|
|
|
|
|
BJP’s rollback talk
Saving tigers |
|
|
Denying history
Ex-servicemen’s just demand
Grapes of gossip
Passport violation and fundamental rights
|
BJP’s rollback talk
THE BJP’s opposition to FDI in multi-brand retail is understandable since its support base among traders may be adversely affected. But to state that the party would roll back the policy on retail FDI if voted to power shows how unreasonable and impractical its leadership can be. A fundamental principle of governance is the party or the group of parties voted to power assumes responsibility for the actions, decisions and policies of the outgoing government. The new regime has to honour all contractual obligations entered into by the previous government. Otherwise, there would be litigation and courts could set aside violations of contracts. The new policy has left it to the states to decide whether they want to allow entry to retail giants. If some of them set up stores in states ruled by the Congress or other parties that support FDI retail, how would the BJP-controlled Centre force them to shut shop? It seems BJP leaders have not thought of the implications of their retail FDI rollback statement, which may scare or confuse foreign investors and change their perception about India. There is no unanimity within the BJP over the controversial policy. Senior leader Arun Shourie has disapproved of the BJP stand on FDI. The party has forgotten that even if it regains power at the Centre, it would be dependent on support from the allies. They may or may not support its stand on the retail FDI policy, which is expected to benefit farmers and consumers as well as small and medium industries. Foreign supermarkets are supposed to source 30 per cent of their products from small and micro units, whose owners would not forgive the BJP for denying them an opportunity for growth. Politically, the party cannot afford to hurt the interests of a large section of society to protect a small number of middlemen, who may or may not be hit by the arrival of big stores. The 2009 general election and the last Punjab assembly poll results have shown that the BJP vote bank in cities is shrinking.
|
|
Saving tigers
THE National Tiger Conservation Authority’s (NTCA’s) stance before the Supreme Court, where it has asked for a ban on core areas of tiger reserve forests to be modified so that some tourist activities can be carried out in such areas, marks a shift in focus from wildlife tourism to eco-tourism. It has some merit. The dwindling number of tigers has been a major cause for concern for environmentalists for a long time. It was indeed the fear of their impending extinction that had prompted the apex court to give an order on July 24 to ban all tourist activity in the core areas of tiger reserves. Subsequently, the NTCA and the Ministry of Environment and Forests have formulated new guidelines on tiger conservation and tourism in and around designated tiger reserves. This has been done in consultation with various states and other parties concerned. There is no doubt that tigers have been increasingly threatened by human encroachment on their traditional reserves. The apex court stepped in forcefully to stop this by protecting the core areas. There is, however, a need to recognise that tigers do not live in a vacuum, and if human and tiger interaction can be regulated, it can be mutually beneficial. Many countries in Africa, especially Kenya and South Africa, have managed to strike the right balance between regulated tourism and wildlife protection. There’s is a ready-made model which can be adapted to our requirements. The tourists and tour operators will need to be monitored to ensure that the conditions laid down by the government are met and thus there is a safe distance between tigers and humans. Involving local people in the endeavour will give them the incentive to ensure that wildlife is kept protected. It will also help in having a human buffer against poachers. For all this to work, constant vigilance and strict action against violators will be needed, and this is where the government agencies have often been found wanting.
|
|
|
Denying history
IT
is not about stifling contemporary voices alone — from artists to cinema to literature and cartoon makers, no one feels confident of exercising creative freedom. The reason is that anything and everything turns out to be a cause for hurt to someone’s fragile class-based identity. Now some segments of society want even the literary inheritance of the past to be reinterpreted because of a few facts that they feel are inconvenient to the present social reality. Even if we boarded H G Wells’ “Time Machine”, the fact is historical facts will remain as they were, grounded firmly in the past. When A K Ramanujan’s much-talked-about essay, “Three Hundred Ramayans”, was dropped by Delhi University’s Academic Council from its BA (Honours) course last year, it had raised a few pertinent questions: Should freedom to choose and access bodies of knowledge and learning be regulated? And who should regulate these choices? What should be the ground for such regulation and to what extent historical facts can be tweaked to suit idiosyncrasies of the present? Now when the publisher of Punjabi folk poet Rajab Ali’s text is arrested for printing the original text that mirrored the reality of a caste-based society of his times, these questions have once again come to the fore. Was there any justification for this arrest? These are some of the emerging issues that eventually society will have to address. Can we erode all voices of our very rich literary traditions because a few facts about them are inconvenient to us now? Can history be a field of contest where Kabeer, Tulsi and Bulle Shah need approval of the present to exist? What should we then do to our history of Partition because stating the facts of those times will hurt the sentiments of some people? Or, should we negotiate history creatively to draw lessons from it? We must keep our cultural heritage — literature, music, theatre, sculptures, art. etc — free from the taint of confused intents of the present.
|
|
|
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. — William S. Burroughs
|
Ex-servicemen’s just demand OF late the media, especially newspapers and social networks, have been full of articles on the armed forces and their “discontents”. Since the authors of most of these are retired generals, air marshals and, occasionally, admirals, they refer more to the complaints and disgruntlements of highest military officers rather than of Other Ranks. Yet rare is any writing on the subject that hasn’t lamented the government’s heartless and overlong failure to attend to the just demand of ex-servicemen for equal rank, equal pension, or OROP, for short. Over this period one has had to witness not just virulent agitation on the issue but also such heartrending scenes as the nation’s defenders marching to Rashtrapati Bhavan to return their gallantry medals to the Supreme Commander, the President. Thank God, this ordeal is now over. The government has at long last done justice to two and a half million ex-servicemen whose number increases by 70,000 every year. The key point is that these men retire an early age and have to exist on meager pensions while other retirees of the same rank get higher or lower pensions depending on their dates of retirement. A good proportion of the retirees could have been absorbed in the paramilitary forces, to great advantage both to them and the country. But this has not been possible, despite the best attempts of several defence ministers and others, because the monster of corruption has taken over the recruitment to not only the police forces in various states but also the Centre’s paramilitary organisations. Even the sleaziest of recruiters find it hard to ask retiring Army men for bribes, and so they are ineligible. Lest the Army should start assuming superior airs on this score, let me hasten to add that on the admission of the best and the brightest within its own higher ranks, corruption in recruitment has contaminated the Army, too. As for other form of graft and malfeasance in the uniformed world, the evidence is littered across the country’s law courts or is stacked on the desks of the Central Bureau of Investigation. On the merits of the government’s decision on OROP, there are two views. Some say that having gone thus far, the government could have gone a little farther and met the demand for one-rank-one-pension in full. They argue that this would not have added very much to the present package of Rs 2,300 crore which is a pittance compared with Rs 42,000 crore the government has generously offered the State Electricity Boards than which it is difficult to think of institutions more inefficient and corrupt. Having bankrupted themselves, they have run into debts amounting to the staggering figure of nearly Rs 2 lakh crore. The debt recasting, even if it is achieved — the states have yet to agree to bear half the burden — would not solve the problem. For, no chief minister would stop the overuse and misuse of free power guaranteed to the farmers. Moreover, nobody would dare say boo to the crooks with clout that are stealing a huge quantity of power with impunity. It is, of course, written off as part of “distribution and transmission losses”! Even so, there is a perfectly valid counter-argument to justify what the government has done. It has, it seems, gone as far as it could have or should have. After all, the amount of pension depends not only on the rank but also the last pay drawn. The salaries of the two men of the same rank and superannuating on the same day often differ because of the length of service in the last rank reached. The Cabinet on Monday could have decided also on several issues concerning the pay, perks and pensions of lt-colonels, colonels, brigadiers and even lt-generals that have also been pending. But evidently, the committee headed by the Cabinet Secretary that examined the entire issue has not been able to complete its recommendations on these points. What the government has got out of the way is very important, no doubt, but it was essentially a sideshow. The real problem, on which the armed forces’ resentment is perfectly legitimate, is the composition of the successive Pay Commissions appointed to fix the salaries and concomitant allowances of both the civilians and the military. In other democracies there always is a separate pay commission for the armed forces. If this country is determined to deviate from this sound practice, why does it always make an IAS officer the commission’s secretary and usually excludes from it any representative of the three services? It is no secret that at the root of the bad blood in civilian-military relations is the services’ intense dislike of the IAS bureaucracy that, they feel, lords over them. Other discontents of the services are a subject too large and would have to be discussed separately. But on one point, I am afraid the Army top brass is unnecessarily touchy is its place on the Warrant of Precedent. Some industrious scholar has discovered that, in the American pecking order, the position of the chairman, joint chiefs of staff is much lower than that of the three service chiefs here on the WoP. There is no heartburning there on this score. Here, it seems, two-thirds of a century after the departure of the British amidst farewell trumpets, wearers of khaki are harking back to the era when, next only to the Viceroy, the Commander-in-Chief (India) was the second most important man. This is just not possible in a democracy where the wholesome principle of civilian control over the military (which need not mean civil service control) is well established. Who sits where around the President’s banquet table is immaterial. What matters is that, in the US, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, together with the Defence Secretary, the Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, and the head of the CIA, is among the President’s main advisers and a member of the National Command. This country remains allergic to the concept of a Chief of Defence Staff for several reasons, including regrettably, stiff resistance within the armed forces, and the departing conduct of the previous Army Chief, General (retired) V. K.
Singh.
|
||||||
Grapes of gossip
Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves nothing unsaid. A gossip is concerned about what one overhears rather than what one hears. People who gossip with you also gossip about you in your absence. This is a genre which grows and survives without any roots. Everybody loves gossip when it is about somebody else. A scandal is the midwife and mother fluid of gossip. From a low buzz to a clamorous din to a round-the-clock media roar, it revs up the gossip machine. Once in Parliament an MP pointed towards the office of an important politician, and said that a film shooting was going on inside. A film actress, who was a Rajya Sabha member, was sitting inside. There he recited a couplet. “Ye uddi udi si rangat yeh khule khule se gaso/tere subah keh rahe hain tere rat ka fasana” (Your appearance is narrating the tale of your night) Corridors of power always reverberate with gossip. Power has only two settings: all or nothing. There are no opponents, only enemies, no debate, only plots. Hypocrisy is at a premium; psychophancy and beviousness a norm among politicians. Hypocrisy helps sustain gossip and loose talk, and spread stories about opponents and sometimes friends also. It can happen at any level. The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see his behind. Sometimes you see dung coming out from the belly of the elephants. Some talk comes from big mouth. We have a giddy appetite for gossip for chicanery and sexual indiscretions and human feelings in all ruinous possibilities. Once I was going to Nepal for the then President’s visit. In the plane, a Punjabi film star was travelling with me. We became very friendly. He told me about film gossips and numerous stories of “Casting Couch”. I told him that film magazines wrote about his numerous affairs. He said, “Din vich teen/chaar gaddia service kar dinda se” (I used to have three four dates a day). He told me that people in the profession were “Butchers” and completely merciless. Compared to some of them, “you cops are like Mother Teresa”. We stayed in the same hotel in Nepal and became very good friends. People have an inherent need to feel connected and they will do it in whatever ways it is easiest for them. Life of an average Indian is a tale of toil, tears and neglect gossip. Indian ethos promotes denial passivity and living defensively. Gossip is their only pastime. In fact gossip lubricates the otherwise dull life of Indians. Same with women. The “kitty parties” of women in fancy clubs are nothing but schools for most of the people who stagnate in the turgid waters of their lives. This happens to most of the retired people. They remember their lost week-end of their youths. I asked a retired senior bureaucrat in Delhi how he was keeping himself busy. He said, “Chai aur chughli” (Tea and
gossip).
|
||||||
Passport violation and fundamental rights AS debates continue in India regarding the utility of laws made during the British Raj, Great Britain itself is in the process of repealing 38 enactments which were legislated between 1849 and 1942 relating to the construction and maintenance of the Indian Railways network during British rule. India needs to take steps too to remove certain redundant laws hampering justice.
Even though Parliament enacted the Passports Act, 1967, the Citizenship Act, 1955, and in 2005 created the concept of Overseas Citizen of India, we continue to rely on the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920; the Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939, and the Foreigners Act, 1946, for various purposes. Most of these archaic legislations made during colonial rule are today outdated, and do not stand the test of principles of natural justice, and confer unfettered, arbitrary and draconian powers. As such, these need to be promptly removed from the statute book. The Passports Act, 1967, which is a comprehensive and wholesome law relating to the issuance of passports and travel documents, provides a statutory safeguarded procedure for variation, impounding and revocation of passports, with rights of appeal to aggrieved persons against offences and penalties levied under this Act. The simultaneous existence of the Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920, and the Foreigners Act, 1946, conferring absolute and unlimited powers to remove or deport a person from India summarily without following the due process of law, are an anathema and antithesis to the rule of law in a democratic country. There is ample scope for judicial review. Powers of house arrest, detention, solitary confinement and summary removal from India under these 1920 and 1946 laws clearly infringe upon the fundamental rights to life and personal liberty guaranteed under the Indian Constitution. The reasons for retaining these pre-Independence laws seem to be misplaced and defy fundamental freedoms. New categories The 1.2 billion Indians contributing 30 million non-resident Indians (NRIs) in almost 180 countries across the globe has led to compromises on dual nationality, which is otherwise prohibited under Article 9 of the Constitution, and Section 9 of the Citizenship Act, 1955. Two categories of "Persons of Indian Origin" (PIO) and "Overseas Citizen of India" (OCI) were carved out to confer limited benefits on persons of Indian origin. Subsequently, PIOs and OCIs enjoy limited rights in India and can enjoy residence rights in India without any visa, registration, sanction or other permissions. Moreover, under Article 5 of the Constitution, every person who has domicile in India and was born in India, whose parents were born in India, or who has been ordinarily residing in India for not less than five years may be a citizen of India. Hence, inherent rights flow to presumption of Indian nationality.
Determination of nationality Under the 1946 Act, disputes relating to questions of determination of nationality when a foreigner is recognised as a national of more than one country - or it is uncertain as to what nationality is to be ascribed to a foreigner - such person may be treated as the national of the country with which he appears to be most closely connected. The 1920 and 1946 Acts permit removal or deportation of a person from India without providing any forum or procedure for determination of the question of the nationality of a foreigner or giving any statutory rights in this process. Tribunals to determine these questions do not exist. However, at the same time, the Citizenship Act, 1955, and the Citizenship Rules, 2009, prescribe that if any question arises as to whether, when or how any person acquired the citizenship of another country, the Central government would first determine the matter. The Supreme Court, interpreting these provisions, has held that a person could not be ordered to be deported or removed from India unless the Central government takes a conscious decision upon holding a quasi-judicial inquiry that a person has ceased to be an Indian citizen. A person cannot be summarily labelled foreigner and determination of his nationality is his fundamental right. It is time our Parliament reconciles this concept of freedom, personal liberty and natural justice with determination of nationality.
Debatable question Today, PIOs have matters relating to matrimonial differences between spouses of global origin, or nationality issues arising out of foreign domiciles. The desirable approach, therefore, would be to create appropriate forums or authorities within the legal system who may address such resolvable issues by granting opportunity of hearing and redress. Accordingly, deportation or removal of a person to a foreign jurisdiction would be an abject surrender to a foreign dominion. Having resolved to be a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, we in India are very capable and competent of adjudicating our nationality issues to provide redress for indigenous Indians. Our post-Independence laws provide the solutions which our vibrant judiciary interprets to protect fundamental freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution. Hence, pre-Independence laws in conflict with assured rights today must go off the statute book. The writer practises law at the Punjab and Haryana High Court
Citizenship laws in force The Registration of Foreigners Act, 1939: A law meant to provide for the registration of foreigners in India. The Registration of Foreigners Rules, 1992: Issued in supersession of the Registration of Foreigners Rules 1939, rules made under the 1939 Act. The Foreigners Act, 1946: An Act to confer upon the Central government certain powers in respect of foreigners. The Foreigners Order, 1948: An Order made under Section 3 of the 1946 Act for power to grant permission to depart from India. The Foreigners (Tribunals) Orders, 1964: An Order made under Section 3 of the 1946 Act to constitute tribunals to determine if a person is a foreigner. The Passport (Entry into India) Act, 1920: An Act to take powers to require passports of persons entering India. The Passport (Entry into India) Rules, 1950: Rules made under the 1920 Act. The Passports Act, 1967: An Act to provide for the issuance of passports and travel documents to regulate departure from India. The Citizenship Act, 1955: An Act to provide for the acquisition and determination of Indian citizenship. The Citizenship Rules, 2009: Rules made under the Citizenship Act, 1955.
Revoking a passport In Satwant Singh Sawhney vs APO, New Delhi, All India Reporter 1967 Supreme Court, 1836, the apex court has held that deprivation of a passport amounts to infringement of right to personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, and in Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India, All India Reporter 1978 Supreme Court 597, it was reiterated that an order impounding a passport must not contravene any fundamental rights.
Law settled by Supreme Court
The Central government is vested with powers under Section 9 (2) of the Citizenship Act, 1955, read with Rule 30 of the Citizenship Rules, 1956, as exclusive jurisdiction to determine the question whether a person, who was a citizen of India, has lost that citizenship by having voluntarily acquiring the citizenship of a foreign state. Under Section 9 (2) and Rule 30, mere proof of the fact that the person has obtained a passport from a foreign country is not sufficient to sustain an order for deportation or prosecution, unless there has been a decision of the Central government under Section 9 (2) of the Act. Moreover, inquiry by the Central government under Section 9 (2) of the Act is quasi-judicial. This proposition of law is settled by the following judgements of the apex court: State of A.P. vs. Abdul Khader, AIR 1961 SC 1467; Government of A.P. vs. Syed Md., AIR 1962 SC 1778; State of UP vs. Rehmatullah AIR 1971 SC 1382.
|
|
| 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 | |
In the social milieu today, international Indians qualify to be PIOs or OCIs. If they wish to reconnect with their homeland, they ought not to be bundled out as foreigners by invoking the colonial provisions of the 1920 and 1946 Acts, which offend fundamental freedoms. The Citizenship Act, 1955, itself creates harmony. The retention of a foreign passport today cannot lead to deportation and summary removal from India. Why then do we need to retain the 1920 and 1946 enactments, which were enacted to regulate the entry of foreigners into India in circumstances prevailing in 1946? This is a serious issue which must engage the attention of Parliament.
A passport is a document which by its nature and purpose recognises a person as a citizen of the country granting it and is in the nature of a request to other countries for his free passage. It contains recognition of the officially authorised agencies giving nationality to the citizen of the State issuing the passport upon necessary declarations being made to it by the holder. Therefore, a citizen is granted an Indian passport upon confirmation of Indian nationality. A passport can be impounded, revoked or cancelled under the Passports Act, 1967, upon certain prescribed conditions and following the requisite procedure under law.