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Short and
sour |
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Communal
politics in UP Women’s
safety
Changes
in land Act
Sowing
seeds of tolerance
Oz
choice augurs well for Delhi
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Communal politics in UP
The
political game lately played in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar area has shown the real face of political parties as each has either contributed to — or tried to take advantage of — the volatile situation. The game is simple and even ordinary citizens have seen through it. Make people feel insecure so that they return to their political protectors. That the Samajwadi Party projects itself as the chief representative of the Muslims is well known. The Congress and the SP compete for the Muslim votes. The BSP has demanded President's rule in the state. The BJP has deputed Narendra Modi’s close aide, Amit Shah, to “manage” Uttar Pradesh, which elects 80 MPs. There is an attempt to revive the temple issue. The VHP's Ayodhya yatra after the Ashok Singhal-Mulayam Singh meeting has vitiated the situation. And now Muzaffarnagar has been chosen as the target of pre-planned communal violence. The riots began on September 7 and for three days the government did nothing. This was despite an alert from the Union Home Ministry about the possibility of communal strife in UP. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav may blame the BJP or the circulation of some inflammatory CD for the trouble, he cannot escape responsibility for the utter failure of governance. Whether his government deliberately remained inactive as part of the political understanding or it was plain incompetence needs to be probed by an independent agency. While Uttar Pradesh has seen riots before, these have generally remained confined to cities. It is for the first time that communal violence has involved villagers, who have co-existed peacefully for decades. To her credit, former Chief Minister Mayawati had kept the communal forces in check. The last riots in Muzaffarnagar took place in the 1980s. The apparent attempt now is to divide the Jat and Muslim votes. This may well backfire for the Samajwadi Party. The Muslims, who constitute 40 per cent of the state's population, seem to have understood the designs of the Akhilesh government and expressed their dismay.
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Women’s safety
Ever
since the fast court in Delhi has declared the four convicts guilty on 13 counts in the Nirbhaya rape and murder case, there has been a growing clamour for death for the accused. There can be little doubt that the heartless and brutal act of the guilty deserves no leniency and the punishment should not only be exemplary but also a deterrent to others. However, beyond the ongoing debate over death vs life sentence, there is an urgent need to make India a safe place for women. Rape cases, including those involving minors, have occurred with nauseating and chilling frequency. Delhi, which has acquired the notorious tag of rape capital, registered 1,121 rape cases in the first eight months of this year, the highest in the last 13 years. Mumbai’s reputation as a safe city for women came under a scanner when a 22-year old photojournalist was gang-raped. Actually in the past few years the number of rape cases in Mumbai has increased. The apathetic attitude of the Mumbai police is evident not only in the low conviction rate but also in the fact that post-Nirbhaya case its proposals like counselling centres for women are yet to take off. However, the simmering public anger after the horrific rape of Nirbhaya has not been entirely misplaced. It has impelled the country from its inertia and resignation towards rape with a better understanding of the heinous crime as well greater empathy and sensitivity for the victims. The recommendations made by the Justice Verma panel led to punitive amendments to the criminal law. The recent landmark judgments by the judiciary too are heartening and can go a long way in dispelling the notion that rapists often go scot-free. Yet in a country where out of one lakh pending cases only 14 per cent are disposed of, the challenges are very many and do not end with speedy trials in a few high-profile cases.
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When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. — Jimi Hendrix
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Changes in land Act As
the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, gets the stamp of the President of India and becomes a law, under one of its important provisions, the farmers in the rural areas whose lands are acquired by the government for public purposes will get four times the market value of the land and in the urban areas the acquisition price will be twice the market price. At the face of it, it looks to be a big step in favour of the affected farmers. Yet it is more of an illusion than a reality. The market price is normally estimated as the three years average price of the sale deeds in the area around, which in actual practice is invariably not higher than the circle value of land in that area. The sale deeds are registered much below the actual money that passes the hands in these transactions. In Punjab, the fact remains that sale deeds are registered at not more than the circle value of the properties, which is hardly one-fourth of the
actual value of the transactions. Though the situation may vary from place to place and state to state, yet it may not be very different in the rest of the country. All this is done to evade the stamp duty that generates black money. The resulatnt situation is that it is hard to find a seller or a purchaser who may agree to accept or pay the whole of the transaction amount in white. The honest buyers and sellers are in an unenviable situation. Neither they can sell the properties nor buy any without converting their honest money into corrupt one. Twice the market price in the urban areas still would remain around one half of the actual market price of the land and the farmer/person whose land is acquired will get half of the market price in white, but will lose the half which he/she would have obtained as unaccounted money. In the rural areas the payments the farmers will get will be totally in white, yet not any more than the actual market price of the land in the area. This Act will not bring about any correction in the situation in the private land market. Now the problem arises in the handling of the white money in the hands of the farmers. Beyond the public sector or in case of some honourable corporate businesses, it will be difficult to invest this money in the purchase of alternative property in the corrupted land/real estate market. The alternative of parking these amounts as fixed deposits in banks or avenues like infrastructure bonds are not very attractive because of their low yields. The buying of shares even in credible companies/corporate businesses carries the risks to which the farmers are not mentally attuned. Consequently, a major part of these sale proceeds will get consumed in conspicuous consumption, social ceremonies and non-essential comfort and luxury goods. There is, therefore, a dire need to create some avenues for investment of these honest funds with attractive yields. One of the answers to the problem can be the creation of special public investment fund with reasonable yield for the investors and this fund can be earmarked for income-yielding projects in the public and PPP mode sectors. For the private sector small and medium scale entrepreneurs who purchase land for setting up new factories or enterprises, the implication will be that they may have to pay at least one half of the actual transaction value in white in the urban areas and whole of it in the rural areas, provided as a fallout of the Act the circle value gets raised to the level of the acquisition price of the lands acquired by the government. That will put them in a fix with respect to the unaccounted money available with them that had been lubricating the wheels of their industry in the corrupted environment of the country. The new investment in such industries may get subdued and adversely affect the industrial growth and their spread in the rural areas. Another category on which this Act will have an unbalancing effect is the real estate dealers and construction contractors. If the circle rates get pushed upwards as a consequence of the acquisition prices paid by the government, their margin of manipulation with unaccounted money will get reduced to one half in the urban areas and nearly to zero in the rural areas. The field reality is that they play the sale-purchase game with the unaccounted money parked with them by the people who have accumulated the corrupt money. It is not for no reason, therefore, that these two categories, i.e. small and medium size new industrial investors and real estate dealers are crying hoarse against the Act. Otherwise there should be no problem in respect of honest deals. Further, this Act will help increase the government revenue from the stamp duty from private transactions, if the circle rates get escalated to the level of the acquisition price of the agricultural lands and as the fallout in case of non-agricultural lands also. Although the Act provides for an assessment of social impact whereby willingness of 80 per cent of the affected farmers in PPP mode acquisitions and 70 per cent in government purpose acquisitions will have to be obtained for the acquisition of their lands, which provides an opportunity to the affected population to scrutinise the kind of project to be established and its impact on their lives in the area around, yet in case of non-utilisation of the land for the purpose specified, the provision to put the acquired land in the land bank to be utilised later for some other project(s) nullifies this option of the affected populations. The provision to provide employment/avenues of livelihood needs to be elaborated to match the education, training and capabilities of the affected farmers and on-job training as an integral part of the employment provided. There should have been a certain percentage of shares reserved for the affected farmers, to be prorated according to the number of acres acquired from the individual farmers or the families, in case anyone opts for the same in lieu of a part of the compensation. It would have been a more egalitarian approach, if some percentage of shares could be reserved for the non-farming families that are affected by the acquisition and are entitled to compensation. The fallout of this Act when implemented in different states and areas as may be moderated/modified by the states would need to be carefully monitored in the impact on the land market, the affected farmers and the local population as well as on industrial growth and the spread of industry in the rural areas, that may necessitate some appropriate amendments to the Act at a later
stage.
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Sowing seeds of tolerance While
browsing through music albums at a store, my eyes rested on the phrase "Deh Siva" written on a CD case. Hey, wait a minute, wasn't that the "shabad" we used to recite every morning when we were at school, if I remembered right? Excitedly, I bought the CD and requested the shop owner to play it. Yes, it was the same prayer in the mellifluous voice of ghazal maestro Jagjit Singh. Now as a 42-year-old, I tried to remember the verses and sing along and just got lost in the heavenly voice of the talented singer. Now as I could decipher the deeper meaning of it, I could appreciate it more. As a girl, studying in a school run by a Sikh management, I just recited the verses for 10 years without much understanding its import. We just memorised it by rote due to our daily rendition before the national anthem during our morning assembly. Later, in higher classes, Punjabi as an additional language was taught and I could understand the lyrics, somewhat. And in the process, I also learnt an additional language along with Tamil, my mother tongue, English, the official language of teaching, and Hindi, the local language. Further, I remember, we visited various gurdwaras like Gurudwara Ponta Sahib on our school excursions. This taught us how to properly conduct ourselves at a Sikh religious place. I don't remember ever my parents objecting to the various Sikh traditions or practices taught at school. They didn't think much about it in the first place when they got us admitted to the school; they were looking for a good school to impart us good education, I guess. And inadvertently, it made us more tolerant of a religion not our own and helped us appreciate other cultures. This is what I would call inclusive education. Incidentally, my husband, who studied in a Christian missionary school, fondly remembers the morning invocation, "O father in Heaven, holy be your name, give us today our daily bread, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us..." This has taught our son to be humble and more so, to value the food on his plate and not waste a morsel of it. As I play Gurbani at home along with bhajans and Sufi music, my teenage son has developed an ear for all kinds of religious music. He chants the Gurbani as effortlessly as the Gayatri Mantra he learnt at school or the Hanuman Chalisa that I taught him. Now, as the debate over teaching religious texts or prayers at schools heats up, I wonder if I would have bought that CD in the first place and savoured the Gurbani with my family had I not learnt it in school years
back.
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Oz choice augurs well for Delhi
Australia
has voted for change. The Australian Labour Party’s six-year-old Rudd-Gillard-Rudd regime has been ousted, hoisting to power, the marathon man of Australian politics, Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party, bringing the Liberal/National Coalition to power. Labour could barely better Paul Keating’s loss to John Howard in 1996. This was our third election since we had migrated to Australia in 2007, and the second election in which we voted, after attaining citizenship in 2009. In the 2010 elections, the near-hung parliamentary results made us wonder whether we had planted the Indian ballot bug in Australian politics when we voted, but the 2013 verdict has restored the true physiognomies of Australia’s predominant two-party system. Riding on a massive 4.5 per cent national swing, the Coalition is expected to reach 90 seats (final official numbers awaited) leaving Labour behind at 50 plus, making it a resounding feat for Tony Abbott, who relentlessly and tirelessly campaigned for over four years. Past opinion polls never favoured him as the preferred prime ministerial candidate, but Labour shooting its own foot put Abbott into an overdrive and gradually altered his planetary constellation to attain political glory. The writing was on the wall. The electronic and print media had written Labour off, even before Australia voted. The former Labour Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, predicted a certain defeat on the television on the eve of voting, and by 4 pm the Fairfax exit polls had all but declared Abbott the Prime Minister. Abbott despite his low popular ranking staged a thumping win, thanks to the Australian Labour Party’s bitter internecine feud. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that Labour deserves a 9/10 rating for running the country and 0/10 for running itself. Internal wrangling Much has been written on the 2010 coup by Julia Gillard, the then Deputy Prime Minister, backed by the powerful Labour caucus, to unceremoniously depose Kevin Rudd. People were outraged here at the ouster of a popularly elected Prime Minister by the Labour powerbrokers, allegedly over differences with Rudd’s functioning of the party and government. Labour never seemingly recovered from it. Although Rudd reclaimed his position in June 2013 in a Labour leadership ballot, it was too little, too late and the impending defeat had been cast in stone already. One questions the prudency of Rudd’s comeback only to lose in the end. In hindsight though, he deserves the credit for getting 50 plus seats for the party and preventing a total wipeout that looked certain six months ago. He has given Labour enough to build the future generation of the party on. It will also make a vocal front bench in Parliament, something Abbott would not have ideally desired. For the Rhodes scholar-turned-Prime Minister, it has been a long arduous journey to the summit. He ran a brilliant campaign and his physical fitness proved a key factor enabling him to cover more constituencies with ease, as opposed to Rudd who especially after his ouster and heart surgery was low in spirits and stamina and could be seen struggling physically. At the helm, Abbott confronts several onerous policy challenges with no quick-fixes, which will keep the opposition guns blazing constantly in Parliament. His entire campaign hinged on the ‘trust factor’, which he skilfully used to bring about Gillard’s downfall, and cannot afford to be seen back-paddling himself on the promises made to the public. Turning it around His three foremost challenges are fixing the budget into a surplus; stopping the ‘boats’; and reverting the carbon and mining taxes that were slapped on Western Australia by the Labour regime, damaging the state economy and growth, and eventually leading to its worst-ever defeat there. Fixing the budget would not be easy. Under the Charter of Budget Honesty, a creation of John Howard, parties release their budget plans and policy costing with figures before voting, to allow its scrutiny for substance and veracity by all. The costing issued by the Coalition strategically only 42 hours before the polls has already triggered a massive debate and slammed by the critics as ‘lazy and uncertain’. The costing proposes a budget outlays cut of $AUD 42 billion and a $6 billion rise over the budget bottom line by 2017. The costing also aims at saving another $AUD 1 billion by stopping the asylum seekers’ boat that costs billions of dollars to the government in processing their cases offshore at various regional destinations as a part of the Labour’s Pacific solution. But what is attracting most negative publicity is the proposed plan for $AUD 4.5 billion massive cut in the foreign aid that would impact on poverty alleviation, humanitarian and human development programmes across the world, including India. Nevertheless, the Coalition’s victory is comforting news for India and Abbott’s stay in power would coincide with the possible Indian prime ministerial visit in 2014 for the G-20 summit in Brisbane, giving ties a solid boost. And India would be well advised to engage with him proactively. Indian connect From an all-time low following India’s nuclear test in 1998, relations have witnessed a remarkable improvement following John Howard’s visit to India in July 2000. Bilateral trade and investments ever since have risen, making India the fourth largest trade partner of Australia. The economic bonhomie coincided with the mishandling of the Muhammad Haneef’s case, the cricket controversy involving Harbhajan Singh and the ill-advised Kevin Rudd’s, and saw reversal of Howard’s decision to supply uranium to India. These events created deep fissures between New Delhi and Canberra. Sensing the urgency to wrest the plummeting ties, Rudd’s visited India in 2009, during which ties were upgraded to a ‘strategic partnership’, but the enduring attacks on Indian students back home continued to batter relations, which Dr Manmohan Singh made no secret of with his counterpart. Subsequently, with Gillard’s reversal of Rudd’s reversal paving the way for uranium supplies and cessation of attacks on Indian students following stringent policy measures to regulate the international student industry, bilateral relations have steadily improved. According to an opinion poll published by an Indian community magazine, 50.75 per cent Indian-Australians supported the Coalition and believed it would forge greater cooperation with India. In Western Australia where there is a large Anglo-Indian community living, Labour’s rout has been widely hailed. The Coalition, too, connected well with the Indian community. It is believed that ‘within minutes’ of receiving a request for an interview from an India magazine, the Coalition had approved of Abbott’s interview. In the interview Abbott said he was keen to visit India within months of his taking charge, apparently 32 years after he visited Bihar as a Rhodes scholar. He also endorsed teaching more Hindi in schools to build cultural understanding of India and emphasised that Indian students coming to Australia on the 457 visa were regrettably demonised under the previous regime. He pointed out that tax paying immigrants help build the Australian economy and do not steal jobs. Fixing economy However, as per the coalitions’ released costing, foreign aid slashing would impact on several health, education, sanitation and poverty alleviation programmes in India and imperil future programmes for improving water, food and energy security. But then India would not be alone at the receiving end of these austerity measures. These measures are more aimed at fixing the Australian economy than altering Australia’s broad foreign policy priorities. Many Australian ‘India experts’ lay excessive emphasis on defence and foreign policy cooperation to improve bilateral relations which is misplaced. Previously, Rudd’s India policy was heavily focussed on defence and foreign policy and as a result in spite of forging strategic partnership and defence cooperation, relations remained cold and stagnant. The future of bilateral ties instead, hinges on how much would Abbott be able to help India deal with its enormous domestic energy needs, human development challenges including poverty alleviation, education, agriculture and water and food security. These are issues weighing heavily upon India’s current policymaking. The Queensland Liberal government is already engaging the Gujarat Government in the field of agriculture and participating in the agriculture summit in Gujarat in November. Similarly, how closely does the Abbott regime engage with the Indian community in Australia; how friendly and hassle-free is the Indian students’ experience made; and how much horizontally and vertically does it invest in India studies in Australia, at the primary and tertiary levels, will determine the quality of bilateral ties. These issues have been flagged in the ‘Australia in the Asian Century White Paper’ under Gillard. Hopefully, Abbott’s vision for engaging the ‘once sleeping giant’ translates rhetoric into practice. The writer is Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, Griffith University, Australia.
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