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One more accident
Qureshi must shut up |
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Courts on fast track
Abolish death penalty
In the beginning
Trapped on flooded roads
Balancing excess and shortage
Corrections and clarifications
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One more accident
A
second major train accident in two months is shocking. That both happened in West Bengal may hurt Ms Mamata Banerjee somewhat politically, but her job may still not be in danger. She gets away with almost anything. She had blamed the May mishap on the Maoists though the rebels had denied their involvement. The Monday morning crash, apparently, was due to human error as the speeding Uttar Banga Express tore into the rear of a stationary Vananchal Express at Sainthia. Why the Uttar Banga Express, which was supposed to halt at Sainthia, was moing so fast will have to be looked into. Every major accident follows a set pattern: the Railway Minister visits the site, announces relief and orders an inquiry. All is forgotten soon. She does not own moral responsibility for any tragedy. Gone are the days when ministers would step down on such issues. It does not seem to occur to her that apart from being a leader of Trinamool Congress, she is also the Railway Minister of India and that she should spend more time in Delhi than in Kolkata. Even when in Delhi, she does not attend Cabinet meetings. The UPA leadership has obviously given Ms Mamata Banerjee a long rope. The causes of rail mishaps range from unmanned level-crossings, poor communication and signalling networks to drivers’ negligence. The Railways has enough money to upgrade technology but someone has to take decisions. The Konkan Railway has developed an anti-collision device which applies automatic braking when two trains come near each other. The device could prevent such accidents as happened at Sainthia but it has not been deployed extensively. Given the blemished track record of the Railways, Ms Mamata Banerjee should have volunteered to quit to devote herself fully to her sole goal of winning the West Bengal assembly elections. The Railways is too important a portfolio to be handled so casually by a part-time minister. |
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Qureshi must shut up
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi seems to suffer from verbal diarrhoea. This may explain why he has been speaking too much after the failed India-Pakistan talks in Islamabad. His uncontrolled comments have damaged the cause of peace. Initially, at least the two countries were not averse to continuing their dialogue. But now it is difficult to say when the talks will be held in New Delhi, though India has invited Qureshi. Where was the need for the Pakistan Foreign Minister to say that India’s External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna had “a restricted mandate”? How could the minister have had an unrestricted mandate? As if this was not enough to spoil the atmosphere, Qureshi has gone to the extent of uttering that “I do not want to visit India for a leisure trip. I want to go for meaningful, constructive and result-oriented talks if the right atmosphere prevails and if they are fully prepared (for talks).” What exactly does he want to say? Making such provocative statements will take the two neighbours nowhere. It is obvious that there can be no talks between India and Pakistan unless an atmosphere conducive to dialogue prevails. When he mentions “if they are fully prepared” Qureshi appears to be pointing to his earlier statement that the Indian side had been frequently consulting New Delhi during the negotiations in Islamabad. But what is the harm in holding consultations? This is a normal practice in diplomacy and Qureshi must know this. He must not forget that it is Pakistan which had been insisting on resuming the dialogue process that had got snapped after the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai. India had been saying since the very beginning that any engagement with Pakistan was possible only if Islamabad took concrete steps to get all those involved in the Mumbai mayhem, including Lashkar-e-Toiyaba chief Hafiz Saeed, punished. In the absence of this, India agreed to hold talks to first reduce the trust deficit. So, where is the question of “result-oriented talks” at this stage? It will be better if Qureshi decides to shut up, at least for now. |
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Courts on fast track
The need to put the justice delivery system on “fast track” cannot be overstressed. Over three million cases are pending in the country’s high courts, and more than 26.3 million cases are pending in subordinate courts across the country. The average court backlog is of 15 years. As a result, a large number of undertrials are languishing in jails across the country. At long last, Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily has unveiled a legal reforms process under which 12,000 new courts will be set up by 2012, vacancies in courts will be filled and infrastructure facilities will be augmented. These “revolutionary” steps, hopefully, would bring down the arrear of cases from 15 to three years. The 13th Finance Commission has already allocated Rs 5,000 crore spread over five years for this very purpose. The Centre would provide an additional Rs 9,500 crore as one-time allocation. One just hopes that the scheme would be implemented on a war footing, as promised by Mr Moily. Many such well-meaning exercises in the past have lost steam midway. History must not repeat itself. The situation is particularly bad in lower courts. Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia came across abysmal working conditions during his informal summer travels to mofussil courts of Mumbai, Greater Mumbai and small towns of Orissa and said earlier this month: “Court staff has no infrastructure; advocates sit in cycle sheds; courts are in bathrooms. Rickety furniture is seen in every mofussil court. The government spent Rs 108 crore to give laptops to the subordinate judiciary, but unless there is a generator, you cannot operate laptops, can you?” When the ground situation is so bad, it is uncalled for to blame the judiciary for the delays. The sooner it is remedied, the better. |
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I used to love mathematics for its own sake, and I still do, because it allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness, my two betes noires.
— Stendhal |
Abolish death penalty
The call of former President A.P.J. Kalam to the Government of India to hold public consultation on the desirability of retaining the death penalty has not received adequate media attention. This is unfortunate because we can no longer play hide and seek with the straightforward question of abolition of the death penalty. Great leaders of the world have voiced their opposition to the death penalty. Gandhiji said, “I do regard death sentence as contrary to ahimsa. Only He takes it who gives it.” Freedom fighter and socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan said, “To my mind, it is ultimately a question of respect for life and human approach to those who commit grievous hurt to others. Death sentence is no remedy for such crimes.” Dr. Ambedkar during the Constituent Assembly debates said, “I think that having regard to this fact, the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether.” The High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, called the death penalty “… a sanction that should have no place in any society that claims to value human rights and the inviolability of the person.” President Eduardo of Chile said; “I cannot believe that to defend life and punish the person that kills, the State should in its turn kill. The death penalty is as inhuman as the crime which motivates it.” Apart from human right there is pragmatic and practical wisdom which dictates against the retention of the death penalty. Our people are usually talked into silence by the pro-capital punishment lobby that it is only in the “rarest of rare cases”, as decided by the Supreme Court, that the death penalty is given, suggesting as if since the law propounded this restriction, the number of executions has been considerably reduced. Unfortunately, facts belie this, ironically, after the rarest of rare doctrine was propounded in 1980. The Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty in 40 per cent of the cases in the period 1980-90 whereas it was 37.7 per cent in 1970-80. For the High Courts the figures confirming the death sentence rose from 59 per cent in 1970-80 to 65 per cent during 1980-90. The vociferous opposition to the abolition of the death penalty springs from the myth that it can lead to an increase of murders. Facts show otherwise. Thus, in 1945-50 the State of Travancore, which had no death penalty, had 962 murders whereas during 1950-55, when the death sentence was introduced, there were 967 murders. In Canada, after the abolition of the death penalty in 1976, the homicide rate has declined. In 2000, there were 542 homicides in Canada – 16 less than in 1998 and 159 less than in 1975 (one year prior to the abolition of capital punishment). According to a survey conducted by the United Nations in 1988, research has failed to provide any evidence that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. In 1997, the Attorney-General of Massachusetts (USA) said, “There is not a shred of credible evidence that the death penalty lowers the murder rate. In fact, without the death penalty the murder rate in Massachusetts is about half the national average.” A survey released in September 2000 by The New York Times found that during the last 20 years the homicide rate in the states with the death penalty had been 48 per cent to 101 per cent higher than in the states without the death sentence. The death penalty was abolished in 1965 in the UK. The membership of the European Union is dependent on having no death penalty. This has been done obviously in the confidence that murders do not get automatically reduced by retaining the death penalty. The South African Constitutional Court unanimously ruled in 1995 that the death penalty was unconstitutional, as it constitutes “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The grievous danger of irreversibility and the innocent being executed is no panic reaction considering that 500 people have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Since 1973, prisoners numbering 123 have been released in the US after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. The Baldus report prepared in the US found that if a homicide victim was white, his or her killer was four times more likely to get the death sentence than if the victim was a black. The same disadvantage will occur in India in the case of a Dalit and a poor person. This very question was asked of the Home Ministry in 2005 by President Kalam — why all those on death row were the poorest of the poor remains well known but officially unacknowledged. So far 133 countries, from all regions of the world, have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, and only 25 countries carried out executions in 2006, a record 1591 executions compared to 2105 in 2005. The community of states has adopted four international treaties providing for the abolition of the death penalty. The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights provide for the total abolition of the death penalty but allow states wishing to do so to retain the death penalty in wartime as an exception. “There are no exact figures of executions having taken place. However, in 1989 the Attorney-General of India informed the Supreme Court that between 1974 and 1978, 29 persons were executed. The government announced in Parliament that 35 executions had been carried out in the three years between 1982 and 1985. And in 1997 the Attorney-General of India informed the UN Human Rights Committee that between 1991 and 1995, 17 executions had been carried out. On November 29, 2006, in a response to a question in the Rajya Sabha (the Upper House of Parliament), the Minister of Home Affairs reported that at present mercy petitions of 44 persons were pending before the President of India, a number of which had been pending since 1998 and 1999.” (vide Lethal Lottery Publication by Amnesty International India & PUCL – Timil Nadu and Puducherry-2008). The last execution took place in August, 2004. Even in a judgment in 2006 in Aloke Nath the Supreme Court stated, when it candidly admitted that the so-called rarest of rarest case for imposing capital punishment was too vague, “No sentencing policy in clear terms has been evolved by the Supreme Court”. Is that not enough reason for abolishing the death penalty because otherwise vagaries and fancies will determine the sentencing. World opinion is now almost wholly veering round to the abolition of the death penalty. Is it not embarrassingly shameful that the land of Lord Gautam Buddha, Lord Mahavir and Gandhi should present such a negative face against human rights which embody the right to
life. The writer is a retired Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi. |
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In the beginning
EVENTS that occur early in our life and career cast their shadow over the years of youth and later, when the reflexes turn flaccid. The life of a young civil servant on his first independent posting declares him magistrate-in-charge of a large land area. The panoply of office is intoxicating and evokes myriad sentiments of ego, compassion, humility and the desire to tread the straight and narrow and, indeed to build durable structures. There is much fanfare when he sits in office, more so when he ascends the podium in court. Liveried peons, a red beacon atop the office car, saluting policemen and bowing revenue staff add to the effect with practised ease as indeed the public who go through these motions, in tandem, ruining the career of many a new entrant. Lacking the right connections, my persona viewed with suspicion and having been declared an Englishman dipped in the Black Sea, I was posted to Raiganj, a large sub-division on the Bangladesh border. The best eating house was a railway canteen which people visited for a change of air as one could go no further, for the steel gauge to Rajshahi had been dismembered during the partition of India. In 1976 a terrible flood devastated Raiganj and village after village reeled under the relentless fury of turbulent waters. This happened two days after I assumed office and the then Chief Minister’s elegant wife, who was also the local Member of Parliament, brought the Irrigation Minister, a Nawab in gum boots, from neighboring Malda, on an aerial survey. When asked to prioritise the afflicted areas, and innocent about the topography as yet, I wrote out on a slip that I had lost my voice. Thereafter I called for the relief inspector known to be extremely competent and expansive. He lived in a mansion that boasted of marble flooring. As we motored through the countryside I was struck by the tragedy of homeless people, starvation writ large upon their countenance, sheltering on top of trees and rooftops. “What a calamity!” I exclaimed. Baishya Babu the inspector bowed to the waist: “Your Honour! Even the snakes have been rendered homeless”. I grew to like Raiganj with its tottering princely homes and vast fields of red chilli plants, and I found that the people were simple, religious and with a penchant for visiting the circus. One morning as I sat at my desk a delegation of local respectables propelled by a businessman of generous proportions sought an audience and told me that the Royal Apollo circus was shortly to be launched in Raiganj and would I consider their request to inaugurate it. The date and time were fixed and a week later I was escorted to the circus site which curiously had located itself on a dry river bed. In my haste I had not read the invitation card and on entering the capacious tent found a large bunting that colourfully proclaimed “the honorable magistrate has kindly agreed to inaugurate and actively participate in the circus!” |
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Trapped on flooded roads
The monsoon has come and the perennial problem of flooded roads and stalled vehicles is back in full measure. The story is the same with every town and city. Life in cities like Mumbai gets totally paralysed. New promises of improvement in the drainage system made year after year are only meant to soothe the frayed nerves for the moment, only to be forgotten in September. Unfortunately, even our national highways are not immune from flooding. A greater surprise is the flooding of roads in planned cities like Chandigarh where the difference in ground levels between the Secretariat and Tribune Chowk of 30 metres provides an excellent natural slope for drainage. The choe traversing in the middle of the city provides added relief. If such is the situation in Chandigarh, one can imagine the fate of all other towns and cities which are not so fortunate and are located on flatter terrains. Public outcry on road flooding is natural. When one goes deeper into the problem, one finds that construction byelaws of every town stipulate that the plinth level of buildings must be higher than the level of road on which their gates open. Reasons are obvious: it prevents their flooding during the monsoon. A road, therefore, is meant to act as a drain for all residential and commercial buildings and all rainwater overflow accumulates on the road and flows in whichever direction the road slopes. In a planned city like Chandigarh, where the grid-roads V2 and V3 are laid first, the road level at the 4 sector-connectors dictates the direction in which its inner roads slope and thus the direction of the water flow. The area of a sector in Chandigarh is 1 square kilometre. Assuming a 60 per cent concrete/paving cover and an equal four-way split, the flow at any V2/V3 connector when precipitation touches its peak level of 50 mm/hr works out to a large volume. Since the two-way split is more common in reality, this flow gets doubled. And this explains the severe water-logging problem we face year after year at some junctions like Sector 36-37 and Sector 34-35 and the railway underpass on the road to the railway station. The accumulated water gushes through the drainage system and leads to floods in the adjoining rivers which play havoc downstream. While this surfeit of water plays havoc on one side, a rapid fall in the level of our underground aquifers is posing a serious threat to our municipal water supply systems and agriculture. The answer lies in technology. The harvesting of rainwater to recharge the groundwater aquifers by larger campuses has already been made mandatory by the forward-looking towns like Chandigarh. Can’t we adopt the same rainwater harvesting techniques as a standard practice for the road system? Harvesting rainwater at half a dozen selected points in every sector; points close to the lowest levels on internal roads, will more than suffice. The entire process can begin with some well-known points of flooding. This approach will serve two objectives at the same time. The same approach can also be adopted on the highways. The writer is the Chairman, PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh |
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Balancing excess and shortage Delhi is perpetually in the grip of a water crisis with the shortage plummeting to 150 million litres a day. In Mumbai water scarcity is reported to be a cause of social discord and stress. A drinking water crisis is lurking in Godawari district of Karnataka as also in Bundelkhand. Media reports suggest that the daily supply of water through water trains is meeting the water requirements of Bhilwara and Pali districts. In addition water tankers are catering to the needs of towns and 15,827 villages of Rajasthan. According to a World Bank study, of the 27 Asian cities with a population of over one million, Chennai and Delhi are ranked as the worst performing metropolitan cities in terms of water availability per day, while Mumbai is the second worst performer and Kolkata the fourth. Though the rate of urbanisation in India is among the lowest in the world, there are 250 million city dwellers. By 2020, 50 per cent of India’s population will be living in the cities, which will put further pressure on the already strained water supply systems of the urban areas. Today water is an increasingly scarce resource. In 2025 the per capita availability of water will be reduced to 1,500 cubic metres from 5,000 cubic metres in 1950. The UN has in fact warned that the shortage of fresh water could be the most serious obstacle to producing enough food for the burgeoning world population, reducing poverty and protecting the environment. The recent Indian Human Development Survey reveals that 74 per cent of the urban households and only 25 per cent of the rural households have access to water supply. But even this supply is highly erratic and unreliable. A typical Indian household without indoor water spends more than one hour per day collecting water. The transmission and distribution networks are so old and poorly maintained that physical losses range from 25 to 30 per cent. The bursting of pipes and leakage causes contamination of water with flows from the sewerage, which is generally laid parallel. Nationwide, the distribution network is in such disrepair that no city can provide water from the public tap for more than a few hours a day. Unable to meet the regular supply, the Shimla Municipal Corporation has proposed water supply on alternate days instead of daily. The health burden of poor water quality is enormous. It is estimated that around 37.7 million Indians are affected by water-borne diseases annually and 1.5 million children are estimated to die of diarrhoea alone. Water-related diseases also put an economic burden on both the household’s and the nation’s economy. In most cities the centralised water supply system depends on surface water resources like rivers and lakes. Chennai, for instance, has to bring in water from a distance of 200km whereas Bangalore gets it water from the Cauvery river, which is 95 km away. Aizwal’s source of water is one km down the valley, an equivalent of several hundred kilometres in the plains. The World Bank in a report published in 2005 warned that India stood on the edge of “an era of severe water scarcity” and “unless dramatic changes are made and made soon in the way in which the government manages water,” the report concluded, “India will have neither the cash to maintain and build new infrastructure nor the water required for the economy of the people.” The water crisis in India is primarily man-made. The water resources in the recent past have in fact been exploited at a much faster rate than they were being recharged, naturally or otherwise. The World Bank report shows that in 1997 the available underground water was approximately 600 cubic kilometres per annum and the demand was almost equal to the availability. However, by 2050 the level of groundwater will be below the 100 cubic kilometres per annum mark and the demand will rise to 1,200 cubic kilometres per annum. In India more than 90 per cent of the groundwater is consumed for agriculture — a large percentage of which is used on that land which requires constant irrigation. The industrial and domestic use accounts for another 10 per cent of the total fresh water abstraction. As expected, there will be a constant competition among urban dwellers, farmers and industrialists in the near future. The crisis is not just the disturbance in the demand and supply curve but largely due to the mismanagement of water resources. Most of the rivers have become cocktails of surface water, sewage discharge and spillage from tributaries. The Yamuna in Delhi has become clinically dead. Though the Delhi Jal Board extracts 229 million gallons every day from the Yamuna, residents in turn pour 950 million gallons of sewage in the river each day, marking it a gurgling drain. The contamination due to sewage disposal, industrial effluents and chemicals from run-offs, arsenic and fluoride has rendered the waters of most of our rivers unfit for drinking, irrigation and even industrial purposes. As the demand for irrigation could not be met by numerous canals, tanks and lakes, farmers have started digging deep bore wells. India is now perforated with 19 million wells nationwide, depleting aquifers of groundwater faster than nature can replenish. Groundwater is a nature’s reserve to account for dry and drought years. The situation, however, has become alarming as out of the 5,723 geographic blocks, 600 are considered either overexploited or critically close to it. Twenty years ago only 250 blocks were found in this category. The situation is so bad that in Punjab 79 per cent, in Haryana 59 per cent and in Tamil Nadu 46 per cent blocks are considered overexploited or critical. Two independent studies have in fact shown that northern India is losing more groundwater than anywhere else in the world except the Arctic ice sheets. This is serious as millions of people in big cities often have to depend on aquifers for their drinking water. Virtually there are no regulations on who can pump how much and for what purpose. The problem is further compounded by the fact most of the water is supplied almost free or at highly subsidised rates. And as these subsidies usually go to rich farmers, they are not necessarily helpful from a conservation or equity stand point. Low water rates are a major factor influencing both waste and low accruals to the exchequer. Continued losses on this front tend to impair the ability of the states to undertake further investments for conservation and treatment of water. The present practices will indeed invite serious crises in the near future. The writer is the Chief Conservator of Forests, Punjab. The views expressed are personal |
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Corrections and clarifications n
The copy is not about what the headline “College principals in spot” (Chandigarh Tribune, July 13, Page 1) says. It is the case of the UT Education Dept abolishing special powers of principals to grant relaxation to students in lecture shortage cases. n
The deck in the lead headline “Rumble over mining brothers hits Delhi” (July 14, Page 1) ending with “BJP slams” is incomplete. n
The headline “Pension for dependents of missing govt servants” (July 16, Page 15) is wrong as the copy talks about members of the missing govt servants getting pension earlier, within six months instead of one year. n
In the picture caption of the news item headlined “No Hindu pilgrim to Katasraj in 2 years” (July 17, Page 5) “Katasraj” has been misspelt as “Katsraj”. 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 |
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