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Revolt by Munde In threatening mode |
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Speeding up justice
Courtier culture
Where past is present
World food crisis Rahul gets the diagnosis right, but not the cure Delhi Durbar
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Revolt by Munde THE Bharatiya Janata Party was once known as the party with a difference. Today it is known as a party of differences. The developments in the Maharashtra unit of the party are a case in point. The BJP’s most prominent leader in the state, Mr Gopinath Munde, felt so piqued over the appointment of Mr Madhu Chavan as the new chief of the Mumbai unit that he resigned from all the party posts he held. He feels that the party has not been treating him well ever since his brother-in-law Pramod Mahajan was killed in a case of fratricide. It is well known in party circles that he does not see eye to eye with Mr Nitin Gadkari, who is the president of the state BJP. He sees the appointment of Mr Chavan, allegedly at Mr Gadkari’s behest, as a snub for him. Mr Munde is so bitter that he has even turned down summons from the ‘high command’ to go to Delhi and sort out the matter with the party leadership. The bickering in the state unit could not have come at a worse time for the BJP. Elections to the State Assembly are due later this year. The ruling Congress is rattled by the price rise and the bitter factional feud within the organisation. The chief minister feels so threatened that he is unable to take any decisive action like when the poor migrant labourers in the metropolis are attacked. The BJP could have taken advantage of the situation if its own house was in order. Even if the differences in the state unit are ironed out, the impression that everything is not all right in the party would linger among the people. That some municipal councilors have thought it fit to express solidarity with Mr Munde shows that it would be counterproductive to drive him to the wall. The BJP has in the past taken advantage of Mr Munde’s following among the SC/ST and backward castes in the state. The numerically preponderant castes would not like their leader to be sidelined for what they think are caste-based reasons. Once such a problem arose in the Bihar unit of the BJP where the party got split vertically. Even in states like Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh the BJP can ignore the caste factor only to its eternal disadvantage. Forget north Indian states, the BJP is divided on caste lines even in its Kerala unit, which never tasted power. The BJP claims in public that it is above caste considerations but it takes care while dealing with caste issues. Mr Munde’s revolt shows how a wrong decision can precipitate a crisis for the
BJP.
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In threatening mode The
success in recent byelections has added new swagger to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s gait and a new sting to her barbs against the Congress. She has taken on Rahul Gandhi for his campaign to woo the Dalits, and has threatened to withdraw support from the UPA government. Had it been somebody else, the Congress might have been even willing to make amends, but this threat might not be taken too seriously because this is not the first time that she has put the gun on the neck of the Congress. This might be seen as pressure tactics rather than as a serious ultimatum. Her rhetorical allegation that Rahul Gandhi washes himself with special soap whenever he spends a night with a Dalit family too had become more of a joke rather than an issue. In any case, this reaction of hers might be giving undue importance to the Congress and Rahul Gandhi considering that their performance has been dismal in almost all the recent elections in the state. Her other demand for a Rs 80,000 crore package for Uttar Pradesh, too, is politically not pragmatic because the right forum for her to put up her case is the Planning Commission and the Finance Commission. Congress spokesperson Veerappa Moily’s remark that “…we know that she will take a political decision and not a personal one…” is only a polite way of saying that she is raising such demands merely out of personal pique. Her concern indeed is that the Congress is trying to rob the BSP’s Dalit vote bank. But her extreme sensitivity is coming out as a sign of insecurity. Not only that, it is also paving the way for the Congress and the Samajwadi Party coming together. That is hardly the right course of action for a leader who by her own admission has set her eyes on flying the tricolour at Red Fort.
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Speeding up justice The
two-day annual conference of chief ministers and chief justices of the high courts held in New Delhi assumes special significance because it has decided on a series of steps to reduce the huge backlog of cases in the courts and ensure speedy dispensation of justice. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who inaugurated the conference, has accepted Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan’s advice to streamline the family courts in all the states. Unfortunately, even though setting up of family courts is a statutory obligation and is an important social welfare measure, many states have failed to fulfil their responsibility in this regard. Under Article 247 of the Constitution, the Centre can establish additional courts for better administration of laws made by Parliament or of any existing law with respect to a matter enumerated in the Union List. The Prime Minister also endorsed Justice Balakrishnan’s suggestion to set up more special courts for trying corruption cases. The demand for more courts is justified because in the absence of an adequate number of courts, the judges are unable to hear cases. In Delhi, for instance, though the CBI is investigating over 1,100 cases, there are no enough designated courts to handle them. The conference resolved that the high courts would set up additional courts of special judges exclusively for the trial of corruption cases being investigated by the CBI under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Equally noteworthy is the judges’ resolve to put in extra hours and reduce the number of holidays. High court judges will not go on holidaying on working days and will also voluntarily work during vacation. The high courts will appoint special metropolitan magistrates to try petty cases. Owing to vacancies, several courts are finding it difficult to handle the load. Retired government servants will hereafter be posted as special metropolitan magistrates who will work under a senior judicial officer’s control. As the problem of managing mounting arrears has reached critical levels and justice is being denied to millions of people, the judges’ willingness to address it sincerely needs to be commended. There will, however, be a need for the Supreme Court to continually monitor the progress in the implementation of the decisions taken.
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Hatred is blind, as well as love. — Oscar Wilde
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Courtier culture
We
live in stirring times. Politics in the country has never been as entertaining as it is, with Cabinet ministers downsizing their Prime Minister, and the Congress leadership turning logic and the party’s hallowed history on its head by decrying sycophancy. Indeed, it would require a Gogol to do justice to the delicious irony and plain absurdity of the situation. Mr Arjun Singh has reached a stage of his political career when he has nothing to lose but his ministership. He enjoys playing Chanakya and belongs to a fraternity of politicians who delight in setting the cat among the pigeons in order to sit back and watch the fun for partisan profit or merely as spectator sport. The late Dinesh Singh, the former Foreign Minister, belonged to this genre although he was a less astute player. What was Mr Arjun Singh’s real motive for springing Mr Rahul Gandhi’s name as the party’s candidate to lead it into the election campaign may never be known. But the consummate politician he is, he knew the chain reaction that would follow. The Nationalist Congress Party, whose leader’s rationale for leaving the parent party was Ms Sonia Gandhi’s prime ministerial ambitions, given her Italian birth, was the first to come on board. It would have no problem in contesting the election with the Congress if it were to project Ms Gandhi or her son as the future Prime Minister. Down South, the leader of the DMK ally, Mr K. Karunanidhi, would be happy to go along with a Rahul Gandhi prime ministership. And after a pregnant pause, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who had once singed his fingers in an earlier leadership game, said he was all for youth taking over. Here was a second Cabinet minister in the Manmohan Singh government in effect diminishing the stature of his Prime Minister, in this instance to protect his flanks from the possible wrath of the family. This display of loyalty was getting decidedly embarrassing for Ms Gandhi because there would soon be a legion of Congressmen out on the streets demanding the anointment of Mr Rahul Gandhi as the country’s future Prime Minister. Since the Manmohan Singh government has about a year to run, it would, at the very least, make his task all but impossible. Obviously, now was not the opportune time to bring out the garlands for the royal scion. But the put-down came in an astonishing statement from the party leadership (read Ms Sonia Gandhi). It said it was against sycophancy. The Congress party has given the country distinguished leaders and many gifts (Jawaharlal Nehru was, in many ways, the architect of modern India) but it also brought into being a courtier culture. This culture, often described as the Congress culture, came to be known by one’s loyalty to one family. Perhaps, Indira Gandhi was most responsible for demanding loyalty to herself as the touchstone of a supporter’s worth thus cementing a tradition and culture that prevails to this day. Those who witnessed the tearful and self-flagellating pleas from men and women seeking to reverse Ms Gandhi’s decision to turn down the prime ministerial crown would understand how deeply engrained courtier culture has become. The Congress party’s strength at one time was its grassroots support and its reach but it was never a cadre-based party. In the beginning, there was the aura of the Independence hero Jawaharlal leading the party. But starting with Indira Gandhi, as the party failed to nurture the grassroots, the leadership came to rely on the leader as the vote getter, and since the leader almost invariably belonged to one Family, the party became the Family. In Indira’s time and, to a lesser extent today, there is no more evocative word in the party lexicon than Madam. The party’s compact with the Family is simple: he or she must bring in the votes and then the Family is supreme. Ms Gandhi herself has publicly reflected on the fact that her son should get a leg-up in politics by virtue of his birth. That is so, she has said, but then he must prove himself. In order to let him do so, he was made a party general secretary and sent on a Discover India mission. And in the recent Cabinet shuffle, she let it be known that he had turned down the post of minister of state. Ms Gandhi proved her own worth to the party by being an indefatigable campaigner in elections, often the only one of consequence for her party. It is also true that few in the Congress had banked on emerging as the largest party after the last general election. But Ms Gandhi’s wise decision to decline the Prime Minister’s post came at a price. In effect, there came into being two centres of power, the weightier centre residing at 10 Janpath. In retrospect, an arrangement between Ms Gandhi and a person other than Dr Manmohan Singh would not have worked. Although the BJP leader, Mr L.K. Advani, is fond of calling the latter the weakest Prime Minister in the country’s history, a stronger political personality with a base of his own would have repeatedly clashed with the Family, tempted as he would have been to exercise the full range of his powers. Where does the present controversy leave Mr Rahul Gandhi, with a party nurtured under the shadow of the all-encompassing Family? For many Congressmen and Congresswomen, sycophancy has become second nature because career prospects are so inextricably tied up with the Family’s verdict. Mr Arjun Singh’s strength is that he has reached as high as he can go and is free to play pranks on friends and foes alike. It is for historians to decide how far the institution of sycophancy is derived from the Mughal courts in Delhi and Agra. Many communities, apart from those that directly dealt with the old rulers, became steeped in courtier culture in large parts of North India, apart from such pockets as Hyderabad. Even in today’s political world, the subservience on display by ministerial flunkeys is painful to behold. Loyalty to the Family, therefore, comes naturally to Congressmen. Mr Rahul Gandhi will, perhaps, publicly express impatience with subservient behaviour before falling in line with his karma. Life is cyclical and he must move
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Where past is present
As the youngest democracy of Bhutan registers itself on the map of world democracies, reams are being written about the future of the erstwhile monarchy and its subjects who proudly proclaim, “Our past is our present”. At this juncture I am inclined to reminisce about the Kingdom of Bhutan where I went into retreat over six years ago; far away from the bad, mad world, far away in time though not in space. From New Alipurduar railway station we drove through Hashimara and Jaigaon on the Indian side to enter Phuentsholing – the gateway of Bhutan. Then the road winds north, over the southern foothills, through lush green valleys and around the rugged north-south ridges of the inner Himalayas, to the central valleys of Thimphu and Paro. Hairpin bends on this breathtaking seven-hour drive are, to reassure the traveller, marked with tall colourful sculptures of the Tashi Tagye — the eight auspicious signs of Buddhism. Tradition ordains the use of signs rather than the human form as the Buddha had freed himself from the cycle of death and re-birth! Fluttering flags which dot the landscape are believed to be in communion with the high heavens. The monarchy held the monks in high regard so much so that one son from each family entered the monastic order. Monks were represented in the National Assembly and the Royal Advisory Council. His Majesty the King, I learnt from the natives, married four sisters, on the advice of a Lama, to secure longevity. The previous King died at 42. Their Majesties, the Queens, lived in four different palaces. Shorn of the scourge of class or caste, Bhutan boasts of a strongly egalitarian society. Men and women enjoy equal educational and social opportunities regardless of rank or birth in all spheres of life including matrimony. This I found amazing in a patriarchal society. Quite unlike us. The monarchy prided itself on promoting the gross national happiness rather than the gross national product. Bhutanese people are healthy and happy. I hardly encountered a sullen face. Commercial hoardings, advertisements and road signage were conspicuous by their absence. A visitor is struck by their penchant for anonymity. Residential buildings bore no nameplates. They indeed looked forward to their past for nothing but to assiduously safeguard their heritage, religion, culture, tradition and ecology in its pristine form. Tourism, technology, development et al may take a back seat. Bhutan appeared to cherish it and stay that way! Will it change now? Driving downhill back home, the chauffeur pulled up at the immigration checkpost. My eyes got stuck at a signboard which roared, “You are now entering the malaria-prone zone. Protect yourself from the mosquitoes.” Long live the
King.
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World food crisis When
the order came down from the top brass of Bangladesh’s armed forces it sounded like a joke. Some of the soldiers and sailors who were told that from now on their daily rations would include increased servings of potatoes almost certainly did not take it seriously either. But in a country where rice is overwhelmingly the staple dish, this was no laughing matter. With Bangladesh and the rest of Asia gripped by a rice crisis that has sent governments into panic, last Friday’s announcement by the military that it was turning to the potato to supplement its troops’ rations was for real. “The daily food menu now includes 125g of potato for each soldier irrespective of ranks,” it said. But it is not just in Bangladesh that the humble potato is being turned to for help. With world food prices soaring and with riots breaking out everywhere from Egypt to Indonesia, experts believe that increased use of potatoes could provide at least part of the solution. Easy to grow, quick to mature, requiring little water and with yields two to four times greater than that of wheat or rice, the potato is being cultivated more in an effort to ensure food security, agronomists say. Such are the hopes being placed on the tuber that the UN named 2008 the International Year of the Potato. “As concern grows over the risk of food shortages and instability in dozens of low-income countries, global attention is turning to an age-old crop that could help ease the strain of food price inflation,” said the world body. “It is ideally suited to places where land is limited and labour is abundant, conditions that characterise much of the developing world. The potato produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less land, and in harsher climates than any other major crop.” Take China. Already the world’s largest producer of potatoes, the country has set aside large areas of additional agricultural land in an effort to increase their cultivation. India has told food experts it wants to double potato production in the next five to 10 years while Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are also working to increase the area under cultivation for potatoes. Belarus currently leads the world in potato consumption, with each inhabitant eating an average of 376lb a year. In the north-east Indian state of Nagaland, which borders Burma, local authorities are working with NGOs to develop quick-maturing potatoes that can be grown between the region’s two rice harvests. It is seen as an additional source of food rather than a replacement and the NGOs are working with the communities to educate people about the benefits of the potato and how to grow it. In Peru, where the potato was first cultivated, a doubling in the price of wheat in the past year has led to the launch of a government programme to encourage bakers to use potato flour rather than wheat flour to make bread. As part of the scheme, potato bread is being given to schoolchildren, soldiers and even prisoners in a hope that it will catch on. At the moment, there is a shortage of mills that are able to make potato flour. “We have to change people’s eating habits,” Ismael Benavides, Peru’s agriculture minister, told Reuters. “People got addicted to wheat when it was cheap.” The potato was first cultivated 7,000 years ago high in the Andes close to Lake Titicaca. There are at least 5,000 varieties of potato, of which more than 3,000 are found in the mountains. Ranging in colour from plaster-board white through yellow to aubergine purple, the tuber retains huge practical and cultural significance in South America. It was taken to Europe by the Spanish, who apparently first encountered it in 1532. Documentary evidence suggests that by 1573, potatoes were already being sold in the markets in Seville. It arrived in India some time afterwards, possibly brought by the Portuguese who seized Goa. Known in Hindi as aloo it is the basis of a number of famous Indian dishes, such as the potato and cauliflower curry aloo gobi. Experts say the potato has great nutritional value. It is a source of complex carbohydrates which release their energy slowly and have just 5 per cent of the fat content of wheat. They have more protein than corn and nearly double the amount of calcium. They also contain iron, potassium, zinc and vitamin C, and were eaten by sailors in previous centuries as a guard against scurvy. And yet, for all its nutritional wonders and easy-to-grow charms, the potato seems to suffer from an image problem. “The thing is that in the West we take the potato for granted,” said Paul Stapleton, a spokesman for the International Potato Centre, a non-profit group based in Peru that has been working with governments around the world to develop faster-maturing strains of potato. Speaking yesterday from Lima, Mr Stapleton said he believed potatoes could help solve not just the current food crisis but also the challenges of feeding a world with a population that is growing by 600 million people every 10 years. “It can help with the current crisis and with the population that is coming,” he said. “There are no more areas to plant rice or wheat. What is going to happen as the population increases? Either we are going to increase yields of what we are already growing or use marginal land. The potato is perfect for that.” Analysts say that while the price of other foods has increased sharply, one factor that has helped potatoes remain affordable for the world’s poorer people is that it is not a global commodity that attracts the sort of professional investment that was so damned by the UN’s food envoy, Mr Ziegler. Around 17 per cent of the 600 million tons of wheat produced every year are traded internationally compared to just 5 per cent of potatoes. As a result, potato prices are driven mainly by local tastes rather than international demand, they say. In such circumstances, the scientists in Lima believe it is in the developing world that the potato will reach new heights. From Kenya and Uganda to Nepal and Bangladesh, they envisage increased cultivation of potatoes and a situation where farmers will grow them either as cash crops to sell in the market or else to feed their families. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Rahul gets the diagnosis right, but not the cure General secretary
of the Indian National Congress Rahul Gandhi made two significant observations recently. In the Lok Sabha, he pinpointed a fundamental flaw in the Land Ceiling Act that was devised and imposed by his grandmother Indira Gandhi nearly four decades ago. His second significant remark came when he was interacting with the media in Uttar Pradesh. He virtually dismissed his own party, where he is holding an important functionary post, as a dysfunctional political apparatus. Since Rahul Gandhi read out what was his first major address in the Lok Sabha, it is to be taken that its contents were a deliberate and well measured narration of his thoughts. He said rightly that the Land Ceiling Act in one sweep included both fertile and productive land as well as non-productive and less fertile land in the ambit of the Act, since the size of the land holding and not its productivity was made the fundamental measure. Fertile land owners prospered despite the ceiling on the holdings because of increased productivity of their holdings. However, holders of infertile pieces of land had nothing more than gradually increasing penury. Rahul Gandhi felt that this was the cause of the debt trap for farmers in many areas. However, his suggestion was not for seeking a lasting and effective solution by increasing productivity of land in all areas with better supply of inputs, including improving health of soil and ensuring better water supply. His suggestion was to provide a larger measure of relief to farmers with less productive lands, in their debt obligations. How could only a relief in debt obligations pull out poor farmers from the perennial cause for the penury? Rahul Gandhi has thus shied away from taking his observations to its logical conclusion of demanding the scrapping of the Land Ceiling Act or amending it to make a distinction between productive and non-productive land. In his second observation he condemned his party for having no internal democracy. In the same way, his father Rajiv Gandhi had also condemned the party in his inaugural address to the Centenary Session of the Indian National Congress in December 1985 in Mumbai by terming it a party of power brokers. But Rajiv Gandhi continued to preside over the party till his tragic death without any serious attempt to drive out the power brokers. The only change he effected was to enroll many old school mates and bureaucrats to high offices around him. Similarly, Rahul Gandhi has also placed himself above the party. His general dissatisfaction with the structure of the party, that denied any avenue for upward mobility to party workers on the basis of merit, was also clearly reflected in his observations. No media report indicated what he intended to do about it and offered no explanation as to why he would continue to hold his office of significance, without insisting on immediate introduction of internal democracy in the party, as the first major requirement and prerequisite to his continued holding of the office. If his summation of the party functioning was a result of the conclusion of a serious introspection of the system, as it has been operating for more than a decade under the stewardship of his mother Sonia Gandhi, he was expected to provide a solution. However, he appeared to be silent on any solution after correctly diagnosing the malaise from which his party suffers. He was not depending only on his advisers to come to the conclusion that his party suffered from a serious structural flaw. His own failure to win more seats for the party in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in June 2007 was sufficient experience to give him that insight. In fact, his mother and he both blamed the failure of the party to convert the good will they had generated through their campaign. A similar reasoning was advanced when the Congress failed to capitalise on the anti-incumbency factor against Narendra Modi in Gujarat. Unless the party is pulled out of its dysfunctional morass, it would fail him in his aspirations of ruling India soon. When a good medico sees a patient with serious gangrene set in, he does not wait for time. He undertakes an emergency operation to save the patient. Rahul Gandhi seems to have got advisers who can point out the malaise but they have no nerve to suggest the remedy.
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Delhi Durbar In the good old days, when attendance in Parliament was thin, floor managers had to scurry around the building to ferret out absconding members and persuade them to complete the quorum in the House. Thanks to the advent of technology, it has become much simpler to reach the members as they can now be contacted on their mobile phones. In addition, parliamentary affairs ministers and chief whips also send out text messages to members so that they can no longer come up with the excuse that they did not get the message. Despite all these measures, members continue to play hookey. For instance, the benches in both Houses were largely vacant last week, with attendence down to barely twenty or even less. This was when the price rise debate was on, and when the railways appropriation Bill was to be passed, for which a three-line whip had been issued. Switched off NDA Convenor and Janata Dal (United) MP, George Fernandes, whose great public orations once commanded unmanageable crowds, has an impatient audience now. Fernandes, who faltered in the middle of his 10-minute speech on the Tibet issue at Jantar Mantar, appeared startled when discourteous TV journalists gradually switched off hand microphones placed before him on stage. The socialist leader’s followers Jaya Jaitley, Shiv Kumar and Pratush Nandan, looked uncomfortable when at least three TV journalists cut short his speech with an impolite “Thank You.” Fernandes, who was calling for a boycott of Chinese goods, did not yield. He collected his thoughts and went on to complete what he was saying. Costly thalis Lok Sabha member (CPI) Gurudas Dasgupta did well to quote prices of a ‘thali’ to drive home the message of unbearable inflation and its impact on the common man. Initiating a short duration discussion on price rise, Dasgupta said that the economic hardship faced by the common man can be imagined by just taking a look at the price of a chappati. The MP had clearly done his homework as he went on to tell the Lok Sabha how a chappati is priced at Rs 4 in Mumbai, Rs 3 in Bihar and Rs 2.50 in Delhi. He pointed out how a frugal lunch with a few chappatis, a watery dal and brinjal ‘subzi’ is priced at Rs 20. He also drew the attention of the House to the rise in prices of toor dal and mustard oil. Contributed by Anita Katyal and Tripti Nath
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