O P I N I O N S

Perspective

A Tribune Special
Subalterns in power
The present-day leaders have let down their mentors, says Amulya Ganguli
THE growth of the regional parties was seen as an expression by Dalits, the backward castes and Adivasis of their long-suppressed desire to assert their distinctive identities. Earlier, as members of larger parties such as the Congress, they remained more as cogs in the wheel than as moulders of their own destinies.

Use and abuse of the power of arrest
by Sankar Sen
The power of arrest is one of the most potent and misused sections of Section 41 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It provides police with wide-ranging powers of arrest without order from the magistrates or without any warrant of arrest.

OPED

Failure of two models
Need to devise our own for development
by Vijay Sanghvi
Noted economist K.N. Raj had famously argued during Plan Holidays in early seventies thus: “If there can be no inflation for economic reasons, no taxation for political reasons and high prices for electoral reasons, there can be no planning for obvious reasons.” What have we done in the name of planned development that no valid and convincing explanations come forward for the steady price rise for the last two years?

On Record
Canada will promote research to help the poor: Malone
by Ashok Tuteja
David Malone was Canada’s High Commissioner to India from 2006 to 2008 before being appointed President of Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which has its regional office for South Asia and China in New Delhi. IDRC, set up through an Act of Parliament in 1971, supports development research in developing countries.

Profile
Befitting honour for Shivaraman
by Harihar Swarup
The raindrops falling on the lotus leaves make a sound which resembles tunes of mridangam. The sound inspired sage Swathi to invent the instrument which came to be known as mridangam.

Perspective

A Tribune Special
Subalterns in power

The present-day leaders have let down their mentors, says Amulya Ganguli

Illustration by Kuldeep Dhiman

THE growth of the regional parties was seen as an expression by Dalits, the backward castes and Adivasis of their long-suppressed desire to assert their distinctive identities. Earlier, as members of larger parties such as the Congress, they remained more as cogs in the wheel than as moulders of their own destinies.

The reason for their generally subordinate role was as much the inadequacies of their own leaders as the dominance of the upper castes in the bigger organisations, which continued to reflect the traditional social norms. Except for a few like B.R. Ambedkar, Jagjivan Ram, Karpoori Thakur and Jaipal Singh, the subalterns generally failed to make it to the forefront of national life.

This deficiency has now been rectified. There are more Dalit, backward caste and Adivasi leaders who hit the headlines today than ever before. Yet, their elevation to positions of importance hasn’t helped their image. They have not been able to establish themselves either by their efficiency or probity. Instead, their exposure to lucrative offices has tended to bring out the negative sides of some of them.

Unlike Ambedkar, who is admired even now, the standard-bearers of the subalterns at present are frequently the subject of ridicule and court injunctions. There is not a single one among them (with the possible exception of Nitish Kumar) who stands out for his administrative capability or as an exemplar of moral rectitude.

A probable reason for this failure is that they banked almost entirely on their social background to make their mark in politics rather than on a projection of their intellectual or managerial acumen. In fact, the opposite was true. All through Lalu Yadav’s 15-year reign in Bihar, his focus was wholly on the assertion of his caste identity and the sustenance of the MY (Muslim-Yadav) alliance. His belief was that, first, the self-respect which his ascent to power had given to the OBCs was a solid political capital, which could not be breached by his opponents. And secondly, that the numerical preponderance of the lower castes and minorities would continue to guarantee his party’s electoral success in the foreseeable future.

His successor as chief minister in Bihar, Nitish Kumar has learnt from Lalu Yadav’s mistakes. He has realised that caste pride alone does not sustain loyalty for long in the absence of the government’s failure to provide the daily amenities of life.

In neighbouring UP, however, Mayawati is continuing to invest in the supposed augmentation of self-esteem of the Dalits to bolster her position. Not only that, she has even equated the boost to the asmita of the Dalits not only to her own rising political fortunes but to the erection of her own statues as well of other prominent members of her community like Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram.

The fallout hasn’t quite been what she may have expected. Apart from a few of her aficionados who wanted to know why she should be criticised when the portraits of members of the Nehru-Gandhi family adorn every government office, there has been widespread disapproval and even derisory amusement over her penchant for self-extollation with even the judiciary finding fault with the huge expenditure on the building of statues.

There has been even more censure and sarcasm over the construction of canopies as an afterthought to save the statues from bird-droppings and the setting up of a special police force to protect them. While the NSG guards Mayawati, the special contingent guards her statues!

Yet, consider the kudos Mayawati could have earned if she had earmarked the crores spent on statues for improving the conditions of, say, primary schools and rural health centres. At one stroke, she would have put all politicians in the shade by showing how someone from the disadvantaged sections could empathise with their plight and try to eliminate the longstanding deficiencies in the educational and medical fields.

An endeavour of this nature would have been no less a vote-catcher than the current focus on the bijli-sadak-pani factor in most states. The two are interlinked, of course. A government which concentrates on schools and health centres will obviously be development-oriented.

However, there may have been a psychological barrier to the adoption of such an attitude. Evidence of a similar mental block was available from the observation of the CPM’s Ashok Mitra when he was the finance minister in Jyoti Basu’s cabinet. He bragged at the time of being a Communist, not a gentleman. Since refined manners had come to be associated by the Communists with the bourgeoisie, they wanted to reject such courteous, sophisticated behaviour in personal relations.

It was like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The manners themselves had earned as much wrath of the comrades as the bourgeois “exploiters”. Instead, the comrades purposefully cultivated the supposedly rough-and-ready ways of the proletariat although the true members of the working class can be gentle and considerate while those who are wealthy can be vulgar and overbearing. Such simplistic equations of behaviour with social status can prove to be wide of the mark.

The same misperceptions about the distinguishing features of the castes and classes motivate the Lalu Yadavs and Mayawatis. Since the OBCs and the Dalits have generally lived in deprived conditions, it is the very absence of privileges which their leaders, who themselves belong to the creamy layer, try to flaunt as a badge of honour. Hence, Lalu Yadav’s disdain for development when he was in power.

The same scornful attitude was evident in the Left Front government’s decision to ban the teaching of English in West Bengal schools up to Class V, with Ashok Mitra arguing in all seriousness that those who want the retention of English will also favour the return of the British Raj! While Buddhadev Bhattacharjee has now reversed this decision, the Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav has expressed his preference for such a prohibition, along with a ban on computers, in his party’s manifesto.

One of the ironies of this phenomenon of the supposed empowerment of the subalterns is that in UP, two of their parties face one another as mortal enemies. What is more, there is an unfortunate social background for this confrontation because the OBCs, represented by the Samajwadi Party, have often been the direct oppressors of the Dalits while acting as the henchmen of the upper castes, especially the Rajputs. It was not without reason, therefore, why the alliance between the Samajwadi Party and the BSP collapsed in the mid-nineties with the latter preferring the company of the Manuvadi BJP rather than of the OBCs.

The political ascent of the backward castes, Dalits and Adivasis has had several negative fallouts – the tarnishing the reputation of their leaders as corrupt and worse as the cases of Shibu Soren and Madhu Koda show, and the intensification of caste antagonism between these groups, thereby demonstrating that the upper castes alone were not to blame.

The strengthening of the concept of caste is another damaging impact of the rise of the subalterns. It was believed at the time of Independence that the pernicious social system with its emphasis on untouchability will gradually fade away. However, although untouchability itself is now less widely prevalent than before, the idea of caste has grown stronger.

For this retrogression, Ram Manohar Lohia may have to share some of the blame, for it was his equation of class with caste which has been guiding his followers in the Samajwadi Party, the RJD, the Janata Dal (United), etc with the emphasis mainly on caste. There is little doubt, therefore, that the subalterns have been let down by their present-day leaders.

Use and abuse of the power of arrest
by Sankar Sen

The power of arrest is one of the most potent and misused sections of Section 41 of the Criminal Procedure Code. It provides police with wide-ranging powers of arrest without order from the magistrates or without any warrant of arrest. The Union Cabinet has now approved the amendment of the Cr PC to make it mandatory for the police to record reasons of arrest of suspects involved in crimes punishable with seven years of or less imprisonment.

Lawyers had earlier protested to the amendment of Section 41 on the ground that this would remove fear from the minds of the criminals who will misuse the amended provisions. Of every four persons arrested, three were let off as not guilty. Thus, many poor people are needlessly arrested and our system has no way of compensating them for the damages they suffer.

The new amendment now specifies that police officers may instead of arresting the person issue a notice of appearance asking him to cooperate with the police officers in the probe. Further, every police officer while making an arrest shall bear "accurate, visible and clear identification mark". At the time of arrest, a memorandum will be drawn up attested by at least one witness who is a member of the family of the person arrested or respectable member of the locality where the arrest is being made.

The National Police Commission (1978-80), in its Third report, has highlighted the corruption and malpractices that arise out of the gross abuse of police power to arrest. It has pointed out that arrest under the local and special laws have been twice than for offences under the Indian Penal Code. These offences are made for individual complaints which might provide some direct cause for arrest and arrest made would satisfy the aggrieved persons.

On the other hand, arrests made under the special and local laws like the Prohibition Act, Arms Act, Gambling Act and Motor Vehicles Act in which cases are registered not on complaints from aggrieved parties as such but on information and intelligence available to the police in their field work. Thus many persons arrested do view the police as having acted harshly on their own information and not on the direct complaint of any aggrieved person.

Discretionary arrests of this type not only affect police image among the public but also provide scope for malpractices and highhandedness. Hence, the NPC has recommended broad guidelines for making arrest. Arrest during investigation of a cognisable case will be justified only when it involves a grave offence like murder, rape or dacoity and it is necessary to arrest the accused to check his movements and restore confidence among the victims.

Further, arrests will be justified only when the accused is a veteran offender and likely to escape or evade the process of law. The NPC also pointed out that continued detention in jails of persons so arrested has meant avoidable expenditure on their maintenance. It found that during 1974-76, 43 per cent of the expenditure in the connected jails was over such prisoners who need not have been arrested.

Unfortunately, most NPC recommendations remain on paper. The Supreme Court, in Joginder Kumar vs. State of UP and others referred to some salutary NPC recommendations and held that "no arrest can be made because it is lawful for the police to do so. The police officers must be able to justify the arrest apart from the powers to do so". Indeed, arrest and detention under police custody does incalculable damage to a person’s reputation. In 1902, the Second Police Commission appointed by Lord Curzon castigated the police tendency to arrest persons randomly and arbitrarily and pointed out how such arrests in Indian society tarnish the persons’ reputation.

The Supreme Court laid down that for enforcement of fundamental rights under Article 21 and 22 (3), the police officers have to inform a friend or a relative of the arrested person after the arrest and the arrested person when he is brought to the police station shall be informed of this right.

The Law Commission, in its 177th report on law relating to arrest, recommended that no arrest should be made just for questioning a person as it amounts to unlawful interference with the personal liberty guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. To arrest a person on suspicion is an awesome power vested in the police and it is to be regulated to prevent abuse.

Further, arrests under preventive sections of the Cr PC are more in number than arrests for substantive offences. In many cases, arrests have been made for offences which are bailable and non-cognisable (that is where police cannot arrest without a warrant or order from a magistrate) The Law Commission recommended that no person shall be arrested for offences which are bailable and non-cognisable and even in respect of offences which are bailable and cognisable no arrest shall be made but the notice shall be served to the accused directing him to appear at police station or before the officers when required.

Offences punishable with seven years of imprisonment and treated at present as non-bailable and cognisable would be treated as bailable, cognisable offences. The Law Commission has left offences where punishment is above seven years untouched.

The amendment does not take away the police power of arrest but only puts checks and balances to stop abuse, corruption and harassment. Rampant use and misuse of arrest has become a big source of corruption in the police stations and courts. So one can understand the reason behind the lawyers’ opposition to restrict the arrest power. The existing arrangement suits unscrupulous police officers and lawyers seeking bails for the arrestees. But then, there is tremendous pressure on the police to make arrests to project an impression of effectiveness. Press reports on sensational cases invariably end with comments on arrests made by the police. The fact that no arrest has been made in particular cases is invariably held up against the police officers.

The states also rely on figures of arrest to meet the opposition criticism of law and order. The public, the media and legislators should consider the repercussions of undue emphasis upon arrest in various situations. The quality of investigation and efficiency of police operations should be de-linked from the arrest made. In certain types of investigations by the CBI, no arrests are made at the stage of investigation but only after the charge-sheets are filed.

The new amendment will hopefully make the police more accountable in respect of making arrest and will put a check on its misuse. The criminal justice system should be reformed to ensure speedy trial and deterrent punishment of criminals.

The writer, a former IPS officer, is Senior Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi

OPED

Failure of two models
Need to devise our own for development
by Vijay Sanghvi

Noted economist K.N. Raj had famously argued during Plan Holidays in early seventies thus: “If there can be no inflation for economic reasons, no taxation for political reasons and high prices for electoral reasons, there can be no planning for obvious reasons.” What have we done in the name of planned development that no valid and convincing explanations come forward for the steady price rise for the last two years?

The tempting but significant question is “did we have a correct model for planning of economy for the past six decades? If so, why is the government unable to put its hand on the pulse and give us correct diagnosis as to what is ailing our economy?”

The Cabinet Committee discussed the issue of price rise to identify four commodities as cause of concerns – pulses, sugar, potato and onion. But it ended the debate within to enhance the issued quantum of wheat and rice to families below poverty line. But no measures announced for controlling prices of the four commodities that are daily need every family.

No explanation came for a short supply of milk but only warning by the Union Agriculture Minister that milk prices might escalate further in coming weeks. He also did not have up his sleeves any measure to meet the shortage.

The ministers are apparently back to the wall. They have carefully avoided a serious debate over the present economic condition and its consequences. Perhaps few have investigated to understand why is that so? Loud noises are only from the worried men over its electoral impact. In 2008, the government had tried to explain it away as a global phenomenon. The commodity prices were increasing in other countries. One sentence was the explanation. Same cannot hold water now as it is too porous.

That leads to the question whether was anything fundamentally wrong with the economic development model that India adopted after the Independence for removal of prevalent poverty? Jawaharlal Nehru crowned as the supreme leader brought with him his intense dislike for commercial class. His bitterness had perhaps brewed in open clashes between the aristocracy and the new emerging commercial class during his graduation in England.

He was also enchanted by the Soviet model of the economic development. He adopted the prohibitive model for rapid economic development from the Soviet Union but could not even think of adopting its political model. A true democrat at heart, he went in for the European liberal democracy.

Consequently, he ended up with a slow growth rate that was derisively called the Hindu Growth Rate. He had no doubt built fine political institutions but most public sector units that he sponsored as the commanding heights of the economy turned into white elephants guzzling too much to produce too little.

The license-permit regime became the fertile ground for growth of only corruption as an industry. His economic decisions were not his political compulsions but the model that Indira Gandhi adopted for her political survival. She needed to render irrelevant the entrenched leadership party that posed a threat to her position.

She swung the economic pendulum to further left and took economic decisions with no one willing to point out the logic of each decision that would emanate from it.

Her political compulsions dictated her to establish herself as one bestowed well towards the deprived classes. But she did not attempt to achieve it by empowering poor. She nationalised 20 top private banks but efficiency and banking norms were first victims. Nationalised banks ended up with huge non-performing assets.

The Urban Land Ceiling Act was imposed to end housing scarcity in urban areas. But it merely twisted the rights of private property ownership and opened flood gates to unscrupulous builders.

The introduction of law to enable the Income-Tax officials to seize properties where they suspect undervaluation and put up those properties for public auction was meant to eliminate malpractices and undervaluation to avoid taxes and registration fees.

However, they ended up in further pushing up property prices and tenancy rents as neighbours in auctioned properties also assumed price of their existing properties at same value and decided to earn higher rents. Finally the government abandoned it after realizing its adverse impact.

The Nineties brought an era of economic reforms and privatisation. It did not turn life into a rosy one, definitely not for an overwhelming majority of Indians. The prescription of the global reforms resulted in escalating costs of every service that governments had provided cheaply earlier. Education for children, travelling and transportation, communications, health services and all other essentials to maintain modern life standards became costly because the governments adopted strategy for recovering maintenance costs and also investment costs from services it provided.

Privatisation did not become a solution but a burdensome development like toll tax for use of highways added to the transportation costs to make every commodity costlier. Each car travelling between Delhi and Jaipur has to shell out Rs 300 a trip on toll taxes without any advantage in saving time.

It does not take into account how villages on these highways became isolated isles since they could not use their traditional vehicles for highways without risks to their lives and also to other travellers. Airports are modernised not to add comfort to passengers but to their ambiences at huge cost.

It is not that India could have bypassed development. Both models have merely added to the cost of living without improving quality and standards of living. Though the US pursued liberal capitalism, it has reached to a stage where even two-and-half incomes of a family is not enough to provide same comforts and facilities as well as services that were available two decades earlier to nearly 80 per cent of Americans today.

India is being driven in the same path. India experimented with two models, the Soviet model of prohibitive nature for 40 years and the liberal capitalist American model for last 20 years. Neither provides better life. First was due to denials and second by its high costs. Can we devise Indian model for economic growth?

On Record
Canada will promote research to help the poor: Malone
by Ashok Tuteja

David Malone

David Malone was Canada’s High Commissioner to India from 2006 to 2008 before being appointed President of Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which has its regional office for South Asia and China in New Delhi. IDRC, set up through an Act of Parliament in 1971, supports development research in developing countries.

On a visit to India and Pakistan recently, he spoke to The Tribune in New Delhi about his experiences here, ties between India and Canada and IDRC’s agenda for promoting research for improving the lives of the poor.

Excerpts:

Q: What was the most satisfying aspect of your tenure as Canadian High Commissioner in India and what was the most trying moment?

A: My whole tenure was most satisfying. I was happy the moment I landed here in 2006 and I felt the same way till I left in 2008, a little ahead of schedule because of my appointment as IDRC President. To extend my engagement with India, I have been writing a book on Indian foreign policy which should be published next year. My sources for the book are mainly Indian and my research partners have nearly all been Indian also.`A0It has been a terrific experience.

Q: From here, you are going to Pakistan. What is your agenda over there?

A: Like in India, we support a number of research institutions, and with some of them we have been working for a long time. We want to find out what the research community is preoccupied with, how external support can help them. I would be meeting valued partners and research grantees of IDRC.

Q: Have you visited Punjab?

A: I have visited Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and other northern states. I have even been to The Tribune office and met Editor-in-Chief H.K. Dua. The Tribune is lucky because it is managed by a Trust. I have fond memories of my visit to The Tribune.

Q: What are your areas of work in Punjab and Haryana?

A: We have been working in association with local partners on the skewed sex ratio, the sense of immunity among the state police from excesses, crimes against women and community policing. Since the people’s sense of alienation from some formal agencies, Punjab started experimenting with community policing, prompting IDRC to step in with support for evidence-based data gathering. Through its partners it also conducted training programmes for community policing and gender sensitisation.

Q: What are the prospects for strengthening the relations between India and Canada?

A: Canada already has strong trade relations with India. From the Canadian side, we also focus on two-way investment – strong from India to Canada, not quite as strong from Canada to India.`A0Investment flows are often a predictor of future trade flows.`A0As a research organisation, IDRC supports study of economic, trade and investment policies globally, as these are very important in relation to the eradication of poverty.

Q: Should IDRC rearrange its priorities, particularly for India and other South Asian nations?

A: Actually, no. My predecessor Maureen O’Neil who often came to India had done a brilliant job and IDRC has a very good institutional culture. What we did do was as a staff was to engage our Board, which includes a very accomplished Indian member, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, on what our priorities should be over the coming five-year period. We had a dialogue with our Board for about a year.

Recently we published a new strategic framework. It emphasises several issues – agriculture, food security, health systems and scientific and technological innovation. We always support research on economic and social policy: this we have done for 40 years now.

Q: How can IDRC help developing nations face the challenges of equitable development?

A: Disparities have widened both in developing and developed world. There has been a global trend towards disparities. The recent financial crisis may bring that trend to a close. May be in both industrialised and developing worlds, there will be more focus on equity within society.

We are interested in supporting research that shows how inequality can be fought. We favour economic growth that leads to widespread development and social progress.

Q: How do you plan to tap the resources of the corporate sector interested in philanthropy?

A: Most IDRC partners are private philanthropists or foundations established by private philanthropists. We are open to working with private companies or their charitable foundations that are interested in entering the field of philanthropy.

Profile
Befitting honour for Shivaraman
by Harihar Swarup

The raindrops falling on the lotus leaves make a sound which resembles tunes of mridangam. The sound inspired sage Swathi to invent the instrument which came to be known as mridangam.

In ancient sculpture, painting and mythology, the mridangam is often depicted as the instrument of choice for a number of deities including Ganesha and Nandi, who is the vehicle and companion of Lord Shiva. Nandi is said to have played mridangam during Shiva’s Tandava dance, causing a divine rhythm to resound across heaven. The mridangam is thus also known as the instrument of Gods.

According to some scholars, mridang is the ancient branch of Indian classical music, created by Lord Brahma himself. According to yet another legend, when Lord Shiva killed the demon Tripurasur out of joy and ecstasy, he started dancing but as the dance was without any laya; the earth started shaking and sinking towards the rasaatal (hell).

Lord Brahma was worried about the situation of the earth and to overcome the crisis he immediately invented mridanga from Tripurasur’s body parts and instructed Lord Ganesha to play it.

When Lord Shiva heard the sound of mridanga, he got intoxicated and started dancing according to the beats played by Ganesha. This is how the `A0 mridanga and taals originated. In present time, Umayalpuram K. Shivaraman emerged as one of the topmost mridangam artistes. He was decorated on the Republic Day with India’s second highest award – the Padma Vibhushan.

His tryst with music began at the age of three when he started playing various patterns on any object that would produce sound. This fetched him a ganjira as a gift from his grandmother. By the time Shivaraman turned 10, he became proficient in playing mridangam. His first concert was held in the temple town of Kumbakonam. Since then, there is no looking back for him.

Having his debut at the tender age of 10, Shivaraman has been in the field as a topnotch artiste for half-a-century, accompanying a galaxy of maestros of recent past and present.

His new techniques, innovations and creative ability in accompaniment, solo renditions, and jugalbandhi, programmes with his North Indian counterparts have earned him a special place in the world of art, worthy of emulation by other artistes.

Besides his professional career, he had undertaken the very laudable task of doing original research in the art of mridangam. This resulted in his highly acclaimed lecture demonstrations done in all important centres in India and abroad, which enabled him to disseminate the knowledge of its divine art to art lovers, music conferences, seminars and the like.

He is the only mridangam scholar who has explored and placed before the world of art lovers authentic information on the techniques and nuances of mridangam for more than two decades.

Shivaraman has introduced the fibre glass mridangam to Carnatic music for the first, improved a mechanical jig to eliminate human error in the moulding of skins for both sides of the instrument and has done research work on tanned and untanned skins for the mridangam. He is also an "A" grade artiste of All India Radio and Doordarshan.

Born in December 1935, Shivaraman is the son of Dr Kasivishwanatha Iyer and Kamlabal. His father, a medical practitioner and himself an accomplished musician, had with insight and intuition nurtured the inborn talents of his son and got him rightly initiated into mridangam through gurukula discipline. Shivaraman learnt the divine art under four gurus, all illustrious masters – Arupathi Natesan Iyer, Tanjavoor Vaidyanatha Iyer, Palghat Mani Iyer and Kumbakonam Raangu Iyengar. The pursuit of art under the gurukula discipline did not deter him to qualify for law. He is a double graduate of the University of Madras.