The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Jagan strikes back
MLAs’ resignation ups the ante

The resignation by MLAs and MPs loyal to YSR Congress Party president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy does not pose any immediate threat to the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh but still puts it in a precarious position where it will have to be at the mercy of supporting outfits and Independents. Not only that, the step may encourage the backers of Telangana to do something equally dramatic. That can put the N. Kiran Kumar Reddy government in big trouble. The MLAs and MPs have announced their resignation in protest against the CBI naming former Chief Minister late YS Rajasekhar Reddy as one of the accused in the disproportionate assets case. The Jagan backers have tried to project it as mudslinging and witchhunt.

The CBI has filed the FIR on the orders of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, but its credibility is so low that even this move is being seen as a Congress attempt to browbeat Jagan Reddy. One factor that goes in favour of the Chief Minister is that the Telugu Desam Party might tacitly support him because Chandrababu Naidu sees a bigger threat in Jagan than Kiran. Even otherwise, not many would like to protest against action in a corruption case at a time when Anna Hazare is the flavour of the season.

Still, it may not be easy to convince the public that the CBI action has been initiated purely on merit and does not smack of political vendetta. As long as only Kadapa MP Jagan Reddy was in the firing line of the government, things were manageable. But now that his late father YSR has also been targeted, the battle will turn more political than legal. It is thanks to his charismatic personality that so many MLAs have heeded his son’s call. If the number of resignations crosses the 30 mark in the next few days, that may precipitate an end game for the Congress, which had found its moorings in Andhra Pradesh mainly due to YSR.

Deadly force multiplier
Need for caution in deploying snipers

Too many times in the recent past we have come across news about para-military forces engaged in anti-Naxal operations being fired upon and practically decimated. Jawans and officers from the CRPF, which has been carrying out such operations in the country, have often returned fire, but have not been effective in thwarting the attacks. Giving additional training to CRPF jawans in operating weapons, and in improving their tactics, is a long-overdue step, and something that should have been done a long time ago.

CRPF’s recent move to train and deploy an elite squad of snipers for the first time will no doubt add much to its muscle. It may also provide it with the edge that it needs to tackle the menace of Naxal attacks which have been inflicting heavy causalities on security forces. Snipers are expected to provide detailed reconnaissance from a concealed position and also to strike at high-value targets. However, the primary role of snipers is a military one. In a terrain where the “enemy” is not visibly different from civilians, utmost caution would have to be used, lest innocent lives are lost in the process. CRPF commanders, given the internal security nature of their duties, will have to ensure that they deploy such personnel after careful consideration.

It has sometimes been pointed out that many of the jawans of the paramilitary forces do not have the requisite training in the use of firearm and in tactics. Even those who have been trained are not given the field practice which is necessary for them to maintain full efficiency. Cherry-picking some jawans and giving them specialised training should not be allowed to eclipse the real need of imparting proper training and giving good equipment to the para-military forces, including the CRPF. Only if the jawans are well-equipped and well-trained will they be able to acquit themselves well on the field.

Thought for the Day

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm. — Benjamin Disraeli

ARTICLE

China’s Inner Asia problem
No plural vision for nation building
by Zorawar Daulet Singh and Sushant Sareen

It is ironical that just as analysts have begun to anxiously debate China’s maritime ambitions, old continental questions have resurfaced. The recent violence in Xinjiang, which claimed two dozen lives in Kashgar, has once again exposed the inter-ethnic contradictions that bedevil Chinese stability in Inner Asia. A rebellion in the provincial capital of Urumqi, two years ago, had resulted in 200 deaths. This time the interrogation of a militant captured by the Chinese authorities revealed that the militants received training in Al-Qaida camps in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

For the past decade, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) has been known to have a radical anti-Han agenda in Xinjiang. The ETIM’s modest capabilities, however, have prevented it from being more than a nuisance value for Beijing. According to one Indian estimate, the total strength of the ETIM is below 200 insurgents who are technologically and tactically ill-equipped to cause mayhem and terror on a scale that has been demonstrated by the Taliban or the Lashkar-e-Toiba in recent years. The more enduring issue seems to be an unresolved inter-ethnic discord that has been exacerbated by China’s brash style of nation building with cross-border terror probably adding a marginal variable into an indigenous problem.

Xinjiang (literally “new frontiers”) has only been a province of China since 1884, after being annexed a century earlier during the Qing dynasty. After the collapse of Qing central authority in 1911, Xinjiang reverted to warlordism with Soviet Russia emerging as the decisive political-military arbiter in the 1930s and 1940s. Communist China’s victory in 1949 and its alliance with the Soviet Union helped China regain sway over its two prized buffers — Xinjiang and Tibet.

The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking people concentrated in southwestern Xinjiang, and are ethno-culturally closer to peoples across Central Asia than the Hans who comprise over 90 per cent of China’s population. From 6 per cent of Xinjiang’s population in 1949, Han Chinese have risen to 40 per cent, dominating the urbanised and industrialised north. Concentrated mainly in the poorer agricultural south, Uighurs account for 8 million of Xinjiang’s 17 million inhabitants. Despite a large migration of Hans and the deployment of generous central resources for providing privileges to urban Hans, Beijing has been unable to subdue its minority ethnic groups.

Perhaps the problem lies in Han China’s inability to construct a plural vision for nation building that can create a stable accommodation between its different ethnicities. A colonial impulse or “Han chauvinism” has prevented Beijing from effectively integrating its periphery and establishing stability and order that define great powers. The persisting resistance among China’s minorities to Han culture raises questions about the ability of Chinese nationalism to absorb ethnicities when compared to Russian nationalism or India’s non-coercive cultural assimilation of its diverse population.

For instance, the Russians successfully wielded power, culture and language to integrate their multi-ethnic empire. And despite its collapse, the post-Soviet geopolitical space is once again being formed around the Slavic Russian core. In contrast, the Chinese have been unable to create a similar legitimacy in their non-Han periphery. Since 1949, China has colonised but failed to integrate Xinjiang and Tibet, which can only come from a normative socialisation, while simultaneously allowing different ethnicities to retain a modicum of their identity. Communist China’s assimilation drive has been coercive and impatient in its attitude.

An exclusivist Han self-image can be partially explained by China’s tumultuous history. The disintegration of the Mongol Empire in the fourteenth century posed a challenge to the transnational economic and cultural interactions across Eurasia that were epitomised by the Silk Route, which traversed through Xinjiang. The response of the new indigenous Ming dynasty (1368-1644) in China was to turn isolationist by expanding the Great Wall. Ming China closed off the Silk Route, which had been actively encouraged by their Mongol predecessors - the Yuan dynasty of Kublai Khan. Having faced the brunt of Mongol rule, the Han’s distrust of foreign influences may have prevented China from attempting to integrate and respond better to the fragmentation of the Mongol empire, which had politically unified large areas across Eurasia, including China. China’s failure to stabilise its continental frontiers had huge historical implications. When the maritime Europeans arrived on their shores in the eighteenth century, the Chinese were too weak to respond.

While contemporary China’s challenges are different, continental instability and resistance to Sinicization in China’s non-Han buffer zones imply that Beijing is once again being confronted with the question of defining a geostrategy that can reconcile its diverse security dilemmas. It is not surprising that China’s spending on internal security exceeds its military budget: In 2010, China spent $84 billion on public security, exceeding its defence budget of $81 billion. While Eurasia’s other multiethnic states also confront complex challenges to nation building, one simply does not perceive a similar level of insecurity in Moscow or Delhi regarding frontier insurrections and backlash to the state the way the Chinese perceive.

Instability on its periphery implies China’s geostrategy will continue to evolve. Beijing’s dilemma has been of reconciling continental and maritime priorities as part of establishing multiple lines of communication (LOC) and energy corridors to sustain China’s rise. In fact, a Eurasian land corridor not dissimilar to the old Silk Route was projected as a logical substitute to maritime routes that remain overwhelmingly dominated by potentially uncooperative powers. Is a continental LOC viable, given the geopolitical flux both within and beyond China’s western frontiers? Can China sustain a more ambitious foreign policy with the attendant corollary of a large maritime commitment before it attains a threshold of continental stability?

What are the India-specific implications? To the extent that Pakistan-based terrorists are spilling over into Xinjiang only underscores India’s position that terrorism must be dealt with holistically. Given that terrorism in southern Eurasia emanates from a single source, why have China and India not cooperated on this issue? There are arguably two reasons. First, both have been free riding on American efforts to snuff out extremism in the AfPak region. Second, China was outsourcing its concern to the source of the problem — Pakistan! Both these assumptions are being called into question.

Further, a Han-Uighur problem can gradually become a China-India problem if Beijing deals with the issue in a narrow-sighted manner such as expanding its security perimeter around its periphery - seeking a buffer beyond a buffer, especially in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Historically, India has borne the brunt of the China-Tibet dispute with 1962 as an extreme manifestation of this. India must guard against an insecure Beijing and any geopolitical spillover into the sub-Himalayan space.

The last thing both countries need is to sleep-walk into a conflict. Despite their contradictions, the geopolitical reality is that China and India have a “shared neighbourhood” and yet have been attempting to stabilise it in a zero-sum fashion. Can such an approach ever produce security?n

Zorawar Daulet Singh is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Alternatives and Sushant Sareen is a Senior Fellow at the Vivekananda Foundation.

MIDDLE

Teacher, teach thyself
by Sumangal Roy

If we had a mirror like Snowwhite’s mother, we could ask: “Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the best teacher of them all?” And what would it tell? The best teacher is the one who ignites the lamp and does not fill the bucket or the one who not only tells, teaches and demonstrates but also inspires. Blah, blah, blah…. A casual search on the net for quotations praising teachers yields around eight lakh entries, many of them highlighting the characters of good teachers. But all of them are defunct today.

The other day, a teacher was ruing about the uncooperative behaviour of her colleague: “Whenever you put him on examination duty he is sure to catch the cheaters and make unfair means cases against them. I will never put him on exam duty in future”. Oh! What a bad teacher! This poor person is not even aware of the basic prerequisites of a good teacher –never to stop a student from wrongdoing!

One teacher got a beating because he tried to teach his students the basics of Indian aesthetics. Another had to lose his job because he wanted the students to dress up in a student-like manner different from a ramp show.

We are today facing increasing incidents of students armtwisting their way to high scores, full attendance, time tables with their favourite teachers, unfair means in exams and many other perks of being ‘students’. The appeasement of the students has become the preferred path of the authorities, teachers and parents alike.

So the mirror today would declare something like this: “The best teacher is the one who marks the students present in the class even when they prefer to be in the natural environment of the open air café, one who would turn a blind eye when the students are using unfair means in the examination, one who would never attempt the folly to teach the students but will hand them ready-to-regurgitate notes. And pity on a teacher who dares to gift the student a leaf or two of the book of ethics. She is the worst of all!”

OPED LAW

A rethink has been initiated for Section 498 A of IPC by the Law Commission of India’s ‘Consultation paper-cum-Questionnaire.’ The law meant to protect married women from the abuse of dowry and cruelty has been misused by some women.
Rethink on ‘Legal terrorism’
Virendra Kumar

What is 498 A— Section 498A was introduced into IPC by the Criminal Law (Second Amendment) Act, 1983 to prevent cruelty to a woman by her husband or his relatives that was reportedly rampant. In order to make the impact of this section deterrent in nature, the crime was made punishable with imprisonment which may extend to three years and also liable to fine.

A rethink on 498 A— After witnessing an unprecedented hue and cry over the use and misuse of Section 498 A, The Law Commission of India has come out with a document, “Consultation Paper-cum-Questionnaire regarding Section 498A of Indian Penal Code (IPC),” at the initiative of the Supreme Court through the Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India to elicit ‘informed public opinion.’

In scores of cases across India, the courts have witnessed misuse of section 498 A, while deciding disputes of domestic nature. The law, designed to help women regain social and economic empowerment in a highly patriarchal society, has been misused in several cases, as is observed even by the apex court. As was in the case of Preeti Gupta v. State of Jharkhand ( 2010) and Sushil Kumar Sharma v. UOI (2005), where not only the husband but all his immediate relations were implicated under false charges. Such acts of ‘over-implication,’ are often resorted with the sole motive to wreck personal vendetta, unleashing a sort of ‘new legal terrorism.’

What should be done to rein this tendency of ‘abuse’, ‘over-reach’ or ‘over-implication’, which of course cannot be the justifiable purpose of criminal law? To find a solution, The Law Commission in its consultation-paper has crystallised at least two different views. One view, which finds support from the observations of the apex court and also the recommendations of Malimath Committee’s report on Reforms of Criminal Justice System, is in favour of ‘relieving the rigour’ of section 498A of IPC by making the offence under the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) as compoundable and bailable instead of non-compoundable and non-bailable.

The other opposite view echoed, inter alia, by the Ministry of Women and Child Development is in favour of maintaining the status quo. In their view, the provisions of section 498A of IPC have been specifically enacted to protect vulnerable married women, who are the victims of cruelty and harassment at the hands of their husbands and their close relatives.

The consultation paper also brings to the fore a third view with some variants, which seem to cut across the two extreme positions as mentioned above. One variation is that the offence under section 498A of IPC should be made ‘compoundable’ with the permission of the court, as has been done by the State of Andhra Pradesh. However, there is sharp difference of opinions on the second variant, namely, whether the offence under this section should also be made ‘bailable’, at least with regard to husband’s relations.

Moreover, while the Commission is appreciative of the need to discourage unjustified and frivolous complaints, ‘it is not inclined to take a view that dilutes the efficacy of s. 498A to the extent of defeating its purpose- to protect women against atrocities.

However, having adopted this clear stance, the Commission has hastened to add : ‘A balanced and holistic view has to be taken on weighing the pros and cons. There is no doubt a need to address the misuse situations and arrive at a rational solution – legislative or otherwise.’

The Commission is in search of a ‘rational solution – legislative or otherwise’ through its questionnaire. It has suggested that there is a dire need to create awareness about the penal provisions of the section amongst the poor and hapless rural women ‘who face quite often the problems of drunken misbehaviour,’ by having ‘easy access’ to the Taluka and District level Legal Services Authorities and/or credible NGOs. The Commission has also reminded the lawyers and the police, what is expected of them ‘morally and legally.’

Perhaps the more pragmatic point that the Law Commission has made relates to the linkage of section 498A of IPC with the provisions of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005. Such a linkage is evident at least in two respects. Firstly, in the exposition of ‘domestic violence’ under section 3 of the Act that encompasses the situation set out in the definition of cruelty under section 498A of the Code. This implies that there exists commonality of objective between the Code and the Act in terms of providing protection to married women from ‘domestic violence’ or ‘cruelty’.

Secondly, there is also a ‘functional-linkage’ as is found in the provisions of the Act itself that makes the Magistrate play pivotal role in protecting the married women.

The critical question still remains to be answered is, how to prevent the abuse of section 498A without diluting its deterrent effect? To answer this central issue, we need to remind ourselves that women seek defence outside home only under duress, and the protective umbrella of section 498A offers it.

The problem is essentially civil in nature and, therefore, is required to be handled by the civil court under the cognate provisions of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, and not by the criminal court under penal provisions of section 498A. This would enable the civil court to sort out matters of over-reach and over-implications with the added advantage of exploring the possibility of matrimonial reconciliation.

In the event, the Magistrate decides that a particular case falls in the realm of criminal law without the possibility of resuscitating the matrimonial relationship, he may pass an appropriate order for its trial by the criminal court.

The writer is Director (Academics), Chandigarh Judicial Academy, Chandigarh.

Law with a double edge
If greed is to be treated under a criminal law, it should be understood that it is not monopolised by the groom’s family alone.
Vandana Shukla

By Jan 2010, one lakh and twenty five thousand cases were registered under 498-A and domestic violence act in three states of Punjab, Haryana and HP. These cases should have been cleared within six months, under the directive of the Supreme Court. Instead, some of the cases have been lingering for 12 to 16 years, since the arrests made under 498A are non- bailable. Those who lack resources to get legal aid remain locked in jail for years. Most of these victims are senior citizens. “ Why is it that the older women and men are nowhere on government’s agenda, neither the law enforcers nor the judiciary listens to us ?” ask Kiran Sharda ( 61) retired chief engineer, BBMB( Bhakhra Beas Management Board), and his wife Pinky Sharda ( 55), who spent their meagre savings paying EMI for their sole flat in Gurgaon, which was claimed by their daughter in law within three years of her marriage. She slapped 9 sections against them and they were arrested like ordinary criminals. Incidentally, it was a love marriage and she never lived with her in-laws. Shardas are now staying in a rented house, contesting a legal battle, they find mindless. And, they are not alone.

The irony of this law was exposed by an interesting case when the chief judicial magistrate of Noida ordered to book a woman, Natasha Jayal, a call centre employee, and her parents for giving dowry under section 3 of Dowry Prohibition Act, in 2008. The action was taken on her husband Namit Juyal’s complaint, who, harassed by his wife’s complaint of dowry harassment case which claimed that her parents paid Rs 10 lakh in dowry to Namit. He was arrested and jailed as per law. Under RTI he demanded to know under what section he had been jailed. When he learnt that on a mere verbal complaint of Natasha, without any investigation he had been arrested, his lawyer slapped the very same section against Natasha’s family- for giving dowry. He also demanded investigation as to how her father could give money that was beyond his means. Under section 3 of DPA, giving and taking dowry, both are criminal offence.

The government had also created the institution of Dowry Prohibition Officers, to prevent giving or taking of dowry, but in several states not a single case has ever been reported by DPOs, while cases under 498 A have grown phenomenally. Also, the conviction rate in dowry cases remains 4 to 5 %, a National Family and Health Survey shows that only 2% distressed women seek institutional intervention, putting a serious question mark on the law and the manner of its implementation. One wonders why institution like DPO was not strengthened!

To seek justice, victimized families of 498 A have come under one umbrella to voice their plight— Save Indian Family Foundation ( SIFF) and All India Mothers in Law Protection Forum ( AIMPF) came into being to protect the interest of thousands of accused and arrested men and their family members by providing them legal help, since most victims could not interpret the law, while many accused had not even ‘heard of’ 498 A till they found themselves behind bars.

Scores of cases have come to light where the greed for ‘quick money’ has lured young women to slap false cases against the in -laws, whose life-long earnings and savings are claimed by the bride and her family. At the same time , women are victimised in a patriarchal system. The law is double-edged and needs a re-think. Or, should be used with utmost care.