P A G E
Monday, July 13, 1998
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, July 13, 1998 |
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Revamping the
Congress
Coping with
sanctions-II |
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A tenant to
remember |
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Revamping the Congress Will the Congress be able to revive itself? The party President, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, seems to have started the process of strengthening the organisation at the state level in right earnest. New party chiefs in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, UP, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh have been appointed. She has picked up the right persons for Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. She has, however, not been able to find a person of her choice for Maharashtra in place of Mr Ranjit Deshmukh who owned the moral responsibility for the setback suffered by the state unit because of cross-voting in the recent Rajya Sabha elections. Maharashtra Congress affairs continue to be messy because of the never-ending factionalism. The division between pro and anti-Sharad Pawar camps has created a major rift at the very top. Whether the meeting of the Maratha strongman, Mr Sharad Pawar, with Mrs Sonia Gandhi last week will end the current stalemate is difficult to say. But then such moves and counter-moves in factional politics are typical of Congress culture. Vested interests are known to manipulate men, matters and issues to gain at the cost of the party’s harmonious and unified functioning. Rightly or wrongly, the impression has gained ground that Mrs Gandhi has foisted her “loyalists” in key positions in the various state units. There is nothing wrong in inducting right “loyalists” in positions of responsibility. Mrs Sonia Gandhi apparently wants trusted persons to head the state units to ensure coordinated functioning of the party. The Congress cannot afford to have persons in top slots working at cross purposes. In fact, this has been the bane of the organisation for several years. To say this is not to deny that not all choices for state units of the party are correct. Take the case of Mr Salman Khursheed as the UPCC chief. He has the reputation of being “nobody’s man”. He has said that he would take everybody along to strengthen the party’s traditional vote bank. If Mr Khursheed is able to do this, that will be quite an achievement. But looking at the ground realities in UP, this looks like misplaced zeal. There are serious group rivalries and disenchantment in the party in UP. The party today has hardly any grassroots support base in that state. Its known vote banks of the Muslims, backward classes and teachers have been hijacked by other opportunist groups and leaders. It is doubtful whether Mr Khursheed will be able to build the party from the grassroots upwards. He is no doubt intellectually sharp and had conducted himself admirably well as the AICC spokesperson. But UP at this juncture demands a different type of dynamism. It is a pity that the party could never properly utilise the services of Mr Narain Dutt Tewari, still a very highly respected leader in UP and beyond. Similarly, the choice of the ageing leader, Mr Ghani Khan Chowdhury, as West Bengal PCC chief has already kicked up a row. What seems to be odd is that while Mr Chowdhury is the party’s President, Mr Priya Ranjan Das Munshi has been appointed Working President. Whether the two will be able to work together is doubtful. Looking at Mr Chowdhury’s physical condition and Mr Das Munshi’s dynamism, the new arrangement can only fuel factionalism in the party to the advantage of Ms Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress. Actually, Mrs Sonia Gandhi should bring Ms Mamata Banerjee back to the Congress fold. She is the only grassroots leader in West Bengal who can effectively challenge the Marxist leadership.Be that as it may, Indian politics these days does not work on the dotted lines. There is an element of uncertainty everywhere. Though Mrs Sonia Gandhi is making sincere efforts to revamp the party, her disadvantage is that unlike Indira Gandhi, she has not been in live contact with the grassroots. She has evolved a centralised system and is fed by the chosen few around her. The problem with the Congress has been its “high command syndrome”. If the party has to revive itself, it must encourage grassroots people to take command of the organisation at different levels. Leaders imposed from above will sooner or later become a liability. Mrs Sonia Gandhi would do well to keep this elementary point in view. Equally necessary for the rejuvenation of the Congress is an effort to eliminate its sickening sycophancy culture. .  |
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| Nuclear after-shock An economic crisis has hit Pakistan much earlier than expected and in a more severe form. And Saturday brought shocking twists on all three fronts: stock and currency markets and in sky-rocketing gold prices. Pessimism about the country’s capacity to avert a meltdown is all pervasive, and for several hours panic gripped the business community as the grapevine suggested sealing of bank lockers to block capital flight. Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz had to repeatedly deny a rumour that he had quit the office owning ministerial responsibility for the creeping financial paralysis. Unlike in India, Pakistan has a fixed exchange system and the rupee is officially valued at 46 to a dollar. In the open market, determined by hundi transactions, a dollar fetches Rs 64 and even at this rate, the US currency is not available. The foreign exchange reserve has dwindled to less than a billion dollars and all inward remittances have ceased because of the volatile currency market. Since the nuclear blasts at the end of May more than $ 1.5 billion has been taken out of the country by non-resident Pakistanis rightly fearing a ban on withdrawal. There are reports that Pakistani politicians and businessmen converted their illegal hoards into dollars in the thriving hawala market and took out as much as $ 1.5 billion. The country has to repay loan instalments and interest totalling more than $ 3 billion during the course of this year and unless there is a massive infusion of funds, it has to either ask for a roll-over or default on repayment, which has grave implications. (The country’s foreign debt is $ 25 billion, compared to India’s nearly $93 billion.) With sanctions in place, multinational financial institutions are not likely to rush to bail out Islamabad and the export earnings will barely meet the import bill. The only good thing is that the Gulf countries will supply oil on a deferred payment basis and with some persuasion and lots of luck, Pakistan may also succeed in raising a big loan from that region. The stock market in Karachi is the worst hit. The index has plunged from around 1600 to slightly more than 800 last week. At this highly reduced prices and in the context of a 25 per cent unofficial devaluation of the rupee, investment should pour in, but unfortunately there is no surplus and no hope of an early upturn. The crisis has had a curious political fallout. One sure way out, many experts have started telling the government, is to sign the CTBT and seek the immediate lifting of sanctions. Pressure is mounting on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, both from within the country and without, to opt for this course and convince the people that the country is now fully equipped to produce nuclear weapons and hence further tests are not necessary. In the event of Mr Sharif agreeing to this, India will face the collective demand of the West to follow suit. That will be a fallout of the financial crisis of Pakistan. |
| Coping with sanctions -II Counter measures: an opportunity It is time we saw the economic sanctions not as a threat, nor as non-existent possibility, but as an opportunity to put together a series of actions that help us strengthen our social and economic base. Here is an opportunity to rally the public opinion behind completing the unfinished agenda of economic reforms. It could have been done in the recent Budget. The Central Budget ignored the leverage the sanctions provide to spurt us into action. It has even overlooked the measures to contain the fallout of the sanctions. Sadly, we missed the bus again. In the wake of the sanctions, there are a number of initiatives we should take with full political consensus and without delay. First, the hesitating and halting approach to reforms must stop. The nation is being fed on reforms like crumbs. The appetite and the ability of the nation to move ahead is far bigger than our bureaucrats and politicians would have us believe. Fifty years of inaction and the past seven years of excruciatingly slow movement to shed dysfunctional government controls cannot be justified in the name of caution. It is too late to talk of “calibrated opening up.” Behind the rhetoric and ideological smoke-screen, it merely retards our economic progress. In the case of public sector disinvestment, for example, the government has spoken of a mere Rs. 5000 crore. Why not Rs 15,000 crore? What is publicised in the name of worker interests is often a camouflage to continue control and patronage over public funds. Whose interests are we really serving by commandeering lossmaking PSUs? We have over Rs 3,00,000 crore invested in central and state public sector undertakings. China, with much greater ideological adherence to centralised controls, has boldly dismantled a number of economic ministries and set on the path to privatise over 2,00,000 (out of 3,00,000) state units. Similarly, in the case of the stock option scheme, the announcement has been made half-heartedly in the Budget only for the information technology sector. Subsequently, other sectors are being included. Why not offer the scheme to all companies without going through such numerous small steps in the name of caution? Financial and insurance sectors have to be treated on an equal footing with other economic activities. There is no way the economy can grow if the supporting structures are allowed to continue without major reform. These sectors require a major shakeup. There is a growing feeling that reforms championed by the Finance Ministry have touched just about everyone except the ministry itself. Second, we must integrate ourselves with international trade and commerce more speedily. For years, we have neglected the protection of intellectual property of our own scientists and technologists. The argument that strong protection — set out under the Paris Convention and the TRIPS provisions — will help encourage local innovation has not been articulated strongly enough. A misplaced feeling exists that a change in patent laws somehow benefit foreigners. China broke that mindset in 1985 when they changed their IPR laws. Today, the patients filed by their local nationals are 10 times those in India. They were a fraction of what we were doing 10 years ago. Japan modified its patent laws in the 1970s. It now launched as many new molecules as the USA. We have been influenced too much by the lobbying of the industry associations who thrive on a lack of product patents. It is in our national interests to recognise and reward our scientists’ contributions. India has a transition period upto 2005 to adopt the TRIPS provisions. We should move faster than that to bring about a culture of indigenous innovation and transformation. We have under-estimated the potential of our brainpower. Infotech and biotechnology are drastically changing the nature of our products and services. It is time we recognised that the protection of inventions by Indians is just as important. The Patents Bill must be introduced and made into law without further delay. Third, we must bring technology development higher up on our national agenda. Our national research laboratories, with some of the best equipment and talent in the world, are grossly under-utilised. Science has been over bureaucratised. It needs to be freed of its shackles. Science and technology have to go beyond space and nuclear technology and contribute to industrial competitiveness and social upliftment. Carried by the euphoria of Pokhran, there is the risk of growing militarisation of science and technology at the expense of developing it for the markets and societal needs. The erstwhile Soviet Union suffered because on this lop-sided prioritisation. Encouraging civilian R&D is just as important if we are to avoid a build up of the unproductive industry-military complex. The technology level in our small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is deteriorating at an alarming rate. The continued artificial cover of protection this factor through the reservation policy — much of which has long outlived its utility — will not be able to prevent the folding up of many of these units. Technology is simply overtaking them. Greater resources are required in the development and the management of technology of SMEs. Fourth, the recent trend towards bringing back protection in the name of the so-called level-playing field must be arrested and reversed. For every “swadeshi” industrialist protected through the tariff walls and the restrictions of investment inflows, there is a “swadeshi” who is hurt by these moves. “Swadeshi” in the context of modern trade and commerce is a myth. In the end, it is through providing value for money to the customers, delivering high quality of products and service and becoming internationally competitive and raising our productivity levels that we can hold our head high in the world markets. This is the true “swadeshi” spirit. Saying that because we are Indians and therefore, second class or shoddy goods will do is not “swadeshi”. Protecting a handful of industrialists is not “swadeshi”. The definition has to be given a broader perspective. Fifth, the discretionary powers of the government in giving approvals must be drastically curtailed. Expressions such as “automatic approvals” are a contradiction in terms. Transparent guidelines must replace the case-by-case consideration. The FIPB should be dismantled. Instead of setting up regulatory authorities to bring about transparency, the government continues to protect its own monopoly, exemplified by the DoT-TRAI imbroglio. Sixth, investment and entrepreneurship have to be given a pride of place. The economic indicators of inflation, fiscal, deficit, export growth and results increasingly judge the government performance in the social sector. The performance appraisal of the bureaucrats should surely be judged by the active encouragement they provide to the economic development of the nation. The performance appraisal system of our civil service should be overhauled. Anyone who has tried to establish business in India talks of the harrowingly obstructionist approach of the bureaucracy. The acceleration of growth requires the elimination of a vast battery of laws which have long outlived their utility. A comprehensive list of the rules and regulations, which are roadblocks to development, has been prepared. The government’s several exercises in administrative reforms have got struck in even more red-tape. It is imperative that the administration should be driven by the objectives of the economic development, not by the need to exercise control over the citizens 50 years after the Raj ended. Seventh, the human resource needs to be given a special attention. It has long been a neglected resource. The productivity of our manpower is among the lowest in the world. For too long the vocationalisation of education has remained neglected. Low labour costs are a vanishing advantage. They certainly do not provide a competitive edge to a nation. We cannot continue to go on paying low wages. Our success in the area of information technology has shown what training and skill development can really do. Our craftsmen and technicians need to be celebrated and given greater social recognition. Sanctions are here to stay. This is an opportunity to stand up and act in areas which will help us become truly world class in our industrial performance. Let us not argue about their impact — whether it is $ 21 billion or $ 2 billion, whether the USA’s own interests will be hurt, or Pakistan will suffer the pain more than us. We should instead focus on actions to improve quality, efficiency and productivity, and upgrade technology, not just in terms of better than before but in terms of world standards. Liberalisation in 1991 removed the props of the licence-permit-quota raj from Indian industry. The sops and subsidies to the entrepreneurs were steadily reduced. The industry was kicked into improving its own performance by focusing on its internal efficiency, speed and output. Seven years later a number of them are emerging as global players. Economic sanctions on India provide a similar opportunity to the government. Industry was forced to look at quality, timeliness, productivity, technology, HRD and restructuring as a means to meet the new challenges. Now is the turn of the nation. This is the concluding part of the article. The first part appeared on Saturday (July 11). |
| A
tenant to
remember by D.R. Sharma About 15 years ago we built a little house in Panchkula, the putative Paris of India, for tenants to live in. While all of them proved to be decent citizens, one turned out to be a wondrous creation of the Lord. When he asked about the rent, I told him to pay whatever his conscience sanctioned. He looked inside and outside the house and suggested that a few mango trees in the outer patch would make the marla house look green and fruity. With his farming background, he loved to tend the hedge and shrubs and planted a couple of mango saplings, specially transported from his village near Ghaziabad. Braving the heat and humidity of July, he once arrived at our campus house with a bag of lemons from the tree we had planted while constructing the house. And when the mango tree matured to bear fruit, he brought a sackful of Dasehri and Langra, affirming that “quality of the stuff was excellent.” He stayed in the house for over eight years, monitoring the manufacturing enterprise of his engineer-son. He would religiously deposit the rent in the bank and occasionally call me to get the passbook updated. Initially he had asked the bank to transfer the amount from his account to our account but when he found that the bank officials suffered from selective amnesia, he asked them not to worry. I think it was after two years that he asked his son to meet me and find out if I remembered that we had a house with a tenant who was hesitant to meet me. “Papa is hesitant to meet you because what he wants to say might offend you,” remarked the upcoming entrepreneur. When I insisted on knowing the content of the intended talk his father wanted to have with me, he said: “We have been living in your house for over two years. Normally house-owners breathe down the neck of tenants after one year and demand a raise in the rent. Your attitude has bewildered us. Papa wants to know if you would really mind if we raise the rent from this month.” When I read about wily tenants and harassed owners I wistfully recall the discreet message that the young man brought from his upright father. “No, I don’t mind the raise in the rent,” I told him, “but the extent of raise I leave to you”. |
| Heading for stagflation by Vinod Mehta The danger of inflation coupled with stagnation of the economy is looming large over India’s economic horizon. The budgetary proposals for the current financial year are yet to be approved by Parliament, but the immediate response of the economy appears to be very lukewarm and somewhat indifferent. After the presentation of the budgetary proposals the sensex has almost nosedived. Whatever little increase in sensex was achieved since the presentation of the budgetary proposals was mainly due to the heavy purchases made by the UTI. However, it would be unreasonable to expect the UTI to intervene all the time to prop up the sensex. Market experts predict that sensex will go down below the 3000 level to somewhere between 2500 to 2700. On the price front, the rate of inflation which was hovering between 4 and 5 per cent for the last two years has all of a sudden increased after the presentation of the budgetary proposals. As of today, the annual rate of inflation is 6.86 per cent and is likely to cross the 7 per cent mark by the end of July, 1998. There is nothing much in the budgetary proposals which inspires confidence among the domestic and foreign investors. With the country’s ranking downgraded by Moody’s and sanctions imposed by some of the developed countries, the new investments will not only be affected but also become expensive due to an increase in interest rates. Not only the foreign investors are shying away from new investments, the domestic investors are also having second thoughts on their investment proposals. It implies that for the third consecutive year there will be no new issues coming in the primary capital market. Whatever little concessions have been given to investors in the infrastructure sector are unlikely to have any salutary effect on the economy in the immediate future as almost all the infrastructure projects have long gestation periods. Moreover, one is not sure if foreign investors would enter the infrastructure area on the scale we expect them to invest because of the sanctions. Therefore, one can say that all this has led to negative perceptions by both the domestic and foreign investors that the industrial sector is likely to stagnate. Some of the economists have already started saying that the rate of industrial growth is likely to come down to about 5 per cent during the current financial year. This is something of an anticlimax to the seven years of economic reforms. The economic reforms initiated in 1990 had begun to spur the economy to realise relatively much higher growth rate. The United Front government had very little to add to the process of economic reforms but it also did not hamper the process of economic reforms. However, the current year’s Budget with its lackadaisical approach has, it appears, put a spanner in the process of economic reforms. This is something serious which the government at the centre has to tackle immediately, otherwise we shall be pushing the economy towards recession and stagnation. On the price front the situation is getting from bad to worse; the prices of essential commodities have started rising at an abnormal rate since the presentation of the Railway and General Budgets. The BJP when in opposition had been very critical of the price rise, but today when it is in power it is unwittingly stoking the fires of inflation through its misconceived excise policy. After the presentation of the budgetary proposals not only the prices of fruit and vegetables are rising at a very high rate, the prices of packaged processed food items like wheat flour, edible oil, tea, coffee, soap and toothpaste have also been rising. While the price rise in the case of fruit and vegetables, meat and eggs, is due to the factors like a mismatch between demand and supply, manipulation by traders, etc, the price rise in the case of manufactured essential items is due to the savage 8 per cent increase in excise duty on all packaged items which include essential consumer items like butter, ghee, cheese, edible oil. tea, coffee, sugar, soap cakes, toothpaste, spices, etc. This single unimaginative item in the budgetary proposals has played havoc with the price level, which was relatively stable by this single act when the price increase will come to a halt is anybody’s guess. If the Finance Minister persists with his folly we shall soon be reeling under a double digit inflation by the end of the year. One can say the conditions are ripe for the emergence of a situation like stagflation — stagnation of the economy coupled with the increasing price level. This would virtually mean layoffs in the organised sector leading to unemployment, and erosion of the real income of the average earners. Still everything is not yet lost. The Finance Minister, if he so wishes, can retrieve the situation by making certain structural changes in the budgetary proposals and save the nation from the curse of stagflation. As a first measure he should come out with proposals which inspire confidence among the domestic and foreign investors and which help the revival of the primary and secondary capital markets. This means that the economy needs to be liberalised further and the remaining shackles, which are holding back investment, need to be removed once and for all. The foreign investors need to be offered attractive packages so that they find the investment climate in India more favourable, lucrative and safe than the one in China and South-East Asian countries. Secondly, the Finance Minister must roll back the savage 8 per cent excise duty on packaged items of daily consumption. He must find out other avenues of raising resources to meet its revenue requirements. — INFA |
| HC
shows red
light to rickshaws By Anupam Gupta A “city built taking into account the car but not the poverty of India” — that is how two leading ecological thinkers, Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martinez-Alier, have described Chandigarh in their book “Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South” brought out recently by the Oxford University Press. Much the same reproach can be addressed against last Thursday’s Punjab and Haryana High Court judgement on traffic control in Chandigarh, proposing inter alia to ban the plying of cycle-rickshaws in the city’s Sector 17. And five years later, in Sectors 22 and 34 (two other fashionable and overcrowded city centres) as well. A grim emblem of India’s poverty, cycle-rickshaws are now threatened with judicial extinction in the name of safer traffic and a cleaner environment. Restricting the movement of cycle-rickshaws in the City Beautiful, and not removing them from the face of the earth, is what the judgement actually proposes to do, and I must confess that my charge is a little exaggerated. And, considering the 96-page judgement and its package of 91 directions as a whole, a bit unfair as well. But a judgement, as much as any argument, is tested by its weakest rather than strongest point. And this surely is the judgement’s weakest point. Contrary to newspaper reports, the ban on cycle-rickshaws is not one of the specific directions issued by the court. Or directly so issued. “Various suggestions,” says the court (at page 63 of the judgement), “made by the High Power Committee pointed out by this court shall also be treated as directions of this court.” And again (at page 94), the state governments of Punjab and Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh “shall be obliged to implement”, rules the court, the recommendations of the Committee, more particularly those contained in its reports of July 18 and August 20, 1997 as well as its final report submitted some time later. Loaded with Secretary/Director/ SP level officers, the Committee — set up by the High Court itself and now accorded permanent status with sweeping powers to monitor the implementation of the judgement — is not likely to have had much experience of travelling by cycle-rickshaw. And its recommendation on the point (extracted at pages 40 and 41 of the judgement) turns the Constitution of India, with its avowed and sustained preference for the underprivileged, upside down. “The increasing number of cycle-rickshaws need to be effectively controlled,” says the Committee. Their parking is “posing a great problem” as most of the existing lots meant for vehicles have been “encroached upon” by them. Cycle-rickshaws encroaching upon motor vehicles! The poor encroaching upon the rich! I am certainly no expert on traffic control. But a socially-neutral strategy of traffic control is simply not viable in an overpopulated developing country. The problem with the Committee’s perception of cycle-rickshaws as a traffic hazard is that it is not merely socially neutral. It is socially misanthropic. “In order to reduce the congestion and have a smooth flow of traffic in the city centre of Sector 17,” the Committee says and recommends, “plying of cycle-rickshaws may be completely banned within this sector, as is the case at Connaught Place, New Delhi. This area may be further extended to include Sector 22 and Sector 34 after a gap of five years.” Sector 17 is rightly spoken of as Chandigarh’s Connaught Place but it is not only that. It also happens to contain the city’s main, inter-state bus terminal. Thousands of people catch, and alight from, buses there every day and not a few among them hire cycle-rickshaws to reach, or leave, the terminal. The Committee could have spared a thought for them. And how have Sectors 22 and 34, both residential sectors, been bracketed with Sector 17, an exclusively commercial sector? Chandigarh, Punjab or Haryana, how can the plying of cycle-rickshaws ever be completely and legally banned in a residential sector, so long as the entire population is not in a position to afford motor vehicles? Whatever be the issue it deals with, public interest litigation must (by definition) plan and provide for India as it is, the India of today. Though essentially Chandigarh-specific, the judgement applies in terms to Punjab and Haryana as well. And one has only to extend the Committee’s expert aversion to cycle-rickshaws in Chandigarh (an “artificial”, historically rootless city implanted by Corbusier’s grand architectural design in the midst of nowhere) to the countless small and big towns of Punjab and Haryana to realise the havoc that it will work if translated into practice. No less than the middle-class Maruti and the VIP-pampered Gypsy, the cycle and the cycle-rickshaw are an inseparable part of the urban landscape in both the states. Whether courts, particularly the superior courts (with their hands already full with more important matters), should busy themselves with the minutiae of urban traffic control is a moot question. Regardless of the finer points of that discussion, many of the directions issued by the High Court — those relating to school buses and school children, for instance — are manifestly welcome. But the judiciary’s concern for a cleaner and safer environment must not cloud, or warp, its sense of social judgement. By all accounts, that would be too heavy a cost to pay. |
| Getting
caught on the
wrong foot by Humra Quraishi Caught on the wrong foot, caught with a foot in the mouth, caught with fruit in the mouth — is how some of the government’s top brass’s activities, of last fortnight, can be summed up. Let’s go step by step. In the first week of July Delhi’s Transport and Excise Minister, Mr Rajendra Gupta, offended members of the Christian community by proclaiming to remove churches from the list of the religious places in whose vicinity no liquor shops/ bars are permitted to operate. This startling announcement came when the Catholic churches of the Capital applied for permission to procure 1,500 litres of sacramental wine from Goa. This spurred the minister to suggest an amendment in the Delhi government’s excise rules — which clearly state that no outlet of liquor would be allowed to open within 75 metres from a place of worship. It is only after the community leaders protested, pointing out that sacramental wine was to be used for religious purposes and not for social purposes (as Gupta had presumably acted on the assumption that since wine was used inside the church so it would be acceptable to make it available in its vicinity as well) that he took back his words. But not without leaving traces of his total ignorance vis-a-vis religious practises and also insensitivity towards minority feelings. Then, last Sunday evening (July 5) walkers at the Lodi Gardens were shocked to see over one thousand people, two NDMC water tankers and some Ambassador cars roll in the premises (which otherwise prohibit passage of any vehicle in it), mango and ice cream crates opening up and amidst all that several BJP leaders rendering some provocative speeches and distributing maps of what they described ‘Akhand Bharat’ (which depicted Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of India). A walker even confided that he heard one of them recounting instances of how centuries back some Muslim invaders had killed and rampaged here. In fact, the ongoings would have gone unnoticed if it had been the premises of some other park but since Lodi Gardens is frequented by the who’s who and it has a strong walkers body, Green Circle, whose members protested and even pointed out that the Delhi Chief Minister was one of the special invitees who heard those speeches and saw the damage those tankers/ cars had done to the pathways, plants, the entry gates. Last week also saw another BJP senior leader and MP, K.L. Sharma going on a ‘special fast’, by which he allowed himself the luxury of consuming only fruit, fruit juices and salads, Refraining from cereals and grains. What could be a more envious, heady diet and yet he went on to say that he was going on this “fast”, to protest against the power and water situation in the Capital. Though the situation of power and water remains unchanged but after media glare on himself and on this special fast he allowed the Chief Minister to stuff ‘puris’ and ‘kheer’ into his mouth. I wonder how long would the politicians be able to fool the masses? And now the effects of the latest mouthings of Union Urban Affairs Minister Ram Jethmalani. He very recently went on to state that the Constitution needs to be reviewed with regard to the provision of special reservations for STs/SCs. When severely cornered he is now going about giving lengthy explanations, saying that he didn’t exactly mean so. Anyway, the situation could only be saved with the Prime Minister reassuring the Lok Sabha that those could be Jethmalani’s personal views and the reservations for STs/SCs/Backward classes would definitely continue. I wonder why these useless controversies are being caused rather raked up, when there is no dearth of serious issues that need immediate attention? Brazilian and French Embassy all geared up From our messed up state of affairs to the soccer final. The Brazilian Embassy diplomats here are all very sure that it is Brazil that would win the World Cup, so much so that they have converted one of the chancery auditoriums into a viewing room — chairs, giant screens, posters and banners. And for the final match — 12/13 July night special invitees are being called to see those historic moments and of course if their team wins a party would follow. “In fact, two parties will be held, one in the embassy premises and the other one in the home of one of the Brazilian nationals residing here...there are near about 100 Brazilians living in New Delhi,” informs the Brazilian Press Attache on Friday morning as he shows me the special arrangements. And not far from where the Brazilian Embassy is situated on Aurangzeb Road is the building which houses the cultural section of the French Embassy. And I am told that giant screens have also been up there ever since the matches started and for the deciding match they too are gearing up with immense enthusiasm. Where to get in touch for those tortured Two weeks back in the confines of this column I had mentioned about the latest UN Day — International Day for victims of torture. Now, their latest newsletter does mention that those organisations setting up specific projects for assistance to torture victims could get in touch with the following: The United Nations Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Palais des Nations, 1211 Geneva 10-CH. Telephone — (4122) 9173394 F ax — (4122) 9170099. What is particularly pathetic as far as our country goes is that very few people, perhaps only a handful, are working for those languishing in jails. Ironical it may sound but even in this 50th year of Independence, the fate of those sitting behind bars remains unchanged. The British Raj shunned our prisoners towards “Kala Pani’, Independent India’s governments are shunning them in ‘Kal Kothris’. Why can’t some open air jails come up? — if for no humanitarian reason than to salute the golden year of our Independence. |
 75 YEARS AGO 27 persons ordered to furnish security AMRITSAR: Sardar Sahib Hardial Singh, Magistrate, First Class, heard today an important case against 20 Hindu Kaseras under Section 107, CPC. Statements of some 12 defence witnesses, including two honorary magistrates and other respectable persons, were recorded. Mr Todar Bhandari argued on behalf of the accused. The Magistrate convicted all the accused and ordered each of them to furnish a bond with two sureties to the value of one thousand rupees which the accused did forthwith. Their sureties being accepted, the accused were released. Mian Mohammed Sharif, Magistrate, First Class, convicted six Mohamedans under Section 107 CPC and released them on their furnishing a bail of Rs 1,000. All these sureties are for a period of one year. Many other similar cases are proceeding in local courts. Mr Langley, Commissioner, Lahore Division, visited Amritsar yesterday and saw several respectable Hindus and Mohamedans. Cloth markets opened today. Many shops in the bullion market did not resume business. |
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