The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

An exercise in half-truths
Needless row over Punjab growth rate

Punjab’s economy has attracted a lot of political attention in the recent past, which is a welcome break from the traditional politics of vendetta and personal attacks. First, it was the mounting state debt and the Centre’s conditional offer to cut it that generated much heat and led to the ouster of then Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal. Then the issue of ballooning subsidies was hotly discussed by both politicians and academics. Now it is the state’s GDP growth rate figures, which have become controversial.

Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal has largely presented the government side. Late last year when he repeatedly claimed in the media that there was no Central offer on the debt issue, he was proved wrong when the Central government later admitted in Parliament in reply to queries from Mrs Harsimrat Badal of the Shiromani Akali Dal and Mr Manish Tiwari of the Congress that talks were held between the Union and state finance ministers to reduce Punjab’s debt. The growth rate issue has cropped up as the Central Statistical Organisation has applied different base years for calculating growth rates –1999-2000 for all India, 2004-05 for Haryana and 2008-09 for Punjab. Punjab’s so-called growth of 8.8 per cent is based on this variation.

Capt Amarinder Singh of the Congress has rightly cleared the confusion. Mr Sukhbir Badal should read the last budget (2010-11) of his own government, which puts Punjab’s GDP growth rate at 5.11 per cent between 2002 and 2007 against the national average of 7.8 per cent. How can the growth rate shoot up suddenly when all available data presents a dismal picture of the state finances? The debt of the government and boards and corporations has reached an all-time high. The fiscal deficit is alarming. The rate of unemployment at 10.5 per cent is higher than the national figure of 9.4 per cent. It does not behove the state’s Deputy Chief Minister to misrepresent the facts. Instead, the economic problems should be recognised and honest efforts made to accelerate the state’s flagging growth rate — at least to the national level.

Blow to Haryana govt
President rescues an upright forest officer

President Pratibha Patil deserves to be lauded for having come to the rescue of Mr Sanjiv Chaturvedi, a Haryana cadre Indian Forest Service officer, who has been hounded by the state government for his impeccable integrity and administrative acumen. In a significant directive on Thursday, she not only saved the whistleblower from continued harassment and torture by the state government but also revoked all charges against him which, after an inquiry by the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment, were found to be fabricated by a coterie of state government officials. Mr Chaturvedi had to pay a heavy price for checking corruption in the forest department. He refused to bow to the powerful mafia with political connections. Consequently, he had to face 12 transfers in five years and a suspension. In particular, he earned the wrath of former Forest Minister Kiran Chaudhary and Prahlad Singh Gillankhera, MLA. When the officer tried to check the alleged misuse of public funds by the forest department which had ordered plantation on Mr Gillankhera’s private land, he was charge-sheeted and suspended.

Creditably, Mr Chaturvedi refused to be cowed down by threats or pressure tactics. He blew the whistle many times and earned the displeasure of his bosses. After he tried to implement the Supreme Court’s orders to prevent the Saraswati Wildlife Sanctuary from being destroyed during his first posting at Kurukshetra in 2007, he was shunted out to Fatehabad. There he had to face more trouble. His decision to stop the illegal construction of an herbal park was viewed seriously. Though he tried to ensure that public funds were not misutilised for creating private assets, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda suspended him in August 2007 without citing any reason. The Centre revoked it in January 2008.

What is disturbing in the episode is the typical attitude of Haryana’s senior bureaucrats. While they did not defend an upright forest service officer at crucial times, apparently to keep the political masters in good humour, it was finally left to the President of India to bail him out. Of course, the Prime Minister’s Office, too, intervened in August 2008 when it sought a report from the state government. Surprisingly, the entire top brass of the government was pitted against an officer who was only following the Supreme Court’s orders and unearthing scams in the department. The President’s directive to the government, first of its kind, would have served its purpose if the state governments learn a lesson from the episode and stop witch-hunt of upright officers.

Thought for the Day

Self-trust is the first secret of success. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

ARTICLE

Wrong premises, false start
Extraordinary court verdict
by B.G. Verghese

The Supreme Court has passed an extraordinary order in confirming the Orissa High Court’s ruling, reducing the trial court’s sentence of death on Dara Singh, found guilty of burning alive Graham Staines, an Australian missionary, and his innocent minor sons aged 10 and six, a few years ago. The court upheld the death penalty only in “the rarest of rare cases” but extenuated the murderer’s intent “to teach a lesson to Graham Staines about his religious activities, namely, converting poor tribals to Christianity”. This is an appalling statement and should be expunged or reversed by a larger bench as it gives a licence for rage killings to teach anybody a lesson.

The court went on to say that conversion by force was not acceptable. None would deny that, and there is no evidence of this in the Kandhamal case. This apart, conversion by conviction is permissible under the Constitution. How is religious conversion any different in principle from conversion from one ideology or political persuasion to another? Several states have adopted quite bizarre anti-conversion (Freedom of Religion) laws that call for certification of bona fide conversion by a magistrate. Yet, such movements as ghar vapasi and conversion of tribals to Hinduism are permissible and considered part of the natural order of things.

Another unfortunate episode is being crudely enacted in Karnataka where the Governor has taken another hasty step in what seems a campaign against the Chief Minister. Such partisan politics is an outcome of Governors being appointed as, or too readily playing the role of, hatchet men. Not that the Chief Minister is an angel. His administration was recently exposed on charges of corruption by the Lok Ayukta, whose wings have since been clipped through a parallel inquiry ordered by the government, which it is feared the Chief Minister could manipulate administratively. An earlier party revolt against Mr Yeddyurappa’s corrupt ways was overcome through dubious means. The BJP, which once favoured the Chief Minister’s removal, is now backing him to the hilt as it tilts with the Union Government on issues of corruption and misgovernance.

Nothing daunted, the party chief, Mr Nitin Gadkari, has proffered the amazing defence that Mr Yeddyurappa’s action in denotifying land to allot this to members of his family “is immoral, but not illegal”. What a travesty of justice and standards in public life! His stance is not improved by pleading that previous Chief Ministers have done likewise. If this is the motto of the party, then it can only attract scorn and condemnation. The BJP may contest the government’s order sanctioning prosecution of the Chief Minister but it erred in staging a day’s statewide bandh in protest against the Governor’s action. Both sides have sent out wrong signals.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court was unduly harsh on Mr Kapil Sibal, the Telecom Minister, for speaking out against the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (CAG’s) “erroneous” calculation of a Rs 1760 lakh crore loss on the 2-G spectrum allocation. Given the raging debate on this subject from public platforms and in the media, there is no reason to suppose that the CBI and other investigative agencies will be unduly influenced by the minister’s observations. Mr Sibal is right in protesting that the government was prevented by the Opposition from presenting its case in Parliament and, therefore, went directly to the people. This is unexceptionable, though some may argue that the minister could have toned down his remarks.

The Public Accounts Chairman, the BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi, too protests too much in complaining to the Speaker about the alleged impropriety of Mr Sibal’s criticism of the CAG. Considering that the CAG’s report was leaked and widely debated in public by the BJP and others well before being presented to Parliament, Mr Joshi’s concerns are misplaced. In fact, his own party forced him to recant his view that a JPC, as sought by the BJP, was unnecessary. The facile manner in which political parties adopt double standards has ceased to surprise.

The Prime Minister in turn has pleaded double taxation treaty confidentiality in disclosing the names of secret Swiss and Lichtenstein bank accounts as have come into its possession. This is a technically correct stance but it begs the question why the government has studiously failed to “ratify” and operationalise the UN Convention Against Corruption, which it signed two years ago. This is a powerful instrument for preventing and investigating corrupt practices through money laundering and keeping the proceeds of illicit transactions in foreign bank accounts. It also provides for joint investigations, freezing of bank accounts and extradition of accused persons. The tardy progress in legislating a Lok Pal Bill without watering down its provisions, as reported, is also inexplicable. None of this inspires confidence and gives credence to charges that suggests the government has something to hide.

Finally, the ongoing battle between the National Advisory Council, headed by the UPA chairperson, and the government and its Council of Economic Advisers on how best to proceed with the proposed Food Security Bill and amendments to the RTI Act is cautionary. Debate is legitimate but it would not be prudent to push beyond a point. Power cannot be divorced from responsibility and an elected government must remain accountable to Parliament and the people, and not to any other unelected or party body in a parliamentary democracy. It must never be assumed that the tail can or should wag the dog. This is not to pronounce on the merits of the case but to underline due process.

MIDDLE

Parkash @ Rs 17 a kilo
by Roopinder Singh

Please call when you have the time, I have something for you,” said an SMS on my mobile phone. I was so busy that I didn’t even notice it, and called back a day later.

Now, in a typical Punjabi conversation you find out how everyone and everything is, before you get to the crux of the matter. This conversation, too, took the same course.

In due course of time, the subject of the SMS came up. “We have managed to get some copies of Parkash,” said Devinder Singh, who has been responsible for digitising a large chunk of literature from the region and has pursued his goal with singular dedication.

What he said was very important to me, personally, since my father, the late Giani Gurdit Singh, published Parkash, a newspaper in Punjabi, and for some years in Urdu, from 1947 to 1978. It was a daily for many years, before turning into a weekly paper.

My father had a formidable collection of manuscripts, newspapers and books, but in part because of our having to move from one city to another, we do not have proper records of the paper of which he was the owner, printer, publisher and editor.

Since a few years, my mother, Mrs Inderjit Kaur, and I have tried to get copies of the newspaper, photocopies or otherwise. She is in touch with Sukhdev Singh of Ludhiana who has an archive of Singh Sabha Patrika, a monthly journal that my father edited from 1973 to 1988, but we have yet to come across someone who has preserved Parkash in this manner.

Naturally, as we were talking about the paper, my fingers got busy on the Internet, and in Google books I found a ‘Snippet view’ of an entry of Press in India (1965), published by the Registrar of Newspapers for India, where it said under the heading Circulation Levels: “Among Punjabi dailies, the Parkash from Chandigarh had the highest circulation (8,110) in 1964.” Now I work for a newspaper that is also published from Chandigarh and has the highest circulation in the region. On the way to office, I often drive past the building where Parkash was printed.

Devinder told me that his colleagues had traced a kabari- wala who had many papers of the 1960s and the 1970s with him, and among them were copies of Parkash. While I don’t exactly know how he managed to get such old papers, it seems that these are a part of an estate sale of someone who had been a collector of old newspapers. Thanks to his passion, something of the past has been salvaged. But it was almost lost.

“We almost had a fight with the kabariwala last night,” said Devinder.

“Why? Was it over how much he wanted?”

“He reneged on the deal we had made and wanted more,” was Devinder’s reply.

“How much did he want?”

“We had agreed to give him Rs 17 per kg, but he wanted more. He broke his word, but then I thought of the value of what he had and we went back to him today,” said the digital archivist, his outrage obvious.

Even as I was soothing ruffled feathers, my mind leapt at the possibilities of resurrecting the times and moods of those decades, and reading some of my father’s Rajnitak Kundilias, the satirical poems that were memorised by many and are still quoted.

Thanks to a dedicated archivist, and a deal that did not go sour, musty bundles of old newspapers are being examined, and soon they will be scanned and made available on the Internet. A digital light will illuminate an era gone by, as seen through varied visions published in newspapers, including Parkash.

OPED NEIGHBOUR

How long will Pak Army be a spectator?
Rampant population growth, illiteracy, corruption and lack of opportunity make a lethal mix. Thus far the military`s attitude has been that none of these issues are its problems and should be addressed by politicians and government functionaries
Irfan Husain

WHEN we learned via WikiLeaks that the Indian Foreign Secretary thinks the Pakistani military is "hypnotically obsessed" with India, we were hardly shocked. Over the years, many (including this columnist) have commented on this obsession.

Why, they have repeatedly asked, does the Pakistani army not thin out its troops along the Indian border in order to face the more immediate threat in our tribal areas along the Durand Line? After all, India is highly unlikely to attack Pakistan while we are preoccupied with the jihadi threat.

The reality is that the Pakistani officer corps has been trained to view India as our primary foe. But, more importantly, defence planners everywhere analyse the capability of potential enemies, not their intentions. In this calculus, India looms large on our military`s horizon.

In most countries, while the defence ministry carries out analyses of dangers posed by possible foes, it is the foreign office that assesses their intentions. Based on these two inputs, the political leadership decides on resource allocations to the military, keeping in view budgetary constraints as well as the needs of the social sector.

These competing demands are mediated first in the Cabinet and then debated in parliament before being approved through a vote. The budget document that emerges at the end of this process reflects the priorities and constraints agreed upon by all major stakeholders.

In Pakistan, however, budgetary allocations are skewed by the fact that the army plays such a dominant role in the process. Not only does it assess military risks, but it evaluates intentions as well.

Finally, it virtually dictates to the government what resources it wants. Such is its stranglehold over the institutions of the state that the single-line entry for defence in the budget is not even debated in the National Assembly.

Ultimately, it is the allocation of resources and the taxation structure that reflect the true distribution of power. In Pakistan, the military siphons off the lion`s share of resources and the feudal class pays no taxes, while the business community gets away without paying anywhere near what it should. In this sense, both our income and expenditure are off-kilter.

This state of affairs has persisted for decades, and its effects are obvious in the shape of a poorly educated, undernourished population with high levels of unemployment. Whether we talk about the dangers posed by home-grown terrorists in the tribal areas and southern Punjab or about gangsters in Karachi, we need to ask what options these young killers have. They have effectively been denied any meaningful education and the opportunities that would flow from it. We criticise the mushrooming of madarsas but fail to tell poor parents where they should educate their children in the absence of the required state investment in education.

So when the country is near collapse, we should not just wring our hands over the end result but look at the causes behind it. And these are, I fear, all too evident: it does not require a rocket scientist to point out that when the state is unable or unwilling to invest in its people, frustration and poverty will drive them to desperation.

But it is not very helpful to go on beating the drum about the army`s acts of omission and commission. After all, any institution that wields unchallenged power will use it for its own ends. Their vision confined by the blinkers of purely military threat perceptions, defence planners have failed to see that their `hypnotic obsession` with India has bred internal foes that the army is ill-equipped to fight.

It is also true that India has done little to reassure Pakistan that it means us no harm. Over the years its defence budget has grown steadily and it has embarked on an alarming arms procurement and development programme. Whenever I have written about this, I have instantly been deluged with angry emails from Indian readers who loftily remind me that India is playing on a much larger stage and has preoccupations other than Pakistan.

While this might be so, it is scant comfort to Pakistani defence planners who see a huge buildup on their eastern border. It would be irresponsible for any military commander to close his eyes to such developments in his neighbourhood, especially given the antagonistic history India and Pakistan share.

Nevertheless, if Pakistan is not to become a failed state, it needs to get its act together. For starters, there needs to be a clear understanding of the factors that have brought Pakistan to the brink. Rampant population growth, illiteracy, corruption and lack of opportunity make a lethal mix. Thus far the military`s attitude has been that none of these issues are its problems and should be addressed by politicians and government functionaries. — By arrangement with Dawn

Tracing the disappeared
The situation in Balochistan is especially critical. There involuntary disappearances have been viewed as part of a systemic design to suppress the people`s legitimate aspirations
I.A. Rehman

THE report of the judicial commission set up last year to probe the cases of involuntary disappearances has not been officially released. But the extracts from it carried by the media contain enough evidence of gross abuse of power by the intelligence and law-enforcing agencies that no modern government can choose to ignore.

Much of what the families of victims and their defenders have been complaining of has been vindicated and the government stands indicted for being utterly insensitive about the citizens` most fundamental rights.

The commission has confirmed that the intelligence agencies have been picking up their victims and that in some cases they have been assisted by the local police/Elite Force "which was obviously beyond their scope of duties". In many cases, senior police officers knew of the arrest and detention of "missing persons" by intelligence agencies but they failed to admit this before the commission/courts. In a few cases the police officers were found guilty of "intellectual dishonesty by registering fake FIRs against the persons picked up by the intelligence agencies and handed over to the police after a long time".

The commission has also taken serious exception to the "uncivilised method adopted by the police and agencies` personnel for arresting the victims", and not allowing the detainees any contact with families during long periods of detention. The intelligence agencies have also been censured for issuing stereotyped denials of responsibility even in the face of strong evidence. While some of the cases of enforced disappearance were solved with the help of intelligence agencies, "all in all their cooperation remained lukewarm and not up to our expectation", the commission is quoted as saying.

An extraordinarily distressing disclosure made by the commission is the fact that the incidents of enforced disappearance have not stopped. When the commission was set up in April 2010 its task was to trace 189 "missing" persons and during the next eight months another 203 people were reported to have disappeared. There is reason to believe that the count of the involuntarily disappeared persons is still incomplete.

Nobody can possibly disagree with the commission when it says: "In order to put an end to the issue of enforced disappearances/missing persons, the intelligence agencies should be restrained from arbitrarily arresting and detaining anyone without due process of law. Generally, it would be appropriate if the government evolves a mechanism for intelligence agencies to share information and leave it to the police to make arrest and proceed under the relevant law."

No further proof is needed that people have been and are being arrested by unauthorised functionaries in violation of due process, that they are detained at unauthorised places, and that a regime of fear has been established.

The remedial measures suggested by the commission are mostly unexceptionable. No one must be arrested or detained in violation of due process and if fresh legislation is needed to meet this basic requisite of the rule of law this should be done without any delay. The commission has conceded the possibility that in extraordinary situations compliance with legal procedures may not immediately be possible, but this should not become an excuse to turn an exception into a rule. And even for such situations legal mechanisms should be in place and these special procedures should come into play as soon after an arrest as possible.

The commission`s plea for reining in all intelligence agencies sums up a great deal that has been said on the subject and also what has been left unsaid. The extra-constitutional and extra-legal autonomy exercised by these agencies has not only caused suffering to a large number of citizens, it has also caused incalculable harm to democracy. A serious effort to regulate the working of the intelligence agencies - civil as well as military - should be high on the national agenda.

Each agency should be organised under a publicly known law which must not only define the powers and obligations of its staff but also provide for prevention of and redress for abuse of authority. As pointed out by the commission, this will be in the agencies` own interest. However, there can be no two opinions on the victims` right to compensation and this recommendation ought to be implemented forthwith. This is an opportune moment for the government to sign the UN convention on the protection of people against enforced disappearance and keep its provisions in mind while drafting new legislation.

The suggestion for the appointment of a commissioner to deal with cases of enforced disappearance needs elaboration. That the families of victims of arbitrary arrest and detention need help even to get their complaints registered cannot be denied. But why cannot the police and the other executive paraphernalia attend to these matters as required under the Code of Criminal Procedure?

Since the commission was only required to help trace the "missing" persons, it has not taken note of the reappearance of some of them in the form of dead bodies. A high-powered judicial probe into these gory incidents must not be delayed. The commission`s findings should help the government in comprehending the gravity of the situation created by enforced disappearances and its inability to deal with it. The victims and their families in all provinces have been subjected to the most horrible forms of anxiety and torture. But the situation in Balochistan is especially critical. There involuntary disappearances have been viewed as part of a systemic design to suppress the people`s legitimate aspirations to control their resources and manage their affairs.

Obviously, in addition to establishing a lawful regime for dealing with those suspected of terrorist acts or other anti-state crimes, it is necessary to reach out to the people of Balochistan with a wide-ranging plan for their political accommodation and full respect for their rights. — By arrangement with Dawn