The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Sops for industry
Concessions when money is scarce

The state cow in Punjab has been milked dry by farmers as well as industrialists with the blessings of their political patrons. Once one incentive is given, they ask for more. And the list is endless. The snag is that Punjab’s treasury is near empty. The latest industrial policy has dried up one more source of revenue for the cash-strapped government by waiving the change-in-land-use charges. Politics of appeasement continues. Industry Minister Manoranjan Kalia has not cared to quantify the burden the latest giveaway will put on the exchequer. That, perhaps, has been for the Finance Minister to figure out.

It was half in jest and half in desperation when Mr Manpreet Singh Badal remarked that the state got more tax revenue from a single multinational fast-food joint than the entire Ludhiana industry put together. The state apparatus, perhaps, still remains equally blind to the widespread theft of taxes. Unless taxes are imposed and collected honestly, there would be no money for development. If the government appeases one section, it cannot say no to another. Getting wind of how easily the Akali-BJP government in Punjab could be arm-twisted into yielding concessions, global tycoon Laxmi Mittal too has sought a Rs 600 crore sales tax waiver for the Bathinda refinery that the Amarinder Singh government had withdrawn.

In a case of short-sightedness the government has decided to ease pollution norms for big industries and outsource the inspection of industrial houses. This is shocking in view of the havoc already played with the quality of groundwater, Budha Nullah and river waters by untreated industrial effluents in the state. The start of a helicopter service from Ludhiana and Jalandhar may help some industrialists fly past chaotic traffic, but what they essentially want is power to run units and safe roads to reach home unhurt. Punjab cannot attract industry until infrastructure comes up to the required level, red tape ends (one-window concept has been hanging for years) and political and bureaucratic machinery moves in the desired direction. There is also a need to shed the practice of replacing tax evasion with tax concessions. It is better to raise revenue and develop.

Iran and N-weapons
Dialogue is the best way to tackle the issue

The Iranian nuclear issue has taken an interesting turn with Teheran allowing inspection of its Qom nuclear facility by UN experts on October 25. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed AlBaradei has described the development as a shift in the relations between Iran and the West, “from conspiracy to transparency and cooperation”. Any development that can lead to the easing of tensions between the two sides must be welcomed in the interest of peace and stability. The Qom nuclear plant is under construction and it will be inspected to ensure that the facility is meant “for peaceful purposes” as claimed by Iran. The existence of the plant was made public a few weeks ago by Teheran.

The change in the Iranian stance has been appreciated by the world community, including the US. This is bound to strengthen the belief that a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue can be found through dialogue and diplomatic means. Iran has another nuclear facility at Natanz, which has been at the centre of a controversy because the world suspects that it is meant for making nuclear weapons, though Teheran denies the charge. Iran’s refusal to dismantle its Natanz nuclear plant, as demanded by the West, has led to the imposition of UN sanctions on Iran. Efforts for more sanctions against Iran may now be given up. Iran has agreed that the low-enriched uranium it has stockpiled will now be shipped to Russia and then to France. The uranium will then be brought back to Iran after its conversion into fuel rods.

This, however, does not mean that Iran has given up its programme to acquire the capability of making nuclear weapons. It might be more confident to do so; hence the decision to allow the inspection of its Qom nuclear facility by IAEA. Whatever is the truth, the latest development has brightened the hope that the Iranian nuclear issue can be resolved through talks. The dialogue route should not be abandoned under any circumstances. If talks can succeed in the case of North Korea, it can lead to similar results in Iran also.

Thought for the Day

The thing with high-tech is that you always end up using scissors. — David Hockney

ARTICLE

Peace in Nepal
Bring back Maoists into mainstream
by Maj-Gen Ashok K. Mehta (retd)

With China and Pakistan hogging the headlines, Nepal has slipped off India’s radar. Five months after losing power, Maoists in Nepal are still shell-shocked. They refuse to accept the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led government as legitimate and have frozen the peace process through a protest campaign which has unleashed the Young Communist League to further erode their commitment to pluralism and non-violence. Maoists have not grown out of the guerrilla mindset, especially using their election victory as the people’s mandate for the abuse of the parliamentary system in the name of civilian supremacy, the mask for recapturing power. In its latest report, the International Crisis Group has attributed the current mess in Nepal to Maoist inexperience in governance.

Jan Andolan III has been launched to recapture power through a United National People’s Movement led by the party’s second-in-command, Mr Baburam Bhattarai, and a 144-member working committee. Mr Bhattarai declared: “We are the state. Singha Durbar is parallel one of the Maoist state”. The Maoists have established a shadow cabinet and made a 45-point charter of demands, which, if not met, will lead to a new movement. On September 6, addressing his supporters in Biratnagar, Prachanda said: “We will provide weapons if required to restore people’s democracy”. Their strategy of threat, intimidation and psywar is not new — it is designed to “unbalance the illegal government” and form a Maoist-led national government.

The Maoists have threatened to launch the next phase of their civilian supremacy campaign by the end of October, after Tihar festival, unless a parliamentary resolution indicts the President over restoring former Army Chief Gen Rukmangad Katwal and a constitutional amendment removes the President from the chain of Army control. This will be a mere Band Aid.

While the budget has not been ratified by the House, Maoists continue to obstruct Parliament and black-flag the President and the Prime Minister.

The Gen Katwal episode was a strategic blunder and a turning point for the peace process leading to the breakdown of political consensus. Mr Prachanda was egged on by party hardliners to sack General Katwal to bring the Nepal Army under political control to facilitate the integration of Maoist combatants into a national Army. Mr Prachanda failed to factor the reaction to and consequences of the dismissal order. The Chinese are believed to have encouraged the Maoists to present a fait accompli, ignoring India’s red lines. The heavy-handed police action against the Tibetans and the YCL attack on Indian priests at Pashupatinath also carry the Chinese stamp.

Ever since the Maoists won the elections in April 2008, the Chinese have substantially increased their activities, including establishing 24 China Study Centres, and renewed making pointed statements about upholding Nepalese sovereignty and territorial integrity. Speaking at the Carter Study Centre on September 5, Ambassador Quo Guohang said: “China will provide arms and financial and diplomatic support if any threat is posed to Nepal’s territorial integrity”. Such commitments were once the prerogative of the Indian state.

Although some of the 109 armed groups in the Terai have declared a ceasefire for the festive season, the government’s new Special Security Plan which envisages additional raising of 12000 personnel in the police, the armed police and the National Intelligence Directorate, all under a Unified Command, has shown positive results. The government is also considering raising a Central Industrial Security Force for instilling security and confidence among business and industry.

The internal security situation is so bad that some people have suggested the formation of a Gorkhali militia consisting of the retired Gorkhas of the Indian Army. Such a force was constituted as part of the United Nations Interim Task Force to monitor the arms and camps of the Maoist combatants. A national security policy is under preparation by a task force comprising representatives from Home and Defence Ministries as well as the National Security Council. This will be the first document to scrutinise threat perspectives to evolve internal and external security imperatives. It could form the basis for the security sector reforms, including democratisation of the Nepal Army.

The new Army Chief, Gen Chhatraman Singh Gurung, launched a national workshop on civil-military relations, emphasising “professional autonomy” while obeying strictly the orders of the civilian government. Relations between the Army and people and democratisation of the Army were discussed.

The recast Army Integration Special Committee and its Technical Committee have come up with a blueprint of a command and control structure of Maoist combatants. It is designed to shifting operational control of the PLA from the Maoist high command to the state. But before that can happen the 19,602 qualified Maoist combatants have to be integrated into the security forces. The integration debate has picked up with different players singing old and new tunes. Speaking for the Maoists, Mr Barshaman Pun is advocating total integration with the army, quoting the South African model where 47 per cent of the rebels and 53 per cent of the state forces were merged. The government is talking in two voices, one saying zero integration with the Nepal Army but integration with paramilitary forces. The other voice — integration into the Army of an unspecifieid number of PLA combatants which meets the Army’s recruitment criterion.

Led by Lt-Gen Pawan Jung Pandey and supported by retired Generals, the Nepal Army has ruled out the South African model as their members are allowed to join political parties. Former UN Official Kul Chandra Gautam has mooted a compromise proposal of integrating 2000 male and 2000 female combatants into the Army. A token integration of two armies is key to the success of the peace process and should be endorsed by Indian interlocutors.

Progress in drafting the constitution is very tardy. Only five of the 10 thematic sub-committees have submitted their concept papers. Very thorny issues of state structure, federalism and devolution lie ahead and with such divergent ideas, between Maoists and other political formations, their harmonisation will not be easy as every article of the constitution has to have a two-thirds backing in the House. Mr Prachanda has said that not a word will be written which is not our word. Of the 57 meetings of the Constituent Assembly, he has attended only three.

Former lawyer and Maoist Khem Lal Devkota, who has become a spokesperson of his party in Delhi said recently that once a national government led by the Maoists is formed, the constitution will be completed on time by May 28, 2010. He said the 1990 constitution was written in three months and the interim constitution in three weeks though the final draft was ready in two months.

So, how does a national government led by the Maoists come in place when they don’t have the numbers. The NC and the UML have challenged the Maoists to table an impeachment motion against the President and a no-confidence motion against the government. While the Chinese are waiting for a return of a Moist-led government, India wants the status quo. Foreign Secertary Nirupama Rao was recently in Kathmandu and met Maoist leaders except Mr Prachanda who left for Chinese Hong Kong. Mrs Rao is quoted as having advised the Maoists to being pragmatists like the Chinese Communists. While accepting Indian dominance in Nepal’s internal politics, they suggested that India should play a constructive role. Senior Maoist leader KB Mahara, on his return from Hong Kong, told the media that unlike India, China has never tried to interfere in Nepal’s domestic affairs.

The Maoists are able to whip up unprecedented anti-India sentiment which is horribly contagious, given the restlessness among Maoist combatants and the YCL, the intransigence of the Maoist high command and the absence of law and order. Breaking the deadlock over civilian supremacy will be easier than ushering back a Prachanda-led government.

Bringing back the Maoists into the peace process is fundamental to breaking the status quo.

MIDDLE

The circle of life
by Robin Gupta

MANY years ago while posted in Delhi, during the cold season, I often walked to office, a short distance away. One morning I noticed a cadaverous young man braving the chilly winds under a leafless tree, clad in a translucent shirt and nondescript trousers, the stamp of hunger writ large on his countenance, with despairing eyes staring out ahead of him.

For no particular reason, I turned on my heel and asked him about his circumstance. “My name is Chandan Singh”, he said. “We are Rajputs from Garhwal. My father served in the British Indian Army, returned home on pension, fought an election and lost all his money. Our family is penniless and I have come here in search of a job”.

I heard him patiently and then looked at my watch remembering that I had several pressing engagements.

Pointing to my house I told Chandan Singh to meet me on a holiday. Hastening my step to office after a short while I stopped in my track struck by the thought that the boy must be on the verge of collapse. I asked Chandan Singh to follow me. Having taken his application I took care to recommend his name for a job standing guarantor for him. Perhaps it was my deep inner vacuity that directed me to light a lamp for a wayfarer.

Many years passed and I was posted to Eastern India while my elderly mother continued to live by herself, in Delhi when communications were erratic and uncertain keeping me in a state of perpetual anxiety about her welfare. From time to time, I would request visitors to Delhi to enquire if she was well, for mother, an outpost of the British Raj, was stately and confident and required me to concentrate on my job in the moffussil and her standard reply to any inquiry about her well-being was “top of the world”.

One winter day on impulse, I caught a flight to Delhi and on reaching home I found the front door ajar, the unlit chandelier ominously silhouetting old carpets and curios with gloom punctuating the overall abandonment. With a fearful heart, I walked into her room to find her lying on her bed breathing heavily under an oxygen mask.

Out of the chilly stillness, a young man walked in with medicine. He touched my feet in salutation. “I am Chandan Singh, sir. I got the job three years back and have been coming to seek mother’s blessings. Two days ago, I found no one here. Mother has been ill and I am looking after her”.

Stupefied I fulminated: “No one informed me. I do not know your address, your father’s name, nothing about you, in fact”. Chandan Singh looked straight into my eyes and said, “Sir, mother is unwell. I am here to serve her. This is my identity card. My father’s name is Lance Naik Bishen Singh. He was in battle with your father in the 8th Army”.

There was a faint smile of recognition on my mother’s face.

OPED

Congress out to woo Muslims for support
by Faraz Ahmad

Two significant events took place last weekend in the national capital. ANHAD, an NGO, organised a meeting on the plight of Muslims to show how they were victims of bias and prejudice of the state.

Muslims from across the country attending the three-day meet were critical and sceptical of the secular credentials of the Indian state and many went so far as to insist that the character of the Indian state is patently communal.

In a parallel development the UPA government decided to ignore the recommendations of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions to standardise and modernise Madrasa education by setting up a Central Madrasa Board for formalising and standardising non-theological madrasa education. Muslim madrasas are spread across the length and breadth of India, specially in the countryside.

Union Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal invited all the 59 sitting Muslim MPs to a meeting to discuss the proposal. Only 18 of them turned up. Four supported the proposal fully, 10 saw nothing wrong with it and generally went along with the proposal. Just four, including the lone Hyderabad-based Majlises Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) MP Asaduddin Owaisi and two Trinamul Congress MPs and one other MP opposed the proposal, objecting to the government “interfering in the affairs of the Muslim community.”

They wielded enough clout to make Sibal retreat and say: “If the community does not want it we can drop the idea altogether.”

The MIM has all along been a bit of a mischief maker and the last we heard it assaulted noted Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen and journalists when she was being hosted by the Andhra journalists at the Hyderabad Press Club a couple of years back.

As for Trinamul, it is busy trying to wean Muslims from the CPI-M led Left Front Evidently, it is banking on similar fundamentalist elements , the self-proclaimed wholesale custodians and traders of Muslim votes. That is why perhaps the Trinamul MPs were most vocal in opposing any modernisation of madrasas.

But not far away from this Kapil Sibal meeting, for three days Muslims from across the country assembled at the Constitution Club and explained how they were being hounded and singled out, bundled into jails and false cases were trumped up upon them. They were not allowed to say their prayers even on the Eid day inside the jail.

Victim after victim narrated how there was nobody to appeal to and respond to their plight, how the police, the administration and even the judiciary, including the Human Rights Commission, was adopting two sets of standards when it came to dealing with Muslims.

The Batla House incident and the Ishrat Jehan killing came up for repeated mention to demonstrate how their attempts at getting justice even through the NHRC have failed. Accusing fingers were raised at the Central Govenrment too, both in relation to the Batla House incident and the Ishrat Jehan fake encounter case, where the Central Government had enthusiastically supported the Gujarat government in labelling Ishrat Jehan and her companion Javed Sheikh as LeT activists gone to Ahmedabad to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Modi and his government’s role came as no surprise to anyone, in the light of what all he had been doing since the February 2002 Godhra incident. But the first affidavit the Union Home Ministry submitted to the Gujarat High Court on August 6, 2009 really shook all faith in the fairness of the Central Government and the policing agencies that are operating under it.

It has since revised the affidavit but without disowning the first and without fixing responsibility on the officers concerned for their blatant communal bias in the first affidavit.

Union Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed, who came to the Muslim meet, virtually raised his hands pleading that he could do precious little to alleviate the sufferings of thousands of poor Muslims across northern and western India who are being subjected to daily humiliation and torture simply because they bear Muslim names or happen to sport a beard or wear a cap on their head and often times the young boys picked up are not even sporting a beard or a cap.

The inference one can draw from these parallel developments is pretty simple. The Muslim community continues to suffer at the hands of a biased and prejudiced administration not just in the state of Gujarat run by Narendra Modi but the situation is hardly different in places like Delhi or UP, run by the supposedly secular governments led by the Congress in Delhi and the BSP and Mayawati in UP.

All the promises of the Congress and UPA government made not just before the 2004 general election but again in the run-up to the 2009 elections of giving a fair treatment to the Muslim community amount to nothing.

But on the other hand, when it comes to issues involving the progress and development of the community, the UPA government and the Congress party would not dare displease the so-called custodians of the Muslim community like MIM or a handful of obscurantist mullahs now aligned to Mamata Banerjee, whom Mamata would not like to annoy at this hour because she hopes to use them to win away all the Muslim voters from the CPI-M dominated Left Front and thus defeat the CPI-M in the next Assembly elections.

This when the recommendations for setting up a Central madrasa board did not come from a saffron body. Rather the NCMEI and its Chairman are all God-fearing Muslims and the Chairman is a respected retired High Court judge. Moreover, the move was inspired by the recommendations of Justice Rajinder Sachar in his now famous Sachar committee report.

When the Sachar report came Muslims were most enthusiastic about it and even MIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi demanded immediate implementation of the report. In fact, modernisation and standardisation of madrasa education will only help Muslim youth in being considered for employment both in the government and other sectors once its certificate is granted a status equal to school pass.

And yet the government is reluctant to move, lest it annoys the self-appointed custodians of Muslim votes, who anyway have a vested interest in keeping the Muslims backward and ghettoised.

In effect, the Congress does not seem to have learnt any lessons from its past mistakes. It continues to encourage and appease wholesale traders of Muslim votes, unmindful of the real concerns of the community. This also has a few lessons for the Muslim community who rushed to the Congress in the hope that in its new avtaar it was different from the Congress of the 1980s.

At the beck and call of political masters
by S.S. Dhanoa

The direct rebuke to the top bosses of the police by the Union Home Minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, at a national-level meeting of the Directors General of the Police is something that must have given a jolt to the dignitaries assembled there, particularly in view of the facts that prevail on the ground in almost all the states of India.

It is exceptional these days to find a Chief Minister who does not interfere in the internal management of the police force. The author was a witness when the DGP of Bihar had rushed into the office of Chief Minister to seek his clearance for postings of a group of police officers that included officers at the level of inspector in pursuance of a call from a Central minister on the eve of the expected general election.

The CM fell silent for a few moments before he told the DG to do what he thought was appropriate. The CM asked the author after the DGP left if it was appropriate for the DG to seek his clearance on something that concerned purely the area where the DG had full powers yet even he could not say no as an answer.

There is no doubt that the Home Minister had someone like the Bihar DGP in mind when he spoke at the conference. IPS officers are selected on the basis of a competitive examination conducted by the UPSC and they enjoy the same protection as is applicable to others under the Constitution.

However, the police officers are found generally carrying out the writ of the political masters more often than officers of other services, though IAS officers too in many states are not far behind in this regard.

The reason for this it seems to lie in the legal framework and the culture of the police services in India. Indian law has vested authority for the naked exercise of state power on a police officer in charge of a police station. He takes cognizance of offences listed in the Indian Penal Code and other laws and he investigates those cases as per the Criminal Procedure Code. He too is responsible for the prevention of crimes in his area for which literally he can take any citizen into custody for at least 24 hours.

The difference in this can easily be appreciated from the example of a secretariat noting where a proposal in the noting of a clerk initiating the file could be rejected by his superior officers but the arguments in the note of the clerk remained recorded which many times led to the expose of top officials when they had tried to oblige their superior political masters.

A commission of enquiry can lay bare such manoeuvres on the administrative side but such an exposure is not possible even if investigation in a criminal case had been similarly compromised. A recent book by a junior CBI official cites instances where the investigation of various important cases got compromised because of the interference by his departmental bosses.

Mr Joginder Singh, an ex-Director of the CBI, has recently gone public to say that the then Prime Minister prevented him from booking a prominent politician in the fodder scam.

There was safety in the old police Act where the overall responsibility for the maintenance of law and order vested with the District Magistrate. He could check a blatant partisan role of the district police because the district officer had powers to initiate the performance report of the district superintendent of police as also a right to be consulted in the transfer of the officers in charge of the police stations.

The district officers also received copies of the FIRs and supervisory investigation notes in important criminal cases. The district officers were required to inspect some of the important police stations under their jurisdiction. The system fell apart when the judiciary got separated from the executive and with the district officers getting more occupied with developmental, welfare and other duties.

The police forces in free countries got created and strengthened because of the need felt for the community. The police in free countries has to seek their acceptance in society by proving their usefulness to the community and by helping/serving the citizen.

The police force in India owes its existence to the need of the colonial authority for peace and order in the country. A police that could bend the law and tackle a threat to the colonial authority, was deliberately fostered and encouraged so that in times of threat to the colonial authority the need for recourse to the use of the armed forces was minimised.

Unfortunately, in India we have again and again after Independence turned to a similar illegitimate use of the police for restoring peace and order as happened in Punjab during the eighties.

It seems that the Home Minister and his team have to go to the roots of the problem rather than indulging in mere symptomatic treatment and castigating the helpless DGPs.

Russia’s war on words
by K. Anthony Appiah

Three years ago this week Anna Politkovskaya, a courageous journalist who exposed appalling human rights offenses in Chechnya, was shot five times as she entered her Moscow apartment building. She was not the first Russian journalist to be slain for performing the invaluable function of bringing buried truths to light. Sadly, there have been, and will be, more murders. And we all pay the price.

Westerners were inclined to think during the Cold War that a democratic Russia would be better for Russians and for us. Yet 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, hopes for genuine democracy in Russia remain unrealized. A major reason is the parlous condition of the Russian media.

In the United States, an investigative journalist who unsettles the powerful can win accolades; in Russia, such a journalist can expect to be gunned down. A liberal democracy depends on reporters who follow the story and publish what they learn. It cannot flourish when the pursuit of investigative journalism carries an informal death penalty.

This year alone has been terrible for the brave journalists who are continuing the work for which Politkovskaya gave her life.

In July the human rights activist Natalya Estemirova was kidnapped outside her home in Grozny, Chechnya; her bullet-ridden body was found hours later in Ingushetia, another of the troubled regions of Russia. Last October, Estemirova had received the first Anna Politkovskaya award from the human rights group Reach All Women in War.

In January, Stanislav Markelov, a leading human rights attorney and president of the Russian Rule of Law Institute, was fatally shot in Moscow as he left a news conference he had called to protest the release of a Russian officer convicted of atrocities in the Chechen war. Markelov, a close friend of Estemirova, was known for his work representing victims of torture and journalists, including Politkovskaya. Anastasia Baburova, a student journalist for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta (which had employed Politkovskaya), was also shot and died hours later.

It is not only those covering Chechnya who are at risk. Last November, Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a newspaper in Khimki (northwest of Moscow) who had been reporting on local government corruption, was beaten nearly to death and then left in the freezing cold; he lost a leg and fingers to frostbite. In February the editor of a local weekly in Solnechnogorsk (further northwest of Moscow) was found unconscious and bleeding. He had published articles critical of local politicians.

There is every reason to believe that the murders of these journalists are assassinations: politically motivated killings carried out or covered up by members of the Russian intelligence services, and ignored by a government whose first duty is to protect the lives and liberties of citizens. Sadly, what Estemirova said about Politkovskaya’s murder is likely to be true of all such killings: “Even if we find out who pulled the trigger, the person who gave the order will remain unknown.”

Russia no longer needs gulags to silence the opposition. The punishment for drawing attention to the sins of the mighty used to be a show trial and exile, possibly to a labor camp. Now journalists receive an anonymous but credible threat of violence to themselves or their families, a beating on their doorstep or, in some cases, execution in broad daylight.

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Corrections and clarifications

In the Middle by Harish Dhillon on October 7, the name of the village should have been Chappar Jhiri.

In the late city edition of October 6, the front page report on Supreme Court’s hearing on Mayawati’s memorials, several paragraphs from another report on power plants in Uttarakhand have inadvertently appeared towards the end of the copy.

On page 3 of Chandigarh Tribune ( October 6) one of the paragraphs in the report, ‘Monkey bite cases rising’ has been repeated thrice and yet another paragraph has been repeated twice.

It should have been ‘propagate’ in the report on SGPC decision to start a course on Sikhism in Hindi ( Page 4, October 8)

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column appears twice a week — every Tuesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua
Editor-in-Chief