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On death row
Army Chief’s hard talk |
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Relief for Lalu
Quota for Muslims
Man of the future
Punjabi immigrants in trouble
Need to check alarming rise in suicides
Inside Pakistan
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On death row
As
many as 17 people being sentenced to death for the murder of one person is highly unusual anywhere in the world. This surreal happening in Sharjah has cast a pall of gloom in Punjab because 16 of the 17 convicts are from the state while one happens to be from neighbouring Haryana. They have been put on death row by a Sharjah court for the murder of a Pakistani man and injuring three others in January last year following a brawl over an illegal liquor business. There is no question of interfering in the legal process of any country but what the Government of India can certainly strive to ensure is that there is no miscarriage of justice. The hapless convicts in the age group of 17 to 30 are sole breadwinners of their families and had mortgaged their landholdings to arrange their work visas for the UAE, where they received this bolt from the blue. Those convicted insist that it is a frame-up. Being extremely poor, they were not able to hire suitable legal help. The lawyer hired half-heartedly by their employer was allegedly of no help in court, with the result that their version of the story never got heard. Language was also a problem. The government must do all that it can to help them in this hour of need, because there are many holes in the police story. Two officers of the Indian consulate met the 17 Indians at a jail in Sharjah earlier this week and are now working on the appeal process. Not many such persons from economically weaker sections of society are fully aware of their rights. Even otherwise, there is a tendency in some countries to be harsh on expatriates. New Delhi must step in forcefully, the way it did in the case of 400 Indian citizens who were ordered to be hanged in Libya in 1996 for going on strike, which is punishable by death as per the law of that country.
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Army Chief’s hard talk
It
is not usual for a Chief of Army Staff to publicly make adverse observations about the ‘internal health’ of the Indian Army that is otherwise held in high public esteem. General V.K. Singh may have charted a new course in publicly acknowledging the gravity of the problem on the day of his assuming charge as Army Chief and announcing a need for an ‘operation clean up’. But he is not the first to acknowledge that there is a serious problem within the Army. In February 1985, a quarter century ago, General K. Sundarji had on assuming command as Army chief issued an internal letter criticising the Army’s officer cadre for ‘becoming increasingly careerist, opportunistic and sycophantic’ while lamenting the decline in ‘standards of integrity’. His letter was preceded by a decade-long debate within the Army through much of the 1970s that corruption was fast becoming a bane of the Indian Army. But never before in the Army’s post-Independence history has moral, professional and material corruption been making headlines as frequently as in this decade with many among them Lt Generals and Major Generals. The Army, which has an impressive record of post-partition nation consolidation and subsequent nation preservation that has involved fighting wars with belligerent neighbours and quelling insurgency and terrorism in far flung states caused mostly by political and administrative mismanagement, has played a critical role in the country’s post-Independence history. For a complex mix of reasons ranging from careerism, a steadily growing inability to attract the best and brightest, shortage of officers, hardship postings ranging from harsh terrains to insurgencies that entail long separations from family, a steady decline in the warrant of precedence, questionable remuneration, and a widespread culture of corruption nationwide has combined to create a rot. General Singh is right in saying that the Army’s value system has to be different from civil society. Difficult as it is, ridding the Army of corruption has become absolutely imperative for an institution that must always be above board and which is crucial to national security.
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Relief for Lalu
The
Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Bihar government does not have the legal sanction to appeal against the order of a trial court acquitting former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad and his wife and successor Rabri Devi, in a disproportionate assets case. The ruling, which has far-reaching legal implications, held that since the Bihar government did not lodge the complaint in the first place, did not investigate the case or even appoint a prosecutor, it was not competent to file an appeal against their acquittal. The court rejected the state government’s plea that since the disproportionate assets were acquired by the couple within the state and while they held public posts, the state government was an interested party. Earlier the state government’s appeal had been accepted by the Patna High Court, prompting Lalu Prasad to challenge the state government’s locus in the case. On Thursday a three-judge special bench headed by the Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan upheld Prasad’s appeal and ruled that only the Centre and the CBI have the authority to appeal in CBI cases. Prosecuting agencies do normally appeal against acquittals. It was the CBI which had investigated and filed a chargesheet against Lalu Prasad and his wife. Its reluctance to appeal against their acquittal, therefore, is questionable. The agency either did a shoddy investigation and had no faith in its own chargesheet or it appears to have succumbed to external pressure, either before or after the acquittal. In a landmark ruling in February, the apex court had upheld the power of the High Courts to order CBI inquiries even without the consent of the state governments. But the highest court of the land is yet to specify the role of the High Courts if, in such cases, the accused are acquitted by the trial courts. The investigation into the fodder scam notably was not only ordered by the Patna High Court but was also monitored and supervised, first by the Chief Justice himself and thereafter by a two-member bench. The ruling is clearly based on technicalities of the law and not on the merits of the acquittal. By ruling out an appeal, the apex court has shut the door on course correction in case of an error by the trial court. It has also allowed the central agency to escape the responsibility of defending its own chargesheet. The ruling, therefore, calls for a debate in the public domain and a review by a larger bench.
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A man with a hundred desires sleeps uneasy. — The Upanishads
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Quota for Muslims There is an erroneous impression after the recent Supreme Court judgement that the Muslims in Andhra Pradesh have been given four per cent reservations in jobs and education. The fact of the matter is that the court has upheld only that part of the Andhra Pradesh Act which relates to Muslims belonging to Other Backward Classes (OBC). Rightly, the Supreme Court has referred to the five-judge Constitution Bench the portion relating to reservations to the Muslim community on the whole. This was necessary because the Constitution does not provide any reservations on the basis of religion. The only exception is in the case of Schedule Caste and Scheduled Tribes. Subsequently, the OBCs were also included in the list of reservations. The issue came to light a couple of years ago when the Backward Classes Commission of Andhra Pradesh identified 14 more Muslim groups which were socially and educationally backward but had not been included in the original list. Consequently, the state passed a legislation to include the 14 groups in the backward members of the Muslim community. So far, so good one can say. The state saw the point and went along with the plea that while hairdressers, dhobis and those working in the cremation grounds in the Hindu community were extended reservation benefits under the backward class, similarly placed groups in the Muslim community were deprived of the benefits. The legislation did away with the discrimination to include the 14 groups. However, where the government went wrong was when it said that all Muslims would be entitled to four per cent reservation except the Sayed, Mughal, Mongol — the Ashrafs of the community — which were considered the highest caste among Muslims like the Brahmins among the Hindus. The government was probably not as much to blame as the commission because the latter said in its recommendation that since only a small minority of Muslims is regarded as Ashrafs, it would be better to include the entire community as qualified to be backward. The Andhra Pradesh High Court rejected by five to two the commission’s criteria for determining most Muslims as the backward and, therefore, gave a stay order. The court’s argument was weighty. It said that no criterion had been laid down to find out how many Muslims were from the upper castes and how many from the OBC. To categorise the entire community as OBC was not fair. The Andhra Pradesh High Court was, however, keen on including the 14 groups in the OBC category. It did so. But it did not want to dilute the benefits enjoyed by the other backward classes, some 41 per cent in the country, by extending the concessions to the Muslim community on the whole. The state had no right to give four per cent reservations to Muslims because it increased the overall quantum of reservations. The Centre has already allotted 27 per cent through the Mandal Commission recommendations. The reservations of SC/ST come to 22.5 per cent. Already this adds up to 49.5 per cent. Any more reservation would violate the Supreme Court’s directive which laid down that reservations cannot be more than 50 per cent. The problem may arise if and when the existing criterion for OBC is stretched to include more and more groups. Were there to be any compromise on the question of criterion, the OBCs would start protesting because the criterion for backward Muslims and backward Hindus has to be the same. Were the government to give in on this point, it would face another Mandal-type agitation which had shaken the northern India in 1990. The religion-centric reservation poses a grave danger of fissiparous tendencies developing in the country. Reservations for Muslims will be looked at in the same way and may create a backlash which may not be good for the community itself and may endanger the equanimity that society enjoys at present. They are unnecessarily arousing the sentiments of the community as it was done by the then Muslim League before Partition. The eyes of the present Muslim leadership are fixed on electoral politics but their approach is highly sectarian. Slogans that there should be reservations for the Muslim community are irresponsible and can develop into a two-nation theory. The Sachar Commission on the plight of Muslims was correct in diagnosing the malady. It pointed out how the community had been denied its share in education, economic benefits and services on the basis of its population. However, the subsequent Ranganath Mishra Commission has recommended reservations for all minorities on the basis of religion. This recommendation is an unfortunate one. Even if it is looked from the point of view of benefits for the Muslims, the gain would be temporary and might jeopardise the future. India is a pluralistic society and it cherishes diversities in the name of religion, language and customs. The community consciousness which the reservation activists are trying to arouse may deliver a serious blow to pluralism. The same old question of separate identity will come to the fore while there should be only one identity — Indian. The reservation for Muslims may open a Pandora’s box of communal and divisive politics. Yet, the 12 to 13 per cent of Muslim population in the country should reflect their number in employment in government and the private sector. The community’s share should also be tangible in the economic fields. There is no alternative to the affirmative action. The government has done little since the submission of the Sachar Commission report two years ago. However, mixing genuine aspirations of the Muslims with religion may be misdirecting the effort in finding a remedy to the long-time neglect. The louder the reservation activists raise their voice, the more unfavourable would be the fallout for the Hindu extremists to exploit. The pluralistic India cannot afford it. Nor can the
Muslims.
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Man of the future I
claim to be no Darwin, but I can foresee the (re?)evolution of the future man, in being half real and half plastic. Believe you me please, for it’s not me who says it, but the chip inside me. With expectancy of life crossing the count of eighty years for an average human being, one can imagine the assortments and appendages a human body is likely to have, in times to come, when you may “buy a liver and get a kidney free!” Take heart, for your so-called mortal frame will one day have a built-in stenting, when a heart attack may just be as harmless as a twitch near the left eye. Or your brain stroke may leave you more charged up, with renewed backup of battery power. I can visualise pop-ins and slots in a man, where one could attach life support systems, as you do the earplugs to an iPod. You could also carry your oxygen cylinder like a pen in your pocket. Also your hornlike, evolved antenna could make you stay connected at all times, with dedicated Intensive Care Units. On the psychological plane, you could have a set of robots as friends for socialising .You could programme them to suit your taste, and if they entertain you no longer, you could re-programme them. I gainsay, you could date them too and leave out the “out-dated” ones. With everyone getting fixed, pretty looks on their faces, employing plastic surgery, there would be Most Ugly Look competitions to experience what would be called “for a pleasant change”. All this will effect a change in human emotions too. Expressions like love, affection, care, concern, empathy could then be good stuff for making sci-fi movies. The Oscar-winning flick could be the story of a man torn to pieces for offering to look after his old and infirm parents. The positive side of the future man’s characteristics and capabilities, is seen by me as being able to see, store, play and repeat your best of the dreams on an LCD screen. Also you could retrieve your long-forgotten memories of people, places and events. And delete permanently the traumas. Now take a look at the anatomy of the future-man who will have a big head, for he will only use his brain. The inactivity of the limbs will make them grow smaller, due to disuse atrophy, since all jobs would be done by remote, or on-person, controls. Even the denture is likely to suffer in size, for fast foods and synergy drinks would not entail much of jaw moment. Stomach size too will reduce, since supplements would take care or your digestion and metabolism. In such a scenario all the Yoga experts would be sent to Coventry. But, would future man be a complete man then? I don’t really
know.
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Punjabi immigrants in trouble Sixteen of 17 Indians facing death penalty in Dubai are Punjabis… These screaming headlines in newspapers during the past few weeks have been sending alarming signals to the single largest immigrant community worldwide. While a fraction of these attacks on young Punjabi immigrants could be attributed to both factional and fractional fights, what has been worrying most is their alleged involvement in illicit activities, including drugs and smuggling. Though a few enterprising Punjabis made supreme sacrifices while saving the honour of fellow comrades or locals, others have lost lives in activities that bring bad name to the community. Otherwise, many Punjabi youth have been victims of hate crime unleashed on them because of various socio-economic factors, including recession and racism. The Punjabi community in British Columbia, for example, has been worried over the ever-increasing involvement of its second generation in gang wars, drugs and other illicit activities. In little over a decade, the community has lost about 100-odd promising youths in the violence. Interestingly, Vancouver, Surrey and Burnaby are the British Columbia areas where Punjabi immigrants dominate. These areas are represented in the British Columbia Assembly and also in the Federal House of Commons by Punjabi-Canadians, who have been raising from time to time demand for new legislations and setting up of homicide squads. However, they have not been able to stem the rot. The problem has now started spreading its tentacles to other provinces of Canada. Toronto, for example, too, has started witnessing cases in which second generation Punjabi youth figure prominently. The most alarming has been Australia in general and its Victoria province in particular. For almost a year, every other week, there is an incident that originally makes headlines scream of alleged racism but later after investigations most of these cases turn out to be of intra-community rivalry. Unfortunately, recent cases reported from Australia have invariably been about the students who have gone there, primarily looking for permanent residency there, using admission to an Australian college or institution, as an immigration facilitator. Unlike Canada or Britain, those mentioned in cases of violence down-under are the fresh immigrants or students. Though personal rivalries, jealousies and fight over girls could be the common reasons for violence involving Punjabi youth, both in Canada and Australia, worrisome issues like drugs and gang wars are confined to Canada only. In the United Kingdom, there have been many instances where Punjabi youth got involved in ethnic violence and suffered serious casualties. Racial slur and discrimination at places of education, work and entertainment have been reported to be other major provocations for the Punjabi youth’s implication in incidents of violence. Like Canada, it is the second and third generation Punjabi youth who are high on the violence-prone list than the new or fresh immigrants or student visa holders. Various studies conducted in Canada and England have blamed excessive freedom coupled with lack of parental control as reasons for the growing involvement of Punjabi youth in illegitimate or illicit activities. Economic recession that followed 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US and the 2008-09 worldwide recession have acted as catalysts where the original unemployed or underemployed youth chose to make enterprising Punjabi youth their target for hate crime. The situation in Philippines, where 20 to 30 Punjabi youth are murdered every year, it is primarily because of their involvement in money laundering business. Middle east countries are the latest addition to the list of hate crime or violence pitted against Indians in general and Punjabis in particular. While state agencies maintain that it was because of their growing influence in illicit or illegitimate activities, including smuggling of liquor, that is making the Punjabi immigrants a clear target of gang war violence, others dismiss it saying that there have been cases where the local employers, instead of disbursing dues to their work force at the end of their contractual periods, get them implicated in false cases. Examples galore, many workers, skilled and unskilled, from India in general and Punjab in particular not only returned home empty-handed but also had a taste of prisons there. Unfortunately, victims of violence overseas get little or no support from the country’s strong diplomatic presence in these countries. In distress when they turn up at the Indian chanceries/ embassies or consulates, they are turned away without being heard. Not only that, they are unfortunately “blamed for creating a mess for themselves besides bringing a bad name to the
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Need to check alarming rise in suicides Disturbingly, there is a spurt in the number of suicides by youngsters. One reason could be the rising expectations of their parents. Remember those good old days when on failing in one or the other examination, parents used to casually tell their child not to worry as “it is not a Kumbh Mela that would come after 12 years”. A popular TV commercial to promote a tooth paste brand goes something like this: on being asked by his schoolmate about the reason of his ‘sadness’, a child replies: “Main fail ho gaya”! And then he is shown jumping with joy when he is told that it is not he but his toothpaste that has failed! The other day a broadly smiling Raunaq, my five-year-old grandson, told his mother on returning from school that his friend Mallai failed in the mathematics test but he got full marks and was greeted by the class. The two examples demonstrate two disturbing facets of our youngsters’ general thinking today: Failure is an extremely awful thing; and the failure of others is worth celebrating. All this, perhaps, is the result of what we teach to our children today, perhaps unknowingly, both as parents and teachers. The amount of malpractices that are being adopted with clinical ingenuity during examinations every year is too well known and perhaps is the result of such wiered thinking. The social malice of intolerance, which is the byproduct of our well ingrained failure to accept failures gracefully, has gone so deep that today even school games, leave aside cricket or hockey matches between India and Pakistan, are played like wars! Is failure that dreadful a thing that today some school examinations at the lower level have been abolished altogether? It is said that, “The only real failure in life is one not learned from”. “Society tells us that to fail is the most terrible thing in the world”. But it is not. “Failure is part of what makes us human”. Defending failures, Sir Winston Churchill aptly remarked, “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”. English poet John Keats too was not wrong either when he said, “Don’t be discouraged by failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid”. The saying that “you always pass failure on the way to success”, needs to be remembered and shared. More so because while the modes of communication today have increased manifold, communication between parents and children have reached a dead-end. This has brought an unwarranted chasm between this once highly intimate and loving relationship. The need of the time is that both parents and children need to revive their traditional methods of communication like an intimate hug or a comforting pat or a warm kiss. Cold mobile talks, SMSs, e-mails or facebook tweets would drift the once pious relationship still
farther. The writer is a former Principal, Govt. College Sector 11, Chandigarh
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Inside Pakistan It seems everything is now working against President Asif Zardari. While he is going to be reduced to a titular head of state after the 18 th Constitution Amendment is okayed by Pakistan’s Parliament — a mere formality with all parties having given their approval for the draft prepared b the Raza Rabbani Committee — the Supreme Court is asserting its authority to ensure that the historic verdict nullifying the Musharraf era-National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) is implemented without further delay.
The apex court has chastised the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for taking up the issue of reopening of the case relating to Mr Zardari’ Swiss bank accounts in a non-serious manner. The NAB did send a letter to the Swiss authorities but without routing it through the Law Ministry. The court has ordered it to dispatch the letter again with the stamp of the ministry and after getting it formally approved by the Prime Minister. The latest court order came after a seven-member Bench headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry heard the case of implementation of the NRO verdict on Thursday, according to The News. The Law Ministry was accused of not cooperating in the matter. The Swiss authorities have taken the view that they cannot open the case against Mr Zardari as he enjoys constitutional immunity as the President of Pakistan. The court’s insistence on properly approaching the Swiss officials concerned indicates that the constitutional protection for Mr Zardari is a matter yet to be legally settled. Some experts have been arguing that the crime he is alleged to have committed relates to the days when he did not have the position he holds today. Official close to
President jailed
The Pakistan Supreme Court’s ire over the delay in the implementation of the NRO verdict has, in the meantime, led to the imprisonment of a senior government functionary, Ahmed Riaz Shaikh. He has been known for his closeness to Mr Zardari. All his assets have also been seized. The court issued its order against Shaikh, Additional Director-General of the FIA (Economic Crimes Wing), after a reference was made to a corruption case against him in which he was awarded a sentence of 14 years and a fine of Rs 20 million by an accountability court in 2001. He was removed from service in 2002, but got reinstated in 2008 after the NRO came into force. He was favoured with a promotion even after the quashing of the NRO by the apex court. Now Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa
The renaming of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) as Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa has led to celebrations all over the province. It has an overwhelming majority of Pashtu-speaking tribes called Pakhtoon. Khyber has been prefixed owing to the historic significance of the Khyber Pass. This is a “historic decision” reached with consensus among the political parties. According to Daily Times, “It took more than a hundred years to do away with this hangover from the colonial times.” A Frontier Post report said that some of the members of the Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reforms opposed the inclusion of Khyber and wanted only Pakhtoonkhwa as the replacement for the NWFP, but they were overruled. After all, Khyber and Pakhtoons are inseparable.
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However, parents cannot tolerate failure of their children today. The result: bouts of depression, unheard of earlier particularly among children, that often lead to suicide.