P A G E
Thursday, September 30, 1999
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Thursday, September 30, 1999 |
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New
look, old agenda
ELECTING
THIRTEENTH LOK SABHA |
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Back
to academics in Kashmir
At
income tax counter
September 30,
1924. |
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New look, old agenda THERE is a new bright look to Indo-US talks but the agenda remains stubbornly unchanged. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has brought a bit of sunshine to her meeting with Mr Jaswant Singh and even light banter. Smile has replaced the carefully cultivated frown of her deputy, Mr Strobe Talbott (who has retired from his interlocutor’s role), but it is too early to tell how much of it is sincere and how much synthetic. The relaxed atmosphere, first noticed in Singapore during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting, is most welcome as it makes for a smooth exchange of ideas and expression of polite disagreement. Still there is something tentative about the Foreign Minister-level talks; as in Singapore so in New York, the meeting was held taking advantage of their presence to attend a more important affair. The two should go through the whole gamut of relations and in considerable depth when Mrs Albright visits India later this year. Another notable feature of the meeting was the extreme length the USA had gone to maintain equal distance as between India and Pakistan. Mr Jaswant Singh met her for 45 minutes as did Pakistan’s Mr Sartaj Aziz, exactly for 45 minutes. Both sides went through the now familiar ground. US President Clinton is expected to visit the subcontinent early next year but has dropped the old condition that the two new nuclear powers should sign the CTBT before that. Now the emphasis is on creating “a positive environment” for the visit. For the USA this means lifting of all sanctions imposed in the wake of the Pokhran blasts last year. The US Congress may initiate the necessary legislation as early as next month. For India it means building a national consensus on the CTBT, holding out a promise not to build a huge nuclear arsenal and finding a way to resume normalisation talks with Pakistan. Washington may not play up the last issue but it is keen on an early resumption of the Lahore process, for the simple reason that it stands committed to easing tension in the Kashmir dispute and has put it down in the July 4 statement signed with Mr Nawaz Sharif. No, the USA will not prod this country to do more than what it has promised to do but will be happy at any progress. This position was bluntly put across in Mrs Albright’s talks with Mr Aziz when he was told that there would be no US mediation in Kashmir. But the pressure to halt or at least go slow on nuclear weaponisation will continue, nor will India receive the treatment reserved for nuclear powers. This is a grey area and the new government has to cope with it. Hope for genuine
improvement in Indo-US relations stems from a warm remark
by Mrs Albright. She referred to the title of a new book,
“Engaging India” and wholeheartedly agreed with
the idea. This and earlier indications from senior
officials clearly point to a new US perception about
India. The stable democratic system and growing
investment and business opportunities in India have
combined to erase old prejudice and there is something
permanent about this. Correspondingly, the USA is
becoming visibly cool towards its one-time favourite,
Pakistan, in part annoyed with its support to terrorist
groups like the Osama bin Laden gang. This is an issue
that India should pursue and not confine it to just
Kashmir. If there is a concerted attack on fundamentalist
terrorism, the result cannot but weaken militancy in the
valley. |
Petty politicians UNION Territory Inspector-General of Police S. K. Singh has only himself to blame for having invited local politicians for obtaining their views on how to arrest the downslide in the law and order situation in Chandigarh. They did not waste much time in showing their true colours. Instead of helping the Chandigarh Police in identifying the flaws in its functioning the politicians created a minor law and order problem by raising anti-police slogans. Their “political pride” was hurt because the IG’s office inadvertently invited more Congressmen than the representatives of other political parties for direct interaction on how to improve the law and order situation. Given the current image of politicians they should have been grateful to the Chandigarh Police for having taken the initiative of involving them in the process of reducing the incidence of various kinds of crimes in the Union Territory. The Inspector-General of Police deserved every bit of the embarrassment he earned by having reposed faith in the political class for finding solutions to problems which, according to available statistics, they themselves create. A local politician’s son is the main accused in a case of murder committed in Delhi. The main accused in the tandoor murder case too is a politician. Romesh Sharma’s alleged crimes are still under investigation. “Godman” Chandraswami has more or less been rehabilitated after spending some time in jail. The police is going easy in investigating charges against him because of his political connections. Some Chandigarh politicians were upset at the over-representation of Congressmen at the meeting convened by Mr S.K. Singh. However, politicians of different parties do not fight like cats and dogs when they turn up for touching the feet of Chandraswami. The Union Territory IGP
has evidently not read the reports of various commissions
and committees on the nexus between politicians and
criminals. The problem of having to suffer known
criminals, who get elected to the country’s
legislatures, has assumed the dimensions of a political
epidemic. Yet, the IGP thought it fit to consult
politicians for improving the law and order situation in
Chandigarh. The television coverage of the Lok Sabha and
some assembly elections has exposed politicians for what
they are. Most political parties have ignored the request
of the Election Commission not to field candidates
against whom criminal cases are pending in various
courts. It is not just law and order that they are least
interested in improving. The television coverage showed
that they are totally out of touch with the real concerns
of the people they seek to represent as lawmakers. Mr S.
K. Singh’s faith in politicians show his childlike
innocence about how not to tackle an issue concerning the
safety and security of the residents of Chandigarh.
Instead of going to the politicians he should go to the
people. He should not give up looking for guidance from
outside the police force. It is up to him to decide how
much time he can spare every month for meeting members of
the general public, not for listening to specific
grievances but for obtaining their views on different
aspects of the elements which constitute law and order.
If he were to meet a cross-section of people from
different age groups, gender and professions, he may find
the inter-action more rewarding than the one he had with
local politicians on Tuesday. |
Poison as food THE conventional wisdom that vegetables are good for one’s health has been made stand on its head in India. Potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, pears and leafy vegetables like methi, mustard and pudina in Punjab have been found to be containing toxic elements like chromium, arsenic and nickel. In the layman’s language, it means that the vegetables that we eat are downright poisonous. Scientists of Punjab Agriculture University have even identified as the culprits. It is the sewerage water containing industrial effluent which has turned the upper layer of the soil toxic. The result is that the vegetables grown near major industrial towns like Ludhiana, Amritsar, Mandi Gobindgarh and Malerkotla contain toxic elements far in excess of the permissible limits. That is a double blow to the people of these big cities coughing and puffing due to atmospheric pollution. But then, things are hardly better elsewhere in the region. The use of insecticides and pesticides has increased so much even in the interior areas that the food items grown there are hardly edible. Ignorance is no bliss but at least this poison goes into the system only because of lack of awareness. What can one say about the deliberate addition of poison in food items? There have been repeated “disclosures” about unscrupulous traders using toxic colour dyes, grease and cheap mobil oil to give the pulses the sheen and colour which attract buyers, but there is hardly any action. Things have not changed even after the dropsy epidemic due to mustard oil adulteration and the nightmare caused by “kesari” dal. Insecticides, chemicals and hormones are still mixed with food items with impunity. The main problem is that
we are not food conscious. The government matches this
complacency to the hilt. A person who shoots one man dead
may go to the gallows but one who causes the slow death
of hundreds of persons through food adulteration can go
scot-free. The process of collecting samples, testing
them, launching prosecution and convicting the culprits
is so tardy and complicated that most suspects go
unpunished. This becomes all the more brazen when
politicians intervene. Milkmen in Uttar Pradesh and
Haryana were found mixing urea, paints, hydrogen peroxide
and plaster of Paris to come up with synthetic milk.
(Incidentally, India should be the only country to
manufacture such satanical concoction.) But when a drive
was launched against them, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav jumped
into the fray calling it harassment. He wanted action to
be taken only against big dairy farms and not small
cattle owners, as if synthetic milk would turn into pure
milk if it were manufactured by someone who had only one
or two buffaloes. He managed to save many people of his
caste but the end result was that hundreds of thousands
of children would continue to get white poison in the
name of milk. Till the entire society revolts against
such highhandedness, we will have to live with the
merchants of death. |
ELECTING THIRTEENTH LOK SABHA UNLESS we are determined to make a mockery of the world’s largest democracy, urgent and foolproof measures will have to be taken immediately to confront and overcome at least three major blights thrown up by the excruciatingly slow-moving poll, now mercifully drawing to a close though in the midst of the dirtiest campaign ever. Heading the list, of course, is the problem of violation and intimidation which not only vitiates the elections wherever it takes place but also erodes the credibility of the entire democratic process. Secondly, the time has come to see to it that elections are completed in a reasonably short period — nay, no more than a fortnight — rather than let them drag on and on, as has been the case this time, and sadly was also in 1991 because of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. Thirdly, there has to be an end also to the Seshan syndrome that seems to be driving the Election Commission still into becoming a law unto itself. There should never again be a repetition of the farce during which the commission first issued a ukase against exit polls and public opinion surveys and then sheepishly “recalled it” after the Supreme Court tersely put the commission in its place. The commission is, and has to be, a monitor of the elections, not a super-government. Let these issues be discussed serially. Over the curse of violence at the hustings, this country has been indulging in a measure of self-delusion. It has been consoling itself with the thought that, given the gargantuan scale of the electoral exercise across a virtual continent, the incidence of poll-related violence cannot be regarded excessive, and that the overall fairness of the poll cannot be in doubt. This argument is not without substance but it contains within it seeds of dangerous complacency. Limited though such violence may be, relatively speaking, both its extent and viciousness have been on the increase. What is more, the habitual perpetrators of violence, especially when they succeed in their nefarious designs of getting elected by hook or by crook, are getting greatly encouraged by the tolerance being shown to them all the time. It will be unrealistic to expect a state of affairs in which the capturing of a single polling booth, to say nothing of the killing of a single candidate or polling agent, would be considered too many. But surely the Indian state has to get over its depressing inability visibly to reduce the level of poll violence by coming down heavily on some at least of the prominent merchants of murder and mayhem. The arrest of a minister in the BJP-Shiv Sena government of Maharashtra for the murder of a candidate opposing him and a BJP MLA in Gujarat for eliminating a rival as well as of two ministers of Bihar for disrupting the polls shows how deep the rot is. And this is only the visible tip of the iceberg. Inextricably mixed up with the problem of electoral violence is the bankruptcy of almost all political parties because each one of them finds it expedient to give criminals a place of honour in its ranks. They inevitably go berserk with impunity. For the strong-armed thugs in the ruling party in any state (and in India today every party is in power in some state or the other) there is the OGL to run riot. During the third round of voting, a minister of UP, a princeling of a place called Pratapgarh, had to be restrained from moving out of his house because of the fears, born of his past record, about what he might do. This did not faze him. As television cameras recorded, he was guiding his goons on his mobile telephone. The frightening events in the Siwan constituency in Bihar in the fourth round on September 25 are even more revealing. Capturing of booths was not difficult because policemen, deeming discretion to be the better part of valour, had done the vanishing trick. Voters, sought to be kept away from the booth, were shot at and in one place even bombed. Is this a pure coincidence that the candidate of the ruling party in ‘‘Lalooland’’, otherwise called Bihar, is Mr Mohammed Shahabuddin, with at least a dozen criminal charges against him? In almost every outrage perpetrated in Siwai, people have named him as the culprit. But no one seems able even to say boo to him. In 1996, this gentleman, allegedly at Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav’s instance, was even appointed Union Minister of State for Home, in the Deve Gowda government. Only public outcry forced the “humble farmer” to cancel the appointment. Shortly thereafter a charge of murder against him was added to the long list that already existed. Surely, there are many opposite numbers of him in various states in various parties, all happily in business. This is so because cases involving even the most heinous crimes languish in courts for decades. The existing law says that only those actually convicted of a crime can be debarred from elections. All political parties are agreed that the ban must extend to all those against whom criminal charges have been framed by the judiciary. This requires a change in the election law. No government in New Delhi has ever sponsored it. To come to the problem of the poll’s unconscionable duration, it is a safe bet that there will be loud cries against the idea of shortening the timeframe. Those who have already put so much premium on lethargy and inefficiency will invoke the familiar argument that adequate time is needed to move Central and state security forces from one sensitive area to the other and, therefore, elections have to be staggered. This is unacceptable for two reasons. First, the normal administration and police force have to be toned up. Secondly, fast means of communication and transport are available, and there is no need to move the required forces by rail or bus. After the detection of Pakistani intrusions in Kargil, five brigades, totalling 15,000 troops with their equipment, were transported there in next to no time. The armed forces need not be involved in elections. But there is no reason why military transport aircraft, such as Ilyushin-76s, should not be used to ensure speedy and smooth polls. Airborne commandos can be deployed to take care of particularly vile attempts to disrupt peaceful voting. In order to function effectively the Election Commission will have to act in a more becoming manner than has been the case so far. When Mr T.N. Seshan began behaving like the monarch of all he surveyed and cancelled elections right and left, the people, fed up with the vagaries of politicians, were at first very pleased. Some openly said that he was perhaps the answer to their prayers. But soon the country became sick and tired of his antics and tantrums. Unfortunately, necessary lessons have not been learnt at Nirvachan Sadan. Otherwise, some of the flamboyant features of the Seshan legacy would not have persisted there. The Election Commission must realise that it has to remain within the limits of its powers under the law. Moreover, the chief and the members of the commission should let their work speak for itself. They should not interrupt it by hogging the prime time on television. To say all this is not to overlook that some of the concerns which might have prompted the present commission to step beyond the Lakshman Rekha are legitimate. The best example of this is this unholy business of exit polls. Such polls are alright in countries which have the decency to complete their voting in a single day. When voting lasts a whole month and takes place on five different dates, an exit poll after every phase can be a source of great mischief. Only those who are making a lot of money out of such polls and perhaps giving vent to their known or hidden preferences are arguing that an exit poll has no adverse fallout. Mercifully, the numerous exit polls this time round are making so absurdly divergent predictions that they have thoroughly discredited themselves. What to do about them
before the next election is for Parliament and the public
opinion to decide. The media, for its part, should
combine its legitimate concern for freedom of speech and
information with due regard to other democratic values. |
Iraq: human cost of the
sanctions THE wholesale destruction of large areas of Iraq in 1991 were presented in the Western media as a geopolitical video-game where selected images showed the wonders and thrills of technology which destroyed military targets. The CIA estimated casualties between 1,00,000 and 26,000; Greenpeace estimated more than 1,50,000 dead, with upto 15,000 civilian deaths. In an interview, General Schwarzkopt said that it did not really matter anyway: “50,000 or 1,00,000 or 1,50,000 or whatever of them to be killed”. This clearly reflects the American insensitivity to the loss of human lives, especially when these are not American and this despite its self-proclaimed status of being a champion of human rights and international norms. Now after eight years of Gulf War, America is waging another kind of war against Iraq: the war of economic sanctions. The economic sanctions have resulted in a massive number of deaths of children and civilians. Mr Denis Haliday, a UN official who coordinated the “Food For Oil Programme” in Iraq, revealed in 1998 that “the programme remains a largely ineffective response to the human crisis in the country and has not begun to tackle the underlying infrastructural causes of continuing child mortality and malnutrition”. He estimated that deaths of 5,00,000 Iraqi children are as a direct result of these sanctions. The UN agencies which are responsible for overseeing the economic sanctions have estimated that the Iraqi infant mortality rate has risen from the pre-Gulf war rate of 3.7 per cent to 12 per cent. The education system has almost collapsed in a country known for the quality of its education in the Arab world. Further, the breakdown in sewage and sanitation systems and in electrical power systems needed to support them reportedly cause an increase of 40,000 deaths annually of children under the age of five and 50,000 deaths annually of Iraqis. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dismissed the issue by stating in May, 1998, “the fact that Iraqi children are dying is not the fault of the United States but of Saddam Hussein... it is ridiculous for the United States to be blamed for the dictatorial and cruel, barbaric ways that Saddam Hussein treats his people.” It is clear that this loss of human life has not made a deep impression in the USA. American public, even when the Gulf war was at its peak, did not blame Iraqi people for the policies of Mr Saddam Hussein. This economic embargo against Iraq has shown that dominant powers can inflict enormous pain at little costs to themselves or to the global economy, especially when the country in question is a small or medium-sized adversary. When properly coordinated this is the most inexpensive and potent weapon against small and medium-sized countries. The massive loss of life occurring in Iraq is much more than that of civilian casualties due to the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is no doubt that there are dangers posed by chemical and biological weapons, but these dangers are either overstated or overlooked when politically convenient. When there was evidence of Iraq using chemical weapons against Iran, it was ignored. Then there were intrusive inspections of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) sanctioned by the UN. The results of these inspections and controversies surrounding the inspections are well known to recount here. Iraqis have been denied access to the import of fertilisers, insecticides, water bleaching agents like chlorine and some of the medical diagnostic equipment, which uses radioactive particles. As a result, infected water is being provided, disease carrying pests have proliferated and multiplied and inadequate medical care is having a cascading effect on the human costs of economic sanctions. The Iraqi economy is more susceptible to economic sanctions because much of it revolves round the export of oil. The effects of sanctions have been further enhanced by the destruction of its infrastructure during the Gulf war and Anglo-American strikes of December, 1998. The terms and conditions of “Oil for Food” programme have further compounded the economic problems being faced by Iraq. Firstly, a large portion of the oil revenues is set aside for contributions to the UN Gulf war compensation fund (30 per cent) and for the operating expenses of UN programme in Iraq (10 per cent). Secondly, the drop in world oil prices has reduced the amount of funds available to the programme. So even if the programme is properly implemented it will not improve the lot of ordinary Iraqi in a meaningful manner. The human cost of economic sanctions could perhaps be justified, from an American point of view, if they could be expected to bring down Mr Saddam Hussein in future or they prevent him from developing WMD. The Iraqi people and society, especially in small towns and villages, have become impoverished and are leading a hand-to-mouth existency. The ration and medical aid provided under Oil For Food programme are inadequate. UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission for the disarmament of Iraq) has evidence that sanctions have not substantially affected perhaps a considerable Iraqi EMD programme. Americans and the rest of the Western countries cannot plead innocence by blaming Mr Saddam Hussein as a guilty party. It is purely a defensive strategy which does not address the solution of a predictable problem caused by economic sanctions. How can the terrible cost of human lives in Iraq be avoided? The first act should be to loosen the noose of economic sanctions by allowing Iraq to sell more oil. This would have to be followed by improved implementation of the Oil for the Food programme and removal of many unnecessary restrictions on the import of life-saving items. — INFA (The author is a
retired Brigadier). |
At
income tax counter STANDING in the queue in the income tax office in Mayur Bhavan in New Delhi, waiting for my turn to file the IT return, I got the feeling as if I was sitting in one of those Dakota planes, called war-horses, in which I used to fly between Calcutta and Guhati in days gone by. With dozens of pedestal fans, placed here and there, blowing at full speed, competing with the noise that came from the sunk breasts of those who once upon a time were GOI’s “Think Tanks”, occupying high positions, nothing could have been more exasperating. It was the 25th of June, the first day to file the return. As a rule, I always file my return personally and on the first day. My son rebukes me for not engaging a chartered accountant. “Why spend money on something which your mother can do better?” I tell him, “after all, she holds an hons. degree in mathematics signed by Mian Sir Fazal Hussain himself.” Mian Sir Fazal Hussain was the Vice-Chancellor of the Panjab University in our times, times before 1947, times when Hindus were Hindus, Sikhs were Sikhs, Muslims were Muslims, all gentlemen, no terrorists, no mujahideen among them. To be on the right side of the law, I had deposited a sum of Rs 3,000 into the bank as advance tax. Subsequent calculations revealed that that was more than what I ought to have deposited. In plain words, the IT Department had to return to me a sum of Rs 585 as refund. Good of them that for the elderly, now-called bazurgs, they had separate counters and that, too, in alphabetical order. My name beginning with V, I stood at the counter intended for those between M and Z. More than an hour passed and yet my turn did not come. “If we can wait a little more,” my wife encouraged me, “they are giving refund cheques to others on the spot. We, too, might get ours.” Happy are those who file no returns. Look at the chatwallahs. Aren’t they earning more than what we get? Any fellow who sells monkey-nuts in the bazars of Delhi makes more than what the government pays us as our pension. Do they file any returns? We seem to be the only bloody fools who pay our taxes and on top of that stand in queues for hours. I heard those remarks and similar other commentaries from the GOI’s ex-bigwigs. “Waiting for your turn to get the refund?” a kindly gentleman, apparently a deputy commissioner of income tax, came up and put the question to me. I nodded my head. He must have put that question to many others. “How long have you been waiting?” he asked me. “Nearly two hours,” I replied. He walked up to the official checking the claims, talked to him and came back to me. “Just a few minutes more, Sir,” said he, “you are fourth on the list.” My turn came. And lo and
behold, the official handling my case gave me a cheque
for exactly Rs 585, the amount I had claimed. “Was
my assessment correct?” I asked him. “I
don’t know, Sir,” replied he, “as rule, we
don’t check the refund claims of those in your
income bracket. We take them to be correct.” |
Back to academics in Kashmir STERN, assertive, intimidating but guarded — it takes a Dr Tahira Abdullah to survive. Principal of the popular Government College for Women in Srinagar, she has just been through a harrowing period of admissions. The college had a teaching staff of 100 for a student strength of 3000, but from the academic session beginning April, 1999, it has almost doubled its intake. Despite that, it still cannot meet the growing demand. The unimaginative and restrictive administrative policies of the state government seems intent in denying higher education to a vast number without offering alternatives. During peak militancy in the early 1990s, Abdullah experienced threats to her life, mainly during admissions and examinations but since she remained unmoved, these soon changed to offers of protection and support from various militant organisations, in exchange for favours during examinations. She was particularly vulnerable since she took a stand against rampant copying. “But things are greatly improved now”, she says, “since people want quality education, not an eye-wash”. The girls at the college are like youngsters anywhere else, except that they wear no make-up, have no pretentious hairstyles and are uniformly clad in salwar kameez. They cover their heads the moment they leave the portals of the college. “Music, dance and entertainment are not encouraged by Islam but are disciplines here and in great demand. Santoor and Sitar are both taught here,” says Abdullah. In 1992, when she was Principal of the Navakadal Government College for Women, the building was burned down as a protest against the department of music of the college. Abdullah was in a quandary — to close down would mean buckling under the diktat of the self-styled moral policemen and continuing would invite fresh repression. She moved the music department to the inner recesses of the building, thus preventing her students from being audible outside — but did not curtail the aspirations of the girls. Some Kashmiri Pandit teachers have stayed on throughout the turmoil but Kashmiri Pandit students now are very few. Recently there was an application from a Kashmiri Pandit girl who did not qualify for admission due to a poor pass percentage, but the administration was contemplating bypassing a few rules to accommodate her because otherwise her options would be limited in the relatively volatile environment of the downtown colleges. Higher education of women, in the valley of Kashmir has come a long way since 1932 when Shrimati Vimla Kaul enrolled in Sri Pratap College as a lone woman among 500 men. In 1950, the first women’s college, the Government College for Women was inaugurated in Srinagar, with an all-woman faculty. Unlike other states of India, education has always been free in the state up to the University level but due to social and cultural reasons, girls and their parents had to be coaxed to send their daughters for higher education. Today, the bias against educating girls is insignificant. Amongst the upper and upper middle class groups, it is the third generation of women getting education but amongst the lower and the lower middle class, they are the first generation. Amongst Kashmiri Pandit girls, literacy was 100 per cent though as a community they were just 4 per cent of the total population (1981 census). Overall female literacy in the state was a miserable 15.88 per cent in 1981 out of a total literate population of 6.67 per cent for Jammu and 33.90 per cent for the valley — but the credibility of these figures is questionable since the locals insist that these figures have been manipulated by the administration for political, economic and other reasons. For the poor state of literacy in the state, Abdullah blames the government — its inept handling of policies, resources and unsympathetic attitude to the limitations of the people. Dr Madhosh, Head of Department of Sociology, University of Kashmir, has done some research on the recent trend in women’s education in the valley and according to him, “Women are more conscientious and academically inclined. During the 1990s the number of female students kept going up and their dropout rate was far less than males for various reasons. Today 70 per cent of students on the rolls of Kashmir University are women.” The reason for this trend he thinks is partly to increase the stock of the girls in the marriage market but there is also a genuine desire to better their lot through awareness and saleable skills. Amongst these girls who are going ahead with their academic aspirations a deep lacuna is emerging — while they are highly qualified, they have yet to adopt a scientific and modern outlook on life. Marriage has the first priority in their scheme of things and careers are chosen to maintain an equilibrium in married life. There is a reluctance to pursue careers outside the state and this not only limits their employability but creates frustration. The preferred careers are teaching and state government services but these are hardly enough to cater to the growing numbers. Today, committed
educationists are doing their bit to meet the academic
aspirations of Kashmiri women but it requires the impetus
of a dynamic society. — Women’s Feature
Service. |
Public faith in political
parties falling HOWSOEVER dismal our political scene may look like, yet we are part of the emerging pattern of democracies around the globe. Democracy may just be a victim of its own success. This year’s election is a watershed in the short life of our democracy in more than one sense. Changes are in line with those taking place in mature democracies of the world. Declining public confidence in politicians, falling active membership of political parties, smaller turnouts for elections, cumulative power of pressure groups, capital-intensiveness rather than labour-intensiveness of elections and institutional sclerosis are some of the common imperfections in democracy as revealed by global surveys of democracies. Winston Churchill once called democracy the worst form of government. Just as the 17th century saw the transition from ad hoc militias to standing armies, so this century has seen a change in political parties. Several opinion surveys on democracy have been conducted to discern the emerging scene of democracy. The pattern shows disillusionment with politicians in all mature democracies except in the Netherlands where there has been a rise in confidence. Confidence in political institutions is also on the decline. Confidence in parliament has declined sharply in Canada, Germany, Britain, Sweden and the USA. Worldwide polls conducted between 1981 and 90 measured confidence in five institutions parliament, the armed services, judiciary, police and civil service. On an average confidence declined by 6 per cent. “How many times can you trust the government in Washington to do what is right?” Three out of four replied, “just about always” between 1950 and 1960. By 1998 it fell to fewer than four out of 10. The proportion of Americans who expressed confidence in the executive fell from 42 pc in 1966 to 12 pc in 1997 and trust in Congress fell from 42 pc to 11 pc. As regards confidence in parliament, 48 pc of the British expressed confidence in 1985 which had halved by 1995. For Sweden this proportion came to 19 pc in 1996 from 51 pc in 1986. In Germany people who had confidence in their MPs were high at 55 pc in 1978, which declined to 34 pc in 1992. In Italy the number of people who think that politicians don’t care for them rose from 68 pc in 1968 to 84 pc in 1997. On voter turnout, a clear scene is emerging. Elections in 18 out of 20 rich established democracies in the 50s and most recent ones have seen an average decline of 10 pc in voter turnout. However, the turnout trend is about 75 pc. The role of political parties is declining in all democratic countries. In the USA, two out of five voters saw themselves as strong Democrats or strong Republicans in 1960. By 1996 it changed to less than one in three. In Britain strong party affinity slumped from 44 pc to 16 pc between 1964 and 1997. This process of “partisan dealignment” has been seen in most mature democracies. Mass media has taken many of the information functions that parties once performed. Just as radio and TV have largely killed off the door-to-door salesman so they have killed off the old-fashioned party worker. So the business of winning elections has become more capital-intensive and less labour-intensive, making political donors matter more and political activists less. Political activism has been reduced to mere money collections. Politics everywhere is becoming more secular. Before the 60s political struggles had an almost religious intensity. In Western Europe it took the form of Communists versus Catholics or workers versus bosses. In some countries where ideas are dividing parties less, geography is dividing them most. Politics in Germany and Britain has acquired an increasingly regional flavour. Pressure groups in most mature democracies have the final word. Judicial activism is emerging as an antidote to political ailments. All these factors are reflected in our system too but with varying intensity. The major drawbacks in our system are the absence of elements of direct democracy like referendums and pressure groups on national scale. Instead we have clubs of the rich and influential involved in influence peddling. Critical citizens are lacking in our case. Like in many democracies we too should give formal status and often a legal right to social organisations which should be consulted before drafting legislation on various issues. Hyperpluralism in our case is also visible in the USA and other countries. Some positive trends in the ongoing elections are quite clear. Stress has been around the persons to head the government to make regional satraps irrelevant. The controversy on communal versus secularism has been blurred. A trend has also been set for switchover to the presidential form of government, if other conditions warrant. The anti-incumbency factor at the state level is almost missing. If Punjab’s ruling set-up suffers, it will be so because of the split. Everywhere else local grievances have taken the back seat. The most harmful scenario is the elimination of corruption from the political agenda. In a way it stands legalised. The ultimate question is
how to make the elected representatives responsive to
people’s aspirations. A critic of democracy has
rightly said that for most people it did nothing more
than allow them “once every few years to decide
which particular representative of the oppressing class
should be in parliament to represent and oppress
them”. |
September
30, 1924. A BOMBAY telegram to a contemporary says that the annual report of the Tata Iron and Steel Industry, which has just been issued, shows that the net profits for the year amounted to Rs. 31 lakhs, nearly the whole of which have been appropriated to depreciation, so that there will be no dividend even to preference shareholder. It is further stated that the benefits of the protection given to steel have not been realised owing to the very low price of foreign steel at present. We do not know if the shareholders of the company will be satisfied with these results but the people generally will not and will ask what the Tatas have done to increase their efficiency and economise costs by employing Indians. It is complained that
too many non-Indians on exorbitant salaries have been
employed by the Company and very little is being done to
Indianise the staff. |
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