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A bold decision Dark horse wins |
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Criminal ministers
Anaemic economy
What’s the hurry?
Choking planet Unforeseen aftershocks of disasters How Hillary Clinton got it all wrong
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A bold decision AFTER
much dithering, the Union government on Wednesday hiked the petrol, diesel and cooking gas prices, leaving kerosene untouched. Though short of the Petroleum Ministry’s reported recommendation of a hike of Rs 10 a litre for petrol, the increase is substantial by the UPA’s own standards and, perhaps, leaves room for a little rollback should the Left squeals in opposition. The last increase of just Rs 2 for petrol and Re 1 for diesel came in February when India imported oil at $67 a barrel. Now the import rate has surged to $124. However, the government is so apologetic about the increase that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh thought it fit to address the nation to explain the obvious, perhaps, to mollify the voter and the Left. Globally, oil prices have climbed up due to the rising demand (western analysts, as usual, blame India and China) and stagnant supplies. Though the world has enough energy reserves and alternative avenues, the cost of oil exploration has become prohibitive. The oil shock has rattled economies worldwide, though the shock is not as severe as it was in the 1970s. India is rather late in raising the oil prices. Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka have already cut oil subsidies while China has resorted to rationing supplies. Greens think high oil prices will cut consumption and pollution. The country is still insulating the oil users from the heat of market rates. The burden is being shared by the government, the oil companies, which suffered a daily loss of Rs 650 crore before the hike, and the public. It is fair enough. The immediate fallout of the oil price hike was a 448-point fall in the BSE Sensex. The cost of transported goods, particularly food, and personal fuel budget will mount. Inflation can also be expected to go double digit in the coming weeks, causing a slowdown to the economic growth. By abolishing the Customs duty and slashing the excise duty, the Centre has signalled the states to cut their oil levies. The taxes on oil in India are among the highest in the world. |
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Dark horse wins BARAK Obama has won the Democratic nomination. He did it against heavy odds. When he began his campaign 17 months ago, he was considered an also-ran. But as he won primary after primary, he showed the potential of a dark horse. Yet, many wondered whether white-majority America would ever accept a black President. And he had a formidable rival in Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has an illustrious career as a Senator, a former First Lady and women’s rights activist. But he proved the pandits wrong when he won even in states considered impenetrable for him. In fact, he garnered votes from every section of the people — white, black, Hispanic, youth, women and old. The turnaround in the fortunes of the two candidates is borne out by the fact that Hillary, who at one time offered to take him as her running mate, will today be happy to play second fiddle to him. Whether Obama chooses her as his running mate or not, the words of praise Hillary had for his leadership suggests that a rapprochement may indeed be possible. In any case, the US has the great tradition of political parties rallying behind their candidates once the nomination exercise is over. Even so, the two will be a great and historic pair. The US never had a black president and a lady vice-president. Such a possibility is bound to cheer a lot of people cutting across religious, racial, ethnic and gender divisions. The twosome will be a deadly combination against the Republicans. One aspect that stood Obama in good stead in the campaign is that he does not carry any baggage. Age is on his side and he is able to unite heterogeneous sections of the voters. Obama now has to make up for the loss of precious time to challenge Republican nominee John McCain, who has a problem in defending the George Bush regime. With increasing evidence that the Bush regime has been less than truthful in its conduct of foreign policy vis-à-vis Iraq, the Republicans are hardly in a position to offer to start on a clean slate. Obama, who is known for his trenchant criticism of the US involvement in Iraq, can afford to promise a break with the past. When the fight is between a cold warrior and new-generation leader, the natural advantages are to the latter. And with a person like Hillary Clinton by his side, it will be a cakewalk for the Democrats, come November. |
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Criminal ministers INITIALLY,
politicians rise to power on the strength of their backers with a criminal background. With the passage of time, many criminals themselves manage to get elected. The rogues’ list is pretty long. Even longer is the list of woes that the country is facing because of them. Some such worthies also manage to become ministers. Strangely, even the elevation does not bring their activities to an end. That is why we continue to have the ugly spectacle of serving ministers being arrested in criminal cases. The latest such shameful incident took place when Assam Education Minister Ripun Bora was arrested by sleuths of the CBI in Delhi on Tuesday on the charge of trying to bribe the CBI officer investigating a murder case against him with Rs 10 lakh. Interestingly, the state CID had given Bora a clean chit in the murder of Daniel Topno, the district president of the All-Assam Tea Tribe Students Union in 2000. The CBI was asked to inquire into the case by the Guwahati High Court. Topno was Bora’s rival candidate during the 1996 assembly polls. Bora’s arrest for trying to bribe the CBI officer tells its own story. Although Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has sacked him, he cannot escape responsibility for giving a coterie of young ministers, including Bora, a free hand and turning a blind eye to their excesses. What is alarming is that such incidents are coming to light a little too often and in too many places. Only a few days ago, a Madhya Pradesh minister had to resign following an income tax raid on his brother’s residence. Last month, a newly inducted Bihar minister had to quit after it was found that he was chargesheeted by the State Vigilance Bureau in 1990 in a case relating to the purchase of poor quality pipes. Then there was the infamous Madhumita murder case against Uttar Pradesh MLA Manikant Tripathi and his wife. The unthinkable will continue to happen till all parties come together to prevent criminals from contesting elections. |
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After all, there is but one race — humanity. — H.L. Mencken
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Anaemic economy
NO economic development can take place in the absence of adequate financial resources that the country and the states acquire primarily through taxes, state earnings, grants and borrowings. The economies of the states are primarily dependent upon direct and indirect taxes, share in central taxes, special grants, funds from centrally sponsored schemes, state earnings and borrowings. State enterprises and the services that levy service charges do not show positive balance in totality. Grants too come from the tax revenue realised by the Central Government. The borrowings also in their penultimate incidence become the liability of the tax payers. Thus, the burden of any expenditure made and liability incurred by the Centre or the states is finally borne by honest tax-payers. Tax evaders de facto transfer their share of liability to the honest taxpayers. The money borrowed today has to be repaid tomorrow. The repayments are to be ultimately made out of the tax collections and the revenue earnings of the state. Unfortunately, the state earnings are at best negligible, if not in negative, due to the indifference and lack of accountability on the part of the managements of these enterprises. Thus, in the end, the total burden falls on the honest tax-payers, who pay in the form of direct and indirect taxes. It is shocking that in India these tax-payers do not get their due respect from the taxation authorities and are often treated like the criminals appearing before police station house officers. If the repayment of the interest and the capital are made out of fresh borrowings, which is the case most of the time, this further escalates the debt burden. If the process goes on unchecked and is not reversed, the state may ultimately land in a debt-trap. The state of Punjab is a classical case before us. From the year 1987-88 the revenue expenditure of the state has been exceeding its revenue receipts. By 1996-97 the annual revenue deficit had increased to over Rs 1357 crore. By 2001-02, the revenue deficit increased to over Rs 3781 crore. The average revenue expenditure of the Akali-BJP government over five years exceeded its revenue receipts by over Rs 2591 crore per annum. The next government clocked the average revenue deficit of Rs 3027 per annum during its tenure. The revenue deficit in the year 2008-09, budgeted at Rs 4963 crore, escalates the debt burden of the state to around Rs 53000 crore. The annual interest burden of this debt amounts to about Rs 4500 crore per annum. Add to it a similar amount of undifferentiated subsidies provided by the state. The state, after meeting the liabilities of interest on borrowed funds, unwarranted and undifferentiated subsidies and committed expenditure, is left with no financial resources of its own for development purposes. The total capital borrowings, in principle meant for development, go towards meeting the interest liability of the state. Thus, the state is virtually in a debt-trap and is suffering from financial anaemia. The state is not able to use even matching grants for lack of funds for state share. Resort to selling of state properties for the purpose is an untenable alternative and indicates the bankruptcy of the mind of the policy makers. Disposing of assets is no replacement for the flow of capital. As and when the Sixth Central Pay Commission recommendations are accepted and implemented, unless the Centre comes to its aid, the state budget will go haywire and grossly deficient. Thus, the state will go bankrupt, which will be its own creation. On the expenditure side, there is no evidence of any sort of prudence being observed by the political leadership. Irrespective of the political party in power, they had been astonishingly prompt to raise their salaries and perks unanimously within minutes of the proposals put in the Legislative Assembly. It is a different matter, coming out of the Assembly, the Opposition leadership showed unabashed hypocrisy of being opposed to such raises. These representatives of the poor unhesitatingly adopt an ostentatiously affluent lifestyle at state expenses. Look at the number of cars being used undeservingly by their families, the paraphernalia of security used as the status symbol and pilot cars deployed as they touch boundaries of various districts during their itineraries in addition to the escort vehicles deployed. Crores of rupees go down the drain just to satisfy their bloated ego and lust for status symbols. Why can the representatives of the poor not live in a comparatively simpler lifestyle with a minimum burden on the public exchequer that is acutely suffering from financial anaemia? Why are they so scared of and want to be overly protected from the people they represent? It had come as a rude shock to the people that even the members of the SGPC, purported to be a religious body, had developed appetite for beacon lights on their cars. Once a person has the beacon light, natural corollary is security guards and gunmen! Ironically, their political bosses are overly eager to yield to these idiosyncrasies out of political interests. Punjab is notorious for tax evasion. Haryana, which has a comparatively lower per capita state GDP, has higher tax realisation and a higher growth rate in tax collection. Seeing this situation, I was asked by the previous government to explore the possibility of mobilisation of additional resources for the state. The report, which we submitted, showed additional mobilisation of Rs 2556 crore without much of additional imposition of taxes. This report, in spite of solid promises made, was never seriously considered or even discussed. One of the recommendation related to the check on the evasion of passenger tax on the buses plying without a permit in the state. At that time on an average eight to nine buses were plying illegally against one permit. The Delhi transport undertaking had five permits and was plying 25 buses. Imagine the evasion! The passenger tax was 6.50 paise per kilometre per passenger! We designed a system that would easily plug this leakage. But transporters/ evaders were sitting right there in the Council of Ministers. It was, therefore, not to be and they did not let any thing happen. We made a statement in the report that businessmen and industrialists were blaming that tax inspectors at the grassroots level did not let them pay the taxes honestly and were concerned mainly with their gratifications. The report suggested measures to provide incentives to the tax-payers, rugged computerisation of the accounting and recording systems and also the system of accountability on the part of tax collecting authorities. Yet, not to speak of any implementation, no serious discussions were ever held on this report. The problem with our society is that the blood-suckers are a powerful force inside and outside the governing system and are anchored right inside the framework of the decision-making mechanism. They are sucking the economy pale and are rendering it anaemic and have brought our society to the brink of despair and helplessness. The prophesy of Jawaharlal Nehru has come true. He cautioned the nation that if the people did not remain vigilant, the political power and governance would slip into the hands of the overly rich, strong-muscled, loud-throated corrupt and criminals. What has happened in the panchayat elections in Punjab and also in West Bengal is not a mean proof of the situation we have landed into. Still more disquieting is the fact that right-minded people have lost their voice and feel intimidated while the blood-suckers are debilitating the anaemic economy and degrading society with impunity. The moot question is whether our democratic system will ever be able to throw up a leadership that would take society out of the quagmire of poverty, ignorance and despondency it has fallen into.n
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What’s the hurry?
Nowadays
everyone seems to be in a tearing hurry to get somewhere or to accomplish something. Day after day passes by as if in a whirl and one scarcely gets time to catch one’s breath when its time to set off again, for God-knows-where. Life has become such an unending race for most of us that one marvels at those who still haven’t succumbed to the temptation to jump onto the bandwagon. A recent visit to the hills provided one with much time for introspection and reflection. The unhurried, unruffled manner of the sweet hill folks was quite contagious and one felt compelled to follow suit, by lazing around for most of the day, switching off one’s cell-phone and taking things easy. Not that the hill people are inefficient by any means; in fact there is evidence to prove that they are quite result-oriented. But the paharis do seem to have fended off stress-inducing factors till now. Not so us plains people. No one really seems to have the time to pause and think. Some of us are quite obviously guiltier than others of being in a perpetual photo-finish race, but no one has remained entirely unaffected by the hustle and bustle that is part of life today. In fact, the whole of urban India seems to be in the twenty-twenty overs mode. Gone are the days when families used to visit each other and spend hours chatting each other up, an activity which would be punctuated by many cups of tea and sumptuous pakoras. Nowadays one tends to meet friends and associates only at parties and social-dos. A “Hi” here and a smile there – that’s what these occasions are about. Breakfast time is one occasion when the action is at its most frenzied. One arrives for the meal from one’s bedroom, while still in the process of fastening something or the other, munches a few morsels precisely two-and-a-half times each, gulps down some milk and whizzes off to work after a quick gesture of goodbye towards one’s wife. The latter in turn holds her head in dismay and advises one to turn up a few minutes earlier the next day, so that one may breakfast at relative leisure. Between numerous early morning calls and the need to devour a glut of heavy newspapers, however, the same story is repeated the next day, more protests from the loved one not withstanding! A little birdie tells me that the same story is repeated in many other households. It seems that each of us has to reach some unknown destination in life and therefore needs to be running all the time. By the time we shall realise it however, time would have been unforgiving and we would have forgotten to spend quality time with ourselves and with the family, while we were firing on all cylinders. What really is the hurry, people? Let’s slow down while we can.n
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Choking planet Presently, global warming, extinction of biodiversity, worldwide food shortages and spiralling food grain prices have resurrected the spectre of a hungry world, roiled with unrest and political upheavals. The World Environment Day (WED), commemorated each year on June 5, is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and public action. The city of Wellington, New Zealand, is hosting this year’s WED. The slogan is “CO2, Kick the Habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy.” Air pollution, in the form of particulate matter or sulphur dioxide, ozone or nitrogen dioxide, has a serious impact on health. It has been estimated that in the European Union, the smallest particulate matter alone (PM 2.5) causes an estimated loss of life expectancy of 8.6 months for the average European. Air pollution is estimated to cause approximately two million premature deaths worldwide per year. More than half of this burden is borne by people in developing countries. The present atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about 385 parts per million (ppm) by volume. Future levels are expected to rise due to ongoing burning of fossil fuels and land-use change, in particular deforestation. Fossil fuel burning has produced approximately three-quarters of the increase in CO2 over the past 20 years. Although it is difficult to connect specific weather events to global warming, an increase in global temperatures may in turn cause broader changes, including glacial retreat, Arctic shrinkage, and worldwide sea level rise. Changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation may result in flooding and drought. There may also be changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events that affect changes in agricultural yields, addition of new trade routes, reduced summer streamflows, bio-species extinctions, and increases in the range of disease vectors. Three species every hour are being wiped off from the earth due to pollution, it has been revealed at a UN conference to save wildlife, held in May this year at Bonn, Germany. Recently, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment indicated that climate change is likely to become the dominant direct driver of biodiversity loss by the end of the century. Current climate change estimates predict increases in temperatures of 1.4°C to 5.8°C by 2100. This will affect species in several ways such as: changes in distribution; increased extinction rates; changes in reproduction timings; and changes in length of growing seasons for plants. The rich variety of life on Earth has always had to deal with a changing climate. However, the unprecedented pace of change we are presently experiencing is so rapid that a great number of species cannot adapt fast enough to the new conditions, or move to regions more suited for their survival due to habitat fragmentation. In fact, recent estimates show that up to a million species may become extinct as a result of climate change. Most of the world’s food and medicines come initially from nature, and dwindling species put human survival at risk. “Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease and where water is in irregular or short supply,” says WWF director general James Leape. The amount of rain may not have increased substantially, but surely the amount of precipitation (may be in lesser days) is increasing. Similarly, drought conditions are also on the rise. It rains for fewer days but much more heavily, causing floods. These have increased the cases of vector-borne diseases like malaria, dengue, chikungunya and water-born diseases like typhoid, jaundice, diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis etc on one hand and also diseases like respiratory disorders due to bad air quality in dry weather on the other hand. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) under the Ministry of Environment and Forests, has identified 24 problem areas on the basis of air and water pollution by industries and ranked Talcher, a coalmine hub in the Angul district of Orissa, as the most polluted place in the country. The board will prepare Environment Management Plans (EMPs) for these regions soon. In the national capital, Delhi, Najafgarh Drain Basin Area in the southwest is the 17th most polluted place in the country, CPCB said. It has identified 17 categories of polluting industries located along the rivers and lakes and in problem areas. According to the board, aluminium and cement industries are the top two polluters in the country. CPCB said it has been conducting inspections to ensure compliance by industrial units of various pollution control norms. Presently, Kolkata has surpassed Delhi as the most polluted metro in India. We are discussing the price rise while scientists are debating measures for clean energy. Get me any party which has a line in its election manifesto underlining green energy targets or a commitment to renewable energy plans. Wind farms, hydroelectric and solar energy initiatives attract less attention. Our priority should have been life. But we are stuck discussing death and the darker sides of it. While humans have been heedless in making Global Warming a reality, nature has given Earth a break. Nations and leaders may get a rare chance to sink their differences and respond to climate change as latest research shows that natural phenomena could keep the Earth’s temperatures in check for the next 10 years. The 10-yr window, beginning 2010, will not last for ever. And from 2020 onwards, temperatures will begin to rise again. But till then, phenomena like cooler North Atlantic waters could counter heating up of Earth due to greenhouse gases. The heartening news has been published in the latest issue of Nature Journal. The report says Earth could benefit from a phase where certain phenomena cancel out the effects of GH gases. It’s known that though increasing GH gas emissions push temperatures upwards, the warming curve is not smooth – there would be periods when processes aid the heating, while the opposite happens during other periods. But unless we take steps now to curb warming, our way of life, our planet, and our children are all in grave danger. The writer is a senior Research Officer in the Planning Commission |
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Unforeseen aftershocks of disasters On April 26, 1986, a mighty explosion tore the roof off reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. Three weeks later, with radioactive fall-out now affecting parts of Europe and North America, and large areas of Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia severely contaminated, the then Soviet leader called for an end to the official culture of secrecy. Within six years the Soviet Union was no more. Some trace the collapse of the Soviet Union directly to the policy of glasnost, declared by Mikhail Gorbachev in the face of the outcry over Chernobyl. Even incomplete transparency, they say, quite simply left the system unsustainable. If you accept this, then the governments in China and Burma could be in for a difficult time. In Burma, the military regime took weeks to admit the scale of the havoc wreaked by cyclone Nargis. Even when it belatedly came close to doing so, it postponed the arrival of foreign aid, and refused outright any assistance that involved foreign troops. There are now reports that, even in a country sealed off from the world, bereaved families are starting to voice their anger against a military regime still insisting that it did a good job of disaster relief. Their discontent is also said to have reached Rangoon. The repression unleashed during the monks’ protests may not keep its power to generate fear for ever. The approach of the Chinese authorities after the Sichuan earthquake was unusual, and admirable, in its openness. Foreign assistance was welcomed, and the welcome was extended to teams from the Japanese military. China’s political leaders went, too, and, in another unprecedented move, declared a day of national mourning in memory of the dead. These efforts to comply with the modern political canon, however, may not be enough to guarantee stability in the longer term. Two key pillars of the Beijing regime are now threatened by the aftershocks: the one-child policy and accelerated infrastructure development that sets out to transform nature on the grand scale. Whole schools were buried, and with them the individual hopes of all their parents. They had one chance to continue their line, and a natural disaster has left them bereft, its destructive effect exacerbated by shoddy workmanship, negligence and fraud. Never again will the government’s promises be trusted. No wonder that officials have now called for media coverage of the earthquake to be curbed. As with Chernobyl, the danger to the regimes in Burma and China derives less from immediate protest by disgruntled survivors than from an accumulation of discontent and distrust elsewhere. The danger stems from ordinary families, who will see only cynicism or impotence from the government, where once they had expected protection. However cruel and arbitrary, successive Soviet purges could be explained by recourse to an ill-conceived greater good; disregard for the children – all the children – put Chernobyl in a different league. Exposed to flood, quake and cynical government indifference, millions of Burmese and many millions of Chinese could reach a similar conclusion. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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How Hillary Clinton got it all wrong It seems an eternity ago, but as recently as October, the Democratic nomination for 2008 seemed to be Hillary Clinton’s for the asking. So what was her biggest campaign blunder? Her campaign team, much of it battlehardened in Bill Clinton’s two successful White House runs, made many surprising errors. The biggest strategic mistake however, may have been to assume that everything would be wrapped up quickly. In the past that had indeed been the case. This time however, a third-place finish in Iowa on 3 January, behind not only Obama but also John Edwards, destroyed any aura of invincibility. So she underestimated Obama? Absolutely. She and her advisers could not imagine the extent to which he would capture the imagination of young voters. Only belatedly moreover did they realise that the Obama campaign was one of the best-run in modern times. Unlike the Clinton team, Obama’s advisers quickly grasped the importance of caucuses (by which delegates are awarded in 16 states and territories). Still less did they imagine how Obama would turn the internet into the biggest money gusher in United States’ political history, enlisting an unprecedented army of small donors who could be tapped for funds time and again. In the later stages of the campaign, Hillary was hopelessly out-raised. Twice she had to contribute millions from her own pocket to keep her campaign solvent. Florida and Michigan didn’t help either, and this time Clinton is not to blame. Clinton gained a paltry 23 delegates, a third of what she might have done had the two states followed the rules and their votes been counted. Did the PR system of awarding delegates hurt her? Undoubtedly. The system introduced by the Democrats back in 1982, of scrupulous proportional allocation of delegates, plus 800-odd “superdelegates” to act as tie-breakers, makes it much harder for a candidate to quickly run up the number needed for victory in a close fought contest. It’s worth pointing out that had the Democrats operated a winner-take-all, no-superdelegate system like the Republicans, she would long since have wrapped up the nomination. Remember, she won almost all the biggest primaries: New York, California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, not to mention Florida and Michigan. Obama’s only big state victory was on his home turf of Illinois. Was she thwarted because she was a woman? Many diehard supporters claim so, arguing that by comparison Obama was given a free ride by a biased media. But the argument doesn’t stand up to serious scrutiny. The truth is simpler, that the media love novelty. Obama was new, from a different generation, she was old hat. Yes, not much dirt was raked up on Obama – but maybe there wasn’t much there in the first place. Studies show that the two had about the same favourable/ unfavourable proportion of news stories and items. Nor is there real evidence to suggest that Americans are more genetically indisposed to elect a woman leader than the people of Britain, Israel and India, to name just three countries that have had female prime ministers. Far more important were her shortcomings as a candidate. Like her husband, she’s an expert on policy detail. But she lacks his (and Obama’s) ability to electrify an audience. She never laid to rest her biggest single problem, her October 2002 Senate vote in favour of the hugely unpopular Iraq war, which Obama opposed from the outset. Also you were never sure which Hillary was running, reinforcing the impression she would say anything to win. But her biggest problem, maybe, was a man. So Bill cost her the nomination? At the very least, the man supposed to be the best natural politician of his era didn’t help. His outburst in South Carolina, likening Obama to a “routine” black candidate like Jesse Jackson, alienated the black vote (once a pillar of the Clinton coalition). Other periodic eruptions, and some blatantly false claims, suggested the master had lost his touch. In today’s electronic universe, where a gaffe can cross the country – and the globe – in a matter of minutes, the impact of such blunders is magnified. More subtly, her husband inevitably was a reminder of the Clinton restoration that lay in wait. Many superdelegates, most of them high party officials and elected representatives, were uncomfortable at how the Clinton machine dominated the party. In the early days, those who declared their support did so for Hillary. But Bill’s mis-steps, coupled with Obama’s steady ascent, turned the tide in the latter’s favour, as the Democratic establishment scented the end of the Clinton era. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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