The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

High court jolts Mamata
After protests, learn governance

Riding the success of farmers’ protests against the acquisition of land for the Tatas, Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress were swept to power in West Bengal last year. One of her immediate decisions was to enact the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011.

The Calcutta High Court has dubbed it “unconstitutional and void”. If a state law on a Concurrent List subject – the Singur Act in this case – is at a variance with a Central law – the Land Acquisition Act here – then the Central law prevails. The state law can override the Central legislation if it is ratified by the President. The Singur Bill was never sent to the President for his assent. The state contends the land is not being acquired as it already belongs to the state government.

The Singur dispute was mishandled, first by the Left government, and then by Mamata Banerjee, who politicised it. The Left government should not have taken over land without farmers’ consent and without adequate compensation. The excessive use of force on protesting farmers at Nandigram and Singur inflamed passions, which Mamata Banerjee exploited politically. Lack of good governance and inefficient law-making have hurt the poor farmers, whose cause Mamata Banerjee famously champions.

The Singur agitation forced the Tatas to shift their car project to Gujarat, suffering a loss in the process. This has sent a wrong signal to industry. It is not hard to understand why Gujarat is among the fastest-growing states and the debt-stressed West Bengal among the laggards. Singur has inspired similar protests over land acquisition elsewhere in the country, weakening efforts to promote industrialisation in general and set up special economic zones in particular. It is industry that creates employment for the poor and revenue for the government. By being anti-reforms and anti-industrialists, Mamata Banerjee has harmed the interests of her own state and people. The land issue could have been resolved through talks with the Tatas, who are not known for being exploitative, anti-worker or unreasonable. But West Bengal’s agitation-prone politicians are good at messing up things.

Supercomputer laurels
India, too, needs to be in the reckoning

High-performance supercomputers displace the reigning monarchs frequently. The latest kid on the block is IBM’s Sequoia, which has come out at the top of the list of the world’s fastest supercomputers. It delivered an impressive 16.32 petaflops per second. A petaflop is a thousand trillion operations.

To put it in perspective, Sequoia can calculate in one hour what would otherwise take 6.7 billion people working non-stop and using hand calculators 320 years to complete. The US; European nations, including Germany, France and Italy; and in Asia, Japan and China, make it regularly to the top supercomputer league, whereas India makes a guest appearance from time to time.

Indian accomplishments, starting with Param in 2007, and followed by Param Padma and Eka have all done well when pitted against the best in the world. However, unlike other nations in the Top-10 league, India does not have a sustained programme to support such high-performance computers. The nation needs to give a boost to its computer centres so that they cannot only build such powerful machines, but also use them for a variety of tasks, which would not be possible otherwise. While weather prediction needs such supercomputers, they also have military use. In fact, Sequoia has been designed to carry out simulations that will help to extend the life of ageing nuclear weapons. The good thing is that by using supercomputers, scientists avoid real-world tests.

India has come a long way since the time when nations, especially the US, banned the export of supercomputers. At one time, even some very powerful desktops were considered for ban. Now the field is wide open and India has demonstrated its capability of making and operating such machines on its own. Indian computing skills are used worldwide. It is time for the government to provide the vision, leadership and the necessary funding so that Indian supercomputers make their mark in the world.

Thought for the Day

I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience. — R. Buckminster Fuller

ARTICLE

Minding the home front
Basic services demand greater attention
by Jayshree Sengupta

The RBI has rightly ticked off the government for passing the buck for its own failures in managing the economy to external factors like the euro zone crisis. It has also rightly refused to bring down the interest rates any further. It may be because 13 times in the past it hiked up interest rates and now it does not want to do a reverse jig and bring down the interest rates every quarter.

The RBI has been widely blamed for stifling investment growth and causing the current industrial downturn with industrial growth at only 0.1 per cent in May. It has pointed out that there are many things that have gone wrong with the Indian economy, and tinkering with the interest rates would not help. First is the problem of inflation which refuses to go away, and the consumer price index is again in double digit. It is not because of supply-side problems alone that prices are going up.

It is also the lack of proper governance and monitoring. Even when there is a bumper crop, the prices of food articles fail to come down significantly. Obviously, there are problems in the supply chain like hoarding, speculation as well as waste. Also the MSP of foodgrains have been hiked to appease the farmers leading to higher issue prices.

In addition, there is a huge amount of black money in the system, estimated at half of India’s GDP, which is around $640 billion. Monetary tightening by raising interest rates will have little impact when there is so much money circulating. People with black money are now demanding gold as a hedge against inflation which has led to an unprecedented price of over Rs 30,000 per 10 grams. In 2011, 878 tonnes of gold was imported and this has added to the current account deficit woes.

The current account deficit at nearly 4 per cent is in the danger zone.
The euro zone crisis has, however, led to a decline in demand for exports and 20 per cent of India’s exports are to the European market. But India is not a significantly big market for the EU. India accounts for only 1.8 per cent of EU trade.

China exports much more to the EU. India’s exports are mostly in garments and textiles, all labour-intensive goods, and the Indian government has quite rightly given an incentive package of $1.8 billion to exporters. Foreign direct investment, however, has fallen by 8 per cent due to the crisis in Europe, and foreign institutional investors have been leaving the Indian financial markets for safer havens as a result.

There has been a sharp slide in the rupee value. Input costs (imported parts, oil and raw materials) are escalating and are affecting industrial competitiveness adversely. No wonder, export growth has become sluggish.

On the domestic front again, serious problems of corruption and the lack of strong leadership in decision making in the economic system remain which has led to mismanagement of public poverty alleviation programmes and government money is being siphoned off into private pockets.

There seems to be no justice as large-scale corruption cases have surfaced in recent times. Nobody seems to be getting punished and with petty corruption thriving alongside, the inequalities are widening. The rich are increasingly stashing money abroad and the list is still not with the public.

Add to all this the extravagant government spending (especially on VIP travel abroad and refurbishing offices and bungalows at huge costs) and subsidies that do not reach the poor. With much lower tax collections than expenditure, this has led to the ballooning of the fiscal deficit.

The government has, no doubt, been living beyond its means, borrowing from the market and its interest payments comprise around 18 per cent of its total expenditure.

Now the Fitch Investment rating agency has also downgraded India’s investment climate. The gaping fiscal deficit has to be reduced. But austerity is not possible except by cutting down subsidies and squeezing the poor further. For reducing the petrol subsidy the government hiked the price of petrol by Rs 7.50 a litre. This has caused shrinkage in the demand for cars.

The automobile sector has registered the slowest sale in May and Maruti sales fell by 4 per cent. The manufacturers are contemplating shutting down factories for a few days a week because inventories are piling up. The automobile sector is an important driver of industrial growth and it is now in trouble. Gross capital formation growth has also declined which is a bad sign and signifies slowdown in investment.

The economic reforms and opening up of the economy were supposed to have given a big boost to new job opportunities and higher incomes for all. But only the educated and connected got into multinational companies with high salaries. Backward castes and minorities remained far behind in many spheres. Property owners saw sky-rocketing land prices as a result of an increase in the demand for land which generated a lot of black money. Much of the tribal population on the other hand has been displaced by the land-grabbing mafia for illegal mining in forest land. There is a lot of discontent in the country which is surfacing in many ways.

The poor have been worse off for they have to pay for their own health care today. India has one of the highest ‘out of pocket expenditure’ on health in the world. There is hardly any social safety net. There is a continuous flow of migrants to towns in search of jobs and they have no place to live as there is a big shortage of affordable housing. And the government school education system in urban areas is ridden with problems of absentee teachers, lack of school infrastructure and lack of teaching material. There are problems in agriculture as well and small farmers are increasingly selling off their land to become common labourers. There is need for higher public investment to support marginal farmers.

Basic services for the poor need to be revamped so that there is better education and health care, and the manufacturing sector is allowed to grow faster in order to create jobs. There is a crying need for an increase in public expenditure in social and physical infrastructure. Yet India has had to live up to the expectation of an ‘emerging giant’ and a prominent member of the BRICS group.

At the G20 meeting in Mexico, the Prime Minister thus pledged $10 billion to the cause of resolution of the euro zone crisis. Clearly we are trying to do a balancing act between India’s prestige abroad and tending to the urgent needs at home. Should we not look inwards more?

MIDDLE

Techno-(un)savvy
by Rama Kashyap

I was trying to chat with my niece on the Internet. As I struggled to trace and strike the right alphabet keys to communicate with her, irritated at my miserably slow response, my niece wrote, “Bua, so gaye kya ?”(Aunt, have you gone off to sleep?) No, I had not dozed off. In fact, despite my best effort, I was not able to match up with her speed. I must admit I was painfully slow.

It is a fact that today’s techno-savvy generation which has grown up with computers, adapts to the new technology like fish to water. But for me, learning to operate the computer has been an uphill task. Anytime, anywhere I would get stuck and lose patience. In desperation, I would start calling my children to help me out of the logjam.

But before coming to my rescue they would offer me a sound piece of advice, “Mummy, why don’t you try? Computer is so user-friendly. …..manage yourself.” What a role reversal! All along I had been advising my children to learn and understand on their own; now they tutor me the same. They tell me if I can understand intricate economic theories, why I can’t follow simple commands given by the computer. I have no valid explanation. I cannot help but feel small.

It is not just the computer but all the gizmos, which the young generation is crazy about, unnerve me. The fancy mobiles with umpteen features which are flooding the market today may entice the Generation X but to me they are rather intimidating. I understand mobile today is a ‘small wonder’, capable of doing a whole lot of things – from chatting, sending messages, playing games, listening to music to booking tickets and Internet banking and a lot more. But for me a mobile is just an instrument for making and receiving calls.

Frankly, even writing a text message is not my cup of tea. I find it quite taxing and time consuming. I would much rather make a call than send a text message. Also I have no qualms in admitting that SMS vocabulary baffles me. I get puzzled by the short forms where ‘you’ is ‘u’ and ‘to’ is ‘2’.

In fact, a new mobile with even slight variation in operational mechanism can be a major irritant for me. No wonder, instead of being thrilled at the prospect of acquiring a new mobile set, I get nervous. I want to cling to my old set as the new one with different mechanism frustrates me. I remember on my birthday, my son gifted a ‘touch screen’ mobile set to me but the new cell phone left me completely drained at the end of the day. Every now and then the widgets would make a vanishing trick. Any accidental touch while talking would end the call unceremoniously.

I wonder why at all there should be smart keys of the touch screen when the simple keys can do a neat job. I wish mobile companies spare some thought for my generation of techno-(un)savvy people which aspires to acquire ‘decent’ mobiles, but with simple basic functions.n

OPED neighbour

The two judgments
The PPP as the major partner in the ruling coalition has done well to accept the verdict. It might have been better for them to vacate the stage altogether in favour of the people more acceptable to both the permanent and ideological wings of the establishment.
I.A Rehman

Yousuf Raza Gilani, disqualified former Prime Minister of Pakistan

ALL praises to the Almighty that the people of Pakistan have been blessed with two history-making judgments of the apex court and this within a matter of days. The more momentous of the two verdicts has ended the months-old agony of Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani by pushing him off the prime ministerial gaddi. Since the issue was contempt of the highest court in the land the verdict was not unexpected, though the scale of punishment is.

While all Supreme Court verdicts must always be honoured even if they do not appear to be sound, it may not be possible to avoid a prolonged discussion on the present judgment. There are quite a few issues that will need to be clarified.

Only time will tell, after the current wave of emotional frenzy has subsided, whether this judgment will be viewed as a vindication of the judiciary’s authority or as an avoidable encroachment on the political domain of parliament, and whether the majesty of law only means the majesty of judges. It hardly needs to be said that history has not always upheld crucial judicial decisions, however popular they might have been in the first instance.

To say this does not mean siding with Mr Gilani and his party; it only means that regardless of any party’s guilt, justice must not only be done, it should also seen to be done. Besides, whatever the circumstances the near total eclipse of parliamentary institutions is a prospect even a stable and disciplined state cannot afford. The consequences to Pakistan cannot be viewed with equanimity. The ouster of a prime minister on a non-political charge calls for solemn reflection and not dancing in the streets.

The PPP as the major partner in the ruling coalition has done well to accept the verdict. It might have been better for them to vacate the stage altogether in favour of the people more acceptable to both the permanent and ideological wings of the establishment.

The other judgment, which disposed of the suo motu Case No 5 of 2012, regarding media coverage of some allegedly shady deals, has been pushed into the background but it will also be debated for long. This because the Supreme Court has withstood another three-yearly test, and is saying that “today, as ever, the court has endeavoured to uphold the constitution and has stood up to unconstitutional forces bent upon undermining it”.

The debate will be long because the court has chosen not to identify the “unconstitutional forces” behind the Malik Riaz-Arsalan Iftikhar affair. The only people taken to task in the judgment belong to the electronic media, and they cannot be suspected of possessing the capacity to undermine the constitution or the judiciary.

By stopping short of exposing the invisible hands that conspired against the judiciary the matter has been left in the area of speculation. As a result the lawyers, who claim to be friends of the judiciary, and who need not be guided by it, may be looking for scapegoats in the wrong places. They should know about the forces capable of using carefully stored information to rattle any institution, the judiciary not excepted.

A highly gratifying feature of the judgment is the assurance that the tradition of replacing a few dry and dreary paragraphs on an exposition of law with classical verse is getting stronger. There is progress too inasmuch as, instead of relying on translations, Hafiz is quoted in his own language. The promotion of Persian poetry, criminally neglected by the education bosses, is yet another feather in the court’s already bulging plumage. And one does not have words to thank the august court for reminding us of the incomparable words of wisdom (Everybody’s flight of mind is limited by his capacity). Indeed, My Lords.

There is a danger, however, that the intoxicating poetry may make us miss Justice Khilji’s observation that “although family members of public functionaries are, properly speaking, not performing state functions, the alleged facts of this case highlight the necessity of extreme caution and discretion in their private and public dealings and conduct”. It is possible the good judge wrote the four-sentence note only to issue this essential warning.

The verdict will also be debated for offering media celebrities a lesson in the ethics of reporting. The advice to media persons to check and recheck the authenticity of information they rely on is wholly valid. But it may not be fair to blame journalists for failing to find out “what has been ascertained by us with very little effort”. Journalists in Pakistan cannot even dream of the power the courts enjoy, especially these days.

It is for the privileged journalists to ponder the causes of their fall from grace. Not long ago they were hailed as leaders of the morality brigade when they were hounding the government’s counsel and tearing into their submissions to the court before the judges had looked at them. What made them change? Or can it be said that they did not change, only the beholder’s angle of vision changed?

Only a few should, however, be surprised at the allegations against the media persons who have learnt the way to profit from an order that is corrupt to the core. There can be no islands of honesty in an ocean of corruption. Who does not know about handout journalists that grew up under Ayub Khan or the breed of lifafa (envelope) journalists raised by Ziaul Haq! It is no secret that pliable scribes are planted in various media establishments and retained by intelligence operators and the most powerful employers cannot think of touching them.

The sooner an across-the-board accountability is held the better. The journalists’ unions should hold full-scale inquiries and remind the people, including the born-yesterday angels, of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists’ code of ethics drawn up half a century ago.

True, there are black sheep in the media. Yet no holier-than-thou institution has the right to paint the whole media community as a bunch of galley slaves up for auction. The fools who sweat day in and day out for a pittance, who are not even paid their wages, greatly outnumber the successful and popular celebrities.

The way to deal with the rot all around is not to make an example of a few politicians, a few journalists, or a few unmentionable names in this category or that the entire mosaic of Pakistan society needs to be replaced by better quality pieces.

This task can be accomplished neither by the whip of the law nor the preachers suffering from illusions of grandeur and infallibility. Let normal political activity continue uninterrupted, the people will themselves throw up their saviours.

By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad.

Window on pakistan
Cards Zardari may have up his sleeve
Syed Nooruzzaman

Interesting questions are being raised in the wake of the Pakistan Supreme Court judgement disqualifying Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. He has quickly been replaced by Raja Parvez Ashraf, considered close to the Bhutto-Zardari family. Going by what has been appearing in the Pakistani media, few people are prepared to believe that President Asif Zardari is no longer what he has been known for — not bothering about giving due respect to the state institutions like the judiciary.

Will he keep quiet after the PPP-led government under his guidance has accepted the court verdict and found a new leader to take over as Prime Minister? Will the new head of government implement the earlier directive of the apex court to approach the Swiss authorities to reopen the money-laundering cases against Mr Zardari, who is alleged to have parked billions of rupees in secret bank accounts in Switzerland? Will there be an attempt to amend the Pakistan constitution on the pretext of bringing more clarity in the law regarding presidential immunity so that the judiciary is unable to act against Mr Zardari? Or will the Supreme Court now keep quiet after it has shown the political class its place by getting a defiant Prime Minister replaced?

The guessing game is on about the cards President Zardari has up his sleeve before the general elections, due early next year, are held. In a signed article, the Editor of The News, Mohammad Malick, argues that Mr Zardari, in any case, wanted to remove Mr Gilani as Prime Minister, as the latter was perceived to have grown too big for his boots. The judicial verdict made the President’s task easier.

Malick says a Zardari confidante revealed some startling facts a few days back: “The President himself is quite miffed with him, but both he and the PM know that under the present circumstances he (President) cannot send him packing. Funnily, as it may sound, it’s actually the CJ who is our last hope to get rid of Gilani reasonably early and well before the next elections.”

Now the question arises: why did Mr Gilani then refuse to reopen the graft cases against Mr Zardari as the apex court wanted? That course would have angered the PPP rank and file, who had started considering the former Prime Minister of Pakistan as a leader who could replace Mr Zardari in a crisis situation. And Mr Zardari could not stomach this reality.

Indications are that the new Prime Minister, Raja Parvez Ashraf, too, will quote the presidential immunity clause in the Pakistan constitution and refuse to act against Mr Zardari if the apex court directs him to reopen the cases against him. According to a report in The Nation, Pakistani Punjab Governor Sardar Latif Khosa, a Zardari loyalist, expressed the view at a ceremony to mark the 59th birth anniversary of Benazir Bhutto that “no Prime Minister will write the letter” to the Swiss authorities as sought by the apex court. Mr Khosa attacked the judiciary by saying that it had launched a “selective accountability” process to harm the interests of the PPP. He also commented on the case relating to Chief Justice Iftikhar Gilani’s son Arsalan Iftikhar: “Arsalan loses 10,000 pounds in gambling in one night and the father is unaware of the activities of his son. The nation wants to know how a grade-17 officer became a millionaire after quitting his job.” It seems the fact that Chief Justice Chaudhry has dissociated himself from the Bench hearing the case involving Arsalan has no meaning for people like Mr Khosa.

But the opposition parties are all praise for the Supreme Court for having tamed the second most powerful politician in Pakistan. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan has been quoted as saying that the court delivered a “historical verdict” against Mr Gilani, but there is need for a systemic change to bring about stability in Pakistan.

With Mr Gilani punished for defying the judiciary, how will the real culprit, Mr Zardari, be brought to book? There seems to be no way to show him the door so long as his party is in power. The PPP may manage to come back to power again after the next elections if those who see politics, supported by the army, behind the drive to nail down Mr Zardari with the help of the judiciary are right.

It all began with the Supreme Court scrapping the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) issued by then President Gen Pervez Musharraf following a political deal between him and the late PPP leader, Benazir Bhutto. Over 8000 persons faced with corruption charges had benefited from the NRO and around 80 of them were politicians like Mr Zardari and Mr Asghar Khan, a retired Air Marshal.

An editorial in Daily Times points out that though the Supreme Court ordered “all closed cases of the beneficiaries to be reopened, its subsequent focus seemed to be on just one of the beneficiaries: President Asif Zardari. Gilani took his stand on the basis of Article 248 of the constitution, which lays down that the President enjoys immunity so long as he is in office.”

When the matter relating to Mr Gilani’s refusal to accept the law’s interpretation by the apex court went to parliament, the Speaker upheld the then Prime Minister’s viewpoint. The matter, as Daily Times argues, should have ended then and there in view of the principle that “parliament is supreme” in a democracy. But, as the paper’s editorial points out, “the essence of the verdict against the Speaker’s finding is to declare, at least in the sphere of the issues raised by the case, that parliament’s supremacy is subject to the will, not of the people, but of the judiciary”.

All this may lead to an ugly situation in the days to come as politics is being used to handle a situation in which the judiciary is trying to uphold its supremacy.