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Stirring caste cauldron
Battle over taxes
It’s impractical |
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Denigration of Parliament
Eating humble pie
‘Ex-factor’ on Lahore streets
In the fitness of things
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Stirring caste cauldron
Politics
and rhetoric have taken over an important social issue, i.e. affirmative action. The nation is committed to providing various resources to the historically oppressed castes and classes. It does so by providing reservations at various stages of education and even in government jobs. The issue now is of quotas for promoting such candidates while they are doing their jobs. While most political parties are vocally supporting the demand for reservation they are doing so with an eye on vote-bank politics. Thus the Bahujan Samaj Party, which banks on support from voters who belong to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, is a major mover of the Bill, it is actively opposed by its rival in UP politics, the Samajwadi Party. Ironically, both support the UPA, which moved the Bill in the Rajya Sabha today. The government had introduced the Bill in undue haste and it has a duty to explain to the nation not only the rationale behind the Bill, but also provide data that shows the need for reserving promotions for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government jobs. It must be kept in mind that a decision on similar lines by the Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh was struck down by the Supreme Court some time ago. The apex court had held the move as unconstitutional. The apex court had also observed that the state had not furnished sufficient valid data that could justify the promotion of employees on the caste basis. Various political parties, however, have now decided to amend the Constitution. The unruly scenes in the Upper House, including a scuffle between members of the House, and its eventual adjournment means that the Bill was not passed on Wednesday, but it will remain alive for discussion later. Indeed, there is much to discuss. Naturally, promotion quotas can lead to heartburn and even inefficiency in government departments. It is, therefore, imperative to inform and educate the public about the need for such reservation. Only after that, with due caution, should a Bill of this sensitive nature be passed by Parliament. Steamrolling such a Bill may cause more harm than help the cause of the oppressed classes.
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Battle over taxes THE Left opposition has scuttled a joint Congress-Sanjha Morcha protest against the levy of taxes in Punjab. Weakened by an unfavourable electoral verdict, both are trying to lean on each other to stay relevant. Faced with growing dissidence after the Congress route, Capt Amarinder Singh is warming up to Manpreet Singh Badal of the People’s Party of Punjab for a better outcome in 2014. Both need each other and are united against a common enemy. The Left, however, finds it hard to reconcile its fight against the Congress at the Centre with an alliance at the state level. Their proposed anti-tax protest may be an attempt to take political advantage of public resentment, but it is a retrograde, short-sighted move. Given the bad state of finances, Punjab needs to raise revenue not only to meet day-to-day administrative expenditure but also invest more in infrastructure, education and health. Punjab has not been able to get Central funds due to its own reluctance to mop up resources. Even the BJP has accepted the property tax on its vote bank. For too long the successive Punjab governments have avoided imposing taxes and resorted to borrowings. Punjab’s debt, which was Rs 78,236 crore last year, is expected to reach Rs 87,518 crore by the end of this fiscal. This excludes the debt of state boards and corporations. The deterioration in the Punjab finances is due to the politics of competitive populism pursued by the Akali Dal, the BJP and the Congress. The list of freebies has expanded from power and atta-dal to tablets and unemployment allowance. There is need to limit the subsidies to the needy, shed administrative flab, wind up unnecessary boards and corporations, scrap the posts of chief parliamentary secretary, withdraw the grant of Cabinet rank status to non-ministers, trim VIP security and end lavish ministerial and bureaucratic expenditure. Instead of street protests all political parties should sit together and evolve a consensus on how to correct fiscal indiscipline.
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It’s impractical
INDIA and the UK are placed in different time and climatic zones. So are their social realities. The intentions of the Woman and Child Development Minister must be well meaning in developing a draft to detail the monetary worth of an average Indian housewife’s effort, so that her well-deserved salary can be paid by her husband. She is following a four-year-old online survey conducted in the UK that estimated that a housewife in the UK performs 30,000 pounds worth of work annually. What she ignored perhaps is the fact that another online survey concluded 100 per cent people opposed the idea of paying the housewife. The minister would do better by finding a solution to a few complicated facts about an Indian household. Will the middle class housewife pay from her hardearned salary the bartanwali, jhadu pochhewali, sabzi katnewali, rotiwali, malishwali, dhobi, presswala etc. or, they will be paid by the husband separately? Who will pay the driver’s salary, if the driver is taking the memsahib for shopping, and what about the maali? The bill for the beauty parlour will be deducted from this salary, or, will it be a perk? And the children’s tutor’s fee? Will that also be deducted from the wife’s salary? What about millions of households where the older daughters double up as domestic help, will they also be paid? These are just a few questions for our complicated household management that rests on a hierarchy of part-time helps to make it run smoothly. Then, what will be the status of payment for millions of working women who double up doing household chores? Will they get some tax benefit? Will the husbands who pay their wives get some tax benefits? And a housewife’s retirement benefits, if ever she decides to retire! There are men who take care of their household, will they be paid by their wives? The idea may appease women, it is impractical. The public and private are two different zones, and each has its own worth.
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The language of friendship is not words but meanings. — Henry David Thoreau
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Denigration of Parliament THE monetary figure of Rs. 1.86 lakh crore attributed to the coal scam is actually irrelevant and so is the claim that there has been no loss as the coal is still inside “the mother earth” made by one of the ministers. But there has been a colossal national loss, and in two forms. One is the severe denigration of the institution of Parliament, and the other the reiteration of the loss of credibility of the entire political establishment. How does one move from the CAG report to these two? Let us take Parliament first. The Leader of the Opposition in one of the Houses of Parliament writes: “If parliamentary accountability is subverted and a debate is intended to be used merely to put a lid on parliamentary accountability, it is then a legitimate tactic for the Opposition to expose the government through parliamentary instruments available at its command. Presently, a national debate on allocation of natural resources is on.” This raises two questions: (1) Is preventing Parliament from performing its legitimate and constitutional duty, and completely preventing it from functioning a “legitimate tactic” for the Opposition? (2) Should “national debate(s)” on matters of critical importance to the nation happen in Parliament or in TV studios, or newspaper columns? “The Opposition” seems to be under the impression that the best way to protect national interest is to not let Parliament function. There have been far too many instances of this desecration of the temple of democracy in the last few months. In an earlier instance the Leader of the Opposition in one of the Houses would announce in the evening that they would not allow the Parliament to function the next day. I believe there can be no greater offence against democracy, and thus against the nation, than the premeditated prevention of Parliament from functioning. It is not only the Opposition that is to be blamed. The ruling coterie is equally at fault but more of that later. First, one wonders about the duties and responsibilities of the presiding officers of the two Houses. Are their duties and responsibilities limited to requesting the members to take their seats, maintain decorum, observe silence, etc., and in extreme cases adjourn the House for two hours, till after lunch, or till the next working day, or is there more to it? It seems strange that their accountability seems to be only to their electors, the members of the Houses, and not to either the House itself as an institution, or to the Constitution, or to what is best called “We, the people”. Now to the behaviour of the ruling coterie. The CAG, in para 4.1 of its report, says: “Delay in the introduction of process of competitive bidding has rendered the existing process beneficial to a large number of private companies as has been observed by the then Secretary (Coal) in July 2004 itself…Audit has attempted to estimate the financial impact of the benefit to the coal blocks allottees restricting itself to private parties.” It then gives the methodology adopted for this purpose before giving the figure of Rs.185,591.34 crore. It then gives four explanations given by the Ministry of Coal in February and March 2012 before explaining why the contentions of the Ministry are not acceptable. Its final conclusion is “Therefore, audit is of the strong opinion that there is a need for strict regulatory and monitoring mechanism to ensure that the benefit of cheaper coal is passed on to the consumers.” What has been the ruling dispensation’s response? One minister says there has been no loss as the coal is still inside the “mother earth”, overlooking the fact that the ownership has passed from the government/public to private hands. Another “lawyer and a Congress MP” while expressing “personal” views, says, “CAG does not have the constitutional or legal mandate to make its own policy prescriptions and then utilise them to compute notional or even mythical loss or gain.” He also has doubts about the Indians’ knowledge of the English language. The 82-word sentence in which he expresses this doubt reads: “Anybody with even a nodding acquaintance with the English language can discern that the constitutional provisions, parliamentary enactment, rules, regulations and even the OM, read together, do not permit CAG the kind of role and approach it has arrogated to itself of juxtaposing its personal policy prescriptions against the policy choices made by a democratically elected government and arriving at quixotic estimates of presumptive loss or windfall gain numbers which by themselves are incorrect and open to both dispute and demolition.” It leaves one wondering if “a nodding acquaintance” with a language also includes writing in a language that folks with “a nodding acquaintance” can understand what the writer is trying to say. The Prime Minister’s statement, sadly, also does not raise the level of debate much. The word “consensus” occurs four times. Reading the statement makes one wonder whether we have a competitive, representative democracy or a friendly, consensual democracy working in the country! Developing a consensus is obviously difficult, as we well know. Hasn’t it taken over 42 years to build a consensus on the institution of Lokpal to which the entire political establishment is committed? And we are nowhere near it. Also, we are still working on getting a consensus on reservation for women. But there was an immediate consensus when the Supreme Court ordered that candidates contesting elections disclose their assets and criminal cases pending against them, and an Ordinance had to be issued to prevent that from happening. But on 01.11.2004 “The PMO stated, ‘…Therefore, there is no urgency in the matter. Accordingly, there is no need to bring in the required amendment in the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act through an Ordinance.’” The Prime Minister also “humbly submit(s) that, even if we accept CAG’s contention that benefits accrued to private companies, their computations can be questioned on a number of technical points.” While the humility of the Prime Minister is well known and must be admired, this statement is hardly prime ministerial. Questioning the computations on technical grounds is not what the Prime Minister should be doing. But then he also says that several state governments, and he specifically mentions some that had the opposition parties in power, disagreed with the competitive bidding process as it “would dilute their prerogative in the selection of lessees.” He, of course, does not clarify what this “prerogative” is. The dictionary, however, explains prerogative as “an exclusive right, privilege, a power, immunity, etc.” In what or whose interest will state governments use this exclusive right is any one’s guess. The reason for this disrespect to Parliament and to the people is that political parties do not feel accountable to anyone except themselves. Their smugness arises from the feeling of invulnerability for five years after each election, and knowing that their competitors after five years will be the same, at least in general terms. The slide in the prestige of the Parliament and the credibility of the political establishment will continue till the political parties realize that they have to reform themselves in their self interest, even if they do not want to do that in the national
interest. The writer is a former Professor, Dean, and Director In-charge of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
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Eating humble pie OUR
colonial rulers could not whiten the apsara in the Ajanta caves despite their 200-year ruling stint. They left her alone in her duskiness. You can’t expect the same degree of respect or neglect — whichever way you like to look at it, now. Nobody can resist change under the global market influence. We have a Rs 2,000-crore plus business of fairness creams. The most visible impact of globalisation is the disappearance of dusky complexion. Forget the original Silk Smitha, who put the silver screen on fire with her smouldering duskiness. Post-globalisation, her biographical flick avatar had to be a gori to get the cash registers ringing. This kind of ‘apartheid’ is not a prerogative of the homo sapiens alone. Wonder what happened to our desi seasonal fruits. For decades one has not seen phalsa (grawia asiatica). The bitter-sweet summer fruit with its rich purple colour has gone missing from our platter. It does not exist in the vocabulary of my daughter. Ditto goes for the beautifully coloured berries in deep pink and pale yellow we used to get during the rainy season – karonda (carissa carandas). Karondas have a peculiar tangy sweet and faintly bitter taste that makes them uniquely appetising during the rainy season. Mixed with green chillies they make excellent chutney. But, you neither get their pickle in the market nor their chutneys or jelly. No one seems to care for these wild berries, rich in vitamin C and iron. Surprisingly, when you google search karonda, you learn the British had created the Great Customs Hedge using thorny bushes of karonda, and made jams with its berries to send home, where vitamin C was required in abundance to face the bitter cold months. The story of jamun and amla is known to everyone. Had their medicinal properties not been discovered and patronised by the practitioners of ayurvedic medicine, they too would have disappeared. Poor phalsa and karonda could not find a saviour in ayurveda. When we lived in Ajmer, we used to eat tiny pinkish green berries known in Rajasthan as dansre. I could not find a single google hit for dansre. Till date I haven’t been able to articulate its taste, which remains elusively delicious, only in memory. And the berries wore an amazingly aesthetic colour combination. The same vender who sold dansre mixed with salt used to sell kamrakh (carambola), a star-shaped green fruit with very sour, acidic taste, sprinkled with some hot masala. Our supermarkets are filled with pickled or fresh globalised fruits and vegetables — olives, jalapeno peppers, kiwis, broccoli, strawberries, cherries, prunes, asparagus, rambutan, artichokes — the list is long. We may not get to see lasode ka achar ( bird lime pickle) on these shelves but we do know the right pronunciation of jalapeno peppers. One also wonders at the production capacity of a tiny country like Italy to meet the growing global demand for olive oil. Even though, it comes from Spain or Brazil, or Greece, we believe olives are healthy because they come from Italy. In their fight for global attention, while the ones that originate in Europe, America and Latin America rule the roost, our desi fruits are eating a humble pie, in their own native
land.
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‘Ex-factor’ on Lahore streets
YOU may sleep without fear. The government is watching.' This is a typical Rehman Malik statement that has lost whatever sleep-inducing effect it might once have had on people. With terrorism, sectarian violence and gang wars hogging attention, Pakistanis are exposed to all kinds of crimes and Lahore has had its share of murder and robbery and extremely worried citizens. The Lahoris may soon regain their sound slumber of old though. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has approved the induction of 4,000 ex-soldiers for security duty to "further improve the law and order" in the city. These soldiers will be hired on contract and will fill the gap created by the deployment of a large number of policemen on guard duty. Police officials say the demand for guard duty, mostly by well-known people faced with threats, has been increasing. Correspondingly, the force's strength for combating street crime has been declining. This gap could well have been highlighted as the crime rate peaks around Eid every year. The decision to hire 4,000 ex-army men has come after the Lahore-based newspapers printed around Eid read like never-ending crime bulletins. Having ex-army for security is not a novel idea that the Punjab government has come up with. It is just a case of keeping your eyes open to the happenings around and learning from the experience of others. Ex-soldiers working as security is the preference in Lahore, even though men with non-army backgrounds can also sometimes be seen masquerading as guards. The experienced former soldiers are there to impart a smart, efficient look to the receptions of various private organisations. They may be the biggest target group for Kala Kola here, but under the firm title of jawans they have been providing good service at affordable - cheap - rates to those looking for a bit of security. Actually, all these security guards, a large number of them ex-army, are underpaid, and often made to work with old weapons and in dark blue uniforms that have been sewn in anticipation of their expanding presence. At an average Rs6,000 a month, they get a pittance for performing a very dangerous duty. The firms which recruit them for their clients take their share out of the salary, just like middlemen make money from outsourcing tasks. Since these shooters have a lot of time to kill, they will tell you they could do with a bit of improvement in what they get out of their labour. The Punjab government's decision about employing ex-soldiers could well turn out to be the stone that kills two birds. It will restore peace on the streets and could set a trend guaranteeing the security guards better pay and perks all over the city. The government will surely pay them well and that could lead to a hike in the salary of security guards all around. Obviously there will be those who must remain cramped inside their democratic boxes and criticise the most necessary military interventions as a blow to civilian authority. The ex-soldiers' reassuring march on the streets of Lahore may elicit a response from the democrats similar to their reaction to the past Sharif government's decision to have soldiers accompany Wapda meter readers. The all-too-proud civilians would be inclined to mention other instances, such as the one where ex-soldiers were given motorcycles by the Punjab government and posted as roving monitors of schools. Monitoring and Evaluation Assistants, they are called, and Punjab has some 800 of them currently. There have been complaints, and one by female teachers that these MEAs' way of observing work was too brusque for their own delicate disposition. Such dissimilarities in perceptions may arise again - but then if you can expect one thing from Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, you can expect him to stand by the right decision. No one can contest the fact that Lahore could do with some security. Now when the chief minister has finally taken notice of a situation the media was crying hoarse about, some appreciation would be in order. The policemen are not idle either. Even when they do not want to do it by themselves, the senior policemen are best placed to know who they want to assign security duty. One of them who spoke to Dawn last week justified the ex-soldiers' recruitment on the basis of the time hiring of new policemen would have taken. What clinched the argument though was his view that the decision was inevitable when the police were told they could not be immediately handed back thousands of their men reduced by the security demands of the time to playing bodyguard. He also showed his preference for ex-commandos - Shahbaz would be all too happy to hire all but one of them. The commandos are more equipped than others to handle a security emergency while all soldiers without doubt inspire greater confidence in people than the ever-suspect policeman. In order of importance, if the choice is between military and police, the more sensitive jobs would go to the army men. The middle solution thus lies in hiring these ex-army men and using them to replace all the policemen minding the VIPs as guards. What's more, released from long boring guard duty, the policemen who are restored to their original work under the proposed scheme will be expected to return reinvigorated. They may turn out to be souls willing and desirous of combating crime. The writer is Dawn's resident editor in Lahore.
By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad.
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In the fitness of things SEVERAL decades ago, some members of the public were kept waiting for hours under Jacobabad's scorching sun to see John Jacob, then the deputy commissioner of the town. They wanted to request the powerful government functionary to address some minor administrative issues that fell in his domain. In addition to being a British government functionary, Mr Jacob was also an inventor and on that day, he became so engrossed in his workshop that he did not attend to visitors from the general public. Later, when he realised that he had failed to attend to his official duties, he was so filled with regret that the next day, he set up an office under the sun. The intention was to make the self-indulgent Jacob of the day before appreciate the suffering of the people who were forced to wait because of him. Perhaps for this reason, when decades later it was proposed that the settlement's name be changed to something more 'pious', as has been done to many other cities in this land of the pure, the people of Jacobabad opposed it. Perhaps this is why John Jacob's grave in Jacobabad is generally afforded the status of a saint's mausoleum. The events narrated above took place many years ago, in an era when we were not independent. But 65 years after Independence, in recent days, a news item entitled ''Desperado' SP shoots youth over trifle' appeared in the columns of this newspaper. A senior police officer had shot a youngster dead over a petty parking dispute on chaand raat. Such an extreme reaction is indicative of the psychological ill-health and stress levels of the officer. Dig a little deeper and you find plenty of occasions that reflect insane behaviour on the part of both military and civil officials. Last year, the then commissioner of Gujranwala Division thrashed the assistant commissioner of Narowal for the rather laughable reason of not getting a washroom cleaned in anticipation of a visit by the chief minister. Recently, several officers of the Pakistan Army were jailed by a military court upon being found guilty of having links to the Hizbut Tahrir, a banned organisation. Then, the propensity of army chiefs to topple elected governments is not exactly the epitome of psychologically stable behaviour. When officers show such tendencies, the lower cadres are sure to be infected as well. One extreme example is that of Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the security official who killed the then governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer. On a less conspicuous but equally pernicious level, causing losses worth billions to the government kitty for just a few bucks in one's personal bank account must also be included in the category of deviant behaviour. A colleague in the civil service described this as being greedy to the extent of "killing a whole cow just to put five kilogrammes of meat in your deep freezer and leaving the rest of it to rot." Both the civil and military bureaucracies have been considered guilty of such deeds, from the dubious purchase of ships in 1994 to that of railway engines recently. While differing in their circumstances and scale, these myriad examples serve to show how many of us can become highly insensitive and resort to irrational behaviour. Why do civilian and military officials so often fail to resist the abuse of official power? Such cases of indiscipline are not because of poor grooming or the lack of proper training; the National Police Academy, Islamabad, the Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul, and the Civil Services Academy, Lahore, etc, are remarkable institutions. There is nothing wrong with their facilities, the training they provide or the principles they advocate. What, then, has gone wrong with government officers? The answer is to be found in psychological health. Officers no longer take pride in serving the public; instead, they take pride in having cars as big as the house of a poor man and houses bigger than even his imagination. Another category of public officials takes pride in performing duties in the name of a skewed version of religion instead of official duties. The solution to this mess is not simple, but one definite step towards it can be to focus on the psychological fitness of government functionaries. It is mandatory for both civil and military officials to undergo an annual medical exam; their physical health has to be in line with the duties they are supposed to perform during the year. Given the cases enumerated above, it would seem appropriate that officers be evaluated for psychological health and fitness as well; different categories of mental and emotional well-being can be developed just as has been done in terms of physical health. In order to prevent the misuse of such a testing system, an independent, fair and transparent body of professionals from the field of psychology should be formed to oversee this; otherwise, given the level of sycophancy and nepotism prevalent in our system, such a body could create more psychological stress instead of helping reduce it. The writer is a civil servant.
By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad.
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