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V. P. Singh
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A step forward
U-turns in Haryana
Reality of bank nationalisation
You’ve had your chips with fish!
Europe’s stimulus
Russia rekindles relationships with Latin America
Delhi Durbar
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V. P. Singh
IN the death of former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the country has lost one of the most colourful and controversial politicians. Few other leaders in independent India have had such an impact on politics as this scion of a princely family. He will long be remembered for the social engineering he attempted when he as Prime Minister took out the Mandal Commission report from the shelves and chose to implement it.
For the first time, the educationally and socially backward classes, also called the OBCs, got reservation in jobs and admissions. But he had to pay a price as the upper castes and the intelligentsia, who felt threatened by the Mandalisation of politics, came out on the streets baying for his blood. His critics averred that his sudden love for the OBCs was a panic reaction to the threat posed by the late Devi Lal, who was uncomfortable under his leadership. Whatever the truth, he never wavered in his commitment to the Mandal cause, which he has been upholding all these years. He might have been a maverick for many but he had the knack of giving up jobs as frequently as jobs like that of UP Chief Minister and Union Finance Minister came looking for him. He had more critics than friends but nobody ever linked him to corruption. Efforts were indeed made to dirty his political career but he always remained spotlessly clean. Small wonder that when he began airing fears that commission had been taken from the Swedish Bofors gun manufacturer by the powers that be, people believed him and voted him to power in 1989. His credibility among the minorities, particularly Muslims, after the demolition of the Babri Masjid was the dream of every politician. Though he had boasted that within a month of coming to power, he would bring out the truth of Bofors, he failed in the mission denting his credibility. Essentially, a loner who enjoyed painting and writing poetry, he was poor in the art of the possible. He was not at all equipped to run a minority government, more so when he had powerful detractors like former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar in his own ranks. It is debatable whether it was at his prompting that Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav got Mr L.K. Advani arrested in Bihar but it was his government that fell on that account. That left him to pursue his passion for painting till renal failure and blood cancer incapacitated him. Whether fighting the disease or battling his detractors, Mr Vishwanath Pratap Singh always held his head high and will strong. |
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A step forward
CENTRAL Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah’s statement that the office of the Chief Justice of India (from the administrative side) does come under the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005, is welcome. What he said conforms to the cardinal democratic principle that the functioning of all the three wings of the government -- the legislature, the executive and the judiciary -- should be open and transparent.
Of course, the statement is in sharp contrast to Chief Justice of India Justice K.G. Balakrishnan’s assertion that his office does not come under the purview of the RTI Act. The CJI, in his wisdom, may sincerely feel that the independence of the judiciary will be at stake if the judiciary is brought under the RTI’s ambit. However, such an apprehension seems to be unfounded. It is nobody’s case that the judiciary should not be independent, but nothing prevents the CJI from lifting the veil of secrecy as regards its administration. If the RTI really empowers a citizen to seek information on the functioning of any wing of the government, including the judiciary, he should not be deprived of his right to know. Consider, for instance, the issue of judicial appointments. The collegium may have its own set of rules in this regard, but these must be put in the public domain for scrutiny and debate. Undoubtedly, the people have great respect for the judiciary. Their respect for it will increase further if they are given an opportunity to know of the criteria for judicial appointments. After all, didn’t the Delhi High Court order suitable criteria for school admissions? The RTI Act was enacted to give citizens just and rightful access to information held by any public authority, including the CJI. All constitutional authorities, including the CJI and his brother judges, are also public authorities as defined in the Act. Suffice it to mention, transparency in judicial functioning and accountability for judicial actions and inaction will inspire public faith and confidence in the exalted institution. As the RTI is a step forward towards opening a closed and secretive judicial system, there is a strong case for bringing the judiciary into the ambit of the RTI Act. |
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U-turns in Haryana
Nothing is impossible in Haryana, the land of Aya Rams and Gaya Rams. It should be the first state in the country – perhaps even the world – where no one knows where its Deputy Chief Minister is. Mr Chander Mohan has been missing from action for more than a month. The funny thing is that no one is complaining.
There are only raised eyebrows, which have become even more crooked after one of his confidants has been removed from service. Apparently, there is no threat to the life of the Honourable Chief Minister but he is only cooling his heels — somewhere at a place of his own choice — after having been “too busy” in official work, perhaps! May be, the government should insert lookout notices in various newspapers and TV channels. As if that is not intriguing enough, equally curious things have been happening on another front. The environment portfolio was taken away from Tourism and Forest Minister Kiran Chaudhary on Tuesday by the Chief Minister. The people have the right to know as to why the sudden change was brought about. But the portfolio was back with her the next day. So, what was it that made her a persona non grata one day and brought her back into favour the next? Since neither the Chief Minister nor Ms Kiran Chaudhary is saying anything, people are bound to draw their own conclusions. One line of thinking is that the turn-around owes its existence to a Delhi trip the latter made. That shows how the high command sometimes comes to the rescue of a minister in difficulty. And how could the Chief Minister even think of taking such a big step without taking the powers that be in confidence? But from the common man’s point of view, the important query is as to what and who precipitated her ouster. If it was because she was too harsh on those who defied pollution control norms, all that can be said is “more strength to her bow”. |
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What is merit? The opinion one man entertains of another. — Lord Palmerston
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Reality of bank nationalisation
UNDERSTANDABLY, Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s curious speech on the nationalisation of banks by Indira Gandhi way back in 1969 has evoked more hilarity than hard-hitting refutation. Sarcasm has been the hallmark of the widespread reaction to her pronouncement, which implied that her mother-in-law was far-seeing enough to have divined that four decades hence there would be a global economic meltdown and took the necessary step to save Indian banks from going the way of Lehman and Citicorp. Even her inveterate critics believe that she was let down by speechwriters or that she was indulging in election-time rhetoric. Moreover, at the time of bank nationalisation she was new to India. Both she and her husband, Rajiv Gandhi, were disinterested in politics. She might not have been aware, therefore, of what was going on. Otherwise, like those of us who witnessed the highly emotive drama, she would also have known that nationalisation of banks was a purely political and populist act in the midst of grim power struggle within the Congress party. It was indeed Indira Gandhi’s masterly counter-stroke on the Syndicate of Congress party bosses and Morarji Desai who had suddenly combined, despite their antipathy in the past, in an effort to oust her. As a first step they had selected, against her wishes, N. Sanjeeva Reddy as the Congress candidate for the presidential election that had become necessary because of President Zakir Hussain’s sudden death. Days later she responded with bank nationalisation, through an ordinance though Parliament was due to meet 36 hours later. This event had taken place, however, after many convoluted moves and counter-moves that need to be put in perspective. As a matter of fact, the issue of bank nationalisation has been a part of political discourse and debate since long before Indira Gandhi’s rise to power. When, after Sardar Patel’s death in 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru invited Jayaprakash Narayan, better known as JP, to join his Cabinet, the latter stymied the move by insisting on a host of conditions. Bank nationalisation had a pride of place on the list. Thereafter, the Left parties continued to clamour for nationalisation of banks but to no avail. Things changed materially after the 1967 general election in which the Congress lost eight states and had its majority in the Lok Sabha substantially reduced. This gave a boost to the party’s radical and left-leaning members, nicknamed Young Turks. They started a sustained campaign for radical economic policies such as bank nationalisation and abolition of privy purses of princes. Indira Gandhi vaguely sympathised with the demand but was too shrewd to plump for it. In any case, to save the already shaken party from a dangerously divisive contest between her and Moraraji Desai yet again, a compromise was worked out. Under it, Desai joined her Cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. He was totally opposed to bank nationalisation but willing to try out “social control” on banks that really amounted to a vigil on their credit policies. Indira backed him fully and repeatedly. This continued right up to early 1969. However, so tenuous and brittle was the compromise between the two leaders that it was bound to collapse, as it did when her opponents in the Congress Parliamentary Board overruled her on the choice of the party nominee for presidency. She had obviously anticipated this. For, on the eve of the Congress conclave at Bangalore she changed her position on bank nationalisation somewhat. The Young Turks had served notice that banks be nationalised immediately. A working committee meeting was to precede that of the Parliamentary Board. Staying away from the former, because of “indisposition”, she sent it a note on economic policy, “Some stray thoughts hurriedly dictated”. Some newspaper editorials commented that her thoughts had “gone astray”. Her note asked the working committee to consider her ideas for “full or partial implementation”. The committee replied that it was for her government to devise policies. Significantly, in her note Indira Gandhi still refrained from endorsing the Young Turks’ demand for immediate nationalisation of banks but, with delightful ambiguity, stated that she was “willing to reconsider the bank nationalisation issue even though the two-year period allowed to social control was not yet over”. On returning to Delhi from Bangalore the first thing she did was to divest Morarji Desai of the Finance portfolio and herself took it over. A stunned Desai rejected her request that he should stay on as Deputy Prime Minister without portfolio. Two days later, she sent for Economic Affairs Secretary I. G. Patel, an outstanding economist-bureaucrat. He was generally believed to be a “Morarji man” but evidently Indira Gandhi, too, trusted him. What followed is best reproduced in I.G’s words: “No one else was present. Without fanfare … she simply said: ‘For political reasons, it has been decided to nationalise the banks. You have to prepare within 24 hours the Bill, a note for the Cabinet and a speech for me to make to the nation. Can you do it, and make sure that there is no leak?’ There was no pretence that this was not a political decision, and the message was clear that no argument from me was required”. Even so, Patel “mustered enough courage” to make two suggestions: “to leave the foreign banks alone, and nationalise only the major ones”. (Patel, Glimpses of Indian Economic Policy: An Insider’s View. OUP, 2002.) Interestingly, in his draft of the Prime Minister’s speech, Patel, on his own, “inserted” a sentence: “This is not the first step in a new wave of nationalisation. This is, in fact, the culmination of the process which began with the nationalisation of Life Insurance and the Imperial Bank to occupy the commanding heights of finance”. She read the speech as written. “It is remarkable,” adds Patel, “how momentous decisions are taken in the heat of political struggle. After this, Mrs Gandhi was heralded as an angel of the poor and she made the most of Gharibi Hatao”. The only other thing I need to recall is that, as the news of bank nationalisation spread like wildfire, crowds of people, most of whom had never darkened the door of a bank, danced in the streets with joy. Eight years later, on a cold March night, they were dancing in the streets again. Why? Because in the post-Emergency poll in 1977 not only was the Congress defeated but also Indira Gandhi and her favourite son, Sanjay, had lost in their constituencies. |
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You’ve had your chips with fish!
I’VE always fancied myself to be a “fishy” character. Oh, not the slippery customer type but one with a distinct affinity for the creatures of the sea. I think it was that serial we used to watch on DD in the good old days, “The Secrets of the Sea” that fed my imagination and made me want to swim in the deep blue among the reefs and the corals with the sharks and the turtle. Throughout my growing years the hankering after the romance with the blue remained. Then on my 40th birthday, I decided to make my dream come true. By then life had taught me lessons in compromise, so instead of going deep sea diving, I announced: “I want an aquarium for my birthday” to my friends who wanted to pool in and buy me — of all the mundane things — a car stereo! Then began the search for a perfect aquarium. The ones readily available would not do, so a very dear friend specially designed an aquarium and then a strong bookshelf on which the designer aquarium was to be installed. Many visits to the fish seller took place. “You have to be judicious about the selection of fish, you know,” said one friend/shareholder. “An incorrect combination can result in cannibalism. “I think we should go in for a Piranha tank” said a younger shareholder. “No, no, we want gentler fish than those! Piranhas are not exactly well behaved,” said another. After debating the merits of guppies, baby sharks, angel fish et al, we decided to get six pairs of goldfish. Each of the shareholders was allowed to name a pair at a “welcome home fish!” party. So we had Blacky and Spotty, Swimmy and Finny, Guppy and Yuppy and even a Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid! A year down the line, I held forth on the aquarium: “Cleaning the tank and changing the water in the tank and looking after the heating and filtration etc is not so bad. But these fish have a terrible habit. They keep dying! I’ve spent simply thousands on re-stalking the aquarium and I’ve even stopped naming them,” I said in some desperation. My friends clucked in sympathy.
Another trying year and I was convinced that “The Secrets of the Sea” was where the fish looked best! “I’ve decided to convert my aquarium into a plant-arium” I announced to the shareholders! “There’s only one fish left and I’m waiting for it to…you know…leave for its heavenly abode”. The shareholders looked at me. The next day was Divali. And guess what my Divali gifts were? Six pairs of goldfish, named Blacky and Spotty, Swimmy and Finny, Guppy and Yuppy and Butch Cassidy and Sundance
Kid! |
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Europe’s stimulus
EVEN John Maynard Keynes himself, not an easy man to please, would have been impressed: a global implementation of the policies he prescribed three-quarters of a century ago to avoid a slump.
At their meeting in Washington on 15 November, the leaders of the G20, the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies, committed themselves to “use fiscal measures to stimulate domestic demand to rapid effect, as appropriate, while maintaining a policy framework conducive to fiscal sustainability”. On Monday we saw the Chancellor announce a £16bn boost for the British economy, equivalent to about 1 per cent of GDP. Yesterday it was the turn of the European Commission to call for “timely, temporary and targeted” action.
José Manuel Barroso, the president of the Commission, has proposed a comprehensive and ambitious recovery plan. He is hoping that, at the EU summit next month, the EU’s 27 member states will agree to a co-ordinated new fiscal stimulus package said to be worth €200bn (£170bn) – or 1.5 percent of Europe’s GDP. The aim is to encourage a mixture of increases in public spending and tax cuts to rebuild confidence amongst businesses and consumers. Some €170bn is to come from the 27 member states while the other €30bn would come from restructuring EU budget spending plans and in loans from the European Investment Bank. Some states, such as Germany, have more room for budgetary manoeuvre than others, such as Britain, will be asked to do more, though this has prompted some grumbling from Berlin. In a joint newspaper article in Le Figaro and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel said they could support fiscal stimulus packages worth 1 per cent of European GDP, although the programme recently announced by Merkel is worth only €12bn, or less than 0.5 per cent of German GDP. In the Bundestag, Mrs Merkel seemed unenthusiastic about a more radical approach: “We should take the path of the middle ground, made-to-measure for Germany.” Perhaps in response, Mr Barroso said that this was not a “one-size-fits-all” formula, but rather a “tool-box” for member states to make use of. Most EU states have already announced quite substantial fiscal packages, in addition to the easing of monetary policy by the European Central Bank. In Germany, a package of measures has been announced to generate €50bn in new investment and contracts from the public sector. France has announced state aid of €19bn for certain key industries, Spain has seen a €40bn fiscal stimulus package, including €6bn in tax cuts, and Italy has announced an €80bn stimulus package. The precise obligations of each EU nation remain undetermined. The Economic Affairs commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, said the Union could currently be divided into three types of country: those in relatively straitened circumstances who would simply be unable to make much extra effort; those who could make only a modest contribution, such as the UK, and those with “room for manoeuvre in their fiscal positions”, which basically means Germany, the EU’s largest economy. There was much more clarity about the sort of measures favoured by the European Commission, including lower taxes on jobs and the option of following the British example and cutting VAT (though not below the EU’s floor of 15 per cent).
Concerns about the EU package focus on three main areas. First, the obvious worry that it may not work and will just leave the EU’s member states with enormous budgets deficits and much higher levels of national debt to no discernible purpose. This is what happened to Japan from the early 1990s, when governments tried time and again to stimulate the economy through tax cuts and public spending on infrastructure projects. The tax cuts were by and large saved, while the Japanese countryside became littered with little-used motorways and bridges. It is a matter of timing. The Japanese boost – including near-zero interest rates – came too late, long after confidence had drained from the economy and deflation (a generalised tendency for prices, especially of assets such as houses and shares to fall and output to stagnate) had gained a firm grip.
The EU, and the wider G20, now hopes to avoid this fate by acting swiftly and decisively, hence the urgency of the initiatives such as cutting VAT, and their clear intent to persuade consumers to bring spending forward. Having seen interest rate reductions do relatively little good because of the failure of the credit markets and the banks to pass them on in full, governments are turning increasingly to boosting their economies though fiscal means.
There are suggestions, not least from President-elect Barack Obama’s advisers , that the next step may be “quantitative easing” – simply “printing money” to induce a return to economic growth. On the record, Mr Obama has said he wants a stimulus package “enacted right away” with tax cuts and spending increases – passed by Congress ready for him to sign into law when he takes office on 20 January.
After Mr Barosso’s plans are approved, it is not clear that Europe, and the UK in particular, will have anything left to offer banks in trouble. That is a very worrying
possibility. — By arrangement with The Independent |
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Russia rekindles relationships with Latin America RUSSIAN President Dmitri Medvedev arrived in Venezuela on Wednesday to boost economic and political ties, his latest stop on a Latin American tour coinciding with President-elect Barack Obama’s preparations to take office. Along with earlier visits to Brazil and Peru, the trip to Caracas reflects a strategy to re-engage a region that Russia largely has ignored since the fall of the Soviet Union. Venezuela has purchased more than $4.4 billion in arms from Russia, which in turn has committed huge sums for energy exploration in Venezuela.
Medvedev’s red-carpet welcome at Caracas’ Maiquetia airport followed Tuesday’s arrival of four Russian warships, including the atomic-powered Peter the Great missile cruiser, in La Guaira. It was the most significant appearance of Russian military assets in the hemisphere since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Russian ships are to participate in joint military exercises with Venezuelan vessels and aircraft starting next week. Medvedev and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were to review the Russian ships Thursday. “We share a common desire for a multipolar world, not a unipolar one,” Medvedev said Wednesday night in an appearance with Chavez at the Miraflores presidential palace. The leaders signed seven trade accords, including one covering nuclear energy development. Earlier Wednesday, Medvedev was in Brazil to sign accords with President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, including a sale of 12 Russian helicopters. The Russian president’s next stop is Cuba, which also is seeking Russian re-engagement. The two nations downgraded ties after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Analyst Sarah Mendelson of the Washington think tank CSIS said she saw political brinkmanship in Medvedev’s presence. It sends a clear signal to Obama that Russia is capable of answering U.S. forays into Moscow’s sphere of influence, such as Washington’s support for the former Soviet republic of Georgia and the proposed placement of an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic, she said. “The Russians are telling Obama that if he follows what Moscow sees as the provocative approach of President (George W.) Bush, there will be consequences,” Council on Foreign Relations fellow Jeff Markoff said. But Medvedev’s ability to make deals in Latin America could be crimped by the global financial crisis and Russia’s declining oil revenues, Markoff added. Latin American nations’ desire not to get off on the wrong foot with Obama also might work against sensitive agreements, Brookings Institution fellow Igor Danchenko said. A factory planned near Caracas that would produce Russian-designed rifles has raised concerns for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that the weapons could end up in the hands of the FARC, the leftist rebel organization with close ties to Chavez. Those concerns prompted a visit to Bogota, Colombia, last week by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who assured Uribe, a close U.S. ally, that all arms sales to Venezuela were “defensive” in nature. Medvedev went to Brazil after visiting Peru as part of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Conference forum in Lima.
One Lima-Moscow accord will allow Moscow to install a plant for repair of about 60 Russian-made helicopters in the Peruvian military fleet. Officials said it would be the first such facility in Latin America and would allow Peru to mend its Soviet-era choppers without shipping them to Russia. “Russia is looking to consolidate its relations in Latin America, largely forgotten since the fall of the Soviet Union,” Medvedev said during a meeting with Peruvian President Alan Garcia.
Kraul reported from Bogota, and McDonnell from Lima. Special correspondent Mery Mogollon in Caracas, Venezuela, contributed to this
report. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post |
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Delhi Durbar IN his enthusiasm to run down the top BJP leadership, Congress spokesman M. Verrappa Moily landed himself in a piquant situation during his media briefing the other day.
Talking about Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his utterances on the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS), the suave Congress spokesman dubbed Modi the person who had communalised the Malegoan blasts
and recalled how he was denied a visa by the US. When asked whether he endorsed the US government’s decision not to give a visa to Modi, Moily immediately retracted to say: “When he was denied a visa, we were sorry but at the same time we were ashamed...the question here is how did Modi land himself in such a vulnerable position?” Little did he realise that the more Congress attacks Modi, the more popular he becomes with the people. Just when Moily was hitting out at Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister’s rallies in Delhi were attracting
good crowds.
All quiet at BJP office One thing the BJP pays the greatest attention to is the media. At least one or the other member of its rather large team of spokesmen is always at hand to quench the thirst for media bytes.
And in election times, greater attention is paid to this. But of late it seems to be lagging behind in this respect. Quite often, even junior members of the media cell are missing nowadays, leaving nobody to provide some gossip, a samosa and
tea to journos. The ostensible reason is the BJP’s preoccupation with state assembly polls currently under way. But even then this is rather unusual for a party like the BJP. Worse, very often there are leaders like media- savvy Arun Jaitley relaxing next door to the party headquarters, his official residence, and yet the BJP office wears a deserted look.
A newsman interpreted this saying either the party is too confident of winning all states involved in the assembly polls or is too despondent fearing
major reverses.
Zardari: a fan of Madhuri Dancing diva Madhuri Dixit, who mesmerised a whole generation of Indians with her ‘jhatkas’ in the nineties, has a die hard fan in Pakistan President Asif Ali
Zardari. Zardari, the husband of former assassinated Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, confessed this during his address at the Hindustan Times conclave last week. He said he was, however, unable to watch Hindi films nowadays because of the high-pressure office he occupies.
Guess who was seated in the audience? Another popular Bollywood actor who was romantically at one time linked with Madhuri — Sanjay
Dutt. Contributed by: Vibha Sharma, Faraz Ahmad, Ashok Tuteja |
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