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Push for peace West Bengal signal to CPM |
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U-turn on farm loans
Fresh look at Tibet
Whither writing in long hand?
The banana parable Haryana needs to rein in fiscal deficit Delhi Durbar
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Push for peace The peace constituency on both sides of the Indo-Pak divide must be heaving a sigh of relief that the two countries remain committed to taking the composite dialogue process to its logical conclusion. The recent incidents of ceasefire violation and the unending infiltration attempts by terrorists were not allowed to overshadow the progress made so far. This is evident from the exchange of views between the new Pakistani rulers and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee during his two-day visit to Islamabad that ended on Wednesday. It is encouraging to note that there is “strong willingness” in Islamabad to go in for a “grand reconciliation” between the two countries. Through the customary joint statement the two sides have declared that terrorism will not be allowed to disrupt the peace process. The menace will be tackled effectively through the joint anti-terrorism mechanism to be reactivated before the fifth round of the composite dialogue, scheduled to begin in July. The agreements to allow consular access to prisoners in each other’s jails and increase the frequency of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad and Poonch-Rawalkot bus services by making them weekly are bound to improve the atmosphere for normalisation of relations. Though the Pakistani side mentioned the outdated UN resolutions on Kashmir and the need to take up this contentious matter along with the other issues under discussion, perhaps this was done for tactical reasons. Both sides are satisfied with the achievements made through the composite dialogue process. Fortunately, there is realisation that both India and Pakistan have to strive jointly for peace in South Asia. They have to do all they can to promote security and stability with a view to ensuring rapid economic growth in the region. There is no doubt that the confidence-building measures taken so far, including those aimed at promoting people-to-people contacts, have expanded the peace constituency considerably. The role of bilateral trade, which has shown an upward movement since the dialogue process began, cannot be ignored. There is need to concentrate more on improving economic relations as this can help India and Pakistan in developing a strong stake in each other’s advancement. The two countries must create a mechanism to promote cross-border investments. Increased bilateral trade and industrial activity involving the two sides can speed up the process of conflict resolution.
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West Bengal signal to CPM The
CPM in West Bengal has been handed a resounding rebuff in the panchayat elections for reasons that are all too clear. Never before during its over 30 years in office, since 1977, has the Left Front suffered such a political rout in the rural areas of the state. The CPM has only itself – not any of the other constituents of the Left Front – to blame for its defeat, which is yet to unravel in all its dimensions. In fact, it would not be surprising if the CPM faced bigger upsets in the election to the middle and lower tiers of local administration, for which counting is under way. The CPM has received the worst drubbing in the areas around Nandigram and Singur, namely, the districts of East Midnapore and Hooghly. Nandigram has been the scene of prolonged and recurrent violence with the CPM cadres and the police pitted against the opposition parties and the people affected by the acquisition of the land for industrial ventures. The violence continued even after the Left Front government gave up its plans to pursue the project. Singur, where Tata Motors has established a factory for the Nano car, was also the site of conflict. The methods by which the CPM chose to pursue land acquisition to implement its industrial policy served to alienate the party from the electorate. It would be wrong to read the CPM’s debacle as a rejection of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s industrial development policy. The policy, though belated, is the long overdue panacea for the economic and industrial revival of West Bengal, and it needs to be vigorously pursued. What needs to be abandoned by the government is the way it went about implementing the policy: without taking into account the concerns of the people and the opposition parties; and assuming that by unleashing a reign of police-cum-cadre terror the people could be literally beaten into submission. In the event, the CPM’s high-handedness and the state-supported violence have backfired. The CPM should draw the right lessons from this punishing verdict, and the other parties in the Left Front, which were critical of the CPM’s methods, may be able to make big brother see the issues involved with more clarity.
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U-turn on farm loans When
the State Bank of India suspended the advance of loans for buying tractors and other farm machinery on May 16 following a steep rise in its non-performing assets (NPAs), it took a decision in the commercial interests of the bank. Apparently, the SBI had not perhaps anticipated the political fallout of its decision. For the BJP fighting the assembly elections in Karnataka, it was a godsend. The party made good use of the SBI decision to portray the UPA government as anti-farmer. Reports say the Congress President and the Prime Minister’s Office responded with alacrity and had the Finance Minister roll back the order. None in the Congress and the PMO, however, would like their intervention to become public. In recent years public sector bosses have increasingly allowed themselves to believe ministerial pronouncements on how the government and the ruling party were keeping a distance from PSUs for ensuring greater operational autonomy. Government bankers also had, perhaps, got carried away by the talk of reforms and autonomous decision-making. Therefore the assumption that they were not expected to weigh the political implications of their decisions. The SBI’s flip-flop on farm loans is a cautionary signal to be careful in future. The stink raised by the bad loans issue will not go away easily. The government banks are required to provide 18 per cent of their credit to the farm sector. To meet the target, banks tend to overlook the rules. Instead of using loans to raise farm productivity and their income, farmers splurge on lavish social functions. The Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver, election-oriented as it is, has sent a wrong message. Every loan taker would now like to default and expect a waiver. Bad loans reduce lending amounts and force banks to follow tighter lending norms, which hit the poor the most.
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Suffering cheerfully endured ceases to be suffering and is transmitted into an ineffable joy. — Mahatma Gandhi
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Fresh look at Tibet
The
recent riots in Lhasa and the passage of the Olympic torch through Delhi has once again brought to the fore the question of Tibet. It is fashionable these days to assert that had Nehru not been naive and negligent on China when it invaded Tibet in 1950, somehow the events would have been different and in India's favour. Sharp commentaries have been written criticising Nehru. In support of this thesis are cited Patel's letter of November 7, 1950, to Nehru and the belief that had Patel, and not Nehru, “handled” Tibet, it would now be free from China's iron grip. But what are the facts and what actually happened? When the British departed from India in 1947 they bequeathed to this country some assets along with a bagful of problems on our northern frontier. Britain as an imperial power never faced any threat from across our northern frontiers. As such, there was not a single administrative, police or military post closer than 160 km from our frontiers. Newly independent India had no comparable resources as imperial Britain did. In addition, it had to face a tribal invasion of Kashmir, aided and abetted by Pakistan and a resurgent, vigorous, new China armed to the teeth. The centuries old buffer provided by the high Himalayas had disappeared. What was the attitude of the Tibetan government in Lhasa at that time? In a note sent on October 16, 1947, to the Government of India, barely two months after India's independence, the Tibetans demanded not only the return of "Tibetan territories" but also of Bhutan, Sikkim and Darjeeling! The KMT Chinese of Chiang Kai -shek were no less extravagant in their demands. Communist China only appeared to represent this line of thinking. Nehru realistically realised that it was not possible to take on the Chinese militarily over Tibet. General Cariappa, when consulted, flatly turned down any suggestion for an intervention. As late as July 1962, the then Army Chief General Thimayya stated that "we could never hope to match China in the foreseeable future. It must be left to the politicians and diplomats to ensure our security." Therefore, the advice to Nehru all along was not to get into a conflict with China over Tibet. Nehru himself responded to Patel in a forthright manner on November 18, 1950, when he candidly wrote that "China will take possession of Tibet. It is equally unlikely that any foreign power can prevent it. We cannot do so." Thus Nehru was aware of the military mismatch then; it is even more acute now. Much is made of the fact that in 1954 when the Sino- Indian agreement was negotiated, the boundary was not firmed up and demarcated on the ground, and that Nehru was naive in trusting the Chinese. While with the advantage of hindsight, some criticism may be valid, but what was the situation that prevailed on the border at that time? In fact, on June 14, 1914, the Chinese government sent a memorandum to the British government that had an explanatory map attached to it in which the McMahon Line was shown exactly as negotiated at Simla. Even in 1954 and 1956, Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai told Nehru that " although the McMahon Line established by the British imperialists was not fair, nevertheless because it was an established fact and because of the friendly relations which exist between China and the countries concerned, namely India and Burma, the Chinese government was of the opinion that they should give recognition to the McMahon Line". China accepted the McMahon alignment as it pertains to Burma. Similarly in 1956, China accepted the Tibet-Nepal boundary alignment that was drawn on the basis of the Tibet-Nepal treaty of 1856 to which it was not a party. Even as late as November 15, 1960, when Nehru affirmed in Parliament that “our maps show the McMahon Line as our boundary”, China did not protest. In the middle sector the dispute is relatively insignificant. But the western sector is a problem area. The Aksai Chin is bleak, inhospitable and a desolate area, with no settled population. The British made no effort to secure it militarily. Nehru inherited a complete vacuum. For China the area assumed strategic importance once it decided to link Sinkiang with Tibet by building a road through it. But what is China’s claim based on? Merely by stating that this area had always been a part of Sinkiang (not Tibet) does not advance Chinese legitimacy to the area. Since 1954 when India started showing its boundary line, the Chinese never protested at first. Even Neville Maxwell, the author of “India’s China war” is perplexed. “Why did the Chinese not question this alignment?” he laments. The fact that the Chinese claim the line has kept changing and shifting over the years also shows that they had very little clue as to where the boundary lay! At the heart of the matter is a question of trust. Should Nehru not have trusted the word given by the Premier of a country that is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and that which preaches morality in the conduct of international relations? That by 1959 the Chinese government changed its views is probably due to the events in Tibet and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India. Had the Chinese respected Tibetan autonomy, as promised, there would have been no need for the Dalai Lama to flee to India. If there is a crisis in Tibet, it is of China’s own making. Nehru was conscious of the need to speedily move forward to bring under administrative control our border areas. He established the Indian Frontier Service, moved the administrative machinery forward, removed the remnants of Tibetans from Tawang, set up the Border Roads Organisation and fully secured the eastern sector. It is because of this huge effort that this area is now fully under India’s control. It would be wise for those who lay an inordinate emphasis on drawing boundary lines with China to remember that the internationally recognised boundaries have never really deterred China from crossing them. In 1979 when the then Foreign Minister Vajpayee was in China on an official visit, the Chinese crossed the internationally recognised Sino-Vietnam boundary signed by China in 1894, to “teach” the Vietnamese a “lesson”. Neither has the well-documented and demarcated LoC in Kashmir deterred or posed a problem to the jehadis from Pakistan. Nehru was conscious of building India into a strong, vibrant, self-reliant and an economically forward-looking country. And therein lies India’s safety and security.n The writer is a member of the National Human Rights Commission.
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Whither writing in long hand? In
these times of keyboard tapping a handwritten newspaper sounds straight from a ‘Believe it or not’ tale. How heartening that at least one such paper exists here in India! The Musalman, an Urdu newspaper of Chennai which is handwritten except for the ads, sells 20000 copies. Run by a family of committed calligraphers, it is fighting for survival. Writing in long hand survived typewriter because the machine was cumbersome and typing a skill, which not all people thought worth acquiring. But it had no chance against the computer. Aided by mobile phone, SMS and email it has spelled the doom of the handwritten word. Apart from file notings in government offices, perhaps schools and colleges and are the only places where it is still in vogue. In the process, we are losing something very precious. For one, typewritten matter lacks the writer’s unique stamp. Earlier, at least personal letters and one’s diary one wrote in hand. Handwritten letters said more than the words on the paper. From the choice of pen to the ink and from size of the letters to their shape, everything said something about the writer. Writing in one’s own hand also encouraged brevity. I recall how my grandfather, who relied on the good old postcard, packed so much in it. In a single postcard, he gave an overview of happenings not only in the family but the entire village. Which cow had stopped yielding milk, which tree had been cut down or had fallen to a summer-storm and how the seasonal crop was shaping — all were integral to his postcard portrait of the time. Naturally, one looked forward to the rectangular piece of thick pale paper. Handwritten matter also gave a clue to the writer’s state of mind — whether one was in hurry, or agitated or excited while penning it. Even the deleted words had a message. Of course, the handwritten notes of famous writers, afforded more than a peep into the creative process through which, they and their art passed. Many writers of yore felt that the physical act of writing was integral to the act of creation. “The typewriter separated me from a deeper intimacy with poetry, and my hand brought me closer to that intimacy again”, said Pablo Neruda. Perhaps the best part of writing in hand is that by comparing one’s handwriting of different phases of life one can do a bit of self-examination. From the tentativeness of adolescence to confidence of youth and from the faint shakiness of the middle-years to the tremulousness of the old age — all are mirrored in the hand-sculpted script. Life is no doubt easier without such self-analysis. Whether such ease is desirable is the moot
question.
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The banana parable Below
the headlines about rocketing food prices and rocking governments, there lays a largely unnoticed fact: bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible. There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly. Soon – in five, 10 or 30 years – the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist. The story of how the banana rose and fell can be seen a strange parable about the corporations that increasingly dominate the world – and where they are leading us. Bananas seem at first like a lush product of nature, but this is a sweet illusion. In their current form, bananas were quite consciously created. Until 150 ago, a vast array of bananas grew in the world’s jungles and they were invariably consumed nearby. Some were sweet; some were sour. They were green or purple or yellow. A corporation called United Fruit took one particular type – the Gros Michael – out of the jungle and decided to mass produce it on vast plantations, shipping it on refrigerated boats across the globe. The banana was standardised into one friendly model: yellow and creamy and handy for your lunchbox. There was an entrepreneurial spark of genius there – but United Fruit developed a cruel business model to deliver it. As the writer Dan Koeppel explains in his brilliant history Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, it worked like this. Find a poor, weak country. Make sure the government will serve your interests. If it won’t, topple it and replace it with one that will. Burn down its rainforests and build banana plantations. Make the locals dependent on you. Crush any flicker of trade unionism. Then, alas, you may have to watch as the banana fields die from the strange disease that stalks bananas across the globe. If this happens, dump tonnes of chemicals on them to see if it makes a difference. If that doesn’t work, move on to the next country. Begin again. This sounds like hyperbole until you study what actually happened. In 1911, the banana magnate Samuel Zemurray decided to seize the country of Honduras as a private plantation. He gathered together some international gangsters like Guy “Machine Gun” Maloney, drummed up a private army, and invaded, installing an amigo as president. The term “banana republic” was invented to describe the servile dictatorships that were created to please the banana companies. In the early 1950s, the Guatemalan people elected a science teacher named Jacobo Arbenz, because he promised to redistribute some of the banana companies’ land among the millions of landless peasants. President Eisenhower and the CIA (headed by a former United Fruit employee) issued instructions that these “communists” should be killed, and noted that good methods were “a hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker or kitchen knife”. The tyranny they replaced it with went on to kill more than 200,000 people. But how does this relate to the disease now scything through the world’s bananas? The evidence suggests even when they peddle something as innocuous as bananas, corporations are structured to do one thing only: maximise their shareholders’ profits. As part of a highly regulated mixed economy, that’s a good thing, because it helps to generate wealth or churn out ideas. But if the corporations aren’t subject to tight regulations, they will do anything to maximise short-term profit. This will lead them to seemingly unhinged behaviour – like destroying the environment on which they depend. Not long after Panama Disease first began to kill bananas in the early 20th century, United Fruit’s scientists warned the corporation was making two errors. They were building a gigantic monoculture. If every banana is from one homogenous species, a disease entering the chain anywhere on earth will soon spread. The solution? Diversify into a broad range of banana types. The company’s quarantine standards were also dire. Even the people who were supposed to prevent infection were trudging into healthy fields with disease-carrying soil on their boots. But both of these solutions cost money – and United Front didn’t want to pay. They decided to maximise their profit today, reckoning they would get out of the banana business if it all went wrong. So by the 1960s, the Gros Michel that United Fruit had packaged as The One True Banana was dead. They scrambled to find a replacement that was immune to the fungus, and eventually stumbled upon the Cavendish. It was smaller and less creamy and bruised easily, but it would have to do. But like in a horror movie sequel, the killer came back. In the 1980s, the Cavendish too became sick. Now it too is dying, its immunity a myth. In many parts of Africa, the crop is down 60 percent. There is a consensus among scientists that the fungus will eventually infect all Cavendish bananas everywhere. There are bananas we could adopt as Banana 3.0 – but they are so different to the bananas that we know now that they feel like a totally different and far less appetising fruit. The most likely contender is the Goldfinger, which is crunchier and tangier: it is know as “the acid banana”. Thanks to bad corporate behaviour and physical limits, we seem to be at a dead end. The only possible glimmer of hope is a genetically modified banana that can resist Panama Disease. But that is a distant prospect. Is there a parable for our times in this odd milkshake of banana, blood and fungus? For a hundred years, a handful of corporations were given a gorgeous fruit, set free from regulation, and allowed to do what they wanted with it. What happened? They had one good entrepreneurial idea – and to squeeze every tiny drop of profit from it, they destroyed democracies, burned down rainforests, and ended up killing the fruit itself. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Haryana needs to rein in fiscal deficit During
the last ten years or so, the economy of Haryana state has witnessed phenomenal growth. From the size of the plan outlays, Haryana’s economy seems to be in good shape. Revenue receipts have grown at more than 20 percent for the past ten years or so. Though capital receipts have shown a declining trend at 28.96 percent, a steady decline in revenue deficits reflects a rosy picture. But on the fiscal deficits front, there is nothing heartening for the state. The fiscal deficit has registered an increase of 82.5 percent during 2005-07. Borrowings are being made unabated for meeting revenue expenditure. The position is likely to deteriorate further on account of pay-revision of government employees, the farm loan waiver scheme and the impact of revision of state finances. It has become imperative for Haryana to adopt stringent budgetary measures for reducing the fiscal deficit. Haryana’s Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBM), 2005, aimed at eliminating the revenue deficit by 2008 with progressive reduction of fiscal deficits. In compliance with the Act and the recommendations of the 12th Finance Commission, a number of measures have been undertaken i.e. rescheduling the loan-waiver scheme, constitution of the resources mobilisation committee for close monitoring of tax collection, creation of consolidated sinking fund and a guaranteed redemption fund. However, the efforts made so far have failed to arrest the increase in the fiscal deficits. The increase in the fiscal deficit, and as a result, in loans, state guarantees and non-plan expenditure, is indicative of nothing except defective-budgeting, improper planning, defective execution of projects and schemes, excess payments and wasteful expenditure. Moreover, the inadequate and centralised tax assessment machinery provide much scope for tax evasion. The way assessment work is being handled under the Haryana VAT Act, 2003 speaks volumes of the revenue lying hidden in the assessment files. This is to the advantage of both – the unscrupulous dealers and the corrupt assessment machinery. Elimination of the revenue deficit while containing the fiscal deficit at a sustainable level is the need of the hour. It is, therefore, the duty of the government to pursue policies to raise non-tax revenue with due regard to cost recovery and equity. For this, capital expenditure needs to be prioritised and those expenditure policies need to be followed that can provide impetus for economic growth, poverty alleviation, human welfare, strictly observing sound principles of fiscal management like transparency, stability and answerability. Generation of adequate revenue and collection of the revenue that is due to the state in full, plugging all loopholes for evasion to meet current expenditure with all caution that borrowings are made only for productive investment, is a healthy fiscal practice. Such a healthy practice adds to the productive capacity of the state, in return generating sufficient revenue to repay debt and interest charges. It would be worthwhile if a state economic council is set up for formulating the economic policy of the state and for reinforcing the underpinning long term development vision of the state, as well as forming programmes and projects to realise the objectives of the development vision. This council should be assigned the important task of coordinating key-sectors like agriculture, industries and services for achieving sustainable economic development in the state, and increasing the timely and speedy implementation of the projects with complete transparency in the delivery system. It is a known fact that delay breeds corruption and fritters away the resources of the state. Only timely utilisation of the funds earmarked for the projects with complete transparency can save a lot of time, energy and funds for the state, bringing down the fiscal deficit. To cap it all, unfaltering and impartial political will is a must if fiscal deficit is to be kept at a sustainable level. The political will is often seen faltering in the face of vote-catching pressures, often resulting in populist policies with consequent squandering away of the state funds and thus, enhancing fiscal deficit. Budgets must be populism-proof, but it is still a far cry. It is only with an unflinching political will that productive results can be achieved. The writer is Director, Centre for Haryana Studies, M.D. University, Rohtak
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Delhi Durbar The three by-elections in Haryana, needed after former chief minister Bhajan Lal and his two colleagues were expelled from the Congress, have become a do-or-die battle for present chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. It is generally being predicted that senior leader Bhajan Lal will prove invincible on his home turf, Adampur, while Gohana could go the Congress way. Indri could well be taken by the INLD, although the Congress is also putting up a tough fight here. In case the Congress fails to put in a good performance, the beleagured Hooda will face a lot of trouble from his detractors in his own party, who are just waiting for the right moment to pull him down. Gate money With the Indian Premier League (IPL) having emerged as among the biggest money spinners in the game of cricket, there is constant speculation about the actual profits being made by the franchisees. Some cynics maintain that it has not been such a profitable venture for the franchisees, who have spent between $67 to $112 million each to get their dream team. But there are others who maintain that the “owners” are laughing all the way to the bank given the revenues they are raking in from the gate money and advertisements in the grounds. This may well be true as all the franchisees are known to have a nose for business and they got into this because they were assured of profits. One can get a fair idea of of the kind of money the IPL business is generating from the fact that the gate money from the last match in Delhi was in the region of Rs 2.5 crore. Rural neglect Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh does not mince words even where his own party, the RJD, is concerned. Earlier this year the minister had written to all political parties to ask their leaders to be more involved in rural development schemes in their areas and inform his ministry if they noticed any discrepancy in its implementation. While he was all praise for Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul as far as their commitment towards rural development programmes was concerned, he was equally quick to admit that his own party leaders had evinced little interest in the UPA’s flagship scheme when questioned about their involvement. “Mota moti baat yeh hai ki kuch response nahin mila,” he quipped in typical Raghuvansh Prasad style. Contributed by Anita Katyal, Girja Shankar Kaura and
Vibha Sharma
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