The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

	Groundwater depletion India’s food security in jeopardy Groundwater depletion has ceased to stir governments. Budgets do make much ado about small allocations for “water bodies” but no one knows where the money goes. There is hardly any material change at the ground level. The water levels in lakes and rivers – all polluted and stinking — keep receding. Last year when drought loomed, the sinking water table drew some attention. Yet no concrete government plan has emerged to clean and revive the dirty and drying water resources. Farmers, meanwhile, extract every available drop to nurture their paddy crop. The World Bank is the latest to ring the alarm bell by pointing out that the overuse of groundwater could endanger India’s food security in 20 years by slashing a quarter of the harvest. Ordinary politicians may not know how climate change will impact agriculture but even the extremely naive would be aware how agriculture could wilt without water. Eighty per cent of the urban and rural water supplies and 60 per cent of irrigated agriculture depend on groundwater. This makes India the largest groundwater user in the world. The US-based NASA’s Grace Mission had last year pointed out how critical the situation was in Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab. Between 2002 and 2008 the water table kept falling as rainwater failed to arrest the decline even when there was normal rain. This means there is no replenishment of groundwater and farmers are drawing on the reserves. It is common to blame paddy cultivation and farmers for the overuse of water. Governments aggravate the problem by subsidising electricity and diesel, raising the paddy minimum support price year after year and by doing nothing to harvest rainwater or replenish the existing water resources. Gujarat is an exception. In the midst of drought last year its water table went up, thanks to the government’s stepped-up investment in irrigation networks and construction of more than one lakh check-dams across the state. It holds lessons for other less enlightened states.
	World Cup lessons Indian hockey can turn around IT is tempting to write a requiem for Indian hockey after the national team’s failure to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup. But before knives are brought out, it must be stated that the Indian team played passionately and skilfully enough to raise hopes about the future. Players played their heart out and tried hard to match other teams in speed and skill. Flashes of the old magic were often on display and the players showed fighting spirit. While they were outplayed by Australia and Spain, the match against England could have gone either way while against archrivals Pakistan, the Indian team, which started as the underdog, put up a spectacular performance. True, it was let down by its relative lack of fitness and stamina, poor finishing and lack of killer-instinct and possibly also by its inability to play the mind-game. But it is Hockey India which is to be blamed. To cite just one small example, a Spaniard, Jose Brasa, was appointed the national coach barely eight months ago. Typically, we Indians tend to postpone all serious preparations till the eleventh hour. One of the more perceptive and thoughtful comments, however, was made by Mr Horst Wein, a professor of physical education in Munich and Barcelona, who is also a master coach of the International Hockey Federation. The professor, in Delhi to watch the World Cup, blamed the lack of vision in those who are “running the game in India” for the decline of Indian hockey. Nothing new in that, one thought, till the professor got into the specifics. Five-a-side or six-a-side matches, he said, should have been encouraged at the school level to promote the game. When eleven-year olds are forced to play eleven-a-side matches, he pointed out, half the players on the field never get to touch the ball with their sticks. “Here right from the young age they are playing 11 against 11, which is a cancer in Indian hockey,” he said. The country continues to suffer from a severe shortage of good coaches, doctors specialising in sports medicine, sports psychologists besides experts like Herr Wein, not to speak of infrastructural deficiencies, good planning, regular tournaments, steady exposure and consistent training to raise levels of the game. Intelligent hockey, says Professor Wein, is played in the mind and it is time to focus more on the mental aspects of the game in order to put Indian hockey back on the fast track.
	Thought for the Day ‘Change’ is scientific, ‘progress’ is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy. — Bertrand Russell
	Corrections and clarifications The headline “Micra to hit roads in July” (page 21, March 7) should instead have been “Micra to hit the road in July”. In the lead headline on page 6 of the issue of March 6 the word ‘crossfire’ has been mis-spelt as ‘crosssfire’. In the headline “Women’s Bill: Cong, BJP issue whip” (Page 1, March 6) it should have been ‘whips’ instead of ‘whip’. The headline “Essar close to buy Trinity coal” (page 20, March 6) should instead have been “Essar close to buying Trinity Coal”. 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

ARTICLE

Disruptions in legislatures
Fountainhead of our problems
by K. Subrahmanyam

THIS year’s budget speech will go down in our history not for the contents of the budget proposals but for the disruption caused in Parliament and the walkout staged by the Opposition. Never before in the 63 years since India became independent has there been such a rude unparliamentary attempt to disrupt the Finance Minister discharging his constitutional responsibility. It is not intended to pass a judgement on the merits of the impugned proposal. Interrupting and shouting down the Governor’s address in the state assemblies has become a ritual in a number of states.

Disruption of the proceedings of the two Houses of Parliament and state assemblies has become the regular norm. When the elected representatives at the highest level - the rulers - are so disorderly, is it any surprise that our bureaucracy’s high and low are equally remiss in the discharge of their duties? The protesters in the streets are equally inclined to resort to violence. Shouting down a minister or preventing a fellow member speaking on his turn according to the prescribed rules is an act of violence.

The ancient Sanskrit saying is, “Yatha Raja, thatha praja” (As is the ruler so are the subjects). In a country where after 63 years of parliamentary tradition Parliament’s members do not observe rules, it is futile to complain that the vehicle drivers on the roads do not do so.

As soon as the Speaker takes her chair, some members start shouting, urging that they should be heard first and their demand should take precedence over everything else though the day’s business has been fixed by the Business Advisory Committee and there are prescribed rules and procedures for drawing the Speaker’s attention to a matter of extraordinary urgency and importance. Such MPs flout the rules and prescribed procedures to draw attention to themselves and their party. In that sense their motivation is not different from that of a terrorist who carries out an outrage to draw attention to his cause through an act of violence.

Here violence is used in the dictionary sense that it constitutes behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt or damage, though the hurt or damage may not be personal. A number of people shouting together to prevent the normal discharge of duties of an MP causes hurt and damage to him as well as others.

The Indian Republic is founded on the principles of pluralism and secularism. Those principles cannot be practised without the spirit of tolerance. Our netas and MPs expect us to believe that they are capable of practising and upholding these principles in their real lives when they hardly display any sense of tolerance towards their elected colleagues within the chambers of the two Houses under the eyes of the presiding officers. Most of the developing countries abandoned democracy and we in India proudly proclaim that this country has been able to sustain its democracy. Have we really? The regular unruly happenings in the Houses of Parliament are a constant reminder how skin-deep is the democratic temperament of our legislators.

The total lack of accountability among our legislators about their unruly behaviour in Parliament translates itself into an analogous lack of accountability in regard to maintaining law and order in the streets. One leader of the Opposition in a state argues that stone throwing is a form of nonviolent protest. For most of our netas, bandhs, violent closure of shops, public transport burning and damage to public property are legitimate activities just as the disruption of the legislatures are. While, through bandhs they cause a reduction in the Gross Domestic Product, prevent daily wagers from earning their livelihood, disrupt the functioning of hospitals and educational institutions, interdict road and rail traffic, they talk of aam aadmi. If the highest legislatures of the country can be disrupted with impunity without fear of any adverse consequences why should any other activity be considered sacrosanct and spared?

Just as in Parliament, disrupted so often, legislation gets through without debate and disruptive behaviour forces decisions, in states, bus -burning and damaging public property have become regular processes leading to decision making. Our lawyers, who are supposed to be trained to uphold law, follow the example of the lawmakers and disrupt law and order and storm high court buildings.

It hardly occurs to such legislators that future police officers and district magistrates will be recruited from the bus-burning and bandh-promoting young men who get away with their violence just as our legislators do. With that kind of conditioning in their youth, their values and attitude are not going to be very helpful in the enforcement of law and order. Having been used to permissive law enforcement, they are likely to be equally permissive.

Our Home Minister in true democratic spirit asks the left-wing extremists to abjure violence and accept the constitutional rule. While it is far from my intention to defend the extremists, is not the extremist asking for the same thing as the disrupting MP does, that he should have his own way irrespective of the rule of law? How do you fight him when the rule of law is not respected within the chambers of the two Houses of Parliament? How do we expect our young men to lay down their lives to protect the constitutional rule when the republic is wrecked from within by the MPs who disrupt the governance of the republic?

Not only such disrupters do not get disciplined, very often they become ministers. That explains why after 60 years of independence India has not eliminated poverty, illiteracy, gender oppression and caste and communal violence. When some 670 people cannot be persuaded to abide by rules and regulations, how is this country of one billion and three hundred million people be successfully welded into a modern democratic republic?

In every session of Parliament days are lost in interruptions and adjournments without any business, wasting the money that belongs to aam aadmi for whom the legislators shed crocodile tears. Most of them are not in the House most of the time. How do such rulers expect that they can have a governing machinery where the bureaucracy will not follow their example and play truant instead of concentrating on the delivery of goods and services to the common man. It is time those political leaders who cherish democratic values, cutting across parties, the civil society, the academia and the leaders in the legal profession raised their voices and warned the country that if this situation is not immediately addressed, we shall be facing the fate of the Weimar Republic.

MIDDLE

Righting my writing
by Sudhamahi Regunathan

SUBBAROYAN was one of those who had come all the way from Tamil Nadu to Delhi as labour. He spent quite a few years carrying bricks and throwing away the malba on construction sites of Delhi’s famed flyovers. Age caught on and as he looked for other options to earn, he arrived in our house as a sweeper.

He began by sweeping the outsides and the garden. From a sweeper he graduated rather quickly to become an advisor on whom the whole family was dependent. The one whom he had taken under his wings was me. He felt responsible for me and so not only helped me with everything possible, but also kept a stern eye on my activities.

One day he came and stood by me when I was typing. Those were the days of the typewriter. I had an old one which made considerable noise as I hammered on the keys. “Now all you do the whole day long is bang on that. Just tell me, I will do the banging, I have more strength than you anyway. And you take rest,” he told me.

Aghast that my cerebral endeavour could be understood so, I pulled out some of my “achievements” and showed him my name saying, “I have written this, and this too. It requires a lot of thought before I bang.” Unconvinced, he went off with an, “Is that so?”

When the computer came I had to convince him that it was not a television but a monitor. And then I thought, why should I? I did not need his approval. And he continued to be skeptical. As luck would have it just the moment when I was playing solitaire, he happened to peer into the screen and was scathing in his remark: “Oh! so you are turning into a gambler?”

A period of research followed when I went to libraries and came back with copious notes. Subbaroyan was happy. He felt he had gently served me away from the vices of the world. To show his appreciation and approval for my “changed” personality, he would make me tea even before he saw the car entering the gate and so on.

When I had to give the book to the publisher I was sorting out the pictures. Subbaroyan who was now kindly disposed to me came to have a look at them. He was silent. Only then did I realise that the tribals, whose pictures I had, were mainly men and most of them almost nude.

Early next morning my husband was reversing the car to go for his game of golf when a silhouette emerged from the bushes and told him, “Forget your golf saab…spend more time with your wife if you want to keep her.”

OPED

Delhi scheme comes to rescue of daughters
by O.P. Sharma and Carl Haub

THE highly skewed sex ratio at birth in India is a result of the preference for sons and the abortion of female fetuses. The preference for sons has deep roots in India for cultural and economic reasons. It is argued that once a girl is married, she leaves the parental home to live with her in-laws and is perceived to be of little economic benefit, such as support of her parents in their old age. A common saying is that raring a girl child is like “watering neighbour’s garden.”

In order to (i) enhance the social status of a girl child in society as well as the family (ii) ensure proper education and make the girl child self-reliant (iii) ensure economic security and (iv) protect the girl child from discrimination and deprivation, an incentive-based scheme called LADLI was launched by the Government of Delhi effective from January 1, 2008.

The object of this scheme is two fold – the direct and tangible objective is to change the attitudinal mindset of the family towards the girl child – by linking cash and non-cash incentives. This encourages the families to look upon the girl as an asset rather a liability.

The eligibility conditions for financial assistance under this scheme are (1) the girl child should be born in Delhi (2) the family should be a resident in Delhi for the previous three years (3) the annual income does not exceed Rs 1 lakh and (4) the girl child should be studying in a recognised government school in Delhi.

The cash incentive under the scheme is that every girl child born is entitled to Rs 11,000 in the case of an institutional birth and Rs 10,000 for a non-institutional birth. Thereafter, the government is to deposit Rs 5,000 each at the time of her admission to class I, VI, IX, X and XII in the name of the girl.

Under the scheme the amount is deposited in the accounts opened with the State Bank of India in the name of the girl child. These deposits accumulate up to Rs 1 lakh on the girl’s attaining the age of 18 years. The money can be withdrawn, preferably by her mother, when the girl attains the age of 18.

According to the annual report on Registration of Births and Deaths, 2008, released by the Director of Economic and Statistics, in 2008 Delhi recorded a positive sex ratio in favour of girls for the first time in 2008.

It is claimed that due to the concerted efforts to implement the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act, outlawing the practice, and with the implementation of the LADLI scheme the sex ratio at birth has started to give positive results in favour of girls.

According to the annual report for 2008, the number of total births registered was 333,908 of which 166,583 were boys and 167,325 were girls, giving a sex ratio of 1,004 girl babies per 1,000 boy babies.

The number of registered births during 2007 was 322,044 of which 174,289 were boys and only 147,755 were girls! That gave a sex ratio of only 848 in 2007. Why is the sudden spurt in the registration of girl births?

The Government of NCT of Delhi has stated that the higher number of registered births of girls during 2008 manifests a dip in female foeticide and infanticide and to some extent to the effective implementation of the LADLI scheme. This needs to be looked into in depth.

The LADLI scheme envisaged that those girls who were born on or after January 1, 2008, are entitled to cash and non-cash incentives. This resulted in the registration of a large number of girl birth during 2008.

During the month of January 2008 alone, a higher number of girl births were registered and the sex ratio was 1,090 girl births per 1,000 boy births.

From February to June 2008 the sex ratio for registered births continued to be favourable for girls. However, during the second half of 2008 – July to December – the sex ratio declined and hovered around 975.

The question which immediately comes to one’s mind is: Why was the higher number of girl births in comparison to boys reported immediately after the announcement of the LADLI scheme and less in the second half of the year? This may perhaps call for verification of the bona fides of beneficiaries under the LADLI scheme.

There is every possibility that the higher sex ratio during the first half of 2008 is due to the registration of those girl births which did not occur in the NCT of Delhi but elsewhere in the neighbouring areas.

Further, a sizeable number of registered births are non-institutional. During 2007 the share of the non-institutional births was higher in the case of boys (25.4 per cent) than girls (24.9). During 2008 the share of non-institutional births was higher in the case of girls (30.0 per cent) than boys (23.1). The actual place of occurrence of non-institutional births can be quite difficult to verify.

Interestingly, the sex ratio of the registered births during January-June, 2008, taken together, works out to 1,048 which then declined to 969 in respect of those births which took place during July-December, 2008. Why this shortfall?

There is every possibility that some parents might have got the benefit of the scheme on the basis of false claims. The non-institutional girl births which took place outside Delhi might have been registered by those migrants who came to Delhi, leaving behind their families and took the benefit under the LADLI scheme though the girl was born at the native place of the parents.

This argument is strengthened by the fact that the higher registration of girl births started immediately after the announcement of the LADLI scheme and this continued for the first half and declined in the second half of 2008.

During the four months since the launch of the LADLI scheme, the Delhi government opened 6,000 fixed deposit accounts and another 23,000 claims were being processed. One should thus be careful in interpreting this first high sex ratio among the registered births in Delhi and verify the factual position.

Recently, the Shagun Scheme – which provides Rs 15,000 to eligible Scheduled Castes girls upon marriage – in Punjab has come under scanner where some people received money thrice even though it could only be given twice, received three cheques for one daughter and even issueless mothers received money.

An enquiry has been ordered in this case by the Punjab government. The Delhi government should take heed of the possibility of misuse of an excellent and well-intentioned programme, something that can happen anywhere when a windfall of funds is involved.

O.P. Sharma is India Consultant, Population Reference Bureau, Washington-DC, stationed in New Delhi. Carl Haub is a senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, Washington-DC

Iraq pays a price for ‘democracy’
by Robert Fisk

IN 2005 the Iraqis walked in their tens of thousands through the thunder of suicide bombers, and voted – the Shias on the instructions of their clerics, the Sunnis sulking in a boycott – to prove Iraq was a "democracy". There followed the most blood-boltered period in Iraq's modern history. On Sunday, the Iraqis walked in their tens of thousands through the thunder of mortar fire – at least 24 dead before voting stations closed – to prove that Iraq was a "democracy".

This time, the Sunnis did vote. And we Westerners tried to forget the past, even the recent past. Few news reports recalled that only weeks ago hundreds of candidates, most of them Sunnis, were banned from standing on the grounds that they had once had links with the Baath Party. It was a clear return to sectarian politics. Shias who were close to Saddam still hold their jobs in the "democratic" Iraq for which the Iraqis supposedly went to vote on Sunday.

Under Iraq's new laws, the electoral system has been jiggled to ensure that no single party can win power. There has got to be a coalition, an alliance – or a "broad alliance" as the television analysts were telling us – among whomever of the 6,000 candidates from 86 parties gain seats in parliament. But all this means is that the next sectarian government will hold power according to the percentage of Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities in Iraq.

The West has always preferred this system in West Asia, knowing that such "democracy" will produce governments according to the confessional power of each community. We've done this in Northern Ireland. We did it in Cyprus. The French created a Lebanon whose very identity is confessional, each community living in suspicious love of each other lest they be destroyed. Even in Afghanistan, we prefer to deal with the corrupt Hamid Karzai – held in disdain by most of his fellow Pushtuns – and allow him to rule on our behalf with an army largely made up of paid tribal supporters. This may not be – in the State Department's laughable excuse – "Jeffersonian democracy", but it's the best we are going to get.

And always we defend these miserable results with the same refrain. Do you want the Taliban back? Do you want Saddam back? Or, in the cases of Cyprus and Lebanon decades ago, do you want the Ottoman Turks back? And while we think that election results – however fraudulent or however complex (Iraq's next government may take months to form) – are an improvement, we do not stop to ask who really wins these elections. Iran, whose demented president knows how to handle "democratic" polls, is of course the victor. Its two enemies, the "black Taliban" and Saddam, have both been vanquished without a single Iranian firing a shot.

Sunni politicians in Iraq claim that Iran is interfering, both militarily and politically, in Iraq. But since most of the current ruling parties were nurtured in the Islamic Republic, Iran has no need to interfere. The Dawa Party, to whom we now graciously bend the knee in respect, was 20 years ago kidnapping foreigners in Beirut, and bombing the US and French embassies in Kuwait City. And we are not even mentioning Mosul and other cities in northern Iraq, where the elections are not about democracy at all, but about who controls the oil on the Arab-Kurdish front lines.

Yes, the Iraqis are a brave people. How many Brits would go to the polls under mortar fire? Or Americans, for that matter? It's not that Muslims don't want freedom or democracy. It's that "democracy" doesn't seem to work when their countries are occupied by Western troops. It didn't work in Afghanistan. The withdrawal of American "combat" troops from Iraq doesn't mean that US forces won't remain in great strength.

And as long as the Mubaraks and the King Abdullahs (both of them) have our uncritical political support, their nations will make no real progress towards freedom.

Thus Sunday's election day in Iraq does not represent further proof of the values of our Western democracies. It does mean that a courageous people still believes that the system under which it is voting will honour its wishes.

As so often in the past, however, the election is more likely – under our benevolent eye – to enshrine the very sectarianism which Saddam once used so ruthlessly to enslave his people.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Delhi Durbar
PC takes time off to enjoy photography

THIS Friday Home Minister P. Chidambaram stole some time away from Parliament and politics to enjoy some art at the India Habitat Centre's Palm Court complex.

The occasion – the launch of the fourth photo show of Ashok Lavasa, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Home. Arriving in his private car sans security, Chidambaram skirted questions on Naxal violence, telling reporters: "No politics please, let me enjoy the pictures".

He was later seen concentrating on the frames which Ashok and his better half, Novel, put together in their ensemble "Inward Eye", often asking them the altitude where some pictures located in the Himalayan ranges were taken.

Leaving the complex, PC left his colleague a warm message in the visitors' book – "Photography has been transferred into high art in these pictures; my congratulations to the Lavasas, wanderers and observers." Also present at the show, to last till March 12, was Raghu Rai, who inaugurated it.

Women’s Bill: BJP better at it

The BJP seems to have done better management of its members and supporters on the Women's Reservation Bill than the Congress. While the Congress, pushing the Bill, was in a quandary at the prospect of Lalu and Mulayam deserting the UPA camp, the BJP sat coolly unfazed. It has already thrown out all its OBC leaders – Uma Bharti, Gangacharan Rajput and Kalyan Singh, who were opposing the Bill.

When JD-U president and NDA convener Sharad Yadav made too much noise opposing the Bill, they had Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar come out openly opposing Sharad Yadav and supporting the BJP on the Women's Bill.

The other day a BJP leader was commenting upon the quality of women who would suddenly come up in politics, thanks to the reservation. But then who cares? Parliament and legislative assemblies would no longer look so drab after all as they do now with all the rustic OBCs muscling their way into the hallowed temple of democracy!

Virbhadra loses prime seat on Budget day

On the Budget day, Steel Minister Virbhadra Singh went to the Lok Sabha after the Cabinet meeting held in the Parliament House and sat behind Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee , who was about to start reading his budget speech.

Suddenly, Virbhadra remembered some work at the Parliament House bank. So he got up from his seat and went to the bank. His earmarked seat was in the direct frame of TV screens since it was right behind the FM.

On returning to the House, much to his discomfiture, he found that his seat had been occupied by another minister from his home state of Himachal Pradesh who until then was seated on the back benches.

Even as Virbhadra stood close to him, this minister, who is seen as a rival of the Steel Minister in state politics, would not vacate the seat.

Seeing this, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal got up and offered his seat to the Steel Minister but he declined. Finally, he had to be content with a seat that somehow was not in the frame of TV cameras.

Contributed by Aditi Tandon, Faraz Ahmad and Ashok Tuteja