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Curbing theft not enough
Need to kill speed |
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Dealing with rapists To castrate or not to castrate IN May 2011, Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau had said the government should explore the possibility of awarding punishment in the form of surgical or chemical castration for the rapists, especially for incestuous offenders, repeat sex offenders, paedophiles and molesters.
FDI in multi-brand retail
Canine ‘catwalk’
India's soft power spreads
London latitude
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Curbing theft not enough
THE two power utilities in Haryana are taking on power thieves, though it is not yet clear whether they are chasing the big fish or are making do with small fries. Media reports indicate they have recovered Rs 69 crore dues and disconnected the supply of 1.6 lakh defaulters in the districts of Ambala, Panchkula, Kurukshetra, Karnal, Sonepat, Jhajjar and Rohtak, and collected Rs 23.70 crore through penalties on erring consumers in the Gurgaon circle up to September 15 this fiscal. They have revived the “theft informer scheme” under which a particular percentage of the realised amount is given to informers. Power theft along with transmission losses is a major problem that distribution companies face. It is usually done in connivance with officials. In Punjab since unmetered supply is given to the farm sector and sections of the poor, part of power pilfered is put in the account of the subsidised supply. Influential consumers often get away with theft or pay up as and when they desire without having their supply disconnected due to unprofessional managements and political interference. The Centre’s latest debt restructuring plan will be available to those distributors who cut theft and transmission losses and raise tariffs to recover the cost, at least part of it. Haryana’s power utilities seem to be working in that direction. The main problem, however, is generation. By selling power below cost, power firms have piled up losses and have been left with little cash to invest in generation. Inadequate coal supplies further affect the existing generation capacity. Spot purchases by both Haryana and Punjab have further stretched the finances of the utilities. Northern and eastern India plunged into darkness on October 31 after these two and other states consumed more than their quota of power from the national transmission network. The power sector needs a major overhaul beyond checking theft. Ending political interference, replacing the worn-out transmission network, ensuring competition to the state-owned utilities and private distribution of power are among the measures that can cure some of the ailments of the power sector.
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Need to kill speed
THE Himachal Road Transport Corporation proposes to install vehicle tracking systems on its buses, using the global positioning system (GPS). While the foremost benefit of this in the accident-prone hill state would be keeping a check on the driver’s speed, the information available could be used to analyse the logistics of the thousands of buses in the HRTC fleet. The location of each bus would be known in real time, thereby facilitating passengers with information on exact arrival timings. Integrated with a “passenger information system”, it could be also used to optimally deploy the buses available according to the number of passengers at a particular bus stand. Essentially, the HRTC would have detailed information on its buses and passengers, and information is the key to any material management. What uses to put the system to would be limited only by ingenuity. The issue of speed on Himachal’s roads, however, needs a deeper look. The state’s figure for road fatalities is nearly one and a half times the national average. And government studies have found human error responsible in most cases. Checking speed on government buses is a good idea, but a large number of the accidents occur with private vehicles, or even load carriers illegally transporting humans. To this end, the state should immediately start speed checks, especially on the national highways, which are relatively wider and thus tempt people to drive faster. Haryana is doing well in this regard on the GT Road. To bring down the rate of accidents in Himachal, money needs to be spent on improving the driving conditions on roads too. While the maintenance of roads is an altogether separate challenge, minor initiatives like better markings and warning signs could go a long way. Even the most prestigious national highway to Shimla does not have its edges marked in white — most culverts and berm stones are overgrown with moss. A driver gets no sense of the bends in the night. These are low-cost initiatives requiring only administrative concern, but can save many a life. |
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Dealing with rapists
IN
May 2011, Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau had said the government
should explore the possibility of awarding punishment in the form of
surgical or chemical castration for the rapists, especially for
incestuous offenders, repeat sex offenders, paedophiles and molesters.
She said this while sentencing a man to 10 years’ rigorous
imprisonment for raping his minor step-daughter for over four years.
When the Chairperson, Haryana State Commission for Women, who visited
the victim of gangrape in Jind, said those accused of gangrape should
be castrated to feel the same pain and humiliation a woman undergoes
when raped, it was not for the first time that the issue was raised in
public. Castration of rapists is an idea that has been stirring the
conscience of lawmakers and upsetting human rights activists around
the world for a long time. In many countries like the US, the UK,
Germany and Israel, castration is a recognised punishment for child
rapists and, to a certain extent, it has borne positive results. But
in India, the existing laws do not permit castration of rapists, even
in the case of a minor’s rape, or in the case of a gangrape. While
the plea of the human rights activists has its own grounds, it can be
rightly questioned: Does a child’s or a woman’s right to
protection more important morally, or the sexual rights of paedophiles
and rapists? About 100 sex offenders at Whatton prison in the UK
were made to undergo chemical castration; the South Korean Ministry of
Justice announced the use of chemical castration on a repeat sex
offender; some sections in China are demanding introduction of
chemical castration to check the growing number of rapes. But the sex
impulse is not the sole source behind sexual crimes. These are
intermingled with social, cultural and psychological issues. In the
Indian context, particularly in Haryana, it is related to a complete
absence of the law and order machinery, which is a state
responsibility. Castration can wait; first, the state should pull up
its cadres for the delay and callousness shown repeatedly in arresting
and punishing the culprits of rape. |
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You may delay, but time will not.— Benjamin Franklin
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FDI in multi-brand retail I was reminded of the ancient maxim, “Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make them mad (with power)”, the very moment government announced policies approving majority FDI in multi-brand retail (read Wal-Mart stores, USA), an increase in foreign direct investment, because this step united the disparate opposition as shown by its bringing the country to a halt. How deep is the political weight of Wal-Marts in the Indian government is evident from a cable sent by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to her embassy in New Delhi in September 2009, (WikiLeaks India cable series: March 18, 2011), enquiring about “How does (Commerce Minister) Sharma view India’s current FDI guidelines? Which sectors does he plan to open further? Why is he reluctant to open multi-brand retail?” Wal-Mart International Division chief John Menzer took pride in claiming that “We’ve energised the FDI lobby and pre-empted the anti-FDI lobby in India.” The apparent tempting sop held out by the Minister of Commerce that Wal-Mart will have to procure 30 per cent of its value from the local market is a non-starter in the light of the actual practices followed by Wal-Mart and others. It is universally known that over 90 per cent of the products in Wal-Mart are sourced from China, which in view of the already cheap Chinese imported goods will ruin the local Indian industry. Moreover, Article III of GATT explicitly forbids regulations like specific sourcing requirement from domestic industries. This touching faith in the all-pervading positive result of Wal-Mart incursion in India is ironically not shared in its home country. Thus, on September 14 New York City shut Wal-Mart out, and mass marches in Los Angeles city (known for Hollywood billionaires) were held in protest against “we do not want you in Los Angeles”. That closing down of small shops at 35 per cent - 60 per cent immediately flows from the entry of Wal-Mart is the finding in a study made by Economic Development Quarterly. That Indian farmers will benefit by Wal-Mart building refrigerated warehouses is a lie. In the US, out of the 1578 refrigerated warehouses, 839 are in the public sector and 739 are private or semi-private. The public warehouses are much larger, accounting for 76 per cent of the general storage capacity, with private and semi-private facilities accounting for only 24 per cent. As against this, it is shameful that over 95 per cent of India’s cold storage capacity is in the private sector whereas only 0.44 per cent is in the public sector. Does the government need Wal-Mart’s permission to increase the number? The touching faith of the governments in globalisation is repudiated by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist, “Globalisation is neither socially benign nor has it been instrumental in reducing poverty; it has been detrimental to the poor and other weaker sections of society. In fact, globalisation has been associated with a growing divide between the richest countries and the poorest, and growing inequalities within most countries around the world.” To the plea by the corporate sector that businessmen need incentives to invest, let them listen to the jibe of the biggest votary of capitalism, Warren Buffet of the US, who felt compelled to publicly confess, “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” Is the Central government listening. I wish the votaries of reform, when talking of increasing the growth rate, were to pay a little attention to the paradox of gross poverty. It shows that while Delhi is supposed to have the highest per capita income in the country, in terms of actuals, according to data presented in the 65th round of the National Statistical Survey Report (2010), it embarrassingly shows that 70 per cent of households in Delhi have a monthly per capita expenditure of less than Rs 1500. Even the self-opinionated Planning Commission has been forced to accept this as the poverty level. Heaps of statistics are thrown at us by the Union government to show that we have no internal resources and, therefore, must invite foreign investment. How deliberately misleading — 500 listed Indian companies have enough cash on their books to double India’s power generation capacity of 2,00,000 MW or build over 40,000 km of six-lane highways every year (compared with the current 800 km). At the end of fiscal year, March 31, 2012, these companies were sitting on cash and cash equivalent — the legend investments that can easily be converted to cash — of over Rs 9.3 lakh crore or $ 160 billion. How false is the government’s pretended claim of shortage of dollars for investments in India is shown by the fact that in the ending months of 2011, there was a record level of Rs 9.8 lakh crore. The further concentration of wealth is shown by the fact that the top five companies in the Bombay Stock Exchange-500 held about Rs 2.07 lakh crore or 22.3 per cent of the total cash of these companies. And yet by the collusion of the Central government, these companies are permitted to take Indian money out of the country by being permitted to invest in countries like England, Australia and Belgium. The result is that coal, the strategic item needed for an increase in our economic growth, is not being mined in India but is being imported from Australia and other foreign countries. Is the Central government working for the people of India? The government cannot silence the discontent in the country arising out of extreme poverty by putting a claim which is false that prosperity so generated will move down and improve the condition of the poor. This is a false claim as given in a warning by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz — “The theory of trickle-down economics is a lie.” Governments should realise that such ugly poverty and disparity in our country is contrary to the mandate given in Article 39 (c) of our Constitution — to prevent that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment…. In that connection it may be instructive to remind the Central government of the warning given by Mr Justice Brennan of the Supreme Court of the US who put it succinctly, “Nothing rankles more in the human heart than a brooding sense of injustice, illness we can put up with. But injustice, makes us want to pull things
down.”
The writer is a former Chief Justice of the High Court of Delhi.
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Canine ‘catwalk’
The neighbourhood is all quiet as I begin my pre-dawn round of the block. If you are a pet-owner, you have no option but to exercise your dog each morning. At this early hour, there is nobody around in the lane and it will still be a while before the pets in the vicinity come out with their human companions for their early morning constitutional. One wonders who will come out first today — Raja, the imposing Alsatian, or Boozo, the playful cocker spaniel. Reminding myself that I have one very inquisitive and independent-minded dog on a leash right now, I come out of my reverie. JoJo is one temperamental character, as those who have had close encounters with him will testify. He tore off the shirt of a colleague who came to discuss a difficult problem on a holiday. He bit the hand of Rashid tailor who stitches the most divine salwars but hasn’t created one for me ever since a series of anti-rabies injections had to be administered to him thanks to JoJo’s friendly scratching. Rashid prefers to stay out of harm’s way, and, as I have no doubt, he has rationalised. There are many more women without growling dogs who need salwar kameezes stitched. Given JoJo’s displays of grand machismo, it is always a challenge to predict who he will object to next. As we trudge along, Raja, the mature Alsatian is the next to come out with his Bahadur in tow. JoJo and, Raja have a nodding acquaintance with each other, characterised by mutual respect between a giant of a dog and a born-aggressive toy specimen. Next we spot Julie, an elderly Labrador who has seen better days but is still exercised carefully. JoJo gives excited yelps and Julie strains at her leash. The two now want to have a conversation but Julie’s keeper is not friendly. I let them pass and rebuke JoJo for having such poor taste in the humans who escort the neighbourhood canines. We have now finished our five rounds. I am not very adventurous and JoJo, for all his bravado, is only a very small two-year-old German Spitz. He likes to inspect the surroundings and never misses a chance to investigate strange-looking mounds and unidentifiably grubby wrappers. As I let him climb atop a heap of sand and construction material, he growls menacingly and his white hair stands on end. JoJo dislikes pugs and the next-door cutie-pie, Coco, is his long-time bête noire. Coco’s walk is more like a waddle: in my view, pugs are not really good companions on a walk. But you can hardly tell this to a pet-owner. Coco is lovable and friendly and JoJo is just a much-misunderstood specimen of caninehood. I restrain my pet with a stern scolding. After the macho snarls and energetic posturing have died down, JoJo is ready for a drink. I fill his water bowl in the driveway itself and invite him to drink deeply. He flops onto the cool tiles and looks up at me as if to say, “That was hard work !”
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India's soft power spreads
CANADA CALLING India’s influence and visibility in Canada have been increasing rapidly in recent years, and Canada’s post-Pokhran-II freeze on bilateral ties now seems like a distant event. One, India has almost become the biggest source of immigration to Canada, and the million-strong Indo-Canadian community already accounts for 3 per cent of this country’s population of 34 million, which is the highest figure for Indians anywhere in the Western world!
Considering that the Punjabis account for the bulk of the Indo-Canadian community, Canada has virtually become their home away from home. And since more than 80 per cent of over 30,000 Indian immigrants who come here each year land in just two urban centres of Toronto, Vancouver and their satellite towns, these cities are increasingly looking ‘Indian’. But more than the rising numbers of Indians in Canada, India’s influence in Canada has been increased by its soft power – Bollywood, music, yoga and cuisine. Though fascination with things Indian among Canadians is not something new, ‘The Year of India in Canada’ in 2011 did wonders as India came here in a big way to showcase its cultural and traditional richness. Canadians were treated to a surfeit of Indian classical music, folk traditions, food and what not. During the year-long celebrations, hardly a day went by without any Indian icon enthralling Canadians. Bollywood too jumped on to the Year-of-India-in-Canada bandwagon by bringing the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) awards – its biggest show overseas – to Toronto. By far, it was the biggest gathering of Bollywood stars in North America. And after this three-day extravaganza – which pumped millions of dollars into the city’s economy – one could see an average Joe talking about Bollywood stars. Amid all this, India also brought its mini-Pravasi Bharatiya Divas to Toronto and announced to set up a unique Indian cultural centre in the Canadian city to rival Nehru House of London! Now, when that cultural centre comes up is a matter of conjecture. Toronto film festival goes Mumbaiya The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) – the world’s premier film show – too couldn’t escape the Indian bug in the ‘Year of India in Canada’ and announced to bring Mumbai to India in 2012.
The just-concluded 37th Toronto film festival screened a record 16 Indian or India-centric films as part of its city-to-city programme with focus on Mumbai. One can conveniently call them Mumbaiya films as they came here under the name of Mumbai. Sridevi flew in from Mumbai to charm Canadians and have chai with top leaders as her comeback film ‘English Vinglish’ was premiered at TIFF. ‘‘I now hope to continue acting (after a gap of 15 years),’’ said the former Bollywood queen after a cup of tea with Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, who is a big fan of Bollywood and personally knows many top-notch film stars. Deepa Mehta brought her ‘Midnight’s Children’ and Mira Nair her ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ to TIFF. Anurag Kashyap seems to have become a regular feature of the Toronto film scene as he was here again with his ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ I & II. So were Hansal Mehta with ‘Shahid’ and Dibaker Banerjee with ‘Shanghai’. Interestingly, Mumbai-based Manjeet Singh became the first Sikh filmmaker to enter the film festival with his highly acclaimed ‘Mumbai’s King’. ‘‘I am thrilled to be here. It is the best thing to happen to me,’’ Manjeet Singh, who is a masters in engineering from the US, told this correspondent at the premiere of his film that shows how three kids in Mumbai slums enjoy their life to the hilt despite poverty and family violence. Bringing over so many Mumbaiya films to TIFF was in keeping with Bollywood’s and India’s growing profile, said Toronto film festival artistic director Cameron Bailey. Bilateral trade at $5 billion
is pathetic
But India’s growing profile in Canada is not reflected in the bilateral trade between the two countries.
Their two-way trade of $5 billion looks pathetic when compared with the Canada-China trade of about $65 billion annually. In 2009, when the bilateral trade between India and Canada stood at about $4 billion, pledges were made by both sides to triple it in the next five years. Three years and dozens of ministerial visits later, the trade still hovers in the region of $5 billion. The much-touted comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) to eliminate tariffs is still in the works after many rounds of negotiations. And the nuclear deal announced by the two prime ministers here in June 2010 remains in a limbo as Canada seeks arrangements to ensure that uranium and reactors sold by it are used for peaceful purposes by India. Canadian diplomacy, which accused India of using their supplied nuclear technology (CANDU reactors) to carry out the 1974 nuclear test and got nuclear sanctions slapped on India, still remains sceptical of New Delhi. Indian diplomacy too doesn’t trust Canada because of its handling of the events of the 1980s – the activities of pro-Khalistani elements and the Air India bombing. Will Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who visits India in November, be able to break the logjam remains on the nuclear treaty?
Poor air links Despite its largest concentration of the Indian diaspora in the world, Canada is the least connected country to India by air. With Air India stopping all flights to Toronto, Jet Airways is the only Indian carrier flying between Toronto and Delhi. Not surprisingly, passengers heading for India are paying through their nose. And they have nowhere to go to seek redress of their plight.
London latitude A Catholic priest in the English city of Southampton has inadvertently acted as a bridge for people of different faiths, including Hindus, by banning yoga from his church hall. Hindus and Christians alike have responded with dismay to Father John Chandler’s ruling that yoga is incompatible with Christian teaching. He has been backed by a spokesman for Portsmouth Catholic Diocese who said, “It’s not possible for Catholic premises to be used for non-Christian activities and there is a dilemma with yoga as it can be seen as Hindu meditation or as relaxation. There is no national policy on this and the decision is for each priest.” His church hall was booked for a yoga class by Christian-born instructor, Ms Cori Withell, who paid £180 to the church, but was told a few days later that she could not have the hall because yoga belonged to another religion. Ms Withell, who described the church’s decision as “petty”, added, “I had never heard about any religious issue with yoga before but I have looked into it since and found that some other religions feel that when people meditate it could let the devil inside.”Some other yoga enthusiasts, who are also not Hindus, have joined inthe criticism of Father Chandler’s policy, describing it as ‘ignorant’. Pierre Bibby of the charity British Wheel of Yoga said: ‘Research demonstrates yoga improves people’s health and well-being physically and mentally. Who could object to that?’ One prominent UK Hindu, Ravindra Parmar, president of the Vedic Society Hindu Temple of Southampton, described yoga as “a form of exercise” and “not a religious type of activity”. Parmar says people are welcome to practiseyoga exercises at Southampton’s Hindu temple, adding that he feels “a little let down” after all the work the Southampton Council of Faiths does to “get all the faiths talking to each other”. |
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Father John, who is in charge of St Edmund’s church in Southampton, justified his decision to ban yoga from his church hall by explaining,“Yoga is a Hindu spiritual exercise. Being a Catholic church we have to promote the gospel and that’s what we use our premises for. We didsay that yoga could not take place. It’s the fact that it’s a different religious practice going on in a Catholic church,” he explained. “On one hand we say to our parishioners ‘be strong in your faith’, and on the other hand there’s this other religious belief that’s not part of our faith. It’s not compatible. We are not saying that yoga is bad or wrong.”