 |
|
Discomfort
in uniform Continent
of opportunity |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Water
for all
Victims of others’
negligence
Mum is
the word
No turning back Punjab can do more to
use energy efficiently Lessons from the
campaign
|
Discomfort in uniform THE Finance Ministry has taken the first step in constituting a three-member committee comprising the finance, home and defence secretaries to examine how and why the country’s uniformed forces feel hard done by the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission. But it should not be an eye-wash exercise. The panel has been asked to submit its report within two months. The government should not only ensure that this is done, but there should also be speedy follow-up on the grievances and lacunae pointed out by the forces. There is enough to suggest that the commission’s recommendations have clearly not done justice to the forces. The only way to correct the damage already done is to set out an alternative set of recommendations for the defence and police forces as soon as possible. The service chiefs of the army, navy and air force, have reportedly submitted detailed proposals to modify the recommendations. Their implications will of course have to be examined, but the proposals should essentially be taken in good faith. Raising the minimum military service pay from Rs 1000 to Rs 3000, for example, is a no-brainer. Reports suggest that the commission, headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna, has not really devoted the kind of study to the services that was mandated. Assuming too much superiority for the IAS on the basis of either hardship in service or criticality of decision-making, is downright laughable and seriously harmful. The amount of emoluments for an estimated two million central government employees, excluding the railways and the defence forces, is around Rs 26,000 crore. For the million-strong defence forces, emoluments take up a sizable chunk of a budget which stands at over Rs 1 lakh crore. Clearly, the numbers alone give the oft-repeated suggestion for a separate pay commission for the defence forces considerable merit. In its absence, especially considering the criticality of the country’s internal and external security, and the officer-shortage in the forces, pay for personnel in uniform deserved serious attention. That they did not get it is a matter of great regret. It is up to the government now to speedily undo the damage.
|
|
Continent of opportunity THE two-day India-Africa Forum Summit has highlighted the need to develop closer relations between India and the black continent. They need each other for their economic growth. India requires assured supplies of oil and gas, besides other resources, from African nations for meeting its fast rising energy demand, whereas Africa desires large-scale Indian investment in areas like IT, power generation, railways, housing, education, healthcare, etc. Africa has a major problem of unemployment and widespread poverty, which can be handled effectively if India’s massive private sector is provided facilities to invest liberally there. It is good that some of the African leaders pointed out on Tuesday that they were in New Delhi mainly to seek investment from India’s private sector, admired for its entrepreneurial ability. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced, India has decided to help 34 least-developed African countries by allowing them preferential market access. This means that exports from these countries will be free from any duty so that they have little difficulty in facing the competition in the Indian market. The decision is bound to boost the economic engagement between the two sides. India will increase its credit to $5.4 billion in the next five years from the $2.15 billion that it gave during the 2003-08 period. There are, no doubt, “immense opportunities for cooperation”, as African Union Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare pointed out. The African nations realise that they can benefit considerably from India’s growth in science and technology, particularly in the area of information technology. India, with its experience of the Green Revolution, can also play a major role in the development of agriculture in Africa. India’s historical relationship with countries like South Africa will make the task easier. It is surprising how India has been left far behind China in expanding economic ties with Africa. China today is a major investor in Africa. New Delhi will have to redouble its efforts to increase its presence in the continent where people are ready to welcome it. India cannot afford to miss the bus.
|
|
Water for all INDIA occupies the 120th slot on a list of 122 countries assessed for the quality of drinking water. Small wonder that some 37.7 million Indians are affected by water-borne diseases every year. The government spends Rs 6,700 crore on the treatment of such people in rural India. These revelations have been made by an NGO called WaterAid. According to the World Bank, 21 per cent of the communicable diseases in India are caused by unsafe water. About 1.5 million children die of diarrhoea every year. There is an excess of fluoride, nitrate, iron and arsenic in ground water. An excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides in the fields and an unchecked discharge of industrial waste into rivers and canals result in water pollution. About 800 million people do not have an access to clean drinking water. In the absence of an effective check, the concentration of chemicals in ground water has been increasing regularly. The World Bank has estimated the cost of environmental damage in India at $9.7 billion or 4.5 per cent of the GDP. Quality apart, there is not enough water to meet the drinking and irrigation needs of the people. The country has 4 per cent of the world’s water availability and 15 per cent of the world’s population. This mismatch is increasing as the population graph maintains an uptrend and water availability is declining. An efficient management of available water resources has to be on top of the national agenda. An over-exploitation of ground water, aided in some states by free power, has to be stopped, given the rapid fall in the water table. The use of sprinklers and drip irrigation needs to be encouraged through incentives. Rainwater harvesting will have to be made mandatory in cities and towns to recharge ground water. States should put up water-testing infrastructure up to the district level as required under the Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission to improve the quality of drinking water.
|
|
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. — Winston Churchill
|
Victims of others’ negligence
The
little girl Vandana was rescued from an unguarded and abandoned 45-feet-deep tubewell. A year or so ago a five-year-old boy, Prince, was rescued from a well in Haryana after a week-long effort. Our Army personnel did a commendable job. But who left such a death trap in a place frequented by children? Leaving wells without cover is only a symptom of the lack of concern for others. We frequently read about deaths of workers engaged in faulty building constructions, about children getting killed through open man-wholes, about electrocution deaths in parks, etc. The list of such negligent acts or omissions is endless. Is there any way of reducing such callousness and compensating the victims? Our society at all levels is yet to realise that everyone is liable under the centuries old law of torts to compensate the victims of his commissions and omissions. In the case of Vandana, in fact, in all such cases, enormous amount of labour and money is spent in the rescue operations. Why should the public pay for the careless conduct of someone whose duty it is to be careful? Irresponsibility is not inconsequential. The pain and agony suffered by the victims has a value in law. But why no one sues the wrong-doers? The single cause that lets the tort-feasors to go unquestioned is the enormous cost of litigation, and the large majority of the victims are poor. The programme of legal aid initiated by the State can hardly deal with the problem. The “contingency fee” system evolved and perfected during the last century in the United States made everyone there to be extra careful in his or her actions or even omissions. The broad features of that system are that a victim of any negligence approaches a lawyer — normally listed in the yellow pages — and signs a contract under which the lawyer agrees to conduct the entire litigation at his costs subject to the understanding that he would recover the costs and fee at the agreed rate from out of the damages realised from the wrong-doer. If the case is “weak” the lawyer may not take it up because of the “no win — no fee” situation. The lawyer’s interest lies in quick success — hence no incentive to seek adjournments. The court ensures observance of the commitments by the parties to the fee contract. In India, such a contract is opposed to law. This is based on an ancient public policy to prevent litigation explosion. Is it time to change with the time? We in India have been following the English legal system under which “champerty” or agreement to pay the lawyer’s fee out of the fruits of litigation was illegal. However, we take pride in pretending to be holier than thou. In the UK following the recommendations of a committee headed by Lord Woolf, the Master of the Rolls from 1996 and later to be the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2000 to 2005, Parliament enacted laws in 1990 and 1999, introducing the “conditional fee” system. The latter Act is appropriately given the title, “Access to Justice Act”. The Civil Procedure Rules of 1998 provided the needed regulatory framework. It is now legal in England, Scotland and Ireland to let the lawyer have his agreed share from the gains of litigation in certain class of cases. The following excerpt from The Times, London, of August 28, 2002, illustrates the public reaction to the new measure,: “A rise in an awareness of consumer rights, coupled with legal reforms that have allowed ‘no win no fee’ deals, have spawned a US-style claims industry over everything from faulty pavements to sexual jokes in the workplace.” “Legal claims, often on a group or ‘class’ basis, have been lodged over disasters such as rail crash injuries, medical mistakes (such as the litigation over HIV-contaminated blood) and the third-generation contraceptive pill”. “At the same time, claims are breaking new ground, reaching into education (poor examination results, inadequate teaching facilities); restaurants (the “fast food” industry); and public services such as the police (failure to protect).” The system is in vogue in Canada, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, the Dominican Republic, Greece, France, Brazil, Japan the United States and Turkey. Summerising the general experience, the Wikipidia lists the following advantages and disadvantages: A contingency fee arrangement provides access to the courts for those who cannot afford to pay the attorneys fees and costs of civil litigation. Contingency fees also provide a powerful motivation to the attorney to work diligently on the client’s case. In other types of litigation where clients pay the attorney by the hour for their time, it makes little economic difference to the attorney whether the client has a successful outcome to the litigation. Finally, because lawyers assume the financial risk of litigation, the number of speculative or unmeritorious cases may be reduced. Contingency fees do not guarantee civil justice, or even access to the courts. Lawyers sometimes “cherry-pick” only the strongest claims which are most likely to succeed. Not all cases are immediately transparent. Some require extensive investigation before the chances of success can be properly assessed. Such cases might be turned away because even the initial assessment of their strength is costly and risky. If Vandana were to be a victim in the US or even in any of the contingency-fee countries, by now the careless contractor would have offered all that he had as compensation for his negligence in leaving the well unguarded. In any case, the teams of contingency fee lawyers — derisively labelled as “ambulance chasers or grave diggers” — would have taken up the case. Perhaps, such a bizzare accident would not have taken place at all because of the fear of the lurking predator — the contingent fee lawyer. That system, therefore, continues to have a great role in making the society cautious — often overly so. The system is basically predatory in nature. Over- killing may be unavoidable and the possibility of lawyers hunting innocent but rich professionals cannot be ruled out. Unscrupulous lawyers and corrupt judges may enter into a deal where the judge concerned would award heavy compensation to be shared between them. This, perhaps, was the reason why two recent successive law commissions of India hesitated to accept the suggestion to legalise champerty. It is, however, to be noted that in cases of land acquisition or motor vehicle accident compensation, a crude variety of contingency fee culture, in fact, has been prevailing at some places. Only a legitimate activity is amenable to regulation and not all illegal activities can be checked by law. Where an activity in a regulated form is desirable in the larger interest of society, the need is to change the law to legitimise it. To begin with, the relaxation may be restricted to cases of torts, followed by a carefully crafted scheme to regulate the practice. The rest of the reforms like insurance covers to the people exposed to risk would naturally follow. And, hopefully, soon people in all walks will learn to behave responsibly — surely banana peels will not fly from BMW cars on to the pavements nor will wells or manholes be left open. Predators will take care. The writer is a Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India.
|
Mum is the word
When
it comes to getting a message across, a mobile can be a mute girl’s best friend. This is what a commercial for a cellular network, featuring Abhishek Bachchan and a deaf ‘n’ dumb firang in the backdrop of the Taj Mahal, would have us believe. But when one is forced to play the mute, thanks to uncooperative vocal cords, and that too in domestic locales not half as romantic as those of the monument of love, connectivity indeed becomes a monumental task. Such was the predicament faced by yours truly recently. An inflammation in the larynx left me speechless, albeit briefly. This necessitated recourse to alternative communication. Since not all inhabitants of my domestic universe are cell stocked, even putting across the simplest message had me playing, yes, dumb charades. Well, played as a game, it works. But try using it for work, and its success rests entirely on whether your team is game for it or not. In my case, certainly not all domestic denizens were willing partners in mime. Take the captain of the scream team: my son. What better for him than an inoperative parental phonetic connection that no longer “follows you everywhere” like a leading mobile network. A mom who’s mum! That spelt a double bonanza: vacation from school as well as scolding. Thus, he was game for the charades only as long as it didn’t interfere with his play. The moment I’d motion for him to cut down on cartoon time, he too would get down to mime. Here, I’d point to the clock to signal: Bed at 10. There, he’d mimic his toon star: Ben 10. All my silent parenting came to scuttle. Mum’s wasn’t the word at all. Connecting to the maid during bed and voice rest posed a challenge of another kind. Hers was less a case of being switched off, more of not catching the signals. I gesticulated for saline water to gargle. All my amateurish mime performance made her do was gurgle. I waved frantically to have the blaring radio muted. What she did was change the channel. Obviously, our wave lengths didn’t match. But the real problem arose when the receivers of my signals were out of range. With my limited repertoire of sign language, I was hard put to devise a system of summon. A bell to ring in my message loud and clear? But all I had of the clanging family was wind chimes. Baby rattlers? Ah, they’d gone out with my son’s childhood. And then, a simple, obvious solution struck me. To hail help, all that was needed was self-generated sound. Clap, clap, clap! It was an idea that changed my life in its silent
era.
|
No turning back KIRTIPUR, Nepal – The police who once hunted him as a guerrilla leader now guard him as a political candidate. He urges his radical young followers to act more like Gandhi and less like the gun-toting rebels many of them were. Prachanda, Nepal’s revered and reviled Maoist supremo, is trying hard to convince his fellow Nepalese, and the rest of the world, that he is committed to revolution through the ballot box, not the barrel of a gun. Millions of voters are expected to go to the polls on Thursday in an election whose outcome will demonstrate, in large measure, whether they believe his promises – and, in turn, whether he keeps them. He insists he will. The brutal, decade-long “People’s War” waged by the communist insurgency in which more than 13,000 died is a thing of the past, says Prachanda, the nom de guerre of Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Democracy and peaceful collaboration are the order of the day. “Let there be no doubt,” he declared in an interview after a recent election rally in this Maoist stronghold outside Katmandu, the capital. “We will not break the peace process even (if) we are in the minority. But we believe we will be in the majority.” Plenty of Nepalese view such pledges with mistrust, especially when the former guerrilla follows them with accusations of a conspiracy to undermine his party. Some of his deputies warn of a backlash if their party loses. The balloting has already been postponed twice, mostly because of alleged violations of the peace process by Maoist cadres. Security for the election remains a serious concern: Several small bombs exploded in Katmandu over the weekend, and there have been numerous cases of campaign violence, including the reported fatal shooting of a communist candidate on Tuesday in Jahare Bazar. Many analysts think the former rebel group will finish last out of the three main parties, though none of the formations will own an outright majority. Official results may not be known for up to three weeks. Regardless of the outcome, the election is likely to change this country of 28 million people forever. The 601 seats up for grabs are for a constituent assembly that will draw up a new constitution. Most of the assembly will be elected, but a few members will be appointed. Women, those of low caste and the long-oppressed people from the southern plains are among those angling for a say in how to reinvent their country. It is a mark of how profoundly the Maoists have reshaped the political discourse here that the assembly’s first order of business, by consent of all the major parties, will be to address the Maoists’ most cherished dream: abolition of the monarchy. Nepal has been a unified Hindu kingdom for 239 years, under the reign of monarchs believed to be earthly incarnations of the god Vishnu. But a disastrous, 15-month period of absolute rule by King Gyanendra, which ended in April 2006 after a popular revolt, has turned him into a figure of widespread odium. Onetime royalists have become fervent republicans. “The monarchy has a long history,” said Prakash Man Singh, a former government minister and an assembly candidate from the country’s biggest and oldest party, the Nepali Congress. “But since the king couldn’t abide by the constitutional-monarchy principle, and since the monarchy has been a destabilizing factor in Nepal, all the people have come to the conclusion that the monarchy should come to an end.” The three major parties promise to declare Nepal a republic. Over the last two years, the interim government has stripped Gyanendra of power, scrubbed his portrait from the currency, subjected him to taxes and excised the word “royal” from the army and the national airline. He rarely appears in public anymore. For the Maoists, it is sweet revenge. The king zealously prosecuted the war against them, relying on a security apparatus that was accused by human rights groups of committing atrocities every bit as bloody as the Maoists’ own record of killings, kidnappings, torture and intimidation. “If he respects the will of the masses, he can live as a common citizen,” Prachanda said. “If not, the masses will (oppose) him, and the people will put him on trial.” Yet booting Gyanendra, who ascended to the throne after a mysterious palace massacre in 2001 that killed his reigning brother and several other members of the royal family, may be easier said than done. No one can predict what kind of powers will be invested in the prime minister, or whether the framers of the new constitution will even stick with a parliamentary system. Also, pockets of royalist sentiment still exist. The Maoists propose a presidential system. At Prachanda’s rallies, which resemble country jamborees complete with folk singers and comedians, supporters introduce the candidate as “our future president.” That prospect, however distant, makes many of his compatriots shudder. Sharma said the fiery language of some Maoist leaders was calibrated to mollify rank-and-file members who might have felt sold out by the leadership when Prachanda agreed to lay down arms in November 2006. But the leaders know that “if they go back to guns and the jungles, whatever they’ve achieved will be wiped out.” The Maoists’ call for justice for marginalised groups has also led other parties to push such issues more strongly – another sign of how the Maoist agenda has gone mainstream. But other parties do not harbor illusions about the challenge of working with the former guerrillas. “We will have to tame a wild elephant,” said Singh, the Nepali Congress candidate. “It will take some time.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
|
|
Punjab can do more to use energy efficiently Punjab’s canal system, suffering from years of neglect, is capable of irrigating 31 lakh hectares i.e. 76 per cent of the 43 lakh hectares net cultivable area across Punjab, thereby reducing the requirement of tubewells from the present 10 lakh to 3.5 lakh. This initiative will not only save 65 per cent of valuable sub-soil water consumption but also bring down the annual agricultural power consumption, from 8200 million units, to 2870 million units. Further, as per a project submitted to the World Bank by PSEB for replacing the present agricultural pump sets with energy efficient pump sets, at an average cost of Rs. 15,000 per set, an annual saving of 1300 units per pump set can be achieved, totaling to an annual saving of 455 million units of power for 3.5 lakh pump sets. Punjab can save 5785 million units of power annually besides earning Certified Emission Reduction (CER) equivalent to 52 lakh ton annual reduction in carbon dioxide produced in thermal generation. whose minimum international price is US $10 per CER. The cost of canal up-gradation and tubewell pumps modernisation programme shall enable the State to recover the capital investment in these two projects within five years. Two years ago, after studying an Andhra Pradesh initiative, PSEB took a historic decision to implement the High Voltage Distribution System across Punjab on the pattern of the USA. Initially the agricultural power connections and later on all connections are to be covered under this programme. For the last two years, all new tubewell connections are being released on 11 kV, with each individual tubewell being provided an independent step down transformer. On the one hand, it has helped PSEB to contain line losses and theft of power, on the other it has earned the delight of agricultural consumers by providing sense of ownership of the transformer supplying him power and a better voltage profile and least interruptions in the power received. All the existing 9.5 lakh tubewells are to be covered under a two years HVDS programme targeted to be completed by March 2010 at a cost of Rs. 4700 crore, whose recovery period through savings in line losses shall be less than four years. With the implementation of the canal system upgradation the requirement of tubewells should reduce to 3.5 lakh whose conversion to HVDS at a cost of Rs. 1800 crore will save 1100 million unit annually and earn CER equivalent to 10 lakh ton carbon dioxide. For optimum utilisation of scarce funds, the power and irrigation wings of Punjab have to finalize an optimum programme for canal oriented irrigation and HVDS oriented tubewell motors. The HVDS programme for agricultural consumers needs to be extended to the whole of the country on the pattern of Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, as it can lead to a saving of Rs. 10,000 crore per annum on national basis. The implementation of HVDS in urban and sub urban areas covering all categories of consumers shall bring very good results and pave the way for PSEB attaining internationally accepted line losses. An excellent work for implementing the HVDS programme in high loss urban and sub urban localities in Patiala circle is being executed and the line losses on feeders under up-gradation are likely to reduce from present 50 per cent to 15 per cent This will bring a revolution in the distribution system management and serve as model for whole of India. Some elements in PSEB are opposing HVDS to serve their vested interests who need to be discouraged for the benefit of the State and its people. The time bound implementation of Efficient Lighting Programme decided by PSEB for implementation about an year back shall bring miraculous results with less investment. With 30 per cent of total power being consumed for lighting purpose, it should be a focus area for conserving power. Replacement of incandescent bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) and installation of energy efficient fluorescent tubes and electronic chokes approved by Bureau of Energy Efficiency (Govt. of India) can lead to a saving of 1800 million unit and CER equivalent to 15 lakh tone carbon dioxide per annum. The present ad campaign launched by PSEB exhorting the masses to install CFLs is a step in positive direction. However, to expedite implementation of this low cost programme, the state government should issue an ordinance banning the use of incandescent lamps on the pattern of Australia and make the use of BEE approved CFLs and energy efficient tubes with electronic chokes mandatory across the state of Punjab. The recovery of capital investment in installing CFLs is very fast and is less than 6 months. The writer is a former chief engineer of PSEB
|
|
Lessons from the campaign Deep
into a primary campaign that was supposed be over by now, Barack Obama must still answer one fundamental question. Hillary Clinton has made Obama’s inexperience her chief line of attack, and if she goes down, John McCain will pick up where she left off. Luckily, Obama doesn’t have to rely on his legislative resume to prove he’s capable of running the government. He can point to something more germane: the way he’s run his campaign. Presidents tend to govern the way they campaigned. Jimmy Carter ran as a moralistic outsider in 1976, and he governed that way as well, refusing to compromise with a Washington establishment that he distrusted (and that distrusted him). Ronald Reagan’s campaign looked harsh on paper but warm and fuzzy on TV, as did his presidency. The 1992 Clinton campaign was like the Clinton administration: brilliant and chaotic, with a penchant for near-death experiences. And the 2000 Bush campaign presaged the Bush presidency: disciplined, hierarchical, loyal and ruthless. Of the three candidates still in the 2008 race, Obama has run the best campaign by far. McCain’s was a top-heavy, slow-moving, money-hemorrhaging Hindenburg that eventually exploded, leaving the Arizona senator to resurrect his bankrupt candidacy through sheer force of will. Clinton’s campaign has been marked by vicious infighting and organisational weakness, as manifested by her terrible performance in caucus states. Obama’s, by contrast, has been an organisational wonder, the political equivalent of crossing a Lamborghini with a Hummer. From the beginning, the Obama campaign has run circles around its foes on the Internet, using MySpace, Facebook and other Web tools to develop a virtual army of more than 1 million donors. The result has been fund-raising numbers that have left opponents slack-jawed (last month Obama raised $40 million, compared with Clinton’s $20 million). But the Web is the political equivalent of gunpowder: It can mow down your opponents, but it can also blow up in your face. In 2004, Howard Dean’s campaign also raised vast sums online, but it spent the money just as fast. “You cannot manage an insurgency,” said Dean’s Web guru, Joe Trippi. “You just have to ride it.” The Obama campaign has proved that adage wrong. It has married Web energy with professional control. It has used the Web masterfully but, unlike Dean in 2004, sees it as a tool, not a philosophy of life. At the top, in fact, the campaign is quite hierarchical. There’s no question who’s in charge: David Axelrod, a grizzled Chicago street-fighter whom Obama has known since he was 30. Axelrod and his subordinates believe their guy represents a new kind of politics, but they’re not above using old-school, hard-ball tactics – even against his own supporters – to help him win. Last spring, for example, when the Obama campaign realised it couldn’t control a popular Obama page on MySpace, it persuaded the company to shut the page down. It is this remarkable hybrid campaign, far more than Obama’s thin legislative resume, that should reassure voters that he can run the government. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
