EDITORIAL SAMARTH: EDITORIAL 29.08.11

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Editorial

month august 29, edition 000822, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

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

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THE PIONEER

BEYOND THE AGITATION
MOCKERY OF CONSTITUTION
CBI A WEAPON OF OFFENCE - BALBIR K PUNJ
DEFINING A STRONG, EFFECTIVE LOKPAL BILL - SHASHI SHEKHAR
ENCOURAGE SPORTS CULTURE - NAVEEN JINDAL
AFTER THE RIOTS, COPS GEAR UP FOR CARNIVAL

THE TIMES OF INDIA

DANCE OF DEMOCRACY
TABLET WARS
WAYS TO FIT THE BILL - MANOJ MITTA
'GOVERNMENT MUST END IMPUNITY CULTURE, REPEAL LAWS LIKE AFSPA' - HUMRA
QURAISHI WHAT'S IN A NAME? - MONOBINA GUPTA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

BEGINNING OF A BEGINNING
LIVE AND LET DIY
NOT OFF THE MARK - KAVITA A SHARMA
THE GRAND ILLUSION - AMITAV GHOSH
HARDLY A REVOLUTION - SOUMITRO DAS

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

FAST AND FUTURE
UNIFORM DISCIPLINE
GETTING REAL
A POST-ANNA POLITICS - MK VENU
HOW THE STORY ENDS - YUBARAJ GHIMIRE
ERRING ON THE SIDE OF GOOD SENSE - JAITHIRTH RAO
ACT TOGETHER, FOR THE WORLD'S SAKE
THE FUTURE BLOWS IN
OF ACCOUNTS AND ACCOUNTABILITY - N K SINGH

THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

IITS BOW OUT
YES THEY CAN
THE AGE OF WISDOM - MEGHNAD DESAI
ONE NUMBER SAYS IT ALL - STEPHEN S ROACH

THE HINDU

MEDIA PRESSURE MAY HELP SPEED UP FOOD SECURITY MOVES
SIGNIFICANT VICTORY
OBESITY'S GLOBAL CHALLENGE - PETER WALKER
LIBYA POSES POLICY CHALLENGE TO ASIAN GIANTS - JAMES M. DORSEY
CHINA'S STEADY PROGRESS IN SPACE - N. GOPAL RAJ
GETTING CHEWED UP OVER A CULTURAL SYMBOL - NARAYAN LAKSHMAN

THE ASIAN AGE

NOW ENACT A GOOD LOKPAL LAW SWIFTLY
WHAT'S NEXT FOR LIBYA? - S. NIHAL SINGH
INDIA RISES BUT FALTERS - JAGMOHAN

DAILY EXCELSIOR

SUPREMACY OF PARLIAMENT
BOOSTING MEDICAL SERVICES
ROAD ACCIDENTS - BY SAYED ESSAR NAQVI
WOES OF AIR INDIA - BY DR BHARAT JHUNJHUNWALA
INDIA'S COASTAL SECURITY - BY ANIRUDH PRAKASH

THE TRIBUNE

END OF A LIMITED BATTLE
ORGAN TRANSPLANT
ALARMING LAWLESSNESS IN PAK
NORMALISING INDO-PAK TIES - BY MAHARAJAKRISHNA RASGOTRA
A MAN NAMED GOD - BY HARISH DHILLON
CAPACITY BUILDING FOR FUTURE CONFLICT - BRIG GURMEET KANWAL (RETD)
ARMY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF NATIONAL POWER - COL B.N. BHATIA (RETD)

MUMBAI MIRROR

THE DIMINISHING OF RAHUL GANDHI

BUSINESS STANDARD

VICTORY FOR ALL
APPLE WITHOUT JOBS
SOUTH ASIAN CROSSROADS - SANJAYA BARU
LIFE LESSONS FROM VALUABLE WASTELANDS - SUNITA NARAIN
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF FIAT MONEY? - ALOK SHEEL
CLEAR AND PRESENT DOUBLE DIP - N CHANDRA MOHAN

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

A VICTORY FOR INDIA
13- YEAR LOW
COSMIC BLING
NEXT BIG REFORM: POLICE AUTONOMY
CHINA, INDIA AND RURAL MARKETS WILL SCRIPT FUTURE
JOE A SCARIA
ENERGY CONSUMERS IN TIME WARP - SOMA BANERJEE

BUSINESS LINE

ON TO THE NEXT ROUND
LOKPAL BILL ONCE AGAIN IN LIMBO - B.S.RAGHAVAN
TRADE UNIONISM AMIDST JOBLESSNESS - C.GOPINATH
HOW INDUSTRY DEALT WITH REFORMS - CHANDRAJIT BANERJEE
MANUFACTURING WILL NOT CREATE JOBS - ASHOAK UPADHYAY
SOME DELAY IN LICENCES WILL BEEF UP BANKING - SHISHIR SINHA

DECCAN CHRONICAL

NOW ENACT A GOOD LOKPAL LAW SWIFTLY
WHAT WILL TV DO NOW?
WHAT'S NEXT FOR LIBYA?
ALL ROADS LEAD TO RAMLILA
INDIA RISES BUT FALTERS
GOD'S LOVE LETTERS

THE STATESMAN

ONENESS OF BEINGS~II
BOEING COMPLEX A CHIC DESIGN STUDIO - SIMON CALDER

THE TELEGRAPH

FLOOD OF IDEAS
GIRLS IN A SPOT
IF SALT LOSES ITS SAVOUR
WAY TO GO - GWYNNE DYER

DECCAN HERALD

PEOPLE'S WILL
DISMAL SCENARIO
BOTOX OF HARD CASH - M J AKBAR

OHERALDO

PRODIGAL SON IPAVES THE WAY
CAUSE & CURE OF CORRUPTION - IBONIO D'SOUZA
PORT INFRASTRUCTURE & SERVICES - NITIN KUNCOLIENKAR

HAARTEZ

A NEW ORDER IN THE SINAI
WE'RE NOT REALLY FREE
BY MERAV MICHAELI
THE MOSHES' MISTAKES - BY ELIA LEIBOWITZ
FOR LIFE, NOT DEATH - BY URI TUVAL

THE NEW YORK TIMES

THE NATION'S CRUELEST IMMIGRATION LAW
THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY TO GRADE TESTS
DIDN'T THEY LEARN ANYTHING FROM WHITEY BULGER?
'INDEPENDENTS' CANDIDATES REALLY LOVE
WHEN ROOMMATES WERE RANDOM - BY DALTON CONLEY
DANGEROUS WHITE STEREOTYPES - BY PATRICIA A. TURNER

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

A BAYRAM MORNING
RAMADAN AS 'NATIONAL EVENT'
NEW MILITARY, NEW TURKEY
SONER ÇAĞAPTAY - ATA AKINER
LIBYA: WHAT NOW?
WHY CAN'T STIMULUS PACKAGES STIMULUTE?
TURKEY'S MYSTERIOUS REFORM AGENDA
ARE OUR CHILDREN VICTIMS OF CEREALS? - MEHMET ALTAN

THE NEWS

MIRZA'S BOMBSHELLS
THE BIG SWITCH-OFF
THE POLITICS OF ANTI-SECULAR SCHOLARSHIP - AFIYA SHEHRBANO
NOT THAT SERIOUS YET - HUSSAIN H ZAIDI
WRONGDOINGS IN RAMAZAN - DR A Q KHAN
TIN HAT TIME - CHRIS CORK
NO WAY TO BUILD BRIDGES
SHARIF'S STANCE - AREEBA MALIK

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

IT WAS NATO'S RAID NOT AFGHANS
THE ERODING TARBELA AND MANGLA
HAZARE WINS HALF BATTLE
AFGHANISTAN RETURNING TO BRINK - AIR CDRE KHALID IQBAL (R)
GLOBAL AGENDA WITH ECONOMIC DEBT - DR RAJA MUHAMMAD KHAN
PARENTS: RIGHTS & OBLIGATIONS — 28 - SIRAJUDDIN AZIZ
DECENTRALISATION & ECONOMIC GROWTH - RIAZ MISSEN
OBAMA'S WORST NIGHTMARE - JOHN HUGHES

THE AUSTRALIYAN

THE POLITICS OF DEPRESSION
GLOBAL REACH OF EXTREMISM
BUSINESS AND BANK ARE ON SONG ON PRODUCTIVITY LINK

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

HOPING FOR THAT OLD OBAMA MAGIC
A $180BN REASON TO RETHINK WOMEN'S WORK
HOPING FOR THAT OLD OBAMA MAGIC
A $180BN REASON TO RETHINK WOMEN'S WORK
UNEASY AND UNTIMELY FITS THE CROWN

THE GUARDIAN

IN PRAISE OF ... SWIMMING THE CHANNEL
AUSTRALIA: A POISONOUS POLITICAL CLIMATE
RIGHTS AND WRONG'UNS

THE JAPAN TIMES

'GRATUITOUS' BOMBING OF A DEFEATED ENEMY - BY HIROAKI SATO
BUDGET REPAIR AND LIBERAL DEFIANCE - BY GEORGE WILL
FUTURE OF NONVIOLENT UPRISINGS AFTER GADHAFI - BY GWYNNE DYER
LIBYA FACES PERIOD OF RELIANCE ON FOREIGN HELP - BY BARAK BARFI
PALESTINIAN STATE MUST FIELD ISRAELI CONCERNS - BY MICHAEL BRÖNING
THE FEUDAL LORDS OF POWER
MR. KIM GOES TO RUSSIA

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

BEYOND THE AGITATION

PEOPLE AND THEIR PARLIAMENT HAVE WON

With Anna Hazare ending his protest fast on Sunday and Ramlila Maidan being vacated of its gathered masses, the nearly fortnight-long agitation for a strong Lokpal Bill has come to an end, at least for the time being. Hopefully, the Standing Committee of Parliament which is dealing with the draft of the proposed Bill to appoint a Lokpal will be sufficiently mindful in ensuring that there is little or nothing to cavil at when it comes up for debate and voting in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. It is also to be hoped that the Bill will be ready by the Winter Session of Parliament so that appropriate legislative action can follow without any needless delay. The last thing we need is a fresh spell of agitation of the kind witnessed in recent days -- not only would that cause damage to Parliament's credibility but also bring into disrepute the very process of law-making. That said, it would be in order to make a larger point to underscore the fact that Parliament remains the cornerstone of our democracy and it is still the best forum to redress grievances and address aspirations through legislative action. After all, what seemed to be an insurmountable problem posed by intractable leaders of the movement was resolved within the chambers of Parliament through parliamentary means.

True, it could be argued that but for the pressure brought about by Anna Hazare's agitation, perhaps Parliament would have rested easy, leaving the issue to the Standing Committee and waiting for the Bill to come up for debate and voting in due course. This argument is not without merit. The agitation acted as an impetus for Parliament to act with alacrity. It also offered an opportunity for parliamentarians to rise to the occasion and act resolutely. The spirit of the agitation and the angst of the agitators were not lost on our MPs and it is to their credit that they came up with a solution to the problem which, in large measure, was the Congress's making: Had it handled the demands of Anna Hazare and his team with greater finesse and sensitivity (after deciding to co-draft the Bill with them), had it introduced a Bill that was not designed to reduce the proposed Lokpal to a caricature of what was widely expected, and had it not been so criminally callous in its response to the rising tide of popular outrage against corruption across the country, it is unlikely we would have had to witness this kind of agitprop. A second point that deserves to be highlighted is the role played by the main Opposition party, the BJP, in bringing the dispute to a closure. It is to the BJP's credit that it stepped forward to fulfil the responsibility which should have been fulfilled by the Government. The statesmanship of the BJP's senior leaders, their emphasis on finding a solution without compromising the primacy of Parliament and, more importantly, by working within the Constitution and its framework, has been in sharp contrast to the cussedness of the Congress's leaders who stood on prestige and nursed huge egos instead of forging the path ahead.

Thankfully, better sense prevailed on Saturday in Parliament. On Sunday evening, large crowds took to the streets to celebrate 'victory'. If there has been a victory, it is that of the people and their Parliament.

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

MOCKERY OF CONSTITUTION

GUJARAT GOVERNOR DOES CONGRESS'S BIDDING

At a time when the establishment of the office of ombudsman has snowballed into a matter of national concern, the Governor of Gujarat found the empty seat of the State's Lokayukta to be too much of an eyesore. That is the reason which is being touted to justify why after sitting on the file forwarded to her by the State Government for an inordinately long time she suddenly chose to appoint a Lokayukta of her choice. While doing so last Thursday, Ms Kamla Beniwal brazenly ignored the recommendation of the Government headed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi. That in the process she violated one of the most fundamental principles of federalism that govern the constitutional framework of this nation is clearly of no concern to the Governor who appears to be more keen to keep the Congress in good humour than to ensure probity in public life. For there is little else, apart from crass partisan politics, that can explain Ms Beniwal's unilateral decision. It has been reported that the Governor was advised by the Attorney-General of India to take matters into her own hands and unilaterally appoint a Lokayukta. The office, after all, had been lying vacant for seven long years since the State's last Lokayukta, Mr SM Soni, resigned in 2003. A long list of indisputable reasons can be cited why the office remained vacant; not surprisingly, these reasons trace their way right back to the Raj Bhavan in Gandhinagar and to Ms Beniwal's penchant for technical details and her love for unending paperwork. In the present context, all this is rendered immaterial. What is material is the blatant abuse of power by Ms Beniwal.

Section 3 of the Gujarat Lokayukta Act of 1986 states that "the Governor shall by warrant under his/her hand and seal appoint a person to be known as the Lokayukta". Ms Beniwal has interpreted this as her right to appoint a Lokayukta without the State Government's concurrence. Yet, as the State's Health Minister Jay Narayan Vyas has rightly pointed out that no law or legal statute can be read in isolation without due regard for the fundamental principles of policy-making and governance. Section 3 then must also be read in consonance with the other Section of the Gujarat Lokayukta Act that clearly states the appointment of the Lokayukta should be based on the recommendation of the Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers. This is the norm in all such appointments: The Government selects and the Governor approves. This is in keeping with India's federal structure and the constitutional authority vested in State Governments. That Ms Beniwal has chosen to ignore this fact and imposed her entirely unwarranted 'decision' on the State is unacceptable. It sets a dangerous precedent and must be negated at once if the majesty of the Constitution is to be upheld.

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THE PIONEER

COLUMN

CBI A WEAPON OF OFFENCE

BALBIR K PUNJ

Whenever the Congress has been in power at the Centre, it has brazenly misused agencies of the state, especially the CBI, to further its political agenda.

Time and again the Congress and the Union Government it heads have denied misusing investigative agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Directorate of Enforcement to advance the party's interests. But the Congress has now been caught on the wrong foot. In its effort to meet the political challenge posed to the Congress by the YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh, led by Mr Jaganmohan Reddy, son of the late Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the Government has launched a seven-State CBI investigation into the Reddy family's assets and the source of funds for Mr Reddy's various business ventures.

The FIR filed in this connection names YSR Reddy as a co-accused in the several cases of corruption that the agency claims it has discovered during its investigations. Mr Reddy has hit back at the Congress by getting MLAs (and MPs) loyal to him to withdraw their support to the State Government, thus weakening it. The Congress's attempts to malign YSR Reddy, the man who was credited with reviving the party in Andhra Pradesh after it remained out of power for over a decade, just to get even with his son for daring the party high command, are ridiculous. For if YSR Reddy was guilty of amassing wealth, he did so during the seven years that he was in power. The Congress cannot pretend that it was not aware of what it describes as the Reddy family's 'massive corruption.

The CBI has portrayed the father-son duo as the fountain head of corruption in Andhra Pradesh. But Mr Reddy, a young politician, could not have played a big role in the alleged corrupt deals unless his father was using him as a shield. Either way, why did the Congress turn a blind eye to these deals even after the party won a second term under YSR Reddy's leadership? Clearly the Congress's sudden urge to be virtuous is no more than a disguise for its attempt to crush Mr Reddy who has the support of as many as 26 MLAs and several MPs. That the CBI is being used to neutralise the threat that Mr Reddy poses to the Congress is in itself proof of the ruling party's misuse of Government agencies to further its political agenda.

Such instances of misuse of investigative agencies are neither new nor unknown. In fact it was the suspicion of the Supreme Court on this count that compelled it to take up the issue of investigations into the 2G Spectrum scam and Hasan Ali's case. In the latter case, both the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court have severely criticised the CBI and the ED for shoddy investigation. Recently the Delhi Police was also castigated for its three-year delay in investigating the cash-for-vote scandal that rocked the Lok Sabha in 2008. The report that the police have finally traced the cash displayed in the Lok Sabha to Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh — the same person whom the BJP MPs had accused of attempting to bribe them — explains why the investigation was delayed for so long. After all, as is well known, Mr Singh played a major role in saving the UPA1 regime during the 2008 confidence vote.

In the Hasan Ali episode also the reluctance of the ED to get to the accused was noted by the Supreme Court. It was only following this that he was arrested and investigations were conducted that led to unearthing his part in deals that involved illicitly sending money abroad. The court also criticised the investigative agencies for their lethargic role in tracing the black money trail abroad. This resulted in the Government charging the Supreme Court with intruding into the executive's domain by taking over the black money investigation. It is alleged that the Government wants to protect Hasan Ali because a free and fair inquiry into his financial affairs could expose some leaders of the Congress. It may also be recalled how the Union Government has been chided by the Supreme Court in several other cases wherein the central figures are Congress leaders.

The misuse of investigative agencies to protect Congress leaders and their patrons on the one hand and to browbeat the Opposition on the other has been a common practice for decades. After the Congress returned to power in 1980, an inquiry commission was set up to look into the affairs of Gandhian institutions promoted by Jayaprakash Narayan. Unleashing Government agencies to hound the party's opponents and publicly accusing critics of being CIA agents was a common practice in the 1970s and 1980s. The practice so infuriated the Swatantra Party MP Piloo Mody that he once came to Parliament with a placard around his neck, declaring that he was a CIA agent. But the practice of maligning and defaming critics continues. This is exemplified by the vituperative and vulgar attack on Anna Hazare by Congress spokespersons.

There are innumerable instances to show how the Congress, whenever it has been in power at the Centre, has misused agencies of the state to exonerate individuals known for their proximity to the party leadership of charges of corruption. For instance, Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi was let off the hook by UPA1 although there was substantial evidence to prove his involvement in the Bofors scandal. Each time this has happened, the the Government has defended its indefensible decisions by insisting that it acted as per the advice of its legal officers. That claim, of course, is no more than a fig leaf and would not pass scrutiny.

The massive response to last fortnight's anti-corruption agitation led by Anna Hazare can be attributed to the popular perception that the Congress is steeped in corruption and that it heads a tainted regime. That perception has been greatly strengthened by the Government's handling of the 2G Spectrum scam, the CWG lootfest, the Hasan Ali case and the manner in which it tried to appoint a bureaucrat accused of corruption as the Chief Vigilance Commissioner despite the Opposition pointing out that he should not be considered for the job. The spontaneous response of the masses in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and, indeed, across the country, to Anna Hazare's movement and the large turnout at Ramlila Maidan where he sat on anashan is really an expression of lack of confidence in the present Union Government, especially the Congress.

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THE PIONEER

OPED

DEFINING A STRONG, EFFECTIVE LOKPAL BILL

SHASHI SHEKHAR

With mounting popular anger over corruption, various draft proposals for an effective and strong Lokpal Bill have surfaced. Each proposal fails to address the fundamental question of accountability. The final draft of the Lokpal Bill should take a holistic view of structural, constitutional and systemic reforms while ensuring justice is delivered. Here are some suggestions towards that end

There are now at least four draft proposals for what everyone fashions to be a strong and effective Lokpal. They all miss the point that no reform against corruption can derive strength from good intentions or 'independence' without clear accountability. Hence the Lokpal debate cannot be about a single agency, office or officer. Instead it has to be about a system of Government and a culture of governance rooted in the principle of accountability.

A strong and effective Lokpal Bill has to be one that takes a holistic view of structural reforms to the Constitution and systemic reforms to how laws are enforced and justice delivered. Unfortunately, all of the proposals in circulation only tinker with the idea of adding a new layer of bureaucracy without cleaning up the underlying mess.

The current political crisis in Indonesia is a stark pointer to the inadequacy of all of these proposals. In an interview to the Jakarta Globe on August 25, the chairman of Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Committee admitted that fighting corruption was complex and the need of the hour for Indonesia were systemic reforms and bureaucratic reforms. This late wisdom coming nine years after Indonesia's version of a Lokpal came into place.

India doesn't need to waste another decade to learn what we already know today. Here is an outline for a strong Lokpal Bill that would be consistent with the principles of Ambedkarite constitutionalism.

This Lokpal Bill should be respectful of constitutional division of powers between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary and federalism. It should strive to establish checks and balances while recognising the elected people's representatives as the only representatives of the people's will. The Lokpal Bill may be a guiding template to States, but it should be left to each individual State to come up with its own legislation where appropriate. The Lokpal Bill must not impinge on States' rights to make their own laws.

Objectives of the Lokpal Bill

The goal of the Lokpal Bill should not be to create a new expansive agency but to make existing agencies efficient and accountable. Hence the Lokpal Bill should strive to provide crystal clarity on what role existing agencies shall play and how they will be independent and accountable in dealing with situations where individuals acting on behalf of the Union Government, Parliament or judiciary must be investigated and prosecuted.

The Lokpal Bill must also not define new crimes nor define new kinds of punishments but must strive to remove ambiguity and ensure consistency in existing definitions so the Union Government, Parliament and judiciary when convicted of wrong doing do not enjoy special provisions or exceptions. Lastly, the Lokpal Bill must ensure that there is continuous monitoring and feedback on the effectiveness of such investigations and prosecutions through the creation of a new limited agency. This agency should be limited to monitoring effectiveness and make recommendations to Parliament on any corrective legislative or executive action.

Finally, the Lokpal Bill must strive to create a culture of accountability to the people by requiring people's representatives and judiciary to be fully accountable to Parliament for conflicts of interest and ethics violations with respect to matters inside Parliament and courts. It must also strive to ensure there is no immunity from criminal prosecution for acts committed outside Parliament or courts.

With these objectives the Lokpal should legislate on constitutional reforms to ensure a culture of accountability within governance and on justice delivery reforms to ensure a system of Government that is fair, unbiased and committed to justice delivery.

Constitutional Reforms

BR Ambedkar in his speech in the Constituent Assembly introducing the draft Constitution explained how the draft tried to achieve responsibility in our system of Government at the expense of stability. Clearly, six decades on we have failed on both fronts with minority Governments giving instability and apathetic Governments shirking responsibility. Hence the goal of the constitutional reforms has to be about making the Prime Minister accountable.

This can be achieved if we consider the idea of adding a single non-voting seat to every State Assembly and to the Lok Sabha. This single non-voting seat could have for its constituency all eligible voters within that State in the case of a State Assembly and similarly it could have all of the eligible voters in India in the case of the Lok Sabha. During elections this all-State or all-India constituency could go to polls along with the other legislative and parliamentary constituencies. The person who gets elected to this non-voting Lok Sabha or Assembly seat could be automatically considered to be the Leader of the House as he or she would be reflecting the collective will of all the voters of that Legislative Assembly or Parliament. Since the seat is a non-voting addition to the strength of the House this seat will not change the balance of power in the legislature which continues to be same as before.

By virtue of being the leader of the House the person elected to the all-State or all-India constituency will have to be invited by the Governor or the President to form the next Government as the Chief Minister or Prime Minister. Irrespective of whether a party or a combination of parties has a legislative majority the Chief Minister or Prime Minister will have a fixed term which will be the same as the term of the legislature. Removal of the Chief Minister of Prime Minister would now require a higher legislative bar similar to a Presidential impeachment. The anti-defection law becomes redundant and irrelevant since the Government no longer depends on a simple majority in the legislature.

In the absence of anti-defection laws, a cultural shift could be effected wherein legislators across party lines can think independently and come together to propose bi-partisan Bills in a manner similar to what we see in the United States. The Chief Minister or Prime Minister could then also have the additional freedom to appoint members to his Cabinet from outside the legislature thus eliminating another source of instability and dissidence.

The net effect of the above constitutional amendments would be that the legislature could solely focus on its twin responsibilities of law-making and executive oversight. The stability of Governments would no longer be impacted by how fractured or fragmented the legislature is. Overall we could move towards a culture where the executive is focussed on law enforcement and the legislature on law-making while both keep the judiciary out of either responsibility thus restoring the balance of power and separation of powers intended by the Constitution.

A culture of direct accountability of the executive can be restored as against the current disturbing trend by which Chief Ministers and Prime Ministers have taken an indirect route office without contesting elections.

Justice Delivery Reforms

We must also consider recasting the Home Ministry into a separate for justice delivery which shall be responsible for all investigations and prosecutions within the jurisdiction of the Union Government. The justice Minister should control three agencies for investigations, prosecutions and vigilance. The Central Bureau of Investigation should be recast as the sole Federal Investigation Agency with clear jurisdiction instead of the current ad-hoc manner of referring investigations to CBI. The NIA and the CBI should be merged. The investigation agency should not require special permission to investigate and prosecute Members of Parliament or judiciary for conduct outside Parliamentary or conduct outside court proceedings.

The Central Attorney's Office shall be responsible for conducting prosecutions. The Central Vigilance Commissioner shall be responsible for whistleblower protection. The appointment of the heads to these three agencies should be subject to approval by Parliament. The heads of all three agencies should be subject to parliamentary oversight for their conduct. The Justice Ministry should also be responsible for a quasi-Government National Justice Commission that harnesses judicial and prosecutorial talent and promotes excellence in those areas. The mission of this commission is to monitor the needs across the nation and to help State and local Governments add capacity with right talent.

In addition, the Supreme Court should be recast as a purely constitutional court with the discretion to take up or reject appeals based on their constitutional merit. Its primary role would be limited to interpreting the Constitution and ruling merely on constitutionality of decisions of lower courts and constitutionality of actions of all agencies of the State. Four Regional Appellate Courts should be set up for all appeals of decisions in lower courts. Appointment of all judges to Supreme Court and Regional Appellate Courts shall be subject to parliamentary approval upon the recommendation of the Ministry of Justice.

The Supreme Court should comprise a limited number of judges (an odd number less than 10) who should be appointed for life. There should be strict entry criteria for Public Interest Litigation to be taken up by the Supreme Court based purely on constitutional merit. The Supreme Court should not have the power to assume any executive functions including but not limited to — investigations, prosecutions, law making and other executive actions.

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THE PIONEER

OPED

ENCOURAGE SPORTS CULTURE

NAVEEN JINDAL

August 29 is celebrated as the 'National Sports Day' in memory of legendry hockey player Dhyan Chand. On this day the Government must initiate steps to rejuvenate the national game and restore it to its golden past

Today, we celebrate National Sports Day in the remembrance of 'Hockey ke Jadoogar' Dhyan Chand. I am a sportsperson myself and thus I feel deeply connected to and truly recognise the importance of sports in our country.

Sports has provided a unique opportunity for young people from all over the country to come together, live in the same environment, share the same food and at the same time compete with each other to attain higher and higher levels of sporting excellence. The importance of any sport is the joy in playing it. Playing the game and playing well is what sport is all about.

Our performance in the previous Olympic Games 2008 was not up to the mark. It is high time for our sports-persons to roll up their sleeves and get prepared for the 2012 Olympic Games. Our National Flag must fly high and our torch must burn bright at those games. At the world stage we still have a lot to achieve if we have to do our nation proud. India is doing well in many fields and is gaining recognition for it across the world. The time has come now to prove ourselves in the sporting fields of the world. Huge talent lies in India, the challenge lies in harnessing this talent, nurturing it, providing the best facilities, training and exposure. For this, an all round effort has to be made, involving the Union and the State Governments, Sports Federations, Universities and Schools.

Sports must start from the childhood and schools are the first arena for training. A healthy child will grow up to be healthy young adult and can then form the base from which we will see fresh sporting talent emerge. Children in many States are victims of malnutrition. So, we must work towards ensuring that our children are well-nourished, adequately taken care of and given proper medical care. These children will then go to school, take part in sports and games and then become sportsperson like Vijender Singh, Akhil Kumar, Jitendra Kumar, Dinesh Kumar, Geeta Devi, Gagan Narang,Vijay kumar, Deepika Kumari, Sushil kumar, Manoj Kumar, Abhinav Bindra, etc.

We need to encourage a 'sports culture' where children are encouraged to play — by their parents, teachers and the society. Schools need to offer sports as a regular subject and not only as an optional choice. And likewise colleges and universities should also include sports as a subject. The present culture of using sports quota has undoubtedly helped students but if sports is offered as a main subject then these students can further develop their talent in the field of sports itself.

The current performance of our sportspersons in CWG 2010 has attracted national and international attention towards Indian sports scenario. We felt extremely proud when India stood at number two at the CWG medal tally. If the present infrastructure has given our sports man such success then with a proper modern and developed setting our players can make an international mark.

Our focus should reach out to the rural villages of our country, so that more players like Deepika Kumari, Paramjeet Samota, Manoj Kumar, Sandeep Singh, Geetika Jakhar, Manjeet Kaur, Mandeep Kaur, Narsingh Pancham Yadav can find their proper representation. Efforts need to be made to ensure extensive and impartial recruitment across the country, provide world-class training and exposure to our sportspersons. For this, an all round effort has to be made, involving Union and State Governments, Sports Federations, Universities and Schools. I would also propose the involvement of the corporate sector both public and private that should be given tax breaks for sponsoring and supporting Olympic sports and athletes.

Our Government is paying special attention to sports and youth affairs. We are committed to take our country to the top in all sporting fields. In my State, Haryana, the State Government is taking keen interest in proper development of sports and its infrastructure. In the past few years, Haryana Government has brought many plans to boost sports.

I call forth all our children, students and youth to take keen interest in sports. We should maintain the present position in CWG and put in every possible effort to make a mark in Olympic as well.

August 29 is celebrated as the National Sports Day, which is named after the 'Hockey ke Jadoogar' Dhyan chand. So, we must talk about our national game Hockey which once had a glorious stature. Presently, our performance has not remained any match to its golden past. We must take necessary steps to rejuvenate the sport once again.

Indian cricket is an international brand now. But we must ensure that our position in Olympic sports like Football, Table Tennis, Swimming, Boxing, Kabbadi, Athletics, Gymnastics, Shooting should gain a substantial world position. I am happy to see that games like Badminton, Tennis, Shooting, Chess, Golf, Wrestling, and Archery have become popular and Indians are beginning to do well.

Sports help in building a team spirit and thus form a binding thread amongst the countrymen. They are also an occasion for promoting national integration.

As a country of young people, India has great potential in the world of sports and games. We are yet to fully harness the talent of our youth in this vast field. We need to bring a nationwide movement of youth in sports. And a close coordination between the Centre, State and sports association will surely bring about the necessary development.

--The writer is the Member of Parliament, Kurukshetra, Haryana. He is also a sportsperson. ***************************************

THE PIONEER

OPED

AFTER THE RIOTS, COPS GEAR UP FOR CARNIVAL

In the wake of the recent riots that swept through London and other British cities, the police are not taking any chances for the Notting Hill Carnival, writes Cassandra Vinograd

British police will flood the streets of the capital during the Notting Hill Carnival, officials said on Friday, deployed among the Calypso dancers and steel drum bands following intelligence suggesting gangs want to create trouble there.

The move reflects a city — and police force — still on edge after four nights of rioting and looting this month left London reeling, amid questions whether the initial police response was adequate.

Thousands of officers will be on patrol at the carnival and elsewhere in the capital, creating a combined force bigger than the 5,000 officers who were on duty for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton earlier this year.

The two-day festival starting on Sunday will also end before dark as a precaution.

Police have already arrested 40 people in raids before the carnival, which celebrates Caribbean culture and typically attracts about one million people. There will be 5,500 officers on duty in London's Notting Hill on Sunday and 6,500 on Monday, the main day of the carnival, police said.

The disorder earlier this month, which spread from London to other cities across England, was blamed on gangs stirring up trouble and prompted soul-searching about deeper-rooted social issues in Britain.

Police Commander Steve Rodhouse said intelligence suggests gangs want to come to the carnival "and create trouble".

He told reporters at a media briefing this week that security operations had been reviewed in light of the recent unrest to take into consideration that the carnival would be taking place "in unusual and exceptional circumstances".

Launched in 1964 with a few Trinidadian steel bands, the carnival has grown into a major street event that lures partygoers from all over the world. It is billed as Europe's largest street festival, attracting people to its parades, rows of jerk chicken vendors and thumping sound stages set up throughout the west London neighbourhood.

Public drunkenness and disorder at the event usually prompt a few hundred arrests each year. Unrest has typically broken out after dark. To address concerns from performers and local businesses, festival organisers decided to wrap up the event a few hours early this year, at 7 pm.

Chris Boothman, one of the carnival's co-directors, stressed that organisers are not expecting "anything out of the ordinary" and that past festivalgoers know there's nothing to fear.

He conceded that he could understand why recent riots in London might concern the uninitiated. To them, he said, "our message would be if you're planning to come, come early, enjoy yourself and get home safe."

Boothman said carnival organisers have no problem with the police reinforcements — as long as their presence doesn't change the flavour of the day.

"Our problem will be if the officers give the impression the police are flooding the carnival," he said.

Rodhouse shrugged off the suggestion that reinforced policing in Notting Hill will leave the rest of London without a strong policing presence, saying: "This is not the case."

In addition to the officers in Notting Hill itself, police said 4,000 ones will be on duty across London to complement the thousands of officers typically on duty on a normal weekend.

"To those who want to come to corrupt this magnificent event you are not welcome. Please do not come," Rodhouse said, adding that the force "will do everything in its power to make it as hard as possible for you."

--AP

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

DANCE OF DEMOCRACY

The Lokpal is an idea whose time has come. That's how BJP leader Sushma Swaraj put it last Saturday. It's a point hammered home by Anna Hazare's anti-graft protest - and how. If Parliament adopted a unanimous "sense of the House" resolution to break the Lokpal logjam, it's because Anna's done what politicians generally haven't save when expedient: he's turned national spotlight on corruption. It's been a victory for the social activist, who ended his fast only when his key demands were met. Yet we also witnessed lawmakers go beyond homilies to adopt a just cause backed by ordinary citizens: the creation of a strong anti-graft watchdog. It was a memorable day: Parliament and people's power partnering each other in the dance of democracy.

With a fasting Anna standing firm, it had become untenable for the UPA to prolong the face-off. But isn't there a larger lesson for those who set store by the fact that they're elected by the people? The democratic contract bonding citizens to their political representatives isn't just a matter of form; its substance is what political institutions deliver between - and irrespective of - periodic elections. Massive popular participation in Anna's campaign signals society's deep anguish at corruption-fuelled institutional rot. Let's wake up to that. Yes, it'll take time and collective effort to find remedies via legislative deterrence and systemic reform. That's no excuse for inaction.

The government and Team Anna must now move from conflict to cooperation. With its broad framework in place, disagreements on the Lokpal Bill's details shouldn't prompt renewed breakdown in negotiations. Crafting this legislation is a complex and onerous task, aimed at establishing an authority in sync with the system of checks and balances underpinning our democracy. No one as of now can claim to be the sole and final word on what the contours and powers of such an ombudsman should be. The government's proposed Lokpal is widely viewed as toothless, the Jan Lokpal version too harsh. Only flexibility will help find middle ground.

Both government and civil society must be willing to consider all inputs so that the best possible Bill can be framed. As for the political class as a whole, it's time to demonstrate sincerity of purpose. The Lokpal Bill, hanging fire for over four decades, has come before Parliament nine times in different versions. That's poor advertisement for politicians claiming to be as keen on fighting corruption as civil society. Anna has said the battle to create a good, effective Lokpal is only half-won. Given that they assert parliamentary prerogative in lawmaking, legislators must help win the other half.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

TABLET WARS

With the announcement of Steve Jobs stepping down as Apple CEO, there's gloom about Apple's uncertain prospects without him at the helm. But doomsayers miss the point. The issue isn't about which of the two heavyweights currently slugging it out in the mobile computing segment - Apple or Google with its Android platform - will come out on top. It's about how competition is spurring innovation at a breakneck pace. That's not going to change. Even if the former does lose some of its edge temporarily, it's unlikely to slip too far. And Android, which has grown blazingly fast to become the dominant smartphone platform, isn't going away anytime soon.

While fears about the death of the personal computer are exaggerated, these technology wars are pushing up the timeframe for evolution and innovation. New versions of both platforms, due this year, are shaping up to be the most significant ones to date. They're likely to provide some clarity on how the industry will shape up in the short-to-medium term. The two represent drastically different views of what post-PC devices might look like: Apple with its walled garden approach, limiting what a user can do with his device in order to give him a cohesive experience, and Android devices with the reverse trade-off - more customisation, less slickness. The latter appears well suited to evolve a device with the flexibility necessary to replace the traditional computer. The free, open nature of this platform makes it possible for innovators in developing markets like India's to utilise their tech expertise. But in the end, whichever wins out - or, as is more likely, however both learn to coexist given the market's sheer size - the end-user is the winner.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

WAYS TO FIT THE BILL

MANOJ MITTA

When Aamir Khan, the hero of the film 3 Idiots, was at the Ramlila Ground last Saturday, Parliament was debating the three sticking points between the government and Team Anna. Though the "sense of the House" resolution proclaimed an "in principle" agreement with them, it is far from certain to what extent Anna Hazare`s three non-negotiable demands will be accommodated in the Lokpal Bill ultimately passed into law. For, each of those demands - incorporation of a citizens' charter, jurisdiction over lower bureaucracy and the same law stipulating state Loka-yuktas - will have far-reaching repercussions, whether constitutional or administrative.

Take the question about Parliament's legislative competence to establish an ombudsman covering public servants at the state level. Though there were eight earlier attempts in 43 years to have a Lokpal enactment, this is the first time the federal issue of imposing the Lokayukta on states has arisen. Curiously, this is despite the fact that the first ever Bill was called the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill 1968. But the two terms then had no federal connotations. While Lokpal referred to the chairperson of the central ombudsman, Lokayuktas referred to its own members!

So, if Lokayukta is instead regarded as the Lokpal's state-level counterpart, one school of thought is that the Bill passed by Parliament can be little more than a model law for states. Another is that since India is a signatory to a UN treaty on corruption, the Centre is empowered by Article 253 of the Constitution to enact a law applicable across the country in keeping with its international obligation.

Between these two weighty viewpoints, there is one reason why the UPA government should go by the latter. Notwithstanding the buzz created by his "game-changing" idea, Rahul Gandhi is not the first person to suggest the Lokpal should be a constitutional body (like the Election Commission) rather than just a statutory body (like the CBI or CVC). The credit is due to the Veerappa Moily-headed Second Administrative Reforms Commission which recommended in 2007 that the Constitution should be amen-ded to create a national ombudsman having jurisdiction over not only Union ministers but also chief ministers. In the detailed presentation it is scheduled to make in the near future before the standing committee, Team Anna would do well to exploit this opening offered by the Moily panel.

Similarly, Team Anna could take advantage of the 1968 Bill to drive home its demand that, besides dealing with corruption cases, Lokpal and Lokayuktas should enforce the citizens' charter made by each department. The charter is meant to give, among other things, an undertaking on the time it would take to fulfil various public grievances. The 1968 Bill, which had been passed by the Lok Sabha before it lapsed, can well be cited as a precedent since it covered complaints concerning allegations of misconduct and also grievances of maladministration. The counter-argument to including public grievances in the Bill's ambit is that the Lokpal might get over-burdened and diverted from attending to corruption cases.

Such apprehensions about efficiency can perhaps be addressed by studying the experience of the Karnataka Lokayukta, which deals with both corruption cases and public grievances. If the much-touted Karnataka model bears out those fears, the Centre has the option of adopting the alternative suggested by the Aruna Roy-led National Campaign for Right to Information (NCPRI). Namely, create a separate body focussed on public grievances.

The NCPRI draft formulations may prove to be a practical solution to the conflict on whether the Lokpal's remit should extend to the lower bureaucracy. According to Team Anna, in the interest of uniformity, the Lokpal should be the sole corruption ombudsman whether the allegations are against the prime minister or the lowest central government employee. The counter-argument is again the problem of overburdening. The government is evidently so apprehensive of this that, in the resolution Parliament adopted, it entered a caveat saying the lower bureaucracy would be "under Lokpal through appropriate mechanism".

Given the commitment to keep that appropriate mechanism under the Lokpal, the standing committee could, tweaking the NCPRI formulation, suggest a body that deals with the lower bureaucracy in coordination with the Lokpal. Such an arrangement may also meet Team Anna's contention that there could often be confusion over where an FIR should be registered if there were two separate bodies for investigating corruption allegations against government servants. After all, the level up to which officers are involved in a given scam is not always apparent at the stage of the FIR.

There is another public interest issue that forced the government to deviate from its approach of letting the Lokpal focus on big-ticket scams. As Team Anna emphasised, the Lokpal in such a scenario would have no remedy for the common man who is a victim of extortionate corruption by petty officials.

In any case, the legislative outcome of the historic Ramlila fast goes beyond the cryptic parliamentary resolution. It bears no mention of the issues on which the government and Team Anna came to an agreement. Team Anna, for instance, is not insisting any more on the Lokpal being the sanctioning and investigating agency for allegations against the higher judiciary. It settled for an assurance that its concerns would be addressed while strengthening the pending Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill. In return, the government is apparently reconciled to bringing the PM under the Lokpal. Give-and-take negotiations do not, however, detract from the magnitude of Anna's achievement.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

Q&A

'GOVERNMENT MUST END IMPUNITY CULTURE, REPEAL LAWS LIKE AFSPA'

HUMRA QURAISHI

The discovery of over 2,000 bodies buried in unmarked graves in Kashmir has caused widespread shock. Links are being drawn between these bodies and civili-ans who 'disappeared' over the years, allegedly targeted by security forces fighting militancy . Meenakshi Ganguly , South Asian director at the Human Rights Watch (HRW), spoke with Humra Quraishi on the need for accountability:

Does the HRW think the dead in these graves could be civilians missing from the Valley?

Yes, we do link these graves to those that are missing. The government insisted that all those missing had gone to Pakistan to join militant groups. Some did. But in other cases, witnesses saw a person being taken into custody by the security forces - after which they disappeared.

The report by the Jammu & Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) is significant because it is the first official investigation. It has found, as human rights workers and Kashmiris alleged, that some graves contain the bodies of the 'disappeared'. These are not mass graves as in Iraq or former Yugoslavia where scores of bodies were dumped into pits. But the SHRC inquiry found 18 graves that contain more than one body.

What should happen now?

We want an independent and credible investigation into this. A commission of inquiry should be formed with the capacity to conduct forensic tests and question members of security forces involved in operations, even those no longer in service.

The government should invite Kashmiri families to submit all information about the 'disappeared', so that each case can be investigated.

How has the state machi-nery responded to the discovered graves?

We have not yet seen a clear response. The inquiry report was leaked. The commission has to submit its findings to the government and make recommendations. We hope the SHRC makes strong recommendations to conduct a proper inquiry in a time-bound and transparent manner. The state government should then investigate each and every allegation of a 'disappearance'. The central government should cooperate because many possible perpetrators could belong to the army or federal forces like the CRPF and BSF.

Could the reality of these graves disappear under politicking?

The government has repeatedly claimed there will be zero tolerance for human rights violations. Addressing the issue of enforced disappearances will be a significant confidence-building measure. India also has an obligation to investigate these under international laws and because it has signed the United Nations convention against enforced disappearances.

Human rights forums cannot go beyond a point in confronting governments - so, what next?

In a democracy, eventually governments have to respond to public sentiment - we saw this play out at the Ramlila Ground. Human rights groups and the media have a significant role in highlighting violations in Kashmir and elsewhere. But the government must end the culture of impunity, repeal laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that provide soldiers with widespread powers but immunity from prosecution for human rights violations. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must keep his 2004 promise to repeal AFSPA.

How does the reality of mass unmarked graves impact people?

Disappearances are among the most heinous of human rights violations. Families are left without answers, caught between hope and despair. I've met numerous families still waiting for news of their loved ones. I hope finally the government will provide answers and solace to these families - and prosecute the perpetrators.

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

MONOBINA GUPTA

If there is one thing that leaves the Bengali ego irreparably bruised, it is the mere insinuation of cultural deficit. Many may not even wince at being slandered as cultural imperialists. But lacking in the department of culture surely is an affront intolerable to a self-respecting Bengali. The race to acquire the right cultural trappings begins right at the top. Present chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Marxist predecessor, though sworn political adversaries, are united in their reverence for Rabindrasangeet, Nazrulgeeti and Sukanta's poems. Come Durga Puja, and you may be treated to a full-throated renditions of Rabindrasangeet as you wait for the traffic light to turn green at important intersections. Amid this heightened cultural superiority is it so surprising for Bengal's political classes to pick the mouthful Paschimbanga rather than a succinct Bengal?

Bengalis are particularly touchy about names. Parents usually do not christen their daughters 'Pinky' or 'Sweetie', or sons 'Sunny' or 'Lucky'. Instead you could end up with an eight-letter name like mine, punctuated with confusing sounding vowels, and mutilated mercilessly by Dilliwallahs exercising the right to verbalise a name their own imaginative way! Distortions are just part of the name-game. A Marxist home minister of the country, without meaning offence, had once expressed wonder at the utterly frivolous name of the leader of a delegation calling on him. He kept intoning his name in genuine awe, till the delegation members burst out laughing.

The business of anointing not just precious offsprings but buildings of brick and mortar, roads, parks and metro stations with lofty names has a great deal to do with this 'Aamra Bangali' self-congratulatory sensibility. Little wonder discussions about the state's baptism threw up high-sounding names - Bangabhumi, Bangadesh, Gaur Banga. Bengal or Banga, in comparison, sounded trite and irreverent.

Rechristening is by now a craft mastered by political parties. Mamata Banerjee has been on a spree of renaming metro stations after luminaries like Mahatma Gandhi, Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Prafulla Chandra Roy, Rajendra Prasad, Anukul Thakur, Mangal Pandey, Uttam Kumar and Sukanta. Many more in the dusty hall of fame are in queue. The former Marxist rulers too had a field day. The Left Front government celebrated its landmark 1977 victory by painting the tower of Shaheed Minar a gleaming red. Who knows - the new rulers may splash another coating of green and white on the faded red! During the Left Front's extraordinarily long tenure, the road many of us grew up calling Lower Circular Road one day became Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Road; Theatre Road became Shakespeare Sarani. Harrington Road was christened Ho Chi Minh Sarani; Camac Park Street, one of the most iconic locations in the city, was renamed Mother Teresa Sarani. Rarely, if ever, and even then mostly in jest, does a Calcuttan refer to Park Street by its re-designated name.

As a prabashi Bangali in Delhi, i am often asked: "Where are you originally from?" My answer veers between "Bengal" and "West Bengal". Tragically, Paschimbanga is likely to roll uneasily off the tongues of non-Bengalis, hopeless at striking the right balance between 'a' and 'o'. 'Bongo' or 'Banga'? Why put people through the agony? But then, knowing my clan's fondness for grand prose and verse, it is not really a bolt from the blue. Funnily, Paschimbanga does not even fit the bill of a proper name change. Paschim, any Bengali will tell you, is nothing but 'West' in Bengali. Will Paschimbanga fare better than Bengal?

Unlikely. The chief minister wanted to move the state up the alphabetic ladder. According to her, West Bengal's ministers were greeted with the yawns of a dozing audience at important meetings. Will they now hold their yawns and save their 40 winks till 'P' arrives?

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

BEGINNING OF A BEGINNING

Now after the ignition, it's about pressing the foot on the pedal. In the avoidable skirmishes between the Government of India and Anna Hazare and his associates, the nation got 12 days of high drama and a flurry of low blows. But thankfully, on Saturday, we saw the immovable object move to an unstoppable force. The withdrawal of Mr Hazare's fast came after both Houses of Parliament expressed solidarity with the anti-corruption crusader's three core demands regarding the proposed Lokpal Bill. Mr Hazare had earlier demanded a parliamentary resolution on these demands — a citizens' charter, the lower bureaucracy coming under the lokpal's purview and the establishment of lokayuktas in all states. But coming from the state of ugly deadlock, the parliamentary endorsement was a gesture that was good enough for Mr Hazare to call off his fast. However way one looks at it, the ongoing agitation has finally got the serious attention of the political class, the government included, instead of the earlier tooth and nail resistance in the name of the sanctity of Parliament to a strong Lokpal Bill.

In the discussion in Parliament that preceded the rapprochement, parliamentarians finally set their cards on the table regarding the issue at hand. Especially forthright were the two leaders of the Opposition of the two Houses, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley. Even though we are yet to be clear about the kind of effective Lokpal Bill the government says it wants to pass, the fact that the nation's legislative body has at last come together to go beyond homilies is most satisfying. Mr Hazare has spoken about the "victory of the Jan Lokpal Bill being a partial victory". He and his associates now hope that the government convenes a special session of Parliament to pass the Bill in a month's time. Considering that Parliament will now be debating the pros and cons of each of the various drafts of the Lokpal Bill, which will then be looked at by the parliamentary standing committee before Parliament passes the law, we would actually consider Saturday's achievement as the ball set moving.

At stake is firming up the most effective Lokpal Bill with safeguards to prevent its misuse. So while a deadline keeps the legislation of this landmark law from slipping away into the horizon, a month should be a working deadline. What must be ensured is that the foot is not taken off the pedal. While views and counterviews will continue to float about on the method used by Mr Hazare to make the nation's lawmakers forge an effective law against statutory corruption, Mr Hazare has unleashed a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle: the will of the people. Consider Saturday's breakthrough — or climbdowns — as the beginning of a beginning.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE PUNDIT

LIVE AND LET DIY

We share the bewilderment of the Chinese at American VIPs doing things for themselves

T he inscrutable Chinese who are not fazed by the prospect of trade and border wars were completely thrown off kilter recently. No, it was not that Barack Obama was found to be a reincarnation of Zhou en-Lai but that the new US ambassador to China was spotted carrying his own rucksack and buying himself a cup of coffee in Seattle airport. Then along comes Barack himself, disembarking at Shanghai airport, holding an umbrella over his head, creating a Confucian conundrum which the Chinese are yet to figure out.

Now, we share the bewilderment of the Chinese at VIPs doing things for themselves. Our VIPs would not dream of lining up for coffee or holding anything, leave alone an umbrella. In fact, not just VIPs, most middle-class Indians are loathe to do too much by way of heavy lifting and this includes such arduous tasks as getting yourself a glass of water or straightening the bedclothes. No, we have underpaid flunkeys for all these tasks. In fact, the presence of people around you at all times to wipe the imaginary sweat from your brow is an indication of your social standing. We are often shocked and awed that western leaders actually pay for family vacations. Here, the political family -and we really mean all 125 members -usually go on a jolly and a jaunt paid for by you and me. Such privileges extend far beyond one's term in office.

While Bill Clinton and Tony Blair may be raking it in posthigh office, it is unlikely that they have someone to do the dishes.
We can take heart from the fact that the Chinese are as protocol conscious as we are. Even a petty party functionary would rather do two years of hard labour in the Gulag than be caught carrying his own briefcase. Don't get us wrong, we are all for a good work ethic, someone's else's that is. Now where did that pesky peon go?
We'd asked him to fetch us some coffee from the machine which is a whole annoying two metres away from us ages ago.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

NOT OFF THE MARK

KAVITA A SHARMA,

The Supreme Court rendered a landmark judgement on August 9 when it held that evaluated answer sheets are covered under the Right to Information Act and that this judgement would apply to all examinations including ones conducted by the public service commissions, universities, boards and also professional bodies.

The judgement takes me back to the 1990s when the Parents' Forum for Meaningful Education (PFME) filed an application on behalf of a student in the District Consumer Forum of Haryana. The student wanted to access his answer scripts of his chemistry paper and then redressal of any grievance in case of an error. His board results showed that he had failed in the subject. The consumer forum ordered that the answer scripts be shown to him. Eight continuation sheets were found missing but nothing could be done as the board chose to go into appeal to the State Consumer Forum where PFME lost. This was because of an earlier order of the National Consumer Forum said an examinee was not a consumer and an examining body was an institution providing 'service' for a consideration.

We could not approach the high court because of a Supreme Court judgement in which it held that the process of evaluation of answer papers or of subsequent verification of marks under Clause 3 of Regulation 104 of the Maharashtra State Board did not attract the principles of natural justice.

In the August 9 judgement, the court, on the other hand, took the view that when an examinee is permitted to examine his answer sheet, the examining body is not giving him any new information but an opportunity to read what he had written earlier. Therefore, in furnishing the answer-book, there was no breach of confidentiality, privacy, secrecy or trust.

Of course, there was a genuine fear that the safety of the examiner would be endangered if his identity was revealed. So the court accepted the validity of this argument and exempted from disclosure not only the identity of the examiner but also of the scrutiniser, co-ordinator and head examiner. Further the court allayed the apprehensions of the examining bodies that they might have to store the corrected answer scripts running into lakhs for long periods and this could lead to infrastructural and administrative problems. It was clarified that "the right to access information" will have a certain time limit. In this case, what the RTI has achieved is something for which there was no mechanism earlier as the consumer court also did not see the statutory examining bodies as 'service providers' for a consideration.

Having taken this step, it is logical that the examining bodies should set up a grievance redressal mechanism even if it is at a small fee to cover the administrative costs. The fear that the examining body would be flooded with applications for access to corrected answer scripts may not be well founded as examinees too want a finality of results so as to move on with their career goals.

Kavita A Sharma is former principal, Hindu College, University of Delhi. The views expressed by the author are personal.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

THE GRAND ILLUSION

AMITAV GHOSH

In the great torrent of words inspired by the anti-corruption movement, what is not being discussed has proved to be almost as significant as what is being said. As a writer I have always been fascinated by the silences that suddenly congeal within the ceaseless argumentation of our collective life. In this instance some of these silences are so striking as to make one wonder why nobody ever mentions the herd of elephants in the room.

Here is one relatively minor instance: on innumerable occasions over the last couple of weeks commentators have excoriated the Congress for its 'lack of leadership'. Yet, not once have I heard anyone remarking on the fact that this is not just a figure of speech - it is literally true. Sonia Gandhi, the actual leader of the party and the fount of its power, is indeed absent, and is known to be incommunicado because she is recuperating from an operation. It is as if some kind of taboo had arisen around this subject.

But here is a much more significant example: several members of the Congress have spoken with great eloquence about the importance of respecting the sovereignty of Parliament and about the dangers of creating an extra-parliamentary source of legislation. Thus for example P Chidambaram: "Do not diminish the sovereign right of Parliament to make laws. The day this right is diminished even by one millimeter, that will be the saddest day for our democracy."

Reading this, anyone would imagine that the functioning of Chidambaram's own party conformed to some ideal model of a Westminster-style democracy. Yet, a basic premise of a parliamentary democracy is that the office of prime minister is held by the leader of the dominant party: in other words executive and political power are vested in the same person.

Could we imagine for example, a situation in which British Prime Minister David Cameron, having led his party to victory in an election, would pick a member of the House of Lords to be the prime minister?

The truth is that members of the Congress are singularly ill-placed to wax indignant about the dangers of bowing to an extra-parliamentary power. They looked to Sonia Gandhi for leadership even when she was not in Parliament; nor is the legislature the real source of her authority. This is indeed the root of the problem for the Congress today: it is itself structured in such a way as to divorce power from the legislature. The prime minister has never won an election; the country knows that his authority is limited and that he is not the government's guiding force. This has created an opacity at the very core of the political system: even if the protagonists were blameless, the situation is guaranteed to generate mistrust.

The differences between the Westminster model and our own political system are obvious. Why then are they so rarely mentioned, even while the model is constantly invoked? Is it because we have become so accustomed to being lauded as the 'world's largest democracy' that we can no longer see what stares us in the face? Or is it because this rhetoric has made us unwilling - or unable - to distinguish between form and substance in politics?

When we look at the form of our political life it is indeed a parliamentary democracy - and considering the available alternatives this is undoubtedly a good thing. But there is another equally important aspect to Indian politics, a dynastic aspect, which it shares with several countries in the region - Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines.

In Pakistan, the pre-eminent dynasty has played no small part in plunging the country into crisis. But a crisis sometimes brings certain truths to the fore. It is not an accident that the term 'deep State' was coined in Pakistan, to describe a situation in which the actual mechanisms of power are hidden behind a public performance of electoral politics.

But the 'deep State' is now no longer exclusive to Pakistan; its workings are discernible also in some of the world's leading democracies, including Britain and the United States: they were evident for example, in the ways in which these countries were led into the Iraq war in the teeth of widespread

popular opposition; no less were they apparent in the way that the interests of banks were privileged over the interests of ordinary people after the financial crisis of 2008.

To millions of people around the world it has become evident that the forms of democracy are not in themselves a safeguard against the manipulation of government by unseen powers. The most moving articulation of this came perhaps from the 'indignados' - the protestors who filled the streets of Spain earlier this year: "Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic and social outlook that we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice… Instead of placing money above human beings, we shall put it back to our service. We are people, not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from."

In India, the events of the last couple of years have unmasked, as never before, our own 'deep State'. As scandal after scandal has unfolded, it has become evident that the collusion between politicians, corporations and the media, is of a staggering magnitude, and that it operates on a scale that far exceeds anything that most people could even imagine. Indeed, it has become apparent that the locus of power in the country has largely shifted away from New Delhi to the corporate towers of Mumbai; it is apparent also that the political class is unable to rectify this.

Something clearly had to be done; it was clear also that the formal institutions of our democracy were not going to do it. The movement that has filled the gap offers cause for both hope and misgiving. In its insistence on bringing political processes into the open, it is trying to restore some of the content that has leached out of governance in India. In failing to address the role of the private sector in corruption it is itself ignoring the elephants in the room. What is undeniable is that its emergence is a development of enormous significance.

The movement has already tasted power and in the months to come it could turn in many directions. The political class is right to be apprehensive about this. Yet, it was this very class that allowed the substance of politics to leak from its grasp even as it clung to the forms.

Inasmuch as the country, as a whole, has allowed this to happen, we are all to blame.

Amitav Ghosh's latest novel is River of Smoke.

The views expressed by the author are personal.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

HARDLY A REVOLUTION

SOUMITRO DAS

A middle-class revolution is a contradiction in terms. To be middle-class in India today is to be a creature of privilege. To be middle-class is not to go hungry ever, not to have to pull one's children out of school so that they can help in putting food on the table, not being prey to a thousand diseases deriving from an unhygienic environment and the list could go on and on. Who could the middle-class revolt against if not itself?

However, it's a quirk of history that the class which is economically the most powerful in the country is not the most powerful politically. The legislature is dominated by downtrodden masses of the country. It is they who vote in a new Parliament every five years or so. The middle-class doesn't have the numbers to win the parliamentary game and, therefore, desists from casting its vote. Thus, its attitude towards democracy is at best ambivalent, at worst schizophrenic. It likes to flaunt the country's democratic credentials before the world community; but it is furious about not having a say in how the country should be run, especially when legislators elected by, for example, the rural masses get away with the kind of indiscipline that would shame any politician in the developed world.

The middle-class holds the political class in contempt. There are several reasons for this. One of them is the fact that most politicians would be unable to secure and hold down a job in the private sector. Another reason is the fact that our legislators are elected by the most poor and illiterate mass of people to be found anywhere on earth. Such an electorate, the middle-class thinks, is unable to produce modern leadership. Then, there is the behaviour of our politicians inside and outside the legislature. They can indulge in acts of hooliganism, but the middle-class is watching them on TV.

The complaint about criminals sitting in Parliament is partly misinformed. Registering cases against political rivals is one of the easiest things to do in India. Amar Singh may represent the worst in our politics, but he is certainly not a murderer. Yet, he has murder cases against him. One also remembers the occasion when Mayawati asked her cohorts to register cases against Mulayam Singh Yadav all over UP and overnight Yadav was faced with the prospect of fighting cases in a 100 different courts in the state. So this business of criminality needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis; no generalisations - such as Arvind Kejriwal's, "They are all thieves" - are warranted. Last, but not the least, the political class is demonised by the media. The middle-class follows the media faithfully, since it's the media that promote the fiction that the middle-class speaks for the nation and that all other points of view are mendacious, if not superfluous.

All this to say that Anna Hazare's movement, being largely driven by the middle- class, is not a revolution. For it to be revolutionary it must scare the living daylights out of the middle-class. What could be a real revolution in this country? The answer is provided by Dalit voices that were heard briefly amid the cacophony surrounding Anna's fast. Both Kancha Ilaiah and Chandrabhan Prasad said that the central issue before the country is not corruption, but the caste system. Ilaiah and Prasad are right. Dalit insurgence is the one thing that is liable to scare the living daylights out of not only our middle-class, but also out of village notables who rule through traditional bodies such as caste panchayats.

It's not just a coincidence that Kiran Bedi named Lalu Prasad, Amar Singh, Ram Vilas Paswan and Mulayam Singh Yadav when she implied that a parliamentary standing committee composed of such people would be unlikely to do justice to a strong lokpal legislation. They are all caste politicians, protagonists of India's 'long revolution'.

The middle-class is comfortable with Hazare's movement. It's in charge. And what it wants to seek through the institution of the lokpal is a sort of a permanent moral guardianship over the political class as a whole.

Soumitro Das is a Kolkata-based writer. The views expressed by the author are personal.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

FAST AND FUTURE

Anna Hazare was supposed to break his fast at 10 am on Sunday, but in the event he — and everyone else — was kept waiting while a member of his "team" made an interminable "mission accomplished" speech. When it is something as hydra-headed and intangible as corruption, however, it is difficult to imagine how victory could be defined — and more, since the reduction of corruption is something that unites most people, including those in Parliament, it puzzling why a milestone on the way to reducing it should be seen as a matter of victory or defeat at all. If there are real lessons to be taken away from the past ten days, one should be that this is about more than the hubris of Team Anna or the leaden reactions of UPA 2. It is about the emergence of an increasingly aware urban Indian, and of the stability and responsiveness of the Indian constitutional system.

In the end, Team Anna's maximalist demands — their bill, or an agitation — had to be dialled down; Parliament's right to amend, make and pass legislation was reiterated; and the Indian people got to see their political leaders, across party lines, speak firmly about the many variants of corruption that affect this country's citizens, and about what could be done to deal with them. In the debates in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, MPs from the two main national parties did not respond to the anti-politician mood that was visible onstage at the Ramlila Maidan; but those from smaller parties were not so restrained. Again, Sharad Yadav had a pointed defence of Parliament— "27 MPs have spent time behind bars and this House saw to it they were put behind bars" — and Lalu Prasad said "the Constitution should not be bypassed one bit." In these words from backward-class leaders who emerged from a previous agitation, we see the power of Parliament and Constitution to represent and to inspire. That, with the flexibility of Indian politics, is what has been underlined this week.

MPs must not waste this moment, but get to the business of governance. And, above all, of reform, for that is the third great lesson of the Anna moment: that legislature and executive have not being doing enough. The construction of a grievance redressal system, and the strengthening of CBI independence, should be buttressed by reforms that empower and address the aspirations of urban India, ignored for seven years. That, then, would be victory.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

UNIFORM DISCIPLINE

After all the first, fraught confrontations between the Delhi police and Anna Hazare's team, it must be said that both sides backed off and cooperated in ensuring that this protest went off with minimal tension. The police renegotiated its agreement with Team Anna, allowing in as many people as Ramlila grounds could take, permitting loudspeakers and tents and parking space, and allowing all this for an extendable 15-day stretch.

And as the days went by, the numbers swelled, emotions ran high, but there was a palpable sense of security in the Ramlila grounds and surrounding areas. Temporarily, it created a public square of the kind that out cities sorely miss, a place for speeches and songs, a place to gather together. It was often boisterous, often angry, but it felt safe. And while the commitment and discipline of the protesters must be applauded, this is in no small part because of the remarkable effectiveness of Delhi's police. They set up unobtrusive security checks, politely gave directions, and allowed this carnivalesque protest to go on with minimal interference.

Of course, for all its purported Gandhian methods, there were some in the Anna movement who got carried away by the anti-establishment energy of it all, there were people who got drunk and made trouble, who harassed and heckled others on the street, Anna topi-wearing gangs of motorcyclists listing and weaving through the roads of central Delhi. The police moved in swiftly and efficiently, putting in extra barricades, arresting a few hundred traffic violators. Overall, over the last ten days, we witnessed a new standard in public order policing, one that respected a group's democratic right to raise hell, and ensured that this goal was achieved with the least inconvenience to others.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

GETTING REAL

India's business interests across the Middle East and North Africa have expanded dramatically in recent years. Several Indian companies are heavily invested in Libya, and stand to suffer considerably from the ongoing tumult. 15,400 Indians had left Libya by the time the rebellion against Gaddafi gathered steam, according to the foreign ministry; many thousands remained. Yet India's foreign policy remains cautious and wary, strangely reluctant to take on a role commensurate with its weight in the world.

In UN forums, it has been conspicuous for straddling the fence — as a non-permanent Security Council member, it abstained when the UNSC authorised the use of force in Libya. Unwilling to recognise the changed terms of the debate, India prefers the rote north-vs-south debate, unwilling to see that the old consensus has cracked. Our commercial interests are clearly at cross-purposes with our diplomatic approach. What's more, the Arab Spring has genuinely upended previous calculations. What is happening in Libya would well happen in Syria, in this cascading revolution across the region.

India, like much of the world, had assumed a certain stability in the region, and framed its diplomacy with those assumptions. However, this chaos in Libya can't be construed only in terms of Western intervention (though that is an admittedly complicating factor). It is also an internal aspiration for change, or like in Syria, a majority trying to empower itself against minority domination. Libya's National Transition Council is recognised by 45 countries. India must make up its own mind after clear-eyed analysis, keeping its own interests in mind. Most importantly, this situation is a reminder of how India's diplomacy needs to be quick-witted and nimble, able to recognise reversals and adapt. When the facts change, our foreign policy must be able to assimilate them and change accordingly. Instead of letting a broad set of principles articulated in the past determine present strategy, we must be guided by our real priorities. As revolution sweeps across the region, India must go beyond the standard interactions with governments and develop ties with the new forces there, so that it can take an informed position on these contestations.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

A POST-ANNA POLITICS

MK VENU

Anna Hazare, himself a veteran of many a campaign against corruption in the past, was sober and understated enough to describe his victory as "aadha" (half) after receiving a letter from the prime minister conveying Parliament's resolve to discuss three critical issues emerging from the Jan Lokpal draft. He also thanked parliamentarians, and admitted that a whole lot remained to be done in the battle against corruption.

He realises that this time round (unlike in the past when he confined himself to the Maharashtra region) his campaign has seized the nation's imagination, and will create unprecedented expectations in regard to some concrete steps being taken against corruption in the near future. Such expectations, scary as they may appear, will have to be managed by both Anna Hazare and the political class as things return to normal in the weeks and months ahead.

If one looks at Hazare's style carefully, he appears very rigid about his demands when he is fasting. However, he is quite flexible and pragmatic when dealing with the political class in normal times. This showed in the easy and natural personal interactivity he has with some Maharashtra politicians, such as Vilasrao Deshmukh and others, who are not exactly perceived as paragons of clean politics. It was also interesting to see that finally two Congress leaders, Deshmukh and Sandeep Dikshit, were allowed to be part of Team Anna's victory recital of the national anthem from the high stage at the Ramlila maidan. Earlier, Anna Hazare had been very careful not to allow political leaders to use their platform.

The Anna Hazare campaign, such as it was, will have a lasting impact both in political and systemic terms. Politically, the mainstream parties were startled at the support that progressively developed for Hazare during his 12-day fast. The presence of youth cutting across class, regions, religions and possibly caste would have got mainstream parties worried. The insecurity of some regional and caste-based party leaders in the Lok Sabha was visible during the debate, as they questioned whether there was anything in the Jan Lokpal bill for the poorest among the Dalits, backwards and Muslims. The DMK expressed worry over some provisions which could change the federal character of the constitution. Which is why speaker after speaker from the Congress kept giving assurances that the provisions of Jan Lokpal bill would be considered only within the contours of the present constitutional arrangement.

The real political impact, if at all, of the Jan Lokpal campaign will be known in the way strong regional parties, which have been vehemently asserting their federal autonomy, perform in the next general elections. The fundamental character of Hazare's Jan Lokpal draft is to push the envelope towards a more unitary system of governance. Theoretically, this tendency should suit the BJP which has historically believed in a unitary system of governance. However, the progressive fragmentation of India's polity on caste and regional lines has made both the BJP and Congress go against their instinct, and accept the coalition form of governance.

It was therefore a bit ironic to see the BJP fully supporting Team Anna's campaign against corruption — but the convenor of the National Democratic Alliance, Sharad Yadav, expressing loads of scepticism over the nature and character of the Anna Hazare movement. Even Mayawati has invited Team Anna to implement his agenda by fighting elections and formally entering the system, however flawed it may be.

The interesting thing to watch is which way the millions of youth supporting Anna Hazare get radicalised politically in the two years before the next general elections. Surely most of the Anna supporters would have voted for the Congress, BJP or regional parties in the last general elections. If they consolidate in a big way on the issue of corruption against the establishment, then it is bad news for the Congress-led UPA. The BJP and other regional outfits could gain. Given the utterly fragmented nature of voting in the general elections, a small swing of up to 2 per cent away from the Congress is all that will be needed to weaken the UPA. And this small swing could be brought about by Anna Hazare's new voters.

The Congress sensed this during the last four days of Hazare's fast. Initially, it hardened its position against Team Anna. Then it went out on a limb to accommodate them. The Congress's anxiety not to completely lose what seems like a new political space created by the Hazare movement was reflected in Rahul Gandhi racing ahead to offer a "game changing idea" of giving the Lokpal a constitutional status like the Election Commission. The idea seemed too radical even for the most ardent civil society activist.

The Congress is evidently trying to seize the new space created by Anna's politics (some TV channels described it as apolitical!), and therefore Jyotiraditya Scindia tried hard to explain in his Lok Sabha address that the UPA had institutionalised the interface between civil society and the government through the institution of the National Advisory Council. He claimed the RTI Act as the biggest contribution of this interface. While there is some truth in Scindia's assertion, the Congress-led UPA has already benefited from those initiatives in the 2009 general elections.

Now they have to do a lot more to beat anti-incumbency building against them. The UPA's best bet is now to come up with some real, tangible governance reforms in its remaining two years. The Lokpal may come up in whatever form it does after the standing committee dovetails the provisions endorsed in principle by Parliament. That alone will not help matters. The Congress needs to make good on other promises made by Sonia Gandhi at the Burari session last year.

A model public services delivery legislation needs to be brought about. It will be in line with the spirit of the citizen's charter, and the demand to bring the lower bureaucracy under the Lokpal. The political class must involve civil society in making public services delivery work at the state level. Anna Hazare must shift the energies of his supporters to a form of active interface with the lower bureaucracy, to ensure effective implementation of Lokpal provisions in regard to delivery of small public services. Another initiative which is practical and could redeem the Congress somewhat is a new electoral funding system. India will have a GDP of $2 trillion by 2012. Only 0.3 per cent of a year's GDP is needed to generate over Rs 30,000 crore, which is roughly what is spent over five years in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. The state should create this fund, and put it under Election Commission's administration for transparent allocation to political parties. A special cess can be put on corporate India to recover this. This is easy — and does not require an agitation by civil society!

The writer is managing editor, 'The Financial Express'

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

HOW THE STORY ENDS

YUBARAJ GHIMIRE

These days, Nepal is as disillusioned with civil society as with its political parties, five years after the sweeping political transformation that led up to this situation, a change that began with a civil society-led mass movement.

Civil society had then commanded wide popular support, almost emerging as a credible alternative institution, at a time when the political leadership — almost without exception — was seen as corrupt, inefficient, and unable to improve Nepal's economy. The former king, Gyanendra, tried to take advantage of the battered reputation of political parties, and took over power in February, 2005, perhaps having already informed India and the US of his intentions. He says he planned to helm the nation for three years, first to control the Maoist insurgency (that had been raging for a decade, and had cost more than 14,000 lives), and then to gradually hand over power to political parties.

It was at this point that several known faces from NGOs, consultancies, former civil servants and politicians who had lost elections in the past came forward under the mantle of civil society, opposing the royal takeover.

They did not ignore the unpopularity of political leaders either. In the early days of protest meetings, civil society groups invited political leaders, including G.P. Koirala and Madhav Nepal, but made it clear that they were not welcome on the dais.

Civil society leaders were also popular in the eyes of the donors and the international community that supported this movement for democracy. The vilification of mainstream political parties also gave the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists an open forum, and allowed them to take the lead in the movement. The Nepali media too, by and large, became part of this movement for democracy, and worked in coordination with civil society. The Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) gradually took the front seat of the mass movement, alongside the Maoists, when civil society realised that it could not substitute for political parties, no matter how unpopular they were.

However, the record of the political parties that these civil society-media groups backed, and the anarchy and instability that followed, have made many of these "leading faces" unpopular with the people now. They are accused of having double standards on issues like state brutality, corruption, and lack of accountability in politics and governance.

Some statistics of the number of people killed by the state, or in political violence in the post-2006 era estimate it at being much more than the 21 people killed during the movement against the monarchy. More than 350 cases of murder, abduction and confiscation of individual property, involving top Maoist leaders and politicians, have been withdrawn. But Nepali civil society has not spoken out, in contrast to what they did during the monarchist regime. That the current dispensation is unprecedently corrupt is openly claimed in the media; some of the leaders are still running rich NGOs or are associated with ethnic and other movements that receive huge funds from donors. In short, civil society leaders are not viewed with respect, and differently from politicians any more.

The Anna Hazare phenomenon is being talked about, debated and discussed in Nepal with its own bias. But invariably, it gets lumped with the failure and the double standards of Nepali civil society. However, one stark similarity lies in politicians having to take a backseat in the Ramlila maidan, just as in Kathmandu, in the first few meetings during the monarchist regime.

Keshav Poudel, the editor of the fortnightly magazine New Spotlight, said on Twitter: "Parliament is dead, long live Anna." The comment is no doubt based on the Nepali experience, in which the leaders at the crest of the movement for democracy undermined institutions including parliament, resulting in an erosion of the authority of the state — which is now almost at the verge of collapse. And civil society leaders' silence is being viewed as their culpability in the overall failure.

Judging by the Nepali experience, the challenges before the Anna Hazare-led movement are many. Will it join hands with non-Congress or non-UPA parties? Will it support one or the other group in the next election? And most important, will the faces around Anna strictly maintain their watchdog status, or will they develop political ambitions and affiliations?

Civil society, in Nepal's context, is a group that wants to rule or enjoy power without accountability. They have shunned open activity — except occasionally appearing in the print and electronic media, given their friendly association of the past. Nevertheless, the fallout of the Anna Hazare movement will be closely observed in neighbouring Nepal.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

ERRING ON THE SIDE OF GOOD SENSE

JAITHIRTH RAO

Everybody is writing you letters. I thought I would join the group. You are busy. But I am hopeful that one of your numerous advisers (hopefully, one not of the hardliner persuasion) reads this, and conveys the gist. And of course, I hope you find it useful in these perilous times.

Your spokesmen have in the last few months, weeks and days taken the high road as far as "constitutional rectitude" and "parliamentary supremacy" are concerned. I would like to draw the attention of your advisers to several historical precedents that might help them persuade you that pragmatic agreements and compromises are very much part of the grand old Congress party's traditions and that you can take comfort that you are following in the footsteps of your professional forebears.

In 1985, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed an "accord" with Sant Longowal. This accord was signed by Rajiv Gandhi with a person who was not operating in any official capacity. Sant Longowal was not a chief minister or for that matter any minister. And Rajiv, who wanted to bring peace to Punjab, did not allow formal technicalities like prior parliamentary approval or approval from a standing committee to get in his way. If I remember right, Rajiv Gandhi went ahead with the agreement without any approval from his cabinet even though they undoubtedly would have given him, and did give him, ex-post-facto approval.

And it was not in Punjab alone. Rajiv signed another "accord" with the All Assam Students Union, which represented no government and which was not even a political party. The AASU could well be described as a "civil society movement" much like Anna Hazare's. No one accused Rajiv Gandhi of violating constitutional norms, undermining Parliament's integrity or giving inappropriate recognition to unelected members of self-styled civil society. Incidentally, in the Assam accord, Rajiv Gandhi agreed to specific legislative commitments. If Rajiv Gandhi did it, surely at least in the Congress party's view, such actions must be quite in order. Why would you then hesitate in signing an "accord" with Hazare and his group?

Incidentally, the founder of the modern version of your party, Indira Gandhi, signed an "accord" with Sheikh Abdullah at a time when the latter had no official position and in fact, when he might have had sedition charges pending against him! Following in Indira Gandhi's footsteps is something that even the hardest hardliners in your party cannot fault you for.

If none of these political initiatives, which involved implicit and even explicit official dealings with unelected, unofficial civil society actors and which involved "truncation of due parliamentary process" succeeded in undermining our Constitution or our Parliament, then why did you think reaching out to the Hazare group and signing an "accord" with them, would somehow have dealt a body-blow to our Constitution and its institutions?

Talking of constitutional propriety and tradition, President Zail Singh violated precedent and tradition when he swore in Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister after Indira's death. At that time Rajiv Gandhi was not a minister. No meeting of parliamentarians or of the Congress parliamentary party was held. So there was no official, correct, constitutional way of stating that, in fact, Rajiv Gandhi represented the majority. If constitutional precedent were to be followed, President Zail Singh should have sworn in the senior-most cabinet minister as the PM (this is what Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan did when Nehru, and later, Shastri died. He swore in Gulzarilal Nanda.) President Zail Singh followed his instincts for realpolitik and I have not heard too many people quibbling about his action. If "respect for parliamentary procedures" could have been bypassed when Rajiv Gandhi was made prime minister, why could you not have bypassed it now by withdrawing one bill from a standing committee and introducing another bill in Parliament? Realpolitik considerations, common sense, wisdom and sagacity have in the past overruled technicalities.

I have been wondering for some time why the Hazare movement and the large crowds distrust the government and were convinced that, if given an "out", the government would once again postpone a proper Lokpal bill or come up with a toothless one. Why this so-called "trust deficit"? And then I thought of Telangana and your erstwhile allies, the TRS. Chandrababu Naidu's defeat was, in substantial measure, due to the sweep in Telangana following the Congress-TRS alliance and a virtual promise of a Telangana state. TRS leader Chandrasekhar Rao joined UPA 1 without the usual demands of an ATM ministry or even a piggybank ministry. Five years of UPA 1 went by and the TRS felt that they had been "tricked". During UPA 2, the same Chandrasekhar Rao went on a fast. The home minister of India publicly announced that a bill to create a separate Telangana state would be introduced in Parliament "immediately". Months, years, later after yet another committee report and more discussions, the TRS can claim to have been "tricked" once again by the government's tactic of making promises, buying time and then backing away. The English expression, I believe, is "bait and switch".

No wonder Anna Hazare was reluctant to give up his fast and his lieutenants were wary of stopping the agitation based on mere "assurances", however solemn or well-meant they may have been on your part.

Your party and your government can find enough precedents in the actions of your forebears that can help you take imaginative political steps without hiding behind the smokescreen of constitutional and parliamentary procedures.

The writer is an entrepreneur

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

ACT TOGETHER, FOR THE WORLD'S SAKE

Hold onto your hats and your wallets. Since the end of the Cold War, the global system has been held together to a large degree by four critical ruling bargains. Today all four are coming unstuck at once and will need to be rebuilt. Whether and how that rebuilding happens will determine a lot about what's in your wallet and whether your hat flies off.

Now let me say that in English: the European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China's growth model is under pressure, and America's credit-driven capitalist model has suffered a warning heart attack and needs a total rethink. Recasting any one of these alone would be huge. Doing all four at once — when the world has never been more interconnected — is mind-boggling

Let's start with the Middle East, the world's oil tap. Libyans just joined Tunisians, Egyptians and Yemenis in ousting their dictator, while Syrians and Iranians hope to soon follow suit. In time, virtually every Middle East autocrat will be deposed or forced to share power. The old model was based on kings and military dictators capturing the oil revenue, ensconcing themselves in power and buying off key segments of their populations. The lid has been blown off by an Arab youth bulge that today can see just how everyone else is living and is no longer ready to accept being behind, undereducated, unemployed, humiliated and powerless. It will take time for these societies to write their own social contracts for how to live together without an iron fist from above.

Farther north, it was a nice idea, this European Union and euro-zone: Let's have a monetary union and a common currency but let everyone run their own fiscal policy, as long as they swear to work and save like Germans. Alas, it was too good to be true. Large government welfare programmes in some European countries, without the revenue to finance them from local production, eventually led to a piling up of sovereign debt. The producer-savers in northern Europe are now drawing up a new deal with the overspenders — the PIIGS: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. It is unlikely that the Germans would just break out of the EU, since a good chunk of their exports go to those overspending, uncompetitive countries. Instead, the northern Europeans are trying to force stronger, rule-based discipline on the PIIGS. But how much more austerity can these countries absorb?

Going East, China has been relying on a model built on a deliberately undervalued currency and export-led growth, with low domestic consumption and high savings. This has allowed the Communist Party to sustain a unique bargain with its people: We give you jobs and rising standards of living, and you give us power. This bargain is now under threat. Persistent unemployment in China's American and European markets is making Beijing's undervalued-currency/low-consumption/high-export model less sustainable for the world. It has to move from an assembly-copying-manufacturing economy to a knowledge-services-innovation economy. This requires more freedom and rule of law, and you can already see mounting demands for it.

As for America, we've thrived in recent decades with a credit-consumption-led economy, whereby we maintained a middle class by using more steroids (easy credit, subprime mortgages and construction work) and less muscle-building (education, skill-building and innovation). It's put us in a deep hole, and the only way to dig out now is a new, hybrid politics that mixes spending cuts, tax increases, tax reform and investments in infrastructure, education, research and production.

When the world is experiencing so many wrenching changes at once, the need for America to be rock-solid is greater than ever. If we don't get our act together — which will require collective action normally reserved for wartime — we are not going to just be prolonging an American crisis, but feeding a global one.Thomas L. Friedman

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

THE FUTURE BLOWS IN

The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the US's Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?

The short answer from scientists is that they are still trying to figure it out. But many of them do believe that hurricanes will get more intense as the planet warms, and they see large hurricanes like Irene as a harbinger.

While the number of the most intense storms has clearly been rising since the 1970s, researchers have come to differing conclusions about whether that increase can be attributed to human activities. "On a longer time scale, I think — but not all of my colleagues agree — that the evidence for a connection between Atlantic hurricanes and global climate change is fairly compelling," said Kerry Emanuel, an expert on the issue at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Among those who disagree is Thomas R. Knutson, a federal researcher at the US government's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton. The rising trend of recent decades occurred over too short a period to be sure it was not a consequence of natural variability, he said, and statistics from earlier years are not reliable enough to draw firm conclusions about any long-term trend in hurricane intensities.

"Everyone sort of agrees on this short-term trend, but then the agreement starts to break down when you go back longer-term," Knutson said. He argues, essentially, that Emanuel's conclusion is premature, though he adds that evidence for a human impact on hurricanes could eventually be established.

While scientists from both camps tend to think hurricanes are likely to intensify, they do not have great confidence in their ability to project the magnitude of that increase.

One climate-change projection, prepared by Knutson's group, is that the annual number of the most intense storms will double over the course of the 21st century. But what proportion of those would actually hit land is another murky issue. Scientists say climate change could alter steering currents or other traits of the atmosphere that influence hurricane behavior.

Storms are one of nature's ways of moving heat around, and high temperatures at the ocean surface tend to feed hurricanes and make them stronger. That appears to be a prime factor in explaining the power of Hurricane Irene, since temperatures in the Atlantic are well above their long-term average for this time of year.

The ocean has been getting warmer for decades, and most climate scientists say it is because greenhouse gases are trapping extra heat. Rising sea-surface temperatures are factored into both Knutson's and Emanuel's analyses, but they disagree on the effect that warming in remote areas of the tropics will have on Atlantic hurricanes.

Air temperatures are also rising because of greenhouse gases, scientists say. That causes land ice to melt, one of several factors leading to a rise in sea level. That increase, in turn, is making coastlines more vulnerable to damage from the storm surges that can accompany powerful hurricanes.

Overall damage from hurricanes has skyrocketed in recent decades, but most experts agree that is mainly due to excessive development along vulnerable coastlines.

In a statement five years ago, Emanuel, Knutson and eight colleagues called this "the main hurricane problem facing the United States," and they pleaded for a reassessment of policies that subsidise coastal development — a reassessment that has not happened.

"We are optimistic that continued research will eventually resolve much of the current controversy over the effect of climate change on hurricanes," they wrote at the time. "But the more urgent problem of our lemming-like march to the sea requires immediate and sustained attention." Justin Gills

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

OF ACCOUNTS AND ACCOUNTABILITY

N K SINGH

Recently, there has been sharp focus on the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India. The CAG report on the 2G spectrum allocation provided a credible basis both for the CBI investigation and the hearings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Parliament. Similarly, the CAG report on multiple irregularities related to the Commonwealth Games has proved embarrassing for the government. CAG's report on the Adarsh housing scam in Maharashtra adds to the woes of a beleagured government. On the horizon are reports on the working of the civil aviation and petroleum ministries on the purchase of aircrafts and cost overruns on production-sharing contracts.

Questions are being asked as to whether the CAG has overstepped its constitutional powers. Aspersions are also being cast as to whether these reports are setting the agenda of the national dialogue.

We must understand the role and obligations of the CAG under the Constitution of India and in light of the fact that separation of powers is one of the basic features of the Constitution. It can be nobody's case that everything that the CAG says is gospel truth. As the principal auditor, it is his obligation to point out deviations and irregularities as he perceives and it is for the concerned ministry or institution to reply, respond, correct and initiate follow up action wherever appropriate. Sensationalising the CAG's findings not only politicises a constitutional entity but distracts from the objectivity of his findings.

There are however many other issues relating to the working of the CAG. First, the CAG has performed the constitutional mandate given to him. The CAG is the guardian of the public purse for both the Centre and the states. This is the reason why Dr B.R. Ambedkar said that the CAG shall be the most important officer under the Constitution of India. The enormous growth in the size and complexity of government budget also has a bearing on the duties of the CAG.

Second, unlike many other countries like Japan, New Zealand, Australia and France, the CAG in India mainly performs the function of ex-post audit. Many regretfully describe it as a dissection well after rigor mortis has set in. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the legal power to enforce action on its findings, recover losses of government money and property and initiate action against delinquent officials.

Third, the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution had recommended the creation of a multi-member audit commission on the lines of Election Commission, whose members may have the same constitutional status and terms of service as the CAG. A similar position already exists in other countries like Japan, France, Germany, South Korea in the form of audit boards or audit courts.

Fourth, the Constitution of India visualised the CAG to be both comptroller as well as auditor-general. However, in practice, the CAG is only fulfilling the role of an auditor-general and not that of a comptroller. The government by an executive order assigned the role of the comptroller on the Controller General of Defence Accounts. However, the constitutional obligation of acting as a comptroller rests only with the CAG, a function which he has unfortunately not discharged. In this respect, the CAG of India differs from the CAG of Britain, which has powers and functions of both comptroller as well as the auditor-general.

Fifth, the Constitution does not lay down any qualifications for the appointment of the CAG and does not prescribe any procedure for making the appointment except that the CAG shall be appointed by the President of India. In the UK, the appointment of the CAG is ratified by the House of Commons on the recommendation of the PM made in agreement with the chairman of the PAC.

Sixth, there is no system of external audit of the CAG in India. External audit of the office of the CAG exists in the UK based on the principle that the agency that audits other outfits should itself demonstrate professional soundness and efficiency.

Seventh, it is believed that CAG has recommended some two years ago for amending the Act of 1971 to widen its scope with growing number of public-private partnerships and the spending by local bodies largely remaining outside its purview.

Finally, the CAG is an examining agency and not an investigating one and nor does it have the sweeping powers like some other functional democracies. It is expected to consider the efficiency, economy and effectiveness of all public expenditures and revenue and is the most important watchdog in our democratic set up. India has entered an uncertain phase of governance. Coalition politics cripples purposeful financial rectitude. In these uncertain times, which may last for long, there is a need to strengthen the CAG further.

The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

IITS BOW OUT

As it turns out, Jairam Ramesh's remarks that the IIT's faculties were not world class wasn't far off the mark. The 2011 edition of the Academic Ranking of World Universities shows that India has just one university that made it to the top 500 in the world, and no, it wasn't an IIT despite the fact that these institutions admit the top 0.1% of India's eligible population. It was the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). The IITs had one entry in the top 500 last year—IIT Kharagpur—but even that college didn't make the cut this time around, since it had been sliding anyway from being between 303-401 in 2008 to 401-500 in 2010. IIT Delhi last figured on the list, at between 401 and 500, way back in 2003.

China, on the other hand, has been steadily increasing its share in the top 500 universities—from just 8 in 2005, to 22 in 2010 and 23 in 2011. Little surprise then that China has managed to maintain a scorching pace of economic growth for so many years while India is spluttering after less than a decade of high growth. China has 19.6% of the world's population, but with 7% of the world's top 500 universities, it has 9.9% of global GDP—India has 17.1% of population and just 2.8% of GDP since it has just 0.2% of the top 500 universities. The equation is a simple one: as GDP grows, so do wages and this makes industries/economies uncompetitive; the only way to fix the balance is through hikes in productivity and that comes from not just education, but from top class education, the type that results in more patents, for instance—India's patents record is improving but is a small fraction of China's.

So why doesn't India have better universities? Well, a recent report by the University Grants Commission found that the 15 IITs were short of 1,693 teachers. Then there's the reservations and the bureaucratic obscurantism that ensures there's no punishment for poor performers or rewards for high performers, how can they, if you have reservations as an instrument of state policy—under the new Right to Education Act, state governments are to prescribe even the size of classrooms and salaries for primary school teachers. What bets even the IISc falls off the list next year?

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

YES THEY CAN

After all the fumbling and bumbling, just when people had become to despair that India's parliamentarians were as dysfunctional as those in the US, the MPs rose to the occasion, and magnificently. After conceding the role played by Anna Hazare and the salience of many of his points, MPs put aside their often vicious party politics and came together to reassert that it was only Parliament that has the power to make laws and that it wouldn't be rushed into passing a law without examining it thoroughly in the standing committee, never mind the enormous pressure being exerted by the fasting Hazare. At the same time, however, the BJP's Arun Jaitley rose to assure the government that workable solutions could be crafted to even the tricky points raised by Hazare, solutions that were within the federal structure of the Constitution. How the MPs finally come up with a solution that gives the country a strong Lokpal while ensuring it doesn't become an all-powerful monolith remains to be seen.

Much of the current crisis, possibly the major reason why Hazare caught the public imagination the way he did, has to do with the government's sluggish response in dealing with corruption to the extent of questioning the CAG's credentials and even denying there was a scam—remember Kapil Sibal's famous zero-revenue-loss press conference? But, that apart, as the Prime Minister said, the Lokpal, empowered or not, is no solution as it comes into play after the damage has been done. The government did well to drop the permission-to-prosecute clause that protects corrupt civil servants, and needs to move quickly on other solutions worked out by it. These include the proposal that all natural resources will be auctioned, a public procurement policy that will make government procurement transparent, and a law passed whereby many powers will be taken away from line ministries and would be given to Parliament-monitored independent regulators.

While the government has its task cut out to move on the reforms agenda, none of this can be achieved unless the Opposition behaves as responsibly as it did over the weekend. The Hazare crisis, in fact, is much smaller than the crisis facing the economy in the face of a possible double-dip recession globally. No country can escape unscathed, but if India is able to move on legislating reforms, the impact can be mitigated—from the 9% growth the government was targeting as recently as February, the consensus GDP forecast is now between 7 and 7.5%. Both savings and investment levels have taken a beating, tax-to-GDP levels have fallen considerably … in other words, with inflation proving difficult to combat, the economy is in trouble. In such a situation, India can't afford the luxury of a situation where, to use Sushma Swaraj's words, the BJP's core parliamentary committee meets and takes a decision on whether to allow Parliament to function that day—as PRS Legislative Research points out, Parliament worked harder even during the height of the Bofors crisis. The old ways can no longer do.

Either for the government or for the Opposition.

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

THE AGE OF WISDOM

MEGHNAD DESAI

The government or the country has had no chance to celebrate the 20th anniversary of liberal reforms. The decisive shift in economic policymaking, which Narasimha Rao with Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram inaugurated, has been vindicated. India is now a byword for economic competence and a seriously high ranking member of the G20. Of course, there are still detractors of the reforms both within and outside the Congress. The excessive corruption we have seen exposed is blamed on the reforms as if the first 40 years of independence were squeaky clean. People say inequality has increased. Yes, we see more of it since the media is not restricted to just Doordarshan. The media displays the wealth of Indians, but inequality was never absent in India. It was well hidden.

The real question is not whether the reforms have worked but why did it take India so long to stumble on the right model. After all, India never became a completely planned economy à la China. Deng Xiaoping saw the writing on the wall and in 1978 changed Chinese economic policy root and branch. He, a life long Leninist, realised that everything he had believed about capitalism was mistaken. Nearby Taiwan, whom the Communists held as beneath contempt, had become a miracle economy and the Chinese had been left with an iron bowl with little rice in it. The decisive change came after 29 years of economic policymaking, which was based as much on the fantasy of an ageing Mao as anything else. This resulted in the largest famine of modern days.

Compared to China's 29, India took 44 years to correct its course. This is because, at their very worst, the Congress policymakers were never as cut off from the people as the Chinese Communist Party was. India never had a famine; just endemic starvation. That was thanks to democracy.

I have a theory that newly independent nations take a while to grow up and come to their senses about the compulsions of economics. To begin with, their leaders indulge in the half understood rubbish they have picked up in their youth the essence of which is a rejection of reality, especially as it reflects alien rule, and idealism which is easy to acquire and hard to shed. This has happened elsewhere. I have heard Julius Nyerere, the charismatic head of Tanzania, confess that his policy of Ujama—uplift of the poorest—ruined the economy because it was based on an idea of socialism borrowed from the USSR, totally unsuitable to African conditions. Mozambique has had 36 years of independence, but the first 25 were spent on unfeasible economic programmes. Now it is a shining example of macroeconomic responsibility and is enjoying some decent growth at last.

South Africa is currently having a similar debate about its economic policy. Years of apartheid created a two or three tier economy. South Africa is the most prosperous of all the sub-Saharan countries and always has been from even before the collapse of apartheid. At that time, there was a high degree of public ownership in the organised sector and trade unions were strong. But nationalisation and trade unions were designed to consolidate the gains of the white minority. Black trade unions had a tough time on their hands to defend the rights of their members in an atmosphere of rampant discrimination.

The debate now has gone back to nationalisation. South Africa has suffered from the recession, especially in its mining sector, which shed much labour. The programme of Black Economic Empowerment has not been working as fast as was hoped. The idea was to increase black ownership of mines and other businesses. Yet black unemployment remains stubbornly high. The answer of populist politicians is to nationalise the mines. This is supposed to remove any economic calculations in employing workers. Boom or bust employment has to be increased. When in Johannesburg recently, I tried to follow the logic of as to why this would help and not wreck the mining sector by making it uncompetitive.

South Africa has had only 17 years since the end of apartheid. It may be that the age of wisdom has not yet arrived. To empower the black people, South Africa needs a radical skilling initiative so that black unemployed workers can become employable, plus a programme for small and medium enterprise (SME) creation, since it is the SMEs who are the major employers in every economy. But a suspicion of the private sector pervades the African National Congress. Any idea that SMEs in the private sector will be the engines of employment creation and empowerment has no chance of advance. The public sector is much more amenable to uneconomic manipulation and that is what we may very well get. Perhaps another 10 years or so and wisdom may prevail. In the meantime, South Africa will 'enjoy' its own equivalent of the Hindu rate of growth.

The author is a prominent economist and Labour peer

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

ONE NUMBER SAYS IT ALL

STEPHEN S ROACH

The number is 0.2%. It is the average annualised growth of US consumer spending over the past 14 quarters—calculated in inflation-adjusted terms from the first quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2011. Never before in the post-World War II era have American consumers been so weak for so long. This one number encapsulates much of what is wrong today in the US—and in the global economy.

There are two distinct phases to this period of unprecedented US consumer weakness. From the first quarter of 2008 through the second period of 2009, consumer demand fell for six consecutive quarters at a 2.2% annual rate. Not surprisingly, the contraction was most acute during the depths of the Great Crisis, when consumption plunged at a 4.5% rate in the third and fourth quarters of 2008.

As the US economy bottomed out in mid-2009, consumers entered a second phase—a very subdued recovery. Annualised real consumption growth over the subsequent eight-quarter period from the third quarter of 2009 through the second quarter of 2011 averaged 2.1%. That is the most anaemic consumer recovery on record—fully 1.5 percentage points slower than the 12-year pre-crisis trend of 3.6% that prevailed between 1996 and 2007.

These figures are a good deal weaker than originally stated. As part of the annual reworking of the US National Income and Product Accounts that was released in July 2011, Commerce Department statisticians slashed their earlier estimates of consumer spending. The 14-quarter growth trend from early 2008 to mid-2011 was cut from 0.5% to 0.2%; the bulk of the downward revision was concentrated in the first six quarters of this period—for which the estimate of the annualised consumption decline was doubled, from 1.1% to 2.2%.

I have been tracking these so-called benchmark revisions for about 40 years. This is, by far, one of the most significant I have ever seen. We all knew it was tough for the American consumer—but this revision portrays the crisis-induced cutbacks and subsequent anaemic recovery in a much dimmer light.

The reasons behind this are not hard to fathom. By exploiting a record credit bubble to borrow against an unprecedented property bubble, American consumers spent well beyond their means for many years. When both bubbles burst, over-extended US households had no choice but to cut back and rebuild their damaged balance sheets by paying down outsize debt burdens and rebuilding depleted savings.

Yet, on both counts, balance-sheet repair has only just begun. While household-sector debt was pruned to 115% of disposable personal income in early 2011 from the peak of 130% hit in 2007, it remains well in excess of the 75% average of the 1970-2000 period. And, while the personal saving rate rose to 5% of disposable income in the first half of 2011 from the rock-bottom 1.2% low hit in mid-2005, this is far short of the nearly 8% norm that prevailed during the last 30 years of the twentieth century.

With retrenchment and balance-sheet repair only in its early stages, the zombie-like behaviour of American consumers should persist. The 2.1% consumption growth trend realised during the anaemic recovery of the past two years could well be indicative of what lies ahead for years to come.

Such an outcome would have three profound implications for the economic outlook: First, since consumer demand still accounts for 71% of real GDP, a protracted shortfall in trend consumption represents a major headwind for overall US economic growth. While misguided Washington policymakers would like nothing better than for consumers to return to their old risky ways and start spending again, over-extended American households now know better. The heavy artillery of monetary and fiscal stimulus is being wasted on attempts to short-circuit balance-sheet repair.

Second, persistent weakness in consumption and GDP growth puts the US economy on a much weaker growth trajectory than that which is built into the government's long-term budget estimates. The Congressional Budget Office is assuming 3.4% average growth in real GDP over the 2013 to 2016 period. If the growth trend is one percentage point lower—a distinct possibility in an era of protracted consumption weakness—budget deficits would be a significantly higher.

Indeed, a CBO rule of thumb equates a sustained one-percentage-point shortfall in real GDP growth with budget deficits that are roughly $3 trillion larger over a ten-year period. Needless to say, such an outcome would spell serious trouble for America's already-contentious deficit-and-debt debate.

Finally, no other economy is capable of filling the void left by a protracted shortfall of US consumption. Europe and Japan are in no position to take up the slack, and consumer sectors in the world's major developing economies—especially China—lack the scale and dynamism to take over. So enduring weakness in US consumption implies pressure on the growth of export-led developing economies. The good news is that will force them to embrace long-overdue rebalancing strategies aimed at stimulating domestic consumer demand.

What can be done? While measures adapted in the depths of the crisis—massive fiscal and monetary stimuli—were effective in placing a bottom under the free-fall, they have been ineffective in sparking meaningful recovery. That should hardly be surprising in an era of balance-sheet repair.

Instead, the US needs a menu of policies tailored to the needs and pressures bearing down on American consumers. Some possibilities: debt forgiveness to speed up the deleveraging process; creative saving policies that restore financial security to crisis-battered Americans; and, of course, jobs and the income they generate.

The US economy—as well as the global economy—cannot get back on its feet without the American consumer. It is time to look beyond ideology—on the left as well as on the right—and frame the policy debate with that key consideration in mind.

The author, a member of the faculty at Yale University, is non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the author of 'The Next Asia'.Copyright: Project Syndicate 2011 www.project-syndicate.org

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

MEDIA PRESSURE MAY HELP SPEED UP FOOD SECURITY MOVES

More than two years have passed and there seems to be no progress worth speaking about in making the promised law that will guarantee food for the people. The promise came from the UPA-2 as part of its election manifesto in 2009. It was a time of recovery from a time of economic troubles. The impact of the global economic slowdown came on top of the agrarian crisis and the closure of several industrial undertakings, resulting in the loss of jobs and wage cuts that impoverished thousands of workers.

Economists have warned of yet another economic crisis, which may turn out to be more severe than the 2008 financial crisis and recession. Nearer home, the Reserve Bank of India has warned of higher inflation and a slowdown in economic growth. The food inflation rate is dangerously close to 10 per cent.

Seen in this context, the need to speed up the process of providing food security to hundreds of millions of people, whose ranks are likely to increase in the months to come, stands out. The news media have a role to play in meeting this challenge. Last year, it was a news report in a national daily that drew the attention of the highest court of the land to the fact that thousands of tonnes of wheat and rice were rotting in warehouses. The Supreme Court of India gave a direction to the government that if it could not store the grain, it could give it to the people to eat.

The 2010 Global Hunger Index shows that India holds the 67th rank among 122 developing countries. It has also stated that "serious hunger" is prevalent in all the States. According to the Index, 42 per cent of the world's underweight children live in India. A 2005 study showed 46 per cent children under three years of age were underweight. These studies bring home the point that the food security law must urgently ensure not just food — but nutritious food.

Following several rounds of discussion at various levels for about two years, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Food cleared the Food Security Bill in the second week of July 2011. The Bill seeks to cover 75 per cent of the BPL (Below Poverty Line) population and 50 per cent of the urban population. The Bill thus entitles 68 per cent of the country's population to food security. Each beneficiary under the BPL (now renamed the priority sector) will be entitled to 7 kg of food grains; rice will be provided at Rs. 3 a kg and wheat at Rs. 2 a kg. In the general category, each identified beneficiary will be given 3-4 kg at half the minimum support price the government pays to the farmers from whom they procure rice and wheat. The government plans to introduce the Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament after consulting Chief Ministers. The total subsidy is estimated to be in the region of Rs. 95,000 crore.

The final bill appears to be a heavily doctored version of the draft presented by the National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi. For instance, although the NAC proposed that 90 per cent of the rural population must be covered for food security, the official draft has reduced the coverage to 75 per cent. The UPA government's refusal to accept the Universal Public Distribution System recommended by several experts in the field has come under sharp criticism from political leaders and social activists. Another major criticism is against the cash transfers system, which will only place the beneficiaries at the mercy of retailers.

The Bill in its present form may not be acceptable to many State governments, which follow much better norms in defining the beneficiaries as well as their entitlements. Even the Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, C. Rangarajan, who was against the inclusion of APL households among the beneficiaries has apparently changed his stand and said that they could be given legal entitlements, though with a lesser quantity of food grains. There are some positive elements in the Bill such as the inclusion of the mid-day meal scheme among the beneficiaries and the provision of cooked and nutritional food for pregnant and lactating women. But among those who were actively working for a strong and effective Food Security Act, there is an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and being let down.

The news media, particularly the Indian language press and television channels, can still play a more informative and insightful pro-active role in educating readers and audiences on the vital issues at stake. Nothing can bring out the social responsibility role of the media than the challenge of covering mass deprivation and building a public agenda to overcome massive social deficits on the food and nutrition fronts.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

SIGNIFICANT VICTORY

Parliament's unanimous adoption of a resolution agreeing "in principle" with Team Anna's position on the three sticking points that prolonged the standoff on the Lokpal legislation is a triumph for the anti-corruption mood in the country — and for the Gandhian technique of non-violent mass agitation on issues of vital concern to the people. Anna Hazare and his team deserve full credit for recognising and riding this popular mood, which showed plenty of signs of becoming a wave; for giving concrete shape to the inchoate aspirations of the movement against corruption through the provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill; and for working out a strategy and tactics that refused to compromise on the core issues but knew when to raise the stakes and when to settle. As for the political players, the major opposition parties did well to recognise the soundness of the core demands of Team Anna and keep up the pressure on the government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the politically savvy elements in the United Progressive Alliance regime can also take some credit for the way they finally acted to resolve this crisis.

What is clear to everyone — except the unreconstructed elements within the political system who have long been opposed to a strong, independent, and effective statutory authority to go after corruption at all levels — is that the Lokpal Bill that was introduced in Parliament by the government and is now before a Standing Committee lies thoroughly discredited. The government must not be guided by those in its ranks who advocate some kind of rearguard action in committee or on the floor of the House to go back on commitments made. The fact is that in sum, that is, in the parliamentary resolution and during the preceding rounds of discussion with Team Anna, the government conceded the following key demands. In addition to Ministers, Members of Parliament (subject to Article 105 of the Constitution), and Group 'A' officers, the Prime Minister at one end and the lower bureaucracy at the other will be brought under the jurisdiction of the Lokpal. Secondly, under the same statute, strong and effective Lokayuktas on the same model as the Lokpal will be established in all States. Team Anna contends that no constitutional problem is involved here since the Lokpal legislation deals with substantive and procedural criminal law, which is covered by Entries 1 and 2 of the Concurrent List in the Constitution. The bottom-line is that it makes no sense to have a strong and effective Lokpal to investigate and prosecute central public servants for corruption while having defunct or no Lokayuktas in States. Thirdly, the Lokpal legislation will provide for a grievance redressal system, requiring all public authorities to prepare a citizen's charter and make commitments to be met within a specified time frame. Constitutionally speaking, these arrangements are covered by Entry 8 of the Concurrent List dealing with actionable wrongs. Whether the Lokpal or another authority established under the same law will oversee this grievance redressal system remains an open question. For its part, Team Anna has agreed that judges need not come under the Lokpal provided a credible and independent Judicial Conduct Commission, free from conflict of interest and empowered to investigate and prosecute charges of corruption against judges, is established by law. Unfortunately, the contentious issue of a selection committee for the Lokpal could not be resolved. But considering that virtually everyone outside the UPA seems opposed to the official Lokpal Bill's provision that the government will nominate five of the nine members of the selection committee, this can probably be regarded as a dead letter.

There are some excellent provisions in the Jan Lokpal Bill that have gone mostly unnoticed. For instance, Section 6(o) provides that the Lokpal can recommend the cancellation or modification of a lease, licence, permission, contract or agreement obtained from a public authority by corrupt means; if the public authority rejects the recommendation, the Lokpal can "approach [the] appropriate High Court for seeking appropriate directions to be given to the public authority." It can also press for the blacklisting of those involved in acts of corruption. Then there is Section 31(1), which stipulates that "no government official shall be eligible to take up jobs, assignments, consultancies, etc. with any person, company, or organisation that he had dealt with in his official capacity." Section 31(2) provides that "all contracts, public-private partnerships, transfer by way of sale, lease, and any form of largesse by any public authority shall be done with complete transparency and by calling for public tender/auction/bids unless it is an emergency measure or where it is not possible to do so for reasons to be recorded in writing." And Section 31(3) requires that "all contracts, agreements or MOUs known by any name related to transfer of natural resources, including land and mines to any private entity by any method like public-private partnerships, sale, lease or any form of largesse by any public authority shall be put on the website within a week of being signed."

In appraising what has happened over the past fortnight, a red herring needs to be got out of the way — the idea of the 'supremacy of Parliament' versus everyone who comes up against it. Parliamentarians who assert this need to learn their Constitution. In India, unlike Britain, Parliament is not supreme; the Constitution is. Nor is law-making "the sole prerogative" of Parliament. The significant victory of the anti-corruption campaigners gives political India a rare opportunity to translate fine anti-corruption sentiments into a potent law that can be a game-changer. The challenge before the people of India is to ensure, by keeping up the pressure, that in the tricky business of law making in committee and on the floor of the Houses of Parliament a potentially powerful instrument is not blunted.

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THE HINDU

OBESITY'S GLOBAL CHALLENGE

PETER WALKER

Governments around the world need to make immediate and dramatic policy changes to reverse a pandemic of obesity, public health scientists have warned.

The call to act — which includes a prediction that almost half of British men could be clinically obese by 2030 — comes in a series of papers published on August 26 in the Lancet medical journal.

The journal begins with a strongly-worded editorial arguing that voluntary food industry codes are ineffective and ministers must intervene more directly.

"Without prevention and control of the risk factors for obesity now, health systems will be overwhelmed to breaking point," the editorial says. "Yet governments' reactions so far are wholly inadequate and rely heavily on self-regulation by the food and beverage industry, and the so-called nudge approach." There was a particular need for leadership ahead of a U.N. summit in New York next month on preventing non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cancer, said one of the authors, Boyd Swinburn, from the centre for obesity prevention at Melbourne's Deakin University.

"Governments have abdicated responsibility. Like a frog sitting in a pan of hot water, we haven't realised what's been happening until it's too late." The journal carries four new research papers by academics in the U.K., U.S. and Australia on what is termed "the global obesity pandemic", charting its causes, implications, likely progression and the ways it could be reversed.

One study, by Claire Wang from Columbia University's school of public health, uses British and American data to track the possible increase in obesity levels if governments continue with current policies.

Based on around 20 years of historic data, the study says that by 2030 as many as 48 per cent of British men could be obese — having a body mass index of more than 30 — as against 26 per cent now. For women, the figure could rise from 26 per cent to up to 43 per cent.

Such a progression is not certain, particularly given slightly more positive data over recent years. But if the historic trend continues into the next two decades the U.K. could have 26 million obese people, up 11 million on the current figure.

Swinburn's paper comes up with a clear primary culprit: a powerful global food industry "which is producing more processed, affordable, and effectively-marketed food than ever before".

He said an "increased supply of cheap, palatable, energy-dense foods", coupled with better distribution and marketing, had led to "passive overconsumption."

Another study by Steven Gortmaker from Harvard University's school of public health, concludes that the response by governments has been a failure of will which mirrored previous struggles to tackle tobacco consumption.

Ministers knew it made sense to crack down on junk foods but did not have the political will to take on such a huge industry.

"I think governments get it, but don't know what to do about it, and don't think it's their responsibility. But it is their responsibility," he said.

His study lists eight cost-effective policies. Topped by a tax on unhealthy food and drink, the rest focus on shielding children from TV advertising or ensuring they exercise more.

The Lancet carries a comment by Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the U.K. government, carried in large type across the cover: "The conclusions are unambiguous. We need collaborative societal changes in many aspects of our environment to avoid the morbid consequences of overweight and obesity." — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2011

Health experts blame passive overeating for global pandemic, warning that governments must tackle obesity now.

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THE HINDU

LIBYA POSES POLICY CHALLENGE TO ASIAN GIANTS

JAMES M. DORSEY

An offer to assist Libya with its post-Qadhafi reconstruction and rehabilitation coupled with India's remaining days as president of the United Nations Security Council and an invitation to attend this week's Friends of Libya conference in Paris enable India to turn the page in its somewhat troubled relations with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)-backed rebels poised to form the North African country's new government.

The opportunity arises as India alongside China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa – the five Security Council members that did not support the imposition last March of a no-fly zone in Libya and NATO's bombing campaign — finds itself forced to rethink its approach towards embattled Arab autocratic leaders in the wake of the rebels' takeover of the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

China and Russia scrambled last week to improve their ties with the rebel Transition National Council (TNC) in a bid to salvage commercial ties and opportunities in post-Qadhafi Libya. Libya may be their most immediate concern as the TNC asserts its authority in the country, but India like China, Russia and the others, is certain to debate the implications of Mr. Qadhafi's fall in its policy towards other embattled Arab leaders, first and foremost Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

Alarm bells rang out last week in the Chinese and Russian capitals after Abdeljalil Mayouf, a manager of the rebel-controlled Arabian Gulf Oil Company (AGOCO) warned that China, Russia and Brazil, in contrast to Western nations, could face political obstacles in reverting back to business as usual once Mr. Qadhafi has been removed from power. Mr. Mayouf did not mention India, but there is no doubt that in his view, it falls into the same category as China, Russia and Brazil.

To be sure, Mr. Mayouf represents only one strand of thinking among the rebels, who have agreed to French President Nicolas Sarkozy inviting India along with the other four recalcitrant Security Council members to the Paris conference to discuss support for the TNC.

Foreign assistance is crucial as the TNC faces the daunting task of enforcing law and order; preventing further acts of revenge and retribution; providing basic services such as water, electricity, food and fuel; reviving oil exports and kick-starting the economy while at the same time hunting down Mr. Qadhafi and gaining control of Qadhafi strongholds such as his hometown of Sirte.

The exercise is likely to provide India and others in the international community a template for similar situations that are certain to arise as anti-government protests sweep the Middle East and North Africa, particularly as protesters' resolve in Syria and in Yemen is boosted by events in Libya and opposition groups seek to emulate the Libyan model of forming a united leadership that effectively serves as a government-in-waiting.

Syria is probably next in line with protesters displaying the kind of resilience and perseverance that has rendered Mr. Assad's five-month old brutal crackdown a failure. As western sanctions particularly of Syria's oil sector start to kick in, the question no longer is if but when Mr. Assad will be forced out of office. India alongside China and Russia is likely to want to ensure that it maintains some kind of constructive relationship with the forces likely to succeed the Syrian leader.

Commentators have been quick to note that Asia's commercial interests in Libya are limited and are likely to in good time assert the same with regard to Syria. India's interests in Libya are virtually non-existent while China relied last year on Libya for only three per cent of its crude imports but had to evacuate from Libya 36,000 workers employed by 75 primarily State-owned Chinese companies earlier this year.

Yet, even if commercial ties with Libya and Syria are relatively miniscule, there is a lot more at stake for India and other Asian nations not only in the three countries whose autocratic leaders were toppled this year, i.e. Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, but across the Middle East and North Africa. Beyond chancing that their companies will be at a disadvantage in competing for lucrative post-revolution contracts, they risk negative perceptions in a region in which millions are closely monitoring events in Libya and Syria and are likely to be reinvigorated by the demise of Mr. Qadhafi.

Mr. Qadhafi's fall was preceded by peaceful mass protests that forced the Presidents of Tunisia and Egypt to resign earlier this year. The grievances that have propelled the rebellion in Libya and the protests in Syria, Tunisia and Egypt are shared with the population of a swath of land that stretches from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Gulf. Change by hook or by crook is likely to be the name of the game for the next decade in the Middle East and North Africa, a region that is strategic because of its geography, energy resources and the financial clout of its oil producers.

No doubt, the struggle for greater political freedom and economic opportunity is likely to be protracted and bloody and the transition towards more open societies messy at best. In a region in which the struggle to get rid of the yoke of dictatorship faces the constant threat of sectarian and tribal strife, India with its mosaic of ethnic and religious groups cohabiting in a democracy and its long-standing ties to parts of the Middle East has much to offer.

That is most immediately true in Libya where the TNC has to quickly move from the rebel capital of Benghazi in the east of the country to Tripoli in a demonstrative gesture of its taking control of the country and a city of two million that is without political leadership or direction. With no running water in Tripoli because supply from aquifers in the desert has been disrupted by the fighting and barely any electricity, the TNC has already promised to immediately start distributing 30,000 tons of gasoline as well as diesel fuel for power stations.

In a country, in which in his 42 years in power Mr. Qadhafi ensured that no institutions developed that could challenge his authority, the TNC and its elected successor will need substantial support in building a more open, transparent society from scratch. Iraq, which was wracked by sectarian violence and fratricide after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, has served as an example of how not to do it. Those lessons are reflected in the TNC's blueprint for the future, which outlines a 20-month timetable for the transition as well as procedures to ensure that the process is transparent.

Like the rebels, Mr. Qadhafi too appears to have drawn inspiration from Iraq's example. He allowed his capital to fall, ensured his escape and vowed to wage an insurgency. Hussein fled to his hometown of Tikrit where he exploited his successor's policies to fuel sectarian strife. Mr. Qadhafi's whereabouts remain a mystery and it is not clear whether he has returned to Sirte. Unlike Hussein, Mr. Qadhafi has no powerful neighbours on whose support he will be able to rely. As a result, Mr. Qadhafi's final stand could prove to be a less bloody and wrenching battle than that of Hussein and his associates.

For India like for China and Russia, the challenge is to develop middle rather than short-term policies that enable it to capitalise on political and economic opportunities amid initial chaos and instability. Transition in Syria is likely to prove as messy as it is in Libya.

It took five months of bloodshed in Syria for India and the other Security Council holdouts to endorse condemnation of Mr. Assad's crackdown and then only in the weakest possible form because of their concern that it could lead to foreign military intervention. Syrians, unlike Libyans, oppose foreign military aid and have so far insisted that they do not want to move from peaceful to armed resistance.

This should make it easier for India, if not for Russia and China, to get on the right side of history. Doing so does not require a political U-turn but would mean a more forceful stand against the brutality of an embattled leader that does not give him an effective license to brutally crackdown on protesters by effectively blocking an international consensus. Libya offers an opportunity for countries like India to demonstrate that their heart is in the right place.

( James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer .)

Change by any possible means is the name of the game in the Middle East and North Africa.

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THE HINDU

CHINA'S STEADY PROGRESS IN SPACE

N. GOPAL RAJ

China's manned space programme is preparing for another decisive step forward — the launch of its first outpost in space, the Tiangong-1. This orbiting space laboratory and its two successors will test hardware and provide the operational experience needed for the country to put up a full-fledged space station by around 2020.

Media reports have indicated that the Tiangong-1, a name that translates as "Heavenly Palace," could be launched by an improved Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre (JSLC) in north-west China at the end of August. However, the recent failure of a Long March 2C rocket carrying an experimental satellite has given rise to rumours that the launch might be postponed.

In 2003, China became the third nation capable of sending humans into space when Yang Liwei circled the earth for about 21 hours in the Shenzhou-5 capsule. Two years later, two of its astronauts stayed aloft in the Shenzhou-6 for nearly five days. That was followed by a three-day mission by three men aboard the Shenzhou-7 in 2008, one of whom came out of the capsule and carried out a spacewalk.

Right from 1987, when the Chinese government came up with "Plan 863-2" for the development of the space sector, a space station in low earth orbit was set as the goal for its human space flight programme, according to Gregory Kulacki of the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists and Jeffrey Lewis, currently with the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.

A place in space

The Chinese aerospace experts on the committee that developed the plan decided that such a space station would be one of the hallmarks of a twenty-first century great power. "A country with the capability of claiming and holding a long-term place in space would signal international significance and national strength," Dr. Kulacki and Dr. Lewis observed out in their book on the Chinese space programme.

The Tiangong-1, along with the Tiangong-2 and -3 that are to follow, will be vital stepping stones towards that objective. Much as the Salyuts did for the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s and the Skylab for the U.S. in 1970s, the Tiangongs will provide China with hands-on experience in docking spacecraft, maintaining crew in space and keeping a space laboratory going.

Indeed, the path that the Chinese have chosen to follow resembles that of the Soviet Union, which launched a series of smaller Salyut stations before going on to assemble the much larger Mir space station.

The eight-tonne Tiangong-1 will have two modules. The larger one, which the Chinese have called the "experiment module," will be here the astronauts live and, as its name suggests, carry out various experiments. The other, which has been termed the "resource module," will house support systems, including the solar arrays that supply the electricity required by on-board equipment.

Docking of spacecraft

China's goal is to realise the docking of two spacecraft during the second half of 2011, declared Mr. Yang Liwei, now deputy head of the China Manned Space Engineering office, at a press conference earlier this year.

The Tiangong-1 will have two docking ports, one at each end of the spacecraft, according to information published by the office on its website.

The plan is to first launch the space lab and then send an unmanned Shenzhou-8 to automatically dock with it. Such docking is essential for periodically sending crews and supplies to an orbiting space laboratory or station. That capability will also be needed for assembling the large space station that China wants to establish by early next decade, which will have multiple modules that are launched separately.

The Soviet Union first demonstrated automatic docking between two spacecraft in October 1967 and repeated it again the following year.

Despite this experience, several early manned Soyuz capsules had difficulties in automatically docking with Salyut stations.

If the Shenzhou-8 is successful, then two manned missions are likely to follow next year. The Shenzhou-9 could have a three-person male crew while the Shenzhou-10 could see two men and a woman going to the space lab, according to Brian Harvey, an Ireland-based space analyst who has published a book on the Chinese space programme.

The 'Tiangong' series

Although the Tiangong-1 is expected to remain operational for about two years, it will not, unlike the Mir and now the International Space Station, be continuously occupied.

The Chinese had not disclosed how long the Shenzhou-9 and -10 missions would last, Mr. Harvey told this correspondent. However, it was thought that these missions could each be about 10 days to 20 days in duration.

Subsequent Tiangongs were likely to see increasingly longer missions, as happened with the later Salyut stations of the Soviet Union. The Chinese were also working on a cargo version of the Shenzhou, which would allow the astronauts to stay aboard a space station for extended periods of time, he said.

"An important part of the thinking of Tiangong is that it will carry scientific experiments that are man-tended from time to time and can be left to operate automatically in between visits," he added.

China's progress in manned spaceflight was "very impressive," remarked Phillip S. Clark, a British expert on the Chinese programme.

"The speed and capabilities of China's manned programme are often derided but on their fourth manned flight the Chinese aim to complete orbital docking and transfer to a space lab," he pointed out in a recent posting on a forum at the space website NASASpaceFlight.com.

Space station

For China, the goal is to build a 60-tonne space station made up of different modules. Earlier this year, the public were asked to suggest names for the space station, which is to be completed around 2020.

The core module of the station, weighing of 20 tonnes to 22 tonnes, will be launched first. Two smaller laboratory modules will then be linked to the core module. A manned spaceship as well as a supply vessel can be docked to the space station.

In order to launch modules of the 20-tonne class, the Long March 5 rocket, which is under development, has to become operational. The rocket will also be used to send a sample-return mission to the Moon.

China currently anticipates completing its space station in the early years of the next decade, which, coincidentally, is about the time that the International Space Station is scheduled to be decommissioned, observed Dr. Kulacki on the blog All Things Nuclear.

"If both those things happen, China's space station will become the de-facto new international space station," he pointed out.

The impending launch of its first space outpost is part of a 'very impressive' plan.

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THE HINDU

GETTING CHEWED UP OVER A CULTURAL SYMBOL

NARAYAN LAKSHMAN

Picture this: from posh city restaurants to tree-shaded charpoys in the villages of India, people are blissfully chewing paan , or betel nut, as they have done for centuries. Suddenly, United Nations narcotics agents arrive, and either arrest the chewers or confiscate all stocks of the culturally-important product.

While this may never ever be a nightmare scenario for India, a similar situation has been giving a headache to one head of State — President Evo Morales of Bolivia.

With his country pushed into a diplomatic corner owing to the obstinacy of the U.N. system, on June 29 Bolivia's first-ever Aymara Indian President was left with no option but to announce it would exit from one of the most important global conventions on narcotic drugs.

The convention

The temporal provenance of his troubles goes back to 1976 when, under the "brutal dictatorship" of Hugo Banzer, Bolivia signed up to the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (UNSCND). The Convention had on its list of banned substances Bolivia's cultural equivalent of paan — the coca leaf.

Mr. Morales described the chewing of coca leaf as "an important symbol of the history and identity of the indigenous cultures of the Andes." The report that sought its inclusion in the list was criticised for its "poor methodology, racist connotations, and cultural insensitivity."

A study by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) cited shoddy work by the U.N. inquiry into the coca leaf's properties, which sought to link coca chewing to "a lack of productivity in the work environment because indigenous coca chewing communities... had a poorer job performance when compared with non-coca chewing regions." But it did not specify how performance was measured, or whether there was any direct causal connection between coca-chewing and productivity.

Coca leaf composition

Writing about the biochemical composition of the coca leaf in The New York Times , Mr. Morales argued that, similar to many other plants, coca leaf had small quantities of chemical compounds called alkaloids. In other plants these include caffeine and nicotine, which have addictive properties, and quinine, which has medicinal properties. While the coca leaf has alkaloids, "the one that concerns anti-drug officials is the cocaine alkaloid, which amounts to less than one-tenth of a percent of the leaf." To be made into a narcotic, the alkaloid needs to be extracted, concentrated and subjected to extensive chemical processing.

Mr. Morales wrote: "What is absurd about the 1961 convention is that it considers the coca leaf in its natural, unaltered state to be a narcotic. The paste or the concentrate that is extracted from the coca leaf, commonly known as cocaine, is indeed a narcotic, but the plant itself is not."

The fact that a plant, leaf or flower contains a fractional amount of alkaloids does not automatically imply it is a narcotic – certainly not in the eyes of the U.N. So why discriminate against the coca leaf? A more insidious factor driving this debate came up when in 2009 Mr. Morales wrote to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon seeking the reform of Article 49 of the UNSCND. He affirmed that "coca leaf chewing is a one-thousand-year-old ancestral practice of the Andean indigenous peoples that cannot and should not be prohibited." But he was rebuffed. "The U.S. publicly opposed the amendment in an attempt to maintain control and stabilise the prolonged international drug war," according to the COHA analysis.

The questions

So, is this a fallout of the U.S. offshoring its drug wars and targeting developing countries for supplying cocaine to willing consumers within its own borders? If so, should its primary focus not be on securing its own borders from drug inflows or adopting anti-drug policies to curb domestic consumption? Does it even make sense to go after an iconic cultural symbol of Bolivia especially when over 90 per cent of cocaine coming into the U.S. is anyway from Colombia, according to the U.N.'s own Office on Drugs and Crime?

In any case, under its 2009 Constitution, Bolivia had four years to renegotiate the terms of the UNSCND or adherence to it, or withdraw from the Convention. Facing a wall of opposition by advanced economies, led by the U.S., this condition inexorably led Mr. Morales to announce that Bolivia would exit the Convention.

The U.S. is unlikely, however, to allow Bolivia to exit unpunished. When Bolivia proposed expanding legal-licensed coca farming in 2003, U.S. officials warned that Bolivia might lose most of its $50 million in U.S. aid.

Yet it is the U.S. that may find itself at the wrong end of a relationship with a solid ally in the fight against illegal cocaine production. As the U.S. State Department admitted in a 2008 narcotics report, "During 2007, the Government of Bolivia managed to eradicate more than 6,000 hectares of coca, surpassing its eradication goal of 5,000 hectares. Bolivian counternarcotics units were active in interdiction and lab seizures."

With the U.N. moving against coca-chewing in Bolivia, the U.S. may find itself at the wrong end of a relationship with a solid ally.

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

NOW ENACT A GOOD LOKPAL LAW SWIFTLY

A signal moment arrived in our recent history when doughty 74-year-old social activist Anna Hazare on Sunday morning ended his 12-day-long fast at New Delhi's Ramlila Maidan, which had become the symbol of a stormy campaign to battle corruption and had shaken up the establishment. The denouement came after Mr Hazare was assured by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on behalf of Parliament, following a Saturday discussion in both Houses, that the nation's elected representatives would "in principle" consider the points made from the street on enacting a strong Lokpal law to check pervasive corruption. The instruments and processes of democracy prevailed in the end over the temptations of instant gratification and peremptory justice being held out by the proponents of mobocracy. Regrettably, that was the basis on which reckless or extremist elements in the Jan Lokpal movement sought to tutor their followers made impatient by heady promises which, if permitted to fructify, would have dealt a body blow to the democratic order.
Led by the Prime Minister, Parliament rose in the end to its full height, after some initial confusion when technical flourishes were on display rather than a political grasp of cascading events, and sensibly nodded deference to the people's sentiments. For his part, Mr Hazare exhibited statesmanship, dispensed with the supercilious counsel of some of his team, and showed an earthy understanding of lawmaking and the need to safeguard the instruments of democracy. His resolve in sustaining a long fast at his age to press for a public cause will also be admired.
It is noteworthy that Parliament did not budge on the fundamentals, and Mr Hazare sought not to oblige it to do so, although the import of his early efforts had pointed there. The issues put in the foreground by the Jan Lokpal movement will receive due consideration of Parliament, along with inputs by other citizens' groups, while enacting the Lokpal law. The raucous movement at last came to accept this, abandoning threats of setting deadlines. It is now Parliament's turn, and particularly the ruling party's, to show the right temperament and move swiftly to deliver on an effective Lokpal law, without permitting bureaucratic bungling and delays. Other elements of the bouquet of measures and laws needed to fight corruption in all its forms also need to be pushed expeditiously. Consideration is also due to Rahul Gandhi's suggestion of constitutional status for the proposed Lokpal. The idea is endorsed by eminent jurists and men of probity such as former Chief Justice of India J.S. Verma and Fali Nariman.

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

WHAT'S NEXT FOR LIBYA?

S. NIHAL SINGH

After 42 years of Col. Muammar Gaddafi's rule in Libya has virtually ended, the new interim administration in the form of the National Transitional Council (NTC) has immense tasks ahead of it. Its handicap is, and will remain, the stark fact that, but months of intensive bombing over Libya by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation warplanes under the guise of a UN resolution seeking to protect civilians, the rebels would not have prevailed. There were also supplies of arms from France and Qatar, among other countries, and training and other help from such Gulf nations as the United Arab Emirates. There are no two opinions on the despotic and often bizarre nature of Gaddafi rule, but rather like the "guided democracy" inflicted upon their peoples by more than one military dictator, this is a regime change brought about by external powers, with France and Britain in the lead, with the United States choosing to stay in the background despite its major and continuing military contribution.
Among the many challenges facing the new administration is to seek national reconciliation — the rebel stronghold Benghazi is in the eastern half of the country. And in a nation of tribal affiliations, with Berbers playing a major role in helping take the capital Tripoli, giving the feeling of inclusiveness is vital. Col. Gaddafi still commands the loyalty of his tribe. Second, the NTC is still a rather ad hoc organisation which must be buttressed by inviting other than eastern tribes and professionals who can bring expertise in their areas. Unlike in Egypt, Col. Gaddafi had denuded the country of institutions and ostensibly giving up office, ruled with an iron hand with the assistance of his sons and tribal loyalists. Having lost his compound in Tripoli, he has taken to issuing defiant radio messages and it is symbolically important for the authorities to capture him. They have placed a bounty on his head.
But Libya is fortunate in being sparsely populated in an immense area rich in oil and minerals. Although its oil installations have been partially damaged in the fighting, it should take less than a year to get its daily production of 1.5 million barrels of oil moving again. In the medium term, it can rely on Libyan funds frozen in the West amounting to some $170 billion, according to some estimates, while a group of countries meeting in Qatar has been facilitating immediate grants to help the NTC with such expenses as paying salaries of public sector workers and urgent imports of food and medicines. The composition of the help group is interesting, comprising, among others, the United States, Britain, France, Qatar and Turkey. Besides, Libya has many experts in various fields it can tap; they were forced to leave the country. A sum of $ 1.5 billion of the Gaddafi regime has been unfrozen by the United Nations Security Council.
Depending upon how the NTC performs its arduous tasks, the nationalist pull will come into play sooner, rather than later, and the help of the Western powers can become a liability for seeking to establish legitimacy. If Libyans are savouring the fruits of the Arab Spring, which took half a year of virtual civil war and much bloodshed, they will not be immune to the infection of the strong streak of nationalism, perhaps laced with forms of Islamist tendencies that increasingly prevails in the region. How Libyan rulers will balance their continuing need for Western assistance and expertise with asserting their legitimacy will remain a central dilemma.
The bizarre nature of Col. Gaddafi's rule and rubbing such important leaders as the King of Saudi Arabia the wrong way were important reasons for the Gulf monarchies and the Arab League providing the West with cover for the intense Nato bombing runs in excess of 7,000 sorties that finally broke the back of Col. Gaddafi's superior forces. Qatar has also played an important role in giving money and material to Benghazi in keeping with its ambition to play a prominent regional role on the strength of its oil and gas riches. And the state-funded Al Jazeera Arabic television channel has become a mascot for all Arabs seeking more power and freedom for themselves and their countries.
Libya also reminds us that the Arab Spring, which had seemed to end with Tunisia and Egypt in the hard summer, is still green. Libya has been a bloody and long drawn out affair but has in the end brought its people new help, albeit with a push and shove from the West. Yemen is still mired in a civil war, with its President, Abdullah Saleh, convalescing in Saudi Arabia but vowing to return, and tribal loyalties still playing out their deadly power play. Syria, whose people have suffered deeply in the face of their brave and continuing protests being answered by preponderant military force, is facing Western sanctions and a call for President Bashar Assad to step down. Seeing how the resolution on Libya was stretched, Russia and some in the Arab world are reluctant to arm the West with United Nations' authority to intervene in Syria. Europe, in any case, is counting the cost of its air warfare over Libya in today's straightened circumstances.
Returning to Libya, what does the future hold for it? The short-term answer can only be ambiguous, given the nature of the problems it faces. A handicap the new dispensation suffers from is the lack of a charismatic leader. The head of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, is a former minister who defected early, and, for all his earnestness, lacks charisma. Perhaps returning members of the diaspore will provide a new leader who can sway the people and lead to the beginnings of a modern nation state. The NTC is hoping that it will be able to account for Col. Gaddafi fairly soon because his cult has been promoted so assiduously for so long that a section of Libyans will not feel completely secure until he is gone or safely under lock and key. He and his son Saif, initially wrongly reported to have been arrested, are also wanted on war crime charges by the International Court in The Hague.

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

INDIA RISES BUT FALTERS

JAGMOHAN

On August 15, 1947, two great visions were entertained by two of the most powerful minds of modern India. One was by statesman Jawaharlal Nehru and the other by savant Sri Aurobindo. Both visions failed to materialise. Why? In the answer to this question lies one of the most instructive lessons of modern Indian history, and also the reason for the whirlpool of moral chaos in which the country finds itself today.
In his speech, on August 14-15, 1947, Nehru had said: "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." What he had envisioned was that the noble values ingrained in the ancient philosophy of India, which were submerged under the debris of unfavourable times, would get rediscovered and be used as an asset. He had hoped that "the best of the old" in the Indian tradition and "the best of the new" in the modern world would get synthesised for raising a great edifice for the future India.
But this vision soon slipped Nehru's mind. He forgot the soul of governance. It did not occur to him that the Constitution and the institutions that were being set up under it required an inner controller, a moral compass. He took practically no measures to ensure that the administrative structure was underpinned by the value of honest work and creative and constructive zeal.
Nehru had recognised the moment when India's destiny was taking a sharp turn. But, unfortunately, he could not raise his leadership to a level that could bring about a civilisational change and create elevating national ethos and attitudes. Along with India's Constitution and Five-Year Plan, he could have been instrumental in the formulation and execution of a comprehensive national regeneration programme.
But that was not to be. A golden opportunity, provided by India's tryst with destiny, was lost. Nehru, instead of assuming the role of an all-round helmsman and a master builder of a new society, chose to be a mere political administrator. Those who came after him did not even have the capacity to reconstruct the original vision or to evolve another on similar lines. The result is for all of us to see: a huge edifice of governance but made of poor clay; a bloated setup of modern institutions but with a barren soul. No wonder, the country was recently visited by an epidemic of corruption. And now people are out on the streets, demanding, ironically, the creation of more institutions whilst the infection is in the soul, which has been in slumber even in free India.
Separately, on August 15, 1947, Sri Aurobindo, in a message broadcast to the nation from All-India Radio, unfolded his vision of free India: "India is arising, not to only serve her material interests but also to live for God and the world." It was not to become a "docile pupil of the West", but to act as a torchbearer of its awakened nobility. It could offer to the world its spiritual gifts, such as those contained in the philosophy of Sanatan Dharma, which according to him, is a universal, eternal religion which embraces all others, providing a metaphysical basis for the ideals of equality, fraternity and national and international harmony.
It was in the context of Sri Aurobindo's belief in the eternal and universal values, embedded in India's culture, that he, in his message on August 15, 1947, visualised a great role for it in bringing about a "worldwide union" and in providing a "fairer, brighter and nobler life for all mankind". He also thought that India would develop "a larger statesmanship". But what do we find today?
A small group of countries holds sway over global economy and international power structure. And where is the "larger statesmanship"? What effort has India made in the direction?
Instead, India has itself jumped on the bandwagon driven by globalisation, deregulation and other ingredients of neo-liberalism — the ingredients that are creating worldwide imbalances, not only in the economy but also in ecology. Consequently, the country is now witnessing rapid depletion of natural resources and ever-widening disparities of income and lifestyles.
Clearly, both the visions have fallen flat. First, the spiritual wasteland which India had become, due to long years of civilisational decay, was not reclaimed and fertilised to receive new seeds which freedom and modernity had brought. Second, neither the educational system nor the general atmosphere has been tuned to the need for creation of a permanent stream of men and women of character and conscience.
It is not possible to have an honest and elevating framework of governance without providing an honest and elevating mindscape to the nation. We must now pick up the gems from our wisdom tradition and now compose that mindscape.

Jagmohan is a former governor of J&K and a former Union minister

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

SUPREMACY OF PARLIAMENT

After twelve days of hectic interaction between the government and the civil society team, a breakthrough has been made. It is India's victory. It has established the supremacy of the Parliament, a subject that that had unfortunately come under unnecessary debate. None among the stakeholders was against strong rules to combat corruption, a social evil of serious implications. But the modalities were a contentious issue. Now a compromise formula has finally emerged and both sides have realized that neither the pressure of public opinion can be disregarded nor constitutional obligations overlooked. The world was watching the standoff with great curiosity. It is now convinced that Indian democracy has the capacity and resilience to absorb shocks howsoever challenging. Of course, credit should go to Anna Hazare not only for generating awareness among the people but more importantly for leading the movement without the minutest incident of violence. It was in true Gandhian in spirit. If at all any violence was noticed in this entire bizarre happening, it was Delhi police's brutal attack on the rally of Baba Ramdev for which Union Home Minister has to be answerable.
The decision of the Parliament expressed in new terminology as "Sense of House' accepting three points of Jan Lokpal Bill draft has been conveyed by the Prime Minister in his letter to Anna Hazare. It shows that the Prime Minister was much concerned about the situation, and had twice made appeal to the fasting civil activist to break his fast as his life was precious for the nation. Now the task before the Parliament and the government is to give teeth to the Lokpal Bill in a manner that neither the law of the land is violated or the authority of the Parliament is not challenged nor are corrupt and tainted functionaries spared the brunt of law. Eradicating corruption is a complicated task but there is no turning away from taking some hard decisions in this context.

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

BOOSTING MEDICAL SERVICES

Union Health Minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad has been frugal to his home State in seeing that medical services in J&K are streamlined and maximized to reach the needy people. Owing to the fact that J&K is a hilly state and connectivity is a rather strained, people living at far off places find it difficult to get medical treatment in time and save precious lives. Apart from this, the ever increasing population of the twin capitals, Jammu and Srinagar, has put great strain on existing medical services. To mitigate the difficulties of the people of the State, the former Chief Minster and current Union Health Minister has gone out of way to establish two Super Special Hospitals in these two cities. During his recent meeting convened to review the Jammu and Kashmir Medical Education Department at Nirman Bhawan in New Delhi, he had a detailed discussion on the project.
The idea of having two Super Specialty Hospitals, one each in Jammu and Srinagar, developed from the perception that on international level great advancement has been made in the field of medical sciences. India, though considered among countries with advanced medical services, still needs to keep pace with the fast developing new methodology of treatment and cure of diseases and researches in the field. It goes to the vision of the Union Minister not to have waited too long to streamline medical services in the country. By choosing his home state as the place for establishing advanced institutes, he has rendered great service to the State. Even prior to it, he was instrumental in providing a super class dental college and hospital to Jammu which is now a model of excellent dental hospitals in the country.

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

ROAD ACCIDENTS

BY SAYED ESSAR NAQVI

This articles has been composed in view of the accident that took place recently.
The accident took place when a bus was coming from Surankote to Poonch. It fell into a gorge near Madana area. Around twenty persons were killed and the number of the injured was even more than this. Those who died include women and children also. It was so terrible that the bus was almost crushed. Escaping death from such a situation is only a miracle. The tragedy left many homes merely houses comprising of bricks and stones. There are certain families which lost their only earning member of their family. Which inturn left them economically paralyzed. They are left to the mercy of almighty.
This is not the first time that this sort of accident occurred on this route in particular and other routes of Poonch in general. Similar sort of accident took place on the same route in 2008 itself which claimed many lives and hence left many individuals helpless.
A simple question comes after looking at the above narrated picture of the accident that is, what could be the cause of these types of mis-happenings? First and foremost, the observable reason is the condition of vehicles deployed in that particular route. Almost all of them are in undesirable condition. For instance, the condition of their tyres is so miserable that they seem merely tubes rather than complete tyres. The conditions seem like that not tyres but tubes are running on the roads. Simply speaking, the condition of vehicles is so miserable that everything of their body moves except for engine. It's very common that the people travelling on these routes often encounter with problems like puncturing of tyres etc. Sometimes these problems end up in extreme cases like an accident.
Secondly, the drivers who drive on these local routes seem undertrained. Being the inhabitants of local areas they are well accustomed with the routes and their nature but actually don't seem have got enough training to drive safely on the roads. As a the result of this they fail to handle the vehicle smartly and sometimes get killed themselves even.
Apart from poor condition of the vehicles and undertrained drivers the overloading of the vehicles could also be held responsible for the mishappening like this. The number of passengers exceeds the permitted which results in overcrowding and consequently imbalances the situation. It may occasionally put the situation out of control for the drivers.
One could also admit that the most unexpected cause of tragedies like this is the casual attitude of the concerned authorities. For instance, the condition of the vehicles is something which is occasionally enquired. Also, least attention is paid to check the overloading of the transported vehicles on these sorts of routes.
Lastly, I intend to suggest the probable remedies or precautions which could be exercised to avoid such disastrous accidents. These precautions are precisely the avoidance of the cause which is supportive for an accident to occur. First of all the condition of the concerned vehicles should be improved. There should be a limit for the vehicle to run before it undergoes repairment.
Besides, travelling agents should be strictly directed by the concerned authorities not to overload the buses and other vehicles. In case anybody is found guilty of overloading he/she should be strictly punished with heavy fine which should also go to the extent of cancellation of permits in the extreme cases. One could also expect the co-operation of people regarding this issue. They should also acquire the awareness of not travelling in the overcrowded buses in hurry because better be late than never. People can also pressurize drivers not drive overloaded buses.
It is our fundamental as well as moral duty to save our people from unnatural deaths like an accident. Representatives along with the administration of the concerned areas are required to trace out the causes of these kinds of accidents and remove them. Automatically, the effect would be good and smooth transport facilities. Also, the people are required to have enough awareness to make themselves safe. They can help themselves through the continuous awareness of the condition of the vehicle and not letting it to overload. If any vehicle is found guilty of it they are supposed to complain the concerned authorities. Reciprocally, authorities are supposed to take action against the culprits of the same. Only a safe road and good conditioned vehicle can make one to think of travelling safely. And only then travelling could become a hobby.

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

WOES OF AIR INDIA

BY DR BHARAT JHUNJHUNWALA

Kautilya says in Arthasastra "Just as it is impossible not to taste the honey or poison that finds itself at the tip of the tongue, so it is impossible for a government employee not to eat up a part of government revenue. Just as it is not possible to find whether the fish moving under water is drinking water or not, similarly it is not possible to find out how much money the government employees have embezzled" (2.9). This is the difficult situation when the Ministers are honest and keen to weed out corruption. One can imagine the hapless situation when the Ministers join the officials in capturing illegal benefits. This is the story of Air India.
The draft report of CAG reportedly points out that Air India voluntarily closed services on profitable routes. The Amritsar-Birmingham service was started in 2005. This was closed in 2008 citing 'technical problems.' Soon thereafter Jet Airways started service on this route. Similarly services were closed on the profitable Kolkata-Bangkok and Kolkata-Dhaka routes. Kingfisher and Jet Airways started services here. Other routes closed were those of Delhi-Kochi, Kochi-Kuwait and Kochi-Muscat. The management preferred to operate only on easy routes even if they were unprofitable.
Air India entered into a contract to buy 111 airplanes at a massive cost of Rs 44,000 crores in 2005 when the company's market share was declining and the balance sheet was in the red. Air India took 28 airplanes on dry lease between 2000 and 2005 even though it did not have pilots to fly these. The management was more excited about making purchases than making profits for the company. The company has the highest employee per aircraft in the industry. The management was more interested in making fresh appointments rather than getting works done from existing employees.
Two paths are open to the officials of a Public Sector Undertakings. First route is of making the company profitable. This involves confronting and haggling with the Employees Union and vendors. The airline industry is much dependent upon customer interface. Polite and warm dealing by the staff brings in customers. This requires much effort in cultivating Human Resources. This path is full of thorns. The results are also uncertain. Disgruntled employees can complain to the Minister and have the MD transferred. Therefore, PSU officials prefer to tread the other easier path. They close profitable routes so that they do not have to struggle with technical problems. They bother not about the quality of service lest they step on the toes of the Unions. They dance to the tune of the minister and secretaries of their parent ministry and provide them with various facilities. They start air service to an unprofitable destination in the Minister's constituency even though it may be a loss proposition for the company. One high official of Air India said "I feel like a woman with 1,000 husbands," referring to the constant demands from government officials. It is more convenient for the officials to join the minister and the secretaries in bleeding the company, than resisting the demands of the minister and secretaries and facing their ire. The problem is not restricted to Air India. It is common to other PSUs like MTNL and Prasar Bharati which too are running in loss.
An unholy nexus has been established between the minister, secretaries and officials of the PSUs. All get opportunities of making money on the sly in this dispensation.
They can get commissions in purchases, appoint favourite persons, and also use or misuse facilities like guest houses and free seats. In return, the secretaries ensure continued flow of government money. Privatizing the company will deprive the secretaries of the various benefits that they get. Therefore, they plead with the Government to provide more funds to keep the company afloat. Recently Rs 800 crores has been provided to Air India as equity by the Government. The money will ensure that the stream of benefits accruing to the minister and secretaries will continue unabated.
It would be necessary for the officials of the company to improve morale of the employees and remove the inefficient among them, sort out technical problems, return excess leased aircraft and cancel excess orders to make the company profitable. Instead Air India has embarked on reducing incentives of the staff to cut costs; and slash fares to increase customers. This will not work. Fewer incentives will weaken the staff morale and cancel benefits that may arise from slashing of fares. The reduced revenues from slashed fares will make things worse.
Peter Harbison, executive chairman of Center for Asia Pacific Aviation, a research group in Sydney, Australia, singled out Air India as an example of government mismanagement. "There are other state-owned airlines in other emerging-market countries that have similar problems, but I can't think of one as bad as Air India," he said. He cited Indonesia's national carrier, Garuda, which once was an airline with heavy debts and a fleet of unsafe old planes that regulators in Europe refused to let land there. But under a businessman, Emirsyah Satar, who was named chief executive in 2005, Garuda Indonesia has been transformed into a profitable company.
These problems of Air India are rooted in the very nature of PSUs. Running a business requires a temperament very different than that of an official. A successful businessman smells and thinks money morning, evening and night. The official is thinking more about his promotions and keeping the minister in good humour. Therefore, fundamentally, the Government must not enter into business at all. This is the learning from the spate of failed nationalizations made by Indira Gandhi. The Government may, if at all, enter business for a short period in areas where the private sector fears to tread. For example, the Government will be well advised to invest in a company to launch commercial satellites. Private businessmen may not have the knowledge or the risk taking ability to enter such hazy areas. The Government may privatize it once the company is successful. It is better to privatize a PSU when profitable than to privatize it when it starts making losses.
We should not get confused by the few exceptions to this rule. Most profitable PSUs are today monopolies or have huge historical investments. The State Bank of India, for example, has a huge network that was built over more than a century. It manages the clearing house in most cities. These factors give it an edge over newly formed private sector banks. This formula, however, is not applicable to companies like Air India, MTNL and Prasar Bharati which are not able to face competition from private players. Role of the government is to regulate and guide private businesses. The government must not step into their shoes. We must privatize Air India as soon as possible.

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DAILY EXCELSIOR

EDITORIAL

INDIA'S COASTAL SECURITY

BY ANIRUDH PRAKASH

In a recent statement to the parliament, the minister for state for home affairs stated that threats to major coastal cities from pan-Islamist terrorist outfits continue to exit. And he added that the government is ably prepared to respond to such threats. Notwithstanding such a claim by the government, doubts about the robustness of India's coastal security mechanism continue to linger; doubts that have been proven right by a series of events off the Mumbai coast in the last few months.
Firstly, on June 12, 2011, a cargo ship M.V. Wisdom which was en route to Alang in Gujarat drifted towards the Mumbai coast after breaking its tug and eventually got stranded in Juhu beach. This incident was followed by another involving a Panama flagged ship, M.V. Pavit, which ran aground near Juhu beach on July 30, 2011 after having been abandoned by its crew a month earlier near Oman. The most worrisome part in this episode was the fact that this ship drifted in the Indian territorial waters for nearly 100 hours and remained undetected by the navy, the coast guard and the coastal police - the three agencies entrusted with the responsibility of coastal security. A few days later, on August 4, 2011, yet another Panama flagged oil tanker, M. V. Rak with 60,000 metric tonnes of coal and 340 tonnes of fuel oil on board sank off the coast of Mumbai. The sinking ship discharged more than 25 tonnes of oil resulting in a major oil spill and thereby endangering marine life in the area.
The government's approach towards coastal security has always been reactive and top down. Corrective measures were undertaken only after a major incident and implemented without preparing the environment at the ground level and thus enable them to function effectively. To begin with, large-scale smuggling along the western coast had compelled the government to establish the coast guard in August 1978 with a mandate to protect the maritime and national interests of the country as well as to assist in anti-smuggling operations. But the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai highlighted the fact that an inadequately manned and ill-equipped coast guard alone cannot safeguard the coasts. Instead of addressing the fundamental issue of lack of manpower and inadequate equipment, the Indian government launched a new scheme to cater for the terror challenge. This was Operation Swan, launched in August 1993 to prevent clandestine landings along the Maharashtra and Gujarat coasts. It was a three layer security arrangement involving the navy, the coast guard and a joint patrolling team drawn from personnel belonging to the navy, coast guard, state police, and customs. While the underlying idea appears doable, the fact remains that Operation Swan has not resulted in a single seizure even after being for 18-years. Inadequate attention paid to overcome the basic problems of coordination, manpower, equipment, and motivation among the various concerned agencies at the ground level has been the main reason for this failure.
Even as Operation Swan was in progress, the Indian government launched yet another ambitious project - the Coastal Security Scheme in 2005, which involved setting up a series of coastal police stations to strengthen the surveillance infrastructure along the coast. The scheme was, however, a non starter because the coastal states did not display any enthusiasm in implementing it as they did not perceive any threat to their coasts. Despite Mumbai being a preferred target of the terrorists, Maharashtra too implemented the scheme only in a piecemeal manner. Moreover, the decision to set up coastal police stations with a mandate to patrol shallow waters gave an excuse for the navy to withdraw from joint patrolling immediately. Thus, coastal defence along Mumbai was rendered weak, giving an opportunity for the terrorists to strike.
The severity of the 26/11 incident compelled the Indian government to take several measures to overhaul the coastal security apparatus. Yet again it insisted that the navy and the coast guard should pool their resources to guard India's territorial and coastal waters. It also instructed the state governments to establish coastal police stations and ensure that manpower and interceptor boats were provided to them.
Over the last two years, various measures to strengthen coastal security have begun to be gradually implemented. For instance, the navy has assumed the responsibility of coastal security and has set up four joint operation centres for better coordination. It has also increased surveillance patrols along the coast and has been conducting several joint coastal security exercises. The coast guard, likewise, has set up five coast guard stations along with a regional and a divisional head quarter and is in the process of setting up four more stations. It has also inducted several offshore patrol vessels which have helped in stepping up patrolling along the coasts and territorial waters. Similarly, under the coastal security scheme, 72 coastal police stations have been operationalised and an additional 154 police stations are in the process of being established in two phases. Around 183 interceptor boats have been provided to the police stations and their manpower is being enhanced.
However, incidents of ships drifting in the country's territorial waters undetected raise questions about the effectiveness of all these measures. Here, it is important to reiterate that the problem lies not in the measures adopted but in the inadequate attention paid to the functioning of the system at the ground level where the actual action takes place. For example, a series of coastal police stations have been operationalised, with some having adequate manpower and interceptor boats. Still these police stations have been unable to function effectively which was evident during the M.V. Pavit incident. There are reasons behind such failure.
Firstly, sufficient attention has not been paid to provide these police stations with essential requirements such as proper training to their personnel for sea operations, adequate fuel and funds for the running and maintenance of the boats, buildings for police stations, etc. Secondly, the respective jurisdictions of the coastal police stations and police stations located near the shores have not been communicated clearly to the personnel on the ground, leading to widespread confusion. Thirdly, information sharing and coordination between the marine police, coast guard and navy remain a problem. At present whatever coordination or information sharing takes place between the three agencies is largely based on personal rapport between the concerned officers. But this rapport has to be institutionalised. And most importantly, if India's coastal security has to become strong, it is essential for the police forces in the coastal states to shed their land centric outlook and turn their attention to coastal security duties as well. (INAV)

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EDITORIAL

END OF A LIMITED BATTLE

BUT THE WAR ON CORRUPTION MUST RAGE ON

Now that anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare has called off his fast and the tension between the government and civil society has dissipated, it is time for introspection among all actors in the drama — the government, the opposition and Team Anna. The lesson for the government is all too clear—that it can no longer take the passivity of the country's middle class for granted. The disgust of people at large with the series of corruption scandals that rocked the nation in the preceding months found expression through Anna's movement. The opposition too stood exposed by the lip service it paid to corruption. The shifting stance of the BJP and the confusion in its ranks did little to inspire confidence in its ability and sincerity to fight on this issue. As for civil society, it would have perhaps run out of steam had it been confronted by a government that was astute and not prone to making blunders like the arrest of Anna at a crucial juncture of its movement.

That Anna Hazare became a rallying point in the sentiment against corruption is beyond question. The redeeming feature is that no government can now afford to ignore corruption the way governments have been doing earlier. If all this leads to greater accountability of politicians to society, it would indeed be a big plus. But riding a wave of popularity after having forced the Central government and the opposition to agree to a "Sense of the House" resolution in Parliament accepting 'in principle' three of his key demands, Anna has indicated that he will now fight for electoral reforms to bring in the 'right to recall' elected representatives and 'right to reject' all candidates listed on a ballot paper. While all this may sound good, Anna must not let his campaign against corruption get diffused with fighting an assortment of causes.

Indeed, it would be folly for civil society to rest content with its limited victory in the war on corruption. It would need to keep a close watch on the Standing Committee's recommendations on the Lokpal issue, on the ultimate bill that is adopted by Parliament and on the way the enacted reforms are implemented. Besides, it would be unrealistic to expect the Lokpal bill to be the panacea for all corruption-related ills.

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

ORGAN TRANSPLANT

LAW MUST STOP RACKETS, PROMOTE DONATIONS

Parliament has made some far-reaching amendments to the Transplantation of Human Organs Act, which provide a ray of hope to hundreds of thousands of people waiting for a transplant. The list of the relatives who can donate an organ has now been expanded to include grandparents and grandchildren. To exclude the possibility of rackets and exploitation of the poor, it was so far limited only to parents, sisters, brothers and spouses of the patients. Formalities have also been reduced for all other donations by "near-relatives" (related by blood). These will have to come through authorisation committees but the donors need not undergo screening as the submission of a birth certificate will suffice.

Other laudable steps include the setting up of an organ removal and storage network and a national registry of donors. To weed out illegal commercial dealings, the punishment has been enhanced from five to 10 years of imprisonment and the fine from Rs 10,000-20,000 to Rs 20 lakh-1 crore. What has to be borne in mind is that there are thousands of people in dire need of not just kidneys but also hearts, lungs, livers and pancreas etc. It is necessary not only to keep away the ghoulish racketeers, but also to extend a helping hand to the patients.

Because of the lack of public enthusiasm about organ donation, there is an acute shortage. According to the Indian Chronic Kidney Disease registry, 74.5 per cent of their patients do not receive any form of renal replacement therapy. The hopeless situation can be remedied only if there is a sustained public awareness about the urgency of cadaver donation. Just as the resistance about blood donation reduced gradually, the organ donors too would shed their inhibition slowly. There should be trained counsellors in intensive care units to support the deceased organ donation programme. India sees about 114,000 deaths in road accidents annually, of which nearly 67 per cent are brain deaths. A column in the application for the driving licence asking whether a person is willing to donate his organs may help.

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

ALARMING LAWLESSNESS IN PAK

LESSONS FROM ABDUCTION OF SLAIN GOVERNOR'S SON

Suicide bombings, abductions, kidnappings, murders and other such incidents have become almost a daily occurrence in Pakistan. Anything can happen to anybody, anywhere, anytime irrespective of how big or mighty he is. Thus, the abduction of assassinated Punjab Governor Salman Taseer's son Shahbaz Taseer in broad daylight in Lahore is not a surprising development. He was forcibly taken out of his Mercedes car on Friday as he was about to reach his office and bundled into another vehicle, a Land Cruiser, by a few armed persons. According to the present Governor of Punjab, Sardar Lateef Khosa, there was no proper security arrangement for the Taseer family. That may be the reason why there were no security guards with Shahbaz to challenge his abductors. Yet the provincial government claims that it had posted security guards for the protection of Shahbaz Taseer. The case may take a more curious turn if there is substance in Mr Khosa's allegation that elements in the provincial administration may be involved in the incident.

Shahbaz Taseer's abduction came despite intelligence reports that sons of influential personalities might meet such a fate at the hands of banned extremist organisations. The Taseer family had been receiving threats from extremists ever since Shahbaz's father, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his own security guard because of his controversial stand on the blasphemy law. And the assassin got widespread appreciation for what he had done. This showed that anything could happen to any member of the Taseer family in a country where law and order was there only in name.

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THE TRIBUNE

ARTICLE

NORMALISING INDO-PAK TIES

INTIMATIONS OF A NEW BEGINNING

BY MAHARAJAKRISHNA RASGOTRA

The visit of Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Ms Hina Rabbani Khar, went off better than one had expected. She struck the right notes when she spoke of "changed mindsets", the need to "shed the burden of history", and the young generation's desire for peace and friendly relations with India. She owned up, without the least hesitation or embarrassment, Manishankar Aiyar's idea of "uninterrupted and uninterruptible" India-Pakistan dialogue to resolve problems.

After Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna's bad experience in Islamabad with Shah Mehmood Qureshi last year, a gesture from Pakistan was called for to restore civility and a modicum of mutual courtesy and respect between high-level interlocutors. Ms Khar made the gesture with commendable dignity and grace. Her poise and youthful charm and the candour and transparent sincerity of her public pronouncements have warmed many hearts and won her a large constituency in India. All this augurs well for a sustained effort to make the dialogue "uninterruptible" and result-oriented.

I was dismayed by the huge play in our media of Ms Khar's Birkin handbag and Jimmy Choo shoes, and her meeting with Hurriyat leaders. The first is pardonable, because she came here at the end of Delhi's Couture Week and dazzled the Capital as no ramp-walker had done. The media should have paid more attention to the elegance, warmth, simplicity and conviction in which she clothed her words and her mission of peace. The tone of voice and feelings of Pakistan's youth she brought to us merit India's serious attention. A fast globalising world is no place for abiding animosity, and it was a particularly touching gesture on Ms Khar's part to pray at the two famous dargahs in Delhi and Ajmer for India-Pakistan peace.

I personally attach no importance to her meeting with the Hurriyat leaders. It needn't have caused the kind of flutter it did in government circles and in our media. These gentlemen are known to be Pakistan's constituency in our country. It was not entirely inappropriate for Pakistan's Foreign Secretary to describe the event as "democratic reach-out". We should have laughed the matter off, instead of expressing concern over it. Ms Khar herself, having done the chore, was dismissive of the event. Perhaps, the Generals back home, who must have concurred in her peace mission, needed a mollifier.

Pakistan is in a difficult internal situation and growing isolation externally. At home, it is ravaged by violence on the part of a whole generation of young jehadis raised in Pakistan's madarsas. They will be around for another decade or two; this is, therefore, a problem for the long haul. Externally, the ISI and the army are engaged in a running feud with the US and are, seemingly, unwilling or unable to stabilise Pakistan's turbulent western frontier to prevent the Taliban's depredations in Afghanistan.

There is some muted appreciation in Pakistan that while its army is engaged in action in the west, India is not giving them cause for concern in the east, but well-meaning Pakistanis are looking for more tangible support for Pakistan's fragile democracy. Many Pakistani friends have told me in recent months of a mood-change in Pakistan in regard to India, even in sections of the Pakistan military. In Pakistan's list of enemies, they say, India has been downgraded to the lowly third position, after the US and the indigenous terrorist organisations!

There isn't much India can do to help Pakistan in its ongoing spat with the US: they are allies of long standing, need each other and are bound to make up as the situation becomes clear in Afghanistan. Nor can much be done to allay Islamabad's unwarranted concern over India's development work in Afghanistan. But a lot can be done to forge a good neighbourly relationship through greatly enhanced people-to-people contacts, sports links, trade facilitation, joint economic activity, student exchanges and cooperation in ending the menace of terrorism. This last is a core issue with India and the onus to resolve it lies on Pakistan. What is needed is a visible dismantling of the whole India-focused apparatus of terror created and nurtured by the ISI since the 1980s.

Both China and the US have exploited Pakistan's geo-strategic importance, in parallel ways at different times, during the last six decades as an armed balancer against India in South Asia, and as the base for jehad against the erstwhile USSR. Unanticipated consequences of Pakistan's enthusiastic participation in those ventures is now threatening its stability; none of it has really enriched or strengthened Pakistan.

Pakistan's truly geo-strategic role lies in its as-yet-unrealised potential as a highway for the flow of trade and commerce, thought and culture between Central Asia and India. Activation of that role would enrich Pakistan and eliminate its aid-dependence in no time. In the bargain, it would make two vast regions dependent on it. But realisation of this potential also requires a stable, tranquil and cooperative Afghanistan.

India and Pakistan need not be at odds with each other in Afghanistan. We should be working together to safeguard Afghanistan's independence and integrity, its development and stability. Pakistan's suspicions of an Indian pincer on its left flank are totally misplaced. Sadly, Afghanistan did not figure in the Foreign Ministers' talks last month.

Of course, there are issues between our two countries, and Kashmir is the foremost among them. It is not a core issue only for Pakistan; Islamabad's illegal occupation of a part of the Indian state is a core issue for India as well. But the short-point about Kashmir is that India cannot give it to Pakistan, and Pakistan cannot take it by war or by turning its back on India. And clearly India is not going to war with Pakistan over PoK. Therefore, the only viable solution lies in restoring the freedom of movement and cultural and economic intercourse across the LoC: then it wouldn't matter very much which part of J&K belonged where. Our joint endeavour should be to make J&K a free-trade area and reduce the LoC to a line on the map. Rightly, therefore, the central focus in the Foreign Ministers' talks was on Kashmir-related CBMs. The CBMs they agreed on, though, are too slow-moving and much too limited in scope and in the areas they cover.

The dialogue on security issues should not remain confined to Kashmir, terrorism or the slow-moving Mumbai trial in Pakistan. Pakistan's security concerns vis-a-vis India, which keep General Ashfaque Parvez Kayani so distressingly India-focused, should be addressed in candid talks. Why can't the Chiefs of Staff of the Army of the two countries meet to allay each other's concerns? War is no longer an option for either country; so, why don't we invite General Kayani over for a visit and reassure him of India's peaceful intent? And why not go a step further and invite President Zardari to be the Chief Guest during the Republic Day celebrations in 2012 or 2013?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's initiatives at Sharm-el-Sheikh (Egypt), Thimpu and Chandigarh, viewed with much skepticism at the time, were far-sighted. It is time now for even bolder steps.

The writer is a former Foreign Secretary of India.

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

A MAN NAMED GOD

BY HARISH DHILLON

His college mates named him God. They did so teasingly. But years later when I reestablished contact with him, I felt that his friends had known, even then, of his many godlike qualities and had named him aptly.

The organisation that he headed ran amongst other things, an excellent multi-speciality hospital. So when one of my employees had exhausted all possible financial resources, including help from the teachers and students, and was still nowhere near the end of his wife's medical treatment, I thought of this wonderful hospital and rang him up. He asked me to fax him all the papers and the next day he called to say that his cardiologist had confirmed that both the diagnosis and the course of treatment being followed were right. Unfortunately his hospital did not have the facilities for the procedure that needed to be followed.

I thanked him but he must have sensed my frustration because he rang me up the next day to say that he had made arrangements for the girl's treatment at a hospital in Delhi. Everything would be taken care of, the transportation to Delhi, the board and lodging for the patient and her attendants, and of course for the procedure and the medication.

The girl was ferried to Delhi and the procedure was successfully carried out. Unfortunately she developed some post-operation complications and died. The doctors hinted that it was because of the delay in carrying out the procedure. I rang him up to thank him for all that he had done, I broke down and wept. I wept for the loss of a young life, I wept in gratitude for all his kindness, and I wept for the futility of it all.

He came up the next day, sat me down on a chair, knelt on the floor in front of me and holding my hands said: "Old man, I never want to hear you weep like that again. What can we do to avoid this kind of situation in the future?"

"I have tried very hard to persuade the subordinate staff to use their medical allowance towards medical insurance. But their needs for the present preclude all thought of what might happen in the future. I would like to set up a corpus, the interest to be used for just this kind of emergency."

Though his organisation did undertake a great deal of charitable work, their rules did not permit them to give away money in such a manner. But within the month he had spoken to people and I received enough money from various sources to set up my fund.

It has been many years since this happened. The fund has helped many people in distress. And in all these years he has not once referred either to the incident or to what he did for me. I know he has forgotten all about it. I like to feel that there is something godlike about this behaviour.

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

CAPACITY BUILDING FOR FUTURE CONFLICT

THE PROBABILITY OF THE NEXT MAJOR CONFLICT BREAKING OUT IN THE MOUNTAINS IS HIGH DUE TO UNRESOLVED TERRITORIAL DISPUTES WITH CHINA AND PAKISTAN. IMMEDIATE STEPS ARE NEEDED TO BUILD AND ENHANCE THE CAPABILITIES NECESSARY FOR DEFEATING FUTURE THREATS AND CHALLENGES

BRIG GURMEET KANWAL (RETD)

The key geo-strategic challenges in South Asia emanate from the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and on the Af-Pak border; unresolved territorial disputes between India and China, and India and Pakistan; and the almost unbridled march of radical extremism sweeping across the strategic landscape. In May 1998, India and Pakistan had crossed the nuclear Rubicon and declared themselves as nuclear weapons states. Though there has been little nuclear sabre-rattling, tensions are inherent in the possession of nuclear weapons by neighbours with a long history of conflict. While the probability of conventional conflict on the Indian sub-continent remains low, its possibility cannot be altogether ruled out. Hence, there is an inescapable requirement for defence planners to analyse future threats and challenges carefully and build the required military capacities if push comes to shove.

In view of India's unresolved territorial disputes with China and Pakistan in the Himalayan region, there is a very high probability that the next major land conflict on the sub-continent will again break out in the mountains. As it is not in India's interest to enlarge a conflict with Pakistan to the plains south of the Ravi River due to the possibility of escalation to a nuclear exchange, there is high probability that the next conflict, having broken out in the Himalayas, will remain confined to the mountains. While the three strike corps are necessary for conventional deterrence and have served their purpose well, it is in India's interest to enhance its military capability to fight and win future wars in the mountains.

A strategic defensive posture runs the risk of losing some territory to the adversary if capabilities do not exist for launching a deep ingress to stabilise the situation. The first requirement is to upgrade India's military strategy of dissuasion against China to that of genuine conventional and nuclear deterrence and vigorous border management during peace. Genuine deterrence can come only from the ability to take the fight deep into the adversary's territory through major offensive operations. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to raise and position one mountain strike corps each in J&K for offensive operations against China and Pakistan and in the northeast for operations against China. In addition, as a strike corps can be employed only in a particular sector and cannot be easily redeployed in the mountains, it is necessary to give the defensive corps limited capability to launch offensive operations with integral resources.

In the modern era, military strategists have invariably preferred Liddell Hart's strategy of the indirect approach through deep manoeuvre, rather than the heavy attrition that used to be routine on the battlefields of World War-I, to achieve a favourable decision. It is necessary to recognise that in the Indian context manoeuvre is extremely limited in the mountains and India's capability for vertical envelopment is rather low. In the plains too India's strike corps cannot execute deep manoeuvres due to the risk of Pakistan's nuclear red lines being threatened early during a war. As firepower is the other side of the coin, it is inescapably necessary to substantially upgrade capabilities to inflict punishment and indeed achieve victory through the orchestration of overwhelming firepower. Unless firepower capabilities are upgraded by an order of magnitude, India will have to be content with a stalemate.

Firepower capabilities that must be enhanced include conventionally-armed ballistic missiles to attack high value targets in depth. Air-to-ground and helicopter attack capabilities should be modernised, particularly those enabling deep ground penetration and accurate night strikes. In fact, the IAF should aim to dominate the air space and air strikes must paralyse the adversary's ability to conduct cohesive ground operations. Artillery rockets, guns and mortars must also be modernised. Lighter and more mobile equipment is required so that these can be rapidly redeployed in neighbouring sectors. India's holdings of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) continue to be low. In recent conflicts like the war in Iraq in 2003 and the ongoing Afghan conflict, PGMs have formed almost 80 per cent of the total ammunition used. Indian PGM holdings must go up progressively to at least 20 to 30 per cent in order to achieve high levels of operational efficiencies. Defence planners must recognise that it is firepower asymmetries that will help to achieve military decisions and ultimately break the adversary's will to fight.

Capabilities for heliborne assault, vertical envelopment and amphibious operations are inadequate for both conventional conflict and dealing effectively with contingencies that might arise while discharging India's emerging regional responsibilities. Two rapid reaction-cum-air assault divisions, with an amphibious brigade each, need to be raised by the end of the 13th Defence Plan, (2017-22). The expenditure on these divisions will be highly capital intensive and will be subject to the defence budget being gradually raised to first 2.5 per cent and then 3 per cent of the GDP.

C4I2SR capabilities are still rudimentary and must be substantially modernised to exploit the synergies that can be achieved by a network centric force. A seamless intelligence-cum-targeting network must be established to fully synergise the strike capabilities of air and ground forces in real time. A good early warning network will enable the army to reduce the number of troops that are permanently deployed for border management and will add to the reserves available for offensive operations. Infrastructural developments along the northern borders have failed to keep pace with the army's ability to fight forward and must be speeded up.

During the long history of post-independence conflicts with neighbours and prolonged deployment for internal security, the armed forces have held the nation together. Dark clouds can once again be seen on the horizon, but the efforts being made to weather the gathering storm are inadequate. The government must immediately initiate steps to build the capacities that are so necessary for defeating future threats and challenges. It must take the opposition parties into confidence as a bipartisan approach must be followed in dealing with major national security issues. In fact, there is a requirement to establish a permanent National Security Commission mandated by an act of Parliament to oversee the development of military and non-military capacities for national security.

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

ARMY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF NATIONAL POWER

COL B.N. BHATIA (RETD)

Everyone knows the Army's challenge in countering insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir for over two decades has been enormous. Expansive mountainous terrain favouring the insurgents, an aggrieved population easily swayed by propaganda and an extensive Line of Control (LoC) facilitating infiltration gave Pakistan the ideal "playing field" to up the ante. To bleed India and fatigue its security forces has been Pakistan's objective.

We have played into Pakistan's hands all along. The counter-insurgency grid expanded manifold in the Kashmir Valley, in line with the adversary's plan to make us commit more troops. It later spilled south of the Pir Panjal ranges into the Jammu-Poonch region, consuming more Army formations. The Doda hinterland came next. What do you think should have been India's response?

Insurgencies cannot be countered by the military alone. A multi-pronged approach using other instruments of national power like economic, political, social and information, if implemented once the situation had stabilised in mid-1990s, would have changed the situation and eased the army's involvement. If such a plan was drawn at the apex level it left those at the operational level guessing. Was there a vision for peace? Not likely

How did the foremost principle of war – economy of force – get violated? Leadership voids at political levels, including associated diplomacy and administrative services which failed to keep pace with the ground situation, kept the army slogging. And voila! What did we have in 1999?

A fearful Pakistan imagining that its sponsored insurgency in J&K was on the wane, masterminded intrusions across the LoC in the Kargil sector. Surprised both at the political and military levels, the Army went into overdrive to evict the intruders. What followed were a series of sheer frontal attacks a la World War-I. Young officers and men assaulted dominating heights in ways unthinkable by any army in the world. If there was any brilliance in generalship during this war, it was just to move and organise troops who willingly sacrificed themselves to regain the lost territory.

We had again played into the enemy's hands by joining battle in a place, manner and time of his choosing and advantage. Rather than "economy of force", we used overwhelming force. When was the last time we thought of dislocating the enemy psychologically? Arguably this cannot be done in the face of political riders, as happened in Kargil.

To secure its own territory, India was forced to launch attacks in such disadvantageous circumstances because of the fear of nuclear retaliation or a flare-up. Nuclear weapons are not what Pakistan got from the bakery down the street while coming into the Kargil heights. They had it much earlier. Did Indian leadership at the core political level ever war-gamed such a scenario in conjunction with the military chiefs?

It was always known that Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons would enable it to raise the threshold of tolerance for India, allowing it to resort to more derring-do in its proxy war.

This happened again just a couple of years later. In December 2001 the attack on the Parliament was the highpoint. Yet again we reacted in a huff and mobilised the armed forces. What followed during Operation Parakaram was ten months of strategic stalemate sans any results.

Estimates of total costs of this "misadventure" could touch Rs 10,000 crore. More than that, this self-goal cost us dearly. We lost face and bared our inability to follow through a resolute intention. Terribly blown apart was the credibility of our deterrence. Former Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal A.Y. Tipnis remarked: "We have shown enormous patience, now it is time to show we have resolve too. Inaction is damaging our credibility; people have begun to believe India is incapable of taking any action." Strategic affairs commentator Brahma Chellaney wrote: "The harsh truth is that the government played a game of bluff not just with Pakistan but also with its own military… When a nation enjoys credibility, it can usually achieve its objectives with a mere threat to use force. However, when there are serious credibility problems, even modest objectives are difficult to accomplish. Vajpayee ended up practising coercive non-diplomacy."

Did we end up also fooling ourselves? Probably we're used to it by now. It's sad when we realise that Kautilya's Arthashastra originated here. No matter how powerful an army is and how competent its generals, its effectiveness can be easily diluted as we have witnessed all along.

Leadership at the political level is structurally, mentally, intellectually and emotionally "distanced" from military leadership. The price is heavy. Unfortunately there is no "fiscal" calculation of what it costs the nation. No one knows or cares at the level where it should matter most. To continue to pretend that this callousness can continue indefinitely without affecting either the military leadership or the efficiency of the fighting force would be ineptitude of the highest order.

A friend called up to say that if the "Anna effect" was misjudged in our own country, how can we ever dream of assessing the capabilities and intentions of other nations? A valid point. And, if in our little dream world we imagine that others have not already noted our continued failings it will be compounding the error.

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MUMBAI MIRROR

EDITORIAL

THE DIMINISHING OF RAHUL GANDHI

WITH HIS PUBLIC SILENCE TILL THE END, THE GANDHI SCION EMERGED AS RELUCTANT TO COMMIT HIMSELF TO A POINT OF VIEW

In October 2009, Open magazine ran a cover story with the title 'Will the Congress rule for the next 20 years?' The Congress had just won three state elections soon after its Lok Sabha triumph, the Opposition was still in disarray, Manmohan Singh seemed like a man in charge, Sonia Gandhi confident and Rahul Gandhi waited in the wings. It was still an over-the-top question but the fact that it could even be asked by a serious national magazine reflected something of the prevailing political mood.

How times have changed since. Harold Wilson gave the political lexicon its time-worn cliché of a week being a long time in politics, the Congress has had two miserably long years. The party was already on the mat long before the Anna Hazare movement burst on the national consciousness and among the many things its dynamics has thrown up is to expose in sharp relief the leadership problems at its top.

Even if it is too early to seriously judge the long-term political impact of the churning we have seen in terms of the public-neta equation, among the many questions that emerges as a by-product is one on the politics and political style of Rahul Gandhi.

This is an important question for a party that is still beholden to the Gandhi family and a serious one for a leader who in the past two years has actively sought to project the personae of a youth leader and of a man of the people (as opposed to a man of government).

With Sonia Gandhi away convalescing, Rahul Gandhi's initial absence from the scene was initially explainable as he was overseas. He is said to have played an important role in behind-the-scenes efforts after his return, including suggestions by the party's spin doctors that he was instrumental in changing the government's attitude from aggression to conciliation after Anna's arrest.

In the public eye though, the impression remains of a leader who simply refused to engage in a public debate or to visibly commit himself to a point of view in his government's greatest hour of need almost till the very end.
His deafening public silence in the days between Anna's arrest to his eventual prepared speech in the Lok Sabha on Friday only served to raise more questions than answers.

By dodging direct questions on the Anna movement until then, the Congress' leader in waiting not only strengthened the impression of a rudderless party being left adrift, he did himself no favours. Even when he did speak, seeking to regain the initiative through his call for an Election-Commission like Lok Pal, the biggest question was why did he not say so earlier?

Crises often tend to show up weak points in sharp relief and this crisis has shown up the inadequacies in the making of Brand Rahul.

His image makers have so far relied on a carefully calibrated strategy of visibly trying to identify him with the downtrodden. From telling Orissa tribals two years ago that he was their soldier in Delhi to his televised road show with UP's farmers, the Gandhi scion has consistently tried to cultivate the imagery of a messiah of the other India, the India that seemingly lost out in the reforms.

There are two fundamental problems with this strategy. The first is that the divide between shining India and rural Bharat was never as clear-cut as it seemed to some Congress strategists. Many of India's urban centres voted strongly for the Congress last time but the daily frustrations of dealing with government in India's cities have in no small measure driven the sinews of this current movement. By choosing to focus almost exclusively on an old socialist style 'protector of the (mostly rural) people' neta imagery, Team Rahul may have made an original ideational mistake.

The deeper problem though is that Brand Rahul is steeped in an older kind of top-down politics that is increasingly at odds with the quicksilver world of modern interconnectivity. In that old Doordarshan-type model, the leader spoke, his words were listened to reverently, and there was little genuine public accountability. That world has changed irrevocably.

You can't speak down at the people any more, you have to engage with them, partake in debate, and most importantly answer questions on sticky issues. That is the one thing Rahul Gandhi has seemed reluctant to do. Even in his pet causes he has seemed to cast project the figure of a benevolent protector rather than an instinctive man of the people ready for questions, engaged in public debates and leading agendas.
In short, he has preferred not to get his hands dirty, but to take safe, mostly choreographed positions. This style of cocooned politics, while seeming to maintain a distance from its daily hustle bustle, is at odds even with his family's record in the Congress.

Long before she inherited Nehru's mantle, Indira Gandhi was deeply involved in the cut and thrust of daily politics, including in the decision to sack Kerala's first Communist government in the 1950s, and even Rajiv Gandhi who had a short induction period, oversaw Buta Singh's efforts to run the 1982 Asian Games.
Rahul Gandhi has now had 7 years as an MP, four as party general secretary, and the question is how long will he be an absentee leader, a perpetual leader in training; of the party but somehow seeming aloof from it.

It is a long way to go for the next election but for Rahul Gandhi it may be time to think of a reboot.

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COLUMN

VICTORY FOR ALL

A TYPICALLY INDIAN END TO A VERY INDIAN AGITATION

India's biggest lesson to the world has been, and remains, the view that a negotiated compromise is always better than one's victory and another's defeat. Once again the elected representatives of the people in Parliament and a social activist who succeeded in galvanising a sizeable segment of civil society, with help from sections of the media, have ended a political impasse through a negotiated compromise that enables all concerned to declare victory. Anna Hazare has called this "half victory" only because some of his advisers and aides seem to have opted for the very un-Indian stance of seeking not just their "victory" but also the defeat of their adversary, Parliament. In rejecting such an outcome Prime Minister Manmohan Singh fulfilled his constitutional obligation to uphold the dignity of Parliament and his high office. In the event, the entire Parliament united to support a sentiment that had come to grip the imagination of the people of India without yielding ground on the principle that all laws in a democracy can only be made by the elected representatives of the people, not social activists and television anchors!

Mr Hazare's so-called "half victory" could in fact have been a full victory if he had followed the sage advice of some of his greatest and wisest supporters like Swami Agnivesh, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Santosh Hegde, Aruna Roy and Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who spoke in one voice and advised him to accept Parliament's appeal a few days ago. If Mr Hazare had responded to the joint appeal of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj and Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, who together assured him that Parliament would take on board his views on a "Jan Lok Pal", he would have stood taller and could have easily declared full victory that evening. Regrettably, the hot heads around Mr Hazare discouraged him from doing so and prolonged the crisis and the television drama. In the event, the final outcome was no different because the "sense of the House" as expressed on Saturday night, after a daylong debate, was no different from the sense expressed by the Speaker of the House.

Whatever the future course of events, there are many lessons to be learnt by all concerned from this episode. The ruling Congress party has much soul-searching to do about its political instincts; the Opposition must ask itself how it can balance better its role as the opposition in New Delhi and a party in government in one state or another; the prime minister and his government must reflect on their competencies and responses and learn lessons for the future to be able to handle such situations better; civil society activists must come to terms with the limits to their power in shaping public policy; and, finally, the media must introspect about its tactics if it wishes to be taken seriously and wants to preserve the constitutional freedoms it enjoys. Every actor in this saga can declare victory, but in the end it is India and every Indian who must win. That has indeed happened in this case.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

APPLE WITHOUT JOBS

STEVE JOBS HAS BEEN A UNIQUE AND INSPIRATIONAL LEADER

There are many good reasons why there has been a global reaction to Apple founder Steven P Jobs' decision to step down and call it a day. Apple Inc is regarded as one of the most valuable companies in the world — in terms of market capitalisation it briefly displaced oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose revenue is almost four times that of Apple, to become numero uno. Also, Apple's products – MacBook, iPod, iPhone and iPad – continue to cast a spell on users who are willing to wait for hours in serpentine queues to be among the first to buy these products. In India Apple's iPhone and iPad may have a relatively slender market share but both Apple and Steve Jobs are almost household names. Apple's success story is linked to Mr Jobs' charisma and deep involvement with the company's product designs. To his credit, Mr Jobs has 313 Apple patents (much more than most granted to other technology chiefs), which demonstrates his eye for detail. He is also considered a business icon, "designer of designers", charismatic person, powerful speaker and brand guru.

However, Apple has had its share of hiccups. It came under a cloud after allegations of running "sweatshops" in countries like China. The other Steve (co-founder Steve Wozniak, also known as "Wizard of Woz") has always been overshadowed by Mr Jobs. Apple has had its share of controversy too. Music labels alleged being bullied into accepting Apple's pricing and other terms even as they claimed that iTunes ate into their profit margins. Even print media houses protested against Apple's "biased" revenue-sharing agreements for content provided on the iPad. Even so, these issues have not overshadowed Mr Jobs' business achievements.

At the Stanford Commencement address in 2005, Mr Jobs outlined his philosophy: "... the only way to do great work is to love what you do." The result is evident. Apple Inc is likely to exceed $100 billion in revenue by the end of its fiscal year this September. Over 15 billion iTunes have been downloaded. This July, in just one day over one million users bought and downloaded Mac OS X Lion. iPods and iPhones have been all the rage around the world. In the 2011 April-June quarter, Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones, 9.25 million iPads, 3.95 million Macs and 7.54 million iPods. And this June Apple launched its "iCloud" services.

Will Apple lose its magic after Mr Jobs? Analysts believe that as chairman he will continue to leave his mark on both the company and its products even as he hands over the reins to Tim Cook, the new CEO and old hand at Apple who has been handling operations in Mr Jobs' absence. Similar concerns were raised when Louis Gerstner of IBM handed over the reins to Samuel Palmisano and when Paul Otellini took charge of Intel after Craig Barrett. However, Mr Cook will have to answer a bigger question: with Google acquiring Motorola Mobility, and the Android operating system catching the fancy of smartphone users, what should be Apple's next move? Mr Cook has around $28 billion in cash to think about it.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

SOUTH ASIAN CROSSROADS

THE SUBCONTINENT IS ON WAY TO BECOMING THE CROSSROADS OF ASIA ONCE AGAIN

SANJAYA BARU

If the new strategic partnership between Bangladesh and India takes the expected step forward next week, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Dhaka, it could herald a new beginning for the eastern sub-region of South Asia including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and India (BBNI).

Major confidence building initiatives taken by the two Bay of Bengal neighbours, with new agreements and initiatives on the border before the weekend, have already created a favourable environment for a successful visit to Dhaka by Prime Minister Singh. Indeed, the Dhaka visit could become this year's most important foreign policy initiative by Dr Singh.

Bangladesh is keen on a BBNI sub-regional co-operation in the hydro power sector and seeks what it calls a more "equitable share" of Teesta River water. This should be possible in theory and could become the game-changer for the region. Dr Singh's visit to Bangladesh could help begin a new era in closer and better connectivity between India and Bangladesh opening up the possibility of new land-based infrastructure projects that will enable road and rail links between South Asia and South-east Asia.

Going beyond sub-regional co-operation, a strong Indian initiative to revive the moribund Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation would help speed up the process of bridge building with South-east Asia through Myanmar and Thailand. The Asian Development Bank is ready to fund projects that would improve connectivity as well as the region's social and economic infrastructure.

Interestingly, many member countries of the Association of South-east Asian Nations are once again focused on their region's links with South Asia. This is an opportune time for both India and Bangladesh, and indeed Myanmar, to adopt a collective approach in taking major infrastructure and energy projects forward, with support from the Asian Development Bank.

Indians have traditionally been brought up on the idea that the flow of people in this part of Asia has been from the west of India, from Central Asia. There has been a similar, if less intrusive, flow of people from India to the east as well, both by land and sea. India was not merely the recipient of invaders and settlers from its west, but it was also the home of migrants, traders, teachers and travellers who have gone east.

The partition of the subcontinent cut off India's land links with both Central and West Asia, on the one hand, and its land links with South-east Asia, on the other. It is these links that the creation of a South Asian free trade area and the new infrastructure projects will revive.

Though action on the western land border will take time, till Pakistan is able to get its internal act together, improve relations with India and the latter is able to reconnect with Afghanistan and beyond by land, the region stands at the cusp of meaningful action both on the eastern land border and also across the maritime frontier.

Even with Pakistan there has been some progress. Reports of a meeting of minds on trade and connectivity between India and Pakistan offer hope of further progress on this front. Pakistan is reported to be on the verge of agreeing to normal trade relations with India, which would imply implementing the World Trade Organisation's "most favoured nation" obligations and offering transit trade rights that would facilitate trade among India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

But land was not the only link in history between India and its neighbours. Waves of seafarers all the way from Gujarat to the Bengal coast sailed across both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.

The modernisation of ports and improved air connectivity have brought both regions closer. Air connectivity between India and its wider southern Asian neighbourhood, ranging from the Persian Gulf to the Malacca Straits and beyond, is already very good. Sea connectivity too is set to increase, restoring ancient links between the ports of the Gulf region and western India and the Bay of Bengal littoral.

What this means is that South Asia has the potential to once again become the crossroads of Asia — linking the land-based and the maritime economies of West Asia, Central Asia and the whole of East and South-east Asia.

It is obvious that India has a stake in this given the geo-economics of the region. However, what is not often appreciated in the region is the enormous benefit the new infrastructural connectivity and economic links will confer on countries to India's east and west, including the large and small land-locked economies of Central Asia and the Himalayan region.

Stop thinking of India as an isolated subcontinent cut off by the high Himalayas, the deserts and the oceans, an "island" so to speak, and think of the region as the "crossroads" between Asia's resource-rich west and north-western regions and its booming industrial economies of the East and South-east Asia. Seen this way, the benefits of regional integration would be continent-wide and not restricted to the region's largest economy.

The important thing about the India-Bangladesh relationship at this point in time is that there is strong political commitment to a movement forward at the highest levels in both countries. By resolving residual bilateral differences the leadership of both countries would be building a new partnership with South-east and East Asia for the 21st century.

A similar movement forward on the western border is also possible, if more difficult. But pure self-interest should guide the political leadership of all the countries in the region to re-establish the region's role as Asia's crossroads.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

COLUMN

LIFE LESSONS FROM VALUABLE WASTELANDS

SUNITA NARAIN

We were standing at the edge of what looked like a swamp — there were grass, pools and streams. On one side there was land heavily barricaded with high walls, barbed wires and armed security. A board read: East Coast Energy, Kakarapalli. A bloody battle had taken place in this village in Andhra Pradesh a few months ago. People protesting against the takeover of their wetland were shot at and three of them lost their lives. Now the site of the 2,640 Mw thermal power plant is under siege — locked and in court.

Looking at the faces around me – a group of some 50 journalists from leading newspapers from across the country – it was clear that none of us could understand this battle. Why were those people fighting for this piece of wetland, which was neither private land nor rich agricultural land? The people, mostly fisher folk, were obviously poor. Then why were they on a hunger strike, which had now crossed a year? Why were they so belligerent that they were willing to lay down their lives?

We then met a group of farmers from a neighbouring village. In Sompeta a proposed 2,640 Mw coal power plant – this one by Nagarjuna Construction Company – had been similarly fought off. Here, too, a bloody battle had taken place in which people lost their lives. The matter has been suspended; the environmental clearance has been cancelled. But the company wants the site. The people say they will fight to the death.

These are today's battles. I could see that though all of us were moved, we were unable to comprehend what was going on.

On our drive to the village through Srikakulam district, we were shown sites proposed for a nuclear plant, a pharma and chemical city and numerous thermal power projects. It was a massive takeover and understandably so. This is coastal India, where the land meets the sea. This land frontier is ideal for new growth projects. There is ample water for nuclear plants' huge cooling needs; there is easy access to imported coal for thermal power projects and chemical plants can dump their toxic waste into the sea without having to invest in expensive treatment systems.

There is another advantage. The government holds large parts of land, which means companies do not have to go through the messy land acquisition process. Moreover, they can obtain property at throwaway prices. This land is variously classified in government records — from tampara (swamp) to poramboke (wasteland) to bela (wetland). Whatever the classification, it underscores that the land has no real economic value and can, therefore, be easily given away at cheap rates.

This is where policy gets practice fundamentally and fatally wrong. This is not useless wasteland, as the revenue office described it while giving it to the thermal power company for a pittance. This is highly productive land, both in terms of its ecological functions and economic uses. But we cannot, or won't, see this because it is not in our interest.

Consider this. This dead swamp is a living sponge, which soaks water, reducing the intensity of floods; the delicately maintained freshwater balance reduces the advance of salinity, which can infiltrate groundwater and ruin drinking water sources. This is a living ecosystem. It plays critical life functions.

These "wastelands" are fertile because they provide livelihood benefits. In Sompeta the bela provides water for irrigation and drinking. In both villages fish catch is an important economic opportunity. It is another matter that the fisher folk in our eyes look poor and desperate for a makeover. But this is their life and the water body is their common asset, which provides them jobs and gives them money to put food on the table. These benefits cannot be discounted.

The problem is lack of policy to protect the interests of water. The environmental impact assessment has limited brief for water issues, or so it would seem. In Kakarapalli and Sompeta the appraisal reports termed the land barren and non-fertile wasteland. The data were collected during summer when water was at its lowest level.

No legal protection exists for water bodies. The Forest Conservation Act provides protection for forests and, incidentally, protects the land where streams and rivers are born. Today, the water structure is invariable common property, which can be taken apart. Its land use can be changed in revenue or municipal records at the stroke of a pen. It can be mutilated and dismembered.

The people of Kakarapalli and Sompeta are teaching us a lesson for future survival. Listen to them before it is too late. There should be no choice here — water and the life it gives are more important than any industry.

sunita@cseindia.org

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BUSINESS STANDARD

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF FIAT MONEY?

THE GOLD STANDARD MAY HAVE BEEN SUPERIOR TO THE CURRENT US-DOLLAR LED INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SYSTEM

ALOK SHEEL

Indeed the Idols I have loved so long Have done my Credit in Men's Eye much wrong: Have drown'd my Honour in a shallow Cup, And sold my Reputation for a Song.

Read fiscal and monetary policies fashioned in the post-war period for Idols, and Omar Khayyam may well have been talking of latter day economic policy-makers in his Rubaiyat. Although policy-makers seemed blissfully unaware, the forces of globalisation were straining and blunting the domestic macro-economic policy framework honed in the post-war period.

In particular, the ageing of Western societies was straining the fiscal framework. The "good deflation" triggered by the entry of China and India into the global market, rising cross-border capital flows arising out of Bretton Woods II, and financial innovation that gave rise to shadow banking were straining the monetary framework. Policy spillovers were also making the task of macro-economic management enormously complicated.

The European Currency Union was an attempt to adjust to the forces of globalisation. But it had one fatal flaw that was masked by the Great Moderation but became painfully apparent in the wake of the Great Recession. The latter has also further eroded the legitimacy of the international monetary system.

Macro-economic policy and the international monetary system now seem to be at a historic tipping point, just as they were during the Great Depression. Reshaping them are the great challenges for the future. How might this be done? Does the past provide some guidance?

The Euro area's fragilities can theoretically – but not of course politically – be overcome by also returning to basics through an institutional re-unification of monetary and fiscal policies. How monetary and fiscal tools themselves need to be reshaped is less clear. Coordinated macro-economic policies and structural reforms across borders are clearly part of this reshaping. However, except in crises, the G 20 has still to figure out a way of how to go about this expeditiously and effectively. The benefits of policy coordination are nevertheless manifest. Apart from policy spillovers in an increasingly integrating global economy, it is apparent that even the unstable status quo is perhaps better than an un-coordinated rebalancing of the global economy. A rise in savings in one part of the global economy in the absence of a rise in consumption in some other part would lead to lower growth in the aggregate.

Could the World Trade Organisation serve as a model for arriving at a global agreement, or consensus, on the use of macro-economic policy tools? Welfare gains from trade are symmetric, since most countries have at least some comparative advantage. However, gains from macro-economic policies may be asymmetric, on account of the inherent advantages accruing to the issuer of the global reserve currency. An agreement on macro-economic policy coordination within the G20 is, therefore, closely linked to the overhaul of the reserve currency system.

This looks unlikely at this stage. There is no good reason for the reserve currency issuer to give up its enormous advantage in the matter of financing internal and external deficits at low costs. No other currency appears to have the market depth or intrinsic strength to take over the mantle of an alternative reserve currency from the dollar. The Euro in its current form suffers from obvious structural weaknesses. The much touted SDR does not have the essential requirements of a currency. The reserve currency itself might change in future with shifting geo-political and economic fortunes, just as it transitioned from the pound sterling to the US dollar in the inter-war period. However, a shift to a more legitimate multi-currency system would be against the tide of history, which is moving towards greater universalisation and integration through trade and investment. The rise of money itself as a form of universal exchange on the back of barter was a manifestation of the universalising trend inherent in markets. A globalised world has space for just one reserve currency. The problem of the reserve currency advantage, attendant moral hazards and legitimacy issues will not go away. So where do we go from here?

Both fiscal and monetary policies have been debased within just 40 years of the end of the gold standard. Consider the seventies and the current spike in public debt, or the Greenspan "put" and the current quantitative easing, and their inflationary outcomes. This indicates that despite certain inherent weaknesses, the gold standard may have been no worse than, and arguably superior to, fiat money.

The gold standard imparted a degree of inflexibility to using macro-economic policies to stabilise growth, since money could not be created at will. Fiat money, however, suffers from the obverse problem that has seen policy-makers succumb to moral hazards inherent in excessive policy flexibility. The gold standard at least delivered on price stability over the long term. Since the stock of gold is limited and finite, its value could not be eroded significantly. The stock of fiat money, on the other hand, is potentially unlimited and policy-makers cannot be trusted to use it wisely.

A return to fiscal and monetary rectitude may well entail re-anchoring fiscal and monetary tools, and with it money itself, to gold (or some other natural material whose supply is limited) in some manner. This was underscored recently by Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank.

How this re-anchoring should be done is not clear at this stage. However, the concept itself might not be entirely fanciful. The market response to the debasement of macro-economic policies since the onset of the recent financial crisis seems to be to turn to gold as a safe haven, a status long occupied by the US dollar. The Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI) and gold prices represented by the World Gold Council (WGC) series, that moved in tandem from 2000 right up to 2007 have diverged ever since. Gold prices have been moving steeply upwards, while commodities have been volatile.

Gold now seems to be behaving more like a currency than a commodity. Is this a classic illustration of the age-old Gresham's Law that bad money drives good money out of the market? The question is whether this is a temporary trend or a structural shift. Be it as it may, some long-term damage has been done. The gold standard and its variants have been around for millennia, outliving several disastrous monetary experiments. Fiat money has been with us for just four decades. Why should this time be different? The experience of the last four decades makes the historian fear for the future of fiat money.

The author is a civil servant. These views are personal

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BUSINESS STANDARD

CLEAR AND PRESENT DOUBLE DIP

THE THREAT IS REAL THE SLOW PACE OF JOB CREATION ESPECIALLY BY START-UPS IS AN INDICATOR

N CHANDRA MOHAN

Together with the travails of debt-ridden Euro economies, the imminent prospect of a double-dip recession in the US – that accounts for 23 per cent of global GDP – is bound to trigger a nasty, brutish and prolonged slump in the world economy. Fear and panic have gripped stock markets in a bear hug as the US economy's recovery from the recession that began in December 2007 is showing signs of flagging. Nothing can dispel the blues that another dip is in the offing as the ranks of the jobless keep rising.

The threat of a double-dip recession is real. With the revisions in US GDP growth estimates, the current pace of expansion is a flat 0.7 per cent a year during the first half of this year that indicates the rebound has been much less robust than was thought earlier. That output has also not returned to the level attained before the recession was mentioned by US Federal System Chairman Ben Bernanke in his address to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's economic symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

What is a double-dip recession? The popular impression is that it is W shaped: recession followed by a weak recovery and another recession like in 1980 and 1981-82. But the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) does not recognise such a recession. They are the high priests who determine when the US economy enters a cyclical downturn and rebounds from it. According to them, the recession can be dated to December 2007 and the recovery process started 18 months later.

This committee believes that two periods of contraction will be either two separate recessions or parts of one recession. They took their time in announcing in September 2010 that the trough of the longest recession since World War II was reached in June 2009. Economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of expansion and it sometimes remains so later on as well. They felt that any future downturn would be a new recession than a continuation of the one that set in from December 2007.

However, a double-dip is highly probable because the US economy has recovered much less than was considered even by the NBER. The recent behaviour of the US labour market is a case in point. The worker-population ratio, which measures the share of adults who are employed, was 63 per cent before the recession of 2007 struck. Eighteen months later, it declined to 59.4 per cent in June 2009 — when the R-word officially ended. The latest number shows an even further drop to 58.1 per cent in July 2011.

The recovery process obviously hasn't extended to the employment front. And unlike the latest 2009-10 Indian data of the National Sample Survey Organisation, falling levels of employment are reflected in higher rates of unemployment to 9.1 per cent in the US. All the evidence is also pointing to a rise in the number of those who are unemployed on a long-term basis of more than a year. And if the underemployed in the US economy are factored in, the employment deficit is closer to 16 per cent.

In this milieu, economists like Paul Krugman ask where is the economic recovery supposed to come from? The vast numbers of unemployed and underemployed are bound to dampen consumer spending. US consumers in any case are burdened by housing debt. Businesses are also unlikely to invest given the lack of consumer demand. The deficiency of aggregate demand is, therefore, likely to weaken any incipient recovery and set off another dip in US economic activity in the coming months.

The gloomy tidings of another economic contraction, thanks to the slackening pace of employment is supported by a recent study by E J Reedy and Robert E Litan titled "Starting Smaller; Staying Smaller: America's Slow Leak in Job Creation" for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Indicative of a longer-term trend is the fact that start-ups created 3.5 per cent of US jobs annually in the 1980s. This shrank to 2.6 per cent during the 2000s, according to US Census Bureau numbers.

The shrinking job creation of US start-ups is important, because this is the difference between positive and negative overall net job growth. Conventional wisdom only focuses on jobs being created by big companies. But new businesses are vital to the labour market since they generated around 3 million new jobs every year before the recession struck in December 2007. But firms born in 2009 created 2.3 million jobs or 700,000 jobs below the recent historic norm.

The slackening pace of job creation in US start-ups is also reflected in per business numbers that show new establishments generated a peak level of 10.4 jobs on the average in 2002, which declined to less than eight in 2009. The pullback by start-ups, the nation's most critical source of job creation, together with the grim tidings of long-term unemployment; the persisting downtrend in worker-population ratios, will further weaken what has been a tepid recovery and clear the decks for a double-dip recession.

From the Ivory Tower makes research from the academic world accessible to our readers

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

A VICTORY FOR INDIA

HAZARE MOVEMENT FORCED GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT TO CHANGE FOR THE BETTER

A popular movement can bend even the most supercilious administration to its will. That's the takeaway after Parliament, in a rare display of maturity cutting across party lines, cleared the way for Anna Hazare's conditions to go the Lokpal standing committee, and Hazare himself broke his fast on Sunday. The end of the standoff involved, as it had to, a climbdown by both government and the activists. The government had to retreat from the position initially adopted by prime minister Singh that only the government and no one else had the right to suggest how rules and laws should be framed. Forced to back down, and with the help of lawmakers among allied and opposition parties, Parliament suddenly looked like a united front. Once three conditions – including the lower bureaucracy under the Lokpal, forming similar bodies in states and having a citizens' charter for the delivery of public goods – were included, the activists were ready to make a deal.
As the Lokpal now moves to the legislative grind, we will, of course, encounter hurdles in framing the new law and implementing it. For example, the lower bureaucracy reports to state governments. Will making it answerable to a Central Lokpal infringe on states' privileges? Can even a fair and efficient Lokpal ensure the delivery of public goods across India, eliminating petty corruption? And what will be the cost of running what promises to be a vast administrative structure running parallel to the executive and the judiciary? At the moment, all these are imponderables. No democracy as vast and varied as India has ever attempted anything like this before, so there are no historical or practical lessons to be drawn from anywhere else in the world. Parallels with tiny Scandinavian nations are meaningless, because India's size and complexity dwarves them. Yet, a start has been made, and hurdles along the way will have to be overcome. Above all, the Hazare movement has achieved something unique: it forced an increasingly opaque, selfabsorbed and arrogant administration to retreat and it forced Parliament to look at itself and assume its responsibilities with dignity. These are no small gains.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

13- year Low

Prolonged periods of inflation are bound to affect savings adversely

High and persistent inflation exacts a very heavy price. It impacts individual welfare adversely by reducing both real income and purchasing power. At the macro-level, it affects savings, investment and growth, in that order. Rising prices force people to spend more on daily expenses. That is not all. Inflation erodes the real value of money and affects the incentive to save adversely. In such a scenario, if loose monetary policy keeps the nominal rate of interest artificially low, resulting in a negative real interest rate, then households will respond by cutting back on savings. This is precisely what has happened. Household savings in financial instruments (deposits with banks and non-banking finance companies, investment in stocks, debentures and small savings instruments besides life insurance, provident fund and pension funds) dropped to a 13-year low last fiscal — from 12.1% of GDP in 2009-10 to 9.7% of GDP in 2010-11. The last time net financial savings as a percentage of GDP dipped below 10% was in 1997-98 when GDP growth dipped to 4.3%. In contrast, GDP growth was 8.5% in 2010-11; so the fall in household savings is not because of poor economic growth. The RBI's explanation that the decline is because financial liabilities have risen is only part of the reason. The reality is the Bank's easy money policy with very low nominal interest rates for a very long time is equally responsible. In its bid to keep interest rates low for corporates, the Bank lost sight of the fact that there is a flip side to low or negative real interest rates. Households see no point in saving. On the contrary, they'd rather consume more today since there's a likelihood of prices increasing further tomorrow.

Thanks to this short-termism, one of our biggest strengths — a high domestic savings rate — has been eroded. The secular trend of a rising savings-GDP ratio, driven by high GDP growth, has been reversed. The only silver lining is that the RBI and the government seem to have realised there is no trade-off between growth and inflation. Hopefully, the recent rise in nominal interest rates will induce savers to turn once again to financial instruments.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

COSMIC BLING

NOW, THE SKY IS THE LIMIT WHEN IT COMES TO THE BIGGEST DIAMONDS

The husbands of newly-married socialites Kim Kardashian and Petra Ecclestone must be thanking their lucky stars that news of a planet-sized diamond (which would surely be their wives' assessment of the just-detected celestial body entirely made of carbon) came too late for their engagement ring hunt. Indeed, the discovery of this blingy space rock accessory of a pulsar by a professor in Australia and his team of astronomers is sure to raise many questions. After all, it may be a small star for scientists, but it is a giant rock for girls in search of best friends. The most crucial query, of course, would be: how many carats is this crystalline rock measuring 60,000 km in diameter? Even if it has been whittled down to a fraction of its size like the Kohinoor, its price, naturally, would be astronomical. No less important would be a confirmation of whether that is the foreversparkling place in the sky all legendary diamond lovers go to.

Advertisements showing film stars in sparkling orbit may be less fanciful in the light of this discovery, but the chances of humans getting their hands (or ring fingers) on any of that orbiting carbon any time soon is unlikely considering it is 4000 light years away from Earth. Still, the lure of cosmic diamonds (as opposed to conflict diamonds) could see a surge in private funding of deep space travel projects with an eye to commercial benefits. Even those of more poetic bent of mind should be pleased, for one of the first truisms of childhood (inevitably debunked before adolescence) now stands vindicated. Jane Taylor had written in 1806 that her 'twinkle, twinkle, little star' was "l i k ea diamond in the sky". Now we know it i sone. So, we propose that the planet be named Elizabeth or Jane Taylor, for obvious reasons.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

NEXT BIG REFORM: POLICE AUTONOMY

AFTER THE LOKPAL BILL, THE NEXT BIG REFORM INVOLVES FREEING THE POLICE SERVICE FROM POLITICAL CONTROL

The monsoon session of Parliament will give the government pause for thought: why has the promise of UPA-II evaporated? As T K Arun perceptively pointed out on this page on July 28, the Congress has become a party of power-brokers. It remains glued together by the fraying power of dynasty.
Apart from a pragmatic but sinewy Lokpal Bill, six other political reforms are needed to liberate Indian governance from atavistic, 19th-century colonial laws. The six reforms fall into three broad categories: police, judicial and electoral. A previous piece dealt with judicial and electoral reforms, including debarring candidates with criminal records. Police reform carries the promise of the greatest impact on citizens' day-to-day lives.
The N N Vohra committee report laid bare the nexus between politicians and crime syndicates. The report was made public 18 years ago; the annexures, containing names of specific politicians with links to crime syndicates, remain classified to this day. The rot runs deep. Top police officers "pay" to win promotions to the highest post. Auctioned posts are funded by politicians cutting across party lines and builder-lobbies. Once ensconced, senior police officers return the "investment" made on them to their politiciansponsors by turning a blind eye to illegal proxy land deals and other acts of political corruption. Many police officers use their high office not to gather actionable intelligence against terror sleeper cells but to extract "commissions" from builders who flout FSI regulations and power brokers who run profitable rackets: the water-tanker mafia, kerosene and diesel adulterators, bookies, illicit bar owners and smugglers. Responding to an RTI query, Maharashtra's Public Information Officer (PIO) revealed on August 2 that, between January 2009 and January 2011, senior state politicians led by home minister R R Patil and the chief minister's office "made 231 recommendations/requests to the police department for the posts of additional superintendent, deputy superintendent, inspectors, assistant inspectors and sub-inspectors". Of these, 54 "requests" were complied with. India has 15.60 lakh policemen or one policeman for 774 citizens. The average across Europe and the US is one police officer for around 300 citizens. Poor pay, outdated weaponry and appalling living conditions are a blight on Indian law enforcement. When a deputy superintendent of police receives a salary of . 13,500 and a constable . 4,900, corruption is inevitable. Policing is a state subject and all political parties have a vested interest in not ceding control of law enforcement to an independent, professional police force.
The Supreme Court has long been aware of the toxic relationship between politicians and the police. It passed a seminal order in September 2006 to delink the two; the seven-directive order provides a complete blueprint to transform law enforcement in India. The first directive mandates the setting up of state security commissions (SSCs) to ensure the police is freed from political influence. The SSCs would periodically evaluate policing performance in their state. The second directive requires each director-general of police (DGP) to be appointed for a minimum tenure of two years through a meritbased, transparent process. The third and fourth directives deal with operational duties of police officers and the separation of the investigative and law and order (beat) functions of the police. The fifth directive — crucially — orders the creation of an independent police establishment board to decide transfers, promotions and postings, a much-abused tool in the hands of state politicians. The sixth directive envisages a police complaints authority and the seventh directive a national security commission for the selection of chiefs of central police organisations.
Taken together, the seven directives of the Supreme Court provide the architecture of an independent, well-paid, accountable police force equipped to deal firmly and fairly with local law enforcement, intelligence gathering from communities, counter-terrorism operations and day-to-day policing. It will sever the umbilical chord that today binds the police with politicians and the underworld.
In November 2010, the Supreme Court issued notices to several states which had not complied with its seven directives and were thus in contempt. Over the past few months, as law enforcement has plumbed new depths with Supreme Court-monitored CBI investigations into various scams, there was renewed hope that the states and the Centre will fall into line and implement the Supreme Court's directives. That hope was belied when the UPA government, far from pressing the states (at least where it is in government) to comply with the Supreme Court's seven directives, took the CBI entirely out of the ambit of the RTI. A more regressive approach to policing is hard to imagine. Autonomy for the CBI must now be high on the Supreme Court's agenda even as it seeks to enforce its own order on police reforms. Chief Justice of India Sarosh Kapadia is a tough and fair arbiter of the public interest. If he concludes that vested political interests are improperly superseding public interest in defying court-directed police reforms, he could use the full force of his judicial authority. The bogus concept of "judicial overreach", floated by apologists of government inaction, certainly would not apply were he to act decisively.

Only by wrenching control of law enforcement away from politicians will we have an effective, modern and accountable police force. The Election Commission's strict code of conduct has dramatically reduced incidents of violence and boothcapturing in recent years. An autonomous, empowered police authority would similarly professionalise the law and order ecosystem in India and give citizens the 21st century police force they deserve.

MINHAZ MERCHANT

CHAIRMAN, MERCHANT MEDIA

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

GUEST COLUMN

ET INTERACTIVE

CHINA, INDIA AND RURAL MARKETS WILL SCRIPT FUTURE

JOE A SCARIA

Life in the fast-lane of technology products has never been easy for tech gadgetmakers. The degree of difficulty has only increased in recent years owing to the acceleration of technological changes that translates into a make-or-break situation for new products in the market place. This is much like a movie launch for which the verdict from the general public arrives in a matter of a few days. Add the extra complexity presented by cultural and demographic differences across geographies, to get an idea of the challenges faced by companies like Canon. Amidst the jangle of new technologies, new brands and the blurring of boundaries between different gadgets themselves, Canon India CEO & president Kensaku Konishi sees the future growth of his industry coming from two key geographies, namely China and India, and the rural markets in particular in the two countries.

Revenues in India have been growing significantly for Canon over the past three years, from . 840 crore in 2009 to . 1,257 crore in 2010, and a projection of . 1,650 crore for this calendar year. "India's revenue contribution is still only a small fraction of the company's global revenues, but what is significant is that India, along with China, holds out the best prospects for the company. And the rural markets here, noted for their new-found disposable incomes, will play a key role. In the coming years, China and India are the ones tipped to grow at 20% plus for the company," says Konishi.

According to him, gadgetinterest is particularly on the rise in India's rural areas, a fact that is reflected in the company's choice of locations for its exclusive showrooms across the country. Canon has launched an ambitious plan to roll out exclusive retail stores across India, and 30 of them have already been launched across 19 cities, including Nasik, Indore and Mysore. Konishi says 70 more will be opened this year, and 300 by 2013, and points out that already, over 50% of revenues are being generated outside of the metros. Canon is banking on that rural push to achieve a 30% revenue growth next year, compared to an average 35% over the past five years.

Given that the gadget world is a predatory one where a new breakthrough preys on an older one, digital cameras were once thought to be easy fodder for mobile phone cameras. Konishi says the fears were completely misplaced. "Mobile cameras actually sparked an interest in photography among the masses, which in turn led many of them to buy a digital camera for better output. What began as a passing interest for many when they began clicking with mobile phones has now grown into a serious passion, for which they now rely on digital cameras. In fact, the professional camera segment has been growing for us."

In the intensely-competitive world of consumer electronics, Canon is also exploring new business verticals, of which one of the new stars is the managed-print services (MPS), which addresses costreduction in the area of printouts taken in offices. The MPS market is still in its infancy in India, but Canon has managed to rope in 40 large corporates in the country to use this offering to drastically cut on expenses incurred in print-outs at offices. MPS is being offered not as a mere cost-saving formula, but a paradigm shift in the way companies have to look at their printing, copying and documentation activities across departments to achieve optimal efficiency.
Worldwide, there are major players like Xerox, HP and Ricoh in the MPS segment, but Canon sees a significant market for the vertical in India, given the scant attention given to print-cost management in many offices. "The managed document services offering comprises a complete solution for corporates, covering not only printing or copying but everything from buying solutions to reduction of overall costs and increase in efficiency," says Konishi. The MPS concept initially caught on in the West, and is now catching the eye of Indian corporates. Canon is expecting to have over 50 large corporates to have the MPS solution by the year-end. The crux of the concept, he says, is not merely to have a consumables buying solution, but to reduce the overall costs and increase efficiency levels.

Canon is also betting on the e-governance projects in the country to contribute to its revenues. The company has partnered with TCS in the passport seva project for passport automation, recently completed trials using a systems integrator for the government's UID (Aadhar) project, and its image capturing technology has been used in an Employees State Insurance Corporation project. Konishi admits that some segments, like printers for home use, have been flat for a while, but he feels the encouraging growth in tier-II and III cities and an overall rural pull is more than making up for it.

KENSAKU KONISHI

CEO & PRESIDENT

Canon India

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

ENERGY QUOTIENT

ENERGY CONSUMERS IN TIME WARP

SOMA BANERJEE

Indian energy consumers are living in a time wrap, far removed from global realities. Be it petroleum products, electricity or coal, skewed pricing policies and inability to propel growth in these vital sectors have created a regime where energy consumers are led to live in a fool's paradise completely oblivious to the need of conservation and sustainability. Artificially controlled low fuel prices, coupled with complete absence of political will and regulatory failure, have insulated Indian energy consumers so much that price shocks look almost inevitable sooner than later. The government needs to show the grit and denationalise the coal sector, allow power tariffs to reflect true costs of fuel and encourage fuel suppliers to evolve into fuel managers who can ensure adequate supplies of fuel to meet the growing energy needs of the economy. The government's approach paper to the 12th Five Year plan calls for Coal India to become a coal supplier and not just a mining company: "…. Should plan to import coal to meet coal demands. This requires blending of imported and domestic coal as supplied by Coal India," the approach paper says.

Let us focus on electricity and the fuel for running power plants vis-a-vis the tariff at which consumers buy power. According to reported information, Tata Power that will be commissioning the country's first super critical power plant and the much-famed ultra mega project shortly, has had to incur a huge escalation in fuel costs. The company has developed the power plant at Mundra based on imported coal. Coal prices in Indonesia, where Tata Power had bought into a mine, have increased from $24 a tonne in 2006 (when the project was bid) to $60 a tonne now. The global picture is even sharper. Average imported coal prices have moved from $99 a tonne to $120 a tonne in the last five years. It is being estimated that the dependence on imported coal is set to rise in the coming years and there is no escaping the hardening commodity prices. An energy report by CLSA estimates almost 30% of the additional coal requirement for power plants will be met by imported coal. Production of domestic coal supplies have fallen short consistently with most supply commitments remaining unfulfilled. It is being estimated that the shortfall in domestic coal supplies are set to increase from 60 metric tonne in FY 2012 to 200 mt by FY 17.

On the price front, the picture is even bleaker. While the average cost of supply (all-India) level increased from . 2.64 per unit to . 3.42 per unit, i.e., an increase of 30%, the increase in revenue has been only 18% (due to low tariffs). Regulators that are empowered to ask for tariff revisions on their own if distribution companies or state utilities fail to do so too have not played their role. Result: huge revenue gaps and hefty increases in the losses of state utilities. As many as five states have not touched tariffs over five years, while seven states have revised tariffs in the last three to five years. The rising fuel costs coupled with operational costs and employee costs have only led to higher losses.

According to a study by AF Mercados EMI on distribution tariffs, states would need to increase tariffs between

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Monday, August 29, 2011

EDITORIAL 29.08.11