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PM’s healing initiative
SEZs vanishing |
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An ordeal of fire
Democracy devalued
Of snakes and tresses
by Raj Chengappa, Editor-in-Chief
Watch a video recording
of the interview here tv.htm
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PM’s healing initiative
THE Prime Minister has finally unfolded a major initiative to provide a healing touch to the Kashmiris and to bring an end to the violent agitations. The formula that he has put before all parties is sensible and needs widespread endorsement, considering that it is suffused with good intentions. It simultaneously proceeds on two tracks. One, it aims to secure the future of the Kashmiris by giving them better education and more job opportunities. Two, he has acknowledged that the key to the problem is a political solution. He has made it bold to say that even autonomy can be considered “within the four walls of the Constitution” if consensus emerged among various parties on the demand. That is one of a piece with the “sky is the limit” offer made by the then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. What Dr Manmohan Singh has sought to underline is the seriousness of his government to address the issue. The bottom line is that peace should return to the valley. That Pakistan is fomenting trouble is a given. It is the government’s job to tackle this menace but at the same time it must ensure that the complaints of our own people do not pile up to such an extent that they fall a prey to foreign mischief. Corruption and lack of employment have been the undoing of Kashmir. Dr Manmohan Singh has promised to address both. Interestingly, at the same time, he has spoken of “sustained internal and external dialogue”. That means that he is willing to talk not only to separatists but also to Pakistan. What is most significant is that he has viewed the happenings of Kashmir not only as a political tangle but also as a human tragedy. “I share the grief, the sorrow and the sense of loss of every mother, every father, every family and every child in Kashmir,” he said. Persons like PDP leader Mehbooba Mufti too should do the same and join in the effort to make a new beginning. The Prime Minister is convinced that the only way forward in Jammu and Kashmir is “along the path of dialogue and reconciliation”. No one whose heart beats for Kashmir can have any quarrel with that.
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SEZs vanishing
Punjab’s attempt to push industrial growth through special economic zones has come a cropper. Announced with fanfare, SEZs are quietly quitting the state. Punjab politicians, who had flaunted exaggerated figures of proposed investment and employment generation, are conspicuous by their silence. Two SEZs were notified, eight got “formal approval”, seven had “in-principle” approval and one was pending with the Centre. The Chief Minister had made much of the proposed investment figure that once stood at Rs 10,181 crore. Now when SEZ proposals are being quietly withdrawn, no one is either trying to stem the outflow of investment or figure out what had gone wrong. When asked what holds up the state’s industrial development, Punjab politicians, including Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal, often blame it on the state’s geographical location. Being away from ports, the state loses out on private investment. However, the real reasons are: exorbitant land prices, erratic power supply, red tape and corruption. If SEZ projects are being scrapped one after the other in Punjab the main reason is that land prices have skyrocketed and at the existing rates SEZs are no longer viable. Corporates rushed here hoping to get hefty tax concessions and cheap land to carry on manufacturing as well as realty business. But as forcible land acquisitions led to farmers’ protests, ruling politicians left the tedious job of land buying to business houses. Finding large chunks of land at one place is difficult. Besides, the industry wants the government to reduce the area requirement in view of land scarcity in the state. For a healthy industrial growth the government will have to create a congenial environment by ensuring quality power supply at competitive rates, corruption-free clearances and an end to red tape and harassment by officials. |
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An ordeal of fire
THE declaration of former President Pervez Musharraf as a proclaimed offender by Pakistan’s Sindh High Court for not appearing before it in connection with a petition filed by an activist of the Awami Himayat Tehreek seeking action against him for “disfiguring” the constitution and committing “high treason” shows that the former military dictator’s proposed political comeback would be no cakewalk. While it is true that the court acted after issuing several notices for Musharraf’s appearance, it is difficult to overlook the fact that his relationship with the judiciary was under extreme strain before he was forced to relinquish office over two years ago. Considering that he was once President of Pakistan and he is in self-exile in London, the court could have taken a less serious view but the adversarial relationship evidently played its part. Significantly, several cases are pending against Musharraf in courts across Pakistan, and the UN enquiry commission’s report also held his regime responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. The government of Asif Ali Zardari, Ms Bhutto’s widower, says it wants to question the former dictator over her death. Pakistan police have also registered a case against Musharraf that could see him tried for detaining judges in 2007 as he desperately clung to power. With that backdrop, Musharraf’s declared intent to return to Pakistan and make a political comeback has set his detractors working overtime. The former dictator’s perception that with the masses disillusioned with the present regime, this is the opportune time for him to return and make a pitch for power may well be mere wishful thinking. Not only would he be tied in legal knots from which he would find it difficult to extricate himself, his fledgling party, the All Pakistan Muslim League, would be up against heavy odds with the bitter memories of the trampling of democratic rights when Musharraf was President and military chief. Yet, one cannot completely put it past Musharraf whose skills of manipulation are undoubted. |
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The Yoga of knowledge and the Yoga of action both lead to supreme bliss. Of the two, however, the Yoga of action (being easier to practice) is superior to the Yoga of knowledge. — Bhagwad Gita
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Democracy devalued
THE complete whitewash of the Press Council of India’s two-member sub-committee report on Paid News, Private Treaties and other dishonourable media practices, devalues India’s democratic coinage. The cover up was done by a larger committee of 12 members which sabotaged the findings of Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta and K Srinivas Reddy who nailed the malfeasance, naming and shaming the parties involved. This provided strong circumstantial evidence, carefully documented, to back the earlier disquiet of the Election Commission and the Securities and Exchange Board of India with regard to these corrupt practices. In the result, the Press Council of India, the custodian of freedom of expression, turned censor. It was a tussle between those who stood for editorial integrity and democratic values against others who defended the publishers’ right to greed and profit by whatever means. The victims are readers and viewers whose trust has been so cruelly betrayed. Among those who abstained and thereby negatively voted against even allowing the two-member committee findings to be appended as a minority report or a minute of dissent were two BJP MPs. Not that other parties are blameless: witness the Maharashtra Chief Minister’s retort discourteous to the Election Commission on his mysterious unpaid media advertising campaign last year. Nine members, including the Chairman, voted for publication; nine opposed; three abstained and six were absent. The high purpose of the Council was subverted through the artifice of anonymity, with all names and identities removed. What remains are homilies. The matter cannot be left to lie. The role and integrity of the media are too important to just bury. What is astonishing is that sections of the media that tirelessly exposed Jharkhand legislators shamelessly demanding cash to vote in a particular manner in the recent Rajya. Sabha elections and other alleged scandals should in turn stoop so low. The law needs to be amended to build safeguards and award condign punishment to defaulters. The constitution and membership of the Press Council need review to stem the rot and a separate statutory broadcast complaints commission established. While a section of publishers has been coy about paid news, trial by the media has become commonplace, sometimes rising to levels of hysteria and fuelling lynch mobs. This has happened with regard to the Commonwealth Games with some questioning if India is ready for such big events and whether a poor nation should not have other priorities. What could have been a more crucial decision for India and the world than its opting to be a full-fledged parliamentary democracy with so many illiterate and poor. The skeptics have been proven hugely wrong despite many warts. Sequential thinking is another malady, ignoring the leveraging quality of certain decisions. The panic decision following the CWG brouhaha even to stop India bidding for the 2019 Asian Games is absurd. Delays have been occasioned in completing the stipulated infrastructure and cost escalation, diversion of funds and embezzlement have been reported. This largely stems from a national failure to ensure close coordination through a single empowered nodal agency as belatedly happened in the case of the 1982 Asian Games. This is not peculiar to the CWG. Witness 26/11, or oversight and clearances for the stop-go 12 million tonne POSCO steel pant in Orissa or critical defence orders (recall the wholly mistaken savaging of the Kargil purchases). All charges must be probed and the guilty punished. But crying wolf because it makes “news” ill serves the nation. The vast bulk of the “colossal” expenditure on the CWG represents investments is in city improvement – transport (metro extension, roads and flyovers), power augmentation, water supply and stadia. For too many, national denigration has become a sport. And shedding crocodile tears for the poor is part of the humbug that offers an alibi for much self-serving avarice and indifference. The Games will go on and can and must be made a success. Let heads roll thereafter, if necessary. The same is true to some extent about the exaggerated reactions of despair and finger-pointing over the dismaying cycle of violence in many parts of Kashmir. All of Jammu and Kashmir is not on fire. The sudden eruption of stone-pelting after June 12 was not entirely happenstance. Mistakes have been made and one lesson that must be learnt is that it is folly to wait to do the right thing until things go wrong. Chalta hai is no policy. Dialogue must commence at many levels to address Centre-state relations, regional autonomy, better grassroots governance and participation, human rights issues, the return of the Pandits, unemployment and so forth. But dialogue does not just mean sporadic talk among so-called leaders. The Prime Minister should address the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the country on the current turbulence and, now, the terrible Leh floods — an aspect of climate change affecting both India and Pakistan which too has been laid low by devastating floods that calls for mutual cooperation (not acrimony) in management of the shared Indus system. Likewise, why should Omar Abdullah not dialogue with the stone-pelters, Hurriyat and others through inter-conferencing over Doordarshan? The Union Home Minister has sensibly offered resumption of a quiet dialogue with all players in Jammu and Kashmir, which a suitable interlocutor could take forward without interruption. Meanwhile, all national actors in a Jammu and Kashmir settlement should dialogue in Delhi to get on the same page. L.K. Advani has reiterated that Article 370 must go! Simultaneously, Arun Jaitley has denounced the putative Manmohan-Musharraf package that envisages making the LoC a soft border and gradual institutionalisation of cross-border movement, commerce and cooperation in Jammu and Kashmir — which remains the most promising road to travel and one that provides an honourable and just outcome for
all.
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Of snakes and tresses
Three of the most impressionable years of my childhood were spent in Jabalpur. But it was not the streets of the city of Jabalpur but a distant hillock called ‘Sita Pahari’ that holds the imprint of my childhood. We lived in a sprawling British Colonial army house surrounded on all sides by thick vegetation. So it was natural to bump into the wild life of the area be it of the four-legged variety or the crawling variety. We were warned about the hyenas and jackals but we were told that the snakes in the neighborhood were completely harmless. That didn’t exactly reassure us but then we hardly had a choice. My first encounter with a snake-denizen of ‘Sita Pahari’ was nothing short of strange. One day as I came home from school, I saw a thin and lean looking snake draped elegantly over the bars of the outer gate. Not quite trained in the art of snake-handling, I clapped my hands and shook the gate a little to dislodge the snake but it refused to budge from its warm perch. Seeing my dilemma a ‘jawan’ stopped by and to my surprise he simply went up to the snake folded his hands and mumbled a few words as though in prayer. And voila! The snake exited. The second encounter was quite scary. My father was in the lawn supervising planting of saplings. He wore moccasins and had propped his foot over the bricks lining the flower bed. Going out to hand him a cup of tea, I glanced down and to my horror saw a snake lounging on his moccasins. Speechless with horror I backed away. Dad spotted the snake and immediately gestured to the ‘mali’ to hand him a stick. Dad bent down and gingerly picked the snake with the stick but at the mali and sevadar’s exhortation simply threw it into the under-bush instead of killing it. We soon realised that harming a snake was taboo here. Intrigued, I asked around and finally was able to piece together the strange ‘Sita Pahari’ myth. The belief was that Sita after her abduction was kept on this hillock by Ravana (hence the name Sita Pahari). Sita in her anguish at being separated from Rama pulled out her tresses which turned into snakes. As the snake inhabitants of ‘Sita Pahari’ were descendants of Sita’s snake tresses, they were revered. Obviously, no historian would accept this far-fetched explanation but it was enough for the inhabitants of ‘Sita Pahari’ to desist from harming these creepy crawlies. And I guess they reciprocated the goodwill for in the three years of my stay I never heard of a case of snake-bite. Beats fiction
anytime.
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by Raj Chengappa, Editor-in-Chief — Parkash Singh Badal, Chief Minister, Punjab
Excerpts of the interview: You are possibly the only Chief Minister who has held the post in every decade starting from the 70s. What’s the difference between the first and the fourth term? At that time problems of the people were minimal and now their needs and problems have grown much more. Accordingly, the Chief Minister has to work now much more than at that time. It’s a greater challenge. Which was your toughest term as CM? During militancy, there were many challenges. I must say that since Independence of the country, Punjab could not get justice or fair play from the Congress governments at the Centre. What was done as a routine for the rest of the country, we were deprived of from the very beginning. When the states were reorganised on linguistic lines it was not done in Punjab. And we had to fight to get justice. Then in case of all other States the capital went to the main state if a new state was created out of it. In spite of the fact that Punjab was a parent state and its capital Chandigarh, they deprived us of it knowingly. And again when there was the Rajiv-Longowal accord I was against that formula and I knew very well that Sant Longowal would be cheated. When there was a meeting in Amritsar, he asked me what to do. I said get something before going to meet Rajiv Sahib. I knew that their commitments would not be honoured. And for that Sant Harchand Singh lost his life. Why did militancy cease in Punjab? Actually, when it started, there was a feeling that the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), moderate people, would not get justice in a democratic way. So they impressed on the people that the only way to get justice was through militancy. Slowly and slowly people realised that this was not the proper way. So in such agitations, if the people are not with you, you cannot succeed. Gradually people got detached. The SAD is not a separatist party. What did you want to achieve in your current term and have you done so? The first aim of my regime is that there should be complete peace and communal harmony in the state. I can say that in spite of the fact that Punjab shares the border with Pakistan where we have a problem, even with J&K, but still there is no incident of militancy. There is complete communal harmony. During your tenure you have given away so many sops to farmers that now your state is broke. What is the real reason? Nobody realises why we are in this condition. We had fifteen years of militancy that has made us bankrupt. Industries are not coming up in Punjab. They are given to other states. We don’t want favours but we want justice. Does having a Prime Minister, who is also a Sikh, help? I am not thinking in terms of a Sikh or a Muslim or a Christian. My relations with him is very good. I have even very good relations with Atal Behari Vajpayeeji and with Gujral Sahib. The Centre is encouraging diversification of agriculture in states. Mere statements that do diversification are of no use. We do business or anything else that is profitable. Supposing, paddy consumes a lot of water and the alternative is maize then the Centre should give a good support price for maize and arrangements for purchasing the crop should also be done. They are not doing this. Actually, the farmer is not getting any savings in agriculture but they have no alternative. Punjab farmers are under a debt of Rs 3,600 crore. A special package should be given to Punjab. Punjab can play a bigger role in solving the food security problem or in any other area. We are two-and-a-half per cent in area and giving the nation 60 per cent of food grains. So, why not give us proper facilities for agriculture and industrial development and for other projects. In Punjab, there is no national institute concerning agriculture. I don’t have any grudge against others. There are national institutes in other States. For example, there is a national dairy institute in Karnal. Why none in Punjab? So how will you rate the performance of your government? You can compare our performance with that of the previous Congress regimes. In education, we have appointed 25,000 teachers and are still appointing more. There is a stay by the High Court. We were to appoint 40,000 teachers. To create employment, we have started skill centres. We have opened an IIT at Ropar apart from three universities and we will shortly have a business school in Mohali. We are solving the problem of polluted rivers by ensuring that all the cities in Punjab have proper drainage and a water supply system. All villages will be provided with clean water supply by 2012. We have earmarked Rs 2,000 crore for this. As far as health is concerned, Rs 350 crore has been sanctioned to completely overhaul our health institutions. No hospital will be without a building, all needed equipment will be provided and there will be no place without a doctor. Power is another major sector. When this government was formed 6200 MW power was there against the requirement of 9000 MW i.e. 30 per cent deficit. We sanctioned three thermal power plants and people are working day and night to complete them. And in two other thermal plants, all formalities have been done. One project for hydro power has now been treated as a national project due to my efforts and work has started. We have done more in this regime than the Congress regimes have done in 15 years. Do you think you made a mistake by having your predecessor, Capt Amarinder Singh, banned from the legislature and the Supreme Court ruling otherwise? Wasn’t it vendetta politics? The case against Amarinder Singh was not registered under my regime. In fact, vendetta was first started by the Congress government. I was implicated in false cases and they involved even my son and my wife in these. I would not have felt that bad if they had implicated me or my son. They implicated my wife also. What had my wife to do with all these? We had not registered a case against anybody in the Congress party or against any MLA or its minister. I don’t believe in vendetta politics. It should end in the whole of the country and not just Punjab. Vendetta politics is not good. The Opposition in the state charges you with being obsessed in this term with ensuring that your son Sukhbir succeeds you? Have I made him Chief Minister? He has been elected and that too with a thumping majority, getting maximum votes. He has created a record in Punjab. And it is not my decision but the decision of the party to make him Deputy Chief Minister. The party decides on such matters. How is his performance as Deputy CM? He is doing well. In the last election he worked hard and the party realised that he had done a wonderful job. The party is happy and he is doing all right. We have never ignored merit. And Manpreet? Manpreet is very good. He is intelligent and hard working. It is a separate thing that sometimes the party does not agree with what he does. I feel that the party is supreme and if it decides that what I do is not proper, I change my mind and go with the party. The party is supreme. Do you think you would relinquish your post in favour of Sukhbir before the next elections? The party has to decide on this. I always depend on the party decision. I never go against the decision of the party. I will obey my party. One should not say things before time.
Watch a video recording
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IN his first term as Punjab’s Chief Minister in 1970, Parkash Singh Badal, then a sprightly 43-year-old, was the state’s youngest Chief Minister. Now in the fourth year of his fourth term as Chief Minister and touching 83, Badal is the state’s oldest Chief Minister. Yet he remains as sharp as ever and is still the glue that holds the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal together as a party. He keeps his rivals constantly guessing about his intentions and they acknowledge him as a shrewd adversary. His detractors say that he is obsessive about ensuring that Sukhbir, his son and Deputy Chief Minister, succeeds him and has left the running of the government to him. But ever so often the elder Badal asserts himself and lets everyone know who the real boss is. In an extensive interview with Editor-in-Chief Raj Chengappa at the Tribune headquarters in Chandigarh Badal spoke in depth on a range of key issues. He then spent another hour in a free-wheeling discussion with The Tribune’s senior editorial staff.