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Theft of power Loans to be costlier |
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Thatcher offered military help to Indira
What makes one progressive?
A new dispensation for policing Delhi
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Theft of power IT turns out Punjab State Power Corporation Limited has been cheating the state government by claiming subsidy for more power than supplied free for agricultural pump sets in the state. This was done by lying about the total electricity supplied to the farm sector. The inflated claim has been exposed by the Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission using data procured from PSPCL itself. PSPCL's misdeed seems more shameful in light of the award it accepted for supposedly reducing transmission losses from 20.12 per cent in 2009-10 to 17.6 per cent in 2011-12. The reality was that it was passing off its losses as free power supplied for agriculture. The state government cannot escape part of the blame for this fraud. PSPCL has been under tremendous strain to balance its books as the government is unable to pay in cash the full subsidy due on account of the free power supplied to farmers. Free power is unsustainable for many reasons, the foremost being the state government's inability to pay the subsidy. Besides delivering the intended benefit to the farmers, the free supply attracts other freeloaders too, PSPCL itself being one. It even gives unscrupulous power officials opportunity to facilitate power theft by adjusting it against the free supply. Farmers misuse it by over-irrigating fields, as it does not hurt them. In the process the dwindling ground water is also wasted. A lot has been said about the unhealthy practice of free power for any sector. But there is no argument against not installing meters for every tubewell. Power consumed at every point must be accounted for, and the responsibility for any losses fixed on the official concerned. Farmers too must cooperate in this, as financial ruin of the state would not be in their interest either. Even if the government believes farmers must be supplied free power, there should still be a token charge proportional to the power consumed. This will incentivise judicious use. In the end, nothing comes free. It is only about who pays.
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Loans to be costlier RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan surprised experts by hiking the repo rate (the main lending rate) by a quarter percentage point in the third quarter review of monetary policy on Tuesday. A rate hike was expected in December when inflation was higher. But the Governor then gave a positive signal by maintaining the status quo. Now when inflation has started moderating, he has raised the policy rate. However, the Governor's action is not arbitrary but based on the Urjit Patel report that expects inflation to be at 8 per cent by January, 2015, 6 per cent in January 2016 and declining thereafter. Rajan does not want to give up the anti-inflation battle mid-way to please consumers, politicians or industrialists. A positive outcome of Tuesday's policy review is the RBI assertion that there would be no more rate hikes in the near future unless inflation makes a U-turn. The bad news is that growth has declined in the past two consecutive months, the service sector is under-performing, mining and infrastructure bottlenecks remain intact, and private consumption and investment demand are weak. A rate hike in such circumstances adds to the gloom. As a result, economic growth will take more time to pick up and this fiscal year it may stay below 5 per cent. The rate hike means costlier loans for individuals as well as industry. Home loans will be affected more than car loans. This is because interest rates on home loans are variable whereas car loans usually carry fixed interest rates. The existing loan takers may have to pay higher EMIs since banks are expected to pass on the additional burden on consumers, barring perhaps those sitting on piles of cash. Usually, the SBI sets the trend and it is under pressure. The RBI's projection of the over-all economic environment is rather dismal despite the exports and agricultural performance being reasonably well. All this does not augur well for the already battered Congress-led government at the Centre in the run-up to the crucial Lok Sabha
elections
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Thought for the Day
If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom? —
Khalil Gibran
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“British lawlessness” THE Nation of the 3rd January has an interesting article on the “British Lawlessness,” a subject which, we expect, will throw some light on a like tendency observed in certain parts of India. The lawlessness of the North-West Frontier and of certain other border districts of the Punjab has been causing anxiety to the people and the authorities. The work of terrorists in Calcutta and other parts of Bengal who have resorted to plunder and murder is another aspect of Indian lawlessness which is even more grave. But the British lawlessness, as noticed in the mob disorders, suffragette acts and Ulster plans has been causing equal anxiety to the British nation. The Nation commenting on Mr. Fielding Hall's article in the "Atlantic Monthly" asks if the present lawlessness is due to the periodic manifestation of a revolutionary spirit in the life of nations, as some plausibly maintain. Mr. Fielding Hall, it says, regards it as a protest against the present restraints and social order. “The average Englishman rich or poor,” writes Mr. Hall, “is bound hand and foot in a maze of laws and prohibitions. He is pried upon by Government officials innumerable, and by powerful secret organizations. His house used to be his castle once, his private house was his own, but he is now an inmate of a vast reformatory, and his house is but a cell in it.” Another proposal for a Supreme Court SIR S. SUBRAMANIA IYER, ex-Judge of the Madras High Court, has contributed a learned article to the Commonweal on the Pioneer's proposal of a High Court. After a careful examination Sir Subramania has come to the conclusion that the Benches which are to sit in provinces would not command due respect and authority and that the cost of the proposal would be out of all proportion to the advantages which are expected therefrom. The learned ex-Judge is also of opinion that apart from the cost and complications incidental to the scheme there is no certainty that the Lord Justice General would be able to secure uniformity of decision on the part of the several Provincial Benches.
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Thatcher offered military help to Indira I HAVE no doubt that Great Britain assisted the Government of India to plan and execute Operation Bluestar, the Army’s nomenclature for the onslaught in and outside the Golden Temple at Amritsar to flush out Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his militant followers. The British have tried to prove the point that the Indians scurry to their colonial masters whenever they are pitted against a ticklish situation.
To rub salt into the wounds, the British archives have made public the documents and letters relating to that period to synchronise with the 30th anniversary of Operation Bluestar. The reason why Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sanctioned the operation was the fear she entertained from the militants who used the Golden Temple as their shelter. The then British Prime Minister, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, offered military help to Mrs Gandhi to enable her to go ahead with her plan. I have reached this conclusion because of the daily telephone talks they held. Mrs Thatcher herself told me when I was India's High Commissioner in London that they would converse on the affairs relating to India and the UK. They could not be discussing the weather. Sikh militants would have figured in their talks. Once I asked Mrs Thatcher whether she was in touch with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, she peevishly replied: “He was a different person.” However, I rule out the assistance by the Special Air Services (SAS) in the operation. Had this been true, the media in the UK and India would have uncovered it in the last 30 years. The operation, as Lieut-Gen. K.S. Brar (retd) has claimed, was entirely carried out by the Indian forces. “We never saw anyone from the UK coming in here and telling us how to plan the operation.” In any case, the truth will be known when the inquiry ordered by British Prime Minister David Cameron is complete. He wants to go into the role of Mrs Thatcher's government in the 1984 operation and “establish the facts.” The Sikhs in India and abroad are understandably upset because London has been giving the impression that as if it was not happy with the operation. Indeed, Mrs Gandhi before sending the Army into the Golden Temple was frantically seeking opinion from different people on whether to undertake the operation. R.K. Dhawan, her aide, came to my residence to know my reaction if the troops entered the temple. He indicated specifically that Mrs Gandhi had sent him. I told him that he would not have come without her permission knowing well how annoyed she was with me because of my writings. “Don’t you ever think of sending the Army because the Golden Temple is the Sikhs’ Vatican,” I warned him. “If you ever did that, the Sikhs would never forget or forgive this sacrilegious act.” My warnings did not deter her from the military operation. Giani Zail Singh was the President those days. I would often meet him and he would pour his heart out to me. He and Mrs Gandhi had become poles apart. So much so that she did not send him any paper, much less the Cabinet’s minutes on the meeting. This was unconstitutional but she did not hesitate to violate it. She also cancelled his goodwill trip to South Africa. However, she assured him that she would not send the Army into the Golden Temple. Constitutionally, the President was the chief of the military. The Giani said many a time that he did not like the manner in which she was handling the Sikhs’ problem. But he felt relieved that the Golden Temple would not be “dishonoured.” I was a member of the Punjab Group which Inder Gujral, before he became the Prime Minister, had constituted to bridge differences between the Centre and the Akali leadership. The Government of India cheated on us. The then Home Minister, Narasimha Rao, invited us to discuss how to reach a settlement with the Akalis. Little did we realise then that it was a sham exercise because the government had already ordered a military operation. This was one week before the Army entered the Golden Temple. General Brar, who led the operation, told me that he was instructed to undertake the operation two weeks before it actually took place. The operation did not last long, although the Army had to use the tanks to meet resistance from the militants. Mrs Gandhi had to be consulted since she had specifically instructed not to use the tanks. There was such a furor, particularly from the Sikhs. Dhawan came to my house again to ask what they should do to lessen the Sikhs’ anger. I told him that their operation had laid the foundation for Khalistan. Dhawan remarked that Mrs Gandhi had said that “Kuldip would tell you that”. However, my advice was that the troops should vacate the temple complex quickly and not try to repair Akal Takht. “If I knew the community, it would rebuild the demolished building itself and not accept what the government did,” I told him. The government withdrew the forces but had Akal Takht repaired. The Sikh community demolished what the government had built and rebuilt Akal Takht through “kar seva” (voluntary work). President Zail Singh was the unhappiest person. No doubt, he made a broadcast for restraint and amity but made it clear that Mrs Gandhi’s government had done an irreparable loss to the Sikh community and its sentiments. He flew to Amritsar by an Indian Airlines plane because Mrs Gandhi was using the VIP aircraft. I do not know whether he left any note to condemn his government and told the story of his helplessness and humiliation. Whatever the government’s compulsions, the onslaught on the Golden Temple was not justified. In fact, they should have found out some other way to tackle the Bhindranwale challenge. The apology by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi has soothed the disturbed Sikh community only to a small extent.
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What makes one progressive? During the last fortnight I have been both amazed and disheartened by the notion of progressiveness that seems to have etched itself in the minds of many young girls and their parents. This concept is so archaic that it makes me wonder where we have gone wrong. One very well-heeled and well-meaning lady expressed surprise that my daughter was staying in a hostel in L.S.R. in Delhi. She couldn't understand why I would risk sending my daughter to Delhi; never mind the fact that it happens to be the best college in the country. She believed that young girls should stay at home as they might get ‘spoilt’. What was shocking was that she felt it was perfectly alright to send the girls to the right boarding schools as that would ensure a certain brand value! I met another young girl, all of nineteen, who after studying in a fantastic school was engaged to be married. Her parents felt that missing out on a 'good catch' was not worth risking at the altar of education and independence. What is truly worrisome is that most believe that progressiveness lies in designer clothes and foreign holidays, but scratch the surface and the meaning of true progressiveness fails them. Just as I was about to give up, my daughter and I met Dr. Paramjit Dhanoa. All of 87, she delighted us with stories about her medical career. She mentioned how in the good old days when people mocked her father for wasting time on educating his daughters, he would say that girls should be educated and be economically independent. Here is a progressive lady who values her education and her family. She is truly worth admiring. And then came the icing on the cake. What makes a woman truly progressive is not her flawless English or her branded school education. It is the strength of her soul. For me the most progressive of them all is Nirbahaya's mother who said that she had no qualms in letting the world know her daughter's name as she believed that her daughter had done nothing wrong and so she had nothing to be ashamed of. This is true progressiveness — the strength to stand by your little girl in the face of the most ruthless adversaries, the strength to call a spade a spade and not take injustice lying down. The strength to let your daughters know that the world is theirs to conquer and they don't need to make excuses for the way to choose to live their lives. If I can be even a little like Nirbahaya's mother, I will have done my duty for my little girl.
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A new dispensation for policing Delhi While one may not agree with the tactics adopted by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his team in Delhi last week, one can't discount the fact that the Aam Admi Party (AAP) highlighted very forcefully a serious constitutional anomaly on the control and superintendence of the law and order machinery in the national capital of Delhi. Unlike elsewhere in the country, where law and order is a state subject, as mandated by the Constitution, in the national capital, the Delhi Police function under and report to the Lieutenant Governor, which in fact means the Union Home Ministry. The current situation prevails because Delhi was granted only partial statehood in 1991 through the 69th Constitution Amendment. This has created huge functional problems for the government of the day in Delhi and earlier governments in Delhi — including the Congress government of Sheila Dixit — raised this issue many a time. Unfortunately, even during the NDA regime in 2003, the proposal to grant full statehood to Delhi did not propose entrusting the Delhi Government with superintendence over the police.
The Union Government justifies keeping the Delhi Police under its direct control and supervision on the ground of national security – Delhi is, after all, not only the seat of Parliament, the Supreme Court, the Union ministries and the military command, but also home to about a hundred embassies. As of now, Article 239AA of the Constitution designates the Lieutenant Governor as the administrator of Delhi. Sub-section 3(a) of the same Article does not give the Legislative Assembly of Delhi the power to make laws on policing and law and order. This power lies with Parliament. Similarly, Section 4 of the Delhi Police Act 1978 vests the superintendence of the police in the administrator, thus by law, the superintendence of the Delhi police comes under the Lieutenant Governor. However, since the prevailing system is not only contrary to the constitutional provisions and also peoples’ aspirations, the fault-line in the policing system in Delhi calls for an immediate correction, while keeping national security concerns intact. This can only be done through a series of legislation by Parliament. One could draw a lesson from the system that prevails in the national capitals of countries like the United States of America and Great Britain. In the US, for example, Washington DC, by virtue of being the national capital, is a “federal district”. It is not a part of any state and is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress. Quite like our capital of Delhi, Washington too houses not just the top executive offices but also the national legislature, the Supreme Court and foreign embassies. Since the 1970s, it is governed by a Mayor-in-Council, though the Congress has the powers to overturn the local laws. The Metropolitan Police Department of the Washington District of Columbia, referred to as MPD, is the municipal police force. Due to its location within an independent federal city, the MPD exercises the standard functions of a local police force and also handles certain activities normally considered to be within the domain of a state police agency such as maintaining a sex offender registry. Its duties include supplementing the various uniformed federal law enforcement agencies like the US Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Capitol Police and the Park Police. Unlike Delhi, which has been granted statehood, though partial, Washington DC is a federal conclave. Yet the police personnel are not employees of the federal government but are under the DC municipal government. The MPD, with a total strength of about 4,500 personnel and headed by a Chief of Police, is accountable to the Mayor and the DC Council, which are elected positions. The MPD has concurrent jurisdiction with other federal law enforcement agencies, including the US Capitol Hill Police, whose role is primarily to protect the US Congress and the assemblies throughout the US. Similarly, it has concurrent jurisdiction with the DC Park Police, which also has a designated role and jurisdiction. The MPD also has a concurrent jurisdiction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is both an intelligence-gathering and a law-enforcement federal force. In London too an almost similar system exists now. Within the city of London, which has only a few thousand permanent residents but a workforce of more than three lakh commuters daily, the 1,300-odd personnel of the City of London Police are governed by the Common Council. The remainder Greater London Area is the responsibility of Metropolitan Police Service (MPS or the Met). Till 2000, the MPS was controlled directly by the Home Secretary. Then the Metropolitical Police Authority was set up and its members appointed by the Mayor of London, the London Assembly and several independent members, though the Metropolitical Police Commissioner continues to be appointed by the Home Secretary. This force, which is about 50,000 strong, is governed by the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime. An Independent Police Complaints Commission acts as the oversight agency. Though there are specialised forces like the Ministry of Defence Police for protecting MOD properties and British Transport Police for protecting the rail network, the statutory responsibility for law and order is that of the two police departments reporting to local elected bodies. The federal nature of our Constitution mandates law and order as a state subject, though attempts have been made to tamper with this provision. In 1976, for example, during the Emergency (1975-77), a controversial amendment was made to permit the Centre to send its armed police to any state but in 1978 this clause was further amended to make such deployment dependent on the consent of the state government concerned. Although the eight central police forces and three para-military forces of the country have designated tasks, they are deployed for specific law and order roles from time to time. Yet none of them is a typical police force, which can independently enforce law and order, besides investigating crime. Until some years ago, the Union government was without a designated law-enforcing police under its direct control. However, since 2008 when the National Investigation Agency (NIA) was set up to control terror in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, the situation has changed drastically. The NIA is empowered to deal with terror-related crimes across states without special permission. Besides terror, this also deals with a host of other crimes such as drug trafficking and counterfeit currency, which are also seen as related to terror and cross-border crimes. In such cases, the NIA has concurrent jurisdiction with the states, which can also probe such cases. Apparently, the Centre took advantage of the extraordinary situation arising out of the Mumbai attacks to push for such an agency. Not only that, the NIA Act also provides for Special NIA Courts, which have the same powers as sessions courts under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, for the trial of offenders accused of such offences. In view of the demand in Delhi, what could be done is to further empower the NIA through amendments to its Act to give it greater superintendence and law-enforcement powers concerning certain Government of India institutions in Delhi and elsewhere. It could ensure the security of the Rashtrapati Bhawan, Parliament, the Supreme Court, the country's international airports, top executive offices and various embassies, which could all be declared a "Union Security Zone". In certain areas and aspects, the NIA can have concurrent powers with the Delhi Police and other state police forces. This will ensure that the vital Central institutions are not under the Delhi Police and the Union Home Ministry has a direct control over these. A safety clause could be inserted in the law to further enable Parliament to overturn any law that it feels could jeopardise the security of the country. In fact, even in Washington DC, such a power has been vested in the Congress. This, in turn, could pave the way for having the Delhi Police under the Delhi Government, just like the MPS in London and the MPD in Washington DC, with certain other law-enforcement agencies having concurrent jurisdiction. The key to effective police functioning within a state is building strong community relations and these can come about only through strong contacts with all sections of the citizenry. Currently, the Delhi Police, being independent of the Delhi Government, perhaps have the advantage of being able to ward off political interference of a certain kind. But, at the same time, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages; functioning as a de-facto federal force, the Delhi Police are devoid of intimate people-connect and also oversight mechanisms which are the essential hallmarks of a democratic system. A re-organisation of the reporting mechanism of the Delhi Police is also desirable because a state government can deliver only when all its organs dealing with its citizens report to it. The sooner the Delhi Police is brought under the control of the Delhi Government the better because given the nature of the people-oriented approach of the Aam Admi Party, issues like the one which cropped up last week will continue to arise. The suggestion to empower the Delhi Government by giving it superintendence over the police will prevent a situation of the kind that happened in Delhi, where a minister could not direct a police official to do something. It is ironical that the issue in Delhi that sparked off the controversy relates to a sex and drug offence – the kind of thing that would have been investigated by the Metropolitan Police in London or Washington DC reporting to the municipality or the Council. It is in fact odd that the Union Home Ministry or the Lieutenant Governor should be trying to exercise control over such local issues.
What should be done *
Delhi was granted partial statehood in 1991 through the 69th Constitution Amendment. This has created functional problems for the government of the day in Delhi *
The NDA proposal to grant full statehood to Delhi did not propose entrusting the Delhi Government with the power of superintendence over the police. *
Section 4 of the Delhi Police Act vests the superintendence of the police in the administrator, the Lieutenant Governor, who reports to the Home Ministry *
Unlike Delhi, which has been granted partial statehood, Washington DC is a federal conclave. Yet the police personnel are not employees of the federal government but are under the DC municipal government. *
In London the statutory responsibility for law and order is that of the two police departments reporting to the local elected bodies.
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Having grown up with a grandmother who was a doctor attached to the Indian Army way back in the 1950s, the idea of women being economically and emotionally independent was something that I always considered to be a given. But last week I was surprised when I came across a section of the people, all supposedly educated and liberal, air their views vis-à-vis young girls today.