P A G E
Monday, July 20, 1998
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, July 20, 1998 |
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Budget
— phase four
Constraints
of populism |
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Friendship
of convenience
Drumbeats
to mark |
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Budget — phase four Within 47 days of presenting the Union budget, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha has made four course corrections and has announced a fifth in a few days time (to boost exports). This has earned him, by popular acclaim, the reputation of being the “Rollback Minister”, which he deeply resents. In the latest exercise on Friday, he unpacked a mini gift worth Rs 263 crore, all in indirect taxes — Rs 192 crore by way of excise duty reduction and Rs 71 crore in customs duty. But the surprising gesture was to abolish gift tax. Finance Ministry mandarins have convinced the Minister that the resultant loss of revenue would be only Rs 10 crore — the amount collected last year. But tax experts see in the new regime tempting loopholes of income tax avoidance, particularly if assets are transferred, and the government may lose as much as Rs 1000 crore. There is one more cheerful provision for the black money-wallahs. They can invest up to Rs 50 lakh in shares without being a tax payer, that is, without having a permanent account number of the income tax department. Ironically, when the ceiling was fixed at Rs 50,000 share market buffs protested saying the draconian provision would scare away investors, admitting that the stock market is the favourite haunt of those sitting on bagfuls of tainted money. Earlier the Minister has announced schemes like “Samadhan” and “Saral”, a slightly modified version of VDIS of yore, making the life of tax dodgers a bit more comfortable. All other rollback decisions of excise duty were expected, not because the Minister is fond of changing his mind but because the budget proposals were patently unrealistic and backward-looking. Taxing branded eatables like namkeen and mithai threaten to defeat plans for mechanisation, quality control and elimination of the inspector raj. And what is more, the measure would add a few thousand more to the already alarming number of tax cheats. Absence of clear thinking was evident in the decision to impose capital gains tax on shares and bonds of infrastructure projects at a time when there is an urgent need to attract capital. Also, it went to the advantage of earlier promoters, thus creating two castes of entrepreneurs. This is a welcome retreat, but not the one on price of land for residential purposes. In the budget he had proposed that for the purpose of stamp duty, the government fixed price and not the so-called fair price will be taken into consideration. The fair value is always deliberately lowered to both save on stamp duty and make room for the use of black money. Real estate and the stock market are the two areas where black money is generated and invested. And black money is the enemy of a liberal, market-oriented economy. It is a pity that the budget has been kind to economic offenders, both individuals and institutions.  |
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Terminator Imports are rarely without a price, specially in the case of foodgrains. The curse called congress grass came to India with the wheat imported from the USA when this country was not self-sufficient in foodgrains production. India could have been in the grip of another malaise in the years to come if the preventive measures just announced had not been taken by the government. The source would have been Terminator, a seed gene patented in the USA by the Delta and Pine Land Company. Most seeds imported from the USA were supposed to contain this gene in five years, which is intended to help seed multinationals to earn more profit. And in the process the farmer would be totally dependent for his seeds on these companies forever. The reason: Terminator is aimed at making every plant sterile, not only in the field where such a seed has been used but in the neighbouring farms as well. The seeds from such crops are good for nothing as these have no reproductive capacity. Whereas in most countries as in India there is an ongoing tradition of farmers saving a part of their crop to be used as seeds for growing the particular crop again and again. The cycle has been going on. Terminator is intended to destroy this cycle once and for all. It was keeping all these and many other factors in view that The Tribune highlighted the development in all its deadly details when the US company got the patent rights in March this year. One must appreciate the efforts made by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research which took up the matter in all seriousness, and has now got a ban imposed by the Directorate of Plant Protection for Quarantine and Storage, Government of India, on the import of any seed that contains this gene. But imposing a ban should not make the government and our agriculture scientists forget about this disastrous product of biotechnology. There is need to keep strict vigil on such activities of multinational companies claiming to have found ways to fight crop diseases. Who knows some day some company finds another method to take a part of farming activity under its control as multinationals have been working on these lines for quite a long time. In fact, a policy should be evolved to discourage the procurement of seeds from foreign sources. Agricultural activity is an area of crucial importance and deserves to be given greater attention, specially the research and development aspect of it. Our agricultural universities and the ICAR centres have to be brought to the level of those in the developed West, specially the USA. |
| Right to die The Constitution has granted every citizen the right to life. The International Charter of Human Rights too has recognised it as a fundamental right. It can only be taken away, in the rarest of rare cases, through the due process of law. What difference would it have made to the life of ordinary citizens had the charter and the Constitution ignored this subject? Simply put, it merely means that every individual is free to earn his daily bread without recourse to what the state has ordained as unlawful acts. But if people die of starvation in Kalahandi, neither the state nor society is made to pay for the violation of this constitutional right. Even though the debate on the subject of right to life is still inconclusive, Mr C.A. Thomas of Kerala has given a strange turn to what can be called a matter of life and death by demanding the right to die. Since Mr Thomas is a law-abiding citizen, he wants to earn this right through the due process of law. He has, therefore, filed a petition in the Kerala High Court and is waiting for the day when he would earn the right to happily and voluntarily end a life well lived. He is clear that he is not pleading for euthanasia because he is in reasonably good health. He would not like his unusual request to be placed in the category of “legal suicide” because he has lived a happy and fruitful life. In defence of his claim to the right to die Mr Thomas, 80, says that “almost all religions teach that death is not the end but a preparation for another life. Be it Hinduism, Jainism, Christianity or Islam, they preach the need to welcome death as the end of one life and the beginning of another”. In fact, he insists that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution included the right to choose death at a ripe age. He has asked the court to direct the Centre and the state government to set up “mahaprasthan kendras” to facilitate voluntary death; direct the government to appoint a commission to study the practice in ancient India and suggest methods for its application today; seek the views of senior citizens on the subject and if the response is positive, set up organ banks and transplant facilities “so that we can be of some use to society before we say our final good-byes”. That the High Court has taken the issue seriously is evident from the fact that it has issued notices to the Central and state governments seeking their views on the subject. However, the question of granting to senior citizens the right to die is not as simple as Mr Thomas has made it sound through well-structured arguments. What would be the legally acceptable parameters to determine the elements which constitute “ripe age”? A point which should not be overlooked is that young relatives can always use such a right to make wealthy senior citizens — the poor may do it because aged relatives become a burden on them — say farewell to life “happily and voluntarily”. In the case of elderly women it may provide the excuse to give the obnoxious practice of sati a less offensive label. |
| Constraints of populism Punjab's fragile fiscal position by Sucha Singh Gill The budget of a government is not only a statement of the expected level of receipts and expenditure but it also displays priorities through expenditure allocations and signals associated with it. The 1998-99 Budget speech of the Punjab Finance Minister was a combined statement of the state’s annual budget and plan of the current financial year. In fact, the major part of this speech was devoted to the unfolding of the annual plan for 1998-99, an analysis of economic problems of the state and the strategy to tackle them. Since there has been considerable academic input into the planning process (since last year), this is an impressive part of his speech. The Finance Minister has touched the critical issues while analysing the problems of the economy such as exhaustion of seed technology in agriculture and the need to evolve new technologies and the urgency to shift to a new high value-added cropping pattern backed by adequate marketing (including export) and agro-processing activities. n view of the growing unemployment (particularly among educated youth), he correctly recognises the need for a faster rate of industrial development and non-farm remunerative employment. The government has shown the commitment to resort to decentralised (block-level) planning as a strategy and R & D, particularly in agriculture, as measures to give boost to rural development with an emphasis on non-farm employment generation and on the improvement in the quality of life.  For the regeneration of the Punjab economy an annual plan of Rs 2,500 crore (an improvement) of 19 per cent over that of last year at current prices or slightly more than 10 per cent at constant prices) has been announced. The major constraint for the government initiative emanates from its fragile financial position of the total Budget of the state of about Rs. 15,000 crore, the additional resource mobilisation is less than Rs 400 crore — 2.67 per cent of the total budget. It does not cover even the annual price rise. Increasingly, the government is depending more on public borrowing and less on tax-based resource mobilisation. In the current Budget, 41.84 per cent of the total receipts are based on public borrowing and, consequently, 31.36 per cent of the spending would be made for the repayment of debt and interest. This practice of reckless borrowing is resorted to avoid tax-based resource mobilisation. This not only accumulates the mounting debt burden for future governments and liabilities for future generations but also progressively eats into tax resources of the state on account of payment of debt obligations. The mild attempt at resource mobilisation is an interesting subject for analysis. Of the total additional resource mobilisation of Rs 400 crore, the additional devolution from the Union Government would account for Rs 100 crore while the disposal of evacuee land will net Rs 50 crore. Thus nearly 40 per cent of the total are merely transfers of resources. Of the remaining Rs 250 crore, Rs 103 crore is expected from the transport sector by an increase in bus fares (Rs 53 crore), special passenger road tax (Rs 39 crore) and revising of the occupancy rate for bus operators from 60 to 65 per cent (Rs 11 crore). Of the remaining, Rs 72 crore would be mobilised in the form of additional collection from indirect taxes and Rs 75 crore is expected to be available in the form of a cut (3 per cent) introduced by the government in the spending of various departments. Thus the additional tax effort by the state is only of the order of Rs 175 crore out of which Rs 11 crore is to be realised from bus operators have been withdrawn later on. The low tax effort by the state government is the result of its policy to please the influential sections of tax-payers, particularly the business community. On a list of eight commodity classes the sales tax cut introduced ranges from 8 per cent to 2 per cent to benefit the business community. As per the statement of the Finance Minister, the occupancy rate in the state transport sector (which is generally lower than the crowded private buses) is more than 80 per cent, but the special road tax is being collected at the rate of 60 per cent. This is to benefit the private transporters. Under the policy of competitive populism, the state government is giving subsidy/tax concessions to influential sections. This includes affluent/rich farmers, business, industry, commission agents, etc. These sections have a considerable tax-paying capacity but this policy has made the financial position of the state very precarious. The government has no money to provide basic health, primary (quality) education for all, improve road networks, provide clean drinking water and make investment in the power sector. Consequently, the basic services in the rural areas are deteriorating day by day. It is a cruel joke that the Finance Minister has allocated Rs 9 crore for the construction of primary school buildings and other infrastructural facilities. As per our estimates, this is hardly enough to cover the requirements of only one of the 140 development blocks. By this pace the government would be able to provide such facilities in the primary schools of the state in a period of 140 years. Another such cruel joke relates to medical education and research. A sum of Rs 5 crore has been earmarked for the establishment of a medical university and the improvement of Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Nursing College at Faridkot. If the government has no money for setting up a university, what is the necessity of its announced establishment? Earlier such joke was played with Punjab Technical University at Jalandhar which has hardly taken off. In last year’s Budget also the Finance Minister announced the four-laning of the Zirakpur-Patiala and Kharar-Morinda-Ludhiana-Moga road, but nothing was done for want of funds. This year again, in addition to these roads, the Ropar-Nawanshahr-Phagwara road has been announced to be four-laned. Since the government has no money it has decided to forward a project of Rs 1000 crore to the World Bank for this purpose. This is being done at a time when everyone knows that the World Bank and its financiers have announced sanctions against India in the wake of nuclear explosions. At the same time, the World Bank last year refused to fund Rs 850-crore project of the Punjab government for rural water supply and sanitation on the grounds that the state government was supplying free electricity and water for irrigation, and consequently, it had no repaying capacity. A recent estimate indicates that if the power supply is to be kept adequate, the state requires an investment of $ 5 billion (Rs 21,000 crore approximately) by 2002. The Punjab State Electricity Board is not in a position to do so in view of the government policy on electricity charges. Moreover, the investment requirement of electricity alone is more than the size on the Ninth Five Year Plan of Punjab (Rs 14,300 crore). In view of the fragile fiscal position of Punjab, the state government is not in a position to grapple with its mounting economic problems. There is no concrete strategy in the Budget to tackle the debt problem of the poor peasants, or to introduce a crop insurance scheme, or launch any major projects to shift the population away from agriculture. The weak financial position and competitive populism are major restraints in this Budget and leave little scope for financial manipulation by the Finance Minister. This is the reason that, in spite of a stable government with an overwhelming majority, it is unable to take the initiative on the major issues of economic development so urgently needed in the state. The state is losing its lead in the matter of economic development and may be very soon overtaken by Maharashtra. It is a historic opportunity available to the present Government of Punjab. If it does not act now, it will not be in a position to do so a year later. The writer is a professor of economics,
Punjabi University, Patiala. |
 75 YEARS AGO Kohinoor India’s famous jewel: its history Mr Y. Methley writes the following interesting note to the “Star” of Johannesburg:- There can be little doubt that the Kohinoor or “Mountain of Light” is the best-known gem that the world has ever seen. The date of its discovery is lost in the mist of antiquity. Some old legends say that it was found more than five thousand years ago in the bed of the river Godavary at Masulipatnam; other authorities put the time of its “birth” at no earlier than the year 57 B.C. However that may be, the Kohinoor has always been treasured and revered, not only for its beauty and its pure water, but because the Hindus esteemed it as a magical stone, possessed and inhabited by a powerful and malignant geni who possessed it ever since it was stolen from the palace of Vikramaditya, the Immortal. One of the first historical references to the Kohinoor dates back to 1300, when it came into the possession of Alla-ud-din (believed by some to be the original of Alladdin), a very powerful ruler, who founded Delhi. |
| Friendship of convenience by Chetna Vaishnavi I have not yet learnt my lessons well in spite of all of Shakespeare’s sermons on friendship. Like Nostradamus, Shakespeare too had a deep intuition about the kind of friends we would have in the 20th century (probably worsening in the 21st century). For it is difficult to believe that during his times friends would have been more materialistic and competitive. Neither a borrower nor a lender be for the lender loses both what he has lent as well as the friend to whom he has lent. And the borrower is no longer counted as a friend. Wise words indeed! My own experience with the world also could not make me wiser to its ways. So I end up being routinely used and dumped to one corner when not needed. I may not be the only one prone to being used by clever “friends”. May be there are many more foolish people like me who never learn a lesson. But friends can be categorically divided into two types in general—friends who want to be of use and friends who want to use you. I have termed the friendship of the later category as “friendship of convenience”. Just like the walking crutch which is put into use when needed but thrown away when not required. Most friendships are friendships of convenience. Such friends in the guise of friendship pretend to remain your loyal friend till they fulfil their goal. In other words they only seek your friendship to fulfil some personal interest. Later on you are non-existent till such time when the next need arises. In the political circle this kind of friendship is very common. Strange bed-fellows they are known as—sharing a common platform only for their convenience. Friends of convenience know the tricks of their trade. Some begin their friendship with flattery, which might sound to you like mellifluous praise. Praises are known to work like magic potion and you are fooled into believing what the other says. Now that the trap is laid you are fooled into walking right into it. In the materialistic world very few know the value of true friendship. There is very little difference between a ‘friend’ and a ‘fiend’— just the letter ‘r’ makes a world of difference. Just like every saint has a past and every sinner a future, a friend with the passage of time could turn into a fiend and likewise a fiend could suddenly realise your worth and seek your friendship. One good friend deserves another. So I value friendship to a great extent. Even in this friendless world, I hold a few friends close to my heart—the caring and the sharing type— whom I hold in high esteem. I care a lot about my friends—ever willing to rush to their aid whenever needed. I only would leave them much later whenever I realise they need me no longer. My criterion for selecting a friend is quite clear. My friend is that friend who never would try to adulate me. My friend is that friend who can dare to criticise me on my face but guide me right thereon. My friend is that friend who is by my side giving me encouraging words everytime I fail. And my friend is that friend who laughs along with me in my personal happiness, however meagre it be. Now does that make you my friend? |
| ‘Kisan power’ and crop insurance During the last two decades or so, farmer politicians have not only adorned “Mantri’s kursi” in Krishi Bhawan but also graced the Prime Minister’s chair on two or three occasions. To some extent the ongoing era of “kisan power” is a byproduct of the Green Revolution which galvanised farmers into the largest politically motivated group in Indian society. Suddenly, agriculture spurred on to the top of the agenda of each political outfit from the extreme left to the right, and none could afford to antagonise the peasantry. Precisely, it is the farmers’ “vote bank” that determines agricultural policies today as the state has lost its autonomy in this regard. Interestingly, here also, the policies adopted so far for agricultural development had pronounced prejudices favouring either a privileged lobby of farmers or regions or crops. No micro-level plans were formulated in the farm sector so that post-Independence developmental benefits could percolate down proportionately to the millions of small and marginal farmers. Simply to hoodwink farmers, scheming ideas like loan waiver plans, crop insurance schemes and free water and power supply have been introduced by all “kisan” political masters and their socio-economic “guides”. Let me dwell briefly upon the complexities of the crop insurance scheme, for everyone believes it to be the best remedy for almost all agriculture-related maladies. Understandably, an institutio nal
response to crop risk is termed as crop insurance. This
risk may be natural or man-made. A natural loss to crop
output can be caused by deficient and excessive rainfall,
hailstorm and cloudburst, snowfall and blizzards, soil
erosion and landslides, cyclones and tidal waves, and a
combination of such factors.Along with the geographical area variation, the intensity of natural phenomena adversely affects the quantity and quality of production. Similarly, the main among human elements of moral hazards, two factors play a predominant role. One, the resources, skills and efforts put in by a farmer. Two, over-use or spuriousness of chemicals, fertilisers, insecticides, pesticides, weedicides, etc. One central question to be asked here pertains to the basis of crop insurance. Should it be based on all the above listed natural and human factors? J.S. Chakravarti, who may rightly be called the father of crop insurance in India, designed his first model in this regard as early as 1920 after a decade’s study in one of the districts of the then Mysore state. He was of the view that “no insurance authority could ever maintain a supervising agency which would be able to watch and enforce that every insured field receives the required amount of care and attention at the hands of its cultivator. Unless some method can be devised by which this great difficulty is eliminated, a system of crop insurance would indeed be impossible.” Apart from the moral hazard, the factor of natural phenomena is not only a complex and intense one but also unpredictable in space and time. Notwithstanding, having considered pros and cons of all natural events, Chakravarti felt that a “direct system of crop insurance, although desirable, might not be practicable in the Indian conditions. Therefore, keeping in view the dependence of our agriculture on the monsoon, he favoured an “indirect system or rainfall insurance.” According to him, in rainfed as well as irrigated agricultural land, it is the quantity and distribution of annual rainfall that decides the crop output. Chakravarti feels drought or deficiency in rainfall harms agricultural operations more severely and extensively. Thus, he advocated a system of drought insurance in India in his pathbreaking work, “Agricultural Insurance: A Practical Scheme Suited To Indian Conditions”. Fifty precious years have elapsed since the British left our shores. During this period we have only debated whether crop insurance can work or not. The scheme is still in an embryonic state. For the implementation of rainfall insurance alone no infrastructure worth the name exists. This has occurred in a country having a predominantly agrarian economy where agriculture is a household activity. Before we step into the next millennium, there is still time to rediscover and implement Chakravarti’s monumental scheme which he designed at the dawn of the present century. (The author is a fellow of the International Centre for Asian Studies, Hong Kong.) |
| POINT OF LAW EC the proper forum on defection by Anupam Gupta “The Robes of the Speaker do change and elevate the man inside.” Thus spoke Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah for a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court six years ago in Kihota Hollohon’s case. Spurning a challenge to the anti-defection law on the ground that it invests the Speaker with the sole power to decide whether a member of the House has defected and should be disqualified or not, thereby introducing an element of political bias, the court ruled: “It would, indeed, be unfair to the high traditions of that great office (of Speaker) to say that investiture in it of this jurisdiction would be vitiated for violation of a basic feature of democracy (requiring independent adjudication of electoral disputes). It is inappropriate to express distrust in the high office of the Speaker merely because some of the Speakers are alleged, or even found, to have discharged their functions not in keeping with the great traditions of that high office. The Robes of the Speaker do change and elevate the man inside.” Judicial expectations in recent history have rarely been so completely belied and so soon. From 1921 to 1946, the Speakers of the Central Legislative Assembly before independence normally wore robes (and wigs) while presiding over Assembly sessions. The practice was, however, discarded by G.V. Mavalankar when he came to occupy that office in 1946. Ever since then, Speakers in India do not actually wear robes and remain dressed like ordinary mortals. Whether for that reason or due to the inveterate frailty of the Indian political character, they have tended ever more increasingly to behave like ordinary men. Ordinary men of the political flock to which they once belonged (with all their birthmarks, interests and prejudices). And legal appearances apart, still continue to belong in heart and mind. “It is obviously not possible,” Mavalankar told the Lok Sabha in May, 1952, at the time of his election as independent India’s first Speaker after the Constitution came into force, “in the present conditions of our political and parliamentary life, to remain as insular as the English Speaker, so far as political life goes. But the Indian Speaker acting as such will be absolutely a non-party man, meaning thereby that he keeps aloof from party deliberations and controversies.” The essence of the matter, Mavalankar added pithily two years later, addressing a Conference of Presiding Officers at Srinagar, “is that the Speaker has to place himself in the position of a judge.” That seems not only a tall but an impossible order given the current state of our political and institutional culture. The blatantly partisan and dilatory conduct of the UP Speaker earlier this year, while hearing the case of disqualification of 12 defecting BSP MLAs, has served to dispel all lingering doubts. The debasement of the office of Speaker over the years is, in fact, one of the saddest stories of the Indian Constitution. Just three days old, the Election Commission’s proposal that the Speaker’s power to disqualify MPs and MLAs under the anti-defection law should be transferred to the Commission itself — or, formally, to the President or Governor acting on the basis of the Commission’s opinion — is, therefore, manifestly welcome. There is no other way to rescue the anti-defection law from the morass in which it has landed itself. If accepted, the EC’s proposal would bring the provisions of the 52nd Amendment to the Constitution, containing the anti-defection law, in line with the original intent and scheme of the founding fathers. But for disputes under the anti-defection law, the decision of all questions as to whether an MP or MLA has incurred any disqualification has been entrusted by the Constitution to the President or Governor. Or, in a real and effective sense, to the Election Commission. Before giving any decision on any such question, says Article 103 (2), “the President shall obtain the opinion of the Election Commission and shall act according to such opinion.” Article 192 (2) contains an identical provision in respect of MLAs, substituting only the Governor for the President. The object of this provision, said the Supreme Court in 1965 in Brundaban Nayak’s case, Chief Justice P.B. Gajendragadkar speaking for a Constitution Bench, “clearly is to leave it to the Election Commission to decide the matter, though the decision as such would formally be pronounced in the name” of the President or Governor. The “actual adjudication”, said Justice Krishna Iyer in 1974 in Shamsher Singh’s case, adding his own inimitable gloss, “has always to be made by the Election Commission.... and the President merely appends his signature to the order”. He is not even required to consult his Council of Ministers for “it would be travesty of impartiality” if such a decision were to be made on the aid and advice of a Ministry bound by political and party loyalties. Had the Supreme Court dipped into the Constituent Assembly debates on the point, they would have had the satisfaction of knowing that their interpretation was absolutely correct. And were the Election Commission to do so today, it would find in the discussion of the founding fathers that ultimate reinforcement which any public proposal of this sort needs to succeed. |
| Diversities — Delhi
letter Drumbeats to mark jubilee closing By Humra Quraishi The countdown for the closing ceremony of the 50 years of our independence has begun but there seems nothing exciting or lasting lined up. Well, to get those facts for you I had got in touch with RL Sudhir who is in charge of the special secretariat manning the jubilee year celebrations. “On August 15 after the flag-hoisting ceremony at the Red Fort there will be a formal closing ceremony at the Central Hall in Parliament and in the evening a major show on Rajpath, which will be a combination of drums collected from all over the country, freedom songs, tableaux and marches. “He rules out any additional programmes but does add that the Delhi administration could come up with some minor changes. (Here let me add that for the opening celebrations last August, the Delhi administration had brought in some filmi frills to the entire show which not only marred the seriousness of the occasion but made it appear like some middle rung cultural pot pourri). And then they are silent on the question of whether anything with a lasting impact could come this August for the coming generation to remember, for the underprivileged to be grateful for, or for those jailed to freely think about just a dose of dance or marchpast or singing and drumming simply isn’t enough, at least it doesn’t do justice to an event of historic significance. Perhaps, in an attempt to highlight the country in different parts of the world a four part documentary film — India 5555 — has been written and directed by S Krishnaswamy and sponsored by the Ministry of External Affairs. Its very first screening in the Capital was at the IIC, on July 16. Initially the totally packed auditorium included former President R Venkatraman, former PM IK Gujral, Lalit Mansingh who is tipped to be our new High Commissioner at UK but, then, the strength of the film can be gauged from the fact that towards the end only 17 persons remained (yes I did a head count). The very obvious drawbacks include a very blatant projection of present day India. For your sampling I will point out just a few from the numerous such scenes — when the director projects the Indian railways the scene shifts to the interiors of a compartment of an AC chair car with no glimpse of the platforms or those dibbas which lie stuffed with human bodies in the most pathetic state; when he focuses on the power situation in the country there is no mention of the load shedding, with the sole focus on the major power projects or the increase in the power production; when the agricultural segment is highlighted then a plump farmer (in my 43 years of earthly existence I have never seen such a well fed farmer) is typecast not to forget happy looking, well clothed village belles running with the cattle in difficult to believe environs. And to compound this total atmosphere of blatancy Krishnaswamy has even gone and projected himself — he comes on the screen in every episode, even in full length shots. There is so much difference between his on and off screen image that just after the screening, at the cocktails that followed, I had a problem recognising him. No, he wasn’t the least embarrassed in projecting himself along with the film saying, “that was to break the monotony”. Well, the monotony could have been very easily broken by bringing some real/realistic shots of the country and to that he quipped: “There is so much negative anyway been projected ...my aim was to project the positive, only the positive”. Even if it comes across an overdose of the unbelievably positive? Iraq’s popularity I am just rushing back in time to file this column from the reception hosted by the Iraqi Embassy on the occasion of their national day, on July 17. I really don’t know why they chose a rather off-beat time — 12.30 pm to 2 pm but in spite of this the hall in one of the five star hotels was packed with the who’s who — the chief guest was the Vice President, Mr Krishna Kant, diplomats from nearly every Arab country represented in New Delhi with the exception of Kuwait, several politicians but prominent was the face of CPM’s Geeta Mukherjee and for some inexplicable reason the number of Sikhs present seemed more than spotted at any other gathering. And it could be because of the ongoing sanctions that only soft drinks and snacks were served. I am told that before the war Iraqi Embassy served one of the best feasts on this occasion but, of course, times are difficult for them. When I asked the ambassador Mohammad Al Haboubi about how the citizens celebrate this day in Iraq he said each town hosts events marking the occasion with the main ones taking place in Baghdad. Bhandari’s outpourings When I first glanced at the book “As I Saw It” (Har Anand) immediately its high pricing of almost Rs 500 struck me as odd. You don’t buy such high priced books just to hear the other side of the not-so-romantic tale, rather one that concentrates on the political ongoings in the decadent state of UP (rather made so very decadent with the third rate politics of the day), with the principal character none other than the writer of this book Romesh Bhandari — former foreign secretary who after retirement served as Lt. Governor of New Delhi, Governor of Tripura, Goa and then of UP, where he remained dogged in controversies and high dramas. This principal character has foretold those political upheavals vis a vis the political characters such as Kalyan Singh, Mayawati, Kanshi Ram .... And Bhandari’s equation with the former PM Deve Gowda can be gauged from the fact that it is he who is releasing this book today — on July 17. Let’s see whether the other characters are also present there. |
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