CII : report and regret
WORKERS warned, “Withdraw the report, or else.” Promptly the CII withdrew its report which, among other things, wanted the shutdown of three chronically sick banks and the sell-off of the biggest one, the SBI.

Kalyan's parting kick
OUSTED Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh may be politically down but is certainly not out going by the heavy baggage of "communal problems" he has left behind for the Bharatiya Janata Party to sort out.

Bugged by Y2K
WHILE on the one hand, there is celebration in the air in anticipation of the arrival of the year 2000, on the other there is a large community which awaits the moment with trepidation, thanks to the fear psychosis generated by the Y2K bug.

CPM’S CHANGING PROFILE
Party in search of programme
by K. Gopalakrishnan
“NEHRU is a banyan tree under which nothing grows,” said S.K. Patil, a Tamanny Hall-style boss of Indian politics and a former Union Minister, leading to usual controversies of the times. One was reminded about Patil’s remark when Mr Jyoti Basu wanted to be relieved of the onerous responsibilities of the Chief Ministership of West Bengal, and the Politburo finally asking him to continue.

How sincere is govt towards NRIs?
By Rahul Singh
OFFICIAL attitudes towards ethnic Indians living abroad have changed over the years. There was a time when the Indian Government tended to look down upon them with a certain degree of contempt.

USA phasing out detention centres
From Martin Kettle in Washington
AMERICA’S “boot camp” regimes for juvenile offenders are increasingly being closed down as authorities unearth evidence that the get-tough regimes can create more problems than they solve.

Trees in winter
by O.P. Bhagat
OVER there stands a tall, spreading oleander. Cold has nipped all its pink flowers. On the leaves is a coating of dust.

75 Years Ago

Sanatan Conference and Kohat
WE desire to draw prominent attention to the important and comprehensive resolution on the Kohat tragedy which was unanimously adopted by the Punjab Sanatan Dharma Conference held at Rawalpindi under the presidentship of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, and which will be found elsewhere in this issue.

CII : report and regret

WORKERS warned, “Withdraw the report, or else.” Promptly the CII withdrew its report which, among other things, wanted the shutdown of three chronically sick banks and the sell-off of the biggest one, the SBI. If the controversial proposal was the big story before the recall, the “or else” part has now assumed a life of its own and threatens to dominate the winter session of Parliament and lead to red faces all around. The contours of the controversy burst out through a sharp question in the Lok Sabha, a massive dharna outside the CII Delhi office and sensational reports in newspapers. A closely guarded secret of corporate India, which is also a financial bombshell, is about to explode and the shooting shrapnel is bound to hit hundreds of top names and bleed their prestige. The scam is about the captains of industry who have taken an eye-popping amount as loan from nationalised banks and state-owned lending institutions, and have conveniently forgotten to repay. The total works out to Rs 59,000 crore, take or leave a thousand crore or two. Of this Rs 50,000 crore is owed to banks and the remaining to the IDBI and others. This is bank credit gone sour but the banks and the Union Finance Ministry do not call it that. It is non-performing asset, they say soothingly, making it sound like the description of a sleeping giant while it is really a dead rhinoceros. It is the stink or the fear of a stink that drove the CII to take back the report and undertake a verbal penance. The apex chamber hopes, desperately no doubt, that its bland press note will somehow put the genie back in the bottle and everything will turn normal. It may not and for two powerful reasons.

The bad debt has not grown to this size overnight; it has taken years. During this period successive governments vied with one another in putting on show their understanding of and generosity to big business. The victim banks were ordered not to initiate legal action against the defaulters; it is nothing surprising in a country where a high profile Finance Minister was virtually sacked for personally ordering excise and customs raids on the premises of two leading industrialists of Mumbai. The RBI has also banned the banks from revealing the names of the defaulters. Of course if a case goes to court, the identity of the man with a ballooning bad debt will be out, but then it holds no threat since there will be no court case except against faceless small entrepreneurs. It was a lovely arrangement and India’s industrial who’s who hid behind this double protection. Now the wall has been breached and names are tumbling out. Irani, Bajaj, Bharat Ram, Khaitan, all rising or risen stars, are there and in the next few days more luminaries will join the list. The second factor working against those sitting on a mountain of unpaid loans is the present mood of bank employees, including the officer class. They were already angry because of the insurance legislation and now there is the CII demand for bank liquidation. It is their last-ditch fight and hence it has turned offensive. The trade unions will keep up the pressure and their friends will do the same inside Parliament. The new breed of investigative journalists will do the rest. Or, will the knock-out punch come in the form of a public interest litigation? It is a big mess and the CII has drawn national attention to it. Big business in India has often been a big drain on national resources. The top cats pay only 1.5 per cent of the GDP as income tax; in Indonesia, where industrialists know a trick or two about cheating, the figure is 7 per cent. Until recently there were zero-tax companies, meaning big units were not sharing with the government even a paisa of their super profit. Ditto for excise duty; more is evaded and only a part comes the government way. It all should add up to equal the fiscal deficit. There is an irony here. The loudest advocates of good corporate governance and transparency are struggling to throw a thick veil over their working and financial dealing!

Kalyan's parting kick

OUSTED Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh may be politically down but is certainly not out going by the heavy baggage of "communal problems" he has left behind for the Bharatiya Janata Party to sort out. The Ram Mandir controversy was revived by him days before he was given the marching orders. It did cause embarrassment to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee whom Mr Kalyan Singh holds personally responsible for his political fall from grace. The Opposition and even the "secular" elements in the National Democratic Alliance warned the BJP against implementing its hidden agenda. However, it now transpires that the BJP's stand on the construction of Ram Mandir at Ayodhya is not the only controversy which the wily expelled BJP leader has left for his successor Ram Prakash Gupta to "mishandle" and thereby ensure the further weakening of the hold of the saffron party in UP. The strange decision to withdraw criminal cases relating to the 1991 communal riot, in which over 15 members of a minority community were dragged out of a cinema house and killed, too was taken during Mr Kalyan Singh's last days in office as Chief Minister. It is said that one of the accused, Sulekh Kumar, a hardcore member of the BJP, wrote a letter to Mr Kalyan Singh on October 23 in which he stated that he was wrongfully named in the 1991 communal riot. Within days of receiving the letter the UP Home Secretary directed the District Magistrate of Meerut to withdraw from court the case relating to the 1991 riot. It is for the present Chief Minister, Mr Ram Prakash Gupta, and the Central leadership of the BJP to explain why they did not try to undo the mischief caused by Mr Kalyan Singh. They have, through inaction, instead backed the decision to "kill" the 1991 Meerut riot case "in the larger public interest and (for maintaining) communal harmony".

Official figures put the number of dead at 20, but eye-witrnesses said that over 40 persons were killed. The main accused, Sulekh Kumar, is now a BJP municipal councillor in Meerut and also the "proud owner" of the cinema house which witnessed the cold-blooded and calculated acts of murder. Significantly, Mr Kalyan Singh was the Chief Minister when the incident of communal killings occurred in Meerut. He was also responsible for the decision taken by the UP Cabinet last year to reject the findings of the Parikh Commission set up to investigate the factors behind the 1982 riot in Meerut, in which over 50 persons were killed. The commission's report too was rejected "in the larger public interest and for maintaining communal harmony in the state". Any one with an iota of common sense should be able to understand the actual reason why the BJP does not want those involved in the killings to be punished. The BJP's stand flies in the face of the popular view which favours prompt and stringent punishment to those responsible for engineering "communal crimes". For all intents and purposes what UP has today is a lame duck government. It is, therefore, up to the Centre to take note of the unfortunate decision to withdraw the court case in the 1991incident of communal killings in Meerut and direct Mr Ram Prakash Gupta to withdraw the controversial order. There is substance in the Opposition parties' charge that the case has been withdrawn because most of the suspects are active members of the BJP. The interest of justice and fair play would be best served by setting up special courts for trying cases of communal violence and not by withdrawing them on the spurious plea of "maintaining communal harmony". Unless, of course, the BJP wants to prove right the Opposition's charge that it is showing indecent haste in following its "hidden agenda".

Bugged by Y2K

WHILE on the one hand, there is celebration in the air in anticipation of the arrival of the year 2000, on the other there is a large community which awaits the moment with trepidation, thanks to the fear psychosis generated by the Y2K bug. Much has been written about its what, when, how and where and computer scientists have spent billions of dollars and even more valuable man-hours to ensure that the minor glitch of identifying the year to computers of yore in two figures rather than four does not cause havoc around the world. India too put together its Y2K action force and it has been proudly proclaiming from rooftops that there is no cause for worry at all. Unfortunately, there are not too many who believe what it says. In fact, as far as India is concerned, the bug has already started biting. Several airlines have decided not to fly into or out of the country on the crucial date. In other words, the country will be out of bounds for several crucial hours. Air-India has done many mock run-ups with the clock re-set to half an hour to the D-day. All systems have worked without glitch but still there are many doomsayers who are not convinced. This could partly be due to the typical western attitude of poohpoohing all claims made by developing countries. But that self-styled superiority is only half the story. The painful truth is that India has also earned the dubious distinction for shoddy workmanship. After all, the escalator tragedy did take place, that too in the Capital of the country and without having anything to do with the Y2K bug. That one incident was enough to undo the claims about modernisation of the airports and the capability to tackle problems like the millennium bug.

What is unfortunate is that the bug fear has come in handy to some to debunk the whole computer revolution. There are some who pat themselves on the back for not going in for computers foreseeing exactly such difficulties. Then there is a we-told-you-so lobby which wants everyone to believe that given the kind of problems that are likely to arise, the country would be better off without the domination of the computers. Nothing could be more absurd. It would be akin to rubbishing telephones just because you at times get crank calls. The current difficulties should rather egg the country on to establishing a foolproof method to get over similar problems in the days to come. The country's reputation on the issue is at stake. If it tides over the bug problem, as it is likely to do if the official claims are correct, it would have silenced many of the critics. If it does not, well, then the fault lies with the men who promise but never deliver. That has been the bane of the country in many diverse fields.

CPM’S CHANGING PROFILE
Party in search of programme
by K. Gopalakrishnan

“NEHRU is a banyan tree under which nothing grows,” said S.K. Patil, a Tamanny Hall-style boss of Indian politics and a former Union Minister, leading to usual controversies of the times. One was reminded about Patil’s remark when Mr Jyoti Basu wanted to be relieved of the onerous responsibilities of the Chief Ministership of West Bengal, and the Politburo finally asking him to continue. For, Mr Basu has been the banyan tree in West Bengal under which nothing grows.

The dilemma of the Politburo is understandable. To relieve a leader of Mr Basu’s stature is not easy. A man who has created history in endurance as Chief Minister, a leader who was found to be fit to be Prime Minister even by the Congress (though not by his own organisation), renowned administrator, one who could adjust to the compulsions of liberalisation and who took the initiative to restrict the activities of the Centre of Indian Trade Union (CITU), Mr Basu is a natural leader enjoying a unique position in politics. It is not easy to relieve such a man or allow him to take “vanvas”.

The popular perception in West Bengal is that the CPM is not willing to take any risk at a time when the challenge from Ms Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress backed by the Sangh Parivar, can no more be dismissed as something insignificant. This new combination has caught the imagination of Bengalis and it improved its electoral performance from 34.6 per cent in 1998 to 38.8 per cent in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. At such a time to allow a new leader to take over would be risky. Over a decade, Ms Mamata Banerjee has developed a following of her own, and her mass appeal is quite formidable.

In the case of the CPM, or for that matter the Left Front as a whole, there is not a single mass leader except Mr Basu, who can match Ms Banerjee’s mass appeal. With just 15 months away from the state assembly elections, for the Left Front taking the risk of any nature is not advisable, particularly when New Delhi is ruled by a combine of which the Trinamool Congress is a significant member. The wise men in the Politburo, known for taking minimum-risk decisions when it comes to electoral challenges, decided that Mr Basu can be assisted by a senior leader, more like an understudy, as Deputy Chief Minister. With this, Mr Basu’s request has been met partially. He has been retained as the leader of the Red Parivar (read the Left Front) to meet the challenges of the saffron variety.

This development also reflects the growing culture of one party, one leader in Indian parties, including in the cadre-based ones. Even in the cadre-based Sangh Parivar, Mr Vajpayee has grown above all — a position which Indira Gandhi enjoyed in the Congress.

Mr Basu, over a period of two and a half decades, has achieved such a position in the CPM, particularly in West Bengal. Though a few leaders got some official positions in the party and the government, no one could grow under his shadow. It provided them the much needed protection from the scorching tropical political sun under which only sons do not wilt.

In a revolutionary party like the CPM for which ideology is supreme, providing inspiration for the masses and the cadres, development of the personality cult and individuals growing above the party is an anachronism. It mocks at the principle of democratic centralism. In West Bengal, the party realised the situation rather late, but not too late.

A word about leaders too. It is a fact that Mr Basu himself, somewhat like Nehru, did not do much to develop a second line of leadership or an immediate successor. In Alimuddin Street, where the CPM state headquarters is located, one can hear, on the other hand, stories about Mr Basu trying to interfere with the career of one or two party leaders who were coming up.

In the case of Kerala the story is somewhat different. E.M.S. Namboodiripad during his lifetime, chose successors though this was not exactly a smooth affair. It could not be avoided as EMS was asked to move to New Delhi to manage party affairs at the national level. Mr Basu has been confined to the state, and when he was chosen by non-CPM leaders to lead the nation, the party decided otherwise — now popularly known as a Himalayan blunder. To be fair to EMS, though he did try to suppress dissent and stymie the career of leaders like K.R. Gowri Amma and M.V. Raghavan, he did tolerate the growth of a second level of leadership.

The grand old revolutionaries were extremely reluctant to retire. Once they became part of the Central Committee or the Politburo, only death intervened with their term. It is almost like the oath at Christian weddings, “Till death do us part.” Such a bondage at the top level of the party continues today. In fact, Mr Harkishen Singh Surjeet and Mr Jyoti Basu were in the Politburo when the CPM took birth, after the Communist Party of India split in 1964. Effecting generational changes has not been the strong point of the Communists.

To be fair, this is not the CPM case alone. Indian parties in general suffer from this gerontocracy. In the Congress the generational changes took place due to dynastic succession. But when, Mr P.V. Narasimha Rao became the leader the grand old men regrouped in the Congress. Take the case of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The grand old men refuse to step down, and the leadership is literally an orchestrated friendly musical chairs. Naturally at the national level there are very few young BJP leaders.

In the CPM, to cut a long story short, the aging leadership has always been a curse keeping the youth at a distance from the leadership and the decision-making process. When Mr Basu decided to call it a day, the party strategists found that there was no one who could take over. Taking an understudy was found to be the only solution in hand, given the challenges from the Parivar-Trinamool combine.

Above all, the communist movement has been facing an existential challenge after the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. China had prepared itself for the eventuality by accepting the theory of one country, two systems, totally alien to communism. Indian communists were trying to play hide and seek between the ruined pillars of communist edifices and the emerging swanky stock exchanges.

The rank and file faced the ideological confusion, but the leadership could not come out with readymade answers to the ideological questions and onslaughts from the new brand of liberalisation movers and shakers.

The CPM did respond on an ad hoc basis. The political resolution of the Madurai Congress, 1972, stated that the party stood for “nationalisation of all foreign concerns, for a moratorium on foreign debts, for nationalisation of all Indian monopolist concerns”. From such a position the party today stands for the entry of foreign capital in productive sectors, as per its latest election manifesto. A revolutionary change, indeed. But these measures are hardly sufficient to meet the challenges.

The reality is that naturally, the party is not worried about the question being raised with regard to Mr Basu, the banyan tree of West Bengal. It is in search of the Bodhi Vriksha of Bihar under which the great Buddha, tormented by questions, got revelation. The party wants answers to the questions on its relevance in the changed situation, ideology and survival. The party itself is working out a new programme. The 14th Congress held in Madras in 1993 asked the Central Committee to appoint a commission to work out a new programme, “... as in relation to the assessment of the international situation and national developments” it need to be updated. The same applies to the statement of policy.

A commission was appointed with Mr Harkishen Surjeet as convener and Mr Jyoti Basu, Mr Anil Biswas, Mr P. Ramachandran and Mr Sitaram Yechuri as members. The rise of the Sangh Parivar (read communal forces) made the challenges far more complex and the task of the commission difficult. At a recent Central Committee meeting the commission was asked to expedite the report and circulate it to the party units after it is considered by the Central Committee. Further, as per the resolution of the Madras Congress, two months after the circulation of the new programme, a special party conference should be convened, preferably before September, 2000, to discuss the single agenda.

The CPM, naturally, is on the threshold. It is likely that the new party congress will focus on existential questions and make it a more vibrant force in Indian politics than harping on the classical revolutionary mould. Till such time the Programme Commission’s report is discussed and adopted, it does not want to take any major decisions leading to vital changes, particularly at the leadership level. The approach of the party at the moment is more pacifist than revolutionary.

What is not noticed by the media and non-communist political forces needs attention. The CPM is changing slowly from a revolutionary party to probably a social democratic party. Its programme is also changing to meet the new challenges. The reluctance to take decisions, which may cause ripples in the rank and file, is, therefore, not surprising. One has to wait for the new programme, which is far important than whether Mr Basu is allowed to retire or not. After all, Mr Basu and Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya (his new Deputy) are expected to perform a holding operation. What follows next would be of tremendous significance for the party and the country as well.

There might be blossoms under the banyan tree, if not under Bodhi Vriksha.

Trees in winter
by O.P. Bhagat

OVER there stands a tall, spreading oleander. Cold has nipped all its pink flowers. On the leaves is a coating of dust. They look more gray than green.

The dust on the oleander is nothing exceptional. Almost all trees and shrubs carry it these days. Slowly and slyly the dust had settled on them in autumn.

The moist night air aided it in clinging there.

As the days pass, more dust accumulates on the trees. The gray leaves look grayer. They even vie with the gray of the mist in the morning. sometimes the mist gets thicker and veils the dingy trees in its gray.

Then suddenly it rains. In the low drumbeat of the drops the dust melts on the leaves. The rain keeps playing its muffled drums. Now gently, now not so gently, it thumps every speck of dust off the leaves.

Light and dark green, their own shades return to the leaves. In some a tinge or more of yellow is also there, but no spot of the dust’s gray.

Every morning the sweeper gets together the fallen leaves and twigs lying on the path along the block. He applies a match to the small heap. As a flame rises, he warms himself for a while.

Meanwhile, the dust, swirled up by the passing vehicles, again begins to settle on the trees. As the days pass, they look gray, some almost grubby. If a cold wave is on, the leaves look strangely numb and sleepy.

At the same time, they dwindle daily. By January the bead tree stands bare. From the branches hang grape-like bunches of the dry, yellow berries. Children pick up the fallen “beads” to play with them.

Soon the mulberry goes leafless. In a fork of the branches rests an old, abandoned nest. The peach tree is also denuded of all its leaves.

By February a few more trees lose their green look. Here a gulmohur stands like an enormous skeleton of forking and reforking bones. There a temple tree has been pinched by the cold of all its large — overlarge — leaves.

Now there are bigger sweepings of the fallen leaves every day. In some trees the loss can be read in the bare tops and half-bare branches. But many other trees look just as before.

In our plains and low hills not all the trees shed their leaves in winter. Most of the doffing of old and donning of new leaves is in spring, right up to the end of April.

Did you notice on the branches small woody knobs? They are not warts, but winter buds. Buds in which the new leaves lie like embryos in wombs. They await the touch of soft, warm air to sprout.

The bare and half-bare winter trees have something sad about them. And the trees which carry masses of dusty or discoloured leaves look a messy lot.

But the bare trees have their own charm too. If at dusk the messy-looking trees look sombre, the leafless trees and the trees with scantly leaves look beautifully black or silhouetted.

Or, as Dorothy Wordsworth says in her Journal, by stripping the trees, winter lets us see their shapes and forms.

Some bare trees will remind you of nudes. Or of models in brief outfits and lingerie ready for a photo session. They look even more bewitching when seen against the afterglow in the sky.

Mist or fog plays its own tricks on them. This makes for much of the magic or mystery in ghost or suspense stories.

Quite often in our films leafless trees or trees shedding leaves serve as a backdrop for the lovers to sing sad songs. Or the lovers are just shown there to highlight the melancholy moments.

Winter trees enrich the poets’ imagery too. In one of his sonnets Shakespeare refers to them as the “Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”

Artists have painted and sketched them as well. Bare cottage trees, with snow on the tiles or thatch, is a traditional Christmas theme.

How sincere is govt towards NRIs?
By Rahul Singh

OFFICIAL attitudes towards ethnic Indians living abroad have changed over the years. There was a time when the Indian Government tended to look down upon them with a certain degree of contempt. This is probably because many, if not most, of the Indians who went abroad in the last century were poor and from the lower castes. They found it difficult to make a livelihood here.

Quite a few went as indentured labourers, which was only a slightly higher status than that of outright slavery. Indeed, the Indians often replaced African slaves in countries like Mauritius, Surinam, Guyana and Trinidad, after slavery was officially abolished in the 1830s. They worked on the sugarcane and other plantations. That they prospered through dint of hard work and enterprise is another matter.

Even an enlightened and liberal man like Jawaharlal Nehru had little sympathy for the plight of Indians in Africa, asking them to “identify” themselves with the newly independent black African governments, even though those governments tended to treat them badly.

In fact, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin threw out almost all the Indians in his country, some 60,000 of them, taking over their properties and their assets. He imagined that local Ugandans could run the businesses earlier run by Indians. He was in for a rude shock, when the country’s economy collapsed. In Fiji, too, where ethnic Indians are in a small majority, a military coup took place because the local Fijians thought that Indians were becoming politically and economically too powerful.

After Nehru and Indira Gandhi, the official line started to change and to become more sympathetic towards ethnic Indians who had made other countries their home. Such ethnic Indians numbered over 10 million and were spread out all over the world. The present Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-dominated government is known for its sympathies towards them and it has, every now and then, floated the concept of “dual citizenship”.

But how sincere and serious is the government on this issue? Not very much, judging from what happened recently in Mumbai. A three-day seminar for non-resident Indians (NRIs), with the emotive and suggestive title, “India Calling”, took place. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and the Chairman of Reliance Industries, Dhirubhai Ambani, were invited for the inauguration of the seminar.

Neither of them bothered to show up. Another star guest, S.P. Hinduja, also cried off, probably because he might have to answer awkward questions about the role of the Hindujas in the Bofors kickbacks scandal.

Even the Union Government’s NRI Commissioner failed to turn up. And the seminar is mainly intended to address the problems of NRIs! The NRIs had to be content with the presence of Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalani and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar. No wonder they are a disappointed lot.

Till now, NRIs have not contributed much to India’s development. The amount that NRIs have put into India is only a small fraction of what overseas Chinese have invested in China.

Why? Firstly, NRIs do not identify themselves with India to the same extent that overseas Chinese do with China. In a sense, this goes to the credit of the NRIs. They have assimilated more into the land and the culture of the places where their forefathers emigrated, whereas the overseas Chinese continue to maintain strong emotional, cultural and economic ties with their motherland.

These ties have sometimes led to considerable hostility against the ethnic Chinese in their adopted countries. In Indonesia, once home to several million Chinese, the hostility exploded into mass killings during the civil war in the 1960s and the military coup, when General Suharto replaced President Sukarno. NRIs have never faced such a degree of antagonism, even in East Africa.

Then, there is the way overseas Chinese are treated when they go to China. They are welcomed with honour. NRIs, on the other hand, as those at the Mumbai seminar pointed out, are harassed by the Customs, cheated by property developers and duped by conmen of all kinds. With corruption being so pervasive in the country, is it really surprising that NRIs are wary of investing in India? Until there is greater efficiency, transparency and honesty in the functioning of various government departments, we cannot realistically expect NRI investment here on a larger scale.

Coming to dual citizenship for NRIs, there are far too many grey areas to make this feasible. Who would qualify and how many years should one go back? What about ethnic Pakistanis and Bangladeshis living outside their countries? After all, they were also part of undivided India. Mr Jethmalani has suggested that two criteria need to be considered. One of the conditions advocated by Mr Jethmalani is that an ethnic Indian applying for dual citizenship should not be a citizen of a country which had, or has, conflicting interests with applicant’s loyalty to India.

But who is going to decide about whether a country has, or has had, “conflicting interests” with India? The USA certainly had conflicting interests with India, when India and the Soviet Union were close to each other. As for the loyalty test, when it comes to a crunch, how can a person be loyal to both his country of adoption and his country of origin?

As a lawyer, who looks at fine distinctions carefully, Mr Jethmalani should know better.

USA phasing out detention centres
From Martin Kettle in Washington

AMERICA’S “boot camp” regimes for juvenile offenders are increasingly being closed down as authorities unearth evidence that the get-tough regimes can create more problems than they solve.

The latest scandal affecting a system which was once touted as the answer to America’s juvenile crime wave has come in Maryland, which last week became the latest state to suspend the paramilitary regime after an investigation revealed systematic bullying by guards, including cases of child abuse.

“The trust of the people of Maryland has been violated,’’ said the Democrat state Governor, Parris Glendening, after a campaign organised by the Baltimore Sun newspaper led a judge to remove 26 juveniles from the camps to protect them from “patterns of abuse”.

“The state’s policy is clear ... Violence will not be tolerated against anyone, juvenile or adult, at any time,’’ said Mr Glendening as he ordered the remaining 79 Maryland youth offenders in the boot camps to be removed and placed in alternative programmes.

Boot camps enforce rapid obedience regimes on young offenders, female as well as male, making detainees undergo a strict, often physically demanding, lifestyle with severe punishments for those who fail to keep up.

In the USA and other countries, politicians of the right - and increasingly of the left - have championed such regimes as a way of showing their commitment to tough law-and-order policies. Penal policy experts who have queried the efficacy of such regimes have been routinely derided for giving warnings which have all too often been vindicated. The Maryland crisis follows similar revelations in some of the 52 boot camps, which contain some 4,500 juvenile inmates, still in operation in other parts of the USA.

In Georgia, where a former US marine received national attention for pioneering the boot camp philosophy, the state has begun phasing out its five camps after the federal Department of Justice found that “the paramilitary boot camp model is not only ineffective but harmful”.

In North Dakota, Colorado and Arizona, boot camp regimes have been dropped and in California and Florida they are also scaling back their use of the system.

Doubts mounted after two high profile deaths. In 1998, a 16-year-old boy convicted of robbery died in an Arizona boot camp after being punished for discipline violations. This year, a 14-year-old girl convicted for shoplifting in South Dakota died from heat exhaustion after drill instructors concluded that she was faking illness during a forced march.

Supporters of the boot camps have argued that the get-tough approach compels impressionable young offenders to rethink the perils of a life of crime.

However, a recent US study by the Kansas-based Koch Crime Institute found that reoffending rates for juveniles from boot camps were similar to or slightly higher than reoffending rates for juveniles who had been sent to traditional detention centres.

The Maryland crisis came to a head after the Baltimore Sun ran a series of reports on life in the state’s Garrett County boot camp, which alleged that guards routinely beat and brutalised young inmates, knocking them to the ground, gouging their faces and eyes and, in one case, breaking bones.

“I wasn’t surprised. I was appalled,’’ says Bishop Robinson, who headed a state inquiry for Mr Glendening after the allegations were published. “I am very much concerned about the conduct of guards and about the way this destroys the credibility of a programme that was well intended.”

Maryland’s about-turn is a setback for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the state’s Deputy Governor and eldest daughter of the assassinated senator Robert Kennedy.

Ms Townsend is responsible for law and order and her “tough love’’ approach stirred speculation that she might be on the short-list of vice-presidential nominees if Al Gore wins the Democratic nomination for President next year. — By arrangement with The Guardian

75 YEARS AGO

December 22, 1924.
Sanatan Conference and Kohat

WE desire to draw prominent attention to the important and comprehensive resolution on the Kohat tragedy which was unanimously adopted by the Punjab Sanatan Dharma Conference held at Rawalpindi under the presidentship of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, and which will be found elsewhere in this issue.

The resolution embodies but a just and fair demand, which has repeatedly been pressed in these columns, when it calls for an “independent public inquiry by a committee consisting of Hindus, Sikhs, Mohamedans and Europeans, so constituted as to command public confidence”.

The ad interim measures suggested by the resolution are also imperatively demanded both by equity and the gravity of the misery which the large number of Kohat Hindu refugees are experiencing in being away from their native place, in spite of all the efforts that are being made by their brother Hindus of other places, to alleviate their suffering.