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CPM in strange company Keep Speaker above politics |
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ISI must be tamed
Eyeing the next polls
Two portraits of character
“Goodbye from the world’s biggest
polluter” Free power and water turning
into tragedy
Corrections and clarifications
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CPM in strange company IN their hatred for anything American, the Marxists are ready to sup with anyone. They are ready for floor coordination with even the BJP to defeat the Congress-led UPA. Ironically, it was to prevent the same BJP from forming a government that the Left parties led by Big Brother CPM supported the UPA four years ago. Not just coordination alone, the CPM is ready to go a long way with the BJP if the views attributed to CPM Politburo member Biman Bose are true. CPM leader Sitaram Yechury has already spoken in strange dialectical terms about the journey being more important than by what class and with whom it was accomplished. However, party General Secretary Prakash Karat, who had a highly publicised meeting with UP Chief Minister Mayawati to seek her support, has put all this in the shade. For a party which claimed until the other day that communalism and casteism were the twin dangers facing the nation and never approved of the caste-based mobilisation of parties like the Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal, it was surprising indeed that Mr Karat saw the BSP as a potential ally. To please Ms Mayawati, CPI leader A.B. Bardhan has done some CBI-bashing by questioning the disproportionate assets case against her. He should have remembered that a panel that included the Leader of Opposition had chosen the CBI Director and that her explanation that the massive wealth she had acquired was all gifted by her partymen and relations did not carry conviction. The Supreme Court has also been seized of the question. What’s more, suggestions have been made that the BSP could head the Third Front with which the Left could have an understanding in the future. That the CPM has no compunction about exploiting the communal dimension of the Indo-US nuclear deal — that it is supposedly anti-Muslim — has been borne out by the way it has been going about drumming up support for its stand that the nuclear deal is the worst calamity that can befall the nation. When anger and frustration cloud a party’s thinking, it can lead to situations like the one the CPM and its allies have created for themselves and the nation. It is an irony that the Left parties have the BJP and the BSP on their side as they campaign against a government they had themselves helped to form.
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Keep Speaker above politics The manner in which the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been exerting pressure on Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to quit his post following the Left’s withdrawal of support to the UPA government over the nuclear deal is constitutionally wrong and improper. By including Mr Chatterjee’s name in the MPs’ list presented to the President, the Left has dragged the Speaker’s office into a controversy which should have been avoided in the larger interest of parliamentary democracy. True, Mr Chatterjee has been elected to the Lok Sabha on a CPM ticket from Bolpur in West Bengal. However, once elected, the Speaker does not represent any party and there is no constitutional hindrance to Mr Chatterjee’s continuance as Speaker. If the Lok Sabha is dissolved, he ceases to be an MP, but the Speaker does not vacate his office and continues in office till before the first meeting of the next House. In their anxiety to muster strength, the Left has done considerable harm to the Speaker by dragging his name. Mr Prakash Karat and his comrades would do well to keep this high office above partisan politics. Moreover, as Mr Chatterjee has said in Kolkata on Sunday, he was not nominated to the Speaker’s post by the CPM. His election as Speaker was unanimous as all parties had accepted him. In the last four-and-a-half years, Mr Chatterjee maintained utmost impartiality and decorum of the House while conducting the proceedings. Though he often failed to check unruly scenes on both sides, nobody has ever accused him of taking sides. The Left’s mounting pressure on Mr Chatterjee to quit his post is in total disregard of his high constitutional position. There is a need to preserve and protect the apolitical character of this office. The founding fathers had recognised the Speaker’s importance in a democratic set-up. As Parliament represents the nation, the Speaker is regarded as a symbol of nation’s freedom and liberty. In the interest of parliamentary democracy, the Left should desist from demanding Mr Chatterjee’s resignation. Clearly, it must not politicise this exalted office for partisan ends.
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ISI must be tamed The destructive activities of Pakistan’s external intelligence network, the ISI, have acquired alarming proportions. Its destabilising role has come under sharp focus again after the discovery of its hand in the suicide bomb blast outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul last Monday, leading to over 50 casualties. As India’s National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan asserts, there is intelligence to prove that the suicide-bomber who drove the explosive-laden vehicle near the embassy gate was associated with the ISI. Nobody can dispute when he argues that “the ISI needs to be destroyed” to prevent the entire South Asia from sliding into chaos. Pakistan itself cannot be a gainer if peace and stability suffer in the region because of the ISI. India knows better than any other country how the ISI has been the most dangerous source of death and destruction on the subcontinent. The terrorist violence in Jammu and Kashmir and the insurgency in India’s Northeast are not coming to an end mainly because of the ISI’s role. It has been behind the numerous bomb blasts in the past in other parts of the country also. The ISI’s modules have been unearthed at many places in India. There is no change in its style of functioning even after the India-Pakistan composite dialogue process having made good progress. The ISI is always headed by a top Pakistan Army general, but it has often been operating almost independently. In fact, it has often used jihadi elements for its purposes. Mr Narayanan has pointed out that there is need “to make a distinction” between the forces behind the ISI and those in Pakistan carrying on the peace process with India. The ISI had also been extending all kinds of support to Taliban activists and other militants in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. It was strange to find the ISI helping the Taliban in Pakistan and Islamabad entering into peace deals with the militants. The US-led multinational drive for peace in Afghanistan cannot bear fruit so long as the ISI, which actually fathered the Taliban, remains intact and untamed.
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Translations (like wives) are seldom strictly faithful if they are in the least attractive. — Roy Campbell
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Eyeing the next polls
However the United Progressive Alliance’s vote of confidence goes on July 22 — the ruling establishment seems to have an edge — the significance of the manoeuvrings in all political camps is that strategists are looking at the post-vote election scene. It is clear that elections are on the horizon, give or take a few months. The basic players remain the same, with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) forming two conglomerations aided by regional parties. The Left parties are grouped around the Communist Party (Marxist) at present running two states, in Kerala in an inevitable coalition. The UNPA (the ‘n’ denoting National) stands naked after the defection of the Samajwadi Party (SP), each of its constituents now having to decide what arrangement is to their advantage. Ms Mayawati was perhaps the first to read the tealeaves by withdrawing the support of her 17 Bahujan Samaj Party MPs to the UPA government. After the SP went over to the UPA, she termed the Indo-US nuclear deal anti-Muslim, hoping to wean away some votes from the SP in UP. The CPM leader, Mr Prakash Karat, made the next move by teaming up with Ms Mayawati. After all, the UNPA is a weak reed to lean upon. While each grouping will decide sooner or later where its post-vote interests lie, there is a sense of impermanence in the relationships being forged. Obviously, one of the reasons that have led Mr Karat to shower praise on Ms Mayawati for opposing the nuclear deal is to preclude the BSP from teaming up with the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh, as it has on more than one occasion in the past. But even in a sea of chameleons, she has proved particularly adept and cynical in changing sides, should it serve her interests. After all, she had no compunction in lauding and supporting Mr Narendra Modi after the Gujarat pogrom. Is there a pattern then in the new political picture that is forming? Given that there is no short-term alternative to the two conglomerates and the Communist parties and their associates occupy a distinct space, how do the rest fit in? If the two conglomerates can be broadly described as centre-left and centre-right and the Communists obviously on the left, what spectrum do the others occupy? It has been said often enough that in a country of great inequalities and much poverty like India, everyone is a socialist and vaguely left. Disregarding such fashionable leanings, most of the smaller parties are by their nature state-or-language-specific — the two Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu, the Telugu Desam in Andhra and the Akali Dal in Punjab. Others, such as party offshoots of the Janata Dal (U) or the Janata Dal (S) or the Biju Janata Dal are, for practical purposes, confined to certain areas, usually the bailiwicks of their dominant leaders. The value of the smaller parties goes up in a delicately balanced political scenario such as the looming trust vote or in making up the numbers in securing a majority in a state. They have no pronounced ideologies and can camouflage their opportunistic actions in the noblest of motives. The emphasis on sub-nationalism in Gujarat and West Bengal falls in another category. The gargantuan size of some state Cabinets is an advertisement for the price paid to induce defections or lure so-called Independents. Some parties have retained an aversion to the BJP for its Hindutva philosophy, generally construed as an anti-Muslim, anti-minority bent whatever justifications are offered on the party’s behalf. But the BJP is no longer a pariah party, having been baptised by Morarji Desai’s Janata Party and anointed by Jayaprakash Narayan. The Sangh Parivar often earns opprobrium for the conduct of its goon component, but such conduct is seldom punished. Destroying public property to vent anger or to make a dubious point on art has become the hallmark of our time. The BJP takes much pride in helping constitute a two-party system after the unchallenged reign of the Independence party, the Congress, came to an end. This is true up to a point, but the evolving pattern is of fragmentation, rather then party building. More and more offshoots peel off a party. In many instances, the leader is the party. And all too frequently politicians tend to take the short-cut by accentuating the specifics of a language and a region. The tragedy is that while the BJP is inclined to adopt more right-wing positions on religion and culture and the Congress mouths old slogans without much conviction, the Communists remain steeped in their quaint beliefs and symbols (Stalin retains primacy in their pantheon of gods) their old comrades shed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. They seem unwilling or unable to move with the times, with their Chinese mentors having taken an entirely different road in reaching the citadel of capitalism. There seems little prospect then of rapid evolution of the party political system in India. At least for some leaders, the aim of shaping the BJP into an Indian equivalent of a typical European Christian democratic party is frustrated by the excesses of the Sangh Parivar and the dominant, if undefined, influence of its mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Even Mr L.K. Advani, who swears allegiance to the RSS, has had occasion publicly to complain of its conduct in the past. Despite Jawaharlal Nehru’s long tutorials to his party men, the bulk of Congressmen and women remains a socially conservative force. And their capacity for independent and fresh thinking was stunted by the nature of the party as it has evolved. With a family guarding the party’s legacy, loyalty comes before innovation. It is so much safer mouthing old slogans and being on the right side of the leadership that counts than to try to chart a new path. In any event, a newly empowered consumer society offers mouth-watering material rewards. Elections are coming, but don’t expect a revolution in India. It promises more of the
same.
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Two portraits of character
When she woke up her husband was gone, leaving a note on the bed, leaving them all to winds and gods. He had brought his wife and five little children from Madras to Calcutta but failed to get a job. They had all been starving. She looked around — nothing to eat, no money. She had five children to feed in an alien city. Slowly, determination came over her face. She must fight it out. That was nearly 60 years ago. She persuaded a few neighbours to loan her some vessels, daal, etc, promising that she would home-deliver quality iddlies and vadas (to begin with) every morning. She also obtained food for her children, as an "advance payment" for the month. She was a good cook. Her popularity grew rapidly, as also her business from the little garage. In five years, she bought up the front portion of the building. Later, a chain of restaurants named after her husband (who, if alive, never contacted her) became famous for their quality products and service in the city. Two of her children went abroad for studies. They all lived in prosperity. This no-nonsense woman had a keen sense of justice. Fondly addressed as "Pati-ma" (grandmother) by her now vast number of admirers, this lion-hearted lady with a booming voice would readily reach out to any family in distress. Getting jobs, sorting out family disputes, getting medical or financial aid -- her concrete help with compassion even to strangers became a byword. She brought sunshine into lives around. And, she visited everyday the hotel where she had once begun it all, checked the standard of food served, and chatted affectionately with the customers. "After all, this is the temple where God rescued me", she once told my mother whom she treated like a daughter. Pati-ma's hearty laughter rings in my ears even today, nearly 40 years after her death. Mr Shetty, her contemporary, came to Bombay as a ticketless traveller and worked as a labourer. In two decades he managed to own a hugely popular restaurant, a lodge, and a goods transport service. A gentle, principled man, Shetty saab became a boon to his community. I lived in his lodge for three years and tasted his nobility. He selected us on the basis of our background and attitude -- not our paying capacity. From cooks to waiters and managers, scores of his staff were treated virtually like his children. An account of their monthly emoluments was kept (they could draw money only after convincing him of the need). They got provident fund, bonus, free medical treatment, etc. He would give them pocket money for recreation on Mondays, when his restaurant (famed for quality) was closed. He picked up many brighter ones among his waiters for training, added his "loan" to their savings lying with him, and bought them partnerships in small suburbun restaurants, setting them on the road to prosperity. No wonder, his employees worshipped the very ground he walked on. He had a strong sense of justice too. He became the chief of hoteliers' association, and commanded immense respect. Disputing parties came to him for arbitration. Like Pati-ma, Mr Shetty too was not "educated". Crisis, courage and success enhanced their compassion. Many such people with a sterling character live among us. We take them for granted, and forget them soon — unless they become
celebrities!
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“Goodbye from the world’s biggest
polluter” US President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.
As he prepared to fly out from his final G8 summit in Japan, he told his fellow leaders: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” President Bush made the private joke in the summit’s closing session, senior sources said yesterday. His remarks were taken as a two-fingered salute from the President from Texas who is wedded to the oil industry. He had given some ground at the summit by saying he would “seriously consider” a 50 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. But green groups had protested that the summit was a missed opportunity to secure the radical reductions in carbon emissions that were needed to reduce global warming. China and India, who were among the emerging economies invited to attend the G8, refused to sign up to binding agreements without firmer commitments from the US and the other industrialised nations to cut their CO2 emissions. However, there was progress towards a deal on the world trade talks in Geneva. On the final day of their three-day summit, the G8 countries agreed to instruct their negotiators to make every effort to secure a deal when talks resume on 21 July. Although a similar call by the G8 summit two years ago failed to break the deadlock in the seven-year trade talks, officials are more confident that this month’s negotiations will be successful. They say there is a growing recognition that it will be much harder to secure a deal after a new US President takes office next January because of pressures to protect American farmers during this year’s election campaign – and that a new global trade framework may never be struck. Mr Bush gave his strongest support for an immediate agreement to his fellow G8 leaders. “We were looking for a signal from Bush and we got one,” one British source said. “It’s not in the bag but there is now a real push for a deal.” The talks will involve a complicated set of trade-offs between Europe, America, Latin America and India over farming and industrial subsidies and tariffs. Brazil, a possible stumbling block to a deal, raised the prospects of a breakthrough after its President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, met Gordon Brown yesterday on the margins of the summit. They issued a joint statement saying that the “window of opportunity” for an agreement is closing. They added: “The time for technical negotiations is drawing to an end. The key decisions now are political ones. We must act decisively now. If we don’t, we will be failing the world’s poor and destroying the best basis for continued economic growth in the future. The cost of failure is simply too great.” Brazil’s willingness to ease restrictions on imports of goods such as cars and chemicals from richer nations could hold the key to a successful deal if European nations accept cuts in support for their farmers in return. Mr Brown told a press conference that a trade agreement could save the average British household £200 a year by bringing down food prices and would also bring greater benefits to the world’s poorest countries, notably in Africa. He suggested that another potential obstacle to a deal – Nicolas Sarkozy – appeared to have been removed during the G8 meeting, when the French President rejected protectionist moves despite his criticism of Peter Mandelson, the EU’s trade commissioner and negotiator in the talks. The Prime Minister described the Geneva talks as “make or break”, adding: “If we fail this month to secure a trade agreement, it will not be easy to resume negotiations... We are at one minute to midnight.” The final day of the summit saw tensions over climate change between the G8 and eight other major economies invited to Japan to discuss a new global agreement. The other eight nations, including China and India, failed to sign up to the G8’s pledge to cut its carbon emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2050.
By arrangement with The Independent
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Free power and water turning into tragedy The excessive commercialisation of agriculture in Punjab is well known but just how much rent-seeking is going on and with what implications, is not so well known.
The recent scheme of the PSEB called the ‘own your tubewell’ (OYT) scheme is one such small but crucial example of how ruinous this rent-seeking has become. Under the scheme, any farmer could own his/her tube-well with electric connection, provided he/she has paid a refundable security deposit of Rs. 25,000 and paid for its installation cost. This includes not just digging of the borewell, putting in the submersible pumpset and the electric motor, but also buying and installing his/her own transformers and electric lines with poles and wires to the point of connection. Once this is done, the farmer is eligible to get an electric connection from the PSEB after he/she has paid the challan fee of Rs. 500. This is the ‘official’ version of the scheme and ‘officially’ it can cost anywhere between Rs. 60,000 to Rs. 2 lakh per tubewell connection, depending on the distance from where the electric lines are to be drawn. The official cost of the transformer is Rs. 45,000. Due to the limited number of electric connections planned to be released and the crucial role of excess groundwater with free power in making a traditional crop (read wheat-paddy/cotton) viable in a small farm, already there was rent-seeking going on in terms of ‘extra money’ being sought by government approved dealers of tubewell and electric equipment, and some of the PSEB’s lower and middle rank officials, wherein a transformer was being sold at Rs. 65,000 instead of the official price of Rs. 45,000, and more money was being asked for to get the connection files approved. A small farmer with up to 5 acres of land can apply for a connection under the OYT. Once he has paid the challan fee, security deposit and got the equipment installed at ‘market rates’ of the equipment, he is asked to get a ‘sealed transformer’. Otherwise, the transformer may not be approved by the PSEB local officials. But, the ‘transformer with a seal’ is priced at double the ‘official price’ of the same. Thus, a small farmer is made to invest Rs. 1-2 lakh on the tubewell and an equal amount to get it connected. The PSEB then decided to end the scheme with effect from June 1, 2008. But, that was the beginning of the ‘suicidal OYT’, for small farmers who had not been able to access electric connections for decades earlier, due to the ‘bigger getting best” and “better placed getting best’, syndrome. Farmers had invested money on tubewells and transformers which was a sunk cost if they could not afford ‘more money’ to get them connected. There have been cases of farmers committing suicides in some villages immediately after the news of the suspension of the scheme spread. Though the PSEB has ordered an enquiry into the OYT scam, those familiar with the working of the state machinery and the politics in the state have already concluded that no heads are going to roll except some scapegoats, as those involved are stakeholders in both the OYT rent-seeking as well as the government and the administration in the state. The booty of OYT is shared widely across various stakeholders in the scheme except the farmers. The farmers want the scheme to be restarted without realising the consequences it can have for their livelihoods and the local agro-ecology. The story of free power to agriculture in the state is a story of tragedy being written in different scripts again and again by the successive state governments. The farmers are desperate as access to free groundwater with free power is a licence to viable farming in the state in the short-term. The farmers are undermining themselves as it is not in their own long term interest to get free power or free water. No one knows how many more small farmers’ lives will have to be sacrificed before the farmers and the state government and the people realize the folly of free power and free water. In the longer term, ‘getting OYT’ or ‘not getting it’ amounts to only freedom to commit suicide later rather than sooner. It is unfortunate that no one in the state who matters, realises the long-term implications of the so-called farmer friendly policies of the state government. Let’s hope the ‘land of the five rivers’ does not turn out to be a ‘land of suicides of five acre farmers’.
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Delhi Durbar As the date for the confidence vote draws closer, the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), finds itself in the throes of an intense debate over defeating the UPA government on the floor of the Lok
Sabha. An important section in the party feels that the BJP should bide its time as things will only go from bad to worse for the Congress in the coming days, now that it has tied up with the Samajwadi Party. Its busybody general secretary Amar Singh has made it abundantly clear that their party will extract its price for bailing out the ruling coalition. Since the next Lok Sabha elections are less than a year away, this section in the BJP feels it should not make any serious effort to bring down the government at this stage. However, there is another section, which includes BJP’s Prime Minsiterial candidate
L.K. Advani, which is apparently very serious about bringing down the Government so that the general elections are held this year itself. According to the BJP grapevine, a number of astrologers have predicted that this year is the most auspicious period for Advani to become Prime Minister. Therefore, it is necessary from Advani’s point of view that elections are held this year itself.
Waiting for
Meira Social justice minister Meira Kumar was “unusually guarded” when questioned recently on the issue of the proposed income ceiling for the creamy layer for
OBCs. So much so, she hurriedly ended a press conference she had herself called after the the National Commission for Backward Classes
(NCBC) submitted its report on this critical issue. Hopeful that the minister will unravel the suspense about the reprot’s recommendations, the media waited outside her chamber for over an hour when she was meeting the commission members. At the end of a rather dramatic wait, marked by a struggle for space and repeated servings of refreshments, the media realized that colas were not worth the while after all. The minister finally surfaced from her “heavily-guarded” meet, and merely said: “We have received the recommendations and will examine them. I can’t say anything else as the document is confidential.” Well then, why the invitation for the press briefing, one was left wondering. Talk about injustice!
Big news This week, when the imposition of Governor’s rule in Jammu and Kashmir appeared imminent, mediapersons covering the home ministry kept their channels of communication open with concerned officials to know whether the J&K governor, N.N
Vohra, had sent his report recommending Central rule. A ministry official managed to fob off persistent journalists with a good natured ‘official’ remark: “If I reply with a ‘yes’, it is news for you and if I say ‘no’ it is bigger news for you. So let it be ‘no comments’.” The same night J& K was placed under Governor’s rule.
Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Aditi Tandon and Ajay Banerjee
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Corrections and clarifications
Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. We will carry corrections and clarifications, wherever necessary, every Tuesday. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Amar Chandel, Deputy Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the words “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is: H.K. Dua
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