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Action against Libya
Ills in the judiciary |
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It’s raining sops!
New ideas in the Budget
Indian Holi, US soil
The literary face of Bhagat Singh
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Action against Libya
THE pro-democracy movement against the rule of Libyan dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi is now confined to Benghazi and the surrounding areas. Colonel Gaddafi’s forces have recaptured many towns which had earlier come under the control of the people seeking an end to his autocratic government. This emboldened the government troops to indulge in a killing spree by attacking civilians, who issued a call to the international community to come to their rescue. The global community (read the US and some of its allies) last week got a resolution passed by the UN Security Council for imposing a “no-fly zone” in the troubled areas in Libya. The resolution allows the use of armed force to achieve the limited objective and hence the air attack by troops drawn from the US, France, Britain and certain other European countries. Qatari forces, too, are with these non-Arab troops, but their role and number is insignificant. The limited goal involves protecting Libyan civilians against attacks by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces and allowing all kinds of humanitarian aid to reach them. But will the international intervention remain confined to this much? Will it not lead to regime change? Actually, the objective now seems to be what US President Barack Obama declared two weeks ago that Colonel Gaddafi “must leave”. Perhaps, he believed then that the dictator’s days were numbered. Many people thought on those lines and that was the time when the “no-fly zone” should have been enforced. Delayed action shows that the purpose is basically not to help the pro-democracy forces or to prevent the killing of innocent civilians by the Libyan government’s troops. But in seeking to fulfill its objectives, the US and its allies must tread warily. The lessons of intervention in Iraq must be duly learnt. India has rightly stated that military intervention should have been avoided and the problem settled through peaceful means. By abstaining from the UN Council vote India has been consistent in counseling caution in meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. While we must be sensitive to people’s concerns, prudent politics lies in taking account of our national interest, including the scenario on the oil front.
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Ills in the judiciary Former Chief Justice of India Justice J.S. Verma has rightly lamented the steady decline of the legal profession in the country. Speaking at a book release function in New Delhi the other day, he bemoaned the fact that while the lawyers are judged by the models of the cars they use, many judges are under a cloud and facing charges of corruption. He lamented that some lawyers have stooped to the level of “mercenaries”, charging an exorbitant fee of Rs one crore from every client. Clearly, the concept and purpose of justice will lose its meaning and value if litigants are exploited by lawyers in this manner. Unfortunately, senior lawyers do not follow any set standards while charging the fee from clients. The fee varies from lawyer to lawyer, depending upon his/her seniority and eminence. Sadly, despite amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code and the Civil Procedure Code, the lawyers take advantage of the loopholes in the law, seek adjournments and slow down the pace of justice so that they could squeeze the litigants. Though the judiciary as a whole is discharging a useful purpose, some of the ills that have crept in need to be ironed out. If the lawyers’ conduct vis-à-vis the litigants is in need of improvement, the judges too need to introspect. Increasing corruption charges against the judges have tarnished to some extent the fair name of the judiciary. To cite an example, the three-member Judges inquiry committee appointed by Vice President Hamid Ansari has now framed 16 charges against Justice P.D. Dinakaran, Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court. He was transferred from the Karnataka High Court after corruption charges were levelled against him. The problem with the judiciary is that there is no speedy institutional remedy available for the common man to bring errant judges to book. The removal of a judge by impeachment, which is mandated by the Constitution, is too slow and cumbersome. Even the Judges Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010, passed by the Rajya Sabha, does not guarantee speedy justice because of the typical bureaucratic mechanism it seeks to provide after legislative enactment. To purge the judiciary of malcontents and strengthen democracy, citizens’ complaints against judges need to be processed fast by making suitable changes in the three-tier committee system — the National Judicial Oversight Committee, the Scrutiny Committee and the Investigating Committee — as provided for in the proposed Bill.
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It’s raining sops!
IT
is unfortunate that election sops are being doled out indiscriminately
in Tamil Nadu, seeking to influence gullible voters unfairly and
thereby subverting the democratic spirit. Facing a formidable
challenge from AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalithaa and confronted with
allegations of a deep DMK role in the 2G spectrum allocation scam, the
ruling party in the state is trying to neutralize the people’s anger
with promises of sops to various sections. Electoral promises are
taken with more than a pinch of salt everywhere, but the DMK’s
promises carry somewhat more credibility because it has a record of
fulfilling many. As per the Government’s claims, since 2006, when
the DMK came to power, colour TV sets have been distributed free to
1.52 crore families at a cost of Rs 3,750 crore. Farm loans have been
waived at a cost of a whopping Rs 7,000 crore. A free gas connection
scheme has swallowed Rs 80 crore in one year.The total rice subsidy in
four years has touched an all-time high of Rs 3,750 crore. With the
model election code of conduct coming into force for the April 13
elections, the Election Commission has ordered stoppage of free
distribution of TV sets but the DMK is unfazed. From free grinders to
35 kg free rice every month for 16 lakh poor families, free bus passes
for senior citizens to free laptops for Dalit engineering students,
increase in old age pension to new insurance scheme for fishermen, the
DMK manifesto released on Saturday has offered sops to all. Chief
Minister Karunanidhi told reporters recently that if the party’s
2006 manifesto was termed as the hero of the last assembly elections,
this time it will be the heroine. Apart from the fact that the
spirit of democracy is being compromised, the effect of such electoral
largesse on the state’s finances is crippling. Tamil Nadu is paying
around Rs 8,300 crore as interest for the loans taken to fund the
freebies rolled out every year. As a result, the state’s total
liabilities have crossed Rs1 lakh crore. It is indeed time that a stop
be put to such blatant electoral allurements. |
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Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.— Martin Luther King
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New ideas in the Budget
IN the Union Budget for 2011-12, many new ideas based on greater reliance on the market have been introduced by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The poor will be asked to buy food at market prices from shops in the villages. According to the Finance Minister, ‘To ensure greater efficiency, cost effectiveness and better delivery for both kerosene and fertilisers, the government will move towards direct transfer of cash subsidy to people living below the poverty line in a phased manner.” Thus, cash handouts will be given to the poor who will directly buy their important needs from the market at market-determined prices. According to the government, all prices should be market determined and the government should not attempt to fix low prices for basic goods for the poor because it creates distortions. In other words, there should be no price control and, according to the last year’s Economic Survey in which the idea of giving coupons instead of subsidised food to the poor was mooted, “setting the price of a commodity becomes a matter of politics and lobbying and adds to the distortions.” The government is trying to get out of the business of public distribution because it cannot do so efficiently and effectively. It wants to reduce the increasing burden of subsidy and is going for coupons and cash handouts and leaving it to the poor to buy from the market like everyone else. Subsidies have already been reduced in this year’s Budget by Rs 20,000 crore which will be much lauded by the World Bank. It is entirely true that the public distribution system (PDS) has got many leakages which are hard to plug and around 40 to 55 per cent of the goods meant for the poor are sold in the open market through back channels and corrupt agents. It is also true that foodgrains are not always available in ration/PDS shops and when the poor go to buy them, they are often told that the supplies have not arrived or they find the shops shut. After making long journeys to shops, the poor often give up and buy from the open market at higher prices than the PDS shops. The idea is to replace the whole system of PDS with smart cards based on unique identification of the poor that will enable them to access food with coupons by which any person below the poverty line will get the requisite amount of foodgrains. It will ensure that the food that the below poverty line person will buy is not adulterated because when the poor buy from shops at market prices, it will act as a disincentive for the shopkeepers to sell adulterated foodgrains . The shop owners can cash the coupons received from the poor at any local bank. What about the family head when he gets cash in hand for buying kerosene or fertilisers? Is he not going to be tempted to buy liquor, tobacco and drugs or use it to pay back some urgent outstanding loan? If women are given the money, there is greater assurance of it going for fuel and fertilisers. She would feel responsible for it but often women are weak and disempowered and are forced by the men in the family to spend money for other urgent needs instead. In a country like India where there is rampant malnourishment among children and anaemia among women, and 45 per cent of the children below five are malnourished, why is the government not taking the responsibility of reaching subsidised foodgrains to the poor? It is their entitlement after all to have basic goods delivered to them. But the government is of the view that if the direct cash and coupon subsidy to the poor has worked in Latin American countries, it should work in India too. There is, however, no guarantee that it would work in India where the social structure and the level of deprivation is very different. Why can’t the government control corruption in the diversion of kerosene and foodgrains in the open market? Also when the Food Security Bill goes through, what will be the mode of operation of the government to fulfil its obligation to give cheap food to the poor? A scheme for monitoring the trucks carrying kerosene through GPS-based vehicular tracking system is being contemplated by Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy for avoiding the diversion of kerosene for adulteration purposes and if it is successful, similar schemes could be tried for the distribution of foodgrains. Another area for which the government is betting on more private participation is infrastructure which is the main bottleneck for higher growth rate and more equitable distribution of incomes. Many parts of rural India are not connected to towns with proper roads and this isolation leads to the perpetuation of poverty. Since over the next five years (of 12th Plan) the infrastructure requirement will run into over $1000 billion, the government is hoping that at least 50 per cent of it will come from private domestic investors and foreign investors. The government has opened the sector to foreign investment further in the recent Budget and has increased the limit of FIIs (Foreign Institutional Investors) for investment in infrastructure in corporate bonds from $20 billion to $25 billion. This will raise the total limit available to the FIIs for investment in corporate bonds to $40 billion. And since most of the infrastructure companies are organised in the form of SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles), FIIs would be permitted to invest in unlisted bonds with a minimum lock- in period of three years. However, the FIIs will be allowed to trade among themselves during the lock-in period. Also tax-free bonds of Rs 30,000 crore have been proposed to be issued by the government undertakings during 2011-12 for infrastructure development. Perhaps this greater private participation is a good thing, and raising FII limit in infrastructure bonds will attract more foreign investors. But then the government has to ensure that rural roads are constructed and not just “state of the art” modern highways only. The interests of the rural people have to be protected and though the private sector will remain important, the government has to regulate and monitor its participation so that proper direction can be given to these investments. So far in the area of infrastructure the public- private partnership model has not worked all that well with big cost and time overruns because of the problem of slow bureaucratic clearances. If foreign investment is to be encouraged many more glitches will have to be sorted out before foreign investors come to India in a big way to invest in Indian
infrastructure.
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Indian Holi, US soil
NOT part of the festival of colours all those two and a half decades of life I spent in the land of Krishna (it’s a festival of miscreants, my father would warn), I couldn’t resist the offer to be part of Holi celebrations while on Fulbright scholarship at Stanford. The two celebrations, one on the most beautiful campus in the world and another on the beach of Santa Cruz, left me mesmerised. The first one, organised by the Stanford India Association, had gulal, hosepipes to spray water around, samosas, bhang and loud music. Dancing on Rang Barse in a mixed crowd (as many Asians as Caucasians) drenched in colours is one of the favourite memories of the lifetime. The best was the traditional Stanford fountain hopping that left the clear waters coloured and hundreds of pictures of us against the Claw and the Waterclock Fountains that were duly uploaded on Facebook within minutes of the party getting over. The second one was more adventurous. This entailed an early morning road trip with a few friends from Palo Alto to Santa Cruz. The winding road makes me go deaf, said the driver. Compatriots that we were, we all underwent partial deafness on that winding patch. A desi group that studied at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) waited in the city downtown with all the stuff. Bhang milk or lassi, whatever it would qualify for, was packed, the rest poured in glasses and the journey towards the campus started. Loud music attracted a stern look from the cops, which made us all at once hide the glasses under the seats. Holi was played with a frenzied game of frisbee in the UCSC. Drenched in colour, the friend who drove from Palo Alto refused to drive down unless we (including him) washed. So we had to take the school shuttle to downtown. The strange glares that we received from the students who refused to board the bus with a joker group that sported all colours of the rainbow made us rush to the shore to try to bathe off the colours at the tap. Not enough! It was then that someone from the motley crowd suggested playing frisbee. Santa Cruz hosts’ refusal to let us enter his pad without washing off the colours made us take a plunge in the icy waters of the Pacific. As we spread ourselves on the beach, queries poured in as to what made us so colourful. Quickly going over the story of Holika, each one of us satiated queries of curious Americans. Pizza after the invigorating session was probably the only time in my yearlong stay that I enjoyed Dominos, while I preferred New York the rest of the year around. Another winding journey back to uptown Palo Alto brimming with the feeling of brotherhood on foreign soil — a Happy Holi
indeed.
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The literary face of Bhagat Singh BHAGAT Singh is a legend and as it happens to all legends, innumerable stories have been built up around his life and his exploits over the years, some of them historically verifiable but many others which are acrophylic. Amongst this second category, I have two personal favourites.
One of the strongest influences on Bhagat Singh during his early years was his grandfather, Arjun Singh. Sometimes during his early years, Arjun Singh said something to the boy which was to remain with him throughout his life: “What you learn at school is important because it will help you to get on with your life. But it is what you learn for yourself, from books other than your textbooks, from the lives and experiences of others, that learning will help you to live a life worth living.” — or words to that effect. Perhaps this is what motivated him to become an avid reader from his earliest years in school and pick up an early familiarity not only with the lives of all the well-known revolutionaries of the world but also with the history of all the revolutionary movements of the world. The other story is about an incident that happened shortly before he left to join school in Lahore. One dull morning the teacher took time off from his formal teaching to ask each of the boys what they would like to do with their lives. The boys mentioned the professions that they would like to follow. When Bhagat Singh’s turn came he said he did not know what profession he would like to follow. But whatever it was that he decided to do it would have to be for the welfare of his people and for the good of his country. Bhagat Singh was only 12 at the time and if the story is true, he had already set the course for his life. And this course had come from the assimilation of his reading. His love for reading remained with him all throughout his short life because again and again in accounts of his life by his contemporaries and in references to him in their autobiographies we are told that wherever he went, he carried a veritable travelling library with him. Chabil Das, who taught him English at National College and was later to become the Principal, had this to say about Bhagat Singh: “I can say with confidence that he enjoyed his studies. He greatly enjoyed reading. Whenever the name of a book was mentioned, he wanted to read it at once. Although Bhagat Singh had read numerous books on history, I still remember the book he liked the best: Cry for Justice. He had marked many portions of this book with a red pencil. This shows how strong was his desire to fight against injustice.” (Meri Inquilabi Yatra,1985). This was to be the method that he adopted to all his reading. He would underline the parts that appealed to him and even make notes of what he had read. It was as complete an assimilation of his reading as it was possible for anyone to achieve.” We know for a fact that he was, during his days at the college, perhaps the most frequent visitor at Dwarka Das Library. The library was, at the time famous for its tremendous collection of books on history, political science and social sciences. The library had also become a repository for revolutionary books, journals and magazines. It is a pity that though contemporary accounts all agree that he was an avid reader and that books were his constant companions, there is no reference to the books that he read. For this we have to wait for his final internment for what has come to be referred to as The Jail Notebook. K. C. Yadav, one of the editors who prepared these notes for publication, tells us that the notebook was bound in red cloth and was beautiful to look at. It had 404 pages of about 21cm by 16 cm size, tied together with a long thread. The pages must originally have been white in colour, were of a very good quality and texture, and weighed 90 gm. With the passage of time, the pages had turned a beautiful antique cream into colour. Each page was stamped with the page number on the top right-hand corner in black. An entry on the page one of the notebook tells us that the book was handed over to Bhagat Singh by the jail authorities on September 12, 1929. Barring four couplets in Urdu, all the entries are in English. The pen used is obviously a very good fountain pen, probably made available to him through the generosity of Chattar Singh. The handwriting is careful and neat and easy to read. The notebook contains short entries from most of the books that Bhagat Singh read during this time in prison. Obviously, these were points that he was impressed by and felt were worth recording. These quotations confirm what we already know of Bhagat Singh’s character. He had an enquiring mind and always wanted to learn. He devoured books with an insatiable appetite, especially those books that he thought could help to solve the many problems that the country faced. The listings in his notebook not only reveal an extremely wide and broad range of interests but also his special bent of mind. There are, among others, passages in the notebook from Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Trotsky, Bertrand Russell, Karl Marx, Engels, Lajpat Rai, Socrates, Victor Hugo, John Bodin, Thomas Aquinas, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, J. S. Mill, Spinoza, Karl Kautsy, Dostoevsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Lenin, Valentine Chirol, and Upton Sinclair. He was also very fond of poetry because the notebook contains extracts from Rabindranath Tagore, Byron, Tennyson, Omar Khayyam, and Arthur Clough. The notebook consists of four parts, each part devoted to a particular theme. There are blank pages at the end of each part, obviously leaving provision for extracts from future readings in that particular subject. There is a deep poignancy to these blank pages because one cannot help feeling a churning of the heart at the thought of what words would have filled these pages if Bhagat Singh had lived. We can see from the notes that Bhagat Singh was attempting to understand the struggle that had waged from time to time and the theories and strategies of social evolution that had been propounded over the years in an effort to make the world a better place to live in. He also seems to be attempting to understand in simple terms, the reality, meaning, and purpose of life. Having read this notebook, it is easy to understand why Bhagat Singh occupies such a unique position amongst all Indian revolutionaries. Because of his firm grounding in all the revolutionary literature that he had read, Bhagat Singh had some clear and firm tenets in the political philosophy which set him apart from other revolutionaries. He believed that political freedom from the Imperialistic rule of the British would be fruitless if it was not accompanied with economic freedom. India would never be really free if it did not become totally free of the exploitation of man by man. He believed that the struggle for freedom would not have a meaningful if it was limited only to the intellectual middle classes. And that was why his efforts were directed towards making the struggle a struggle at the grassroots of the masses. His speeches, his writings in journals and the pamphlets that he wrote and distributed at public places were all geared into educating the masses that this struggle was their struggle. He realised early that splinter revolutionary group would never be able to achieve very much on their own and that is why he attempted to bring them all together under one umbrella group when he organised the convention of all revolutionary groups from September 8 to September 9, 1928, at the Ferozshah Kotla grounds. He understood the need of publicity for all the efforts of the revolutionary forces and he looked for any opportunity that would provide a platform for suitable propaganda. Looked at from this perspective, his trial itself was one big propaganda event for the revolutionaries. His love and his understanding of the importance of reading remained with him till the very end. It was the day of Bhagat Singh’s execution. The friendly warden Chatar Singh, who had been responsible for facilitating the provision of numerous books to his favourite inmate, found himself thrust into the very unwelcome role of being one of the party that would escort the prisoners from their cells to be prepared for the hanging. He stood outside Bhagat Singhs’ cell, his bunch of keys rattling in his trembling hands, as he fumbled to find the right key. Bhagat Singh looked up from his reading and with that same warm smile on his face, turned to his warden and asked: “Will it be possible for you to wait a few minutes? It would be very kind of you to let me finish this chapter, I have only a few pages left.” Charat Singh glanced at the other members of the party and seeing confirmation in their eyes, turned to Bhagat Singh again. He was too overcome in the face of such overwhelming equanimity to trust himself to speak. He nodded his head in the affirmative. Bhagat Singh went back to his reading while the escort party stood outside the cell door waiting for him to finish. They waited in silence but they all felt a growing disquiet, a growing sense of discomfort in the face of such supreme courage. As he had promised, there were only a few pages left and he was indeed done in a few minutes. He turned the corner of the last page down as a marker, closed his book, put it aside and got to his feet. “Let’s go,” he said, walking to the cell door, and with his back held straight and a spring in his stride walked bravely to his death. The writer, a noted educationist, is currently working on a book on Bhagat Singh It was the day of Bhagat Singh’s execution. Bhagat Singh looked up from his reading and with that same warm smile on his face, turned to his warden and asked: “Will it be possible for you to wait a few minutes? It would be very kind of you to let me finish this chapter, I have only a few pages left.” The warden nodded his head in the affirmative. Bhagat Singh went back to his reading. As he had promised, there were only a few pages left …
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