The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Overcrowded jails
Need to speed up prison reforms

SUNDAY’s protests by prisoners over the mysterious death of a 43-year-old undertrial in Bathinda Central Jail are symptomatic of the systemic rot in our prisons. Though the inmates have protested against the ill-treatment and the lack of timely medical help to the victim, a fair and impartial investigation into the death has become imperative. At the root of the malaise is overcrowding. For instance, though the Bathinda jail can accommodate only 700 prisoners, it has as many as 1750 undertrials and convicts today. The result is there for all to see — congested rooms, lack of proper lighting, no sanitation and basic amenities. Unfortunately, this problem is not confined to Bathinda alone. The condition of inmates in the Amritsar jail is equally deplorable. The inmates are denied even basic amenities which is a violation of their human rights. Jail riots as in Bathinda are bound to happen if the prisoners are stuffed in crowded rooms like animals and are denied facilities for leading a normal life.

What happened to the Punjab Government’s plan to free 7,000 undertrials and decongest jails? As part of the Centre’s reforms under the National Legal Mission, the state government was to reduce the strength of inmates in jails, especially those facing trial for minor crimes. Currently, there are 17,205 persons lodged in Punjab’s 26 jails, including 922 women. Of them, 6,204 are convicts while the rest are facing trial for various crimes. Clearly, there is no justification for keeping those charged with petty offences in the jails for years without trial.

The Centre and the states need to follow a pro-active approach to prison reforms. There is no dearth of recommendations on this issue. What is lacking is the political will and administrative support to implement these reforms. Moreover, the recent amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code, which does not make it necessary for the police to arrest a person for a crime where the punishment is less than seven years, should help decongest the jails. It will also help states reduce their daily budget to the tune of Rs 5.86 lakh on maintaining the undertrials. Alternatives to imprisonment like the imposition of fines, confiscation of property of the offenders as in the UK, Japan and Holland and the system of open jails should also be tried to ease congestion in jails.

Heat over prices
RBI tries to cool the temperature

While the Opposition raised a ruckus in Parliament over price rise, the RBI tightened money supply on Tuesday to suppress demand. There are two ways to bring down prices: increase the supply of food and other products or slow down demand by curbing cash flow in the system. Since a normal monsoon will ensure a good crop this year, prices of food products may cool except those of pulses and oilseeds which are imported. The government has bungled by letting foodgrains rot in rain rather than release them in the market to contain prices. The FCI chief admits food worth Rs 50,000 crore is wasted annually. It is largely due to poor management and inadequate/defective storage.

The RBI has a limited role in controlling prices. It regulates money supply by tinkering with key rates. If industry is in crisis, it lowers the cost of borrowing to push industrial growth. When growth is on expected lines and prices shoot up due to a surge in demand, it picks up extra cash to dampen demand. On Tuesday it lifted the repo rate — the rate at which it lends money to banks — by 25 basis points, which was expected. However, it surprised analysts by forcefully raising the reverse repo rate — the rate at which it absorbs excess cash from the system — by 50 basis points. The third key tool in the hands of the RBI is the cash reserve ratio, which was left unchanged.

If there is an excessive fall in money supply and banks see a growing demand for loans, then they raise the interest rates. In the present scenario banks have excess cash but demand is not strong enough. So the RBI steps may not lead to a hike in interest rates. The RBI and the government are agreed on containing inflation, which is above 10 per cent. Price rise particularly hurts the poor as well as those surviving on interest income like the retirees. Instead of seriously discussing the issue, the Opposition is wasting Parliament’s time through noisy protests.

Thought for the Day

Every object has some life, even inanimate ones. So treat all with respect. — The Upanishads

ARTICLE

Disgrace abounding
Modi’s record on pursuing justice scandalous
by B.G. Verghese

The net is closing in on Amit Shah, Gujarat’s erstwhile Minister of State for Home and close confidante of Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister. His resignation was clearly tactical as he feared arrest for absconding after being summoned for questioning by the CBI for “knowledge” about the murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, an alleged don, his wife and others in false encounters over four years ago. Telephonic evidence supposedly links him to the contract killers within the Gujarat police force, some of whom have made damaging confessions.

The CBI inquiry was ordered by the Supreme Court which was distressed by the pace and manner of investigations being previously conducted by the Gujarat authorities. An embarrassed BJP has sought to put some distance between itself and Shah after being caught on the backfoot in Karnataka following the shenanigans of the Reddy brothers, both ministers in the BJP government there, for unlicensed export of illegally mined iron ore. This itself has opened up a huge scandal.

Amit Shah’s plea, through his lawyer, was that he needed more time for preparation before he appeared or applied for anticipatory bail. This is a standard ruse — to seek more time after having sought to scuttle investigations and adopting the most brazen delaying tactics to evade the law. Gujarat’s record on pursuing justice and permitting the law to take its course after the sordid 2002 carnage has been scandalous. If today an Amit Shah is caught, can Narendra Modi be far behind?

If ministers like Amit Shah and Pacheco in Goa, wanted for an alleged rape, abscond, this is shocking and should be regarded as an offence in itself and liable to condign punishment. But, alas, this seems to be a time of disgrace abounding. Consider this recent calendar of shame.

After the grievous train collision, killing over 60 passengers, at Sainthia, all that the Railway Minister, Mamata Bannerjee, could think of saying was to allege a dastardly conspiracy by her Leftist opponents in office in the state whom she is striving to displace. Her continuing neglect of her portfolio, playing politics while the Railways run downhill, is a burden the country should not have to shoulder. This after Raju and Alagiri.

The total bedlam in the Bihar legislature, with members coming to blows and assaulting the Speaker, led to the expulsion of 67 “honourable” members! This followed a Patna High Court ruling on a PIL plaint seeking a CBI investigation into a Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) report alleging the siphoning away of over Rs 11,412 crore by the then government between 2002 and 2008 when the RJD, now in opposition, was in office.

Not to be outdone, the Karnataka Assembly witnessed a 48-hour bed-and breakfast dharna by rowdy JD (S) and other MLAs protesting the BJP government’s defence of the Reddy brothers, charged with illegal mining, after the Governor impugned their integrity and advised the Chief Minister, Yeduyarappa, to drop them. The published evidence against them is devastating and has been backed by the State’s Lok Ayukta, Santosh Hegde, a former justice of the Supreme Court. Hegde temporarily resigned on being thwarted from pursuing the matter but returned to his post after solemn assurances that the State Government would vest him with additional powers. Meanwhile, the Reddys remain defiant and the BJP is digging in to defend its sole southern bastion.

Nothing daunted, Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan curtly told the Election Commission that it had no jurisdiction to query the lavish and often identical “paid news” electoral advertisements in his favour last year which were not reflected in his mandatory return of election expenses. He had earlier at a public meeting in his constituency said he would give Rs 5 lakh to each of the three villages that had given him the highest votes. This comes close to ex post facto buying of votes if paid for by Chavan and should accordingly be part of his election expenses or, if coming from the exchequer, would constitute milking taxpayers’ money for personal gain.

Chavan has now suddenly resurrected Maharashtra’s claim against Karnataka to Belgaum and 865 adjacent villages on linguistic grounds, seeking UT status in the interim, a suggestion made only to be dropped. Immediately thereafter, the Maharashtra government announced it would

legislate to arraign those defaming any national or religious icon. This came in the wake of a Supreme Court order overturning the 2004 ban on an old book on Shivaji by James Laine for allegedly denigrating the hero. The book was then “withdrawn” and the Shiv Sena has now warned the publisher not to reprint copies and bookstores not to stock the book. This crude ban on historical research, publication and intellectual debate bodes ill for any liberal society. Such crude, petty politics will be resisted.

Many of these episodes relate to corruption. Yet, a former Chief Justice of India, R.C. Lahoti, has reportedly written a tale of woe to the Chair of the UPA, Sonia Gandhi. Every whistleblower who risked his life to expose corruption after the murder of engineer Satyendra Dubey by corrupt contractors whom he had detected massively defrauding the National Highway Authority project some years ago, has come to grief after approaching the Central Vigilance Commission “while the culprits remain, by and large, unharmed to this day”. Pretty damning that! But why? Because we protect the powerful and influential at the top and fear to break the coalition of corrupt politicians, businessmen and contractors who “grease” the “system”.

It is for the same reason that police reform has not proceeded apace. For the affluent and greedy, anything and everything goes. For the poor, it is always jam tomorrow.

MIDDLE

Like a mother
by A.J. Philip

WHEN my friend told me on the phone about his mother’s death, I did not know how to respond. How could I offer condolences to him when I myself needed them? For, she was like a mother to me.

It was about 40 years ago that we first met, when I visited my classmate Ravi’s house. He wanted me to stay with him for a night. When I left the house the next day, she had already become a “mother” to me.

For some inexplicable reasons, I could not complete the degree course in time. I left for Bombay in search of a job while Ravi left for Delhi and enrolled himself for a postgraduate course in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

I got a job in Bombay, though it was not to my liking. I decided to return to Kerala to clear the paper I had not appeared for. I needed a quiet place to stay for a week and prepare for the examination. I went straight to Ravi’s house which was close to the college.

His mother, again, received me with warmth and made all the arrangements for my stay. Every night before I went to bed, she would give me a glass of milk. She would also say, “In case you need black coffee at night, don’t hesitate to call me”.

I did well in the examination and soon left for Delhi at the invitation of Ravi. Since then I had always made it a point to visit her during my yearly visits to Kerala.

Last month, I had to go to Mavelikkara, about 8 km from my native town. Suddenly, I felt the urge to meet her and have lunch at her house. I took a bus and went straight to her house, about 30 km from Mavelikkara.

The neighbourhood had changed but the house remained the same. The old, familiar dog was in its cage and barked when I entered the compound.

On pressing the bell, a young lady opened the door and I nearly stepped into the house. I was a little tired after the bus journey and hungry too! “Who do you want to meet?” asked the lady.

“Ravi’s mother” I said.

“We are tenants here. She is with her relatives at Mannar, far away from here. Others in the family have gone to Australia”.

I was disappointed to hear this. It was the first time I missed her when I visited her home. During the return journey, I thought a lot about her.

When she lost her husband at a young age, she found hope in her two sons, whom she doted on. She was a regular listener to all the three Malayalam news bulletins from the Delhi station of All India Radio because Ravi was once a news-reader there.

And when I, too, became a casual news-reader, I knew that if there was one person who would surely listen to me, it was her. She had once told me that I was her third son. I had no clue that she had, of late, been ailing until I heard about it after she was no more. In her death, I have lost a “mother”.

OPED WORLD

Cameron’s India visit seeks to break barriers to trade
Andrew Buncombe and Andrew Grice

David Cameron (43)

WHEN David Cameron stands on the grounds of India’s best-known IT company between Britain and India, he will no doubt have in mind the thoughts of a previous visitor to the Infosys campus.

It was after visiting the Bangalore headquarters of the IT pioneer that the Pulitzer-winning author, Thomas Friedman, came up with both the idea and the title of his book, The World is Flat. The idea contained within his treatise on the globalised economy was that in the interconnected business world of the 21st century, all players were equal. India, in particular, had lots to offer.

Mr Cameron was converted during a visit to India in 2006, his first overseas trip as Leader of the Opposition. He believes - and some politically neutral British officials agree - that the previous Labour Government put too many eggs in China’s basket and got little in return, while paying lip service to the world’s largest democracy, India.

Mr Cameron will take personal charge of Britain’s relations with India, leaving Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, to develop links with China.

Looking east is also a deliberate shift from what Mr Cameron sees as Labour’s obsession with the “special relationship” with the United States. The US is forging new links with the world’s fast-growing economies, so Britain must do so too, Mr Cameron believes.

Mr Cameron has brought an unusually high-powered delegation including six cabinet ministers and about 60 businessmen. He is accompanied by William Hague, the Foreign Secretary; George Osborne, the Chancellor; Vince Cable, the Business Secretary; Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary; David Willetts, the Higher Education Minister and Greg Barker, the Climate Change Minister.

Britain wants India to open its doors to banks, legal and insurance firms and small manufacturers; in return, India will ask for mutual recognition of qualifications so that its lawyers and bankers can operate in the UK.

Privately, British companies complain about Indian bureaucracy and even alleged corruption, although Mr Cameron is not going to shout about that. A business taskforce is likely to be set up to ensure the high-profile visit is not a one-off, quickly forgotten mission. The aim will be to break down barriers to trade.

The most attractive prize in a country with a growing consumer class is the retail market. At the moment, this sector in India is worth around (pounds sterling)227bn and is forecast to grow to (pounds sterling)352bn by 2014.

Yet a full 90 per cent of that trade is unorganised and the potential opportunities for companies such as Tesco and other retail giants are vast.

Mr Cameron will be looking to increase Indian investment in the UK, seeking to attract more Indian students to British universities and to halt the slide of British influence in India.

Six decades after India won independence from Britain, the two countries already do plenty of business. According to official figures, in 2009 total bilateral trade was worth (pounds sterling)11.5 bn ( 1,115 crore pounds sterling), with UK exports to India totalling (pounds sterling) 4.7 bn and (pounds sterling) 6.8 bn of Indian exports to Britain.

India is the fourth-largest single investor in Britain, while British investment in India lags behind Singapore and the US. There are 40,000 Indian students in the UK. The Government, under fire from Labour for having a cuts agenda but no growth strategy, wants to secure as much business as possible from India.

But the historic links bring problems as well as opportunities, UK officials admit. Previous British politicians have been accused of patronising their hosts, and in today’s world the UK arguably needs India more than India needs it. And India is gravitating towards the US. Trade between India and the US, at (pounds sterling)36bn, is three times the level with Britain and there are more than twice as many Indian students in America than in the UK.

America welcomes India’s entrepreneurs with offers of residency rights for creating jobs, while in London the Government is imposing a cap on immigration from outside the EU. “There is a contradictory message to some extent,” said Jo Johnson, the Tory MP for Orpington, brother of London mayor Boris Johnson and formerly the Financial Times bureau chief in Delhi.

“The big problem in the [UK-India] bilateral relationship has been a tendency to think, okay, we do the big high-profile visit, we announce some more or less incredible trade targets, we all go home and there is no follow through.” Gerwyn Davies, public policy adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, warned that the immigration ceiling would hit Commonwealth countries like India. “Now is not the best time to impose a cap, because we need those workers to consolidate and strengthen what is already a fragile economic recovery,” he said.

What can Britain offer India? There will be closer links between universities, sports and cultural bodies in the two countries, and an offer of help on security for the Commonwealth Games, which take place in Delhi in October.

India’s politicians are likely to appreciate the size of Mr Cameron’s entourage and the fact that he has made India one of his first foreign trips since becoming Prime Minister.

Yet there is plenty of scope for Mr Cameron to get things wrong. He will be well advised to avoid the mistake of referring to his senior south Asian hosts by their first names, as the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, did during a visit in January 2009. Diplomats still cringe at the memory of Mr Miliband’s poorly-researched attempt at bridge-building when he referred to “Manmohan” and “Pranab” [Mukherjee, the then foreign minister].

Mr Cameron is expected to confirm that British aid to India will be cut. In the three years to 2011, the UK would have provided (pounds sterling)825m to India, a nuclear-armed nation with a space programme and an overseas aid budget of its own worth as much as Britain gives it. While defenders of the aid package point out that at least two-thirds of Indians live in utter poverty - a damning indictment on India’s political classes since independence in 1947 - the International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, has warned such a grant may have to be scaled back.

Indian business believes Mr Cameron and his hosts will have much to talk about. BG Srinivas, a senior Infosys executive based in London, said there is scope to expand the bilateral relationship: “There are lots of ways that the UK can expand into the Indian market - IT, pharma, telecommunications.

In India there are also lots of centres of expertise.” As for increased Indian investment in the UK, he said: “The US is equally attractive, and larger. But within Europe, the UK stands out.”

The Independent

Reduction of British aid not justified
Pritam Singh

The British Prime Minister David Cameron begins his high profile tour of India with the aim of building stronger economic and political ties with India. The importance the British government attaches to this visit is highlighted by the fact that he is accompanied by seven members of his cabinet and a host of chief executives from top British companies such as Vodafone, BAE and Standard Chartered.

This growing British interest in India is understandable given the size of expanding middle class in India which has high purchasing power. However, along with this increased interest in India comes a conflicting signal that the British government is considering reducing foreign aid to India.

One of the reasons for this move towards reducing foreign aid is the compulsion to step up aid to Afghanistan but the other reported reason, that India does not need foreign aid any more, is questionable.

In taking a decision about foreign aid to a country of the size of India, it is important to keep in mind the role of such aid in reducing the level of poverty in India and, through that, to the reduction of global poverty. It is wrong to look at the growth rates of India’s GDP, which are certainly impressive , to conclude what Andrew Mitchell, the cabinet minister responsible for international development, does when he says that India is “roaring out of poverty”.

Given the uneven nature of India’s development pattern, India still has one of the largest concentrations of poor people in the world.

The United Nations Development Programme update for 2009 reports that 320 million Indians, almost 25% of the population, live in extreme poverty. The World Bank’s report on global economic prospects shows that 827 million of the Indian population live on less than $ 2 a day.

The findings of the Arjun Sengupta-chaired National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector are even more alarming. According to the Sengupta report, 836 million Indians (77% of the population) live on Rs. 20 ($ 0.45) a day. Even the more conservative estimates by the government’s own Suresh Tendulkar Committee give a figure of 37% of the population living below the poverty line. India figures at 66 out of 88 in Global Hunger Index.

If the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving global poverty by 2015 is to be met, the reduction of poverty in India is central to meeting that target. Instead of reducing foreign aid to India, what is required is a strategic shift in the focus of that aid to reduce poverty.

British foreign aid in the past has been generally well monitored and that monitoring process needs to be tightened to ensure that the aid reaches the most vulnerable and is compatible with sustainable development objectives.

No doubt there is weight in the argument of those who question giving foreign aid to India which is a nuclear power with a defence budget of $31.5bn. That underlines the need to change the focus of aid away from supporting militarisation of India to those projects that are targeted at reducing poverty reduction and ensuring sustainable development.

Another argument is that since British foreign aid to China and Russia has been cancelled, there should be reduction, if not cancellation, of aid to India. But it misses the historical debt that Britain owes to India from the period of colonial rule. It should never be forgotten that British colonial rule over India was responsible for deindustrialisation of India, increasing burden on agriculture, accentuating poverty and causing the first ever famine in India.

Finally, the almost 2 million strong Indian diaspora settled in the UK makes a significant contribution to the UK government revenue and has the right to expect that British aid effort should result in reduction of poverty in India.

(The author is the Director of Postgraduate Programme in International Management and International Relations at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford)