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Petrol prices mishandled Judiciary
vs executive |
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No one
acts
Mercy
petitions before President
Earning
hands
CINEMA:
NEW Releases
Simmers but doesn’t deliver Movies on TV
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Judiciary vs executive
Pakistan
President Asif Ali Zardari continues to be under tremendous pressure from the judiciary because of his questionable past. He was the cause for Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani losing his job as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Perhaps, the same fate awaits the new Prime Minister, Raja Pervez Ashraf, who has also been directed by the Pakistan Supreme Court, like his predecessor, to write a letter to the authorities in Switzerland to get the money-laundering cases against Mr Zardari reopened. However, Raja Ashraf, asked by the court to submit a compliance report by July 12, stated on Sunday that there was no question of his acting against President Zardari. This means he is prepared to go down like Mr Gilani by taking the same stand that the latter took — the Pakistan President enjoys constitutional immunity in cases of a criminal nature. On the other hand, Mr Zardari was directed by the Lahore High Court on Wednesday to sever his links with the PPP by resigning as its co-chairman, as the use of the President’s office for political purposes was not permitted by the constitution of Pakistan. A Full Bench of the court warned him that contempt of court proceedings might be initiated against him if he failed to implement the May 12, 2011, court decree by September 5, when the next hearing of the case is scheduled. President Zardari does not have any constitutional immunity in this case as the matter is of a civil nature. But if he dissociates himself from his party, he may lose control over its functioning as his son Bilawal, who is the PPP chairman, is too young to manage party affairs the way it suits the Bhutto-Zardari family. If Mr Zardari does not resign from the PPP, chances are that he may be disqualified to hold the office of President. And once he ceases to be President, Prime Minister Ashraf will have no excuse to refuse to get the cases against Mr Zardari in Switzerland reopened. The judiciary appears to be fully prepared to bring him to justice by closing all his escape routes. It’s a tricky situation for the Pakistan President, who seems to be left with the only option of fighting his battle politically. |
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No one acts
About
90 per cent of the trafficked children come from disadvantaged sections of society, and hence lack a strong lobby to protect their rights. It is understood that cracking the chain of human trafficking, a well-organised industry worth $ 16 billion internationally, is not a cake-walk. About 6 to 8 lakh men, women and children are trafficked internationally every year, of which 70 per cent are women. While children and men are trafficked for labour, women and young girls are forced into prostitution. The well-knit operation of human trafficking is conducted in collusion with the corrupt law enforcers, as has been alleged by this year’s US Trafficking Persons (TIP) report. In poor countries like India where a child, particularly a female child, is sold as a commodity to fight starvation, trafficking is not a new phenomenon. But with scores of laws to protect their right to freedom and dignity — the Bonded Labour Act, the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, to name a few — it is sad that the internal trafficking of girls is still widespread in India. These girls are either forced into marriages or are made to work as sex workers. The crime of internal trafficking of women once again finds its genesis in the problem of depleting sex ratio of the girls. Despite the setting up of over 107 Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) and government funding of over 100 NGO-run hotlines and distribution of rehabilitation funds for the rescued victims, the problem remains unabated because of a powerful lobby that protects these criminals against the clutches of law. In view of a very low rate of conviction in cases of human trafficking and a rise in the number of trafficking calls for comprehensive anti-trafficking laws, prosecution and conviction of the officials allegedly involved in trafficking and an improved protection arrangement for victims who testify against traffickers have been suggested by the TIP report. But, above all, the skewed sex ratio needs to be corrected to prevent these crimes.
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The precondition to freedom is security. — Rand Beers
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Mercy petitions before President
President
Pratibha Patil just before her retirement has been the subject of strong criticism allegedly for accepting over 35 mercy petitions and commuting death sentence to life imprisonment of these accused persons convicted of rape and murder of children — an action which causes justifiable disbelief and alarm. She is even said to have commuted the sentence of a person who died five years ago (showing a kind of sloth in disposing of such delicate matters). The President’s office being naturally piqued at getting the blame and finding an unexplained and unfair silence from Home Minister P. Chidambaram, refusing to clarify that it was he who had recommended the pardon, has had to come out with a Press statement that all commutations are “not playing to the gallery” by the President but rather she has acted “on the aid and advice of the Home Minister”. The President is on firm footing – it has been held by the Supreme Court that pardon under Article 72 of the Constitution being an executive action by the President is to be exercised on the advice of the Central government, which means the Home Minister. Hence it is incumbent on Mr Chidambaram to explain to the public as to what were the special considerations which led him to recommend pardon to these 35 accused persons held guilty of most heinous crimes. This is an instance where explanation from the Home Ministry is urgently required if faith in even and serious dealing with such sensitive matters is to the accepted by the public — more so when President Patil is retiring in three weeks. Mr Chidambaram owes to President Patil to remove the unfair cloud, the blame for which, if any, has to be taken by him and not by her, who only did the ministerial act of following the Home Minister’s advise, which she was bound to accept under the Constitution. The reasons by Mr Chidambaram need to be placed in public domain, so that the electorate can profitably be amazed how such serious matters of life and death are dealt with by the Home Ministry. It also needs explaining that while Mr Chidambaram has had all the time for consideration and to give in for such unlikely pardon, he has not found time to even consider and deal with cases of others having been awarded the death sentence. This is all the more urgent because previous Presidents had specifically formulated certain guidelines before execution of the death sentence. Thus President APJ Abdul Kalam, who had 25 mercy petitions pending before him, only dealt with two, rejecting one and pardoning the other. He took keen interest in laying down specific criteria for consideration of the petitions. He addressed detailed queries to the Home Ministry about the poverty of the accused and whether the accused had proper legal help for his defence, and raised questions about other petitions and sent these to the Home Minister for further clarification. President K.R. Narayanan also chose a similar role by disposing of only one of the 10 petitions pending before him. Of course, we had the opposite case of President S. D. Sharma who rejected all 14 mercy petitions filed before him. These illustrations show that even in disposing of mercy petitions, the President, though objective, is yet subconsciously influenced by major inarticulate premise of their personal views on the question of the death penalty. Thus, a certain kind of arbitrariness at granting pardon is bound to happen. Let me clarify — for people like me who advocate the abolition of death penalty — even a messy policy of pardon is to be welcomed because at least by this process the horror of death penalty is somewhat lessened, because I fully accept the stand of Dr Ambedkar, who said, “I think that the proper thing for this country to do is to abolish the death sentence altogether” and that of Jayaprakash Narayan, the great socialist leader, who said, “Death sentence is no remedy for such crime.” Ironically, after the rarest of rare doctrine of death penalty was propounded in 1980 by the Supreme Court, it confirmed the death penalty in 40 per cent of the cases during 1980-90 whereas it was 37.7 per cent in 1970-80. For the High Courts the figures confirming the death sentence rose from 59 per cent in 1970-80 to 65 per cent during 1980- 90. The vociferous opposition to the abolition of the death penalty springs from the myth that it can lead to an increase in murders. Facts show otherwise. In 1945-50 the State of Travancore, which had no death penalty, had 962 murders whereas during 1950-55, when the death sentence was introduced, there were 967 murders. A survey conducted by the United Nations in 1988 concluded that research has failed to provide any evidence that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. A survey released in September 2000 by The New York Times found that during the last 20 years the homicide rate in the states with the death penalty has been 48 per cent to 101 per cent higher than in the states without the death penalty. The death penalty had been abolished in 1965 in the UK. The membership of the European Union is dependent on having no death penalty. This has been done obviously with the confidence that murders do not get automatically reduced by retaining the death penalty. Since 1973, as many as 123 prisoners have been released in the US after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. So far, 139 countries, from all regions of the world, have abolished the death penalty and 150 have put a moratorium on it. Mahatma Gandhi openly proclaimed, “I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because he alone gives it.” Must this land of the Buddha and Gandhi continue to present such a negative face against human rights by retaining the death
penalty.
The writer is a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi.
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Earning hands Our
roof will surely leak this monsoon”, muttered Karuna Devi, lying with her back on a worn-out mat, half-asleep but fully worried. Excruciating waves of pain passed through her feeble frame as she tried to turn and lie on her stomach. She rose before the sun rise and went to bed when even the moon looked tired in the sky. She dreamt sometimes of better days, when her six daughters and three sons would grow up and the family would earn more. Her husband returned home late, smelling of liquor, as ever, mumbled abuses at all, especially at the eldest son, Ramdin. “He roams around all day, and returns home without much picks. I thought I got two more earning hands when he was born and then two more with the next birth and so on, but in the end I got more stomachs to feed and more bones to cover. To cap it all, you frustrate me more by talking about the weak roof.” His abuses went on and on and eventually lulled all of them to sleep. Next day began as usual. They went out from their shanty to do labour work. Ramdin went to his “area” — the bus stand. He was determined to fight a group of urchins, who snatched his picks. They robbed him again. No one in the busy bus-stand intervened. For them, the fight of the rag-pickers was like the fight of dogs. It seemed a group of stray canines just attacked an intruder in their area. Just that. Nothing special. How would he go home now? “Bring some good stuff. We need to plug the leak of the roof. Do you understand?” he remembered his mom’s words. He wanted to end her misery as fast as possible. He often dreamt of finding a diamond in the rags some day. “There are so many careless people in the world. Some can drop those by accident” At that precise moment, a shining object caught his eye lying besides two empty bottles under an AC bus. He got up slowly and slid under the bus. It was just a heart-shaped yellow button. He was disgusted. He extended his hand to pick up the bottles that had rolled towards the centre of the bus. Just then, he heard the roar of the engine. In panic, he gripped the bottles and tried to come out swiftly from the other side. It was too late. The rear tyres crushed him like a bee gets swatted. His shriek was no louder than the sound of a lifeless dry leaf when it is trampled upon. The driver of the bus ran away. No one tried to catch him. The parents cried and beat their chest. By the evening, they were all quiet. The powerful transporter had compensated them “suitably” with Rs 20,000. She sat that night against the wall, all numb. She touched the currency notes in her lap shining above her soiled sari. Her other children too stared at the pad of notes out of their deep sockets. Once she used to cuddle her son in the same lap. She looked at the roof and through the holes, she spotted clouds hovering above the sky. “He did have earning hands,” said her husband. Then, he looked at his other children who were looking at their earning hands — a total of
16.
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CINEMA:
NEW Releases
Movie: The Amazing
RATINGS: Marvel Comics and Hollywood has put together a whole variety of superheroes, from Superman to Batman but Spider-man is never more at home than in New York, or specifically Manhattan, where he scales the sides of those towering skyscrapers as though he's jogging on the waterfront. The new Spider-man Andrew Garfield is clearly an improvement on Toby Maguire or have we seen too much of Maguire ? As Peter Parker Garfield is more intense, even energetic, yet underplaying his role at the right times and Emma Stone is no less enthusiastic as his charming girl-friend Gwen Stacey. The pair imbues the story with zest and zing. Here they show Spider-man's parents and a cute web is woven around his birth, though now he lives with his uncle Ben (Martin Sheen) and aunt May (Sally Field). But it is dad's former colleague Dr Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans) whose experiments with spider DNA go wrong and hence is estranged from the Parkers. Gwen's dad George (Denis Leary) is the police chief, making matters worse. The screenplay by James Vanderbilt, Alvin Sargent and Steve Kloves is smooth as are the establishing shots and director gives this latest version a head start over its predecessors. In fact Spider-man only appears halfway through the film. And our own Irrfan Khan plays Dr Rajat Ratha, a senior scientist. Spider-man of course does his double-act like Zorro and enjoys it as much but he doesn't have to wait till night. He can change form at will. Pitted against him is Dr Connors, who after getting a magic formula starts creating giant figures set to attack the super hero. If Zorro has his whip, Spidermam uses his webby threads to strike at the enemy. It is in the latter half that the film is heavy with FX and here the 3D is very effective. There is a giant mutant lizard and a Hunk at their destructive best — immortal, succumbing only at the director's behest. But thankfully director Webb (talk about puns !) doesn't go overboard as in some of the recent action-ers. Cameraman John Schwartzman goes to town with the aerial shots and slick editing makes the fare absorbing even though it is all of 136 minutes. Garfield is superb right through while the pretty Emma Stone provides adequate support, reminding one of Judy Geeson a couple of decades ago. Rhys Effans, however, is inconsistent while Irrfan Khan, given a higher status for an Indian, is rather stiff before his sudden exit. Martin Sheen and Sally Field, who picked an Oscar early in her career for playing a labour activist in Norma Rae, do their nominal cameos reserved for golden oldies. Yes, this superhero is quite amazing and well worth watching.
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Simmers but doesn’t deliver
Movie: Maximum However, the rivalry between the two never quite acquires the cutting razor's edge. At best, it simmers and sizzles but falls short of the requisite punch. The dramatic tension despite many elements of intrigue fails to touch a zenith. Indeed, on the surface level the film exposes much. The police-politician-builder-underworld nexus forms the web of the thriller, which had the potential to grow into a riveting narrative. Yet the film, a peep into how police and the criminal network functions, often in tandem with each other, neither shocks nor provokes. Actually the action doesn't pulverise into a force to reckon with. Besides, despite the short length of the film less than two hours, it moves at a lukewarm pace. Never mind that something or the other is happening all the time and that the narrative spans a long period from 2003 to 2008 and even fleetingly refers to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, it doesn't hold you in a vice like grip. No doubt the movie is supported by a battery of good actors and performances-can actors like Rajendra Gupta and Vinay Pathak ever let you down? Expectedly they don't in their respective cameos, Gupta as Pandit's father and Pathak as the wily politician. Surprisingly, here even Neha Dhupia as the doting housewife delivers. Amit Sadh as the media man is competent. Yet sadly enough it is in the etching of lead protagonists that the film doesn't measure up. Sonu as Pandit has many shades to his persona. One moment as the doting father he is tying his daughter's shoelaces, yet another involved in a romantic chitchat with his wife and still at another point he is busy grooving at a dance bar. Not to forget his flirtatious rendezvous with a starlet. Nevertheless, his character, no fault of Sonu though, doesn't quite come alive. A fine actor like Nasser is almost if not completely wasted. All in all, the film promises much. However, one keeps sitting in anticipation for the big moment which doesn't follow through. Surprise elements too are devoid of the shock value and are dead giveaways. The film, however, is not a drag and passes muster as watchable fare. |
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Movies on TV
The
film portrays the feeling of pure love which never changes over time (Love
"now" and "then"), although the perspective of realizing
one's soulmate has changed now. An old-fashioned romantic tells his love story
to a modern man who has just broken up with his girlfriend. The film stars
Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone in lead roles. ZEE CINEMA 7:15AM
Raat, 10:40AM Aakrosh / Diler / Ravan Raaj, 2:00PM Maine Pyar
Kiya, 6:00PM Aazaan, 9:00PM Phir Hera Pheri HBO 10:50AM
High Lane, 12:40PM Child's Play 2, 2:25PM Blades of Glory, 4:40PM
Jonah Hex, 6:25PM Mona Lisa Smile, 9:00PM Fast Five, 11:45PM
A Man Apart SETMAX 8:00PM Dangerous Ishhq Star gold 6:00AM
Kya Kehna, 9:05AM Khichdi: The Movie, 11:35AM Indian, 3:05PM Jigar
kaleja, 5:50PM Gangaajal, 9:00PM Golimaar INDIAN TALKIES Star movies 7:21AM Ghost Rider, 10:02AM Vampires
Suck, 11:46AM The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
1:59PM Battle Creek Brawl, 6:24PM Pirates of The Caribbean: On
Stranger Tides, 9:00PM Total Recall, 11:22PM The Magnificent
Butcher FILMY 9:00AM Preetam, 12:30PM Malamaal Weekly, 4:00PM
Chandramukhi Ke Hunkar
Dangerous Ishhq Set max 1:30PM Dangerous
Ishhq is a 2012 Bollywood Supernatural thriller film directed by Vikram
Bhatt and starring Karisma Kapoor in the lead role. The story of the film
spans over a period of four centuries and tells four different stories set in
different time periods. This film marked the comeback of Karisma Kapoor to
films after a break of nine years. Zee Cinema 1:10AM Apaharan, 4:00AM
Andaz Apna Apna, 7:25AM Shirdi Ke Sai Baba, 10:55AM Pratibandh,
2:25PM Vishwatma, 5:55PM Double Dhamaal, 9:00PM Nayak Star
Gold 12:00AM Golimaar, 2:20AM Abhay, 5:00AM Telemart, 6:00AM
Kal Ho Naa Ho, 9:55AM Naya Ajooba, 12:05PM Sivaji: The Boss,
2:55PM Zameen, 6:05PM Golmaal 3, 9:00PM Singham Set
max 9:25AM Dil To Pagal Hai, 1:30PM Dangerous Ishhq, 4:15PM Mere
Brother Ki Dulhan, 8:00PM Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya Movies ok 2:30AM
Dushman Devta, 6:00AM Xcuse Me!, 9:20AM Jajantaram Mamantaram, 11:50AM
Khatta Meetha, 3:05PM Diljale, 5:50PM Raja Hindustani, 9:00PM
Ayan Vidhwansak The Destroyer, 11:50PM Ayan Vidhwansak The
Destroyer Set max 09.00 Dil To Pagal Hai, 01.30 Dangeorus Iahq,
04.30 Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, 08.00 Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya Star
gold 6:00AM Kal Ho Naa Ho, 9:55AM Naya Ajooba, 12:05PM
Sivaji: The Boss, 2:55PM Zameen, 6:05PM Golmaal 3, 9:00PM
Singham
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INDIAN TALKIES 9:30AM 
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Love Aaj Kal, 1:00PM Chintu Ji, 4:30PM Housefull, 8:00PM
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