The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

CJI speaks
Need to cut delays to help litigants

Chief Justice of India Justice K.G. Balakrishnan has rightly called for expediting justice by cutting down delays so that the common litigant did not face hardship. In an interview to two newspapers, he said that the country’s justice delivery system is such that litigants try every method available to avoid trial. This is particularly common in the case of the powerful and influential people. A fall-out of this tactic is that the accused invariably take advantage of the delays and get away scot free. Justice Balakrishnan has deplored this tendency on the part of the powerful and the influential to subvert the system and evade justice. They challenge the summons issued to them, appeal against framing of charges and every interim order — from the trial court up to the Supreme Court. Obviously, the trial will be delayed if the accused obtains an interim stay in any court. This is more than evident in the Ruchika molestation case where DGP S.P.S. Rathore has escaped from the clutches of law for years because of his clout in Haryana.

What Justice Balakrishnan has said is absolutely true, but something needs to be done to correct the drawbacks in the system so that justice is expedited and the accused, however high and powerful they may be, are brought to book expeditiously. The people will lose faith in the judiciary if they don’t get justice within a reasonable timeframe. As the CJI has said, the prosecution must be extra careful and vigilant especially in cases where the rich and the powerful are involved as the accused.

Over the years, there is no dearth of recommendations on how to reduce delays and expedite justice. The government has taken note of these which range from filling in vacancies of judges, discouraging pleas for adjournments, reducing vacations, putting in extra work, appointing retired judges and advocates as judges, making best use of information technology for case management and using alternative dispute redressal mechanisms like the Lok Adalats, arbitration and plea bargaining. Since the UPA government is also committed to judicial reforms, the CJI needs to use his good offices in getting various recommendations implemented and speeding up justice.

Eradicating polio
Govt must act more aggressively

It is a welcome development that the bivalent oral polio vaccine, which is being seen as a ray of hope to eradicate polio, has been launched in India. The need for the new vaccine that simultaneously tackles two types of viruses — type one and three — has been felt for some time as India remains one of the few nations in the world still fighting to eradicate polio. While the introduction of the new vaccine, to be used first in Bihar and then in UP, marks a significant move, it is not enough by itself.

Vaccination against polio was initiated way back in 1978. India launched its Pulse Polio Immunisation Programme in 1995 to cover all children below three years of age. Later the target age was raised to five years. Even though the nation spends Rs 1,200 core every year on polio control, the disease continues to cripple its children. The virus that causes polio invades the nervous system through the mouth and leads to paralysis within hours, affecting children below five years. Though India has made tremendous progress in controlling polio, it has been unable to eradicate it completely. While the nation bears nearly half the global burden of the crippling disease, UP and Bihar alone account for 97 per cent of polio cases in India. The reasons are not far to seek. Besides shortfalls in the Nation Rural Health Mission’s pulse polio targets, the CAG has found glaring state-level deficiencies in the implementation of the Pulse Polio Immunisation Programme.

Polio-free India is not an impossible goal. However, a mission that had to be achieved by 2005 continues to elude the nation and will do so till the disease is fought on all fronts. Besides plugging gaps in cold chain supply, implementation of polio drives as well as awareness campaigns have to be more concerted, leaving no room for complacency or slip-ups. High-risk groups like migrants with small children and those living in unhygienic conditions need to be covered more aggressively. With global support coming from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, greater government will is needed to rid India of polio completely.

Thought for the Day

If there wasn’t death, I think you couldn’t go on. — Stevie Smith

ARTICLE

The big challenge of 2010
Time to concentrate on agriculture
by Jayshree Sengupta

Everyone is predicting the future these days-about the world and India because we are entering a new decade of this millennium. There is a lot of hype about where India will be in 2020 and 2030, and even 2050. Such long-term thinking is really quite misplaced when the ground reality is stark and not so cheery. No doubt, India and China are going to have a better future than most other countries, the government today, perhaps, ought to take stock of what is important for the happiness and security of the common person or aam admi in the year ahead. Today, it seems that food prices and job security are the most worrisome issues for aam admi. Controlling food prices is not so difficult if past experience is any guide, because the government can easily enhance and extend the public distribution system so that the poor are protected. Creating jobs is, however, difficult.

Agriculture will be a weakest area this year because there is to be a shortfall in rice production by over 13 million tonnes due to deficient rainfall to the extent of 22 per cent. Agricultural growth is crucial for GDP growth because around 60 per cent of the population lives in the rural areas. Due to the drought this year, agricultural growth is going to decline by at least 1 to 2 per cent.

Agricultural production the world over is unable to cope with the world demand for food. It started with the world’s agricultural land being diverted to the production of ethanol, and global demand could not match the supply of foodgrains and prices shot up between mid-2007 and mid-2008. In India, too, from that time onwards, food prices have been rising.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has recently said that after the global financial crisis, another factor responsible for high food prices is excess liquidity and he warned, “You could see additional moves towards the agricultural commodities sector, if there were perceptions of market shortages.” This view is being aired by the Indian government also. There has been an excess of liquidity in the monetary system in India after the Reserve Bank of India eased its monetary policy following the global financial crisis. People also got extra incomes through the three stimulus packages and government salaries were hiked, tax rebates granted and dearness allowances raised. Excess liquidity has led to money being diverted for speculation and hoarding which has accentuated food price inflation. Apart from fresh fruits and green vegetables, most agricultural produce can be stored and released when the prices are higher. Hoarders have been amply rewarded by the 20 per cent food inflation.

According to FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN)-OECD agricultural outlook, crop prices around the world are projected to be 10 to 20 per cent higher in real terms in 2009-2018 than in 1997-2006 while the real prices (price minus inflation) for vegetable oils are expected to rise more than 30 per cent.

One way to control excess liquidity from straying into speculation is to raise interest rates, which could bring down inflation but would adversely hit investments. The government has a balancing role to play but currently it is denying that there would be a tightening of credit via higher interest rates.

The FAO says that all over the world a long-term decline in farm investment is to be blamed for food shortages and high prices and estimates that $44 billion in new investments would be needed annually to boost agriculture in developing countries. Quite clearly, India, too, will have to invest heavily in agriculture, especially in irrigation facilities, and only then can there be a rise in productivity. Food self-sufficiency is a goal that ranks high for a huge country like India. There cannot be import dependence for feeding over one billion people because of the vulnerability India would develop geopolitically. Thus, the government’s stake in enhancing agricultural production is very high.

Its hands, however, are tied because of the ballooning fiscal deficit which is high at 6.8 per cent of the GDP. There has to be more money in the government’s coffers in order to increase public investment in agriculture. It can do so if it consolidates its expenditure and withdraws its stimulus package. But how should it exit from its stimulus package without disturbing economic recovery? For example, car makers have been flourishing because people have been spending their extra money on cars and other consumer durables.

Similarly, if the stimulus package is withdrawn in the US too soon the repercussions will be felt in India because Americans will consume less of imported goods and save more. India’s private sector, which has been thriving on the basis of its business links with industrial countries like the US and the EU , will suddenly face slack demand, lower foreign direct investment and financial institutional inflows.

After the global financial crisis, all countries which gave generous stimulus packages last year would have to face the challenge of how to withdraw these so that recovery from recession is sustained and governments are able to manage their budget deficits better.

As for creating jobs, it is only manufacturing, mining and infrastructure that can provide new jobs for the semi-skilled and semi-literate labour force. Agriculture has to be more productive so that fewer people are dependent on it. The surplus labour would then have to find jobs mainly in manufacturing. But for higher manufacturing growth and expansion, higher agricultural incomes would be needed because rural demand is very important for manufactured goods. The recent rise in manufacturing growth can only be sustained if rural population has more spending power. Remember the highest number of mobile phones and two-wheelers are sold in the rural areas. Similarly, the “fast-moving consumer goods” have found a ready market in the villages.

The growth in manufacturing also depends on the disposable incomes of people in towns and cities after meeting their food bill. But most people today, the rich and the poor, are groaning about high food prices and their demand for manufactured goods like TVs, washing machines and refrigerators is being adversely affected.

Agricultural growth of about 4 per cent and investment is thus of highest importance, but the government is in a bind because it has to find resources for a quantum increase in public investment in agriculture. It has to tax the other sectors more and transfer resources to agriculture in the form of new investment. Unless it does so in a carefully calibrated manner by raising taxes and gradually withdrawing the stimulus package, the projected 9 to 10 per cent growth for this decade may remain a pipedream.

MIDDLE

Power of flickering candles
by Ashok Kumar Yadav

WHEN my wife proposed a candle-light outing recently, I turned nostalgic about our romantic jaunt to Venice, the city of lovers, where we had spent several evenings to fathom its pulsating spirit, with candles flickering on wayside dinner tables overlooking an iridescent waterway.

But the present proposal was certainly not romantic. It was for a cause, to join a candle march to exhibit solidarity with Ruchika in whom every parent saw his own daughter. The famous lines of Wordsworth that “the sweet face of Lucy Gray will never more be seen” came fluttering when I recalled the tragedy of the hapless girl.

Such was the impact of candle march that an “omnipotent” cop found him baked even in chilling weather. The public outcry triggered by the “paraffin Gandhigiri” hastened the process of plugging all escape routes in Macaulay’s criminal law, to avert the repeat of Ruchika’s suicide or Jessica’s murder.

The word “candle” owes its genesis to a Latin word “candere”, which literally means “flicker”. It has, however, come to symbolise a silent but steady, unyielding protest against all forms of atrocities against women and children.

Even offering of roses in “Lage Raho Munna Bhai” seems to have been inspired by “Take Back the Night” candle march held in Belgium in 1976 against all kinds of sexual abuse. Also christened as “Reclaim the Night”, the feminist movement has acquired international connotation for ensuring freedom of movement to women even at the “noon of night”.

As the ingredient material of candle altered from tallow in the first century to natural fat to beeswax to paraffin to gel, its usage has also kept changing over the years.

Candles and oil lamps were used for illumination in bucolic Indian milieu and elsewhere, till mid-sixties. As a schoolboy coming from a small hamlet, where electricity was then a rare commodity, I used to study under candle light and it continued playing an important role while burning mid-night oil for civil services.

Such is the significance of candles that they are integral to various religions world over. We cannot imagine Divali without candles. Candles are also used in “Ubon Ratchathani Candle Festival” in Buddhism. In Christianity, candles are used for decoration, ambiance and as a symbol that represents the light of Christ.

In some Western churches, a special “Paschal” candle, an iconic symbol of Resurrected Christ, is lit at Easter, funerals and baptism ceremonies. Even in Judaism, a pair of candles is lit prior to the weekly “Sabbath” celebrations.

During India’s struggle for independence, our national heroes used to swear by blazing candles. Even in the aftermath of Kargil hostilities, candle processions generated an atmosphere conducive for Indo-Pak peace initiative. A candle march has come to signify surging public sentiments, solidarity for a cause and wake-up call for hibernating establishment.

The flame of a candle may flicker but the heat it generates can surely melt even the glaciers and make grunting “human bears” run for life. The power of flickering candles is indeed deadlier than cannons and mightier than pen.

OPED

Assam simmering
Delhi’s policy is not realistic
by Kuldip Nayar

Our Northeast remains disturbed, although not like Pakistan’s Northwest. The fires burning in the Indian region are mostly political. They are nowhere a conflagration in the name of religion as is the case in Pakistan.

However, both countries face a problem which cannot be resolved only with force. The beleaguered people want development and a free say. These aspirations have to be appreciated so that policies are formulated accordingly.

I have returned from Assam quite disturbed. The state has been wrecked by many agitations for a long time. I recall covering the convulsions it went through when there was a movement to oust “foreigners,” illegal entrants from Bangladesh.

The All Assam Students Union (AASU), which was then leading the agitation, entered into an accord with the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, who promised to detect “foreigners” and delete their names from the voters’ list. They were to be ultimately ousted from the state.

Nothing like that has happened. In fact, the Assamese have been reduced to 40 per cent in the state. Even when the accord was reached, I doubted if it could be implemented. The Centre had tried to disperse the migrants among the Indian states. But none agreed to rehabilitate them.

After the lapse of some years, it is clear that there is no probability of ousting the “foreigners.” New Delhi should consider issuing work permits because those who cross into India from across the border come in search of livelihood. They want to return to their homeland. Since they have no other option, they stay back and face perennial harassment.

It is the New Delhi-AASU accord which gave birth to the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). The front has raised the standard of sovereign Assam state and clash with the security forces openly.

The violence has led to the killing of thousands of people both in Assam and at places where the ULFA cadre has sought refuge, particularly at the foothills of Bhutan and the border of Myanmar.

The breakthrough in the ULFA challenge came about when Bangladesh handed over to India the outfit’s chairman, Archinda Rajkova, the party’s ideologue Bhimkanta Buragohain and a few others.

The five rebel outfits in the region have characterised Dhaka’s gesture to Delhi as “betrayal” and they have vowed to take revenge. This has not deterred Bangladesh, which has declared to root out Indian militant outfits from its soil.

No doubt, the state government is trying its best to enter into a dialogue with the ULFA. But the latter’s refusal to give up the sovereignty demand has posed a problem. Probably the detained ULFA leaders want their commander-in-chief Paresh Barua to join them before they hold talks.

The ULFA does not seem to realise that no Indian government can talk to them on secession because there are some other movements in the country agitating for the same demand.

What has made me more concerned after a visit to Guwahati is the attitude of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the main opposition party to the ruling Congress. The AGP is itself against the demand for sovereignty but supports the ULFA stand for no pre-conditions for talks.

The AGP obviously wants to harness the sympathy which the ULFA evokes in the state. I was surprised to see the evidence in Guwahati itself. My remark at a seminar that the ULFA leaders should not have been handcuffed was received by the audience with a resounding applause.

People in Assam or, for that matter, in South Asia, do not seem to realise that those who raise the gun against the state cannot be given any room because their success means the destruction of the polity.

The ULFA should tear a leaf out of the Nagas’ book. Their leder, Phizo, made the same demand for sovereignty and went to London to direct the revolt in Nagaland. I was India’s High Commissioner to the UK when Phizo died. One of his comrades, Khodao-Yanthan, met me after Phizo’s death.

Since the days of the insurgency in Nagaland, Yanthan had been living in the UK. He told me he wanted to go to Nagaland to adivse his old friends to give up violence and seek a solution within the framework of united India.

Ours was a friendly meeting. I was confident that he would be a moderating influence on the extremists. I informed New Delhi about his visit which I could not follow because I had resigned by the time he met the Indian government’s representatives.

Yanthan told me that Phizo had “changed” and wanted to settle the Nagaland question within the contours of India, not outside. I wish I had met him. I was told that his death had taken place long before it was announced.

My journalist friend, Harish Chandola (Phizo’s niece is married to him) vainly tried in London to get the death certificate to determine the date of his demise. I also asked the High Commission officials to look into the matter but did not get any satisfactory response.

Yanthan was insistent on describing his nationality as ‘Naga’ in the visa application. The Consular section was bent upon rejecting it on the ground that India did not recognise Nagaland as a separate country. I intervened and wrote on his visa application that the Nagas were Indians. He got a visa.

I thought it was important that he visited Nagaland and tell the militant fringe that Phizo had himself renounced violence and had proposed talks on Nagaland’s integration with India. I wonder if the northeast in India and Northwest in Pakistan can learn from Phizo.

I feel New Delhi’s policy on the Northeast has not been realistic. Jawaharlal Nehru kept the area separate and secluded so as to preserve the culture of the people living there. Indeed, this is a weighty consideration for any government.

But it should ensure that the area is not cut off from the mainstream, affecting not only the emotional ties but also the economic and social development.

True, the Taliban menace which Pakistan faces has to be eliminated. But Islamabad must realise that there must have been something lacking in its rule which could not bring about the emotional integration of the territory with the rest of Pakistan.

Licentiousness breeds extremism
by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Last week I once again condemned the burkha and will do so till the end of my days. By that time, with the unstoppable rise and rise of Wahhabi Islam, they will probably have incarcerated me in black polyester and turned off my voice.

I unconditionally hate fanatical proselytisers – male and female – what they do to my faith and the faithful. The way they ban pleasures and progress, fill young minds with strictures to paralyse the will and suppress god-given desires in lands of freedom and autonomy.

Their inner lives are stormy, psychological dramas which turn dangerously unstable. Some of the resulting turmoil and sexual unrest may be swelling the seething brain of the next terrorist manqué.

On blogs now thought to be written by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a plane over Detroit, you are given the impression from news reports that he was a lonely boy, unhappy with his peers who drank and partied.

At university he apparently cut himself off, tried to hold on to Islamic Puritanism in a country of no shame, no restraint. Millions of Britons of all backgrounds are alarmed by the dissipation and debauchery that now defines Britain.

For Umar Farouk and many other Muslim men like him, living in such a landscape is literally intolerable. He confesses that he does try to lower his gaze in front of females, wonders if he should get married because he is getting too aroused.

You could make a movie, a Taxi Driver for our times, about just such an anti-hero, the hormonal male who is expected to live a life of total abstinence in the middle of licentiousness.

The Pakistani journalist Maruf Khwaja describes this inner chaos in an Open Democracy blog. In some homes they cannot watch television, listen to music, dance or indulge in anything pleasurable: "[Muslims] want to do what their secular friends do, have nights out, go clubbing, have boyfriends and girlfriends. Many are depressed by social isolation and attempt to escape by leaving parents and Islamic legacies behind."

Others, like Asif, revert. He says he had a contact list full of willing white women whom he chatted up to "get into their knickers" and now that he is a good Muslim, he talks to covered-up ladies and can "really communicate with them". The saintly Muslim female has desexualised herself, protects herself in the polluted land she lives in full of mad, bad and dangerous sinners.

Women who are not coerced but choose to cover themselves are expressing that revulsion and fear of contamination. Their solutions are as bad as the problems they are trying to escape, sometimes worse. Sexual abuse, rape and forced homosexuality remain the dirty secrets of British Muslim communities, kept under wraps as it were, while they flap around proclamations of purity.

I cannot stand these false virtues and self-reverential pieties nor am I pleading on behalf of screwed-up men who would murder us naming Allah. I am saying that the collapse of all restraint in our societies is breeding sicknesses and madness, and may be pushing some Muslims to the edge of reason.

Non-Muslims are as concerned about social nihilism, and increasingly so. A list was sent home to the parents of girls at a middle-class school in London last week sternly reminding non-uniformed sixth-formers that there were still rules of decorum to follow. A list followed of garments henceforth disallowed: no tops that show the midriff or cleavage, no tight mini-skirts, no underwear showing, no clothes with holes in them, etc, etc.

Do parents and their teenagers think such wanton wear is OK for school? In an alarmingly short time, the nation has gone from Fifties uprightness to public striptease, even in schools.

We mothers of teenagers who can't bear this milieu are trying to do the impossible – to somehow let our born-free children find themselves and define their futures while holding them back protectively from the debauchery of modern British life.

In Natasha Walter's new book, Living Doll: the Return of Sexism, she describes the widespread self-degradation of young women and girls who wear "fuck-me" clothes, binge-drink and sleep around, all in the name of emancipation. Their heroines are Jordan and glamour models in lads' mags and what they really, really want is to be just like these big-breasted big-timers.

Teenagers told her they had had dozens of sexual partners already and some said they would happily go in for lap-dancing or porn shots "for enjoyment". The word that comes up all the time is "choice", but one has to ask what choice is there, really, when a pushy popular culture tells females as young as eight that they are creatures of the flesh which they must tame and give over to the public gaze and touch.

To me, that choice is engineered just as it is for veiled women. Both are victims of societal pressures that mould and compel certain decisions. They are perhaps twins born of the same womb.

Dr Marcus Braybrooke, a respected Anglican clergyman and theologian, has expressed his anxieties: "[All of us] face the same challenges in an increasingly alien society. Original sin and sexual inhibition has been replaced by what most Christians and Muslims would regard as undue permissiveness." Atheists too and humanists I bet, and all other sorts.

The last decade was a period of economic greed and libertine excess encouraged and reflected by magazines, television, music, high-paid entertainers and childlike resistance to self-control. Modesty was for losers. Some of those losers turned modesty into the ultimate cause, turned themselves into morality warriors and claimed God was on their side.

With things falling apart and ethical compasses broken, you can see why so many are turning to self-discipline and certainties in an age of chaos. Islamic Stalinism is set to grow stronger. A society in a state of perpetual abandon cannot survive that onslaught. We need to sober up and see what we have become. The future is grim; it needs us to be serious.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Delhi Durbar
BJP faces pulls and pressures

The other day when Ravi Shankar Prasad was briefing the media about the first meeting of the office-bearers chaired by new BJP president Nitin Gadkari, he failed to mention Gopinath Munde's name as one of the task force members for the March 10 anti-price rise rally in Delhi. BJP organising secretary Ram Lal, standing at a distance, had to hurriedly send in a slip to remind him about it and an embarrassed Prasad added Munde's name as well.

The bad wibes Munde and Gadkari share is common knowledge in the BJP. Munde, at one time, had resigned all party posts, protesting Gadkari's decisions about the Maharashtra BJP.

Therefore, it is not clear whether this was an oversight on the part of Prasad or a conscious effort to get into Gadkari's good books. As it is the hunt for new office-bearers is on and it is being said that at least two spokesmen, namely Prasad and Prakash Javadekar, might be elevated to general secretaries' status.

Pakistan Speaker in Delhi

Speaker of the Pakistan National Assembly Fehmida Mirza, in Delhi last week to attend the Conference of Commonwealth Speakers, reminded everyone of former Pak Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Similar in fashion and style to the firebrand assassinated Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leader, Mirza drew everyone's attention for more reasons than one. First, she stuck to Lok Sabha TV when giving a full-length interview, leaving out a lot of media persons who were waiting to speak to her.

Later, however, she made up for her unavailability by ensuring that the detailed remarks on "Role of Speaker as a Mediator" she made in a closed-door meeting of presiding officers at Vigyan Bhavan, reached all those who were keen to know what Fehmida had to say on issues.

Copies of her speech in the workshop were distributed at Vigyan Bhavan after the session concluded.

NRIs hail PM's announcement

The Prime Minister's announcement about his government's plans to grant voting rights to NRIs was welcomed overwhelmingly by those participating in the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) celebrations last week.

Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor did not want to be left behind in taking credit for it. He was heard saying that it was he who had proposed that NRIs should be allowed to participate in the electoral exercise as a “pravasi” when he had participated in the PBD celebrations in Mumbai in 2003.

His rival in Kerala politics, E Ahamed, who is the Minister of State for Railways, recalled that it was he who had introduced a Private Member's Bill in Parliament, seeking voting rights for NRIs when he was an ordinary member.

But many delegates wondered whether the announcement would be transformed into a reality.

Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Aditi Tandon and Ashok Tuteja

Corrections and clarifications

In the headline “Kotla powerhouse machine lying defunct” (Page 3, January 11), the word “defunct” is inappropriate. The body of the report reveals that it is out of order. The dictionary meaning of defunct is dead or extinct.

In the report “Rathore’s girl, too, defaulted on fee” (Page 1, January 8, Chandigarh Tribune), the use of the word “girl” is improper. Instead, we should have said “Rathore’s daughter” or “Rathore’s child”.

In the intro of the report “Lid blown off school’s claims” (Page 3, January 8, Chandigarh Tribune), “their support” has been spelt as “there support” and “ideals” has been spelt as “idles”.

The headline “No jobs cuts, Gupta assures worried college staff” (Page 7, January 7) should have been “No job cuts….”

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

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

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

H.K. Dua
Editor-in-Chief