P A G E
Monday, October 5, 1998
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, October 5, 1998 |
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New
states, new troubles
CHIEF
OF DEFENCE STAFF IDEA Economy:
signs for subdued growth |
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Transparent Absurdity
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New states, new troubles IN the BJP’s original scheme of things, the three new states of Uttaranchal, Vananchal and Chhatisgarh were to be the icing on the already assured electoral cake. They are to be carved out of states which are among its four very strong popular bases. It was a win-win position, win elections in the three grateful new states and win elections in the three mother states as a reward for redeeming its pledge. But now, just a few months later, the dream has soured and tension prevails where there should have been near euphoria. Obviously, popular support was for a concept, a vaguely visualised common good; but the concrete plan has left many untouched or bruised. Then there is the redoubtable Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav to cynically turn a good proposal into a contentious issue tilted heavily in his favour. Above all, the BJP had not done its homework, nor took into account the sensibilities of its allies. Uttaranchal symbolises this miscalculation. Land is an explosive issue in the proposed Uttaranchal, and Ms Mayawati brought this out by egging some adventurous dalits to grab forest land. That led to a furore and brought the Akalis into the picture. Yet, there is no evidence that the BJP, the pre-eminent and ruling party in the state, gave thought to this. When the Akalis first protested and demanded the exclusion of the Sikh landlords-dominated Udham Singh Nagar from the new state, BJP leaders, including Parliamentary Affairs Minister Madan Lal Khurana, rejected it off hand and asserted the plan was final. Nothing happened during these past months and that has made the Akalis real angry. West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress has now joined the Akalis in criticising the BJP. Not surprisingly, as there are a good number of Bengali-speaking small farmers or agricultural labourers in Udham Singh Nagar and they too fear loss of land if pushed into the embrace of the land-starved hill state. This has sent the BJP top
leadership into a tizzy. Prime Minister Vajpayee, party
president Thakre, vice-president K.L.Sharma and Mr
Khurana are talking to the Akali leaders all at once. One
newspaper has hinted that the BJP is reconciled to accede
to the Akali wishes; it is struggling to come up with a
formula that would not seem like a full-scale retreat.
The open and not-so-open exercise is not a pretty sight.
Unlike Ms Jayalalitha’s AIADMK, the Akali Dal is a
genuine soulmate of the Sangh parivar and has made this
friendship the key element of its state-level policies
and politics. That explains its sober stand through these
rough months of one-way dialogue. Unfortunately the BJP
either ignored the depth of Akali feelings or misread
them; more, it was blind to the all-too-transparent
compulsions of the Akalis in supporting the cause of
fellow Sikh farmers in the Terai region. Anyway it is
good that the top brass of the BJP has suddenly woken up
to its delicate political equation with the Akalis and
has decided to act. Party spokesman Naidu never tires of
claiming that the BJP-led government never acts under
pressure. A wag has inserted a word to make the statement
read, the BJP never acts except under pressure (as in the
case of Cauvery, Bihar and Mr Bezbaruah). It is time the
party did something to prove the wag wrong. The place to
do that is the hill areas and Jharkhand. |
What about mafia raj? IT is time for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to cast off the adulatory hangover of his "successful" New York and Paris trips and grapple with the ominous problems in various parts of the country, particularly Punjab, UP and Bihar. His utterances show that he is more concerned with the people's problems than with the BJP's prospects in the states where elections are scheduled to be held within a few weeks. However, one is surprised to find him donning colourful headgear and using his time and energy on proving his proven rhetorical skill and understanding of the India that was in Rajasthan and elsewhere when threats are being posed to the government he heads, among others, by the Akali Dal. Even while dealing with his jetlag, he was told all about the fallout of the recent happenings in Bihar and the Patna-related turmoil in Delhi. Mr Laloo Yadav and his wife, who ministers to his chieftainship, have challenged Mr Vajpayee to justify his remark that "there is mafia raj in Bihar". Aggrieved people in and from the region that gave birth to Dr Rajendra Prasad and Jayaprakash Narayan see the instinct of political survival dominating the righteous decision-making capacity of the Prime Minister. He knows much about mafia raj. But does not he know something about the mafia organisers? The Leader of the
Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Mr Sushil Kumar Modi,
has spoken for 10 crore suffering denizens of the
casteist fiefdom by providing details of the mafia:
"Several ministers of the Rabri Devi Cabinet, some
Rashtriya Janata Dal MPs, dozens of District Magistrates
and Superintendents of Police and two controversial
brothers of the Chief Minister are controlling the crime
syndicate of Bihar. Mr Laloo Yadav is himself the
'Godfather' (remember Mario Puzo's Sicily as a
contemporary has creditably done?) of the mafia."
Some goondas "celebrated" Dasehra on Thursday
night by gang-raping a minor girl in Patna. They abducted
the girl in full public view after beating her parents
up. She was taken away in a car allegedly to an
advocate's house. The lawyer's son is among the accused,
according to police reports. Nothing has been done to
redress the legitimate public grievance that in a woman
Chief Minister's domain such heinous crimes have become a
routine affair. Why are some major suspects in high
places not being brought to book? (They include Siwan's
MP, Mr Laloo Yadav's brothers-in-law and a former RJD
MP). Mr K.R. Narayanan, in his supreme wisdom, decided
not to impose President's rule on Bihar. But what is he
— or his Prime Minister — doing to save Bihar
from the mafia? Will Mr Vajpayee interrupt his popular,
political talk shows and visit Bihar without delay? Or
will the Head of State set an example for him by doing
so? |
Spreading sickness INTEREST in just about every aspect
of human behaviour is both natural and unavoidable. The
seemingly meaningless gossip sessions among housewives
— in which the reputation of the absent subjects of
discussion are torn to smithereens — should be seen
as an attempt to generate some excitement in their
otherwise dull lives. However, when well-meaning
institutions and organisations take upon themselves the
responsibility of investigating the negative features of
human conduct, they must ask themselves the question
whether such an enquiry will help reform society. They
must follow the simple rule of thumb that the good news
born out of their investigation should be shared with
mankind and the bad news only with those who are in a
position to take positive action. By this yardstick, a
study conducted by a voluntary organisation in Mumbai and
Delhi and made public under the impressive title of
“Voices from the Silent Zone” deserves both
attention and admonition. It deserves the attention of
those who are in a position to save children from being
abused by parents, family friends and servants. Is there
such an organisation or individual who can claim to have
the power to save a daughter from being abused by her
father and a son from being seduced by his mother? The
American chat shows have pulled the hitherto forbidden
subject outside the closet for public discussion and the
upshot is that the sickness instead of being contained
has now spread to the healthy sections of society. It
must be understood that any number of stories of human
perversity can be picked up from the streets of Sodom and
Gomorah to the bylanes of present-day civil society. What
the voluntary organisation has discovered is an old tale
which should never have been made public. Such instances
of human perversity as have been discussed in the report
constitute an insignificant part of the otherwise
wholesome interests of the human race. If it was not the
case, society would not have reached a point from which
it is ready to explore the untouched frontiers of the
universe. The media too should re-examine the parameters
of the basic elements of good, healthy and developmental
journalism. To restore to society the state of robust
health it is necessary to drastically reduce the daily
dose of negative journalism. Years ago, a cub reporter
learnt an important lesson in positive journalism when M.
Chalapathi Rau (MC to most) rejected an “exclusive
story” of a father having seduced his daughter.
MC’s reason for the rejection was that such stories
would spread sickness in society. He even rejected
another “exclusive” about a Congress
leader’s property dispute with his mistress. The
reason? Why wash private dirty linen in public? The
explicit rape scenes in B.R. Chopra’s “Insaaf
ka Tarazu” were expected to arouse public revulsion
against human bestiality. The film was a success because
of the countless voyeurs among the front rows and the
balcony-wallahs who bought tickets in the
“black”. However, the statistics compiled by
the voluntary organisation should not have been brushed
under the carpet. Nevertheless, it should not have been
made public because, among other things, it presents a
distorted picture of Indians as sex maniacs. An Indian
teenager in the USA is currently facing the charge of
having made his younger sister pregnant. If found guilty,
he may face upto 20 years in jail. It would be a folly to
blame American society for having “corrupted”
an Indian youth or to conclude that Indians everywhere
are obsessed with unnatural sex. The report is flawed
because it seeks to project what is essentially an
aberration into a problem of diabolical dimensions for
which it does not offer any solutions. |
CHIEF OF DEFENCE STAFF IDEA IT is heartening that at long last, possibly as a result of Pakistan’s testing of the nuclear bomb, our government has woken up to the necessity of the formation of a National Security Council (NSC) which will undertake the first ever strategic defence review of the country. A task force under the chairmanship of Mr K.C. Pant, a former Defence Minister, has been instituted to work out the modalities for this. It is contemplated that although the NSC will be based on the American pattern, unlike the US model, it will not be part of the government. It will be only an advisory body. Secondly, the integration of the three Services under a Chief of Defence Staff will remain outside its orbit. Thus it will be only a cosmetic exercise to placate the nation of its defence preparedness. The Defence Ministry has already conveyed to Parliament’s Standing Committee through an office memorandum that “the government has ruled out the integration of the three Services under the creation of a new post of Chief of Defence Staff, as the existing system has been found to be ideal in the Indian context”. The question arises as to who were the bureaucratic “military experts” in the government to have decided on this issue? The pertinent question to be answered is: what was the rationale or logic on which this ruling was based — the dire need for the Chief of Defence Staff against the specific recommendation of Parliament’s Standing Committee? In its defence the government has taken the stand that unlike the USA and the UK, the integration of our three Services takes place at the inter-Service institution of the National Defence Academy (NDA), followed by another inter-Service training organisation, Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), and ending with that seat of higher learning, National Defence College (NDC). They go on to proclaim that even at the apex body level we have the Chiefs of Staff Committee with its Chairman being elected in rotation, thus ensuring inter-Service hegemony. On the face of it,
therefore, the system certainly gives the appearance of
having a well-knit inter-Service defence organisation, a
model for other countries to copy. But there the picture
ends. The irony is that in spite of the above facts, for
all intents and purposes, we still fight separately and
independently under the respective individual commanders.
Our overall defence organisation is not in keeping with
the military thought now accepted as a truism throughout
the world — that a modern war must be fought by all
the three Services acting together as one under a single
commander. The attendant disadvantages of the existing system — indecision, lack of cohesiveness, loss of time, and in fact all the inherent defects which one normally must expect when there is no central unitary control and direction — completely preclude its retention in the present-day warfare when any delay and indecision concerning defence is more or less certain to prove disastrous. This will be specially so in nuclear warfare, and even more so in our case where any war is expected to be a short one and there will be very little time for any adjustment before it ends. Thus, in our set-up, cooperation among the various Services depends not on any unified operational command but on the art of liaison. Most countries have introduced the unification of the Services at the top by appointing a professional expert as Chief of Defence Staff. In India, in the absence of any such arrangement, we must rely on the civil servants in the Ministry of Defence to settle any conflicting claims or recommendations of the Services. Not unnaturally the Ministry of Defence has gradually assumed the duties and status of an inter-Service arbitrator and director, a responsibility for which it is not constituted or competent. In this context, the Secretary, Ministry of Defence, virtually functions as the Chief of Defence Staff. No matter how brilliant an administrator he might be, in his case it is asking for the impossible, and indeed unfair to expect him to convert himself overnight into the chief executive of the nation’s defence system. In the past, the different constituents of the nation’s armed forces developed independently and, during war inter-Services coordination was somehow managed though with considerable difficulty and heart-burning. After the 14-day war with Pakistan that led to the birth of Bangladesh although wide publicity has been given to “intimate” cooperation among the three Services in general, and the Army and the Air Force in particular, the “cooperation” really boils down to one Service in distress calling for help, to which the other Services respond though not always without reservations. Luckily, that war was too short to test the strength and durability of this type of cooperation in a long drawn-out conflict. At the apex of our defence high command is the President, who is the Supreme Commander of the armed forces. He exercises this command through the Cabinet. It is axiomatic that in a democracy the civil government must be supreme. In Western democracies, this implies the supremacy of the elected members of the government, namely the minister, the Cabinet and Parliament. In India, unknowingly, we seem to have gone a step further. Under the “civil government”, we have unconsciously included the civil servant about which there can be no doubt that this was never the intention when we became a republic. Possibly, one of the reasons for this fallacy was the fact that since in the democracies like the UK and the USA the ministers are known as Secretaries, our civil servants believed that this was synonymous with their own ranks. It is high time we exposed this myth of inter-Service cooperation, as for all practical purposes in our set-up it just does not exist. It is possible that one of the reasons why our government may be hesitant in bringing about the necessary reorganisation effecting the unification of the armed forces under a single authority to be called the Chief of Defence Staff, is the obsessional fear of a military coup. Judging from what has happened in the past in many parts of the world in general, and in almost all our neighbouring countries in particular, perhaps the fear is justified. However, it is ironical that wherever a military coup has taken place it has invariably been in a country having inter-Service rivalry, or where each Service functions as a separate entity as it is in India. Strange as it may seem, a coup has seldom taken place in a country where the Services have been unified and integrated. Of course, the bureaucrats would not like to lose their hold on the Generals, and this is a major factor why they do not support the Chief of Defence Staff concept. It is also ironical that, unlike in the USA where the Chief of Defence Staff has a say even in the formulation of the foreign policy, in India the Services have been kept completely out in the planning and formulation of the nuclear strategy. It is unbelievable that about the Pokhran-II development the three Service Chiefs were informed only four days in advance. Today India can claim to possess the fourth largest army in the world. Independently, the three Services are prepared for battle, but the organisation needed to mould them into a unified efficient fighting machine requires reorientation. This can be achieved only by the complete unification of the entire defence organisation in all its aspects under a Chief of Defence Staff system. The National Security Council must have in its charter to bring this about, without which its formation will remain yet another meaningless exercise. (The writer is a
retired Brigadier). |
Economy: signs for subdued growth SEPTEMBER was targeted by the Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, for the much-delayed industrial revival and return of buoyancy in investor confidence, but large segments of industry and transportation services are still in the thick of recessionary conditions. Mr Sinha now hopes that things would begin to look much better by the end of December. Progress in the first half (April-September) does not bear out the RBI’s optimistic assumption of 6.5 per cent GDP growth. Meanwhile, steel, automobiles and textiles are in the range of manufactures facing a variety of problems, including lack of demand, input costs and liquidity. The Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), the public sector giant, has had to adopt a turnaround strategy which will mean hiving off some uneconomic units, down-sizing the workforce and withdrawal from non-core activities. The first quarter (April-June) resulted in a hefty loss of Rs 311 crore, despite the cost reduction exercises under way from 1997-98 which saw only a modest post-tax profit of Rs 133 crore. SAIL’s restructuring became inevitable in the wake of cheaper imports and the prolonged growth slackness in consuming industries like capital goods, automobiles and general engineering. Export markets have also somewhat contracted as much of Asia is reeling under recession and developed countries like the USA want to protect domestic industry against cheaper Asian imports by slapping quotas. Not only automobile sales remain depressed but also some of the major companies are cutting down production and resorting to staggering of work shifts. Ashok Leyland and Telco, the leading commercial truck makers, are badly affected. The textile industry,
specially in the South, is reeling under severe liquidity
and input cost problems, chiefly raw cotton for which the
government has set an export quota. Industrial output as a whole in the first four months (April-July) recorded a lower growth of 4 per cent as against 5.6 per cent in the corresponding period of last year while infrastructure industries also registered lower growth. The Railways carried five million tonnes less freight than last year in the five months (April-August) and the shortfall was more than 11 million tonnes behind the target which is being scaled down from 450 to 440 million tonnes. Even this order of freight traffic may not materialise unless there is a strong pick-up in demand for wagons for coal, steel, cement, fertilisers and oil products. Loss in earnings could affect Plan expenditure unless borrowings increase. A revision of rail traffic is ruled out at present, given the depressing conditions allaround. The two government-owned airlines are in financial distress. The Disinvestment Commission has suggested the privatisation of Air-India, which has been incurring heavy losses while the government’s plans to reduce its equity in Indian Airlines to 49 per cent over three years can take off only after IA finances are put on a sound footing with further injection of its equity and loans. The energy scene is hardly more inspiring. Notwithstanding the government’s readiness to involve foreign oil companies in new blocks, on and offshore, the country is headed for a rapid depletion of its current reserves. Self-sufficiency in hydrocarbons has already come down to 35 per cent of oil consumption. Crude output stagnates at 33-34 million tonnes for nearly a decade with growing dependence on imports of both crude and products. While power sector policies have been streamlined with the creation of a Central Electricity Regulatory Authority, the opening of transmission for the private sector, and the clearance of three fast-track power projects, overall there will be little additions to capacity in the near future so that the demand-supply gap will remain as wide as ever. Problems of funding power and other infrastructure projects both by the financial institutions and external sources are yet to be sorted out decisively. Oil majors like Hindustan Petroleum and the IOC have announced massive investment plans during the Ninth Plan period (with only three years left in it) on refinery expansion, pipelines, etc, while the Life Insurance Corporation will allocate Rs 30,000 crore for infrastructure sectors over a five-year period. These proposed investments would have no impact over the short term. The State Bank of India in concert with the other financing institutions hopes to channel a good part of the $4.6 billion mobilised under the Resurgent India Bond scheme for infrastructure though there is an undercurrent of anxiety about getting returns on resources borrowed at relatively high cost with repayments due in five years. At the start of the busy
season in October, markets await the launching of the
government’s disinvestment programme while the
Reserve Bank of India is due to announce its monetary and
credit policy for the latter half of 1998-99, a policy
which has to stimulate demand but not let prices out of
control when inflation is already past 8 per cent. —
IPA |
Life
as a toxic brew TEMPTATION for an object is only our reaction to it. Humans are always parched for romance. Desire is never satisfied by the enjoyment of the objects of desire. It grows more and more as does the fire to which fuel is added. Life is a toxic brew of longings, desires, passions and playfulness. Life always proves the “irrationality” of the rational. Gillian Gas, a 43-year-old member of the jury in Canada, looked into the eyes of the accused in a murder case and the sparks flew. A house on fire relationship followed. The accused was acquitted, and she was jailed. She said, “I am guilty, because of my heart.” Romance had obstructed justice. There is something subtly subterranean, furtive, deceitful and trumpetless in such relationships. Passion always generates an intensity of impulse. Freud says: “Everything you and I do spring from two motives. The sex urge, and the desire to be great”. Desire is always on the threshold of puberty. The incendiary mixture of desire, deceit and debilitating sense of gratification always gives birth to affairs which slit their own throat. Life has in-built sharp pruning shears and long knives. High intensity and high voltage emotions lead to short-circuiting and finally a breakdown. The lives of such people intersect at the same subterranean level. It is a hidden confluence of elemental forces and personal trauma. If we go below the mask of double lives, a subject fascinating in itself, we penetrate into the deep strangeness of two persons’ psyche and yet to deeper disconcerting affinities. We do not know what monsters swim inside us. There is a feel of a hidden and somewhat sinister dimension. After sometime every relationship becomes stale. Men get bored, women get disenchanted. Men grow bold, women become fat. Affection becomes affliction and talent a curse. While we do control our choice of actions, we cannot control the consequences of our choice. Heart has its own reasons. Foibles often overshadow considerable talent. Life is not heroics but like small practical things that come together to give effectiveness, joy and delight. Humans are born to respond to any challenge. There are certain human traits which grow organically from the environment. Psychologists describe such persons having a “T” personality. A person with a “T” personality is a thrill seeker. He wants change, variety, novelty and the intensity of experience. “T” types have a dark side also. They can be destructive to themselves and others. Power and sexual energy seem to go together. Along with power comes bad judgement. Power makes a person feel that he is immune to getting caught. Power is an aphrodisiac for both men and women. Reckless masculinity is a characteristic of a risk-taking personality best suited to strong leadership. It is difficult to say whether men and women are attracted to the person in power or the power itself. It is necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish. At Francois Mitterand’s graveside, not long ago, the mistress mourned alongside the widow. Some pleasures are fraught with risk, and their mortality rate is quite high. It only needs a single matchstick to ignite. Alfred Hitchcock described a villain as “An ordinary human with failings”. We are spinning our own fate, good or evil, and never to be undone. Even the smallest stroke of virtue or vice leaves its little scar. Our good or bad actions silently follow us through the darkness of our ignorance. Initially when one is indulging in such an affair, one has a young boy’s delight in pulling off a daring scheme and getting away with it. There is a sense of wonder, a sense of hope. Each situation requires a certain type of play. Tactics speak of a wide range from straightforward and necessary to devious and cunning. Human species constitute an adaptive organism, reinventing itself periodically. Decisions seal our destinies. And then not piety or wit can lure back time to cancel half a line. Nor all your tears can blow out the fate decreed. Harmonal tumult and romantic cardshaping can lead to very unsavoury situations. Mistakes of a few moments have to be paid for by a life-time of tears. Sirf ek qadam utha liya
tha galat raahe shauq mein; |
Clinton: to lie or not to lie
AN “attempt to interpret politics on Freudian lines,” wrote Bertrand Russell in Marriage and Morals, “is, to my mind, a mistake...most of the greatest men, other than artists, have been actuated in their important activities by motives unconnected with sex.” President Bill Clinton’s bete noire, US independent counsel Kenneth Starr apparently thinks otherwise. A “fetid blend of libido and legalese”, his 445-page report to the US House of Representatives on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair is one of history’s most successful examples of sexual McCarthyism. And Nelson Mandela notwithstanding, it is difficult to disagree with Eric Pooley in Time magazine that Clinton may be driven from office not because he has been proved to be a Nixonian crook but because he has been proved to be an X-rated cartoon. However much one may agree with Bertrand Russell and dislike Kenneth Starr’s obsession with sex, it is undeniable that, legally speaking, his report totally demolishes the President’s construct of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. “You don’t have
to show the severed head of a victim to show that a
victim died, and you don’t have to show all the
graphic details about sex to show that sex took
place.” Philadelphia lawyer and former chairman of
the American Bar Association’s ethics committee,
Lawrence Fox’s protestation is eminently
understandable on first principles. But Starr’s
explanation for presenting what he himself calls
“specific, explicit and possibly offensive
descriptions” of the President’s sexual
encounters with Ms Lewinsky — ten such encounters
are described in the report in meticulous detail, almost
entirely corroborated by evidence whose admissibility is
unquestionable — is no less convincing. From a
purely legal point of view, it borders in fact on the
brilliant. In his grand jury testimony the President (says Starr) relied heavily on a particular interpretation of “sexual relations” as defined in the Paula Jones case. Beyond insisting that his conduct did not fall within the Jones definition, he refused to answer questions about the exact nature of his physical contact with Ms Lewinsky. He thus placed the grand jury in the peculiar “position of having to accept his conclusion without being able to explore the underlying facts.” This presidential strategy (says Starr) mandated that the report set forth evidence of an explicit nature that would otherwise have been omitted. The Jones definition of sexual relations went beyond just sexual intercourse. A person engages in sexual relations, it said, when he or she knowingly engages in or causes contact with the genitalia, breasts or other specified parts with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person. The Starr report bears out President Clinton’s assertion that he did not have sexual intercourse with Ms Lewinsky. Yet, it comprehensively falsifies his claim that he did not also have any sexual contact with her of the type envisaged by the Jones definition. To any normal, adult reader of the report it would, in fact, appear incredible that, considering the things they did together and so many times, the President and Ms Lewinsky did not have intercourse. This is not to say or suggest, however, that their encounters, so vividly mapped by Starr, were unusual or abnormal for any two consenting adults within or outside marriage. It is obvious from the report, then, that President Clinton lied, and lied considerably, both to the grand jury on August 17 and to the court in the Paula Jones trial on January 17 this year. And if such lying on the part of the leader of the world’s most powerful nation qualifies, per se, to be called a “high crime and misdemeanour” — for which the President, Vice-President or any other civil officer of the United States can be impeached under Article II, Section 4 of the US Constitution — though that question is highly debatable and still remains to be decided, he must suffer the consequences. With due apologies to Nelson Mandela, there is not much at stake here for the rest of the world except the self-esteem of a nation that has never lost sleep over violating the honour and esteem of other nations. And yet, what could the poor President do under the circumstances but lie? Or, any other man in his place in America or anywhere else round the globe? It is all very fine to say, as almost all legal systems do, that lying under oath is perjury. And asking other witnesses to do the same in order to protect oneself, obstruction of justice. But is it fair, sensible or practical to expect a man not to lie when accused of wrongdoing, without insulating or immunising him from legal consequences in case he speaks the truth? How can law, or morality, oblige a person not to lie on pain of punishing him for speaking the truth? Of all the rebuttals, then, that the President’s legal team have put forward in reply to the Starr report, the one that carries the greatest conviction and is virtually unanswerable is the rebuttal to Starr’s charge of abuse of power. President Clinton abused his constitutional authority, alleges Starr, by lying and lying again to the public and the Congress, as also the grand jury, all as part of an effort to hinder, impede and deflect possible inquiry by the Congress. “Implicit in this charge,” say the President’s lawyers in a detailed statement carried by Newsweek on September 21, “is the notion” that any official, in any branch of the government, who makes a public statement about his conduct or any other matter that is not true, may be removed from office. “It would follow, therefore, that no official could mount a defence to impeachment, or to ethics charges, or to a criminal investigation while remaining in office, for anything other than an immediate admission of guilt will necessarily be misleading.” The tragedy (or farce) of
impeaching President Clinton is that he faces punishment
as much for not lying as for lying. |
March to protest against rape of
nuns
MEMBERS of the Christian community are outraged at the government’s response to the rape of four nuns in Madhya Pradesh and to the series of otherwise planned attacks on them in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. And at the time of my filing this column, news is gaining ground that on October 3 there will be a protest march here, at Parliament Street. Says John Dayal who is the national secretary for public affairs of the All India Catholic Union: “There has been persistent violence against us ever since the rath yatras of ‘91, ‘92 and ‘93, but it has been sharper in the last three years ... and the worst aspect is that the so-called secularists and activists and even women don’t wish to condemn it, especially this latest incident of rape of nuns. Why haven’t the Narmada river activists condemned the rape of the nuns, after all it is worse than the rape of the river? Why hasn’t Menaka Gandhi spoken against it, after all the defiling of a woman’s body is a worse crime than the targeting of animals? Why hasn’t the women’s brigade of the BJP, Rajmata, Uma Bharti, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, spoken against the rape? Why haven’t women parliamentarians come forward to condemn it? Why should the Catholics be the only ones to protest against a crime as heinous as rape ... raping of nuns means that we have become so degraded that we want to see nothing pure.” Commenting on VHP’s
claim that it is targeting at Christians because they are
“converting,” he counters:” If the
conversion theory was correct then the Christian
community would not be mere 2.6 crore in the 1 billion
population of India. In fact, the former director of
NCAER, Itzak Bhatti, has told me that if there was only
one Christian couple in 54 AD then by the middle of the
14th century even by natural procreation process we would
be much more than the present percentage. In India the
Christian population is (ratio wise) much less than in
countries like Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt. Let me also
point out that though the Indian Constitution has an
Article on freedom of faith but the states of Madhya
Pradesh, Orissa and Arunachal Pradesh have earlier passed
the anti-conversion laws. So all these conversion stories
are false propaganda tactics of the present government,
which is definitely bigoted for I have facts to prove
that minorities are being targeted at. In fact, in 1996
the Religious Freedom Committee of the UN had passed some
resolutions on minorities (linguistic, religious, etc)
and under that they had written to several governments
including the Indian government but till date India has
not responded to those resolutions ....” MPs from Kuwait I was under the impression that it is only our parliamentarians who go on those global touring missions, but this week visiting New Delhi was the high profile parliamentarians’ delegation from Kuwait, led by the Deputy Speaker of their Parliament, Talal Mubarak Al-Ayyar. There was a lunch hosted in their honour, and lunch spreads at some of these Arab embassies are no ordinary fare, rather along the lines of the proverbial feast with the choicest of food combinations. In fact, out of sheer curiosity I tried counting the number of dishes but after 30 I simply lost count. Anyway, let me not digress. Coming to this lunch, not many of our parliamentarians were to be spotted except for Najma Heptullah and Arif Mohammad Khan. Their absence seemed to be made up by several foreign policy experts, academicians from JNU and media persons. Sitting on my table was third secretary in the Kuwaiti Embassy here, Salah Al Saif and he recounted how his paternal grandfather Daham Al Saif had lived for seven or eight years in Calicut, in the ‘40s, doing business in wood. This brings me to write that it seems so ironical that though we have had close links with the Arab countries since centuries but our present generation knows the mere basics about these countries. Mind you, those basics which are fed to them by the Western media. To quote Professor Girijesh Pant, chairperson of the centre of West Asian and African Studies, JNU: “We have a history of glorious Indo-Arab relations but the present generation’s knowledge is distorted and inadequate ... at best they know each other by few paragraphs in history textbooks. With globalisation of media the possibility of knowing each other gets further reduced, because of the nature of this globalisation is such that media is controlled by western stereotype and it is they who decide our mutual perception....” This Kuwaiti delegation was here not to discuss this aspect, rather focus on several bilateral issues and also to highlight the fact that till date over 600 Kuwaitis sit imprisoned in Iraqi jails, languishing there since the end of the Gulf war of 1991. Medical Alert Last Saturday morning I
received a visitor who came totally unannounced,
unexpected and unknown (to me). In the usual course this
would have completely put me off but her face and the
first sentence she spoke seemed so genuine that I had to
talk on. And she is no ordinary woman, rather the
64-year-old Nirmala Bhooshan, a retired government
employee, who has recently set up an organisation called
Medical Alert — India. Motivated by an article in
the Reader’s Digest that she’d read whilst on a
visit to the USA, on how personal identity tags on those
suffering from dementia and disabilities or those likely
to fall victims to fits / convulsions / heart-attacks /
seizures can help save lives, she decided to set up a
similar organisation in New Delhi. Said to be the first
of its kind in the country, Medical Alert has been set up
by her and has even enrolled members. But like every
sensible project even this one has faced some stumbling
blocks. Perhaps, the main one being that few people know
about it and the second could be the economics of it, for
to be a member of Medical Alert you have to first pay an
initial sum of Rs 350 and then follow it up with a yearly
payment of 150. Though I point out to Nirmala Bhooshan
that this amount could be difficult to afford for the
great majority of us but she says that to meet the
overhead costs this is the minimal amount they have to
keep. Anyway, the very concept of Medical Alert is
definitely worth pursuing. |
IF the decision of the British Government on the Kenya question is, for the most part, wholly unacceptable to India, the arguments on which it is based are an outrage upon logic and commonsense. Take, for instance, the principal argument by which the decision in favour of communal franchise is defended and the Wood-Winterton recommendation that “a common electoral roll be adopted even though combined with reservation of seats” is brushed aside. “This recommendation,” says the memorandum, “went to show that the advantages claimed for a common electoral roll would, in practice, be illusory in the special condition existing in Kenya. It was clear that no candidate, European or Indian, could stand as an advocate of the interests of the other race without sacrificing the support of his own. “If the elections were to be fought on racial lines, as they undoubtedly would in Kenya, the main advantage claimed for a common electoral roll, namely, the bringing of races nearer together would be lost.” These words can only mean that, in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government, the adoption of a common electoral roll with reservation of seats is impossible in the special conditions of Kenya because the racial conflict there is of so acute a character. Was there ever a transparent absurdity like this? As if these so-called special conditions — the acuteness of the racial conflict — were not exactly the conditions which the recommendation was designed and, in fact, calculated to meet! The main advantage claimed for the common electoral roll, namely, the bringing of the races nearer together would, we are told, be lost in the case of Kenya because the election would be fought on racial lines. As if it was not precisely
for the purpose of preventing the election being fought
solely on racial lines that this remedy was devised! If
this remedy is not to be applied to a case like that of
Kenya, where else is to be applied? To a case in which
there is no racial conflict and where, therefore, no such
thing as a common electoral roll with a reservation of
seats can possibly be either necessary or desirable? |
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