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Education as legal right
Killing of a Pak moderate |
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Murder of Bihar MLA Police must get to the root of it THE stabbing to death of a BJP legislator of Bihar, Raj Kishore Keshri, by a woman visitor, Rupam Pathak, in full view of his bodyguards and supporters at his residence has sent shock waves across the country. Significantly, Rupam had earlier accused the MLA of sexually exploiting her repeatedly.
Wen’s visit to India and after
School for scamsters
Corruption driving away wealth
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Education as legal right
THE
Right to Education Act requires private schools to admit 25 per cent students in the 6-14 age group belonging to marginalised sections of society from the 2011-12 academic session. The government will pay for the education of this section at the rate prevalent in government schools. No seats will be left vacant and admissions will be made through draw of lots. The aim is to provide education to every possible child by involving government and private schools without discrimination of any kind and ensure schools and teachers meet the laid-down guidelines. Since private schools often get subsidised land and are not required to pay taxes, they should not drag their feet in undertaking this noble
cause. The RTE Act is bound to erode private schools’ profitability and force them to hire more teachers, the cost of which will be borne by the other students. Each school is required to furnish details of the expenditure incurred on the education of every child. This will make their accounts public — something private schools hate to do. But it will also ensure greater transparency and curb fleecing of parents on one excuse or the other. Parents and local bodies will have a greater role in the management of private schools.
After initial hesitation private schools in Chandigarh have agreed to implement the Act. Some issues remain to be sorted out. If an underprivileged student drops out midway, will the government still pay the subsidy? The Act empowers the local authorities to ensure compliance of the specified norms. This may encourage bureaucratic interference as well as corruption in the functioning of private schools and discourage innovation in teaching. Officials should not be allowed to destroy good private schools. Besides, will children from modest backgrounds be able to cope with the examination-driven system without adequate financial and academic support from their families? In the absence of a level-playing field they may lag behind and face psycho-social pressures. A flexible, thoughtful approach is required for removing irritants and implementing an otherwise well-meaning Act.
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Killing of a Pak moderate
Pakistani Punjab’s Governor Salman Taseer, who was gunned down by one of his own security guards in Islamabad on Tuesday, represented a distinguished class in his country. As a liberal thinker and politician, he expressed his views without bothering about its consequences. That is why he not only opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law, a relic of the days of military dictator Gen Zia-ul-Haque, but also campaigned for its repeal with vigour. In the process, he emerged as a fearless champion of the rights of the minorities in Pakistan. When he recently declared that he would plead with President Asif Ali Zardari for the grant of pardon to Aasiya Bibi, a Christian, sentenced to death under the blasphemy law, he had stated that the case was an example of how members of a minority community can be made to suffer because of the existence of laws which can be easily misused. He himself belonged to the Shia
minority. However, whether Taseer lost his life because of his stand on the Aasiya Bibi case or owing to some other reason — he had a running battle with Pakistani Punjab’s most prominent political family, the Sharifs — may be known in the days to come, when the report of the enquiry ordered into his assassination will be made public. His appointment as Punjab Governor was openly opposed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his brother and the province’s Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif after the February 2008 elections. Taseer would use every available opportunity to criticise the PML (N) government in Punjab. His outbursts against the Shahbaz Sharif government were among the factors which led to the parting of ways between the PPP and the PML (N) soon after the formation of the PPP-led coalition ministry in Islamabad. Taseer remained safe in his coveted position because of his closeness to President
Zardari. Taseer, who remained a PPP member despite being the Governor of Pakistan’s most influential province, belonged to a small but vocal section which wanted to free Pakistan from the clutches of extremism. His thinking got reflected in the English language paper he owned — Daily Times. His killing is a major setback to the fight against the culture of intolerance being nurtured by extremism. |
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Murder of Bihar MLA
THE stabbing to death of a BJP legislator of Bihar, Raj Kishore Keshri, by a woman visitor, Rupam Pathak, in full view of his bodyguards and supporters at his residence has sent shock waves across the country. Significantly, Rupam had earlier accused the MLA of sexually exploiting her repeatedly. She had lodged a report of rape against the MLA and one of his lieutenants, Bipin Rai, in May, 2010, but later withdrew it. Pathak’s shocking narrative has many familiar shades — that of Gaganjit Barnala’s 45-year-old maid servant, who accused the Tamil Nadu Governor’s son of rape. A case was registered and the procedure followed. Eventually, the woman withdrew her complaint. Same helplessness was reflected by a couple of women who committed suicide before the office of the IG, Police, Haryana, when their complaint of sexual harassment by police officials was not registered.
Taking the law into their own hands is not the right solution. Rupam Pathak cannot but be held accountable for the murderous attack. Beyond sensationalism created by this news, what should disturb a civilised society is events that lead to such desperate actions like committing suicide before the office of an IG, Police, or killing the accused rapist, especially, since enough laws are available to protect women against any kind of sexual exploitation. Their implementation depends on a social reality. Therein lies the flaw.
The victims of sexual exploitation in all these stories are accused of conniving with the opposition to ruin a flourishing political career. Which is nothing but clichéd. If a woman would risk bleeding to death to benefit an opposition party, or, would opt for gallows, is left to one’s imagination. Strangely, no political party stands by these victims. These are cries of desperation, of women pushed against the wall of apathy. They are also indicative of failure of a system; well meaning though, it fails to rescue the weak against the powerful in time. Ruchika’s case is still in the process of getting justice, after two decades! Such issues end up being dumped in the collective insomnia of society. Paradoxically, they take birth from the same phenomenon.
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The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. — Abraham Lincoln
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Wen’s visit to India and after
Prime Minister
Wen Jiabao is one of the few Chinese leaders held in high regard by his Indian interlocutors because of the refreshingly open approach that he adopts even on contentious issues like the differences on the demarcation of borders or in seeking common ground on issues like climate change. It was during his visit to India in 2005 that the two countries agreed on the “guiding” principles which would underlie a settlement to the vexed border issue, which led to a brief conflict in 1962 and has remained a source of tensions. The most significant aspect of the 2005 understanding was that in determining a border settlement, the two countries would “safeguard the interests of settled populations in border areas.”
In Indian eyes, the guiding principles signalled Chinese readiness to discard claims to populated areas in the State of Arunachal Pradesh and recognise the Himalayan watershed along the McMahon Line as the international border.
Wen made an unprecedented effort to reach out to Indian corporate leaders, media persons and academics, apart from a get-together with Indian school children, who were thrilled to meet “Grandpa Wen”. His meetings were laced with quips like “India and China are friends”, “cooperation and not competition” and “there is enough space in the world for the development of both countries”. Mercifully, there were no chants of “Bhai
Bhai”. Wen himself is one of the smartest survivors in the politics of the Middle Kingdom. He accompanied party chief Zhao Ziyang during the latter’s fateful trip to meet the protesters at the Tianmen Square in 1989. While Zhao was purged and placed under detention for “grave insubordination,” Wen not merely survived, but also thrived, adeptly using his charms to rise under party leaders Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang and Jiang
Zemin. Emerging as a protégé of former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, Wen has played the role of “Grandpa Wen” with the public in China, during floods and the SARS epidemic. He charmed George Bush in 2003 into rebuking Taiwan’s President Chen-Shui-bian. Barely a few years later he drew applause from his party colleagues by warning Bush on Taiwan, averring: “We don’t wish foreign intervention, but are not afraid of
it.” Within a year of the 2005 agreement, China started singing an entirely new tune by laying claim to the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh, describing it for the first time as “Southern Tibet”. Moreover, this period saw increasing Chinese military intrusions across the Line of Actual Control that emerged after the 1962 conflict, though both countries had repeatedly pledged to ”maintain peace and tranquillity” along the Line. Responding to these developments, India decided to raise two new army divisions for deployment in Arunachal Pradesh and deployed frontline SU-30 fighter squadrons along its eastern borders.
While China had traditionally avoided taking sides on India-Pakistan differences on Jammu and Kashmir, the new visa procedures it adopted in 2009 were designed to show that it did not recognise Indian sovereignty over the state. Military contacts between the two sides came to a grinding halt when India’s Northern Army Commander, whose area of responsibility in Jammu and Kashmir includes command of troops on its western borders with China, was denied a visa to undertake a scheduled visit to Beijing.
With the US and its European partners seemingly weakened by the economic downturn, India noticed growing Chinese assertiveness in enforcing its maritime boundary claims on its Asia-Pacific neighbours, ranging from Vietnam and the Philippines, to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The visiting Commander of the American Pacific Fleet was even told that the United States should recognise the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean as being in China’s “sphere of influence”. The Chinese vehemently opposed Joint US-South Korean military exercises in the Yellow Sea after North Korea provocatively torpedoed and sank a South Korean naval vessel. In the wake of these developments, India’s Defence Minister A.K. Antony visited Vietnam to boost defence cooperation, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Japan and South Korea to strengthen growing strategic ties. These visits signalled to China that India was prepared to proactively respond to its moves to strengthen Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and missile capabilities and to increase its presence in the Indian Ocean.
Sensing growing unease and faced with moves by its ASEAN neighbours to recast the Asian security architecture by invitations to the US and Russia to join the East Asian Summit, China evidently realised the need to cool frayed tempers across its western borders with India. Premier Wen’s offer to visit New Delhi was welcomed, especially as India has no desire to see tensions with China
escalate. Wen’s discussions in New Delhi appear to have been unusually candid. India had given an indication that this would happen, when it brushed aside Chinese demands that it should boycott the Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony honouring Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. New Delhi made its concerns clear to Premier Wen on Chinese actions on visas for its nationals from Jammu and Kashmir, its continuing nuclear, missile and defence cooperation with Pakistan and its growing trade surplus, which has been accentuated by denial of adequate market access to Indian corporations, in areas ranging from information technology to agro-products and pharmaceuticals. India also asserted that military-to-military ties, which it had suspended, would not be resumed till these concerns were adequately addressed. Ritualistic reiteration of India’s “One China” mantra was avoided. With China’s political leadership set to change in 2012, there are no illusions in India that major differences on sensitive issues like the demarcation of land borders can be settled anytime soon. Nor are there any realistic expectations of any change in nuclear weapons and missile-related cooperation between Beijing and
Rawalpindi. In 1991, Deng Xiaoping wisely advocated a strategy of “hide your strength, bide your time”. While Deng’s advice was followed for over a decade, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) evidently concluded around 2006 that China was no longer merely an “emerging power” and that Deng’s advice of “bide your time” was outdated. This has inevitably led to China’s neighbours getting together to respond to Chinese “assertiveness”. It now appears that China’s rulers have realised the need to appear reasonable and non-aggressive.
With China due for a leadership change next year, it remains to be seen if its present political leadership is willing or will be able to rein in the hawks in the the People’s Liberation Army. Moreover, can the new generation of Chinese leaders, including Vice-President Xi Jinping, resist the temptation of becoming jingoistic to overcome internal contradictions? Amidst these uncertainties, there should be no slackening in enhancing our defence
capabilities.
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School for scamsters
The recent proliferation of scams in society brings to the fore a great national strength which has so far not been appropriately exploited. Our ability and natural genius as scamsters is something which could make a huge contribution in making India the superpower it craves to be. But in order to nurture this enormous talent we need an institution where the fine art of scamming can be passed down to future generations by the masters so that this legacy can be preserved for posterity. It is time to think of an Indian School for
Scamsters. The school would be a hub for all educational activities connected with the art of scamming. Since the spectrum of scamming activities today is very vast, the school will need specialists from all walks of life to focus on their areas of expertise. Thus we will have politicians, bureaucrats, members from the corporate world, defence, para military and sports heading the various departments. One might think that finding such eminent personalities is not a very difficult task because one has only to scan the newspapers and television channels and the names will reveal themselves. Not so. Most of the names that appear are of scamsters who have practiced the art; failed; and been caught out whereas what we are looking for are the masters who are yet to be caught. No cause for concern though because as we are repeatedly told, the known scams are only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. If that be so, we are looking at a very vast recruitment base provided we tap it
right. Funding this potentially world class school should not be a problem. All we need to do is to resolve that 10 per cent of all funds that are made available from failed scams will be diverted to this school so that future generations benefit from the mistakes made by the present lot of unskilled scamsters. This should throw up enough resources to not only fund the school but also various branches that will be necessary to spread scamming wisdom across our vast country.
We shall need land for the school. Since land scams are at the very heart of the scamming industry we need to reach out to the land mafia for making land available. To begin with, the Commonwealth Games Village would be a suitable venue for the school, with the Mumbai chapter based at the infamous Adarsh Society. Eventually, we need branches in all states for which land can be suitably identified on similar
lines. Any such institution must have a vision for future growth. The school’s vision will be to eventually develop into a National Scam University where advanced studies in scamming can be undertaken. This university need not be confined by artificial borders as exist between nations. Indeed we need a Global Vision as appropriate to an emerging superpower. Students from all over the world will one day flock to this university to learn from the masters and restore India to its pre-eminent place as the fountainhead of knowledge in this chosen
field. A seat at the high table at the United Nations is assured. De-hyphenation from Pakistan will follow. The K word will become irrelevant. Economy will boom. Unemployment will be history. The Sensex will soar. All will be well in the world!n
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Corruption driving away wealth We have been long used to the illegitimate private wealth being stashed abroad. But this is the first time that even the legitimate wealth of the nation is flowing out. And that too in billions of dollars. The latest villains to facilitate this outflow that we have identified are the lobbyists and corruption within the government. When the dust settles down on the 2G spectrum scam it will most probably turn out that the lobbyists play but a bit role in facilitating corruption. Some have in the past even argued that in an extremely etiolated and inefficient system of governance such as exists in India corruption plays the part of greasing the machinery of governance. The more serious problem that has not been addressed at all concerns the key leverage points within the system of governance. The problems of governance in India are far too numerous and tangible to require enumeration. To keep on harping about the quality of the bureaucracy, however, is to miss out on the most important structural limitations with which our governmental systems have functioned for the past so many years. It is easy enough to lament the declining standards of our civil service and to reminiscence about the days when things were better but those were also the days when ministers did not necessarily work at cross-purposes with the departments under their charge. While people are looking at Air India and the government telephone companies being almost run to the ground by their respective managements, it would do well to recall other analogous episodes. In the not too distant past the Transport Ministry made serious efforts to run down the Delhi Transport Corporation and bring in the killer Blue Line buses as a solution to the traffic woes of Delhi even when a coeval study done by Amitabh Kundu of JNU had said that the then DTC was one of the most efficient city bus services in the world. Then there was the occasion when the minister in-charge of Posts and Telegraphs went on a week-long visit to the North-East while the postal department employees went on a nation-wide strike, making demands that were easily accepted once the postal services had been run to the ground and private courier companies began to thrive. These have been the more visible events. Usually the insidiousness of ministerial omissions helping in running down the departments under their charge is subtle and not always visible to the public eye. One feels that the entire lament about a decline in the bureaucracy is a misleading one insofar as it does not really address the problem at hand. The idea that dismantling the civil service, allowing lateral entry of professionals etc. would help improve matters are all based on the assumption that the quality of personnel in the public sector is completely different and sadly lacking in comparison with their peers in the private sector. This might be a comforting thought since it has been argued for so long but the fact remains that it has little basis in reality. It is also substantially inspired by the false idea of the generalist civil servant who, it is presumed, has little idea of the complexities of modern-day governance. It is a matter of detail that in the last twenty-five years the profile of personnel entering the Indian Administrative Service has changed profoundly. At one time, a majority of civil servants had degrees in the liberal arts or the basic sciences. This is no longer the case. Nearly 80 per cent of those entering this profession today are engineers, doctors or management professionals by training. Moreover, some of the best in-service training ensures that bureaucrats build up professional competence and remain updated about their field. That being the case, the question that comes to mind is: How come the similar human material given a location in the private sector is able in general to achieve better results while about the government, the less said the better? Surely, we need to look at structural constraints to performance-oriented behaviour in the bureaucracy. No doubt individuals are important but the organisational logic that governs their actions is even more so. The one parameter that distinguishes the private sector from the public, above all, is that they are driven by the imperative to show tangible results and this applies to all personnel beginning from the CEO downwards. Perhaps that is why the majority of CEOs in the private sector have a very high turnover rate. This is certainly not the case in the bureaucracy. In the case of any ministry in the Government of India or a state department, the CEO is the minister-in-charge who is the executive head. As the person responsible for all decisions taken in his department, whether directly or by way of delegation, it is the minister who has the authority to set the agenda for the department and to monitor its execution. Yet there is no mechanism to ensure that ministerial actions are dictated by the goals of the organisation. There are no stakeholders to whom the minister is answerable in the context of the specific department entrusted. The current organisational structure and practice in the government in India does not demand that the CEO of any ministry be held accountable for any result or departmental action. Here is a case of complete authority with equally complete lack of responsibility. It is this lack of accountability which is the crux of the matter. The cases of public sector units which went into doldrums because the minister-in-charge consistently took decisions against organisational interests are legion. Yet in the considerable public discourse on the subject of governance, most commentators assume that the minister is a figurehead and that it is the bureaucrats who really “run” everything. This is far from the truth. It is not and never was the task of the bureaucracy to lead executive action; that is a job for the political executive. Given, that the minister has the authority to take decisions on all executive matters, it is difficult to see how the minister could be a figurehead. Like any CEO, it is the minister who sets the tone of the department. Should his bureaucrats disagree with him regarding the well-being of the department, it is they who get transferred out and not the minister. The problem of non-performance within the department remains unaddressed. So far as the private sector is concerned, it is seldom argued that personnel should act despite their superiors, so why is it so easy to argue this in the public sector? To do so would be to ignore the logic of organisational behavior completely and to have a serious misunderstanding of the role of the minister. As representatives of the public in a parliamentary democracy, it is the political executives who are and should be responsible for both policy and action. Cases of ministers or secretaries, as they are called in the USA and the UK, taking the credit or the heat for administrative decisions are routine. So why is it that we in India find it so difficult to credit or discredit — as the case may be — the minister-in-charge for any action? The maximum that we do is to hold them responsible for their personal actions. When it comes to departmental action, this is seldom the case. Policy and action go hand in hand and it is neither possible nor desirable to separate the two. Yet it is routine for ministers in India to say that they were looking at the “big picture” and they are not responsible for administrative details. In a democracy, such statements are incongruous, to say the least. It might be a good idea to remember that the Challenger space shuttle disaster of the 1990s happened due to a defective rubber seal. But is it possible for those in charge of the project to say that they were too busy “looking after the big picture” to take care of such details? Whatever they might have been busy doing, the one casualty to such an approach is surely the absence of effective results in any government programme.
The writer is a Professor of contemporary history at Panjab University, Chandigarh. A guest faculty at the LBSNAA, Mussoorie, for many years, he has provided inputs for redesigning the current IAS training programme
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The recent complaint from none other than Deepak Parekh, the Bhishma Pitamah of Indian business, that the governance deficit in India is pushing Indian investment abroad is a cause for some concern. The outbound investments include virtually all the important business houses of the country ranging from the Ambanis to the Tatas with the Bharti Mittals, the Kirloskars and many others thrown in for good measure [see table]. 