|
|
|
|
|
Rare honour for Ansari
Anna gets real |
|
|
A national shame
Unemployment in India
Who will fill this gap?
Mission peace, on a wing and a prayer
|
Rare honour for Ansari
That
incumbent Vice-President Mohammed Hamid Ansari will get a second term to serve the country was never in doubt. Thus, as a nominee of the Congress-led UPA, he easily defeated his challenger and BJP-led NDA candidate Jaswant Singh by securing 490 of the 736 votes cast. Jaswant Singh could manage only 238 votes. That Ansari could not get 500 votes as his poll managers had predicted is not as important as is the fact that he got the support of the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who had opposed his candidature for the top constitutional post of President. MPs belonging to the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress also voted for Ansari, according him the rare honour of being the second candidate in independent India’s history after Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan getting re-elected as Vice-President. Ansari is gifted with scholarly abilities as proved by his association with the Centre for West Asian and African Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia’s Academy for Third World Studies as a visiting professor before he became the Vice-President of India. He was admired for his skills as a diplomat when he served as India’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran and Afghanistan and as High Commissioner to Australia. After his retirement as an IFS officer, he got an opportunity to play his role as the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University. He has been known for his leftist leanings, which can be noticed in his writings. But he has never been a left ideologue. Ansari has the rare ability of flooring even his critics with his suave manners and politeness in his behaviour. During his first term as Vice-President he handled with aplomb the Rajya Sabha sessions as its Chairman. This is a major responsibility that the Vice-President has to discharge. But he has never been at the centre of a controversy. He received flak from the Opposition only once when he adjourned the House on the night of December 29, 2011, during the debate on the Lokpal Bill. However, the charge that he did it “abruptly” was not convincing.
|
|
Anna gets real
Team
Anna’ is over. Members of the now-disbanded team have decided to form a political party. Anna Hazare himself has not. In fact, his blog posted a day after the decision to float a party would have come as an eye-opener to the erstwhile team too. It shows him not as a simple man overcome by ambition, but a simple man with a clear mind, which is pragmatic too. “I will neither become part of any party, nor contest elections,” he says. He is apprehensive of going political. What if those of the proposed party too turn greedy after getting elected, he wonders. A very valid question. Also, he says Jantar Mantar alone is not the nation. There are 6 lakh villages too. Again, he’s questioning the seemingly “overwhelming” support for the proposed party. All this while the nation debated Team Anna’s wisdom, or even sincerity, it had right in its midst apparently a very wise and well-intentioned man! Who derailed the campaign that seemingly had everyone’s support? Not the government — it couldn’t be expected to support ‘revolutions’. Not the political parties — their cynical approach was what always has been and will be. The media? It only supported his cause, at least initially. Could it be the success, or at least the illusion of it that was created at Ramlila Ground last year? What started as a lone old man deciding to go on fast turned more and more ambitious with each wave of support rolling in. Before Anna or his confidants could realise, they were talking big — of throwing out the government. That is what did them in. People had come to expect what the team could never deliver. Not only Anna, some in his team are also not sure of politics. It is time they all went back to the drawing board, and decided afresh what they are good at, and can deliver. There are no losers in this effort to bring down the wall of corruption. It’s time to begin all over again — this time, brick at a time.
|
|
|
A national shame
What
happened to the Indian hockey players at London Olympics requires a psychological analysis. At their first match they gave a good fight to the Netherlands and lost with honour intact (2-3). Thereafter they did not just lose, but lose so badly that every hockey lover hanged his/her head in shame. How could the team that beat Pakistan to win the inaugural Asian Championship Trophy last year sink so low to become the only one among the 12 to score not even a single point? Five matches played and all five lost? The dismal performance at London Olympics 2012 is bound to revive memories of the ignominy at the 1986 World Cup when India played to earn the bottom-place as well as the failure to even qualify for Beijing Olympics 2008. The decline and fall of Indian hockey becomes all the more painful if one looks back. In Olympic Games held between 1928 and 1956 India won six of the eight golds and Pakistan remained the main challenger. However, in the mid-seventies hockey saw a dramatic change with the introduction of the synthetic pitch. India lost valuable time in preparing for change, resulting in an increased European dominance. Australia and India have the same style of playing hockey but the difference is stark: one at the top and the other at the bottom. India’s players come from humble backgrounds, play on grass initially and later switch to the artificial surfaces. A small country like the Netherlands has 200 astro-turf grounds, India has just one-tenth of that. Schools, colleges and universities do not encourage hockey nor do they have adequate infrastructure. Since rewards in hockey are limited, youngsters turn to cash-rich cricket. A major fallout of the London debacle will be that youth may get further disillusioned. They no longer have role models to look up to. The “Chak De” spirit has taken a beating. This, however, is also the time to make a new beginning, to do introspection and remove shortcomings, and learn lessons for future.
|
|
|
Everything has been figured out, except how to live. — Jean-Paul Sartre
|
Unemployment in India President
Barack Obama’s warning to India about going slow on economic reforms and not opening up the economy anymore to foreign investment has not gone down well with the government. No sovereign state wants unsolicited advice from outside. According to many, the Indian economy is doing quite well as compared to the US. One indication is the number of the unemployed. There is 8 per cent unemployment in the US but in India, according to the latest government statistics, there is very little joblessness. As compared to Europe, India has much less unemployment. Spain, for example, is struggling with a high unemployment rate of around 25 per cent with around 50 per cent of its youth being without jobs. In Western countries, open unemployment is visible as young people can be seen in cafes spending the day, whiling away their time. They are not much worried about work because the state gives them hefty unemployment benefits. In India, the last two years’ unemployment data was similar to that of the US and hovered between 6 and 9 per cent. As recently as in March 2012, Labour and Employment Minister Mallikarjun Kharge declared at a conference on “Innovation in Public Employment Programmes” in New Delhi that “despite global slowdown, India not only maintained its employment standards but also succeeded in reducing unemployment from 8.3 per cent in 2004-05 to 6.6 per cent in 2009-10”. How is it possible that according to the latest Annual Survey of Employment and Unemployment by the Labour Bureau of India, the unemployment rate has suddenly plunged to 3.8 per cent for 2009-2010? Another survey (National Sample Survey Organisation) has declared that unemployment has been reduced to 2 per cent . Why is there a discrepancy between the two surveys? In the years when India was growing at 8 to 9 per cent, it was widely acknowledged that the country was experiencing high GDP growth but it was jobless growth. This is because employment in the organised sector was growing slowly and it was only 1.9 per cent last year. In recent times educated young job-seekers have been increasingly frustrated in their search for employment because of the availability of very few openings in the corporate sector or the public sector. The recent data seems to deny all this and paints a picture of a robust economy in which jobs are growing rapidly. But one wonders where and in which sectors are the extra jobs being generated? If industrial growth is plunging, exports are declining and agricultural growth is not encouraging and is below the target rate, in which areas are jobs being created? It could be the services sector but then the IT sector does not have so many new jobs either as outsourcing business is not growing rapidly due to problems in the Western countries who are its main clients. According to the head of the Labour Bureau survey, however, the recent figures have been derived from a much bigger sample covering many more districts than the previous surveys. Moreover, the survey has been conducted across the country. The incredibly low unemployment figure, which almost indicates a full-employment economy, can only mean that people who are basically underemployed and are earning very little are not admitting that they are jobless. They may be having a part-time job or it is casual in nature, and they may have a place to go to and spend the day. When asked whether they have a job, they say that they are employed. The social stigma in India attached to being jobless is quite harsh and perhaps everyone who is actually jobless wants to claim that he or she is self-employed. The fact remains that they are underemployed. Agriculture is a sector where the majority of the population is employed, but there is no doubt that under-employment and surplus labour exist in a big way. This is reflected in the low productivity per person in agriculture. With 52 per cent of the population engaged in agriculture, the contribution of agriculture is only 17 per cent to the GDP. Manufacturing industries are the biggest employers of semi-skilled labour, but manufacturing growth has been declining in recent months. In fact, if the manufacturing sector’s share in the GDP rose to 40 per cent as in China, many more jobs could be created. Also, a semi-skilled person, when unable to get a job, often takes to small retailing or some other type of self-employment. No wonder, those with post-graduate degrees are more often unemployed than the less educated. A person with higher education will desist from selling small items on a footpath or take to vending goods from door to door than someone who is already poor and has to earn a living. The data reveals all this — that only 15.6 per cent of the total workforce was in regular wage employment in 2009-10. According to the data, most people ( 51 per cent) were self-employed and 33.5 per cent were casual labour. Among casual labour, one must take into account those who find jobs for a certain period of the year under MGNREGA. On the whole, the job data seems to give a wrong impression about the state of the economy because in actual life, doing farm work which is not needed or sitting in a shop with five other people is far from being productively employed. It only shows the special cultural milieu of India where being openly unemployed is not socially acceptable and families accommodate the jobless in their businesses or farms, however small they may be, to give the person some self worth and a sense of dignity. The data does not reflect the huge underemployment in the economy. On the other hand, the data can boost our confidence that all is well with the economy and joblessness is not a big problem. In fact, if India does open up its retail sector, a large number of people (around 18 million) who are engaged in petty trading and retail would lose their livelihood as multinational companies would open their chain of stores all over the country. They would take over food and other types of retail business which will be heavily computerised and mechanised. Not only will the much-reviled middlemen lose their jobs but many other small retailers will also lose their livelihood. It is perhaps better to wait for the right time to open up the retail business. President Obama has to understand the Indian psyche before advising rapid economic reforms and realise that without adequate safety nets, open unemployment will be a scourge for
India.
|
|||||
Who will fill this gap? For more than two years, I have been missing an early morning visitor to my house. It started only weeks before the commencement of the summer unrest which later engulfed the entire Kashmir valley. This visitor would rarely ignore his early morning duty due to any kind of situation crippling normal life, be it a general strike or curfew restrictions. He lost his battle for life following a brief illness two years ago. Aziz Kaka had been a regular visitor to my place for about six years, carrying a fistful roll of nearly a dozen local English language and vernacular dailies. Although I had subscribed to only a few English and Urdu dailies, he would hand over a complete file of newspapers, about three times more the number which had been requisitioned. When I kept on insisting during the early days that I required only the selected number of newspapers, he did not give up and convinced me with the plea that no additional charges would be demanded. Even then I was reluctant to get about a dozen newspapers, but his persistence and regularity prompted me to surrender. Why I chose to make him my regular visitor was because I found him the only reliable hawker around. He never compromised on his regularity and punctuality. And he kept his promise till the last or, in other words, “duty unto death”. I ignored some lethargy in regularity and punctuality whenever I noticed these in him. In this process a glance at the newspaper headlines, going through some details which I had missed to come across during the previous day, invigorated me for the day’s fresh task. Now it has been a long time since he departed us and no one seems to fill the gap. I have almost given up the task of finding a suitable person to do the job. This type of regularity and sincerity to his duty embedded within the soul of Aziz Kaka had been shaped by several senior journalists and editors over nearly three decades. He was doing the job he had chosen for himself not only to earn his livelihood, but would do it with dedication which began with the collection of newspapers from printing presses till the distribution to his customers. Later in the day, his day-time job involved going to the offices of one or two local newspapers for compiling newspaper files and doing some other office work. His day ended with preparing his meals at one of these offices before going to bed for another early morning rise. In a way, Aziz Kaka was all in one due to his humility, sincerity and dedication. In his toil, he defeated the dictum of specialisation — one person doing only one
job.
|
|||||
Mission peace, on a wing and a prayer
We
were appointed as the Government of India’s Interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir on October 13, 2010, on the recommendation of the All-Party Parliamentary Delegation that visited the state in September 2010.
We began our mission on a wing and a prayer. Our mandate was to open the widest-ranging dialogue possible with the people of Jammu and Kashmir, and draw up a roadmap for a solution to the decades-long conflict. Coming hard on the heels of a summer of unrest, in which 120 young Kashmiris had tragically died, the assignment was a daunting one. To undertake such a task when the state was in turmoil, anger was high, and key political actors were at loggerheads, meant that we would be hedged by misgivings all along. In fact, the misgivings began even before our mission did. There was a howl of protest at our appointment from a clutch of Delhi-based policy analysts, which had an extremely negative impact in Jammu and Kashmir. We arrived in the state to be greeted by cynicism and worse. Indeed, our own hopes were low. There had been two decades of pain and suffering, and just as the state was beginning to glimpse peace, three summers of violence had polarised its communities and resulted in the trauma of summer 2010. We were lucky that this negativity changed within a month or two, and the people of the state came forward to talk to us. Within the next year, we met some 700 delegations, from every district of the state, including pretty much every political affiliation, religious and linguistic community and profession. The only groups that we did not meet were the Hurriyats and affiliated organisations, which maintained, as they had with all our predecessors, that there was no point in talking to government-appointed interlocutors.
Desire for peace
The generosity of the people we met, who shared their anger and grief, taught us that there is a heartfelt desire for lasting peace in the state. But the years of conflict and the many failed attempts at resolution have fractured the polity and given rise to increasingly extreme political expression, further compounded by a lack of consensus amongst India’s political leadership and policy community on how to tackle the political issues, including parliamentarians, think tanks and civil society. Every citizen of Jammu and Kashmir knows what a minefield the prolonged conflict has created, though we in Delhi often forget the lessons learned. For us, our first and probably biggest problem was that that the relationship between assuaging hurt sentiments and tackling the political issues can be a conflicting one. To assuage hurt sentiments might require time out from political engagement, because the political issues are potentially divisive. On the other hand, to put political engagement on the backburner might offer time out, but if the time out is prolonged then anger can return with redoubled force. We sought to deal with this dilemma by urging — indeed nagging along — grievance redress and allied confidence-building measures (CBMs), month by month. If in one year of our mission some confidence could be restored, we thought it would lay the ground for tackling political issues. One year was, of course, too short a time for a state hit by over 20 years of armed conflict, but that was the time we gave ourselves. Burnout is a clear and present danger in missions of this sort, and I have to confess I had come close to burnout by October 2012, when we handed our report to the Home Minister.
Wait for consensus
By the time our mission ended, the situation was much improved. Nevertheless, the calm was precarious, and volatility remains just under the surface. A visible peace process is required, and though both the Central and state governments are implementing CBMs, progress is slow and halting. Similarly, though several rounds of talks with Pakistan have taken place since the government renewed dialogue in February 2011, and Jammu and Kashmir has been discussed, there have been no visible results. It was in this context that our report was released in May this year. Many sections of it proved to be controversial, and the criticisms can be divided into predictable (the usual naysayers) and specific (in particular, on the longstanding political positions). One lesson I learned was how far the major national and regional parties are from a consensus on political settlement. At the same time, reaction to the report may have galvanised political actors. Within the state, each party is now taking positions in a way in which it had not earlier. If the parties are not yet ‘dialoguing’ with each other, that is because the discussion in New Delhi has been strikingly muted, except in the media. Perhaps there will be some discussion in the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
Feedback time
We will be visiting Jammu and Kashmir after Id to get some feedback on our report, especially on how to proceed with a faltering peace process, which will be presented to the government. Our hope is that the feedback will be concrete as well as free and frank, i.e., on which suggestions in our report should be followed through, which should be discarded, and which are missing and require to be added. Such responses ought to feed into and accelerate policy formation at the Centre, though, of course, none of us can guarantee that outcome. Despite the existence of formidable obstacles, the de-escalation of the past year within the state — accompanied by the looming threat of re-escalation in the near future — has created the opportunity for a result-oriented peace process. Talks have now become a necessity that no political actor has the luxury of spurning, whether elected or representative, because public frustration is clear.
Aspirations across LoC
Interestingly, the past few months have also seen new developments in Pakistani-held parts of Jammu and Kashmir. In the former Jammu regions of Muzaffarabad and Mirpur, demands are being made for amending the 1974 Constitution to provide a relationship that is closer to Article 370 and self-governance. On the other side, in Gilgit-Baltistan, many have begun to question the reforms package of 2009, in the light of the Pakistani Government’s sale of mineral exploration rights to China. Significantly, the reforms package, too, offered a relationship that was a severely watered down version of Article 370 as it stands today. Both developments merit more than a passing notice. The aspirations of the people of Pakistani-held Jammu and Kashmir have never been ascertained, not even through a mission like ours. By and large, we have to rely on small news items tucked away on the inside page of a Pakistani newspaper, or on Facebook and obscure websites. Yet it is clear that no permanent solution can be found without the participation of the people of the whole state. Between 2004 and 2007, considerable progress was made in bringing armed conflict to an end, because all tracks of dialogue were in place. It will need greater effort to bring the tracks back in place today, but a wing and a prayer can sometimes fly. The writer is Director of the Delhi Policy Group.
|
Key recommendations
Political suggestions
|
|||
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
