurance and intervening in case of distress sales or crop failures due to floods or drought. |
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Kashmiri women yearn for lasting peace FOR Yasmeen Jaan, a young woman of 22, it is virtually impossible to imagine a life without the violence and sense of fear that has marked the turbulent period of armed insurgency that erupted in the Kashmir valley more than eighteen years ago. Before that she was just a child of four, too young to register or cherish memories of an innocent childhood. Growing up in the her village Hakoora in Anantnag district of South Kashmir, she was witness to routine deaths, encounters, cross firing, grenade blasts, identification parades, searches and cordon operations as the violence engulfed each and every part of the Kashmir Valley. The lives of Yasmeen and countless others in her generation have been marred by the troubled times they live in. Yasmeen’s struggle continued through her life as a student in rural Kashmir. 'Blackouts' were quite common in the area and the security forces would ask the people to shut off the lights in their houses by 9 pm ensuring that not even a small streak of light coming from any house. Also making it impossible for a restless Yasmeen to complete her assignments. “For years we saw blackouts. My parents would sometimes put 2-3 layers of curtains on the widows so that the light would not go out in the night and we children could study,” recalls
Yasmeen. It would get even more difficult in winters when the sun would set very early, coupled with these blackouts particularly for the houses situated closer to the army camps forced to switch off the lights earlier than others. After that it was nothing but an almost deafening, eerie silence. The journey has not been smooth ever, recalls Yasmeen, now pursuing her MA in Political Science from the University of Kashmir. Her perception of peace has been formed during this journey. When asked if peace has returned to her life as Kashmir has become normal Yasmeen bursts out: “Peace does not mean if the shops are open, traffic is plying and there is lot of hustle and bustle. Peace to me means if my mother would stop worrying that I would return home safely at the end of the day. “That there won’t be bullets flying all around me at any time and there won’t be any hartals, bandhs and killings. When there would be no atrocities and rapes committed, when there is no psychological pressure on our minds, when no girl would be forced to withdraw from school, college or university. I don’t term this deceptive normalcy as peace. Peace is still far away from our lives”. Other girls echo Yasmeen’s sentiments about peace and what it means to them. For Kehkashan Mumtaz, a PhD scholar from Bandipore, Baramulla, pursuing her research in English on a famous Kashmiri poet Aga Shahid Ali, peace primarily is a life without fear, the absence of any security forces on the streets on Kashmir. “Kashmir was thought to be one of the safest places for women. But that is a thing of the bygone era when there was no militancy, no security forces and no Mujahideen,” adds Kehkashan. What they are left with now is Kashmiri women’s wounded psyche. “The conflict has build such a pressure on her that on an average, you daily hear about 2-3 women committing suicide every day in Kashmir,” says the KU scholar. For Kehkashan, the much bandied about term in political and media circles of a ‘return to normalcy’ has no meaning. “Is that what you call peace and normalcy? We are a terrorised lot.” Kashmir might have recovered from those days of bloody violence but for hundreds and thousands of women who lost their men folk to it, peace has a different connotation. When women talk about peace, they do not talk from the vantage point of having won wars but from the pain that wars inflict. Kashmiri women who supported the militancy now yearn for that elusive peace – peace on the borders that they hope will extend within their villages, towns and homes, giving them a life of dignity and honour that has evaded them for so long. Fatima Begum of Budgam lost her husband Mohd Shaban Parray eight years ago when he was picked up by the army as a suspect after a mine blast had occurred in the village. He never returned, a plight of many hapless Kashmiris. “Peace can return to their lives if an enabling environment for women in different parts of the state is created and confidence generated in them, so they can set up their own income generating units, which later would earnable them to effectively utilise existing government schemes,” says Professor A.N. Sadhu, economist and former head of department, Economic University of
Jammu. – Charkha Features |
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Delhi Durbar Summer
has not arrived yet but the travel season has clearly set in, especially Vice-president Hamid Ansari is away to Central Asia while external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee has just returned from an important bilateral visit to the United States. Tourism minister Ambika Soni’s long-awaited trip to China for the opening of an Indian tourism office in Beijing, put off twice, eventually materialised last week. Science and technology minister Kapil Sibal was also away to Netherlands while commerce minister Kaml Nath, who has earned the reputation of visiting India occasionally, and his junior Jairam Ramesh, have also been out of the country. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ministerial colleagues P. Chidambaram and Sharad Pawar have, however, been grounded and left to battle the monster called inflation, which is threatening to negate the “feel good” generated by the “pro-poor” budget. Media advisor Now that it is public knowledge that the Prime Minister’s media advisor Sanjaya Baru will be leaving in August to take up a teaching assignment in Singapore, speculation has already begun on the possible persons who could succeed him. There is a view that since Lok Sabha elections are due early next eyar, it might be advisable to appoint somebody from the Congress to this crucial position. In fact, an informal search has already begun in the party for a person who will be best suited for this job, since it has to be somebody who will be on the same wavelength as the Prime Minister. Among the names mentioned in this connection include Abhishek Singhvi, Jairam Ramesh and Salman Khursheed, as they have the necessary attributes – they have the ability to reach out to the press, they know the mind of the party organisation and can provide the necessary political inputs. At the same time, they will be at ease in the bureuacratic set-up.
Irreverent Ever since BJP leader
L.K. Advani’s memoirs were released, he has been the media’s darling, having been interviewed in every major newspaper and television channel. Most of the write-ups and interviews have been quite complimentary to the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, which must have pleased Advani no end, as he has, for long, been overshadowed by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s engaging personality. So, after all these gushing stories, when a local daily ran a rather irreverent piece on Advani and his daughter Pratibha, it was not received well by the two. The latter is learnt to have lodged a protest with the newspaper owner.
Contributed by Anita Katyal and Tripti Nath |
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