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Stuck at the red light
Right to learning
Deter gang rapes |
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The horrors of Gujarat
Shave off to show off!
Managing the economy
Army Act needs to be reviewed
LeT remains a major threat to peace
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Stuck at the red light IT is rare to sight a railway minister in this part of the country – West Bengal and Bihar being their favourite haunts. Even if he chose to fly, Mr Dinesh Trivedi did land in Chandigarh on Sunday, and to the surprise of many, at Sirhind as well. Inspections and assurances of safety are alright, what people in this region want to know from Mr Trivedi is: How long will it take the Railway Ministry to complete the ongoing railway projects in Punjab? The ministry, for instance, has not been able to provide a rail link between Chandigarh and Ludhiana for the past 20 years. The Amritsar-Chandigarh Duronto train did finally start last year, but it remains one of the slowest. Allegations are that private bus transporters do not want trains to cut into their business. To be fair, project delays and cost-overruns are not confined to the North. According to the 36th report of the parliamentary standing committee of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation tabled in Parliament in August last year, 147 projects involving an investment of Rs 1,26,174 crore are pending. In project delays the Railways has the dubious distinction of topping the Central ministries. The longest pending is the Howrah-Amta-Champadanga rail line, which was announced in the 1974-75 budget. Soon after taking charge in July last year, Railway Minister Trivedi assured journalists that early completion of projects would be his top priority. The result is yet to be seen. Shortage of funds is often cited as a reason. Successive railway ministers have not hiked train fares. Railway land and property have not been commercially exploited. The Sam Pitroda committee has calculated that the Railways needs Rs 9 lakh crore for modernisation in the next five years and 30 per cent of it should be budgetary support. The coming budget will show how much the Finance Minister can spare and how much the Railway Minister raises through his own efforts. Populism and politics have ruined the Railways.
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Right to learning THE reservation of 25 per cent seats in private schools for children from economically weaker sections was a major instrument available to the state governments towards implementing the Right to Education Act. However, few states have been able to reach a settlement with private schools regarding the compensation for that. Even if this provision is implemented, the fact remains that the benefit would only be limited, as mostly it is the urban poor that will gain. The vast majority of rural poor will still be subjected to the abysmal standards of education in government schools, or budget private schools that provide marginally better education. The Act requires private schools also to shape up, but the problem with the ‘budget schools’ is that they can’t afford to. Shutting them would amount to removing the ‘marginally better’ option. Therein lies the importance of improving the standard of education in government schools. In the two years of the Act, funds have been provided by the Centre to the states through the pre-existing Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to increase the number of schools, hire more teachers, and provide basic infrastructure such as classrooms. A lot has been achieved. The teacher-student ratio is up, and so is the enrolment in schools. But the trouble remains with what happens in the class. Attendance is poor for both teacher and student. In the absence of any formal assessment system, there is little effective monitoring of what the teacher does. As the Centre provides funds under the SSA, it must conduct an audit of the quality of education being delivered, and leverage the purse strings to force states to improve. The operative word in the Act is ‘education’. Let it not be reduced to mere literacy. As The Tribune reports on Monday revealed, many of the basics such as teachers are now in place in Punjab, but other requirements such as furniture, libraries and laboratories are a far cry. For equipping students for today’s world, all that is required. As government schools — unfortunately — set the minimum
standards, let the bar rise.
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Deter gang rapes SINCE the Supreme Court has ruled out capital punishment for rape, in a recent verdict the apex court set aside a judgment by the Allahabad high court that upheld the death- sentence to a teenager, Amit, who raped and murdered a 13-year-old school going girl seven years ago. The law making and law enforcing agencies will have to think of effective laws, other than capital punishment, to instil confidence in the public against the growing ghastliness of the crime. This should be something that can set an example, and, they must do it fast, because the laxity of law and delay in its enforcement is emboldening rapists as never before. Unfortunately, if a woman is not safe in a bar in upscale Park Street area of Kolkata, her poor counterparts in Burdwan and East Midnapur- a rag picker and a vegetable vendor - are equally vulnerable. So was a teen- aged girl from Noida, who was gang raped by five men in a car, on the outskirts of the national capital. All five of them are educated, middle class men. What is shocking about these cases is the growing cruelty towards the rape victims and the bravado of the rapists. If extreme cruelty in a murder case earns the distinction of rarest of the rare category of crime to deserve capital punishment, why is it that gang rape of a woman and rape and murder do not qualify to be rarest of the rare category of crime? To top it, when top politicians begin to raise doubts about the antecedents of rape victims in public, or, escape responsibility by blaming the opposition for inciting such crimes, it emboldens the rapists. The cheap political device of feeding obsolete patriarchal beliefs, which always raise fingers at a woman’s character when she becomes a victim of rape, has as such resulted in only one in ten women ever reporting rape to the police. To top it, an insensitive police and poor conviction rates have further added to the rise in crime graph. It’s high time exemplary punishment was awarded to rapists to check their growing audacity and let women have trust in the efficacy of law.
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Where there is love there is life. — Mahatma Gandhi
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The horrors of Gujarat
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AM worried that the G.T. Nanavati-headed commission on Gujarat killings may not repeat what the Special Investigation Team (SIT) did. It has reportedly given a clean chit to Chief Minister Narendra Modi. I have seen how Justice Nanavati evaded naming the person behind the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi after reconstructing an impartial account. When I met him after the report to pinpoint the person responsible, he shrugged his shoulders and said that everybody knew who he was. This is true but coming from him, as it did in black and white, would have made all the difference. The head of SIT, R.K. Raghavan, investigating 10 cases on the instruction of the Supreme Court, appears to have allowed his ideology to have the better of him, although he has been an outstanding police officer. Even the court has not commented on Modi although it had all the details before it. By sending to the trial court the case of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was burnt or butchered alive along with 69 other people at the Gulburg Society in Ahmedabad, the Supreme Court only passed on the buck. This is the same court which commented on Modi: Nero was fiddling when Rome was burning. The sort of report the SIT has submitted can be assessed from the evidence of two retired judges it has ignored. Both had interviewed the then Home Minister Haren Pandya, who was murdered because he had started speaking the truth. According to the two judges, P.B. Sawant, who was on the Supreme Court bench, and Justice H. Suresh of the Bombay High Court, Pandya told them that the Chief Minister had directed the police to give Hindus a free hand to vent their anger during the riots. Both judges were members of the People's Tribunal which held Modi guilty. That there is not a single FIR filed against the Chief Minister is not a plus point. He had created so much fear in the minds of victims that they dared not go to the police station, hardly safe for Muslims at that time. To incite the people, Modi also arranged to parade through Ahmedabad streets the 49 bodies of karsevaks who had been burnt on a train at Godhara while returning from a pilgrimage. This had dire repercussions. Even today Muslims in Gujarat generally confine themselves to their localities fearing that they may be attacked. They have not forgotten how some 2000 of their community were killed exactly 10 years ago (February 27-March 1, 2002) and how several thousands were ousted from their homes and lands. Some Muslims have tried to return, but have found that they are not welcome to their places where they and their forefathers had lived for ages. True, the horror of Gujarat has shaken the nation. Yet, no amount of condemnation by the public and the media has made Modi relent, much less force him to apologise. He has refused to say sorry and has gone about arranging the humbug of sadbhavana (goodwill) sittings at big cities of the state. Modi has a lot to hide. Specific instances of murders, when reconstructed or proved, pinpoint to the state's plot for ethnic cleansing. Brave police officers like Sanjay Bhatt have told the truth, even at the risk of annoying Modi who has unleashed his repressive, one-sided administration against Bhatt. He is suffering alone and even the Gujarat High Court has not come to his aid. Bhatt said in an affidavit that Modi instructed officers to let Hindus vent their anger on Muslims. Hats off to Teesta Sitalvad who has stood firm to expose Modi and his state police's acts of omission and commission. I endorse her walking out of a television programme when an anchor, ignorant of facts, was indulging in inquisition, not questioning. In the case of Sikhs, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi have offered their apologies for the 1984 riots. Modi and his party, BJP, have not done event that. In fact, he is the party's candidate for prime ministership for the general elections in 2014 and the BJP chief Nitin Gadkari does not stop praising him. Certain tragedies furrow so deep in minds that the passage of time does not lessen the pain or the anger when the perpetrators go scot-free. Massacres in Gujarat are as vivid in the nation's memory as if they happened only yesterday. The anti-Sikh riots in 1984 is another pogrom which brought back the horror over the killings the other day when a sentenced culprit was sought to be released after serving his life term of 16 years in jail. The Supreme Court has said in the case of Godse who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi that life sentence means the entire life of the convict. Why there is so much umbrage against the anti-Muslim and anti-Sikh riots even after years of their occurrence is not yet understood either by the BJP in the first case of Gujarat or by the Congress in the second case of Sikhs. The reason is that there is practically no action against those people who soiled their hands with blood. The BJP has saved them in Gujarat and the Congress in Delhi and elsewhere. Still worse, both parties do their best to protect the administrations which planned and executed the
riots.
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Shave off to show off! THE first time I heard of an electric shaver was when Neil Armstrong carried one to make the ‘giant leap’ in setting foot on the moon way back in 1969. A bigger wonder for me was that with none around to see or feel his clean-shaven face covered with a bulb-like thing, what for the ‘moon-struck’ astronaut needed the grating gadget? The modern-day stubble flaunting metro-sexual macho men, of course, were not appreciated then. I also wonder when in human history did the male of the species of homo-sapiens started shaving their faces although I read somewhere that the Chinese shaved their heads by placing a bunch of hair on a wooden anvil to be hammered to a fall . Information on the Internet unfolds interesting and bald facts about Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Mesopotamians and Indians using pumice stones, flints and razors for shaving. With modern-day creams, foams and gels taking the lead over the round-shaped soap-cake of the sixties vintage, around which a brush needed to be rotated-rubbed, with a little water added, to create froth to make it land on the face to soften the stubble so as to make the razor plough through it, shaving kits have changed a great deal for a clinical job. I was surprised when my son on a vacation to India refused to use my foam cylinder and instead asked for my cream-and-brush combo, saying that they have enough gels, froths, fizzes and foams in America. May be, change is the most desirable escape on a vacation. But to me going without a shave adds to the enduring laziness of a holiday. I recall a classmate who said she loved intently watching her father shaving his face as a delightful indulgence. Her liking this macho-motion absorbedly may speak of a father-fixation too. But the way a child keenly gazes at you while you are shaving and makes a curious face, twitching a muscle here and there, is the most lovable thing that shaving can create in others, besides cleansing one’s own mystified hairy spots. Till recently barbers were seen sharpening their razors burnishing them on a leather-strap hung in ready reach. No disposable shaving sticks were then available which graduated from one blade to three or four, supplemented and evolved suitably with a lubricating lining that would last the cutting-capability of a blade for a week or 10 days. There was a scene in “Haqeeqat”, a movie made after the Chinese aggression, showing soldiers lined up to first allow the crafty barber put swath on their faces in one swashing go, and later perform his job with his ustra, sweeping as if moping the left and right sides of the face, followed by one scratch of the chin. Mamraj Nayee of my village used only water to wet the stubble for he believed that soap, etc, was applied to mark the area to know if that portion had the ustra fall on the skin or not! Virus travelling from one person to another riding on the sharp edges of a blade or a razor may only be a recent discovery but eruptions on the face after a barber’s treat were appropriately called Barbery. Certain rich people in earlier times too had their independent barbers. Mesopotamians are known to have great respect for the barbers on a par with doctors and dignitaries. I wonder if I am the only one who makes a blade last as if for a life-time opposed to some filthy-rich people who might be using three blades to shave one time. Also I know people giving a second shave-helping to the face while going for an evening party. Some people grow hair and nails faster than the rest. No pun intended,
please.
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Managing the economy Given that this is his government’s last budget in this tenure — and he might even not be Prime Minister in June next year — the obvious question which comes to mind is: where were you these last four years, Mr Prime Minister? Why are you and your economic team after four previous budgets only now thinking of the provision of basic services, jobs for the youth and sustaining growth? And if the answer is, as is likely to be, and as the recent meeting with his economic team concluded, that the “budget must continue with the approach of preserving economic stability, checking inflation and creating jobs while protecting the vulnerable groups through social safety net programmes”, then we are in bigger trouble than many imagined. Continuing with any approach which this economic team has apparently been doing for four years is a really bad idea. What is needed is bold, imaginative and creative thinking, not a same-as-usual strategy. But, of course, it would be foolish to expect anything imaginative or creative in economic policy from this government or its economic team. One must give full marks to this government for achieving numerous critical milestones and for making some particularly important interventions in the political sphere. There is no doubt about the fact that the government has defended democracy and has also strengthened it far more than most people anticipated, although there have been some really ridiculous blunders and missed opportunities as well. Many of the extraordinary constitutional amendments usually passed unanimously are also major achievements. In terms of an evolving foreign policy, there are clear signs that this government is willing to take some more interesting and independent positions with regard to dealing with its neighbours and the US. Its policy changes towards India, both in terms of working for better relations and furthering peace after Mumbai 2008, are creditable achievements, especially the Most Favoured Nation status granted to India and the desire for more economic cooperation. Analysts and observers will cite other equally important achievements of this government. However, one area where there is considerable agreement is that this government really has had no economic policy during these last four years. And if it has, it has been hidden from the public eye altogether. Hence, continuing with whatever approach the team has for its last budget, sounds ominous. The absence of any clear thinking on economic issues has been the main weakness of this government. It has stumbled through four years, and while it deserves credit for managing to avoid any major economic crisis and catastrophe, it has shown little imagination and has not been particularly proactive. There are few achievements which come to mind with regard to economic policy these last few years. The Benazir Income Support Programme is one, but while there has been ample criticism of the programme and its philosophy; to be fair, there is insufficient evidence just as yet to either call it an abject failure or a success of any degree. The IMF programme which the government eagerly embraced ended before it was to be completed and, by some accounts, is considered a failure. Other than these and a few clearly defined policy interventions, policy outlines have been absent. The circumstances in which the government has managed to stay afloat are also creditable. Dealing with floods two years running, high oil and food prices causing considerable domestic inflation and a security environment not at all conducive to growth and stability are also major achievements. But this is crisis management, not proactive economic policy. The last four years show that it is crisis management which has become this government’s economic policy. What on earth will the government do in the absence of crises, when things stabilise, as trends suggest? With elections to be held before the budget after this one next year in June, one can expect lots of voter-friendly goods being thrown in, although the longer-term costs, especially for the next government (which might well be the same one), will be high. Most governments resort to such strategies in an election year, and believe that they will sort out the mess once re-elected. However, unlike this government, most governments have plans, policies and strategies, where such over-spend is factored in, and can be adequately dealt with later. In the last four years, this government has only been able to deal with crises, some even of its own making, such as the inability and unwillingness to raise revenue resulting in a growing fiscal deficit. If re-elected, despite the need for a more proactive strategy at this time, for higher growth and job creation and revenue generation, as well as sufficient interventions in infrastructure and social sectors, one should expect only more of the
same. The writer is a political economist. By arrangement with Dawn,
Islamabad.
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STRIKING a balance between the need to punish wrongdoing and the rights of those accused of wrongdoing is a delicate task the world over. But sometimes it becomes patently obvious that an unwelcome imbalance has resulted and that is surely the case when it comes to the Pakistan Army Act, 1952. From the state having the right to terminate the services of an officer or jawan and there being no recourse to judicial review, to allowing punishments to be enhanced at the appellate stage, to being able to deny the documents of the trial proceedings of a military court to the accused, the denial of fair and legitimate rights and due process to those tried or punished under the Army Act is hard to defend. That the major distortions have come under military dispensations only makes the case stronger for a thorough review of the Act to bring it in like with the spirit of the constitution and international norms. So, it is some relief that the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society has called on the government to review the Army Act and strengthen the protection for those tried or punished under it. The Society may have its own motives for taking up the matter. It was one of the more high-profile organisations to openly criticise the Musharraf regime, and has included in its resolution on bringing changes to the Army Act specific references to personnel dismissed through administrative orders during the Musharraf era. Nevertheless, the thrust of their demands is largely correct. Perhaps most problematically of all, the jurisdiction of the high courts to review certain actions against civilian or uniformed individuals under the Army Act has been ousted by a clause of the constitution, while the Supreme Court’s ability to intervene has also been somewhat limited to matters of ‘public importance’ and concerning fundamental rights. Surely, more judicial scrutiny, not less, is required when the armed forces have the ability to proceed against civilians under laws governing the armed forces. To be sure, being a country racked by terrorist violence and one where militants are known to have infiltrated the armed forces, the law must be able to adequately deal with those seeking to undermine and overthrow the state. But basic civil liberties also need to be protected. The long journey to becoming a country where the rule of law has primacy will never be complete until regressive measures are expunged from the statute books.
— An editorial in Dawn, Islamabad
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LeT remains a major threat to peace American
journalist Sebastian Rotella’s twin exposes in ProPublica -- botched up US efforts to stop Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative David Coleman Headley from playing his dirty role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack and details of LeT operational head Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi’s jail life — have coincided with the release in India of journalist Wilson John’s new book titled “The Caliphate’s Soldiers: The Lashkar-e-Tayyeba’s Long War”. After read both works it becomes clear that despite giving the title of Man of Peace to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, and despite intense global scrutiny and sanctions, LeT remains a grave threat to the world as ever. The LeT is more complex and orthodox to the core than even the Haqqani network, with which the Americans are desparate to hold talks, or the Taliban with which Pakistan’s establishment is going through the motions of a dialogue for peace. Sebastian and Wilson look at the LeT phenomenon through different prisms; the American’s concern is how and why Pakistan Army Chief General Kayani is disregarding US concerns over LeT, particularly Lakhvi and Headley. The Indian scholar goes beyond the headline and comes up with a scholarly work on LeT to add another feather to his cap as the only thorough-bred terrorism expert in this region who has made the world sit up and put on the thinking cap. Though the Americans were loath to admit in public until the recent Mullen outburst, the US-Pakistan relationship has been strained because of LeT and its 2008 Mumbai attacks. The state guest status that Lakhvi enjoyed ever since he was placed under arrest to assuage world opinion did not help matters either. There are no visible signs of any disruption in the `strategic partnership` of LeT with the Pakistan Army and the ISI. Nor are there any visible signs of the Pakistani state ‘dismantling the terrorist group’, according to the author. In his assessment, LeT remains the world’s most powerful and resourceful multinational terrorist group. It is this that makes terrorist attacks directly carried out by LeT or by its proxies in India and elsewhere in the world a possibility. The threat will remain quite high in the coming years. ‘At least some of these attacks would be spectacular in visibility and impact, and will carry the potential of triggering a military conflict in the region’, Wilson opines. With over 50,000 armed cadres trained in guerrilla warfare, intelligence gathering, explosives handling, and sabotage, LeT has a unique leverage vis-a-vis the Pakistan military hierarchy. In fact, it has become a reliable military reserve force that can be outsourced work by the Pakistan Army like it did during the Kargil war. Today, LeT runs scores of training centres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab and PoK. The objective is to have an office and a training centre in every district of Pakistan. LeT spends about $330 per trainee for the Daura-e-Aam course (basic) and about $1700 per trainee in the more advanced three-month Daura-e-Khaas course. Its operational bill is over $5 million a
year. The writer is a Delhi-based specialist on South Asian affairs and terrorism.
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THE Prime Minister of Pakistan has asked his economic team to prepare next year’s budget and to focus on “job creation for youth, provision of basic services like health, education, clean drinking water and civic amenities to people and sustaining growth”.