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Caste-based census
Business with Beijing |
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Honour restored
Prime Minister & the media
The peace that was
Ill-timed controversy
IPL gain is World Cup loss
Mumbai Diary Corrections and clarifications
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Caste-based census
The
Union Cabinet’s decision to refer the issue of caste census to a Group of Ministers (GoM) for close scrutiny cannot be faulted because this question has sharply divided Parliament and the Cabinet. Some sections may have dubbed it a ploy by the government to put the issue on the backburner, but one must think of the consequences of taking a hasty decision. No doubt, caste is a reality. But caste census can further divide society. Though the Cabinet is yet to take a final decision, reports suggest that the GoM, to be headed by Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, is likely to examine whether caste enumeration, if at all necessary, needs to be done in the second stage of the headcount from February or at the last stage when biometric signs of citizens are to be collected. Even if the GoM clears the decks for caste count, are our enumerators capable of undertaking this gigantic task? In his reply to a debate in Parliament recently, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said that the enumerators are ill-equipped to handle the job. The census is meant to collect observational data. And the enumerators, mostly primary school teachers, have been trained to ask the question and record the answer as returned by the respondent. According to the Registrar-General and Census Commissioner to the Government of India, the enumerators have no training or expertise to classify a respondent’s answer as Other Backward Classes (OBC) or otherwise. There is a Central and state-specific lists of OBCs. Some states don’t have a list of OBCs. Some states have a list of OBCs and a sub-set called Most Backward Classes. There are also certain open-ended categories in the lists such as orphans and destitute children. Names of some castes are found in the lists of Scheduled Castes as well as OBCs. In many states, Scheduled Castes converted to Christianity or Islam are treated differently. The status of a migrant from one state to another and the status of children of inter-caste marriages, in terms of caste classification, are also vexed questions. If caste count is desirable, issues will arise regarding the methodology. The GoM would do well to examine all these factors fairly and objectively before taking the final call on caste count.
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Business with Beijing
The
visit to China by President Pratibha Patil, the first by an Indian head of state in 10 years, is indicative of renewed efforts on both sides to put their bilateral relations back on track. While visits by heads of state are normally symbolic rather than substantive, President Patil has begun her visit on the right note when she asserted that there is enough space in the world for both India and China to fulfil their individual aspirations and prosper. Since the turn of the century, trade between the two countries has increased manifold and a far more mature relationship is slowly becoming evident. While Jairam Ramesh may have got carried away in criticising the Indian establishment for being paranoid about China, the post-Copenhagen warmth between the two countries provides an opportunity that neither New Delhi nor Beijing ought to miss. India is rightly going the extra mile by playing down reports of China selling nuclear reactors to Pakistan and the construction of a dam on the Bramhaputra by the Chinese. While Indian concerns need to be conveyed firmly to Beijing, there is no place for hysterical reactions that marked alarmist media reports last year on alleged Chinese intrusions in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. The hawks in both New Delhi and Beijing seem convinced, judging by comments in the media, that the two Asian giants have conflict of interests and cannot, therefore, be great friends. Pending issues like the border disputes, dumping of Chinese industrial and consumer goods, apprehensions of the Indian security establishment over allowing Chinese firms to do business with the Indian power and telecom companies and the fear of hacking sensitive data, among others, have threatened to derail dialogue between the two countries from time to time. But the fact is that neither New Delhi nor Beijing can wish each other away. While India with all its handicaps remains a thriving democracy, China undoubtedly has emerged as an economic and military super power with its reserves of foreign exchange alone said to be double of India’s entire Gross Domestic Product. Not doing business with Beijing, therefore, is not an option. And if Chinese companies can deal with the Americans and the Europeans, Indian firms will also have to learn how to do business with China. India does need to build up the infrastructure and beef up its security on its eastern border and take adequate steps against cyber hacking. Above all, India needs to deal with China as a self-confident nation and exorcise the ghosts of 1962.
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Honour restored
The
Armed Forces Tribunal’s order to expunge adverse annual confidential reports against a brigadier who commanded a brigade during the Kargil war after discovering that the corps commander had fudged reports of the conflict and showed bias towards him raises several important issues related to both the Army and the higher defence management. The brigadier, who was overlooked for promotion, has since left the Army. But the verdict has at least restored his professional honour. The judgment also comes as a reminder of the collective failure of the country’s defence management system 11 years ago when Pakistani troops surreptitiously occupied portions of Ladakh district of Jammu and Kashmir after violating a clearly demarcated Line of Control (LoC). The Army units deployed along the LoC were caught completely unawares as were senior commanders thus reflecting poorly on the calibre of a section of the Army’s leadership at that time. Military assessments warning of such a possibility offered by some officers prior to the detection of the intrusion were ignored. The intelligence gathering, management and coordination system similarly came in for question. The Military Intelligence, which is authorised to conduct intelligence gathering operations up to a limited distance into foreign territory, failed to detect the intrusions. The RAW reported a Pakistani military build up but fell short of detecting two extra battalions that had been inducted into the area by the Pakistanis. The Intelligence Bureau’s information was more specific. But then, as the Kargil Committee Report brings out, there was little coordination among the intelligence agencies. What is crucial is that both the Army and those responsible for running the country’s higher defence management apparatus should have learnt appropriate lessons from the Kargil War. Some progress has been made at effecting better coordination such as creating a Defence Intelligence Agency, empowering the National Security Council and creating the post of National Security Advisor. The government has also created a weapon-specific Strategic Forces Command and the island-specific Andaman and Nicobar Command. However, the government is yet to create a Chief of Defence Staff or tri-service Theatre Commands to effect better coordination between the three services. Indeed the lessons of the Kargil war are yet to be fully translated into action.
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This is the first of punishments, that no guilty man is acquitted if judged by himself. — Juvenal
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Prime Minister & the media IT may seem trite but the first point about Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Press conference is that it should cease to be the rarity that it is. The good doctor should meet the media often, if only because he has a vision — about both the high rate of growth and promoting peaceful and friendly relations with neighbours, especially Pakistan — which must be articulated to garner the much-needed public support. If he does not do so, no one else would. For, the country is now eons away from the time of Jawaharlal Nehru, and even the pre-Emergency days of Indira Gandhi, when every major policy or issue used to be discussed threadbare at every forum of the Congress party — the working committee, the AICC, the Congress session, the Congress Parliamentary Party — and, above all, in Parliament. Now Parliament, if and when allowed to meet, has been reduced to an arena for shouting matches, not reasoned debate. As for the Congress, the less said the better. At no Congress forum is any serious policy issue discussed, except at closed-door meetings of the Congress Core Group, and that, too, occasionally. The tenor of many a questions at the Press conference and the institutional silence of the Congress party, the core of the ruling coalition, underscore the skepticism about the Pakistan policy, especially in the context of what had happened after Sharm el-Sheikh. (Incidentally, Dr. Singh is factually wrong when he says Pakistan is our “largest neighbour”; that distinction belongs to China.) And though this did not find expression at the Press meeting, there is widespread feeling in the country that while the high rate of growth is laudable, the plight of the poor is worsening and their numbers are on the increase. Shouldn’t these concerns be addressed? To put the problem in perspective, let me briefly revert to the era of Nehru, a leader of titanic stature. Even he faced strong opposition within his party, then overwhelmingly dominant on the Indian political scene. He had to put in their place two Congress presidents, Acharya Kriplani and Purushottam Das Tandon. Up to 1950, there were major differences between him and his deputy (and only near-equal), Sardar Patel. The republic’s first President, Rajendra Prasad, was constantly at odds with him. Nehru dealt with them entirely democratically, and won his point by mobilising party and public opinion. Ironically, the only Congress president who overruled him once in 1959 was his daughter. The issue was dismissal of Kerala’s first Communist ministry. Backed by the Congress rightwing, Indira Gandhi told her father to overcome his qualms. Of course, Dr. Singh is no Nehru. Since 2004 the respective positions of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and him have been crystal clear. Not only have the two accepted the equation willingly and gracefully, but also the Congress and the country have no problem with it. However, Dr. Singh is the Prime Minister of India, with Ms. Sonia Gandhi’s full support, enjoying high countrywide respect. He must act accordingly. In this context it is welcome that, in answer to questions that were sometimes loaded and sometimes leading, the Prime Minster clarified that there was “no distrust or mistrust” between him and Ms. Sonia Gandhi; that she was the Congress president and he a Congressman; that he met her every week and valued her “advice and guidance”; that the government and the party were working in sync, and the party had in “no way weakened him”. It is only fair add that all the doubts and misgivings underlying the volley of questions on the subject were based on endless talk in political Delhi that is virtually a vast whispering gallery. Sadly, some of the questions asked were fatuous. For instance, someone chose to inquire whether he valued Ms. Sonia Gandhi’s advice “more or that of his wife, Gursharan Kaur”. Good humouredly the he replied that the two advised him on different subjects. By the same token, some of Dr. Singh’s replies to pertinent questions were either evasive or anodyne or too terse. For example, the forecast that food prices would come down by December should have been elaborated with hard evidence. Moreover, with due respect, one must say that there are few buyers of his claim that Ms Mayawati and the two Yadav stalwarts, Mr Mulayam Singh and Mr Lalu Prasad, helped the UPA defeat the cut motion without any quid pro quo. It was unrealistic to expect startlingly new announcements at the press conference but some of the nuances in the Prime Minister’s responses to crucial questions are significant and merit attention. His declaration that since the task assigned to him was incomplete there was no question of his retirement must be read together with his answer to the question about Rahul Gandhi’s future. He began by saying that the Gandhi scion was “fully qualified” to be a Cabinet minister, and then added that he had been saying for long that younger people should “take over”, and whenever the Congress party “made that judgement”, he would be “very happy to make place” for whoever it chose. Arguably the most important part of the Press conference was that dealing with Mr A. Raja, Union Minister for Telecommunications belonging to the Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam, accused of causing the country a loss of whopping Rs. 60,000 crore as part of the 2G Spectrum scam. To be sure, the Prime Minister did repeat Mr. Raja’s self-defence stressing that his actions merely followed the established policy. But conspicuously, Dr. Singh did not give the Telecommunications Minister a clean chit. Instead, he said that the Chief Vigilance Commissioner had asked the CBI to inquire into the case. If any wrongdoing were found he would act against the guilty. This is reassuring in the context of reports, contradicted by no one, that during his last visit to Delhi the DMK patriarch and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Mr M. Karunanidhi, had made it clear to all concerned that there was no question of Mr Raja either resigning or being sent out. Shockingly, Mr. Karunanidhi backed the impugned minister’s claim that he was being targeted because of being a Dalit. However, after Dr. Singh’s statement the only danger to guard against is that the inquiry doesn’t last as long as did the labours of the Liberhan Commission. Finally, there is something touching about the Prime Minister’s realisation that a resumption of partnership with the estranged Left Front is not possible and his indirect plea to former allies as “like-minded” people to support his
government.
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The peace that was My father built his house 80 years ago on a 3,000 sqft plot of land. He owned the house but not the land which was held on what was called a “Lease in Perpetuity”, which meant that there was no time limit and the owner of the house could sell it anytime. The token ground rent was Rs 1/56 per annum paid to the Defence Estates Officer, Delhi Cantt. When I sold the house in 1988, the rent had not changed. There were four such properties in the locality with tumbledown cantonment bungalows all belonging to an Englishman called Roberts, a widower who had lost his only son in a swimming accident. He was getting rid of his property, at throwaway prices before going home. Roberts was an extraordinary Englishman. Except during the monsoon, he slept on the roof of his house throughout the year. His hobby was catching snakes, of which there were plenty on the Ridge. He once bagged a pair of white cobras which he presented to the London Zoo. In 1830 the British garrison shifted from Daryagunj, which was considered too malarious, to the wide and open spaces beyond the northern Ridge where, many years later, was built the Viceregal Lodge. The roads bore military names — Cavalry Lines, Probyn Road, Battery Lane, Lawrence Road, Racquet Court Road, Arsenal Road. The names were changed after Independence but old-timers like myself still use the original names. Atop the Ridge the Flagstaff Tower, a rotunda, gave shelter to British women and children during the sepoy mutiny of 1857. The road from it to the mosque built in the 14th century by Feroze Shah Tughlak is closed to vehicular traffic to make a peaceful venue for early morning and evening strollers, with only monkeys and peacocks for company. By the time my father had finished building his house, the university had moved into Viceregal Lodge. N.K. Sen, popularly known as “Nishi Baby”, occupied a small corner of it to live. Before becoming the Registrar he had taught philosophy at St. Stephen’s College. My father’s subject was English but both his younger brothers had been Nishi Babu’s students. Registrars those days seemed to have sufficient time for an evening stroll which the cigar-smoking Nishi Babu indulged in on the campus accompanied by my father and followed by myself and my dog. As for the house, what it lacked in modernity it more than made up in spaciousness. Each of its three bathrooms could easily contain a living room in one of the sophisticated flats in New Delhi and, of course, there were the lawns, front and back. Peace, perfect peace, occasionally broken at night by a laughing hyena who had made himself comfortable on our front
lawn.
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Ill-timed controversy
It
was a foregone conclusion that the lone survivor responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack Ajmal Amir Kasab would get the maximum penalty of death from the trial court. It was also obvious that with the conclusion of the case the evidence presented before the court by the public prosecutor would become known and the Government of India would be under tremendous public pressure to demand action by the Pakistani Government against the masterminds of the attack sitting across the border in Pakistan whose names figure in the evidence. It was also clear that discussion in the media on these issues would occupy a lot of time during the next few days.
However, discussion on these issues did not last long. It is discussion on the death penalty, which has got stirred the question of hanging of Mohd. Afzal Guru convicted for the 2002 Parliament attack case whose mercy appeal is pending before the President of India. The BJP used this opportunity to attack the ruling UPA Government for not expediting action in the matter and keeping the hanging of Afzal in indefinite abeyance. One wonders whether the leaders of the BJP would be equally vociferous in demanding hanging of Pragya Singh Thakur, Lt. Col Srikant Purohit, Ram Narain Singh, Dayanand Pandey, Devendra Gupta and Chandrashekhar, belonging to the Hindutva outfits like the Hindu Jagaran Manch and Abhinav Bharat, accused of the Malegaon and Ajmer Dargah blasts and the Mecca Masjid terror attack in case they are also convicted and awarded the maximum penalty of death by the judiciary? From their reaction of defending Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and the other accused so far, it seems most unlikely. The media chose the most inappropriate time, only a day before the quantum of punishment was to be announced for Kasab, to discuss the very serious issue of the death penalty. It was clear that almost all TV panellists would demand death for him. The man on the street and the victims or the family members of the 26/11 attacks were all bound to demand the same. The lawyers who appeared in the discussion and were asked to give their opinion on the basis of the law of the land, were also bound to pronounce the maximum penalty of “death” in the case as it was certainly covered under the “rarest of rare” cases, the yardstick prescribed by the Supreme Court for the award of the capital punishment. So long as the provision of the capital punishment is present on the statute book, the courts are certain to award death in such “rarest of rare” cases and the largest number of people is bound to demand it when any such case is under discussion. The question becomes case specific and the circumstances of the case, the barbarity, the cruelty, the horror and the bloodshed all visit the mind of the person asked to give his opinion, combined with his own anger at the outrage (and the sense of patriotism and nationality in the cases of acts of terror by Pakistani nationals) force him to pronounce death as the only punishment. They demand it because that is the maximum punishment available under the law for such heinous crimes. What needs to be understood is that they would demand “life imprisonment” for the same crimes if that were the maximum punishment available. Such crimes happen in those countries also, which have abolished the death penalty and the people in these countries demand, and the courts award, the maximum punishment of life imprisonment for them. The question of death penalty needs to be discussed in an objective manner, in an atmosphere of detachment, without reference to any specific case. Such a discussion did take place at the Conference Against the Death Penalty held in New Delhi on July 22-23, 2000, in which retired judges and Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of India and high courts participated. The unanimous opinion of the conference was that the death penalty should be abolished. Different arguments were presented in the conference for abolition of the capital punishment. They ranged from practical reasons that almost all those awarded the penalty of death are from the most vulnerable sections of our society – the poorest and those belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and minorities – because they cannot defend themselves properly in the courts because of the high cost of securing justice; that it is reminiscent of the old barbaric practice of eye for an eye and hand for a hand which does not befit a civilized society; that it has failed to act as a deterrent, to humanistic and moral considerations that no man has the right to take a life which he cannot give back. The last argument is also important in the light of the fact that several people like Balbir Singh in the Indira Gandhi assassination case and S.A.R. Geelani in the Parliament attack case, who were convicted for the crimes and awarded the death sentence by the lower courts, were adjudged not guilty by the higher judiciary and acquitted. Human life is too precious to be left to the vagaries and errors of the justice administration system, particularly when it vows by the edict of not letting a single innocent person be wrongly punished even if in the process two criminals go scot-free. In a country where those responsible for the killing of thousands and rapes and arson in communal riots often roam around freely, there cannot be any justification for continuing the capital punishment. With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN the first attempt at abolishing the death penalty was made. Since its adoption 140 Member States have abolished the death penalty either in law or in practice. It is high time that we hear the call of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navnitham Pillay, and abolish the death penalty from our statute book when she says: “I hold this position for a number of reasons: these include the fundamental nature of the right to life; the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people by mistake; the absence of proof that the death penalty serves as a deterrent; and what is, to my mind, the inappropriately vengeful character of the sentence.” For a country, which gave to the world the greatest apostle of non-violence in Mahtma Gandhi, this is the only rational option. But such a decision cannot be reached on the basis of the opinion of the man on the street, that too with reference to a case like that of Ajmal Amir Kasab. The writer is the National Secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties
(PUCL)
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IPL gain is World Cup loss We
all cheered the sixes and fours in the IPL. We sat up late in the night to watch Hayden, Dhoni and above all Tendulkar and turned up late and dizzy in offices to do work that mattered. None of us complained about the IPL and none of us bothered to ask would the players be fit for the T-20 World Cup and would we also be fit to see so many cricket matches? I had to visit an ophthalmologist to get a lubricant for my dry and tired eyes strained by the IPL. I am sure many others must have complained of the same and I know some in my immediate circle. I also gained weight sitting like a couch potato, munching food and watching non-stop cricket. I and millions of viewers can get tired but how can players complain of that? When watching cricket can tire just one sensory organ of the body, we should have spared a thought for the players whose whole body and mind is taxed 24x7. No, we did not think of that and we don’t want to think of that. Players for us are robots, life-like animated heroes, who will keep on performing day in and out, like the ones in video games. How can they be tired? We question once they start losing. And then our favourite time-pass is to ask for blood. Let the heads roll, we demand. And the heads sought are of those who are the actors on the stage of cricket, not those who direct the shows, organise the matches and fix the itinerary that leaves no breathing space for the actors. They seem to be put in a mill, supposed to churn out one brilliant performance after another. Those, who don’t, need to be hacked. We make the IPL a success by paying for tickets and cable TV. We give them time and energy and pack the stadiums. We raise the TRPs and hence more advertisements and more money for the game. We, the people, don’t realise we need not fill the stadiums as that should be reserved for Indian cricket team matches. We looked and marvelled at the cricketers hitting one sixer after another without realising the boundary in IPL matches is less than the boundary earmarked for World Cup matches. That was not true cricket but we, the experts, don’t realise that. The five wise men at the helm of selection affairs will not realise in T-20, a bowler who goes for 10 runs an over and doesn’t score, would also be inferior to an all-rounder like Irfan Pathan, who may go in for 12 runs an over but would score quick 30 or 40 and take bouncers chin up. The five wise men will not realise that a so-called great bowler would continue receiving the ball in front of wickets for donkey years instead of behind the wickets to affect a runout. They will also not enforce the cardinal rule for the players that one has to dash straight to the other end for a run and not go diagonally increasing the distance and losing the wicket. Such things would not be told and talked. Instead, we make the gladiators bleed and turn our back to them when they need nursing and care. We don’t talk about re-formatting the IPL matches in such a way that players get time to recover. Let this be the opportune time to decide the issue once and all. Let us, the public, vow, not to make IPL matches a huge success that it overshadows competitions like the World Cup. Let us tell the Board of Cricket Control of India (BCCI) that IPl matches need to be reduced by half or fix no player would play more than eight matches in the entire tournament. Let us boycott those matches and schedules which can have a direct conflict with the international prestige of Indian cricket. It starts with the public and it ends with the public only.
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Mumbai Diary Is Sonia Gandhi the subject of Prakash Jha’s Rajneeti? The question dogging the Katrina Kaif starrer would at least ensure a decent opening for the movie if it manages to sail through the political maelstrom the subject entails. According to the grapevine, the film is a commentary on modern-day politics with a heavy dose of glamour that sets the screen afire. But the real masala lies in the role of Katrina Kaif as the widow of a successful politician that has drawn parallels with the first family of Indian politics.
But after Congressmen raised a hue and cry without as much as looking at the film’s publicity material, Jha is said to be nervous of attacks on cinema houses or worse still, a ban on the flick. According to the trade, he is willing to even organise a special screening for the people who matter in order to ensure the smooth progress of Rajneeti. It has been more than three decades since Aandhi with Sanjiv Kumar and Suchitra Sen in the lead role was similarly compared with the life of another Gandhi. One cannot really say if a special screening was organised for the former Prime Minister, but the movie did see the light of the day and its melodious numbers still top the charts. Brothers again
Ever since the Ambani brothers split up more than five years ago, investors have alternately cheered and booed one or both of the siblings depending on how their stocks responded to the vagaries of the marketplace. On the whole, the response used to be fairly positive as various companies covering infrastructure, communications and natural resources were de-merged and listed as separate entities in the bourses. Investors in the flagship Reliance Industries who were given free shares in all the companies that went to the breakaway group led by Anil Ambani were laughing all the way to the bank as the combined networth of their holdings zoomed. However last weekend’s news that the two brothers have signed a non-compete clause that could even result in them co-operating in the marketplace has been jeered by retail investors. Suddenly, chat rooms and mailing lists are abuzz with the talk that all the reports of the Big Fight were just one big ploy devised by Mama Dear to boost the valuations of the companies. Since investors tend to be generally bullish, the hope is that the brothers would join hands to pick up good companies in the recession-hit developed countries. Bhajji on bhangra
Star bowler Harbhajan Singh, who played the gallant knight literally sweeping Neeta Ambani off her feet, is back in the news. At the IPL awards night when the whole world was looking for cues about the fate of former IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi, Bhajji bowled a howler that went unnoticed — till now, that is. In a verbal joust with Shah Rukh Khan, Bhajji reportedly cracked a wicked one-liner about Punjab’s famous export - “Bhangra toh langra hai”. Most people barely noticed it. But a beady-eyed Punjab Heritage and Culture Society, which cottoned on to the episode, is kicking up a storm. Gurminder Singh Sidhu, president of the society, wants an apology. When last heard of, the lanky Sardar with nine lives is drawing the support of figures like Navjot Singh Sidhu and Daler Mehndi. Brothers in arms, what? |
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Corrections and clarifications
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
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