O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Sena goes berserk
Punish the guilty of attacking IBN channels
It appears that the Shiv Sena and the MNS are holding a competition as to who is able to do more damage to the image of Maharashtra. Almost every day, one or the other of them comes up with an outrage which has no place in civilised society. On Friday, it was the turn of the Shiv Sainiks who ransacked Hindi and Marathi TV news channels IBN-7 and IBN-Lokmat in Mumbai and Pune and assaulted its editor and other staff members, some of them women. 

Not a lasting solution
Economics, not politics, should matter
Although the government has bought political peace and managed to calm the agitated sugarcane growers, who had disrupted normal life in Delhi on Thursday as Opposition MPs crippled Parliament’s functioning for two days, the reprieve is temporary and comes at a considerable cost to the Centre. It is obvious the UPA government did not want to be seen as anti-farmer, especially in UP.

Save the child
India must do more to prevent infant deaths
Here is more proof, if it is needed, that India has been faltering in the way its treats it children. According to UNICEF’s State of the World Children report, 5,000 children below five years die every day. Children succumb to prenatal complications, respiratory infections, diarrhoea, etc. What is more regrettable is that these infections are preventable. Earlier reports, too, slammed India’s track record on infant mortality rates and child malnutrition.

• Thought for the Day

ARTICLE

Changing face of diplomacy
Economic clout as the key to win friends
by O.P. Sabherwal
Diplomacy, one might add, is the international face of politics, of which camouflage is an essential ingredient. Surely, the main thrust of diplomacy is to provide global sustenance to a nation’s socio-political-economic advancement and, therefore, its foreign policy and diplomacy have to be in sync with national economic advance.

MIDDLE

Reality show
by Naina Dhillon
Sitting one evening alone at home, I decided to watch one of the many reality shows that one keeps hearing about. Not being able to sit through the one I had chanced upon, I did what most of us do while watching T.V., I used the remote and surfed through various channels.

OPED

Is Gorkhaland possible?
Where policy has deepened the crisis
by Gen Ashok K. Mehta
Crossed Khukuri banners, green, white and yellow flags of the Gorkhaland Janmukti Morcha (GJM) and thousands of Gorkha ex-servicemen and their families had gathered at the martyrs’ memorial in the middle of the Batise railway loop to Darjeeling, the finest observation point of the magnificent Kanchanjunga range.

Fiscal muddle in Punjab
by Gobind Thukral
For the past some weeks a two-member committee, set up by the Punjab government, has been struggling hard to take the state out of the current fiscal mess. The committee members – Sukhbir Singh Badal and Manoranjan Kalia – have met a number of times without coming to any conclusion.

Chatterati
By-election code may change
by Devi Cherian
The tough Firozabad by-election made Rahul Gandhi change the way the Congress treated by-elections. Till now it was an unwritten code that big leaders would not campaign in minor battles. Arch rival Mayawati decided to keep away from canvassing and Mulayam too kept away from campaigning even though it was his daughter-in-law contesting.

EDITORIALS

Sena goes berserk
Punish the guilty of attacking IBN channels

It appears that the Shiv Sena and the MNS are holding a competition as to who is able to do more damage to the image of Maharashtra. Almost every day, one or the other of them comes up with an outrage which has no place in civilised society. On Friday, it was the turn of the Shiv Sainiks who ransacked Hindi and Marathi TV news channels IBN-7 and IBN-Lokmat in Mumbai and Pune and assaulted its editor and other staff members, some of them women. They vandalised the office and the outdoor broadcasting van of the channels, shouting that they would not accept any criticism of the Shiv Sena and its chief Bal Thackeray. The message was clear: SS troopers can criticise, threaten or beat up anyone – even Sachin Tendulkar — they want and the others cannot even protest about this utter highhandedness.

It is not just the Shiv Sainiks who are responsible for this kind of behaviour. They have obviously the full backing of their top leaders. Shiv Sena MP and Editor of its mouthpiece Saamna, Sanjay Raut, blatantly declared that “the attack on the IBN is definitely by Shiv Sena workers and some of them are even office-bearers…. We are not afraid of the consequences and will face it”. Since the leaders have admitted that it is they who engineered the attacks, they must be punished for the audacity, and the cases of rioting and attempt to murder registered against those who indulged in vandalism must be extended to its leaders.

When some MNS MLAs had manhandled Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Azmi right there in the Assembly, MNS leaders had also cocked a snook at everyone in a similar manner. The tolerance shown towards their storm trooping tendencies has encouraged them instead of shaming them. It is time the country told them that “enough is enough” in clear terms. Any party which acquiesces in their unacceptable behaviour for political reasons would be harming its own cause because such loose cannons can fire at anybody. The Thackeray chauvinists have already narrowed down their hardline Hindutva agenda to espousing the cause of Marathis only. They will try to divide society even further if they are not stopped in their tracks. 

Not a lasting solution
Economics, not politics, should matter

Although the government has bought political peace and managed to calm the agitated sugarcane growers, who had disrupted normal life in Delhi on Thursday as Opposition MPs crippled Parliament’s functioning for two days, the reprieve is temporary and comes at a considerable cost to the Centre. It is obvious the UPA government did not want to be seen as anti-farmer, especially in UP. The farmers might have returned home somewhat happy over the “victory”, their battle for an acceptable sugarcane price is far from over. The sugar mills may not, and cannot, afford to pay the cane price of Rs 280 a quintal they insist on. The sugarcane-producing states should also feel relieved as they will not have to pay the state advised price.

The Ordinance had allowed the Centre to fix a “fair and remunerative” price for sugarcane in place of the statutory minimum price. It had passed on the responsibility of paying the state advisory price, which raised the sugarcane price significantly, on the states. Given the debilitated condition of state finances, it practically meant farmers would not receive the price they used to get under the previous practice. Hence, the protests. A divided and demoralised Opposition suddenly found an issue and forced the government to backtrack.

The rollback of the offending clauses of the Ordinance will hurt the Centre the most as it may have to pay the sugar mills the difference between the state advised price and the levy sugar price. The arrears of the sugar mills are estimated at Rs 1,400 crore. The issue of sugar and sugarcane pricing needs to be discussed calmly involving all stakeholders. A viable solution seems to be to keep off politics and let the sugar mills and farmers determine the price. If mills pay less, farmers would shift to other crops. If farmers insist on a higher price and the government forces the mills to pay it, the sugar industry would turn sick, ultimately harming the interests of farmers. The government can build a buffer stock with market purchases or imports and check price fluctuations so that the consumer is not hurt.

Save the child
India must do more to prevent infant deaths

Here is more proof, if it is needed, that India has been faltering in the way its treats it children. According to UNICEF’s State of the World Children report, 5,000 children below five years die every day. Children succumb to prenatal complications, respiratory infections, diarrhoea, etc. What is more regrettable is that these infections are preventable. Earlier reports, too, slammed India’s track record on infant mortality rates and child malnutrition.

One of the reasons for the high rate of child deaths is malnutrition. Even in relatively developed states like Punjab 27 per cent children below three years are underweight. Severe malnutrition has been reported among children less than three years in rural Madhya Pradesh leading to the death of many children. Though the government has several nutrition programmes in place, doubts have been raised about is implementation. Undeniably, there has been a perceptible improvement in social parameters like access to clean drinking water and school attendance of girls, yet many hurdles remain in the protection of children, especially among the Scheduled Tribes and the Scheduled Castes. On the health front, even though immunisation is considered one of the most cost effective interventions, only 54.1 per cent of the nation’s children are fully immunised and nearly 11.3 per cent have not received any form of vaccination. Early marriage of girls and inadequate healthcare are the other factors behind the lower survival rate of children.

There is urgent need to combine care, nutrition and medical treatment. To prevent prenatal complications, institutional deliveries have to be improved. Besides, mother and child need to be treated as one as the mother’s low nutritional status has a direct bearing on her child’s birth-weight. The government must address the problem at the grassroots level and fulfil its responsibility towards children. 

Thought for the Day

Ask you what provocation I have had?/ The strong antipathy of good to bad. — Alexander Pope

ARTICLE

Changing face of diplomacy
Economic clout as the key to win friends
 by O.P. Sabherwal

Diplomacy, one might add, is the international face of politics, of which camouflage is an essential ingredient. Surely, the main thrust of diplomacy is to provide global sustenance to a nation’s socio-political-economic advancement and, therefore, its foreign policy and diplomacy have to be in sync with national economic advance.

India had a good start — the Nehru years. But thereafter this country has lacked a global diplomatic thrust that matched India’s national advancement in different phases of the post-Independence era. The weakness lay in the lack of a cutting edge in foreign policy. The prompter of this pattern, it could be said, was a weak national economy. Consequently, Indian diplomacy has been hitched to a foreign policy that lacked forceful thrust, resulting in an ambiguous direction. Pakistan, for most of these years, has been the prime obsession of Indian foreign policy: fitted into the non-alignment pattern of relationship with the super powers, and a disjointed relationship with the rest of the world.

Not the leader shaping events, but a nation led by events outside its ambit. Thus, Indian diplomacy, flowing from an inept foreign policy, had a meek appearance. But the time has come to break this straitjacket pattern and to devise foreign policy and reshape diplomacy that promotes initiatives in realising national objectives, with the economy in the forefront.

We are witnessing a changing face of global diplomacy. It is the economic clout that now provides the core of foreign policy the world over, and that should be India’s prime methodology too. India has risen from the shambles to a surging economy with a global standing. It must, therefore, use its economic clout to restructure its foreign and diplomatic policy.

Ties with the sole super power, the United States, and China — a close neighbour and a rising world power — with Russia, Japan, the European powers, the developing nations, and Pakistan have to be appropriately structured. There has to be a link in this pattern, and a chain reaction, which India has to take into account while devising its foreign policy setting.

Much work and painstaking scrutiny of the ingredients is called for in the foreign policy exercise. Restructuring ties with the US should, of course, be a priority. But alongside, among the priorities, must also be reshaping of relationship with two nations in our immediate neighbourhood — China and Pakistan. One is termed a “failed” state, and the other a fast rising world power with a mighty economic clout. It is here that special attention is needed to give a new direction to our ties. Pakistan is in the melting pot while China’s upward mobility is a phenomenon by itself. An appropriate relationship with the two neighbours will give India a big punch both in the international and domestic spheres. It is the Indian economic clout which will open the way forward in both cases.

With China, the relationship is complicated by the legacy of the boundary dispute and the 1962 border conflict. Meanwhile, economic ties have received a big jump — despite rivalries of two big developing nations in their bid to surge forward. Despite all the hurdles, China has become India’s number one trading partner. Both countries have to learn that the world is big enough to accommodate India along with China. India has a lot to learn from China’s economic dexterity, just as China has been silently taking a leaf from Indian upswing in information technology - even Indian advances in nuclear technology.

For a breakthrough in their relationship, the two countries have to get past the boundary dispute. Bilateral talks have already laid the basis for a solution — nearer than ever before. It is a package deal, based on the position expounded by the veteran Chinese statesman, Chou Enlai, in 1961, that alone can clinch and seal a solution. To get past the lingering dispute on small patches of land, India should use its vast economic leverage in economic interaction to win over adamant Chinese postures.

With Pakistan, too, it is India’s economic clout that can serve as a lever to win friends and power. If economic interaction and trade can register a big leap with China, despite the border dispute, so can be the result in ties with Pakistan.

History and geography dictate that we give a bigger priority to the relationship with Pakistan — a state and a people with whom India has been tied by an umbilical chord for centuries. The Partition based on the criterion of religion — the two-nation theory — has not completely snapped this umbilical chord. But it is this two-nation theory that has plunged Pakistan into a maelstrom. It is the undefined concept of an Islamic Republic that has placed Pakistan in peril, a resolution of which cannot but have a profound impact on India-Pakistan relationship.

Is the struggle of Pakistan with the Taliban, claimants to the throne of an Islamic state, the climax of the model of statehood that Pakistan chose while separating from India? Yes, it is. The model presented by Mohammad Ali Jinnah — an Islamic republic with modern secular governance — has not worked anywhere, least of all under a democratic framework that Pakistan has sought to imbibe in small periods of its existence.

It is Kemal Ataturk who put the issue to test in Turkey — and he selected the secular model under a democratic framework. This secular democratic model does not fit in with the two-nation theory on which Pakistan is based, the prime impediment being the anti-India plank that guides Pakistan, particularly its army. The result is Talibanisation. Its horrid face frightens the people of Pakistan, including the political class — with the result that a big majority of the Pakistanis support the battle to eliminate the Taliban. The consequence is seen in the first-ever army drive against the Taliban in Waziristan.

Aside from taking the Taliban head-on, Pakistan needs to end the anti-India hatred ensuing from Partition. Indications are that much of the political class is keen on beginning a new chapter of ties with India. But the Indian response is faltering. The demand that the terror outfits based in Pakistan must first be eliminated is unrealisable. And so, there is an impasse.

It is India that is better placed to make a new beginning in India-Pakistan ties. The demand that the Pakistan government brings the 26/11 perpetrators to book is fair and Islamabad accepts this. But the Pakistan government wants to wriggle out of its duty: It must deliver. India on its part needs to bring greater flexibility to Indo-Pak relations. Even if a “composite dialogue” is delayed, relationship with the people of Pakistan need not be shut off.

India’s economic clout, stepping up bilateral trade in a big way, is the potent weapon for an opening. Economic and trade relations are immensely beneficial to both countries and the people at large — they offer a hefty bonanza. Use a small part of Indian foreign currency reserves. A dollar trade loan can be the lever that produces wonderful results. Add to trade, cooperation at the level of the people. In music and culture, and even cricket: a sport that excites millions in India and Pakistan.

That is the onset. Hitherto, Indian policy should be two-pronged — one poised towards the Pakistan government and the army and the other towards the people. A back-channel diplomacy is needed to break the bottlenecks on all issues, including Kashmir.

MIDDLE

Reality show
by Naina Dhillon

Sitting one evening alone at home, I decided to watch one of the many reality shows that one keeps hearing about. Not being able to sit through the one I had chanced upon, I did what most of us do while watching T.V., I used the remote and surfed through various channels.

I was amazed both at the formats of these shows and the “performance” of the actors. I am sure that a lot of the situations are simulated for the all-elusive TRPs. As far as the producers are concerned, if entertainment means a bunch of unhappy bawling babies being placed in the care of celebrities, then so be it. What amazes me is that not only are these shows aired daily but that they find so many takers.

What is so fascinating and interesting in the lives of other people? Are we so afraid of dealing with our own lives that this vicarious living provides us with an excuse to procrastinate? Are we so detached from our own realities, so disinterested in our own lives that we watch the lives of others unfold? When are we going to stop and take stock of our own lives if all we worry about is which celebrity to vote out of a programme?

Reality struck me a week ago while I was enjoying a cup of tea with my teacher of English in her lovely home in the hills. When I came away with a bunch of fresh, real chrysanthemums, I wondered when I had last actually enjoyed a cup of tea.

Reality strikes me everyday when I feel the lump in my throat as I realise that my daughter is growing up faster than I would like and that in another three years she will have spread her wings and flown away. This is the reality that I choose to stay with and focus on, because all the reality shows on earth cannot give me the joy of a wonderful evening spent with one who taught me so much when I was young.

May be it’s time to look at our own realities and find the joy and happiness that is really real, one that will stay in our minds and hearts forever and will never be interrupted with commercial breaks and changing TRPs. If only we would listen to our children, even if all they seem to be doing is rattling off their never-ending trials and tribulations. We must remember that they are the ones who are real and their reality will impact our lives much more than a Rakhi Sawant or a Rahul Mahajan.

I, for one have found reality in the drawings on my refrigerator, the hurriedly made birthday cards and the lovely little gifts got back by both my son and daughter after hikes, even though they have hardly any pocket money to speak of. I have found reality in the fresh flowers and cups of tea with my teacher. What about you?

OPED

Is Gorkhaland possible?
Where policy has deepened the crisis
by Gen Ashok K. Mehta

Crossed Khukuri banners, green, white and yellow flags of the Gorkhaland Janmukti Morcha (GJM) and thousands of Gorkha ex-servicemen and their families had gathered at the martyrs’ memorial in the middle of the Batise railway loop to Darjeeling, the finest observation point of the magnificent Kanchanjunga range.

Interspersed in the intense three-day all-India conference at Darjeeling this month, the GJM was commemorating the 280 “martyrs who had laid down their lives for the greater cause of their motherland”.

Even as Member of Parliament Jaswant Singh, elected from the Darjeeling hill areas and an ex-serviceman himself, laid the first wreath, four more Gorkhas of East Frontier Rifles from Darjeeling hills were killed in a Maoist ambush in West Bengal.

Uniformed Gorkhas wearing GLP (Gorkhaland Personnel – not Police) flashes gave the GJM’s undisputed leader, Bimal Gurung, a guard of honour, maintained traffic, good order and military discipline.

Welcome to Ayo Gorkhaland (Gorkhaland is Coming).

The new Gorkhaland Andolan followed when Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) supremo Subhash Ghisingh was evicted from power in 2007 by Bimal Gurung, who piggybacked Indian idol III Prashant Tamang, a Kolkata Gorkha policeman. He galvanised all Indian Gorkhas to help them discover their common identity.

Indian Gorkhas are distinct from Nepali Gorkhas and are scattered all over the country, notably in J&K, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, North Bengal Sikkim, Dooars and the North-East and, like Israelis once, are in search of a homeland. Perception differences and government policy have simultaneously blurred and accentuated the identity crisis.

The arguments about how Gorkhas came to Darjeeling as economic migrants, soldiers of fortune, and through the British annexation of the territory go on even as apolitical organisations like the Bharatiya Gorkha Parisangh under former MP Dil Kumari Bhandari of Sikkim and the Dehradun-based Gorkha Democratic Front, despite the physical separation of organisations, strive for a national identity. Indian Gorkhas united to showcase Prashant Tamang as an Indian idol and secured a Gorkha victory. Yet, there are differences between the BGP and the GJM.

The largest concentration of Indian Gorkhas is in North Bengal in the hill district of Darjeeling comprising subdivisions of Kurseong, Kalimpong and Darjeeling and parts of Dooars. It has a Gorkha population of nearly 22 lakh compared to six lakh in Sikkim, which became a state in 1975 following Indian annexation.

The region is of great strategic value. It is contiguous – or nearly contiguous – to four countries – Nepal, China, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The vulnerable Chicken’s Neck and Siliguri Corridor and the National Highway 31 A to Sikkim along with the only road and rail links to the North-East along the Tiger and Sevok bridges lie in this area.

The Darjeeling hill areas are richly endowed, blessed with the world’s finest tea, exotic tourism, rare timber, famous schools and colleges, revered Hindu and Buddhist shrines and the incredible Gorkha soldier.

These special assets were effectively projected during the conference organised by the GJM’s ex-servicemen branch. The bulk of the programme was devoted to tracing the history of Gorkhaland, the all-India spread of Gorkhas and their role in India’s freedom struggle and after.

The demand for Gorkhasthan was made much before Independence and even accepted by the undivided Communist Parety of India. Although Subhash Ghisingh started the Gorkhaland movement in the late 1980s, he has left behind a legacy riddled with corruption and tarnished with the charge of sleeping with the enemy – West Bengal.

Ghisingh secured the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) in 1988 and by 2006, its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule, incorporating the status of a tribal area. The struggle for statehood got lost in the politics of survival till a new leader, a Ghisingh protege, Bimal Gurung was born.

“Ghisingh has betrayed the Gorkhaland cause by accepting the Sixth Schedule, an option we have rejected outright. There can be no alternative to statehood,” he said at the conference where he was the last speaker at the conference. Throughout the day he kept sipping countless cups of salted tea and listening to speakers that included Jaswant Singh and Dil Kumari Bhandari.

Before taking the podium which had in the backdrop, the proposed map of Gorkhaland – stretching from River Mechi on the Nepal border to Sunkosi river bordering Assam – and flanked by pictures and Mahatma Gandhi and himself, he took off his shoes. His one-hour presentation in Nepali was punctuated by dramatic cries: “Gorkhaland is not our demand: It is our right”.

His style and delivery were electrifying, Gurung sounding a bit like Hitler, justifying the claim of Gorkhaland, not necessarily in any offensive language. According to him – and it was news for many – this was the 27th and last time the cause for a Gorkha homeland would be advanced.

He promised that the GJM would present a comprehensive case at the fourth round of tripartite talks on December 21, 2009, at Darjeeling involving the Centre, the state and the party. Pointing to Jaswant Singh, he said they had chosen a wise man from the desert to guide the movement in the mountains and “take our voice to Parliament”.

Making the briefest of speeches, Jaswant Singh counselled patience, restraint and eschewing violence. He promised that a Gorkhaland would happen in due course. His battlecry: Jai Kali, Jai Mahakali Aayo Gorkhali” resounded in the Darjeeling Club theatre, the venue of the conference.

Delhi has for the first time appointed an interlocutor, former Lt Gen Vijay Madan from the Gorkha Regiment, who was posted at the Eastern Command in Kolkata during Gorkhaland I. Mr Gurung wants the DGHC scrapped, its 6,000 contractual workers regularised, the Sixth Schedule withdrawn before joining the December dialogue.

On an earlier occasion, he had threatened to shoot himself at Darjeeling’s holiest Mahakali temple if Gorkhaland was not realised by March, 2010. The GJM has launched a non cooperation movement like not paying taxes, electricity bills and banning the sale of liquour without imposing any restrictions on home-made intoxicants (rakshi) which Gorkhas love. At one stage they were contemplating closing down schools but better sense prevailed.

By all accounts the GJM is a well-knit organisation and hugely motivated. The 30,000 ex-servicemen together with a growing students’ wing and around 11,000 GLP make a powerful team.

Not just due to its strategic location, the central government fears that with a Gorkha Sikkim (they call themselves Sikkimese), Maoists running riot in Nepal and several Gorkha pockets of dissidence nearby, including Bhupalese (Bhutanese of Nepali origin), Gorkhaland could well become the launch pad for Greater Nepal. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said recently: “There can be no second partition of Bengal but we can consider a special status for the entire North Bengal”.

Some ideas short of full statehood being thrown up are a special status beyond the Sixth Schedule; conferring greater autonomy for self-governance; and attaching the region to Sikkim state.

Former Chief Minister Narbahadur Bhandari of Sikkim used to say: “We accepted to merge Sikkim with India but we certainly have no wish to be submerged by it” in reference to both the construction of the Teesta Hydel project and Greater Sikkim by amalgamating other Gorkha areas in the region.

The tripartite talks can only buy more time but the formation of Gorkhaland seems deservedly inevitable: from Ayo Gorkhali to Ayo Gorkhaland. The challenge is in making it graceful and painless.

Fiscal muddle in Punjab
by Gobind Thukral

For the past some weeks a two-member committee, set up by the Punjab government, has been struggling hard to take the state out of the current fiscal mess. The committee members – Sukhbir Singh Badal and Manoranjan Kalia – have met a number of times without coming to any conclusion.

The poor fiscal health of the state is impacting the pace of development and may even lead to the stoppage of salaries/pensions. The state woefully lacks many essential services like education, health, power and irrigation. A large number of schools are without teachers and hospitals without medicines and doctors.

There is an acute shortage of electricity and water supply, and irrigation courses require urgent repairs. Punjab may further slip downward as the Finance Minister, Mr Manpreet Singh Badal, fears.

The committee has hinted at a charge on electricity motors at farms. The quantum is being debated. While Sukhbir Badal wants the minimum rate per horse power, Mr Kalia insists on a higher amount. This difference is not based on any rationale, but the political constituency each one caters.

Since the BJP is an urban Hindu party, it cares more for its constituents. It recently got the increased electricity charges in the urban areas stalled on the plea that since farmers are getting free power, why the urbanities should pay more.

The Akalis push hard for farmers, their electorate. The two parties often find themselves in a bind on crucial issues. The industrial policy recently announced by Mr Kalia offering major concessions to the industrial sector has left many Akalis fuming its approval by the Chief Minister. Whether it attracts any industry, given the grim power situation and the poor infrastructure, is another matter. The differences between the two partners do make political sense, but defy any economic logic.

The Chief Minister may finally veto any withdrawal of the power subsidy in the farm sector since he understands the political cost, yet the issue of subsidy will remain hot.

Over 1.5 lakh farmers have left farming in Punjab during the last decade to move to the urban areas. Farming compares poorly against trade and industry. Even a petty trader can make in five years what a farmer would take 15 to make. This is one major reason for the indebtedness of farmers and their suicides. Punjab farmers are under a debt burden of Rs 32,000 crore despite bumper crops of paddy and wheat.

It is true that many farmers in Punjab would like to have quality supply of electricity than free supply. But this argument comes due to two reasons; they want quality and adequate supply and since the water table is falling each crop season, they are forced to dug deeper, spend huge sums of money and feel cheated at the end. The state ought to take care of the grower of food. The current level of subsidy is welcome otherwise. They suffer government apathy and poor governance, besides large-scale and deep corruption.

Next year the tightrope walk may become too hard to continue. The government may not even be able to pay salaries and pensions which mean Rs 1,000 crore per month. What will come out of the ambitious annual plan of Rs 8,400 crore is anyone’s guess. The state is unable to clear bills of infrastructure projects by the public works, irrigation and public health departments. The state has no other way but utilise funds received under central schemes.

The state may not have enough to pay salaries and may run out of its loan limit any time. It will be forced to seek the Centre’s help to stay afloat. There is a committed expenditure of Rs 18,000 crore on salaries, pensions and interest payments for this fiscal. Punjab is raising loans ranging between Rs 500 and 700 crore every month while the total annual available limit is Rs 6,219 crore.

Chatterati
By-election code may change
by Devi Cherian

The tough Firozabad by-election made Rahul Gandhi change the way the Congress treated by-elections. Till now it was an unwritten code that big leaders would not campaign in minor battles. Arch rival Mayawati decided to keep away from canvassing and Mulayam too kept away from campaigning even though it was his daughter-in-law contesting.

The local party unit and son Akhilesh were asked to take care of the battle whereas the Congress heir apparent swept the poll turf with a visit, tilting the scales in favour of Raj Babbar. There was a lukewarm turnout from the Yadavs. The Babbar camp led by AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh mobilised voters in big numbers to the booths.

Also, Lodh votes do not seem to have backed the SP. The Lodh-Yadav combo and Muslims used to be the winning formula for the SP. So on hindsight, Mulayam must be regretting his decision now. The negative sentiment in the Lok Sabha polls may have played a role in such a course of action.

By convention, political bigwigs stay away from by-elections but Chief Ministers are in charge. But Rahul's Firozabad trip may prompt leaders to shed their inhibitions.

Star campaigners

The Samajwadi Party had a whole lot of stars for the election of daughter-in-law Dimple vs Raj Babbar. But Mulayam Singh realised that the old brigade of Sanjay Dutt, Jaya Pradha and Jaya Bachchan were a flop show and then he changed his tune to vote for the bahu. The second phrase was "you need to choose between "gaddhar" Raj Babbar and between Dimple your bahu".

Raj Babbar got his star power from son Pratik and daughter Juhi. But the real star of the election campaign since the last two years has been Salman Khan. Sallu was campaigning all over the country for the Congress candidates.

Kamal Nath’s lifestyle

You just cannot ground Kamal Nath. He may be on to Surface Transport now from the globe-trotting Commerce and Industry, but there is no match for his lifestyle in the Manmohan Cabinet.

This Doon boy's birthday on November 18 is a grand affair every year. Posters portraying him in a business-style dress instead of a politician’s familiar “kurta pyjama” were plastered all over Delhi, Bhopal and Chhindwara, his constituency. Well, Kamal Nath has always been known for his style.

An evening with kids

People associate fashion designers only with Page 3, but there is also a philanthropic side to them that goes unnoticed. The movers and shakers of the fashion world sat down and enjoyed an evening with special children. There was no snobbery or attitude being thrown around; only humility and a feeling of spreading joy in the limited way they could.

The designers included Ritu Kumar, Manish Arora, Ranna Gill, Rajesh Pratap Singh, J.J. Valaya, Namrata Joshipura and Rohit Gandhi-Rahul Khanna. The Tamana students, most of whom are spastic or suffer from Down's syndrome, walked the ramp with professional models with ease. As the special children did the catwalk, the pros walked barefoot – setting the mood for a show that showed the grounded side of Indian fashion.