The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Guidelines will help
HC bid to check child molestation cases

The Punjab and Haryana High Court’s decision to formulate comprehensive guidelines to check increasing cases of child molestation in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh is heartening. The ruling by a Division Bench consisting of Chief Justice Mukul Mudgal and Justice Jasbir Singh in response to a public interest litigation is worthy of appreciation because it comes in the backdrop of the Ruchika molestation case. Unable to face the humiliation and torture of her family by former Haryana DGP S.P.S. Rathore, 14-year-old Ruchika committed suicide. After 19 years of trial, Rathore got away with a punishment of six months jail. Keeping the Rathore episode in view, the Bench has decided that while framing the guidelines, it will examine the procedure to be adopted when senior police officers are accused in such cases.

Significantly, the Bench will consider the procedure adopted by the state governments not only in promoting such tainted police officers but also of recommending conferment of honour on them. Aptly, the Union Government had stripped Rathore of his police medal. The surmise is that when the guidelines are ready, these will help authorities to tackle child molestation cases effectively. They are also expected to act as a deterrent because today officers of Rathore’s ilk do not have the fear of law.

Tough enforcement of laws and exemplary punishment of the guilty, however high and powerful they may be, has become imperative today because India has the dubious distinction of having the world’s largest number of sexually abused children. Prevention of sexual abuse of children can be focused at three levels. At the primary level, the focus can be on removing the causes, strengthening the child’s competence to recognise and react, increasing parental awareness, strengthening social vigilance and bringing in a strong punitive policy. At the secondary level, the emphasis should be on early detection, quick intervention and provision of a supportive environment in schools and families. Finally, tertiary intervention should involve effective coordination among the police, courts, counsellors, doctors and social workers.

Travel disruptions
The system needs to cope better with fog

Even the predictability of the fog around this time of the year would not have entirely prepared travellers for the delays, disruption and last-minute cancellation of flights and trains this week. This is largely due to the continuing unpredictability of when the fog would descend, how dense it would be and for how long it would last. While Meteorology has acquired a certain degree of precision in predicting weather conditions, it is clearly outwitted by the fog in North India. With long distance trains running several hours late, scores of trains and flights getting cancelled and hundreds getting rescheduled, passengers have had a harrowing time. Poor visibility and poorer driving sense rendering road travel also unsafe and slow, they were reduced to praying for a slice of good fortune. While many of them would have booked tickets weeks, if not months, in advance, last minute cancellation of flights and trains left them in the lurch. Those who had the misfortune of getting stranded at the overflowing railway stations and departure areas in airports had an even more uncomfortable and frustrating time with no place to sit and with supply of food and water running out.

While hi-tech planes have the ability to fly even in blinding weather conditions, pilots continue to rely on their eyesight and what they can see for themselves. Dependence on instruments necessarily slows down taxiing, landing and take-off by planes, increasing operational time. That technology alone is no safeguard against dense fog was evident during Christmas last month when all important airports in Europe virtually shut down, frustrating holiday plans of thousands of people. One must also keep in mind that some of the major disasters involving planes actually took place on the ground and in foggy conditions in Europe and the United States. It would be unfair to blame air traffic controllers, therefore, for being cautious and for placing safety above everything else.

There is, however, no excuse for negligence. The Instrument Landing System (ILS) at the Chandigarh airport was last year found to have outlived its life but is yet to be replaced. If officials are tied down by technical reasons or if they have to wait for the new terminal to become operational, in all fairness they should have made their helplessness public. While more airlines and pilots in the country are said to have become compatible to category III level of the ILS this year, a lot more needs to be done to alert passengers in advance, to enable them to make alternative arrangements and to make the waiting period more comfortable.

Thought for the Day

Forsake not words; forsake only words of envy and greed. — The Upanishads

ARTICLE

Hasina’s visit to India
An opportunity to improve relations
by Maharajakrishna Rasgotra

In the South Asian sub-continent, in land area population India is larger than each one of its neighbours: it is larger even than all of them taken together. Each neighbour shares with India a common history and a long and rich tradition of thought and belief, culture and way of life and a common, in some cases, an open border.

These ancient bonds are reinforced by ties of blood and new family links transcending borders, nationality and ethnicity. And daily there is much legal as well as informal commercial activity and social interaction across these borders. The region’s geography and history, and the aptitudes and interests of the people make South Asia a natural common market and a integrated though diverse community.

However, ever since the subcontinent’s partition and independence from the British rule, the region has been a theatre of responses contrary to the dictates of geography and history and the people’s natural propensity for amity, kinship and cooperation. Politics driven by vested interests, the search for new identities on the part of the elites, nationalistic passions often fanned by insecure regimes are part of the reason for this sad state of affairs. The asymmetry in size, resources and power potential between India and its smaller neighbours also causes feelings of envy, unease and resentment among the latter.

Since neither neighbours nor India can do much about the latter’s size, the neighbours misinterpret India’s nonchalance concerning this penurious aspect of our relations as India’s arrogance, if not quite its perfidy. They nurse unwarranted suspicious, raise impossible demands and use India as a punching bag to ease their frustrations.

Some in the region even view India as a country to be balanced and countered through liaisons with extra-regional powers. Not that these latter have done much good to the region: in fact, they have only caused rifts within and between countries and militarised some to virtual self-destruction.
Nevertheless, nothing India does is good enough, and even India’s genuine solicitude for its smaller neighbours and its willingness to be of use and help are spurned as condescension, or worse, hypocrisy.

Of course, we have some good and genuinely friendly neighbours too, but overall, India’s 60-year experience of neighbourly relations can be summed up in seven short words: Victim of the Tyranny of Small Neighbours!

Be that as it may, neighbours cannot be changed, and it is for the bigger partner to be patient and modest and remain ready always to offer friendship and cooperation and to seize the opportunity, when it turns up, to prove its goodwill, friendship and sincerity and convert estrangement into truly close good-neighbourly relationship. The best way to alleviate the ill-humour caused by asymmetry is to refrain from seeking reciprocity: for what we can do to enhance our neighbour’s well-being, prosperity and power eventually adds to our own strength also.

In neighbourhood relationships, everywhere there are commonalities as well as differences. South Asia is no exception and even though in our case commonalities outweigh, by far, our differences, we must, one by one, remove the differences from our bilateral agendas. In that task the initiative should rightly be with the big neighbour.

A moment propitious for such an initiative has now arrived for lifting India-Bangladesh relations, stagnant since the tragic assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujeeb in 1975, to a new rising trajectory of cordiality, trust and cooperation. It is a moment of opportunity because after 15 failed military coups and three military governments, democracy has risen phoenix-like to a new stature in Bangladesh.

Moments are rare in South Asian history when a military takes over its country’s rule, rids it of corruption, disciplines the bureaucracy, fights terrorism, restores law and order, curbs extremism, organises a remarkably fair, free and transparent election and hands over power to an elected government.

That is precisely what the Bangladesh Army has done and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina comes to Delhi later this week as Bangladesh’s elected Prime Minister. And she comes to us after doing something which should transform our relations with this good neighbour.

Whereas the previous governments in Dhaka were in denial about sheltering Indian insurgents and turning a blind eye to the activities of Pakistan’s ISI in support of terrorism in India, Prime Minister Hasina has expelled or imprisoned the ULFA leaders. India must respond to this voluntary gesture in a way which strengthens Bangladesh and reinforces Prime Minister Haisna’s personal position as a new leader of democracy’s surge in South Asia.

Bangladesh has a few genuine grievances which we must now redress with promptitude and transparent sincerity. Its very large trade deficit with India has been a source of concern for long. Related to the trade imbalance is the question of non-tariff barriers against meagre Bangladeshi exportable goods.

We agreed to an India-Bangladesh Free Trade Area, but our diligent bureaucrats lost little time in negating that highly desirable measure by pasting on it a negative list of 300 items!

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had spoken sometime ago of “unhindered flow of goods” between the two countries. In implementation of that policy, the negative list of 300 items should be scrapped and a joint mechanism set up to examine and remove non-tariff barriers which continue to hinder trade-flows.

Prime Minister Hasina’s visit should also result in equally solid progress in resolving the important issue of fair and equitable sharing of waters of 54 common rivers. The best way to do this would be to initiate a joint environmental programme to address a whole range of issues, including the issue of sharing of river waters, joint projects to build storage dams, generate hydel power and connect grids of the two countries for power trading etc.

Bangladesh and Sheikh Hasina herself have been targets of terrorism. There is much room for cooperation between the two countries to fight that evil. Regular consultations through frequent formal and informal high level exchanges of visits should be instituted between the intelligence agencies, the police and the militaries of the two countries. The BSF should stop shooting to kill Bangladeshi infiltrators — a cause of much public agitation and anti-Indian propaganda in Bangladesh.

Cooperation in border management will help reduce illegal border crossing and combat cross border crime and terrorism. Joint mechanisms should be established to resolve without further delay the important issues of land and maritime boundaries, bilaterally if possible, on the basis of partnership and mutual accommodation or with the help of World Bank’s good offices.

During this writer’s recent visit to Dhaka, he had difficulty in explaining why an agreement concerning transit facilities for Bangladesh to Nepal, across the Siliguri neck, signed years ago has remained unoperationalised.

In view of the rapidly changing global and sub-continental environment and the growing expanse and complexity of our relations with our South Asian neighbours, the government should consider creating an additional post of Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs to deal exclusively with neighbourhood developments and relationships under the overall direction of the Minister of External Affairs.

The writer is a former Foreign Secretary of India

MIDDLE

Milk teeth, permanent set!
by Raji P. Shrivastava

Dr Rusi Zinzuwadia looked out of the window of his first-floor clinic at the busy traffic on Ashram Road. The windowpanes shut out most of the sounds and also the smells of baked goodies from Pastry Waggon on the ground floor.

The 40-something dentist had reason to feel content. Things were going alright for him, and he was ‘alone but not lonely’, as he explained to his tennis mates at the club each morning.

Mrs Lobo interrupted his reverie with her announcement, “Percy Anklesaria, Sir — routine extraction — accompanied by his mother!”. Dr Zinzuwadia returned to his desk and rose as a reluctant eight-year old was led into the room by his determined parent.

Lily Anklesaria had to be the prettiest lady he had ever met but for now, the dedicated dentist had no time to study her luminous countenance. Percy was sulking and complaining by turns and everyone knew that he could bring the house down with his tantrums. Lily was obviously distressed and explained how she had tried to shake the tooth off but as usual, it just wouldn’t oblige. Percy had the strongest milk teeth you had ever seen!

Within minutes, Dr Zinzuwadia led Percy into the examination chair, gave him a squeezy gremlin to distract him and ushered Lily out into the reception area with a “Why don’t you just relax with a Limca while I sort Percy out!”.

Whatever the dentist did inside took only five minutes and one blood-curdling scream from Percy as Lily pressed her forefingers to each ear in terror. There was only so much a single mother could take, after all! Dr Zinzuwadia scribbled on the case papers as Lily asked, “Any medication, Doctor?” The dentist looked at the patient in serious speculation and said, “Well, Mr Anklesaria, if the patient has pain on his way out of my clinic, be sure to give him the biggest icecream bar you can find!”

Young Percy got the message and began to groan. On their way out, Percy frogmarched his mum into Pastry Waggon’s icecream counter seeking compensation for his ordeals.

As luck would have it, each of Percy’s teeth required the expertise of Dr Zinzuwadia and the chilled concoctions at Pastry Waggon. Percy was now 11 years old and the last of his milk teeth had been extracted today. Dr Zinzuwadia was filled with a sense of loss as he contemplated the fact that his favourite patient would perhaps no longer require his services — and that he would probably not see much of Lily again. With the unerring instinct of the very young, Percy asked Dr Zinzuwadia, “Can my mum and I marry you, Doctor?”

By the time 12-year old Percy needed braces to fix his mal-aligned teeth, Mrs Lobo had retired. Lily had replaced her as the dentist’s assistant with a more significant double role as his wife. The frozen chocolate candy from Pastry Waggon had given way to family packs of premium icecream — another of Percy’s initiatives!

OPED

A genetic revolution required for second Green Revolution
by Arabinda Ghose

It is not statistical jugglery. While the production of food grains was 209.8 million tonnes (mt) in the year 1999-2000, the first year of the 21st century, it is unlikely to be near this figure when estimates are published at the end of June 2010. The agricultural year begins from July 1 and lasts till June 30 the next year. Advance estimates have not been published apparently because of the deficient monsoon in 2009.

During this decade an estimated 120 to 130 million children have been born in the country, putting more pressure on the food grain kitty of the country. Does it mean India is heading for something like a famine?

Fortunately, no. For, it is not a fact that production has not been higher than in 1999-2000 during the subsequent years. However, lower production too has been recorded.

For example, the production during the very next year, 00-01, was 196.8 mt,13 mt less, thanks to 91 per cent rainfall compared to the long period average (LPA).

Rainfall was equally deficient the very next year, 2001. However, thanks to our farmers, production had risen to 212.9 mt that year (2001-02).

Unfortunately, 2002 saw the country face a severe drought, rainfall recording only 81 per cent of the LPA. The production of food grains had plummeted that year (02-03) to 174.8 mt only.

There was welcome relief during the next year (03-04). Because of the 102 per cent of the LPA rainfall, food grain production had registered a huge jump of nearly 40 mt to 213.2 mt. That was the year when there was a political change at the Centre. The NDA regime had ended and the UPA had taken over.

Unfortunately, the UPA regime began with a 13 per cent deficit rainfall from the LPA, with the result that food grain production had gone down by about 15 mt to 198.4 mt. in 04-05.

Although in 05-06, rainfall was 99 per cent of the LPA, food grain production did not rise much during the year. It was only 208.8 mt.

The 09-10 figures are still to see the light of the day although it is feared that the final figure for this year will be about the same as in 99-00, which means food grain production in the country has not made substantial progress during the decade 2000-2010, a monumental failure on the part of the government, which has been singing the tune of the second Green Revolution from almost the first day it had taken office in May, 2004.

The natural question that one may ask the government is: how far is the second Green Revolution from reality?

As soon as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had appointed Mr Sharad Pawar as the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Affairs, he had been gushingly declaring that a second Green Revolution would be ensured soon. The President of India too had felt this way at a later date. However, there is not even a hint of such a revolution taking place.

One is compelled to compare the situation, in the 1960s when famines were averted by importing wheat from the USA.

Agriculture Minister C. Subramanium had taken the initiative to import high-yielding wheat seed from Mexico in the teeth of opposition from conservative elements raising the bogey of “American agriculture destroying Indian agriculture”.

The import of 18,000 tonnes of seed from Mexico, multiplication at many places in India and distributing the new seeds had made the first Green Revolution possible with the rabi season of 1968.

Another Green Revolution will mean another genetic revolution. There are well-meaning people opposing any genetic manipulation for increasing productivity of seeds of food grains.

With due respect to their sentiments, one has to say that these people are pushing India to the brink of another famine by not accepting new technologies, duly approved by official agencies (in case of Bt Brinjal now).

Last year's drought has been blamed for the loss in production of food grains. But even during such a devastating drought, Punjab and Haryana have retained their level of paddy production through innovative means.

The Centre and the States have not, one avers, made efforts to fight the drought as Punjab and Haryana have done.

They have done so by a very stringent use of available water, which prevented the growth of weeds and pest attacks, saving the crops by only life-saving irrigation. What had prevented the Government of India and the minister Mr Pawar, to get other states replicate these innovative measures?

Will India, thus, limit its production of food grains to a level of only about 230 mt a year and depend permanently on imports in order to feed the growing population? One hopes someone in the government answers this question.

Why overwork? Be happy
by Johann Hari

The people of one of the most conservative states in the US have stumbled across a simple policy that slashes greenhouse gas emissions by 13 percent, saves huge sums of money, improves public services, cuts traffic congestion, and makes 82 per cent of workers happier.

It all began two years ago, when the state was facing a budget crisis. One night, the new Republican Governor Jon Huntsman was staring at the red ink and rough sums when he had an idea. Keeping the state's buildings lit and heated and manned cost a fortune. Could it be cut without cutting the service given to the public?

Then it hit him. What if, instead of working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, the state's employees only came in four days a week, but now from 8 to 6? The state would be getting the same forty hours a week out of its staff – but the costs of maintaining their offices would plummet. The employees would get a three-day weekend, and cut a whole day's worth of tiring, polluting commuting out of their week.

He took the step of requiring it by law for 80 per cent of the state's employees. (Obviously, some places - like the emergency services or prisons – had to be exempted.) At first, there was cautious support among the workforce but as the experiment has rolled on, it has gathered remarkable acclaim. Today, two years on, 82 per cent of employees applaud the new hours, and hardly anyone wants to go back.

A whole series of unexpected benefits started to emerge. The number of sick days claimed by workers fell by 9 per cent. Air pollution fell, since people were spending 20 per cent less time in their cars. Some 17,000 tonnes of warming gases were kept out of the atmosphere. They have a new slogan in Utah – Thank God It's Thursday.

But wouldn't people be irritated that they couldn't contact their state authorities on a Friday? Did the standard of service fall? It was a real worry when the programme started. But before, people had to take time off work to contact the authorities, since they were only open during work hours. Now they were open for an hour before work and an hour after it. It actually became easier to see them Monday to Thursday: waiting times for state services have fallen.

And once we started on this course, it could spur us to think in more radical ways about work. If this tiny little tinker with work routines leads to a big burst of human happiness and environmental sanity, what could bigger changes achieve?

Work is the activity that we spend most of our waking lives engaged in - yet it is too often trapped in an outdated routine. Today, very few of us work in factories, yet we have clung to the habits of the factory with almost religious devotion. Clock in, sit at your terminal, be seen to work, clock out. Is this the best way to make us as productive and creative and happy as we can be? Should we clamber into a steel box every morning to sit in a concrete box all day?

In a wired lap-topped world, far more people could work more effectively from home, in hours of their own choosing, if only their bosses would have confidence in them. They would be better workers, better parents and better people – and we would take a huge number of cars off the road.

But the problem runs deeper than this. Britain now has the longest work hours in the developed world after the US – and in a recession, those of us with jobs scamper ever faster in our hamster-wheels. Yes, the British now make the Japanese look chilled. This is not how 2010 was meant to turn out.

If you look at the economists and thinkers of, say, the 1930s, they assumed that once we had achieved abundance – once humans had all the food and clothes and heat and toys we could use – we would relax and work less. They thought that by now work would barely cover three days as we headed en masse for the beach and the concert-hall.

Instead, the treadmill is whirling ever-faster. This isn't our choice: virtually every study of this issue finds that huge majorities of people say they want to work less and spend more time with their friends, their families and their thoughts. We know it's bad for us.

Professor Cary Cooper, who has studied to effects of overwork on the human body, says: "If you work consistently long hours, more than 45 a week, every week, it will damage your health, physically and psychologically." You become 37 per cent more likely to suffer a stroke or heart-attack if you work 60 hours a week.

We don't stop primarily because we are locked in an arms race with our colleagues. If we relax and become more human, we fall behind the person in the next booth down, who is chasing faster. Work can be one of the richest and most rewarding experiences, but not like this. In a recession, this insecurity only swells.

Under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the 1990s, the French discovered the most elegant way out of this, taking the Utah experiment deeper and further. They insisted that everyone work a maximum of 35 paid hours a week. It was a way of saying: in a rich country, life is about more than serving corporations and slogging.

Wealth generation and consumerism should be our slaves, not our masters: where they make us happy, we should embrace them; where they make us miserable, we should cast them aside. Enjoy yourself. True wealth lies not only in having enough, but in having the time to enjoy everything and everyone around you.n

— By arrangement with The Independent

Inside Pakistan
PPP’s succession war
by Syed Nooruzzaman

With President Asif Zardari finding it difficult to retain the position of co-chairperson of the PPP along with his responsibilities as the President of Pakistan, efforts are quietly on to pass on the party’s leadership to his son, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari. Bilawal technically already holds the position of chairperson of the PPP, but he has to come back from England, where he is studying, and demonstrate that he is the leader of the party, earlier led by his mother, Benazir Bhutto.

But this is not as easy as it appears. A drive has been launched by a section of the PPP in Sindh to ensure that the party’s leadership remains in the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s family. Bilawal is a Zardari and, therefore, does not fit in with such a scheme of things.

As M. A. Niazi says in an article in The Nation, “Though Benazir (Bhutto’s eldest child) ended up inheriting Zulfikar's mantle, the inheritors he intended were his sons, Murtaza and Shahnawaz. Shahnawaz died first, leaving a daughter, and was dead by the time Benazir became PM for the first time.

“Murtaza was elected an MPA (Member of Provincial Assembly), though his other candidates were wiped out, in the 1993 election. He was killed, and a distraught Benazir's government was sacked soon after. He left behind a daughter, Fatima, and a son, Zulfikar Ali. Though still a child, some of the Sindh PPP cadres are looking towards him (Zulfikar) as the ultimate successor, not Bilawal, whom they dismiss as 'Zardari's son'.”

That may be the reason why the rumour mill has it that President Zardari wants his son to become Prime Minister as soon as possible.

But is Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani willing to vacate his position? He is too powerful today to be shown the door by Mr Zardari.

Gilani’s survival strategy

Mr Gilani’s closeness to the Pakistan Army is too well known. He is now trying to mend fences with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also. According to Business Recorder, “… there are sharply contrasting positions taken by various factions within the ruling coalition on the two-term bar on a candidate for the office of Prime Minister. Even when Prime Minister Gilani has offered to lift this bar and Mr Nawaz Sharif told his partymen last Sunday that he would accept the repeal of the 17th Amendment untied to his future candidature; the diktat of realpolitik cannot be defied.”

Clearly, Mr Gilani is doing everything possible to make his position secure in view of the goings-on in the PPP. He may be the most suitable person to take over as the President of Pakistan once Mr Zardari is compelled to resign. He seems to be working on the strategy that if the Prime Minister’s position falls vacant, it should go to Mr Sharif, and not to Bilawal.

“Missing persons” again

The issue of “missing persons”, mostly Baloch nationalists abducted by security and intelligence agencies, is again in the limelight. The case relating to the “missing persons”, which led to the removal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry during the regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf, has been taken up afresh by a three-member Bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court following a petition filed by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Despite Prime Minister Gilani’s recent assurance in the National Assembly that all those held in custody without taking recourse to the process of law will be set free, nothing substantial has happened so far. Only five of the thousands of “missing persons” have returned home.

According to The Daily Times (Jan 7), “The law states that no person can be kept in custody unless he has been produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of his arrest. (But) this law is practiced more in breach by the intelligence and security agencies, and at a more ordinary everyday level, even by the police.”

The Supreme Court has given a good dressing-down to the government. The News quoted Mr Justice Javed Iqbal as saying, “There is no law that permits the abduction of people”. Then he observed that the intelligence and other agencies had to abide by the law of the land. He reminded them that the days of their arbitrary style of functioning had gone. The judiciary could no longer allow violations of the law once this was brought to its notice.