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Over to Parliament
Waiting for MFN status |
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Justice for the poor Not unless the entire chain works THE Chief Justice of India in urging judges to be sensitive to the needs of the poor litigants has raised a major cause. While he was referring particularly to the services provided to the poor in courts — as in the manner in which their cases are addressed by judges and the legal aid provided to them in the form of expenses and counsel — the larger issue remains that the legal system at the grassroots level that does not allow them to even reach courts. For most people who qualify to be called ‘poor’, even getting an FIR registered is a challenge.
Obama faces uncertain world
Happy to be ‘Aunty’
The vulnerable side of Suu Kyi
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Over to Parliament
IN the run-up to the winter session of Parliament, which begins on November 22, the UPA seems confident of taking head on the Opposition challenge on the decision allowing foreign investment in retail. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s lunch with Mayawati and dinner with Mulayam Singh Yadav went on smoothly, indicating no surprises in the stands of the UPA’s two outside supporters. Conveying the government’s resolve, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma has said that the FDI decision is “cast in stone”. The Congress has not reversed any of the recent decisions on reforms despite pressure from various quarters. It is strange the Opposition is united behind a small number of middlemen, while sacrificing the interests of a vast majority of consumers and farmers who will benefit from the FDI decision. When the Centre has given each state the option to allow or disallow foreign retail giants, where is the need for wasting Parliament’s time? The Opposition is divided on how to corner the government. Mamata Banerjee stands almost isolated on her unilateral decision to move a no-confidence motion, which requires the support of at least 50 MPs for being tabled. She has only 19 MPs. The Left parties and the BJP do not appear keen on bringing down the government. BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi has cautioned that if Mamata Banerjee’s motion fails, the government would become safe as another no-trust motion cannot be introduced at least for six months. The presiding officers of the two Houses of Parliament will decide whether the executive decision on retail FDI can be put to vote. Fears about government stability have surfaced, dampening investor confidence. The DMK has kept up the “suspense” by being non-committal on the issue. The BJP, which had stalled Parliament’s work during the monsoon session, stands weakened as the corruption charges against its chief, Nitin Gadkari, would not allow it to occupy the high moral ground this time. Important legislative work has been pending in Parliament for too long. The lawmakers should first do work for which they are elected and paid; protests scare away foreign investment which India badly needs.
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Waiting for MFN status
IT is surprising that Pakistan is still not clear about granting the Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India despite a Cabinet decision on the subject. The surprise comes with members of the Public Accounts Committee of Pakistan’s National Assembly (parliament) expressing reservations about the commitment made by Islamabad many times in the past. They have sought from their Commerce Ministry a detailed assessment of the repercussions of granting the MFN status to India on different segments of Pakistan’s economy. Their fear is based on the assumption that India’s agriculture-related industry will “destroy” Pakistan’s farm-based industry because of “the farm subsidies” the former gets. This amounts to scare-mongering by those in Pakistan who refuse to see anything vis-à-vis India from a positive angle. Such people forget the fact that Indian agriculture gets very little subsidy today, and whatever subsidy remains will have to go in the days to come. While India granted the MFN status to Pakistan a few years back, Islamabad has been ambivalent owing to assumed fears. The Pakistan Cabinet finally passed a resolution agreeing “in principle” to grant the MFN status to India by this year-end following pressure from its trading lobby. Most business organisations in Pakistan have expressed the view that a decision in favour of India will benefit both countries as bilateral trade between the two will increase considerably. Interestingly, the Public Accounts Committee, which has created the latest controversy, is full of members of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. Their views are in contravention of the thinking of President Asif Zardari and Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who have been assuring India that the Pakistan Cabinet had taken a well-considered decision and there was no question of going back on it. When the two neighbours are on a conciliatory course with the composite dialogue process making slow but steady progress, the committee members should have avoided expressing the kind of views they have done. India did not make an exception in the case of Pakistan when it allowed FDI in retail and other sectors. Nothing should be done to dampen the sentiments of businessmen and other segments of the expanding peace constituency in the two countries.
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Justice for the poor
THE Chief Justice of India in urging judges to be sensitive to the needs of the poor litigants has raised a major cause. While he was referring particularly to the services provided to the poor in courts — as in the manner in which their cases are addressed by judges and the legal aid provided to them in the form of expenses and counsel — the larger issue remains that the legal system at the grassroots level that does not allow them to even reach courts. For most people who qualify to be called ‘poor’, even getting an FIR registered is a challenge. There are certain genuine limitations too in providing compassionate treatment to the destitute. Judges and senior officials can have the discretion to make exceptions in the paperwork involving the cases and appeals of the poor, but the lower level staff in the bureaucracy and the police fear getting into trouble if they do not complete the ‘files’ in the prescribed format, which can be a fairly inconsiderate process. One factor that can help this is simplifying administrative procedures, as is being done under the Right to Services Act in many states. Under the criminal-justice system, lodging complaints on every report, without using discretion, would be a good starting point. But the biggest reason for the poor not being able to get justice is their lack of awareness that there are ways to redress their grievances. Creating awareness among them regarding their rights should be a focus area. To address the situation it is not just the judiciary that needs to do its bit, but all those who see themselves as ‘pillars’ of society and the democracy. The media has to expose injustice to the poor, even if it does not make for any dramatic coverage. So should be the bureaucracy’s intention. It is challenging because there are no rewards at the end of it. But justice begins with the mundane, like a poor man being able to get his child admitted in a school.
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Silence is foolish if we are wise, but wise if we are foolish. — Charles Caleb Colton
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Obama faces uncertain world Finally, after months of non-stop campaigning, Barack Obama has managed to capture the White House for a second four-year term as US President. With a clarion call to national unity, he underlined: “In the weeks ahead I look forward to sitting down with governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.” He went on to say that “despite all the hardship we’ve been through, despite all the frustrations of Washington, I’ve never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about America.” Mitt Romney responded by saying that “this is a time of great challenges for America and I pray that the President is successful in guiding our nation.” It was a close election, though in the end Obama managed to scrape through in key battleground states like Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Wisconsin, Virginia and Colorado. For a President who had come to office on some grandiose rhetoric of hope, the ground realities had changed. He was no longer as popular as he was in 2008 and the state of the economy remained parlous. But his Republican challenger never managed to craft a larger narrative about his policy priorities, and, despite his impressive performance in the first debate, was always responding to events on the ground. His was a reactive campaign and the Democrats succeeded in presenting him as a caricature by negative ads that ran through the length and breadth of the country, especially in key swing states. Hurricane Sandy also helped Obama by strengthening his case for a strong government machinery and underlining his credentials as a competent leader. Despite Obama’s victory, America remains a country as deeply divided as ever. This is clear in the popular vote where Obama received 50 per cent and Romney around 48 per cent. It is also reflected in the composition of the new US Congress. Democrats retained their majority in the US Senate whereas the Republicans kept control of the House of Representatives, leaving Congress divided along the lines that have led to a gridlock for the past two years on some of America’s most pressing issues. The Democrats will be expanding on their current 53-to-47-seat edge but they will not be in a position to gain the seats necessary to win a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority, meaning a continuation of the gridlock that has been a hallmark of the modern Senate. Meanwhile, the Republicans will be maintaining at least a 20-seat margin, thereby a strong hold over the House. And this continued Republican dominance in the House of Representatives probably will lead to renewed clashes with Senate Democrats, with whom the conservative caucus feuded for the past two years in budget battles that brought the federal government to the brink of defaulting on its debt. The markets, therefore, responded negatively immediately after Obama’s re-election. There is widespread anxiety about the economic future and about the ability of the American political system to get its act together. Politically, nothing much has changed and as the fiscal cliff looms large, with taxes on track to rise sharply and spending to be slashed, each side will at least threaten to allow the US to go off the fiscal cliff, likely to prompt a recession to get their way. The economic concerns about the American future will persist and it will have a strong impact on the global economic recovery as well. The world wants the US political system to work but it is not readily evident if Obama’s election will pave the way for more efficient policy making. And so the world will wait with bated breath. The foreign affairs landscape is also unlikely to wait for Obama to savour his victory. Already the British government is demanding that violence in Syria has gone on for far too long and Washington should now take the lead in working more closely with the rebels so that a swift resolution could be found of the Syrian crisis. It will be interesting to see what course Obama takes towards West Asia in the coming months and if he would give a push to the now almost defunct Middle East peace process. The Iranian nuclear crisis also will be high on the agenda. There is some speculation that the Obama Administration in its second term would be making a grand gesture towards Tehran to normalise Washington’s ties with the country. But it is easier said than done at a time when the Cold War between Iran and Saudi Arabia is at an all-time high and the Arab Gulf states who are long-standing allies of the US have been demanding strong action against the Iranian nuclear programme and the increasing propensity of the regime in Tehran to create problems elsewhere in the region. Afghanistan will continue to hog the headlines at least till the withdrawal of the US forces in 2014. As the situation deteriorates further, there will be pressure on Obama to do more to assuage the concerns of ordinary Afghans about the possibility of the return of the Taliban post-2014. Obama will have to take an even harder line vis-à-vis Pakistan if America wants to retain any semblance of order in Afghanistan after the departure of western troops. And given his past record, he won’t be loathe to taking a hard line against the military-jihadi complex in Rawalpindi. Most significant, however, would be the ability of the Obama Administration to manage China’s rise and the political transition already underway in Beijing. As a new generation of Chinese leaders take office, Washington will have to tread carefully in articulating American interests and its willingness to stand up for them. There is growing demand for a robust American presence in the Asia-Pacific region from China’s neighbours and to some extent, the Obama Administration has already made its intentions clear by explicating its “pivot” to Asia. But there are a lot of issues that still remain mired in confusion about the true extent of American commitment to the region. Though Obama’s second term will be very much like his first insofar as India is concerned, New Delhi may have significant stakes in almost all the issues which will be the focus of Obama’s second term. It will have to critically assess its own interests as President Obama will go about redefining the terms of his ‘new’ foreign
policy.
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Happy to be ‘Aunty’ Browsing through the lifestyle pages of a newspaper the other day, I felt amused and angry by turns. A prominent film personality had come in for sharp attack on account of her sartorial choices. “Beautiful she may still be, but her dress sense has nosedived to a point where she can no longer relate to the younger generation. Gone is the gazelle-like elegance of this former beauty queen who now has ‘auntie’ written all over her.” I thought to myself, “Here is a writer who does not need to tell the world that her mind is as shallow as a play-school swimming pool.” The article contained more such negative comments about the ‘auntie-ish’ look of the film star and how she seemed middle-aged and unglamorous in her recent outfits. I wonder why we expect a celluloid celebrity to be svelte and eternally sweet seventeen. Even with the combined impact of excellent genes, cosmetic surgery, a personal trainer, a nutritionist and a make-up artist, one cannot be pushing 40 and hope to look like every young man’s college sweetheart. The muscles may defy gravity thanks to a lifetime of self-denial spent mostly on the treadmill. But a couple of decades of having been there, done that and seen it all will make even the most self-obsessed of celebrities older and wiser in the mind with time. Celebrities are real people with families and friends just like you and me. I wouldn’t know much about how they conduct their personal lives, but I hardly think that an Indian film star’s seven-year-old niece is likely to call her star aunt anything but “Aunty”, ‘Maasi’, ‘Bua’, ‘Maami’ or ‘Chitthi’ depending on the relationship and the language spoken in the family. I remember the euphoria exhibited by my younger sister who was only 21 when she became an aunt to my baby. It was as if she had been given all her Christmas presents at once. My beautiful sister did not resent being labelled “aunt” to someone she called, “God’s most perfect angel”. She telephoned all her friends excitedly and announced, “Hey, people! Treat me with more respect! I am now an aunt!” Everyone inevitably acquires nieces and nephews as they grow older. It is still not a very Indian thing to call out to one’s aunt, “Yo Kamaljit! “ or slap one’s uncle on the back and say, “Hi Subramaniam, wassup, dude?” So, becoming an aunt or an uncle should feel as natural as the inevitable march of time. Why is it that labels like “Aunty” and “Uncle” are used sarcastically in public discourse to refer to someone who looks older than they “ought” to, or simply, old? This is evidence of how lookist we have become as a society. Lookism is a prejudice as obnoxious as any of the more recognised ones. It should be possible to critique a person’s work without rude references to aging or anatomical or facial features. After all, even the writer who dipped her pen in vitriol to write that lifestyle piece is aging by the minute and, very likely, not as gracefully as her well-known
target.
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The vulnerable side of Suu Kyi Much has been said about her gentle reprimand to the Government of India for not supporting her during her difficult times. Much has been written about her steadfastness to the Gandhian principles of ahimsa and satyagraha. And much has been commented upon with respect to her childhood closeness to Jawaharlal Nehru and to the aspirations of a young post colonial state. This political side to her was summed up, by her, so well when she asked us to help her country walk down the same road that we in India had walked, to democracy and freedom. How could we even hesitate to offer her our solidarity? But it is not the politics that I want to speak about here. I want to understand her being and in doing so understand the being of those who make history, not because they chose to, not because it is thrust upon them, but because history itself requires such agents for its own survival.
That ‘lonely’ impulse of delight
There are three ruminations that ASSK offers in this wonderful lecture from which we can get a glimpse into her being. It is these that I want to write about. The first pertains to her dispute with Nehru on a line he quotes in his Discovery of India from the poem ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’ by W.B.Yeats. It is one of her favourite poems and when, in the solitude of her house arrest, she read Nehru quote it as ‘that lovely impulse of delight’ that ‘turns to risk and danger and faces and mocks at death’ she felt that Nehru had misquoted it. The word in dispute was ‘lonely’ not ‘lovely’. Let me quote her at some length so that we may enjoy the elegance of her prose, the gentleness with which she conveys her disagreement. “I had remembered the words as ‘that lonely impulse of delight,’ and I could not check to see which version was correct as I did not have the poem to hand. To me, ‘lovely’ changed the entire meaning of the poem. I wished I could have discussed the matter with Nehru himself. Was it not essentially lonely, rather than lovely, to delight in what would seem at least inexplicable if not outright undesirable, to most of those around us? …. Was ‘lovely’ a misprint in my copy of Discovery of India or had Nehru misread the line?” And so while the above passage gives us a glimpse into that inner world of her being as she struggles to answer the question of what it is all about, it is the words that followed the above quoted passage that quite enslaved me. To mull over the meaning of a word, to build a whole philosophy on the interpretation of a poem, these are pastimes in which prisoners, particularly prisoners of conscience, engage, not just to fill empty hours but from a need to understand better, and perhaps to justify, the actions and decisions that have led them away from the normal society of other human beings. ‘To build a whole philosophy on the interpretation of a poem is a sentence that tells you that she has developed her philosophy in making the link between ‘lonely’ and ‘death’, a philosophy that renders issues of fear and courage, expectation and disappointment, choice and its denial, irrelevant. In this majestic statement ASSK tells us that she lives in a zone that has moved beyond such issues, a zone where one does what one’s conscience tells. You do not choose to do You know you have to do it. You just do it. That is why the poem ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’ is one of her favourite poems. I read it for the first time after I heard her recite the few lines from it. Through it I understood her better as I think I did Gandhi, and Mandela, and Martin Luther King, and Vaclav Havel and Andrei Sahkarov. The second rumination illustrates her sense of self-deprecation. One must not take oneself too seriously if one truly seeks to understand the cosmic order of things she seems to imply. Again let her speak for herself. “During one of my periods of isolation, I jotted down on a piece of paper that if I could be sure of one, just one, totally trustworthy, totally reliable, totally understanding, totally committed friend and colleague, who would keep faith with me and with the cause in which we believed throughout the vicissitudes of this existence, I could challenge the combined forces of heaven and earth. In isolation, one tends towards melodrama. Storming heaven for assurance, looking for trust and believing in it when, on the contrary, betrayal is what one experiences, seeking affirmation that the cause is worthwhile when loneliness is all pervasive, and yet, when the moment passes, there is no self-pity or anger, just irony and humour. Irony and self-deprecation make for good governance. This is not a relationship that has been probed and needs to be. That is why Nehru was a great prime minister and why Mandela demitted office after only one term.” It is in commenting on her third set of ruminations, however, that I feel least confident, not because I am diffident about my interpretation, but because I feel I would be intruding, a trespasser. She did not make the connection that I am going to make. In fact she deliberately held back from making it. Yet in every sentence, every word, the pretend stoicism of her face, the suppressed quiver in her voice, one could tell that what we were hearing was, in fact, autobiographical. ASSK wanted to share her private angst with the world, in an indirect way. That is why she discusses this episode in her speech. That is why I make bold to offer a connection between what she said and what she left unsaid. The extended account of Nehru being offered a deal by the regime, on his staying in jail rather than going to look after Kamala, on his belief in the cause of freedom for his people, on his existential pain when he had to face his possible disloyalty, when he had to confront the question of which is his greater obligation to an ill Kamala or a subjugated people, to a suffering family or a suffering people? Aung San Suu Kyi was talking about her own existential dilemma, of the painful choice she had to make when she chose not to return to England when Michael Aris was suffering from terminal cancer. She saw in Nehru a soul mate. Listen to her coded telling of her story.
The said and the unsaid “In 1934, while serving one of his many terms of imprisonment, it was suggested to him “through various intermediaries” that if he were to give an assurance, even an informal one, that he would keep away from politics for the rest of the term to which he had been sentenced, he would be released to tend to his ailing wife. This roused a deep indignation in the proud independence fighter. “Politics was far enough from my thoughts just then, and the politics I had seen during my eleven days outside had disgusted me, but to give an assurance! And to be disloyal to my pledges, to the cause, to my colleagues, to myself! It was an impossible condition, whatever happened. To do so meant inflicting a mortal injury on the roots of my being, on almost everything I held sacred. I was told that Kamala’s condition was becoming worse and worse and my presence by her side might make all the difference between life and death. Was my personal conceit and pride greater than my desire to give her this chance? It might have been a terrible predicament for me, but fortunately that dilemma did not face me in that way at least. I knew that Kamala herself would strongly disapprove of my giving any undertaking, and if I did anything of the kind it would shock her and harm her.” The above passages fascinated me. The monumental egoism: ‘my pledges,’ ‘my colleagues,’ ‘myself,’ ‘the roots of my being,’ ‘everything I held sacred.’ The briefest appearance before an impartial court of conscience before deciding that he would be doing Kamala more harm than good by doing what was repugnant to his principles. And of course Kamala’s own words put the seal of approval on his decision…. Yet in full awareness of the egoism and some possible self-deception on the part of Nehru, I have to confess that I wholly endorsed his stand on the matter.” That Daw Aung San Suu Kyi chose to share these reflections with us is a measure of her greatness. She could have avoided talking about this episode. She could have chosen to discuss something more impersonal. The lecture was already so rich in philosophical insight and so poetic that excluding this story would not have made it any less valuable. And yet she included it. She placed her most vulnerable persona before the scrutiny of the world’s cameras. She did this in India. This was her tribute to Nehru. And to the struggling peoples of the world.
The writer is the Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla
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THE Nehru Memorial lecture given by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, on 14th November, 2012 in New Delhi, was a master class performance. It was measured. It was poetic. It was political. It was philosophical. It did not employ the rhetorical flourishes so favoured by orators nor did it pander to the conceits of the audience and manipulate their emotions just to get their applause. In fact the tone of her delivery was almost constant, with just a little blip for irony, a brief chuckle for humour and an occasional whiff for nostalgia. The large assembly of India’s power elite was at Vigyan Bhavan. They had come to hear her speak. The honesty with which she spoke made one feel that she was not speaking to us. We just happened to be there. She was delivering a soliloquy, another one of those long chains of thoughts that she had given voice to during her periods of house arrest. She was speaking to history.