The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

RTE in rural India
Schools without teachers meaningless

Of all teaching aids, the teacher would, perhaps, count as the single most important. But at the end of two years of the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, the country is far from achieving the target for teacher-pupil ratio — two teachers for every 60 students in primary and one per 35 students in secondary classes — in rural schools. While nationally only 40.7 per cent of the schools in villages have achieved the target, Punjab is much worse at 30.4 per cent, and Uttarakhand even lower at 16.3 per cent. J&K, on the other hand, despite being a troubled state is much better, having achieved the target in 87.5 per cent of the rural schools.

Punjab’s problem is peculiar in that its overall teacher-pupil ratio in government schools is reasonable, around one teacher for every 35 students, according to the state government’s figures. This makes the lack of teachers in rural schools seem particularly unfair. After the recruitment of more than 50,000 teachers over the past two years, Punjab now has a shortage of only around 10,000, which is, relatively speaking, not much. The reason for rural schools not getting teachers is that most of them try getting posted to towns and cities — and the system allows that. In fact, teacher transfers are seen as a major source of corruption. The state government would do well to check this immediately, for not only does it affect the education of children in villages, it is also a very visible phenomenon among the masses.

Commenting on the RTE Act implementation, Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said: “If we want to change the entire structure... then it is important to change the foundation.” For a country that has its masses in the villages, that foundation would be in the rural areas. If attention is not paid to equitable distribution of education resources, along with the increasing economic disparity in the country we would also have denied the disadvantaged the skills required to come up even in future.

Mind your food
Transfat in snacks playing havoc

Everyone knew snacking was harmful. But introduction of smart foods and low- cal roasted snacks made life somewhat guilt-free for those fond of munching. Then, fast food giant Pepsico quietly took off the ‘Snack Smart’ logo it had launched with much fanfare involving Bollywood star Saif from the packs of its popular snacks. The company replaced rice bran oil, which has 40 per cent less saturated fat and zero trans- fats, for cheaper palm oil to cook its snacks for saving cost. While the company went to town on the launch of smart foods, spending crores on ad campaigns, the consumer was not informed about the withdrawal of the ‘Smart Food’ logo and the change of cooking oil, which no more guarantees less saturated fat and trans- fats.

If this does not amount to taking the consumer for granted, there comes more bad news. A study conducted by a Delhi-based NGO, Centre for Science and Environment, claims that food items like potato chips, burgers and noodles wipe out almost the entire permissible daily limits of bad fat, salt and sugar in just one serving. Trans-fats used in these foods clog arteries, while large amounts of salt lead to increase in blood pressure making the heart work overtime and causing damage at a young age. The NGO that tested 16 popular brands, including Nestle’s Maggi noodles, McDonald’s, KFC, Haldiram’s aloo bhujia and PepsiCo’s Lay’s potato chips, accused that most of these companies mislead the consumer through wrong claims and insufficient labelling. The study seeks stronger regulations and labelling rules for food products. Some other voluntary organisations have been demanding a statutory warning to be printed on such foods, declaring their health hazard.

That may be stretching it to the extreme, but, one cannot forget opening of floodgates against multinationals a decade ago on the presence of pesticides in the colas, which had led to fall in their sales and the banning of their products in schools. This study should be taken seriously, keeping in mind the popularity of these foods among the children and the young, who are at greater health risk.

Thought for the Day

Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude. — Ralph Marston

ARTICLE

Tackling rural poverty
Need to focus on industrialisation
by Jayshree Sengupta

On the basis of the controversial poverty line according to which anyone earning Rs 28.35 per day in urban areas and Rs 22.42 in rural areas is above the poverty line, the latest Household Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2009-2010 has revealed that India’s poverty ratio has gone down from 37.2 per cent to 29.8 per cent between 2004-05 and 2009-2010. Also, according to the Planning Commission, poverty reduction has been faster than in the previous five years.

In the face of much flak from Opposition parties, a ‘technical committee’ has been appointed to examine the methodology of calculating the poverty line according to the Suresh Tendulkar formula because there have been many changes, specially in the rate of inflation, since the formula was first adopted in 2009.

Also more data on the basis of the ongoing Socio-Economic and Caste Census will reveal the extent of poverty according to different castes and communities. This will come out in July 2012 and will give a more comprehensive and complete picture. According to the Planning Commission, poverty has declined more in the rural areas (from 41.8 per cent to 33.6 per cent) than in the urban areas. If that is so, it is good news and shows that the rural-urban divide is narrowing.

A few days ago the new Census report 2011 had also thrown up a number of facts about the rural sector which show that rural consumption of goods and services has indeed gone up, specially of mobile phones, banking services, TV sets and cycles/motorcycles, but in many other important areas it is woefully backward and some human development indicators still remain low. What is surprising is that poverty reduction in north-eastern states has been much less though their achievements on the human development front are better than others.

In sanitation, health and education especially, it seems that rural India is still far behind the other emerging countries like Brazil, China and South Africa and the availability of toilets or safe drinking water from taps in village homes is far from universal. There is an endemic problem of malnourishment among children under five years of age due to the lack of proper diet. Rapid poverty reduction can take place only with more public investment in health infrastructure.

Unfortunately, rural health care facilities are not adequate. The excerpts from the HUNGAMA survey of 100 districts in the recent Economic Survey reveal that 42 per cent of the children under five years are underweight and 59 per cent are stunted due to malnourishment. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has provided for substantial duty reduction on Soya protein and Soya protein concentrates as well as on all processed soya food products in the recent Budget, but will it reach the malnourished children?

Even if there has been a decline in rural poverty, the quality of teaching in rural schools remains uneven and inadequate. The recent Economic Survey has a report in which the problems in rural schools have been spelt out (ASER 2011). According to it, over half of all classes in rural government primary schools are multi-grade and more than half of all standard 2 and standard 4 classes sit together with another class. Also, the basic reading skill levels are showing a decline as well as arithmetic levels across most states. Though there has been an increase in the number of toilets for girls and in libraries, attendance has been declining. If the states really want to go for sharper and rapid poverty reduction, they have to first ensure that the village schools are properly run.

The Planning Commission has rightly pointed out that in rural India, the households with the primary education level and lower education have the highest poverty ratio whereas the reverse is true for households with secondary and higher education. Much more is needed in providing rural roads and transport which is one of the main reasons for the rural poor from not being able to travel to nearby towns to seek work. Rural mobility ought to be a priority area as it will enable manufacturing companies to sell their products into the hinterlands of India and also provide jobs in retail.

Rural industrialisation is also important for providing jobs for rural youth. Part of the urban congestion is due to the constant flow of migrant workers seeking jobs in towns. Providing job training and imparting skills is something that the government has to focus on for increasing the employability of millions of village youth. It is good to know that Rs 1205 crore has been assigned for skill training for the youth in Budget 2012. Vocational training will be important in towns.

Poverty reduction is sustainable if rural women have extra incomes. Most rural women are very industrious and are also involved in handicrafts production in their spare time. If a ‘hub’ for rural handicrafts in each district could be established, it would enable rural women to gather ideas about market trends and appropriate raw materials to be used. In some states, cooperatives and NGOs have been helpful in enabling the women to earn more by opening marketing and credit channels for them. Many NGOs also offer skill training and provide raw materials and have accelerated poverty reduction.

Why have the north-eastern states remained poor? This has to be looked into carefully. It has to do with inadequacy or inefficacy of development programmes for income generation. Why have some states like Bihar, UP and Chhattisgarh also not done well? Maybe because these states have a larger proportion of Muslims, members of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and OBCs in their rural population who, according to the Planning Commission, have higher poverty ratios. The poverty ratio for Muslims is very high in states like Assam, UP, West Bengal and Gujarat.

Among other social categories, the Scheduled Tribes face the highest level of poverty followed by the Scheduled Castes and OBCs as against 33.6 per cent for all classes in rural areas. Rural poverty is lowest among the Sikhs at 11.9 per cent.

For better targeting of the government welfare schemes, corruption in their delivery has to be stopped and people below the poverty line should be helped to rise above it and never slip back into poverty again. This can only happen with universal health care and effective primary education. Better targeting of PDS would also help reduce poverty faster. One big illness in the family can push the members to below the poverty line as the cost of private treatment is exorbitant and the poor have to borrow from money-lenders. The availability of cheap medicines through government dispensaries is also extremely important for sustained poverty reduction.

MIDDLE

Effective communication
by Vaidya Viswanathan

When I received an email the other day from my erstwhile factory colleague, telling me that he now conducts training sessions on effective communication, I broke into violent hiccups, spilling my coffee all over. For I know from experience that my friend can be anything but a communication expert.

An electrical engineer, I was manning the main electrical substation of a fertiliser complex along with my colleague and had just taken charge of morning shift duty that started at 6 a.m. At 6.15 a.m., day after day, our chief manager (CM) who was terror personified, would call the substation personnel through the intercom phone from his township residence and feebly utter a monosyllable, 'Report'. Immediately, the daily report would flow through the phone from our end in a torrent. It was basically a summary of the previous day's electricity consumption figures, production data and significant system parameters.

The CM had established a bizarre pattern for the report and was so finicky that even the slightest change of order in the recitation would invite a serious reprimand from him. In between, he would bark several questions that only the coolest cat could answer. After surviving this daily ordeal by fire, we would heave a huge sigh of relief just as our honourable PM does after surviving every scare from his allies rather than the Opposition.

Half an hour into the morning shift, the canteen boy would buzz us on the intercom and take down order for breakfast that would be delivered piping hot to the shift crew at their work tables from the in-house canteen.

Strangely on that day, the 6.15 a.m. call from the CM did not come. At 6.30, the intercom rang. My colleague, perhaps feeling a tad too hungry, jumped at the phone and went ahead in full steam, "Note down correctly and don't mess up when you deliver as you normally do. 12 idlis, 4 vadas, sambhar and chutney. Bring 2 plates and two extra cups of sambhar. Can you repeat what I just said?"

Only the previous day, my colleague had attended a seminar on two-way communication. Now, looking at me meaningfully, he imperiously asked the man at the other end of the wire to paraphrase what he had heard. The twinkle in his eyes clearly told me that my friend was enthusiastically putting his learning to test. There was tense silence from the other end for a few seconds and then the wire exploded. “What is this all poppycock about? Idli, vada, sambhar, chutney! Nonsense! I say, 'Report' please,” thundered the voice from the other end.

My colleague realised the Himalayan blunder that he had committed, stood up in rapt attention and started blabbering deliriously, "Yes, sir…. Chutney sir….Sorry sir. Yesterday's electricity consumption was 1.00 lakh idlis and production was 200 tonnes of sambhar…."

The ever-grim-faced chief manager broke into rapturous laughter and the high voltage tense atmosphere was at once defused to safe level. But it took several days for my colleague to recover from the huge 'shock' that he had received. Of course, ever since that traumatic day, he is seen taking extreme care to check the caller's identity (by asking 'may I know who is calling?' at least three times) before he opens up. But he continues to get a mouthful from impatient ones at the other end!

OPED PAKISTAN

One of the problems with Pakistan’s fight against corruption is the multiplicity of (mostly outdated) anti-corruption laws. Lawmakers must realise the importance of whistle-blowing laws which guarantee indemnity to a public servant or any other person.
Corruption: Insensitivity of legislatures to blame
Affan Taj

CORRUPTION has haunted Pakistan since its birth. Different governments have been dislodged on the basis of such allegations and every institution, it is said, is a victim to it.

Why, then, has our state apparatus failed to root out this menace?

Minar-e-Pakistan

Pakistan’s anti-corruption laws do not define corruption. Before the promulgation of the Ehtesab Ordinance, 1997, even an explanation of the term ‘corruption’ was missing from the legislative framework. The Ehtesab Ordinance explained ‘corruption and corrupt practices’ through six characteristics; it was superseded by the National Accountability Ordinance (NAO), 1999, which explains ‘corruption and corrupt practices’ through 12 characteristics.

The Supreme Court interpreted corruption in 2008 while adjudicating on a case investigated by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), as “…an act which is done with intent to give some advantage inconsistent with law and wrongful or unlawful use of official position to procure some benefit or personal gain. (The) expression corrupt practice(s) is a series of depraved/debased/morally degenerated acts” (The State Vs M. Idrees Ghauri).

The problem is that this definition is limited to government servants. It is undisputed that corruption has various forms and limiting the term to a simple definition is indeed a complex job. But if our laws do not take into account the various nomenclatures of corruption, how will the institutions enforcing those laws detect corruption?

Until 1997, our legislatures only perceived and focused on anti-corruption legislation targeting public servants: people employed by the state, such as every officer of the police, the bureaucracy and a court of justice or land or tax official, but not an elected representative. (Commissioned officers in the military are public servants but are exclusively regulated by a special law as will be discussed later.)

The Prevention of Corruption Act 1947 (POCA) was the first anti-corruption legislation adopted by the constituent assembly. It applied only to public servants and remains in force, but defines criminal misconduct rather than corruption.

The wafaqi mohtasib’s (ombudsman) laws and provincial anti-corruption laws, such as the Punjab Employees Efficiency, Discipline and Accountability Act 2006, and the Sindh Prevention of Bribery and Corruption Act 1950, are no different.

Provincial anti-corruption laws are only applicable to public servants employed by the provincial governments and cannot be used to hold the executives of a province, during or after their tenure in office, accountable. The ombudsman’s laws suffer from a similar deficiency.

Another issue is that even within its defined parameters, provincial anti-corruption establishments do not function properly.

For example, in 2010 the office of the ombudsman, Punjab, according to its annual report, received 123 complaints pertaining to the officials of the anti-corruption establishment in Punjab alone.

The Federal Investigative Agency, created by virtue of the Federal Investigative Agency Act 1974, has an anti-corruption wing which deals with certain offences relating to corruption in connection with matters concerning the federal government. But the FIA is vulnerable to political interference.

The provincial anti-corruption establishments, the offices of the ombudsman and the FIA suffer from a further inability to proceed against certain institutions that are regulated by dedicated laws, such as medical or legal practitioners or the army.

These institutions do not define ‘corruption’. And even otherwise, Pakistan’s institutions rarely proceed against members of their own ranks, thereby resulting in zero or rare convictions that render the institutional laws ineffective.

The problem in Pakistan is that while there are abundant anti-corruption laws, they are outdated and preclude a certain class of people or institutions from being drawn into their purview, thereby granting them a sort of implied immunity.

The Army Act 1952, for instance, does not define the word corruption or include the classification ‘corruption or corrupt practices’. Rather, it defines ‘illegal gratification’ as an offence.

Resultantly, none of our anti-corruption agencies or courts can investigate a serving army officer for alleged corruption.

Meanwhile, the Army Act provides immunity to all serving members of the armed forces from investigation, arrest, detention or trial from all other courts or investigative agencies.

The National Accountability Ordinance, 1999, was one law which brought a hitherto untouched class of people into the domain of accountability. As the SC observed in the Asfandyar Wali’s case, “For the first time, members of a hitherto untouchable class of influential and powerful persons, not merely restricted to holders of public office, but also include bankers, businessmen, industrialists, bureaucrats, and other persons, who are involved in corruption and corrupt practices as defined in the NAB, fall within the purview of accountability in an effective and coherent manner.”

Under the NAO 1999, NAB has been conferred with unprecedented powers to investigate and prosecute cases involving corruption. It is the only accountability institute functioning somewhat effectively in this area. But NAB has its limitations. Its chairman is appointed by the President in consultation with the leader of the House and the leader of the Opposition. He is, therefore, legally powerless to bring the president, prime minister, leader of the opposition or a provincial chief minister, even after the expiry of their service, into the domain of accountability.

Lawmakers introducing the Holders of Public Office (Accountability) Bill, 2009, to repeal the NAO 1999 believed that elected representatives or the holders of public office (i.e. people who have served as presidents, prime minister, governors, etc) do not technically fall within the accountability purview of the existing laws. The Bill, whose name was later changed to the National Accountability Commission Bill (NAC), was thus introduced.

Since then, however, it has been lying pending with the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice. The proposed Bill was also seen as a disguised attack on the existing NAO 1999 by proposing to replace it with the NAC Bill, thereby rendering many of the effective provisions of the law defunct.

One of the problems with Pakistan’s fight against corruption, thus, is the multiplicity of (mostly outdated) anti-corruption laws.

Moreover, our lawmakers must realise the importance of whistle-blowing laws which guarantee indemnity to a public servant or any other person exposing instances of corruption. These would give public/government servants the strength to expose corruption without fear of being persecuted by the state itself.

Furthermore, our legislatures have enacted tailor-made anti-corruption laws to please some institutions and keeping self-interest in mind. This is a criminal attitude. Then, our legislatures have not empowered anti-corruption institutions with autonomous powers. As a result, the state and its institutions have been subjected to a lot of political interference which deters free and fair investigation.

If anything is to blame for the current helplessness against corruption, it is the insensitivity and laziness of successive legislatures in authoring weak, limited or no anti-corruption legislations. If we are to effectively root out corruption, our legislatures hold the key.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore. By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad.

Politics of coalition in Pakistan
F.S. Aijazuddin

It was on 18 February 2008, Election Day itself. Two United States Senators — John Kerry and Joe Biden — had come to witness the conduct of the general elections. Kerry was already a household name in Pakistan, as the joint begetter of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, while Joe Biden looked as if he had no idea that once he returned to the U.S., he might be selected by Barack Obama as his Vice-Presidential running mate.

To some cynics, it was entirely appropriate that the vantage point from which they would observe the Pakistani elections should be the lawn of the US Consul-General’s house in Zafar Ali Road. There, over lunch, they solicited the opinions of some ministers from the Interim Provincial Cabinet. The view of one of them – in hindsight – was prescient.

These elections, he told them, would be governed by three Cs. The first C was the Conduct of the elections. Unlike previous elections, almost all the parties accepted the conduct of these elections as being fair and as impartial as they could be in such contentious circumstances. The second C was that all the parties would have to learn to live with its consequences, and the third C was that there would be a government by coalition, as no party was likely to emerge with an unequivocal majority. India had learned to live with the manacles of governance by coalition; now it would be our turn.

And so it has been for the past four years — a coalition government that has survived not because it was united and strong but because the opposition to it was fragmented and weak.

Anyone trying to analyse the present political conundrum must wonder how many centres of power there are in Pakistan.

Is Parliament sovereign, or does it enjoy like every modern sovereign only the power to advise and to consent? The legislative record of Parliament over the past four years – constitutional amendments notwithstanding-would suggest that it represents vested interests rather than the interest of the public vested in it.

Does power lie in the barrel of a gun? No longer. The Pakistan Army may regard itself as an alternative government-in-waiting, but that is a perception which is withering by the day.

Does power lie then with the judiciary? Each Bench would like to believe that the Law, as a former Supreme Court Chief Justice once asserted, is mightier than the King of Kings. It may be so in theory; in practice, though, there is the technicality of being able to enforce one’s judgment. How many divisions, Stalin once asked derisively, does the Pope have?

The inescapable answer is that despite the formality of our parliamentary form of government, in which an elected Prime Minister is prepared to sacrifice himself to save a unanimously elected President, it is clear where power actually rests. There is one singular authority and that is in the office of the President. Someone once wrote: ‘In its organization the State must be established on the principle of personality, starting from the smallest cell and ascending up to the supreme government of the country […]Every man in a position of responsibility will have councillors at his side, but the decision is made by that one individual person alone.’

The man who wrote that made his credo a reality, his Mein Kampf once regarded as an unworkable blueprint became a manual for democratic authoritarianism.

The recent Senate elections have reinforced beyond argument the position of the PPP as the strongest party in the country. But the true test of electoral supremacy will come after the next general elections. That is when an electorate – semi-literate, sleepless because of load-shedding, footsore because of lack of transport, unwashed because of waterless taps, and jobless because paying jobs are to be found only in Islamabad – will decide whether they want more of the same or the chance (however slim) of something different, hopefully something better.

So far, while every political party is articulate to the point of apoplexy, none of them has published anything resembling a manifesto. Each talks of a youth dividend, without comprehending that these 85 million or so boys and girls will one day, like chicks, outgrow their charm as electoral pets.

Not one of these parties has delineated a policy — for education, for job creation, for income equalization, for health, for public transport, for taxation, for trade, for commerce, for foreign policy— any policy that would be followed by any of the innumerable ministries that huddle in Islamabad. The next elections will not be a contest between those who deserve to be in power as much as a deal brokered among those who are prepared to share the spoils of power.

By arrangement with Dawn