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RS’s date with history
Killings by Taliban |
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Infant mortality
Anomalies in agriculture
Identity crisis
Water pollution in Punjab
Running out of friends
Immigrants have changed Dutch society
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RS’s date with history
The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday took the first great step to give a better place to women in society when it passed the Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill by 186 to 1 vote. The Bill seeks to provide for 33 per cent of seats for women in Parliament and State Assemblies which means that the women of India will have greater voice in making laws for the nation. This is a major step forward by the country’s evolving democratic system where women have been given a raw deal over the centuries. The Bill has had many ups and downs in the last 14 years. Indeed, the events in the past two days were shocking and unprecedented in Indian parliamentary history. A handful of unruly members of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party disturbed the proceedings only to be suspended by the House. They created disorder in the Rajya Sabha demanding quota within quota for the Muslims, the OBCs and Dalits among women. And when they refused to leave the House and continued to disrupt the proceedings, the Chairman, Mr Hamid Ansari, rightly decided to get them evicted by the Marshals of the House. The Congress-led government, backed by understanding with the BJP and the Left, kept its nerve and went ahead with the resolve to ensure more power to women. The Rajya Sabha vote shows that if the major national parties join hands on vital issues, they can achieve several national aims. In the process, they can call the bluff of smaller regional parties, which are not much concerned about national political and societal aims. The kind of consensus seen on the women’s Bill among the Congress, the BJP and the Left, cutting across the ideological divides, can be consolidated further to forge unity of purpose on other divisive issues. Tuesday’s vote came as a result of a lot of back-channel contacts among the three major political parties. This is how a democratic system should be encouraged to function in a vibrant democracy. Hopefully, the consensus arrived at for the Rajya Sabha vote will ensure a smooth passage of the Bill through the Lok Sabha where the Speaker of the House, like the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, will also be determined to uphold the highest parliamentary traditions and will not succumb to pressures from motley groups whose politics is becoming irrelevant for a modern India. |
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Killings by Taliban
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan continues to cause death and destruction despite what Islamabad claims to be doing against the militants. The Taliban has owned up responsibility for Monday’s killing of 13 persons when a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden car into a building having the offices of Pakistan’s Special Investigative Unit in Lahore. According to a Taliban spokesman, “The attack was to avenge (US) drone attacks and (Pakistani) military operations in the tribal areas.” Such attacks, as the man boasted, will continue so long as the US and Pakistani drives against the militant movement do not come to an end. The latest killings have occurred after the arrest of a few top Taliban commanders like Mullah Baradar and Colonel Imam. The Taliban militants have demonstrated the capacity to strike at will anywhere in Pakistan. Yet it is surprising why Pakistan has been pursuing a soft policy towards the militants. It has been clandestinely helping the militants having strong links with the Taliban in Afghanistan and the jihadi outfits working against India. The truth, however, is that terrorists of all persuasions have the same destabilisation agenda. Their ideology is the same. If they are the enemies of India, the US and Afghanistan, they are also no friends of Pakistan. Islamabad’s belief that the Taliban factions being patronised by the ISI can help in achieving strategic depth in Afghanistan is wishful thinking. The Taliban carrying out suicide bombings in Pakistan may intensify their activities once the Taliban factions in Afghanistan become a part of the ruling dispensation. The Taliban is, however, more interested in capturing power in Pakistan than in Afghanistan obviously because Pakistan is a nuclear-weapons state. They have any number of sympathisers in Pakistan’s armed forces and intelligence agencies, as is well known. These elements continue to assist the Taliban in various ways. The latest proof of this uncomfortable reality has been provided by the arrested former colonel of the Pakistan Army. Therefore, the need of the hour is not only to launch an all-out war against the Taliban, but also to weed out the pro-Taliban elements in the military. Blaming India or any other country for the suicide bomb blasts in Pakistan will not do. |
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Infant mortality
As if being one of the biggest contributors to neo-natal and child mortality in the world was not damning enough, there is now added reason for Madhya Pradesh to hang its head in shame. While the revelation that in that state more than a lakh of children under five died between 2005 and 2009 is benumbing, what is more shocking is that crores of rupees under the Reproductive and Child Health programmes meant to reduce infant and maternal mortality rate and the total fertility rate were not used. Undeniably, while the Madhya Pradesh government cannot be absolved, unfortunately the record of other state governments is no better. A relatively prosperous state like Punjab too recorded nearly 19,000 infant and 900 maternal mortality cases last year. Not only is India’s infant mortality rate high, even safe motherhood remains a distant goal. According to a survey, no state in India will be able to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals related to maternal mortality rate by 2010. The 13th Finance Commission’s recommendation that a state’s performance in reducing infant mortality rate be linked to grants from the Centre and the Union Government’s acceptance of the “incentive grant” is in the right spirit. But how earnest are the state governments in using these funds is evident from Madhya Pradesh’s example. The state governments must realise their responsibilities and work sincerely to improve human development indicators. Indeed, the reasons behind high IMR are many. Early marriage and early pregnancies too have a bearing on children’s health. In Punjab with IMR of 41 per 1,000 live births the major cause is attributed to low birth weight. Yet reasons cannot be an excuse for the inaction of the state governments, especially in tackling malnourishment among small children of impoverished sections of society. The fact that the IMR in rural areas is higher than in urban areas once again points to the need to provide better care to the rural people. The NRHM’s goal of reducing IMR to 30 per 1,000 live births by 2012 can only be achieved with the active cooperation of the states. |
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Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.
— Charlie Parker |
Anomalies in agriculture
In Budget-2010, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee pointed out that agriculture was the weakest sector of the economy today. It is because of the crisis in agriculture that we are having such a difficult time coping with food inflation. If the urban middle class is reeling under its impact, imagine how the poor in the countryside are dealing with it. Between Budget-2010 and Economic Survey-2009-2010, many anomalies in agriculture and public distribution system have been addressed. An important point that has been revealed in the Economic Survey is the consistent decline in private investment in agriculture. How to make more credit accessible to the middle and small farmer, however, remains somewhat nebulous both in the budget and the survey. It is lack of access to easy credit and high rates of interest that are behind the fall in private investment in agriculture. Without investment in irrigation storage and farm equipment, there cannot be a significant rise in productivity. It is of utmost concern that Indian agriculture has low productivity in all major crops as compared to most other farming countries in the world and even as compared to China. The farmers who have huge debts also cannot invest, and on this front much progress has been made towards debt relief. Around 3.68 crore farmers have benefited from the scheme involving a debt waiver, and debt relief has amounted to Rs 65 319.33 crore. Crop loan repayment has been extended by six months and the interest rate subvention of 1 per cent has been raised to 2 per cent for timely repayment of loans. This means that for the farmers who are able to repay on time, the interest rate is only 5 per cent. What about others? For higher agricultural productivity, farmers need to access nutrient-based fertilisers at cheap rates and a change of the subsidy regime has been suggested. Instead of giving subsidies to the companies producing fertilisers in bonds, direct cash subsidies are being contemplated. The Economic Survey has proposed a coupon-based fertiliser subsidy that will be given to all farmers but more to the small and medium farmers and they can trade these coupons for purchasing fertilisers. But they could use the coupon to buy anything else if they wish — for example, they can buy a TV set or sell it freely to others. Does it not amount to giving the farmer too much of a free hand? For more efficient public distribution of foodgrains, necessary to minimise the impact of the food inflation on the poor, another option has been offered that will take care of the many “leakages”. No grain will be given at a subsidised rate to the PDS shops and they will be free to charge the market price while selling grains irrespective of who the customer is. Coupons would be given to BPL families and ration shops would be allowed to accept such coupons. Shopkeepers will not have the temptation to adulterate foodgrains for BPL families when they would be getting the market price through coupons. The shops can trade their coupons for cash from banks. But will this work? Surprisingly, the government has cut the budget for the monitoring of food and civil supplies and strengthening of the PDS. For the 2010-11 fiscal, the overall outlay for monitoring and research in foodgrains and management and strengthening of PDS, Rs 40.40 crore was allocated in 2009-2010. But the actual expenditure was only Rs 14.60 crore. For this fiscal year, the outlay has been brought down to Rs 29.60 crore and for PDS, it has been cut down from Rs 7.20 crore last year to Rs 3.91 crore because the Ministry of Consumer Affairs could not spend the money and only spent Rs 2.83 crore. Perhaps better utilisation should have been the aim instead of a lower allocation. The Economic Survey has also mentioned the need for maintaining proper and efficient buffer stocks and has rightly pointed out that the very purpose of such stocks is defeated if the FCI sticks to the buffer stock norms and insists on maintaining minimum stocks, especially in cases when releasing of such stocks fully would bring down the prices. A better solution would be to release foodgrains directly to retail consumers which would immediately lead to downward pressure on prices. India has a huge buffer stock of foodgrains and still there has been such a hike in the prices in recent months. What is the purpose of the stocks which are just lying in storage at a great cost to the exchequer? One subject that needs attention and has not been duly addressed in the latest Economic Survey is the issue of raising the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat and rice over the past few years and which have contributed in no small measure to the food price inflation. There has been a substantial increase in MSPs to incentivise farmers to increase productivity and production. But it has always signalled a higher floor price of the produce which has led to rising foodgrain prices every season. The increase in the MSPs has, however, not led to small and medium farmers from enriching themselves as they have no easy or direct access to the agricultural market. It is thus a questionable move why the government has gone on raising the MSPs when the small farmers are not seen to be gaining from it directly. In the production of pulses, India has faced smaller output in the last few years (14 to 14.8 million tonnes when the demand is between 17 and 18 million tonnes) and there has been a persistent gap between demand and supply. The steep rise in the prices of pulses is due to the fact that the shortfall in production has not been met by timely imports. And there are very few countries that export dals. In oilseeds, we are more or less import-dependent and over the years, oilseed production has just declined in the face of fierce competition from abroad. Cheap imported palm oil was hard to compete with and oilseed farmers switched over to other types of crops. In the Budget, there is a provision of Rs 300 crore to organise 60,000 pulses and oilseeds villages and also provide integrated intervention of watershed and related programmes. The Finance Minister has laid emphasis on cold storage facilities in order to preserve the produce longer. These are important for enhancing the farmers’ incomes and their ability to purchase goods and services. It is the consumer demand emanating from the rural and farming sector that held up the total demand for goods and services in the country in the months following the global financial crisis. The factories kept busy catering to the demand from rural India and that is why we did not witness a collapse of the demand in the face of the global meltdown and industrial growth, even though it declined in the past two quarters and is again rising in an impressive manner. |
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Identity crisis
Who are you ? Where do you live ? What do you do? Three rather simple questions to which I believed I had the answers. But one lives and learns. These days you need a proof for everything. A lesson in “identity crisis” was taught early by a bank clerk, who blandly asked me to prove that I had only two siblings, a brother and a sister, and not more. Is there any proof that you have only one brother ? The question infuriated me but I had no answer till I blurted out, “What kind of proof do you need ?” He reflected for some time and then said, “ Get me a certificate from the panchayat or zila parishad of the place you were born or where you grew up,” he said. But what if they also ask for some evidence, I enquired sarcastically, since the family had moved away two decades ago. He gave me a cold look and shrugged. That was 20 years ago. Last month I sought to change the billing address with the mobile service provider. An application in writing with an identity proof should be sufficient, I reckoned and persuaded my wife to carry them. But where is the address proof, they asked. She went back with an address proof issued by the office since it was an official accommodation. But what is the proof that your husband works for this organisation, they persisted. What would convince you, she asked in turn. The “pay slip”, they blandly told her. It was my turn to explode. What nonsense, I exclaimed later at home. I have not asked for a loan, for God’s sake. And if I can fake a letter from the office, what would prevent me from faking a pay-slip, I hollered. “ Go and get it changed,” she replied with a stiff lip, “ I am not going back”. I turned to the corporate communication head of the service providing company. Surely he would vouch for the fact that I am not a terrorist, had nothing to do with Richard Headley and that I reside where I claim to be residing and do what I claim to be doing. He was sympathetic. Just furnish the identity proof and the address proof and that’s it. Eureka, I triumphantly told my wife. She looked unconvinced. I marched into their office and offered the documents. But would I be carrying a photograph ? I had not brought one. I went back with the photograph when they enquired if I had filled up the forms. Nobody had told me about forms till then. When I filled the forms, they took one look and threw up their hands. They should be filled in black ink, I was admonished. After filling the forms in black ink, I returned. But no, photo copy will not do. I went back with the original. They looked at my identity card, my PAN card, my driving license and the letter issued by the office. They made a few phone calls, listed what I had submitted before putting down the receiver. “This will not do,” I was told, “ we need your pay slip”. That is when I raised my arms, gathered all the documents and fled. It would not have been nice screaming at the poor
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Water pollution in Punjab
THE untreated sewerage water of the cities is a big problem in Punjab with its stink making life a hell for the urbanites. With no treatment facilities at most of the places, water flows through open nullahs and pollute the water bodies, including rivulets, water streams and even the rivers. The Sutlej is totally black and stinking beyond Ludhiana, as the city’s effluents along with the untreated sewerage water fall into it through Buddhah Nullah. The Malwa belt, where people use this water for drinking purposes, today is marred by cancer. None of the statutes or government dictates has cured this malaise. A solution to this multi-faceted problem is a unique sewerage treatment plant, which the noted environmentalist and the man behind the cleansing of Kali Bein, Sant Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal, has indigenously designed and built on about six acres of land near Dasuya town in Hoshiarpur district at a measly cost of about Rs 18 lakh. The plant, built in one month’s time only, has in the first leg three 11 ft-deep wells with a diametre of 30 ft, 20 ft and 15 ft respectively and six adjoining ponds of 170ft x 100 ft in the second leg, all built at the height of about 12 ft from the ground level. Thick sewerage water from the open nullah is thrown through two pump sets in the first well from a height by scattering it on a platform for aeration. It then swivels in the well and enters into the second and then into the third one. Sewerage water loses its thick slurry in the bottoms of these V-Shaped wells from where it is separated with the help of a pre-laid underground pipe and taken aside in the open beds. After drying, this slurry becomes very fertile soil capable of growing vegetable and flowers in flower pots and kitchen gardens. The water from the wells then moves to the adjoining larger ponds of 170ft x 100ft, three of which are built in a row and gets purified automatically as it moves from one pond to another, losing its stink after the second pond. After passing through the first three, water enters into the set of other three ponds parallel to the first ones. In the fifth and sixth ponds, the water is crystal clear and fit for irrigation purposes with all the healthy nutrients in it. From here it is channelled to a 3 km underground pipeline taking it to the adjoining fields for irrigation. The tilt of wells and ponds is so designed that the water moves automatically with the gravitational force. Daily around 10 to 12 lakh litres of sewerage water of Dasuya, having a population of around 20,000, falls into this sewer and irrigates around 300 acres of crop of wheat post-treatment. Farmers who use this water are a happy lot as they have stopped using ground water for irrigation and their yield has shot up by 30 to 40 per cent due to this nutrient rich water. Roughly, it increased the output of wheat by around 180 tonnes and that of paddy by 240 tonnes last year from these 300 acres, which means an additional income of Rs 40 lakh to the farmers. Their fertiliser consumption has also fallen to around one-third of what they used earlier and approximately 60 tonnes of urea and 30 tonnes of DAP was saved in a year, which means a net saving of about Rs 6 lakh on account of fertilisers. Since the farmers have stopped using underground water, the water table has also gone up fairly in the area. Kali Bein, which was polluted with its dirty water, has been spared of this curse. In nutshell, this plant can be seen a model for solving the sewer woes of all the towns in Punjab and that too with huge economic and environmental advantages coming in as a bonus. Punjab today has 134 municipalities and three corporations with a population base of about 85 lakh. Taking Dasuya town’s population as the base for all calculations, all the cities of Punjab put together have a capacity to irrigate 1,25,000 acres of land, thereby increasing the output of wheat and paddy by 37,500 tonnes and 50,000 tonnes respectively, which means an additional income of about Rs 80 crore to the state farmers. They will also save around 25,000 tonnes of urea and 12,500 tonnes of DAP resulting in a net saving of Rs 24 crore. It will further stop polluting the water bodies and ground water and the people will be spared of diseases caused by impurities in water. All the rivers and rivulets of Punjab will again become clean with a single stroke. Apart from land, with a cost of around Rs 75 crore, this model can be easily replicated in small and medium towns of Punjab. The only thing which needs to be ensured is that the implementation work should not be entrusted to any government agency, which may take years to commission the plants and at many times of what Baba Seechewal has spent. It will be in the fitness of things if the required land and funds are handed over to Sant Seechewal’s NGO, which can build such treatment plants in Punjab in a single year! There is no better solution to the problem of water pollution in Punjab than these low-cost treatment
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Running out of friends I am but Muslim lite, a non-conformist believer who will not be told what and how by sanctimonious religious sentinels for whom religion is a long list of rules to be obeyed by bovine followers. Readers know I am often critical of Muslim people and nations. Bad things that happen to us cannot all be attributed to "Islamophobia", a nebulous and imprecise concept that, like anti-Semitism, can be used to besmirch and sully and silence criticism. But this week even I, even I, can see that for the British establishment Muslims are contemptible creatures, devalued humans. As I prayed before starting this column I felt tears stinging my eyes and my face was burning as if I had been slapped many times over. Do they expect me to turn the other cheek? Millions of other Muslims must have felt what I did. And some may well go on to do things they shouldn't. Their acts will intensify anti-Muslim prejudices and will be used to justify injustice. The cycle is vicious and unrelenting. Once again at weddings and birthday parties, in quiet, tranquil mosques, at dinner tables across the land, including those of millionaire Muslims, I am hearing murmurs of trepidation and disquiet – voices kept low, sometimes vanishing into whispers, just in case; you never know if they will break down the door. These people are, like myself, well incorporated into the nation's busy life. Some own restaurants and businesses, others work in the City or law firms and chambers. At one gathering a frightfully posh, Muslim public school boy (aged 14), an excellent cricketer, said in his jagged, breaking voice: "I will never live in this country after finishing my education. They hate us. They'll put us all in prison. Nothing we do is OK. Do you think I am wrong Mrs Yasmin?" No I don't, though his hot young blood makes him intemperate. Where do I start? Well, with the PM who takes himself to the moral high ground at every opportunity, to orate and berate as he did when called in by the placid Chilcot panel. The son of a preacher man, John Ebenezer Brown, Gordon has the manse gene. Unlike the shape-shifter Blair, he is authentically himself, driven by embedded values, and I admire that. But, like his predecessor, he is shockingly indifferent to the agony of the people most affected by the Iraq war, a war Brown still says was "the right" thing to do for the "right reasons". His only regret? They should have thought a bit more about what to do next after they had defeated Saddam and pulled down his statues. Not a word about the countless Iraqis killed when we bombed indiscriminately in civilian areas, no word of sorrow, however hollow or feigned, about the dead children or those now born in that blighted land with two heads and other grotesque abnormalities. John Simpson's recent BBC report described the rising number of such births in Fallujah, picked for the cruelest collective punishment by America. Are they not children, Mr Brown? You still cry for your own baby, who died so young. For Muslims, that only confirms native Iraqis are grains of sand to those who executed the imperial war. Martinique intellectual and liberationist Aimee Cesaire wrote: "Colonisation works to de-civilise the coloniser, to brutalise him ... to degrade him." We saw how with Brown, whose empathy is withheld from Iraqis, Muslim victims tortured with the connivance of our secret services and perhaps from all citizens who pray to Allah. Meanwhile at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge John Denniss is industriously sentencing demonstrators who gathered near the Israeli embassy to rail against that state's attack on Gaza, one of the worst acts of state terrorism in recent history. Our government said nothing then, and were therefore complicit. Protesters came from all backgrounds but the vast majority of those arrested were young Muslim men. Dozens are being sent down for insignificant acts of bravado. Some were about to go to university, to train as dentists and the like. Their homes were raided, families cowed and terrified. Joanna Gilmore, an academic expert on public demonstrations, says never before have such disproportionate sentences been handed out, not even with the volatile anti-globalisation protests. Denniss intends his punishments to be a deterrent. To deter us from what? Having the temerity to believe we live in a democracy and are free to march? And then the crypto-fascist, Aryan Geert Wilders, is invited into the Lords by UKIP and crossbench peers to show his vile anti-Islam film in the name of freedom of expression. Freedom my arse. It is just another entertaining episode of Muslim-baiting. I dare the same peers to now invite David Irving, the Holocaust denier, to share his thoughts freely in the Lords, and get Omar Bakri over from the Lebanon with films of himself making fiery speeches on what to do with infidels. Again Muslims are made to understand that different standards apply to others. We are on trial, always, and always must expect to lose. I am here accusing the most powerful in government, parliament and the judiciary, not those individual MPs, peers and judges who try to do the right thing. To them we are immensely grateful, and to the extraordinary lawyers, activists, journalists, artists, writers and ordinary Britons fighting ceaselessly for our liberties. We just witnessed Helena Kennedy in court passionately defending Cossor Ali, accused of providing active support to her convicted terrorist husband. The jury, scrupulously fair, bless them, acquitted the young woman. Muslims involved in crime and violent Islamicism must be tried and punished. But their acts do not give lawmakers and law keepers of this land licence to strip the rest of us of our humanity and inviolable democratic entitlements. During the dark days of the conflict in Northern Ireland, the Irish in Britain were often treated unjustly by parliament, police, judges like Lord Denning, and vast sections of the media. Under Thatcher, miners and trades unionists were mercilessly "tamed", too. But this time, with Muslims, the establishment has surpassed its previous disgraceful record. They steal our human and civil rights and don't even try to behave with a modicum of honour during and after war. The same people call upon us to be more "British" but treat us as lesser citizens. Deal or No Deal? You tell
me. — By arrangement with The Independent |
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Immigrants have changed Dutch society What had been expected to be relatively run-of-the-mill local elections in the Netherlands quickly acquired a lot more significance once the Dutch government had unexpectedly collapsed over the Afghanistan issue. These results tell us little about Afghanistan, but they do offer a foretaste of the possible result of the general election that is planned for 9 June, and in particular they give us a good indication of the prospects for Geert Wilders' far-right Freedom Party. Dutch politics has been in disarray since the traditional patterns were first challenged by Pim Fortuyn's populist protest in 2002. Fortuyn was, of course, assassinated just before that election, and his leaderless party fell apart soon afterwards. Wilders has now taken up Fortuyn's legacy, but in a much more extreme and direct manner. His is an explicitly anti-Islam party, decrying the Koran, threatening deportation for immigrant offenders, promising a ban on the building of mosques and minarets, and so on. In this, he builds on, and further promotes, the inter-communal tensions that have been so evident in the Netherlands since Fortuyn, and which also hit the headlines with the assassination of film director Theo van Gogh and the hounding of the politician and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dutch society, long one of the most homogenous in continental Europe, was never as tolerant as it appeared, and problems which rumbled for long under the surface have become steadily more acute as the share of the non- Western immigrant population has grown to become one of the largest in western Europe. The Dutch party system is now exceptionally fragmented. No party is expected to win much more than 20 per cent in the coming election, which, given the extreme proportionality of the electoral system, means none is likely to win more than 30 of the 150 seats. In this clouded Dutch landscape, Wilders's sharp and direct appeal wins a lot of favour. He also runs a highly disciplined party. There is no membership, and hence no activist layer which needs to be appeased, and the party's parliamentary group – currently nine seats – is firmly under his control. In the local elections, he concentrated his efforts on just two flagship municipalities: Almere, a new city near Amsterdam, and The Hague, the seat of government. His party did tremendously well in both, topping the poll in Almere, and running a close second to Labour in The Hague. All this is good for the image that Wilders promotes, of a party for straight talking and with popular appeal. It also positions him well for the general election, with the Freedom Party now being forecast to emerge as the first or second largest in parliament. The big question now is whether, and how, that success might translate into a role in government.n — By arrangement with
The Independent |
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