EDITORIAL 31.03.10

Please contact the list owner of subscription and unsubscription at: editorial@samarth.co.in

 

media watch with peoples input                an organization of rastriya abhyudaya

 

Editorial

month march 31, edition 000469, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

Editorial is syndication of all daily- published newspaper's Editorial at one place.

For ENGLISH  EDITORIAL  http://editorialsamarth.blogspot.com

      For TELUGU EDITORIAL http://editorial-telugu-samarth.blogspot.com

 

 

THE PIONEER

1. PERSIAN GULF
2. NEFARIOUS NEXUS
3. POLITICAL WILL REQUIRED - ASHOK K MEHTA
4. UMA, BJP MUST JOIN FORCES - SUDHANSU R DAS
5. JUMBO TALES OF ABUSE - VR JAYARAJ
6. BENJAMIN'S OPTIONS - GWYNNE DYER
7. TIME TO STOP BEING PASSIVE - NIKOLAI TROITSKY
8. CLIMATE RHYTHM OUT OF TUNE - SACHIN JAIN

MAIL TODAY

1. SONIA MUST PUT HER RETURN AS NAC CHIEF TO GOOD USE
2. AVOIDABLE CONTROVERSY
3. ADOLESCENT PREOCCUPATION
4. COOPERATION A MUST FOR GOOD CYBER SECURITY - BY SUBIMAL BHATTACHARJEE
5. DECCAN BUZZ - A SRINIVASA RAO
6. DASNA JAIL ' SUICIDE' GETS A POISON TWIST - BY AKASH VASHISHTHA IN GHAZIABAD

THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. TWO'S COMPANY
2. LOVE ALL
3. RESURRECTION OF THE STATE - SHAIBAL GUPTA
4. 'FREE ISN'T ALWAYS GOOD ENOUGH' - RONOJOY SEN
5. PUBLIC & PRIVATE - JUG SURAIYA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. WAITING TO EXHALE
2. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
3. PROTECTING THE PM - S SUBRAMANIAN
4. AN ARSENAL CALLED DECEPTION - THOMAS MATHEW
5. CAPE OF GOOD HOPE - N CHANDRA MOHAN

INDIAN EXPRESS

1. FREE THE ADVICE
2. NUCLEAR SUMMER
3. THAT NEW SCHOOL FEELING - SANJAYGDHANDEU
4. MOUNTAINS OF TERROR - SUDEEP PAUL
5. CONVERT MUNICIPAL WASTE TO WEALTH - RANESH NAIR
6. THE SANDRA BULLOCK TRADE-OFF - DAVID BROOKS
7. THE GREAT GAME FOLIO - C. RAJA MOHAN
8. JOBS IN THE CITY
9. MEMORIES OF REVOLUTION - ASHIM CHATTERJEE

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. THE RIGHT KIND OF ADVICE
2. GET THE ENVIRONMENT RIGHT
3. FINMIN'S CONJURING ON BORROWING - SUBHOMOY BHATTACHARJEE
4. NOW THAT FARM PRICES ARE FALLING - YOGINDER K ALAGH
5. TAX DEPARTMENT LOSES A BATTLE - TANU PANDEY

THE HINDU

1. RIGHT DECISION
2. LAWLESS STATE
3. YOUR RIOT WAS WORSE THAN MINE
4. A DAMAGING REPORT - MAHADEVAN RAMASWAMY AND RAMASWAMY R. IYER
5. HAS THE RECESSION ARRESTED CRIME? - TAMMY JOYNER
6. FATIMA MEER: ACADEMIC AND ACTIVIST - ARJUMAND WAJID

DNA

1. OVERCONNECTED WORLD
2. ENDING CASTE TYRANNY
3. BJP'S LOST OPPORTUNITY - S NIHAL SINGH
4. WHY FOREIGN BUSINESSES TRIP UP IN CHINA - VENKATESAN VEMBU

THE TRIBUNE

1. THEY HAD IT COMING
2. N-DEAL: ANOTHER HURDLE GOES
3. SONIA BACK IN NAC
4. THE INDIA-BHARAT DIVIDE - BY ASH NARAIN ROY
5. THE PORTRAIT - BY HARISH DHILLON
6. AN UNEQUAL FIGHT - BY DINESH MANHOTRA
7. ARMY CAN'T DO WITHOUT 'SAHAYAKS' - BY COL PRITAM BHULLAR (RETD)
8. DELHI DURBAR - PIL MISUSE

MUMBAI MIRROR

1. YOU MAY NOT LIKE IT

BUSINESS STANDARD

2. THE REAL IRAQI FREEDOM
3. PROTECTIONISM REDUX
4. WHAT FOOD COUPONS CAN AND CANNOT DO - SUBIR ROY
5. INDIA'S CENTURY - JAIMINI BHAGWATI
6. SHOULD OVERSEAS DEALS BE TAXED?
7. LUNG SPACE FOR CITIES – M J ANTONY

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. IT'S 'PUNNY' HEADLINE TIME!
2. LESSONS FROM MOSCOW BLASTS
3. STANDARD CHARTER?
4. WHITHER THE PRAKASH KARAT LINE? - C L MANOJ
5. WHAT THE GREEN REVOLUTION TEACHES US - ARVIND PANAGARIYA
6. HARMONISING ONE'S FAITH WITH SCIENCE - VITHAL C NADKARNI
7. WILL RAISE PENETRATION OF INDIAN GENERIC
8. HUGE OPPORTUNITY FOR OUTSOURCING COS
9. INDIA GAINS FROM US HEALTH BILL?
10. ZAIN'S A BETTER BET THAN MTN: SUNIL BHARTI MITTAL - SANDEEP GURUMURTHI & SHAILI CHOPRA
11. US-CHINA TRADE WAR CAN SHAKE UP MARKETS: NOURIEL ROUBINI - ANDY MUKHERJEE & SHAJI VIKRAMAN

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. AFTER MOSCOW: UNITE, TACKLE ROOT OF TERROR
2. TOWERING INFERNOS - BY INDER MALHOTRA
3. PROFESSIONAL TRIUMPH OR MARITAL BLISS? - BY DAVID BROOKS
4. HISTORY'S DANCE WITH EQUALITY - SHOVANA NARAYAN
5. A SUFI WHO WAS BELOVED OF GOD - BY SADIA DEHLVI
6. THE ORDER OF THINGS - BY K.C. SINGH

THE STATESMAN

1. WIDOW WORE BLACK
2. ARSENAL BLAZES
3. BACKDOOR TROT
4. HIGHER STILL HIGHER - BY PR DUBHASHI
5. CONSTITUTION,QUOTAS AND COURTS - RAJINDER PURI
6. SILLY SEASON FOR SELLING - SUDIPTA DEY
7. GRAFT IN CHINA... A WAY OF LIFE?

THE TELEGRAPH

1. ICON FEVER
2. ENEMY WITHIN
3. A TRUSTED ALLY - K.P. NAYAR
4. INSIDE THE SCRABBLE ASYLUM - STEPHEN HUGH-JONES

DECCAN HERALD

1. TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE?
2. MOSCOW MAYHEM
3. DEFENDING RAISINA HILL - BY P P BALACHANDRAN
4. THE BLOSSOMING OF SINO-IRANIAN RELATIONS - BY RICHARD HEYDARIAN
5. MEETING OF EAST AND WEST - BY SHOBA NAIDU

HAARETZ

1. NEEDED: AN ISRAELI PEACE PLAN
2. WHAT IS BARAK DOING IN NETANYAHU'S 'REPUB-LIKUD' GOVERNMENT? - BY AMIR OREN
3. AN IMPASSE WITH WASHINGTON - BY MOSHE ARENS
4. HAPPY FESTIVAL OF FREEDOM - BY MERAV MICHAELI
5. WHERE'S THE SOLIDARITY? - BY SHLOMO AVINERI

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. WISHING DOESN'T MAKE IT LAW
2. THE MOSCOW BOMBINGS
3. ENFORCING SCHOOL STANDARDS, AT LAST
4. LO-SWEET, LO-FAT, LO-SALT
5. WHAT MAKES CHECHEN WOMEN SO DANGEROUS? - BY ROBERT A. PAPE, LINDSEY O'ROURKE AND JENNA MCDERMIT
6. SHOULD THERE BE AN INQUISITION FOR THE POPE? - BY MAUREEN DOWD
7. THIS TIME WE REALLY MEAN IT - BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I.THE NEWS

1. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS
2. NOT SO 'SPECIAL'
3. THE SKY IS NOT FALLING, IT'S JUST DEMOCRACY - AMEER BHUTTO
4. BOMB WITH THE FUSE LIT - ZAFAR HILALY
5. JUDICIARY, JUSTICE AND THE PUBLIC - DR A Q KHAN
6. THE TALE OF MISSING CONSULATES - M SAEED KHALID
7. THE THIRD SUMMER OF DISCONTENT - ANJUM NIAZ
8. JIHAD JANE - LUBNA JERAR NAQVI

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. DR KHAN A FREE MAN
2. INDIA TO BUILD ANOTHER DAM ON CHENAB
3. SBP SEES LIGHT AT THE END OF TUNNEL
4. FROM BACKBURNER TO COLD STORAGE! - KHALID SALEEM
5. US EFFORTS TO SNAP TALIBAN-QAEDA ALIGNMENT - ASIF HAROON RAJA
6. PAKISTAN IS NOT A 'PRIORITY' - ALI SUKHANVER
7. INTERNATIONAL ARMS CONTROL - MAHMOOD HUSSAIN
8. KARZAI FLOUT US INFLUENCE - DEXTER & MARK

THE INDEPENDENT

1. BURIGANGA'S WOES
2. DAYS OF DARKNESS
3. A 500-RUPEE NOTE..!
4. USE OF DUAL-USE CARS IN REDUCING TRAFFIC CONGESTION - PROF BIJON B. SARMA
5. THE END OF AN ERA IN FINANCE - DANI RODRIK

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. THE RIGHT DECISION ON DRAGAN
2. BOGUS GREENS SHOULD BACK OFF
3. OUR EXPERTS NEED TO SING FROM THE SAME SONG SHEET

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. EASY COME, EASY GO
2. POLICY BUDGIES STILL BEING SMUGGLED
3. A VERDICT SHOWING CHINA IS STILL MADE OF STEEL
4. DROUGHT OUT OF SIGHT, NOT OUT OF MIND

THE GUARDIAN

1. IN PRAISE OF … VICENTE TODOLÍ
2. CONGO: MASSACRE IN THE JUNGLE
3. NATIONAL CARE SERVICE: DEATH TAX RIP

THE KOREA HERALD

1. CELEBRITY SUICIDE
2. A CASE OF CORRUPTION
3. NEW TREMORS IN GLOBAL FINANCE, TRADE - MICHAEL BOSKIN
4. ARE KOREANS REALLY FAST WHEN NEEDED? - KIM SEONG-KON

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. TOUGH TIMES FOR PRO SPORTS
2. MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY
3. WHY CHINA KILLS A CHICKEN TO SCARE MONKEYS - BY TOM PLATE
4. A SERVICE REVOLUTION IS SWEEPING SOUTH ASIA - BY EJAZ GHANI
5. THE POPE'S EASTER MYSTERY - BY KEVIN RAFFERTY
6. CAN TURKEY FULFILL ITS TRANS-ATLANTIC PROMISE? - BY KEMAL KIRISCI, NATHALIE TOCCI, AND JOSHUA WALKER

THE JAKARTA POST

1. YES, RI NEEDS TO PLAY A GLOBAL ROLE, BUT HOW, AND WHEN? - YASMI ADRIANSYAH
2. KOPASSUS AND THE LEGEND OF 'MPU GANDRING' - ABOEPRIJADI SANTOSO
3. ASIA'S 'HOLY GRAIL' OF REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE - EVAN A. LAKSMANA

CHINA DAILY

1. HUNT DOWN TERRORISTS
2. AN IGNORANCE OF LIVES
3. END OF HOUSING BUBBLE?
4. THE SURPLUS OF PROMISE
5. ADDRESS THE SOCIAL CONFLICTS DUTIFULLY - BY CHAN CHOI-HI (CHINA DAILY)
6. STOP BLAMING CHINA FOR AMERICA'S WOES - BY COLIN SPEAKMAN (CHINA DAILY)
7. AN OPEN INVESTMENT RACE - BY ZHANG MONAN (CHINA DAILY)

DAILY MIRROR

1. SHAME
2. INDIA'S FAILED DIPLOMACY TAINTS INDO -AMERICA PARTNERSHIP
3. LEGISLATIVE POWER OF PARLIAMENT IS NOT ABSOLUTE - BY MHM SALMAN
4. RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE MODERN DAY ELECTRICITY CONSUMER
5. WHY NOT A GOVERNMENT OF COHABITATION?  

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

PERSIAN GULF

A GAP NEW DELHI AND TEHRAN NEED TO ADDRESS

The cancellation of Foreign Minister SM Krishna's visit to Iran after Tehran changed dates twice and made its reluctance to play host obvious indicates an emerging challenge for Indian diplomacy. In a sense, the Iranian Government acted in bad faith. It initiated the process of the visit by inviting Mr Krishna for Navroz — traditionally marking New Year in that country — and then altered the dates. When the new dates were accepted, Tehran changed them again and this time it was inconvenient for New Delhi to play along, given Mr Krishna's prior commitments. The Foreign Minister's visit was supposed to be a precursor to a prime ministerial trip to Iran. Obviously, the entire time-table will now have to be revisited. Iran is making it clear that it is not going to forgive India easily for voting against it at the International Atomic Energy Agency and seeking sanctions and action against the regime in Tehran for its clandestine nuclear weapons programme. Iran has consistently violated its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its pursuit of the Bomb is worrying for not just Israel and the United States but also deeply disquieting in terms of India's own security. A Shia nuclear-weapons state will be seen as a grave provocation by Sunni Governments in West Asia. There will be pressure, particularly on Saudi Arabia, to take counteractive measures. The secret — or perhaps non-so-secret — protocol between the Saudis and the Pakistanis whereby Riyadh funded and supported Islamabad's development of a nuclear arsenal that would then provide umbrella cover to the paramount Arab kingdom could then become explicit. A larger arms race in the Muslim world would result and Pakistani's diplomatic space as well as ability to leverage its nuclear infrastructure — aimed primarily at India — would increase. As such, particularly at a time when it was negotiating a civilian nuclear deal with the United States and the international community, and needed to provide evidence of its being a responsible stakeholder in the nuclear enterprise, India could just not have ignored Iran's transgressions, much less approbated them.

This background is important and suggests a contradiction that will always remain. Nevertheless, India and Iran have a compelling medium-term congruence of interests in Afghanistan. In case American troops withdraw or scale back their presence in Kabul, in case the Taliban — or least a faction of the Taliban beholden to the Generals in Rawalpindi and deriving ideological sustenance from a particularly extreme version of Sunni Islam — takes change, both India and Iran are going to see a critical worsening of their security environments. They will have to work together, as they did in the 1990s and in the period leading up to 9/11, to build proxies and create capacities for alternative players in the Afghan polity. Unfortunately, Tehran's blind antagonism to Washington, DC, a result of the limited, provincial world-view of its current President, is preventing it from taking a clear-eyed view of the Afghan situation. It wants Western forces to quit at once, not realising this is probably going to happen anyway in 2011 and that it will inevitably create a power vacuum in Kabul. In these circumstances, India and Iran need to discuss Afghanistan as well as perhaps the scenario in Pakistani Balochistan. However, this conversation cannot even begin if Iran decides to be bull-headed and seeks not tactical alliance with India but strategic subservience from it.

***************************************

THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

NEFARIOUS NEXUS

BELLARY COULD GO THE GOA WAY

There is no denying the fact that politics today is viewed as a murky profession wherein the only way one can climb up the ladder of success is by employing money, muscle power and a good dose of deceit. Some might say, and justifiably so, that this is an unfair generalisation. After all, not all politicians deserve to be tarred with the same brush. But one has to accept the fact that this is the majority perception. And not helping matters are cases like that of the Reddy brothers who have no qualms about liberally using all resources at their disposal to serve their political and business interests. At the outset, it is quite apparent that things are not quite kosher in Bellary, the mining barons-cum-politicians' fiefdom along the Karnataka-Andhra Pradesh border. The Reddy brothers have allegedly pushed their mining activities into large tracts of reserved forest area in violation of the Forest Conservation Act. The allegation has forced the Supreme Court to stay all further mining activities of the Obulapuram Mining Corporation, the company owned by the Reddy brothers, and order an expert committee headed by the Survey of India to ascertain the veracity of the alleged encroachment of forest land. But it would appear that someone is averse to letting the law of the land take its course. On Monday, a group of unidentified men physically assaulted the Tapal brothers who are responsible for initiating judicial proceedings against the Reddys. The former were waiting to meet Survey of India officials when the attack took place. It is clear that the aim here was to intimidate the Tapal brothers, perhaps into withdrawing their case against OMC. Yet, one cannot overlook the fact that the Tapal brothers are themselves in the mining business and are close to a local Congress leader.

What we essentially have here is a heady cocktail of business and politics, precisely the thing that the common man has come to despise. When business and politics mix it automatically results in the creation of lobbies and mafia that not only squeeze the system dry but also spawn a culture of criminality. Goa is a classic example of this where the nexus between the sand mining mafia, the property developers and the politicians has completely spoiled the tourist paradise and given rise to a host of criminal activities. Unless there is expeditious judicial intervention, Bellary too will head the Goa way. This is the last thing that Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa wants. His Government came to power on the plank of inclusive development and clean governance. Mr Yeddyurappa is a seasoned statesman and knows the pitfalls of allowing a nefarious miners-politicians nexus to flourish. He must do his best to ensure that the law of the land prevails.

***************************************

            THE PIONEER

COLUMN

POLITICAL WILL REQUIRED

ASHOK K MEHTA

With Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa on an unprecedented winning spree on the battlefield and at the hustings, can he secure a two-thirds majority in the parliamentary elections on April 8? The complex proportional representation system virtually rules out such an outcome on the strength of just his own party. Mr Rajapaksa wants to drop reliance on defectors and inconvenient allies which had forced him to appoint 113 Ministers out of his alliance's 131 legislators. Technically he needs another 19 seats to reach the magic figure of 151 in a 225-member House. So rampant is political opportunism that UNF leader Ranil Wickremesinghe has made his party members sign an affidavit to preempt any post-poll defections.

Sri Lanka is divided into 168 constituencies among 109 districts. Of the 225 seats, 196 are directly contested and the remaining 19 come from the national list. The three main parties in the south of the country are Mr Rajapaksa's UPFA, UNF, and Gen Sarath Fonseka's DNA. With the General in military custody facing charges of treason and fraud, the Fonseka factor was given an inadvertent boost by his arrest.

The election excitement is really in the north and east where, despite voters' lists being incomplete, Tamils and Muslims will be voting independently for the first time. Big Brother LTTE is not watching. The North and the East are represented by 31 parliamentarians of which the TNA, the LTTE proxy, held 23 seats in the dissolved House with the balance split between Muslims and Sinhalese. This time around, the TNA has split into four groups and reverted to its old name of Federal Party.

The non-LTTE groups in the fray are EPRLF, TULF, PLOTE and other smaller parties. EPDP led by Jaffna's own Douglas Devananda, a Government Minister and a future Chief Minister of the North, will contest under the UPFA. In the East, Chief Minister Pillaiyan, the renegade LTTE commander, will fight under his TMVP banner. Unlike in the past, the Tamil vote will get divided among different parties while the Muslims will vote either for the UPFA or UNF, or the SLMC.

Current poll predictions give the UPFA an outright margin over other parties but missing the two-thirds majority target. Provincial elections in the North will be held later in the year depending on the outcome of the parliamentary elections. Many reasons are being suggested for the two-thirds majority required to change the 1978 Constitution devised by President Junius Jayawardene. Mr Rajapaksa, like his predecessor Chandrika Kumaratunga, wants to curtail the executive presidency; change the electoral system and enact Amendments enabling power-sharing with the Tamils; and last but not the least, remove the limitation in the Constitution restricting the President to two terms in office.

People fear that Sri Lanka could be drifting towards a single-party state with a nominal Opposition and power concentrated in the ruling Rajapaksa family. Blinded by the success of the military solution, Mr Rajapaksa has completely ignored the question of national reconciliation. His track record towards devolution indicates that he has sought to buy time pretending that the ethnic problem did not exist and it was terrorism which had to be quelled by crushing the LTTE.

To impress India and the internal community he appointed two panels — the All Party Representative Committee and an Experts Committee — whose recommendations have become archival material. Most recently, he announced the establishment of yet another committee to study the root causes of the ethnic conflict. This is a big contradiction because Mr Rajapaksa has said there is no ethnic conflict. He has dazzled his southern admirers, juggling with the four Ds: Demilitarisation, Development, Democracy and Devolution, forgetting the last D.

India has been taken for a ride with frequent pledges that the 13th Amendment would be implemented soon. Mr Rajapaksa made this commitment to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who announced it in Parliament last year. Foreign Minister SM Krishna stated in Parliament last month: "We keep urging the Sri Lankan Government for a political solution." Members in the Tamil Nadu Assembly periodically endorse the same sentiments.

The 13th Amendment enacted in 1988 ensured that powers relating to police, land and finance were not devolved to Mr Varatharaja Perumal, then Chief Minister of the erstwhile North-Eastern Province. Twenty years on, Chief Minister Pillaiyan has even less power than Mr Perumal, the difference being that Mr Pillaiyan's one-time mentor, Karuna, who was made the Minister for national integration had said: "Tamils are interested in development, not devolution".

New Delhi has good reason to be angry over devolution being pushed to the back-burner despite its unpublicised role in helping Sri Lanka win the war against the LTTE. This was a big strategic investment, even bigger than the deployment of the IPKF and sacrifice of 1,200 lives. All that South Block likes to hear are rosy commentaries on the unique and time-tested relationship between 'sister countries'.

It is the UN and the West that Mr Rajapaksa has steadfastly defied over transparency and accountability in the conduct of the war who are now turning the screws on the Government over alleged violations of human rights. The US and the UK keep pressing Colombo on reconciliation, early rehabilitation of 11,000 LTTE rebels and a free and fair trial of Gen Fonseka. UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon is to establish an experts' panel to advice him on alleged excesses during the war. The EU has withdrawn trade concessions which will hit Sri Lankan textile workers. Former Chief Justice of Sri Lanka Sarath Silva recently observed that the Government has to uphold human rights and the right to freedom of expression in order to reclaim trade benefits.

Stung by Western criticism of its record in governance — not lifting the emergency and anti-terrorism laws even one year after the war and creating new high security zones in the north and the east — Colombo has employed an image makeover company Bell Pottinger. Tourism has registered a 68 per cent increase and National Geographic billed Sri Lanka as the number two tourist destination in the world. Mr Rajapaksa has promised doubling the per capita income from $ 2,000 to $ 4,000 in his current term.

Sri Lanka becoming another Singapore is possible if there is genuine reconciliation and power-sharing with Tamils, including winning over the Tamil diaspora. With or without a two-thirds majority in next month's elections, Mr Rajapaksa must show he has the political will to win the hearts and minds of the Tamils.

********************************************

THE PIONEER

COLUMN

UMA, BJP MUST JOIN FORCES

SUDHANSU R DAS

Had the Sangh Parivar taken the initiative to get the BJP's stalwarts on the same page before the last Lok Sabha election, the UPA would not have returned to power. Senior BJP leader LK Advani has admitted it was the disunity among party leaders that led to the BJP's defeat. Over the years, BJP leaders have been quoting historical facts to explain the lack of unity among Hindus, which they say is the source of misery in our society. But they too have fallen victim to the same disease.

Both the BJP and its former leader Uma Bharati wasted seven precious years in trying to decide if they should unite for a common cause. This exemplifies the fact that the Sangh has failed to convince the people that Hindutva is synonymous with universal brotherhood. Whereas, the BJP has hardly succeeded in countering the malicious campaign of its opponents who have unjustly tried to equate Hindutva with communalism.

The absence of Govindacharya has been extremely costly for the BJP. The former was one of the key strategists of the party. Govindacharya was relegated to oblivion due to the BJP's dilution of political integrity. Being a cadre-based party, this is something that the BJP can ill-afford.

Politics of convenience is something that the RSS cadre, who have given their blood and sweat for the BJP's growth, can never endorse. Ms Bharati enjoyed the backing of the RSS cadre due to her clean image. When she first came to Bhopal she was up against huge odds. Then Chief Minister Digvijay Singh had turned the State into an impregnable fortress for the Congress. But Ms Bharati, with the support of the RSS, was able to breach this fortress. She comprehensively exposed the Chief Minister's lies about development in the State. As a result, Ms Bharati was able to win a thumping majority and become the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh.

But the fire-brand sadhvi did have her shortcomings. She was too quick to judge her party colleagues in the BJP. She should have realised that she was part of a political party and not a sat sangh. She and the BJP must come together to give the country the political direction it needs.

***************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

JUMBO TALES OF ABUSE

DESPITE STRINGENT LAWS, ELEPHANTS ARE ILL-FED AND CONTINUE TO BE PARADED DURING FESTIVAL SEASON EVEN WHEN THEY ARE IN MUSTH. THE CONDITION OF WILD PACHYDERMS IS NO BETTER AS THEY FACE INCREASED DANGER OF POACHING. THIS IS THE SITUATION IN KERALA WHICH HAS A REPUTATION OF BEING AN ELEPHANT-LOVING SOCIETY!

VR JAYARAJ

Elephants are revered and loved in Kerala and have been an integral part of its culture for centuries but they are perhaps the most persecuted animal species in God's Own Country nowadays. There are more than 700 tamed elephants in the State and a good majority of them are victims of persecution in one way or another: Mahouts torture them for weird reasons, owners force them to do festival jobs even when they are in musth just for money or caretakers make them starve without giving them adequate water and food. They are made to walk long distances on asphalted roads under the blazing sun or forced to stand for long hours on hot concrete floors or grounds packed with large numbers of people at festival venues in the summer when temperatures soar above 40 degrees Celsius, and often the owners and caretakers 'forget' to sprinkle water on their bodies or to keep the floor they stand on wet to keep them cool as the law stipulates. Added to these cruelties is the threat of deliberate refusal of treatment when the pachyderms fall ill and reduction in fodder when they get old simply — so that death comes quickly — for the owners' greed for insurance money and the good sum the sale of ivory could bring.

According to statistics, 81 elephants — more than 11 per cent of the State's total tamed elephant population — died in 2009, and Wildlife Department officials say that there is no justification for such mortality rates in Kerala. This becomes even stranger when one considers the fact that 78 out of them were aged between 19 and 38 years, while the average life-span of Asian elephants is said to be 70 years. Veterinary doctors specialising in elephant diseases say that there has been no record of the spread of any serious elephant diseases last year.

"Keeping elephants is not really a profitable business now as it used to be earlier," says Mr Anantha Padmanabhan, an elephant-lover in Thrissur, known as the capital of Kerala's elephant-rearing business. "The exhaustive mechanisation of logging and timber business has made tamed elephants almost jobless. The only way for the owner to make money from elephants is by using them for temple festivals but it is a seasonal affair. So it is normal for the owners to put them to festival jobs in hostile climatic conditions and even when they are in musth without giving them adequate fodder or water without any break," he says.

There are Central and State laws to prevent cruelty to elephants but almost often these are disregarded. According to the Kerala laws, elephants should not be made to walk on asphalted roads for long distances but normally this is not adhered to. Elephants are not to be paraded under open sun for festivals between 11:00 am and 3:00 pm but this rule is violated just because the main function (Ezhunnallippu) of temple festivals is held during these hours. Owners, caretakers and festival committees are required to ensure that water is being sprinkled frequently on the elephants during Ezhunnallippu on hot days and that the ground where they stand should be constantly kept wet but this is conveniently forgotten. The law has strictly banned the use of elephants in musth for festivals but even officials admit that owners manage to violate this rule by organising fake certificates from veterinarians.

In the context of rising complaints about abuse and torture of tamed elephants in Kerala, the Animal Welfare Board of India last month instructed the Kerala Government to strictly enforce its rules, including the one that elephants used for festivals should have registration as per the rules pertaining to performing elephants. Though the Kerala Wildlife Department passed on the instruction to authorities in all districts, the tragic fact remains that not even a single elephant in Kerala is registered with the Animal Welfare Board. "But this has not caused hurdles to the conduct of any festival this season. Almost all the temple festivals of the season are over and all these festivals had paraded caparisoned elephants," Mr O Sreenivasan, a Malappuram-based vet, points out.

If this is the plight of the tamed in elephants in God's Own Country, where the pachyderm's picture is part of the official Government seal, the condition of wild elephants is not any better. On the one side, elephants in the jungles of Kerala are running helter-skelter for water and fodder as temperatures are rising to unprecedented levels due to large-scale deforestation. On the other, incidents of poaching for ivory are increasing by each passing year. The Kerala Forest Department had found the bodies of at least 12 wild elephants with tusks and teeth removed in the past three years. The department had identified at least three cases of elephant-poaching last year. Officials say that this number related to elephants that died of natural causes or in accidents but they have no idea as to how many elephants could have been killed by the poachers in the past three years. One official put the number of wild elephants that had fallen victims to poachers in the past three years at above 30.

 

***************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

BENJAMIN'S OPTIONS

CHOICES GALORE FOR ISRAEL TO DEAL WITH US CONFRONTATION

GWYNNE DYER

By the time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Washington on Wednesday night, after postponing his departure twice, there was general agreement in the American media that his visit had been disastrous. Congress gave him its uncritical support, of course, but his meeting with US President Barack Obama went into overtime and ended without a photo op, a joint statement, or even a public handshake.

At the same time, the British Government was warning its citizens that they risk having their passports cloned if they travel to Israel. Twelve members of the Israeli hit-team that murdered Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January used passports that had been cloned by Israeli officials at Ben Gurion airport from genuine British passports.

"Such misuse of British passports is intolerable," said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. "The fact that this was done by a country which is a friend, with significant diplomatic, cultural, business and personal ties to the UK, only adds insult to injury." He then ordered the expulsion of the head of the intelligence services at the Israeli Embassy in London.

The French and German Governments may do the same thing, for the Israeli assassins in Dubai used French and German passports too. But none of that will bother most Israelis, since they already see the Europeans as hypocritical and disloyal. "I don't want to offend dogs on this issue, since some dogs are utterly loyal," said Mr Aryeh Eldad, leader of the far-right HaTikva Party. "Who are (the British) to judge us on the war on terror?"

But falling out with the loyal American dogs is a different matter entirely. Israel depends very heavily on the United States for weapons, financial aid and diplomatic backing, and now Mr Netanyahu finds himself in a contest of wills with Mr Obama.

His problems with Washington became acute with the announcement, during Vice-President Joe Biden's visit to Israel earlier this month, that 1,600 more homes for Jews would be built in occupied East Jerusalem. It was an "insult to the US," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as it deliberately sabotaged American attempts to restart peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

That, at any rate, is Washington's interpretation of the event, and it certainly does resemble Mr Netanyahu's tactics during his previous stint as Prime Minister in 1996-1999. His goal has always been to expand Israeli settlement and control in the occupied territories and ward off any peace deal that hinders that process. So now that he finds himself in a direct confrontation with the White House, what are his remaining options?

One, obviously, is simply to give in and stop expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, while peace talks with the Palestinians proceed. That would cause the immediate collapse of the far-Right coalition Government Mr Netanyahu now leads, but an alternative coalition including the centrist Kadima Party would not be hard to construct.

The main obstacle to that option is Mr Netanyahu himself. Despite his reputation as a slippery character, he has always been rock-solid on the issue of land, particularly with regard to Jerusalem. "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital," he said in Washington on Monday — and for him, that includes the eastern part of Jerusalem that Israel conquered in 1967 and subsequently "annexed."

International law does not allow that, and other countries do not recognise it. More than 40 years after the "annexation," not one foreign embassy has moved up from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But Mr Netanyahu has nailed his colours to the mast on this subject, so unless Mr Obama gives in the Israeli-American split will continue.

What other options does Mr Netanyahu have? He can just wait for the wind to change in Washington. The mid-term Congressional elections get closer by the month, and Democratic members of Congress who fear that the powerful pro-Israeli lobby will subsidise the campaigns of their opponents will be begging Mr Obama to let Mr Netanyahu have his way.

It would be humiliating for the White House, but it's almost traditional for American Presidents to be humbled by Israel and they all survived the experience. And if, by some chance, Mr Obama sticks to his guns and the confrontation really becomes a political liability for Mr Netanyahu, he can always change the subject entirely by attacking Iran.

That is what he'd really like to do anyway. Whenever possible, he changes the subject from the thorny question of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to the more comfortable topic of Iran's alleged drive for nuclear weapons. This is an area in which Israeli and American views are very close (which is not to say that they are necessarily accurate).

Changing the subject in that way would require unilateral Israeli air strikes against Iran, and lots of them. Washington would be privately furious that Israel had embroiled it in a dangerous confrontation, but publicly it would have to back Israel's play. So perhaps we should hope that Mr Obama backs down at some earlier stage in the proceedings.

After all, it's not as if the Israeli-Palestinian "proximity talks" that this confrontation is all about were actually going to produce anything useful.

-- The writer is an independent journalist based in London.

 

**************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

TIME TO STOP BEING PASSIVE

AN EMERGENCY SITUATION CAN OCCUR AT ANY MOMENT AND, THEREFORE, WE MUST TAKE PRECAUTIONS OURSELVES AND ALWAYS BE PREPARED FOR THIS, WRITES NIKOLAI TROITSKY

Two explosions rocked the Moscow metro on Monday morning, killing more than 30 people and injuring dozens more, according to official sources. Spokesmen for law enforcement agencies described them as a carefully planned terrorist attack.

 

The strike was dealt with brutal precision in order to produce as many victims as possible. On the first day of a working week, during the rush hour — between 8 am and 9 am — when thousands of people in the city are travelling to work. What is more, they chose two of the busiest change stations on the same line. Both of them are in the heart of the capital.

Why did this happen today? The attacks could have happened last week or next week. They are not tied to any date or anniversary. We needn't look for any logic there. The trouble is that both last week and next week we would have found ourselves equally unprepared for this tragedy. "We" in this case refers to all of us: Special services, city authorities and everyone who lives in or is visiting the capital. Everyone except those who have taken a long time to carefully engineer the tragedy.

This metropolis with its millions of people is powerless before terrorists. It is impossible to seal all directions, all entries and exits, all public places. It is impossible to check every metro passenger. If metal detectors are installed at all stations and start to inspect the passengers, the city will grind to a halt.

No matter how effective and professionally competent the security agencies might be, they are not in a position to prevent every threat. Even in smaller states like Israel, whose residents live with an inborn expectation of terrorist attacks, where practically every door is closely guarded, there are occasional failures. Blasts tear through cafes, bus stops and night clubs. What then can be said of this vast country and a huge city like Moscow?

Does that mean that no one can do anything, and all that remains to us is to passively wait for trouble to come? No, it doesn't. Such an approach is equivalent to a piece of black humour advice: In case of a nuclear explosion cover yourself and start crawling towards a cemetery. But you can protect yourself against standard terrorist acts, unlike nuclear explosions. Certainly, there is no 100 per cent guarantee. But every opportunity must be exploited to minimise the deadly risk.

What must not be done is to place all responsibility for our security on city services, the Emergencies Ministry, the Federal Security Service, on officials and law enforcement agencies. We must take precautions ourselves. Regrettably, such is the reality of life. In this sense, life in Moscow is no less and no more dangerous than in any metropolis. The danger lurks on the streets, in the metro and its myriad of public places.

An emergency situation can occur at any moment and one has to be always prepared for it. And not only mentally. You should carry personal identification papers on you, have information on your blood type, and a notebook with telephone numbers to call or contact in case your mobile is damaged.

Many of our offices hold regular fire drills for their personnel. These are usually taken with a grain of salt and treated as a formality. And when disaster strikes such lack of forethought now and again backfires with tragic consequences.

As practice shows, terrorist attacks in public places take place as often as fires in offices. So why not hold drills for explosion warnings? People need to know where to run, what to do and how to keep themselves safe. Certainly not everything can be foreseen, but this does not mean we should give up in despair and do nothing.

Inactivity spells impotence. The fact is that we cannot put up anything against our strange brand of terrorists, the likes of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. They always try to remain anonymous and make no political demands. This is more terrible than the notorious Russian 'rebellion'. When a series of detonations causes a huge city to shudder and collapse and its residents to flee in panic, such acts must rightly be called ruthless, though, unfortunately, they are not senseless.

 The writer is a Moscow-based commentator on current affairs.

 

**************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

CLIMATE RHYTHM OUT OF TUNE

BUNDELKHAND FARMERS FACE THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL WARMING, WRITES SACHIN JAIN

Bundelkhand once used to yield the highest agricultural produce both for domestic consumption and export. But today, beset with relentless drought and a mindless development trajectory, it is identified as one of the most backward regions in north India.

The region represents a textbook case of adverse impact of climate change. With the din at the international negotiations having died down and settled into individual nations seeking solutions and setting their own targets, the focus perhaps now needs to narrow down to a tighter local context.

The 193rd Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Global Warming and its impact on India acknowledges the serious implications of climate change on Indian agriculture system and even defines climate change as threat to its existence. The report dwells upon the decreasing productivity of most of cereals due to increase in temperature and decrease in water availability, especially in the Indo-Gangetic plains. It goes on to describe the regional impact of climate change — a decreasing trend in the rainfall in east Madhya Pradesh and adjoining areas.

In recent years eastern Madhya Pradesh was severely hit by what is referred to as dry monsoons. Of the 39 districts declared drought-affected in 2007-08, most of them were in Bundelkhand region. In 2008-09, 21 districts in western Madhya Pradesh were classified as drought-hit.

After four long years, rains showered a bounty on Bundelkhand but it was without the joy that normally heralds the monsoon. In the second week of June 2008, in a span of only 15 days, the region received nearly 32 per cent of its total average annual rainfall. This continued relentlessly till July 2008, by which most of the Bundelkhand received around 55 per cent of its total rainfall. A region which had remained parched suddenly experienced a deluge. This freak rain caught the farmers unawares. They were simply unprepared with their seeds and agricultural practices which precede the onset of the monsoons in the normal course. The flooding caused the erosion of top soil. About 76 per cent farmers lost almost everything — agricultural land, livestock and shelter.

According to a group of farmers in Teela village, Tikamgarh district, earlier they used to have a systematic approach towards agriculture and livestock management based on an inherent understanding of climatic patterns. But now in summers it gets stormy and there are rains in deep summer. In fact during the monsoon, they do not get rains, and at the end of winter it is gets so cold that all vegetables, wheat and other crops fail.

In short, there seem to be no manual to steer these farmers caught in this vortex of climate change. In other words, it is not possible for farmers to predict weather any more. There are no corresponding solutions, at least not at present.

Most families have either lost their cattle to drought or set them free to find their own means of survival. Hakkim Singh Yadav of Wigpur village, once the proud owner of 37 animals, laments that he is now left with only seven of them.

It is also apparent that frequent droughts and deforestation over the last 15 years have robbed Bundelkhand region of its capacity to harvest and store rainwater. Agricultural production has been continuously decreasing for the last eight years and today the region is producing less than half of its capacity. The increasingly unpredictable weather pattern and the impact of climate change have taken toll over crop yield as well as livestock.

What's happening in Bundelkhand clearly shows that climate is the biggest and most serious problem faced by the world in general and India in particular. It's time we take the environmental damage that being caused due to climate change serious as it is proving disastrous for agriculture which is the mainstay of our country.

 

**************************************

******************************************************************************************

MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

SONIA MUST PUT HER RETURN AS NAC CHIEF TO GOOD USE

 

THE question that inevitably comes to mind, following Sonia Gandhi's return as chairperson of the National Advisory Council or NAC after four years, is whether this is a hint that she feels that UPA- II is dragging its feet on some of her pet social programmes. For instance, problems have cropped up in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme or NREGS, which was the brainchild of the earlier NAC. Complaints about misuse and under- utilisation of funds earmarked for the scheme are pretty common.

 

The Congress president will surely be disappointed with this. It is no secret that Mrs Gandhi is the main force behind the party's social agenda and if she is going to monitor such programmes it is a welcome step. We should not be surprised that she would want to ensure the success of the government's key social sector initiatives covering the right to education, food security, welfare of workers and women's empowerment. The party has good reason to believe that lack of performance on this front will hurt over the long run.

 

The step to revive the NAC and reappoint her as its chief also indicates a shift in the way the Congress keeps a watch on the UPA government.

 

Mrs Gandhi has been reasonably successful in the separation of party and government, in the sense that while everyone knows who is boss, the interventions in government matters are discreet. She will now be keeping an eye but from within the government. However, she must be careful not to be seen as Super Prime Minister because that would undermine the government's authority. She should also choose the NAC members carefully, people who have the standing to provide guidance to the government — like some of the members in the previous council.

 

**************************************

MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

AVOIDABLE CONTROVERSY

 

FEW things could have been more avoidable than the ongoing controversy at the Delhi Technological University ( DTU) which has seen students boycott mid- semester examinations.

 

It is a wonder how instead of expending their energies on projects that badly need their attention, the authorities poke their nose into affairs where there seems little reason to disturb status quo.

 

This is what the Delhi government did by ' upgrading' the Delhi College of Engineering, which was a constituent college of the Delhi University, to DTU, a state university. As is well known, the DCE had been a reputed engineering institution of the country. The problems it faced could have been easily resolved within the existing framework. But it appears that the ambition of the institution's director, who was close to retirement, was more of a factor to reckon with than such considerations. So, even as the said official finds himself elevated to the post of vicechancellor of DTU, the students have been left worrying about the dilution of their institution's brand value.

 

The least the Delhi government can do under the circumstances is to remove Mr P B Sharma from the vice- chancellor's post and get an able educationist and administrator in his place, one who commands the confidence of the teaching faculty and the students. Also, there is no reason why the institution cannot revert to its old and established name as the Delhi College of Engineering, even while retaining its status as a university.

 

**************************************

 

MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

ADOLESCENT PREOCCUPATION

 

DOES the Congress party have nothing better to do than fight Amitabh Bachchan? The mighty political party counts Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel among its leaders. It has ruled the country through most of its history and continues to do so, yet, it gets into an obsessive low- level vendetta with a film star.

 

Surely there are other issues of import that deserve precedence over whether or not Mr Bachchan should have been present at the inaugural function for the Bandra- Worli sea link or not. Or even whether or not he is Gujarat's brand ambassador. Mr Bachchan may be a film star, but since he is not a political adversary of the Congress, he is simply not worth the time and effort that Congress spokespersons have put in to denounce him.

 

**************************************

 

 

MAIL TODAY

COOPERATION A MUST FOR GOOD CYBER SECURITY

BY SUBIMAL BHATTACHARJEE

 

RECENTLY, Indian and American officials met to discuss counter- terrorism issues. For the first time, cyber security figured in their exchanges. Because of an earlier misstep, when the National Security Council Secretariat had taken up the issue, the two sides are moving cautiously and would prefer not to publicise their meetings.

 

The last time around, the whole issue was side- tracked as three of the Indian participants in the process were arrested and are still in jail for allegedly giving classified information to an American counterpart.

 

Yet the press of cyber security issues has compelled the two sides to resume their dialogue. Leave alone the alleged issue of Chinese penetration of Indian official networks, there is the real threat of jihadi use of cyberspace for their operations.

 

Every day it becomes clearer that the country needs a national approach to look at cyber tools for infrastructure, intelligence, investigations and as a potential offensive weapon.

 

Organisations

 

On the infrastructure front, the CERTIn under the Department of Information Technology ( DIT) was set up in January 2004 to provide both reactive and proactive services and also create awareness on various aspects of cyber security. In 2008, its role was partially improved and incorporated under the amendments to the Information Technology Act 2000 ( IT Act) but it needs much more teeth to deal with the situation. It is better oriented to handle civilian and criminal issues than the more serious and dedicated attacks having national security implications.

 

The National Technical Research Organisation ( NTRO) was set up during the NDA regime to take charge of all communications surveillance and cyber security issues and by now it should have become the point of reference for any government effort on cyber security. It is far from that and needs to have a reorientation and focus in the area.

 

The defence forces have their own autonomous activity for both offensive and defensive security worked out by the tri- service Defence Intelligence Agency and the intelligence branches of the three wings of the armed forces. Some of the research issues have been taken up in the DRDO labs and some academic institutions through miniscule funding provided by the DIT. The Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing and the sector specific intelligence bodies have their own arrangements and have taken up cyberspace

 

as a major area of participation and intelligence gathering. For investigation purposes, the Central Bureau of Investigation ( CBI) and the state CIDs have started to make headway in cyber forensics and while the progress is not tardy, a lot of ground needs to be covered in a very short time. The offensive dimensions of cyber tools is something that cannot be commented upon here, but our neighbours have given us enough indications that we cannot remain perpetually on the defensive.

 

Despite all this activity, we still do not have a picture of an overall culture of cyber security across the nation. There are islands of activities and some of them are really good. But there are also gaps.

 

There is also the important task to get them all to work in consonance. That has to be a function under the highest level and the Prime Minister should be able to have a daily desktop shot of the cyber scenario along with his intelligence briefing.

 

There is definitely some thinking that has moved in the right direction and the activation and rejuvenation of the Multi Agency Centre ( MAC) is one pointer of this. The Home Minister's pitch for getting the National Counter Terrorism Centre ( NCTC) set up by the end of this year is an important step and all reports indicate cyber security will be a major focus area for the NCTC.

 

Cooperation

 

However the outfit is yet to be built and therefore the challenge is to carefully work out its architecture and then set up the structure. The Home Ministry would be well advised to keep the work of the US Department of Homeland Security as a reference point and learn from them as to how a quality counter terrorism centre can be set up in quick time, with cyber tools being a key factor in its performance.

 

The Indo- US cyber security dialogue, through the now defunct Indo- US Cyber Security forum, had gone on very well till 2005 when everything stopped because of the alleged NSCS spying incident which remains to be proven in a court of law. In the forum, apart from the government to government dialogue, there was also an industry day where all the top companies participated and this was a great

 

opportunity for generating synergy. The recently begun counter terrorism dialogue, restarted after the state visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in November last year, should make cyber security a major area of action and the MHA should have no hesitation in picking up the best in cyber forensics and training from the US side.

 

But there are many angles to cyber security other than the terror or criminal angle and the external attempts to target and reach our networks need to be dealt with much more systematically. As the nation becomes more digitised, and as more government functions move to the cyberspace due to its intrinsic advantages, there will have to be matching infrastructures to secure the networks.

 

More and more critical networks are becoming computer and network systems dependent and so protecting the critical infrastructures is an on- going job that needs 24X7 vigil.

 

The ambitious Unique Identity Card ( UID) which is proposed to be launched in the next few months is going to be one such mammoth network which will have a huge database— the present target of 600 million users in the next four years is itself a huge task and there would be constant references to that database by a variety of registrars like the income tax department, the banks, social sector schemes etc who plan to use the UID as the base for authentication.

 

Integration

 

At the same time, global engagement to address concerns relating to cyber security has to be fostered. Cyber

attacks have a transnational dimension and so a sound globally compatible legal system has to be in place to prevent the attackers from finding sanctuaries in a few countries.

 

Today technology also enables deception over the exact digital location of an attack, but global cooperation will be able to bridge this gap and partnership on R& D efforts will also be useful. Efforts have to be made to work out a binding treaty to commit nations to ensure that their territory will not be used to launch cyber attacks that can destabilise other countries' networks.

 

The cyber attacks in Estonia in April 2007, the reported attempts on Indian systems, and the more recent attempt on Google, are a reminder about how dangerous this can be. The current dialogue of the Group of Governmental Experts ( GGE) of 20 leading nations is deliberating on the subject and hopefully will have a working model this time. India is participating for the first time in this GGE and, ideally, it should have played a leadership role in it.

 

Everything indicates that cyber security is going to be an ever larger part of the national security apparatus. Since the process of setting up the NCTC and revamping the national security system is on, it will be a good idea to ensure that the internal and external dimensions of cyber security are effectively integrated even while retaining its essential attribute— flexibility.

 

The writer is country head, General Dynamics. The views here are personal

 

**************************************

MAIL TODAY

DECCAN BUZZ

A SRINIVASA RAO

 

CM, JAGAN GO TO TOWN ABOUT THEIR HOSTILITY

A COLD war of sorts has been continuing between Chief Minister K Rosaiah and Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy ever since the latter was denied the opportunity to succeed his father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, who died in a tragic helicopter crash on September 2.

 

The differences between Rosaiah and Jagan have now reached a stage where they literally do not see eye to eye with each other. On Sunday last, the two leaders had been to Gudavalli village in Krishna district to participate in a condolence meeting for former deputy chief minister Koneru Ranga Rao.

 

Jagan came to the village a few hours in advance and ensured that he got an unprecedented welcome at the Vijayawada airport from the Congress leaders.

 

At Gudavalli, he addressed the condolence meeting much before the chief minister arrived there and soon left the place.

 

By the time Rosaiah landed at the Vijayawada airport, Jagan was entering the lounge. They just ignored each other's presence and refused to have eye contact, what to speak of exchanging pleasantries. The police were apprehensive that there could be a clash between Jagan's supporters who came to see him off and the Congress workers who were there to receive Rosaiah.

 

The incident shows how uncomfortable the situation is in the state Congress. The Jagan camp, which initially thought Rosaiah was only a stop- gap arrangement, is growing impatient with the Congress high command's move to grant full powers to the chief minister. In the last six months, there have been attempts by both the sides to run down each other. Rosaiah has been trying to strike at the roots of Jagan's business empire by various means, such as stalling iron ore mining at Obulapuram where Jagan's friend

 

Gali Janardhan Reddy has stakes and cancellation of tenders for Singareni coal mine privatisation in which Jagan had business interests. On the other hand, Jagan's camp tried to embarrass Rosaiah by engineering

 

engineering attacks on Reliance outlets.

 

Even the ongoing communal problem in the Old City is being attributed to Jagan's camp, as a bid to destabilise the Rosaiah government.

 

Now, Jagan's camp is getting

 

ready to take on Rosaiah politically.

 

The young MP is embarking on a state- wide tour, starting with West Godavari district, in the second week of April, in the name of consoling the families of those who had either committed suicide or died of shock after the death of YSR. His fan club, Jagan Yuva Sena, is gearing up to make his tour a grand success.

 

It is going to be nothing but a show of strength by Jagan to prove that he is the only charismatic leader in the party.

 

Jagan's proposed tour has left Rosaiah in a tizzy, as it has been planned to coincide with the state government's " Praja Patham" ( mass contact) programme, as part of which Rosaiah will be touring different parts of the state to review the progress of various programmes at the village level. Already, Jagan has been running a campaign through his Telugu daily Sakshi , criticising the Rosaiah government for not effectively implementing the programmes launched by his father. During his tour, Jagan is going to raise these issues, which might embarrass the chief minister.

 

Rosaiah reportedly sought the Congress high command's interference to stop Jagan from going ahead with the tour. Pradesh Congress Committee president D Srinivas made it clear that if Jagan wanted to go ahead with his proposed tour, he could do it only in his personal capacity.

 

" There is nothing wrong if Jagan wants to call on the distressed families. But, it is not going to be an official programme of the Congress party," he said.

 

MALLYA CLAIMS THE LORD IS ON HIS SIDE

THE ongoing IPL- 3 cricket tournament is interestingly poised and it is very difficult to predict which team would emerge victorious in the finals.

 

However, liquor baron and chairman of Kingfisher Airlines Vijay Mallya, who owns the franchise of Bangalore Royal Challengers, is pretty confident that his team will bag the cup. This is because he claims he has the blessings of Lord Venkateshwara of Tirumala.

 

Last week, Mallya had a darshan of Lord Venkateswara and announced a donation of Rs 6 crores for the goldplating of the celestial doors at the Bangaru Vakili ( golden threshold) of the sanctum sanctorum. He said he had sought the blessings of the Lord to ensure the victory of Royal Challengers in the IPL- 3 tournament.

 

For Mallya, a donation of Rs 6 crore is nothing compared to the windfall gains he would make if the Bangalore Royal Challengers win the IPL- 3 cup. The profits would run into a few hundred crores and would fetch business 10 times more than that.

 

YSR REDDY'S ' JINXED' HOUSE GETS A NEW OCCUPANT

THE Chief Minister's camp office at Begumpet, which was a beehive of activity during the Y S Rajasekhara Reddy regime, had become a deserted place after his family vacated the premises in January.

 

His successor K Rosaiah was reluctant to occupy the premises, apparently because he was not sure how long he would remain in the chief minister's post. So, he preferred to operate from his own residence at Ameerpet, three kilometres away from the Chief Minister's camp office. As his residence was located in a densely populated area, there used to be a lot of space congestion and traffic problems.

 

And the visitors had a tough time meeting the chief minister.

There was another reason why Rosaiah was hesitant to move into the Begumpet residence.

 

Superstitious that he is, Rosaiah believed that there were some vastu problems with the camp office which led to the untimely death of his predecessor YSR. Finally, exactly 200 days after taking over as the chief minister, Rosaiah moved into the camp office last week, amidst chanting of Vedic hymns. But before that, he ensured that major changes were made in the building as per vastu requirements so that evil forces were kept at bay. And he also got a firm assurance from the Congress high command that he would not be unseated for at least another couple of years. Amen!

 

***************************************

MAIL TODAY

DASNA JAIL ' SUICIDE' GETS A POISON TWIST

BY AKASH VASHISHTHA IN GHAZIABAD

 

THE MYSTERY of Frontier Mail blast accused Mohammad Shakeel's " suicide" has deepened after a forensic examination revealed traces of poison in his viscera.

 

The discovery of aluminium phosphide in Shakeel's viscera by experts at the Agra Forensic Lab has cast fresh doubts over his alleged suicide in the highsecurity cell of Dasna jail on June 19 last year.

 

Jail authorities said Shakeel had hanged himself with his lungi ( wrap- around) in his cell and left behind a suicide note in which he had claimed that he was " dying of his own will". Shakeel's post- mortem examination had failed to pinpoint the cause of his death. But his viscera was preserved and three samples were sent to the Agra Forensic Lab for examination.

 

The report, which was filed on March 5, stated that traces of aluminum phosphide was found in jar numbers one and two while the sample in the third jar was devoid of poison.

 

On March 25, the Dasna jail superintendent, V. K. Singh, sent a letter to district magistrate R. Ramesh Kumar apprising him of the contents of the viscera report and urged him to take " relevant and necessary action" in the matter.

 

The discovery of poison in Shakeel's viscera raises many questions over the jail authorities' suicide theory, bringing along with it a whiff of murder, sources said.

 

And all this cannot be done without the collusion of jail authorities, they pointed out.

 

When contacted, Singh said: " The aluminum phosphide found in Shakeel's viscera could be attributed to the use of insecticides which are used on wheat and other

 

food grains. Aluminum phosphide is also used as a fumigant for rodents and insects." He added, " Still, the presence of this compound in the viscera is a matter of investigation."

 

Shakeel was an accused in the 1996 Frontier Mail bomb blast case in Ghaziabad. The son of Pilakhuwa resident Suleman, Shakeel was arrested after his involvement in the blast at Ghaziabad

 

station came to light.

 

He was also accused of involvement in terror- related activities in the Capital in 1997. Various sections of the Indian Penal Code ( IPC) including 302, 307 and 121 ( a) as well as the Explosives Act were then slapped on him.

 

Shakeel was subsequently convicted for his terror activities in Delhi while trial was on in the train blast case.

 

He was transferred to the Dasna jail in Ghaziabad in 2006. Since then, he was confined to the solitary cell, barrack no. 5.

 

On the day he " committed suicide", the police said, around 3 pm, he tied his lungi and bedsheet together and hooked the makeshift cord on the 11- feet- high roof. He then hanged himself.

 

The new twist in Shakeel's ' suicide' case also raises fresh doubts over the death of Ashutosh Asthana, a key accused in the multi- crore PF scam. Asthana, who was lodged in the same jail as Shakeel, was found dead on October 17, 2009, in his cell.

 

In his case, too, the postmortem examination report had failed to pinpoint the cause of his death. The findings of the viscera report were also inconclusive.

 

RIGHT TO EDUCATION KEEPS SIBAL MINISTRY ON ITS TOES

BY KAVITA CHOWDHURY IN NEW DELHI

 

THE HUMAN resource development ( HRD) ministry is working overtime to ensure a quick implementation of the Right to Education ( RTE) Act, which comes into effect on April 1.

 

The ministry is trying to get the financial aspects of the Act approved by the cabinet and the central model rules cleared by the law ministry so that states can enact their own rules at the earliest.

 

HRD minister Kapil Sibal said: " Institutions will be given ( adequate) time to ( align) with the provisions of the Act." An official said the ministry had framed model central rules for the Act, but was awaiting the law ministry's clearance to notify them. " Once we notify the rules, the states will be obligated to notify them," the official said.

 

" We need to rework the financial norms for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the main vehicle for implementing the RTE. The central funding has to increase to enable states to implement the Act and put the necessary infrastructure in place. We are working with the finance ministry and need to get ( the funds) approved by the cabinet," he added.

 

The ministry will also generate awareness about the Act through a short publicity film on television titled Roll Call, which features Nandita Das.

 

Sibal has met various channel heads and requested them to air the film.

 

The government, Sibal said, would work on a year- long programme to generate awareness about the Act.

 

The minister also indicated that the implementation of the Act would not be delayed on account of the ongoing litigation challenging it before the Supreme Court. " The SC has served notice on the government," Sibal said, and added: " Everybody has the right to challenge the government. The court will decide. But the implementation of the Act will not be affected." Private institutions challenged the RTE Act in court as it mandated a 25 per cent reservation for poor children in their pre- school sections.

 

SUMAN SAYS HE WAS HUMILIATED

BY ALOKE BANERJEE IN KOLKATA

A DAY after he expressed his desire to quit from Parliament and from all party posts, Trinamool Congress MP Kabir Suman described a section of the party leadership as utterly corrupt.

 

Suman said he had been continuously humiliated by some leaders after he raised the issue of corruption and opposed the ongoing Operation Green Hunt.

 

On Monday, Suman had sent an SMS to party chief Mamata Banerjee, chief whip Sudip Bandyopadhyay and some other senior leaders, informing them of his decision to quit. He said he would not reconsider his decision and would send his resignation letter to the speaker.

 

The press conference at his residence on Tuesday was disrupted by some Trinamool supporters. They asked Suman not to talk to the media about party affairs. They also wanted him to reconsider his decision, saying the party would be ruined if honest leaders quit.

 

" In politics one should be prepared to accept humiliation. But strictly speaking, I am not a politician. I can't accept the humiliation anymore," Suman said.

 

A popular singer, he plans to return to music.

 

Trinamool leaders in Kolkata and Delhi maintained silence on the issue. Mamata Banerjee could not be contacted. But Bandyopadhyay said Suman had been embarrassing the party and that a decision would be taken once his resignation letter was received.

 

RAISINA TATTLE

NEED A REGULATOR

WILL THE government lock the stables after the horses have bolted? Or in other words, will the government set up the Coal Regulatory Authority after all the mines have been allocated? Natural resources are gold mines, and there is a mad rush for it among our enterprising and resourceful barons. The authority was proposed in the annual budget in 2008. And it was underscored in the recent budget as well.

 

Sriprakash Jaiswal, the minister of state for coal, asserted that the regulator would be in place by March 15.

 

Nothing has happened yet. There are those in the power and steel sectors who demand coal mine allocation as a birth right.

 

Is there something more to this than meets the eye?

 

Busy swatting flies!

 

UNION ministers of state ( MoS) are nowadays seen as a liability in many quarters for their out- of- turn

remarks.

 

Left with nothing much to do, their penchant for speaking out of turn has not brought about any improvement in their status. A prime ministerial intervention did little to alleviate their idleness. Being left with precious little to do other than making statements, they spend more time in their home states.

 

One chief minister of a southern state is particularly annoyed with the manner in which MoSes from his state keep sauntering around, inaugurating all and sundry events and contributing to the political turmoil. The octogenarian never misses an opportunity to rub salt to the wound by slighting them about their lack of real work in the Capital.

 

REAL AWARENESS

VICE- PRESIDENT Hamid Ansari's wife Salma feels measures such as the women's reservation Bill will not be of much help unless awareness is created among women at the grassroots level. " I have just one problem with this Bill. The government comes up with a lot of schemes and many projects, but how many women are able to take advantage of these?" she says.

" Unless awareness is created among women at the grassroots and they are educated, such legislations will not be of much help. Till the time they are not educated, unless they understand that they have to take care of their lives themselves, no matter how many such Bills are passed, there will be no benefit at the grassroots- level women."

 

MODI TURNS POET

AFTER a literary exhortation to " countrymen" — on the lines of " friends, Romans, countrymen" from Julius Caesar — at the prospect of being grilled by the SIT for the Gujarat riots, Narendra Modi has turned to writing poetry.

 

Clearly, the chief minister's more erudite friends have not dared intervene with this sudden outpour of poetry.

 

The poem — " The one who loves my Gujarat, Is my soul. The one who loves my India, Is my God" — therefore, could only appeal to those possessed with a tepid sense of humour.

 

For most of the others who were witness to the pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat, there is no humour left so far as Modi is concerned.

 

***************************************

 

******************************************************************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

TWO'S COMPANY

 

The UPA, in its first stint, created a government-civil society interface via the National Advisory Council (NAC), a panel subsequently disbanded. The political innovation was seen to have paid off in May 2009. NAC's brainchild, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) contributed to the coalition's electoral success. This advisory panel which earned its spurs by pushing people-friendly legislations guaranteeing rural jobs or the right to information is back. Asserting herself only recently on getting the women's quota Bill through the Rajya Sabha, Sonia Gandhi too returns at the NAC's helm. Accorded cabinet minister status, the Congress chief now has an institutional platform to promote the UPA's social schemes.

The timing is significant. Just recently, the Budget hinted at a scaling down of focus on the government's social sector commitments. The finance ministry is also pursuing fiscal consolidation and reform, through attempts to trim subsidies or by pushing disinvestment. Plus, the government hasn't entirely toed Sonia's line on the upcoming food security law, considered as much of a social sector policy marker for UPA-II as NREGA was for UPA-I. Its draft Bill deviates from Sonia's proposals by reducing the monthly quota of food to 25 kg without mentioning a price. It also distinguishes food from nutritional security and restricts beneficiaries to a yet undefined but strictly BPL category.

Clearly, give and take will be in order. A debt-burdened regime can't be faulted for trying to pare the scheme's costs. But this shouldn't mean defeating the aim of entitling the poor. Rather than slash quantity or define BPL in a way that doesn't fully cover the needy, the focus must be on delivery. Costs will dip if the creaking PDS is reformed, and by disallowing multiple programmes. The NAC, on its part, must realise that social schemes shouldn't stretch acceptable fiscal limits. Nor can there be opposition to the window opened up to cash transfers as a 'food allowance' in case of non-supply of foodgrain. If anything, experiments with alternative delivery mechanisms like cash transfers and food coupons are desirable. Besides, funds for bloated populist schemes can be better spent on health, education and infrastructure, the real keys to empowerment.

As for the NAC-backed communal violence Bill, effective crackdown on rioters is necessary. But the legislation will require both political firmness and tact to push through, given strong opposition among certain political and social groups. Fast-tracking the whistle-blowers' Bill is equally important. Punishing fraud, corruption and mismanagement of resources mandates protection of those exposing crimes. NAC's services will be useful for both. Overall, government-NAC interaction can be a good thing. It can make government more aware of the uses of political pragmatism. But, as a quid pro quo, the NAC will need to appreciate the government's compulsions, with special regard to the economic logic of policymaking.

 

***************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

LOVE ALL

 

The news that tennis star Sania Mirza is all set to marry Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik seems to have caught everyone by surprise. But at a time when India and Pakistan are not on the best of terms, there couldn't have been better news. There is nothing like more civil society contact and across-the-border romances and marriages to ease tensions between the two neighbours. It has been shown that in societies where there are a greater number of inter-faith or inter-ethnic marriages there is less likelihood of ethnic violence or tensions. This has proved to be true in some of the most divided and violence-prone parts of the world such as the Balkans. But there's more to the Sania-Shoaib engagement. It goes to show that borders, even the most contentious such as the one dividing India and Pakistan, are essentially artificial constructs. That is the reason this newspaper played on 'LoC' to create a category called 'Love over Country' in its matrimonial ad section, to encourage marriages across the border.

The Sania-Shoaib engagement has of course attracted attention because they are both extremely popular sportstars. Sport has traditionally been a barrier breaker between the two nations. Even when relations have been rocky, cricket has often succeeded in bringing the people of India and Pakistan closer. The warm reception that the Indian cricket team got during its tour of Pakistan in 2004 stands out. Shoaib seems to be well aware of the role of sports in dissolving borders. That's probably why he has said that he would be the proudest person if Sania can win a medal for India in the 2012 Olympics.

 

*****************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

RESURRECTION OF THE STATE

SHAIBAL GUPTA

 

In the last four years, no chief minister in post-independence India has got as much adulation as Bihar's incumbent. In this backdrop, it would be legitimate to ask how Bihar could turn the corner and reinvent itself, when the state was a non-functioning institution and the economy at the bottom. Even if Nitish Kumar is making well-intentioned efforts, a fact conceded by most people, he cannot possibly create a provincial benchmark in the absence of either a sound financial base or the institutional memory in the state of even a modicum of governance which could trigger change.

Thus, some analysts may feel Nitish's government is a one-election wonder because, like its financial base, the social support of his coalition is narrow and there is an absence of a well-oiled party structure which could tangibly convert political capital, if at all earned, into electoral support.

When Nitish took over the reins of Bihar in November 2005 with numerous disadvantages staring him in the face, he went about his job with clinical precision. On one hand, he had a techno-managerial strategy of working out the nuts and bolts of how to resurrect the state structure, then non-existent. On the other, he took forward the 'social justice' constituency by incorporating it even more substantively in governance.

The resurrection of the state essentially entailed better coordination between the judiciary and the executive with the full support of the legislature. Soon the state reassumed its role as a social mediator in Bihar. Its effects were immediate. The authority of the state was established with a spate of convictions of criminals across the board. In the absence of a functioning state earlier, that space had been taken over by musclemen or radical organisations.

But once the state reacquired legitimacy, its role was not limited to establishing law and order alone; it also choreographed massive public investment. Even private sector investment, as per the report of the CII, increased manifold in Bihar. Thus gross state domestic product (GSDP) growth of 11.3 per cent is not a flash in the pan for the state. Being construction-centric growth, Bihar's GSDP reflects mainly economic activity related to the building of roads, bridges and houses.

However, Nitish is not a leader who fetishises growth. Inclusion in the lower-tier of governance - through positive discrimination - of women (50 per cent) extremely backward castes (20 per cent) and Dalits (10 per cent) in panchayati raj institutions was built into his priorities. The most backward section among the Dalits and Muslims, christened "Mahadalits" and "Pasmanda", were given attention and proactively promoted.

In the process, the 'social justice' constituency was further consolidated. In south and western India, the anti-
Brahmin movement had graduated from focusing on identity to economic entrepreneurship. But in Bihar, in the absence of societal incentives, taking up governance at the lowest level was a crucial component of the empowerment agenda for the subaltern. On top of that, positive discrimination for women has created a new constituency without precedent, where a section of the elite is also involved in a newly democratised social configuration.

Nitish's 'coalition of social extremes', crafted in the last assembly election, could survive for so long because Bihar's construction-fuelled growth is class-neutral. Building of roads and bridges facilitated movement of goods, people and agents of the state, which in turn ensured social peace and tranquillity. Such development was a critical intervention in Bihar where road density is very low.

Second, the revival of the state had unanimous public support, because it benefited all. One should also remember that the phenomenon of the 'coalition of social extremes' has a long history in India. It was first constructed by Mahatma Gandhi to serve the freedom movement, and later adopted by Nehru to build the massive edifice of the national state. Bihar coopted the strategy in its state-building exercise in recent years.

However, Bihar's state-building exercise would be incomplete without addressing the problem of land management, especially with relation to updating of records, consolidation of holdings etc. In anticipation of Nitish taking some steps related to land management, members of a section of the elite, mainly upper caste, turned belligerent. A relatively better-functioning state and positive discrimination in favour of the subaltern in panchayati raj institutions had already embargoed their criminal activities and marginalised them from the lower centres of power. Further, certain principles were sought to be adopted by Nitish's party, like discouraging nepotism in politics. So, any space further ceded to him through a programme of land management could permanently disempower the traditional elite, both economically and politically.

Consequently, there was an 'elite revolt', spearheaded by the most discredited and lumpen sections of their rank, which attempted to destabilise the government. Its resonance is felt even within the party structure of the JD(U). However, the tenant section within the same social composition has given full support to the state-building effort, particularly maintenance of law and order. The forthcoming assembly election in Bihar will thus script a new grammar of political coalition-building and consolidation.

(The writer is member secretary, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna.)

 

***************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

'FREE ISN'T ALWAYS GOOD ENOUGH'

RONOJOY SEN

 

Nigel Portwood was appointed chief executive of Oxford University Press in 2009. With over 20 years of experience in publishing, he is at the forefront of tackling the many challenges facing OUP. He spoke to Ronojoy Sen during a recent visit to Delhi:

What are OUP's India plans?

India is seen by people in the West as a source of great growth and big opportunity, as a market to exploit because of the number of people here. The interesting thing about OUP's approach to India is that although it's an interesting market it's not one that we want to access from the outside. We want to access it from the inside. We have been here for nearly 100 years and have done very well. We've got to the stage where in the last decade we've had the highest growth. We're just at the point where the titles, publications and content from India are being exported to the rest of the world. We see India as a source of value for the rest of OUP both in content and services.

What are the growth figures for India?

India is one of the fastest growing businesses in OUP. I fully expect to double the size of the business in 5-6 years. More of our sales, our research content is going to come from this part of the world which we are going to sell in the rest of the world.

What are the challenges facing the publishing industry?

The publishing industry is going through its most significant and fastest transformation in its 500-year history. Digitisation is going to drive that change. It's changing the way in which content is presented and used. It's much nicer to have an online database that you can search and is cross-referenced than wade through shelves ofprinted matter. But it changes the way the consumer uses the product, it changes the way we distribute the roducts, it changes the way we publish.

Some people in the industry are fearful of this. But it also creates more opportunities for us. Earlier, the only way we could represent content was on the printed page. Now we can represent it completely differently on multiple formats. We have to think of new business models. If you look at the journals business, which is an important part of our academic business, it is an example of how the industry realised that they could deliver more value to consumers, more content for less cost. The industry has grown because it embraced the technology. Libraries get access to many more products for less money. An added value benefit for us is that we get to distribute our content to more people.

How do you see the dictionary business being affected?

The perception from outside is that the dictionary business is over. In some markets that's true. But it's not true for India where sales of our dictionaries have doubled. In western markets few retailers stock them. But if you look at our dictionary business, sales have continued to go up. We are selling more and more of online dictionaries. It's still a very vibrant business. From the dissemination point we can create more usable dictionaries. We can then put them on to different devices by licensing our content. There will always be free versions of the dictionary online, but people are discovering that free isn't always good enough.

 

***************************************

THE TIMES OF INDIA

PUBLIC & PRIVATE

JUG SURAIYA

 

The Indian economy is often likened to an elephant: slow and lumbering, but strong and stable. Can the Indian elephant put on roller skates and again accelerate to 9 per cent-plus growth? A semantic problem stands in the way.

 

In the economic realm there is great confusion between public and private. We are constantly talking at cross-purposes when we discuss issues regarding the public sector vis-a-vis the private sector. And there is going to be a lot of heated talk about this, in Parliament and outside, in the coming weeks.

 

The point of dispute will be disinvestment in public sector undertakings (PSUs), which had been put on indefinite hold during the UPA government's previous tenure in office, thanks to the Left parties. Once again in fashion, disinvestment is the finance ministry's key to economic breakthrough.

 

It is through disinvestment that the government hopes to bring the fiscal deficit down to 5.5 per cent for 2010-11. The fiscal deficit is the amount by which the government's expenditure exceeds its income, from tax revenues and other receipts. To cover the deficit, the government borrows money from itself: i.e., it prints more currency. By doing this, the sarkar has done a very clever thing: it has made its fiscal - or financial - deficit, your deficit, through inflation. When the government prints more currency, there's more money chasing the same amount of goods and services so you end up paying more for what you buy. This results in a hole in your household budget, your very own fiscal deficit. Public debt has been made into private debt.

 

One of the ways the government can bring down its fiscal deficit - which in the end is really your deficit - is to disinvest in the public sector. Disinvestment is very wrongly often mixed up with 'privatisation' - a dirty word in the socialist vocabulary and one routinely likened to the cardinal sin of 'selling off the family silver'. Privatisation is when a PSU is sold to a private company, or consortium. Disinvestment is when public sector shares are sold to you and me - the real public - directly or through mutual funds.

 

Disinvestment is what makes the public sector truly public, which it is far from being right now. Currently, India's so-called public sector is more private than the so-called private sector. What we call the private sector is held accountable for its performance by its shareholders and investors. If it does not perform well, it will be pulled up by the public that has invested in it. Our so-called private sector is really the public sector.

 

What we call the public sector - what really should be called the sarkari sector - is actually a very private sector, in that it is accountable to no one but itself for its performance, or lack of it. If a PSU continues to run at a loss, it won't go under. It will be bailed out with government money. Which means your money and mine, but over which we have no say. What we call the public sector today is a form of economic dictatorship, the equivalent of taxation without democratic representation.

 

Disinvestment - a public sector owned not by the sarkar, but by the public and for the public - represents economic democracy. So when people liken disinvestment to selling off the family silver, ask them whose silver it is, and to whom it is being sold. If it's sarkari silver being sold to the public, is that a bad thing for the public, or for democracy, or a good thing?

 

Whom ought the Indian elephant - on skates or not - belong to: the sarkar, or to the real public, to you and me?

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

WAITING TO EXHALE

A confirmed Maoist and a godman? An unusual combination if there ever were one. Prachanda, that inveterate anti-Indian, has found solace in Indian yoga as propounded by Baba Ramdev, to cure an ailing neck and cultivate positive thoughts. Now this is good news. Baba Ramdev, whom the Indian communists have taken on, seems to have new friends in the neighbourhood. It was not so long ago that the CPI(M)'s Brinda Karat had found his pills and potions to contain animal products. A doughty exhalation from the yoga guru found Ms Karat running for cover on that occasion. Perhaps we can export the Ramdev school of exercise to greater benefit to countries that are not so well disposed towards us. After all, if they are engaged in exhalations and inhalations, chances are that they won't be plotting and planning against us.

We agree completely with Prachanda's view that there must be positivity in life. We do recommend that he apply this in the political field where, we are sorry to see, there has been little of this. For those of us who are not in the best of fitness conditions, Baba Ramdev's yoga may be a hard act to follow, especially in light of his calisthenics on television that seem to involve sucking in his stomach to his spine.

If there are any among our readers who can do that, we may give you an year's supply of editorials for free. This, of course, could be scarier than having to undergo the Ramdev regimen. Prachanda has exhorted his hordes to adopt the Ramdev course of action and that too even as Nepal is in the throes of drafting a new constitution. We can only hope that all this twisting and turning will result in Prachanda and his followers adopting more positive thoughts about a neighbour that has wished his country well. But for the moment, let's not hold our breath on that one.

***************************************

 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

Many Russians — and much of the world — had nearly forgotten the Chechen insurgency that erupted in the 1990s. While Chechnya and swathes of the North Caucasus have remained wracked by ethnic and Islamicist violence, Moscow's success has been to maintain a protective cordon and keep the violence confined to its southern reaches. The Kremlin's declared end to counter-terrorism operations in April 2009, was really about it being contained, not eradicated. However, that containment was breached in November last year, when Chechen terrorists bombed a north Russian train.

The brutal bombing of the Moscow metro on Monday morning, already claimed by a pro-Chechen insurgency group on its website as its handiwork, is likely to further confirm that the North Caucasus has come to haunt Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's and President Dmitry Medvedev's government once again.

This is not a great surprise. Russia had adopted a relatively successful no-holds-barred military strategy in the region in the past decade. But the political follow-up was uninspired. Moscow set up thuggish local rulers to keep the insurgency in line and provided them with money, arms and a blank cheque when it came to human rights and good governance — a strategy not dissimilar to what India practiced for a while in Kashmir. The goal was less about seeking a final Chechen settlement as much as trying to ensure the violence did not spread to Russia proper. The Moscow explosions indicate this half-measure has now run its course.

Messrs Putin and Medvedev now face a choice. They can fight terror with more terror and win themselves a year or so of peace. Or they can also float a genuine attempt at political reconciliation in an area of Russia that has been handed over to officially sanctioned warlords. The latter will not be easy but it holds out the only possibility of a lasting peace. There is another incentive for Moscow. There have been sketchy reports since last year that Chechen fighters based in North Waziristan, and under Taliban and al-Qaeda influence, are working their way back to Russia. A deeply alienated Chechnya will be a fruitful recruiting ground and the Moscow area a target-rich environment. If they are to secure a hold over the insurgency, Moscow will never be able to quarantine the North Caucasus. Russia needs to think more long-term if it wants to ensure this does not happen.

***************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

PROTECTING THE PM

S SUBRAMANIAN

 

The Special Protection Group (SPG) celebrated 25 years of its formation on March 30. Prior to 1947, executive powers were vested in the viceroy and the governors. As they represented the British, they faced threats from revolutionaries. The then Central Intelligence Bureau monitored those threats and periodically issued advisories to the provinces.

After Independence, it became necessary to protect PM Jawaharlal Nehru from crowds. The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi brought home the fact that popularity was no protective shield. Nehru was allergic to the presence of uniformed policemen. So, security personnel were deployed in plainclothes. The responsibility for the protection of the PM continued to remain with the states and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) was made responsible for coordination. The system stood well, and during Nehru's tenure, there was one solitary attempt to harm him by a man in Nagpur in May 1955.

The initial years of Indira Gandhi's tenure were marked by no serious security problems. It was later that there were unsavoury incidents that happened in some states. To assist the local police and to coordinate arrangements, the IB started to send one of its experts in advance to the places of the PM's visit.

In the 1970s, threats to the PM's security increased with separatism, insurgency and militancy. Despite precautions, Ms Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 by her own guards. A committee was formed to review all arrangements and it recommended the creation of an elite organisation to take care of the "proximate protection of the prime minister" and overall coordination of security arrangements. An Act of Parliament was enacted and the SPG was born in 1985.

In a nation of a billion-plus, it is not humanly possible to identify people who may harm the PM. Precise intelligence is, on most occasions, an elusive commodity. Hence, security authorities work on the principles of denying access to "unknown or unvouchsafed persons and distance-keeping".

The SPG has been evolving its strategy and tactics and upgrading its equipment constantly to keep ahead of the adversary. And it firmly believes in its motto: The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.

S Subramanian is the Founder Director of the SPG

The views expressed by the author are personal

 

***************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

AN ARSENAL CALLED DECEPTION

THOMAS MATHEW

 

In the 1990s, Deng Xiaoping, China's pragmatic leader who is credited with sowing the seeds of the policies that have made China what it is today, outlined the '24 Character Strategy' and said: "Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile and never claim leadership". In plain words, it was a homily on the art of deception.

The 2010 Chinese military budget announced recently seems to be an effectuation of Deng's advice. Li Zhaoxing, the former foreign minister and currently the spokesperson for the annual session of the Parliament of China, the National People's Congress (NPC), delivered the spin. He announced that China's budget is 'comparatively low' for a nation of the size and territory of China. He went on to add that in 2010, China's defence budget only grew by half of what it did in 2009. Some newspapers carrying the story commented that the military budget of 532.115 billion yuan (nearly $78 billion) was the lowest increase in the last two decades.

But the numbers don't add up. The China Daily, quoting Xinhua, the official Chinese media organisation had announced in 2009 that the Chinese defence budget would be 480.686 billion yuan (nearly $70 billion), an increase of 14.9 per cent over the previous year. The same official source claimed that the budget for 2010 has increased by only 7.5 per cent over the previous year. But when a number rises from 480.686 to 532.115, it is a 10.7 per cent increase. If on the other hand, 532.115 is to represent a 7.5 per cent increase, then it should have risen from a base of 495.115. Therefore, it can be either that the 2009 budget grew 18.4 per cent over the last year or it rose 10.7 per cent in 2010.

So, are the figures meant to deceive nations already wary of the huge Chinese military build-up? Official Chinese defence budgets in any case are notorious for their lack of transparency. Since 2002 China has been the largest importer of weapons and nations are left befuddled by the import of Chinese professions concerning its 'peaceful rise'. Therefore, Chinese military budgets could be concealing more than they reveal.

The game is obviously to 'hide' its growing military strength. Even if the Chinese official figures are presumed to be correct, countries like India have reasons to worry. Chinese defence budgets have traversed a sharp upward trajectory in the last two decades. In 2000, China, from being the seventh largest military spender, emerged as the second largest spender.

India needs to be vigilant. The spectacular growth in Chinese military and economic power cannot but be a matter of grave concern to India.  Both nations have several outstanding border issues that China doesn't seem to be in any hurry to settle. It has made the audacious demand that Indian leaders should refrain from visiting parts of Arunachal Pradesh staking claim to the state. Beijing has also successfully blocked international financial institutions from extending development assistance to a sovereign part of India. These are but a few instances. Its continuing policy of arming Pakistan against India is evidence of Chinese animus against India.

However, India's defence budgets have, on the other hand, not kept pace with its growing security imperatives. Its 2010 defence budget of Rs 147,344 crore (around $31.1 billion) represents a measly year over year growth of 3.98 per cent, barely enough to maintain the previous year's level of expenditure after adjusting for inflation.

Compare it with China's budget, which has been estimated to be 2-3 times its official budget. This would make China's budget dwarf Indian military spending by nearly 5 to 7.3 times. The present level of India's defence expenditure is, therefore, inadequate to address the security challenges it could face even in the immediate future.

Critics, however, say that there is little purpose in increasing the defence budget when, every year, money is surrendered. The reality, however, is that Ministry of Defence (MoD) is not the only ministry that is culpable of not spending its allocations. The compelling need of the hour is to overhaul the acquisition structure in MoD and spend more on defence, like nations do when faced with security threats.

India, of course, doesn't have any imperial intent but it surely must be ready to counter any nation preparing to employ it.

Thomas Mathew is Deputy Director, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi The views expressed by the author are personal

***************************************

HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE

N CHANDRA MOHAN

Since the early 2000s, fast-globalising corporations from India, China and other Asian countries have shown a growing appetite for foreign direct investments (FDI) in Africa. This push into the world's poorest continent has been motivated in part by a desire to secure access to raw materials for their rapidly growing economies. Their hunger for oil and minerals has led western observers like the billionaire George Soros to dub them as Africa's 'new colonialists' as they are perceived to be exploiting the continent like the Europeans had in the past.

This drive into Africa by Indian transnationals does appear, prima facie, problematical. The continent is home to more than half the 35-odd countries that have experienced humanitarian emergencies — largely man-made crises in which thousands of people perish in wars. Sudan is civil war-ridden but that hasn't prevented India's oil giant ONGC from being heavily involved in oil exploration there. In this milieu, a scramble for resources is bound to appear controversial with India vying with China to become one of the largest investors in Africa.

The flow of India's FDI into Africa averaged $334 million a year between 2000 and 2004, hitting a peak of $883 million in 2002, largely reflecting ONGC's involvement in Sudan. Now, with Bharti Airtel's $10.7 billion acquisition of Zain, Kuwait's third largest telecom operator, for its African assets (excluding Sudan and Morocco), India's FDI in Africa has touched, according to Indusview Advisors, a mergers and acquisitions advisory firm, $16.7 billion. Much of these investments represent more than a search for oil and minerals.

Not so long ago, Bharti had agreed to buy Warid Telecom in Bangladesh, signaling a new strategy of scaling up globally through a string of small and medium-sized acquisitions in the developing economies. Africa is the new frontier for Bharti as its telecom market is the most underdeveloped and is spread over a vast geographical area. The market has relatively low rates of penetration with only three to four operators. In India, in contrast, most of the global players are already present in the industry and the market has become highly competitive with wafer-thin margins.

More generally, India Inc's African safari is more than resource-seeking in nature. India's biggest domestic auto manufacturer, Tata Motors, is making preparations to launch its 'people's car', the Nano, in the continent. Godrej Consumer Products Ltd wants to take its products to Africa and has recently bought Tura, a household brand in Nigeria. The investment intentions of even a mining conglomerate like the Vedanta Group also go beyond its interest in copper as it intends to set up a power project in southern Africa not only to meet its own requirement in Zambia, but also to cater to demand in Mozambique, Botswana, Malawi and Angola.

Far from being a search for oil and minerals, "some of these investments are propelling African trade into cutting-edge multinational corporate networks, which are increasingly altering the international division of labour," argued Harry Broadman, a World Bank economist. One of the top 25 agri-business transnationals, India's Karuturi Global Ltd, a global leader in the production and export of roses, acquired Sher Agencies, the world's largest rose farm in Kenya. It is also engaged in large-scale agricultural farming in Ethiopia to produce rice, palm oil and sugarcane.

Indian giants like the Tatas — whose commitment in current and future projects in the continent is pegged at $1.24 billion  — and Mahindra and Mahindra are making outbound investments in South Africa to exploit a booming market in the continent. Back home, they have acquired critical size and now look increasingly overseas for growth. According to consultancy firm, Accenture, companies like these follow a 'string-of-pearls' approach, gaining experience and confidence by venturing into smaller markets in emerging economies before tackling more mature markets. Mahindra's auto business, thus, targeted Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia before moving onto South Africa. The American and European market represents the ultimate challenge.

While rising FDI from India holds great promise for Africa, reforms are needed to strengthen this process. The business environment needs to be made more investor-friendly and transaction costs lowered. An Indian firm in Ghana found it so costly to ship a container from Accra to Lagos that it decided to do a cross-border investment than export. Broadman also advocates reforms that leverage linkages between investment and trade to allow African business-participation in global production-sharing networks generated by Indian and Asian investments.

India, for its part, has considerable advantages in engaging Africa. The biggest of these is the Indian diaspora, especially in south and east Africa. The diaspora's contribution has been significant in India's trade, as they own distribution channels, manufacturing facilities and even mines in these countries. Unfortunately, this potential has not been adequately tapped, although India Inc has made diverse investments of late in a range of industries, including infrastructure. India's growing partnership with Africa must harness the diasporic potential.

N Chandra Mohan is Professor of Economics and International Business at the IILM Institute for Higher Education, New Delhi

The views expressed by the author are personal

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

FREE THE ADVICE

 

In its first outing, everybody knew what the National Advisory Council was supposed to do. The United Progressive Alliance relied on support from the Left; that support was supposedly conditional on the implementation of the Common Minimum Programme; and, since the CMP was a political compromise, a political group outside government to monitor its implementation seemed a straightforward idea. So the NAC's mandate then was clear. But this time it's the government that got a mandate. What, then, are we to make of news that the NAC is back? Sonia Gandhi has once again been appointed its chairperson, and its other members will reportedly be named shortly.

 

A re-formed NAC, one without a clear mandate, will have quite a tightrope to walk. On the one hand, India cannot afford that it become a cosy talking shop for those who feel that their leadership of what they would choose to call "civil society" somehow entitles them to have more of a say in policy formation than anyone else (including

 

the elected representatives of the people). Where, after all, is the guarantee that a clubby insiders-only group will not start reflecting the reflexively statist views of the anti-reform group that exists within the Congress party? On the other hand, a group that works on the political calculations required to ease the passage of important legislation to which the ruling coalition is already committed — the food security act, the nuclear liability bill — is something that is clearly missing. And if it can also gauge which reformist steps would both super-size India's growth — while including in the process more and more of our citizens — and be politically implementable, especially by creating a non-partisan consensus on the subject, then that too is needed.

 

So the NAC must, of course, advise on policy. But its composition will be crucial. An officially-sanctioned pressure group for the party is one thing; a group of experts that can figure out pragmatic steps forward for reform, and begin the process of bringing on board non-UPA parties to make the legislation happen, is something quite different. It cannot, therefore, be a group composed purely of social-sector do-gooders — or, for that matter, of "apolitical" technocrats. We will have to watch carefully as the new members of the council are appointed; for in those announcements the government's commitment to reform, and the scale of its ambitions for the remainder of its term, will both be made clear.

 

***************************************

 

INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

NUCLEAR SUMMER

 

After more than nine months of tedious wrangling and patient negotiation, India and the US have finally reached an agreement granting India the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. It caps the groundbreaking Indo-US civil nuclear agreement that gave us access to nuclear fuel and technology. The deal was intended to inaugurate billions of dollars worth of nuclear commerce between the two countries, but had been stuck so far because of India's discomfort with American oversight (there will be none, India will only answer to the IAEA in Vienna) and US concerns about proliferation.

 

For India, a concrete arrangement on reprocessing terms was vital before buying reactors, to avoid another Tarapore — where we bought American nuclear reactors but US policy did not allow us to reprocess or return the fuel. This arrangement lays down some safeguards to address concerns that the fuel could be diverted towards a weapons programme. India has also bargained and won the right to more than one reprocessing plant, given the risk of transporting nuclear material. Pushing these through has been a wrenching affair in the US, and now the burden shifts to India, which must complete the process and enact a nuclear liability bill to begin brisk nuclear business between the two countries. Such a law is necessary to lay the foundations of nuclear industry, to create an insurance sector, and allow for private participation. While it has been unfairly cast as a favour to American business interests, it is patently in our own interests to get nuclear business going.

 

Even as we can now transact with Russia and France, it is worth underscoring the fact that this exchange would not have materialised without American heavy-lifting in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The US ambassador greeted the news as part of the "great, win-win narrative of the US-India global partnership" — and indeed, in swatting down its own non-proliferation chorus, and offering India a model that has only been held out to Europe and Japan so far, the US has clearly signalled its investment in the relationship. India would do well to stand by its friends.

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

THAT NEW SCHOOL FEELING

SANJAYGDHANDEU

 

The Indian higher education system, including technical , professional and vocational education, is, in its present form, more than a hundred years old now. It all started when a set of institutions were started by the British Raj in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. Soon thereafter, some more institutions were established by the Church and related organisations. Some of them continue to operate even today. It might be worth noting, thus, that Indian higher education was after all started by Foreign Education Service Providers (FESPs) from Britain. The very fact that the language of instruction in most of Indian higher education is English is another pointer that Indian higher education has always been open to foreign inputs.

 

An element of fierce competition was introduced to this model in the '30s and '40s, when some nationalist groups started their own educational institutions. These institutions were, however, passing on the same basic knowledge, if with a flavour of national- ism: the ownership of these nationalist institutions was in the hands of trusts or individuals. The competition, as far as academics was concerned, was healthy. And among them, including the British or Church-owned FESPs of those times, the quality was uniform. The situation continued thus till the '50s.

 

Soon after Independence, there was a significant expansion in the higher education space. Due to the adoption of a socialistic model of economy and governance and because of the initiative of state and Central governments, all higher education institutions were brought under full government funding and support — and hence under government control. The IITs and IIMs were established, as were Central and many state universities. Since the country was building new dams, establishing new steel plants and building new aircraft, a new kind of manpower was required. The educational system, hence, started setting up many polytechnics, industrial training institutes and engineering colleges. This phase continued till the end of the '70s.

 

The beginning of the '80s saw a new phenomenon: self-financed institutions in existing universities, as well as private institutions in engineering, arts, commerce and science education. Many politicians saw in this an opportunity, financial as well as social. The "Shikshan Samrat" age was born, and higher education became a source of big revenue. All one was required to do to succeed was to make sure one got all the licences from government agencies and regulatory bodies, as the younger generation of students was growing in numerical strength. The methods of access to higher education were becoming so stringent that this development, the opening up of a huge number of educational institutions in the southern and western parts of India, became a major demographic solution (or was it a problem?).

 

It must be mentioned that private unaided institutions have a social responsibility and thus should be held accountable for their quality. Unfortunately, the regulatory mechanisms — both internal and external — did not ensure quality. So while the country saw a huge expansion of the higher education system — an expansion that is needed even today, considering that India's gross enrolment ratio of 12.4 per cent is still very low — the expansion in quantity at the cost of quality has brought us to the present situation.

 

Unshackling the higher education system and opening its doors to fresh air would reinvigorate a static system — particularly in finding a resolution to the quantity-quality issue, the major challenge today. Opening up the system is merely a strategy; it is neither a magic wand nor a magic solution. But there is a long history of how opening up a sector has helped that sector. The time has come to adopt that strategy for higher education.

 

Consider India's automotive sector. Till the early '90s, it was one or two car manufacturers, one or two truck manufacturers, each pushing the same models year after year under a licence-permit raj. Once the sector was opened, India emerged as a global hub for automotive components. Even when a GM car is produced in

 

India, it is not sold at the international price: international brands in India will try for better quality at competitive prices. And Indian companies are competing, and winning in some aspects.

 

Now, let us consider a service industry, the banking sector. Till the early '90s, we were used to

 

the highly inefficient services of nationalised banks. When it opened up, we were able to see a big change in the entire industry. International banks are there; nationalised banks have changed; new technology speeds up operations. Customers have plenty of options, as new banks come up with new products and services. Even when interest rates are low, customers are happy with banks' increasingly automated and efficient services.

 

Companies like Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive have been selling consumer products for decades. Does it mean that we have been paying exorbitant prices for these? The answer is simple: prices are always based on quality and costs, no matter whether the product is produced by a national or an international organisation. If these aspects are taken into account, the education sector will also see a bright future.

 

One should consider the Foreign Education Providers Bill with an open mind, and examine the specific features of the bill.

 

However, one has to consider both the historical background and the present situation in India before one looks at the details. Both clearly point to the bill's potential.

 

The writer is the director of IIT Kanpur

 

express@expressindia.com

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

MOUNTAINS OF TERROR

SUDEEP PAUL

 

Whether you are in a Moscow subway or a London subway or a train in Madrid or an office building in New York, we face the same enemy." The London of yore may have cringed at its subway being called a "subway"; but those were Hillary Clinton's rather emotionally chosen, and therefore reductive, words in reaction to Monday's suicide bombings in the Moscow metro. Collated with Barack Obama's prompt condemnation and pledge to help bring the perpetrators to justice, they hint at a reintegration of Russia's story of terrorism with the War on Terror — the former having been isolated somewhat as a case of its own after tales of Russian brutality in Chechnya and the emergence of Vladimir Putin's neo-muscular Russia.

 

The Federal Security Service believes the attacks are attributable to terrorists from the North Caucasus. Whether or not forensics has indeed found as much evidence in the body fragments of the two female suicide bombers the suspicion (or conviction) is founded on rock solid precedent. The Russian Federation has known terror bombings and hostage-sieges since the First Chechen War that a demoralised Russian army had lost in 1996.

 

The first suicide bombings began in 2000, after Russia's victory in the Second Chechen War. In 2002, the siege of Moscow's Dubrovka Theatre brought to light the cult of female Chechens ready for death. The first female suicide bombers surfaced a year later, in an attempt on Akhmad Kadyrov, the pro-Moscow Chechen leader and father of Kremlin-backed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. In February 2004, came the first big one: an attack on the Zamoskvoretskaya line of the Moscow metro that killed 40. In August, a woman blew herself up outside Rizhskaya station, killing 10. After that attack, came Monday's. Meanwhile, women militants had taken part in the Beslan school siege in September 2004 in North Ossetia.

 

Mostly Chechen and Ingush, these women terrorists lost husbands, fathers, brothers, sons at Russian hands. A couple of the women in the Dubrovka siege were reportedly victims of rape by Russian soldiers. From brutal victimisation to terror is the route that only a minority of the overwhelmingly traumatised Chechen women took. Yet, for Muscovites, if there's a suicide bombing and the bomber is female, the trail, axiomatically, leads to the North Caucasus.

 

A twist in the tale this time, however, taking one back to the question of repositioning Russia's terror narrative, is Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's claim that militants originating along the Af-Pak border may have facilitated Monday's attacks. Moscow's growing agitation at the prospect of a US pullout from Afghanistan in 2011 — a region that had terminally infected its last empire and could again jeopardise its geopolitical security along with New Delhi's — is no secret. The Caucasian militias' old links to jehadis in Af-Pak could be re-manoeuvred to carry out attacks which presumably will spread out among Russia's cities, particularly the Federal Cities of Moscow and St Petersburg. Monday's attacks were most likely in retaliation for recent federal military successes in the North Caucasus, including the slaying of a militant leader in Ingushetia allegedly linked to the bombing of the Nevsky Express in November last year that left 29 dead. That's why Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov's promise last month, to export the Caucasian war to Russia's cities, appears quickly buttressed by action.

 

Russia fears the North Caucasus as its Achilles Heel, where, despite putting pro-Kremlin regimes in place, it has no assurance of continued control. The North Caucasus, still retaining Lermontov's scenic, topographic, ethnic beauty and ruggedness, still the "cauldron of nationalities", lies between the Black and Caspian Seas, overlooking the path to Turkey and Iran, allowing Russia access to the Mediterranean. It's where Europe meets Asia; it has been fought over by nations since the distant past. Today, it's the key to Russia's dominance of its rediscovered "traditional sphere of influence". Ironically, Chechnya is relatively calm now. But its spillover has resulted in burgeoning Islamist violence in Ingushetia and Dagestan.

 

North Ossetia is the only healthy dwarf of the region. The rest — Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, South Ossetia and Abkhazia (the last two technically in Georgia, and focus of the Russo-Georgian war of 2008) — are each a basket case, with poverty, unemployment and corruption radicalising the youth in the Muslim-majority republics, notwithstanding Kremlin-funded development projects. If history, for centuries, has been made here, resentments too run back into the past. The Muslim ethnic groups (Chechen, Ingush, Balkar) were accused of collaborating with the Nazis by Stalin and mass-deported to Central Asia. They returned in the '50s, to find the Soviets redrawing their maps. That unforgiven act triggered invasions when the Soviet Union suddenly stood dissolved.

 

Moscow's hope lies in the exhaustion of the ordinary folks. Even Chechens are not sure anymore if they want independence. The rest are just aware of their vulnerability. If large-scale investments by Russia's government and oligarchs help rebuild the republics' economies, a very dangerous conflict zone could go off the radar of global terror. A little money in the right pockets does what the best militaries cannot.

 

sudeep.paul@expressindia.com

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

CONVERT MUNICIPAL WASTE TO WEALTH

RANESH NAIR

 

When you visit the beautiful green grounds covering an area close to 48 acres in Gorai, in the western suburbs of Mumbai, by the side of a creek overlooking Asia's largest pagoda, it is hard to imagine that this picturesque location was until recently home to approximately 2.3 million tonnes of garbage in an open dump with an average height of 26 metres, about as high as a five-storey building. The wide green expanse and the revived mangroves have brought about a marked improvement in the quality of life of the residents in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

 

Before we tell you the Gorai story of rags to riches, let us first get a sense of the urban waste challenge in India. Urban India produces an average of 1,20,000 metric tonnes of garbage daily. With a population of over 12 million, Mumbai alone generates garbage of 6,500 tonnes per day.

 

Municipalities in India spend between 10 to 50 per cent of their budget on solid waste management (SWM), but most of this is consumed in the salaries of sanitation workers and transport of waste, while a minuscule proportion is spent on its scientific disposal. The abysmal state of affairs with regard to the collection and transport of waste is all too well known. Less understood are the implications of the neglect of waste treatment and disposal, as the garbage lies untreated and unprocessed in open dumpsites, and its grave consequences for public health and the environment.

 

Not very long ago, nearly 1200 tonnes of garbage was being dumped daily at the open dumping grounds in Gorai. The site had been used for this purpose since 1972, and had become a huge public health hazard. The foul odour emanating from the dump created a situation where residents in the surrounding neighbourhoods could not open their windows. The toxic leachate (the liquid that drains through the garbage) from the waste had led to the degeneration of mangroves in the creek that runs parallel to the dumpsite. A court directive in March 2007 led to the shutting down of the dumpsite.

 

Thanks to an innovative public-private partnership led by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the scientific closure of the dumpsite at Gorai has transformed this waste, accumulated over several decades, into wealth. Sanitary landfills are large and deep underground pits into which the residual waste is put in between scientifically layered geo-textile material and high density polyethylene sheets to ensure complete and airtight closure. The onsite conversion of methane gas is carried out using flaring systems, and the area is developed so as to provide a green cover over the dumpsite.

 

MCGM earns carbon credits for the capture and combustion of methane (landfill gas) from Gorai, and the transaction is one of the largest carbon advance transactions in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). A tonne of methane is equivalent to 21 tonnes of carbon in its global warming potential. The leachate is collected and transported off-site to Versova where the municipal corporation operates a sewerage treatment plant. Gorai is the first dumpsite closure project in India to be registered at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). MCGM has already received a carbon advance of Rs. 25 crore against future delivery of carbon credits from the Asian Development Bank, and the total carbon credit earnings are expected to be about Rs 72 crore (higher than the total capital cost of the project). It is estimated to reduce greenhouse gases by 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over a 10 year crediting period. MCGM is in discussions with a leading energy company to set up a 2 MW power plant at the site to convert the methane to energy, further enhancing the revenue capability of the project.

 

At Gorai, the project has been completed in 24 months and commissioned in February, 2010 at a total capital cost of Rs 50 crore. After competitive bidding, IL&FS was selected as the project developer and environmental consultants to MCGM and the contract for construction was awarded to a consortium led by United Phosphorus Limited and M/s Van Der Weil Strotgas BV for a period of 15 years. The operations and maintenance of the site will be done by the consortium for a period of 15 years at an agreed cost of Rs. 12 crore.

 

The project required clearances from multiple authorities of the Government of India and the government of Maharashtra, and has been developed in accordance with the Municipal Solid Waste Rules 2000, which make it mandatory for Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to collect, transport and process/treat garbage and dispose of the residual in sanitary landfills. The rules have typically been ignored by ULBs in India.

 

Admittedly, solid waste management in urban India is a much larger challenge than attending to the menace of an over-piled dumpsite, no matter how huge. But while the Gorai scientific closure addresses only the backlog in solid waste management, it sets a great example for what is possible. Gorai is a part of Mumbai's overall Integrated Waste Management Strategy which involves a comprehensive waste disposal plan, developed on a public-private partnership framework as a set of independent but well synchronised projects that covers multiple projects including large landfills at Kanjur (4000 tonnes per day), Deonar (2000 tonnes per day) and Mulund (500 tonnes per day).

 

Besides carbon credits, the integrated strategy includes projects which generate revenue from sources such as compost, an organic manure prepared by microbial decomposition of organic matter under aerobic conditions; biogas from organic waste which can be used to power electricity generators, construction debris waste which can be used in pavement blocks, etc. While no specific plan was devised for the 150 or so rag-pickers in Gorai, MCGM has built in a social rehabilitation program for the new scientific landfill sites at Kanjur, Deonar and Mulund, with the possibility of using their skills at the material recovery facility.

 

It was good to hear from R.A. Rajeev, the additional municipal commissioner who oversees the solid waste management for Mumbai, that for the next 25 years, the city does not have to worry about its solid waste management. Mumbai has shown the way. Other cities must follow.

 

Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia is the chairperson of ICRIER and chair of the High Powered Expert Committee on Urban Infrastructure.

 

Ranesh Nair is a consultant to the committee. Views are personal.

postcardsofchange@expressindia.com

 

***************************************

 

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

THE SANDRA BULLOCK TRADE-OFF

DAVID BROOKS

 

Two things happened to Sandra Bullock this month. First, she won an Academy Award for best actress. Then came the news reports claiming that her husband is an adulterous jerk. So the philosophic question of the day is: Would you take that as a deal? Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow?

 

On the one hand, an Academy Award is nothing to sneeze at. Bullock has earned the admiration of her peers in a way very few experience. She'll make more money for years to come. She may even live longer. Research by Donald A. Redelmeier and Sheldon M. Singh has found that, on average, Oscar winners live nearly four years longer than nominees that don't win.

 

Nonetheless, if you had to take more than three seconds to think about this question, you are absolutely crazy. Marital happiness is far more important than anything else in determining personal well-being. If you have a successful marriage, it doesn't matter how many professional setbacks you endure, you will be reasonably happy. If you have an unsuccessful marriage, it doesn't matter how many career triumphs you record, you will remain significantly unfulfilled.

 

Over the past few decades, teams of researchers have been studying happiness. Their work, which seemed flimsy at first, has developed an impressive rigour, and one of the key findings is that, just as the old sages predicted, worldly success has shallow roots while interpersonal bonds permeate through and through.

 

For example, the relationship between happiness and income is complicated, and after a point, tenuous. It is true that poor nations become happier as they become middle-class nations. But once the basic necessities have been achieved, future income is lightly connected to well-being. The US is much richer than it was 50 years ago, but this has produced no measurable increase in overall happiness. On a personal scale, winning the lottery doesn't seem to produce lasting gains in well-being. People aren't happiest during the years when they are winning the most promotions. Instead, people are happy in their 20's, dip in middle age and then, on average, hit peak happiness just after retirement at age 65. People get slightly happier as they climb the income scale, but this depends on how they experience growth. Does wealth inflame unrealistic expectations? Does it destabilise settled relationships? Or does it flow from a virtuous cycle in which an interesting job that in turn leads to more interesting opportunities?

 

If the relationship between money and well-being is complicated, the correspondence between personal relationships and happiness is not. The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socialising after work and having dinner with others. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.

 

If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbours. Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime.

 

The overall impression from this research is that economic and professional success exists on the surface of life, and that they emerge out of interpersonal relationships, which are much deeper and more important.

 

The second impression is that most of us pay attention to the wrong things. Most governments release a tonne of data on economic trends but not enough on trust and other social conditions. In short, modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most. They have an affinity for material concerns and a primordial fear of moral and social ones. Governments keep initiating policies they think will produce prosperity, only to get sacked, time and again, from their spiritual blind side.

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

THE GREAT GAME FOLIO

C. RAJA MOHAN

 

NOWRUZ DIPLOMACY

Last year on the occasion of the Nowruz, the new year celebrated widely in Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, US President Barack Obama reached out to the Iranian people and leadership and offered to end decades of confrontation between the two countries.

 

This year it is Iran's turn to leverage the Nowruz for its own regional diplomacy. Last week, Iran hosted the first ever World Nowruz Festival in Tehran by inviting the leaders of its neighbouring countries.

 

Nowruz, which means "new day" in Farsi, is a spring festival of Persian origin that begins on March 21, the vernal equinox in the solar calendar. Nowruz celebrations predate Islam and originated about 3,000 years ago when Zoroastrianism dominated the spiritual landscape of Persia and its neighbourhood.

 

Hardline Islamists have tended to frown upon the pagan elements of the Nowruz festivities, but have been unable to force the Iranian and Central Asian Muslims to discard it. When the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan during 1997-2001, it had banned Nowruz celebrations.

 

That Tehran's Islamic Republic has chosen to make a big deal of Nowruz suggests Iran is keen to build on the strong Persian civilisational links that bind it to its neighbours.

 

Speaking at the celebrations, which Iran now plans to organise every year, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei underlined the cultural nature of the festivities and the opportunities it provides for regional cooperation. These Nowruz celebrations expand on the trilateral summitry of Persian-speaking nations, under which the Iranian, Tajik and Afghan leaders have been meeting annually over the last three years.

 

The Nowruz event was attended by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek attended the Tehran celebrations. Azerbaijan was represented by Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

 

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, could not make it to the Nowruz festivities this time. India which shares so much of Persian culture will, hopefully, not miss it the next time around.

 

KARZAI'S PLAY

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's frequent contacts with the Iranian leadership is raising eyebrows in Washington. Two days before President Obama breezed through Kabul, Karzai was in Tehran to join the Nowruz celebrations.

 

Earlier this month, Karzai hosted the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his second visit to Kabul. Ahmadinejad did not miss the opportunity to lambast the United States and its policies. With Karzai standing next to him at the press conference in Kabul, Ahmadinejad hit back at a hostile US reporter by asking him a counter question: "Your country is located on the other side of the world so what are you doing here?"

 

Karzai's outreach to Tehran comes amidst the growing gulf between him and the Obama administration. The more insult Washington throws at Karzai, the greater the incentive for the Afghan president to reach out to all those who are opposed to the United States. The New York Times reported in its Tuesday edition that Karzai has begun to deliberately signal distance between himself and Washington, and presenting himself as the only leader who can limit American dominance over Afghanistan.

 

The Americans might be making a big mistake if they underestimate the intelligence and survival skills of Afghan rulers. When the Soviet troops started leaving Afghanistan in 1988, few in the West expected that the Russian-backed President Najibullah would last. Najibullah surprised every one by holding on to power for three more years.

 

KAYANI'S COSTS

As Karzai begins to step back from the American embrace, Pakistan's army chief, Ashfaq Kayani is adding up the benefits of being serenaded in Washington last week. The GHQ in Rawalpindi, however, can't be unaware of the costs of drawing too close to the US. If Kayani really cooperates with the United States in taking on the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, the extremist groups are certain to step up the efforts to destabilise Pakistan.

 

If Kayani is seen as acting on America's behest, many friends of Pakistan in the region, including those in Beijing and Tehran, would want to think through the implications for their own interests. Put simply, Kayani's Washington visit might have begun to limit the Pakistan Army's options of playing all sides of the game in Afghanistan.

 

express@expressindia.com

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

JOBS IN THE CITY

 

With the Left governments in Kerala and West Bengal announcing urban employment guarantee schemes, the CPM is now daring the UPA to extend its flagship rural employment guarantee programme to urban areas. It says that unless the Central government comes up with an employment guarantee scheme for urban areas, the UPA's "illusory pursuit" of inclusive growth will cease to have any meaning. "It is up to the Central government to display its sincerity in upholding both the letter and spirit of this constitutional guarantee by extending the employment guarantee to the urban areas," says the lead editorial in party mouthpiece People's Democracy.

 

Adding some political punch, the editorial says the introduction of urban job guarantee by Left-ruled states comes at a time when the Centre has adopted a "cruel trajectory of imposing unprecedented burdens on the poor through policies that are aimed at increasing the prices of all essential commodities."

 

ARRESTING LOGIC

With its Bengal unit not playing ball, the CPM may have dropped the term "jail bharo" from its protest plan on April 8. It is saying that the lakhs of people would picket Central government offices and court arrest as part of the nation-wide protest against price rise.

 

The CPI, however, is sticking to the plan. The editorial in New Age underlines that the jail bharo campaign "must be a real mass arrest programme." "The fight against price rise could not be confined to opposition to certain decisions of the Union and state governments...It has to be intensified and enlarged as a fight against the very concept of economic neo-liberalism," it says.

 

BITTER MEDICINE

In the light of the Medical Council of India's attempts to bar doctors from receiving gifts and sponsorships from the industry and from promoting specific medicines, an article in People's Democracy says the MCI should be given statutory powers. It welcomes the MCI's decision to amend the Indian Medical Council Act to insert a code of conduct for doctors in their relationship with pharmaceutical companies, and plans to recommend a quantum of punishment for those who violate the new amendment.

 

Compiled by Manoj C.G.

 

***************************************

INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

MEMORIES OF REVOLUTION

ASHIM CHATTERJEE

 

Comrade Kanu Sanyal is no more. The news is quite difficult to digest, and still more difficult because of the mysterious circumstances in which the glorious revolutionary's life came to an end.

 

Without any investigations, I have no right to judge the suicide theory put forward by different quarters. But I am at a loss to understand how Kanuda, whom I knew closely for over four deacdes, could resort to such a step because of physical pain or political isolation. Instead of paying lip service to Comrade Sanyal's greatness, Left leaders as well as his comrades and admirers should take the initiative to unearth the mystery behind his death.

 

If the story of suicide is true, it must be stated that Kanuda had no right to do it. It has not only killed Kanuda, but will deliver a mortal blow to the movement of which he was a symbol. It must also be stated that the responsibility also lies with us. Instead of splitting, had we been able to stay together and manage differences of opinion, this mishap could have been avoided. The time has come to understand that the split by itself is no virtue. Today, uniting with differences is far more important.

 

I had the privilege to know Kanuda well. Along with him, I was a CPI(ML) Central Committee member, elected from the Calcutta Congress in May 1970, of which Comrade Charu Majumdar had been secretary. Along with Comrade Souren Bose, I was Kanuda's cell-mate in Alipur central jail for over a year and a half. Together we formed the Organising Committee for Coordination of Communist Revolutionaries (OCCCR). Around 1981, we fell apart on the question of evaluating the crisis that engulfed us then. While I thought that the crisis was a theoretical one, Kanuda termed it an organisational one. He revised his stand later, but we did not unite under a single organisation again.

 

From my experience, I evaluate Kanuda as a revolutionary comrade with firm conviction, unwavering determination and a down-toearth approach. He had an intense love for the people. A charming personality, Kanuda hated hypocrisy, was never comfortable with urban intellectuals, but had been quite at ease with peasants and workers — both known and unknown.

 

For two major contributions, Comrade Kanu Sanyal will be remembered for ever. First, during the stormy days of the 60s, Comrade Sanyal, through the Naxalbari uprising, gave a new direction and orientation to the communist, left and democratic movement in our country. After Naxalbari, to quote Samar Sen, nothing remained the same.

 

Secondly, when everyone thought that Naxalbari was developed because of Charu Majumdar, Comrade Sanyal, through his article 'More on Naxalbari', boldly declared that Naxalbari had developed in spite of Charu Majumdar. In his article he distinctly described the development of that period in North Bengal — two lines, two developments, two parallel practices and two results — the success of the Naxalbari uprising and the fiasco at Chaterhat. The future will remember Kanu Sanyal for these two contributions.

 

With Kanuda, the last stalwart of the Naxalbari uprising is gone. It denotes the end of an era. The communist, left and the democratic movement as well as the whole country is poorer because of the sudden demise of Comrade Kanu Sanyal. Long live Comrade Kanu Sanyal.

 

The writer was a Naxalite in the 1970s

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THE RIGHT KIND OF ADVICE

 

The National Advisory Council (NAC), now all set to start a second innings after the appointment of Sonia Gandhi as its chairperson on Monday, was first set up in the tenure of UPA-1 to oversee the implementation of the common minimum programme and to act as an interface between civil society and government. The NAC, in its first avatar, got much credit for conducting advocacy for, and pushing the government to enact, two of UPA-1's most significant legislative actions—the NREG and the Right to Information Act. But the NAC met an early demise when Sonia Gandhi resigned as chairperson in March 2006 after the office for profit controversy—though the NAC was officially disbanded only two years after that in March 2008. The government still hasn't announced who the members of NAC-2 will be, but the membership of the first term serves as a good guide while understanding the motivation for, and future role of NAC-2. Almost all the members, including former bureaucrats, academics, scientists and activists were strongly associated with UPA's agenda for social sectors and redistribution. There wasn't much, if any, representation for the reformist, economic growth-oriented section of civil society. It will probably be the same this time.

 

The Congress party strongly believes that its redistributionist agenda—NREG, loan waiver and other big spending schemes—secured it a second term. And it probably believes that more such programmes are necessary to secure a third term. NAC-2 will likely perform the role of advocating redistributionist legislation like the Food Security Act, which seems to have lost its way in the last one year. The only difference is that NAC-1 operated in the boom years of economic growth, which made all the public spending affordable. NAC-2 has to operate in a different growth environment. And it must recognise that big spending programmes can only be financed in an economy that is booming and generating massive revenues for the government. With the international situation still bleak, the thrust for growth has to come from within. But will NAC-2 see reason in allowing (even pressurising) the government to continue with economic reform in order to get the kind of growth needed to sustain what NAC will likely have in mind on spending? Unlikely, if its membership has a profile similar to NAC-1. It is a pity that the Congress doesn't have an institutional forum for economic reformers to make their voice heard, just like the NAC gives a focus to social sectors. After all, redistribution will bust the deficit if there isn't any reform-generated growth.

 

***************************************

 

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

GET THE ENVIRONMENT RIGHT

A recent report puts hugely positive numbers against increased M&A activity in the Indian metal and mining industry, finding that 2009 saw an increase of 45% in deal count and 173% in deal value compared to 2008. The flip side of this story is how delays and disputes continue to make headlines. The latest development on this front is that the Supreme Court asked the French cement giant Lafarge to seek fresh environmental and forest clearance from the Centre before resuming limestone mining in the east Khasi hills of Meghalaya. The project in question is intended to supply raw material to Lafarge's cement plant in Bangladesh. The delay is especially controversial for two reasons. First, there is the potential for diplomatic complications, given that India had guaranteed Bangladesh an uninterrupted supply of limestone. Since Bangladesh is short of limestone reserves, there are claims that delays in this project will not just hold back our neighbour's cement plant but also its overall economic development. Second, it has been alleged that Lafarge transferred tribal land to itself in violation of the Indian Constitution's Sixth Schedule and then mortgaged it to international banks. As lawyers and concerned parties trade charges, what's evidenced is the scale of the cost being paid for India's confused mining policies—now extending beyond domestic economics to international politics.

 

There is chaos in the Union government ranks. Just yesterday, it was reported that steel minister Virbhadra Singh is asking the finance ministry to increase the export duty on iron ore. This is part of the ongoing turf battle with the mining ministry. Last week, PM Manmohan Singh was playing umpire between environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh and surface transport minister Kamal Nath, power minister Sushilkumar Shinde, water minister Pawan Bansal and others. It's the contention of Nath, Shinde, Bansal and party that developmental projects are being gratuitously held back by Ramesh's ministry. Now a few states are also at odds with Ramesh. His defence is that the Union environment and forests ministry is only trying to protect India's ecological security. He has accused state governments of deliberately delaying the notification of buffer zones for wildlife reserves. As this factitious back and fro continues, India is seeking to incentivise foreign funds into mining. Legislative amendments that would make the sector more investment-friendly are constantly being tom-tomed around. But how can the sector register smart growth as long as confusion prevails? Investment requires the bedrock of certainty.

 

***************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

FINMIN'S CONJURING ON BORROWING

SUBHOMOY BHATTACHARJEE

On Monday evening, as banks pored over the details of the half year market borrowing calendar of the government and RBI, they may not have noticed a Rs 10,000 crore jugglery in the figures. That jugglery is in the statement of the revenue deficit figures by the government for the current year. The difference will also impact the deficit calculation for the next year, for which the borrowing calendar was released on Monday.

 

In short, the government has told Parliament that its revenue deficit for 2009-10 is Rs 3,39,766.84 crore, whereas for the rest of the world the figure is Rs 3,29,061 crore, a difference of Rs 10,705 crore. The first set of figures is contained in the annual financial statement (AFS) of the central government. The statement can be called the heart of the budget documents. The statement is a sort of accounts for the government treasury. And the treasury, known as the Consolidated Fund of India, is under the control of the Lok Sabha. So every finance minister gives the details of the spending and receipts from and into the consolidated fund in the AFS.

 

Every official writing those numbers, therefore, ensures that none of those figures are incorrectly printed. To make sense of those numbers, the government also prints supporting documents, including the crucial Budget at a Glance, which presents those numbers in a ready-to-understand form for you and me. This document also has sanctity as it is laid on the table of both the Houses of Parliament.

 

Yet, the revenue deficit of the Centre, as per the AFS, is much more than the deficit as shown in Budget at a Glance. It will be difficult to recollect when this has happened before. The government is, in effect, saying that the revised revenue deficit of 5.3% for 2009-10 is an understatement and the correct figure is more like 5.5% of GDP. This also means the revenue receipts in Budget at a Glance have been overstated or the revenue expenditure has been understated by a similar amount.

 

In the scheme of government accounts, the fiscal deficit is the sum total of all revenue and capital expenditure balanced against the revenue receipts and non-debt capital receipts. Usually, the government spends more than it earns. So the difference between the two is made good by government borrowings from different sources, including the bond market. Since the market borrowing made by the finance ministry matches the lower estimate of revenue deficit, it would seem the under-provision has not been accounted for. In effect, the fiscal deficit, too, has been understated.

 

Is there a critical piece of information missing in the accounts for the current year? The total number of ministries for which the finance ministry draws up a balance sheet is 105 and it would be a gargantuan task to trawl through them to find the missing link. It is also unnecessary. The point of debate is pretty clear. One set of government figures on the deficit does not match the other. Both have been tabled in Parliament.

 

However, in the budget estimates for 2010-11, this discrepancy has been ironed out. The difference between the two sets of numbers in the AFS and Budget at a Glance is just Rs 250 crore, which is obviously an accounting difference. But there are two entries in the receipts and in the expenditure budgets that provide a hint of how the same may have been reconciled. In the demand for grants for the ministry of consumer affairs, the sum provided for the estimated food subsidy is Rs 55,578 crore. But the projected expenditure for food subsidy is Rs 10,000 crore more. This will be provided for, the budget documents show, through a ways-and-means advance to the Food Corporation of India for Rs 10,000 crore.

 

This sort of borrowing by the government to meet a departmental expenditure has rarely happened before and certainly not in the past two decades. No department has had its projected expenditure clearly offset through the mechanism of cash borrowing. The explanatory note with the entry says the advance will be adjusted in the same fiscal, which the government can be quite relied upon to implement. As a result, despite incurring a total expenditure of Rs 66,678 crore for food subsidy, the government can get away with showing a lower bill. To that extent, the fiscal and the revenue deficit will also be lower in the next fiscal. But as the ways-and-means advance will be financed by RBI, it will add to the overall cash availability in the economy with the attendant consequence on yields.

 

Similarly, in the receipts budget, the finance ministry has made another startling assumption. This is the under-provision for the borrowings made by state governments. In the past two years, as the state governments have got richer due to higher tax collections and fiscal prudence, they have invested their surplus cash in 14-day treasury bills issued by the Centre. The interest on those bills is naturally provided for by the Centre. In 2008-09, that investment rose by 73% and in 2009-10 by 43% to Rs 98,663 crore. But for 2010-11, the finance ministry has assumed there will be zero growth in the cash surplus of the states. The corresponding interest payment provision is also lower and so on. The borrowing calendar offered to banks to make up the shortfall naturally looks healthier than it actually is.

 

subhomoy.bhattacharjee@expressindia.com

 

***************************************

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

NOW THAT FARM PRICES ARE FALLING

YOGINDER K ALAGH

 

While a lot of money is being spent on agricultural projects, not much is seen in terms of outcomes in water availability and newer seeds. While the cap on subsidies is fine and the market-linked policy on newer products and expansion of urea capacity is well taken, it is nobody's case that much advantage to agriculture can be expected in the short-run. So, it is the price and profitability signals that will be the centre point of any short-run revival strategy after the bad kharif last year. But nobody is worrying about all this out there.

 

The Economic Survey made the valid point that despite the 'hype' over food prices, producer prices in agriculture only grew by 6%. GDP deflators are a box only national income statisticians know. The reconstituted Statistics Commission together with the chief statistician has to take us forward on price statistics for agricultural policies and the spread between consumer and harvest prices, but the rough trends are known. Since the chief economic advisor wrote on the 'hype' over agriculture prices, a lot of water has flown down the rivers. The Wholesale Price Index has fallen for food and if one uses the language some papers have used, it is now at an annual negative rate of above 25%.

 

But more seriously, harvest prices are falling. In western Maharashtra agricultural markets about two weeks ago, tur dal prices were running below Rs 30 per kg, just above the minimum support price (MSP), and so was soya. Potato prices started falling, and now there are reports of potatoes selling at Rs 2 per kg in village markets because of which potato-producing regions like West Bengal and northwestern Gujarat have been sending SOS messages to non-existent saviours. Sugar prices are also on their way down and we are in the falling cobweb, with the factories no longer buying sugarcane.

 

The response of policymakers has been fascinating. I argued for an examination of the possibility of a mild degree of tariff protection and MSP support. The government was kind enough to tell oilseed and pulse farmers, largely in very poor rain-fed areas, that duty-free imports will continue until March 31, 2011, putting paid to any fancy ideas (s)he may have of making money this kharif season or even the next rabi season because by March-end the larger cropping decisions will have been made.

 

The Reserve Bank of India, meanwhile, coolly kept on churning its information machine. In the period April 2009 to July 2009, for which they gave us the latest figures this month, edible oil imports went up by 77.7% and pulses imports grew by 34.6%. Meanwhile, the ministry of shipping was generous in saying that more is on the way. The government not only imports these food products, it also subsidises them. Take pulses, where the numbers are less frightening. The April-July numbers suggest an annual rate of $1.5 billion.

 

Since we subsidise farmers in OECD and other countries who sell us these pulses at 15% premium over local market prices, we will give them $115 million. That's roughly Rs 500 per tonne. If we look at acreage response elasticities, we could probably get 10% growth in pulses, provided we were equally generous to our own farmers. The numbers in edible oil, where we now import more than three-quarters of what we need, are even more promising. However, I wanted to take the less favourable case for my argument.

 

The chief economic advisor tells us very validly that the way you present your argument will convince the policymaker. He gave a very interesting example of a vacuum cleaner improving the welfare of domestic servants. I taught my pulses example in a course for college teachers in economics last week. The students loved it and we were all very happy. It is textbook stuff from Krugman and Obstfeldt and great fun. I didn't know whether it was funny or tragic that the government went out of its way to reject the Alagh Committee on using tariff policies in tandem with pricing and monetary policies, yet accepted the objective of ensuring global competition for our farmer. Actually, I only wrote the stuff four years ago and some of the top economists in the government have argued for a variable tariff policy for agriculture.

 

As I drive down to my retreat, next to a nature park, there is the enervating thought that our economists are really good and our senior ministers are even better and maybe somebody out there is reading. At seventy-one years young, I am still an optimistic kind of blighter.

 

The author is a former Union minister

 

***************************************

 FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

TAX DEPARTMENT LOSES A BATTLE

TANU PANDEY

In a ruling that could put sizeable revenue receipts for the government at risk and impact its stand on the capital gains tax levied on capital gains from the sales of shares of Indian companies by overseas firms, the Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) has said that profits from such sales are not taxable in India if the company comes from Mauritius.

 

This could have very wide implications as many overseas firms operate in India through low-tax countries like Mauritius and the Indian government is even engaged in a legal tussle over levying the capital gains tax on companies where mergers and acquisitions have been carried out via share purchase transactions.

 

The AAR ruling was in favour of E*Trade Mauritius that had earned profits from selling shares. The AAR said in its order that though the capital gains accrued to the company, a tax cannot be levied with the Indo-Mauritius tax treaty as it stands now.

 

The tax department's point was that the company is 100% subsidiary of a US firm and that the Mauritian company was only a vehicle used by the US firm to operate in India. So, the department was in favour of levying the capital gains tax on the profits from sale of shares. The company had, of course, contended that the tax should not be levied.

 

Experts believe that the only solution to deal with problems like these is to revise the tax treaty between India and Mauritius. The government has already initiated a process to revise tax treaties with various countries including Mauritius.

 

This AAR ruling has, therefore, confirmed that a tax resident of Mauritius can only be taxed in Mauritius and not in India, even if it is the shares of an Indian firm that have been sold. This could even pose a threat for the revenue department with many companies using the Mauritius route to buy shares of Indian companies, at least until the treaty remains in its current form.

 

tanu.pandey@expressindia.com

 

***************************************

******************************************************************************************

THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

RIGHT DECISION

 

The Tamil Nadu government did the legally correct and politically wise thing in accepting the recommendation of the Prison Advisory Board against releasing Nalini, a life convict in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case lodged in the Special Prison for Women in Vellore. Nalini played a key role in the monstrous crime that shook the nation on May 21, 1991: alongside the charge of conspiracy, she faced charges on 121 different counts and was physically present at the scene of crime. As Justice D.P. Wadhwa noted in the Supreme Court decision awarding the death penalty to Nalini and three others in the case: "It is not that Nalini did not understand the nature of the crime and her participation. She was a willing party to the crime." Fortunately for her, the death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment in April 2000 following an open appeal by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. But if a life sentence for a heinous crime is to have any meaning at all, it should be just that: a lifetime in prison. Indeed, one of the arguments of those who want the death penalty to remain on the statute books in India is that the alternative, a life sentence, is decidedly not meant to be incarceration for the remainder of the convict's life. The life convict, in fact, can count on freedom after 14 years and usually earlier. Early release of Nalini would have bolstered the argument of the hanging party, advocates of an extreme, barbaric punishment that no longer exists in most countries.

 

While there is something commendable about the sense of forgiveness shared by Sonia Gandhi and her daughter Priyanka, who showed personal nobility in visiting Nalini in Vellore, this can have no bearing on the legal issue. Nor is the fact that Nalini is a mother or has acquired educational qualifications in prison relevant to the issue. A relevant question is: has she shown any remorse? "Even now," the PAB records, "she does not admit her guilt." Add to this the problem of taking care of the security of Nalini and others who might have to live in close proximity to her in the event of her release and the issue resolves itself from a practical standpoint as well. The principal perpetrators of the assassination are all dead now, but the ends of justice, including proportionality of the punishment, will not be served if Nalini is set free. After all, as Justice Wadhwa held, without her help, the assassination could not have been carried out. Instead of taking up the wrong cause, sympathisers of the no-longer-extant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam would do well to support humanists in campaigning for the abolition of capital punishment in India — and for getting the three others sentenced to death in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case off death row.

 

***************************************

THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

LAWLESS STATE

 

On March 9, during a visit by U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, the Israeli government announced approval for the building of 1,600 new settlement homes in occupied East Jerusalem. The timing was highly offensive, as Washington had only just brokered indirect talks between the Palestinians and Israel. The Palestinian leadership is justifiably furious: with its chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, saying no trust can be built if Israel acts like this, it has pulled out of the planned talks. The Israeli announcement, made without Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's prior knowledge, came from the Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose ultra-orthodox Shas party is a member of the ruling coalition. As if this were not enough, on March 24 the Jerusalem municipality announced a project under which 20 more apartments would be built in East Jerusalem. The number of Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem has doubled since the 1993 Oslo accords, as it has in the West Bank. No other state has recognised the occupation of either the West Bank or East Jerusalem. In another episode that damaged Israel's standing, the United Kingdom has expelled an Israeli diplomat and member of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, over his country's use of forged British passports in the operation to murder Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai on January 19.

 

For countries that invariably back Israel, the reactions of the U.S. and the U.K. have been very sharp. Mr. Biden, on President Obama's instructions, has "unequivocally" condemned the building plans while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called the main plan's announcement an insult. Several British MPs have said Israel is becoming a rogue state. In response, Mr. Netanyahu has been typically truculent, calling Jerusalem his country's capital and telling the Palestinians that their demand for a freeze on all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories was "illogical and unreasonable." He knows that none of the condemnations will be backed by serious action. Ms Clinton has told the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that U.S. support for Israel is "rock solid"; and the British security services will continue collaborating with Mossad. This means Mr. Netanyahu is unlikely to make any attempt to control his coalition partners, and can pander to the most extreme sections of Israeli society. He can also be confident of ensuring in advance the form of a final settlement with the Palestinians. Israel, it seems, can continue insulting its friends and destroying any possibility of a Palestinian state.

 

***************************************

 

THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

YOUR RIOT WAS WORSE THAN MINE

WHEN DOUBLE STANDARDS TAKE CHARGE, IT IS THE VICTIMS OF COMMUNAL VIOLENCE WHO SUFFER, BE THEY THE SIKHS OF DELHI, THE MUSLIMS OF GUJARAT OR THE PANDITS OF KASHMIR.

 

India's polity has an unerring taste for the irrelevant. That is why the controversy over a sitting Chief Minister being summoned to answer questions about mass murder has made way for an unseemly debate about the morality of an ageing actor. After his embarrassing, nine-hour appearance before the Special Investigation Team, one would have thought Narendra Modi presented a large enough target. Instead, the Congress has chosen to launch a full-throated campaign against Amitabh Bachchan for choosing to become a brand ambassador for tourism in Mr. Modi's State. The party has accused the Bollywood superstar of being indifferent to allegations of State complicity in the massacre of Muslims which took place there in 2002. And it has started boycotting him in a manner that is as crude and mean-spirited as it is ineffective and pointless. Thanks to this, the mass media are today discussing Big B rather than the Little Men whose role the SIT is now investigating.

 

As can be expected, the Gujarat Chief Minister is thrilled. The spotlight which was earlier on him is now being trained elsewhere. Instead of being forced to rally others to his own defence, Mr. Modi has happily mounted the barricades on behalf of Mr. Bachchan. In keeping with his party's fondness for technology and Islamophobia, he has blogged that the actor's critics are 'Talibans of untouchability'.

 

If Mr. Bachchan is guilty of overlooking mass violence today, it is because equally illustrious gentlemen, including some industrialists, did the same when they declared Mr. Modi prime ministerial material. For that matter, the actor himself has done this sort of thing before. In his movies, Mr. Bachchan was a crusader for the underdog. In real life, he is attracted to the kind of powerful men he once fought on the big screen. His fans have a right to feel cheated. Political parties, especially the Congress, do not have that right.

 

The party finds fault with him for representing Gujarat in the wake of 2002. But in 1984, barely weeks after the blood in the streets of Delhi had dried, the actor accepted a Congress ticket for Allahabad and got elected to Parliament. "As a brand ambassador does he endorse or condemn the mass murder in Gujarat?" Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari asked the other day, adding: "It is high time Amitabh Bachchan came out and said what his position on [the] Gujarat riots is." Despite the party having 'apologised' for its role in the massacre of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi's assassination, I doubt Mr. Tiwari or any other Congress spokesman will ever ask Mr. Bachchan what his position on the Delhi riots was or is.

 

But if the Congress prefers to forget the history of 1984, the BJP and its leaders act as if history ended that year. In their telling, 2002 either didn't happen or pales in comparison with what preceded it. And so begins the sordid exercise of weighing the suffering of victims and, worse, of playing the plight of one set against another. Mention the suffering of the Muslims of Gujarat and the BJP will start talking about the plight of the Pandits, driven by terrorism from their homes in the Kashmir Valley in 1989 and 1990. Try talking about the injustice done to the Sikhs of Delhi and the Congress will insist on speaking only of Gujarat. And the minute the microphones in the studio are switched off, the politicians are quite happy to forget about the shared travails of all victims.

 

The reality is that the Delhi and Gujarat massacres are part of the same excavated site, an integral part of the archaeology of the Indian state. Eighteen years separate 2002 from 1984. Eighteen is normally the age a human being is considered to have become an adult. Inhumanity also seems to take 18 years to fully mature. In an act of conception which lasted four bloody days, something inhuman was spawned on the streets of Delhi in 1984; by 2002, it had fully matured. Paternity for the 'riot system' belongs to both the Congress and the BJP, even if the sangh parivar managed to improve upon the technologies of mass violence. Both knew how to mobilise mobs. Both knew how to get the police to turn the other way. Both knew how to fix criminal cases. Both knew what language to speak, even if one set of leaders spoke of a 'big tree falling' and the other paraphrased Newton. Both had the luxury of not being asked difficult questions by criminal investigators. Until now.

 

There is one school of thought that Mr. Modi's summons and interrogation have come eight years too late. There is a lot of merit in that point of view. But the reality is that the call for a leader to render account for mass crimes committed on his watch comes 18 years too late. Veteran journalist Tavleen Singh said recently that if Rajiv Gandhi had been interrogated in 1984 about what happened to the Sikhs, Gujarat would not have happened. She is right. Had the courts and the entire edifice of the Indian state not failed the victims of 1984, many, many politicians, police officers and officials would have gone behind bars. Had that happened then, every leader would have been forced to think a hundred times about the legal consequences of instigating mass violence or allowing mobs to go on the rampage.

 

The debates on Mr. Modi over the past two weeks have been so incredibly divisive because neither the Congress nor the BJP is interested in a discussion on systemic remedies. Justice is about punishing individuals, rehabilitating victims and dismantling the infrastructure of communal terrorism. But our biggest parties want nothing to do with any of that. Gujarat 2002 should go unpunished because Delhi 1984 never saw justice, says the BJP. 'No SIT ever interrogated Rajiv Gandhi so why is Mr. Modi now being interrogated?' is the party's self-serving refrain. On its part, the Congress is unwilling to incorporate in the draft Communal Violence Bill clear-cut legal provisions that could deter politicians and policemen from again abusing their power as they did in 1984 and 2002.

 

One of the questions the SIT was expected to ask Mr. Modi during his interrogation on March 27 was what exactly he said when Ehsan Jaffrey called him up on February 28, 2002, asking for help. The question is important because soon after the former MP put down the telephone, he was killed by a mob along with 58 other innocent people. I have no idea whether that question was put to Mr. Modi, let alone what his answer was. But when the same question was put to Jai Narayan Vyas, official spokesman of Mr. Modi's government, in a televised debate a few days ago, the answer was atrocious. Ehsan Jaffrey had been a Congress MP, said Mr. Vyas. "So I demand to know what the Congress party did to help him."

 

There was, of course, nothing the Congress could have done to save the doomed member then. The BJP was in power in both Gujarat and the Centre. But the party has a chance to do something now: Pass a law with real teeth. It's been more than a quarter-of-a-century since a big tree came crashing down upon us. It is time for the earth to stop shaking.

 

***************************************

THE HINDU

A DAMAGING REPORT

THOSE WHO WERE IMPATIENT WITH THE NARMADA BACHAO ANDOLAN'S STRUGGLE MUST NOW RE-EXAMINE THEIR THINKING IN THE LIGHT OF THE SECOND INTERIM REPORT OF THE EXPERTS' COMMITTEE SET UP BY THE MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT AND FORESTS.

MAHADEVAN RAMASWAMY AND RAMASWAMY R. IYER

 

The Second Interim Report of the Experts' Committee set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) of the Government of India to assess the planning and implementation of environmental safeguards with respect to the Sardar Sarovar (SSP) and Indira Sagar projects (ISP) on the Narmada River is a clear finding, by a government committee, of the egregious failure of the government machinery on virtually all the aspects studied.

 

The report covers the status of compliances on catchment area treatment (CAT), flora and fauna and carrying capacity upstream, command area development (CAD), compensatory afforestation and human health aspects in project impact areas. (The scope of the committee did not include the issues of displacement and rehabilitation or hydro-meteorological issues, which were dealt with by other groups.) The report is a severe indictment of the governments of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra and of the bodies set up by these governments to implement the projects for the 'integrated development' of the Narmada Valley. Peppered with phrases like 'gross violation', 'negligence', 'highly unsatisfactory,' 'inadequate,' 'serious lapse' and 'non compliance' it states in strong and unequivocal terms that with respect to virtually all of the aspects under consideration compliance is either highly inadequate or absent altogether (a partial exception being compensatory afforestation). Construction, on the other hand, has been proceeding apace: the ISP is complete and the SSP nearing completion. The report recommends that no further reservoir-filling be done at either SSP or ISP; that no further work be done on canal construction; and that even irrigation from the existing network be stopped forthwith until failures of compliance on the various environmental parameters have been fully remedied.

 

This is a major development. It must be seen against the backdrop of the protracted legal battle fought by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) against the various lapses, failures and deficiencies in these projects. In a climate where environmental and human rights issues are increasingly being sacrificed at the altar of 'development,' the NBA has been persevering untiringly with its struggle for decades. Those who have tended to become impatient with that struggle must now re-examine their thinking in the light of the present report.

 

The legal history of the NBA's petitions is a long one. We need not go into the High Courts' or the Supreme Court's earlier pronouncements, some of which affirmed the fact of lapses and inadequacies several years ago. What needs to be noted is that even the majority verdict of the Supreme Court in 2000, which rejected the NBA's petition and allowed the project to proceed, and was widely perceived as indicating a shift in judicial thinking in favour of 'development' and against public interest litigation on environmental and displacement aspects, did reaffirm the importance of those aspects. While directing the government to ensure the speedy completion of the projects under consideration and taking the view that the existing machinery for environmental protection and relief and rehabilitation (R&R) must be presumed to be working properly unless proved otherwise, the SC made an important mandatory stipulation for the continuance of work, namely, that further progress would be subject to checks at every stage (every increase of 5 m in dam height) on the status of these measures. Subsequent litigation over the years has related largely to the issue of compliance with this condition.

 

The first interim report of the Expert Committee, dealing with the issue of backwater effects, rejected the project authorities' contention that on recalculation the backwater level of SSP was going to be much lower than earlier stated. That contention had been used to assert that gates and other proposed structures could be proceeded with without concern over any additional submergence over that relating to the approved level of 121.7 metres. The report showed this to be untrue. Now the second interim report comes up with a strong finding of non-compliance on virtually all environmental aspects. This is a clear vindication of the NBA's assertions over the years.

 

It is a matter of grave concern for more than one reason. One, this is not a non-official committee or a committee of environmental activists, but a government committee consisting almost entirely of technocrats, retired forest officials and the like; two, its findings point to a fundamental and near total violation of significant aspects of the Supreme Court's judgment; and three, the severe environmental damage documented in its pages is largely irreversible.

 

Even assuming that 'development' can be pursued without any concern for the environment, and that some argument can be found to defend the flouting of a Supreme Court judgment, there are several other concerns that should worry the votaries of 'large infrastructural development at all costs.' Untreated catchments can shorten the life of projects through siltation, thus altering their cost-benefit ratios; they can also bring about increased run-off and washing-off of soil nutrients with adverse consequences for the productivity of irrigated land (as also for the aquatic and river-bank species and fisheries); dam operations in such unstable catchments can lead (and have led, in at least one incident already here) to flash floods with tragic consequences; and so on. These are hard, practical and often economic consequences that can be noted by all and not only by 'environmentalists'. One hopes that Indian society as a whole — citizens and government alike — will take at least these concerns seriously.

 

In the meanwhile, the SC, possibly not having yet been seized of the second environmental committee's report, has said that work on canals can start subject to the approval of the MoEF of the CAD plans submitted for the Omkareshwar Hydroelectric Project (OHP) and the ISP. However, since the report is itself in pursuance of court directives, the MoEF can and should halt all further work on the project, bringing this anomaly to the court's attention.

 

Where do we go from here? We cannot say, but many will be watching keenly to see how the government responds to the recommendations of its committee. We must hope that the response will not be such as to make us doubt the seriousness of its professions of concern for the environment.

 

***************************************

THE HINDU

HAS THE RECESSION ARRESTED CRIME?

TAMMY JOYNER

 

After two long years of economic woes, the recession in the United States has managed to create a few unexpected benefits — namely a noticeable drop in crime — and confound a few economists and criminologists along the way.

 

Until this recent downturn, a bad economy was easy to read: crime and deviant behaviour (think drug dealing, fencing and the like) go up when the economy goes down. But the latest set of police reports across the country doesn't square with past downturns. The underground market, it seems, has been turned on its ear in this recession.

 

"This is a real break in past patterns," criminologist Richard Rosenfeld told about two dozen economists from around the world who gathered in Stone Mountain, Georgia., this month for the second annual meeting on the "Economics of Risky Behaviours."

 

More eyes on the street

 

Across the nation, crime, on the whole, is down considerably, especially property crimes and violent crimes such as robbery. The counterintuitive nature of this recession makes sense when you peel back the layers. Take home burglaries, for instance.

 

"We assume crime climbs when the economy is down," said Rosenfeld, curators professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. But "during high unemployment, more people are at home and that cuts the rates of burglary."

 

Additionally, people tend to carry fewer valuables these days, so there are fewer street crimes such as robberies, Rosenfeld added.

 

The drug trade, which usually grows and flourishes in a recession, has been contained mostly within the groups of people who were already buying and selling drugs. In the past, disputes over drug deals often resulted in murders or other violent crimes. Now, they're contained and rarely reported. After all, who's going to go to the police about a drug deal gone bad?

 

"The absence of expansion in the drug market could be related to the absences of crime increasing," Rosenfeld said.

 

Add last year's stimulus money, which extended unemployment benefits and food stamps to millions and helped many communities keep more police on the street, and you get a clearer picture. "That may have cushioned the low-income against the full effects of the economic downturn," Rosenfeld said.

 

But don't break out the champagne just yet. Rosenfeld cautions that the usual crime wave that accompanies an economic downturn may just be slow in arriving.

 

"These factors aren't going to continue much longer," he said.

 

"The latter half of 2010 is going to be the real deciding factor" as to whether the current crime wave hiatus is a fluke or a real trend. —©2010 New York Times News Service

 

( Tammy Joyner writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution .)

 

***************************************

THE HINDU

FATIMA MEER: ACADEMIC AND ACTIVIST

WRITER AND FORMIDABLE CAMPAIGNER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN SOUTH AFRICA.

ARJUMAND WAJID

 

Fatima Meer, who has died aged 81 after a stroke, was the most formidable female leader of Indian origin in the liberation movement of South Africa. She was an intellectual, academic, writer and activist, but above all a tireless fighter for social justice and human rights. Meer was the first non-white woman to be appointed in a "white" university when she joined the University of Natal as a lecturer in sociology in 1956, and later set up the influential Institute for Black Research there in 1972. Describing her characteristic intervention during an incident of student unrest, one of her students said: "It was an unbelievable sight to see this petite little woman, wrapped in a sari, march in front of a Hippo [an armoured police vehicle] and order it to stop." This typified the moral courage she demonstrated in all her activities, whether it was welfare work or political campaigning. During the race riots of the Cato Manor area of her home town of Durban in 1949, in which black people attacked Indian homes and businesses, she was one of the first to get to the heart of the troubled area with a van full of supplies and baby milk.

 

Much later, during the Inanda riots of 1985 in which the Gandhi settlement in Phoenix, near Durban, was set on fire, she again found herself a van to save some of Gandhiji's belongings from the burning house. She returned soon after to plan projects to improve conditions for one of the most deprived communities in the area. Whether it was literacy classes in her father's garage, fundraising for flood victims in Bengal, leafletting in the streets of Johannesburg or leading a march against the pass laws that restricted the movements of non—white people, her underlying agenda, always, was to fight for equal rights and bring down the apartheid government.

 

As Winnie Mandela, Meer's close friend, put it: "At a time when most Indian girls were helping their mothers in the kitchen making samosas, this young woman was leading protest marches and challenging the most oppressive system in the world." Meer's Gujrati grandfather, Ismail, had arrived in South Africa as a trader from Surat on the east coast of India in the 1880s. Her father, Moosa Meer, was the editor of Indian Views, a weekly in Urdu and English. Her mother, Ameena, was a white woman originally called Rachel. The Meer household was a mixture of Muslim Gujarati traditions and liberal political activism; Fatima combined the two.

 

At Dartnell Crescent school, Meer began her political involvement by organising the Students' Passive Resistance Committee to support the struggle against the apartheid regime and made her first public speech at a Natal Indian Congress rally at the age of 17. She was inspired by her paternal uncle, Ahmad Meer, a prominent political figure, and her second cousin Ismail Meer, a law student and NIC leader. Fatima fell in love with Ismail while both were at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, where they were contemporaries and friends of Nelson Mandela. She completed her university education in Durban and they were married in 1952. The 50s were a period of intense political activity for Fatima Meer as she fought government decisions such as the pass laws and the Group Areas Act, which segregated communities on racial lines and resulted in large numbers of Indians, including Meer's family, being forcibly evicted from their homes and businesses in areas declared "whites only."

 

Considered a threat to public order, Meer was banned three times under the Suppression of Communism Act. She was proud to be among the first banned when the powers of the act were widened to cover groups other than communists. Among other restrictions, the banning order stipulated that she could not attend gatherings, make public statements or make contact with other banned persons. She was first banned in 1955 for two years, in 1976 for five years — along with Winnie Mandela — and again in 1981 for another five years.

 

Unlike her husband Ismail, who was also banned at the same time, Fatima flouted the orders as much as she could. In 1977 she survived an apparent assassination attempt by apartheid hitmen. In 1976, her son Rashid was forced into exile in London, where he remained for almost 14 years before returning to a post—apartheid South Africa, where he died in a car accident in 1995.

 

Passionate about education, Meer also was involved in a number of schemes and projects to help impoverished Africans gain key skills. A woman of strong convictions, she lived her life with a strong sense of duty. She did things instinctively, spontaneously and passionately; sometimes in the most haphazard manner. A maverick, she refused to join a political party, although both the ANC and NIC claimed her as their own.

 

She wrote Nelson Mandela's first biography, Higher Than Hope, published in 1988, along with more than 40 books, essays and lectures. Her book on Gandhiji's life, Apprenticeship of a Mahatma, was made into the 1996 film The Making of the Mahatma, for which she wrote the screenplay. Ismail died in 2000. Two daughters, Shamim and Shehnaz, and five grandchildren survive her. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

( Fatima Meer: born: August 12, 1928; died: March 12, 2010.)

 

***************************************

 

******************************************************************************************

DNA

EDITORIAL

OVERCONNECTED WORLD

 

Middle and upper class opinion in India has just got wider and better established. Today's war of words will be carried out not just in newspapers and television studios, but also in the cyber world of blogs and tweets. The last few days have seen all forms of media, traditional and new, exploding over the subjects which excite the middle class — even temporarily. Among them: the woes and worries of film icon Amitabh Bachchan and his peculiar relationships with the Congress party and Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Modi's own riposte on what was happening to Bachchan has also leapfrogged from Twitter to TV and print. The advent of multiple media has changed the nature of action and response in politics and society. Today, you tweet, and someone may react and act on that information. At the other end of the spectrum, a humdrum event may draw an adverse blog comment and set off its own chain of comment, debate, reaction and political development.

 

Purists will argue that subjects like Bachchan's invitation to the inauguration of half a bridge in Mumbai and the confusion this caused in the Maharashtra Congress are hardly as significant as, for instance, US president Barack Obama's sudden visit to Afghanistan, the twin bomb blasts in Moscow's underground rail system and Indian ships being hijacked off the coast of Somalia. But together with the Gujarat chief minister's defence of Bachchan on his own blog and the questions raised on why Bachchan has associated himself with Gujarat, we have examples of very effective use of cyberspace and its tools by two prominent figures. Their labours have borne fruit.

 

The battle in China over internet freedom between the authorities and net giant Google is a case in point. Google has exited the country ostensibly because the latter refused to allow interference. This constitutes clear evidence of the importance countries attach to the cyber world and its impact on society. The minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor may have got into trouble with his party bosses for his tweets but he does have over five lakh followers. Similarly, where blogs were once an opportunity for ordinary people to get a chance to air their views, film stars and politicians use them to defend their actions and attack their detractors. Welcome to the brave new world.

 

***************************************

DNA

EDITORIAL

ENDING CASTE TYRANNY

 

Caste may be losing its oppressive edge with urbanisation and modernisation, but it is still a depressing reality once you move away from the big cities. An extreme deformity of this system is the caste court or panchayat, or khap, as it is known in Haryana.

It has continued to function unofficially in many parts of north India and its authority has remained partly unchallenged. They should have been declared illegal a long time ago but for some reason this anachronistic institution has continued to exist in many parts of rural India.

 

Their social tyranny has become a byword for cruelty and superstition as no one has yet challenged them officially, not even the modern state. Consequently, these caste courts have literally become kangaroo courts, sometimes meting out death sentences and getting them carried out as well.

 

It was exactly such a caste court which was responsible for the murder of Manoj and Babli, young lovers who got married in defiance of caste convention. They were kidnapped and killed by members of the khap in June, 2007. Justice was done recently when a Karnal sessions court last week convicted seven people for the murder of the young couple.

 

On Tuesday, death sentences were awarded to five of them, with the sixth one getting a life sentence and the seventh one seven years. It is not just the exemplary harshness of the sentence — which will have its own salutary impact — that is crucial in the matter. What is more important is that at long last a clear message has gone out that the caste court cannot have a juridical status and cannot punish individuals.

 

It is not certain that this verdict will end once for all the tyranny of caste elders and the criminal complicity of the rest of the clan in murderous deeds. But the Karnal court has struck a blow for the state, for the justice system and for society in general.

 

This should put the fear of law in the hearts of caste-minded folk that they cannot impose their views on others and that they cannot commit what is shamelessly called "honour" killings.

 

Caste tyranny cannot be justified in the name of tradition. Justice, old or new, is based not just on blind custom but on the principle of fairness. Caste courts are merely expressions of old prejudices and tyranny. It is time to stamp them out completely.

 

 ***************************************

DNA

BJP'S LOST OPPORTUNITY

S NIHAL SINGH

 

As Nitin Gadkari approaches his first 100 days as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president, his efforts to reinvent the party, to bring it more in tune with the India of the 21st century, and thus make it more electable, must be termed a failure. His attempt to use symbols to denote the change has not succeeded in enthusing the young and has merely confused the party faithful listening to old Bollywood songs he belted at a party meeting.

 

Gadkari, of course, has an impossible job in changing the persona of the BJP. To begin with, he has the handicap of being the nominee of the party's mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), whose new leadership decided to take the party under its wings in the face of two successive losses in general elections. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was betting on the fact that Gadkari's informality, his preference for bush shirts and trousers, rather than the traditional party garb, would help him win new friends and influence people.

 

But the RSS pitch in elevating him to the party presidency was very much to safeguard the ramparts of the Hindutva creed. The RSS view, and that of a section of the BJP, is that the party's fortunes have taken a nosedive because it has strayed away from the holy grail. The truth is that neither the party nor its mentor has succeeded in marrying Hindutva to the multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of the country.

 

The demolition of the Babri Masjid was a one-off event preceded by the blood-curdling rhetoric of LK Advani painting the countryside red through his original rathyatra. It led to the first national BJP-led government, despite the hiccups. It was clear to the party and everyone else that it could not play the same card again. Worse still, Advani's expected retirement merely sharpened the contest for the throne.

 

Bhagwat felt that only a new broom outside the party hierarchy in Delhi was the answer. The new president's first test was the composition of the new BJP executive. The howls of protest that have greeted the list from Bihar are only one part of the story because most party men and women were underwhelmed. He had to make too many compromises and the induction of men such as Varun Gandhi with his baggage of campaign hate speeches and film, theatre and television stars and sports entertainers of the ilk of Navjot Sidhu was a sign of desperation, rather than maturity.

 

Bhagwat was betting on the fact that a somewhat obscure party functionary with no record of playing parlour politics would help enthuse the party ranks. Judging by the new executive, it seems that Gadkari's lack of experience has led him into making basic mistakes. Squabbles in the BJP for the leader's crown have harmed the party, but it suffers from a deeper malaise of its inability to find a compromise between its hardcore Hindutva beliefs and the compulsions of ruling a heterogenous country.

 

True, Gadkari has sought to make the definition of Hindutva elastic, as have others before him. The only person who succeeded in doing so up to a point is AB Vajpayee, who took poetic licence in swearing his allegiance to the RSS even while skirting around it.

 

Where do Gadkari and the BJP go from here? It has lost its self-advertised tag of party with a difference, most recently in the shameful spectacle of the party leadership bowing to the demands of the mining lobby in Karnataka even at the cost of humiliating its chief minister in the only southern state it rules, proving the veracity of the aphorism that "all are naked in the (political) hamam". How then is the BJP to discover the winning formula to return to power in New Delhi after its tantalisingly brief six years?

 

Perhaps Gadkari now recognises that he has taken on a bigger challenge than he had imagined. The problem is

that the greater control the RSS exercises over the BJP, the more difficult it becomes for the party to sell a sanitised version of Hindutva that does not alarm significantly large sections of the electorate.

 

Unlike in Vajpayee's case, Gadkari's attempt at a makeover for the party through his dress, behaviour and informality has scored poorly in achieving his objective.

 

It must also be open to question whether Gadkari's cocking a snook at political morality by elevating a person such as Varun Gandhi in the party's ranks or roping in film, television and theatre stars to enhance the party's popularity is the right key to strike at the beginning of his national leadership career. Well-wishers of the BJP can only hope that Gadkari will learn from his mistakes and change course before it is too late.

 

***************************************

DNA

WHY FOREIGN BUSINESSES TRIP UP IN CHINA

VENKATESAN VEMBU

 

On Monday, four executives of Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto were sentenced to harsh jail terms after a Shanghai court found them guilty of accepting bribes from Chinese steel makers and stealing "commercial secrets" during the annual iron ore price negotiations.

 

The case, which has been criticised for its non-transparent trial and which threatens to roil China's relations with Australia, has drawn sobering attention to the increasing political risk that foreign businesses face as they flock to China and look to ride its economic boom. The arrests in the case were made last year, when a frustrated China found itself unable to leverage its 'commercial clout' as the world's largest consumer of commodities and secure lower benchmark ore prices from the international miners. And even the punishment verdict, it is widely believed, was intended to intimidate foreign miners as well as the fragmented Chinese steel industry, particularly those domestic elements that have resisted consolidation, which would strengthen China's hand at the price negotiations.

 

The Rio Tinto case isn't the only incident involving the interplay of politics and business where foreign companies have run up against theGreat Wall of China. In other ways too, foreign businesses are learning to their dismay that their investments over the years in (and their assiduous cultivation of) China offer no guarantee that they'll gain access to its famed 'billion-three' market. Having milked foreign companies for their technology, and having built up its domestic industry on the strength of copious foreign direct investments, China is signalling that it can, and will, be picky about whom it patronises. And foreign businesses in China don't feel too welcome.

 

A recent survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that a growing number of US businesspeople "feel unwelcome" in China owing to "discriminatory government policies" and "inconsistent legal treatment". In particular, they pointed to a new Chinese government regulation that aims to promote 'indigenous innovation' by requiring companies to use domestically developed technology rather than foreign ones. It's true that it's US companies, in particular, that are feeling the chill wind of Chinese discrimination. It's part of the larger story of frictions between the two countries over everything from climate change politics to the undervaluation of the renminbi to US arms sales to Taiwan. But other countries from Europe and Asia too increasingly find themselves being shut out of the marketplace. Indian companies have long been hankering for greater access to the Chinese market in four areas — IT products, pharmaceuticals, engineering goods and services, agriculture and meat products — they've had little luck so far.

 

The irony is that although the recent experience of foreign companies in China, particularly Rio Tinto and search engine giant Google, should perhaps serve as a cautionary tale to others overseas, the flood of foreign direct investment into China continues. And for all their moaning and groaning, even the foreign businesses now operating in China who complain of discrimination aren't willing to walk away.

 

The only exception, of course, is Google, which last week redirected its web search function on the mainland to its Hong Kong servers, and ended its self-censorship of web content.Given that Google is in the information business, and its brand equity elsewhere was being tarnished by its yielding to Chinese demands for self-censorship, and it was slipping further into the slough of censorship, it could afford to walk. Faced with a similar choice between having to shut up or ship out, other foreign businesses might still prefer to shut up, in anticipation of the potential rewards from a 'billion-three' market.

 

***************************************

 

******************************************************************************************

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

THEY HAD IT COMING

"HONOUR" KILLERS DESERVE NO MERCY

 

Given the general sentiments against capital punishment, it is given in the rarest of rare cases. The brutal murder of Manoj and Babli by their relatives and community members in 2007 on the diktats of a self-styled community panchayat (khap) for marrying in the same gotra (sub-caste), indeed fell in that category and forced a Karnal court on Tuesday to sentence five of the seven convicts to death. While one of them has been sentenced to life imprisonment, the seventh convict, accused of abduction, has been sentenced to seven years in jail. How well entrenched the khap panchayats and those who owe allegiance to them are can be gauged from the fact that this was the first case in the state in which the affected family decided to seek justice against the illegal diktat. The death sentence will presumably put the fear of law in the minds of those who think that women are no more than dumb cattle, who must live, marry and die the way menfolk want them to. Such medieval prejudices have been strengthened by the totally illegal but powerful kangaroo courts which not only boycott the "offenders" or force them to live as siblings but also kill them, as it happened in the case of Manoj and Babli of Karoran village near Kaithal.

 

Those who actually kidnapped the couple and eliminated them have been punished. But what about those who aided and abetted the crime? They too are equally responsible for the inhuman crimes that take place at the bidding of khap panchayats. Everyone from the courts to the Home Minister of the country has spoken strongly against their excesses but nothing much has changed on the ground.

 

The reason is simple. Politicians see in khap panchayats a dependable political tool and vote bank. And the policemen, most of them coming from the same milieu where a boy and girl from the same village are forbidden from marrying, are also averse to coming to the aid of those who defy the self-styled keepers of public morality. When these two join hands, they simply play havoc. It is heartening that finally the noose is tightening around the neck of such forces. 

 

 ***************************************

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

N-DEAL: ANOTHER HURDLE GOES

FOCUS NOW SHIFTS TO LIABILITY BILL

 

With the finalisation of the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing agreement between India and the US, the nuclear deal clinched by the two countries in September 2008 has crossed another major hurdle on its way to bearing fruit. Now India will be allowed to reprocess the US-supplied enriched uranium in two facilities to be set up in this country. The two nuclear plants will operate in line with International Atomic Energy Agency procedures, and India will be in a position to make additions and alterations if it so desires. It would have been in the interest of both countries if India could get more than two plants on a "stand alone" basis, but the Barack Obama administration had its reservations. However, India has been given some concession so far as the clause for halting the reprocessing of the US-origin spent fuel is concerned. The new agreement empowers the US to suspend all the arrangements made under the Indo-US nuclear deal only if there is a threat to the physical security of the plants or to US national security. This is almost as India wanted — "under exceptional circumstances".

 

Now the ball is in India's court. It has to get the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Bill passed by Parliament so that there is no hurdle for US firms to invest in the country's nuclear energy sector. This will lead to not only the creation of a large number of jobs primarily for Indians but also a substantial increase in nuclear power generation to meet the country's fast rising power demand. The introduction of the Bill during the budget session of the Lok Sabha had to be deferred owing to sharp differences between the government and the Opposition over the capping of the liability of the operating firm at Rs500 crore in the event of an accident affecting civilians. Hopefully, the differences will be sorted out by the two sides so that the country can have the law essential for the entry of foreign nuclear firms in India.

 

India and the US deciding to sign the spent nuclear fuel reprocessing accord without much difficulty shows that Washington remains committed to allowing the historic civilian nuclear deal to bring about the intended results. The new high in India-US strategic partnership should now lead to the transfer of high nuclear technologies to this country as envisaged in the deal. 

 

***************************************

THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

SONIA BACK IN NAC

SIGN OF REASSERTION OF HER AUTHORITY

 

Congress President Sonia Gandhi's appointment to the National Advisory Council (NAC) as its chairperson not only suggests her reassertion of authority in the party and the government but also the United Progressive Alliance government's desire to monitor social sector reforms at various levels. Mrs Gandhi had left the NAC in March 2006 after the Opposition accused her of violating the rule that MPs must not hold offices of profit during their tenure. Parliament amended the office of profit law to exempt 55 offices, including the NAC chairperson's. However, Mrs Gandhi refused to return to the NAC. She quit her Lok Sabha membership and got re-elected from Rae Bareli. Subsequently, the NAC, once regarded as a "super government", also lost its lustre though its term expired only on March 31, 2008. After the Supreme Court upheld the Parliament (Prevention of Disqualification) Act, 2006, in August 2009, the Congress mooted the NAC's resurrection.

 

 

The NAC acted as an effective interface with the civil society in regard to the implementation of the Centre's National Common Minimum Programmed (NCMP). It comprised distinguished professionals drawn from diverse fields of development activity such as Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze, C.H. Hanumantha Rao and N.C. Saxena. Through the NAC, the government had access to their expertise and to a larger network of research organisations, NGOs and social action and advocacy groups. It made recommendations to the Centre and provided feedback on the impact of action initiated in various sectors.

 

The NAC had played a notable role in the enactment of the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and the Rs 70,000-crore loan waiver scheme for farmers. In its new avatar, it is poised for a bigger role because Mrs Gandhi is said to be keen on monitoring the Congress' big ticket programmes like the Food Security Bill, the Right to Education Act, the NREGS expansion and major schemes on health and water. The BJP's charge that Mrs Gandhi's position in the NAC had undermined the Prime Minister's authority may seem exaggerated. However, one cannot rule out the possibility of growing tension between the party and the government which needs to be avoided.

 

 ***************************************

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

THE INDIA-BHARAT DIVIDE

THERE IS A LOT TO LEARN FROM BRAZIL

BY ASH NARAIN ROY

 

The rise of "Chindia" has forced the centre of the world to move to the East. However, the world largely views China's rise as a threat and India's as a wonderful success story. Thanks to democracy, so goes the argument, India produces the largest dollar-billionaires as also slumdog millionaires. As the world moves closer to the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs), India, a nation of billion aspirations, faces millions of problems. And yet, despite the many loopholes and leakages, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and a plethora of Central schemes have begun to change the face of rural India. Now the Right to Food Act, independent India's biggest, boldest effort to free the nation of hunger is about to be introduced.

 

Prof Amartya Sen has applauded the Manmohan Singh government's move as a "step in the right direction". At the same time, he has advised the government to make sure that the facilities reach the poor. As celebrated American journalist James Reston famously said, "A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top." More so in India where many revolutionary steps have floundered owing to the corrupt, inefficient and highly bureaucratic state machinery.

 

Reaching the goals of MDGs depends largely on India's and China's success. NREGA gives out hope despite its many limitations. A revolutionary step, it has added substantially to the purchasing power of the rural populace. It is slowly becoming a powerful mechanism for helping poor communities to invest in building durable assets and to generate employment. The flagship programme has got the thumbs up from the ILO which said that had it not been for the scheme, the labour class in India would have been badly hit by the recession. Nevertheless, NREGA is still far from becoming transformative.

 

Now that the Food Security Bill is on the anvil, there is a lot that India can learn from the Zero Hunger Programme of President Lula of Brazil.

 

The Fome Zero or Zero Hunger programme was launched on the very first day President Luiz Inacio da Silva, popularly known as Lula, assumed office in 2003. Inspired by the UN Millennium Development Goals, Lula's flagship programme placed primary importance on reducing hunger, malnutrition and extreme poverty.

 

At the core of the programme is Bolsa Familia (Family Purse). It is the largest income transfer programme in the world, providing cash assistance and benefits to 12 million poor families. The emphasis is on giving cash directly to mothers and female heads of households as mothers are considered more zealous in controlling family resources.

 

However, the beneficiaries must show children's school attendance and use of health cards and other social services. The programme allots about $ 55 a month to poor families on the condition that their children go to school, and distributes food to some 37 million children while they are at school. Some 12.4 million families are part of the Family Purse programme.

 

Brazil is a country of sharp economic and social contrasts, even more than India. It is simultaneously the most developed and the poorest country in Latin America. It has been for long one of the world's most unequal societies: from the Manhattan-style skyscrapers of Sao Paulo's financial district to the grinding poverty of the parts of the north-east. In Morumbi, the affluent neighbourhood of Sao Paulo, there are some of the most magnificent houses in the world. And yet, even in a city of Rio de Janeiro a large chunk of population lives in favelas (slums), many under sub-human conditions.

 

Lula's revolution has sought to change that and the results are there for all to see. When Lula took over, he

realised Brazil was not an underdeveloped country; it was an unjust country. While Brazil still faces major challenges, as per FAO estimates, malnutrition has been reduced by 73 per cent in the last six years. It has also managed to reduce infant mortality by 45 per cent in the same period. This has been achieved through food banks, community kitchens, school meals from local ingredients and support for small farmers. Between 2003 and 2008, the proportion of people living in poverty has come down from 28 per cent to 16 per cent.

 

The Brazilian model has several ingredients. First, it is the result of excellent coordination between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Social Development. Many of our programmes in India suffer from the lack of coordination. In early 2009, while attending a meeting organized by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj with the visiting Afghan delegation in Shastri Bhawan, I was stunned by the reaction of a senior ministry official in response to a request from the Afghan minister to meet officials of the Rural Development Ministry. He flatly told the delegation, "You may have to directly request the ministry. Here we deal only with the Panchayati Raj."

 

Second, it is an excellent example of a combination of public-private partnership, international support and governmental contributions. Third, Lula's success owes a lot to his ability to get the Family Purse programme coordinated among the federal, state and local governments.

 

Many people were skeptical about Lula's initiative initially. Lula ensured that the Family Purse did not remain a one-off programme. He combined emergency measures with structural changes, like family agriculture programmes, agrarian reform and initiatives to educate families about nutrition, something that had never been done in Latin America. He launched dozens of programmes under the zero hunger banner that targeted clean water and electricity supplies, among others.

 

The northeast region in Brazil is the poorest and has the highest rates of illiteracy. Interestingly, 88 per cent of the beneficiaries who learned to read and write were from the same region. Lula has reasons to take credit for ensuring that the programme reaches the intended beneficiaries in regions that need utmost attention.

 

Several African countries like Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia have begun to replicate aspects of the Brazilian model. In North Africa, some of the countries have largely relied on price-distorting food subsidies for their social safety nets. Many argue if countries fighting hunger and malnutrition could switch to a conditional cash transfer model like Brazil's, things could improve. India too has for long depended on the subsidies model. Will the conditional cash transfer model like Brazil's be a success?

 

India's stakes are high. If India is to acquire global power status, it cannot afford any further widening of the India-Bharat divide. The robust economic growth and several Central schemes have lifted millions out of poverty. But our gains are still modest. At times, we seem to be trying to eradicate cancer cells with a blow torch.

 

The writer is Associate Director, Institute of Social Sciences, Delhi.

 

***************************************

THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

THE PORTRAIT

BY HARISH DHILLON

 

Years ago I read a Ronald Dahl story where a dealer in antique furniture, masquerading as a parson, scouts old farmhouses for neglected, forgotten pieces of antique furniture.  He meets with spectacular success and uses his ingenuity to reaffirm, in the farmer's mind, that his possession  is a piece of useless junk.  Having done this he buys off the piece at one tenth of what he will sell it for.

 

Then, inevitably, he overdoes his smartness.  He finds a genuine Chippendale commode.  He convinces the owner that it is a crude, modern reproduction and that he is only interested in the legs to be used for a coffee table.  A deal is struck for a very small fraction of the real value. 

 

The dealer, his heart bursting with excitement, rushes off to bring his van around.  In the meantime the owner is assailed by doubts.  A parson would be driving a car too small to take such a large piece of furniture.  Once he realises this, he would back off from the deal.  Since it was only the legs he was interested in, the farmer chops off the legs to ensure there is no backing off.

 

 I felt that the parson's inordinate greed had called divine retribution upon him.  With this feeling I should have learnt to control my own greed.  But I am ashamed to admit that in a similar situation I behaved in exactly the same way.

 

I found an old portrait in a junk shop,  covered with  green fungus.  Yet, enough of the face was visible to show that it was a superb work of art.  The dealer, noticing my interest, launched into the usual sales talk: "Its an original oil painting, more than a hundred years old".

 

"Painting?"  I cut in, "What painting? It is in such a bad condition; it is absolutely useless.  I only want the frame for a mirror."

 

After some haggling a ridiculously low price was settled upon. Since I was travelling by train, he agreed to send it to my sister's place, who would bring it up later. The next day my sister rang up. "What did you want that dilapidated frame for?"

 

"For what is inside it."

 

"But there is nothing inside it". My heart missed a beat but my mind raced.

 

"Can you ask him what he has done with the painting?"

 

The answer came five minutes later.  "He says you told him it was useless. His daughter has just started painting lessons and he has given her the canvas to practice upon."

Fortunately my story had a happy ending.  I made a dash to Delhi, recovered the canvas while the coat of white paint, which the girl had put on it, was not quite dry, paying him the price he had originally asked for. 

 

Six months later, fully restored, the splendid portrait of Salar Jung II hangs in my living room, a constant reminder of what might have happened because of my inordinate greed.

 

***************************************

THE TRIBUNE

OPED

AN UNEQUAL FIGHT

J AND K GRAPPLES WITH JOB RESERVATIONS

BY DINESH MANHOTRA

 

While introducing a Bill in the Legislative Assembly on February 28, 2009, to ban inter-district recruitment in the State, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, perhaps, had no idea that this issue would snowball into a big political controversy and that he would have to plead before Sonia Gandhi to find a way out.

 

Both the coalition partners – the National Conference and the Congress — have divergent views on the issue. The National Conference advocates that the Bill should be tabled in the Assembly but the Congress opposes the Bill in its present form.

 

If passed into a law the Bill would jeopardise the interests of weaker sections, especially the Scheduled Castes (SCs), as the SC candidates would be allowed to apply for the reserved posts only in their own districts.

 

According to the existing rules, any person who is a state subject is eligible to apply for any government post anywhere in the state.

 

The issue was first raised in 2007 when some MLAs demanded that inter-district recruitment should be banned as candidates from the educationally advanced districts take away jobs at the cost of candidates from the backward districts.

 

As the Supreme Court had already upheld the verdict of the J&K High Court against banning inter-district recruitment, the then Chief Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, had announced in the Assembly on January 15, 2007, that the government would amend the Constitution for imposing the ban and a Bill in this regard would be introduced in 
the Assembly.

 

Azad, however, could not introduce the Bill during his tenure. Omar Abdullah introduced the same Bill in the Assembly on February 28, 2009

 

The Bill intends to amend the present recruitment rules which deals with reservations. Clause 6 of the recruitment rules makes it clear that a person is eligible for appointment to a district cadre post only if he/she is a permanent resident of the State and also a resident of the district concerned.

 

As the population of the Scheduled Castes is almost negligible in 12 of the 22 districts, leaders of this section term the Bill as an attempt to jeopardise interests of the weaker sections because they can apply for the reserved posts in only 10 districts and the reserved posts in the remaining 12 districts would automatically lapse due to the unavailability of SC candidates.

 

Keeping in view the pressure of the SC leaders, the government referred the Bill to a select committee of legislators on March 9, 2009. The committee, headed by Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather, has submitted its report.