The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

The water challenge
Solutions are there, but not the will

The deepening water shortage in Punjab and Haryana and in some areas residents getting dirty water should be a cause for concern to governments in both states. A growing population, consumption-driven growth, climate change, increased cultivation of paddy, over-exploitation of groundwater, non-recycling of used water and poor conservation habits are widening the gap between demand and supply. The water woes of Shimla, Chennai and Bangalore are well known. Delhi-ites will soon be forced to consume treated sewage water as they do in Singapore. In Rajasthan water resources are guarded and even animals are denied free access. A McKinsey report warns that Indian cities could turn into “dry, stinking holes” by 2030.

It is a matter of regret that in Punjab and Haryana the crisis is partly self-created. Farmers have abandoned traditional crops that consumed less water and switched to paddy, a water guzzler, lured by frequent Central hikes in the minimum support prices. If the cost of a sharp decline in the water table and installation of submersible pumps to extract water from deeper levels is factored in the MSPs, the paddy grown here will carry a prohibitive price tag. Farmers of Punjab and Haryana are actually subsidising rice consumed in other states. Free power has only helped them use and waste more water than required. No wonder, experts suggest either denying the land-owners the ownership rights of groundwater or levying a cess on its extraction.

Gujarat’s Jyotigram scheme is widely appreciated for separating agricultural and non-agricultural feeders for supplying power in villages to cut water misuse. Check dams have been raised to harvest rainwater. Sprinklers are replacing flood irrigation. Village ponds have been levelled in this region. All such water bodies will have to be revived with community effort to ensure that groundwater gets replenished. Climate change, given its serious effect on water resources and agriculture, has to be contained before it is too late. Better water management at the individual, state and national levels is the need of the hour.

Upholding free expression
SC defends actor Khushboo’s comment

Wednesday’s ruling by the Supreme Court quashing all cases filed against Tamil actor Khushboo for her views on pre-marital sex in metropolitan cities will come as a much-needed relief to her. The fact that 22 cases of defamation were slapped on her for her comments to an English fortnightly not only added to the courts’ burden but also subjected her to avoidable harassment. The Madras High Court, instead of rejecting the complaints against Khushboo in April 2008, consolidated them and ordered a joint trial.

The ruling does not come as a surprise because the apex court held last month that no law prohibited pre-marital sex or live-in relationships. Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan aptly questioned, “when two adults live together, what is the offence and under which section of Indian law?” Apart from violating Khushboo’s constitutional right to freedom of speech, the complainants have confused a pompous moralism with the law, leading the apex court judges to say that what was seen as unethical and indecent by certain sections of society could not be termed an offence.

Significantly, Justice Balakrishnan has now ruled that Khushboo’s remarks amounted to “fair comment”, protected by her fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. The Tamil actor had claimed in an interview that women who indulged in sex before their marriage should take care to protect themselves against sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, but her words were taken out of context to suggest that she had urged women to be “immoral”. The complaints of defamation by vested interests were frivolous and mala fide with the sole motive of getting political mileage and publicity, she contended. The apex court has at last quashed all cases filed against Khushboo, but who will compensate her for the mental torture she had to undergo for long?

Thought for the Day

The world’s a scene of changes, and to be constant, in Nature were inconstancy. — Abraham Cowley

ARTICLE

All phone calls are vulnerable
But State must act responsibly
by Inder Malhotra

AS was only to be expected, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, barely audible in the midst of the Opposition’s loud protests, has emphatically denied that the United Progressive Alliance government authorised the tapping of mobile phone calls of its political opponents as well as of a Congress leader. He has also stated that there was “no substance” in the cover story of the newsmagazine Outlook alleging large-scale misuse of its phone-tapping capacity by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO). However, the Home Minister kept an escape hatch open. If there were any proof of unauthorized “eavesdropping on political leaders”, he said, appropriate agencies would investigate it thoroughly.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should normally have made the statement on this delicate matter, if only because the NTRO is under him, not the Home Minister. But he was busy receiving Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and by the time he was ready to come to the House, it had been adjourned for the day because of bedlam. Unfortunately, he chose to speak on the subject outside the House though only to declare that there was no need for a Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate the matter. But the BJP is now accusing him of breach of parliamentary privilege.

As for the Home Minister’s statement, it absolves the UPA government of all blame. But by implication it does concede that the NTRO may have listened to the conversations of political leaders and other citizens without being asked to do so. As Stalin once said famously, secret agencies of all countries, including his own, were a law unto themselves. Even so, it is doubtful that Indian intelligence agencies can afford to be brazenly defiant of the political authority. Therefore, Mr Chidambaram would have been well advised frankly to tell the country that because of the highly advanced technology at its disposal, the NTRO sometimes overhears conversations it doesn’t intend to. Rotating interceptors, called “Eagles”, targeting areas in need of careful watch, pick up every phone call, fax or other communication within its range. What the agency does with the information thus gathered is a different matter.

Let me hasten to add that what the NTRO - formed around the communications intelligence apparatus of the foreign intelligence agency, Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), after the Kargil War - is doing is nothing miraculous. America’s National Security Agency (NSA) has been in a position to monitor all communications across the world since soon after World War II. Britain’s GCHQ, Government Communications Headquarters, and similar agencies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand have the same capability. Moreover, these five agencies work in tandem. It should, therefore, be obvious that almost every conversation over a mobile phone or any other communication channel is vulnerable, not only to agencies in this country but also foreign ones.

From the foregoing it does not follow that the citizens of India have no defence for their privacy or the powers that be can eavesdrop on their political opponents with impunity. On the other hand, in a country facing terrorism, both cross-border and indigenous, Maoist menace, other insurgencies, smuggling, organized crime and money laundering, intelligence agencies cannot be so bound down as to be made dysfunctional. There has to be a proper balance between the nation’s need for security and stability and the privacy of the innocent citizen and propriety in politics. Regrettably, neither this country’s politico-administrative system nor its civic society is such as to be able to sustain the requisite balance the way the mature democracies manage to do.

Yet, it must be added that despite our relatively limited resources, the relevant agencies have given an excellent account of themselves. During the Kargil War, RAW tapped the phone call between General Musharraf in Beijing and his chief of general staff, General Aziz, in Islamabad. This exposed the Pakistan Army’s role in what Pakistani propaganda was making out to be the handiwork “entirely of the Mujahideen”. Even more valuable was the recording by the NTRO during 26/11 of the conversations between the terrorists attacking Mumbai’s five-star hotels and their handlers in Pakistan. This gave the lie to the initial Pakistani claim that it had nothing to do with the savage onslaught.

Organizations like the NTRO, RAW and the Intelligence Bureau have a lot more to do to become more effective and cohesive. Similarly, the heavily criminalised political order has to cleanse itself. Otherwise, someone will have to monitor the phone calls of even “prominent” politicians.

What follows is not intended to justify any wrongdoing by any intelligence agency with or without the government’s approval. The idea is to underscore that complaints being voiced so angrily today are not new. Allegations of political opponents and even colleagues being under surveillance have been endemic in this country under all regimes over the last six decades. Nor are Western democracies wholly immune from this malaise.

Even in the time of the most liberal and democratic ruler of this country, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Cabinet colleague he liked, T. T. Krishnamachari, publicly complained that his phone was being tapped and he named the then Intelligence Czar, B. N. Mullik, as the culprit. Twelve years earlier, when bugging devices were rudimentary and scarce, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, a Cabinet colleague totally trusted by Nehru and, therefore, entrusted with a delicate security mission, was confident, for good reason, that the formidable Sardar Patel would get his telephone tapped. He made no fuss. As Communications Minister he simply got the general telephone at the AICC office shifted to his residence. On the phone that Rafi Sahib normally used the IB only heard grocery orders, dinner menus and family chatter.

There are many other such instances. But let me skip them and get to the era when the nadir was reached. Sadly, this happened when Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister got all the phones of President Giani Zail Singh tapped. Of course, Gianiji, a past master in political intrigue, was then busy plotting Rajiv’s dismissal despite the Prime Minister’s four-fifths majority in the Lok Sabha.

In V. P. Singh’s time his rival, Chandra Shekhar, claimed that his phone was being tapped and VP’s short-lived government stoutly denied this. So did another Prime Minister with a brief tenure, H. D. Deve Gowda, who was accused of snooping on several leaders, including former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. There is no need to go on and on.

MIDDLE

Green fingers
by I.M. Soni

Many in Chandigarh, with hoe in hand, are finding joy in their home kitchen garden. Gardening gives them satisfaction of creating something. One may not give birth to a rose but one can grow one.

Many glad gardeners of Chandigarh have won applause and reward in flower shows. Their products and pictures have adorned newspapers pages. The “oxygen” of publicity generates in them a new vitality to hoe better. May their buds bloom!

This bud-brigade has a considerable strength. They hail from all walks of life. There are doctors, engineers, lawyers, university and college teachers, contractors, and other engaged in the hoe hobby. The most notable are senior citizens. Many often grow grapes in their backyard to make wine at their house. One I know has grown up a sort of hanging garden for his heady hobby.

When these green fingers cluster, they discuss their prize possessions, and promise to swap saplings. They talk about roots and stems, leaves and branches, petals and pollen. Questions like, why are leaves becoming yellow, why are petals falling are floated and flouted.

Ladies’ fingers, brinjals (not the Bt variety), green chillies, mint, coriander are fondly sown, manured and lovingly harvested.

The very mention of their green crops swells their chest. Late Prof. R.C. Paul, Vice-Chancellor, Panjab University, once showed me a home-grown cabbage the size of a big water melon.

One gets emotionally attached to plants. When a fully blooming lime plant in our backyard was uprooted by labour during re-construction, I cried. The sad scene still haunts me. The tree fallen like a wounded soldier, refuses to be rubbed off my mental screen.

There are other plus points. When you are plucking roots, dead twigs or leaves, no fine fingers pluck at your nerves. You tame your tensions.

One is far from the cares of the world when one digs the earth, inhaling its musty flavour. There is a kick in it as typical as the one you get from opening a book after long years.

Small, green gardens grown and tended with loving care, lend nature’s balming effect to the house, and in a small way, offset the menacing effect of jungles of concrete.

Soil your fingers, grow mini forests and green your home. You will have a wonderful feeling of peace and harmony.

OPED

Rajasthan faces heat
Agitating Gujjars insist on quota
by Perneet Singh

Legal hurdles notwithstanding, the Gujjars are once again up in arms in Rajasthan, seeking a 5 per cent quota in government jobs. With the memories of violent Gujjar agitations still fresh, the government doesn’t want any bloodshed and would like to redress the issue amicably.

Gujjar women up in arms

However, unlike previous occasions, the present Congress regime has limited options in view of the legal hurdles the Bill providing 5 per cent reservation to the Gujjars is facing. Interestingly, the Gujjars too have no choice but to hold dialogue with the government, which is very much clear from their approach till now. In fact, having learnt their lessons from the past, both sides are cautious.

The state government is committed to providing a 5 per cent quota in government jobs to the Gujjars, but is wary of promising anything which it cannot deliver in future. Similarly, the Gujjars, after having lost over 80 lives in the previous agitations, are making sure that their agitation is peaceful and respond positively to offers for talks.

At the root of the legal tangle is the Bill, which was introduced in the Rajasthan Assembly on July 14, 2008, by the previous BJP regime. The Bill provided a 5 per cent reservation to the Gujjar, Banjara, Gadia Lohar and Raika communities under the Special Backward Class (SBC) category, besides a 14 per cent quota to the poor among the upper castes under the
Economically Backward Classes (EBCs) category.

Though the House passed the Bill, the then Governor SK Singh sat on it for a year before signing it on July 31, 2009. However, the Rajasthan High Court stayed the Bill on October 13, 2009, on the ground that it exceeded the 50 per cent cap on reservations set by the Supreme Court. The state already has a 21 per cent quota for the OBCs, 16 per cent for the SCs and 12 per cent for the STs, making it a total of 49 per cent. After the Bill the total reservations went up to 68 per cent.

The legal options the government has are: (1) separating the 5 per cent quota for the Gujjars under the SBC category from the 14 per cent reservation for the EBCs and (2) providing the community a 5 per cent quota within the limit of 50 per cent reservations. The state government is mulling a new Bill to end the stir. There is a proposal to rework the quota Bill without reservations to the Economically Backward
Classes (EBCs).

The proposal suggests that the 14 per cent reservation to the EBCs clubbed with the 5 per cent quota to the Gujjars be separated from the existing law. This would bring the total reservations down to 54 per cent. The Gujjar leaders now insist that they be given the reservation under the 50 per cent cap so that it cannot be challenged in court. They feel that the government can achieve this by extending them the reservation through a sub-category within the existing quota for either the STs or the OBCs.

However, with the strong Meena community (ST), which is always at loggerheads with the Gujjars, making it amply clear that they would not share their reservation pie with anyone, the government is left with the only option of carving out a sub-category in the OBC quota. The government can take a 4 per cent share out of the 21 per cent for the OBC and add another 1 per cent to it, to give a 5 per cent quota to the SBCs within the upper limit of the 50 per cent reservation, but the move may prove to be politically tricky to the Congress government.
A section of the Congress leaders allege that the Gujjar agitation is remote-controlled by the BJP. Bainsla had joined the BJP on the insistence of former CM Vasundhara Raje and unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Sawai Madhopur last year. He is also a special invitee to the National Executive of the BJP.

Interestingly, the Gujjars have found support from an unexpected quarter this time – the Meena community, which was at daggers drawn with the former during the previous stir. This is because the Gujjars are no more stressing on their inclusion in the ST category under which the Meena community falls. The Gujjars are currently focussing on the 5 per cent reservation, irrespective of the category. In the last agitation, the Gujjars were seeking ST status. However, the Meena community, which has ST status, was against the Gujjars being granted the same status.

Delhi: Capital of dirt and debris
by Ashali Varma

The citizens of Delhi are worried and there is a reason — the city is fast being swallowed by debris and garbage. Even where there is no construction there has been a sharp increase in rubble — bricks and mortar — plastic bags, empty snack bags and other such stuff on roads and even high-end markets like Basant Lok.

Work in progress for the Metro Photo: PTI

It is as if the MCD (Mother of All Corporations) — its highly paid sweepers and malis (getting Rs 18,000 per month), who I am told sign attendance ledgers in the morning and skip to other lucrative jobs for the day — has totally abandoned its tax-paying citizens.

Perhaps, the biggest bane of our collective existence is this blighted institution that is known to leave huge unguarded pits, which swallow poor children. It declares there is no waterlogging on roads when newspaper photos show flooded roads, it charges its citizens huge bribes for “completion certificates” and subsequently seals and destroys the property with aplomb because it is now considered illegal.

An institution that has ghost workers on the pay rolls and is now agitating for more junior engineers —an organisation, in short, that is completely unaccountable to the people it is supposed to serve. And we, the people, are forced to pay taxes to sustain such bureaucratic behemoths riddled with corruption. Is this democracy?

Even where the Metro and other such excavations are not going on, it seems like the MCD, Jal Board, PWD and other such public works have combined all their resources to dig up Delhi. I am almost sure that if all the debris in Delhi were to be collected it could build a whole new city!

The city government would no doubt declare this is all being done for the beautification of our capital for the Commonwealth Games. But we who are living here know one thing for sure that when any agency digs up a road, the dividers or even the pavements, these are seldom covered neatly. Near every excavation there is invariably a pile of rubble to be picked up by someone else — and heads of the various public works are quick to point fingers at one another, while doing absolutely nothing to resolve the problem.

To make things worse, next to each mound of debris pedestrians feel it is fine to throw their own little packets of gutka, plastic bags and whatever they want to discard as someone else will pick them up. And while we are all waiting for that someone else, filth is literally burying us alive.

I do think the foreigners about to visit our much-excavated city would prefer cleanliness to new pavements. They will definitely notice the dirt. As for beautification, as they say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. I put my bet on visitors noticing debris and trash more than a fancy divider or a pavement.

Even our Environment Minister has declared that Indian cities could get a Nobel Prize for being the world’s dirtiest if such a prize existed.

I can honestly say most Delhi-ites (except those working for the above mentioned organisations) would agree that we should get rid of these government organisations and outsource garbage collection and waste management and even the beautification to good accountable companies in a fair and transparent manner so that money doesn’t change hands and go to the favoured contractors. Is this too
much to ask?

Hyderabad Diary
Return of the native?
suresh dharur

Popular actress of yesteryear and Samajwadi Party MP Jayaprada is likely to return to her home state and join the Telugu Desam Party from where she began her political odyssey 16 years ago.

Jayaprada

The internal developments in the SP, leading to the exit of her political mentor Amar Singh, have left Jayaprada with no option but to look for greener pastures elsewhere. Ever since she quit the SP in solidarity with Amar Singh, the actress has been mulling her political options.

The buzz in Andhra Pradesh political circles is that she is in touch with the TDP supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu and bargaining for a key position in the regional party. She is likely to head the party’s women’s wing, a post she had held in the past before migrating to the Samajwadi Party.

Out of power, the TDP is also keen on adding a touch of glamour to the party and infuse new enthusiasm among the cadre.

Trial by fire

Ramalinga Raju

The fallen IT icon B. Ramalinga Raju may well go down in the Indian corporate history as the longest-serving under-trial prisoner. The founder chairman of Satyam Computers has been in judicial custody for the last 15 months. The fraud he had scripted in the software company was also the biggest in the country’s corporate history.

The trial is yet to commence as Raju is undergoing treatment at a city hospital and the doctors have ruled out his appearance in court. Though a special fast-track court was set up six months ago, not a single person has been questioned so far as the court has been adjourning the case every week because of Raju’s ill-health.

The CBI has listed 800 witnesses and submitted 1.60 lakh pages of documents pertaining to the case. Besides, over 100 material objects were filed. The trial is going to be a long and grueling process.

Non-stop work

The software industry, an important contributor to Hyderabad’s brand image, has reasons to cheer. The state government recently issued an order bringing IT and IT enabled services under the purview of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to insulate them from disruptions due to agitations and shutdowns.

This means that employees cannot resort to strike nor can they cite shutdowns or curfew as an excuse for their absence. The IT industry representatives have been demanding the application of ESMA to ensure uninterrupted development. The demand became more vociferous in the wake of the recent turmoil over Telangana.

AP has 1,300 IT companies employing about 2.50 lakh professionals.

Corrections and clarifications

n Since the copy talks about the commissioning of the stealth frigate (INS Shivalik), in the headline “INS Shivalik enters on April 29 (April 22, P2) the word enter is inappropriate.

n In the main article “Subversion of democracy” on the edit page (April 23, p10), the word “censoring” has erroneously been used in the break quote in place of “censuring”.

n Instead of the headline “Where parking creates heat” (Chandigarh Tribune, April 26, P4) “Parking woes worsen” should have been used.

n In the headline “Accidents abound despite four-laning” (Chandigarh Tribune, April 28, p5) the use of word “abound” is wrong. “Galore” would have been correct.

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.

Raj Chengappa, Editor-in-Chief