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Dance of death Kosi’s
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Unwarranted
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Amartya Sen’s
formulation
A place to live
Advantage Zardari Nature in retreat:
Keep off the grass Delhi Durbar
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Kosi’s curse
PRIME MINISTER Minister Manmohan Singh has called the Bihar floods a national tragedy. One had expected that a calamity of this magnitude would be countered with a national-level rescue effort. But no urgency of that kind is visible anywhere in the state even 19 days after the floods, which are one of the worst in living memory. Millions of people are homeless and thousands are trapped. But neither the Bihar government nor the Centre has mounted a matching rehabilitation drive. The Prime Minister himself reacted only on August 28, full 10 days after the flood havoc. Very few military rescuers have been sent by New Delhi, and that too very late. There are no facilities to help trace missing people. Nor are there any trauma care facilities. Thousands of people fight for food packets. A few hundred of the strongest get them, while the weak and frail look on helplessly. The support from local government and panchayat institutions has collapsed. The Bihar police is nowhere to be seen at rescue and relief sites. What goes on in the name of relief is a national scandal, which must be probed. But before that, it is necessary to reach out to the people who may die for want of relief. While all such natural calamities are coolly palmed off as the curse of gods, the present one is mainly man-made. The officials responsible for maintaining the barrage whose breach caused the devastation did not act despite written warnings of its state of disrepair. Will the government take stringent action against them once the crisis is over? The chances are bleak. Floods are an annual feature in Bihar but no long-term perspective has ever been employed in tackling them. A dam was mooted on the Kosi river at Barahkhetra over 50 years ago. It could have controlled the monsoon water flow and irrigated 2.5 million hectares, besides producing over 3,000 MW of electricity. The estimated cost of the project in 1954 was Rs 100 crore. It was shelved because it was too “costly”. Will somebody count the cost of the current flood and at least now think of reviving the project? The chances of that too are bleak.
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Unwarranted leniency
THE award of five years of rigorous imprisonment to Sanjeev Nanda by Delhi’s Additional Sessions Judge in the BMW case is too minimal to meet the ends of justice. Considering the gravity of the offence, Nanda should have been given the maximum punishment of 10 years under Section 304 (Part II) IPC. Clearly, he deserved no leniency at all. In fact, Judge Vinod Kumar convicted him under this provision. It was not an ordinary case of a driver causing deaths by “rash and negligent act” under Section 304 (A) for which the maximum sentence is two years. An inebriated Nanda mowed down six persons, including three policemen. The evidence on record makes it clear that he was driving at great speed. Worse, he continued to drive though the windscreen had fragmented due to the impact of the collision. This not only demonstrated a high degree of recklessness but also suggested that Nanda was aware of the immense harm he was going to commit. The case is a typical example of how the high and the mighty have been subverting the criminal justice system all along. Sanjeev Nanda is the owner of a five-star hotel in Delhi. His father, Suresh Nanda, is an international arms dealer and his grandfather is Admiral S.M. Nanda, former Chief of Naval Staff. Small wonder that Nanda and his friends tried every trick to circumvent justice. There was no end to the witnesses’ flip-flops during the trial. While for one witness, the BMW car became a truck, for another, Sanjeev Nanda was just sitting in the back! On top of all this was the collusion between the prosecution and the defence counsel. The Delhi High Court called the bluff and barred two senior advocates — R.K. Anand and I.U. Khan —from practising for four months following an NDTV expose. Nanda may have the right to go on appeal against his conviction. But if the high and the mighty should be tamed for their abrasive conduct and debilitating effect on society, convicts like Nanda ought to be given exemplary punishment.
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“Do-so” is more important than “say-so.” — Pete Seeger
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Amartya Sen’s formulation That
“famines do not tend to occur in functioning democracies” is the famous two-decade-old formulation by the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen which he reiterated with same firmness in his speech at Hiren Mukherjee Memorial Lecture in Parliament Building last fortnight. Placing reliance on “reach of public reasoning” and the “role of the media” in galvanising general public into protest mode forcing governments to act, he said the achievement in preventing famines is a tribute not just to the institution of democracy, but also to the way this institution is used and made to function. The Nobel Laureate, however, lamented saying the present crowding out of political interest in the colossal and persistent deprivation of the underdogs of the Indian society through the dominance of more easily vocalisable current affairs (important as they may be) has a profound effect in weakening the pressure on the government to eradicate with the greatest of urgency the most gross and lasting injustice in India. “There is something peculiarly puzzling about the priorities that are reflected in what seems to keep us awake at night” he says. Sen’s puzzle about wrong priorities shows his concern but his excessive reliance on the two functions of democracy — public reasoning and the role of the media — seems misplaced and, therefore, therein lies the real answer to his puzzle. In the past 20 years since the time Sen gave this formulation about famine, the public reasoning and the media have undergone major changes. Besides, if today Bengal-like famine (in the classical use of the term) does not visit us, it is because of several different and known factors, and not only because democratic institutions are used and made to function. We may not have famines but we do have a constant drop in caloric intake by ever-growing poor making them victim of slow deaths. Foodgrain availability per day per person has dropped from 510 gm in 1971 to 430 gm today. Availability of dal stands half in the same period. In Bihar “Mushahars” (dalits) eat rat not out of urge for rodent meat but just to survive. Leave aside Kalahandi (Orissa) , even in Bundelkhand (UP) there are reported hunger deaths more often today although doctors ascribe ailment as the cause of death. What needs to be analysed is why democracies do not tolerate mass starvation whereas they are tolerant to mass poverty even of most dreaded nature. In India one farmer kills himself every eight hours with total number going up to nearly 1.5 lakhs in the past 10 years although the government tally is just one-fourth of this. And still, there was not a single nationwide agitation by any political parties — carriers of public reasoning. It never entered the domain of public reasoning so seriously as to create a mass awakening and resultant protest crippling the government. Yes, the same public reasoning (in an us-vs-them form) got fully galvanised when Ganesh drank milk, when a lecherous father-in-law raped his son’s wife and when land to Amarnath Shrine issue came to the fore. Hindutva forces on one side and Muslims of Kashmir backed by militants on the other have disturbed peace in the battered state. Mutually hostile and contradictory public reasoning threatened a nationwide communal conflagration. Take another example. Four-fifths of people in Bihar live on Rs 17 a day but the champion of “social justice forces” Lalu Yadav hardly launched any major agitation and never did any think to change this situation when in government. Yes, he was quite “vocal” when ban on Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) was lifted by a high court order and vehemently critical when ban was re-imposed by none other the Supreme Court. He gave a certificate to SIMI saying it was not involved in terrorism and if the government bans SIMI it should also disband the RSS. The Congress-led UPA Government ignores SC judgement by not hanging Afzal Guru although the issue has nothing to do with any real public cause. Were they all indicators of correct public reasoning? If Sen feels that famine means emaciated bodies of a few hundred or thousand people littered on tracts of parched land full of vultures pecking at those bodies in a few hundred square kilometres of area then it is impossible in this modern world. But rickety bodies in a few villages of Maharashtra — something worse than the sight of Somalian children — was shown by at least two sensible TV channels a few months ago. Scene was sufficient to shake the public reasoning out of its coma but perhaps public reasoning is not so fickle as to get ruffled by such `vulgarities’ . No demonstrations were held. Last year in Varanasi the BHU students resorted to violence when they were denied a close proximity to a visiting Shilpa Shetty. Nearly 30 years ago the students of same university had refused to receive degrees from a doyen of film world. Mass hunger, even if it is chronic in nature does not fall in famine category because hunger does not lead to immediate death. Why public reasoning does not shake the collective consciousness of society out of slumber when it finds that over 80 per cent of Biharis are living on meager Rs. 17 a day? Is Sen’s reliance on the role of the media too overstretched if not completely misplaced in Indian context? Besides, his further averment that preventing famine is a tribute not just to the institution of democracy but also to the way this institution is used and made to function needs further examination on the matrices of facts. Sen concludes and perhaps he too finds a solution when he says it is hard to escape the general conclusion that economic performance, social opportunity, political voice and public reasoning are deeply interrelated. In those fields in which there has recently been a more determined use of political and social voice, there are considerable signs of change. Yes, that is why we should not lay much reliance on all four factors which are interrelated. Indian media does not get TRP when it runs stories on farmers’ suicide, not even on serious parliament debates. High capital intensive electronic media needs high TRP and thereby high return. High TRP can be possible when we cater to the segment which watches TV and has purchasing power. Farmers’ plight is not its interest area but Rakhi Sawant’s dance is. Advertisers want TRP from urban moneyed segment which products and services. Thus since our public reasoning is faulty, public voice (media) will remain wide off-the- mark resulting in complete neglect of social opportunity. Economic performance will be judged by GDP and not by absence of basic amenities for the voiceless. It was, therefore, not without reason that Sen makes a fervent appeal in the last lines of his lecture saying “ A good first step may be to think more clearly — and a little more often — about what should really keep us awake at
night”.
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A place to live As
my well-intentioned, occasionally quixotic, career in the civil service comes to an end, I pause to consider a place to live. The kaleidoscope of places, the situations I have worked in, is puzzling, for so torrential have been the paces of life, so varied its myriad hues, so potent the perfumes of recalled memory that any convincing image is difficult to confirm. I first presided over the court in a century-old red-bricked structure in Jalpaiguri district of North Bengal. The district courts were located amidst dense green forest that kept out the sunlight with undulating tea gardens spread out under shade trees bearing brilliant red flowers stretching up to the blue mountain ranges of Darjeeling. On moonlit nights the scintillating peaks of Kanchenjunga with their pristine beauty took one’s breath away and like some other civil servants I thought of this Shangri-La as my retirement home. Remembrance quite effortlessly shifts to Mount Abu, Rajasthan’s hills resort with princely mansions and sturdy palm trees edging the Nakki lake over which an efflorescent moon would descend to still waters and giving a lingering look climb another hill. It is here, some 36 years ago that I trained at the Police Academy along with Kiran Bedi; N.P.S. Aulakh of Punjab; Gopal Sharma of Jammu and Kashmir; A.S. Gill of Rajasthan and indeep most of the serving or recently retired State Police Chiefs in the country. If happy camaraderie, hopefulness, history and race memory are a credible caliper, it is to Mount Abu then that I should return to walk along the lake and amble through the exquisite marble columns of Dilwara’s temples that would make their Greek counterparts bite the dust. In the cold season of 1980, I visited Orissa on tour. I was struck by the religious fervour of the area where people chanted the names of Jagannath in the natural reflex; in the streets and in their fields. And striding the silent beaches at dawn I considered Puri as a place to live for here I thought the shoreline embraces the sky. I was posted in Delhi with the Union Government for eight years. My relationship with the city’s urban presence is easily explained for it has many specimens of past grandeur; many tombs and precise structures; many artifacts of red sand stone interspersed with marble and granite set off by blue turquoise and cobalt tiles placed in wide parklands of multidimensional perfection. I have lived and worked in Chandigarh since 1989, a three years-tenure with the Haryana Government followed by a permanent transfer to Punjab in 1992. During my field postings at Faridkot, Ferozepur and Patiala, Chandigarh remained a transit home. This beautiful dream of a French architect is disciplined poetry composed in stone and indeed a city in the making. With so many thoughts and so many choices, I witness the Tricolor ceremonially being brought down outside my chamber in the Secretariat, The guards and the buglers salute and march away. A muse comes to my aid — “I will go to another land, I will go to another sea, A better city will be found, A better one than this.” And himself answers — “There is no other land, There is no other sea, There is no other road, no ship for you, Always you will return to the
city.”
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Advantage Zardari
Two
decades ago, Asif Ali Zardari was virtually unknown in the high-flying political circles that his new wife Benazir Bhutto traveled in. When the son of a cinema owner married the daughter of a legendary president, he told reporters that he had no taste for politics. “One politician in a family is enough,” Zardari said. But since Bhutto was assassinated in December, Zardari has demonstrated an enormous appetite for what he once claimed to reject. He has taken control of his wife’s Pakistan People’s Party, led it to its ruling perch in the country’s government and, on the eve of a parliamentary vote, has positioned himself as the leading contender to replace his wife’s one-time nemesis, Pervez Musharraf, as president of the republic. If Zardari is elected Saturday, his ascension will consolidate his party’s hold on the government and bring on a new era in U.S.-Pakistan relations after years of White House backing for Musharraf’s military rule. Zardari is known to many people here as “Mr. 10 Percent” because of allegations that he raked in millions of dollars in kickbacks during his wife’s two terms as prime minister in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Zardari spent 11 years in prison on corruption charges that were lodged against him when he was a member of Parliament and minister in Bhutto’s government. But he was never convicted and in recent months, Pakistan’s government dropped the case as part of an amnesty deal that Bhutto negotiated with Musharraf last year. But the case continues to haunt Zardari. Since he declared his presidential candidacy Aug. 23, details have emerged from the array of corruption cases lodged against him not only in Pakistan, but in Switzerland, Spain and Britain. Late last month, questions regarding Zardari’s mental health surfaced after court documents in the now defunct British corruption case were made public. According to the documents, which were first reported by the Financial Times, a New York psychiatrist diagnosed Zardari as suffering from dementia, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. The parties of the two candidates opposing Zardari in the presidential race have savaged him, saying his history of mental illness should bar him from running for office. News of the psychological reports and reports that a Swiss court would soon release about $60 million in frozen assets to Zardari after closing its case against him prompted sharp criticism from Pakistani Sen. Mushahid Hussain, the presidential candidate for Musharraf’s former Pakistan Muslim League-Q party. Zardari declined repeated requests for an interview with The Washington Post. But in a column that the newspaper published this week, he called the allegations of bribery and money laundering “unsubstantiated” and “politically motivated.” Aides to Zardari have mounted a vigorous defense, saying that the reports of $60 million in frozen assets are untrue. They have also sought to recast his reported mental health problems as a natural but temporary result of years of torture. An assassination attempt on Zardari’s political associate, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, on Wednesday served to raise already heightened concerns about Zardari’s safety. Those concerns, his supporters say, are one reason he has largely refrained from making public appearances or granting interviews in the days leading up to the election. If he becomes president, he will face the daunting test of a divided Parliament. In recent days, he has come under attack from former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, his one-time partner in the coalition government formed after their parties were swept to power in Feb. 18 national parliamentary elections. Sharif worked closely with Zardari after the elections to mount a united front against Musharraf. But the coalition collapsed a week after Musharraf resigned Aug. 18 in the face of impeachment charges. Sharif, who was ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 military coup, said he decided to quit the coalition after Zardari reneged on a promise to restore Pakistan’s tattered judiciary. Incensed by Zardari’s decision to run for office, Sharif selected former Supreme Court chief justice Saeed-uz-Zaman Siddiqui to compete against him on his party’s ticket. A longtime political ally of Sharif, Siddiqui was appointed chief justice in July 1999 but was ousted months later when he refused to endorse the military coup led by Musharraf that ended Sharif’s term as prime minister. The fates of dozens of judges fired by Musharraf last year have become a defining factor in Pakistani politics. Sharif has been a vocal advocate for the judges’ return to the bench. He has especially insisted on the reinstatement of the ousted Supreme Court chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. A staunch opponent of government corruption, Chaudhry could pose a threat to the legal indemnity granted to Zardari if restored to the high court. Zardari has studiously avoided making specific references to Chaudhry in particular, but has vowed to restore the judiciary in general. The quest to strike a balance between the judiciary, the legislature and the executive could be another test for Zardari if he becomes president. A series of amendments passed under Musharraf’s government allows the president sweeping powers, including the power to dissolve Parliament. Whether Zardari has the opportunity to deliver on that and other promises will be determined Saturday, when Pakistan’s four provincial assemblies, the National Assembly and the Senate take up the vote for the country’s next president. The winning candidate needs 352 votes out of 702. The next president is expected to be sworn in next week. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Nature in retreat: Keep off the grass So
you thought looking after your lawn was hard work? Spare a thought for Jon Valters, who tends to a lot more grass than the average gardener. To be precise, some 147 acres on which he is spending some £200,000 to do, well, as little as possible: no cultivation, no building, not so much as a new fence or pathway. Rather he is looking to extend this plot of land. He has also managed to raise £1.4m over the last five years to buy grass. That, of course, is when he is not busy travelling all over the UK covering regional current affairs for the BBC. Grass may not be the most compelling of country matters to evoke a passion, in that it has neither the magnificence of great forests, the majesty of lakes or the cuddliness of wildlife. But Valters is committed to the cause. Ask him what is wrong with the vast swathes of greenery that the countryside offers and he counters that they should be vast swathes of colour. According to the Greenland Trust, an organisation Valters founded, large parts of flowery meadows have disappeared since the Second World War. Meadowlands once thrived through fertilisation by the manure from the sheep and cattle left to graze on them; the use of chemical fertilisers, ostensibly to improve yield, replaced fields full of various flower and grass varieties with a limited selection of rye-grasses better able to absorb the nitrogen in the fertiliser. Bio-diversity has been further limited by farming’s shift from use of hay to silage, requiring the use of more fertilisers. “I had no background in ecology, but wildlife was always my passion,” explains Valters, 51, who took an unpaid, 15-month sabbatical from the BBC to set up the Grasslands Trust, now with eight employees, and to which he devotes his spare time. “I was walking with an ecologist friend on downland in Dorset and we came across this incredible carpet of flowers. He told me how much of this grassland has been lost and the shock of it made me want to do something. Because I was ignorant of the situation, I assumed many other people would be too and that getting across the need to rescue grasslands was important.” It is not, however, merely a sentimental image of a bygone landscape, grasslands’ value as historic and archaeological sites should not be underestimated. Neither is it a question of grasslands’ benefit in preventing flooding or storing carbon dioxide. Nor of just saving the flowers that the grasslands once sustained. Indeed, various species of butterfly and bumblebee – pollinators essential to the success of crop production – are supported by grasslands, not to mention hares and birds including the lapwing, skylark and barn owl, numbers of which have fallen by 75 per cent, 50 per cent respectively over two decades. Increasingly, these are dependent on those flower-rich grasslands that are now only found in patches – on nature reserves, in fields too small or too steep to plough productively, on lands set aside for non-agricultural use, such as churchyards and village greens, even on road-side verges. “It’s not a question of stopping farming to protect grasslands but stepping back from such intensive farming,” says Valters. “Getting that message across is difficult because grassland is hard to explain. The idea of grasslands isn’t very dramatic but that’s because many people haven’t seen what they can or should look like. People go into the countryside and see a sea of greenness and assume that’s the way it should be. But they should be seeing a huge variety of colours. Putting fertiliser on grasslands, which can be exceptionally rich habitats, can kill the wild flowers and associated wildlife. The lush greenness is good for the cattle, but little else.” In addition, recent attempts to stave off the loss of grasslands have proven ineffective in the face of market forces: costly schemes aimed at encouraging farmers to help recreate grasslands, can rarely offer them sufficient compensation for their land in the face of rising cereal prices – which encourage farmers to convert land back into cultivation. Ironically, given one that one environmental action often causes another environmental disaster, the rising demand for bio-fuels is also persuading farmers to convert every scrap of land. The Grasslands Trust has stated that the crisis is considered “the most complex and challenging issue in conservation today, climate change aside.” Rather, Valters is happy to be doing something about it. “Setting up the Trust was a steep learning curve – I’d never done anything like it before and it was quite a slog. But I’m pleased with what we’ve achieved in a short time. The Trust is like a second job and it can take up a lot of time, given that my job is pretty intense as it is. But that has helped too – as a journalist you know how to get some attention and knowing how to write helps in terms of getting those fund-raising applications out to charitable trusts and government agencies.” By arrangement with
The Independent
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Delhi Durbar A leader’s political stature can be judged by the kind of reception he gets from his party men when he enters the main assembly hall during media briefings, which are supposed to be open to all leaders of the party. This is true of the Congress. And it is equally true of the BJP. If it is a senior leader like its PM-in-waiting L.K. Advani, then the party’s spokesman waits outside the hall to receive him. Younger leaders like Arun Jaitley or Venkaiah Naidu often send their minions before the briefing to assess the attendance in the room while the party spokesperson waits for Advani in the porch outside. After last Sunday’s rally at the Ramlila ground was declared a success, it was generally thought that the clout of BJP general secretary Vijay Goel, the rally’s main organiser, appears to have gone up in the party. Some sections were even mentioning him as a possible chief ministerial candidate for Delhi. Perhaps to test his clout, Goel walked into the media room on Monday, a day after the rally. But, to his utter disappointment, Goel had to pull a chair for himself to talk to the media and then worse, spokesperson Prakash Jawadekar quietly disappeared, leaving Goel to fend for himself.
UP’s BMW
Uttar Prdaesh bureaucratic circles have a new nickname for their Chief Minister and BSP chief: BMW, a code for Behen Mayawati. The nickname is being attributed to Mayawati’s opulent top-of-the-line lifestyle, which fits well with the BMW brand. And like the BMW, the BSP chief is on a roller coaster ride. Not only is she all set to give a tough fight to Sonia Gandhi in the forthcoming general election, but has also gone one up on the UPA chairperson in international media circles as well. Mayawati was recently featured on the Forbes’ powerful people’s list for the first time. Uttar Pradesh bureaucrats say this is the outcome of a think tank especially set up by BMW to project her internationally as a powerful mass leader. Her next aim is to displace Sonia Gandhi by getting a slot higher than her on the Forbes’ list. Making her debut in the club of 100 most powerful women in the world, Mayawati ranked 59th while Sonia Gandhi has slipped from her previous year’s sixth rank to 21st place this year.
Projecting Rahul
Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi’s projection as the Congress party’s future prime ministerial candidate is on in full swing. His photograph is given equal prominence along with Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in all party posters and hoardings. Little wonder then that AICC general secretary Margaret Alva, in charge of several North-East states, is thrilled that Gandhi junior has agreed to launch the party’s election campaign in Mizoram later this month with a youth rally. Needless to say, the party is pulling out all stops to ensure that the rally turns out to be a success. Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Vibha Sharma and Ashok Tuteja
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