Progressive verdict
ON Thursday the Supreme Court knocked down one more symbol of male dominance by stating that the mother can equally act "as the natural guardian of a minor like the father". The judgement is one of the several delivered by the highest court of the land in recent times in favour of gender equality.

Will firmness hold?
After acquiescing in a near-total collapse of the air travel network in the country, the government has finally woken up to the need of disciplining the agitating air traffic controllers.

Lay off PF, please!
THE Government is again casting its covetous eyes on the provident fund. It is normal during the pre-budget days. But this year the government’s hands have been strengthened by the Dave Commission report submitted on Wednesday.

Ration muddle: Combating food insecurity
by S. P. Malhotra
COMBATING food insecurity — both chronic and transient — has been the major concern of food policy in India during the past decades.

Andhra CM Naidu a ‘living proof’
by Tavleen Singh
LAST week I spent a whole day watching Andhra Chief Minister at work and concluded at the end of it that all we need is four more chief ministers like Chandrababu Naidu for India to become a developed country in the next 10 years

Guzzling away with Ghalib
By Amita Malik
EVERY year, without fail the media, print and electronic, celebrate Ghalib’s anniversary with great zest.

75 Years Ago

Prices in Berlin: exodus of foreigners
BERLIN’S hotels, which have been crowded for the past few weeks, are now three-quarters empty.

Progressive verdict

ON Thursday the Supreme Court knocked down one more symbol of male dominance by stating that the mother can equally act "as the natural guardian of a minor like the father". The judgement is one of the several delivered by the highest court of the land in recent times in favour of gender equality. That it has taken over 50 years after the framing of the Constitution for the judiciary to identify the source of strength of the concept of equality can be traced to the well-focused activism of concerned groups. It must be recognised that neither the judiciary nor the legislature — the interpreter and maker of laws — do not operate in a vacuum. They are expected to respond to the social, cultural and political changes sweeping the globe. Of course, the language used for defining the provisions of the Guardian and Wards Act and the Hindu Minority Guardianship Act, which the apex court reinterpreted for settling the dispute among natural parents over the guardianship of a minor child or children, could not have been different. The GW Act was framed in 1890 while the legislation defining the guardianship of a minor was introduced in 1956. The verdict shows that if the legislature fails in its duty to amend or replace archaic laws, the judiciary is willing to step in for removing the shortcomings in existing laws. At a certain level if championing the cause of gender equality can be considered a contest, the judiciary is way ahead and the legislature will have to do a lot of running, through a series of progressive measures, to catch up with it. For instance, it was the apex court which defined the acts and gestures which amount to sexual harassment of women at the workplace.

Logically the initiative should have come from the legislature keeping in mind the fact that an ever increasing number of women are now part of the country’s work force.

Reacting to the increasing incidents of rape in the country women’s groups have been demanding changes in the existing laws which encourage humiliation of victims in open court. The courts allow the character of the victim to be questioned, but the criminal antecedents, if any, are not held against the culprit. But for the effective intervention of the judiciary, in response to complaints brought to its notice, Indian women may still be living in the dark ages and their conduct judged by the retrograde laws of Manu. In a manner of speaking every verdict which redefines the parameters of existing laws is an indirect comment on the failure of the legislature to act. Clearly the two Acts framed in 1890 and 1956 have outlived their utility. The Supreme Court has merely tried to enforce the concept of gender justice by reinterpreting some of the obnoxious provisions of the two Acts. But a legal heavyweight may still find loopholes in the Supreme Court’s interpretation to thwart the country’s march towards gender equality. No one can deny that there may still be some grey areas which may require further elaboration so that the spirit of the judgement is not defeated through legal nit-picking. Of course, the better option would be to introduce new laws in the light of the progressive verdict delivered by the apex court. However, to expect a legislature which is dragging its feet on granting 33 per cent reservation of seats to women in Parliament and the State Assemblies to become gender sensitive is to expect a miracle. But the miracle may happen sooner than later, going by the popular support to gender issues in the country.

Will firmness hold?

After acquiescing in a near-total collapse of the air travel network in the country, the government has finally woken up to the need of disciplining the agitating air traffic controllers. Six of their leaders have been summarily dismissed and action taken against several others under ESMA and the Air Safety Act. That is not the end of it. The Aviation Minister has warned of even more drastic steps. While this resolute action may or not have the desired result, the question uppermost in everyone's mind is whether this firmness will continue if the ATCs carry out their threat of intensifying their agitation. The government does claim that it has a contingency plan but it is no easy task to deploy air force officials all over the country. The ATCs know their "indispensability" and are quite likely to carry out their warning. In all such situations, the past experience is that in close-door meetings, the long-pending demands of the agitationists are finally met and there is a promise not to "victimise" the employees, which only means that no action would be taken against them for whatever they might have done during the strike period. The government wants to project this as reasonableness but the impression that the common man gathers is that it has caved in. After all, if it were reasonable, it should have accepted the demands even before there was a strike. Doing that after that stage has passed reinforces the general feeling that it oils only the creaking wheels. Small wonder that every successful agitation — how so ever unreasonable it might be — spawns 10 more in the belief that the government is amenable not to reason but to ransom. Another spin-off is that once a particular section manages to go a pay hike through the agitational route, all other sections feel that they have been downgraded and a demand for restoring parity is immediately raised by them. Since the salary hike given to one section cannot be withdrawn, it is time for offering the bounty to others. Some time back, it was the pilots who demanded a phenomenal fattening of their pay packets. Now it is the ATCs who want the same salary. Tomorrow, it will be another section.

There is no denying that some agitations are for genuine reasons. The government drags its feet on implementing the recommendations of various pay commissions. Those crushed under the weight of ever-increasing prices are painted into a corner and forced to fight for their rights. But for every single genuine strike, there are two others for purely selfish reasons. The overall impression projected by this tendency is that India is a country that is perpetually on strike. Take the ATCs for example. They have gone on strike four times during the past one and a half years. The loss caused to the nation is tremendous. The present strike itself has cost the airlines operations more than Rs 16 crore. Cargo delays have cost upwards of Rs 200 crore. Then there is wastage of thousands of tons of aviation turbine fuel. But more than all this, there is the incalculable loss to the country's reputation as a tourist destination. Little do the agitators realise that they are killing the goose that lays golden eggs. The aviation industry in India is already gasping. Their shenanigans will only worsen its condition.

Lay off PF, please!

THE Government is again casting its covetous eyes on the provident fund. It is normal during the pre-budget days. But this year the government’s hands have been strengthened by the Dave Commission report submitted on Wednesday. The most striking recommendation is to divert a good part of fresh accruals every year to the stock market. The argument is tempting: the return on the government securities, in which the fund running into a mammoth figure of Rs 75,000 crore, is less than what annuities and shares would offer. Really? The committee refers to the US decision and also to the US experience. There the stock market has consistently done very well compared to all other ways of saving. The Dow Jones index is steadily going up, often offering the pension fund subscribers as high as 12 per cent in real terms. In India, however, the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex is languishing at around 3200 points for more than five years. As a result, the public sector companies alone have shed something like Rs 20,000 crore in the value of their shares. And then there is the woe of US-64 whose net asset value has come down to less than the face value of Rs 10. And Mr S.A.Dave is a former chairman of the UTI!

True, the actual return on provident fund in India is very low, something like 2.47 per cent. This is the figure after adjusting the guaranteed return of 12 per cent against inflation. In many countries the benefit is higher. The Dave committee starts on the assumption that a minimum return of 5 per cent is possible if the money is professionally managed. That is what it has recommended. But it is not for want of professional management that the share prices have not gone up, but because of the presence of speculators in the name of brokers who seek short-term benefit at the cost of long-term stability.

In fact, investment in equity is seen today by the middle class as a sure way to ruin. The experience of the two earlier stock market booms and the later busts is still fresh in the minds of would-be investors. Their attitude towards other savings plans like mutual funds, agro-based companies and such others is the same and for the same reason. This mood is reflected in the decision of the PF trustees to shun the share market as a likely investment possibility. As they felt, it is better to earn a little less than to lose the capital. Also, in a country where the interest rate on government equities is determined by the market (and not fixed by the government as was the practice earlier) and where there are very few plans assuring a steady 12 per cent return and also tax benefit, PF subscribers are not very badly off. The committee has also made two other controversial proposals. It wants to make withdrawal from the fund virtually impossible; except for house-building, withdrawals will not be permitted. Two, there will be a 10 per cent tax on withdrawals. Naturally, it also wants the government to stop guaranteeing the 12 per cent interest rate and to end the present diversion of 1.6 per cent to the pension fund. In the days to come trade unions are sure to raise their voice against the report.

Ration muddle: Combating food insecurity

by S. P. Malhotra

COMBATING food insecurity — both chronic and transient — has been the major concern of food policy in India during the past decades. The major objective of the policy is to ensure availability of foodgrains to the common people at an affordable price.Apart from the focus on increased production and productivity, emphasis has been laid on support price for procurement and maintenance of public stocks of rice and wheat. The Food Corporation of India is responsible for the procurement and stoking of foodgrains and the public distribution system (PDS) has the responsibility for distribution in the States.

The public distribution system formed an important component of the food security system. The PDS is the costliest single programme, that distributes rice, wheat, edible oil, kerosene and sugar at subsidised prices through a network of some 4,00,000 fair-price shops in urban and rural areas throughout the country. Its total subsidies form 0.5 per cent of the GDP in recent years.

Recognising that the food subsidies often did not reach the poorest households, authorities introduced the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) in 1997. The PDS was modified to link the state-level allocations (and so the PDS subsidy) directly to each state’s share of total population living below the official poverty line.About 320 million people below the poverty line (BPL) were to get rice and wheat at about half the Central Government issue price. Ten kg of cereals per family per month are to be issued to all the BPL families. The State Governments had to identify the beneficiaries and issue special ration cards. The beneficiaries under the scheme should have an annual income of Rs 15,000 only.

For 1997-98, out of the total foodgrain requirements of 18.4 million tons, 7.7 million tons was earmarked for the BPL and the balance 10.7 million tons for the above poverty line (APL) section of society. Although the bulk of allocation for the 1997-98 is for the non-poor i.e. APL section gradually the non-poor are to be phased out of the TPDS. For monitoring of the scheme, the Central Government would need to be more vigilant. However, the scheme envisages that the actual monitoring would have to be done by the beneficiaries. It is not spelled out how this will be done. Besides, the State Governments will also have to keep its monitoring mechanism in top gear or any below par performance would result in forfeiting of allocation of foodgrain in the next year.

Since the advent of the TPDS in 1997, India’s poorer states are receiving a substantially higher share of PDS subsidies. Wheat offtake in UP (one of the poorest and largest), for example, increased from 4.4 per cent (207.8 thousand tons) in 1994-95 to 12.6 per cent (876.2 thousand tons) in 1997-98. Bihar (another large, poor state) also increased its wheat offtake share from 4.7 per cent (222.3 thousand tons) to an estimated 7.5 per cent (410.7 thousand tons) over the same period. Despite this, a considerable concern has been expressed regarding the implementation and effectiveness of the TPDS. The scheme may turn to be as ineffective as the existing PDS. The estimate of the leakage of the rationed foodgrains under the PDS to the black market is as high as 70 per cent. Despite over 200 anti-poverty schemes launched for the poor, to bring them out of their miserable state, they have made little progress. A large government machinery, at the Centre and state levels, is deployed to pull these people from the quagmire of poverty. However, Indian poor stay poor, and their numbers grow. The TPDS is the latest anti-poverty programme of the government. It is doubtful if the TPDS would succeed in its objective. One drawback that invites abuse and diversion of grains from the poor to the non-poor under the TPDS is the expectation that the retail dealer will supply the same variety of grain at half the price to the poor (theoretically those with ration cards) and at the regular price to the non-poor. Given past experience with similar arrangements for kerosene and cooking oil, it is unrealistic to expect anything but high level of fraud.Although the Central Government plans to enforce strict monitoring, such control is likely to be difficult and administratively costly.

Early evidence from the World Bank’s village studies in UP and Bihar indicated that targeting measures taken by the TPDS may have increased the amount of PDS foodgrains reaching the poor. BPL lists had been prepared in the majority of study villages and new ration cards (so-called red cards) actually distributed in over half of them. Many of the respondents felt that most of the poor — particularly the very poor-were included on the lists, although numerous reports were also heard of inappropriate inclusion and exclusion. Nevertheless, the TPDS suffers from many of the same implementation problems as it predecessor — the PDS. For example the poor said they were discouraged from using the PDS by irregular hours of store operations, lack of information about when rations would be available, insults from shopkeepers and high transport costs relative to expected savings. Poor informants in UP complained that by the time they learn of a delivery, most of the grain has already been distributed to the (wealthier) households living near the shop.Sugar rations were rarely available and many informants claimed to receive less than their full 10 kg allocation.

The TPDS does not serve fully the interest of the poor. They can of course buy foodgrain from fair price shop. However, the poor are kept away from ration shops in several other ways. These include the followings:

Items from the consumption basket of the rich and upper middle class are included in the PDS, and those exclusively consumed by the poor are excluded. For instance, coarse grains, a staple diet of the poor in many parts of the country is not part of the PDS. On the other hand 60 per cent of the rice allocations made by the Ministry of Civil Supplies to ration shops have been of fine and super-fine rice. Only the remaining 40 per cent is of the common variety. A large number of ration card holders complain that they never got good quality rice from their ration shop. However, the Food Corporation of India and the Ministry of Civil Supplies have been allocating fine (15 per cent dearer than the common rice at PDS prices) and super-fine (21 per cent dearer than the common rice) varieties of rice under the PDS.

PDS fair price stores, are mostly found in the wealthier communities in the village which contributes to the diversion of the food subsidy to the non-poor. Moreover, the PDS is largely defunct at the harvest season when the PDS price is often higher than the open market price.

Even in cities the poor find it difficult to get ration cards. This involves besides greasing various palms at regional card offices, so many administrative clearances that uneducated poor people find it almost impossible to get around them. However, a large number of bogus ration cards have been issued by the Fair Price Shop dealers, that helps them to siphon off a bulk of the ration foodgrains. The level of foodgrains lifted from the Food Corporation of India has no connection with the number of poor in any state. If at all, there is an inverse relationship. Bihar and UP, home for 37 per cent of the country’s poor, lift merely 13 per cent of the foodgrains from the PDS. Of this only a small proportion goes to the people, whether rich or poor. The National Sample Surveys indicate that less than 3 per cent of the poor living in the villages of the two states buy anything from the ration shop. In other words, shopkeepers sell grains in the open market at higher prices, pocketing the difference.

On the other extreme are Kerala and Gujarat. Kerala with 2.5 per cent of the country’s poor lifts 4.24 per cent of the foodgrains from PDS. Gujarat with 3.2 per cent of the country’s poor lifts 8.25 per cent of the foodgrains from PDS.While in Kerala a significant proportion does reach the people, both the rich and the poor, in Gujarat a part of the ration grains perhaps also makes its way to the open market.

It is difficult to target the poor. If the government really wants to have a public distribution system for the poor, it should devise a system that is less attractive for the non-poor. The PDS should subsidise only coarse grains. The non-poor will stay away from PDS. Unfortunately, there is no political support for such schemes, because these would fail to benefit the non-poor, who are more numerous and well organised. To begin with, half of the foodgrain allocation under the PDS should be of coarse grains, and in states where the staple diet of the poor is coarse grain, no other grains should be distributed. The government should not allocate fine or super-fine rice for PDS. If the poor or the rich wish to buy fine or super-fine varieties of rice they can buy from the open market.

Similarly, sugar should be taken out of the PDS. Most people in urban areas, keep ration cards to buy sugar. Once this incentive is withdrawn they won’t buy any ration at all. This will make the PDS largely defunct for the rich and the middle classes. Furthermore, to discourage traders from diverting PDS foodgrains to open market the panchayats should be involved in the distribution of ration and also in identifying the poor in the rural areas.

It is doubtful if the situation will improve considerably under the TPDS. Despite the best efforts, the TPDS will stay away from the poor. The amount of subsidy will increase. The non-poor beneficiaries are likely to outnumber the poor. The bureaucracy lacks both the capability and honesty to truly weed out the unworthy.For instance, Andhra Pradesh experimented with a system of issuing white ration cards for those below the poverty line and pink cards for others. Had the system worked successfully, around four million cards should have been issued to poor households. In fact as many as 11.2 million white cards were issued. Pink cards numbered only 0.2 million indicating how few admitted to being non-poor.

If the government is serious about improving the lot of the rural poor, it should concentrate on a few selected anti-poverty programmes, whose implementation should be monitored regularly. The government should phase out completely the second and untargeted channels of PDS and shift progressively more public spending from food subsidy to public works programmes.Ensuring income and employment rather than providing cheap foodgrains, should be the route to remove poverty and guarantee food security to the Indian poor. The poor should be provided with better access to health and education services that have been shown to equip the poor to help themselves.

The access to and the production of foodgrains are closely interlinked. It is good for the government to assure better access to foodgrain to the poor. India’s food security remains vulnerable. On the production front alarm bells are being sounded. The declining performance of foodgrains is raising considerable concern.Rate of growth has fallen, government stocks are depleted and official agencies found it difficult to procure adequate quantities of wheat during the 1997 season. Production of foodgrains between 1990-91 and 1996-97 increased at 1.7 per cent against 1.9 per cent annual growth in population. There may not seem to be a cause as yet to press the panic button. The slow growth partly reflects the cut-off year. However, the difference in the growth rate between the 1980s and 1990s is too wide to be ignored.

Not only is agricultural growth declining in the high-productivity and the historically best-performing states: Punjab and Haryana; it is also deteriorating in states as West Bengal and UP, where poverty rates are high but where agricultural growth was either strong or improving. Recent evidence showing the continuation of a 10-or-more year declining trend in total factor productivity indicates that technological change the long-term source of rapid agricultural growth is being eroded. As a consequence, the long-term prospects for agricultural growth and scope for higher agricultural wages and returns from family farming are shrinking and so will rural off-farm employment opportunities.

It is imperative to achieve a sustained growth in foodgrain production in India along with launching of special schemes that assure access to food to the Indian poor. For increasing production it is essential to extend the technology to areas not fully covered, to step up investment in irrigation, land development, farm implements and promotion of better farming practices, with focus on small and marginal farmers. In 1997 the Ganga KalyanYojana with a provision of Rs 2000 million was launched. Under this programme the individuals/groups, consisting of small and marginal farmers below the poverty line, would be assisted through subsidy by the government and credit by financial institutions, to take up groundwater and surface water utilisation schemes. Similarly, the provision for the accelerated irrigation benefit programme has been enhanced from Rs 9000 million to 13000 million. However, it is relevant to stress that despite large investment under the accelerated Rural Water Scheme, the Minimum Programme and the legislators quotas, a large proportion of wells and tubewells in a number of states e.g. Bihar, eastern UP and Orissa are lying out of use due to lack of adequate water and power.

The writer is a former Senior Commodity Specialist, Food and Agriculture Organisation, Rome (Italy).

Drug menace in Africa
by Hari Sharan Chhabra

THE African continent is neither a major drug-consuming region nor a big producer of drugs. Yet drug trafficking and abuse and consequent money-laundering are growing in a big way. According to experts, in the coming years drug trade could be a major threat to the development of Africa. This will be a major constraint of Africa’s healthy growth as the continent is already a victim of ethnic conflicts, ecological crisis and AIDS.

African countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Madagascar, Swaziland and Ethiopia are engaged in the cultivation of cannabis, and the Horn of Africa, particularly Somalia, produces the leafy drug Kat. But narcotic drugs like heroin and cocaine are now penetrating sub-Saharan Africa. It needs to be emphasised here that African countries are generally transit sites for drug trafficking to North America and Europe, the principal consumers of heroin and cocaine. Also important is to note that Latin America and Asia are the major production centres of the two lethal drugs.

Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivore and Senegal in West Africa and Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana, South Africa and Zambia in Eastern and Southern Africa are some African countries that face an influx of drugs. Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is a most attractive transit point for illicit drugs, because of this country’s proximity to South America and Europe. In Zambia, cocaine leads the drug market and 80 per cent of it is transported to Europe and 20 per cent consumed locally. An increasing number of Zambians are arrested for drug trafficking, of whom the majority of the couriers are women.

Nigeria, the giant of Africa in terms of population (100 million), and South Africa, the richest country in the continent, take the cake as regards the menace of drugs. According to a UN publication, Africa Recovery (August, 1998), there are up to 500,000 cocaine users in South Africa and one-third of its teenagers experiment with drugs. There are up to 300 international crime syndicates involved in drug-trafficking in South Africa. Johannesburg international airport, which has surpassed Cairo as the busiest airport in Africa, had over 100 kg of cocaine seized in 1997.

South Africa offers a huge market for drugs. As a regional hub, it attracts numerous traffickers for trans-shipment of drugs. South Africa also stands out as an ideal site for money-laundering, which has become a serious issue for the government. In February, 1998, the police revealed that money-laundering had been going on through government bonds, real estate and various businesses. Such "dirty money" often means that taxable revenues — perhaps in billions of rands — are being lost.

No wonder, the South Africa Narcotics Bureau (SANAB) fears being overwhelmed by the expansion of criminal syndicates. One former SANAB officer commented: "Local syndicates are taking advantage of our weak criminal justice system, bribing their way out of airports and exporting large quantities of drugs."

Nigeria plays the most ugly role on the globe in drug-trafficking. With the escalation of drug usage in the developed countries of the West, West African airports are employed as transit points, and Nigerians are sought as couriers.

Africa Recovery has this to say about the role of Nigeria: "Since the early 1980, Nigeria has earned an international reputation as a hub for trafficking in hard drugs. As the trade in heroin and cocaine is very profitable, ever larger numbers of people were attracted to it. By the 1990s the menace of drug-trafficking had international as well as national ramifications. Nigerian syndicates alone are said to control an estimated 50 per cent of the entire illegal heroin in the world".

Even in India, Nigerian students are involved in drug smuggling. According to an estimate, at least 20 Nigerian students are languishing in various Indian jails caught as couriers of drugs. And most interestingly, many Nigerian illegal immigrants in South Africa are engaged in lucrative drug trade.

There are laws imposing heavy penalties for drug-trafficking — Kenya imposes life imprisonment. But the crucial factor is that law enforcement is a difficult task. International conferences are being organised to share experiences and exchange ideas in order to improve efforts to combat the drug problem. Treatment and rehabilitation of drug abusers is not easy in Africa so far.

A special session of the UN General Assembly was held on June 8-10, 1998, in which representatives of many African countries backed the UN global anti-drug strategy. They supported new initiatives from the UN International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP). The drug trade can be stopped, said UNDCP Executive Director Pino Arlacchi, who oulined an ambitious plan "to create a drug-free 21st century". The "Drug Summit" finally adopted by consensus a political declaration, committing member states to measurable results in reducing the demand for drugs by 2008. The UN General Assembly urged nations to work with the UNDCP to halt money-laundering operations and illicit crop cultivation.

Even the Organisation of African Unity in March, 1998, adopted an African Common Position on Drug Control, underscoring the necessity of a multi-sectoral approach to the continent’s drug problem. — IPA

Andhra CM Naidu a ‘living proof’

by Tavleen Singh

LAST week I spent a whole day watching Andhra Chief Minister at work and concluded at the end of it that all we need is four more chief ministers like Chandrababu Naidu for India to become a developed country in the next 10 years. There is, though, a rider: we need them in the four bimaru states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar which are abysmally backward even by our own meagre standards. Naidu is living proof that all it requires is one good leader for things to start changing at a speed that is almost hard to believe.

My day with him began at 6.15 a.m. when he has his daily telephonic conference with every Collector in the state. I arrived at his house in Hyderabad to find myself ushered into an office whose main feature was a particularly high-tech computer. On the screen, while waiting for the CM, I noticed figures for the state’s power supply. Details of which plants were functioning at what capacity were given along with other sets of statistics relating to various governmental activities. The Chief Minister was up, his staff told me, but was just finishing his morning exercise and ablutions. Music filtered down from upstairs as they explained his exercise routine. A few minutes on the treadmill and then some yoga is what he did every day.

Even as they filled me in the CM arrived in person. He went straight to the computer and studied the information on the screen. Then, he turned to the telephone and proceeded to take a rollcall of the Collectors who were present to speak to him from their districts. He said he always talked to them early in the morning because the telephone rates were cheaper before 7 a.m. He spoke to each in turn and asked to know how the government’s latest schemes were faring and what problems they were facing in implementing them.

The two schemes that were being given top priority were File Disposal Week and a system of farmers’ markets he had just started called Rythu Bazars. "There are files in some government offices" he explained "that have been lying undealt with for 20 and 30 years this is why I felt we had to have regular file disposal weeks. As for the Rythu Bazars it is something we have just started to enable farmers to come and sell their produce directly to consumers so that we eliminate the middlemen who make most of the money and who are often responsible for prices going up."

He added that the idea to do something about food prices had come to him after onions became a luxury item last year. His government had stepped in at that point to make onions available at reasonable prices in Andhra’s towns and cities and it was then that they had noticed that middlemen were a problem. That the scheme is popular with farmers became evident that morning when a large group of them came to greet him after he had finished talking to his Collectors. They came in lilac and pista green buses that had vegetables painted on them. These special buses. Naidu explained, were being introduced all over the state and their only job was to go into the villages and bring farmers to the Rythu Bazars and take them back.

Other groups of people came and met him all morning and then we set off in his car for the airport where a helicopter was waiting to take us to a small district town called Kurnool where he intended to see for himself how File Disposal Week was getting along. It was a surprise visit and the Kurnool administration had only been informed that morning that the Chief Minister would be paying a visit to the town.

While driving through Hyderabad, on the way to airport, I noticed that the streets were much cleaner than when I had last been here a year ago. The CM was pleased that I had observed this and told me that he had achieved this by privatising the city’s cleaning services. "First, I tried to get our own government sweepers to do a better job when this did not work I decided to give it out on contract", he said. The result is that Hyderabad is probably India’s cleanest city today.

In the helicopter Naidu explained that he wanted Andhra to be a model state by showing that good governance can achieve miracles. The most-difficult thing, he added, was changing the mindset of officials who had grown accustomed in the past 50 years to getting paid for doing almost no work at all. But, he was trying to overcome this problem by pushing them constantly to do more. In Kurnool I saw exactly what he meant. Our first stop was the Collectorate where he went into office after office to see whether files were being disposed of. When he came across an officer who seemed not to be working as fast as he should he would berate him for not taking his work seriously. "This file is 20 years old, why hasn’t it been dealt with yet". Even when he was striding through the corridors he spent his time pulling people up for neglect. Why is the toilet in such bad shape? Why is the building unpainted?Why are those windows in such a mess? Why have you allowed all this to happen?

Our next stop was the office of the District Health Officer and when he observed that conditions here were even worse than the Collectorate the Chief Minister was livid. "This is the District Health Officer" he said angrily "and he cannot look after his own health. Just look at how dirty his office is. How could we talk of health when your office looks like this?"

Then it was the turn of the government hospital to receive a surprise visit from the Chief Minister. When he noticed that hygiene had not improved at all since his last visit a month ago, he told the Medical Superintendent that he was ordering an inquiry. "I am spending Rs 1300 crore a year on health and these are the conditions of our hospitals. I will not have it".

In Kurnool that day he had words of praise only for the local Registrar office which had managed to begin the process of computerising land records. They gave us a demonstration to show that it was possible now to obtain information even on village land in 30 seconds. Mr Naidu was pleased and proud. "I want Andhra to become a model state" he said again "and I will achieve this goal". In more ways than one, he already has.

Guzzling away with Ghalib

Amita Malik

EVERY year, without fail the media, print and electronic, celebrate Ghalib’s anniversary with great zest. His decaying house and his tomb are visited, Urdu scholars quote his poetry and we have synopsis as well as Amina Ahuja’s splendid calligraphic presentations of the poet’s verse. And everything seems fine. But not quite.

Ghalib is Delhi’s very own poet. I once attended the famous film on him by Sohrab Modi, which was screened in a mid-way cinema between Old and New Delhi. To my delight, I found the less expensive seats were overflowing with Ghalib lovers, including women in burqas and my butcher from Nizamuddin. They not only knew every couplet, they actually anticipated them and recited them with gusto. Truly he is the people’s poet.

But not when it comes to our TV and radio channels. They insist on calling him Gaalib and they keep on mentioning his guzzles. They seem to forget that there is an "H" in both words so they drop it by the wayside. Even the normally reliable Sonali Verma insisted on calling the poet Gaalib. Barely one or two Urdu-knowing newscasters got it right on the Star channels but the majority messed it up. I give the highest scores for pronouncing the name correctly to Zee TV because although not Urdu experts, the presenters had taken the trouble to get the name right. True, the syllable is guttural, and the Germans would probably get it right more easily. I am no Urdu scholar and the special "Gh" sound is absent in both Bengali and English. But I did find the time to practise it until I got it right. It is the least one owes to a poet of his stature. Presenters seem to forget that viewers and listeners depend on them to improve their pronunciation and they have a responsibility in the matter.

Sports are very much in the air and our very own Linda Spurr, Sonali Chander, is developing into a very good all-rounder in the best sporting tradition. She has an amazing grasp of several sports and seems to enjoy her coverage. So do we. I also like Misha Grewal very much for the warm, relaxed manner in which she conducts sports interviews, although she did make a bit of a boo-boo when she asked Leander Paes if he and Bhupathi were like a married couple. Poor Leander blanched and said: "Please don’t say that on television". Words have double meanings in the sports context and one has to be careful. One keeps on thanking one’s stars that the cricket relays are being done by the satellite channels and not Doordarshan, with its limited time and poor commentators. I hope this arrangement will continue for the cricket World Cup. Wimbledon and the Paris Open. DD ruins everything for sports lovers and it is time it realised this.

One gathers that there was a big international conference of media women sponsored by some Finnish media organisation. One read a little and saw bits and snatches of it on television, mainly DD, which carried the minister’s speech (not very relevant in an international context) and another big-wig at the conference was the Acting CEO of Prasar Bharati, Mr Kejriwal. The Indian delegates were two producers from Doordarshan. No wonder. It became limited bureaucratic participation by local bureaucrats although the India International Centre was overflowing with interesting women from East and West. In handing over the arrangments and choice of participants to a former Doordarshan producer no longer with them, the Finnish organisation not only limited the discussions but also deprived well-known Indian media women, who are far more internationally known than Pramod Mahajan and Kejriwal of interacting with their international counterparts. A great waste of a very good opportunity and I only wish the Finns had not got tied down to the Indian Government media and made it a wider and more professional forum. They are probably not aware of Indian ways and the penchant of bureaucrats to grab the plums on every occasion, and make it a closed-circuit affair.

75 YEARS AGO

Prices in Berlin: exodus of foreigners

BERLIN’S hotels, which have been crowded for the past few weeks, are now three-quarters empty owing to the flight of foreigners from Germany in consequence of the rapid increase in prices.

So rapid is the adjustment of prices to the moments of the exchange that travelling is no longer ridiculously cheap for foreigners, who are now charged many times more than the natives.

The latter, however, are also affected. For instance, the Association of Silesian Publishers have decided to cease the publication of books. Pomeranian newspaper proprietors have stopped the publication of papers owing to the increase of rates for coal and raw materials. One large store in Berlin reports that its customers are 75 per cent fewer than a month ago.