The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Last man standing
Kuldeep Bishnoi’s party crumbles

The majority that the Congress party had failed to muster at the hustings on its own has finally come its way with the fifth MLA of the Haryana Janhit Congress of Mr Kuldeep Bishnoi, Mr Dharam Singh Chookar from Samalkha, also deserting it to join the Congress. With five legislators of the HJC in the Congress kitty, the latter now has a strength of 45 in the 90-member assembly, which has an effective strength of 89 as one seat is vacant. With the support of BSP member Akram Khan and seven Independents, the Congress now has the support of 53 members in the Vidhan Sabha. That reduces the dependence of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Independents but raises uncomfortable questions about the constitutionality and also the morality of the defections.

Mr Kuldeep Bishnoi must be a disillusioned man, considering that he is now the only MLA of his fledgling party. When the Congress had failed to cross the half-way mark in the elections, it was obvious to everybody that his party would come in for concerted picking. But he carried the parleys about merger and support a bit too far. At one stage, there was even talk that he might be made Deputy Chief Minister but in the end, he had to go empty- handed. The way his brother Chander Mohan got and lost the coveted post and the way he has now lost it despite being so close must have left their father Bhajan Lal, a self-styled Ph D in politics, baffled. However, that is how things function in the land of Aya Rams and Gaya Rams.

How Mr Hooda rewards the new entrants remains to be seen. He had kept four ministerial berths vacant for the expected guests. Now there are five men to be appeased. He already has an army of nine Chief Parliamentary Secretaries. How the extra person is accommodated will be interesting to watch. Even more crucial will be the reaction of his own party men. There are already serious rumblings among old Congressmen over the lion’s share given to Independents. Particularly sharp will be the reaction of the known detractors of the Chief Minister.

Abuse of parole
Manu’s case a violation of rules

The two-month parole granted to Siddharth Vashisth alias Manu Sharma, serving life sentence in New Delhi’s Tihar jail for killing model Jessica Lall in 1999, raked up a controversy and has raised serious questions of propriety. Evidently, he got relief thanks to his powerful political connections. He may have surrendered to jail on Tuesday 12 days before his parole was to end, but this does not dilute his offence and the indiscretion of the authorities. Reports about his involvement in a brawl in a Delhi five-star hotel bar on Monday night showed that he was back to his old ways. He seemed to forget that he was convicted for murder after he shot dead Jessica Lall at a bar for refusing to serve him a drink late in the night. In fact, Monday’s incident would not have come to the fore had he not quarrelled with the New Delhi Police Commissioner’s son in the hotel.

As it appears, the Delhi Government was less than scrupulous in following the jail manual to bail out Manu Sharma. Chief Minister Sheila Dixit may have said that “all rules were followed” in this case but the grounds on which he was granted parole were specious and unconvincing. Surprisingly, no official had bothered to verify whether his mother was “seriously ill”. TV channels had nailed down this claim on Tuesday by showing a beaming Shakti Rani Sharma addressing a Press conference for a cricket match in Chandigarh.

Worse, parole for a life convict to help him review his business interests is ludicrous. This is a mockery of justice and is inimical to our constitutional rights and freedoms. There will be no rule of law and the Constitution will be a dud if life convicts are given parole in this manner. In fact, the Supreme Court had rejected Manu Sharma’s plea for bail in November 2007. To prevent the brazen abuse of parole, there is an imperative need for making the rules more stringent.

Thought for the Day

The eye must redden at an act of injustice even while it sheds a tear. — Ram Manohar Lohia

ARTICLE

Power dynamics in Pakistan
LeT still considered strategic asset
by G Parthasarathy

Developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan will figure prominently when Dr Manmohan Singh visits the Obama White House on November 24. The Obama Administration has handled events related to the recent re-election of Mr Hamid Karzai as President of Afghanistan in a crude and insensitive manner. By publicly humiliating Mr Karzai, Washington has only weakened a leader set to play a crucial role in the emerging developments in Afghanistan.

Moreover, the prolonged period that the Obama Administration has taken to review its policies on Afghanistan has given an impression of dithering and uncertainty on the most crucial foreign policy challenge that Washington faces today. This has only confused the countries like India which have sought to complement Washington’s efforts to strengthen Afghanistan internally. These developments are also encouraging the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to believe that they will succeed in their efforts to promote terrorism globally.

Vice-President Joseph Biden reportedly advocates action against Taliban and Al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan, and even as Mr Obama pondered over what to do next in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a well-planned visit to Pakistan, intended to reassure the Pakistanis of the American commitment to their welfare, stability and prosperity. The visit came at a time when the army establishment, led by Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, had joined forces with the opposition Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to undermine President Zardari, by voicing serious reservations and calling for the rejection of the Kerry-Lugar Act. The US law has pledged $ 7.5 billion as assistance to Islamabad, at a time when Pakistan’s revenues cannot even meet the cost of the government’s administrative expenditure, with its economic growth having plummeted to 2 per cent in 2008-2009.

Aware of the power dynamics within Pakistan, the longest meeting that Mrs Clinton had in Islamabad was not with President Zardari, or Prime Minister Gilani, but with General Kiyani, together with ISI chief Lt-Gen Shuja Pasha, with whom she spent three hours. Something in the otherwise calm and composed Hillary Clinton appears to have snapped after the meeting with the Army brass. Irked by the orchestrated criticism of US policies while in Lahore, which echoed what she heard in Islamabad, Mrs Clinton publicly voiced her misgivings about the continuing support by Pakistan’s military establishment for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

On October 29 she said: “Al-Qaeda has had a safe haven in Pakistan since 2002. I find it difficult to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are, and couldn’t get them, if they really wanted to.” Cautioning Pakistan on cross-border terrorism that it promotes in neighbouring India and Afghanistan, Mrs Clinton asserted: “If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together, there are issues that not just the United States, but others have with your government and your military security establishment.”

There is nothing to suggest that the Pakistani military or its political allies have been affected by Mrs Clinton’s public admonition. While the military continues its operations against the Tehriq-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in South Waziristan, primarily because the TTP has challenged the Army’s writ within Pakistan, the ISI nevertheless continues to back the Taliban military commanders in neighbouring North Waziristan, led by Sirajuddin Haqqani. They have relentlessly staged terrorist attacks within Afghanistan, including on the Indian Embassy in Kabul and on Indian workers throughout Afghanistan.

Moreover, the Taliban political leadership led by Mullah Omar, popularly known as the “Quetta Shura,” remains comfortably ensconced in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province. While reviewing policies on Afghanistan, the Obama Administration will sooner or later have to decide on whether it can realistically contain the Taliban or its Al-Qaeda allies in Afghanistan without exercising the “Biden option” of striking at their bases in Pakistan, across the Durand Line.

Recent revelations by the FBI of Lashkar-e-Toiba links of two Chicago residents of Pakistani origin, who were plotting a terrorist strike on targets in Denmark and India, clearly establish that the Pakistan-based terrorist organisations like the LeT now have a worldwide reach and, like Al-Qaeda, a worldwide agenda of terrorism. The terrorist attacks planned on India were to be a continuation of the earlier terrorist strikes in Mumbai and elsewhere. The prime accused, Daood Gilani aka David Headley, was in touch with Ilyas Kashmiri, a former army commando of Pakistan’s elite Special Services Group (SSG).

Kashmiri was used by the ISI in the 1980s for training the Afghan Mujahideen and in the 1990s for jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. He escaped after being captured by Indian forces in Poonch in 1994. Interestingly, while Kashmiri was later charged with an attempt to assassinate President Musharraf and for the assassination of a former Commander of the SSG, Maj-Gen Faisal Alvi, in 2008, he was allowed to get away and seek refuge in North Waziristan alongside the Afghan Taliban military commander, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who General Kayani reportedly considers to be a “strategic asset” of the ISI.

The LeT was reportedly planning to attack elite schools in northern India, reminiscent of the attack by Chechen terrorists in Beslan, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of school children. Chechen terrorists have longstanding links with the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, the LeT and political parties in Pakistan like the Jamaat-e-Islami. Home Minister P Chidambaram and the Army chief have warned that future terrorist attacks will not go unpunished. Interestingly, the establishment’s reaction in Pakistan to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech in Kashmir was brought out by former Senator and Muslim League leader Mushahid Hussain, who has long-standing links with the Pakistan Army and the LeT. Mushahid Hussain asserted that the Prime Minister’s readiness for dialogue while visiting Kashmir was because of the growing fears in India about Maoist violence, insinuating that the offer of dialogue was because of India’s internal compulsions.

India has continuously misread the internal dynamics of Pakistan. Even in late 2007 our High Commission in Islamabad and luminaries in South Block believed that General Musharraf remained strong and virtually invincible.Right now there seems to be little appreciation of the fact that it is General Kiyani, and not President Zardari, who determines and dictates the policy in Islamabad. Anyone who knows General Kiyani’s approach to relations with India, even from the days he commanded the 12th Infantry Division in Murree, should realise that he is pathologically anti-Indian and regards the LeT and the Afghan Taliban as “strategic assets”’. This is the message Dr Manmohan Singh has to firmly convey to Washington while responding to any call for the revival of the composite dialogue process.

MIDDLE

D(e)ivisions
by Rachna Nehria

It was my first visit to my paternal grandfather’s place and I was glad that he was waiting for me at the village bus stop.

I ran to meet him and was about to touch his feet when he swiftly moved away. When I looked up, his face, which was cheerful until then, wore an expression of annoyance.

As tears rolled down my cheeks, he gathered me in his bear hug and said, “By evening, I’ll make it up to you.”

He picked up my suitcase and declared, “Let’s go.” He had retired as a PT teacher in the village school some 20 years ago, but he was still fit as a fiddle.

As I huffed and puffed to keep up with him, he told me how my “worthless” father, who was unemployed then, had married a girl from upper Himachal. How could my son cross over the cultural chasm, he asked.

It was after years of persuasion that he had finally agreed to meet a member of my family but the fact that he didn’t allow me to touch his feet told me that the embers of my father’s misadventure hadn’t cooled down completely.

After lunch, my cousins decided to dress me up in the traditional style. The puja for Sankrati was to be performed that evening, they explained.

Grandpa was at his stunning best for the puja. As the village priest was nowhere in sight, grandpa borrowed me from my cousins for the interval.

He began, “Your mother comes from upper Himachal while this is the lower region of the state. People over there give equal value to boys and girls. So, boys and girls touch the feet of elders, but…” his voice trailed off as he saw the priest approaching.

A few minutes later, my cousins encircled me and made me sit at the altar.

Grandpa took his seat in front of me. He offered me flowers and rice and, to my utter disbelief, touched my feet at the end of the
ceremony.

“A girl for us is a dei (goddess). How could I have allowed my goddess to touch my feet,” he said with a smile.

OPED

Importance of Madhu Koda
The scandal has lessons for financial sector too
by Uttam Sengupta

The on-going drama involving former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda deserves attention because it highlights much that is wrong with governance and politics. Koda is the first former Chief Minister to be charged with money-laundering, hawala and acquiring assets by illegal means but he can hardly be the only politician who is guilty of such misdemeanour. Why is he then the first one to be hauled up ?

There are other questions which also beg for an answer. What is the law going to do to people, the mine owners and industrialists, who allegedly paid Koda and his cronies in crores to get their work done.

It may appear logical to identify and blacklist such people and undo the damage but the establishment appears to have neither the inclination nor the ability to crack down on the beneficiaries of political corruption. Only stern action against the beneficiaries can act as a deterrent but while the cat is visible, the bell is nowhere to be seen.

Accountants were arrested for turning a blind eye to the fudging of balance sheets by the Rajus of Satyam fame; and surely similar action is called for in the Koda case too. It is also inconceivable that financial irregularities worth Rs 4,000 crore , as is being alleged, could take place at all without the knowledge of agencies like Revenue Intelligence and the Enforcement Directorate.

Clearly some sections in these agencies either colluded with Koda and cronies or turned a blind eye to their brazen financial dealings. Yet, there is no move to identify such elements and make them accountable for their action.

After all, any important transaction in a bank now requires a Permanent Account Number ( PAN). Transactions over Rs. 50,000 are routinely communicated to the Income Tax authorities. Every time a credit card or a debit card is used, the information reaches the authorities. Frequent fliers to foreign destinations are tracked , again, as a matter of routine.

Details regarding payments made in clubs, resorts and on air travel, foreign exchange purchased etc. are also available to agencies like Revenue Intelligence, the Enforcement Directorate and the Reserve Bank of India.

Yet, Koda and his friends were apparently allowed to deal in hundreds of crores of rupees, float companies, purchase mines and property abroad , open and operate bank accounts for non-existent companies with official agencies maintaining a sphinx-like silence.

It is difficult to believe that bankers, brokers, investment consultants and tax officials were not aware of what was happening. Therefore, their sudden flurry of activities now in tracking down investments made by the former Jharkhand chief minister and his men, is not just amusing but also raises one or two disturbing questions.

One is of course whether politicians are being targeted selectively by the official agencies. Is Koda being singled out for special treatment in order to send a message to other political players, specially on the eve of the assembly elections in the state?

The suspicion is strengthened because the agencies have initiated action so far against only those politicians in Jharkhand who are either independent or who are attached to very small, regional parties. Of course nobody would believe for a moment that politicians belonging to the recognised political parties in the state were lily white.

Also, how could Binod Sinha, a small-time trader and petty contractor from a small town like Chaibasa in Jharkhand, suddenly start flying in and out of the country and purchase mines in Liberia and launch companies in Dubai without the knowledge of the Big Brother ?

If it is so easy for country bumpkins like Sinha to stash away easy money and invest in properties abroad, it is frightening to think how much more is being stashed away and invested by infinitely smarter and better-connected individuals and politicians from the bigger and more prosperous states.

The fact of the matter is that everybody in Jharkhand knew what was happening. Politicians found the mineral-rich state a playground where they could mint money by pushing files or sitting over them; by signing on some papers and by refusing to sign on others; granting mining lease to some while canceling the lease of others.

It is hardly possible that successive chief ministers remained ignorant of what was happening in the mines department. It is difficult to believe the chief ministers, Arjun Munda from the BJP and Shibu Soren from the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, were entirely innocent.

It was common knowledge in Ranchi that Binod Sinha was Koda’s pointsman. He was discreet and avoided the glare of the media although he was a permanent fixture in the Chief Minister’s official residence.

While the official explanation was that the two had been inseparable friends from their student days, it was equally well known in bureaucratic circles that even official files were being routed through Sinha, who had emerged as one of those power brokers that the Indian political system invariably throws up. Nobody batted an eyelid; nobody protested.

Sinha was the middleman between Koda and industrialists, between Koda and bureaucrats, between Koda and other politicians. And it is just possible that he extended his services to not just Koda but other politicians as well.

It is also possible that agencies chose to overlook the financial deals as long as more powerful people than Koda or Sinha had a finger in the pie.

But the hounds were unleashed either because Sinha became too ambitious and tried to venture out on his own or because he appropriated or tried to appropriate what other powerful people might have claimed to be their own.

Whatever be the motive, the Koda chronicle has important lessons for the economy. A level-playing field, zero tolerance for breaking or bending the law and uniform punishment and penalty are required to inspire confidence in the rule of the law. Selective or a partial political witch-hunt simply will not do.

Involve land-owners in development
by G.S. Grewal

Sixtytwo years have passed since India became independent; still rural India is as backward and uneducated as ever. Some urban areas have developed by making farmers poorer and helpless. The methods of development are crude and rustic. Under the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, wide powers were reserved by foreign rulers for themselves. Every state in the country has an urban development authority. A rural development authority is never heard of. Living conditions in villages are pathetic. Seventy per cent of youth in Punjab’s rural areas are unemployed and drug addicted.

As long as development is done through centralised institutions like PUDA, development will remain lop-sided and expensive. Its benefit will never reach the grassroots. The whole process encourages inflation and price rise. Slums are multiplying. PUDA, the developing authority, wants to make as much profit as private contractors.

In the original Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995, Section 136 provided that any saving made from a project should be spent on the same project after consultation with the people. The said people-oriented section was deleted in a subsequent amendment.

The attitude of the bureaucracy makes the acquisition proceeding extortionist. Hence, resentment among the people. It is calculated that 48 per cent live in slums in Mumbai and more that 33 per cent in Chandigarh.

An average farmer family of five people in India does not own more than two acres. It is one of the wonders of the world the way they survive. By acquisition we deprive them of this small piece of land and push them on the road to slums in cities.

People can be made partners in development. Land should only be acquired for roads, sewerage and open space or schools and colleges etc. The owners should be paid regular rent for the same out of the taxes, fees charged from the users. The places where shops and houses or other things are to be made should be built by people jointly by taking loans etc. This is being done in Maharashtra and Gujarat with much greater success. The system can be modified according to local requirements.

In Punjab when octroi was abolished the government had agreed to compensate the municipalities. Similarly, some sort or procedure can be evolved which distributes benefits to all sections of societies and not only to the builders and planners. The owner of land should also benefit from its development instead of being sacrificed for it same. In the present system everybody earns except the owners of the land which is acquired.

Development Laws should be amended to make them people-oriented.

Greater Mohali Area Development Authority recently made a land pooling scheme. It is just a clever attempt to acquire land without the payment of adequate compensation. People were not consulted before the scheme was launched.

All aspects of the scheme are still not made public and ultimately people are given 1/5th of what they own. In real and pooling people should get much more than what they surrender. Therefore, there are not many takers of the scheme.

A scheme should be such where land owners crave for it and not resent it. It is a myth that with land pooling development will be slow. It will be faster than the present method where every affected person runs to the High Court to get a stay and then the project is halted for years.

In Punjab many land acquisition works have been at a standstill for the last eight-nine years and yet cases are pending at initial stages in courts. Every method in which people become partner will be faster than the present one in which they first acquire and then develop. That is anti-people and not suitable in the country where there is no surplus vacant land available and personal holdings are small.

Nowadays land is allotted to societies which construct houses on approved lines by pooling resources. The same can be done by the original owners. The role of the developing agency should be to assist the owners instead of exploiting them. Nobody in Punjab has tried this method so far and we are adopting the same procedure which was being used by our masters before Independence.

Under the land pooling scheme farmers will cooperate and there will be very limited litigation. Let us try this at least for some time and it can be improved by experience. At least, there will be no protests and agitations. Instead. there will be cooperation.

In Punjab roads to each village were made on peoples’ land, without acquiring it. People come forward to build roads. The labour and earth was supplied by villagers free. Government provided other material, skilled labour and machinery. Whole project was completed in record time and foundation was laid down for the progress of Punjab. With little more effort, imagination and better motivation wonders can be created to take the state amongst the most progressive ones in the country. To fulfil this vision, the administration has to change its way of thinking for the grass root man and his benefit. Hundreds of ideas will strike, some of them can be used to change the process of planning for the benefit of the society as whole and not only from the points of view of the already affluent section. One dedicated, motivated man can change the face of the State that will make all of us proud of.

The writer is a former Advocate General of Punjab

Failure of Adivasi dream has fuelled Maoist fire
by Soroor Ahmed

An important aspect often ignored while discussing Left extremism in the country is that the Maoists of the post-liberalisation era are much different from the Naxalites active in the 1960s and early 1970s. While the latter were confined to West Bengal, and later on to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, their counterparts in the 21st century have dug themselves deep in at least nine states.

While young college graduates, journalists, writers, academics, peasants, landless and to some extent industrial labourers were carried away by the revolutionary slogans of the Naxals of yesteryear, the Maoists of today have spread their tentacles to the tribal – and to some extent Dalit – pockets of the plateau region of the country. While in the past the struggle was focussed more on landlords, landowners and feudal lords, now ire is directed at the capitalist and industrialist class people.

The absence of an alternative tribal political movement has also helped the growth of Maoists in the mineral-rich forests and hill regions of the country. The failure of the political tribal outfits like the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha has also contributed to the expansion of the Maoists. Shibu Soren, along with A.K. Roy and Binod Bihari Mahto, was instrumental in forming the JMM in 1972, the time when the police was crushing Naxals in West Bengal.

While Soren’s struggle was directed against the “dikkus” (people from outside the tribal region) and money-lenders, today the Maoists are targeting state machinery and multi-national companies. They are openly championing the cause of the people displaced by industrialisation and construction of big dams.

That is why even today they are able to draw support from many intellectuals who feel that some of the issues raised by them are genuine, though they disagree with the method.

The Maoists are not just opposing big landlords, but are up in arms against the Tatas and special economic zones. Ironically, they took up these issues in the state ruled by the Marxists.

The failure of the dream of the Greater Jharkhand spread over the tribal belts of the then Bihar (now Jharkhand), Orissa, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh, part of the then Madhya Pradesh, also played a key role in letting down the Adivasis.

The then Vajpayee-led NDA government in November 2000 played its own card and created a truncated Jharkhand comprising only 18 districts of the then South Bihar, while the demand was for a much greater state. The largest NDA constituent, the BJP, has its own agenda in the creation of rump Jharkhand.

While the Naxals of a generation ago lost the battle within a few years in West Bengal and took shelter in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, the land of famous 1948 Telengana uprising, the Maoists of today are growing stronger with the passing of each year.

In the 1960s and 1970s the Naxals largely adopted the hit-and-run tactic, now the Maoists come in hundreds to stop trains like Rajdhani Express, blow up jails in the heart of Jehanabad in Bihar, or loot 2,000 rifles from an armoury in Orissa or kill 55 cops in one go in Chhattisgarh.

These Red Indians – Red stands for Communists as well as aboriginal people like in America – run parallel government in many parts of the country and hold kangaroo courts give judgements and carry out executions. The Naxals of the past were no match to them.

Now the classic Maoist concept of “Let villages encircle the towns” has been replaced by the new idea of consolidation in forests and alluring the police convey to land-mines laid down for them. The forests and the hills have become a happy hunting ground for them to fight the state machinery.n

The writer is a free-lance journalist based in Patna