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India set for N-commerce
Moving closer to CECA
Rampant corruption |
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Two allies at cross-purposes
Tuition — Now and Then
Old age security for parents
Women, children in poor health
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India set for N-commerce WITH the signing of the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damages at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Wednesday, India has fulfilled all the commitments it had made for the operationalisation of the 2005 Indo-US nuclear deal. The Convention, besides other things, provides for the speedy delivery of compensation to victims in the case of a nuclear accident. India is among the 14 countries which have signed it, though only four have ratified it. India’s honouring its last remaining obligation should be seen against the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s coming visit to Delhi. He will be accompanied by a number of industry representatives, including some associated with nuclear reactor suppliers like General Electric and Westinghouse. These companies have already been discussing the nitty-gritty of selling nuclear reactors to India, but have been apprehensive about the compensation factor when there is a mishap and their equipment is found defective. Owing to pressure from the US nuclear industry, the Obama administration has expressed its dissatisfaction over the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act, 2010, which India added to its statute book some time ago after considerable deliberations in Parliament and outside it. The US says that some of the clauses in the nuclear liability law are in contravention of the IAEA Convention. But India’s viewpoint is that it cannot do anything that hurts the interests of the people. It cannot allow reactor suppliers to go scot-free in the event of a nuclear disaster. The quiet efforts being made by the US reactor suppliers to enter into a pact with the Nuclear Power Corporation of India, which has plans for the immediate purchase of a few nuclear reactors, to circumvent the liability law cannot succeed. India has to gear itself up for hard negotiations on the nuclear damages law during President Obama’s Delhi visit. The country, of course, needs to augment its nuclear power generation capacity to meet the fast growing energy demand. But this cannot be done by ignoring the nuclear accident factor.
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Moving closer to CECA INDIA and Malaysia have concluded their 32-month negotiations and moved closer to signing the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) by January 31. If all goes well, CECA will come into effect on July 1, 2011. The talks on CECA between the two countries began in 2008 and culminated in a pact during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. A similar in-principle agreement for CECA was reached with Japan in September this year. India has already inked a free trade agreement (FTA) with the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). CECA is a broader pact and includes uncovered areas like services and investment. India’s latest deal with Malaysia may ultimately put pressure on ASEAN to move ahead on services too. If this happens, then all the 10 ASEAN member countries would throw up employment opportunities for Indian professionals and skilled persons. India’s core strength is in services and it will give the bilateral trade a major boost. Whether it is with Malaysia or Japan, CECA also opens up the two-way door for building infrastructure, exchange of scientific and technological expertise and human development resources, among others. Significantly, Malaysia has agreed to give commercial banking licence to Indian banks. This is a cause for cheer for bankers. India’s trade with ASEAN has grown rapidly after the launch of its Look-East policy. Indo-Malaysian trade surged from $3.38 billion in 2004-05 to $8.01 billion in 2009-10 after touching an all-time high of $10.60 billion in 2008-09. It is now projected to reach $15 billion by 2015. From Malaysia India imports petroleum products, electronic item, edible oil, chemicals and metals, while its exports include machinery, metals, spices and cereals. The two countries have formed a CEOs forum for greater interaction between businesses and industries. The other issues that came up during the Prime Minister’s visit included terrorism, higher education, discrimination against local Indians and job opportunities for Indian workers in Malaysia.
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Rampant corruption
Transparency
International’s annual exercise in releasing an ever-growing list of countries ranked on the ‘Corruption Perception Index’ tells us little that is not already known to us. This year’s ranking lists India and Indians as less honest than 86 other nationalities, including the Chinese and the Vietnamese. It is small consolation that India is perceived as more honest than Pakistan. That India is a country where corruption is a daily habit is something that citizens have learnt to live with. Even the judiciary and the armed forces have not been immune; dodging taxes is business-as-usual and it is not uncommon to find even godmen and religious institutions embroiled in corruption-related scandals. No wonder, the report of a child putting a five-rupee coin on the class teacher’s table and demanding a change of seat evokes more amusement than horror. It is also significant that the largest foreign investor in India is Mauritius, which helps launder black money back into the country. Sadly, neither the anti-corruption laws nor an ever-increasing number of anti-corruption agencies have made much dent into the culture of corruption. While the recently concluded Commonwealth Games in New Delhi has served to highlight the contempt with which public money is appropriated by the already rich and the powerful, it is disturbing that agencies like the Anti-Corruption Bureau, the Central Vigilance Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India and the LokAyuktas seem to have made little or no difference. Corruption has retarded development and the country has lost its competitiveness in the global market. Successive Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, Chief Vigilance Commissioners and Union Law Ministers have acknowledged the need to take stern action against venal officials. Weak legal frameworks allow the officials to enjoy the fruits of their corruption even as the judiciary ends up exposing the infirmities of the law and investigation. The country has an abysmal record of penalising senior officials, industrialists, politicians and businessmen for corruption. But no government in New Delhi seems to have either the inclination or the ability to crack the whip. One can, therefore, say safely that next year, too, the country will figure low down the list of honest nations.
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Our memories are card-indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control. — Cyril Connolly
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Two allies at cross-purposes ONE of numerous
American analysts who are upset over Islamabad’s “double-dealing” in the Afghanistan war has compared his country’s relationship with Pakistan to “making love to a cactus”. It is an apt, if unusual, description which reflects adequately the frustration and anger widely expressed within the United States, especially after the recent crisis arising from Pakistan’s closure for 11 days of the principal supply route of the US and NATO troops in Afghanistan in retaliation for the killing of three Pakistani soldiers by a NATO aircraft that had intruded into Pakistani air space. But the sweet talk and cooing by both sides after last week’s US-Pakistan “strategic dialogue” in Washington — interestingly, the third in seven months — showed that the odd couple, ostensibly in partnership in the war on terror but often working at cross-purposes, sees nothing wrong in what is going on. At the “joint press availability” following the three-day talks, the US Secretary of State and leader of the American delegation declared that the United States had “no stronger partner than Pakistan in fighting the mutual threat we face from extremism. And the cooperation is very deep and very broad. But, as my friend said, this does not mean that we agree on everything”. Her last sentence was a clear reference to an earlier reply by the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, to a question about American “doubts” about Pakistan’s commitment to anti-terror fight. He stated that the quality of “our relationship — the depth, the understanding we have developed over the last two years — should not be judged by media reports. Our understanding is stronger than it is believed to be.… Yes there were concerns, on both sides, and we shared them. And why not? But our relationship is often misunderstood with what is reported in the media”. Mrs Hillary Clinton joined the laughter and said: “I have nothing to add to that.” Evidently, all this seems to be for public consumption. For, what the two sides reportedly said to each other in private — and this included President Barack Obama’s “pre-planned but unannounced dropping in” on the two delegations — was quite different. “Tough talking” may be too strong an expression for the private conversations at several levels such as a meeting with US Defence Secretary Robert Gates of Qureshi and the Pakistan Army Chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. But these were candid to the point of being blunt. Some of such remarks of the negotiators were echoed by the spokesman of the State Department, P. J. Crowley. Curiously, the mainstream American newspapers covered the dialogue with Pakistan perfunctorily. But websites specialising in security and foreign policy have reported the exchanges in some detail. According to these, the American side privately laid great emphasis on the need for the Pakistan Army to take strong and immediate action against the Haqqani network in North Waziristan which it believes to be the principal supporter of the Afghan Taliban and the main provider of sanctuaries to them. Any expectation that this would actually happen is, however, a classic case of the triumph of hope over experience. Remarkably, a day before the strategic dialogue began, Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN, in a hard-hitting article in The New York Times had praised Pakistan for everything “positive” it had done in relation to the Afghan war and decried it for all its “negative” actions. He had pleaded that Pakistan should be “rewarded” if it cooperated with the US fully, but given a “stark choice” if it does not. Pakistan must, he added, shut down all sanctuaries on its soil or the US should take “military action” to do so, “with or without Pakistan’s consent”. When after the end of the strategic dialogue, the Public Broadcasting TV channel put Khalilzad’s proposition to the Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, the latter recoiled in horror. This would be the worst thing to do, he remarked. Pakistan is a sovereign country. Earlier, at a meeting at Brookings, Holbrooke clearly stated that there was “no trust deficit” between the US and Pakistan. That country had taken strong military action against militants even though 70,000 Pakistani troops were engaged in relief and resettlement of the victims of the catastrophic floods and the Army had taken heavy casualties. Qureshi, speaking to the same gathering, spelt out Pakistan’s main demands on the US: enhancement of American aid and effort to counter the after-effects of the floods; a major role for Pakistan in the talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan; reduction of Indian presence in Afghanistan; a nuclear deal with Pakistan akin to the Indo-US nuclear agreement; and US mediation for a settlement on Kashmir. Obviously, he gave expression to these “concerns” during the strategic talks, too. Whatever the situation about other issues, the Pakistani Foreign Minister drew a blank over the nuclear deal and Kashmir-related US mediation between India and Pakistan. Obama did envisage the possibility of mediation during the campaign for the presidential election in 2008 but abandoned the idea later. To Qureshi it was the US President’s “promise”. On nuclear deal Mrs Clinton ducked the question at a joint Press conference. On TV on Kashmir, Holbrooke was categorical in ruling out US mediation unless both sides invited it to do so. No less importantly, the State Department’s spokesman made it clear that while Pakistan had stakes in the stability of Afghanistan, so had other countries of the region, “including India, including Iran and including others”. On the other hand, if some American sources are to be believed, irrespective of what the US says publicly or privately, General David Patraeus, the top US commander in Afghanistan, has already intensified drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas and would escalate them further as needed. This gains some credence from the fact that the issue of drone strikes that has infuriated the Pakistani public was not mentioned during the Washington talks, publicly or privately. An important reason for this is that an additional military aid worth $2.29 billion to Pakistan over the next five years — in addition to the $7.5 billion under the Kerry-Lugar Act — was virtually announced even before the arrival of General Kayani and Qureshi. Furthermore, the Pentagon “compensates” the Pakistan Army for its expenditure on counter-insurgency. This amount is also on the increase constantly. Munificence obviously matters more than diplomatic
verbiage.
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Tuition — Now and Then MY better half informed me that the three-year-old child of Ramu, working in the house across my house, was having a tutor. A few days back, we had complimented Ramu for putting the child in a good school and now the teacher was also coming six days a week to coach the child. The young tutor, herself a student in a school, was paid Rs 150 per month out of the meagre salary. The child was unhappy at this encroachment on his playtime and would start crying at the approach of the tutor. It was beyond my comprehension to understand the need of tuition at this tender age. Tuition has become a must for students. It is said that a student can’t get good marks if he does not take tuitions, and admission in a professional institute is just not possible without it. The children start at 6 am and go on up to 10 pm taking three to four tuitions a day. The students as well as teachers of present day have become expert in bunking regular classes. My guess is that 99 per cent of children studying in classes eighth to twelfth are regularly receiving tuitions. The parents have to shell out a large amount, whether they can afford it or not. The school teachers were earlier classed as financially average people but a large number have become crorepatis. Even the income tax department has raided a few. Naturally I compare this with my school days, when not more than 5 per cent students would go for private tuitions. It was never revealed that the child was getting tuitions otherwise he would be branded as a duffer. It is almost 58 years but I remember my school days at Tilok Chand Jain High School of Indore. Our wonderful teachers were always ready to solve our problems at all times without any monetary considerations. I always used to study with my friend Arun Trivedi, who recently retired as Chief Engineer of MP. Both of us were fairly good in mathematics. On reaching class tenth, our mathematics teacher Mr Bhatia asked us to visit his house every Sunday morning. Our special tuition would start with a good breakfast prepared and affectionately served by Mrs. Bhatia. Guruji used to give us difficult mathematic problems, which were not from regular textbooks. There was always a competition between the guru and disciples. He would try to dig out the most difficult problems and we would try to solve them as quickly as possible. The result was very rewarding. Both the disciples of Guruji scored 100 per cent marks in mathematics at the final matriculation examination, at a time when this was practically unheard. I only wish that the clock turns back to the golden
era.
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Old age security for parents Parents are afraid that one child may not survive up to their old age or may not care for them in later years. Hence, the decision to have more children comes from a desire to find safety in numbers. An understanding of this issue is important because in this understanding also lies the solution to population stabilisation. Once we know that people have a large number of children because they suffer from old age insecurity then we can find ways to help them overcome this insecurity and convince them that they need not have more children because their old age has already been secured. I suggest an idea of population stabilisation that will (1) address the problems of financial insecurity in old age (2) lead to a more stable and manageable population and (3) be economical to the nation on an opportunity-cost principle. It has been estimated that with inflation it costs about Rs. 10 lakh to take a child from birth to the age of 20 in a lower middle class family. This cost may be borne by parents, the government and by society at large, but it is a real cost to the nation and represents the expenditure that must be made on every new born child. However, the same amount can also be used in other ways – for instance, strengthening our education, health and other social infrastructure. Hence, it represents an opportunity cost for the country as a whole. From the above estimate, it is clear that three children in a family represent an expenditure of Rs. 30 lakh for the country. On the other hand, we could spend Rs. 1 lakh after the first/second child was born in the form of an investment to be made in the name of parents agreeing to accept some form of sterilization. This would save Rs 20/10 lakh expenditure on the two/one unborn children respectively or average of Rs.15 lakh. This investment of Rs. 1 lakh with the NPS or other reputed financial institution can reasonably be expected to grow to over 10 lakh in 20 years. At the end of the 20 years the financial institutions would use this amount to pay an interest to the parents. One can reasonably expect them to get more than Rs. 1 lakh year for the rest of their life. After the younger/surviving spouse turns 60, the scheme may permit access to the capital as well. The merit of this scheme is that the annual payment to the parents would be made irrespective of whether those children lived or died during those 20 years and represents a far more reliable form of old age security than having many children. As more and more people accept this security cover in the states where they are still having three children on an average, we would stabilise the population by preventing one or more additional births in each such family. One offshoot of this arrangement will also be that the families themselves will be able to provide a much better growing-up environment for up to two children, and if, God forbid, those children should not survive, then the parents would still have the security cover which starts after 20 years, just when they begin to face old age insecurity. The Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh has done useful research in suggesting innovative schemes for population stabilisation. One of the suggestions is to provide some sort of deposit to benefit couples who opt for sterilization after one or two children. So it is clear that our suggestion for population stabilisation is in keeping with the innovative schemes of the Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh. The point that we wish to emphasise here is the quantum of that deposit. We recommend that the government should make a deposit in the name of the parents (jointly or survivor) when the couple opts for sterilisation. To begin with, the government can provide this incentive for a target of one lakh BPL couples every year for each of these four states. This translates into an outlay of Rs 1,000 crore per state per annum or Rs 4,000 crore per annum for all the four states. What is most important in this context is to understand that this expenditure will save the nation far more in terms of the unspent amount for children not born. A rough estimate will tell us that if the total fertility rate is three and we are successful in sterilizing 1 lakh couples after the first/second child is borne then the nation would save Rs. 20/10 lakh per couple respectively i.e.10 lakh being the savings per child or average Rs.15 lakh per couple. In other words, the nation as a whole in these four states will save Rs. 60,000 crore over the next 20 years or Rs. 3,000 crore every year. We would stress that while this Rs 60,000 crore may look like a hypothetical figure to be spent in future years, but it would get spent no doubt. It would get spent in the form of an increased outlay for children’s immunisation, for their drinking water, sanitation, doctors, nurses, midwives, hospitals, medicines, schools, teachers, books, transport and all these expenses that can go towards providing a quality life to a child. For example, the Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh has concluded that the Right to Education entails (1) 13.3 lakh new teachers (2) 33,405 pucca schools (3) upgradation of 27000 kutcha schools (4) 7 lakh girl toilets and (5) drinking water facility in 3.4 lakh schools The estimated expenses for the Right to Education is Rs. 38,000 crore for UP and Rs. 26,000 crore for Bihar for the next five years. Similarly, the National Advisory Council is even now deliberating over Rs. 91,000 crore a year subsidy on food for people living in urban slums and rural BPL households. This list can go on to include expenses that we will be required to make in sectors like health, education, housing, transport and sanitation. In addition to the quantifiable expenses, there are intangible ones like civic unrest, fights over land, jobs and increased crime in general. Compared to all these costs, providing an old age security cover will work out to be more economical and effective. I also recognise other important interventions in this sphere. In my constituency of Kurukshetra I have been advocating at least high school education for girls, marriage at the legal age of minimum 18 for girls and 21 for men, and 3-4 years of gap between children. These are all important measures which we must continue to work for. However, in this essay I have tried to bring out the need for an old age security cover. In this context, if we make a bold attempt to make real deposits which would be valuable to parents after 20 years, we would have made a strong headway in stabilising the population of the
country. The writer is a member of Parliament
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Women, children in poor health Promoting
the health and nutrition of women is crucial to development — not only for them as the citizens of today but also for those of future generations. The unresolved puzzle in case of Haryana is when it is assumed that real income, wages and purchasing power of people have increased, why the proportion of women with chronic energy deficiency and anemia remains unchanged. The proportion of underweight children (0 to 3 years) has rather increased from 38 percent to 42 percent over a period of 10 years (1993-94 to 2004-05) as is reflected from two national-level health survey (NFHS1 and NFHS3). Not only this, preventive care in health promotion and medical promotion during childbirth is still low. Infectious diseases, malnutrition and maternal and perinatal causes account for most of the disease burden. Females experience more episodes of illness and less likely to receive medical treatment. A large proportion of anemic women (55 percent) in reproductive age group reveal that either their special nutritional needs are not met, or their nutritional status is compromised by unequal access to food and by heavy work demand. Appropriate nutritional interventions can go a long way in improving their situation. Though the government has introduced a number of interventions, such as the mid-day meal scheme and the school health programmes. Despite several national nutrition programmes in operation, significant dent could not be made. The matter of great concern is how these programmes are being implemented. A recent example of Kalanwali School at Sirsa reveal the hollowness of the school health programme where the sheer negligence of doctors in administering vitamin A supplement landed 100 schoolgirls in hospital. It shows how mechanically the targets are achieved. Similarly the results of another programme, Indira Bal Swasthya Yojana, launched as an offshoot of the National Rural Health Mission in the state, reveal that under phase 1 out of 9.65 lakh children tested for anemia, 6.2 lakhs, i.e. 65 percent were found to be anemic. About 10.95 lakh children studying in 9099 out of 9,246 government primary schools in Haryana were subjected to health check-up. Under this scheme children aged 6 to 12 studying in government primary schools were covered. Such an alarming proportion of primary school-going children suggests that fruits of economic growth and development are not evenly distributed across different sections of the population. Further in case of curative care also, one finds that rural health infrastructure remains underutilized either due to lack of doctors and medicines or due to insensitivity on their part to attend to patients. Improving women’s health requires a strong and sustained government commitment, a favourable policy environment, scientific thinking, administrative infrastructure and well- targeted resources. For this increased attention throughout the life cycle of a woman is required. The whole women health programme need not be oriented to reproductive health care only. It is true that they need special care during those years also. Yet efforts need to be made to present a positive picture of the girl child, to raise their social status and by providing basic necessities of life such as sanitation, safe water supply and fuel. Community support during their adolescence too is crucial. It is the time when they start deciding about various issues. An awareness campaign regarding importance of healthy food is needed. The other aspect of curative care need to be taken care by strengthening the institutional set-ups. The time demands that we need to be more sensitive and committed to the needs of women by not only creating infrastructure, but also by motivating and sensitising the medicos and paramedics towards their needs. Since every woman, mother and child counts, and in order to make a difference each one of us has a role to play. The writer is an Associate Professor in Geography, Kurukshetra University email:
rajeshwariku@gmail.com
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BY setting up the Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh (the Population Stabilisation Fund) in India, the Ministry of Health has recognised the need to stabilize the country’s population. There are many reasons, both historical and current, which explain why India’s population has been growing so fast, especially in many backward states where the total fertility rate i.e., the total number of children a woman has during her lifetime, is still much higher than the population replacement rate. It has been accepted by experts that higher fertility is ‘wanted’ by parents because they feel some children may die.