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Pumping votes Sexual harassment
in sports |
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A feature of house
searches in the Punjab
Playing politics of
identity
When the village
got its first jeep
Year of governance
reform in China
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Sexual harassment in sports Sexual
harassment in sports is as much a reality as the use of performance-enhancing drugs. After the Sports Authority of India (SAI) suspended Satvir Singh, the wrestling chief coach at the SAI Training Centre, Hisar, women organisations have raised the demand to set up a sexual harassment committee at the centre. Satvir was accused of sexually harassing a teenage woman wrestler and was booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the IPC. This is not the first case of such nature, gender activists believe the malaise of Indian sportswomen having to face sexual abuse remains unaddressed and it is far more widespread than generally acknowledged. Leading Indian sports women have alleged the existence of the casting couch, both in individual and team sports. Cases of exploitation of women players from tribal and remote areas by coaches and officials keep surfacing. The scandal involving Ranjitha, a member of the Indian women's hockey team, who complained against chief coach M K Kaushik, resulted in his suspension after a four-member inquiry committee found him guilty. Then Sydney Olympic bronze medallist Karnam Malleswari accused SAI weightlifting coach Ramesh Malhotra of sexually harassing junior lifters. The Indian Weightlifting Federation suspended Malhotra and to salvage its image, the Union Sports Ministry changed the coaches, but no structural measures were introduced to avoid such occurrences in future. In this light the demand of the members of the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Haryana, to deploy women coaches for female sportspersons may seem narrow for the spirit of sports. In one of the complaints received from 31 women players during the Karnam Malleswari case investigation, a complainant has underlined the fact that the girls come from poor and humble backgrounds and are too scared to speak against the coach. Unless the Sports Ministry includes women in selection and decision-making committees, and sets up sexual harassment committees, sexual exploitation of women would be hard to check.
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Thought for the Day
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
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A feature of house searches in the Punjab IN connection with the house searches which have been going on in several parts of the Punjab it is necessary to call the attention of the Government to the sense of uncertainty, distrust and alarm which prevails in the people at the present moment. To begin with the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department do not seem to be proceedings only against such persons whom they have reasonable grounds to connect with any offence. From the manner in which house searches and arrests have so far taken place there is justifiable cause for apprehension that the officers have been proceeding on vague reports incriminating, not a known individual about whose identity there is no mistake, but some unknown people who happen to bear an unfortunate name or to belong to certain religious persuasion. For instance they may want a man who bears the name of Amar Nath, Dina Nath or Khushi Ram and from the manner they have been going about in the city it appears they suspect every individual of a certain age who bears these names. Imperial Legislative Council AT Wednesday's meeting of the Imperial Legislative Council the Provincial Small Cause Courts and the Indian Telegraphs Bills were passed. Several amendments to the latter were moved by Mr. Achariar, one of which was accepted in modified form. There was considerable discussion on the use of the word 'Native' in the Bill, Rai Sitanath Ray, Mr. Achariar, and Mr. Surendranath Banerji objecting to it. Sir Syed Ali Imam said that the word 'Native' had acquired a certain sense of contempt but although he himself was a native he felt that he and his countrymen could rise above it. All the same speaking on behalf of Government he felt great sympathy for those who resented the use of the word and he would have eliminated it if it could have been done without destroying the symmetry of the language.
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Playing politics of identity
INDIA may not be coming apart at the seams but the polity is. Union ministers are quarrelling among themselves. Feuds of bureaucrats are coming out in the open. Even intelligence agencies, the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation, are at loggerheads. Understanding between the bureaucracy and the rulers has been reduced to trivialities. So much so that Finance Minister P. Chidambaram tells a top official to improve his English and the official, in turn, complains to his
minister.
On top of it comes the manner in which the Bill to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh was passed by the Lok Sabha. The Lok Sabha television channel, showing the proceedings, was stopped from telecasting live which negates the claim of transparency. MPs in favour of a united Andhra Pradesh were not allowed to participate in the debate because as many as 17 of them had been ousted from the House a couple of days earlier when they, including some Congress ministers, were making the passage of the Bill impossible. I am concerned over the precedent the Congress has set and the way the Speaker went along. Tomorrow if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) comes to power and decides to have legislation to put restrictions on the minorities, the party has only to point out that the then ruling Congress had suspended the basic norms of parliamentary democracy. For nearly 50 days, there was the government of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) exposing the status quo governance which the two main parties, the Congress and the BJP, had perpetrated in the last three decades. In a way, AAP too has become a regional party as supreme in Delhi as are Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and Naveen Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha. Indeed, politics of identity is the biggest danger to the democratic governance. And this in no way is minimising the harm the BJP is doing to the pluralistic ethos inherited from the days of freedom struggle. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is getting large crowds by appealing to the Hindus to imbibe Hindu nationalism. Muslims are justifiably feeling insecure because the soft kind of Hindutva is contaminating more and more people. To check this dangerous trend, the Congress is too weak and too clueless to show mirror to the nation. Regional parties feel that they can fill the space vacated by the Congress. Probably, they can but it will be at the expense of India's unity. The Constitution, which binds all parts of the country together, is being violated by some regional parties both in letter and spirit. There is no option to the federal structure which the Constituent Assembly cherished and enshrined in the Constitution. Odisha is a typical example of how the Indian polity works. The state is federal in character but dynastic in rule. It seldom defies the central government, however autocratic or arrogant in its postures at times. But Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's rule is personal and he follows the footprints of his father, the late Biju Patnaik, who governed in a capricious and corrupt manner. He is still remembered because he gave identity to Oriyas, who even today are fighting for a place under the sun. Naveen continues to remind people of his father's legacy. I saw during my visit to Bhubaneswar hoardings all over the city with Biju Patnaik's finger pointing towards Naveen as if he was reminding that his successor was his son. (There were also hoardings carrying only the photo of Rahul Gandhi without his mother, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on either side of Naveen.) Just as Sukhbir Singh Badal in Punjab, Akhilesh Yadav in UP or Omar Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir, Naveen Patnaik's parentage is his asset. The polls in democracy are only up to elections. Subsequently, people cease to count during the five-year tenure of the state assembly. With a clutch of bureaucrats Naveen rules the state, much to the misery and helplessness of the voters. He is worse because he has eliminated leading politicians from his party methodically. He has thus become indispensible. In fact, Naveen's strength is the absence of a leader in his own party and his adversary, the Congress. Former Chief Minister JB Patnaik preferred the Governorship of Assam to the ever-increasing wrangles in the Congress. What surprised me was that there was not even a hiss of AAP in the state. I thought that Odisha, which has no opposition worth the name, would be an ideal place for AAP. The party appears to have not gone beyond Delhi, western UP, Haryana and parts of Rajasthan. No doubt, its birth and success in Delhi evoked a tinge of idealism. But then Arvind Kejriwal became synonymous with the party. He did not allow anyone else to grow. In fact, some of his antics have doused the aspirations of the intelligentsia which saw in him an alternative. Thank God, some other names who will contest the Lok Sabha elections have come out. They should underline the need for a collective leadership. Dozens of NGOs, with a more enviable record than Kejriwal, are distant from AAP. They should be persuaded to join the party which is, in fact, a platform for "thousands of mutinies" raging in the country. AAP, however, needs to come out with its economic agenda because people have essentially voted against the Congress and the BJP. AAP has done well in exposing the central government on the price of natural gas. Even when the private company had signed a contract to purchase gas for $2.5 Btu till 2017, the price has been raised to $8 Btu. It is obvious that Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily, who has defended the increased price, must be mixed up with the scam, another in the Manmohan Singh regime, left with two months in tenure. Corruption looks like becoming a poll issue. The Congress with numerous scams will be the target. Per force, the party has made communalism the main issue. Both corruption and communalism have to be confronted with a plank of cleanliness and pluralism. AAP can plug these lines, provided it stays together.
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When the village got its first jeep
The repair and servicing of the jeep cost a phenomenally insignificant sum then. I still possess a receipt issued by Kesar Motor Garage on the G.T. Road, Jalandhar, showing a bill of twenty rupees seven annas and three paise for washing, servicing, repairing the speedometer and filling the brake oil. I wonder if we can even get a puncture mended these days without paying double the amount. The journeys from Kapurthala town to our village three miles away were extremely adventurous. The village being located in the sandy terrain did not have a motorable approach and the poor vehicle had to traverse three miles on the dirt track. While setting for the village, we would remove the windscreen and canvas hood for fresh air to come which attracted a backlash of dust raised by the rear tyres, covering us with a fine powder of dust. Negotiating a difficult sand dune on the way the jeep had to go on four by four which proved ineffective at times. We would wait for a push from willing pedestrians, who would lend a helping hand to pull out the vehicle on the understood condition that they would get a free ride on the trailer for the rest of their journey up to the village. The arrival of the jeep in the village was always a source of great excitement for the village urchins. When not parked in the garage, the clever ones of them would put the stationary jeep in the neutral gear and push it down the slope while a dozen out of them would hop on it turn by turn to enjoy the ride. Since they had no access to the ignition key, their sole thrill consisted in pushing the jeep a few yards. The jeep was often borrowed for ceremonial journeys of the village weddings. No youngster from the village would bring his bride home unless the "Billi" (vernacular for Willys) was made available to be decked up to perform the important journey from the bride's home to the bridegroom's. Once an overconfident driver, having imbibed a few drinks at the marriage party, drove the jeep into a well before the bride and bridegroom could sit in it. Since the villagers did not have the wherewithal to pull the jeep out of the well, the bride and the bridegroom performed the journey on the bullock cart. A message was sent to my father conveying regrets for the mishap. Having showered the choicest expletives on the bridegroom's father, my father arranged to send a crane to the bride's village to pull out the ill-fated jeep. That was the last matrimonial mission on which the jeep was allowed.
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Year of governance reform in China
Last
November, the third plenary session of the 18th Central Committee of
the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded in Beijing providing
President Xi Jinping with an opportunity to advance his blueprint for
China’s future development and growth over the next decade. The
third plenary session has historic significance for promoting reform
starting from the time when Deng Xiaoping outlined his vision of
reform and opening up, in 1978, to develop a China that was a modern,
powerful, and socialist nation. After much speculation, only a very
brief communique was issued on the final day of the plenary session.
However, three days later, a document entitled "The Decision
on Major Issues Regarding Comprehensively Deepening Reform"
was released comprising more than 20,000 characters. It was later
revealed that President Xi had, in fact, personally led the documents’
drafting team, a show of his influence in shaping the development
agenda. In
the context of the public concern with corruption in India and the
challenges to the political legitimacy of the system, these
initiatives in China are valuable for our own public debate. This
article explores three governance aspects of the plenum decision,
which, although not adequately discussed, are of much significance. It
will first look at the need to cultivate a society based on the rule
of law, then with the steps to be taken for a more responsive party
and an austere government and finally with the emphasis on building an
active and participatory civil society. Rule of law
In late 2013,
Bo Xilai, a former governor and important former party official, was
convicted on allegations of corruption. The public trial, which drew
comparisons to the famous trial of the "Gang of Four", due
to intense media interaction and public interest was heralded by the
state press as an example of China’s adherence to the rule of law
and the maintenance of equality for all under the law. This was a view
contested by the western media which saw it as a sham trial, based on
political considerations and designed to control an errant
leader. Such contestations over the legitimacy of the rule of law in
China were also highlighted by the concurrent alleged termination of
the services of two professors, for stating that the government should
abide by the constitution. These instances raised doubts about the
efficacy of the rule of law, about the freedom of speech and about the
narrowing space for scholars in China. Towards the end of January, a
legal activist Xu Zhiyong, who championed the cause of democracy and
the rule of law was convicted of "gathering a crowd to disturb
public order". His disillusionment with the arbitrary judicial
process was exemplified when his legal team remained silent for a
large part of his trial. Significantly, the trial was also not
accorded the media blitz that the Bo Xilai trial had received
indicating the selective priorities of the state.
In the wake of this scepticism, the proposed plenum reforms seemed to indicate that there was a more serious emphasis on ensuring promotion of rule of law and independence of the judiciary than was earlier presumed. The plenum declared the need to ensure fairness and transparency in the functioning of the courts and prosecuting bodies through developing protocols for judicial personnel management and also establishing systems for recording court proceedings. In an attempt to reduce political interference, the plenum moved to separate the jurisdiction of the courts from the administrative divisions of government. This is a measure to check local governments and their officials from exercising undue influence and management over the local courts. This move has been widely praised, for if and when executed, it will introduce a system of separation of powers, and checks and balances between the state and the judiciary, which are the core principles of a constitutional order. An equally important measure which indicates a greater respect for human rights is the move to abolish the Laojiao, or re-education through labour (RTL) camps. These camps detained persons for petty crimes but also more recently political prisoners in conditions often criticised for being harsh and degrading. However, human rights groups have feared that the system will only be replaced by another form of extra-judicial punishment, one that will still involve arbitrary detention without court approval. The change comes in the backdrop of measures that vaguely mention the importance of constitution values, and the need for the judicial system to protect human rights and promote legal aid nationally. President Xi has emphasised that the party must lead by abiding by the law and by balancing "vitality and order" in the polity. However, unless this translates into genuine political reform, more examples of misuse of administrative discretion will continue to occur. Envisaging a more responsive party
Following from the
above, the second key measure is the proposed reform of the Communist
Party by emphasising that the leadership should function in a way that
serves the people and becomes responsive to their needs. This is in
keeping with an emphasis to support innovation and allow for
grassroots exploration to connect with local populations by the party
leaders. This drive to connect is imperative, given the increasing
number of protests that are taking place every day across China, and
the spread of dissent on the internet through ever-expanding social
media platforms such as Weibo. Interestingly, in addition to being
responsive externally, the plenum decision has also highlighted the
need to reduce entry barriers, promote merit, and encourage talent
within the party. The emphasis on intra-party democracy, a move to
reform the image of the party after the Bo Xilai and Ling Jihua ‘crash
cover up scandal’, seems to have gathered force especially with the
blogosphere increasingly critical of dynastic politicians and "princelings",
select descendants of prominent and influential senior communist
officials who continue to control the party and whose families are
accused of leading very extravagant lives. Realising the impact of
the abuses and excesses of power, on the validity of the party rule,
President Xi has adopted a series of austerity measures to reduce
excesses. He stated, in early 2013, that "If we don’t redress
unhealthy tendencies and allow them to develop, it will be like
putting up a wall between our party and the people, and we will lose
our roots, our lifeblood and our strength", and has over the
year, as promised tackled both "tigers" and
"flies"— powerful leaders and lowly bureaucrats in an
attempt to purge the system of corruption. This frugality has seen the
development of a new catch phrase "four dishes and one soup"
to characterise the waist-tightening by the state. The party has
announced a five-year plan to fight graft and improve supervision of
its cadres. However, without institutional systems for internal
transparency, meritocracy, participatory decision-making, measures to
promote intra-party democracy will remain as is widely understood,
political rhetoric. A participatory civil society
The third
key reform measure is the steps to stimulate the vitality of social
organisations, a need also acknowledged for the first time in China’s
12th Five Year Plan. The state has traditionally been uneasy and
distrustful of non- governmental organisations, however, after an
earthquake in the Sichuan province in 2008, which evoked a strong
response from civil society in rescue efforts, and also the important
part played by a large number of volunteers at the Beijing Olympics,
the role played by civil society and the attitude of the state is
slowly changing. The plenum decision has called for social
organisations to take over public services where possible and through
this proposal, the state hopes to jointly address social conflict to
foster stability. There is also encouragement for the development of
industry associations, trade unions, and social organisations in the
fields of science and charity, as well as in urban and rural community
services. This move coupled with simpler registration procedures is a
tacit acknowledgment that future economic reform will have to be
dependent on political and social reform. The number of registered
civil society organisations (CSOs) in China has increased to around
4,62,000, more than 100 times that in 1988, and there are roughly 1
million grass roots CSOs that are not formally registered. There is,
thus, an enormous potential for organisations to participate in
governance and service delivery. The mood of the plenum appears to
allow for such experimentation based on a recognition and realisation
that the state cannot provide for everything and everyone as a society
evolves and becomes more complex. These plenum reforms have been
largely seen as constructive, positive and even potentially
transformative. The broad canvas, of possible reform in areas
considered sensitive, indicates an ambition to be a responsive
government, flexible, capable and willing to change. The challenge,
however, is to ensure that the implementation mechanisms to execute
the decisions of the plenum are in consonance with the ambitions. In
these three spheres of rule of law, party reform and civil society,
the narrative and interaction with the state is continuously dynamic.
This is being driven by a greater accountability demanded by the
public but also a need for legitimacy in the eyes of the people by the
state. Establishing systems of checks and balances, transparency and
accountability and faith in the due process of law will allow for a
more egalitarian and just judiciary, party and civil society. The
state envisions a China that is moving towards developing into a
Xiaokang society or well-off society. However, the vision for the
society is not understood only in terms of economic growth but an
understanding that such growth, with social and political justice, is
necessary for any holistic progress and it is in this context that the
above spheres assume importance. — The writer researched reforms in
China recently |
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IN the late forties of the last century when my father was a member of the Constituent Assembly of India he bought a Willys jeep with a trailer for a paltry sum of rupees four thousand. Those were the days when vehicles were few and far between even in Delhi and most of the august members of the assembly walked from the North and South Courts to attend the sessions. When not in Delhi, our family would drive down in the jeep from our residence at 22, Queens Way (now Janpath), to our village in the erstwhile princely state of Kapurthala, taking almost an entire day on the Grand Trunk
Road.
Much of the commentary, post the decision, has involved
discussing the economic reforms and the decisive role of the market in
resource allocation. The coverage given to this decision is because it
will also influence reform (i) for state-owned enterprises, (ii) for
the pricing mechanism of water, oil, gas, electricity, transport and
telecommunication and (iii) for fiscal reform, and land reform.