The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Bordering on hope
Centre offers Punjab help

Punjab’s border districts, neglected for too long by successive state and Central governments, see a glimmer of hope as there are signs things may finally turn around. The Planning Commission plans to bolster industrial infrastructure in Amritsar and Tarn Taran districts and train youth in skills required in anticipation of the expansion of Indo-Pakistan trade. Ferozepur and Fazilka districts too can be opened up for trade with Pakistan as the single-road route through Attari may not be convenient or enough. Minister of State for Planning Ashwani Kumar, who shared Central plans for the region with The Tribune over the weekend, was not very specific. He also hinted at an expert committee looking — once again — at crop diversification and a cancer research centre for the Malwa region.

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, who toured the state over the weekend, said all that an excited Akali leadership wanted to hear: a debt waiver for the terrorism-hit border state, a package for fighting water-logging and providing safe drinking water in Punjab apart from relaxing conditions for building roads in the border districts. Punjabis may be forgiven if they are not sufficiently jubilant. They understand the politics of “packages” and promises. It is not easy for Central money to reach them or private investment to land in the border state. Central schemes come with conditions which the cash-strapped state government often finds hard to meet. Nevertheless, there is hope for better Central-state cooperation, which, surprisingly, is happening without the participation of local Congress leaders.

Hardships villagers in the border districts of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur, Pathankot, Ferozepur and Fazilka face are numerous but not insurmountable. A comprehensive plan covering health, education, drinking water and sewerage issues is required. More than money, corruption-free, efficient governance is important. The Centre can provide limited help only to solve some of the problems. Ultimately, the responsibility for sound fiscal management and addressing grassroots concerns rests with the state government.

Growing unrest in Europe
People losing faith in govts’ policies

Anti-capitalist feelings are getting intense across Europe. Proof of this, if needed, was available on Sunday when protesters under the banner of “Occupy” took to the streets in many cities all over the white continent to express their anger against the market-driven policies of their governments that have led to millions of people losing jobs. The first anniversary of the anti-capitalist movement drew a large number of protesters to popular parks and squares in London, Lisbon, Frankfurt, Athens, Barcelona, Madrid, etc, holding banners of disapproval of their government’s policies. Governments are resorting to austerity measures on a large scale in deference to the wishes of big financial institutions having linked their bailout packages to reducing the benefits given to the salaried classes. But there are some people like those having their own business establishments getting richer day by day.

The biggest rally against what Occupy” activists called “predatory capitalism” was held in London because the unequal distribution of wealth is the most glaring in Britain. According to one estimate, the wealth of the richest 1000 persons in Britain has increased by $249 billion over the last three years. The situation elsewhere in Europe is no better. Only the common man is suffering, losing not only his or her job but also social security measures so essential in these difficult times. In Spain, there is 25 per cent unemployment, the highest among the 17 countries which have the euro as their currency.

The government’s wrong economic policies have led to a serious political crisis in Greece where a strong anti-austerity sentiment has prevented political parties from coming together to form a coalition government to save the country from going in for fresh elections. In the just concluded parliamentary polls in Greece, no political group could get a majority to form a government on its own. The last attempt by the leaders of the three biggest parties to reach an agreement to install a coalition ministry ended in a failure on Sunday because the far-left Syriza party refused to support any coalition that stands for an unpopular European Union-backed bailout plan. In fact, entire Europe remains in the grip of uncertainty.

Thought for the Day

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits. —Lillian Hellman

ARTICLE

Dealing with armed forces
Public controversies must be avoided
by Air Marshal R.S. Bedi (retd)

Despite the fact that the armed forces in India have remained almost in a state of war continuously since Independence to keep their cohesiveness, integrity and sovereignty intact and have stood by the government without ever alluding to any doubt as regards their loyalty, they are still viewed with a certain amount of scepticism. The obvious tendency for the political leadership as well as the bureaucracy is to exercise tight control over them. This widening chasm and lack of harmony between them is harming the national interest. Partly, the armed forces’ leadership is itself to blame for this state of affairs.

In advanced democracies like the US and Europe, the armed forces are generally held in high esteem. The military uniform is a symbol of national pride and reverence. The armed forces and their civilian counterparts in the government work in unison at all levels as a seamless entity.

But here in India the powers that be have not realised the importance of the men in uniform nor have they, for that matter, grasped the worth of the exalted position of the Service Chiefs. It first started with Gen Thimayya who could no more bear with Krishna Menon’s idiosyncrasies and chose to quit honourably. The country was shocked. Nehru persuaded him to withdraw his resignation. He also appealed to his patriotism saying that it would not project India as well. Then Pakistan President Gen Ayub Khan was transiting through New Delhi. Gen Thimayya promptly obliged the Prime Minister. Nehru instead castigated him in Parliament the very next day for being immature. The General did not take up the cudgels for being slighted unfairly. He continued to head the Army but as a lame duck Chief.

This, however, created ripples in the Army because General Thimayya was a soldier’s General, a charismatic leader and an outstanding professional who stood out as the first Indian brigade commander during World War II and later as General Officer Commanding of a division in J&K. Besides, he had also earned laurels for the country as the Chairman of the Neutral Nations Commission in Korea. This is how our illustrious Prime Minister treated an equally illustrious soldier. This was, in fact, the beginning of the rot setting in.

Later, it was Gen Rodrigues who was run down unsparingly not only by his Defence Minister, George Fernandes, but also by a host of parliamentarians for his remark that the armed forces were equally responsible for good governance. The manner of dismissal of the Navy Chief, Admiral Bhagwat, was shocking, to say the least. Considering the sensitive nature of the matter, it could well have been handled more carefully by allowing the Chief to exit gracefully instead of humiliating him by showing the door.

It is interesting to look back when Nehru was to appoint the Army’s first Indian Chief. He harboured serious doubts about Gen Cariappa on account of his wide popularity in the armed forces and continued proximity to Pakistani Generals even after Partition. He was thinking of appointing the next senior-most man, General Rajendrasinhji, as the Army Chief. Gen Rajendrasinhji allegedly told Nehru that he would resign if so appointed as the Chief over and above his senior, Gen Cariappa. Nehru backed off and appointed Gen Cariappa as the Army Chief.

In a partly similar case in the Navy in recent past, the Admiral next in the line of succession promptly accepted the bait instead of standing up to it as a matter of principle when Admiral Bhagwat was sacked.

These examples reflect the cavalier attitude of the political hierarchy in this country. These also highlight the military leadership’s acquiescent and deferential demeanour. This has done tremendous harm allowing the bureaucratic hold on them to tighten. The armed forces have been marginalised to the extent that they are not even in the decision-making loop. The Chiefs are no more in direct link with the government and have to deal through the Defence Secretary only. But while the armed forces in any democratic country must necessarily function under civilian control, it must not be misconstrued as a bureaucratic control.

It is instructive to bring out here the advice given by Lord Mountbatten to Prime Minister Nehru in regard to the importance of Service Chiefs. When the committee of secretaries recommended that, as in other ministries, the Defence Secretary too should have a status higher than the three Chiefs, Lord Mountbatten objected to it immediately on the ground that one could not equate the Service Chiefs with the secretaries of the departments of the government. Being responsible for the sovereignty and integrity of the nation and key players in ensuring national security, the Chiefs must have a status commensurate with their span of responsibility and the right of direct access to the Prime Minister as in all democracies.

Nehru accepted the logic and decided to place the three Chiefs above the Defence Secretary in status which continues to be so even today. Notwithstanding this, the Chiefs have been somehow denuded, gradually, of their standing and eminence with the passage of time.

A stage has now reached when the Chiefs can hardly air their views even on matters of national security, of which they are largely responsible without inviting flak and brickbats. Any time they attempt to clarify or make a statement with regard to the nation’s capabilities vis-a-vis China or Pakistan, they are ticked off, sometimes even publicly.

Air Chief Marshal Naik, now retired, was snubbed for his response to Pakistan’s boast that it had developed tactical nuclear missiles against India’s overwhelming conventional superiority. The Chief had merely pointed out that the nuclear weapons were nuclear weapons whether tactical or strategic. Pakistan should not miscalculate, for India’s response of “punitive retaliation” would remain the same regardless. Earlier, too, a former Army Chief, Gen Padmanabhan, was publicly censured by the then Defence Minister for having elucidated India’s nuclear capability and likely response to Pakistan’s blackmail. For that matter, was it really necessary to rebuke the Army Chief when he answered in the affirmative to a query as regards India’s capabilities to mount similar operations as the American “Jeronimo” to exterminate Osama bin Laden? The Service Chiefs must periodically air views on matters of national security in order to instil confidence among the people.

The Indian armed forces are one of the most apolitical forces in the world. They have always stood by the government without any doubts about their loyalty and rumour-mongering as it happened recently notwithstanding. The incident was played up as it also happened earlier when an artillery brigade moved to Delhi for range firing at the time of Nehru’s death. The vested interests created the fracas which only led to the widening of the trust deficit further.

The cavalier manner in which the armed forces are being treated is not in the long-term interest of the country. The institution of Chiefship, which at one time had certain aura about it, has been severely mauled. Public pronouncements slighting the armed forces and their Chiefs must stop in the long-term interest of the country.

The writer is a former Director-General, Defence Planning Staff, New Delhi.

MIDDLE

Murdering — with due respect!
by Vandana Shukla

It was my first full-time job. And, I was new to this region. One of my colleagues had been absent for quite sometime due to prolonged sickness. After recovery when he returned, I walked up to him to express my concern. I said, “Suna hai aapke dushmanon ki tabiyat nasaaz thi (I hear your enemies had fallen sick- only your enemies could fall sick, not you, because you are a friend, is what it meant).” He felt offended and blurted out, “Who told you I have enemies here?”

That was the end of my enthusiasm for using euphemisms. The art of circumlocution is a form of polite opacity, which demands a little sensitivity on the part of the listener. Euphemisms are a pleasant echo from an age, when people had time and discretion for a protracted conversation. But modern life and its demands have created a new kind of euphemism, which hurt and conceal, both, at the same time. Orwell said, euphemisms are designed “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectful.”

Americans have developed it into a fine art of deception. Sample this. When you get a ‘pink-slip,’ you are not offered a rosy future. The truth is, all your rosy dreams are dashed to the ground. These words cloak the unpleasant results of a decision —‘let go’ for firing and ‘right sizing’ is actually a softened expression for mass sacking.

A ‘rest room’ is not where you rest, but a cover-up for the Victorian embarrassment for mentioning the word ‘toilet.’ A ‘cuddly’ girl is in fact fat, and in our very Indian context ‘wheatish’ complexion is a concealment of a colonial hangover. A ‘homely’ person can be boring and vulnerable, and the one who cannot suffer fools may be respectably ‘reserved.’

The cruellest of them all is ‘collateral damage’ for the incidental dead civilians. Almost all cultures devised expressions to obfuscate sex, the most refined of them is ‘love making,’ there are many which are hilariously obscure. No wonder, brothels had to be given a respectably detached expression. If prostitution became ‘the oldest profession,’ in Russia a brothel is known as a ‘public house,’ if you confused it with public school you could be in trouble. In China many massage parlours and karaoke bars double up as brothels. In India we call them ‘red light areas’ for some obscure reason.

Signals of anger concealed in such bland remarks like ‘with due respect’ are often lost to even fluent speakers, the coded meaning being “Don’t you understand silly, you are mistaken.”

American search for perfection in body and in things beyond the body has lent some of the remarkable lies that the civilized world has learnt to repeat. They use ‘dental appliances’ which, in fact, are false teeth, they buy ‘previously owned’ car rather than ‘used’ and they go to ‘wellness centres,’ rather than hospitals. In other parts of the world people get old and die, in America they become pre-elderly then senior citizens and then they meet ‘terminal episode’ or ‘a therapeutic misadventure’, which, in Hindi would be told plainly, ‘poore ho gaye (completed his/her journey), in an undeceptive expression, yet using euphemism.

OPED CONTROVERSY

The government has unnecessarily cast aspersions on the functioning of the Department of Space, which scientists had looked up to for decades. Has the decision to ban top scientists from government employment served the national interest?
THE ANTRIX-DAVOS DEAL: WHAT THE GOVERNMENT MUST EXPLAIN
Pushpa M Bhargava

All of a sudden, G Madhavan Nair, a former Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and three of his retired colleagues learnt from the media about the ban on them from holding any position in any Government or Government-aided organisation. No charge-sheet was given nor any opportunity provided to them to defend themselves from whatever charges had been framed against them.

Apparently, there were two major charges: (a) an alleged financial loss to the Government on account of the deal between Antrix Corporation Ltd (the business arm of ISRO) and Devas Multimedia Private Ltd and (b) procedural lapses during the process of finalising and signing the deal.

BAN IN COUNTRY'S INTEREST?

This has serious implications both nationally and internationally. Therefore, we must ask the following questions: Has it all been fair? Are the reasons given and the steps taken by the government for the punishment meted out to the four space scientists sound? Has the government decision served the interests of the country?

To find answers to these questions, we must look at the growth of the Department of Space (DOS) and individuals who built it as well as the history of the case. Being a member of the first Advisory Committee for Space Sciences I have known the first five Chairmen of ISRO personally. The tradition of integrity, responsibility, excellence, transparency and commitment to the country that, for example Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan, U R Rao and Kasturirangan established, is not trivial, given the lack of it virtually everywhere else. It would have been, therefore, only fair if the government had exercised more restraint and care before announcing the ban on Nair and his colleagues through the media in January.

HISTORY OF THE DEAL

Let us look at the case. Discussions on the then novel multimedia project and the possibility of involvement of DOS/ISRO started in 2003 by Kasturirangan, the then Chairman of ISRO and at present a member of the Planning Commission, without any firm or irrevocable commitment on the part of DOS. These discussions led to the possibility of an appropriate deal being signed between Antrix and Devas.

After at least 18 meetings, a positive recommendation by a committee consisting of A N Shankara, a former Director of the Satellite Centre, one of the main constituent units of DOS, and a unanimous decision of the Antrix Board, the jinxed deal between Antrix and Devas was signed on January 28, 2005. And nearly five years passed without a murmur from any quarter!

In November 2009, Radhakrishnan took over from Nair -- during whose tenure the deal was signed - as Chairman, ISRO, and Secretary, DOS. Almost immediately afterwards, in December 2009, a committee headed by B N Suresh, a former member of the Space Commission, was appointed to look into the deal and gave it a clean chit. An Additional Secretary, a civil servant in the Department of Space who was not an expert in the area, was then asked to report on the Antrix-Devas deal.

PROCEDURAL LAPSES

On the basis of his report in which he pointed out procedural lapses and a financial loss to the Government of India as a consequence of having the Antrix-Devas deal signed as well as the support provided to this conclusion independently by the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the deal was annulled by the Government in July 2010 - more than five years after it was signed.

The Government then appointed a high-powered review committee consisting of B K Chaturvedi, Member, Planning Commission, and Roddam Narasimha, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and a member of the Space Commission, on February 10, 2011. This committee pointed out several procedural lapses in the process of signing the Antrix-Devas agreement but did not find any financial irregularity or loss to the Government on account of the deal. It was clear from the report of the Chaturvedi-Narasimha committee that the CAG had confused space spectrum with terrestrial spectrum, the two of which have to be "considered and priced differently".

CONCERNS OVER LOSS

DOS only receives transponder-using charges from the users; other charges such as spectrum charges would come within the purview of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Department of Telecommunications. In this connection, it is worth quoting Section 3.5.8 of the Chaturvedi-Narasimha Committee: "It is thus clear that the nature of service planned under this agreement which envisaged telecom, telephony, internet, data transmission and video services, would need consideration by TRAI and subsequently by the government on the procedure for allocation regarding prices to be charged for the spectrum and the number of operators to be allocated to the spectrum, along with the block size etc. Devas would have to pay, apart from other charges to Antrix, additional amounts as decided by the DOT and the Ministry of I&B In view of the above position, the Committee considers that concerns regarding spectrum having been sold cheap under the agreement have no basis whatsoever."

This view is also supported by the fact that there has been absolutely no evidence of any financial advantage to either Nair or any of his other three colleagues who have been indicted. It was something of a feat for the Chaturvedi-Narasimha's committee to submit a detailed, well-argued, over 50-page report in 30 days.

PRATYUSH SINHA PANEL

Yet, in May 2011, another committee was appointed to look into the Antrix-Devas deal. This committee was chaired by Pratyush Sinha, a former Chief Vigilance Commissioner, and also had Radhakrishnan as a member. It was on the basis of the recommendations of this committee that the Government issued its orders indicting Nair and three of his former colleagues, including Dr Shankara, who had supported the deal. Shankara, a former Director of the Satellite Centre, was one of the key persons involved in the progress of our space programmes.

Following the government decision based on the Pratyush Sinha committee's report, Roddam Narasimha, who has been a member of the Space Commission for some 20 years, resigned from the Commission. Like many of us, he also felt that Nair and his colleagues had been victimised for no fault of their own.

Past practices

As regards procedural lapses on the part of Nair, they were partly due to practices that had been followed till that time. Kiran Karnik, a former Chairman of Nasscom who was associated with DOS for a long period, has written a letter to the Prime Minister saying, "In terms of processes, as far as I know, this agreement went meticulously through every step: a technical assessment by Antrix/ISRO experts, approval by the Antrix board followed by Space Commission's approval. "If Cabinet approval was not sought for the deal (as reported in the media), the question is whether it was at all required and whether past transponder deals with private parties had gone through any such specific Cabinet approvals. The method - of leasing transponders at a fixed price - was no different from that followed for many TV channels that had earlier sought capacity for broadcasting.

"There has never been a history of auctions by ISRO (nor, as far as I know, by any global space agency). Satellite spectrum has always been treated differently from that on the ground, and the comparison is not just a case of apples and oranges, but two altogether different species."

The government has unnecessarily cast aspersions on the functioning of our finest and most successful government department. This does not augur well for the future of DOS, which we all had looked up to for decades - leave aside the future of the country. I believe the government and the ISRO management should come up with convincing answers about the questions being raised.

The writer is the founder Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad.

All about the deal

n The charge is that ISRO under the then Chairman G Madhavan Nair negotiated a deal that would have seen ISRO building satellites and giving precious S-band spectrum at a questionable price to a company named Devas.

n The contract with Devas was signed in 2005 by ISRO's commercial arm, Antrix. Two satellites and a massive 70 MHz of S-Band spectrum, to be used by Devas for broadband services, were priced at Rs 1,000 crore.

n The contract was scrapped in February, 2011, after media reports alleged that the deal was loaded in Devas' favour. ISRO reports directly to the Prime Minister's Office.

n What is S-band and why is it crucial? Spectrum in the S-band, also known as 2.5 Ghz band, is scarce and is extremely valuable for mobile broadband services. It is also of strategic interest and can be used for radio networking, satellite mobile television transmission, disaster warning systems and dissemination of meteorological data. Mobile phone companies want this spectrum to be set aside for extension of 3G services.