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Waiting for rain Payout in Bhopal Attacking rank |
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Challenges before the PM
Just next to God
Settle the riparian rights first Defence notes
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Waiting for rain THE smiles brought about by the forecast of a normal monsoon this year are increasingly getting replaced by worries about deficient rain, if not a drought. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research has come out with the prediction of a below-normal monsoon. With more than half of July already gone, the north-western region is still waiting for a brisk rain. Also the spread of the monsoon has been uneven countrywide. While there are floods in Bihar and Assam, it is a drought-like situation in Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab. Experts will have to decide sooner than later about the viability of the river interlinking project or work out an alternative to minimise the damage caused year after year by floods, drought or weak monsoon. Although insufficient rain is a cause of concern for every citizen, it is the farmer who pays the real price. The cost of farming goes up significantly. With tubewells working overtime, the pressure on the already depleted underground water resources mounts. The watertable goes down further. Demand for electricity increases manifold. The Punjab Government is buying electricity worth Rs 13.26 crore every day from other states to ensure a regular supply to tubewells so that the paddy crop is saved. Still in many areas farmers have lost the crop. With agriculture still rain-dependent, better irrigation facilities have to be made available. In his latest budget, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has focussed on better water management and made fund allocations to preserve, renovate and revive traditional water bodies like ponds, lakes and tanks. Now it is for the state governments to move forward in this direction. Rainwater harvest measures are only talked about, but little action is visible on the ground. Punjab has to reinvigorate its efforts to dissuade farmers from paddy growing to oilseeds and other non-water intensive crops. Punjab, which is fighting for its water rights, should also make efforts to reverse the downtrend in the sub-soil water level. |
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Payout in Bhopal IT’S better late than never. The Supreme Court's directive to the Reserve Bank to release Rs 1503 crore deposited with it by Union Carbide for disbursal among the Bhopal gas tragedy victims is the successful culmination of a long-drawn-out process. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the country that it took so long for the victims to get justice. But for the monitoring of the case by the apex court and the out-of-court settlement with the multinational company, the victims would have had to wait longer to get due compensation. The amount to be disbursed marks the single largest payout in India. But in terms of the trouble the people of Bhopal underwent since MIC gas leaked out of the Union Carbide plant 20 years ago, the payout is no big deal. As many as 4,000 people died in a few days while many more died of its aftereffects subsequently. Even today, thousands of people suffer from the consequences of the world's worst-ever industrial disaster. Many have died waiting for the money locked up in the RBI. Since the claimants are in thousands, the Settlement Claim Commissioner had to evaluate each claim and arrive at a justifiable compensation package. This naturally took time. One can only hope that the money will help the victims begin a new chapter in their lives and it is not siphoned off by the unscrupulous elements. As the victims receive money, there will still remain in their minds a lingering thought whether the multinational company had got away by giving peanuts. There is no doubt that the company had not taken adequate safety measures while setting up the dangerous plant in a thickly populated area. The state authorities were lenient when it enforced safety regulations on the company. And when the tragedy struck, the authorities were more interested in arresting the company chairman than in fixing the blame on the multinational and getting adequate compensation from it. Fortunately, better counsel prevailed and the government went in for an out-of-court settlement, which obviated much of the delay in the settlement of the case. Had it been more businesslike, it could have obtained a higher payment at an earlier date. |
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Attacking rank AMERICANS can never die of boredom. They invent a cause or a fad to keep the scene alive as it were. It is not a mere coincidence that half of those who espouse a new trend end as millionaires. For long western society has berated sexism, genderism, Semitism and, above all, Marxism. When the Americans on Capitol Hill reviled Communism, the red flag went into retreat. Now an enterprising academic has found a new issue that should become popular across the globe. He has invented a brand new word to finish what in its un-American avatar was known as bossism. Currently Prof Robert Fuller is out mobilising public opinion for promoting "rankism". If you accept his thesis, you must pay for it by exchanging some part of your hard-earned money for a copy of the book he has written to explain the true import of his "wordsmithry". After all, rankism is not just another word. It is a weapon for defeating the bullying behaviour of a class of people that thinks it is superior. Of course, when an American says that rankism is a nasty word to make the bully called boss scurry for cover, no one should dare suggest a substitute for raising the stink level. Language is important for ensuring change. However, if the American academic had looked around for more effective strategies for attacking rankism, he would have found an interesting one in the municipal office of a small town in Uttar Pradesh. The boss was called commode because of his unpleasant demeanour. The employees started dumping garbage outside his office to drive him out of town. Besides, if bossism could not make the boss become less bossy, how will Professor Fuller's invention make the rhino bleed? Bossism is an attitude that is only loathsome in others. The book promises to turn nobodies into somebodies. But pray, why? When nobodies become somebodies the dictionary calls them upstarts. In any case, Professor Fuller's exhortation for closing rank against rankism smacks of opportunism. |
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Good order is the foundation of all good things.
— Edmund Burke
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Challenges before the PM THE most immediate political challenge the UPA government faces is protecting the authority of the Prime Minister. Contrary to expectations, the challenge to his authority is coming not from the fact that there is a dual source of power within the party. Rather the challenge is coming from the fact that almost every minister and ally seems to easily upstage the Prime Minister and his message. Chief Ministers are routinely not consulting the government on important decisions as we recently witnessed in Punjab; Cabinet Ministers routinely and openly deny consulting the Prime Minister. In the Press, the Prime Minister often appears overshadowed by statements from his Cabinet colleagues, not to mention blackmail from his allies. And even the one significant appointment that had his stamp all over it, the elevation of Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, seems less authoritative than it first appeared. For the Planning Commission has been expanded to include more Cabinet members, and there is no doubt that heavy weights like Mr Sharad Pawar and Mr Laloo Yadav will leave an undue mark on its deliberations. But the real danger is that the government will end up facing crises no one in the top leadership intended to bring about. The dismissal of four Governors, probably against the best constitutional instincts of the Prime Minister, compromised the ability of this government to set new yardsticks of constitutional propriety. One of the mandates of this government was to take us beyond the murderous politics of identity that have marked the last few years of Indian politics. One Chief Minister in Andhra is playing politics with reservations for Muslims. Another Cabinet Minister is using as sensitive an issue as Godhara for his own ends. Whatever one may think of the desirability of a new commission to look into Godhara, it is something that should have the imprimatur of impartiality and ought to involve the relevant ministries like Home and Defence. The HRD Minister is missing a historic opportunity to move beyond the debilitating saffron-versus-red history debate. All these are issues that have the potential for polarising politics and can seriously compromise a long-term strategy to defeat Hindutva. But the Prime Minister seems to have little control over the Congress party's ability to define secularism in a principled way. Of course, it is a reality in coalition politics that allies will extract their pound of flesh, and who dare stop Mr Laloo Yadav in his tracks. Mr Chandrababu Naidu routinely took advantage of his position in the NDA. But there is a real danger that the allies will forestall the Prime Minister's legislative agenda, both directly and indirectly. For instance, it was clear that the Left would oppose increasing FDI in sectors such as insurance. But the BJP had initially sounded conciliatory, and would have contemplated supporting legislation to this effect. But by dropping the Godhara inquiry issue, at the moment he did, Mr Laloo Yadav has simply short-circuited any possibility of legislative cooperation across the party aisles. In addition, he may have produced a rift between the Congress and the NCP. But most importantly, in the budget session of Parliament, where Dr Singh's new deal for India should have dominated the debate, the budget has been wiped off the front pages. And we seem to be experiencing a politics of déjà vu. It is true that the Prime Minister has less room for manoeuvre for many reasons. He does not have an independent political base, his own personality is seldom combative, and his geniality seems oddly out of place in the politics of hardball. But he has some assets that he ought to exploit. First, one assumes that for the moment at least he enjoys Mrs Sonia Gandhi's support. This should be used to create more discipline at least within the Congress. Both the Prime Minister and Mrs Sonia Gandhi together should at least give the appearance that they are setting the agenda, not their loud-mouthed colleagues. Second, although Dr Singh has no obvious political base of his own, his presence gives this government great legitimacy and makes it a locus of hope. His reputation for integrity is a great asset for his party. Most people believe that unlike many of his Cabinet colleagues he will not jeopardise the country's future for venial politics. He is the embodiment of the hope that this government will make a new start and depart from politics as usual. But the Prime Minister has to learn to make political use of these assets. This will require first of all an ability to set the agenda and be in the news. There is an impression gaining ground, somewhat unfairly, that important issues are being settled at every place but the Prime Minister's Office. This impression has to be corrected. This will require that the Prime Minister is both more visible and assertive in public on core matters. He will have to use the public sphere to make his case and enhance his authority. Although he cannot use it too often, any threat of resignation on his part will be an embarrassment for this government. He ought to use this authority to make at least some of the ground rules and core principles of this government clear. Politics, as Machiavelli, argued cannot be conducted on respect alone, for respect that is not assertive is liable to be the object of contempt very soon. There is some truth in the thought that his humility and self-effacing qualities are an asset in this political climate. He can run coalition politics precisely because he is so low key and out of the picture so often. He can let others take credit for just about anything. But there is a real risk that he may acquire an image of a man who can too easily be ignored, and who is not a central player in current political equations. It is true that he is functioning under severe political constraints, but in the final analysis, his constraints will not be an adequate alibi from his invisibility in the public sphere. This is especially in the light of the fact that he is not being upstaged by Mrs Sonia Gandhi, but by half a dozen lesser leaders. It is early days in the government and he still stands a chance of using his office to stamp his authority. As extraordinary a man as Dr Manmohan Singh is, he was not born into political greatness, he did not achieve political greatness, but now that it is being thrust upon him, he ought to rise to the occasion. It will be a great tragedy if he does
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Just next to God ALL life comes directly from God, but, next to God, mother is the most important agent of the procreative process of the nature. The intensity of relationship between the baby and the mother continues well after the bearing stage and birth. There is certainly something unearthly about this bond. A mother whose child had got stuck under a wheel of a truck is known to have lifted the vehicle to save her child. In this super human effort, she had a few of her ribs cracked. I witnessed something of this nature when I went to file my income-tax return on the 30th of June at Delhi a few years back. I was accompanied by my son who is a paediatrician by profession and was recently blessed with a son himself. His wife also happens to be a child specialist. During the course of their professional training and also the short stint as paediatric consultants, they already must have saved scores of budding lives. It is, in fact, the likes of them who have brought the death rate in our country close to the world standards. They, thus, have a particular sensitivity towards nascent lives struggling to survive the pressures of environment. The babies who got a new lease of life at their hands, of course, would not remember it when they grow, but their mothers would certainly not be able to forget them. I must say that the income-tax people had made all arrangements to make life easy for thousands of their assessees who thronged their halls to file the income returns. However, they could not do much about the weather that had decided to be particularly atrocious on that day. The atmosphere in the crowded space was, indeed, unbearably stuffy. Yet, nobody was complaining, as the income tax personnel were dutifully there to share and suffer all the steamy discomforts of the place with the milling crowds. As we came out after filing our income returns for the year, we found a female monkey perched on a wall of the building and holding something close to its heart. It seemed to have completely forgotten about the usual playfulness in its blood and sat still, solemn and sad. My son pointed my attention to it and wished that he had a camera with him. I thought the point of his interest possibly was the very samian presence in the income-tax complex, as if it was also keen to file its tax return in time. But, no. My son explained to me that what it was holding in hands was a few months old mummified body of its baby. It was still reluctant to part with it and appeared to be on the lookout for a messiah in the large crowd who would bring its baby back to life with a magic touch. All mothers are made that
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Settle the riparian rights first
THE national ruckus over Punjab’s river waters is a classic instance of the manner in which issues that demand dispassionate debate are allowed to become hostage to the blinding heat of political and emotive jargon. The Constitution clearly puts river waters in the state list with no role or authority for the Centre to intervene or adjudicate on any inter-state dispute over the issue. The Centre comes into the picture only where two riparian states jointly seek its intervention. Clause 78 inserted in the Punjab Re-Organisation Act, 1966, empowering the Centre to adjudicate between Punjab and Haryana is thus ultra vires the Constitution, said Parkash Singh Badal in a case filed by him in the Supreme Court as Chief Minister in 1980. Congress Chief Minister Darbara Singh later withdrew the case, in the wake of a widely publicised rebuke and pressure from the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. In the present debate, neither Rajasthan nor Haryana is a riparian state to the Satluj, Ravi and Beas rivers as none of these flows through either of the two states. As such, it is not hard to see that the awards, agreements or orders contrary to this principle are bad in law and worse in politics as these deny the genuine first user, Punjab, its natural right over its natural asset. If the riparian principle is to violated, then nothing can stop Punjab from demanding a share in the Narmada or Cauvery, or the closer to home Yamuna. Punjab’s protests against this natural injustice have been dubbed “seditious”. Punjab has precedents on its side. Mahanadi, Godawari, Krishna and Cauvery were the four rivers of the undivided state of Madras. Andhra was carved out of Madras in 1953, and as Mahanadi, Godawari and Krishna fell in the Andhra region, Madras, now Tamil Nadu, ceased to be a riparian state and consequently was denied any right over the waters of these rivers. By the same logic, Andhra ceased to have any riparian right over Cauvery which flowed through Tamil Nadu. Again, in 1974, the Narmada Water Dispute Tribunal outrightly rejected Rajasthan’s petition to be made a party along with Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The Tribunal’s only ground for this decision: Narmada did not flow through Rajasthan. The enormity of Punjab’s grievance flows from the fact that the same non-riparian Rajasthan walks away with nearly 8 Million Acre Feet (MAF) of water while Punjab through which the rivers flow gets a meager 3.5 MAF. There are more precedents to support the new Punjab Act. In 1873, the erstwhile princely states of Patiala, Nabha and Jind were given water from the Satluj only after these states recognised Punjab as “the sole owner of the Satluj waters” and paid segniorage (malkana) to Punjab for the water used. These states categorically thanked Punjab for “its favour.” Precisely this has been written into the Punjab Termination of Agreements Act, 2004. It replaces the words “favour” with “good neighbourly gesture”. Much the same way, in 1873, the Maharaja of Bikaner received water from the Punjab rivers, categorically recognising Punjab’s sovereignty over its waters and agreeing to pay royalty in accordance with the Riparian principle. Thus it is somewhat odd to see even legal experts and media luminaries dubbing Punjab’s insistence on the riparian principle and the Punjab Assembly’s Termination of Agreements Act 2004 “preposterous”. If anything, the Act has come two decades too late. Had this come earlier, the nation could have been spared the horrors of a bloody Punjab in the 1980s and 90s. The plea that no party can withdraw from an agreement unilaterally is only as valid as that an agreement can continue to be valid at the unilateral will of one party. In the present case, the agreements violated national laws on contracts, which presuppose “consideration” in lieu of anything given away by one party in any agreement. Punjab never received any consideration in lieu of the water given. The fact is that the agreements and orders on Punjab exist in violation of the Indian Contracts Act and the riparian principle and without the constitutionally necessary gubernatorial assent. The miracle is that they have stood there for so long. There is a view that Rajasthan has a right over these waters because the irrigation requirements of this state were factored into the case presented by India before the world body while determining the division of waters in the Indo-Pak Treaty. To begin with, this factoring was based on patently incompetent assessment of the future usage in Punjab where the watertable has been going down by roughly two feet every year, threatening to turn the state into a desert by 2015-20. Further, does the Indo-Pak Treaty make it obligatory for India to violate the riparian principle while solving its internal river water disputes? Certain water management experts have been spreading the impression that Punjab needs superior water management and not more water. They quote data which sublimely ignore the depredation of Punjab’s water resource through an unparalleled density of tubewell irrigation, the highest in the country, and the need to replenish its watertable through a resort to canal irrigation. Punjab’s inflammable waters demand a cool, impartial view and the only course open before the country is for the Supreme Court to settle the question of riparian rights once and for all. Ordering a canal to be built and at the same time decreeing that this order has nothing to do with the actual water to pass through it is, to say the very least, putting the cart before the horse. |
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Defence notes HAVING tasted success in the field of developing aircraft, with Light Combat Aircraft Tejas already a success in trials and the light helicopters already achieving success in the market, India is now looking at developing a hypersonic plane, which would put the country in the elite league. Although India is already in the league of a handful of countries which have the capability to develop, test and then manufacture aircraft, this having been achieved after the success of Tejas, the success in the hypersonic field would be an achievement matched only by a few. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee recently disclosed that Indian defence scientists were involved in the development of a hypersonic aircraft.
Recruitment age raised The Government has raised the minimum age for recruitment in the Army as a result of a United Nations convention. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has informed Parliament that hitherto the age for recruitment in the Army was 16 years , which was causing trouble under a UN convention. It has now been decided to enhance the age for recruitment to 17 years and six months. This will be effective from August, 2004, but there will be no change in the upper age limit, which is 25 years.
Jaguars face problems Ten per cent of the Indian Air Force (IAF) deep penetration strike aircraft, Jaguars, are facing problems of low thrust. making take-offs risky. According to reports, the low thrust and low power has been reported in the Jaguar's Adour engines. The snags reported in multi-role fighters have led to a series of crashes recently. The problem has been detected following a court of inquiry blaming the low thrust in engines for some of the crashes. The government had ordered a study in September 2002 to suggest corrective measures. The study team comprising experts from Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, the Directorate General of Quality Assurance and Rolls Royce, the manufacturers of the Adour engines, had come up with some measures to upgrade the engines.
Controlling AIDS With AIDS assuming epidemic proportions in many parts of the country, the Army has decided to put in its bit to control the menace. The Director General of the Armed Forces Medical Services has got prepared a forceful audio-visual presentation to educate the uniformed brethren and their families. The film titled ‘Aakhri Dastak” is a story of a village boy who gets recruited in the armed forces and contacts AIDS during training. The film brings out the modes of spread of the menace and prevention in an imaginative way, which the troops and their families can associate with. The film has actors like Raza Murad, Kiran Kumar and Asif Shiekh in the lead roles. It was premiered at the Air Force Auditorium in Delhi at the Subroto Park and the Chief of Army Staff, General N.C. Vij, was also present. |
As the same sugar is made into various figures of birds and beasts, so the one sweet Divine Mother is worshipped in various climes and ages under various names and forms. — Sri Ramakrishna I believe in the Varnashrama dharma in a sense, in my opinion, strictly Vedic but not in its present popular and crude sense. — Mahatma Gandhi Where conduct is good, understanding is perfect. Without good conduct, it is less and less. — Guru Nanak Speak to men according to their mental capacities, for if you speak all things to all men, some cannot understand you, and so fall into errors. — Prophet Muhammad To think and feel we are able, is often to be so. — J. Hawes |
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