Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventing undesirable flirtations or transcending clandestine love affairs, they often don't work. Where both parties are known to loathe each other, only a rash parent, desensitised by the thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing full well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf.
The single, strong parent in this case was a desperate State Department – with John Negroponte as the ghoulish go-between and Gordon Brown as the blushing bridesmaid – fearful that if it did not push this through both parties might soon be too old for recycling. The bride was certainly in a hurry, the groom less so. Brokers from both sides engaged in lengthy negotiations on the size of the dowry. Her broker was and remains Rehman Malik, a former boss of Pakistan's FIA, who has been investigated for corruption by the National Accountability Bureau and who served nearly a year in prison after Benazir's fall, then became one of her business partners and is currently under investigation (with her) by a Spanish court looking into a company called Petroline FZC, which made questionable payments to Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Documents, if genuine, show that she chaired the company. She may have been in a hurry but she did not wish to be seen taking the arm of a uniformed president. He was not prepared to forgive her past. The couple's distaste for each other yielded to a mutual dependence on the United States. Neither party could say 'no', though Musharraf hoped the union could be effected inconspicuously. Fat chance.
Both parties made concessions. She agreed that he could take off his uniform after his 're-election' by Parliament, but it had to be before the next general election. (He has now done this, leaving himself dependent on the goodwill of his successor as army chief of staff.) He pushed through a legal ruling – yet another sordid first in the country's history – known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, which withdrew all cases of corruption pending against politicians accused of looting the national treasury. The ruling was crucial for her since she hoped that the money-laundering and corruption cases pending in three European courts – in Valencia, Geneva and London – would now be dismissed. This doesn't seem to have happened.
Many Pakistanis – not just the mutinous and mischievous types who have to be locked up at regular intervals – were repelled, and coverage of 'the deal' in the Pakistan media was universally hostile, except on state television. The 'breakthrough' was loudly trumpeted in the West, however, and a whitewashed Benazir Bhutto was presented on US networks and BBC TV news as the champion of Pakistani democracy – reporters loyally referred to her as 'the former prime minister' rather than the fugitive politician facing corruption charges in several countries.
She had returned the favour in advance by expressing sympathy for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, lunching with the Israeli ambassador to the UN (a litmus test) and pledging to 'wipe out terrorism' in her own country. In 1979 a previous military dictator had bumped off her father with Washington's approval, and perhaps she thought it would be safer to seek permanent shelter underneath the imperial umbrella. HarperCollins had paid her half a million dollars to write a new book. The working title she chose was 'Reconciliation'.
As for the general, he had begun his period in office in 1999 by bowing to the spirit of the age and titling himself 'chief executive' rather than 'chief martial law administrator', which had been the norm. Like his predecessors, he promised he would stay in power only for a limited period, pledging in 2003 to resign as army chief of staff in 2004. Like his predecessors, he ignored his pledge. Martial law always begins with the promise of a new order that will sweep away the filth and corruption that marked the old one: in this case it toppled the civilian administrations of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. But 'new orders' are not forward movements, more military detours that further weaken the shaky foundations of a country and its institutions. Within a decade the uniformed ruler will be overtaken by a new upheaval.
Dreaming of her glory days in the last century, Benazir wanted a large reception on her return. The general was unhappy. The intelligence agencies (as well as her own security advisers) warned her of the dangers. She had declared war on the terrorists and they had threatened to kill her. But she was adamant. She wanted to demonstrate her popularity to the world and to her political rivals, including those inside her own fiefdom, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP). For a whole month before she boarded the Dubai-Karachi flight, the PPP were busy recruiting volunteers from all over the country to welcome her. Up to 200,000 people lined the streets, but it was a far cry from the million who turned up in Lahore in 1986 when a very different Benazir returned to challenge General Zia ul-Haq. The plan had been to move slowly in the Bhuttomobile from Karachi airport to the tomb of the country's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, where she would make a speech. It was not to be. As darkness fell, the bombers struck. Who they were and who sent them remains a mystery. She was unhurt, but 130 people died, including some of the policemen guarding her. The wedding reception had led to mayhem.
The general, while promising to collaborate with Benazir, was coolly making arrangements to prolong his own stay at President's House. Even before her arrival he had considered taking drastic action to dodge the obstacles that stood in his way, but his generals (and the US Embassy) seemed unconvinced. The bombing of Benazir's cavalcade reopened the debate. Pakistan, if not exactly the erupting volcano portrayed in the Western media, was being shaken by all sorts of explosions. The legal profession, up in arms at Musharraf's recent dismissal of the chief justice, had won a temporary victory, resulting in a fiercely independent Supreme Court. The independent TV networks continued to broadcast reports that challenged official propaganda. Investigative journalism is never popular with governments and the general often contrasted the deference with which he was treated by the US networks and BBC television with the 'unruly' questioning inflicted on him by local journalists: it 'misled the people'. He had become obsessed with the media coverage of the lawyers' revolt. A decline in his popularity increased the paranoia. His advisers were people he had promoted. Generals who had expressed divergent opinions in 'frank and informal get-togethers' had been retired. His political allies were worried that their opportunities to enrich themselves even further would be curtailed if they had to share power with Benazir.
What if the Supreme Court were now to declare his re-election by a dying and unrepresentative assembly illegal? To ward off disaster, the ISI had been preparing blackmail flicks: agents secretly filmed some of the Supreme Court judges in flagrante. But so unpopular had Musharraf become that even the sight of judicial venerables in bed might not have done the trick. It might even have increased their support. (In 1968, when a right-wing, pro-military rag in Lahore published an attack on me, it revealed that I 'had attended sex orgies in a French country house organised by [my] friend, the Jew Cohn-Bendit. All the fifty women in the swimming-pool were Jewish.' Alas, this was totally false, but my parents were amazed at the number of people who congratulated them on my virility.) Musharraf decided that blackmail wasn't worth the risk. Only firm action could 'restore order' – i.e. save his skin. The usual treatment in these cases is a declaration of martial law. But what if the country is already being governed by the army chief of staff? The solution is simple. Treble the dose. Organise a coup within a coup. That is what Musharraf decided to do. Washington was informed a few weeks in advance, Downing Street somewhat later. Benazir's patrons in the West told her what was about to happen and she, foolishly for a political leader who has just returned to her country, evacuated to Dubai.
On 3 November Musharraf, as chief of the army, suspended the 1973 constitution and imposed a state of emergency: all non-government TV channels were taken off the air, the mobile phone networks were jammed, paramilitary units surrounded the Supreme Court. The chief justice convened an emergency bench of judges, who – heroically – declared the new dispensation 'illegal and unconstitutional'. They were unceremoniously removed and put under house arrest. Pakistan's judges have usually been acquiescent. Those who in the past resisted military leaders were soon bullied out of it, so the decision of this chief justice took the country by surprise and won him great admiration. Global media coverage of Pakistan suggests a country of generals, corrupt politicians and bearded lunatics: the struggle to reinstate the chief justice had presented a different picture.
Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent member of the PPP, minister of the interior in Benazir's first government and currently president of the Bar Association, was arrested and placed in solitary confinement. Several thousand political and civil rights activists were picked up. Imran Khan, a fierce and incorruptible opponent of the regime, was arrested, charged with 'state terrorism' – for which the penalty is death or life imprisonment – and taken in handcuffs to a remote high-security prison. Musharraf, Khan argued, had begun yet another shabby chapter in Pakistan's history.
Lawyers were arrested all over the country; many were physically attacked by policemen. Humiliate them was the order, and the police obliged. A lawyer, 'Omar', circulated an account of what happened:
While I was standing talking to my colleagues, we saw the police go wild on the orders of a superior officer. In riot gear . . . brandishing weapons and sticks, about a hundred policemen attacked us . . . and seemed intensely happy at doing so. We all ran.
Some of us who were not as nimble on their feet as others were caught by the police and beaten mercilessly. We were then locked in police vans used to transport convicted prisoners. Everyone was stunned at this show of brute force but it did not end. The police went on mayhem inside the court premises and court buildings . . . Those of us who were arrested were taken to various police stations and put in lockups. At midnight, we were told that we were being shifted to jail. We could not get bail as our fundamental rights were suspended. Sixty lawyers were put into a police van ten feet by four feet wide and five feet in height. We were squashed like sardines. When the van reached the jail, we were told that we could not get [out] until orders of our detention were received by the jail authorities. Our older colleagues started to suffocate, some fainted, others started to panic because of claustrophobia. The police ignored our screams and refused to open the van doors. Finally, after three hours . . . we were let out and taken to mosquito-infected barracks where the food given to us smelled like sewage water.
Geo, the largest TV network, had long since located its broadcasting facilities in Dubai. It was a strange sensation watching the network in London when the screens were blank in Pakistan. On the very first day of the emergency I saw Hamid Mir, a journalist loathed by the general, reporting from Islamabad and asserting that the US Embassy had given the green light to the coup because it regarded the chief justice as a nuisance and wrongly believed him to be 'a Taliban sympathiser'. Certainly no US spokesperson or State Department adjunct in the Foreign Office criticised the dismissal of the eight Supreme Court judges or their arrest: that was the quid pro quo for Washington's insistence that Musharraf take off his uniform. If he was going to turn civilian he wanted all the other rules twisted in his favour. A newly appointed stooge Supreme Court would soon help him with the rule-bending. As would the authorities in Dubai, who suspended Geo's facilities.
In the evening of that first day, and after several delays, a flustered General Musharraf, his hair badly dyed, appeared on TV, trying to look like the sort of leader who wants it understood that the political crisis is to be discussed with gravity and sangfroid. Instead, he came across as a dumbed down dictator fearful for his own political future. His performance as he broadcast to the nation, first in Urdu and then in English, was incoherent. The gist was simple: he had to act because the Supreme Court had 'so demoralised our state agencies that we can't fight the "war on terror"' and the TV networks had become 'totally irresponsible'. 'I have imposed emergency,' he said halfway through his diatribe, adding, with a contemptuous gesture: 'You must have seen it on TV.' Was he being sarcastic, given that most channels had been shut down? Who knows? Mohammed Hanif, the sharp-witted head of the BBC's Urdu Service, which monitored the broadcast, confessed himself flummoxed when he wrote up what he heard. He had no doubt that the Urdu version of the speech was the general's own work. Hanif's deconstruction – he quoted the general in Urdu and in English – deserved a broadcast all of its own:
Here are some random things he said. And trust me, these things were said quite randomly. Yes, he did say: 'Extremism bahut extreme ho gaya hai [extremism has become too extreme] . . . Nobody is scared of us anymore . . . Islamabad is full of extremists . . . There is a government within government . . . Officials are being asked to the courts . . . Officials are being insulted by the judiciary.'
At one point he appeared wistful when reminiscing about his first three years in power: 'I had total control.' You were almost tempted to ask: 'What happened then, uncle?' But obviously, uncle didn't need any prompting. He launched into his routine about three stages of democracy. He claimed he was about to launch the third and final phase of democracy (the way he said it, he managed to make it sound like the Final Solution). And just when you thought he was about to make his point, he took an abrupt turn and plunged into a deep pool of self-pity. This involved a long-winded anecdote about how the Supreme Court judges would rather attend a colleague's daughter's wedding than just get it over with and decide that he is a constitutional president . . . I have heard some dictators' speeches in my life, but nobody has gone so far as to mention someone's daughter's wedding as a reason for imposing martial law on the country.
When for the last few minutes of his speech he addressed his audience in the West in English, I suddenly felt a deep sense of humiliation. This part of his speech was scripted. Sentences began and ended. I felt humiliated that my president not only thinks that we are not evolved enough for things like democracy and human rights, but that we can't even handle proper syntax and grammar.
The English-language version put the emphasis on the 'war on terror': Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, he said, would have done what he did to preserve the 'integrity of their country' – the mention of Lincoln was obviously intended for the US market. In Pakistan's military academies the usual soldier-heroes are Napoleon, De Gaulle and Atatürk.
What did Benazir, now out manoeuvred, make of the speech as she watched it on TV in her Dubai sanctuary? Her first response was to say she was shocked, which was slightly disingenuous. Even if she had not been told in advance that an emergency would be declared, it was hardly a secret – for one thing, Condoleezza Rice had made a token public appeal to Musharraf not to take this course. Yet for more than 24 hours she was unable to give a clear response. At one point she even criticised the chief justice for being too provocative.
Agitated phone calls from Pakistan persuaded her to return to Karachi. To put her in her place, the authorities kept her plane waiting on the tarmac. When she finally reached the VIP lounge, her PPP colleagues told her that unless she denounced the emergency there would be a split in the party. Outsmarted and abandoned by Musharraf, she couldn't take the risk of losing key figures in her party. She denounced the emergency and its perpetrator, established contact with the beleaguered opposition, and, as if putting on a new lipstick, declared that she would lead the struggle to get rid of the dictator. She now tried to call on the chief justice to express her sympathy but wasn't allowed near his residence.
She could have followed the example of her imprisoned colleague Aitzaz Ahsan, but she was envious of him: he had become far too popular in Pakistan. He'd even had the nerve to go to Washington, where he was politely received by society and inspected as a possible substitute should things go badly wrong. Not a single message had flowed from her Blackberry to congratulate him on his victories in the struggle to reinstate the chief justice. Ahsan had advised her against any deal with Musharraf. When generals are against the wall, he is reported to have told her, they resort to desperate and irrational measures. Others who offered similar advice in gentler language were also batted away. She was the PPP's 'chairperson-for-life' and brooked no dissent. The fact that Ahsan was proved right irritated her even more. Any notion of political morality had long ago been dumped. The very idea of a party with a consistent set of beliefs was regarded as ridiculous and outdated. Ahsan was now safe in prison, far from the madding hordes of Western journalists whom she received in style during the few days she spent under house arrest and afterwards. She made a few polite noises about his imprisonment, but nothing more.
The go-between from Washington arrived at very short notice. Negroponte spent some time with Musharraf and spoke to Benazir, still insisting that they make up and go through with the deal. She immediately toned down her criticisms, but the general was scathing and said in public that there was no way she could win the elections scheduled for January. No doubt the ISI are going to rig them in style. Had she remained loyal to him she might have lost public support, but he would have made sure she had a substantial presence in the new parliament. Now everything is up for grabs again. The opinion polls show that her old rival, Nawaz Sharif, is well ahead of her. Musharraf's hasty pilgrimage to Mecca was probably an attempt to secure Saudi mediation in case he has to cut a deal with the Sharif brothers – who have been living in exile in Saudi Arabia – and sideline her completely. Both sides deny that a deal was done, but Sharif returned to Pakistan with Saudi blessings and an armour-plated Cadillac as a special gift from the king. Little doubt that Riyadh would rather him than Benazir.
With the country still under a state of emergency and the largest media network refusing to sign the oath of allegiance that would allow them back on air, the polls scheduled for January can only be a general's election. It's hardly a secret that the ISI and the civilian bureaucracy will decide who wins and where, and some of the opposition parties are, wisely, considering a boycott. Nawaz Sharif told the press that in the course of a long telephone call he had failed to persuade Benazir to join it and thereby render the process null and void from the start. But now that he is back in the country it's unclear whether he will still go ahead with the boycott or try and negotiate a certain number of seats with the Chaudhrys of Gujrat, who had betrayed him by setting up a faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, the PML-Q, to support Musharraf. Perhaps a shared bout of amnesia will bring them together again.
What will Benazir do now? Washington's leverage in Islamabad is limited, which is why they wanted her to be involved in the first place. 'It's always better,' the US ambassador half-joked at a reception, 'to have two phone numbers in a capital.' That may be so, but they cannot guarantee her the prime ministership or even a fair election. In his death-cell, her father mulled over similar problems and came to slightly different conclusions. If I Am Assassinated, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's last will and testament, was written in semi-Gramsci mode, but the meaning wasn't lost on his colleagues:
I entirely agree that the people of Pakistan will not tolerate foreign hegemony. On the basis of the self-same logic, the people of Pakistan would never agree to an internal hegemony. The two hegemonies complement each other. If our people meekly submit to internal hegemony, a priori, they will have to submit to external hegemony. This is so because the strength and power of external hegemony is far greater than that of internal hegemony. If the people are too terrified to resist the weaker force, it is not possible for them to resist the stronger force. The acceptance of or acquiescence in internal hegemony means submission to external hegemony.
After he was hanged in April 1979, the text acquired a semi-sacred status among his supporters. But, when in power, Bhutto père had failed to develop any counter-hegemonic strategy or institutions, other than the 1973 constitution drafted by the veteran civil rights lawyer Mahmud Ali Kasuri (whose son Khurshid was until recently the foreign minister). A personality-driven, autocratic style of governance had neutered the spirit of the party, encouraged careerists and finally paved the way for his enemies. He was the victim of a grave injustice; his death removed all the warts and transformed him into a martyr. More than half the country, mainly the poor, mourned his passing.
The tragedy led to the PPP being treated as a family heirloom, which was unhealthy for both party and country. It provided the Bhuttos with a vote-bank and large reserves. But the experience of her father's trial and death radicalised and politicised his daughter. She would have preferred, she told me at the time, to be a diplomat. Her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, were in London, having been forbidden to return home by their imprisoned father. The burden of trying to save her father's life fell on Benazir and her mother, Nusrat, and the courage they exhibited won them the silent respect of a frightened majority. They refused to cave in to General Zia's military dictatorship, which apart from anything else was invoking Islam to claw back rights won by women in previous decades. Benazir and Nusrat Bhutto were arrested and released several times. Their health began to suffer. Nusrat was allowed to leave the country to seek medical advice in 1982.
Benazir was released a little more than a year later thanks, in part, to US pressure orchestrated by her old Harvard friend Peter Galbraith. She later described the period in her memoir, Daughter of the East (1988); it included photo-captions such as: 'Shortly after President Reagan praised the regime for making "great strides towards democracy", Zia's henchmen gunned down peaceful demonstrators marking Pakistan Independence Day. The police were just as brutal to those protesting at the attack on my jeep in January 1987.'
Her tiny Barbican flat in London became the centre of opposition to the dictatorship, and it was here that we often discussed a campaign to take on the generals. Benazir had built up her position by steadfastly and peacefully resisting the military and replying to every slander with a cutting retort. Her brothers had been operating on a different level. They set up an armed group, al-Zulfiqar, whose declared aim was to harass and weaken the regime by targeting 'traitors who had collaborated with Zia'. The principal volunteers were recruited inside Pakistan and in 1980 they were provided with a base in Afghanistan, where the pro-Moscow Communists had taken power three years before. It is a sad story with a fair share of factionalism, show-trials, petty rivalries, fantasies of every sort and death for the group's less fortunate members.
In March 1981 Murtaza and Shahnawaz Bhutto were placed on the FIA's most wanted list. They had hijacked a Pakistan International airliner soon after it left Karachi (a power cut had paralysed the X-ray machines, enabling the hijackers to take their weapons on board); it was diverted to Kabul. Here Murtaza took over and demanded the release of political prisoners. A young military officer on board the flight was murdered. The plane refuelled and went on to Damascus, where the Syrian spymaster General Kholi took charge and ensured there were no more deaths. The fact that there were American passengers on the plane was a major consideration for the generals and, for that reason alone, the prisoners in Pakistan were released and flown to Tripoli.
This was seen as a victory and welcomed as such by the PPP in Pakistan. For the first time the group began to be taken seriously. A key target inside the country was Maulvi Mushtaq Hussain, the chief justice of the High Court in Lahore, who, in 1978, had sentenced Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to death, and whose behaviour in court had shocked even those who were hostile to the PPP. (Among other charges, he had accused Bhutto of 'pretending to be a Muslim' – his mother was a Hindu convert.) Mushtaq was in a friend's car being driven to his home in Lahore's Model Town area when al-Zulfiqar gunmen opened fire. The judge survived, but his friend and the driver died. The friend was one of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat: Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi, a dodgy businessman who had ostentatiously asked General Zia to make him a present of the 'sacred pen' with which he had signed Bhutto's death warrant. The pen became a family heirloom. Zahoor Elahi may not have been the target but al-Zulfiqar, embarrassed at missing the judge, claimed he was also on their list, which may have been true.
It is the next generation of Chaudhrys that currently provides Musharraf with civilian ballast: Zahoor Elahi's son Shujaat organised the split with Nawaz Sharif and created the splinter PML-Q to ease the growing pains of the new regime. He still fixes deals and wanted an emergency imposed much earlier to circumvent the deal with Benazir. He will now mastermind the general's election campaign. His cousin Pervez Elahi is chief minister of the Punjab; his son, in turn, is busy continuing the family tradition by evicting tenants and buying up all the available land on the edge of Lahore. It has not been divulged which member of the family guards the sacred pen.
The hijacking meanwhile had annoyed Moscow, and the regime in Afghanistan asked the Bhutto brothers to find another refuge. While in Kabul, they had married two Afghan sisters, Fauzia and Rehana Fasihudin, daughters of a senior official at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Together with their wives they now left the country and after a sojourn in Syria and possibly Libya ended up in Europe. The reunion with their sister took place on the French Riviera in 1985, a setting better suited to the lifestyles of all three siblings.
The young men feared General Zia's agents. Each had a young daughter. Shahnawaz lived in an apartment in Cannes. He had been in charge of the 'military apparatus' and life in Kabul had exacted a heavier toll on him. He was edgy and nervous. Relations with his wife were stormy and he told his sister that he was preparing to divorce her. 'There's never been a divorce in the family. Your marriage wasn't even an arranged one . . . You chose to marry Rehana. You must live with it,' was Benazir's revealing reply, according to her memoir. And then Shahnawaz was found dead in his apartment. His wife claimed he had taken poison, but according to Benazir nobody in the family believed her story; there had been violence in the room and his papers had been searched. Rehana looked immaculate, which disturbed the family. She was imprisoned for three months under the 'Good Samaritan' law for not having gone to the assistance of a dying person. After her release she settled in the United States. 'Had the CIA killed him as a friendly gesture towards their favourite dictator?' Benazir speculated. She raised other questions too: had the sisters become ISI agents? The truth remains hidden. Not long afterwards Murtaza divorced Fauzia, but kept custody of their three-year-old daughter, Fatima, and moved to Damascus. Here he had plenty of time for reflection and told friends that too many mistakes had been made. In 1986 he met Ghinwa Itaoui, a young teacher who had fled Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1982. She calmed him down and took charge of Fatima's education. They were married in 1989 and a son, Zulfiqar, was born the following year.
Benazir returned to Pakistan in 1986 and was greeted by large crowds who came out to show their affection for her and to demonstrate their anger with the regime. She campaigned all over the country, but felt increasingly that for some of the more religious-minded a young unmarried woman was not acceptable as a leader. How could she visit Saudi Arabia without a husband? An offer of marriage from the Zardari family was accepted and she married Asif in 1987. She had worried that any husband would find it difficult to deal with the periods of separation her nomadic political life would entail, but Zardari was perfectly capable of occupying himself.
A year later General Zia's plane blew up in midair. In the elections that followed the PPP won the largest number of seats. Benazir became prime minister, but was hemmed in by the army on one side and the president, the army's favourite bureaucrat, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, on the other. She told me at the time that she felt powerless. They wouldn't let her do anything. 'Tell the people,' was my advice. Tell them why you can't deliver on your promises to provide free education, proper sanitation, clean water and health services to improve the high infant mortality rate. She didn't tell them; in fact she did nothing at all apart from provide employment to some of her supporters. Being in power, it seemed, was satisfaction enough. She went on state visits: met and liked Mrs Thatcher and later, with her new husband in tow, was received politely by the Saudi king. In the meantime there were other plots afoot – the opposition was literally buying off some of her MPs – and in August 1990 her government was removed by presidential decree and Zia's protégés, the Sharif brothers, were back in power.
By the time she was re-elected in 1993, she had abandoned all idea of reform, but that she was in a hurry to do something became clear when she appointed her husband minister for investment, making him responsible for all investment offers from home and abroad. It is widely alleged that the couple accumulated $1.5 billion. The high command of the Pakistan People's Party now became a machine for making money, but without any trickle-down mechanism. This period marked the complete degeneration of the party. All that shame-faced party members could say, when I asked, was that 'everybody does it all over the world,' thus accepting that the cash nexus was now all that mattered. In foreign policy her legacy was mixed. She refused to sanction an anti-Indian military adventure in Kargil on the Himalayan slopes, but to make up for it, as I wrote in the LRB (15 April 1999), her government backed the Taliban takeover in Kabul – which makes it doubly ironic that Washington and London should be promoting her as a champion of democracy.
Murtaza Bhutto had contested the elections from abroad and won a seat in the Sind provincial legislature. He returned home and expressed his unhappiness with his sister's agenda. Family gatherings became tense. Murtaza had his weaknesses, but he wasn't corrupt and he argued in favour of the old party's radical manifesto. He made no secret of the fact that he regarded Zardari as an interloper whose only interest was money. Nusrat Bhutto suggested that Murtaza be made the chief minister of Sind: Benazir's response was to remove her mother as chairperson of the PPP. Any sympathy Murtaza may have felt for his sister turned to loathing. He no longer felt obliged to control his tongue and at every possible opportunity lambasted Zardari and the corrupt regime over which his sister presided. It was difficult to fault him on the facts. The incumbent chief minister of Sind was Abdullah Shah, one of Zardari's creatures. He began to harass Murtaza's supporters.
Murtaza decided to confront the organ-grinder himself. He rang Zardari and invited him round for an informal chat sans bodyguards to try and settle the problems within the family. Zardari agreed. As the two men were pacing the garden, Murtaza's retainers appeared and grabbed Zardari. Someone brought out a cut-throat razor and some warm water and Murtaza shaved off half of Zardari's moustache to the delight of the retainers, then told him to get lost. A fuming Zardari, who had probably feared much worse, was compelled to shave off the other half at home. The media, bemused, were informed that the new clean-shaven consort had accepted intelligence advice that the moustache made him too recognisable a target. In which case why did he allow it to sprout again immediately afterwards?
Some months later, in September 1996, as Murtaza and his entourage were returning home from a political meeting, they were ambushed, just outside their house, by some seventy armed policemen accompanied by four senior officers. A number of snipers were positioned in surrounding trees. The street lights had been switched off. Murtaza clearly understood what was happening and got out of his car with his hands raised; his bodyguards were instructed not to open fire. The police opened fire instead and seven men were killed, Murtaza among them. The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police logbooks, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated, the provincial PPP governor (regarded as untrustworthy) dispatched to a non-event in Egypt, a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level.
While the ambush was being prepared, the police had sealed off Murtaza's house (from which his father had been lifted by Zia's commandos in 1978). The family inside felt something was wrong. At this point, a remarkably composed Fatima Bhutto, aged 14, decided to ring her aunt at Prime Minister's House. The conversation that followed remains imprinted on her memory and a few years ago she gave me an account of it. It was Zardari who took her call:
Fatima: I wish to speak to my aunt, please.
Zardari: It's not possible.
Fatima: Why? [At this point, Fatima says she heard loud wails and what sounded like fake crying.]
Zardari: She's hysterical, can't you hear?
Fatima: Why?
Zardari: Don't you know? Your father's been shot.
Fatima and Ghinwa found out where Murtaza had been taken and rushed out of the house. There was no sign on the street outside that anything had happened: the scene of the killing had been wiped clean of all evidence. There were no traces of blood and no signs of any disturbance. They drove straight to the hospital but it was too late; Murtaza was already dead. Later they learned that he had been left bleeding on the ground for almost an hour before being taken to a hospital where there were no emergency facilities of any kind.
When Benazir arrived to attend her brother's funeral in Larkana, angry crowds stoned her limo. She had to retreat. In another unusual display of emotion, local people encouraged Murtaza's widow to attend the actual burial ceremony in defiance of Islamic tradition. According to Fatima, one of Benazir's hangers-on instigated legal proceedings against Ghinwa in a religious court for breaching Islamic law. Nothing was sacred.
Anyone who witnessed Murtaza's murder was arrested; one witness died in prison. When Fatima rang Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested and not the killers she was told: 'Look, you're very young. You don't understand things.' Perhaps it was for this reason that the kind aunt decided to encourage Fatima's blood-mother, Fauzia, whom she had previously denounced as a murderer in the pay of General Zia, to come to Pakistan and claim custody of Fatima. No mystery as to who paid her fare from California. Fatima and Ghinwa Bhutto resisted and the attempt failed. Benazir then tried a softer approach and insisted that Fatima accompany her to New York, where she was going to address the UN Assembly. Ghinwa Bhutto approached friends in Damascus and had her two children flown out of the country. Fatima later discovered that Fauzia had been seen hobnobbing with Benazir in New York.
In November 1996 Benazir was once again removed from power, this time by her own president, Farooq Leghari, a PPP stalwart. He cited corruption, but what had also angered him was the ISI's crude attempt at blackmail – the intelligence agencies had photographed Leghari's daughter meeting a boyfriend and threatened to go public. The week Benazir fell, the chief minister of Sind, Abdullah Shah, hopped on a motorboat and fled Karachi for the Gulf and thence the US.
A judicial tribunal had been appointed by Benazir's government to inquire into the circumstances leading to Murtaza's death. Headed by a Supreme Court judge, it took detailed evidence from all parties. Murtaza's lawyers accused Zardari, Abdullah Shah and two senior police officials of conspiracy to murder. Benazir (now out of power) accepted that there had been a conspiracy, but suggested that 'the hidden hand responsible for this was President Farooq Ahmad Leghari': the intention, she said, was to 'kill a Bhutto to get rid of a Bhutto'. Nobody took this seriously. Given all that had happened, it was an incredible suggestion.
The tribunal said there was no legally acceptable evidence to link Zardari to the incident, but accepted that 'this was a case of extra-judicial killings by the police' and concluded that such an incident could not have taken place without approval from the highest quarters. Nothing happened. Eleven years later, Fatima Bhutto publicly accused Zardari; she also claimed that many of those involved that day appear to have been rewarded for their actions. In an interview on an independent TV station just before the emergency was imposed, Benazir was asked to explain how it happened that her brother had bled to death outside his home while she was prime minister. She walked out of the studio. A sharp op-ed piece by Fatima in the LA Times on 14 November elicited the following response: 'My niece is angry with me.' Well, yes.
Musharraf may have withdrawn the corruption charges, but three other cases are proceeding in Switzerland, Spain and Britain. In July 2003, after an investigation lasting several years, Daniel Devaud, a Geneva magistrate, convicted Mr and Mrs Asif Ali Zardari, in absentia, of money laundering. They had accepted $15 million in bribes from two Swiss companies, SGS and Cotecna. The couple were sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to return $11.9 million to the government of Pakistan. 'I certainly don't have any doubts about the judgments I handed down,' Devaud told the BBC. Benazir appealed, thus forcing a new investigation. On 19 September 2005 she appeared in a Geneva court and tried to detach herself from the rest of the family: she hadn't been involved, she said: it was a matter for her husband and her mother (afflicted with Alzheimer's disease). She knew nothing of the accounts. And what of the agreement her agent Jens Schlegelmilch had signed according to which, in case of her and Zardari's death, the assets of Bomer Finance Company would be divvied out equally between the Zardari and Bhutto families? She knew nothing of that either. And the £120,000 diamond necklace in the bank vault paid for by Zardari? It was intended for her, but she had rejected the gift as 'inappropriate'. The case continues. Last month Musharraf told Owen Bennett-Jones of the BBC World Service that his government would not interfere with the proceedings: 'That's up to the Swiss government. Depends on them. It's a case in their courts.'
In Britain the legal shenanigans concern the $3.4 million Rockwood estate in Surrey, bought by offshore companies on behalf of Zardari in 1995 and refurbished to his exacting tastes. Zardari denied owning the estate. Then when the court was about to instruct the liquidators to sell it and return the proceeds to the Pakistan government, Zardari came forward and accepted ownership. Last year, Lord Justice Collins ruled that, while he was not making any 'findings of fact', there was a 'reasonable prospect' that the Pakistan government might be able to establish that Rockwood had been bought and furnished with 'the fruits of corruption'. A close friend of Benazir told me that she was genuinely not involved in this one, since Zardari wasn't thinking of spending much time there with her.
Daniel Markey, formerly of the State Department and currently senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, explained why Washington had pushed the marriage of convenience: 'A progressive, reform-minded, more cosmopolitan party in government would help the US.' As their finances reveal, the Zardaris are certainly cosmopolitan.
What then is at stake in Pakistan as far as Washington is concerned? 'The concern I have,' Robert Gates, the US secretary for defense, recently said, 'is that the longer the internal problems continue, the more distracted the Pakistani army and security services will be in terms of the internal situation rather than focusing on the terrorist threat in the frontier area.' But one reason for the internal crisis is Washington's over-reliance on Musharraf and the Pakistani military. It is Washington's support and funding that have given him the confidence to operate as he pleases. But the thoughtless Western military occupation of Afghanistan is obviously crucial, since the instability in Kabul seeps into Peshawar and the tribal areas between the two countries. The state of emergency targeted the judiciary, opposition politicians and the independent media. All three groups were, in different ways, challenging the official line on Afghanistan and the 'war on
terror', the disappearance of political prisoners and the widespread use of torture in Pakistani prisons. The issues were being debated on television in a much more open fashion than happens anywhere in the West, where a blanket consensus on Afghanistan drowns all dissent. Musharraf argued that civil society was hampering the 'war on terror'. Hence the emergency. It's nonsense, of course. It's the war in the frontier regions that is creating dissent inside the army. Many do not want to fight. Hence the surrender of dozens of soldiers to Taliban guerrillas. This is the reason many junior officers are taking early retirement.
Western pundits blather on about the jihadi finger on the nuclear trigger. This is pure fantasy, reminiscent of a similar campaign almost three decades ago, when the threat wasn't the jihadis who were fighting alongside the West in Afghanistan, but nationalist military radicals. The cover story of Time magazine for 15 June 1979 dealt with Pakistan; a senior Western diplomat was quoted as saying that the big danger was 'that there is another Gaddafi down there, some radical major or colonel in the Pakistani army. We could wake up and find him in Zia's place one morning and, believe me, Pakistan wouldn't be the only place that would be destabilised.'
The Pakistan army is half a million strong. Its tentacles are everywhere: land, industry, public utilities and so on. It would require a cataclysmic upheaval (a US invasion and occupation, for example) for this army to feel threatened by a jihadi uprising. Two considerations unite senior officers: the unity of the organisation and keeping politicians at bay. One reason is the fear that they might lose the comforts and privileges they have acquired after decades of rule; but they also have the deep aversion to democracy that is the hallmark of most armies. Unused to accountability within their own ranks, it's difficult for them to accept it in society at large.
As southern Afghanistan collapses into chaos, and as corruption and massive inflation takes hold, the Taliban is gaining more and more recruits. The generals who convinced Benazir that control of Kabul via the Taliban would give them 'strategic depth' may have retired, but their successors know that the Afghans will not tolerate a long-term Western occupation. They hope for the return of a whitewashed Taliban. Instead of encouraging a regional solution that includes India, Iran and Russia, the US would prefer to see the Pakistan army as its permanent cop in Kabul. It won't work. In Pakistan itself the long night continues as the cycle restarts: military leadership promising reforms degenerates into tyranny, politicians promising social support to the people degenerate into oligarchs. Given that a better functioning neighbour is unlikely to intervene, Pakistan will oscillate between these two forms of rule for the foreseeable future. The people who feel they have tried everything and failed will return to a state of semi-sleep, unless something unpredictable rouses them again. This is always possible.
30 November
Tariq Ali's The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power will be published next year.
Other articles by this contributor:
Pakistan at Sixty • The Trouble with Pakistan
In Princes' Pockets • Saudi Oil
Mullahs and Heretics • A Secular History of Islam
Bitter Chill of Winter • Kashmir
The General in his Labyrinth • Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Tehelka::Education is Integral To India's Big Dream Of Human Empowerment
Tehelka:: Free. Fair. Fearless
Education Is Integral To India’s Big Dream Of Human Empowerment
One needs to find reasons for the poor index of human security. Especially in a country like India that aspires to be one of the relevant powers of the 21st century
C. UDAY BHASKAR
A FEW MONTHS ago India’s GDP crossed the one trillion dollar mark and if this was cause for some cheer, the more recent Forbes report, that on current individual fiscal worth, the number of Indian billionaires was greater than that of China seemed to burnish the image of a nation swiftly moving up the global ladder. However this feelgood mood was brought into sharp and unflattering context by two UN reports released last week. The UN Development Report for 2007 noted that on the Human Development Index (HDI), India had slipped from its rank of 126 in 2006 to 128 in 2007. And then, the UNESCO Education for All: Global Monitoring Report confirmed the downward trend when it announced that India had slipped from a rank of 100 to 105 over the last year.
While the UNDP Report this year dwelt more on climate change and its long term implications, taken together, these two reports and their assessment of India in terms of individual human security is cause for deep concern and should not be glossed over.
Illustration: NAOREM ASHISH
Some random figures as related to India and South Asia are deeply disturbing. India ranks 62 among 108 developing nations in the global Human Poverty Index . Despite the fact that India's per capita GDP has doubled in the 15 year period from 1990-2005, as many as 380 million Indians are afflicted by the DAD syndrome — $1 a day. It is equally shameful that as regards human security, India has had 2.5 million starvation deaths and 2 million sanitation-related deaths — and these are the more stark and visible indicators. China and Brazil with whom India is often compared have been placed at rank 81 and 70 respectively on the 2007 HDI.
To the extent that education is integral to human empowerment thereby creating more viable opportunities for improved individual security, India’s track record is patchy. While it has come down the global education ladder to position 105, it is appalling to acknowledge that for a country that is perceived to be an IT power and the back-office of the 21st century, a third of the world’s illiterates now live in India. Further disaggregated, the UNESCO estimates that India, Nigeria and Pakistan account for 27 percent of the world’s out-of-school children. What is most shameful — yes, that word again — is the fact that India’s deep socio-cultural bias against the girl child comes to the fore in the education domain. While official statistics take credit for a gross enrolment of 95 percent at the primary level, the drop-out at Class I is almost 15 percent — and the gender skewing is distressing. Among the drop-outs at this stage, up to 66 percent are girls and when combined with the gruesome statistics about female feticide, India as a collective stands deeply tainted.
WHAT ARE the reasons for this poor index of human security so unambiguously associated with a nation that aspires to be one of the more relevant powers of the 21st century? Resource constraints — yes, to the extent that India is able to spend only 4.1 percent of GNP for education. Here yet another report, the World Economic Forum and CII document Global Risk Network becomes relevant. Identifying six factors that can slow down the Indian economy, it makes reference to corruption and poor governance as being central to shaping India's potential growth. It may be recalled that when the late Rajiv Gandhi had become Prime Minister in late 1984, he bemoaned the fact that for every rupee that the government allocated towards development — which includes the spectrum of poverty alleviation, socio-economic improvement and education — only 16 paisa went towards the intended purpose with the remainder being siphoned off for personal gain. The grim reality 23 years later is that maybe just 6 paisa of the government rupee reach the sectors it is disbursed for and the rest is part of the corruption and graft malignancy that now engulfs India.
Unless this paradigm changes, it is more likely that next year, India will slip further down the global HDI end education ladder even while faring well at the macroeconomic front. Equitable and sustainable human security for one billion Indians, alas, remains elusive.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 48, Dated Dec 15 , 2007
Education Is Integral To India’s Big Dream Of Human Empowerment
One needs to find reasons for the poor index of human security. Especially in a country like India that aspires to be one of the relevant powers of the 21st century
C. UDAY BHASKAR
A FEW MONTHS ago India’s GDP crossed the one trillion dollar mark and if this was cause for some cheer, the more recent Forbes report, that on current individual fiscal worth, the number of Indian billionaires was greater than that of China seemed to burnish the image of a nation swiftly moving up the global ladder. However this feelgood mood was brought into sharp and unflattering context by two UN reports released last week. The UN Development Report for 2007 noted that on the Human Development Index (HDI), India had slipped from its rank of 126 in 2006 to 128 in 2007. And then, the UNESCO Education for All: Global Monitoring Report confirmed the downward trend when it announced that India had slipped from a rank of 100 to 105 over the last year.
While the UNDP Report this year dwelt more on climate change and its long term implications, taken together, these two reports and their assessment of India in terms of individual human security is cause for deep concern and should not be glossed over.
Illustration: NAOREM ASHISH
Some random figures as related to India and South Asia are deeply disturbing. India ranks 62 among 108 developing nations in the global Human Poverty Index . Despite the fact that India's per capita GDP has doubled in the 15 year period from 1990-2005, as many as 380 million Indians are afflicted by the DAD syndrome — $1 a day. It is equally shameful that as regards human security, India has had 2.5 million starvation deaths and 2 million sanitation-related deaths — and these are the more stark and visible indicators. China and Brazil with whom India is often compared have been placed at rank 81 and 70 respectively on the 2007 HDI.
To the extent that education is integral to human empowerment thereby creating more viable opportunities for improved individual security, India’s track record is patchy. While it has come down the global education ladder to position 105, it is appalling to acknowledge that for a country that is perceived to be an IT power and the back-office of the 21st century, a third of the world’s illiterates now live in India. Further disaggregated, the UNESCO estimates that India, Nigeria and Pakistan account for 27 percent of the world’s out-of-school children. What is most shameful — yes, that word again — is the fact that India’s deep socio-cultural bias against the girl child comes to the fore in the education domain. While official statistics take credit for a gross enrolment of 95 percent at the primary level, the drop-out at Class I is almost 15 percent — and the gender skewing is distressing. Among the drop-outs at this stage, up to 66 percent are girls and when combined with the gruesome statistics about female feticide, India as a collective stands deeply tainted.
WHAT ARE the reasons for this poor index of human security so unambiguously associated with a nation that aspires to be one of the more relevant powers of the 21st century? Resource constraints — yes, to the extent that India is able to spend only 4.1 percent of GNP for education. Here yet another report, the World Economic Forum and CII document Global Risk Network becomes relevant. Identifying six factors that can slow down the Indian economy, it makes reference to corruption and poor governance as being central to shaping India's potential growth. It may be recalled that when the late Rajiv Gandhi had become Prime Minister in late 1984, he bemoaned the fact that for every rupee that the government allocated towards development — which includes the spectrum of poverty alleviation, socio-economic improvement and education — only 16 paisa went towards the intended purpose with the remainder being siphoned off for personal gain. The grim reality 23 years later is that maybe just 6 paisa of the government rupee reach the sectors it is disbursed for and the rest is part of the corruption and graft malignancy that now engulfs India.
Unless this paradigm changes, it is more likely that next year, India will slip further down the global HDI end education ladder even while faring well at the macroeconomic front. Equitable and sustainable human security for one billion Indians, alas, remains elusive.
From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 48, Dated Dec 15 , 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Tehelka::- State of Disgrace(Orissa)
Tehelka:: Free. Fair. Fearless
State Of Disgrace
Tall claims around Naveen Patnaik’s government prove hollow on the ground, reports BIBHUTI PATI in a comprehensive round-up of the many ills that continue to plague Orissa.
Tribals rally for their rights on forest and land in Kalahandi
Photos: Bibhuti Pati
It has been a long honeymoon. But there are unmistakable signs that it is finally coming to an end. As the country gets into election mode, BJD supremo and Orissa Chief Minister Navin Patnaik is preparing for what could well be his first real electoral battle.
With the Opposition unable to put up even a semblance of a fight, the last three Lok Sabha and two Assembly elections have been virtual cakewalks for Navin. His undeniable charisma helped him breeze past the combined might of the Opposition in all these elections. But in the next one – the projected parliamentary poll sometime early next year – he would need much more than charisma to win. If he manages to hold his fort this time as well, the reason will be the absence of a unified, strong Opposition rather than Navin’s performance as Chief Minister.
He may be considered one of the best chief ministers in the country, but that claim is beginning to sound hollow in the light of his recent record. Sceptics point to the startling fact that while Navin is constantly bagging one of the top three positions in the list of best CMs, Orissa has slipped to the bottom of the table on most development parameters. Even as his government signs a MoU a day, people continue to die of malnutrition, starvation, diarrhoea and cholera in the perennial hunger zone of Kalahandi, Koraput and Raygada.
The Orissa government would like us to believe that the 200 odd deaths that have taken place so far in these districts are due to diarrhoea and cholera and not starvation. But the fact of the matter is that the majority of the deaths happened because facing starvation, people in these areas are forced to eat inedible roots, leaves and barks – and just about anything that they can lay their hands on – and fall ill. Having no safe drinking water source in the vicinity, they are forced to drink polluted water and then fall prey to diarrhoea and cholera. But instead of fighting the crisis on a war footing, ministers and government officials are trying to undermine the gravity of the situation by sticking to the heartless “It happens every year” line. If the government is to be believed, no starvation deaths have taken place in Orissa since independence!
Over 200 deaths – even if they are due to cholera - are certainly incompatible with a state that is positioning itself as the best investment destination in the country for industry. It seems Navin has all the time for industrialists, but none at all for the wretched of the earth, who are bent on giving his government a bad name!
Even on his pet industrialisation front, Navin’s report card is singularly bare. The ambitious Posco steel plant at Paradeep, the biggest of them all, has run into such rough weather that it is unlikely to take off in the foreseeable future. After burning its fingers in Kalinganagar, the government is wary of using force to break the resistance. It has even stepped aside and allowed the company to deal directly with the people for land. But that does not appear to have helped matters. The other two big-ticket investment proposals – Vedanta Alumina in Lanjigarh (Kalahandi) and Mittal steel plant in Patna (Keonjhar) – have fared no better. If anything, the movement against these two plants is getting stronger by the day. The mega UAIL alumina project, of course, has been in a limbo for nearly a decade now.
Kalahandi, Raygada, Jharsuguda, Sundargarh, Keonjhar – you name it, the resistance against industry is spreading rapidly throughout the state. People are skeptical about claims that industry will bring jobs for those who are going to be displaced. Similar promises made by industries that have already gone on stream have not been kept, so there’s no reason to believe that things would be different now or in the future. If anything, the scope for employing local people – a significant proportion of whom are tribals and semi literates – is diminishing fast with high technology and increased mechanisation. The locals see the promise of jobs is a mere ploy to make them vacate their land.
Kalinga Nagar - still simmering
In the aftermath of the Kalinganagar bloodbath, the Navin Patnaik government sought to assuage the hurt of the people by coming out with a rehabilitation and reconstruction (R & R) policy. Though claimed as the best in the country, there were few takers for this sop and understandably so. After all, nearly a decade after being driven out of their homes to make way for the joint venture Nilachal Ispat Nigam Limited (NINL), just 115 of the 650 families have been rehabilitated so far. Even those who got the mandatory 10 decimal piece of land are yet to get the patta. If this was the more recent experience, the past experience has been much worse. By the government’s own admission, over 9, 000 families displaced by the first major developmental project in the state, the Hirakud dam, are yet to be rehabilitated.
Navin Patnaik may have become the darling of industrialists and the pink papers, but his affair with them has soured his relationship with the people of the state. If he has acquired even an iota of political understanding during his seven-year rule as Chief Minister, he can see that the industrialisation drive could well prove to be his undoing. May be he has already realised that. But so powerful are the forces that he has unleashed with his single-minded pursuit of industrialisation in the last three years that it would be very difficult for him to put the genie back in the bottle.
Moreover, the over-emphasis on industry has made sure that the state’s agriculture sector is neglected. After seven years in power, the Navin Patnaik government is yet to come out with an agricultural policy – despite making periodic noises about doing so. In 2005, the government announced that irrigation facilities would be provided to at least 35% of the land in each block. But two years later, the number of blocks with less than 35% irrigated land remains where it did when the announcement was made: 198. In fact, the size of total irrigated land in the state has declined from 24, 85, 000 hectares in 2002 to 21, 64, 000 hectares now. No wonder then that growth in agricultural production has remained stagnant at a miserable 1.6% over the seven years of Navin’s rule. Lift irrigation’s plight is more precarious - out of 15,000 government tube wells, only about 5,000 are functioning.
Farmers in Sambalpur, Jharsuguda and Bargarh districts are up in arms over the government’s decision to siphon off 0.345 million acre cubic feet (MA cft) of water from the Hirakud reservoir, the mainstay of agriculture in these parts, and give it to industry. Undeterred, the government appointed an expert committee, which conveniently concluded that agriculture would not be affected by it.
A few months back, the Chief Minister made an extraordinary claim, “Forests in the state are ‘growing’ at the rate of 16 sq. km every month.” This is dismissed by a senior IFS Officer, who said that satellite data and the findings of the National Forest Survey give a complete lie to the Government claim. “Ask those who are working in the field of forests and they will laugh it off as a big joke. What about the Titalgad Forest Generate Programs? It was launched by the then Forest and Environment Minister, Bijoyshree Routray. Forest restoration is yet to gather any semblance of momentum. The loss in this sector is due to direct negligence of Navin Patanik solely because Navin clings on even to the Forest and Environment portfolio only in order to facilitate industrialists at the time of forest and environment clearance. The issue of Hadgad wildlife sanctuary, where illegal mining activities are carried out in a protected area, is a recent example, but the CM keeps mum,” he says. “Jala, Jami, Jangala (Water, Land and Forests)”, Navin’s favourite line at the beginning of this term, has now given way to the war cry of “Industry, Industry and More Industry”.
Navin had earned the gratitude of the tribals when he decided to vest procurement rights of 62 non-timber forest produces (NTFPs) with the panchayats. The lakhs of primary gatherers of these forest products, who never got a commensurate price for their produce, now hoped that their days of exploitation at the hands of the traders were over. But in the absence of any capacity building of the panchayats to deal with this new responsibility, it is now back to square one with the traders ruling the roost as before. If the government were indeed serious about providing employment, it would have ensured that the primary gatherers got remunerative prices, instead of handing over forests to industry on a platter for exploitation of minerals.
The same disdain and callousness has marked the government’s response to the allegations of suicide by cotton farmers in Nuapada and Kalahandi districts. The whole country is alarmed over the suicide of debt-ridden cotton farmers in Vidarbha, Telengana and other parts of the country. But when allegations of suicide by cotton farmers in western Orissa arose, the government spent all its energies trying to prove that the reasons for the deaths were ‘domestic quarrel’ or some other mundane matter, rather than debt. There is a marked similarity in its responses to the suicide by cotton farmers and starvation deaths in KBK districts.
Coastal belt women in ‘dharna’ against industrial activities
The poor in the supposedly prosperous and politically important coastal districts have fared no better in the Navin government’s scheme of things. Thousands of fishermen in Kendrapada and Jagatsinghpur districts are grappling with the twin problems of sea erosion and a seven-month long ban on fishing, and some are driven by their mounting debt burden to commit suicide. The reason for their indebtedness is not a fall in the catch, but the ban – six months on account of the breeding season of the endangered Olive Ridley turtles and one and a half months for the breeding season of fish. As fishermen are driven to despair and death, and Olive Ridley turtles continue to die in thousands, trawlers are allowed to work unchecked.
Even as the government was patting itself on the back for being the ‘No. 2’ state in the country in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) came the stunning allegation by the Delhi-based Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS) that as much as Rs. 500 crore of the Rs. 750 crore purportedly spent under the scheme had been siphoned away by officials. The Union Rural Development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has now ordered a CAG inquiry into the scandal, seriously denting the image of the supposedly ‘corruption-free’ government.
Navin Patnaik might try to emulate his father and lay the blame for the state’s underdevelopment on the Centre. But the facts won’t fit this claim. Central assistance to Orissa under various poverty alleviation schemes, which stood at Rs. 340.38 crore in the fiscal year 2003-04 – the last one of the NDA government – has now reached a whopping Rs. 808.75 crore this year, the fourth of the UPA government. If anything, the UPA government has been much more generous to Orissa than was the NDA dispensation, of which Navin’s party was an integral part. Grants and assistance under almost all heads – CSS, Centrally sponsored schemes, share of central revenue, and the 12th Finance Commission awards – have increased manifold under the UPA rule. As many as 19 of the 30 districts in the state have been included in the NREGS scheme and 21in the National Food Security Mission. What central neglect is Navin talking about?
And what, pray, does the government have to show by way of achievement for all this money pumped in by a presumably ‘unfriendly’ government? Even as states like Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh have reduced poverty by 4.5%, Orissa has managed a paltry figure of 1.5%. During the last eight years the loan burden has increased from Rs.18,100 crores in the year 2000 to Rs. 38,000 crores at the end of 2006-07 and is expected to touch 54,000 crores by 2009.
After the brutal lathi charge on demostrating teachers
The government’s performance in the crucially important sectors like health and primary education too is dismal. On the occasion of the launching of the National Rural Health Mission in Orissa on 17th June, 2005, the government announced that infant mortality rate in the state would be brought down from a staggering 97 per 1, 000 live births to 60 by the next year, i.e. 2006. But all that it has managed so far is a figure of 75. The new-fangled ‘public private partnership’ (PPP) notwithstanding, service delivery in the health sector remains poor. The infant mortality rate though has decreased from 83 in 2003 to 75 in 2005 against the decline in all-India level to 58. Despite all the sops announced by the government to lure doctors to KBK districts, including the recently announced incentive of Rs. 5,000, as many as 706 posts of doctors are lying vacant in government hospitals – a vast majority of them, needless to say, in the eternally underdeveloped KBK districts.
On a recent visit to Kalahandi, it was startling to find that doctors and paramedical staff had not reached the villages worst affected by diarrhoea and cholera even after the death toll in the three districts – Kalahandi, Koraput and Raygada – had reached 200. Even more shocking was the revelation that in one particular case, the medical team sent with medicines and relief packets to a village, after finding out that it would take half a day to reach there, simply dumped everything by the roadside, returned to the district headquarters and glibly reported that “all” the medicines had been distributed.
For all the money that has been pumped into the state under various central schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL), Kastuba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya and the like, Orissa has precious little to show by way of improvement in primary education. According to the latest Economic Survey (2006-07), the number of primary schools has actually declined form 15, 893 in 2003-04 to 15,737 in 2005-06. The fall in the number of teachers at the primary level was more discernible – from 49, 786 in 2003-04 to 32, 985 in 2005-06. Things are no better at the secondary level. The teacher-student ratio in the state remains 1:21, one of the worst in the country, while recent government data also shows that primary schools in Orissa has the highest child dropout ratio.
Just about the only achievement that the Navin Patnaik government has managed in its seven-year rule is to put the economy back on rails. When it took over the reigns in 2000, the state’s finances were in a complete mess. Revenue deficit as a percentage of revenue collection stood at a whopping 43.7%, tax revenue as a percentage of gross state domestic produce (GSDP) was 4.7% and the ratio of debt to total revenue receipts 304.29%. Through prudent fiscal management, the government managed to turn things around. From a precarious 364 days out of 365, wage and means advances and overdrafts have now come down to a fairly satisfactory level. Fiscal deficit, which was Rs. 2,800 crore when Navin took over, is now a thing of the past. But at least part of this success has to be attributed to the generous central outlay for the state in the last few years.
The most interesting part is the State’s plan expenditure. Knowing fully well that there are very limited resources in hand, each year the government has increased the plan budget. During three years plan outlay is increasing to reach 3500 crores in 2006-07 and again a hike in the year 2007-08 to an estimated Rs. 4388 crores. But the average expenditure during these seven years remained at Rs. 2500 crores which is almost the same as in the Ninth Five Year Plan period. Centre sponsored plans and grants have also remarkably increased. But the percentage-wise expenditure of these was so low that all the time the Centre has to remind the state to furnish the utilisation certificate. Finance Minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadai refused to comment on the state’s performance when contacted for this story.
Apart from his government’s dismal performance on almost all counts, there’s another fact that adds to Navin Patnaik’s unpopularity – his inability or disinclination (or both) to learn Oriya. Nine years after entering state politics and a full seven years after becoming the Chief Minister, he still cannot read, write or speak a sentence of Oriya; unless, of course, it is from an English script. Two years ago, this resulted in an incredible spectacle - of the then Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Arjun Munda giving a 15-minute long impromptu speech in Oriya at a public meeting, followed by the Orissa Chief Minister reading out a five-minute speech from a script – in English!
There have been other equally laughable situations – such as Navin Patnaik chairing meetings of the Oriya Bhasa Pratisthan or similar bodies where decisions have been taken to make Oriya mandatory in all government departments and transactions. It is incomprehensible how the head of a government that expects IAS and IPS officers posted in the state to pick up the local language in just six months can continue to rule the state for seven long years without learning even elementary Oriya.
The people of the state, exasperated as they were with the corrupt Congress government that preceded Navin Patnaik, might have overlooked his inability to speak the local language in the past. But he would certainly have to answer for this continuing ‘inability’, apart from a host of other questions, in the coming election.
State Of Disgrace
Tall claims around Naveen Patnaik’s government prove hollow on the ground, reports BIBHUTI PATI in a comprehensive round-up of the many ills that continue to plague Orissa.
Tribals rally for their rights on forest and land in Kalahandi
Photos: Bibhuti Pati
It has been a long honeymoon. But there are unmistakable signs that it is finally coming to an end. As the country gets into election mode, BJD supremo and Orissa Chief Minister Navin Patnaik is preparing for what could well be his first real electoral battle.
With the Opposition unable to put up even a semblance of a fight, the last three Lok Sabha and two Assembly elections have been virtual cakewalks for Navin. His undeniable charisma helped him breeze past the combined might of the Opposition in all these elections. But in the next one – the projected parliamentary poll sometime early next year – he would need much more than charisma to win. If he manages to hold his fort this time as well, the reason will be the absence of a unified, strong Opposition rather than Navin’s performance as Chief Minister.
He may be considered one of the best chief ministers in the country, but that claim is beginning to sound hollow in the light of his recent record. Sceptics point to the startling fact that while Navin is constantly bagging one of the top three positions in the list of best CMs, Orissa has slipped to the bottom of the table on most development parameters. Even as his government signs a MoU a day, people continue to die of malnutrition, starvation, diarrhoea and cholera in the perennial hunger zone of Kalahandi, Koraput and Raygada.
The Orissa government would like us to believe that the 200 odd deaths that have taken place so far in these districts are due to diarrhoea and cholera and not starvation. But the fact of the matter is that the majority of the deaths happened because facing starvation, people in these areas are forced to eat inedible roots, leaves and barks – and just about anything that they can lay their hands on – and fall ill. Having no safe drinking water source in the vicinity, they are forced to drink polluted water and then fall prey to diarrhoea and cholera. But instead of fighting the crisis on a war footing, ministers and government officials are trying to undermine the gravity of the situation by sticking to the heartless “It happens every year” line. If the government is to be believed, no starvation deaths have taken place in Orissa since independence!
Over 200 deaths – even if they are due to cholera - are certainly incompatible with a state that is positioning itself as the best investment destination in the country for industry. It seems Navin has all the time for industrialists, but none at all for the wretched of the earth, who are bent on giving his government a bad name!
Even on his pet industrialisation front, Navin’s report card is singularly bare. The ambitious Posco steel plant at Paradeep, the biggest of them all, has run into such rough weather that it is unlikely to take off in the foreseeable future. After burning its fingers in Kalinganagar, the government is wary of using force to break the resistance. It has even stepped aside and allowed the company to deal directly with the people for land. But that does not appear to have helped matters. The other two big-ticket investment proposals – Vedanta Alumina in Lanjigarh (Kalahandi) and Mittal steel plant in Patna (Keonjhar) – have fared no better. If anything, the movement against these two plants is getting stronger by the day. The mega UAIL alumina project, of course, has been in a limbo for nearly a decade now.
Kalahandi, Raygada, Jharsuguda, Sundargarh, Keonjhar – you name it, the resistance against industry is spreading rapidly throughout the state. People are skeptical about claims that industry will bring jobs for those who are going to be displaced. Similar promises made by industries that have already gone on stream have not been kept, so there’s no reason to believe that things would be different now or in the future. If anything, the scope for employing local people – a significant proportion of whom are tribals and semi literates – is diminishing fast with high technology and increased mechanisation. The locals see the promise of jobs is a mere ploy to make them vacate their land.
Kalinga Nagar - still simmering
In the aftermath of the Kalinganagar bloodbath, the Navin Patnaik government sought to assuage the hurt of the people by coming out with a rehabilitation and reconstruction (R & R) policy. Though claimed as the best in the country, there were few takers for this sop and understandably so. After all, nearly a decade after being driven out of their homes to make way for the joint venture Nilachal Ispat Nigam Limited (NINL), just 115 of the 650 families have been rehabilitated so far. Even those who got the mandatory 10 decimal piece of land are yet to get the patta. If this was the more recent experience, the past experience has been much worse. By the government’s own admission, over 9, 000 families displaced by the first major developmental project in the state, the Hirakud dam, are yet to be rehabilitated.
Navin Patnaik may have become the darling of industrialists and the pink papers, but his affair with them has soured his relationship with the people of the state. If he has acquired even an iota of political understanding during his seven-year rule as Chief Minister, he can see that the industrialisation drive could well prove to be his undoing. May be he has already realised that. But so powerful are the forces that he has unleashed with his single-minded pursuit of industrialisation in the last three years that it would be very difficult for him to put the genie back in the bottle.
Moreover, the over-emphasis on industry has made sure that the state’s agriculture sector is neglected. After seven years in power, the Navin Patnaik government is yet to come out with an agricultural policy – despite making periodic noises about doing so. In 2005, the government announced that irrigation facilities would be provided to at least 35% of the land in each block. But two years later, the number of blocks with less than 35% irrigated land remains where it did when the announcement was made: 198. In fact, the size of total irrigated land in the state has declined from 24, 85, 000 hectares in 2002 to 21, 64, 000 hectares now. No wonder then that growth in agricultural production has remained stagnant at a miserable 1.6% over the seven years of Navin’s rule. Lift irrigation’s plight is more precarious - out of 15,000 government tube wells, only about 5,000 are functioning.
Farmers in Sambalpur, Jharsuguda and Bargarh districts are up in arms over the government’s decision to siphon off 0.345 million acre cubic feet (MA cft) of water from the Hirakud reservoir, the mainstay of agriculture in these parts, and give it to industry. Undeterred, the government appointed an expert committee, which conveniently concluded that agriculture would not be affected by it.
A few months back, the Chief Minister made an extraordinary claim, “Forests in the state are ‘growing’ at the rate of 16 sq. km every month.” This is dismissed by a senior IFS Officer, who said that satellite data and the findings of the National Forest Survey give a complete lie to the Government claim. “Ask those who are working in the field of forests and they will laugh it off as a big joke. What about the Titalgad Forest Generate Programs? It was launched by the then Forest and Environment Minister, Bijoyshree Routray. Forest restoration is yet to gather any semblance of momentum. The loss in this sector is due to direct negligence of Navin Patanik solely because Navin clings on even to the Forest and Environment portfolio only in order to facilitate industrialists at the time of forest and environment clearance. The issue of Hadgad wildlife sanctuary, where illegal mining activities are carried out in a protected area, is a recent example, but the CM keeps mum,” he says. “Jala, Jami, Jangala (Water, Land and Forests)”, Navin’s favourite line at the beginning of this term, has now given way to the war cry of “Industry, Industry and More Industry”.
Navin had earned the gratitude of the tribals when he decided to vest procurement rights of 62 non-timber forest produces (NTFPs) with the panchayats. The lakhs of primary gatherers of these forest products, who never got a commensurate price for their produce, now hoped that their days of exploitation at the hands of the traders were over. But in the absence of any capacity building of the panchayats to deal with this new responsibility, it is now back to square one with the traders ruling the roost as before. If the government were indeed serious about providing employment, it would have ensured that the primary gatherers got remunerative prices, instead of handing over forests to industry on a platter for exploitation of minerals.
The same disdain and callousness has marked the government’s response to the allegations of suicide by cotton farmers in Nuapada and Kalahandi districts. The whole country is alarmed over the suicide of debt-ridden cotton farmers in Vidarbha, Telengana and other parts of the country. But when allegations of suicide by cotton farmers in western Orissa arose, the government spent all its energies trying to prove that the reasons for the deaths were ‘domestic quarrel’ or some other mundane matter, rather than debt. There is a marked similarity in its responses to the suicide by cotton farmers and starvation deaths in KBK districts.
Coastal belt women in ‘dharna’ against industrial activities
The poor in the supposedly prosperous and politically important coastal districts have fared no better in the Navin government’s scheme of things. Thousands of fishermen in Kendrapada and Jagatsinghpur districts are grappling with the twin problems of sea erosion and a seven-month long ban on fishing, and some are driven by their mounting debt burden to commit suicide. The reason for their indebtedness is not a fall in the catch, but the ban – six months on account of the breeding season of the endangered Olive Ridley turtles and one and a half months for the breeding season of fish. As fishermen are driven to despair and death, and Olive Ridley turtles continue to die in thousands, trawlers are allowed to work unchecked.
Even as the government was patting itself on the back for being the ‘No. 2’ state in the country in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) came the stunning allegation by the Delhi-based Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS) that as much as Rs. 500 crore of the Rs. 750 crore purportedly spent under the scheme had been siphoned away by officials. The Union Rural Development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh has now ordered a CAG inquiry into the scandal, seriously denting the image of the supposedly ‘corruption-free’ government.
Navin Patnaik might try to emulate his father and lay the blame for the state’s underdevelopment on the Centre. But the facts won’t fit this claim. Central assistance to Orissa under various poverty alleviation schemes, which stood at Rs. 340.38 crore in the fiscal year 2003-04 – the last one of the NDA government – has now reached a whopping Rs. 808.75 crore this year, the fourth of the UPA government. If anything, the UPA government has been much more generous to Orissa than was the NDA dispensation, of which Navin’s party was an integral part. Grants and assistance under almost all heads – CSS, Centrally sponsored schemes, share of central revenue, and the 12th Finance Commission awards – have increased manifold under the UPA rule. As many as 19 of the 30 districts in the state have been included in the NREGS scheme and 21in the National Food Security Mission. What central neglect is Navin talking about?
And what, pray, does the government have to show by way of achievement for all this money pumped in by a presumably ‘unfriendly’ government? Even as states like Jharkhand and Chhatisgarh have reduced poverty by 4.5%, Orissa has managed a paltry figure of 1.5%. During the last eight years the loan burden has increased from Rs.18,100 crores in the year 2000 to Rs. 38,000 crores at the end of 2006-07 and is expected to touch 54,000 crores by 2009.
After the brutal lathi charge on demostrating teachers
The government’s performance in the crucially important sectors like health and primary education too is dismal. On the occasion of the launching of the National Rural Health Mission in Orissa on 17th June, 2005, the government announced that infant mortality rate in the state would be brought down from a staggering 97 per 1, 000 live births to 60 by the next year, i.e. 2006. But all that it has managed so far is a figure of 75. The new-fangled ‘public private partnership’ (PPP) notwithstanding, service delivery in the health sector remains poor. The infant mortality rate though has decreased from 83 in 2003 to 75 in 2005 against the decline in all-India level to 58. Despite all the sops announced by the government to lure doctors to KBK districts, including the recently announced incentive of Rs. 5,000, as many as 706 posts of doctors are lying vacant in government hospitals – a vast majority of them, needless to say, in the eternally underdeveloped KBK districts.
On a recent visit to Kalahandi, it was startling to find that doctors and paramedical staff had not reached the villages worst affected by diarrhoea and cholera even after the death toll in the three districts – Kalahandi, Koraput and Raygada – had reached 200. Even more shocking was the revelation that in one particular case, the medical team sent with medicines and relief packets to a village, after finding out that it would take half a day to reach there, simply dumped everything by the roadside, returned to the district headquarters and glibly reported that “all” the medicines had been distributed.
For all the money that has been pumped into the state under various central schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL), Kastuba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya and the like, Orissa has precious little to show by way of improvement in primary education. According to the latest Economic Survey (2006-07), the number of primary schools has actually declined form 15, 893 in 2003-04 to 15,737 in 2005-06. The fall in the number of teachers at the primary level was more discernible – from 49, 786 in 2003-04 to 32, 985 in 2005-06. Things are no better at the secondary level. The teacher-student ratio in the state remains 1:21, one of the worst in the country, while recent government data also shows that primary schools in Orissa has the highest child dropout ratio.
Just about the only achievement that the Navin Patnaik government has managed in its seven-year rule is to put the economy back on rails. When it took over the reigns in 2000, the state’s finances were in a complete mess. Revenue deficit as a percentage of revenue collection stood at a whopping 43.7%, tax revenue as a percentage of gross state domestic produce (GSDP) was 4.7% and the ratio of debt to total revenue receipts 304.29%. Through prudent fiscal management, the government managed to turn things around. From a precarious 364 days out of 365, wage and means advances and overdrafts have now come down to a fairly satisfactory level. Fiscal deficit, which was Rs. 2,800 crore when Navin took over, is now a thing of the past. But at least part of this success has to be attributed to the generous central outlay for the state in the last few years.
The most interesting part is the State’s plan expenditure. Knowing fully well that there are very limited resources in hand, each year the government has increased the plan budget. During three years plan outlay is increasing to reach 3500 crores in 2006-07 and again a hike in the year 2007-08 to an estimated Rs. 4388 crores. But the average expenditure during these seven years remained at Rs. 2500 crores which is almost the same as in the Ninth Five Year Plan period. Centre sponsored plans and grants have also remarkably increased. But the percentage-wise expenditure of these was so low that all the time the Centre has to remind the state to furnish the utilisation certificate. Finance Minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadai refused to comment on the state’s performance when contacted for this story.
Apart from his government’s dismal performance on almost all counts, there’s another fact that adds to Navin Patnaik’s unpopularity – his inability or disinclination (or both) to learn Oriya. Nine years after entering state politics and a full seven years after becoming the Chief Minister, he still cannot read, write or speak a sentence of Oriya; unless, of course, it is from an English script. Two years ago, this resulted in an incredible spectacle - of the then Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Arjun Munda giving a 15-minute long impromptu speech in Oriya at a public meeting, followed by the Orissa Chief Minister reading out a five-minute speech from a script – in English!
There have been other equally laughable situations – such as Navin Patnaik chairing meetings of the Oriya Bhasa Pratisthan or similar bodies where decisions have been taken to make Oriya mandatory in all government departments and transactions. It is incomprehensible how the head of a government that expects IAS and IPS officers posted in the state to pick up the local language in just six months can continue to rule the state for seven long years without learning even elementary Oriya.
The people of the state, exasperated as they were with the corrupt Congress government that preceded Navin Patnaik, might have overlooked his inability to speak the local language in the past. But he would certainly have to answer for this continuing ‘inability’, apart from a host of other questions, in the coming election.
Monday, November 26, 2007
A new East Asian focus on India - by P.S. Suryanarayana
The atmospherics of the East Asia Summit last week propelled India to the regional centre stage again.
Is India really central to the East Asia Summit (EAS) — an exclusive regional forum which is expected to play a key role in shaping the next big theatre in world politics? Surely, the latest EAS meeting in Singapore, which brought India and China, as also Japan, into sharp focus, was not designed to provide clues to such a long-term proposition. However, the atmospherics of the
third annual summit of the EAS last week propelled India to the centre stage of Greater Ea st Asia in several ways.
The larger geopolitical region covers all the 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States, for long the dominant military power in this wider region, is not a member of the two-year-old EAS, which remains wary of letting the Americans on to its diversified but rather
very Asian stage.
Interestingly, it was in an overarching cultural setting that the importance of being India in Greater East Asia was dramatically illustrated. The occasion was the dedication of an exhibition, titled "On the Nalanda Trail," as an EAS project. The exhibition — tracing the trail of Buddhism in India, China, and Southeast Asia — is being organised by Singapore at the Asian Civilisations Museum in the City-State. The unusual show is aimed at promoting the establishment of an international university, through a multilateral treaty, at the old Nalanda site in India. The proposed university will offer a number of courses, including peace and security studies.
India's centrality to the current process of inter-state engagement in Greater East Asia was best put across by EAS Chairman and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. At a reception hosted by him for the EAS leaders, Mr. Lee said: "The ancient university in Nalanda was not just devoted to Buddhist studies. It was also a first-class educational institution and the most global
university of its time. ... The new Nalanda (university) should strive to perform a role consistent with this original ethos and vision. It should be a great intellectual centre, an icon of the (current) Asian renaissance. ... It should also be a centre of civilisational dialogue and inter-faith understanding as the original Nalanda once was. In this way, the (EAS) Nalanda project can
be an inspiration for the future of Asia."
Piloting the EAS and other ASEAN-related summits with diplomatic skill, clear from the way he warded off a Myanmar-related crisis that could have affected these events, Mr. Lee saw India's relevance to planet-issues as well.
The East Asia Summit is the only pan-regional platform, as different from sub-regional groups, where India and China share the high table. Significantly, China had earlier joined Japan, the global eco-guru, and the U.S., a reluctant "leader" on green issues, in issuing a declaration on climate change. The occasion was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's summit in Sydney in September. The APEC had then endorsed a set of "aspirational goals" as non-binding commitments to reduce the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. So, a general expectation ahead of last week's EAS meeting was that India, not an APEC member, could perhaps now be brought into this emerging circle of key state-players as eco-friendly protagonists of economic growth.
Greenhouse gas emissions
What happened at the EAS was a different story though. Japan, taking off from its earlier platform of "Cool Earth 50," now proposed a new package of measures to ensure "a sustainable East Asia." The idea was that Japan could help its other East Asian partners in adopting eco-friendly but growth-protective technologies to ensure the reduction of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by half by 2050. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's EAS partners did not reject his offer. However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India would be willing to place a "cap" on greenhouse gas emissions at a level equivalent only to the "cap" that the developed bloc might be ready to apply to itself. And, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made common cause with Dr. Singh in emphasising how growth would remain a priority for both their countries and how they could consider eco-targets only within the ambit of priorities. In the event, while the APEC consensus was not repudiated, the EAS could not create any fresh consensus that might have covered India as yet another example for the U.S. to follow.
If Mr. Wen and Dr. Singh were able to advance the cause of the developing countries, through their mutually reinforcing presentations at the EAS meeting, there was a political reason too for their bonhomie. Shortly before the EAS convened, they met for the first time after a political crisis rocked New Delhi over India's civil nuclear energy deal with the U.S. Even as that crisis spiralled, it was seen in the U.S.-friendly circles in East Asia as a new reality check for assessing, over time, India's credibility as a serious negotiator in sensitive matters. Against this background, it is understood, on good authority, that Mr. Wen was willing to consider cooperation with India on matters relating to peaceful uses of atomic energy within an overall framework of non-proliferation. Later, the Indian side even went public with a formulation that Mr. Wen was "forthcoming and supportive of international civil nuclear energy cooperation with India."
This China-India meeting and the coincidental commencement of talks between New Delhi and the International Atomic Energy Agency set the stage for the EAS deliberations. And, Mr. Lee's commendation of India and China for their "eloquent presentations" on their shared concerns about economic growth as "a priority" virtually put India back on the East Asian stage as a serious player.
Is India really central to the East Asia Summit (EAS) — an exclusive regional forum which is expected to play a key role in shaping the next big theatre in world politics? Surely, the latest EAS meeting in Singapore, which brought India and China, as also Japan, into sharp focus, was not designed to provide clues to such a long-term proposition. However, the atmospherics of the
third annual summit of the EAS last week propelled India to the centre stage of Greater Ea st Asia in several ways.
The larger geopolitical region covers all the 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States, for long the dominant military power in this wider region, is not a member of the two-year-old EAS, which remains wary of letting the Americans on to its diversified but rather
very Asian stage.
Interestingly, it was in an overarching cultural setting that the importance of being India in Greater East Asia was dramatically illustrated. The occasion was the dedication of an exhibition, titled "On the Nalanda Trail," as an EAS project. The exhibition — tracing the trail of Buddhism in India, China, and Southeast Asia — is being organised by Singapore at the Asian Civilisations Museum in the City-State. The unusual show is aimed at promoting the establishment of an international university, through a multilateral treaty, at the old Nalanda site in India. The proposed university will offer a number of courses, including peace and security studies.
India's centrality to the current process of inter-state engagement in Greater East Asia was best put across by EAS Chairman and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. At a reception hosted by him for the EAS leaders, Mr. Lee said: "The ancient university in Nalanda was not just devoted to Buddhist studies. It was also a first-class educational institution and the most global
university of its time. ... The new Nalanda (university) should strive to perform a role consistent with this original ethos and vision. It should be a great intellectual centre, an icon of the (current) Asian renaissance. ... It should also be a centre of civilisational dialogue and inter-faith understanding as the original Nalanda once was. In this way, the (EAS) Nalanda project can
be an inspiration for the future of Asia."
Piloting the EAS and other ASEAN-related summits with diplomatic skill, clear from the way he warded off a Myanmar-related crisis that could have affected these events, Mr. Lee saw India's relevance to planet-issues as well.
The East Asia Summit is the only pan-regional platform, as different from sub-regional groups, where India and China share the high table. Significantly, China had earlier joined Japan, the global eco-guru, and the U.S., a reluctant "leader" on green issues, in issuing a declaration on climate change. The occasion was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum's summit in Sydney in September. The APEC had then endorsed a set of "aspirational goals" as non-binding commitments to reduce the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases. So, a general expectation ahead of last week's EAS meeting was that India, not an APEC member, could perhaps now be brought into this emerging circle of key state-players as eco-friendly protagonists of economic growth.
Greenhouse gas emissions
What happened at the EAS was a different story though. Japan, taking off from its earlier platform of "Cool Earth 50," now proposed a new package of measures to ensure "a sustainable East Asia." The idea was that Japan could help its other East Asian partners in adopting eco-friendly but growth-protective technologies to ensure the reduction of worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by half by 2050. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's EAS partners did not reject his offer. However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India would be willing to place a "cap" on greenhouse gas emissions at a level equivalent only to the "cap" that the developed bloc might be ready to apply to itself. And, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made common cause with Dr. Singh in emphasising how growth would remain a priority for both their countries and how they could consider eco-targets only within the ambit of priorities. In the event, while the APEC consensus was not repudiated, the EAS could not create any fresh consensus that might have covered India as yet another example for the U.S. to follow.
If Mr. Wen and Dr. Singh were able to advance the cause of the developing countries, through their mutually reinforcing presentations at the EAS meeting, there was a political reason too for their bonhomie. Shortly before the EAS convened, they met for the first time after a political crisis rocked New Delhi over India's civil nuclear energy deal with the U.S. Even as that crisis spiralled, it was seen in the U.S.-friendly circles in East Asia as a new reality check for assessing, over time, India's credibility as a serious negotiator in sensitive matters. Against this background, it is understood, on good authority, that Mr. Wen was willing to consider cooperation with India on matters relating to peaceful uses of atomic energy within an overall framework of non-proliferation. Later, the Indian side even went public with a formulation that Mr. Wen was "forthcoming and supportive of international civil nuclear energy cooperation with India."
This China-India meeting and the coincidental commencement of talks between New Delhi and the International Atomic Energy Agency set the stage for the EAS deliberations. And, Mr. Lee's commendation of India and China for their "eloquent presentations" on their shared concerns about economic growth as "a priority" virtually put India back on the East Asian stage as a serious player.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Healthcare tsunami about to strike India?
Healthcare tsunami about to strike India?
Healthcare tsunami about to strike India?
November 22, 2007
In the euphoria of being a "young" India with oft-quoted demographic statistics that half of India is below 25 years of age and two-thirds are below 35, it is easy to ignore the fact that India is also home to a very large number of aged in absolute terms and that by 2027, it will have over 170 million people above 60 years of age, almost double of what we have today.
India's endemic infrastructural deficiencies are now glaringly visible beyond the top 8 metros and mini metros. Roads, public transport, potable water, power, affordable mass housing, ports and airports and the railway network -- all are stretched beyond their originally planned capacity and will, unfortunately, end up creating a huge drag on the economic growth in the coming years.
However, these deficiencies pale in comparison with those in the social infrastructure. With almost 25 million births per year, India needs an annual incremental addition of education as well as healthcare facilities equivalent to almost half of what a UK or a France or an Italy may need for their entire populations.
This addition does not even take into consideration the backlog we have built up over the last few decades on account of not ramping up spending on education and healthcare in line with the increase of population and the changes in the overall socio-economic environment.
We in India have gladly accepted the membership to the BRIC club, and rejoice every year when Forbes publishes its annual list of the super wealthy. What is not easily appreciated is the fact that on every social indicator, India is still more a third-world rather than an emerging economy. Sticking to the theme of this particular piece, I would focus only on the healthcare indicators.
Against a world average of 3.96 hospital beds per 1,000 population, Russia has 9.7, Brazil has 2.6, China has 2.2, and India languishes at just over 0.7. The deficiency is appalling on a similar scale when one compares the norms versus the actual for doctors and nurses.
Worse, while it is theoretically possible to create a million or more new beds (just to bring the availability of the beds to 1.7 per thousand from the current levels) in an accelerated manner by large-scale financial investment (about $80 billion or Rs 320,000 crore (Rs 3,200 billion) taking the cost per bed at a conservative $75,000 or Rs 30 lakh (Rs 3 million) against current costs of new players like Max and Fortis and Apollo that are well in excess of Rs 50 lakh per bed, and in the US, where the cost is reportedly now running at $2 million per bed), it is not possible to accelerate the development of trained doctors and nurses and other technicians.
India currently has about 600,000 doctors and about 1.6 million nurses. As per WHO norms for developing countries, this translates into a shortfall of 1.4 million and 2.8 million doctors and nurses, respectively, for India. With a total current annual output of about 22,000 doctors, one can only imagine the lamentable gap between the educational capacity in this sector versus the requirements.
Sadly, this still does not complete the picture. On account of urbanisation and changes in the overall lifestyle of the population, India is already seeing alarming growth in the so-called lifestyle diseases. Projections are that in the 2005-2015 decade, the incidence of heart disease will increase by 68 per cent, diabetes by 48 per cent, and cancer by 40 per cent. The economic cost to the nation in the next decade could be as much as $236 billion on account of cardiac diseases and diabetes alone.
Reaching developed country healthcare norms by 2027 will require an astronomical $1,000 billion over the next 20 years. Even reaching halfway (i.e. the current norms of China and Brazil in terms of the number of beds) will entail an investment of over $500 billion, i.e. between $10 billion and $20 billion per year for the next 20 consecutive years.
Unfortunately, unlike other sectors, healthcare delivery cannot be priced on a cost plus basis since the payee's ability in India is severely constrained with practically negligible penetration of healthcare insurance. It is no surprise, therefore, that almost all of the current organised healthcare service providers are struggling to show any profitability at all despite carrying the tag of being "premium". In these circumstances, it is very difficult to imagine fresh capital formation of this magnitude anytime in the near future since generating adequate returns on investment under current healthcare sector dynamics is a huge challenge.
India can probably live for a few more decades with potholed roads, erratic power supply, cramped airports and a filthy railway network, and skyrocketing commercial and residential capital values. With 25 million new- borns and a net addition of almost 18 million per year to the 1.15 billion already to take care of, can we live with endemic illiteracy (or inadequate literacy) and inaccessible or unaffordable healthcare for hundreds of millions? In the shadow of these hard facts, the Sensex at 20,000 and Forbes listing showing an addition of 20 or more billionaires from India may look a bit less impressive!
Healthcare tsunami about to strike India?
November 22, 2007
In the euphoria of being a "young" India with oft-quoted demographic statistics that half of India is below 25 years of age and two-thirds are below 35, it is easy to ignore the fact that India is also home to a very large number of aged in absolute terms and that by 2027, it will have over 170 million people above 60 years of age, almost double of what we have today.
India's endemic infrastructural deficiencies are now glaringly visible beyond the top 8 metros and mini metros. Roads, public transport, potable water, power, affordable mass housing, ports and airports and the railway network -- all are stretched beyond their originally planned capacity and will, unfortunately, end up creating a huge drag on the economic growth in the coming years.
However, these deficiencies pale in comparison with those in the social infrastructure. With almost 25 million births per year, India needs an annual incremental addition of education as well as healthcare facilities equivalent to almost half of what a UK or a France or an Italy may need for their entire populations.
This addition does not even take into consideration the backlog we have built up over the last few decades on account of not ramping up spending on education and healthcare in line with the increase of population and the changes in the overall socio-economic environment.
We in India have gladly accepted the membership to the BRIC club, and rejoice every year when Forbes publishes its annual list of the super wealthy. What is not easily appreciated is the fact that on every social indicator, India is still more a third-world rather than an emerging economy. Sticking to the theme of this particular piece, I would focus only on the healthcare indicators.
Against a world average of 3.96 hospital beds per 1,000 population, Russia has 9.7, Brazil has 2.6, China has 2.2, and India languishes at just over 0.7. The deficiency is appalling on a similar scale when one compares the norms versus the actual for doctors and nurses.
Worse, while it is theoretically possible to create a million or more new beds (just to bring the availability of the beds to 1.7 per thousand from the current levels) in an accelerated manner by large-scale financial investment (about $80 billion or Rs 320,000 crore (Rs 3,200 billion) taking the cost per bed at a conservative $75,000 or Rs 30 lakh (Rs 3 million) against current costs of new players like Max and Fortis and Apollo that are well in excess of Rs 50 lakh per bed, and in the US, where the cost is reportedly now running at $2 million per bed), it is not possible to accelerate the development of trained doctors and nurses and other technicians.
India currently has about 600,000 doctors and about 1.6 million nurses. As per WHO norms for developing countries, this translates into a shortfall of 1.4 million and 2.8 million doctors and nurses, respectively, for India. With a total current annual output of about 22,000 doctors, one can only imagine the lamentable gap between the educational capacity in this sector versus the requirements.
Sadly, this still does not complete the picture. On account of urbanisation and changes in the overall lifestyle of the population, India is already seeing alarming growth in the so-called lifestyle diseases. Projections are that in the 2005-2015 decade, the incidence of heart disease will increase by 68 per cent, diabetes by 48 per cent, and cancer by 40 per cent. The economic cost to the nation in the next decade could be as much as $236 billion on account of cardiac diseases and diabetes alone.
Reaching developed country healthcare norms by 2027 will require an astronomical $1,000 billion over the next 20 years. Even reaching halfway (i.e. the current norms of China and Brazil in terms of the number of beds) will entail an investment of over $500 billion, i.e. between $10 billion and $20 billion per year for the next 20 consecutive years.
Unfortunately, unlike other sectors, healthcare delivery cannot be priced on a cost plus basis since the payee's ability in India is severely constrained with practically negligible penetration of healthcare insurance. It is no surprise, therefore, that almost all of the current organised healthcare service providers are struggling to show any profitability at all despite carrying the tag of being "premium". In these circumstances, it is very difficult to imagine fresh capital formation of this magnitude anytime in the near future since generating adequate returns on investment under current healthcare sector dynamics is a huge challenge.
India can probably live for a few more decades with potholed roads, erratic power supply, cramped airports and a filthy railway network, and skyrocketing commercial and residential capital values. With 25 million new- borns and a net addition of almost 18 million per year to the 1.15 billion already to take care of, can we live with endemic illiteracy (or inadequate literacy) and inaccessible or unaffordable healthcare for hundreds of millions? In the shadow of these hard facts, the Sensex at 20,000 and Forbes listing showing an addition of 20 or more billionaires from India may look a bit less impressive!
Monday, November 19, 2007
Friday, November 09, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion - Grain of Truth - with a table of starving people per 1000
The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion
The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion - Grain of Truth - with a table of starving people per 1000 by Abhirup Sarkar, ISI, Kolkata.
The Telegraph - Calcutta : Opinion - Grain of Truth - with a table of starving people per 1000 by Abhirup Sarkar, ISI, Kolkata.
"What you do for others is more important than what you do for yourself" - Annonymous
"What you do for others is more important than what you do for yourself" - Anonymous
A voyaging ship was wrecked during a storm at sea and only two of the men on it were able to swim to a small, desert like island. The two survivors, not knowing what else to do, agree that they had no other recourse but to pray to God.
However, to find out whose prayer was more powerful, they agreed to divide the territory between them and stay on opposite sides of the island.
The first thing they prayed for was food. The next morning, the first man saw a fruit-bearing tree on his side of the land, and he was able to eat its fruit. The other man's parcel of land remained barren.
After a week, the first man was lonely and he decided to pray for a wife. The next day, there was a woman who swam to his side of the land. On the other side of the island, there was nothing.
Soon the first man prayed for a house, clothes, more food. The next day, like magic, a! ll of these were given to him. However, the second man still had nothing.
Finally, the first man prayed for a ship, so that he and his wife could leave the island. In the morning, he found a ship docked at his side of the island.
The first man boarded the ship with his wife and decided to leave the second man on the island. He considered the other man unworthy to receive God's blessings, since none of his prayers had been answered.
As the ship was about to leave, the first man heard a voice from heaven booming, "Why are you leaving your companion on the island?"
"My blessings are mine alone, since I was the one who prayed for them," the first man answered. "His prayers were all unanswered and so he does not deserve anything." "You are mistaken!" the voice rebuked him. "He had only one prayer, which I answered. If not for that, you would not have received any of my blessings."
"Tell me," the first man asked the voice, "what did he pray for that I should owe him anything?"
"He prayed that all your prayers be answered."
For all we know, our blessings are not the fruits of our prayers alone , but those of another praying for us.
This is too good not to share...
My prayer for you today is that all your prayers are answered. Be blessed.
"What you do for others is more important than what you do for yourself"
Friday, October 19, 2007
INDIA: Judicial Accountability: No Adjournment, Please! - Salar M. Khan
“The Lord is only one and he is the God above all of us. I am not God. Judges are not Gods”, said Justice Y.K.Sabharwal, former Chief Justice of India. And that was not very long ago.
Justice Sabharwal was dealing with a petition, as the Chief Justice of India, suggesting that the practice of addressing judges of high courts and the Supreme Court as “my lord” or “your lordship” should be done away with. He was right. What he said was entirely compatible with the democratic norms India aspires for.
People in India have lauded the role of the Supreme Court of India in advancing the Constitutional rights of the common citizenry. The Supreme Court of India has actually infused life into the letter of the Indian Constitution by its brilliant exposition of fundamental rights enshrined therein. The power exercised by it has been so enormous and wide-ranging that almost every sphere of life in India has been transformed. Its contribution to the development of contemporary jurisprudence has been acknowledged world over.
The Judiciary enjoys enormous respect and credibility in India. People look towards it for realisation of their dream of democratisation of the Indian society. The courts, especially high courts and the Supreme Court have also come forward and have enunciated “public interest” jurisprudence. The courts relax rules of locus standi when issues relate to the common good of society. The courts actively promote rule of law and force other state institutions to adhere to the rulebook.
They have been quick in enforcing accountability whenever there is any breach. The Supreme Court of India has ruled that the state is in a fiduciary relationship with the public, and any breach or negligence in public duties amounts to breach of trust. Thus, it has been held that the institutions of the state are under an obligation to perform their duties strictly in accordance with law and are accountable to the people for their actions.
However, unfortunately somewhere between this zealous promotion of transparency and accountability among all other institutions of the state, the Indian judiciary has failed to develop sound mechanisms for promoting these values within itself. Is this proverbial darkness under the lamp?
Proverbial darkness
This darkness, fairly visible to all in India but seldom discussed for fear of inviting action under the contempt of court law, has suddenly got illuminated by the conviction and sentencing of four journalists of the English evening daily Mid-Day, by the Delhi High Court. That is, the Delhi High Court on September 21, 2007, awarded four months imprisonment to these journalists for publishing an investigative story and a cartoon touching upon the conduct of former Chief Justice of India Y.K. Sabharwal. The court, however, directed them to be released on bail in view of the Supreme Court Order. Significantly, the story, primarily based upon documentary evidence, was published after Justice Sabharwal had retired.
The Delhi High Court on September 11, 2007 had held these journalists guilty of contempt of court stating that they had crossed the limits. According to the court, the journalist had “tarnished the image” of the Supreme Court of India.
The Delhi edition of the English daily the Mid-Day had published detailed investigative stories and a cartoon alleging that Justice Sabharwal had committed serious judicial misconduct during his tenure in office. The report alleged that he while a judge in the Supreme Court but before he became Chief Justice, called for and dealt with the sealing of commercial properties case in Delhi—this was improper as only the Chief Justice could do so.
It was further alleged that his sons forged partnerships with two major mall and commercial complex developers of Delhi at a time when he was ordering sealing of residential properties being used for commercial purposes. It is a matter of common knowledge that sealing orders had caused a big push in the prices of shops and offices in the malls, thereby benefiting his sons and their partners. It was pointed out that he should have recused himself from hearing the sealing case because of conflict of interest.
The report also informed that at the time when Justice Sabharwal was ordering the sealing of residential properties in Delhi, his sons were having offices of their companies at his official residential address. Justice Sabharwal’s sons Mr. Chetan and Mr. Nitin had three companies namely Pawan Impex, Sabs Exports and Sug Exports. Initially these companies had their registered offices at their home at 3/81, Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi but then were shifted to their father’s official residence at 6, Motilal Nehru Marg, New Delhi.
The report gave many instances of alleged unjustifiable pecuniary benefits obtained by his sons. It was alleged that the Union Bank of India, a public sector bank, advanced a loan of Rs. 280 million on a collateral security that was non-existent. It was further alleged that the Uttar Pradesh government allotted a number of industrial and commercial plots in NOIDA, a suburb of Delhi, to his sons’ companies at throw-away prices. The report also mentioned purchase of a house in Maharani Bagh colony of Delhi at a price of Rs. 154.6 million. The report alleged that the source of this money was unexplained.
Defence of truth
The report was based upon documentary evidence like registration deeds, documents obtained from the union ministry of company affairs, certificates of incorporation of the various companies, published lists of shareholders, notices declaring increased share capital in his sons’ companies, and notices from the Income Tax Department. The reporter of the Mid-Day also talked to Justice Sabharwal and recorded the conversation.
After publication of this report, the Delhi High Court took suo motu cognisance and issued notice to the editor, the resident editor, the publisher and the cartoonist of Mid-Day for contempt of court. On September 11, 2007, it found them guilty of criminal contempt of court. The court said: “We find the manner in which the entire incident has been projected appears as if the Supreme Court permitted itself to be led into fulfilling an ulterior motive of one of its members.
The nature of the revelations and the context, in which they appear, though purporting to single out former Chief Justice of India, tarnishes the image of the Supreme Court. It tends to erode the confidence of the general public in the institution itself. The Supreme Court sits in divisions and every order is of a bench. Imputing motive to its presiding member automatically sends a signal that the other members were dummies or were party to fulfil the ulterior design.”
The order of the Delhi High Court neither gives any finding on the defence of truth taken by the journalists nor on the issue of these publications being in public interest. It is relevant that the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 was amended to include certain safeguards. The Amendment Act replaced Section 13 of the original Act and provided that the contempt would not be punishable “unless it (the court) is satisfied that the contempt is of such a nature that it substantially interferes, or tends substantially to interfere with the due course of justice” and that it “may permit, in any proceeding for contempt of court, justification by truth as a valid defence if it is satisfied that it is in public interest and the request for invoking the said defence is bona fide.” Looking at the present case pertaining to Mid-Day journalists, it seems that the 2006 amendment in the contempt law of India is not of much consequence.
While convicting the journalists, the court relied upon the judgement of the Supreme Court of India in Haridas Das Versus Smt. Usha Rani Banik and Others (Civil Appeal No. 7948 of 2004), despite it being related to the period prior to the amendment of the Contempt of Court Act, 1971, in 2006 allowing the truth as a defence.
Justice Sabharwal has denied the allegations contained in the publications. Thereafter, the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) issued a rejoinder rebutting his claim of innocence. The journalists also took truth as a defence in the contempt of court proceedings.
The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Judicial Reforms (CJAR) was formed in March 2007 by many civil society groups and eminent jurists who felt that there was an urgent need to enforce accountability in the judiciary. Thus, the position as of now is that there are certain serious allegations against Justice Sabharwal and his sons and these require proper inquiry into to get to the truth.
The issues arising out of this case are obvious—judicial accountability, sweep of judiciary’s power to punish for contempt, and the extent of freedom of speech under the Indian Constitution.
“Warrants for cash”
Another recent instance of use of power to punish for contempt against a journalist pertains to “warrants for cash” episode. A TV journalist Vijay Shekhar conducted a sting operation in a Ahmadabad court and had got warrants issued against the then President of India, the then Chief Justice of India, and many others by paying “bribes” to court officials. He recorded the entire episode on tape where some lawyers and court officials were shown negotiating for issuing warrants through a magistrate. The tape was telecast.
After the telecast, the Supreme Court took a strong note of it and asked the Gujarat High Court to conduct an inquiry. The Gujarat High Court conducted the inquiry and absolved the concerned judicial officer without calling the journalist. Thereafter, the Supreme Court proceeded against the journalist for contempt. The poor journalist had to apologise to avoid a jail term.
Many instances of corruption in the higher judiciary have become public. Some of the allegations include involvement of three Karnataka High Court judges, accompanied by women, in a brawl at a Mysore wayside eatery, soliciting sexual favours from a female litigant by a Rajasthan High Court judge and a court staffer in return to settling the case in her favour, abuse of their official status by three Punjab and Haryana High Court judges to get their nominees selected by Punjab Public Service Commission ex-chief and scam accused Ravinder Pal Singh Sidhu, use of abusive language by a drunk Madhya Pradesh High Court judge in a club in Bhopal, and homosexual molestation of a male police constable by a Rajasthan High Court judge (since transferred).
Prevalence of corruption in judiciary is not a secret anymore. Various judges have raised concerns about the same; some have even tried a guess. According to Justice S.P. Bharucha, former Chief Justice of India, around 20 percent of the judges are corrupt. Another judge, Justice Michael Saldalma of the Karnataka High Court said the percentage is 33 percent. Justice Saldahna also said that the public perception about corruption in the judiciary is much more important than its actual incidence.
Contempt of Courts Act--1971
It is significant that such instances have been reported despite having a law like Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. Power to punish for contempt was also used by the Supreme Court against some newspapers for reporting some of the above instances.
Under the prevailing law, the definition of contempt is very wide. As per Section 2 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, the contempt has been categorised as “civil” and “criminal”. Civil contempt has been defined as “willful disobedience to any judgement, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court or willful breach of an undertaking given to a court. The Act defines “criminal contempt”, amongst others, as the publication of any matter or the doing of any other act whatsoever which “scandalizes or tends to scandalize, or lowers or tends to lower the authority of, any court”. Such a vague provision is prone to misuse.
There is also an instance where a journalist and a news channel were restrained by court from carrying out a story related to the impeachment motion against the then Chief Justice of Tamil Nadu being circulated among Members of Parliament. Kumar Rajesh of the TV news channel Aaj Tak had sent a fax to the then Tamil Nadu Chief Justice to get his response to the charges against him in the impeachment motion. The High Court immediately issued contempt notice to the correspondent and issued an injunction against him and his channel restraining them from carrying any story related to the impeachment motion.
Therefore, the position in India is that if any person makes adverse comments, the power to punish for contempt for “scandalising the court or lowering the authority of the court” can be utilised. If one seeks information about the charges contained in a formal impeachment motion, he finds himself in deep trouble.
Despite many instances of misconduct by judges becoming public, the judiciary in India has consistently refused demands for accountability. So much so that former Indian Chief Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, when asked to give his comments, recently told an English daily from Delhi, “I would not like to comment on any particular case, but judicial accountability is merely a term for debate now. There is no point in wasting time on it.”
Another former Chief Justice A. S. Anand has also maintained that the “code of conduct” formulated for self-monitoring of conduct of judges has failed and legislative sanction for its enforcement is overdue. Justice Anand has said that enactment of statutory mechanism to deal with complaints against the judiciary is in its own interest. He said, “credibility is a judge’s (the) greatest asset. To maintain it, all allegations must be probed.” It is another matter that Justice Anand himself faced charges of judicial misconduct, regarding land deals in J&K and Madhya Pradesh, and he chose not to defend himself in public.
Presently the only mechanism available to take action against erring judges in the higher judiciary is impeachment by Parliament. This provision has proved ineffective and impracticable. No judge has ever been impeached in India. The impeachment motion initiated against a Supreme Court judge V. Ramaswamy failed in the Parliament.
This state of affairs has now galvanised civil society groups, and demands for proper mechanisms for ensuring transparency and accountability in the higher judiciary, is gathering momentum. The CJAR has specifically taken up judicial accountability as a campaign point.
As a part of judicial accountability the CJAR has demanded the declaration of assets by judges, transparency in the appointment and transfer of judges, amendment to the Contempt of Courts Act, establishment of an independent commission having disciplinary powers over judges, and the removal of restriction on registration of First Information report against judges.
The Law Commission of India came out with its l95th Report dealing with The Judges (Inquiry) Bill in 2005. Thereafter, The Judges (Inquiry) Bill, 2006 was introduced in the Parliament. The Bill sought to amend the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968. Under the 1968 Act, only the Lok Sabha (House of People) Speaker or the Rajya Sabha (House of States) Chairman could admit a complaint relating to the misbehaviour or incapacity of a judge and constitute a committee to inquire into it. Further, under this law, only Members of Parliament can register complaints of judicial misconduct.
National Judicial Council
The provisions of the Bill include the establishment of a National Judicial Council (NJC) to undertake preliminary investigation and to inquire into allegations of misbehaviour or incapacity against a judge of the Supreme Court or of a High Court. The Bill also provides for regulation of the procedure for such investigation, inquiry and proof. The Bill provides for two procedures, reference and complaint. Under the reference procedure, the Rajya Sabha Chairman or the Lok Sabha Speaker can make a reference to the NJC for an initial inquiry into allegations contained in a notice for removal of a judge admitted in the Parliament.
The Bill further provides that under the reference procedure a notice for the removal of a judge can be admitted in the Lok Sabha only if it has the signatures of not less than 100 members and in the Rajya Sabha only if it has the signatures of at least 50 members. The Presiding Officer of the House makes a reference to the NJC to probe the allegations only after the notice is admitted.
Under the complaint procedure, any person can complain to the NJC against a judge. The NJC will initiate further action if a prima facie case was made out on preliminary scrutiny and verification of the material. It has been further provided that if the complaint is found to be false, vexatious and not made in good faith, the complainant shall be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term up to one year and also a fine up to Rs. 25,000.
If the allegations are proved against the judge in question, the NJC will submit its report to the President, who shall forward it to the Parliament for appropriate action, which includes removal.
The differentiation has been made between serious lapses and minor ones of a judge. It has been provided that the NJC itself will have power to impose minor measures in cases where misbehaviour or incapacity does not warrant removal. The minor measures enumerated in the Bill include, issuing advisories, request for retirement, stopping the assignment of judicial work for a limited time, warring, censure or admonition, public or private. As per the Bill the NJC shall have no power to impose minor measures in a case of serious misconduct, where the matter is referred to by the Speaker of Lok Sabha or Chairman Rajya Sabha on a motion of removal.
The Bill exempts the Chief Justice of India from the purview of the NJC. It further provides that in case of inquiry against Supreme Court judges, the NJC would consist of the Chief Justice of India and four senior-most judges of the apex court. For any probe against High Court judges, it would comprise of the CJI, two senior-most judges of the Supreme Court and two Chief Justices of the High Courts, to be nominated by the Chief Justice of India.
This variation in composition of the NJC has been proposed apparently on the basis of the recommendation of former Chief Justice of India Mr. R.C. Lahoti. Mr Lahoti had said that the inclusion of two High Court Chief Justices in the probe against the apex court judges would be violative of the protocol. The Bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice on December 19, 2006. The committee has now submitted its report to the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
The Standing Committee report has suggested some drastic changes in the Bill. The committee has found that under the reference procedure the threshold requirement in terms of obtaining the signatures of Members of Parliament was excessive and has said that it amounts to equating one common person to 100 members of the Lok Sabha and 50 members of the Rajya Sabha.
Besides recommending inclusion of the Chief Justice of India within the ambit of complaint procedure, the report has also recommended formation of a broad-based empowered committee having representation not only from the Judiciary but from the Executive, Parliament and the Bar as part of the NJC. The report recommends that this committee must be entrusted with the responsibility of screening complaints, including those referred by the Presiding Officers of Parliament after the admission of a notice for removal of a judge.
The report has objected to the provision of voluntary retirement as one of the minor measures in cases where the NJC is “satisfied that all or any of the charges regarding a judge have been proved and if it is of the view that the charges do not warrant his or her removal”. The report argues that it would amount to enabling the judge to bypass the accountability process.
Noted jurist Ram Jethmalani in the dissent note appended to the report has opposed the creation of the NJC. According to him the system of minor punishments would expose the entire judicial system to ridicule and be totally counterproductive. He has argued that changing the method of recruitment of judges could restore the prestige of the judiciary.
The issue of judicial accountability in India cannot be pushed under the carpet for long. Transparency and accountability are the values the judiciary of a democratic country can hardly refuse. There cannot be any justification for the judiciary of India to consider itself beyond scrutiny. Judicial independence does not mean the absence of accountability.
Accountability ensures transparency and, therefore, raison d’être for independence.
Mere statements of principles acknowledging need to have judicial accountability are not enough. Practicable mechanism for judicial accountability is necessary for preservation of judicial independence in India.
Courtsy: Asian Human Rights Commission, News Letter
Justice Sabharwal was dealing with a petition, as the Chief Justice of India, suggesting that the practice of addressing judges of high courts and the Supreme Court as “my lord” or “your lordship” should be done away with. He was right. What he said was entirely compatible with the democratic norms India aspires for.
People in India have lauded the role of the Supreme Court of India in advancing the Constitutional rights of the common citizenry. The Supreme Court of India has actually infused life into the letter of the Indian Constitution by its brilliant exposition of fundamental rights enshrined therein. The power exercised by it has been so enormous and wide-ranging that almost every sphere of life in India has been transformed. Its contribution to the development of contemporary jurisprudence has been acknowledged world over.
The Judiciary enjoys enormous respect and credibility in India. People look towards it for realisation of their dream of democratisation of the Indian society. The courts, especially high courts and the Supreme Court have also come forward and have enunciated “public interest” jurisprudence. The courts relax rules of locus standi when issues relate to the common good of society. The courts actively promote rule of law and force other state institutions to adhere to the rulebook.
They have been quick in enforcing accountability whenever there is any breach. The Supreme Court of India has ruled that the state is in a fiduciary relationship with the public, and any breach or negligence in public duties amounts to breach of trust. Thus, it has been held that the institutions of the state are under an obligation to perform their duties strictly in accordance with law and are accountable to the people for their actions.
However, unfortunately somewhere between this zealous promotion of transparency and accountability among all other institutions of the state, the Indian judiciary has failed to develop sound mechanisms for promoting these values within itself. Is this proverbial darkness under the lamp?
Proverbial darkness
This darkness, fairly visible to all in India but seldom discussed for fear of inviting action under the contempt of court law, has suddenly got illuminated by the conviction and sentencing of four journalists of the English evening daily Mid-Day, by the Delhi High Court. That is, the Delhi High Court on September 21, 2007, awarded four months imprisonment to these journalists for publishing an investigative story and a cartoon touching upon the conduct of former Chief Justice of India Y.K. Sabharwal. The court, however, directed them to be released on bail in view of the Supreme Court Order. Significantly, the story, primarily based upon documentary evidence, was published after Justice Sabharwal had retired.
The Delhi High Court on September 11, 2007 had held these journalists guilty of contempt of court stating that they had crossed the limits. According to the court, the journalist had “tarnished the image” of the Supreme Court of India.
The Delhi edition of the English daily the Mid-Day had published detailed investigative stories and a cartoon alleging that Justice Sabharwal had committed serious judicial misconduct during his tenure in office. The report alleged that he while a judge in the Supreme Court but before he became Chief Justice, called for and dealt with the sealing of commercial properties case in Delhi—this was improper as only the Chief Justice could do so.
It was further alleged that his sons forged partnerships with two major mall and commercial complex developers of Delhi at a time when he was ordering sealing of residential properties being used for commercial purposes. It is a matter of common knowledge that sealing orders had caused a big push in the prices of shops and offices in the malls, thereby benefiting his sons and their partners. It was pointed out that he should have recused himself from hearing the sealing case because of conflict of interest.
The report also informed that at the time when Justice Sabharwal was ordering the sealing of residential properties in Delhi, his sons were having offices of their companies at his official residential address. Justice Sabharwal’s sons Mr. Chetan and Mr. Nitin had three companies namely Pawan Impex, Sabs Exports and Sug Exports. Initially these companies had their registered offices at their home at 3/81, Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi but then were shifted to their father’s official residence at 6, Motilal Nehru Marg, New Delhi.
The report gave many instances of alleged unjustifiable pecuniary benefits obtained by his sons. It was alleged that the Union Bank of India, a public sector bank, advanced a loan of Rs. 280 million on a collateral security that was non-existent. It was further alleged that the Uttar Pradesh government allotted a number of industrial and commercial plots in NOIDA, a suburb of Delhi, to his sons’ companies at throw-away prices. The report also mentioned purchase of a house in Maharani Bagh colony of Delhi at a price of Rs. 154.6 million. The report alleged that the source of this money was unexplained.
Defence of truth
The report was based upon documentary evidence like registration deeds, documents obtained from the union ministry of company affairs, certificates of incorporation of the various companies, published lists of shareholders, notices declaring increased share capital in his sons’ companies, and notices from the Income Tax Department. The reporter of the Mid-Day also talked to Justice Sabharwal and recorded the conversation.
After publication of this report, the Delhi High Court took suo motu cognisance and issued notice to the editor, the resident editor, the publisher and the cartoonist of Mid-Day for contempt of court. On September 11, 2007, it found them guilty of criminal contempt of court. The court said: “We find the manner in which the entire incident has been projected appears as if the Supreme Court permitted itself to be led into fulfilling an ulterior motive of one of its members.
The nature of the revelations and the context, in which they appear, though purporting to single out former Chief Justice of India, tarnishes the image of the Supreme Court. It tends to erode the confidence of the general public in the institution itself. The Supreme Court sits in divisions and every order is of a bench. Imputing motive to its presiding member automatically sends a signal that the other members were dummies or were party to fulfil the ulterior design.”
The order of the Delhi High Court neither gives any finding on the defence of truth taken by the journalists nor on the issue of these publications being in public interest. It is relevant that the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 was amended to include certain safeguards. The Amendment Act replaced Section 13 of the original Act and provided that the contempt would not be punishable “unless it (the court) is satisfied that the contempt is of such a nature that it substantially interferes, or tends substantially to interfere with the due course of justice” and that it “may permit, in any proceeding for contempt of court, justification by truth as a valid defence if it is satisfied that it is in public interest and the request for invoking the said defence is bona fide.” Looking at the present case pertaining to Mid-Day journalists, it seems that the 2006 amendment in the contempt law of India is not of much consequence.
While convicting the journalists, the court relied upon the judgement of the Supreme Court of India in Haridas Das Versus Smt. Usha Rani Banik and Others (Civil Appeal No. 7948 of 2004), despite it being related to the period prior to the amendment of the Contempt of Court Act, 1971, in 2006 allowing the truth as a defence.
Justice Sabharwal has denied the allegations contained in the publications. Thereafter, the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) issued a rejoinder rebutting his claim of innocence. The journalists also took truth as a defence in the contempt of court proceedings.
The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Judicial Reforms (CJAR) was formed in March 2007 by many civil society groups and eminent jurists who felt that there was an urgent need to enforce accountability in the judiciary. Thus, the position as of now is that there are certain serious allegations against Justice Sabharwal and his sons and these require proper inquiry into to get to the truth.
The issues arising out of this case are obvious—judicial accountability, sweep of judiciary’s power to punish for contempt, and the extent of freedom of speech under the Indian Constitution.
“Warrants for cash”
Another recent instance of use of power to punish for contempt against a journalist pertains to “warrants for cash” episode. A TV journalist Vijay Shekhar conducted a sting operation in a Ahmadabad court and had got warrants issued against the then President of India, the then Chief Justice of India, and many others by paying “bribes” to court officials. He recorded the entire episode on tape where some lawyers and court officials were shown negotiating for issuing warrants through a magistrate. The tape was telecast.
After the telecast, the Supreme Court took a strong note of it and asked the Gujarat High Court to conduct an inquiry. The Gujarat High Court conducted the inquiry and absolved the concerned judicial officer without calling the journalist. Thereafter, the Supreme Court proceeded against the journalist for contempt. The poor journalist had to apologise to avoid a jail term.
Many instances of corruption in the higher judiciary have become public. Some of the allegations include involvement of three Karnataka High Court judges, accompanied by women, in a brawl at a Mysore wayside eatery, soliciting sexual favours from a female litigant by a Rajasthan High Court judge and a court staffer in return to settling the case in her favour, abuse of their official status by three Punjab and Haryana High Court judges to get their nominees selected by Punjab Public Service Commission ex-chief and scam accused Ravinder Pal Singh Sidhu, use of abusive language by a drunk Madhya Pradesh High Court judge in a club in Bhopal, and homosexual molestation of a male police constable by a Rajasthan High Court judge (since transferred).
Prevalence of corruption in judiciary is not a secret anymore. Various judges have raised concerns about the same; some have even tried a guess. According to Justice S.P. Bharucha, former Chief Justice of India, around 20 percent of the judges are corrupt. Another judge, Justice Michael Saldalma of the Karnataka High Court said the percentage is 33 percent. Justice Saldahna also said that the public perception about corruption in the judiciary is much more important than its actual incidence.
Contempt of Courts Act--1971
It is significant that such instances have been reported despite having a law like Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. Power to punish for contempt was also used by the Supreme Court against some newspapers for reporting some of the above instances.
Under the prevailing law, the definition of contempt is very wide. As per Section 2 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, the contempt has been categorised as “civil” and “criminal”. Civil contempt has been defined as “willful disobedience to any judgement, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court or willful breach of an undertaking given to a court. The Act defines “criminal contempt”, amongst others, as the publication of any matter or the doing of any other act whatsoever which “scandalizes or tends to scandalize, or lowers or tends to lower the authority of, any court”. Such a vague provision is prone to misuse.
There is also an instance where a journalist and a news channel were restrained by court from carrying out a story related to the impeachment motion against the then Chief Justice of Tamil Nadu being circulated among Members of Parliament. Kumar Rajesh of the TV news channel Aaj Tak had sent a fax to the then Tamil Nadu Chief Justice to get his response to the charges against him in the impeachment motion. The High Court immediately issued contempt notice to the correspondent and issued an injunction against him and his channel restraining them from carrying any story related to the impeachment motion.
Therefore, the position in India is that if any person makes adverse comments, the power to punish for contempt for “scandalising the court or lowering the authority of the court” can be utilised. If one seeks information about the charges contained in a formal impeachment motion, he finds himself in deep trouble.
Despite many instances of misconduct by judges becoming public, the judiciary in India has consistently refused demands for accountability. So much so that former Indian Chief Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, when asked to give his comments, recently told an English daily from Delhi, “I would not like to comment on any particular case, but judicial accountability is merely a term for debate now. There is no point in wasting time on it.”
Another former Chief Justice A. S. Anand has also maintained that the “code of conduct” formulated for self-monitoring of conduct of judges has failed and legislative sanction for its enforcement is overdue. Justice Anand has said that enactment of statutory mechanism to deal with complaints against the judiciary is in its own interest. He said, “credibility is a judge’s (the) greatest asset. To maintain it, all allegations must be probed.” It is another matter that Justice Anand himself faced charges of judicial misconduct, regarding land deals in J&K and Madhya Pradesh, and he chose not to defend himself in public.
Presently the only mechanism available to take action against erring judges in the higher judiciary is impeachment by Parliament. This provision has proved ineffective and impracticable. No judge has ever been impeached in India. The impeachment motion initiated against a Supreme Court judge V. Ramaswamy failed in the Parliament.
This state of affairs has now galvanised civil society groups, and demands for proper mechanisms for ensuring transparency and accountability in the higher judiciary, is gathering momentum. The CJAR has specifically taken up judicial accountability as a campaign point.
As a part of judicial accountability the CJAR has demanded the declaration of assets by judges, transparency in the appointment and transfer of judges, amendment to the Contempt of Courts Act, establishment of an independent commission having disciplinary powers over judges, and the removal of restriction on registration of First Information report against judges.
The Law Commission of India came out with its l95th Report dealing with The Judges (Inquiry) Bill in 2005. Thereafter, The Judges (Inquiry) Bill, 2006 was introduced in the Parliament. The Bill sought to amend the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968. Under the 1968 Act, only the Lok Sabha (House of People) Speaker or the Rajya Sabha (House of States) Chairman could admit a complaint relating to the misbehaviour or incapacity of a judge and constitute a committee to inquire into it. Further, under this law, only Members of Parliament can register complaints of judicial misconduct.
National Judicial Council
The provisions of the Bill include the establishment of a National Judicial Council (NJC) to undertake preliminary investigation and to inquire into allegations of misbehaviour or incapacity against a judge of the Supreme Court or of a High Court. The Bill also provides for regulation of the procedure for such investigation, inquiry and proof. The Bill provides for two procedures, reference and complaint. Under the reference procedure, the Rajya Sabha Chairman or the Lok Sabha Speaker can make a reference to the NJC for an initial inquiry into allegations contained in a notice for removal of a judge admitted in the Parliament.
The Bill further provides that under the reference procedure a notice for the removal of a judge can be admitted in the Lok Sabha only if it has the signatures of not less than 100 members and in the Rajya Sabha only if it has the signatures of at least 50 members. The Presiding Officer of the House makes a reference to the NJC to probe the allegations only after the notice is admitted.
Under the complaint procedure, any person can complain to the NJC against a judge. The NJC will initiate further action if a prima facie case was made out on preliminary scrutiny and verification of the material. It has been further provided that if the complaint is found to be false, vexatious and not made in good faith, the complainant shall be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term up to one year and also a fine up to Rs. 25,000.
If the allegations are proved against the judge in question, the NJC will submit its report to the President, who shall forward it to the Parliament for appropriate action, which includes removal.
The differentiation has been made between serious lapses and minor ones of a judge. It has been provided that the NJC itself will have power to impose minor measures in cases where misbehaviour or incapacity does not warrant removal. The minor measures enumerated in the Bill include, issuing advisories, request for retirement, stopping the assignment of judicial work for a limited time, warring, censure or admonition, public or private. As per the Bill the NJC shall have no power to impose minor measures in a case of serious misconduct, where the matter is referred to by the Speaker of Lok Sabha or Chairman Rajya Sabha on a motion of removal.
The Bill exempts the Chief Justice of India from the purview of the NJC. It further provides that in case of inquiry against Supreme Court judges, the NJC would consist of the Chief Justice of India and four senior-most judges of the apex court. For any probe against High Court judges, it would comprise of the CJI, two senior-most judges of the Supreme Court and two Chief Justices of the High Courts, to be nominated by the Chief Justice of India.
This variation in composition of the NJC has been proposed apparently on the basis of the recommendation of former Chief Justice of India Mr. R.C. Lahoti. Mr Lahoti had said that the inclusion of two High Court Chief Justices in the probe against the apex court judges would be violative of the protocol. The Bill was referred to the Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice on December 19, 2006. The committee has now submitted its report to the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
The Standing Committee report has suggested some drastic changes in the Bill. The committee has found that under the reference procedure the threshold requirement in terms of obtaining the signatures of Members of Parliament was excessive and has said that it amounts to equating one common person to 100 members of the Lok Sabha and 50 members of the Rajya Sabha.
Besides recommending inclusion of the Chief Justice of India within the ambit of complaint procedure, the report has also recommended formation of a broad-based empowered committee having representation not only from the Judiciary but from the Executive, Parliament and the Bar as part of the NJC. The report recommends that this committee must be entrusted with the responsibility of screening complaints, including those referred by the Presiding Officers of Parliament after the admission of a notice for removal of a judge.
The report has objected to the provision of voluntary retirement as one of the minor measures in cases where the NJC is “satisfied that all or any of the charges regarding a judge have been proved and if it is of the view that the charges do not warrant his or her removal”. The report argues that it would amount to enabling the judge to bypass the accountability process.
Noted jurist Ram Jethmalani in the dissent note appended to the report has opposed the creation of the NJC. According to him the system of minor punishments would expose the entire judicial system to ridicule and be totally counterproductive. He has argued that changing the method of recruitment of judges could restore the prestige of the judiciary.
The issue of judicial accountability in India cannot be pushed under the carpet for long. Transparency and accountability are the values the judiciary of a democratic country can hardly refuse. There cannot be any justification for the judiciary of India to consider itself beyond scrutiny. Judicial independence does not mean the absence of accountability.
Accountability ensures transparency and, therefore, raison d’être for independence.
Mere statements of principles acknowledging need to have judicial accountability are not enough. Practicable mechanism for judicial accountability is necessary for preservation of judicial independence in India.
Courtsy: Asian Human Rights Commission, News Letter
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Thursday, October 04, 2007
TCS, DGSD ... the list grows : how to deprieve India in the name of technology?
From: Umashankar C ...@yahoo.com>
Date: Sep 30, 2007 11:42 PM
Subject: TCS, DGSD ... the list grows : how to deprieve
This write up is purely in the interest of the nation and it speaks about technology. The intention is not to cricitcise Government but to tell them that they should look at the technology which is cost effective. They should also learn to look through the cost pushing design of the IT companies/PPP Partners
Government of
The other side is the VSNL (TCS owned) supported REGINET software of Tamil Nadu which had a similar electronic signature provision. They wanted me to approve for extension of 79 such electonic signatures for the next one year. When I looked at the software design, it was meant to be used only by the intranet users and it had nothing to do with external users. But this system had been imposed by the vendors to sell over 500 such e-signatures at a cost of Rs.900 per e-sign every year. I was under pressure to approve the expenditure as the services came down after the expiry date.
I put a team to study the system design. Within two hours we got over the issue. The same e-signature dongles work for a different design. No need to pay TCS or anyone else. The beauty is that it can work forever, without payment to anyone.
Just because some American company wanted to sell its product we are blindly looking at e-signature for everything and thus end up pushing up the cost. Companies such as TCS look for pushing up the cost of e-governnace which is patriotic to the least.
TCS does not have any knowledge about platform independent technology, more so
In the case of DCA, the users can simply do with user id and password. But they were forced to buy the digital signature from TCS. To use the digital signature the companies have to buy Windows OS! After all these, the user is not able to get any great service from them. Every year, the companies have to shell out user charges to TCS for the digital signature. For every director on the Board the amount is collected. With over 400000 registered companies in
A similar deprievation is on through VISA card system when
I am told that now DGSD is adopting a similar stand by allowing C1 India to collect annual subscription charges from bidders for using their e-procurement portal which has not been decided through open tender. DGSD has to be asked to explain how it chose its partner and how it allows C1 India to collect at the rate of Rs.6000-9000 per bidder every year for being a bidder for DGSD?
Umashankar
C.Umashankar IAS., (TamilNadu Cadre)
e-governance expert & Managing Director, Electronics Corporation of TamilNadu Limited(ELCOT) (A Government of TamilNadu Undertaking)
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
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About Me
- Sandip K. Dasverma
- Arise Awake Stop not till the goal is reached. - Swami Vivekananda Swami ji is my inspiration, not as a monk but as a social reformer and for his universal-ism.