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Banking on
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A nuisance called
affidavit Centre finally decides to trust the citizen In continuation of its efforts to cut red tape and streamline the administration the Union government has taken a citizen-friendly decision by minimising, if not eliminating, the need for affidavits in Central offices. The UPA too had toyed with the idea but, like many other good things it had thought of, the citizens' charter remained on paper. It is indeed surprising that the Centre should lag behind states, including Punjab and Haryana, in undertaking citizen-friendly measures.
Dealing
with ‘expansionist’ China
Valley
beyond the veil of beauty
Finally,
the solution to a vexatious dispute
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A nuisance called affidavit In
continuation of its efforts to cut red tape and streamline the administration the Union government has taken a citizen-friendly decision by
minimising, if not eliminating, the need for affidavits in Central offices. The UPA too had toyed with the idea but, like many other good things it had thought of, the citizens' charter remained on paper. It is indeed surprising that the Centre should lag behind states, including Punjab and
Haryana, in undertaking citizen-friendly measures. It was the British who had introduced affidavits since they did not trust local citizens. For so many years after Independence the colonial practice still continues in many Central and state offices, requiring citizens to get documents/affidavits attested by either class-one officers or notaries. For instance, the passport office wants every applicant to give an affidavit stating his or her mother's name if the Class 10 certificate does not have it. Subjecting such a large population to needless inconvenience seems to be a favourite pastime of the post-Independence rulers, who seem to drive some sense of power and pleasure by pushing citizens to the wall. The widespread demand for affidavits and attested documents makes citizens run from pillar to post and wait in queues to buy affidavits. People are often forced to purchase stamp papers of higher denomination than required because a perpetual artificial shortage of low-denomination papers is created in every town and city. Nothing irks a citizen more than the payment to a notary for a simple signature. For villagers, there are additional expenses on travel from the village to the town/city and then within the city to various offices and courts, all for a signature. Now self-attestation of documents has been allowed. Even in states like Punjab, which have done away with affidavits and made the delivery of services time-bound, the reality on the ground is not so pleasant. Still many offices and educational institutions insist on affidavits. Either there is lack of awareness or the rules have not been implemented with the firmness required.
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Progress would be wonderful - if only it would stop.
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The Arya Sikh controversy WE have carefully refrained from entering into the merits of the dispute over the Urdu publication which forms the basis of the arrest of two Arya Samajist writers in Patiala State. But, apart from the merits of the case itself, there is one aspect of the angry and at times acrimonious controversy which has been raging for some time which can no longer be ignored, viz., the effect on the masses of the two sections of the same community, as regards whose enthusiasm, energy or public spirit there can be no doubt whatsoever. The spectacle of two such progressive and go-ahead sections drifting more and more apart with no love lost for each other is one which must make all well-wishers of the community shudder. At this juncture Mahatma Munshi Ram, Governor of the Gurukul, Kangri, has published an opportune and friendly call to the leaders of the Khalsa Panth inviting their urgent attention to the desirability of taking measures to stem the tide of inter-communal bitterness. Memorial to Lady Hardinge THE proposal to raise a suitable memorial to the late Lady Hardinge will be universally supported in India. Her untimely death has cast a shadow over the bright outlook of India. She had indeed touched the chords of Indian heart by her womanly qualities which only reminded the female heroines of ancient India. We are glad to hear that steps are taken at Simla to raise a memorial and Raja Sir Harnam Singh is at the head of the movement. Both by his personal acquaintance with the departed lady and his eminent position in Indian society, Raja Sir Harnam Singh worthily takes the lead in this matter. We have no doubt it will be universally supported and welcomed.
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Dealing with ‘expansionist’ China
Addressing
an election rally in Arunachal Pradesh on February 22, Mr Narendra Modi called on China to shed its “mindset of expansionism”. He averred: “Arunachal Pradesh is an integral part of India and will remain so. No power can snatch it from us. I swear in the name of this soil that I would never allow this state to disappear, break down, or bow down. China should shed its expansionist mindset and forge bilateral ties with India for peace, progress and prosperity of both nations”. China made the predictable noises, with Prime Minister Li Keqiang congratulating Mr. Modi on his appointment and President Xi Jinping sending his Foreign Minister Wang Yi with a personal message of greetings. Did these gestures signal any substantive change in China’s policies, either on its outrageous territorial claims on Arunachal Pradesh or the continuing intrusion of its troops across the Line of Actual Control? The answer is clearly in the negative. Just on the eve of Vice-President Hamid Ansari’s visit to the Middle Kingdom, China published yet another official map depicting Arunachal Pradesh as its territory. While the UPA government had claimed that new “mechanisms” had been agreed upon to curb cross-border intrusions, the intrusions continued. Any talk of a more robust military response to Chinese adventurism is ill-advised. The NDA government has inherited a situation where our armed forces are inadequately equipped and lacking in numbers. It would take a minimum of five years before the armed forces are adequately equipped and manned to be able to present a more self-confident response to Chinese adventurism. New Delhi should, however, now reorient its diplomacy by taking note of the fact that Chinese assertiveness is directed not only against India, but also towards all its maritime neighbours with unilateral declarations on delineation of its maritime boundaries. Just as China's claims on Arunachal Pradesh have no legal or historical basis, its claims on its maritime boundaries with all its maritime neighbours are in violation of the UN Convention on the Laws of the Seas. China has used force to seize disputed islands claimed by the Philippines and Vietnam and to explore for offshore oil and gas. Tensions with Japan are escalating because of China’s claims to Senkaku Islands, controlled by Japan since 1894. China's unilateral declaration of an “Air Defence Identification Zone” beyond its borders has been rejected by South Korea and Japan. Its territorial claims on its maritime borders face challenges from South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. Yet another major source of concern is the Chinese policy of “strategic containment” of India, primarily based on enhancing Pakistan's nuclear weapons, missile, maritime, air power and army capabilities. This is an issue which India, rarely, if ever, highlights either bilaterally, or internationally. This policy of “strategic containment” through Pakistan has been reinforced by China's readiness to provide weapons and liberal economic assistance to all of India’s SAARC neighbours. Worse still, bending to Chinese pressure, India has periodically avoided joint military exercises with Japan and the US. A measured response to Chinese “containment” will be for India to step up military cooperation with Vietnam, including the supply of Brahmos cruise missiles, which can enable Vietnam to counter Chinese maritime bullying. This would be an appropriate answer to China's unrestrained military relationship with Pakistan. Given the fact that Russia is a major arms supplier to Vietnam, President Putin’s concurrence can surely be obtained for such missile supplies to Vietnam. Russia has, after all, given its concurrence to China’s supply of Russian-designed advanced RD 93 fighter aircraft engines to Pakistan. Will growing trade relations with China soften its border claims, or its “strategic containment” of India? Bilateral trade with China today amounts to around $66 billion, with India facing a growing trade deficit, currently of around $29 billion. China’s annual bilateral trade with Japan amounts to $314 billion and that with South Korea $235 billion. China is also the largest trade and investment partner of Vietnam. Both Japan and South Korea have substantial investment ties with China. Despite this, China has remained unyielding in its territorial claims on these countries. It has not hesitated to use force and threatened to cut its investment ties with Vietnam after recent tensions. To believe that China will embark on a path of reason on border issues because it sells a few bullet trains and invests in infrastructure in India would be, to put it mildly, naïve. On the contrary, India needs to ensure that unrestricted, duty-free access to Chinese products in areas like energy and electronics, does not adversely affect indigenous development and production, or undermine energy, communications and cyber security. While dialogue and economic cooperation and interaction with China in forums like BRICS and G20 are mutually beneficial, we should review our approach to border issues with China. China has no intention of exchanging maps specifying its definition of the Line of Actual Control, either in Ladakh or Arunachal Pradesh. India should now insist that the border issue has to be resolved in accordance with the “guiding principles” agreed to in 2005. The boundary has to be along “well defined and easily identifiable natural geographic features”. Secondly, any border settlement should "safeguard due interests of their settled populations in the border areas". Proceeding according to these “guiding principles” enables India to reinforce its claims that the border lies along the Karakoram Range in Ladakh and McMahon Line in Arunachal Pradesh. Given China’s agreement to safeguard the “interests of settled populations,” its claims to Arunachal Pradesh are untenable. Moreover, with the Dalai Lama now clarifying he no longer seeks an independent Tibet, India should not hesitate to state that it hopes the Tibetan issue is settled in accordance with the 17-point 1951 agreement between the Chinese authorities and the Dalai Lama. This agreement acknowledges Chinese “sovereignty” in Tibet, while respecting the freedom of religion and the “established status, functions and powers of the Dalai Lama”.
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Valley beyond the veil of beauty I kept my faith in Khusro and held on to my excitement, and went on ‘preparing’for my visit. I specially asked a friend, who’s a travel blogger and has been to the Valley four-five times to plan my itinerary so that I don't miss anything. I had been wanting to go for a long time but because of the turmoil there had lost hope of seeing it in this lifetime. So this visit was really special. Even before reaching, you get a taste of the magic that awaits you. As you descend, you get a peek of the majestic Pir Panjal range from the aircraft window. And when we finally reached, both Khusro and Kashmir did not disappoint, especially the Dal Lake. The next eight days just flew by as we soaked up the beauty all around. People were friendly and helpful. But while the eyes feasted on the beauty, the heart was sad as beneath all this beauty lurked misery and despair - of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, a tourism-dependent economy not strong enough to provide jobs all the year round. The old attendant at our houseboat, Khan Chacha, had a family of five marriageable daughters and a job from March to November only, as did the “shikara wallahs” (The Dal usually freezes in winter). The young coolie who pulled my sledge at Gulmarg had a postgraduate degree in psychology from Srinagar University. His parents had done menial jobs to finance his degree in the hope that he could escape this life of drudgery. But alas! Nine-year-old Bilal, my pony boy in Sonamarg, may make the steep trek to Thajiwas Glacier daily during the tourist season but has not seen the inside of a classroom. The beautiful teenage girl, cutting grass for fodder in the Betaab valley in Pahalgam, was an orphan who had lost her parents and a brother to the turmoil in the valley. But Julie had not lost her spunk. She was studying despite opposition from the relatives she was living with and had managed to reach Class XI. She was determined to make something of her life. I came back in love with the Valley’s beauty but a heavy heart. But the story doesn’t end here. Reaching home, I discovered that I had misplaced some pashmina-silk stoles in Pehalgam. I almost wrote it off but found a visiting card of a neighbouring shopkeeper in my bag. Hoping against hope, I called and requested him to check with his neighbour. To my pleasant surprise, I got a call in the evening from the stole shop owner. I had misplaced the stoles at some other shop. The owner of that shop had recognised the stoles and returned these to the stole shop owner, who has now promised to courier these. Not only has this incident restored my faith in humanity but has also made me love Kashmir and Kashmiris even more.
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Finally, the solution to a vexatious dispute
A
dispute that had defied solution since Partition ended on July 7, 2014 when the Arbitration Tribunal on the India-Bangladesh Maritime Delimitation delivered its ruling. The court had concluded its hearings on December 18, 2013. The Arbitration Tribunal for the Delimitation of Maritime Boundary between Bangladesh and India was established under Annexure VII of the UN Convention of Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and was set up under the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague, Netherlands. The Award of the Tribunal is binding on all parties. There is no provision for appeal. The rules of procedures, however, permit a party to seek any interpretation of the verdict within 30 days of receiving the verdict and the interpretation would be made available within 45 days. International arbitration Final award After the
decision In the same year, Bangladesh had also taken recourse to international arbitration in its dispute with Myanmar over the maritime delimitation dispute. That case was, however, shifted to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) at Myanmar’s request. In 2012, Bangladesh was awarded over 110,000 sq-km area, including the disputed 25,000 square km in the Bay of Bengal, in this arbitration award. Domestic political compulsion was the primary reason for the Sheikh Hasina-led Bangladesh government to opt for international arbitration. Any bilateral agreement would have been bitterly criticised as a sellout in the highly divisive and polarised domestic politics of Bangladesh. The reaction of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by arch-rival and bête noire Khaleda Zia, to the award in the India-Bangladesh case underscores this compulsion. The BNP has called the current award a defeat for Bangladesh because the full extent of Bangladesh’s claim was not accommodated. This is a typical glass-half-empty reaction of the BNP. The technical and legal aspects of the dispute and the arbitration award recognised India’s claims that the Land Boundary Terminus is situated to the East of New Moore Island and the equidistance principal, as proposed by India, has been accepted for the demarcation. The angle bisector method proposed by Bangladesh has been rejected. Adjusting the equidistance line The award, however, accepted Bangladesh’s claim and the equidistance line has been adjusted to take into account the cut-off effect on Bangladesh due to the concavity of its coastline. In such disputes contesting parties make claims and final awards are usually compromises that are a mixture of give and take. Thus, India has retained its claim on New Moore Island (South Talpatti), a critical factor, as it gives India access to the Haribhanga River (border between India and Bangladesh) in southern West Bengal and India’s rights in the extended Continental Shelf have been, by and large, protected. Both India and Bangladesh have received less than they asked for in their maximalist claim lines, both in the EEZ and the Continental Shelf. It is note-worthy that the total area under question is about 3,66,854 sq km. India had claimed that this area should be divided in the ratio of 1: 3.44 in favour of India, while Bangladesh had claimed that it should divided in the ration of 1: 1.52. The award has finally split the area in question into 1 : 2.81 in favour of India, which is clearly closer to India’s claim. A confusing aspect of the award is the concept of grey areas, wherein India enjoys rights over the water column and Bangladesh over the seabed and subsoil. This will merit closer examination and will require considerable cooperation between India and Bangladesh. The Indian nominee to the Tribunal, Dr PS Rao, gave a partially dissenting opinion to the award, pointing out that the adjustment made to the provisional equidistance line has been done arbitrarily, that the identification of the relevant area based on which the adjustment has been supposedly made is equally arbitrary and that it is contrary to law and practice. One Indian negotiator called the award irrational and the procedure adopted absurd. The frustration of the Indian negotiator is understandable, in the background of India’s historical experience with international mediation and arbitration, beginning with the Kashmir issue, the overly generous terms to Pakistan in the Indus water Treaty and the boundary award in Kutch, Gujarat in which India lost some territory to Pakistan. Western bias In all these arbitrations and mediations, representatives of Western countries played a prominent role. In all cases, there remains a strong feeling that India has been given an unfair deal because it is the bigger neighbour and has borne the brunt of latent Western bias and prejudice, resulting from historical baggage. In a mature and statesmanlike reaction, Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali welcomed the award and said, “According to the verdict, Bangladesh has finally won more than 1,18,813 square kilometres of waters comprising territorial sea, exclusive economic zone extending out to 200 nautical mile (NM) across sizable area”. Calling the award a victory of friendship for both sides since it finally resolves a long-pending dispute between the two countries. He added that the award would strengthen bilateral relations. Earlier, during External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s recent visit to Dhaka, India had declared that it would accept the arbitration award since it was India’s sovereign decision to accept arbitration. Following the arbitration award, India has announced that it respected the verdict of the tribunal that awarded 19,467 sq km out of 25,000 sq km of the disputed area to Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal and was studying its full implications. The spokesperson of the Indian External Affairs Ministry said, “We believe that the settlement of the maritime boundary will further enhance mutual understanding and goodwill between India and Bangladesh by bringing to closure a long pending issue. This paves the way for the economic development of this part of the Bay of Bengal, which will be beneficial to both countries." India’s approach to this issue bears the stamp of a thoughtful and far-sighted political handling by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Bangladesh should be happy with the award and has attempted to publicly portray the ruling as being in its favour. Clearly, Bangladesh is trying to contain any euphoric upsurge, though some quarters are indulging in triumphalism. In effect, the award falls short of both India's and Bangladesh's expectations. The moot point is that a long--standing dispute that was hampering the ability of both countries to move ahead on full exploration of the affected part of the Bay of Bengal and its resources has finally been put to rest. Both India and Bangladesh should be looking to the future, rather than examining how many square kilometres of sea each side may or may not have gained. The real significance of the award lies in its finality, because it would provide clarity and legal certainty on the exact location of the maritime boundary between India and Bangladesh and promote coastal and maritime security. The areas where India and Bangladesh clearly enjoy sovereign rights would be clearly identified and India and Bangladesh would be able to undertake exploration and exploitation of the natural resources including fishing rights without doubt or interference. Exploration for gas and oil can take place with either side protesting about ownership of the EEZ. The award also opens up avenues of India-Bangladesh cooperation without which Bangladesh may find it difficult to exploit resources that it expects from its EEZ. The Land Boundary Agreement remains the last item on the boundary-related issue between India and Bangladesh. This should also be brought to its logical conclusion by ensuring that the Parliament passes the Constitutional Amendment Bill. The slate will then be wiped clean on boundary-related issues between India and Bangladesh. — The author is a former Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and former High Commissioner of India to Bangladesh.
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Bangladesh took a sudden high level political decision to go for international arbitration in 2009, after 40 years of wrangling and disagreement between the two sides. The positions of the two sides had become entrenched and negotiations had reached a dead end. Bangladesh’s decision to seek international arbitration had surprised India. As High Commissioner to Bangladesh during 2009, the author was summoned by Foreign Minister Dipu Moni who sprung the decision in this hurriedly arranged meeting. She insisted on speaking to Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and the author had to call on his mobile and arrange the conversation. Dipu Moni kept pacing up and down the meeting room, clearly tense and nervous and wanted to convey the Bangladesh government’s decision personally to the Indian External Affairs Minister. The Sheikh Hasina government had assumed power after a period of political turmoil in Bangladesh and the Indian government, in a spirit of friendship and accommodation, accepted Bangladesh’s decision and agreed to international arbitration.