The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

The cancer is spreading
Lt-Gen Rath pays for his impropriety

The Indian Army deserves to be complimented for acting speedily and effectively against a serving Lt-General for an act of impropriety. A specially constituted general court martial comprising seven Lt-Generals has found Lt-General P.K. Rath guilty of intending to defraud the force by issuing a no-objection certificate ‘improperly and without authority’; of signing a memorandum with a private realtor to reserve seats in educational institutions for wards of army officers; and of not informing the higher authorities about the land transfer. For these misdemeanours, the court martial has ordered two-year seniority loss, 15 years of loss of service for pension and has handed out a severe reprimand.

The incident pertains to the time when Lt-Gen Rath, who now holds the dubious distinction of becoming the highest ranking officer in the Army’s post-Independence history to be indicted by a court martial, was commanding the Siliguri-based 33 Corps in West Bengal and was designated to take over as one of the two deputy chiefs of army staff before his chief of staff at the corps headquarters, a major general, blew the whistle on him leading to the court martial. It, however, also brings to the fore a number of issues which reflect poorly on the Army’s internal health. First, Lt-Gen Rath almost got away as the previous Chief of Army Staff had displayed considerable reluctance to take action. The court martial was eventually ordered at the behest of Defence Minister A.K. Antony. Next, the incident serves as a grim reminder to the growing incidence of corruption involving senior army officers that has regularly been making news in the past decade. Action is now expected to be taken against another Lt-General, who incidentally held the critical post of military secretary, and was entrusted with postings and transfers of the army’s officer corps.

On the positive side, the court martial reflects that the justice system within the Army is much swifter compared to the practice prevalent in the civilian domain. It also reflects positively on the professional and apolitical character of the Indian military and the fact that the armed forces remain steadfastly subservient to civilian control.

A shoddy report
Khushpreet case handling is a sad chapter

The magisterial inquiry into the recent gruesome killing of young Khushpreet in Chandigarh has revealed what any informed member of the public already knew — that the innocent five-year-old became a victim of police ineptitude. But beyond that the report only competes with the police in terms of shoddiness with which it handled the case. Indeed, the findings of the report are as non-specific as the terms of reference were vague. The one-line mandate for the Punjab Civil Service officer who is otherwise entrusted with running the Union Territory’s inefficient bus service was to inquire into “the incident of kidnapping and subsequent death of Khushpreet”.

The circumstances and haste in which the inquiry was ordered followed by its mandate and tabling of the final report serve as a microcosm of the UT Administration’s overall inefficiency along with indifference to the sensibilities of the understandably outraged and grieving parents. The inquiry was ordered by the UT home secretary to placate Khushpreet’s parents who refused to give their consent to a post mortem of their son’s body unless the police took severe action against the erring policemen. Earlier, a seemingly indifferent police played the oldest, most predictable and meaningless card in the pack — it transferred the station house officer and a police post incharge to the police lines and that too two weeks after Khushpreet was kidnapped. Rather than holding its own inquiry as both a professional and self-respecting organisation, the top police brass allowed its civilian counterparts in the Administration to order an inquiry following which it felt compelled to suspend two inspectors and a sub inspector and transfer to the police headquarters a deputy superintendent of police who had been entrusted with the critical task of leading a team to catch the kidnappers.

The UT Administrator woke up to finally ask the police to pull up its socks 12 days after the five-year-old’s body was found only to subsequently spurn a memorandum handed over by the murdered boy’s father. The attitude of the UT Administration, the police and the findings of the magisterial inquiry are all examples of inept governance of a union territory that prides itself in minimal political interference and for being a centre of education and learning.

Thought for the Day

Seventy per cent of success in life is showing up. — Woody Allen

ARTICLE

China factor in East Asia
India being sought as a balancer
by Harsh V. Pant

In a sign of new significance that India is attaching to its ties with Southeast Asia, it will be hosting Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyona at its Republic Day celebrations. It was 60 years back that then Indonesian President Sukarno was the chief guest at India’s first Republic Day function in 1950. This visit is intended to give a boost to India’s “Look East” policy, underscoring the need for greater integration and deeper engagement between India and East Asia in trade and other strategic sectors. The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, who had travelled to Japan and Malaysia for bilateral visits and to Vietnam for the 8th ASEAN-India Summit last November, has made it clear that his government’s foreign policy priority will be East and Southeast Asia, which are poised for sustained growth in the 21st century.

This is a time of great turmoil in the Asian strategic landscape and India is trying to make itself relevant to the countries in the region. A two-week standoff between Japan and China over a boat collision shows the communist state is adopting a more aggressive stance against rivals and US allies in Asia, and there may be more tension to come. With its political and economic rise, Beijing has started dictating the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to its neighbours, thereby laying bare the costs of great power politics. The US and its allies have already started re-assessing their regional strategies and a loose anti-China balancing coalition has started emerging.

Both Tokyo and New Delhi have made an effort in recent years to put Indo-Japanese ties in high gear. The rise of China in the Asia-Pacific and beyond has fundamentally altered the strategic calculus of India and Japan, forcing them to rethink their attitudes towards each other. India’s booming economy is making it an attractive trading and business partner for Japan as the latter tries to get itself out of its long years of economic stagnation. Japan is also re-assessing its role as a security provider in the region and beyond, and of all its neighbours, India seems most willing to acknowledge Japan’s centrality in shaping the evolving Asia-Pacific security architecture. Moreover, a new generation of political leaders in India and Japan are viewing each other differently, breaking from past policies, thereby changing the trajectory of India-Japan relations.

New Delhi’s relations with Tokyo have come a long way since May 1998 when a chill had set in after India’s nuclear tests with Japan imposing sanctions and suspending its Overseas Development Assistance. Since then, however, the changing strategic milieu in the Asia-Pacific has brought the two countries together so much so that the last visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Japan resulted in the unfolding of a roadmap to transform a low-key relationship into a major strategic partnership. The rise of China is a major factor in the evolution of Indo-Japanese ties as is the US attempt to build India into a major balancer in the region. Both India and Japan are well aware of China’s not-so-subtle attempts at preventing their rise. An India-Japan civil nuclear pact would be critical in signalling that they would like to build a partnership to bring stability to the region at a time when China is going all out to reward Pakistan with civilian nuclear reactors, putting the entire non-proliferation regime in jeopardy.

The talks on the civilian nuclear pact, however, seem to be going nowhere at the moment with the two sides merely agreeing to speed up talks. Japan continues to insist that India must sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) whereas India has no intention of doing so given its long-standing concerns regarding the discriminatory nature of these treaties. Meanwhile, the new liability law in India could make greater civilian nuclear cooperation between Japan and India more difficult to accomplish.

Trade was also the focus of the Prime Minister’s visit to Malaysia. Making a strong pitch for greater Malaysian investment in India, Dr Manmohan Singh and his Malaysian counterpart signed an array of agreements aimed at galvanising bilateral economic cooperation and liberalising their respective investment regimes to facilitate greater foreign direct investment into each other’s territory. Security partnership between the two is also being strengthened with the decision to explore the possibilities of collaborative projects in the defence sector and enhance cooperation in counter-terrorism through information sharing and the establishment of a Joint Working Group.

In Hanoi, India made a strong case for its growing relevance in the East Asian regional security and economic architecture at the 8th ASEAN-India Summit where the focus was on enhancing the integration of the East Asian region with India. India’s Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN signed last year committed New Delhi to bringing down import tariffs on 80 per cent of the commodities it traded with ASEAN. This allows India to challenge China’s growing penetration of East Asia and prevent India’s growing marginalisation in the world’s most economically dynamic region.

After signing a free trade pact in goods, India and ASEAN are now engaged in talks to widen the agreement to include services and investments. India hopes to increase its $44-billion trade with ASEAN to $50 billion by next year. Indonesia remains a key factor in India’s Look-East policy and it has played a major role in enhancing India’s ties with ASEAN. By giving the Indonesian President the honour of being the chief guest at the Republic Day function, India is underlining the need for greater India-Indonesia cooperation in the years to come.

India is pursuing an ambitious policy in East Asia aimed at increasing its regional profile more significantly than before. China’s presence is already changing the regional landscape and smaller states in the region are now looking to India to act as a balancer in view of China’s growing prowess and America’s likely retrenchment from the region in the near future. It remains to be seen if India can indeed live up to the full potential of its own possibilities in the region.n

The writer teaches at King’s College, London.

MIDDLE

Why am I happy?
by Shriniwas Joshi

The statistics show that about 50,000 Himachalis are ready this year to enter into the 70th year of their lives. They have reasons to be happy because a recent survey in Britain has found that older people are happier than those half their age and a Gallup phone survey on Americans concluded that older, male and Republicans are happier people.

The Americans, like most of the Indians, have tagged happiness to a political party and gender. I do not believe it. I dare to give mantras of happiness to the 50,000 of my brethren about to step into my ‘decadal age’. I am happy because I am apolitical. I am happy with the BJP when it shouts against the price rise and happy with Congress when it says the price rise is because India has progressed and people can afford to buy costly onions. I am happy because I know that my brain cells are stagnant with no further growth; so no brainy job.

I discuss pension plan but not the five-year plan. I am happy that my secrets that I had told to my friends were safe with them as they, like me, were also undergoing the process of memory loss. An example of my memory loss is that I can locate my infant grandson and my mobile when they make a sound. I am least bothered about the meteorological warnings because my joints cast the shadows before the coming events. I feel happily equal to those in my age-bracket when someone tells me that such and such has been operated upon for stones or appendix because I am also a minus bladder, minus appendix man.

I am happy that whole of Shimla knows me because I generally forget my glasses at home and misplace whosoever passes by my side on the Mall as somebody whom I knew when my eyesight was six by six and greet him or her. He or she, honouring my grey hair, reciprocates.

I am happy that I am in seventies but my teeth are at sixes and sevens. I am happy that I will not die of road accident because now I am so cautious that even when I have to cross a footpath, I look both ways and get assured that no vehicle was coming. Not bothered about my lower stamina and depleting recalling sense, I am happy for my longer experience and higher forehead with hair missing from the front scalp and that the barber spends less time on me.

I have long forgotten that lights are turned out for romantic reasons too and when my young neighbours switch off the lights early, I feel happy for their economic wisdom. I felt sad when our children left us one by one but now I feel happy when they come to visit us four by four. My brethren, I know many more mantras but I have forgotten those. Please pardon me.

OPED DEVELOPMENT

The National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), launched in October, 2010, is an ambitious scheme of the Centre to eradicate rural poverty. It has been designed by restructuring the 10-year-old village self-employment scheme, the Swarnajayanthi Gram Swarojgar Yojna of the Union Rural Development Ministry on the recommendations of various expert committees to rectify shortcomings.
Tackling poverty: Need for synergy
Ranbir Singh

The Government of India had been giving priority to rural development for the overall growth of India since Independence on account of the predominantly rural character of our polity. The launching of the community development programmes in selected areas on October 2, 1952 for awakening the dormant forces of progress in rural society for bringing about a silent revolution in it and its supplementation by the National Extension Service Scheme in the remaining areas on October 2, 1953 has to be seen in this perspective.

The NRLM aims to provide gainful self-employment to the poor rural households. Tribune photo: Pradeep Tiwari

However, subsequently, the focus on rural development was shifted to Intensive Agriculture District Programme for overcoming the problem of food shortage by bringing about a green revolution. Since the benefits of green revolution did not percolate to the small and marginal farmers and the landless agricultural labourers of rural society, the Government of India set up the Small Farmers Development Agency and the Marginal Farmers and the Landless Agriculture Labourers’ Development Agency in 1970s.

Even these failed to tackle the problems of rural poverty. Therefore, the Government of India set up the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) in 1980 for implementing various poverty alleviation and employment generation programmes. These have now become the flagship programmes of the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India.

Guiding principles
* The NRLM's core belief is that the poor have innate capabilities and a strong desire to come out of poverty. This intrinsic capability of the poor is unleashed only when they are organised into institutions which are truly owned by them and provided sufficient capacity building and handholding support.
* A sensitive support structure from national level to sub-district level is required to induce a social mobilisation process. A strong institutional architecture owned by the poor, enables them to: access institutional credit for various purposes, pursue livelihoods based on their resources, skills and preferences, access other services and entitlements, both from the public and private sector.
* Even the poorest of the poor family can come out of abject poverty in a period of six to eight years. The NRLM programme can be upscaled in a time-bound manner if it is driven by the institutions of the poor.
* Its core mission is to reduce poverty through building strong grassroots institutions of the poor. These institutions enable the poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities, resulting in appreciable increase in their incomes, on a sustainable basis.
* The core values which will guide all the activities under NRLM are: Inclusion of the poorest; transparency; accountability; equity to the disadvantaged, especially women and vulnerable groups; partnerships; and ownership and key role of the poor in all stages — planning, implementation and monitoring
* In a mission mode, it will be able to focus on targets, outcomes and time-bound delivery; shift from the present allocation-based strategy to a demand-driven strategy enabling the states to formulate their own poverty reduction action plans; and monitor against targets of poverty outcomes.
* The magnitude of the task on hand can be assessed by the fact that 450 lakh households still need to be organised into SHGs and the existing SHGs covering 250 lakh also need further strengthening and greater financial support. This is clearly an enormous task considering the limitations of the existing strategy and the delivery systems.
* The external sensitive support structure envisioned under the NRLM should gradually shed its functions and responsi-bilities to the institutions of the poor and truly evolve into a sensitive facilitating structure. Ultimately, the success of the NRLM will lie in achieving this objective.

Among the various poverty alleviation and employment generation programmes, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) is a wage employment scheme. It was introduced in 2006 through the enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2006). The scheme has now been rechristened as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). It aims at ensuring the right to work through the demand-driven guarantee of 100 days unskilled work to all the rural households.

The Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY) is a self-employment scheme. Introduced in 1999, it sought to provide work through self-employment by forming the Self Help Group (SHGs) of the rural poor in general and the Scheduled Caste women in particular. This Centrally-sponsored scheme had been designed mainly to promote self-employment oriented income generation activities for the Below Poverty Line (BPL) households in the rural areas.

The primary objective of this scheme was to help them cross the threshold of poverty by helping the BPL rural households to break the financial, technological and market constraints through capacity building. The major features of the SGSY were as follows: formation of the SHGs; their training in management; their capacity building for skill upgradation to help them take up micro-enterprises; promoting thrift and providing them credit through revolving fund support; building their credit linkages with the banks; giving them subsidy for taking up micro-enterprises; extending them support for marketing; building infrastructure to strengthen forward and backward linkage for them; and giving technological inputs for micro-enterprises to them.

However, the SGSY failed to achieve the desired results. The evaluation studies of the scheme conducted by various agencies found that the formation of the SHG could not gather momentum in the northern and eastern states. The banking system did not suit them. Their capacity building remained inadequate due to the weaknesses in the training mechanism. The process of the formation of SHG federation remained tardy.

The swarozgaries kept on slipping back into poverty due to inadequate risk mitigation. The implementing agencies (DRDAs) lacked dedication. No efforts were made for the convergence of the SGSY with other rural development schemes. The grievance redressal mechanism was conspicuous by its absence. Besides, there persisted lack of transparency and accountability in its implementation.

Therefore, the Government of India converted the SGSY into National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) in 2010 for poverty alleviation and employment generation in selected areas. By the end of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, it will be extended to the rural sector as a whole.

The objective of the NRLM is to reduce poverty by providing gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities to the poor rural households. It aims at improvement in their livelihood on a sustainable basis by building strong grassroots institutions of the poor.

The Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, has prepared a framework for the implementation of NRLM so that all the states are able to put in place a mechanism keeping in view their specifics. This has laid down the guiding principles of NRLM and spelt out its values as well as its key aspects which include universal social mobilisation, promotion of the institution of the poor, training, capacity building and skill building, revolving fund and capital subsidy, universal financial inclusion, provision of interest subsidy, livelihood, infrastructure, creation of marketing support, skill and placement projects, rural self-employment training institute and other innovations.

The NRLM places special emphasis on the convergence of the rural development programmes of the Centre and the states, partnership with other NGOs and CSOs and linkages with PRIs. It has also suggested the creation of sensitive and dedicated support structures at the national, state, district and sub-district levels. These include NRLM Advisory Coordination and Empowerment Committee and national management units at the national level, State Rural Livelihood Mission (SRLM) as autonomous bodies and State Mission Management units at state level, District Mission and Management units at the district level and the sub-district units at the block and cluster levels.

The framework has stipulated that the institutions of poor, the SHG federations would also provide support to them. These will also have suitable linkages with the governments, DRDAs and PRIs. The governance of DRDAs shall also be made effective by including the representatives of SHG federations and by professionalising them so that they could respond in a better way to meet the needs of the poor.

According to the framework, the expenditure on the Centrally-sponsored scheme will have to be shared by the Centre and the states in the ratio of 75:25 (90:10 in the case of North-Eastern states). Its allocations would be made on the basis of the relative incidence of poverty in the states. It shall be implemented in a phased manner to reach all the districts and blocks by the end of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan.

It was in this context that a national workshop was organised by the Union Ministry of Rural Development at Kochi, Kerala, from December 16 to 18, 2010. The objective behind the exercise was to familiarise the representatives of various states with the Kerala initiative so that the NRLM could be emulated by them with state-specific modifications.

Kerala has set up the Kudambashree (State Poverty Eradication Mission) which has made special intervention and started many innovative programmes such as feeding programmes for the children of BPL families in the 0-03 age group, IT consortium, solid waste management programmes and a health care programme. It also set up training groups and started education, knowledge and skill aptitude training for the entrepreneurs.

It has set up an accounts and audit service society and formed event management groups. Besides, it has provided financial support, training, marketing and convergence assistance to the entrepreneurs. It has also set up a community marketing network.

However, far more important than the creation of this framework is the creation of a mechanism for convergence between the community-based organisations (CBOs) and the Panchayati Raj Institutions. It is equally important to have synergy in all the rural development programmes of the Government of India and the state governments. Besides, the rural poor will have to be mobilised through a sustained campaign in a mission mode.

The mindset of the stakeholders in the implementation process of the NRLM, the officials as well as the non-officials, will also have to change radically. They will have to be sensitised to work for the poor with a missionary zeal. Otherwise, the lofty objectives of this grand design for the removal of rural poverty will prove to be another exercise in futility which will, in turn, breed unrest.

The writer, a former Dean (Academics), Kurukshetra University, is currently Consultant, Haryana Institute of Rural Development, Nilokheri (Karnal)