The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Life for MLA
Rid politics of criminals

THE life sentence awarded to Bihar’s ruling Janata Dal (United) legislator Sunil Pandey for his involvement in a kidnap case highlights once again the issue of criminalisation of politics. He and eight others were charged with kidnapping Patna’s noted neuro-surgeon, Dr Ramesh Chandra, when he was on his way home from a function in May 2003. Along with the MLA, five others have also been awarded life sentence and a fine of Rs 50,000 each. According to reports, they had demanded a ransom of Rs 1 crore from the doctor’s family. Four others involved in the crime have been absconding. As they failed to appear in the court on Wednesday, the judge has ordered them to surrender and rejected their applications for bail.

Incidentally, Sunil Pandey is the fourth “people’s representative” from Bihar to have been convicted for life in a criminal case. Others who have been convicted in the past two years include, Siwan MP Mohammed Shahabuddin, Madhepura MP Pappu Yadav (both Rashtriya Janata Dal) and Balia MP Surajbaan Singh (Lok Janashakti Party). Significantly, several criminal cases are pending against them. Sunil Pandey is known for his abrasive behaviour. Not long ago, he threatened Patna’s journalists with dire consequences after they published reports of his misbehaviour with the Maurya Hotel staff. Even in the case of Dr Ramesh Chandra, it is believed that though Sunil Pandey secured his release following intense political pressure, he relented only after a portion of the ransom was paid to them.

Clearly, no political party is free from criminals today. They are bringing a bad name to the representative institutions and the people who have elected them. In the first place, why should political parties give tickets to criminals, history-sheeters and hoodlums? Criminalisation of politics cannot be checked if the political parties don’t shun persons with criminal antecedents. Efforts to weed out criminals from representative institutions should, first, start with the political parties themselves. The people, too, should reject them at the hustings even if they are fielded by political parties.

Clarity of verdict
SC order will help general students

THE Supreme Court has done well in directing the Centre that the unfilled seats reserved for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in professional institutions like the IITs and the IIMs should go to the general category candidates. Indeed, the court has made it clear that these seats cannot be carried forward to the next year. This, in fact, is a reiteration of its April 10, 2008, order when it upheld the constitutional validity of the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006. The April 10 ruling was crystal clear and there was no confusion about the status of the unfilled seats. Still, it is not clear why the authorities concerned have been refusing to fill the vacant seats with general category students.

The petitioners have accused the Centre of keeping the 432 vacant seats unfilled under the 27 per cent quota norm. As the vacancies are large and necessary infrastructure has also been put in place for the students, the Union HRD Ministry and the IIT-IIM authorities should have coordinated with each other and implemented the court’s orders. Instead, they misinterpreted the April 10 ruling, created unnecessary confusion among the students and wasted a lot of time.

The present policy on the cut-off percentage for the OBCs seeking admissions to the IITs and the IIMs has also come under judicial scanner. The thoughtless manner in which the authorities have been reducing the cut-off marks for the OBCs is deplorable because this will compromise merit and dilute the image of the global brands. Ideally, the cut-off marks for the OBCs should be fixed at five marks below that of the general category and, certainly, it cannot be a whopping 50 per cent. The Bench has taken exception to the Centre’s existing policy and it would be interesting to watch the court’s adjudication on the matter on September 29. Anyway, nobody can accuse the Supreme Court of lacking in clarity when it pronounced its verdict on filling unfilled seats reserved for the OBCs.

Thought for the Day

Rousseau was the first militant lowbrow.

— Isaiah Berlin

ARTICLE

Terrorism without end
Government forced to act
by Inder Malhotra

AS this newspaper wrote editorially the other day, there has been a “sickening pattern” in relation to terrorism in this country, which, next only to Iraq, is the biggest target of jihadi terrorists. After the latest outrage in the heart of the nation’s Capital, the usual ploy of infuriated condemnation of the terrorists, screams that “we will catch them”, and tributes to the citizens’ “spirit” in not being cowed down was tried again, in the hope that anger would subside soon and everyone would go back to business as usual.

However, this time around the crass calculations went awry. Nothing illustrates this more vividly than the sudden acceptance by the United Progressive Alliance government of the need for a stringent anti-terror law, a federal agency to combat the scourge and for reforming the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and other bumbling institutions expected to fight terrorism. Concrete decisions have yet to be taken, and, as usual, policy makers are confused.

For instance, the idea of having a Minister of State for Internal Security in the Home Ministry is neither here nor there. When, in the Rajiv Gandhi years Arun Nehru held that position, he ruled the roost and the then Home Minister, Buta Singh, had to defer to him. The late Jagdish Pilot’s appointment to the same post subsequently was the wily P.V. Narasimha Rao’s way of bypassing Shankerrao Chavan. However, the U-turn government is making, under compulsion of the roused public opinion, is clear enough. This did not happen without cause.

There was first a storm over Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil’s performance or lack of it both within the Congress party and among UPA allies. However, it seems that Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh haven’t yet realised that the position at the Home Ministry today of this minister of immaculate attire and inane pronouncements is as untenable as Krishna Menon’s was at the Ministry of Defence in 1962. Then Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, Congress-ruled Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil and former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam spoke out vigorously in favour of a stronger anti-terror law. It was senior Congress leader and chairman of the Administrative Reforms Commission Veerappa Moily who delivered the coup de grace. He released the commission’s report recommending exactly such a comprehensive and stringent law.

No less important was the big change in the public mood that became manifest in numerous television talk shows. Several speakers in these discussions blamed not only the Congress and the UPA but also the BJP and indeed the entire political class for playing politics even with terror. They had a point. The implacable hatred between the core of the ruling coalition and the principal opposition party has become an enemy of national interest. Over the last four and a half years the BJP has been taunting the Congress for being “soft” on terrorism because of its “vote bank politics”. The Congress has been hitting back that POTA was in full force and L. K. Advani, the saffron party’s prime ministerial candidate, was Union Home Minister when terrorists attacked Akshardham, the Red Fort and even Parliament. This arid exchange is now out of date. The threat to the country is too serious for cheap gibes. In any case, the Congress is on the back foot though the saffron party continues to be carping in its criticism.

The most indefensible act of the Central government is not to allow BJP-ruled Gujarat and Rajasthan to have laws identical to the one Maharashtra already has. In a federal parliamentary democracy, states should have the right to legislate on subjects within their province. The provision for President’s assent to such laws is sound in principle. Given Gujarat’s reprehensible record in matters of communal killings, there need be no surprise that the Muslim minority, which is complaining that it is under siege, feels suspicious about the objective of the Gujarat law. If the UPA government shares this apprehension let it refuse Narendra Modi the presidential assent. But the present dog-in-the-manger policy of sitting on the Gujarat Bill for two years without saying aye or nay is unacceptable.

When the Constitution was framed no one had anticipated the current sway of terrorism. Isn’t it time to amend it and put terrorism in the Concurrent List? This would ensure that where a state law is in conflict with the Central one, the latter would prevail.

Nothing is more scandalous than that India is the only country so heavily menaced by terrorism that has no federal agency to counter it. Chief ministers of BJP-run states (who say that a federal agency would be of no use without a stringent federal law) are not the only ones opposed to the proposed agency. So are such Congress allies as the DMK in Tamil Nadu. The Left Front was still part of the UPA when Chief Ministers of West Bengal and Kerala said no to a federal anti-terror agency.

It also says something about the UPA brand of secularism that two prominent UPA ministers, Laloo Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, during the 2004 elections, travelled along with an Osama bin Laden look-alike, without inviting a word of remonstrance from Congress leaders. If they were presenting a role model to the minority community they seem to have succeeded though to a limited extent only. For, it does seem that the outfit that calls itself the Indian Mujahideen, in vituperative, abusive and sarcastic e-mails, has claimed responsibility for all the recent outrages, draws its recruits from elements in the proscribed Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Some activists of this IM have been arrested in Ahmedabad and Jaipur but no case has yet been concluded and some of the arrests made after the Delhi bombings were unnecessary, as the persons detained had to be released hastily.

Typically, perhaps the most ominous revelation by the Indian Mujahideen has gone largely unnoticed. All through the last six decades Muslims in the rest of India have remained aloof from the activities of Kashmiri separatists and secessionists. The IM has now served notice that it would make the “Kashmiri cause” the cause of “all Muslims”. This reminds me that some years ago a retired Director-General of the ISI told the then Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad: “Safeer Sahib, hum Kashmir ko Bharati Musalmano kay liye deen ka masla bana den gae (Mr Ambassador, we will make Kashmir an issue of faith for Indian Muslims)”.

MIDDLE

Complimenting Cheema
by Jupinderjit Singh

CC is no more. Prof M S Cheema, an eminent educationist, historian, and writer, but fondly remembered by Ludhiana journalists as the “complimenting Cheema” proceeded to another world last month.

Newspaper offices often have regular non-journalist visitors. Many are hated as they are mere stooges of scribes. Some are “necessary evils”. They inform the latest gossip and spread it here and there.

But CC arrived as a whiff of fresh air. Walking on 80-something old bones, supporting thick white beard, a starched turban with eyes shining out of the wealth of intellect, his high spirits energised everyone.

He wrote a column for Ludhiana Tribune on social and historical issues. But he walked at will in the office when he was not writing also. He caught first person he met and start his compliments: “Wah! I heard you are teaching English to British” was his punchline.

This was his major compliment. That too, for all the scribes. It would instantly make recipients feel special. Soon, all got to know that he praised everyone. But still, each waited to hear that oneliner from him.

In the profession where good work is rarely patted openly, his praises were the much needed protein for a budding journalist. He made those credible by quoting from the writer’s recent write-up. His rare talent was to quietly tell the weakness in writing. The sugar-coated quinine always worked.

He read newspapers from the masthead to the printline. Then, he didn’t miss the new hairstyle or a turban a journalist donned. For the married, he always had some couplets to praise how good the couple looked. For singles, he claimed a line of suitors was waiting outside.

He was at his best when a trainee or some visitor in the office met him. Mere mention of the person’s surname would click the slide show of CC’s encyclopedia on their origins.

He would reach right up to the house of the person naming some prominent person of his clan or the village. CC went on and on talking to even five journalists at one go on different issues.

As a historian he was invaluable. While penning a column “A page from history” for the Ludhiana Tribune, I depended on him largely. He was a walking library.

The youthful exuberance of the octogenarian CC is missing now. Every time the office door opens, I wish CC walked in. Every time, I think some writeup is worth praise, I wish he had read it.

Complimenting Cheema would never have realised that we would miss him more for the compliments than all his talents. I wish humans had developed some software to save his brain for the wealth of knowledge he possessed. I am sure encouraging compliments would have splashed on the screen the moment one clicked it.

OPED

American meltdown
India escapes with bruises
by Nirmal Sandhu

WILL the ongoing American meltdown go beyond devastating stock markets and affect an average Indian or a non-American? Quite likely. American lifestyle, values, consumption-driven prosperity and greed — popularised by television and films in the fast-globalising world —are what middle classes in developing countries aspire to achieve.

Like Americans, Indians too were until recently lapping up loans, cheaply and easily available, to accumulate possessions: big cars many could do without; plots, flats, houses and farmhouses to multiply incomes in the shortest possible time; and, above all, ever-rising stocks that became a craze fuelled by easy bank loans.

Foreign funds and institutions saw an opportunity to multiply their wealth and invested heavily in emerging markets, lauding their economic policies, dishing out robust future growth figures and even advising them how to run their businesses and governments to be rich like America.

The rising stock markets created many a new billionaire. Financial newspapers and TV channels projected them as new heroes, tempting middle-class novices to invest their hard-earned money in shares of companies they knew hardly anything about. Those left out of the money-making marathon felt inadequate and stupid.

As the production of products, including food and fuel, in a consumption-crazy world, especially India, fell short of the furiously growing demand and prices escalated, the then RBI Governor Y.V. Reddy stepped in to make loans difficult and dearer. The skyrocketing property prices took a breather and even declined. Car sales slowed. Life was no longer rosy.

Americans had no Reddy to tell them to take it easy. For the past one decade they have been recklessly buying houses, cars, college education, health care and foreign vacations. America lived on borrowed money.

The successive governments did not raise taxes to fund new services and amenities they were dolling out to citizens.

Surplus funds from all over the world found their way into US financial institutions. Oil wealth lubricated the system. China saved, America spent.

To push growth, the US Federal Reserve, the central bank, kept interest rates too low and for too long. Driven by competition and aggressive shareholders to perform or quit, bank managers bent over backwards to give car/housing loans, even to those without a regular income or a good track record.

The result: the defaults and the sub-prime crisis. For the past few months the mountain of bad mortgages has been falling apart. Many of America’s venerated financial institutions — Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG —have suffered heavy losses.

Some have been nationalised, but how many can the government bail out? Quite a few analysts are critical of the US government for using taxpayers’ money to save crumbling private giants. They call it the “socialisation of losses and privatisation of profits”.

Since Monday the US has seen unprecedented destruction of wealth. Panic has spread. Former head of Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, partly guilty of stoking the fire, has called it the worst crisis of his lifetime, the kind that probably happens once in a century.

The loss of faith in banks has led to panic selling in the US, European, Russian, Chinese and other stock markets. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) are offloading their stock holdings. The latest worry is about the future of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Can this happen in India? The possibility cannot be ruled out altogether. So far only the ICICI Bank losses have surfaced. Real estate companies having financial tie-ups with some of these institutions have taken a hit.

Fortunately, the financial system, especially the stock markets, has coped well with the unfolding dark scenario. There are no payment defaults, no whiff of systemic failure or fraud.

But should we not put our house in order before anything goes wrong? Imagine if the SBI, PNB OR HDFC meets a similar fate?

The prospect is too frightening. The regulator, the RBI, must tighten supervision over all banking activity and, to dispel public misgivings, if any, should go in for an independent auditing of all private and public banks.

The maelstrom in the global markets may strengthen the Leftist opposition to investment of pension funds into stock markets. It is scary to think of life-time savings evaporating in some bad financial deals.

So far the economy is unhurt except for the rupee depreciation, which is due to FII outflows.

Oil is softening and inflation is on the retreat. The Prime Minister is confident of 8 per cent GDP growth this fiscal.

PU faculty vying for elite status
by Prithipal Singh Kapur

I have read Dr Rana Nayar’s article “Badal’s U-turn on PU” (September 10). He has not been able to discern the relationship of Panjab University with Punjab, which is much more than the name. It is an emotive issue for Punjabis of all hues than merely a concern of a “few Punjabi intellectuals.”

The basic issue of Central status for Panjab University can be examined dispassionately only if we understand Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s acceptance of the Knowledge Commission’s report regarding the establishment of Central world-class universities throughout the country.

The announcement carries within itself the idea that these universities will have a different concept and mission so as to enable India to find a respectable place in the global arena of higher education.

These universities are not expected to carry along the burden of conventional universities, particularly when we find that with 400 universities (including deemed universities), over 18,000 college and a host of national and regional institutes in India, not a single university finds even a mention in a recent international ranking of the top 200 universities.

This hard fact has to be seen along with another bitter truth about the discussion that took place among the members of the Accreditation Committee that visited Panjab University a few years ago. The members found the heritage of the university too heavy to deny it the status of a five-star university.

I stop short here and resist the temptation of making a detailed mention of the academic decay that has been rampant in the university for quite a few years that holds against the claim of the university for Central status.

To me it looks that the Panjab University faculty is simply vying for getting the stamp of an elite status. They are unable to appreciate that they are pursuing a case for administrative re-orientation that can help them only financially and bring them better service conditions without much obligation.

It is regrettable that the top authorities became a willing tool and tried hard to woo and mislead the first family of Punjab which ultimately responded to saner voices raised in the interest of Punjab.

Much is being made out of the financial obligations of the Punjab government. Here the question to be asked is: why over the years the Panjab University authorities have consciously adopted an apathetic attitude towards Punjab that has led to a feeling of alienation in the minds of those at the helm in the Punjab government. I leave it to the concerned to look within and find out answers to their own questions.

Dr Rana Nayar’s write-up is based on wrong perceptions. Perhaps, he has not cared to verify historical facts. There was no Parliament in India in 1947 — only a constituent assembly.

The East Punjab government promulgated an Ordinance on September 27, 1947, for setting up the East Punjab University with effect from October 1, 1947. The ordinance was subsequently replaced by the East Punjab University Act of 1947.

The Governor of Punjab remained the Chancellor of the university till 1966 (For details see R.R. Sethi, J.L. Mehta, A History of Panjab University, Chandigarh, 42-43, 1968).

Panjab University became an inter-state body like the SGPC and the high court through the Punjab Re-organisation Act of 1966, which also carries the burden of a joint capital and its being Union Territory as an interim measure.

These are inter-related issues and have to be dealt with politically. Selective action regarding anyone is surely going to affect claims and counter-claims, which academics at Panjab University refuse to appreciate.

Does Dr Rana Nayar’s appeal to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has any meaning? The answer lies in some not-so-happy memories, which the Prime Minister himself only can testify.

The writer is a member of the Panjab University Senate and former Pro Vice-Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University

Delhi Durbar
Stars to blame

THE anti-Christian violence in Karnataka, which almost coincided with the three-day national executive meeting of the BJP, is being attributed in BJP circles to some mishandling of astrological signs by Chief Minister B.S. Yedyurappa, a believer in astrology.

He has faithfully followed the stars, which his admirers feel, have made him the Chief Minister despite all odds. This time, too, he took care to follow the astrological signs and, accordingly, the inauguration lamp for the national executive meeting was lit exactly at 11.55 am.

But as Yedyurappa drove to the venue, his entourage was interrupted exactly at 11.53 am. The next five minutes were wasted in dealing with the issue of an outsider having broken the CM’s security net.

In the process, the lamp was eventually lit only after 12 noon and all through the three-day meeting the Chief Minister was clearly a worried man.

Sendoff to Sarna

Navtej Sarna, the longest-serving spokesman of the External Affairs Ministry, was given a warm sendoff by journalists, diplomats and his colleagues at a get-together last week.

Many of the senior journos recalled how Sarna, the tall Sikh, who always sported a sky-blue turban, deftly handled the media whenever he was sought to be put in a tight spot over foreign policy issues.

Sarna took up the high-pressure job in October 2002 from Nirupama Rao, currently the Ambassador to China.

Sarna, who has also written two novels, said he found the spokesman’s job challenging and interesting. Sarna, perhaps, is an equally familiar face in Pakistan. He appeared almost everyday on television news channels when India-Pakistan ties were tense.

Sarna now goes to Tel Aviv as the Indian Ambassador to Israel, another tough assignment.

No smoking

Trust the Health Minister to spare no one in his crusade against tobacco. Known for his anti-tobacco appeals to Amitabh Bachchan and Shahrukh Khan, Anbumani Ramadoss the other day trained his guns on Kolkata Chief Minister Budhadeb Bhattacharya, whose smoking habit is well known and hard to ignore.

But from October 2 this year, Bhattacharya won’t be able to puff away to glory in the Writers Building as the Health Minister has held out a strong and clear warning.

“No CM, no Governor, no head of institution can smoke in government buildings or at public places from October 2. I appeal to the West Bengal CM to quit smoking,” he said, not leaving any chance of embarrassing Kolkata where, he said, 71 per cent men use tobacco.

Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Ashok Tuteja and Aditi Tandon