The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Rape victims
Can compromise mitigate trauma?

Compromises’ are not new to the victims of rape. It is advocated as though a compromise can mitigate the humiliation and trauma of rape. A compromise is an expression of community consensus that the victim of rape faces an uphill battle securing redress and social acceptance, and hence it can wipe out violence in the eyes of society and restore her ‘chastity’. That she should forget and forgive and move on after accepting some money is how compromises work. In some cases, a marriage with the rapist is also offered as a life-time settlement.

Despite an awakened administration and judiciary that is handling the rape cases with more alacrity and sensitivity post-Delhi gang-rape case, the pressure from panchayat members in the Hisar gang-rape case to force the family of the victim to come to a compromise stems from the same old inefficiency of the system that emboldens the accused to demand a compromise. The veiled threats received by the victim’s father under the garb of sympathy from the village panchayat remind one of the Manoj-Babli case. He had to send three daughters and his wife to a ‘safe place’ fearing further persecution. Though the police denies any threat to the family, fears of the victim’s father cannot be misplaced, since the panchayat members seem to be on the side of the accused, five of whom are already under arrest.

In Sonipat district, an active role played by the police made one such caste panchayat, which had annulled the marriage of a young couple, revoke it within days. The caste panchayat had annulled the marriage barely two days after it was solemnised on the basis of violating social brotherhood. The couple’s family relented, but the young couple lodged a complaint with the SP and sought police protection. With police intervention, the panchayat revoked the annulled marriage. It reinforces the fact that when the police and the administration mean business, kangaroo courts can’t carry out their medieval whims.

Black waters of Punjab
Reflection of polluted governance

Drains in Punjab continue to be plied with untreated industrial effluents, and the authorities appointed to check the menace continue to deny it with equal impunity. Nullahs in Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar, and even the Ghaggar in Patiala, are clear and present evidence of industries playing foul. No scientific expertise is required to see what they carry, yet it took a Tribune report to make the Punjab Pollution Control Board conduct raids. It had thus far been claiming there were no violations of the norms. That is not what people living in the cancer-hit southern districts of Punjab would say, for they are forced to drink water delivered to them in canals fed by the Sutlej from where it is at its filthiest.

What would be the reason for the PPCB as well as the government to be in a denial mode, or at best pay lip service to the cause? Promises have been made, deadlines given, yet little seems to move despite the visible anger among people who suffer the brunt of the pollution. It is obviously politics, beyond the powers of officialdom. The pollution board had in early 2012 started making tough noises, raids were conducted, and a few units sealed. Suddenly, it all turned silent. Assembly elections were nearing, and ‘persecuting’ industrialists would have meant loss of support — moral and material — for the ruling alliance partner BJP, which has a strong base in the industrial cities of the state. The immediate concerns of politics obviously outweigh abstract interests like environment and health.

Pollution norms not being enforced is part of a larger addiction that the industry has to the ‘convenience’ of doing business in the state. Taxes are evaded, building and labour bylaws are violated as a matter of course, and pollution has failed to come on the state’s agenda in any meaningful way despite a huge furore among environment activists. The threat held out against any government action is that it is tough for business to survive in the state otherwise. But ignoring law can never be acceptable as an incentive. What cannot be sustained legally must go. There can be no reason to allow any unit to foul Punjab’s land, waters or air for even a day.

Thought for the Day

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.

— Max Beerbohm

ARTICLE

Verma panel shows sensitivity
All recommendations deserve quick action
by Justice Rajindar Sachar (retd)

JUSTICE Verma and his panelists have shown commendable sensitivity to the public concern by submitting their report in 30 days instead of the allotted 60 days, thus leaving no excuse to Parliament to avoid passing the necessary law because of paucity of time during the forthcoming parliamentary session.

The panel has rightly ruled out the death penalty (which is no longer accepted in over 160 nations of the world); life imprisonment meets both the requirement of human rights and adequacy of punishment. The recommendation to clarify that life imprisonment would mean for life should meet the requirement of justifiable revulsion and anger at the rapists conduct.

Minister of Law Ashwani Kumar is already on record against the death penalty — hence I see no reason why there should be any long debate on this issue, even though I understand that there are a few queer characters who very nonchalantly suggest hanging the accused publicly — a throwback to the middle ages.

Rightly, there is condemnation of the khap panchayat's self-serving approach to women's rights, the self-glorification of their arbitrarily fixed rules of conduct for women on the use of mobiles, co-education, the kind of dress, music and singing and their right to marry of their own choice. Law is needed against these outmoded feudal practices to put immediate stop to these.

Though the recommendation of the breach of command responsibility placed on officers in the Army for the acts of their inferiors may be somewhat debatable, there is no reason why the provision for prior sanction for prosecuting Army personnel should not be deleted and further these cases should be tried before ordinary criminal courts so as to give confidence to the victims that the guilty will not escape punishment.

Though the speed at which the Verma panel was constituted was rightly welcomed, the public will have to keep a close check on Parliament to see that the panel's recommendations get legal cover in the forthcoming session of Parliament. This is because the record of the government (and I have to regretfully accept even that of courts) in this regard has not been helpful in the past. Though Parliament amended the Criminal Procedure Code to provide that in offence of rape, the trial should be completed within two months from the date of commencement of the examination of the witnesses, trials continue much beyond that period. Even more regrettably, the amendment done in 2009 requires that offences of rape are to be tried as far as possible before a court presided over by women. And yet unacceptably (and in fairness it has to be conceded here the responsibility in that of the judiciary also), four out of six fast-track courts formed in Delhi to try sexual offences are being presided over by male judges.

The most important recommendation, which I am afraid is not to the liking of politicians, is the one relating to electoral reforms. I say this because for over a decade various Chief Election Commissions have been writing to the Central governments led by both the Congress and the BJP to effectuate the existing electoral rules so that electors can cast their votes as "None of the Above" candidates, by amending the ballot box rules (which already gave such right to the electors) by now providing a slot in the electronic voting machine. But both parties are unwilling to do this, obviously because they are apprehensive that this will give an opportunity to the voters to express their no-confidence publicly in their candidates.

In that context, I have strong misgivings whether Parliament would give effect to the most important recommendation of the panel, that a "legislator should be disqualified if a court takes cognizance of an offence punishable with a minimum of five years in jail.

I myself have been emphasising for long that the most serious menace to our electoral system is not the criminalisation of politics but the politicisation of criminals. Previously, politicians used criminals in their electoral battle, but the politicisation of criminals, which is now prevailing, means that criminals are sitting as legislators. In the recent UP Assembly elections, a spokesperson of the Samajwadi Party openly justified the selections of a candidate with a criminal background with unembarrassing confession "that his being a history-sheeter has added to his capacity to get votes, and that though such leaders get caught, their communities rally behind them more strongly."

Parties still continue to ignore the warning regarding criminal elements in our legislatures given by the Vice-President of India years back when he said: "The most important issue of concern today is the decreasing credibility of our legislatures as effective institutions capable of delivering public good and contributing to effective formulation of laws. Exactly 23 per cent of MPs elected in 2004 had criminal cases registered against them — over half of these cases could lead to imprisonment for five years or more. The situation is worse in the case of MLAs, failing to discharge their two-fold brief, legislate and deliberate, and that the country's top lawmaking body had fallen short of people's expectations. The current Lok Sabha has already lost 21 per cent of its time due to disruptions, up from 19 per cent for the 13th House, and that the situation had worsened despit outrage, as the wastage for the 12th Lok Sabha was 10.66 per cent and much less for earlier Houses".

Unless the Verma panel report really singes the conscience of the legislators into making a change in election law, where a candidate, if charge-sheeted with cognizable offence six months before the date, is debarred from contesting the elections, I am afraid, criminality in politics would continue and this would make a mockery of the Verma panel's recommendation for changes in an electoral law, a very strong component of the panel's report. The demand is, therefore, that all the recommendations along with that of electoral law should be carried out simultaneously.

As the situation stands at present, the BJP has threatened to disrupt Parliament work unless Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde resigns. This will mean no legislative business. I am not suggesting Shinde's resignation. However, I do feel that the government could corner the BJP into letting Parliament function if in the beginning it takes up both the Verma panel report and the passing of the Women Reservation Bill. In this situation, the BJP possibly could not dare to stall the working of Parliament and incur the wrath of all women and an overwhelmingly large number of people. This consensus on the part of these two major parties will be a fitting tribute to the memory of Nirbhaya and many previous victims of rapists.

The writer is a former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court.

MIDDLE

Snowfall in Shimla
by N. S. Tasneem

During the winter in Shimla, the greatest attraction is snowfall. It sometimes falls unannounced as it did on November 25 in 1951. It was windy the previous evening and at nightfall it started raining. Nobody could imagine that there would be snowfall at that time of the year. But the next morning witnessed a heavy snowfall that had covered trees, roofs, ground and doorsteps. For me it was an exhilarating experience to pick up a handful of snow just at the doorstep. Tracking all the way from Summer Hill to The Ridge and then to look at the Jakhu Hill, clad in a thick mantle of snow, was a sight, unimaginable.

Then it so happened that during my stay there for long years, I could smell snow in the air. In case the sky was overcast with clouds and at times there had been rain and sleet, snowfall was a possibility. But this process was not always followed by nature. At times it could start snowing without any warning, just as the sun starts glowing suddenly from behind the dark clouds.

Once when I was standing at Scandal Point, there was a sudden onrush of white clouds in the sky. As I started the climb up The Ridge, there occurred suddenly a pin-drop silence all around. By the time I reached The Ridge, in just five minutes, snowflakes started falling at a great speed and unrelenting regularity. In the twinkling of an eye, so to say, countless snowflakes settled down on the roof of the library and at the turrets of the Christ Church. The trees on the slopes of the Jakhu Hill burst into snow — white buds on their branches.

During the chilly night, small poodles of water would turn into transparent ice. Underneath the ice, the metallic road would be visible, quite clean and clear. College-going boys would come up quite early in the morning on Scandal Point and position themselves at strategic places. The school-and college-going girls would pass, up and down, through a small stretch of the road, leading from Scandal Point to the Telegraph Office Clock.

At places, on the road, there would be no snow and the unwary girls would step on the metallic road peeping through the ice. The result would be a sudden fall on the snow and the books scattered here and there. That was in a way a clarion call to the boys to come to the rescue of the damsel in distress. Two or three of them would rush forward to give her a helping hand to get up or to pick up her books, half sunk in the snow. The passers-by would giggle while trying to avoid the ice-covered patches on the road.

The snows of Shimla are also known for creating panic among the people, if not playing havoc with life and property. The roofs give in under the heavy load of snow. Or there can appear cracks in the wooden planks of the ceiling. Water pipes can burst sometimes and uprooted electric poles render electricity go haywire. I am reminded of an incessant snowfall in Shimla during a period of 15 days in February, 1961. At that time, while trudging the way from Sanjauli to Gorton Castle, I had to pass through a sort of snowy tunnel, with 8-foot high snow-wall on either side.

Still the snows of Shimla have an uncanny grip on the minds of the people who have been to that place or long to go there. At times, however, snowfall proves to be will-o’-the-wisp, leaving the people expectant of snowflakes.

OPED — DOCUMENT

A hard look at Punjab’s decline
“Economic Freedom of the States of India 2012”, a report co-published by the Cato Institute with Indicus Analytics and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, has placed Punjab at the 12th position out of 20 states ranked for economic freedom. The report also carries a chapter by senior economic journalist Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, titled ‘Why Punjab has Suffered Long, Steady Decline’, which is excerpted by The Tribune in two parts. Part I today deals with ‘some myths about Punjab’s decline’.

WHY has Punjab suffered a relative decline in the last two decades? Politicians and academics in Punjab reel out a long list of reasons but most of these turn out to be exaggerated or downright false.

Myth No. 1

India has fought several wars with Pakistan across the Punjab border and fears of fresh wars have kept industry away from Punjab

Normally, successful agriculture produces lots of consuming power for farmers and workers, and becomes a good basis for industrialisation. Punjab also has a good road network and is not too far from the major metropolis of Delhi. The state’s scholars claim that industrialisation has been held back by the fact that it is a border state, next door to Pakistan, with whom India has fought three full-scale wars and several other skirmishes. Because of this, they say, New Delhi has been reluctant to allow major investments in the state, since these would be sitting ducks for Pakistani aircraft in the event of a war. This, they claim, has artificially held back the state’s industrialisation and hence its GDP growth.

The claim is manifestly false. Gujarat is also a border state with Pakistan, and is the most industrialised and fastest-growing state in India. Even Rajasthan, another border state that is backward and mostly desert, seriously lacking infrastructure and agricultural potential, has grown faster than Punjab. It is worth mentioning that the original Punjab state was in 1965 split into two, with the most backward southern part forming a new state, Haryana. This once-backward portion now grows much faster than the once-advanced portion that is still called Punjab. To be fair, Haryana has a special advantage that other states don’t—it surrounds Delhi state on three sides, so Delhi’s urban sprawl has spilled over into Haryana.

There was indeed a time, in the 1960s and 1970s, when the central government sometimes seemed hesitant to build major public sector industrial projects in Punjab because of its location next to Pakistan. Nevertheless, it built a railway coach factory at Kapurthala, a unit of Hindustan Machine Tools in Ludhiana, and helped launch Punjab Tractors in Mohali. There have been no hostilities across India’s western border with Pakistan (comprising the states of Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat) since 1971. In none of the three Indo-Pak wars of 1947, 1965 and 1971 was there bombing by either side of industrial factories—the focus was on military targets.

In any case the public sector has long ceased to be the driving force of industry in India and economic reform starting in the 1980s and accelerating in the 1990s have put the private sector in the driver’s seat. The private sector has invested massively in two other border states, Gujarat and Rajasthan, but much less in Punjab. Clearly proximity to Pakistan is not a good excuse for Punjab’s slippage in the economic growth table. New Delhi has permitted Reliance Industries Ltd to put up the largest oil refinery complex in the world in Gujarat, within easy reach of Pakistan’s Air Force. Essar Oil has built the country’s second biggest refinery complex in the same state. This year, a joint venture of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (a central government-owned company) and Mittal Industries has commissioned a big 9-million tonne oil refinery at Bathinda in Punjab, just 100 kilometres from the Pakistan border. This disproves the thesis that New Delhi’s war paranoia has held up industrial projects in Punjab. Indeed, the Bathinda refinery may soon export fuel to Pakistan.

Myth No. 2

Sikh terrorism caused Punjab’s decline

Sikh militant separatists wanting to create an independent state of Khalistan were on the rampage in Punjab from the start of the 1980s to 1993. The state at one point became so ungovernable that it was placed under martial law. During the insurrection, New Delhi sought some sort of accommodation with disgruntled Sikhs, but failed dismally. Martial law also failed. Then in the 1990s a new Congress government came to power and decided to crack down on militants, using the police, not the army.... it succeeded in finally crushing Sikh militancy by 1993.

Now, it is true that in the heyday of Sikh militancy in the 1980s, industrialists were not keen on opening new factories in the state. Some industries that were located in Punjab (such as Hero Honda) built new factories in other states. But terrorism ended two decades ago, and Punjab’s decline has continued nevertheless. Prof Gurmail Singh of Panjab University points out that Sikh militants had a complete grip of western districts but not of eastern districts of the state, yet industrial growth from the 1980s onwards was weak in both eastern and western districts.

Today, many Indian states face Maoist insurrections, which sometimes look as threatening as Sikh militancy once was in Punjab. In the last decade, an estimated 167 out of 600 Indian districts have suffered from some form of Maoist violence. Yet this violence has not come in the way of India achieving its fastest growth in history. The most entrenched Maoist-held areas are in the state of Chhattisgarh, which has huge forests, relatively few roads, and limited administrative breadth. The Maoists control very large areas in the state. Yet Chhattisgarh has been in the last decade one of India’s fastest growing states, averaging 9.1 per cent per year between 2002-03 and 2010-11. No doubt it has the advantage of big mineral deposits but Maoists have seriously disrupted this. The contrast between economic growth in Punjab and Chhattisgarh demonstrates that terrorism does not necessarily mean economic decline, and can coexist with double-digit growth. Besides, almost two decades have passed since the end of terrorism in Punjab, so it is a poor excuse for the state’s continuing weak performance.

Punjab politicians say that the state accumulated huge debts because of low revenues and the high cost of combating terrorism in the terrorist era, and claim that New Delhi has not given enough debt relief to Punjab to get rid of this historical burden.

This is disputed strongly by New Delhi. A former Finance Ministry official who dealt with Punjab’s debt problems says that debt relief for the terrorist era has been given in ample measure by the Twelfth and Thirteenth Finance Commissions. The real problem, says the official, is that slow GDP growth has meant slow revenue growth and its fiscal impact has been compounded by huge non-productive subsidies, mainly for electricity. The official adds that most Punjab politicians got used to having several personal security staff in their entourage during the terrorism era of 1980-1992 and are reluctant to give these up. Punjab has a very high police/population ratio but the police are diverted massively from standard law and order operations to VIP security. This is a huge waste of public funds.

Myth No. 3

Punjab is very distant from the sea and so is unable to grow as fast as states with ports

No doubt coastal locations have their advantages. No doubt closeness to a port helps develop export industries. Yet Punjab was just as far from the sea through most of its history, including the first three decades after Independence and this did not prevent it from becoming one of India’s richest, fastest-growing states. The world over, land-locked states complain that they are seriously disadvantaged, yet many of them grow fast. In South Asia, Bhutan has been the fastest-growing country and has comfortably overtaken India in per capita income. In Africa, land-locked Botswana has overtaken coastal South Africa to become the continent’s richest country. After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the richest of the ex-communist states has turned out to be Slovenia, which is virtually land-locked.

The lesson is clear. Geography is not destiny. Land-locked areas may have disadvantages but are capable of becoming rich and fast-growing if they follow the right policies. Just as badly land-locked as Punjab are the two neighbouring hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, both of whom have grown much faster than Punjab. However, these two states have been aided by tax breaks bestowed by New Delhi. Until the 1980s, New Delhi followed a “freight equalisation policy” that enabled all states to get industrial inputs like coal and steel at the same government-ordained price. Once freight equalisation was abandoned in the 1990s, Punjab’s distance from coal mines and steel plants became a disadvantage. However, many other states were just as disadvantaged in distance from coal mines and steel plants but fared well. The best example of this was Gujarat, which became India’s fastest-growing major state even as Punjab kept slipping.

Myth No. 4

Punjab has no metallic minerals or coal and so loses out to states that do

Punjab suffers from chronic power shortages and this has been an important discouraging factor for potential industrialists. Indian coal has high rock content, so transporting coal from coalfields—all of which are very distant—means transporting almost as much rock as coal, thus raising generating costs. The main mineral-bearing areas are in central and eastern India. Punjab’s politicians claim that a lack of raw materials has placed the state at a serious disadvantage.

However, the mineral-rich central and eastern states have historically been among India’s most backward and slow-growing. This is because minerals in India are generally found in mountainous jungle areas with few roads or other infrastructure, inhabited by tribes with some of the highest poverty, lowest literacy and worst health indicators in India.... Through history, across the globe, vibrant agriculture has been the driver of growth in rich civilisations, not minerals. That has always been true of India as a whole.

One reason for this is that minerals should not be interpreted to be just coal or metallic ores. Good agricultural soil is a form of mineral wealth and this was the driver of all great ancient civilisations from Egypt to China. And Punjab has this sort of mineral wealth in abundance—its soils are excellent for agriculture and rank among the best in India. This is one reason why its agricultural yields are the highest among any state. Mineral wealth is by no means a key determinant of either industrialisation or GDP. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are India’s most industrialised states, with high GDPs. None of them has major minerals. Maharashtra has substantial coal reserves for power generation but Gujarat and Tamil Nadu do not. Looking across the globe, we find that countries like Japan, Korea and now China have shown it is possible to import minerals from across the world and yet produce internationally competitive industries and become miracle economies. Punjab itself was the fifth-most industrialised state in India in the 1980s, despite the lack of nearby minerals or coal. The reasons for its subsequent decline have to be found elsewhere.

(Part-II will appear tomorrow)