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Politics of quota
Dragon power |
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Improve health care
Pluralism asserting itself
The last playground
Striving for probity in public life
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Politics of quota
THE Haryana government has accepted in principle the report of the Haryana Backward Classes Commission recommending 10 per cent reservation in state government jobs for five castes — Jats, Jat Sikhs, Bishnois, Rors and Tyagis – and 10 per cent additional reservation for the economically backward people of the general category. The government has already provided for 47 per cent reservations: 27 per cent for the Scheduled Castes and 20 per cent for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). If the fresh HBCC recommendations are accepted — as has been indicated by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda – this would take the total to 67 per cent, which violates the Supreme Court judgment in the 1992 Indira Sawhney case limiting all reservations to 50 per cent. Aware of this, the Jat representatives have rejected the HBCC report and threatened to go ahead with their agitation, which includes the blockade of all entry points to Delhi from Haryana on December 23. Even if the state government, bowing to pressure from the agitators, issues a notification based on the commission’s report, it is liable to be struck down by courts. Since the commission is headed by a retired judge, he must be aware of the apex court ruling. Anyway, the commission is yet to submit its final report and the government action will depend on that. The government seems to have secured a brief report to pacify the Jats. There is no justification for reservations for candidates from well-to-do families. All Jats, for instance, are not poor or backward. The community has given a number of chief ministers to Haryana and is well represented in government service. The poor need help on priority regardless of their caste. Rising aspirations and inequitable growth breed social unrest. And solutions offered are questionable. The demand for reservations – whether in admissions to premier institutions, government jobs or in promotions as Mayawati is seeking at the Central level – stems from a sense of deprivation. Instead of working for inclusive growth, politicians tend to pursue the politics of appeasement, which can be socially divisive and dangerous.
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Dragon power
Economically, militarily and politically powerful, Beijing is asserting itself. China has long been an enigma but with the recent changes in the top leadership, every official move is being analysed by China watchers. It is too early to say that the new Communist Party leader, Xi Jinping, is effectively changing policies, especially given that the Chinese have a tradition of continuing with previous policies as a signal of respect for predecessors. However, some of the neighbouring nations are already expressing concern about the Asian giant’s ambitions. The recent row on what Japan considers its airspace over tiny islands in the East China Sea is a case in point. The two nations, which have strong economic ties, have been sparring with each other over territorial rights for long. The carping has escalated after Japan bought the islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, from a private Japanese owner. Both countries have deployed ships and airplanes in an effort to assert their rights and the latest incident involved a Chinese government plane overflying the island. Other nations, like the Philippines, which has far less economic clout than Japan, have also faced the blunt arm of China flexing its military and economic muscle, but have preferred to maintain a lower profile in their protests. It is clear that Beijing considers the South China Sea as its backyard and thus is being assertive there. China recently held massive military exercises. A case in point is the major Air Force fighter pilot contest organised recently. It makes no secret of its ambition to have a flotilla of aircraft carriers. Even as Asian leaders come to terms with a giant that is no longer content at being a mere economic powerhouse, the new leadership in Beijing is also expected to demonstrate satiety and maturity. This will happen by not allowing what can essentially be settled at a diplomatic level, out of the gaze of the public eye, to develop into confrontations that damage the standing it so eagerly seeks in the comity of nations. The Chinese civilisation is one of the oldest and the most developed in the world. It has shown a remarkable capability of adapting to the changing economic world, and needs to apply its deft touch at reassuring its neighbours about its intentions.
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Improve health care
A
pilot study conducted in Gujarat about the efficiency of the UPA’s much hyped health insurance scheme, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna ( RSBY), has confirmed what a study conducted in 2008, in a southern state of India by a group of institutions, including the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford, had suggested that the poor in India go for private health service. And that nearly 70 per cent of poor people’s health care expenditure goes to private health care providers. Authorities acknowledge that there is corruption and inefficiency in the government system, especially in villages where many health centres do not have basic infrastructure, including medicines or doctors. The RSBY scheme was launched to guarantee free hospitalisation to the people below poverty line. But the pilot study showed that over 50 per cent of people enrolled in RSBY had to pay at the time of hospitalisation, and the payments ranged from Rs 10 to Rs 1.5 lakh due to lack of monitoring by the insurance firms. These facts go against the tall claims made by the government for providing free health service to its poor. They also go against the government’s plan to sustain a high growth rate. It is a fact that more than 27 per cent of the undernourished people globally live in India. But, the government spends only 1per cent of its GDP on healthcare facilities, forcing millions of people to struggle to get medical care. India’s economic growth story has been aspiring to hover around 6 per cent, but it could fall to below 5 per cent if its poor remained under-nourished and in want of health care. India’s maternal mortality rate (MMR) stands at 450 per 100,000 live births — way behind the expected goal of 109 by 2015, as marked by the United Nations. To improve on this dismal record, India needs to increase public expenditure, up to 3 per cent of its GDP, and ensure better healthcare facilities, especially in the rural areas.
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People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy. — Anton Chekhov
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Pluralism asserting itself WHAT message do Muslims get when neither civil society nor the Election Commission does anything to stop Amit Shah, a former Gujarat minister, from contesting the state assembly seat this December? He is accused of being an instigator of fake encounters against Sohrabbudin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapat during the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002. That the BJP fielded Shah as a candidate only confirms the allegation that Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers were part of the plan to effect ethnic cleansing. Maybe the party is not shy of playing the Hindu card and it is testing the waters in Gujarat. The BJP’s image has already been damaged by the open rebellion of top leaders like Ram
Jethmalani, Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha against party president Nitin
Gadkari, alleged to be mixed up with dubious business companies. Shah’s nomination could have favoured the Congress but the party is apt in scoring a self-goal. It has adopted Shweta Bhatt as its candidate in the Gujarat polls. She is the wife of Sanjiv
Bhatt, the police officer who spilled the beans on the riots by admitting in public that he and other officers were instructed by the Chief Minister not to take action against those who were murdering Muslims and looting and burning their houses and shops. The stock defence of the
BJP, more so of Modi supporters, has been that Bhatt is a Congress stooge and his statements against Modi are at the party’s instance. At least some leaders in the Congress should have realised that the candidature of Bhatt’s wife would give Modi an ammunition which he would
use. Mrs Bhatt probably tells the truth when she says that she was waiting for the election so that she would have a platform to expose the dictatorial rule that prevails in Gujarat. Many would corroborate her charge because they have gone through harassment and have even been roughed up because of their criticism of
Modi. I feel that she would have been on a stronger wicket if she had not accepted the Congress ticket. She would have also carried greater credibility as an independent candidate. On top of it, her husband, Sanjiv
Bhatt, a serving police officer, although suspended, accompanied her to the returning officer to file her nomination. An independent officer with an outstanding service record, seen on television screens, sitting next to his wife when she files her nomination papers is bound to cost him his unsoiled reputation. The reason why the Congress offered Shweta Bhatt the party ticket is not difficult to understand. The party wanted to bring the anti-Muslim riots in the state to the fore. For some reasons, the Congress itself had pushed the carnage to the background. The party should never have allowed to go the killings out of focus. Whether the party ultimately gets more voters or not is difficult to predict, but it would be doing some justice to thousands of Muslims who live in Gujarat in fear and have little scope for their development. A re-run of the killings and other excesses committed with the blessings of the Modi government may arouse the conscience of the Gujaratis who gave Mahatma Gandhi to the nation. Their support to the people whose hands are tainted with blood is
pathetic. Modi and a large retinue of the BJP leaders would try to polarise the state — their only agenda — but it is for the Gujaratis to reject them. The nation remains secular but how odd it is that their ideological stance has been quite the opposite. They should know that the Constitution enjoins upon us not to differentiate between the Indians on the basis of religion or caste. Were the Gujaratis to return to the mainstream, they would give confidence not only to Muslims but also the entire nation. Not only in Gujarat but all over the country, the Muslim community feels insecure and helpless. It has been seen that young Muslims have been picked up by the police on mere suspicion. Some have been set free and some still await justice. The law courts are responsible for their detention and the years they have spent in jail. Worse is that none has been held accountable. Mohammad Amir Khan who, after being in jail for 14 years, was not found guilty by the Delhi High Court. He should at least be given some financial assistance as a rehabilitation gesture. Even otherwise, Muslims have never been so demoralised as they are today after Partition. There is despondency and lack of hope. The Sachar Committee report on improving their lot remains mostly unimplemented. Still what evokes hope and confidence is that there is overall communal harmony. It means that pluralism is asserting itself. The fact that there was no repercussion in the rest of India, after the Mumbai attacks in 2008, shows that both Hindus and Muslims have learnt to live in harmony. I am optimistic that the day is not far when Muslims would be able to rent a house in posh localities in big cities. No doubt, some Muslims have been desperate and adopted terrorism for their expression. But the answer to this problem is not counter-terrorism as some fanatic Hindu organisations are doing. Both communities should understand that killing begets killing. Despite all this, the Opposition leader in the Lok
Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, wants to anoint Modi as the next Prime Minister of India. Her loyalty to the BJP is understandable. But how can she inflict on the nation a person who was believed to be a party to the killing of more than 2,000 Muslims? If the Supreme Court had not transferred the cases of “encounter” and other crimes to courts outside Gujarat, Modi and his team would have got away with their cover-up job. The call by British envoy Sir James Bewan on Modi at Ahmedabad amounted to mocking at the critics of the Chief Minister. Bewan’s explanation was that the UK wants to have more trade with Gujarat. He is the envoy in New Delhi, not
Ahmedabad. As the Ahmedabad-based Jesuit said in his letter to the British envoy, “Morality can never be compromised by any other consideration. This was something which Mahatma Gandhi resolutely fought for and ultimately sacrificed his life for.” Renewed opposition in America to Modi’s visa is understandable because it does not want to give the impression that Washington will follow London’s example. This message should go to all countries in the
world.
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The last playground Suddenly, I heard noises. I got up with a start. My before-work siesta was interrupted. On looking down my balcony, I saw my neighbour’s little daughter taking a class of the locality’s other children. I wanted to shout and tell them to go away, but I stopped myself when I looked around. The neighbourhood — where I grew up — had evidently grown richer. Inside each compound wall was parked a car or two. The road in the middle was frequented regularly by all sorts of vehicles. The ‘playground’ that I and my friends — some decades ago — had been encroached upon by these mobile steel boxes. It was difficult to imagine that our team had played cricket and badminton in the middle of the street. The present-day little ones had only this car-less man’s compound as consolation. Thoughts flooded my mind as I stood quietly in my balcony. My wife had scolded them once for leaving behind a paste of green leaves on our bench. “We were making chutney like mummy,” they explained the next day. They would pluck flowers and leaves from the flower pots and sometimes leave the tap slightly open, but my wife and I could only reprimand them softly — after all, our 10-year-old son was also part of the gang. Every night, my mother would safekeep all the playthings that they would leave behind in haste when their mothers called each one for dinner. All these would be returned to the rightful owner when he or she made a reappearance on our premises. A stranger entered and the ‘class’ was interrupted — it was an MC employee who had been assigned to note the reading of the water meter. As I turned to go back into my quilt, he called me downstairs. “How many people stay here?” he said. “Four,” I replied. “Is the meter working?” “Why do you ask?” I asked back. “The consumption is so less,” he said. “Look around you, my man. I neither have a car to wash nor a lawn to water every day. My wife — despite having a fully automatic washing machine — uses it only to spin the clothes dry,” I explained. “Really?” he said astonished and went his way. “Uncle, who was that?” said the little ‘madam’. “He came to inform me that the car I have booked will be delivered tomorrow,” I lied. “So, let’s play here one last time,” she regrouped her class. I smiled and re-entered my quilt.
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Striving for probity in public life AS a political personality occupying the office of Chief Minister of Punjab, Bhimsen Sachar would have dealt with questions of governance. These are of a perennial nature and have been posed in all periods and to all systems; each faced challenges, including those of probity; each sought to develop appropriate responses. In terms of principles and commitments, there are two aspects of the requirement of probity in public domain. In the first place, I would like to draw attention to Article 51A of our Constitution that prescribes among the duties of citizens the requirement "to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement."
This requirement of a quest for excellence cannot evade the seven principles prescribed by Gandhiji and necessitates a commitment for their implementation leading to probity in everyday life of a citizen. In the second place, and in our world of today, societies and states no longer have the luxury of isolation. Instead, we have a community of states and a globalisation of values. National sovereignty is increasingly circumscribed by national commitments to global conventions. These, together, give teeth to the principles and behaviour pledges inscribed in the Charter of the United Nations. The most relevant of these international commitments, having a direct impact on an essential aspect of probity, is the UN Convention against Corruption, adopted in October 2003 and somewhat belatedly ratified by India on May 11, 2011. This is a comprehensive document, has a direct relevance to the question of probity in public life and its rationale and objectives therefore need to be considered carefully.
Rejection of corruption The Preamble of the Convention urges States to "foster a culture of rejection of corruption". Given this requirement in terms of national and international norms and commitments, where do we in India stand in terms of perception and action in regard to this ailment? The matter is very much in the public domain. It has been said with much justice that "evidence of corruption has moved from anecdotal to documentary", that it is Indian democracy's "inconvenient fact", that it violates human rights, constitutional rights and Rule of Law, and that "it undermines the very social fabric and the political and bureaucratic structure of the Indian society". Our ranking in the global Corruption Perception Index is, to say the least, distressing. The disease is not of recent origin but, in an earlier period, carried a social stigma less evident today. In 1949 the poet Josh Malihabadi had written a long poem entitled Rishwat. One couplet summed up the public opprobrium attributed to the ailment: Bhool kar bhi jo koi leta hai rishwat, chor hai Aaj qaomi paagaloon main raat din yeh shour hai
Propensity to corruption The perception of wide-spread corruption has widened and deepened in the public mind. It is evident that more effective corrective action is needed to restore public confidence. This has to be qualitatively different and must address three aspects of the matter simultaneously. These relate to (a) propensity, (b) opportunity, and (c) scope. It is essential to examine the role of each of these in the genesis and perpetuation of corruption: "The propensity to resort to illegal or immoral means to achieve desired ends is increasingly pervasive in the wake of a sentiment that both traditional morality and constitutional morality have somehow become un-necessary and not in need of observance beyond the ritual of lip service. A culture of hedonism and of what Nehru called "vulgar display of wealth" does of necessity lead to a culture of inequality, very different from the requirements of justice, equality and fraternity to which we swear allegiance as citizens. The only viable corrective to this would lie in a concerted effort, in the family, the school, the work place, and the civic domain to rejuvenate and re-imbibe the required social values and, at the same time, put in place deterrents to ensure compliance. Propensity could and does also emerge from situational compulsion caused by real or created scarcity, by intentional delays in the delivery of public service and the resultant moral dilemma faced by the seeker of a public service. The petty corruption thus generated has a differential impact on the less privileged whose capacity to resist is minimal.
Opportunity and scope "The same holds for opportunity. Successive reports of government commissions over five decades have suggested reform of procedures that would facilitate public service delivery, introduce transparency and thereby reduce opportunity to go astray. The Right to Information Act has helped rectify this in some measure; much still remains to be done. Rigorous training to inculcate the concept of service is essential so that it is rendered as a duty not a favour. The scope of what is considered corruption has to expand to cover the act as well as actors, both the taker and giver of bribes. This is of particular relevance in cases that go beyond petty corruption. A paper presented at a World Bank workshop some years back observed that "the problem of corruption lies at the intersection of the public and private sectors. It is a two way street. Private interests, domestic and external, wield their influence through illegal means to take advantage of opportunities for corruption and rent seeking, and public institutions succumb to take these and other sources of corruption in the absence of credible restraints." A survey by the Swiss consultancy firm KPMG in March 2011 showed that "in many cases corruption is induced by the private sector", adding that "a large number of respondents believe that corruption is a two-way street and people who pay bribes are as much to blame for the current environment as those accepting such payments. The regulation in India tends to focus on the bribe taker rather than the bribe payer and hence corporates do not shy away from adopting corrupt practices."
Nepotism as a virtue There are other dimensions to the problem. Given our social scene and traditions, nepotism in some form or the other is, tacitly or explicitly, considered a virtue. It is said to be "a custom with infinitely more practitioners than defenders". How is it to be defined in the Indian context of Kunba parvari ? When and where does it violate canons of probity and becomes a corrupt practice? Has any government or public body sought to develop a framework to check it? Much of the debate on dealing with the perils of corruption has dealt with the legal framework and law enforcement and the effort to make it produce better results. This is essential but not sufficient. An aspect of the fight against corruption, insufficiently addressed, is its impact on human rights and the extent to which it derogates the Rule of Law that ensures administration of justice by normal law courts, avoidance of arbitrary decision-making, and abuse of discretionary power. It has been argued in this context that "the human rights approach to corruption control mechanism makes the people of India central players in the corruption resistance movement" and that "the law enforcement work of the government to ensure corruption-free governance ought to be perceived as a part of the right of the people of India to seek a corruption-free government. Concomitantly, it then becomes the duty of the government to ensure that all its affairs are conducted in a manner that promotes transparency, accountability, and integrity in public administration." One clear benefit of such an approach would be to link up different ingredients of good governance and thereby synergise the quest for better governance and substantive rather than formal political legitimacy.
A four-fold approach In the final analysis, therefore, a four-fold approach to treat this deadly social ailment and promote probity would lie in the combination of a) ethical training in norms incorporated in legally enforceable Code of Ethics, b) comprehensive protection of human rights, c) a legal framework and regulatory practices that enforce clash of interest rules, and d) laws and procedures that forbid nepotism in all its manifestations. These steps would assist the attainment of "excellence" in terms of the Duties prescribed in the Constitution. The endeavour is to be individual and collective. Here, as elsewhere, a Gandhian dictum is of relevance: "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Excerpted from the Bhimsen Sachar Memorial Lecture the Vice President of India delivered on 'Virtue in Public Life' at the India Islamic Culture Centre, New Delhi, on December 7, 2012
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