Historic Lokpal Bill passed
A historic law to fight corruption, say Manmohan, Sonia
The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the historic Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, 2013, paving the way for establishment of an ombudsman to fight corruption in public offices and ensure accountability on the part of public officials, including the Prime Minister, but with some safeguards. The measure was adopted by the Elders on Tuesday.
The Bill was passed unanimously following a brief discussion as members from Seemandhra disrupted the proceedings protesting against division of Andhra Pradesh. Samajwadi Party and Shiv Sena members walked out, opposing the new law.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi described the passage of the Lokpal Bill in Lok Sabha as a “historic and landmark” step to fight corruption.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh said it was a remarkable achievement. “It is a historic day in India’s Parliamentary democracy,” he said in a statement.
Making a rare intervention in the House, Lok Sabha, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi said the passage of the Bill was a “big success” but more needed to be done to fight corruption. Supporting the Bill, Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj sought to give credit to the “old man” (social activist Anna Hazare), who has been fasting for the passage of the Bill, and the people of the country, who had put pressure. She said there was a clamour to take credit for it.
Earlier, moving for the passage of the Bill, Law Minister Kapil Sibal said discussion had taken place over the past two years both inside and outside the House. However, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav said the law Bill would bring government work to a halt as officials would be afraid of carrying out their duties.
Nursery admission guidelines issued
The much-awaited nursery admission guidelines were finally released here on Wednesday. Admissions to nursery schools will now be done only on the basis of four criteria.
They are “neighbourhood up to six kilometres, sibling studying in the school, parent alumni in the school and inter-transfer case.” The Right to Education Act has also been extended to these admissions.
Regarding quotas, the order released by the lieutenant governor specifically mandates that “there shall be no management quota in admissions in any private unaided recognised schools of Delhi.”
The total number of seats for admission to a class will now be divided into four parts. Twenty five per cent of the seats will be reserved for the economically weaker sections and disadvantaged groups and five per cent for wards of the staff/employees of the school.
Another five per cent of the seats will be reserved for girls, which will have to be divided according to a draw of lots for girls residing within a six kilometre radius.
The rest of the seats will fall in the open category. Unfilled seats will spill over to open seats.
The 25 per cent EWS quota does not apply to minority schools that also have the right to reserve seats for the minority community.
Schools have been ordered to identify localities within a six kilometres radius and publicise on their websites, notice-boards and through the admission procedure they follow to ensure maximum transparency.
Admission for most schools in the Capital will begin on January 1.
High Court Bench dismisses U.S. ship crew’s bail petition
The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday dismissed the bail petition of 35 crew members of US ship M.V. Seaman Guard Ohio , who were arrested on charges of entering Indian waters with arms and ammunition.
Justice M. Sathyanarayanan dismissed the petition on the grounds that the crew had not produced valid documents to possess arms and ammunition and that the investigation was at a crucial stage. The Sierra Leone-flagged ship belonging to a U.S-based company, AdvanFort, was intercepted and detained by the Indian Coast Guard ship Naikidevi on October 12. The ‘Q’ Branch CID of the State police arrested the crew members, including Captain Dudinik Valentyn, on October 18, and seized the arms/ammunition on board the ship.
The crew was booked under various provisions of the Arms Act, 1959, Essential Commodities Act 1955, Motor Spirit and High Speed Diesel (Regulation of Supply, Distribution and Prevention of Malpractices) Order, 1998 and IPC.
The crew, comprising 12 Indians, 14 Estonians, 6 British nationals and 3 Ukrainians, moved the High Court after the Principal Sessions Judge, Tuticorin, dismissed their bail application on October 30, 2013, on the grounds that the investigation was at a preliminary stage.
In their petition, the crew members had alleged that the anti-piracy vessel was “lured into the port by treachery” and the claim of the Indian agencies that it was intercepted was false. The ship was at least 19 nautical miles away from the Indian coast when it was asked to come to the port to escape from cyclonic weather conditions.
It was “not involved in any activity prejudicial to the safety and security of the coast,” the petition stated.
The Indian agencies disregarded norms of international law by imposing their criminal jurisdiction beyond Indian territory, the crew claimed. The crew had so far not produced the licence for keeping arms and ammunition, despite the assurance of the Captain on October 13 before a joint interrogation committee that the documents would be produced, they pointed out.
Justice Sathyanarayanan granted bail to P. Selvam, who was arrested on the charge of attempting to supply diesel to the vessel.
Bench dismissed petition on grounds that the crew did not have valid documents to carry arms
It also stated that the investigation was at a crucial stage
Devyani moved to U.N. for full immunity
New Delhi on Wednesday transferred Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul in New York who has been charged with criminal offences, to India’s Permanent Mission in United Nations in an apparent bid to boost her diplomatic immunity.
The decision to move her to the U.N. came amid fears that Ms. Khobragade, who was arrested last week, may be detained again. As a U.N. official, she would have full diplomatic immunity, which she does not have as an official at a consulate.
India also wants the U.S. to apologise, drop all criminal charges against Ms. Khobragade and allow her to return home. Though there have been two previous cases in which Indian diplomats at the New York consulate were enmeshed in cases of ill treating a domestic employee, this is the first time that a diplomat is facing criminal charges for not paying her domestic worker the minimum wage and of giving false information on the wage in the visa application.
The controversy took a new turn after it emerged that the family of Sangeeta Richards, the domestic worker, was given U.S. visas though New Delhi had been regularly petitioning U.S. authorities to have her traced after she went missing in June.
Her husband and two children boarded an Air India flight for New York on December 10, just two days before Dr. Khobragade was arrested and strip searched.
The episode has prompted the government to push a proposal pending with the Union Finance Ministry to designate Indian domestic help working abroad as government servants on contract in order not to fall foul of minimum wages laws in developed countries.
Under the pool system, a fixed number of domestic help are available and their services are called upon by diplomats according to need. If this is coupled with short-term Government contracts, they will not be held personally culpable in case of a contractual dispute.
The contract system will take care of the minimum wages issue.
Poverty higher among employed than unemployed: report
Unemployment rates rise steadily with the level of education
Over half of India’s working population in 2011-12 was under the $2-per-day poverty line, new research has found, raising serious questions over the quality of work most Indians find. In fact, the incidence of poverty is higher among the employed than the unemployed.
Researched and prepared by the Delhi-based Institute for Human Development (IHD), the India Labour and Employment Report 2014 was released by the Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday. The report analyses decades of data up to the 2011-12 round of the National Sample Survey and presents original research.
A quarter of the workforce is under the official Tendulkar poverty line of Rs. 27.20 a day in rural areas and Rs. 33.33 a day in urban areas, according to the IHD report. If a slightly more generous poverty line of $2 per day (at Purchasing Power Parity) is used, the proportion jumps to 58.5 per cent. While the incidence of poverty is declining among both the unemployed and the employed, the numbers show that “low earning from employment, rather than unemployment, is the main source of poverty,” the report says. Among workers, the incidence of poverty is the highest among casual workers.
Data from the report suggests that the unemployed in India might primarily be those who haven’t found the right job and are able to hold off for the right offer. “In poor countries, unemployment tends to be very low because almost everyone needs to do some type of work,” Alakh Sharma, director of IHD and principal author of the report told The Hindu . Unemployment rates, which range between two and four per cent for the general population, rise steadily with the level of education and are higher still among women who are educated. In 2011-12, a third of the total unemployed were graduates or post-graduates. Unemployment is highest in the 15-25 age group, meaning new entrants to the job market — the cohort that is poised to see big growth in the coming years.
In general, the educational and skill levels of the workforce are extremely low: one in three workers is illiterate; for women the number is one in two. This raises the worrying sceptre that India’s much-heralded demographic dividend is already slipping away. “India is among the bottom of all countries in terms of years of schooling of its workforce,” Mr. Sharma said. “In many States, the demographic transition has already begun. There is a huge challenge of providing some functional education to the existing workforce, apart from educating and skilling the future workforce,” he said.
For the report, IHD researchers created a new Employment Situation Index (ESI) to compare the numbers across the States. The composite index is composed of seven indicators that measure the extent of formal and casual employment, work participation rate, unemployment, wages, unionisation and the incidence of poverty among the self-employed. Using the index, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka and Punjab are in the top five and Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in the bottom five. Himachal Pradesh and Kerala are the top-ranking States in female employment.
There is also a strong social dimension to employment, the IHD found. The Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and large sections of the Other Backward Classes have lower educational attainments and are concentrated in low productivity sectors, while Muslims are concentrated in low-paying petty self-employment. ‘Upper’ caste Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Christians have a disproportionate share of good jobs, the report says.
Anti-Superstition Bill passed in Maharashtra Council
The Maharashtra State Council on Wednesday passed the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Bill, commonly known as the Anti-Superstition Bill.
The Bill, which was cleared by the Assembly last week, was passed in the Council after a three-day debate.
The Opposition Shiv Sena and the BJP staged a walkout complaining that they were not given enough time to speak.
Replying to the debate, Social Justice Minister Shivajirao Moghe said the Bill was “historic and complete.”
RTI Act: panel differs with AG’s opinion
The Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice has differed with the opinion of the Attorney General G.E Vahanvati over the proposed amendment to The Right to Information Act to exclude political parties as ‘public authorities’ and has held that the government was right in mooting the amendment.
The Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2013 seeks to amend the Right to Information Act, 2005 order to nullify the June order of the full Bench of Central Information Commission that brought six national parties under the act’s ambit.
In its report on the Bill, the committee contended that the CIC order was based on “misinterpretation of law.” The Bill, introduced in the last session of Parliament, was referred to the committee for closer examination.
“The Attorney General of India was apprehensive that this law would not sustain the test of judicial scrutiny as it was creating a class within a class without having any consideration to the principle of intelligible differentia having reasonable nexus with objective of the Act, whereas the Law Secretary was of the view that it was quite sustainable since Parliament has legislative competence to override the CIC decision. The Committee, however, subscribes to the opinion expressed by the Law Secretary,” panel chairman Shantaram Naik told journalists.
In his opinion to the Committee, Mr. Vahanvati also said: “Political Parties are foundation of democracy and need to be given sufficient protection from malicious and motivated application for which safeguards already exist under Section 8 of the Act.”
The parliamentary committee maintained that the aspects of transparency in financial matters of political parties were fully covered under existing laws and mechanisms. These include direction from Election Commission to the parties asking them to submit their accounts within 90 days after general election, inspection of accounts of candidate of political party and obtaining the same from the EC on payment of nominal charges, and declaration of assets and liabilities to the Ethics Committee of House by MPs.
BJD supports
CIC order
Mr. Naik said all the six national parties declared as public authorities by the CIC disagreed with the order. Though regional parties are not affected by the order, the Biju Janata Dal, through its member in the Committee, said it was opposed to the proposed amendment and fully supported the spirit and tenor of the CIC order.
He, however, conceded that the civil society was opposed to the proposed amendment. The Committee was of the view that declaring political parties as public authority under RTI Act would hamper their smooth internal functioning as party rivals may misuse the provisions of RTI Act.
CIC order bringing six national parties under the Act’s ambit
“misinterpreted
the law”
Centre did not sign any binding accord in Bali, says Sharma
Assuring MPs that India’s interests were safeguarded at the WTO negotiations in Bali earlier this month, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on Wednesday said the Centre has not signed any binding agreements, and that the deal reached at the trade talks was not going to adversely impact India’s food security programme.
“The WTO has no jurisdiction on India’s food security or any other sovereign programmes… India has not taken any binding agreements. It [the Bali negotiations] will not affect our farmers. Our MSP [government-decided minimum support price for foodgrain] will only go up; our [foodgrain] procurement will only go up… It is our decision, nobody can tell us,” Mr. Sharma said in the Rajya Sabha while answering queries of Opposition MPs who feared that the WTO talks in Indonesia would affect India’s food security programme and hurt farmers’ interests.
Mr. Sharma noted that till a permanent solution was found, India would be protected against any challenge in the WTO under the Agreement on Agriculture regarding public stock-holding (procurement) programmes for food security purposes. Lauding the role of Indian officials for successfully negotiating in India’s favour several crucial aspects of the deal, Mr. Sharma said at the talks, India rejected any kind of temporary arrangements. “A new agreement was needed to replace the old and imbalanced one…We have managed to address the issue of trade imbalance in India’s favour and also in favour of other developing nations,” he added.
Earlier, Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley said the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government had compromised on India’s interests and conceded on issues that would adversely affect India’s food security programme and farmers’ livelihood. He feared that India would be subject to international inspections of its public purchases.
Similarly, Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) noted that as per the WTO agreement, developed countries would not allow developing nations including India to initiate steps that affect market mechanisms like public procurement or giving subsidies. It meant that the government would have to introduce direct cash transfers to farmers, which would hurt India’s food security, he added.
The WTO has no jurisdiction on India’s food security or any other sovereign programmes: Sharma
India would be subject to international inspections of its public purchases: Jaitley
Green Tribunal’s powers to deal with wildlife cases challenged
It demands the iron ore miner’s right to mine in land that MoEF says is a tiger corridor
The National Green Tribunal’s powers to take up cases about wildlife have been challenged. The question of the tribunal’s jurisdiction has cropped up in a petition filed by an iron ore miner in Kohlapur, Maharashtra, asking for renewing his right to mine in a piece of land the government has said is a tiger corridor.
The case pertains to a mine operating in a village that falls between the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve and Radhanagri Wildlife Sanctuary but the case could now take a greater significance, besides deciding the fate of the tract of land between the two tiger-bearing areas that the environment ministry said is a corridor used by tigers.
The mine owner who applied for renewal of his lease to mine iron could not secure the forest clearance as the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) — the apex body of the government in charge of tiger conservation, under the environment ministry — said the lease fell in a wildlife corridor that needed protection.
The NTCA said so on the basis of research conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India for demarcation of land corridors used by tigers in 2010. The Wildlife Institute of India, the government’s premier body on wildlife conservation science, said in 2010 that, “The block (where the mining occurs) is in the crucial corridor link between the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve and the Radhanagari Wildlife Sanctuary. It is crucial for tiger movement in the Northern Western Ghat area in the State of Maharashtra. Small tiger populations in this area cannot be sustained without maintaining crucial connecting corridor links.”
The miner who was aggrieved, approached the National Green Tribunal claiming that his mine did not fall in the tiger corridor and the process of demarcating the corridor had not been legally carried out under the Wildlife Protection Act.
Government’s defence
In the latest affidavit filed by the environment ministry in the ongoing case, the government defended its decision. But it also went a step ahead, stating that the miner, if aggrieved about the creation of the tiger corridor under the Wildlife Protection Act, can approach the “competent authority” under the Wildlife Protection Act.
The green laws that the tribunal is empowered to adjudicate on does not cover the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, though the body is empowered to deal with issues pertaining to forest clearances under the Forest Conservation Act 1980, besides other regulations and legislations.
The laws under its jurisdiction are specifically listed in the rules to the National Green Tribunal Act, 2010. The NGT is expected to hold the next hearing in the case soon, with the petitioner now also having claimed malafide intent on the part of the officials in declaring his mine area as part of a tiger corridor.
The lease fell in a wildlife corridor that needed protection: National Tiger Conservation Authority
Process of demarcating the corridor was not legally carried out under the Wildlife Protection Act: Miner
‘Promote millets as staple food’
Millets such as sorghum, ragi and pearl millets should be promoted in the interest of health and nutritional security, said Agriculture Minister Kanna Lakshminarayana here on Wednesday, inaugurating a three-day, international consultation on ‘Millets for health and nutrition’ at the Directorate of Sorghum Research (DSR).
The DSR, a unit of the ICAR, is celebrating its Golden Jubilee year of sorghum research this year. DSR Director J.V. Patil said the past four decades had gone through phases of green revolution, self-sufficiency and favourable government policies to promote fine cereals such as rice and wheat. This, he said, had resulted in reduction of millet consumption.
U.N. intervention sought
Sikh rights groups, “Sikhs for Justice” (SFJ), and the All India Sikh Students Federation (AISSF), have approached the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions to secure the release of former Sikh militants who continue to be detained after the expiry of their prison term.
In an urgent appeal addressed to Malick Sow, Chair-Rapporteur for U.N. “Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions” and Ivan Šimonoviæ, Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights, the SFJ has urged the U.N. body to persuade India and secure the release of the six prisoners and save the life of activist Gurbaksh Singh Khalsa who is on a fast unto death, pressing for the prisoners’ release.
Gurbaksh Singh Khalsa has been on a hunger strike since November 14 to secure the release of Gurmeet Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, Shamsher Singh, Lal Singh, Wariam Singh and Gurdeep Singh Khaira lodged in different jails of the country. Said Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal advisor to SFJ: “Continued arbitrary detention of Sikh prisoners beyond the sentence period exposes the bias towards Sikhs who are a minority in India. On the one hand, the Indian system failed to prosecute those who committed genocidal attacks on Sikhs during November 1984 while, on the other, Sikh activists continue to face arbitrary detentions without any charges.”
A sea of conflict
The haunting image — from a reporting assignment over a month ago — of an army of Indian trawlers charging towards the shore of Analativu, a small island in the northern tip of Sri Lanka, remains vivid in my memory.
Though there were no arrests reported that night, the Sri Lankan Navy, on several occasions before and after that, have arrested Indian fishermen on charges of trespassing. Not just in Analativu, but at different points off Sri Lanka’s northern and eastern coasts.
Indian fishermen have, over decades, fished in Sri Lankan waters — some have faced arrests; but the year 2013 has been particularly bad. A total of 600 fishermen from India — all from Tamil Nadu — were arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy this year, a sharp increase compared to the last few years (See box) . Nearly 400 of the fishermen arrested this year have been released, while about 200 fishermen are currently in Sri Lankan prisons. A total of 107 trawlers were apprehended from the fishermen, of which the Indian side has retrieved about 40 so far.
Satellite images have, beyond doubt, established that Indian fishermen frequently cross the agreed-upon International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) that defines the two nations’ respective fishing zones on either side of it.
However, many including Tamil Nadu politicians, passionately argue in defence of the fishermen, usually on three major grounds: that the fishermen erroneously stray into Sri Lankan waters without intending to; that it would take time to deter fishermen away from a zone where they traditionally held fishing rights; and that it is, at the end of the day, about their livelihood.
The argument that the fishermen naively stray into Sri Lankan territory falls flat, for, virtually all the trawlers found trespassing are equipped with GPS monitors that would clearly indicate where they are headed.
Change of course
Even if Indian fishermen traditionally held fishing rights across Palk Strait earlier — they had the zone virtually to themselves during Sri Lanka’s 30-year civil war that ended in 2009 — four years is not too short a time to change their course. The idea of “traditional fishing rights” is also questionable, particularly when Indian fishermen are found coming all the way around, off the island’s north-eastern coast, near Mullaitivu.
And to all those staunch defenders of livelihood issues who argue that it is, after all, a question of survival for those “poor fishermen” and therefore has to be dealt with with more lenience: you are right. It is, indeed, a very serious livelihood issue. And that is precisely why it should not get enmeshed in shrill political rhetoric.
So far, every case of arrest plays out in a predictable fashion with all the actors playing their part well, exactly by the book.
The moment news of an arrest is out, Tamil Nadu politicians put out a strong statement condemning the “atrocity of the Sri Lankan Navy” and urging New Delhi to take a strong position that is not diluted by its diplomatic compulsions. Both the ruling AIADMK and the DMK in the Opposition and all other political parties in Tamil Nadu share the same position on the issue.
Soon, New Delhi assures Tamil Nadu that it would do its best to get the fishermen released soon, a cue for backdoor diplomatic exchanges. New Delhi and the Indian mission in Sri Lanka, in particular, seem to have had a very hard time throughout 2013 — caught between Tamil Nadu’s unreasonable demands and an increasingly strained diplomatic equation with Sri Lanka that effectively weakens its leverage vis-à-vis pushing for the rights of the Sri Lankan Tamils.
The Sri Lankan government, on its part, soon highlights how poaching by Indian fishermen has severely affected the Sri Lankan economy. Some forces within the Sri Lankan government also tend to use the fishing conflict to bait the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which formed the northern provincial government recently, provoking it to take on Tamil Nadu in this matter.
The issue gets further complicated when Sri Lankan fishermen are simultaneously caught poaching in Indian waters — as many as 171 fishermen were arrested in October and November 2013 alone. The fishermen arrested there, it is reliably learnt, are Sinhala fishermen using well-equipped longliners.
Following these parallel arrests, the two countries virtually end up with a barter deal on the release of the arrested fishermen.
The Tamil Nadu government and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, who has been strongly criticising New Delhi for its stance, has, in the last few years, taken no serious measures to deter its fishermen from poaching in Sri Lankan waters.
If Tamil Nadu politicians care for Sri Lankan Tamils as much as they claim to, how come they completely miss the larger point about Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen being the worst-hit in this maritime mess? If it is about Tamil Nadu fishermen’s livelihood, what is it then, for Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen on this side of Palk Strait who are struggling to cope with the after-effects of a brutal war?
2013 has shown that diplomatic trade-offs can, at best, be a myopic response to an acute problem. If the livelihood concern flagged by many is for real, then Tamil Nadu has the biggest responsibility.
It has to change its strategy from resorting to unreasonable, emotional outbursts to finding ways to equip its own fishermen in the best, long-term interest of their livelihood by, say, offering training in deep-sea fishing methods. It should actively discourage the fishermen from crossing the IMBL.
The TNA might want to open up channels of communication with the Tamil Nadu government to engage with it, particularly on the fisheries conflict.
An amalgam of Tamil political parties with varying degrees of Tamil nationalism among its constituents, the TNA has repeatedly emphasised how deeply it values the solidarity expressed by Tamil Nadu in support of Sri Lankan Tamils. However, only an ongoing dialogue between the party and Tamil Nadu will help get across certain specific realities about Sri Lankan Tamils.
Political stakes
Unlike earlier, the TNA also has political stakes with regard to this issue, as the Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP), a member of the ruling coalition in Sri Lanka that had a strong support base among fishermen, seems to be losing ground to the TNA, going by its performance in the recent Northern Provincial Council (NPC) elections.
In Kayts, an island off Jaffna, for instance, the EPDP secured 31.48 per cent of the votes in the September elections to the NPC, as compared to the 71.99 per cent that it cornered in the 2010 parliamentary elections. The fisheries issue, therefore, offers new political space for the TNA provincial administration as well. Even if the TNA does its bit, the future of several thousand fishermen in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province — in Jaffna alone there are nearly 20,000 Tamil-speaking fishermen whose lives are tied to the sea — is, clearly, in Tamil Nadu’s hands.
Diplomatic trade-offs can, at best, be a myopic response to an acute problem
Welfare policies & electoral outcomes
Three propositions dominate explanations of the Congress party’s rout, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s impressive victory and the Aam Aadmi Party’s stunning success in Delhi in the recent Assembly elections. One, that there is a strong anti-Congress wave in the country owing to pervasive anger with its record in power, especially corruption and rising prices, two, that it is a vote against its approach to governance, an approach that relies heavily on social legislation and centrally sponsored welfare schemes, and three, that the Congress’s secularism has lost its vigour because people have moved on to other issues, namely “development.”
The party’s poor showing in this round of Assembly elections is certainly an indication of a sharp change in the national mood which has turned against it in the run-up to the 2014 parliamentary election. While the four States are not representative of the rest of India, yet the results are very largely a verdict against the Congress-dominated United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre. The UPA has been widely punished for rampant corruption, inflation and policy drifts neutralising to a large extent the regime’s previous big achievement of striking a balance between economic growth and social welfare. The strong public sentiment against the Congress and an ensuing anti-Congressism building up across different contexts and States portends its imminent decline and loss of power in Delhi.
Populism vs reforms
The Congress rout has led some analysts to argue that India is entering a new era in which the identity politics and issues of mass deprivation and inequality don’t matter; social welfare policies don’t any longer influence electoral outcomes. The party’s wash out is a warning against an electoral strategy that relies heavily on “populism” and “freebies” — two terms that have increasingly become a staple of the Indian news media. In short, the Congress is paying the price for building an expansive welfare state, rather than pursuing reforms to boost higher growth. They have questioned the relevance of welfare policies particularly in the context of Rajasthan where the Congress suffered huge losses despite an array of welfare schemes.
Imbalances
The wide-ranging critique of welfare policies is puzzling because India has enacted far fewer social policies than one would expect from such a poor, democratic country. India’s social policy expenditures on health and education — both as percentages of national income and as per capita spending have significantly lagged behind those of its more developmentalist neighbours in East and South East Asia and fall well short of the recommended norm of six per cent. With regard to social protection spending in Asia, India ranked in the bottom half of the 35 countries recently surveyed by the Asian Development Bank. So, all this uproar against social welfare programmes seems somewhat misplaced.
Certainly, the Congress under Sonia Gandhi’s leadership has given priority to the social welfare and rights-based approach to development. While the growth model has seen no change during the UPA rule, there was recognition that serious imbalances between growth and distribution needed to be addressed through some redistributive measures. Thus, the government went on to shape a new form of welfare politics through a host of rights-based legislation, the most important being the right to employment, the right to food and the right to education. This has raised the hackles of two powerful forces — the corporate sector and middle classes — who feel that these policies have gone too far, especially with the enactment of the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The public debate over the NFSA highlights this phenomenon. The criticism revolved around the idea that resources are being wasted on populist policies and subsidies, wilfully oblivious to the fact that the elite and middle classes have managed to capture public resources often at the cost of the poor.
For sure, social welfare policies are driven by electoral interests. On balance, the Congress coalition came to power in 2004 largely on the strength of the promise to guarantee work. It retained power five years later by extending and deepening social spending and enacting rights-based legislation. These policies have won the support of the poor and the marginalised that form its core constituency. Of late, the Congress has placed greater emphasis on these policies in the hope of differentiating itself sharply from the BJP. In fact, Mr. Narendra Modi’s rise has led the Congress to further sharpen its identity as a party of the underprivileged. But it has failed to protect the interests of its core constituency, especially with regard to inflation which hurts them the most. Nothing illustrates this more starkly than the irony of the Congress pushing pro-big business policies giving rise to crony capitalism and economic reforms such as FDI in retail, even as the corporate sector and middle classes are unforgiving in their disapproval of the UPA regime.
Noticeably absent from these accounts has been the role of welfare policies in the re-election of BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The electoral effects of welfare measures were obvious in Madhya Pradesh, where Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan sought a renewed mandate on the basis of a series of social welfare schemes and within minutes of the swearing-in as Chief Minister, he launched some more schemes with an eye on the general election. Likewise in Chhattisgarh, Chief Minister Raman Singh banked on the revamped Public Distribution System and food subsidies to win votes. But there is no disparagement of these subsidies and schemes perhaps because those who have led the charge against social welfare policies regard them as examples of good governance by a party of the Right.
Ideological divide
This raises the question why social welfare policies, which include an old-age pension of Rs.500 per month for the poor; free medicines for all and a comprehensive right to treatment scheme; and the Chief Minister’s food security scheme, did not work in favour of the Congress in Rajasthan. None of them seems to have caught the imagination of the people. Some of them were hurriedly pushed with no clarity about whether the implementation of these schemes will reach the intended beneficiaries. Not surprisingly, they failed to make an electoral impact as the overall development work was patchy and their benefits didn’t reach their intended beneficiaries. But the Congress defeat has given an opportunity to the neo-liberals to attack social welfare measures generally. Those opposed to welfare schemes would therefore tend to see the Congress debacle as arising from its welfare schemes, rather than from more obvious causes like inflation which blunted the positive effects of welfare measures, the loss of moral legitimacy on account of unbridled corruption, public alienation due to increasing disconnection from people’s expectations, and the crisis of leadership aggravated by dual power centres and a lack of synergy between the party and government.
On secularism, Mr. Modi’s aggressive campaign has strengthened majoritarian impulses and sharpened the ideological divide over it. The decision to nominate him as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate was driven by the desire to tap into the Modi brand of polarising politics with its anti-Muslim tinge. If anything, majoritarian prejudice has been aroused during this election campaign by issues such as the “burqa of secularism,” “love jihad,” status of Article 370 and so on. These issues infuriate and mobilise the core Hindu supporters. They add force to the majoritarian logic of a democratic polity even without the espousal of the Hindutva ideology upfront. Also, it is difficult to deny that concurrent with Mr. Modi’s rise in the BJP there has been a spate of communal violence across north India. There is more than the promise of “development” and “governance” at work here.
As a final point, the Congress has to grapple with the long-term implications of losing so much ground to the BJP in north India. Even though the four States account for only 72 parliamentary seats, they do indicate a trend of public opinion stacking up against the party beyond these States. To regain ground it needs to carry out radical changes in policy, strategy, organisation, and the communication skills of its leadership. It must pursue an agenda that promotes redistribution and safeguards secularism but this can gain traction provided it refurbishes its credentials as the party of the aam aadmi .
(Zoya Hasan is professor of politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University.)
There is no disparagement of subsidies in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh because those who attack the social welfare policies of the Congress regard them as examples of good governance by a party of the Right
New ways of learning old rules
Traditional grammar classes should be replaced by tutoring in language awareness and analysis guided primarily by languages already known in the classroom
Teaching grammar in some form or the other — traditionally prescriptive — is an essential part of the school curriculum. Generally, all children learn at least two languages in secondary school, spending approximately 1,400 hours — much more if three languages are taught — on grammar. But this mechanical exercise does not lead to any tangible addition to the knowledge base of either the children or the teachers. This is a massive waste of human energy and resources, not to mention the boredom it inflicts on the teacher and the taught alike. It also results in the neglect of the multilingual potential in the classroom. A default classroom is characterised by inherent language variation and this multilingualism can be treated as a resource to enable focus on the scientific study of language (i.e. real grammar), leading to meta-linguistic awareness, cognitive growth and social tolerance.
Irrespective of which theoretical model or pedagogical practices is followed, almost all grammar-teaching, explicit or implicit, is done within the framework of a ‘standard, pure language and a single correct, grammatical answer’ through a ‘Present-Practice-Produce’ model. Children don’t even become aware of the highly rule-governed behaviour of the structure of language and how the same grammatical phenomenon may function across languages. Nor do they become sensitised to the socially-determined variability in the dynamics of linguistics. We would find that in most cases what’s taught is insensitive to the nature and structure of language and a great opportunity to build on an enormous resource available for free in the classroom is lost. It is most unfortunate that the students, despite having been drilled in grammar for a number of years, are never encouraged to think and reflect about their own languages or about the languages of their peer group.
Pick up any textbook of English at the elementary school level. You will find exercises on changing active voice to passive and vice versa as if all sentences can be ‘converted’ from active to passive and there is a mathematical equality between the two.
What is worse is that children are never encouraged to reflect on what happens to the phenomenon of ‘Voice’ in, say, Hindi and Telugu, the two languages they may be learning along with English. Consider, once again, the case of Subject-Verb agreement — a topic on which mechanical exercises are repeated ad infinitum across school classes and languages. All school teachers would recollect the amount of time they spend ‘correcting’ phrases such as ‘He walk’. I wonder whether it is appreciated that all children who learn English (as a first, second or third language) go through such stages. There is, in fact, a very strong structural pressure to use ‘walk’. In the present tense, we use ‘walk’ with ‘I, you, you (plural), we, they’; the ‘s’ of ‘walks’ simply copies the subject ‘he/she/it’ onto the verb, rather redundantly; yet all children learn ‘walks’ when the moment is ripe. We could do better things than this in our grammar classes.
Most textbooks also have exercises on ‘contracted forms’, once again making children mechanically run through ‘do not = don’t; is not = isn’t’, etc.; the fact of the matter is that this is not always true. A sentence such as ‘Don’t you ever shout at me’ can never be rendered in the form ‘Do not you ever shout at me’. There are contexts in which the speakers of English use the contracted forms and there are some where they don’t. Also, there are several varieties of English, including, for example, the Black English Vernacular (BEV) which regularly use the double negative for specific communicative functions. ‘You ain’t going to no place now’ is a legitimate sentence coming from a native speaker of English.
Consider the case of making negatives. If you are not in good health, you could say: ‘I am not well’ or ‘I am unwell’ or ‘I am ill’; the first one is a case of commonly used explicit negation, the second of using a prefix such as ‘un’ and the third of using a different lexical item; each to be used in specific contexts. What happens in Hindi or Tamil or Santali or Angami or whatever languages happen to be available in the classroom? Shouldn’t years of grammar lessons provide a forum for the discussion of such phenomena? It is quite possible that children may discover on their own that the negative particle ‘not’ always stays close to the auxiliary or the verbal complex. The sense of joy and wonder children experience when they unravel such across-the-board concepts in human languages is always a memorable sight.
Discovering rules
In the case of English plurals, the standard practice is to teach children that they should add ‘-s, -es or -ies’. What about speakers who don’t go to school? And, children do make plurals before going to school! The rule in English is, in fact, rather simple — take any word of English and add the sound ‘z’ to it; it is vocalised with the sound ‘s’ in one set (cap, cat, trick), with the sound ‘z’ in another set (rib, bed, bag, photo, baby) and as ‘iz’ in still another set (bus, brush, church, judge). Notice that ‘baby’ (pronounced baybi ) ends in a vowel sound and in all such cases we simply add the sound ‘z’; thus baybi + z = baybiz . If children are given proper instructions and sufficient space to reflect on data collection and classification in their minds, they can discover such rules on their own.
School textbooks will also invariably have exercises on the comparative and superlative degree, teaching children, say, in the case of English, to add ‘-er’ for the comparative and ‘-est’ for the superlative degrees (fast, faster, fastest). However, most children rarely become aware that this can happen only with words of one or two syllables. The moment you have bigger, polysyllabic words such as ‘accountable, interesting, fascinating, fabulous etc.’, you need to add ‘more’ or ‘most’ for comparative and superlative forms respectively. And how do other languages — Kannada, Tulu, Konkani or Hindi — handle the issue of degrees of comparison? All these languages may be available in the same classroom.
In Hindi grammar — and perhaps in language instruction in general — it is customary to teach classification of words into tatsam (‘as it was’) , tadbhav (‘born of that’), deshaj (‘local’) and videshaj ( ‘foreign’) as if words walk around with flags in the mind of a speaker of her language(s). No speaker of Hindi may know, or care to know, that pustak (‘book’) is from Sanskrit; botal (‘bottle’) is from Portuguese, top (‘gun’) is from Turkish, bas (‘bus’) is from English and kitaab (‘book’) is from Arabic. For her, they are all Hindi words. Words fortunately don’t need passports and visa stamps to walk across languages.
What is being suggested here is that the traditional grammar classes could be replaced by language awareness-and-analysis classes guided primarily by the languages already available in the classroom. Such a process takes children through a process of scientific enquiry, empowers their languages, generates self-esteem, sharpens their cognitive skills and enhances mutual respect for each other’s languages. Several research studies have shown the close relationship between multilingualism, linguistic analysis, meta-linguistic awareness, cognitive growth, scholastic achievement and social tolerance.
(The author retired as Professor and Head, Department of Linguistics, University of Delhi. He may be contacted at agniirk@yahoo.com )
Mechanical exercises are insensitive to the nature and structure of language
n internal struggle in Iran
Hossein Shariatmadari’s business card identifies him as the “Supreme Leader’s Representative” at Kayhan , Iran’s leading conservative newspaper. Listening to his unwavering advocacy of Iran’s revolutionary politics, you realise just how hard it will be to reach the nuclear agreement that many Iranians I talked with in Tehran seem to want.
Shariatmadari says frankly that he doesn’t believe in striking a compromise with the West. “The identity of both sides is involved in this conflict,” says the stern editor. “It didn’t ‘just happen.’ It is structural. The problem will be solved when one side gives up its identity, only then.”
The Kayhan editor is using his powerful voice to resist the deal being negotiated by President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. He says bluntly that he doesn’t think Iran should have signed the six-month freeze negotiated last month in Geneva, and he argues that Zarif misled Rouhani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei when he said the deal guaranteed Iran’s right to enrichment of uranium. “This gentleman [Zarif] did not tell the truth,” he asserts.
Can hardliners such as Shariatmadari and the leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps block a deal? An Iranian banker may have been right when he told me that “Zarif has the backing of 90 per cent of the people” to negotiate an agreement that removes economic sanctions and eases Iran’s isolation. But the vanguard represented by Shariatmadari and the Revolutionary Guard may hold the commanding heights. The power of the Revolutionary Guard is a crucial variable. Rouhani told me in an interview in New York this September that he thinks security organisations such as the Revolutionary Guard should have less power in Iran, and he made that argument to Iranians in June’s presidential election. But when I ask Shariatmadari about Rouhani’s critique, he dismisses it as “election propaganda”.
Tehran this week seemed a city caught somewhere between Pyongyang and Los Angeles. It’s a sprawling city with sophisticated, outgoing people. The slogans of the 1979 Islamic revolution are fading on the walls, literally.
But the radical roots of the regime are still intact. And Shariatmadari speaks for the vanguard that has internalised the message of a massive mural on Karim Khan Zand Boulevard, near his office, that shows founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini with the words: “We will never put down the flag you raised”.A visit to Tehran makes clear that in the nuclear negotiations Iran is facing an internal struggle over its identity. That’s evident in the public sniping between Zarif and his critics, including the Revolutionary Guard chief, General Mohammad Ali Jafari. The Iranian leadership may be allowing this debate to heighten its leverage in negotiations — to encourage concessions to sympathetic moderates who are battling hardliners. But it’s not just for show: You can feel the underlying tension in ordinary conversation.
The public’s support for Rouhani stems, in part, from national fatigue after eight years under the inflammatory rule of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He seemed to delight in shocking the West with his anti-Israel diatribes, but for many Iranians he was an embarrassment. People I talked to here said the Ahmadinejad years are remembered for bad economic policies and corrupt favouritism for the powerful elite.
The public gave Rouhani a 51-per-cent majority in a six-candidate field, and if he ran again, he would do far better, argues Saeed Laylaz, a prominent economic journalist, in an interview at his apartment in northwest Tehran. “We support him unconditionally,” he says, but there’s no polling data that confirms that support. As for the supreme leader, Laylaz expresses a view I also heard from others that “Khamenei is behind Rouhani because otherwise the system will collapse”.
The public yearning to escape the drabness of the Islamic republic is evident in small things. One Iranian tells me about the new fad of travelling to Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan and paying $100-a-ticket to hear pop-music stars who can’t come to Iran. There’s also a boom in low-cost travel to less restrictive societies. Dubai and Istanbul, which used to be favourites, have gotten so expensive that Iranians out for a good time are turning to cheap flights to Yerevan in Armenia and Tbilisi in Georgia. Shariatmadari thinks these Western temptations are poisonous. He’s suspicious even of President Obama’s phone call to Rouhani in September, which he saw as an attempt to demean Iran. I ask if Rouhani should have hung up. “We believe in politeness,” he says with a rare smile. — © 2013. The Washington Post.
Iran’s hardliners are opposing the nuclear deal, but there is a public yearning to escape the drabness of the Islamic Republic
A wait-and-watch policy
In a move that has surprised everyone, the Reserve Bank of India in its mid-quarter monetary policy review has not changed either the policy repo rate or the cash reserve ratio (CRR). The repo rate remains at 7.75 per cent and the CRR at 4 per cent. On the eve of the policy statement there was an almost universal expectation that given the levels of inflation the RBI would most certainly hike the interest rate — signalling policy repo rate by at least 0.25 percentage points. Some also expected a change in the CRR. Liquidity levels in the system are comfortable. The extraordinary liquidity tightening measures that were introduced to support the rupee are being wound down. Liquidity conditions have also improved due to higher capital inflows from abroad in the wake of special facilities for banking capital and for non-resident Indians. With all other rates — the reverse repo, the marginal standing facility rate and the bank rate — being pegged to the repo rate and therefore remaining unchanged, the RBI has decisively opted for a status quo in its monetary and liquidity measures. The rest of the policy statement is an elaboration of this stance, which is based on the belief that monetary policy should not always be reactive.
Inflation is no doubt a serious problem: CPI inflation stood at 11.24 per cent in November, its highest level since the new composite index was introduced. Headline WPI inflation at 7.52 per cent has been moving up and is well above the RBI’s comfort level. Underpinning both are high food, especially vegetable, prices. The traditional belief that monetary policy will have little influence over supply side factors has been proved wrong, and irrespective of where inflationary pressures originate they need to be countered with all available policy measures. Persistent inflation reinforces inflation expectations. While maintaining that there is no room for complacency, the RBI feels it has enough reasons to wait and watch. For one thing, there is evidence that vegetable prices have started coming down. Second, the disinflationary impact of stable exchange rates will ease the pressure on prices. Finally, the lagged effects of monetary tightening since July should help. The decision not to raise the rates is obviously a debatable one. There is no room whatsoever for complacency. Should the moderation in prices not pan out as expected, the Reserve Bank says it will take action even outside the policy dates. The traditional policy dilemma of growth versus price stability remains. The latest policy statement reveals a more contemporary dilemma of whether to act immediately against inflation or wait for some time in the expectation of prices moderating. Timing is critical, and the RBI can be expected to remain vigilant.
Outrage and overreaction
It is not surprising that the details of the treatment to which Devyani Khobragade, the Indian deputy-consul in New York, was subjected after her roadside arrest on charges of fudging her domestic help’s visa forms and underpaying her have caused an uproar. A strip search, examination of body cavities and the possible use of restraints other than handcuffs such as waist chains and shackles, are grossly over-the-top steps to use against any detained person. These are automatic, non-discriminatory and legal post-arrest procedures, but that does not make them any better. Ms. Khobragade, even under her limited consular immunity, was entitled to be treated with dignity. Angered, New Delhi has retaliated by withdrawing certain privileges for United States diplomats based in India. While some of this outrage is justified and rightly seeks to establish that the international diplomatic community lives and works in a world of reciprocal terms and conditions, in the current atmosphere of nationalist fury, it is all too easy to take it too far. The government should take no steps that compromise the security of the U.S. Embassy in Delhi. It must be remembered that under the same Vienna Convention, the host state is under “a special duty” to protect embassy and consular premises.
Never known for taking on the U.S on substantive policy issues, the government’s unusually aggressive reactions — and those of political parties too — on behalf of a diplomat, smell of political considerations ahead of an election. From the Prime Minister and Ministers of Home and External Affairs to the Bahujan Samaj Party leader, everyone has weighed in on her side. In the furore, it has been all but forgotten that there are serious charges against the diplomat, and that the domestic worker is also an Indian. It is certainly odd that the domestic worker’s family was able to obtain visas to travel to the U.S even while Ms. Khobragade’s request to have her traced remained pending. Despite Indian diplomats being embroiled in similar cases in the past, each time blaming the domestic worker’s motives — in all previous cases, the complainant got long-term residency in the U.S — the government has only now started giving serious thought to managing the practice of officials taking domestic staff along on postings abroad. Both sides could have found a mutually acceptable way to defuse the controversy — often in such cases, the issue is closed by withdrawing the diplomat. That the government chose instead to transfer Ms. Khobragade to India’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, with a view to enhancing her immunity, is questionable and casts India’s claim of a nation ruled by law in poor light.
