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Spam at public cost Cost-effective treatment |
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Picking up the threads
What my days of truancy taught me
Hong Kong will never be the same again It is now even less like China than it was earlier
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Spam at public cost A large number of citizens may not be satisfied with the services provided by their government, but they are subjected to in-your-face advertisements of various ministries that seek to glorify political leaders more than the work done. A panel set up by the Supreme Court has made stiff recommendations against the use of public money to place such advertisements in the media. The NDA did with its 'India Shining' campaign, UPA-2 followed it up with crores spent on Nehru-Gandhi family birth and death anniversaries; the Hooda government did it with 'No. 1 Haryana' ads; the Punjab government has placed half-page ads in papers to launch even minor roads and administrative blocks. A lot of this money is spent especially ahead of elections, which makes it particularly offensive. The challenge is of determining what constitutes a legitimate communication exercise as against a political promotion. Among other suggestions, the panel has called for setting up an ombudsman to decide this till a law in this regard is made. It has also asked for an audit by the CAG, which should be an effective measure. After all, cost-effectiveness of all expenditure needs to be assessed. There can be no justification for multiple departments giving out ads on the birth anniversary of one personality, or pictures of ruling political personalities that take up greater space or time in an ad than the message it conveys. Communication from the government is a necessity, but it has to serve a purpose. People have to be informed of various services available, their rights and how to secure them, or even local administrative matters. All this information should be put up on websites, a practice that has still not become a habit with most departments. Each and every bit of information that a citizen may need in dealing with the government should be available online. The RTI Act too can be taken a step further by putting in public domain various contracts, tenders, awards, job selection results, and decisions directly concerning the public.
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Cost-effective treatment With affordable healthcare out of bounds for common people, the government has in a welcome step decided to issue guidelines on cost-effective treatment for 40 top killer
diseases. The move involves the publishing of standard treatment procedures and best available technologies to help patients make informed choices about the treatment they wish to choose for a given medical condition. Going by the success of the WHO propagated effective, low-cost way to prevent diarrhoeal diseases, one hopes the guidelines would be simple and affordable. Healthcare continues to be a major burden for the common people, with the government spending just about 4.1 per cent of the GDP on health. Since the private sector expenditure on healthcare in India is more than double of what the government spends, guidelines like the ones proposed are more than needed for an unregulated healthcare industry. Patients are fleeced and misguided from the stage of diagnosis to treatment. Secondly, by including 40 major diseases, the overlap of schemes for the same healthcare issue will be avoided. In the past we have had multiple schemes for controlling maternal mortality, causing wastage of resources for the same beneficiaries. Though mortality rather than morbidity continues to be the major focus of healthcare in our country, mental illness, a major cause of dysfunction that remains grossly under-represented by conventional public health statistics, is included in the list of 40 diseases. Neuropsychiatric disorders are projected to increase to 15 per cent by the year 2020. While at the international level mental health is receiving increasing importance, conditions like depressive disorders leading to a rise in the number of suicides remain undiagnosed in our country. Schizophrenia is on the rise and needs to be treated on a par with fatal diseases. Mental health needs to be integrated with primary healthcare as a first step to remove helplessness faced by millions of patients who remain absent from the healthcare data. Offering informed choices about their treatment will of course be an added advantage.
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Thought for the Day
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
—Saul Bellow
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The greatest sufferers by War Who are the greatest sufferers by the War? Sir Henry Johnston writing in the "Nineteenth Century and After" for October enlarges upon the terrible sufferings which this war will inflict upon the middle classes. In India and the colonies the people according to him, will not suffer materially. But the weight of the burden that will, he thinks, be laid upon the middle class throughout the United Kingdom - the class that attempts to live decently and intellectually on incomes ranging between £ 150 and £ 1,200 a year, the middle class "that has made the British Empire and contributed its greatest glories" - will be terribly heavy. But it is not quite correct to say that people in India do not suffer. Both by unemployment caused by loss of trade and high prices, people are already suffering and will continue to suffer during the war.
What should Indian girls learn? We drew the attention of the public recently to the resolution issued by the Bengal Government appointing an influential committee to suggest what should be taught to Hindu girls at schools to make them useful wives and mothers. Certain ideas were also expressed therein showing the desirability of giving to girls an education different from that to boys and better calculated to be of help to the peculiar conditions of society and home life in which women are placed. It is a difficult problem to decide whether a differentiation of curriculum in the case of Indian girls would be most desirable. But there is no doubt that the bulk of the Indians are in favour of this, while a more intellectual and perhaps ambitious class of Indians want no differentiation.
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Picking up the threads PRIME Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the US, in more ways than one, was a success. He may not have brought with him anything tangible from America but has created a climate of confidence and won back Washington which always looked at India with suspicion. Here is a person who was denied a US visa, who was able to shame the US Administration with speeches of friendship with America. However, in the process, Modi has buried Jawaharlal Nehru's idea of non-alignment deep. True, the movement has lost its raison d'être, the confrontation between the Communists and the democratic bloc. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, the Communists lost the cold war. Still the movement had come to represent an idea that small nations should not fear the big ones because of their size or power. In comparison, the number of states comprising the third world countries was far more than those either in the American bloc or the Soviet. Modi is a product of the capitalist world. He has neither the pull of the Nehru era of socialism, nor that of Mahatama Gandhi's self-sufficiency. Modi wants the country to develop, whatever be the means and how big the economy may create a distance between the haves and the have-nots. I, belonging to an era where Independence meant economic betterment of the lower half, do not understand or appreciate how a country which is poor can develop or give justice to the have-nots without moving towards left. I believe that the socialistic pattern of society which we chose was the right path and we should go back to it. But Modi's good-worded speeches, which meant everything to everybody, may be pleasing to the ear. He is, indeed, a forceful speaker. But what we do on the ground is important. Take, for example, the Planning Commission. That it had become a parallel government is true. But we should have removed the bureaucratic conflicts. Planning for a country like ours has to be there to marshal the resources and distribute them equitably among the states. The Planning Commission needed to be put back on the track, not to be pushed aside, as Modi has done. It is a pity that the left in the country has not grown in influence. But this is because the Communists do not understand the Indians. Marx is important. So is Gandhi. Yet, in the Communists' politburo, you can see the photos of Marx and Engels, not that of Gandhi or Nehru who represented our Independence struggle and sacrifices. Modi could have utilized the Planning Commission for the capitalist system which he preaches and follows. But its abolition does not make sense. Many in the country praise Modi for not mentioning Kashmir when Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had devoted 19 sentences, to quote a Pakistani, to Kashmir, something never done before. Modi did not even mention Kashmir in his speech. This has gone down well in the country. But a problem does not disappear if ignored. India has to discuss the problem peacefully, across the table, sooner or later because Pakistan, besieged by several difficulties, finds support in the country. The Hurriyat, which seeks to represent Kashmir, is acquiring fundamentalism and losing its appeal in India as well as among the democratic countries in the West. The Hurriyat would have earned laurels if it had turned out Syed Ali Shah Gilani when he changed his pluralistic line and talked in parochial terms. I agree with the reaction coming from across the border that we over-reacted when we cancelled the talks with Pakistan after its High Commissioner in India invited the Hurriyat leaders. Such talks have been held before even when the Hurriyat spoke about separatism. But Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj gave a clear and categorical reply that the Foreign Secretary-level talks have been suspended. She also explained that the government had changed and its policy was different. I want to recall some instances of the past for Modi and Sushma Swaraj so that some continuity is visible in the policy followed then and now. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif summed up his talks with the late Inder Kumar Gujral years ago at Male. "Aap Kashmir de nahi sakte, aur hum aap se le nahi sakte" (you cannot hand over Kashmir to us and we are in no position to take it from you). Not only that, Nawaz Sharif confronted the army and entered into a time-bound agreement with India to sort out the issue of Kashmir. It's another matter that the army dismissed him and took over the reins of the country. He had to undergo imprisonment for several months. Why should the same Nawaz Sharif devote 19 sentences to Kashmir, the largest reference any Pakistan leader has made at the UN? Apparently, he has developed a vested interest in the Prime Minister's chair that he occupies. The armed forces, driven by anti-India sentiment, do not want a settlement with New Delhi because the dispute is the raison d'être of its power in Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif, elected with the support of the military and the rightists, remained tethered to secularism. He wanted to prove that Islam was not opposed to democracy or secularism which was equivalent to pluralism. Why has he changed? Or why he begs seeing which side is buttered. He never compromised. I personally think the wilderness has taught him a lesson. In the US, Modi was able to create an environment where the BJP has begun to count. His priority for the SAARC countries has also delineated the agenda for the government. It's good that he has dropped hostility towards Pakistan. Now, it is time for the two countries to pick up the threads from where Manmohan Singh had left.
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What my days of truancy taught me THE recent news story about a Tarn Taran boy who ended his life as he was being forced to go to school reminds me of human psychology that is almost always operative in a human mind. Reading it, I turned emotional and nostalgic about my own days of truancy. Those dim memories flashed with full force, making me to vividly recollect how and why I myself used to play truant when I too was forced to go to school as a growing child. Every day of those painful experiences flashed into my mind as if they all are my recent experiences. Truly, human mind encompasses the oceanic world of our happy and painful memories. Playing truant opened a new leaf of joys into my painful school life. What would delight me all the more was that I felt a new sense of freedom then. I was not only saved from the angry beatings of those sturdy boys, but also from the Headmaster, who would teach us mathematics, always carrying a beating cane under his arm pit. The Headmaster's beatings from early childhood, instead of teaching me mathematics, had rather made me forget whatever I knew about mathematics earlier too. Mathematics became my worst enemy once the Headmaster gave me a severe beating. Till date I can never ever forget those painful experiences of physical punishment which makes me shudder. An escape from such bad and sad experiences virtually made my imagination flourish much better than ever earlier. I would enjoy playing crystal balls with another class-fellow who too would share such escapades with me. Both of us would locate such streets and corners of our village where we were sure we won't be found by our parents or elders. Such pleasure-giving escapades would serve us for a day or two, and then we would turn up in the class telling the teachers that we were either ill or some important guests had arrived in our respective homes. The left-out class work we both would copy from the copies of intelligent ones, willingly giving them our share of pocket allowance. As ill luck would have it, while lost in playing crystal balls during our pleasurable escapades one day, my father appeared on the scene. My heart sank, palpitated faster, making me sweat more than ever before. The other class-fellow took to his heels, seeing me caught by the ear by my angry father. Father directly took me to the school, and the Headmaster listened to my tale of woe. When I told him that I was afraid of the bullies, the Headmaster turned kind towards me, and even taught a lesson to those trouble-makers, asking them to come to school with their parents the next day. Not only I and my class-fellow, but many more school-going students are afraid of the bullies or of some rude teachers. Even the parents of many such students beat them if they report about the bad behaviour they face in school. The need of the hour is to see to it psychologically. If we all make rightful efforts, no incident of suicide can ever happen!
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Hong Kong will never be the same again Whatever happens in the coming days – and the predictions are dire – Hong Kong will never be the same after an amazing week. More than a week ago, a barrage of tear gas exploding around a modest student demonstration catapulted Hong Kong into a new place. It’s an ideal world that has no business existing in the heart of a place as hard-headed and money-minded as this. A multi-lane city-centre highway became a people’s park, a flyover ramp became the site of gentle family strolls. Teenagers line this impromptu park with shops that offer cold drinks, hot soup, towels, umbrellas and much more. They are like the million shopkeepers in the real Hong Kong outside, with the difference that no money is offered or taken.
Hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers, the majority very young, have found the courage to imagine and put into practice a way of living and sharing that has nothing in common either with Hong Kong’s cut-throat capitalism nor with the crony communism rampant on the mainland. There are no police in this world. Instead there are first-aid stations staffed by volunteers. More volunteers circulate with signs printed with the number to call if you need legal advice. There are mobile democracy classrooms. The advertising installations for fashion magazines and perfume are plastered with satirical depictions of Hong Kong’s chief executive C Y Leung. The walls of the flyover ramp bear messages of support in 61 languages, including Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Quebecois French and Pashto. Five days ago these occupied streets were kept immaculately clean by volunteers. They are still immaculately clean today. Near the back of the crowd of 5,000 listening to speeches on Sunday night was an elegant middle-aged couple, Makim, 44, and Fafa, his wife, 36. They held up pieces of paper which said simply, “Thank you.” Fafa said: “We’ve come here every day. I own a make-up shop in Causeway Bay” – site of one of the occupation camps – “and of course it’s hurt my business. But we hope they will change Hong Kong. Our bodies are weak but our faith is strong.” Anger brought this place into being, but there is no anger on display, let alone violence or looting. You sense people falling in love. At dawn on Saturday a young couple in Causeway Bay got engaged in the occupied street– the pictures were all over Facebook in no time. But this world with its clear rules – no booze, no graffiti, no mess, signs that say “Please don’t waste produce and leave with your garbage” – could be living through its last hours. On Sunday powerful, realistic men were telling the inhabitants of this world, time’s up. Go home, right away. Former Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang said, “The students’ ideals and aspirations for democracy have been fully understood and are respected. It is now time for them to leave the protest venue. No one would like to see the students getting hurt. I sincerely urge the students to leave immediately. Otherwise there is a danger to their safety.” Before flying to Washington for meetings with the International Monetary Fund, Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah said: “The high speed of development over the past week was completely out of everybody’s expectation. It’s hard not to be concerned that more serious chaos could happen. This event is a grave test for all Hong Kong people. Its handling shall require everyone’s wisdom and patience.” These warnings reinforced that of Mr Leung, who said that, today being a regular working day, the roads around the government offices must be cleared so civil servants can get to their desks. The air was thick with rumours that drastic action could be taken at any time. Professor Michael DeGolyer, a close observer of changing Hong Kong, told The Independent: “People are beginning to sense we are approaching an inflection point. Leung’s statement that if the streets and particularly around government offices are not cleared by tomorrow morning the Hong Kong government may probably lose control of HK is very ominous: that is the condition under which central government forces may be called for assistance. “It is a clear warning that he may already have the backing of central government authorities to legalise the entry of People’s Liberation Army troops or Security Police in large numbers.” There are increasing signs of dissent from ordinary members of the public. The occupation of the working-class commercial district of Mong Kok has seen continual tension between occupiers and those opposed to them, some criminals but others local shopkeepers infuriated by the damage to their businesses. The hostility showed signs of spilling into the Admiralty area with the arrival of a small but noisy demonstration demanding that police clear the roads. Both government and occupation sides were holding out hopes of dialogue. The olive branch was extended by Mr Leung last Thursday, but spurned by the students after the outbreak of Triad-inspired violence in Mong
Kok. Power of protest 2007 December: Beijing says it will allow the people of Hong Kong to directly elect their own leader in 2017 and their legislators by 2020. HK’s Chief Executive Donald Tsang hails this as "a timetable for obtaining universal suffrage", but pro-democracy campaigners express disappointment at timescale. 2009 June: Tens of thousands of people attend a vigil in Hong Kong on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The territory is the only part of China to mark the anniversary. 2013 June: Hundreds march in support of whistleblower Edward Snowden, who fled to Hong Kong after exposing US surveillance programmes. 2014 July: Tens of thousands of protesters take part in what organisers dub Hong Kong's largest pro-democracy rally in a decade. 2014 August: Chinese government rules out a fully democratic election for Hong Kong leader in 2017, by imposing tight rules on nominations of candidates who want to run in the poll. 2014 September: Pro-democracy demonstrators occupy city for several days to protest central government's decision to limit voters' choices in a 2017 leadership election. British past to tense present 1842: China cedes Hong Kong island to Britain after the First Opium War. Thousands of Chinese migrants fleeing domestic upheavals settle in the colony. 1970s: Hong Kong established as an “Asian Tiger” — one of the region's economic powerhouses — with a thriving economy, hi-tech ndustries. 1982: Britain and China begin talks on the future of Hong Kong. 1984: Britain and China sign Joint Declaration on the conditions under which Hong Kong will revert to Chinese rule in 1997. Under the “One country, two systems” formula, Hong Kong will become part of one communist-led country but retain its capitalist economic system and partially democratic political system for 50 years after the handover. 1989: Massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square leads to calls for the introduction of further democratic safeguards in Hong Kong. Sino-British talks preceded the 1984 Joint Declaration on reversion to Chinese rule 1990: Beijing formally ratifies Hong Kong's post-handover mini-Constitution or Basic Law. 1992 December: Hong Kong stock market crashes. 1994 June: After two years of bitter wrangling, Hong Kong's legislature introduces a stripped-down version of Chris Patten's democratic reform package. Widens the franchise but falls far short of universal suffrage. 1997 July: Hong Kong handed back to the Chinese authorities after more than 150 years of British control. Tung Chee-hwa, a Shanghai-born former shipping tycoon with no political experience, is hand-picked by Beijing to rule the territory. following takeover. 2003 July: A day after a visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, 500,000 people march against Article 23. Two government members resign. Bill shelved indefinitely. 2004 April: China rules that its approval must be sought for any changes to Hong Kong's election laws, giving Beijing the right to veto any moves towards more democracy. 2005 March: Amid mounting criticism Tung Chee-hwa resigns, citing failing health. He is succeeded in June by Donald Tsang 2006 March: Pope Benedict XVI elevates Bishop Joseph Zen, the leader of Hong Kong's 300,000 Catholics and an outspoken advocate of democracy, to the post of cardinal. China warns Cardinal Zen to stay out of politics. 2006 July: Tens of thousands of people rally in support of full democracy. 2007 July: Hong Kong marks 10th anniversary of handover to China. New government under Chief Executive Donald Tsang is sworn in. Plans for full democracy unveiled.
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It is now even less like China than it was earlier ALITTLE over 17 years ago I watched from a flyover with a view of Hong Kong harbour as Britain's last governor, Chris Patten, with Prince Charles at his side, sailed away on the royal yacht Britannia.
A couple of hours earlier we had all been in the Wanchai Convention Centre as Hong Kong was handed over from 156 years of British rule to the People's Republic of China. Under the mantra of "One country, two systems", Beijing had promised to honour the territory's special status for the next 50 years. The Basic Law, hammered out in years of negotiations, said the "ultimate aim" was for Hong Kong's Chief Executive, the governor's replacement, to be elected by universal suffrage. Now the flyover and the roads leading to the convention centre are blocked by thousands of demonstrators who say that Beijing has broken its promises. Many of them are too young to remember the handover, giving the lie to those who imagined that Hong Kong's thirst for real democracy would gradually fade away. On the stroke of midnight on June 30, 1997, China’s communist apparatchiks sacked Martin Lee QC and his fellow popularly-elected Democrats on Hong Kong's legislative council, and appointed a puppet legislature instead. They could never have anticipated that the courtly Mr Lee, now 75, would be venerated a generation later by the demonstrators, who say that if people like him cannot seek to be chief executive, “one man one vote” is a sham. With Beijing looking over his shoulder, Mr Leung is not offering any real concessions. The Hong Kong authorities have backed down on previous occasions — in 2012 over plans for compulsory "patriotism" education in schools and in 2003 over a security bill which threatened to stifle freedoms — but this dispute questions the fundamental legitimacy of Beijing's rule over the whole of China. That is why news of the protests has been so vigorously censored on the mainland. The fond hope in 1997 was that over time an increasingly prosperous, confident and relaxed China would grow more like Hong Kong. Instead they have grown apart, to the point where Hong Kong's annual commemorations of the last time students took to the streets demanding freedom, the 1989 Tiananmen slaughter in Beijing, are the only such events anywhere in China. Precisely because China's economy has developed so far since 1989, Beijing can scarcely afford another Tiananmen. But political development has not kept pace, and the crucial question is whether the country's communist hierarchy has the vision and flexibility to overcome this threat to its authority without using violence. — The writer is a former Foreign Editor of The Independent on Sunday.
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Modi was able to formulate a joint statement with President Barack Obama that goes farther than what his predecessors were able to achieve. For the first time an Indian Prime Minister wrote a joint edit with the US President in an American newspaper. This is a healthy practice which the Indian media should follow. 
When a child of seven I was frail and weak-bodied. The physically sound boys of my class, even the senior ones, would bully me, forcing me to part with the meagre pocket allowance that my father would provide me after I made requests time and again. Those torturous experiences would pain me all the more when I would see during the recess time those bullies relishing the choicest cakes at the cost of my pocket allowance. This forced me to take the shelter of truancy, as that would save me from the bullying behaviour of those sturdy boys, as also would allow me to spend my pocket allowance according to my own choice and convenience.
1898: China leases the New Territories, together with 235 islands, to Britain for 99 years from July 1. 