The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Anand at last
Amendments meet long-standing demand

THE Cabinet’s decision to approve the amendments to the Anand Marriage Act, 1909, is welcome. This meets a long-standing demand of the Sikhs. After a Bill to this effect is passed in Parliament, Sikh couples would be able to get their marriage registered under the Act. Although the Anand Marriage Act, 1909 legalised Sikh marriages, they were registered under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.

The Anand Marriage Act was introduced in the Imperial Legislative Council by Ripudaman Singh of Nabha, who played a significant role in it being adopted as an Act. It came about because of the perceived need of the Sikh community for legal sanction to their religious ceremony, since Sikhs who married in accordance with anand karaj rites, found their marriages challenged in courts. After the Act, anand karaj marriages gained legal sanctity. However, Sikh marriages were covered under the Hindu Marriage Act, which the Sikh community found irksome. That the same applied to Jains, Buddhists and other communities, except Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Jews, did not seem to provide any comfort to the community. With Pakistan announcing its own Sikh Anand Marriage Ac,t through which it recognises marriages performed through anand karaj, the situation became even more delicate.

Now not only will anand karaj marriages be recognised, there will also be a Bill to amend the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969. Through this bill, administrative marriage records of births and deaths will not include marriage records and thus non-denominational marriages could also be registered, along with those registered under the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriages Act. This would indeed be a forward-looking measure, since many marriages take place between adherents of different religions and for them non-denominational marriage registrations make sense. The Cabinet has indeed, taken positive decisions, and it is expected that Parliament too will endorse them and give the people of India these much-needed laws.

Take-off troubles
Air India rescue uncertain

THE government has decided on a Rs 30,000-crore package to rejuvenate the ailing Air India. Of this Rs 6,750 crore will be handed over immediately to help the state airline clear the dues of the oil companies and airport developers as well as pay staff salaries. The remaining amount will be paid spread over nine years. Besides, 27 Boeing planes called Dreamliners will be added to the fleet. Air India has accumulated losses of Rs 20,321 crore and a debt of Rs 43,777 crore as on December 31, 2011. As part of the rescue plan, 15 banks led by the SBI have agreed to recast Air India’s debt.

Even after all this, experts doubt whether Air India would regain health. The government plans to monitor the airline’s performance and hopes it will turn profitable by 2018. Similar hopes were expressed when Rs 3,200 crore was infused in Air India between 2009 and 2012. Being state-owned, the airline has to carry a certain baggage. It has to run on non-profitable routes. Politicians misuse the carrier and influence top-level appointments. It is hard to cut the staff strength and salaries. Delayed flights, substandard services, frequent strikes and a poor reputation keep away discerning and demanding customers.

Agreed, other airlines are not exactly in the pink of health. Kingfisher Airlines is in serious trouble. High oil prices, stiff airport charges and heavy taxes combined with an economic slowdown in the developed world have hit the aviation industry. To bail it out, the government has allowed direct import of fuel and is keen to permit foreign airlines pick up 49 per cent equity stake in domestic airlines. For a change, the government does not seem averse to selling a stake in Air India to a foreign airline. But why would a foreign airline take the risk of investing in Air India – even after a Rs 30,000 crore package — without first having management control?

Thought for the Day

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

— Mark Twain

ARTICLE

Mixing religion with politics
Punjab govt sends out a wrong signal
by Kuldip Nayar

AT the height of an Akali agitation in the eighties, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, then out of office, reached Delhi under the guise of a truck driver and burnt a copy of the Indian Constitution. He personally did not agree with his Akali party's fiat but went along with the decision as a disciplined soldier. Subsequently, he regretted his act of burning.

I don't know whether Badal has felt the same way after filing a mercy petition to the President on the clemency of Balwant Singh Rajoana, who has been sentenced to death. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has adjudged him an accomplice in the murder of former Chief Minister Beant Singh. Mixing religion with politics has been the bane of Akalis. But I thought they had come out of their contradictory position. The manner in which the party and the government connived at the "unrest" in the state a few days ago indicates that the passion of religion still has the better of the community.

Most unfortunate was the role of Akal Takht. It is a highly respected seat of Sikhs, and many others in the country look up to it with prayers on their lips. Its hukamnama on the clemency of Rajoana meets the norms of religious assertion but mocks at the laws and the courts in the country. The decision was not politic but it conveyed the impression that the highest religious authority of the Sikhs could have a perspective that went against the ethos of democratic secular society. The twin principle of "miri piri" (polity and clergy) does not fit into the religious fervour.

What happened in Punjab during the agitation over the clemency of Rajaona reminds me of the lawless and brutal days which the state went through some years ago. Once again the message of the recent happening is that a few determined people, fired by religious fanaticism, could dictate an agenda which made Punjab an uncertain state. The nation heaved a sigh of relief when the fire of extremism was extinguished in Punjab and it began to live like a normal Indian state three decades ago.

A similar kind of indignation swept through Tamil Nadu when Nalini, a culprit in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case, had served her life sentence and was ready to be released. Even the state assembly passed a resolution for clemency. Sonia Gandhi's family too did not oppose the clemency. But since the release went against the spirit of the judgment she was kept in jail along with three others. Yet the state did not witness the stir which Punjab did, nor did any party make a political capital out of it as the Akalis did.

I personally think that hanging should be dropped from the statute book because it is medieval in practice, tit for tat, a tooth for a tooth in attitude. Some 125 countries in the world have done away with the death sentence. India too, without banning hanging, was more or less following the practice till a few years ago, without specifically saying so. Even the Supreme Court endorsed it by underlining in a judgment that hanging should take place in the "rarest of rare" cases. But surely, the result was to the contrary. The statistics show that the cases of death penalty were the highest in the five years following the Supreme Court's advice.

There is no go from a Parliament Act to stop hanging. It is time that the political parties in the country paid serious attention to the proposal. The sentence should be for life, meaning thereby that the guilty should not be released till his death. Alternatively, we can adopt the practice followed in America where the court gives a sentence for 40, 50 or 80 years. In any case, the sentence of hanging is reprehensible and should be done away with.

Yet the existing law has to prevail till the abolition of hanging. What I saw in Punjab was not the protest against death sentence but defiance. True, the situation would have taken an ugly turn if Balwant Singh Rajoana's execution had taken place. Yet what it conveys is that how weak the state has become over the years in fighting against some motivated elements who decide to mock at the law. The five-star facilities provided to Bibi Jagir Kaur, once a minister but now a convict, in jail takes the cake. Does the government realise what message it gives to the people? Is it the extension of the government's double standards shown in the case of Rajoana?

The point at issue is not whether Balwant Singh Rajoana should be given clemency - a petition is pending before the President of India-but whether the pressure and the threats of violence should be used to get a favourable decision. When the state government itself becomes partisan, it sends out a wrong signal. It was alarming to find a few officials at Gurdaspur, a city in Punjab, not rising to the occasion and putting down a communal riot firmly. That the government suspended or transferred them shows that it woke up to its duties. But then the damage had been done.

What hurts me more than anything else is the attitude of the Punjab Chief Minister. How could he file the clemency petition when Rajoana does not want clemency, as he has said in writing? How does the state government come into the picture when the step is legally, leave apart the fact of clemency, questionable?

It is another matter that Rajoana should not be hanged because the death sentence is an outdated practice which the country should have abandoned long ago. The Badal government, I am afraid, has only proved that when the option is between religion and politics, it opts for the first. That the BJP is an integral part of the Punjab government does not surprise me because it too mixes religion with politics when it suits the party.

MIDDLE

Losing a life partner
by Pritam Bhullar

I was struck by the worst tragedy of my life on January 4 this year when my wife passed away. For me, it was doomsday. Having finished with all our responsibilities more than a decade and a half ago, it was a time when each one of us was incomplete without the other even for a short while.

In the evening of October 2, 2011, Amarjit (I called her Jit) had shivering followed by fever. The blood tests revealed the next day that it was a minor ailment from which one generally recovered in a week. On October 5, she was admitted to a famous hospital in Mohali. Who knew at that time that she was not to recover — doctors' skills notwithstanding? Admissions and discharges became a routine for three months, and it was on December 15 that she left home for her fourth admission. And the dead body was brought home on January 4.

What does this prove? It proves beyond doubt what is written in the holy books of all religions that the time of death is fixed before you take birth. It is also written therein that janam, maran (birth and death) keep repeating till such time as you improve and purify your soul or spirit to a level that it merges with the Godly soul. It is also mentioned that the soul is immortal, and it is only the physical body that dies.

Now that I am going through intense grief over the death of my life partner in my mid-eighties, I know how inseparable we had become. Soon after her death, my mind turned to find answers to the questions: What happens after death? Would we meet again? Has incarnation been proved?

I have found answers to these questions from authentic books which I would like to share with the readers.

On what happens after death, the book "Life after life" by Raymond A. Moody, which is his bestseller and of which over 13 million copies have been sold, provides the answer. The author quotes many cases of near-death experience where people have passed away temporarily and are resuscitated to life. They explain their experience of death that is almost similar in all cases though put by them in different words. The soul gets out of the body during their death, floats over it and watches it, then goes through a dark tunnel, sees its near and dear ones and a bright light that is very soothing. Then it sees a border or a limit from which the soul is sent back.

A person who died from a cardiac arrest in a hospital and was resuscitated in a few seconds says: "There was a beautiful light all around me. When I looked ahead, I saw a field and hedge across it and a man moving towards me from the other side of the hedge. I wanted to reach him, but I felt myself being drawn back irresistibly." Another case is of a husband who committed suicide to meet his dead wife but was revived in a hospital. He could not meet his wife; instead, he was frowned at and told to undergo punishment for cutting short his life.

The second question, "Would we meet again?", is answered in the book "Reunited — how to meet loved ones again who seem lost in death" by Raymond A. Moody. He has quoted a large number of cases where your near and dear one’s spirit or soul has come back to meet you through mirror visions.

The answer to the third question, "Has incarnation been proved", has been found from two books. First and an old one, "The mysteries of life and death" by Acharya Rajneesh. He says that your soul does not die. It keeps changing bodies as you shift from an old house to a new one. Another book on this subject is an international best-seller, "Many lives, many masters." — The true story of a prominent psychiatrist, his young patient and the past life therapy that changed both their lives — by Brian L. Weiss, M.D.

You cannot undo what God does to you. So, I have to learn to live with grief with the hope that one day I will meet Jit. And I know that I am going closer to her with every passing day.

OPED — PAKISTAN

The new intellectuals
Pakistan's new public intellectuals are television talk-show hosts, so-called analysts and journalists. These individuals have an eager public listening to their observations, analysis and insights every day, often many times a day, and they have the extremely powerful medium of television
S. Akbar Zaidi

IT seems impossible to imagine a society, even such as ours, without intellectuals. They have existed from time immemorial, in every society, at different layers of the social strata interacting with, and frequently changing, the course of history, and of the future.

Intellectuals, in the past, have spoken, written, thought, proselytised and made different kinds of interventions in social processes. They are often considered to be the moral keepers of nations and societies, those who give direction, hope, those who explain and unravel issues which others fail to comprehend.

Intellectuals are a core component of society and are located at numerous steps of the social spectrum, many of them faceless, unknown. Allahrakha or Bala, sitting on their charpai near Mandi Bahauddin in the presence of locals explaining their notions of life and its meanings, are intellectuals, just as much as Shaukat Ali, sitting on the banks of a river with a group of friends under a moonlit sky discussing and explaining how the wheels of time move. But public intellectuals are those who require a public and a forum or public sphere.

In the West, at least, many of those who are considered public intellectuals and have thought and written about such issues are considered to be critics who offer 'counter-discourses' to their "merely professional routines creating social capital and cultural power". Many of them, at least in the West, and especially those who are also academics, trace their lineage according to scholars, to "a tradition of rhetorical political inquiry, the domain of Socrates and Cicero, precursors to contemporary public forms and forums of democracy".

As public intellectuals — as opposed to those who hold opinion in private or small circles — such individuals are called upon "to make public pronouncements on issues that ostensibly lie outside the purview of the academy", as some academics have argued. Hence, they are public intellectuals, not simply lecturers and teachers. While there are scores of intellectuals who are formally outside the academy as well, one would argue that in the tradition of the modern West (and even East), at some time or the other, most have been located in academia, howsoever defined. Not so in Pakistan.

Pakistan's new public intellectuals are television talk-show hosts, so-called analysts and journalists. These individuals have both an eager public listening to their observations, analysis and insights every day, often many times a day, and they have the extremely powerful medium of television, which has become the new public sphere. Most of these individuals are interpreters of our maladies, they give direction, propose solutions and sanction what is moral and what is not and determine codes of ethics. They do exactly what public intellectuals do.

Of course, a more radical interpretation of the public intellectual is based on Gramsci's notion of the 'organic intellectual', who not only interprets the world, but actively changes it.

Here again, in this manner, the Pakistani intellectual no longer exists, since the organ itself has shrivelled and died. The presence of only variants of mainstream politics — with the exception of the radical religious right — precludes any notion of a Gramscian intellectual. Whether one calls the leaders of radical religious groups 'intellectuals', or ulema, or politicians, or something worse is worthy of intellectual debate.

Barring a few notable and exemplary exceptions, whether from the right or the non-right (it is impossible to call the other the left or even liberal), the spectacle of Pakistani intellectuals holding forth on complicated moral and ethical issues of consciousness, is just that - a spectacle.

These new intellectuals hold immense power and sway over a receptive audience, who are certainly by no means mere empty repositories of what is handed to them, yet are still unthinkingly and unimaginatively receptive to ideas and themes, and are fed opinions which are at best not thought through, if not highly biased and prejudiced. The level, quality and standard of discourse, for all that it is worth and for all that it contributes, cannot be considered to be intellectual. Perhaps it is not even meant to be.

This is obviously not the fault of those who are given or like many who appropriate the mantle of the intellectual but has far deeper systemic and intellectual roots. The state of the social sciences and humanities in Pakistan, the state of academia more generally, all of which are so critical to the formation of intellectuals, is self-evident.

Intellectuals emerge through an understanding of history, philosophy, theory and much more. Also, public spaces where those who have such skills can raise them interacting with others, creates an intellectual forum. Even if one had the sort of intellectuals who emerge from such academic traditions and disciplines — and Pakistan has very few — the absence of public forums aggravates matters.

With the op-ed pages of newspapers, or now television, the only forum for public debate, where retired bureaucrats, foreign secretaries or generals and journalists espouse opinions largely about contemporary politics or US-Pakistan relations, clearly an intellectual space doesn't exist.

Again, this is not the fault of producers or editors or even those who do write and speak, but shows the absence of those who ought to. Many of those who could have emerged as intellectuals, have chosen a far easier, less troubling or challenging and far more lucrative existence, choosing to become consultants or joining 'think tanks', always distancing themselves from any 'oppositional consciousness'.

The absence of academics, scholars and intellectuals offers a partial explanation to why Pakistan is the way it is. The quality of those who actually are Pakistan's new intellectuals helps complete that explanation.

The writer is a political economist. By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad

Managing oil price risk
Hammad Siddiqi

PETROL prices have risen again and are expected to continue to rise in the near future. However, the debate on petrol prices seems to be focused on demanding a subsidy from the government.

The government has partially yielded by reducing the prices slightly. The fact is that most of our oil needs are met through imports; consequently, we face significant oil price risk. Shouldn't the debate be about finding a feasible way of managing this risk?

In this short article, I provide an outline of a petroleum strategy that could potentially eliminate the oil price uncertainty to a large extent. However, before discussing the new strategy, it is instructive to look at our current strategy.

How do we buy oil? We buy refined oil by paying spot prices to various companies in the Middle East region. These spot prices have been fluctuating a lot with a clear upward trend.

These spot price changes are passed on to the consumers with some time lag. The time lag currently is one month and there has been a proposal to reduce this time lag to 15 days.

The eventual plan is to revise prices on a daily basis. The government's aim with this new plan is to reduce the political costs of increasing oil prices. As accumulated changes over a month tend to be larger than accumulated fortnightly or daily changes, the government hopes to lessen the political cost by making many small changes rather than a single large change at the end of the month.

The strategy that I propose here will allow the government to fix oil prices for up to a year without costing anything to the government. More importantly, by intelligently timing the market, that strategy also allows for the possibility of 'locking-in' at low prices.

A simplified example clarifies. Suppose today is Jan 1 and oil futures with three-month expiry are trading at $100 per barrel at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Assume that we buy such futures. Buying such futures does not imply any immediate cash outflow. A futures contract is simply an agreement to buy or sell in the future.

Suppose, in the example we are considering, the futures contract calls for cash settlement. Cash settlement means that there is no physical delivery of oil, rather the difference between the spot price on expiry and the futures price is exchanged. Let's say on the expiry of the futures, which is on March 30, the spot price of oil shoots up to $140 per barrel.

As we hold a buying position in the futures, we will receive the difference between the spot price ($140) and the futures price ($100), which is $40 per barrel from CME. And, if the spot price on March 30 falls to $60 per barrel, we will be required to pay $40 per barrel to CME.

What's the point of entering into such agreements? Isn't this speculative? Surely, we can make money but we can also lose money. As in the example just discussed, we can gain $40 per barrel but we can also lose $40 per barrel. Well, in isolation, this is surely speculative and risky but when combined with actual spot market activity, it becomes a good hedge. Here's how.

Let's say the government fixes the rupee price of oil corresponding to $100 per barrel. Suppose on March 30, the spot price goes up to $140 per barrel. In the absence of any futures trading, the cost to the government of buying oil would be $140 per barrel, and the domestic price would surely go up to reflect this reality. What would be the net cost to the government if it had previously entered into the futures contract mentioned above? Had the government also taken a buying position in the corresponding futures contract, it would receive $40 per barrel from CME on cash settled oil futures.

It needs to pay $140 per barrel to Middle East suppliers, so the overall cost would be $100 per barrel ($140-$40), which would be recovered from the domestic consumer. That is, the domestic rupee price can be kept fixed at the level corresponding to $100 per barrel even when the international spot price is $140 per barrel.

So, the lesson is, that by intelligently combining our spot market buying with buying positions in cash settled oil futures we can protect ourselves from oil price fluctuations. Playing with cash-settled futures on their own is bad strategy and certainly not recommended, however, combining them with actual spot market buying is good strategy and should be pursued to manage oil price risk.

It is important to realise that oil price fluctuations are a major source of risk for our economy. Eliminating these fluctuations with an appropriately tweaked hedging strategy should be a priority. Rather than implementing a model in which oil prices are frequently revised, we should go the other way by fixing prices for six months or a year.

The means of doing that are already in place in the form of cash-settled futures. It is also important to realise that there are no free lunches in financial markets. If we are protecting ourselves from a hike in oil prices with the help of futures, we are also giving up gains if the price goes the other way. However, the cost of giving up such gains seems small compared to the benefit of eliminating oil price uncertainty.

It is the hope of this writer that the conversation on oil moves away from demanding subsidy from the government as the subsidy would surely be financed by printing money which would contribute to inflation. So, if we save two rupees on oil through a subsidy, we would be paying many times over elsewhere because of the way inflationary expectations work.

Hedging oil risk surely beats any subsidy.

The writer is a professor at LUMS and a fellow of the Centre of Economics Research, Pakistan. By arrangement with Dawn