LIST OF NEWSPAPERS COVERED
ASIAN AGE
BUSINESS STANDARD
DECCAN HERALD
ECONOMIC TIMES
HINDU
HINDUSTAN TIMES
INDIAN EXPRESS
PIONEER
STATESMAN
TELEGRAPH
TRIBUNE
1
CONTENTS
CIVIL SERVICE
3-46
ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENN
EDUCATION
7-10
11-19
EMINENT PERSONALITIES
20-25
EMPOYMENT
26-27
FEDERALISM
28-30
HEALTH SERVICES
31
INCOME
32
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
33-35
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
36
POLICE
37
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
38-42
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
43-45
PUBLISHING
46-48
RAILWAYS
49-50
TAXATION
51
TERRORISM
52
TRANSPORT
53-56
2
CIVIL SERVICE
STATESMAN, JAN 22, 2016
Greater accountability for the steel frame
Tuktuk Ghosh
Since the run up to the General Elections in 2014 there has been a huge buzz about minimum
government and maximum governance. This claim has surfaced every now and then, often to
reinforce the point about how differently the NDA government goes about the business of
governance.
Among the stand-out differences can be put down the Prime Minister’s direct and regular
interactions with the steel frame, especially the top echelons. They began with informal gettogethers of all Secretaries to Government of India in November 2014 and April 2015 which
went down well primarily because of the strong message of confidence communicated in their
abilities-quotient and also the novelty factor.
These were interspersed with a series of one-on-one presentations by Secretaries to the PM on
the highlights of policies and achievements of their ministries.
Almost as a logical accompanying step, PRAGATI was structured to deepen the interface
between the Prime Minister, Secretaries and Chief Secretaries of States. PRAGATI is the ICTbased multimodal platform for pro-active governance and timely implementation. It facilitates
close and intense concurrent evaluation of flagship programmes, mega-infrastructure projects
and addresses important developmental issues. To date, some seven of these exercises have been
held.
Obviously they have had a positive impact, both in terms of gearing up and preparing for
scrutiny by the highest political executive and also on the consequential sanctity of the decisions
taken as well as commitments made, thereby ensuring they did not slip off the radar screen into
familiar oblivion. Most interestingly, the concerned Ministers or Chief Ministers did not
participate either in the initial presentations to the PM or the PRAGATI reviews. Whatever may
be the reasons for it, the apparent departure from protocol is eloquent. The onus of enhanced
performance appears to rest squarely on the bureaucracy in the PM’s perspective. This is based
on the Gujarat- model he followed and is observed in several States across the country. To bring
it up front on the Central stage is noteworthy.
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The Prime Minister has been holding brain-storming sessions with all (repeat all - and not a
select few) Secretaries on governance issues and development policy. Here, too, Ministers and
other dignitaries are on a select invitee-list and often the Cabinet Minister handling the subject
under discussion does not feature in the list. The undergirding rationale repeats the unmistakable
signals of the PM crafting his individualised reach-out mechanisms to those who, in his
estimation, are really behind the wheels. Such sessions are a mint new concept and can expect to
yield dividends in terms of efficient and impactful delivery, by engaging proactively and on a
positive note with the vast in-house talent and knowledge resource available, which is often
rather churlishly disregarded. It has the possibility of taking accountability to hitherto unexplored
levels.
Eight Groups of Secretaries have been set up for focussed attention in specified sectors.
These have a broad sweep and relate to the following:
Good governance - challenges and opportunities
Employment generation strategies
Farmer-centric initiatives in agriculture and allied sectors
Education and health—universal access and quality
Innovative budgeting and effective implementation
Accelerated growth with inclusion and equity
Energy efficiency and conservation
Swachchh Bharat Ganga Rejuvenation.
Beginning 12 January, the Groups have been making presentations to the PM. The format for the
presentations has been drawn up in such a manner that it focuses on actionable points and
implementation-related aspects. Each of these Groups has members from different ministries.
They have had to meet almoston a daily basis and coalesce their recommendations so that they
ring authentic and convincing. By all accounts, they have done a great job.
For there to have been significant harmony and co-ordination amongst the Group members
unravels many interesting prospects for collaborative and more coordinated functioning in the
silo-encrusted legacy set-up that we are chained to. The details of the presentations are not in the
public domain as yet. Hopefully, the Secretaries will be empowered, through formal
authorisations of Cabinet, to translate the accepted innovative ideas into ground level realities
within a given time frame, especially their more complex cross-sectoral aspects .
So far, so good. But as the sceptics would be quick to point out in jaded despair, there has been
an overdose of diagnostics,
analytics and road maps but they’ve predictably languished in
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labyrinthine black holes after the initial hype and hoopla. And, more importantly, can this be
among the most sustainable models of new-style governance and accountability, blessed by the
PM, for energising the sarkari behemoth?
This is the great challenge for not only the PM but his entire team in the bureaucracy. It is
ultimately about redefining the governance-experience for the ordinary citizen, which is actually
being critiqued in real time now and will not wait for a distant election as in the good old
comfortable - or our netas and netris, of course - days!
The writer is a retired IAS officer.
ECONOMIC TIMES, JAN 20, 2016
Supreme Court stays action against Kerala IAS officer for praising Narendra Modi
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed proceedings, initiated by the UDF
government in Kerala, against an IAS officer for praising Narendra Modi in 2013 in a newspaper
article and has asked the state government to explain why it initiated proceeded against the
officer on this count.
The IAS officer, Dr B Ashok, had in his article defended a proposed trip by the then Gujarat CM
Narendra Modi to the Sivagiri Mutt at Varkala in Thiruvananthapuram district to inaugurate a
spiritual cultural conclave.
The state government had opposed the mutt's invitation to Modi on the ground that he had failed
to stop the 2002 Gujarat riots as chief minister. Rahul Gandhi had declined the mutt's invitation.
The IAS officer had written: "It is true that the Gujarat government might not have been
effective in preventing the killings (in 2002) but such genocidal riots had followed the
assassination of Indira Gandhi." He had also flayed the Congress vicepresident Rahul Gandhi for
turning down the invite.
The UDF government had initiated disciplinary proceedings against him. He was then ViceChancellor of the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. Though he had approached
the High Court that had refused to restrain the government from holding the inquiry against him.
The state government sacked him as vicechancellor for alleged violation of service rules, but the
Kerala High Court reinstated him. In August 2015, the High Court upheld the disciplinary
proceedings initiated against him. On Tuesday, however, a bench headed by Justice J
Chelameswar, issued notice on his petition challenging the High Court order, and stayed the
disciplinary proceedings against him.
In his appeal before the top court, argued by senior advocate KV Vishwanathan and advocate
Vivek Chib, the IAS officer argued that he had not violated any service rules as the vice5
chancellor of the university or any other civil service rules. He urged the top court to quash the
proceedings against him.
The bureaucrat had written an article titled 'What if Modi comes to Sivagiri', on April 24, 2013,
in the Kerala Kaumudi daily. This article had prompted the UDF government to censure him and
also issue a chargesheet against him on the ground that it amounted to conduct unbecoming of an
IAS officer. Stay on top of business news with The Economic Times App. Download it Now!
ECONOMIC TIMES, JAN 19, 2016
12 junior staff removed from PMO
NEW DELHI: 12 junior level personnel have been removed from the Prime Minister's Office
and posted to various central government ministries.
Of them, three have been sent to Defence Ministry, two each to Agriculture and Cooperation,
and Information and Broadcasting departments, and one each to Commerce, Food and Public
Distribution, Higher Education, Petroleum and Natural Gas, and Road Transport and Highways,
an order issued today by Department of Personnel and Training ( DoPT) said.
The order did not cite any reason behind relieving the employees of Assistant Section Officers
grade from the PMO.
Meanwhile, 16 new employees have been appointed to the PMO.
The services of these employees, who were working as Senior Secretariat Assistants in various
ministries, have been transferred to Home Ministry. They all will further be posted to the PMO,
it said.
6
ECONOMOC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
HINDU, JAN 19, 2016
A tale of two economists
Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian publicly differed with RBI Governor Raghuram
Rajan and took a bet on accelerating growth. He is clearly losing
Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Arvind Subramanian started 2015 on an over-optimistic note.
He is likely to have ended it in disappointment. The economy is slowing down: in the first six
months of the financial year, real GDP grew 7.2 per cent, slower than the 7.5 per cent in the
corresponding earlier-year period. In 2016-17 too, GDP growth will not be significantly greater
unless some specific steps are taken, the CEA has said. Thankfully, there are few takers in the
government for the main measure he is suggesting: a further pause on fiscal deficit reduction.
About a year ago, barely months into his job in the Finance Ministry, Dr. Subramanian projected
a sharp recovery with growth of up to 8.1-8.5 per cent. He forecast the acceleration even though
he did not expect any big-bang reforms (on this count, his forecast was correct). In his scheme of
things, the spurt in growth would come from incremental policy pushes, such as to subsidy
reforms, direct benefit transfers, and financial inclusion of the poor.
The brave outlook underestimated the weakness in the exports sector. It relied on the Rs. 70,000
crore of public investment that was earmarked in the year’s budget — as suggested by him — for
building infrastructure to stimulate private investments. The stimulus he had designed was
implemented. It proved insufficient to generate the growth impulses needed to kick-start the over
$2 trillion economy and rekindle animal spirits gone numb in the dying years of the United
Progressive Alliance’s 10-year stint due to policy paralysis and corruption scandals.
As things stand, it seems unlikely that industrial growth will cross 5 per cent. Growth in lending
by banks to industry, a proxy for investment sentiment, hasn’t budged from a 20-year low.
Corporate balance sheets are burdened with mountains of debt. The worst exports performance
since 1952-53 is inevitable.
A government not shy of its business-friendly credentials should have picked up these stress
signals early on and administered the remedies, but its mandarins were too excited: international
agencies had declared that 2015 was going to be the year in which India would race past China
(the Chinese economy is about five times as large as India’s) to be the fastest growing economy
in the world.
It was. But that this had probably more to do with China slowing down rather than India picking
up, and the stark difference in size made the comparison between the two economies irrelevant.
But the cheerleaders among bureaucrats and ministers couldn’t be bothered with technical
minutiae — all that mattered was that India is a bright spot in a gloomy global economy.
7
Why is growth slowing?
In the boom years during the UPA government’s tenure, four engines had powered the economy.
Of those, just two are still running: government investments and private consumption. Exports
and private investments, the other two, are out of steam. The UPA years saw an investment
boom, which was bound to turn sooner or later, and has.
Lower borrowing costs could restart the investments cycle but the hands of the Reserve Bank of
India Governor, Raghuram Rajan, are tied. An agreement that the government and the RBI
signed a year ago has made controlling inflation the main objective of monetary policy. The
agreement formalised a policy goal that the central bank has always pursued anyway, except that
it set the targets in terms of consumer price inflation. Moreover, government-owned public
sector banks have been slow to pass on to borrowers the rate reductions that Dr. Rajan has
announced. Banks are a cartel and keep interest rates high because higher interest rates mean
bigger profits.
Dr. Rajan is well on course to bring inflation within the 6 per cent target that the government set
around the same time the CEA made his cheery growth forecast. In fact, the ‘rock star’
Governor, with whom the CEA has worked closely earlier in the International Monetary Fund,
has had an excellent year. India was still one of the ‘fragile five economies’ when the year
began. Yet, it is the only one to have come out of the phase of heightened currency volatility and
current account deficit instability that characterised the group. Besides, the purse-string
managers of the government’s budget in North Block, who haven’t yet let its fiscal deficit slip,
Dr. Rajan too deserves credit for restoring India’s macroeconomic stability, which the
government hasn’t quite leveraged to push growth, just as it has been caught sitting on its hands
despite the favourable global trends in oil and commodity prices.
On growth, Dr. Rajan has been spot on. By the end of the summer, he had cut the Reserve
Bank’s GDP growth projection for the year not once but twice. In July, even as Dr. Subramanian
was sticking to 8.1-8.5 per cent, Dr. Rajan’s call was 7.4 per cent.
The overconfidence in Delhi lasted till the last day of November, when new official data
released, revealed a slowdown instead of the promised smart recovery. Within hours, the
government cut its growth projection to 7.5 per cent.
In the following weeks, the CEA did a few mea culpas on earlier positions, raised fresh concerns
about the state of the economy and declared the official data puzzling and unusually difficult to
interpret. And he called for reassessing the government’s commitment to fiscal deficit reduction.
Environment for lower interest rates
Abandoning the committed path for fiscal rectitude now will put macroeconomic stability at risk.
It might end up hurting growth rather than supporting it with the government and the RBI
8
working at cross purposes. How? To fund a wider deficit, the government will have to borrow
more, which could push up interest rates and crowd out private borrowers.
Inflation might have been tamed but the Reserve Bank’s key interest rate, despite cuts adding up
to 125 basis points in 12 months, is still high for a revival in investments and growth. Although
higher public investments are desirable, the government needs to do all it can to create the
environment for lower interest rates, not higher.
Public investments can be increased without deferring deficit reduction, though. There is a
perceptible improvement in the quality of government spending with a shift towards capital
expenditure. This can be built upon. Savings from efficiency in spending remain an underrated
resource. The government ought to cross the political hurdles for strategic disinvestment. If the
government’s fiscal consolidation would distract from the demand in the economy, much of its
spending will also add to it. Government employees’ salaries and pensions are set to rise as the
Seventh Pay Commission award is accepted and disbursed. The hikes are bound to result in a
surge in demand for goods and services. So are other transfers from the government.
The growth and the outlook won’t seem as lacklustre if Dr. Subramanian had corrected his
forecast earlier, as Dr. Rajan had. He publicly differed with Dr. Rajan and took a bet on
accelerating growth, and it looks as if he is going to lose the bet.
BUSINESS STANDARD, JAN 19, 2016
Hollande declares economic emergency:French President unveils a euro 2-billion plan to
revive hiring and catch up with a fast-moving world economy
Paris attacks: Hollande wants 3-month state of emergency, say sourcesFrench President Hollande
to visit China next weekFrance plans constitution change to extend state of emergencyBarack
Obama to host French President Hollande at White HouseUrge Germany to do more in IS fight:
Francois Hollande
French President Francois Hollande on Monday pledged to redefine France's business model and
declared what he called "a state of economic and social emergency," unveiling a euro 2-billion
($2.2 billion) plan to revive hiring and catch up with a fast-moving world economy.
The measures he proposed, however, are relatively modest, and he said they would not "put into
question" the 35-hour workweek. With his country under a state of emergency since extremist
attacks in November, Hollande did not seek to assume any new emergency powers over the
economy. In an annual speech to business leaders, Hollande laid out plans for training half a
million jobless workers, greater use of apprenticeships, and aid for companies that hire young
9
workers.
Hollande's Socialist government has struggled to boost long-stagnant French growth or reduce
chronic unemployment, which has been around 10 per cent for years. His chances of winning a
potential second term may hinge on whether jobs pick up before next year's presidential vote.
Hollande stressed the urgency of updating France's labour-friendly business model in an
increasingly border-free, online economy. The measures included a loosening of France's rigid
working time rules, and a bonus of 2,000 euros to small businesses that hire young people.
He stressed the need to integrate youth from France's troubled suburbs, including minorities who
face job discrimination, into the global economy. High unemployment in France's North African
and African communities is seen as one of the factors driving some youths to violent extremism
or the drug trade.
Some measures will be included in draft economic reform laws the government is presenting to
parliament in the coming weeks.
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EDUCATION
INDIAN EXPRESS, JAN 20, 2016
Govt sets up panel for yoga education in universities
The decision to start a yoga department in all universities was taken at a consultative meeting of
vice-chancellors, which was chaired by HRD Minister Smriti Irani, on January 2.
Paving the way for yoga in mainstream education, the Human Resource Development (HRD)
ministry has set up a committee for setting up of Departments of Yogic Art and Science in
universities across the country.
The panel has been asked to identify courses in Yogic Art and Science that can be offered,
develop curriculum for the identified courses, define eligibility criteria for students studying
yoga in higher education, prescribe qualifications for yoga faculty and determine modalities for
faculty training, among other things.
The decision to start a yoga department in all universities was taken at a consultative meeting of
vice-chancellors, which was chaired by HRD Minister Smriti Irani, on January 2.
The committee was notified on January 15. It has been asked to submit its report within 45 days.
The 12-member committee will be headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s yoga teacher,
Professor H R Nagendra.
Ishwar Bharadwaj, head of the Department of Yogic Sciences at the Gurukul Kangri University
in Haridwar, Professor Neel Kamal from Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali University in Haridwar and
Rupen Bhowmick, working president of the Indian Yoga Federation in Agartala, are among the
committee’s 12 members.
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TRIBUNE, JAN 20, 2016
INDIAN EXPRESS, JAN 20, 2016
Universities can govern themselves: JNU Vice Chancellor
Sopory was speaking at a press interaction at JNU a week before his retirement on January 27.
Written by Aranya Shankar
Referring to the recent trend of the University Grants Commission (UGC) in sending circulars to
universities, asking them to celebrate various days such as Good Governance Day and Yoga
Day, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Vice-Chancellor S K Sopory said it wasn’t “possible to
follow all the directives” and “that universities were capable of governing themselves”.
Sopory was speaking at a press interaction at JNU a week before his retirement on January 27.
“We do take some suggestions and celebrate some of these occasions which we think are good…
But it is not possible to follow all of them…,” he said.
While listing several achievements during his tenure including the NAAC accredition, creating a
barrier-free campus and revamping the sexual harassment policy, Sopory confessed that his
“biggest failure” was not to be able to construct more hostels.
“We had funds for the past two years. But I haven’t been able to get permission to begin
construction for over 20 months now, despite all the support from the Lieutenant Governor,
Delhi Development Authority etc, the plan has got stuck with the Ministry of Environment and
Forests,” he said.
“Initially, we had requested (permission) for cutting of trees but they (officials) kept saying it
comes under the Ridge area. We were told to go to Ridge Management Board, which comes
under the chief secretary. The board… held a meeting two months ago during which the proposal
was cleared but the university hasn’t got any communication in this regard,” he said, adding that
he “never thought the government will take so much time to decide”.
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Speaking about the recent controversy on JNU reporting the highest number of sexual
harassment cases, Sopory said it only happened because students were given a platform to
complain. “Here, the GSCASH never says go someplace else. They always encourage filing of
such cases,” he said.
Counting the resumption of the JNU student union (JNUSU) elections in 2012 as one of his
achievements, Sopory said he was happy to give students a “healthy platform to raise their
voice”. Speaking to The Indian Express, Sopory also acknowledged a change in the JNUSU
composition over the last few years.
“Now there is a member from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad also in JNUSU which
wasn’t there before. But coalition politics is good as far as students’ interest comes first. I only
see them as JNUSU office bearers, not as individual party members,” he said.
Sopory took over as the 11th vice-chancellor of JNU in January 2011. An eminent plant
molecular biologist, Sopory began his academic career in 1973 as a faculty at the School of Life
Sciences, JNU. “As an academician I learnt research, as a vice-chancellor I learnt to work
beyond my domain. Administration is a very different task but I enjoyed every bit of it,” he said.
TRIBUNE, JAN 20, 2016
Nation
HC: Schools can’t hike fee arbitrarily
The Delhi High Court today ruled that private schools had no right to commercialise education
by arbitrarily hiking tuition fee, and that the government could intervene to regulate the fee
structure in these schools.
Both the Director of Education (DoE) and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which
allotted land at concessional rates, could restrain unaided schools from charging excessive fees
from students, a Bench comprising Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath held in a
judgment in a PIL case.
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“The schools cannot indulge in profiteering and commercialisation of education. The quantum of
fees to be charged by unaided schools is subject to regulation by the DoE,” the HC ruled.
HINDUSTAN TIMES, JAN 20, 2016
Occupy UGC protest highlights the demerits in the merit system
Twinkle Siwach
|
Post-liberalisation, the nature of education and the scale of universities in India have undergone a
major transformation. It was a time when global players were commoditising education and
beginning to interfere in the principle of access to education as a ‘fundamental right’ for the
citizens. On the one hand, the quality of education being offered in governmental institutions was
declining, and on the other hand, there was a rise in the number of private higher education
institutions in India. The government believed that the move would help in providing education
to more people, enhance their knowledge base, equity, development, etc. But it had failed to
realise that the hiked entrance fees would bar many students from entering these institutions.
Now, there are fewer state or central universities offering quality education, promoting research
and research scholars with a subsidised amount of entrance/annual fees.
A student pursuing an MPhil or a PhD reaches an age where he/she doesn’t want to be dependent
on their family for funds. In the case of students belonging to economically backward
communities, it becomes even more difficult to pursue education if there is no viable subsistence.
This is particularly true in the case of women. In such a situation, it becomes the duty of the
government to provide them assistance by educating them and giving them equal employment
opportunities and wages.
In research universities, students are not merely consumers, they are doing value addition to the
existing knowledge pool of society and deserve to get assistance from the government to pursue
their research interests and produce relevant output. Research scholars are demanding a rise in
the current scholarship fund from Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000 a month for MPhil students and from Rs
8,000 to Rs 12,000 a month for PhD students as they too have to come to terms with the rising
prices of essential commodities and for many these scholarships are the only means of
livelihood. Here, one needs to realise why one should opt for higher education. Is it possible to
survive on one’s own when the government decides to scrap the existing fellowships and later
make them available for only those who fall under a specific ‘merit’ or ‘economic’ criterion?
The other question is: How to define this ‘economic’ and ‘merit’ criterion for a student who has
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already cracked the entrance exam. The merit criterion is, in fact, narrowing the scope of
fellowships to exclude many to opt for higher education.
Universities are meant to be socially inclusive. But the criterion is dividing the students by
increasing the spirit of competition and decreasing their friendly exchanges. And we are left as
‘computerised robots’ and not ‘thinking individuals’.
The ‘Occupy UGC’ protest is a fight to save higher education in the country. In times of a global
ideological and financial crisis, education seems to be the easiest target for cutting funds.
Instead, it should be priority for any government and must get the highest budgetary allocation.
Our education system is at stake. People who can afford go to foreign universities and those who
do not have the ‘time’ or ‘money’ can decide between petty jobs and poor education.
Twinkle Siwach is a PhD scholar, Media Studies, JNU.The views expressed are personal.
HINDUSTAN TIMES, JAN 20, 2016
Saffronisation? Raje scraps Cong textbooks, spends Rs 37 cr on new ones
Rakesh Goswami
The Rajasthan government is spending around Rs 37 crore on printing new textbooks for classes
1 to 8 as part of its larger plan to include historical figures such as Maharaja Surajmal, Hemu
Kalani and Govind Guru, glorify warrior-kings such as Maharana Pratap, and question the
greatness of “invaders” such as Mughal emperor Akbar in its social sciences content.
From academic session 201617, all 36 books being taught in the primary and upper-primary
classes will be based on a new agenda that critics have described as saffronisation.
Rajasthan’s school syllabus was changed only two years ago, during the Congress government’s
regime. In 2012-13, new textbooks were introduced for all subjects pertaining to classes 1, 3 and
5, and modified social sciences textbooks were prescribed for students of classes 6 and 7. Later,
in 2013-14, new textbooks were introduced for all subjects in classes 2 and 4, and a new social
sciences textbook was brought in for class 8. All that has now been scrapped, with the Rajasthan
State Textbook Board (RSTB) auctioning off the books.
“Textbooks up to 2012-13, which are now obsolete, have been auctioned to clear our
warehouses. We are printing 5.66 crore new textbooks for classes 1 to 8, and need space to store
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them,” said RSTB secretary Deepti Kachhawaha. The board will also print 1.23 crore textbooks
for classes 9 and 11 in accordance with the new syllabus.
Rajasthan (primary and secondary) education minister Vasudev Devnani had courted controversy
earlier over his plans to introduce Surya Namaskar and Saraswati Vandana in government
schools.
Unfazed by the criticism over the new textbooks, Devnani had told HT in an earlier interview
that he was merely correcting distorted history and promoting Indian culture and values among
students.
“There is no saffronisation. Education should be above politics or religion. Some people with
vested interests are politicising the issue,” he had said.
However, educationists have termed the decision as the “Hinduisation of education”.
“It is in the nature of right-wing forces to attack the education system when they come to power.
This time, the nature of change is different because they are in power at the Centre too. They
have come out openly against the idea of composite culture and secularity,” said Dr Rajiv Gupta,
former head of Sociology, University of Rajasthan.
TELEGRAPH, JAN 21, 2016
SC asks Sanskriti to open 60% quota to all transferable bureaucrats (for now)
New Delhi, Jan 21 (PTI): The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the Sanskriti School here to
admit wards of all central government employees with transferable jobs within the existing 60
per cent quota for children of top top bureaucrats.
A bench of Justices A.R. Dave, C. Nagappan and A.K. Goel also stayed the implementation of a
Delhi High Court order quashing the quota, meant for children of Group-A officers.
Sanskriti, set up for kids of top central government bureaucrats with transferable jobs, reserves
60 per cent of the seats for children of Group-A officers, 25 per cent for those from economically
weaker sections, 10 per cent for wards of rest of the society and 5 per cent for its own staff.
The bench clarified that, for now, it was not taking into consideration the Delhi government
notification quashing the management quota in all schools in the national capital.
The court admitted the appeals filed by Sanskriti School and the Union government against a
Delhi High Court judgment.
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The bench also took note of the submission that Sanskriti School and the Centre should come out
with a scheme to categorise seats when the appeals would be taken up for hearing on April 6.
The Centre and school administration have assailed the high court's decision to eliminate the 60
per cent quota for wards of group-A officials, the highest class of government servants.
They have also sought an interim order allowing the institution to continue with the admission
process under the old scheme till the matter is finally decided.
Now the court will decide as to whether the society running the school can be held as state or its
instrumentality under the Constitution and hence, amenable to the writ jurisdiction of the apex
court and the high court.
HINDU, JAN 23, 2016
By UGC norms, expulsion is discrimination
Four years ago, the University Grants Commission (UGC) officially acknowledged what was
always known: discrimination along caste lines was a fact of college life. And the admission
made its way to the UGC (Promotion of Equity in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations,
2012, drafted at an emergency meeting of officials called after the suicide of a medical student in
the capital and a research student who was denied a guide.
The expulsion of students belonging to the Ambedkar Students Association by the Executive
Council of the University of Hyderabad, leading to the suicide of Rohith Vemula, would have
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qualified as discrimination under the regulations notified on January 19, 2013. But they remained
only on paper, leading many activists and intellectuals to believe that they should have been
made into a law.
The notification deals with specific acts of discrimination on the basis of caste, creed, religion,
language, ethnicity, gender, and disability. It defines harassment as unwanted conduct which is
persistent and demeans, humiliates or creates a hostile and intimidating environment or is
calculated to induce submission through actual or threatened adverse consequences.
Interestingly, the memorandum submitted by the striking students, is framed in the context of
discrimination along caste lines and states as subject matter: “Expulsion of five Scheduled Caste
Ph.D. research scholars from their hostel room on flimsy, concocted allegations made by a
disgruntled non-SC/ST student.”
At variance was Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani’s statement at a press conference that
repeatedly sought to downplay the caste angle in the death of Rohith Vemula.
HINDUSTAN TIMES, JAN 16, 2016
President’s office wades into V-C appointments in DU, JNU
Srinand Jha
|
The NDA government appeared headed for another round of bitter confrontation with the
academia, this time over the appointment of vice-chancellors in two of the country’s most
prestigious institutions — Delhi University and the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The development comes in the wake of the resignation of nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar from
the board of governors of IIT Bombay and the subsequent decision of Raghunath K Shevgaonkar
to quit as the director of IIT Delhi.
Through representations routed through leaders of Opposition parties, faculty members of the
two universities have sought President Pranab Mukherjee’s intervention into “serious violation
of statutory norms” and “interference” by the human resources development ministry in the
selection process.
Responding to one such representation sent by Janata Dal (United) leader KC Tyagi, the
President’s officer on special duty (OSD) Suresh Yadav informed in a letter dated January 11
that the complaint has been forwarded to the HRD ministry for “appropriate attention”.
18
“The NDA government has been systematically working at destroying academic institutions with
aims of imposing a communal agenda,” Tyagi alleged. Crying foul over the insertion of a fresh
pre-qualification clause requiring applicants to have “at least 10 years experience as professor”,
the teaching staff of the two universities are asserting that this was “in contravention of the
statutes laid down for the two universities by an act of Parliament”.
Faculty members are also protesting the ministry’s directive to the universities to place
advertisements defining the format of the selection process.
Identical advertisements for the two posts were published in a Delhi newspaper on August 5 and
August 15.
“So far, it had been the search committee’s prerogative to conceive and follow a particular mode
of selection. By setting out a defined format and inserting pre-conditions violative of the statute
of the two universities, the ministry is attempting to tinker with procedures, possibly in
pursuance of ulterior motives,” one DU professor alleged.\
HT sent out a questionnaire to the HRD ministry on the issue, but no response was received till
late Friday night.
In a separate memorandum to the office of the President, leaders of women’s organisations and
“concerned citizens” have also strongly objected to a particular candidate whose name has
featured in the list of names forwarded by the search panel for the top job in Delhi University.
The particular candidate has been accused in a case of sexual harassment.
“A candidate with such a black mark should not have been considered at all for the top job,”
JNU professor Nivedita Menon said.
19
EMINENT PERSONALITIES
STATESMAN, JAN 23, 2016
PM reveals 100 secret files on Netaji
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday released digital copies of the first set of 100 files on
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his birth anniversary here.
Modi arrived at the National Archives of India and met the family members of Bose. He then
went on to release the files.
Earlier in the day, Modi paid tributes to Netaji and posted his 1944 proclamation on Twitter
wherein Bose asked fellow countrymen to fulfil their 'duty' to liberate India.
"Remembering Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his birth anniversary. His bravery and patriotism
endears him to several Indians across generations," Modi had tweeted.
The initiative is an attempt to clear the air over Netaji’s mysterious disappearance as well as
giving access scholars to carry out further research on Bose.
Modi had assured the family members of Bose in October, 2015 that his government would
declassify files related to the national hero and make them available in public domain.
STATESMAN, JAN 22, 2016
Netaji and the Mahatma - I
Arunabha Bagchi
January 23 is the most memorable day for all Bengalis. It is, of course, the birth anniversary of
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. The day is particularly important this year, as our Prime Minister
has promised to start declassifying the files relating to Netaji that our government has still not
released 70 years after his presumed death in a plane crash in Taipei. There are doubts about the
conditions of the most sensitive files, with many observers believing that they must have been
damaged by moth, or by bureaucrats. Both UPA and NDA governments refused to declassify the
files, despite repeated RTI applications made by concerned citizens. The latest refusal by the
Modi government in November 2014 came up with the same outrageously lame excuse iterated
many times before: “Disclosure of the documents contained in these files would prejudicially
affect relations with foreign countries.” Will we never be an independent country? Imagine the
Chinese government issuing a similar statement to the Chinese people.
After Independence, the role of Netaji in our freedom movement has been increasingly
downplayed by the Congress Party and the ‘official’ historians to the point that Netaji was
20
reduced to a footnote in our history textbooks for high school students by the time I left India in
1969. Then, in 1974, right after I came to Europe, I had a surprise encounter with an Englishman
as we waited for the boat in the Hoek van Holland to go to England. On learning that I was from
Calcutta, he startled me by starting a conversation in reasonable Bengali. As it turned out, he
was an engineer at the Gun Shell Factory in Cossipore in the 1940s and had once lived in Saheb
Bagan next to Chiriamore. He told me that had Netaji been born in his country, his countrymen
would put up a Column for him next to Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. This comment has
been resonating with me ever since. If this Englishman were alive today, he would mention with
a wry smile that his countrymen have put up a statue of the Mahatma near their Parliament
instead.
The Mahatma and Netaji were, without doubt, the greatest freedom-fighters in their respective
generations. That Netaji has virtually faded from our history books is attributed to Nehru’s
anxiety that the truth about Netaji might diminish his own unassailable position in India. But
other leaders of the Congress were relieved as well. They must have been alarmed at Netaji’s
audacity to contradict the Mahatma when their opinions differed. This was bound to create a bad
precedent for them. It could not be tolerated in a country where leaders want to ‘rule from their
graves’. This has led to the kind of dynastic politics we are witnessing all over India today, with
the BJP and the CPI-M being the refreshing exceptions. Even Bengal has fallen prey to this
destructive virus. An honest assessment of the differences of opinion between Netaji and the
Mahatma is imperative for the future of our country. As our Prime Minister so aptly put it,
“There is no need to strangle history. Nations that forget their history lack the power to create it.”
Gandhiji returned to India from South Africa in 1914 and got involved in the freedom struggle
by joining the Indian National Congress. He first fought for delegation of certain powers to
Indians by constitutional means, just as most others in the party. But everything changed with the
massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh in April 1919, and the subsequent reaction of the colonial
government to that unspeakable atrocity, and made “a rebel of the once loyal” Mahatma. By the
end of 1920, Gandhiji took over the mantle of the Congress at the Nagpur session, where a
policy of progressive non-violent non-cooperation with the triple boycott of legislature, law
courts and educational institutions was adopted. This was followed eventually by the nonpayment of taxes. The Congress even declared its goal as Swaraj that the Mahatma interpreted as
“Self-Government within the Empire if possible - and outside, if necessary.” Gandhiji even
promised Indians Swaraj before the end of 1921.
Netaji passed the Indian Civil Service (ICS) examination in 1920 and resigned from his post in
May 1921, while still in England, to devote all attention to the freedom of his country. On
arriving by ship in Bombay, he went straight to meet the Mahatma who was staying there at that
21
time. He wanted a clarification from the Mahatma on three points. Here are Netaji’s own words,
“Firstly, how were the activities conducted by the Congress going to culminate in the last stage
of the campaign, namely, the non-payment of taxes? Secondly, how could mere non-payment of
taxes or civil disobedience force the Government to retire from the field and leave us with our
freedom? Thirdly, how could the Mahatma promise Swaraj (that is, Home Rule) within one year,
as he had been doing ever since the Nagpur Congress?” He was satisfied with the Mahatma’s
answer to the first question, but remained unconvinced with the reply to the other two. Although
disappointed with the replies of his leader, Netaji went to Kolkata and vigorously participated in
the non-cooperation movement under the Congress leader in Bengal, Deshbandhu CR Das.
As Netaji suspected, the year 1921 ended with no Swaraj in sight. Then on February 1, 1922,
Gandhiji sent an ultimatum to the Viceroy, Lord Reading, declaring that if the Government did
not promise to grant Swaraj in the next seven days, he would be obliged to start a movement for
non-payment of taxes in the Bardoli subdivision of Gujarat. This electrified the nation and
similar measures were being prepared all over India. Then in an entirely unrelated event, the
police station of an unknown village, Chaura Chauri, was attacked by disgruntled villagers
killing some policemen. When the news reached Bardoli, Gandhiji summoned the Congress
Working Committee there and the committee, at his insistence, ordered the civil disobedience
movement to be stopped throughout the country. The anti-climax led to a dramatic lack of
confidence in the leadership and it took eight years before another serious movement for freedom
could be launched in India.
Low-key efforts for obtaining Swaraj continued throughout the decade. The only significant
development for us was the imprisonment of Netaji without trial in 1925 in Mandalay in Burma.
The prisoners there were put in cages, like animals in zoos, exposed to the elements throughout
the year. The other prominent leader ever sent there by the British was Lokamanya Bal
Gangadhar Tilak. He died soon after his release. Netaji’s condition also deteriorated dramatically
in the Burmese prisons. He was released in 1927 at the intervention of top government appointed
doctors, B. C. Roy among them. The British instinctively realised who their most formidable
enemies were, and concentrated on neutralizing them.
(To be concluded)
STATESMAN, JAN 23, 2016
Netaji and the Mahatma-II
Arunabha Bagchi
| 23 January, 2016
After his release from prison, Netaji concentrated on raising the consciousness of workers,
peasants and students. He soon became hugely popular, particularly among the youth of the
22
country who became increasingly restless with hardly any progress on the political front. This
new generation of freedom-fighters was not satisfied with the ‘Home Rule’ and demanded
complete Independence from the British. This alarmed the party leaders, and before the Lahore
Congress of the party, the Mahatma and Pandit Motilal Nehru met the Viceroy demanding
immediate ‘Dominion Status’, a euphemism for ‘Home Rule’. Their demand was summarily
rejected by the Viceroy and the Mahatma declared at the Lahore Congress that the goal of the
party was, from then on, total Independence, or rather, Purna Swaraj.
Then in March 1930 the most dramatic movement for freedom was initiated by the Mahatma
when he walked to Dandi from his Ashram and defied the British Salt Tax law by making salt
from the water collected on the shore of the Arabian Sea. It set in motion a civil disobedience
movement never seen anywhere in the world before, or since. The brutal attacks on non-violent
protesters all over India got wide national and international publicity. The Government had to
act and the Mahatma was arrested. Meanwhile, a bogus round table conference was taking place
in London about a new Constitution for India, with ‘kings’ of Princely States under British
suzerainty, representatives of communal parties and religious leaders, with the exclusion of the
Indian National Congress, the only legitimate people’s party fighting for the country’s
independence.
The Government negotiated with the Mahatma to restart the Round Table Conference, this time
including the Congress, with a vague promise of ‘Dominion Status’. Mahatma accepted the offer,
stopped the civil disobedience movement at the height of its success, and went to London in
September 1930.
What surprised Netaji was Gandhiji’s decision to be the sole delegate for the Congress, without
the support of any serious advisors, in the middle of hundred-odd delegates claiming to represent
all and sundry of the Indian people. The conference was a total failure for our cause of
Independence and the Mahatma returned thoroughly dejected in December of that year.
This is how Netaji analysed the root cause of failure of the Round Table Conference-“During his
stay in England he (Gandhiji) had to play two roles in one person, the role of a political leader
and that of a world teacher. Sometimes he conducted himself not as a political leader who came
to negotiate with the enemy, but as a master who had come to preach a new faith-that of nonviolence and world peace.” Netaji knew well enough that the fringe Christian groups that
surrounded the Mahatma in England had zero influence on the policy of the British Government.
The civil disobedience movement was resumed in 1932, but this time the Government was well
prepared and fatigue set in among the protesters. The campaign fizzled out after a while.
23
The story of Netaji being elected as the president of the Congress for the year 1938 and the
opposition of the Mahatma to his re-election as the president in 1939 are well known. Netaji won
his re-election by substantial majority despite this opposition. But there was an impasse with the
selection of the Working Committee and finally he lost the no-confidence motion brought by the
loyalists of the Mahatma. Netaji’s subsequent imprisonment (thirteenth in all), house arrest, his
dramatic escape in the disguise of a ***kabuliwalah*** to Afghanistan in January 1941, then to
Europe and finally to South-east Asia by a German submarine where he set up the Indian
National Army (INA) are parts of the Netaji legend by now.
Netaji struggled for our Independence for twenty years as a loyal follower of the Mahatma.
Gandhiji’s promise of Swaraj within one year did not come after eighteen years when the Great
War broke out in Europe again. Netaji was not prepared to wait forever and decided to use the
chaos of war to snatch India from the British yoke. An English patriot in these circumstances
would do exactly the same. This explains the comment on Netaji by the Englishman I mentioned
before.
As the Great War started, the British wanted an assurance from Indian leaders of their support in
the war efforts just as it happened during the First World War. At first, the Congress was willing
to cooperate. Then Gandhiji wanted an assurance of Independence after the War as the price for
the support. No such assurance was forthcoming. Then there were some dramatic successes of
the Japanese Army in South-east Asia. This forced the British Prime Minster to send a delegation
led by Stafford Cripps to make a deal with the Mahatma. The delegation promised merely the
‘Dominion Status’ and threatened to partition the country along religious lines. The Congress
Working Committee rejected the proposal, and in his original draft resolution the Mahatma said,
“Britain is incapable of defending India .The Indian Army is a segregated body, unrepresentative
of the India people, who can in no sense regard it as their own .Japan’s quarrel is not with India.
She is warring against the British Empire. If India were freed, her first step would probably be to
negotiate with Japan. The Congress is of the opinion that if the British withdrew from India,
India would be able to defend herself in the event of the Japanese or any other aggressors
attacking India.” Then in May 1942 the Mahatma launched the “Quit India” movement. With
virtually Marshall Law imposed on the country, that movement was also crushed.
Netaji unequivocally admitted that the Indian National Congress, under whose banner he fought
for the Independence of his country most of his life, was the creation of the Mahatma. Gandhiji’s
miraculous success in inspiring such vast number of ordinary people to fight for their country
must be attributed to “his single-hearted devotion, his relentless will and his indefatigable
labour.” Still, his three major campaigns through non-violent means to gain our Independence
failed, although they progressively diminished the resolve of some British people to hold on to
24
India. Netaji attributed the failure of the campaigns to yield direct results to two reasons. The
first was lack of independent thinking and forthrightness of most of Gandhiji’s close followers.
He thought that this was due to our habit of unconditional surrender to avatars and ‘holy men’.
The second was that “he (Gandhiji) has understood the character of his own people-he has not
understood the character of his opponents.” Netaji might very well have been wrong, but let his
countrymen decide that.
All quotations in this article are from Netaji’s The Indian Struggle, Part I, a classic which, if
completed, would rival Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution.
(Concluded)
25
EMPLOYMENT
TELEGRAPH, JAN 20, 2016
35% govt job quota for women
Patna, Jan. 19: The state cabinet today cleared the general administration department's proposal
to grant 35 per cent reservation to women in all government jobs.
The decision is part of the seven promises that chief minister Nitish Kumar had made to the
people before the Assembly elections.
From now on, 35 per cent of vacant posts in government will be filled up by women aspirants.
At present, 16 per cent reservation is for people belonging to the Scheduled Castes, one per cent
for the Scheduled Tribes, 18 per cent for extremely backward classes (EBC), 12 per cent for
other backward classes (OBCs) and three per cent for women. The remaining 50 per cent is for
the general category.
Briefing reporters after the meeting, principal secretary, cabinet coordination, Brajesh Mehrotra
clarified that the existing quota of three per cent for women would remain. The 35 per cent quota
will be for all other categories.
So for example, if the government advertises for 200 vacant posts and 50 per cent of that, i.e.
100, are in the general category, then 35 of these posts will be kept aside for women. The same
formula will be applied for the other categories - SC, ST, EBC and OBC.
Nitish had earlier made a provision for reservation of 35 per cent for women in the recruitment
of police constabulary in the state and 50 per cent in panchayats and local bodies, decisions that
yielded rich dividends during the elections.
Principal secretary Mehrotra said that in the absence of eligible women candidates, the seats
would be filled with male candidates in the respective reserved categories and that too during the
same year of recruitment.
After winning the elections in November, Nitish has been working on fulfilling his promises
made prior to the polls. He has already announced a ban on sale of country liquor from April 1.
In another important decision taken today, the cabinet passed the Right to Bihar Public
Grievance Redressal Ordinance 2016, fixing accountability of public servants and making
provisions for punishment for their failure to provide services within the specified time frame.
Though the Bihar Public Grievance Redressal Bill was passed in 2015 and was subsequently
enforced in the state, it was lacking on several counts. Under the new rule, the public servants
would have to explain the reason for the delay in rendering services to the aggrieved.
26
Mehrotra said there would be no fee levied on the services. Counters would be set up at different
places across the state to collect applications from the people.
The officers earmarked for the job would review the complaints on a weekly basis and work out
solutions.
27
FEDERALISM
TELEGRAPH, JAN 22, 2016
Pulled to the Centre: - A blow against federalism
Prabhat Patnaik
The Narendra Modi government's decision to abolish the National Development Council is a
further blow against the federal structure of our republic. True, the NDC did not have a
constitutional status, and differed in this respect from the Inter-State Council, whose activation
was often demanded by the Left, precisely because it was a constitutional body, for
deciding inter alia on the composition and terms of reference of finance commissions. But in
practice the NDC had come to acquire the position of the supreme body on issues of planning
and development in the country, a body where both the Centre and the states were represented.
Even though there was no voting at NDC meetings, and decisions were supposedly arrived at
through "consensus", these meetings were by no means a rubber stamp for the Centre. On the
contrary, in the early 1980s, when Centre-state relations were at the core of a nationwide debate,
there were quite a few stormy meetings of the NDC, with Jyoti Basu and Ashok Mitra
mobilizing the chief ministers of Opposition-ruled states against the Centre's encroachment on
states' resources and powers. And even though much of this fire had got extinguished by the time
I got a chance to attend NDC meetings as part of the Kerala delegation under the chief minister
V.S. Achuthanandan, I still found many forthright statements being made at these meetings by
chief ministers, some of whom also belonged to the ruling party at the Centre.
Of course, the habit of rejecting even concerted demands of states had already surfaced under the
Manmohan Singh government, which, for instance, had unilaterally raised the share of states in
funding the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in spite of the unanimous plea against it at an NDC meeting
by state governments, including Congress-led ones. But, the Modi government has now carried
this process of centralization miles further: it has simply done away with the NDC altogether,
which means that the state governments henceforth will have no say in development
policymaking in the country, as no other body comparable to the NDC either exists or is being
contemplated. Indeed, the very fact that the Central government decided unilaterally to scrap the
NDC without so much as a "by your leave" to the state governments indicates the utterly
subordinate status that states have come to occupy under the present dispensation.
It may be thought that the governing council of the Niti Aayog, which includes chief ministers,
would emerge as a replacement for the NDC; but the two councils are altogether different for at
least two reasons. First, the Niti Aayog itself is of little relevance, because, unlike its
predecessor, the Planning Commission, it has no funds being channelled through it. And second,
the NDC was never the "governing council" of the Planning Commission. It was a body on its
own to which the Planning Commission presented its plans, and specific programmes like the
Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, for final approval; but it was never concerned with the
"governing" of the Planning Commission.
Discussions on the general strategies of development of the country can hardly figure with any
28
degree of meaningfulness at a meeting of the "governing council" of a largely irrelevant body
like the Niti Aayog. And if perchance some chief minister does happen to raise such issues, then
his or her attempt would be promptly ruled out of court for not being part of the meeting's
agenda. Thus no matter how the abolition of the NDC is "sold" to the country, it constitutes
indubitably a negation of the role of the states in development policy-making.
This fact becomes particularly ominous in the context of several other developments that are
taking place, which also restrict the rights of states. The first of these is the doing away of the
Planning Commission, of which the abolition of the NDC is a sequel. The Planning Commission
itself was a departmental body of the Central government, and the fact that funds to states were
routed through it at all, rather than exclusively through the Finance Commission which was a
constitutional body, had been a source of controversy. But even as a departmental body of the
Central government, it had at least enjoyed a degree of autonomy. With its demise, the role of
Central ministries which are completely devoid of any such autonomy will increase greatly in the
devolution of funds from the Centre to the states, which means a further compulsion on state
governments to don the role of mendicants.
The second development is a reduction in the relative magnitude of the total transfers from the
Centre to the states that has been occurring lately. This assertion may appear odd at first sight in
view of the 14th Finance Commission's raising the share of the states in the divisible pool, and
the Central government's coy acceptance of this recommendation. But while doing so, the Centre
has so reduced the transfers through other channels that total transfers as a proportion to the
gross domestic product are headed for a fall. They have, of course, been falling for some time,
but this trend is being carried forward.
According to calculations made by Sona Mitra of the Centre for Budget and Governance
Accountability, New Delhi, the total transfers from the Centre to the states as a proportion of
GDP, which was 6.4 per cent in 2010-11, 6.1 per cent in 2011-12, 5.8 per cent in 2012-13, and
5.6 per cent in 2013-14, fell to 5.4 percent in 2014-15 (revised estimate) against a budget
estimate of 6.1 percent for that year. In 2015-16, the budget estimate itself was scaled down to
5.8 percent. The actuals clearly are likely to be even lower than in any previous year.
The third development is the Centre's frenetic attempts to introduce a goods and services tax. All
sorts of absurd claims are being made about the rise in GDP growth rate that would ensue if a
GST is introduced; and it is a symptom of the intellectual regression in our national life that such
claims are not meeting with the derision they deserve. The GST would completely do away with
the freedom of the states to fix rates for the taxes that are constitutionally under their jurisdiction.
To an extent this has already happened with the introduction of the value added tax, but with
GST even the multiplicity of tax rates that VAT allows will not be there. There is much talk of a
"revenue-neutral" GST rate (which is supposed to leave total tax revenues unchanged compared
to what would have accrued otherwise), but nobody knows what this rate is, and how the total
revenue will be distributed among states to ensure "revenue-neutrality" for individual states.
But even assuming that there is no revenue loss at present, and that all present state governments
agree to a GST, it still entails a violation of the spirit of the Constitution,because it takes away
the right of any future government at the state level (or at the Central level for that matter) to
29
impose tax rates of its choice. The essence of a federal polity is that different parties and political
formations should be able to come to power at different times in the different states and should
be free to pursue policies, including tax policies, of their choice. (Indeed, the same holds for the
Centre.) And the essence of democracy is that the people should have such a multiplicity of
alternatives before them and be free to choose between them. Fixing a uniform tax rate violates
this requirement. It is possible to argue that it violates the "basic structure" of the Constitution
and hence should not be accepted, even if a constitutional amendment is enacted for introducing
a GST by meticulously following all the appropriate procedures.
At any rate, since states are the resource-deprived constituents of our federal polity, a uniform
GST entails an unfair encroachment on their powers. And the Central government's obsession
with the GST betrays only its eagerness to make life easier for corporate capital through an
attenuation of the constitutional rights of the states.
An abridgement of the federal structure of our polity is in conformity with the perception of
the Hindutva forces, who are oblivious of the diversity of this country and whose vision of a
Hindu rashtra is that of a unitary State. It is also in conformity with the neo-liberal ideal where
states and even lower-tier entities like panchayats are denied the resources to experiment with
alternative development strategies, but enjoy unrestrained freedom to entice domestic corporate
capital and multinational corporations for the pursuit of "development". A unitary State, in short,
appeals to both, and the moves towards such a State merely express the common predilections of
the corporate-communal alliance that currently rules at the Centre.
The author is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Del
30
HEALTH SERVICES
PIONEER, JAN 20, 2016
HEALTH MINISTRY APPROVES TWO NATIONAL CENTRES ON AGEING
The union health ministry on Tuesday approved the setting up of two National Centres on
Ageing to boost up geriatric care in the country.
The centres will come up at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi
and Madras Medical College in Chennai.
The centres will be set up under the National Programme for Health Care of the Elderly
(NPHCE) during the 12th five year plan period, said an official statement.
Among the major works to be done by the centre would be health care delivery, training of
health professionals, research activities, besides having a 200 bedded in-patient facility.
31
INCOME
ECONOMIC TIMES, JAN 23, 2016
Interest rates on small savings schemes like PPF may be reset every quarter
By Deepshikha Sikarwar,
NEW DELHI: Interest rates on popular small savings schemes such as Public Provident Fund
(PPF), National Savings Certificate (NSC) and the Kisan Vikas Patra could soon be reset every
quarter as part of the government's plan to peg them closer to market rates to reduce market
distortions and help the cause of lower interest rates.
The government will also reduce the mark-up over the benchmark government bond rate for such
schemes of small maturities to nudge short term rates lower.
High interest rates on small savings schemes have long been cited as a structural barrier to
interest rates coming down as they compete with bank deposits, but are not subject to the same
kind of market pressures as them. Because they stay high, bank deposit rates are forced to remain
high and therefore prevent lending rates from coming down.
A senior government official said the first reset under the new rules will happen from April 1 this
year and rates are expected to fall. A notification will be issued soon, this official said, adding
that interest rates on schemes for senior citizens and a scheme for girl children were not likely to
be revised.
Small savings' interest rates are linked to yields on government bonds of comparable tenure, but
unlike gilts that are traded daily and see yields change, these change only sparingly.. The last
revision in rates on these schemes was on April 1last year. Since then, market rates have moved
south following a 0.75 percentage point policy rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India, creating a
wide wedge between what the banks can offer and what is available on small savings.
State Bank of India, for example, offers 7 per cent on deposits of maturity of five years or more.
Deposits of such tenure fetch 8.5 per cent in a post office small savings account. The PPF rate for
a similar maturity is 8.7 per cent. This wide gap between small savings' and market rates impacts
deposit mobilisation by banks as their ability to reduce deposit rates is adversely impacted. This
impacts banks' ability to lower lending rates as well. A quarterly reset of small savings rate will
ensure that distortion in the rates caused by the small savings is kept to a minimum, officials
said. The weighted average yield of dated government securities was 7.94 per cent in AprilSeptember 2015 compared with 8.81 per cent in the first half of the preceding year, potentially
opening up the possibility of an up to one percentage point reduction in the small savings rate.
In their pre-budget meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley earlier this month, banks and
financial institutions had also suggested quarterly benchmarking of rates.
32
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
STATESMAN, JAN 20, 2016
Diplomacy & militarism
Prasenjit Chowdhury
Bruce Riedel, who had worked in the National Security Council of the White House and had
attended the Bill Clinton-Nawaz Sharif meeting in 1999 during the Kargil war, has said that the
Pathankot attack was designed to prevent any detente between India and Pakistan after Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover in Lahore. He claimed that the outrage and the
attack on the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan were the handiwork of
the Pakistani terror group Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) which the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
had created 15 years ago. The villain, judge and the jury are known to each other.
It might be banal to recall how within three months of the then Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore, the Kargil war broke out in the summer of 1999. But it bears recall
that the Kargil misadventure was followed by the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814,
scheduled to fly from Kathmandu to Delhi, on 24 December 1999. J.N. Dixit in his book, IndiaPakistan in War and Peace chronicled how during the Kargil conflict, the Pakistani authorities
had not only pushed 1,500 to 2,000 well-equipped terrorist mercenaries into Jammu and
Kashmir, but had also despatched subversive elements to other parts of India through Nepal,
Bangladesh and some of the South-east Asian countries. Kathmandu, Dhaka and Bangkok had
become operational bases of the ISI to generate subversive activities against India, particularly in
its north-eastern states, “where links between the Pakistani agency and violent secessionist
movements are affecting the security environment”.
Dixit’s account of Masood Azhar after his release confirmed the extent to which Pakistan had
supported the hijack as well as Azhar’s political and terrorist agenda. Azhar was welcomed “with
great fanfare” in the presence of Pakistani authorities. He addressed a series of public meetings
for six weeks after his arrival in Bahawalpur, justifying the hijacking as an act of jihad (holy
war). He admitted that his organisation’s basic political objective was to capture Jammu and
Kashmir by force. His ‘vision’ to recruit an armed cadre of half a million people to continue the
jihad against India was the gist of his statements in Northern Sindh and parts of Pakistani Punjab.
Audio-cassettes of his speeches were circulated not only all over Pakistan, but in Jammu and
Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and north-western Rajasthan as well. There is evidence
of an ISI network in different parts of India; post-Pathankot it is fair to question if all of them
have been neutralised.
33
Therefore, the recent flip-flop over the “arrest” of JeM chief Masood Azhar once again proved to
be a dampener. Some commentators suggest that the army continues to distinguish between
‘good’ terrorists like JeM and LeT and ‘bad’ terrorists like the Pakistani Taliban, to whom any
diminution in tensions with India might risk the army’s stranglehold on Pakistan’s national
security policy. Pakistan is ruled by four interest groups or their coalition Rs: military,
bureaucracy, feudal lords and industrial barons.
It is a pity that India could not take advantage of the defeat it had inflicted on Pakistan in
December 1971. The Simla agreement is rightly perceived as India’s colossal political failure
because of its inability to obtain a final settlement of the Kashmir dispute. The agreement was a
weak expression of the Nehruvian foreign policy establishment in that it let Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
off the hook in the peace settlement that followed the 1971 war. Bhutto informally agreed to the
LoC after the war, but stopped short of formalising it before consolidating his position at home.
Years later, when Musharraf proposed a peace formula, New Delhi lost the opportunity to have
the LoC recognised as an international border. The rest is history.
Even if a civilian government led by Nawaz Sharif wants peace with India, Delhi will have to
engage with several centres of power in Pakistan. It was during the time of Sharif that the
Pakistan army launched a full-scale war against India in Kargil apparently keeping the country’s
Prime Minister in the dark. This proved that the army and the ISI could act fairly independently
of the political establishment, even if it involved fatal military adventurism. Islamabad persisted
in feigning innocence about the presence of the world’s most wanted man close to Pakistan’s
military academy.
How can India deal simultaneously with a pro-Western and pro-jihad Pakistan when the
neighbour is veering towards anti-Americanism and protection for Islamic terrorists? Or worse,
how can Pakistan save itself from imploding under the weight of its own contradictions?
If Pakistan could get away by inflicting a 26/11 on us or mounting an attack on Parliament, we
have thus far remained content with a few drummed-up and symbolic hangings and nothing
really very substantial. Earlier too amid more brazen instances of Pakistan violating the LoC,
powerful vested interests had scuttled the “peace” process. It appears that India’s security and
defence measures in relation to its neighbours have often been meekly ‘accommodative’ and
‘defensive’ and at best, ‘reactively adversarial’. While India seems to be in awe of a fiercely
militaristic and nationalist China, even the three wars between India and Pakistan did not result
in shifting the power asymmetry decisively in our favour. According to the Subrahmanyam
Committee that examined the Kargil debacle, since 1991 the Indian intelligence agencies had
34
pointed out the implications of Pakistan’s growing nuclearisation for managing the situation in
Kashmir. Somehow, in India this failed to become part of the nuclear debate.
The Indo-China war in 1962 crushed Nehru’s reputation as well as that of India and its army. It
revealed how a country with huge ambitions was not able to protect its own borders. Earlier in
the years of American hostility towards India, the US arms-supply relationship with Pakistan and
later, the Indo-China war had taught India the crucial importance of maintaining a balance
between goals and capabilities.
The cycle of India-Pakistan relations has a certain banal predictability. But without change of
perceptions on either side, without the readiness to make adjustments and shed dogmas
particularly regarding Kashmir, all talks are bound to fizzle out. While India must learn to secure
its borders against a potential Sino-Pak axis, she must also try to become a hardliner state
through a combination of diplomacy and militarism.
35
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
INDIAN EXPRESS, JAN 22, 2016
Delhi Govt forms panel to audit civic bodies’ accounts, BJP calls move motivated
The deputy CM cited difficulties being faced by people due to strikes by municipal employees,
nurses and teachers.
The Delhi government Thursday appointed a committee to audit the accounts of all three
municipal corporations and submit its report within a week. A Anbarasu, Secretary Revenuecum-Divisional Commissioner, will head the committee, said an order by Deputy Chief Minister
Manish Sisodia.
The deputy CM cited difficulties being faced by people due to strikes by municipal employees,
nurses and teachers. “To review the financial position of the civic bodies and to take stock of the
grants under plan and non-plan heads to be released… it emerged that the Delhi government has,
in fact, released almost all its dues to the three municipal corporations,” stated Sisodia’s order.
The BJP described the audit as “politically motivated to defame the image of the corporations”.
State BJP president Satish Upadhyay who has been standing committee chairperson in the South
municipal corporation said the financial matters of the corporation are managed by the
administrative wing of the corporation and regularly audited.
East Delhi mayor Harshdeep Malhotra termed the process “political drama” and said it was
aimed at delaying payment of dues to the corporation.
36
POLICE
PIONEER, JAN 19, 2016
IPS SERVICE MEET CONCLUDES WITH COLOURFUL GAMES
Interesting and exciting games were organised at the third and final day of the IPS Service Meet
at the State Capital on Monday even as prizes for the concerned were given away by DGP
Surendra Sinh in the three-day event.
Various sports items like Shooting competition, dragon boat race, archery, dog show, horse
riding competition, kite flying competition, speed boat ride, water scooter ride, zipline, rock
climbing and rappelling were performed.
The shooting was held at the 25th Battalion firing range and in the competition DGP Surendra
Sinh and other IPS officers participated.
During the shooting event when DGP Sinh tried to fire several times but the gun failed to fire
and the gun was immediately replaced by the on-duty police personnel after which he was able to
take part in the shooting competition. However, Sinh said that he is not used to do firing with
pistols and is comfortable with revolver due to which he faced problems in firing.
Superintendent of Police of Sidhi Abid Khan won the shooting competition while DIG Chanchal
Shekhar and IG Balaghat DC Sagar stood second in the competition. IG Gwalior Adarsh Katihar
and SP Anuppur Chandershekhar Solanki came third in the competition. After the shooting
competition Hawk Force demonstration of tackling terrorist activities and attack was done.
At the 25th Battalion children and women enjoyed archery and paint ball firing. Dog show was
organised at the event. The participants enjoyed the horse riding.
After finishing the events the participants reached Kerwa Dam and enjoyed boating with the
family and friends.
Dragon boat race was held and two teams were formed for the competition. The team headed by
DG Lokayukata Ajay Sharma won the race while ADG Purshottam Sharma’s team came second
and ADG SL Thousen’s team claimed the third position. Team headed by Anvesh Mangalam
came last in the competition.
Chandra Shekhar Solanki, Ashutosh Awasthi, Makrand Deuskar were in the team of Ajay
Sharma. Mrs and Mr Santosh Singh and similarly, Mrs and Mr Shailendra Singh were in the
team of Purshottam Sharma. Pawan Jain, K Baburao and Manish Shankar Sharma were in the
team of SL Thousen and Aruna Mohan Roa, Alok Ranjan, Ravi Gupta and DC Sagar were in the
team of Anvesh Mangalam. Joint Director of Public Relations department and Publicity officer
of Madhya Pradesh police Pradeep Bhatia was awarded for handling the promotion of the event
in better manner. In the prize distribution IG DC Sagar and IG Yogesh Choudhary were awarded
along with their families. Pleased with organising the event properly Sinh provided ADG Pawan
Jain with special prize.
37
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT
TELEGRAPH, JAN 18, 2016
A conservative turn- Excluding the poor
Mukul Kesavan
India's Constitution isn't perfect. No document drafted by committee can be. But it is a miracle.
In the middle of the 20th century, against a backdrop of genocidal violence, the Constituent
Assembly wrote the rules for liberal democracy on a continental scale. In the most unequal place
on earth, the founders insisted that every adult had the right to vote and stand for election
regardless of sex, education, status or wealth. In a stroke they made mass democracy the political
norm, not a distant goal to be reached in baby steps.
They weren't magicians. India remained an ugly, hierarchical society riven by discrimination and
prejudice. But at the level of political principle those prejudices were orphaned because the
Constitution did not own them. It went further: it institutionalized affirmative action by reserving
political, administrative and educational opportunities for Dalits and tribals, Independent India's
most exploited and marginalized citizens. The Constitution was, in effect, a charter of political
correctness, a blueprint for turning an old country into a new republic.
Political correctness is the term disgruntled conservatives use to snipe at civility and
consideration in public discourse. The antithesis of political correctness is a conservative
common sense that services the status quo by using arguments derived from tradition, culture
and authenticity.
This could be your aunt sagely observing that it takes three generations of literacy for the 'lowborn' to become fit for responsible white collar jobs. It could be a modern young professional
barring the woman who cleans his lavatory from doing kitchen duties for reasons of hygiene. It
could be a politician arguing that in a predominantly Hindu country it is reasonable to defer to
Hindu sensibilities. It could be a sociologist claiming tribal people were best understood as
primitive Hindus. Or it could be state legislatures passing laws to disqualify the uneducated, the
indebted and the ill from contesting local elections because they were unfit to be leaders. All of
these positions rationalize a conservative consensus where paternalism rules and the poor and
marginal know their place.
It is a consensus that has never been hegemonic in republican politics, thanks to the radical
inclusiveness of the Constitution. In a viciously unequal country like ours there aren't many
institutions that nurture a sense of fellow-feeling that might bridge differences between the
comfortable and the wretched, between people of one sort and people of another. Alone in the
cultures of the world, India has no tradition of public places where strangers can eat and drink
and talk. No cafés, no pubs, no coffee houses, no communal meeting places.
Which is why the great liberal moment when India's republicanism was forged was an
exceptional time. The mass mobilizations led by the Congress, the inclusive rhetoric of an anticolonial nationalism, created a sense of fellowship unprecedented in India's history. To be part of
38
a great movement, to be jailed for your convictions, to know that men and women not like you
had rallied to the same cause, was to be socialized into that great republican virtue, fraternity,
before the republic was formally inaugurated. It wasn't broad enough, this sense of fellowship, to
prevent partition, but it was strong enough to constitute an inclusive, scrupulously non-sectarian
republic committed to mass democracy.
The great triumph of this Indian take on political correctness was that even sectarians were
forced to use its vocabulary. Thus the 'integral humanism' of Deendayal Upadhyaya and the
'pseudo-secularism' of Lal Krishna Advani were attempts to ground majoritarianism in the
terminological terrain of liberalism. The power of the idea of republican inclusiveness was
perversely demonstrated by Advani's odd infatuation with Jinnah towards the end of his political
career. And the idea of reservations as a way of creating a level playing field in an unequal
society became politically sacrosanct, even for a right-wing party like the BJP.
But the election of Narendra Modi was both a symptom of and a catalyst for a conservative
reaction against the republican virtues. Instead of liberty, equality and fraternity, we have, in
recent years, been offered efficiency, respectability and paternalism. This is most obvious in the
arena of local self-government, where state legislatures are allowed to frame eligibility criteria
for contesting elections. One state government after another has tried to limit the participation of
the poor in municipal and panchayat elections. While the BJP-led state governments in Haryana
and Rajasthan have done this in the most systematic and thorough-going way, the
marginalization of the poor in local politics is a cross-party endeavour. A variety of political
parties have tried to disqualify the uneducated, the indebted and the sick from political office, on
the vicious assumption that the poor are responsible for their poverty, that having failed to fend
for themselves they can't be allowed to represent others.
The contempt for the vulnerable in these laws is medieval, especially the enthusiasm with which
they exclude the ill. The legal scholar, Anup Surendranath, writes in The Indian Express that
Odisha and Rajasthan disqualify people with leprosy from contestingpanchayati elections.
Odisha bars those suffering from tuberculosis for good measure and, along with Maharashtra,
Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, prevents the 'deaf-mute' from local body elections. Rajasthan,
according to Surendranath, takes this prejudice against the disabled to its logical conclusion,
"...disqualifying anyone with a 'physical or mental defect or disease rendering him incapable of
work.'"
It's interesting that the criteria used to disqualify the poor are 'secular': education, or a lack of it,
debt, the absence of a lavatory, ill health. This is a classically right-wing agenda, aimed not at
religious community or caste, but at a class, those who are chronically indebted, who can't afford
an education or a lavatory, who can't pay a doctor's bills... in short, the poor. These laws won't
prevent Dalits or women from getting elected topanchayati office because the seats reserved for
them will be filled by women and Dalits who meet these criteria. They will merely exclude the
poor within these categories. This is class war waged with election laws.
Remarkably, India's Supreme Court, so willing, otherwise, to intervene in matters of public
interest, has consistently deferred to the right of state legislatures to discriminate amongst their
citizens. Surendranath cites the 2008 verdict of the Supreme Court where it upheld Odisha's
39
decision to bar those suffering from leprosy from contesting panchayat elections, ruling that this
did not violate their right to equality. In exactly the same spirit, the court endorsed the Haryana
Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act 2015 that effectively excluded half of Haryana's rural
population from contesting panchayat elections. The Constitution and its interpreters no longer
seem to stand athwart conservative prejudice, saying 'stop'.
The BJP's decision to allow its governments in two states to exclude substantial sections of their
adult population from political competition is a daring one. Both Rajasthan and Haryana passed
their panchayat acts early in the life of Modi's prime ministership. It remains to be seen how this
move resonates politically. It could backfire. With legislative assembly elections due in India's
largest state, Uttar Pradesh, in 2017, this bill could be a gift for the Bahujan Samaj Party and its
mainly plebeian support base. Its leader, Mayavati, could cite these bills as an upper caste BJPled conspiracy to exclude the poor and the backward from the basic electoral processes of a
republican democracy.
Alternatively, the BJP might succeed in rallying a plurality of votes around this paternalistic
vision of governance by the respectable on behalf of the great unwashed. These laws and their
endorsement by the Supreme Court have created an opening for an explicitly conservative
politics; whether this can be consolidated into a conservative era depends on Modi's ability to do
in Uttar Pradesh what he failed to do in Bihar: win India's poor heartlan
TELEGRAPH, JAN 22, 2016
Changing the rules: - Poland's liberal democracy is threatened
Timothy Garton Ash
Poland, the pivotal power in post-communist central Europe, is in danger of being reduced by
its recently elected ruling party to an illiberal democracy. Basic pillars of its still youthful
liberal democracy, such as the constitutional court, public service broadcasters and a
professional civil service, are suddenly under threat. The voices of all allied democracies, in
Europe and across the Atlantic, must be raised to express their concern about a turn with grave
implications for the whole democratic West.
And this needs to happen soon. For the political blitzkrieg of the last two months suggest that
the strategy of the Law and Justice Party (known by its Polish acronym as PiS), and specifically
of its one true leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is to do the dirty work of transforming the political
system rapidly, even brutally, and then to show a kinder, softer, more pragmatic face. He has
the parliamentary majority to do this (although not the two-thirds needed to change the
Constitution), still considerable popular support, and, shockingly, the president of the country is
behaving like his glove puppet. For at least 20 years, Kaczynski has dreamed of what he sees as
completing the anti-communist revolution of 1989, but he also knows, recalling his experience
in power from 2005 to 2007, that the window of opportunity may not long be open. So he says
to himself, like Macbeth, "[I]f it were done... then 'twere well. It were done quickly."
Since what I have just written will be seen as partisan, unfair criticism by many who voted for
Kaczynski's party in last autumn's election, let me state equally clearly what I am not saying. I
40
am not criticizing a party with a clear parliamentary majority for pushing through its
proclaimed conservative, Catholic, Eurosceptic policies, cleverly combined with an almost leftwing set of economic and welfare promises. I may not like those policies, but that's democracy.
I have been for nearly 40 years now a friend of Poland, not just of one milieu, let alone of any
particular party. Among my most moving memories is the vast crowd in front of the historic
monastery of Czestochowa greeting Pope John Paul II in 1983, and singing the old patriotic
hymn, "Return to us, O Lord, a free fatherland".
PiS represents a whole conservative, religious side of Polish society, and a solid third of the
Polish electorate. Skilfully picking up other votes, benefiting from the disillusionment with the
centrist Civic Platform and pathetic chaos on the Polish Left, it won a resounding victory in a
free and fair election - like David Cameron's Conservatives in Britain. So it's not the policies,
the politics or even the ideology that requires all friends of Poland to sound the alarm; it's the
winning team attempting unilaterally to change the rules of the whole democratic game.
A comparison with Conservative-ruled Britain is interesting, because PiS politicians claim to be
implementing something like British-style parliamentary sovereignty. A British Conservative
politician once described Britain's political system as "elective dictatorship", because of the
extraordinary power concentrated in the hands of any prime minister with a substantial and
disciplined parliamentary majority. Yet although Britain does not have a written Constitution,
like the United States of America and Germany, it does have powerful checks and balances: an
impeccably neutral head of state, fiercely independent courts which do not hesitate to find
against government ministers, the BBC, a professional civil service, security services that (these
days, so far as I know) don't do the bidding of one politician against other politicians, a robust
culture of civil political debate... Need I go on?
In Poland, by contrast, the president, Andrzej Duda, is executing his political master's strategy.
Duda holds a doctorate in law, but his own doctoral supervisor says he has already violated the
Constitution three times. New legislation and judicial appointments will effectively neuter the
constitutional court (formally Constitutional Tribunal), a new media law subordinates public
service broadcasting directly to government, political appointees will be allowed at the highest
level of the civil service, and so on. For a rough British comparison, imagine Nigel Farage in
place of the queen (King Nigel I?), the Daily Maileditor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, appointed by the
ruling party to direct the BBC, and the Mailcolumnist, Richard Littlejohn, becoming the top
official at the foreign office.
The good news is that Polish society is already mobilizing in defence of liberal democracy. As
early as last November, an opinion poll found 55 per cent of respondents saying democracy is
threatened in Poland. The European Union has also responded more sharply than it did to
similar (and worse) changes in Viktor Orbán's Hungary. Tellingly, Kaczynski and Orbán met
privately for five hours on January 6, coordinating their positions.
The day after Poland's constitutional court met to consider the constitutionality of its own
emasculation, the European Commission discussed whether the attack on that court and the new
media law justified invoking a new EU mechanism to defend the rule of law in member states.
German media have given particular prominence to this dangerous turn in Poland, the European
41
Commissioner responsible for media also happens to be German, as is Martin Schulz, the
outspoken president of the European Parliament.
But if we leave it to Brussels and the Germans, it is all too easy for Kaczynskiites to claim that
Brussels is giving orders to Poland just as Moscow used to, and to play on still latent antiGerman feeling. So we need traditional friends of Poland to speak up as well: its historic ally,
France, for example (Poland is the only country I know to make positive reference to Napoleon
in its national anthem); Spain, another major, traditionally Catholic country, which has made
the transition from dictatorship to democracy; Italy, Canada. Not least, we should hear from the
US, especially as Poland prepares to host an important North Atlantic Treaty Organization
summit this summer and wants Nato forces permanently based in the country.
And what about Britain? Realistically, Cameron is the politician least likely to criticize
Kaczynski at the moment, because he desperately needs a deal over in-work benefits for
(mainly Polish) migrants in the United Kingdom, so as to win his referendum on Britain's EU
membership. But it's worth a try, if only to hear his weasel words in reply. So will a British
member of parliament please put down a question about Poland for the next prime minister's
questions in the House of Commons?
The author is professor of European Studies at Oxford University, and senior fellow at the
Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His new book, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a
Connected World, will be published next spring
42
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
TELEGRAPH, JAN 20, 2016
Project for improvement: - Coordination and management for effective governance
Commentarao
S.L. Rao
The Indian bureaucracy has implemented and managed some complex projects since
Independence. Hydroelectric projects, national highways, educational institutions, hospitals,
welfare schemes like free or cheap food for the poor, famine relief, disasters like floods,
tsunamis and earthquakes, events like the Kumbh Mela once in 12 years at Allahabad
attended by millions from all over India, the national employment guarantee scheme that has
raised rural wages and consumption, among many others.
Many of them, particularly labour intensive projects, municipal ones and welfare schemes,
have exceeded time and cost budgets. Welfare and guarantee schemes have not benefited
many of the desired beneficiaries. Some examples: millions of bogus ration cards, diversion
of subsidized foodgrains, kerosene and so on to the open market, the beneficiaries receiving
only a part of the guaranteed payments under the employment guarantee; vast national
resources (coal, iron ore, sand, spectrum) given away at national loss and private gain. A few
bureaucrats, politicians and businessmen have enriched themselves. Indian governments are
good at handling major crises, but fail in managing schemes and projects that take time.
Corporate governance and management of successful companies have lessons for
governments. Government administration has complex procedures and no individual
accountability. Companies have clear individual authorities and decision-making. The
individual's accountability is clear. Its absence in government makes it difficult to identify
and deal with (through training, other work experiences, termination) employees who are
incompetent or misuse authority. There is a leader with authority over everyone.
Lack in many of these is visible in very many State-owned enterprises, in vital sectors as
well as in peripheral ones. These enterprises cannot diversify their outputs in relation to
market needs. Their leaders tend to look up to the government for approvals. The interest of
consumers is not the priority. The tenures of CEOs are short (three years usually) and most
are appointed when nearing retirement age. The government also continues to exercise many
controls over major decisions (pricing, raw material procurement and so on). All enterprises
in India, public and private, are subject to many critical government approvals and
clearances. Particularly in State enterprises these have led to inefficiencies, slowed decisionmaking, constrained individual initiatives and enterprise, making it difficult to do business in
India. Estimates say that State-owned enterprises reduce gross domestic product by over 1
per cent). In decision-making, when vast schemes and projects are involved, governments in
India could usefully take lessons from those private enterprises that are governed and
managed well. What is so different about such private enterprises?
Enterprises succeed because they have a common vision, and a plan for the future. There is a
43
detailed delineation of the tasks to be performed by individuals and groups, with timelines
for completing them to achieve the objectives of the plan. Risks are assessed and actions
worked out to counter them. Tasks assigned to individuals and groups and their performance
is regularly measured, there are feedback and rewards and penalties on performance. People
are carefully chosen and trained for the tasks assigned to them. Their ability to build teams is
valued and nurtured. Regular and objective evaluations identify training needs, assignments
for broadening experience, and job rotation to develop talent. Different teams work together,
completing the portion of their tasks that enable the others to perform. There is succession
planning for all jobs, and no certainty that the same person might stay on a succession list.
Potential CEOs are identified and given necessary work exposures.
The outstanding example was the design and building of the Polaris submarine in the 1960s
within a tight time-frame. It was a complex job, with hundreds of items to be procured, made
and delivered in time and cost budgets. The methods developed became a model of effective
management that swept corporate practice globally.
Efficient practices include strong monitoring and evaluation systems put in place that
measure progress, identify hold-ups and bottlenecks before they become so, and anticipate
difficulties and their solutions. Timely changes can then be made to the plan and even among
the people assigned various tasks. The purpose is to prevent execution from suffering.
In recent years, there are increasing instances of the government being unable to manage
large projects. Calcutta built the first metro in India. It used primitive technology and took
many years to complete. The Delhi metro was led by an engineer who had built railways in
difficult conditions, most recently the Konkan Railway. He demanded and got full authority
and was not interfered with. Construction began in 1998. It has over 213 kilometres, carried
2.7 million passengers a day, and is the 12th largest in the world. It was built with minimum
inconvenience to a very busy city. Mumbai gave metro construction to a private company.
Delayed permissions from state government and the railways considerably delayed the
project which is still small. Its leadership was by an inexperienced manager. Bangalore
metro has been led by bureaucrats (there have been four IAS CEOs). It has been under
construction for over 10 years and has hardly 20 kilometres running. It has disrupted traffic
in an already overcrowded city.
One sees the same pattern in managing electricity distribution companies. State-owned
electricity boards have brought nationalized banks that lent money to them to the verge of
collapse. Privatized distribution companies have done well in spite of government
interference. They are led by professional managers for whom it is a career. State-owned
Discoms with turnovers of Rs 10,000 crore and more are mostly led by administrators, early
in their careers, when in their thirties.
Welfare schemes have become huge and call for good management and leadership. In their
absence, there is large theft, and many targeted beneficiaries are not covered.
The lessons are clear: put a trained career manager as CEO; smooth out coordination issues
in advance (for example, with the metro - road traffic, diversions, pipe lines, rail lines to be
44
crossed and so on). Another lesson is to have a single CEO till most of the initial project
execution; lay down systems that are well learnt by all; have fully worked budgets, with
financing plans by dates, detailed work plans and qualified people. Permissions from the
government should be planned and given in advance. The issue is not about
publicversus private ownership. It is about coordination - with all parties and departments and qualified management.
The problems multiply when political persons are also involved. This is the problem in many
urban areas where, for example, road construction, repairs, clearing drains, clearing and
disposing of garbage, among others, have become insuperable problems. Garbage requires
collection, clearance, transportation to a collection point, transportation for disposal by
dumping or in waste disposal plants. Similarly, drains have to be periodically cleared and,
before the monsoon, cleared of mud and garbage; the muck has to be transported and
dumped. Banning plastics will help. But there is big and regular money in contracts for these
activities, for contractors and the awarders of contracts. The absence of a single CEO with
authority, multiple agencies whose approval is required, the lack of coordination between the
many agencies, and corruption at all levels with no remedial actions, are major issues. An
urban area with a single CEO who has all concerned agencies reporting to him, (as in
London and New York), has a better chance of success. Bombay in the 1950s experienced
this when S.K. Patil was mayor and the city ran well.
Corporate governance and management have developed principles to get large-scale works
implemented well and within time and cost budgets. Governments must learn from them.
The author is former director-general, National Council of Applied Economic Research
45
PUBLISHING
TELEGRAPH, JAN 23, 2016
Critical republicanism- Can Hindu liberals criticize Muslim bigots?
Politics and Play - Ramachandra Guha
In March, 1937, M.K. Gandhi published an article entitled "Need for Tolerance". This was in
response to a letter he had received from a Muslim friend. This man, a liberal and sceptic,
wondered why, when referring to the Prophet Mohammad or the Koran, Gandhi never analysed
them critically. "I am at a loss," he wrote, "to understand how a person like you, with all your
passion for truth and justice, who has never failed to gloss over a single fault in Hinduism or to
repudiate as unauthentic the numerous corruptions that masquerade under it, can holus-bolus
accept all that is in the Koran." The friend was "not aware," he told Gandhi, "of your ever having
to called into question or denounced any iniquitous injunction of Islam. Against some of these I
learned to revolt when I was scarcely 18 or 20 years old and time has since only strengthened
that first feeling."
Reproducing and then answering this letter in Harijan, Gandhi remarked, "I have nowhere said
that I believe literally in every word of the Koran, or for that matter of any scripture in the world.
But it is no business of mine to criticize the scriptures of other faiths or to point out their defects.
It should be, however, my privilege to proclaim and practise the truths that there may be in
them.'
Gandhi held the view that only adherents of a particular faith had the right to criticize its precepts
or sanctions. By that token, it was both his "right and duty to point out the defects in Hinduism in
order to purify it and to keep it pure. But when non-Hindu critics set about criticizing Hinduism
and cataloguing its faults they can only blazon their own ignorance of Hinduism and their
incapacity to regard it from the Hindu viewpoint. ... Thus my own experience of the non-Hindu
critics of Hinduism brings home to me my limitations and teaches me to be wary of launching on
a criticism of Islam or Christianity and their founders."
Critics from within had the capacity and empathy to reform and redeem their faith; critics from
without the tendency to mock and caricature the other's faith. Gandhi thus concluded that it was
"only through such a reverential approach to faiths other than mine that I can realize the principle
of equality of all religions".
Gandhi was writing in 1937, at a time when Hindu-Muslim relations in British India were
fraught with tension. Muslims had enthusiastically participated in the non-cooperation movement
of 1920-22. But they had largely stayed away from the second major campaign led by Gandhi,
the Salt Satyagraha of 1930-31. His associates in the 1920s, such as Shaukat and Mohammad
Ali, had now become Gandhi's bitterest opponents.
In 1934, M.A. Jinnah returned from self-imposed exile in England. He took over as president of
the Muslim League, and infused new energy into the organization. It began to emerge as an all46
India party. In this context, Gandhi and his Indian National Congress had to be even more careful
not to alienate Muslim opinion, if they wished to build a broad front against colonial rule. Thus
his gentle, ginger approach to the question of whether he, a Hindu, could criticize Muslim icons
or religious texts.
Must liberal Hindus be as cautious in 2016 as Gandhi was in 1937? If (like Gandhi) we have a
critical, sceptical, attitude towards our own faith, must we yet be "reverential" towards other
faiths? I ask this question in the context of the controversy that has broken over some incendiary
remarks about the Prophet Mohammad made by a Hindu Mahasabha leader named Kamlesh
Tiwari. The remarks were deplorable; yet surely the response by Muslims across India was
grossly out of proportion.
In my own home town, Bangalore, the Deccan Herald reported that "a huge procession was
taken out during the evening, culminating in a rally at Khuddus Saheb Eidgah (Haj camp) on
Miller's Road at 7 p.m". The rallies "led to traffic jams in some areas". Meanwhile, "a large
number of Muslim traders closed down their business establishments and participated in the
procession". At the rally itself, speakers demanded that "the Central Government should
intervene and ensure steps against such utterances".
The protests in Bangalore took place in mid-December, several weeks after Kamlesh Tiwari's
remarks. A month later still, a mob went on the rampage in the Malda district of West Bengal,
burning shops and homes, angry about what Tiwari was reported to have said.
Bangalore and Malda are a thousand miles from Uttar Pradesh. And Kamlesh Tiwari is an
obscure figure in an obscure political party; he will soon slip back into the obscurity he deserves.
However contemptible his remarks, did they really call for such large protests across India? And
is the faith of Muslims in the Prophet so fragile that it can be disturbed by a single vile remark by
an unknown or insignificant man?
This brings me back to Gandhi's question, or dilemma. What does a liberal who happens to be a
Hindu do when Muslims or Christians submit to misguided or malevolent leaders of their faith?
Does he stay silent, or speak up? I think the latter. Goodness knows that Muslims in Bangalore
and Malda suffer from all kinds of handicap: poor schooling, inadequate housing, patriarchy
within, discrimination in the workplace without. Tragically, rather than focus on these vital
issues of everyday life, Muslim 'community' leaders seek to channelize the energies of their
followers only in a defence of the Prophet.
As a Hindu, I believe those who think that Mohan Bhagwat is an able or credible leader are
misguided. For Bhagwat has not disavowed the idea of the Hindu rashtra; indeed, he publicly
venerates his predecessor M.S. Golwalkar, he who claimed that Muslims, Christians and
Communists were the three main enemies of the nation. In 2016, the RSS still does not fully
endorse gender equality, while it is savagely prejudiced towards gays and lesbians. In sum, it is
not the kind of Hindu body that I believe deserves to lead and guide Hindus in the 21st century.
As an Indian, I think the fact that the most important Muslim leader in our most populous state is
Azam Khan is a disgrace to Muslims, to Uttar Pradesh, and to India. He has a known track
record in polarizing Hindus and Muslims. (Notably, it was an offensive remark of Azam Khan
47
that sparked the offensive retort of Kamlesh Tiwari.)
In terms of sheer venality, Azam Khan may be in a class of his own. Sadly, the Muslim leaders
elsewhere in India are not much better. They also seek to stoke the insecurities of their
constituency, rather than provide them hope and opportunity. Rather than start schools, or offer
vocational training, they choose to use the funds and manpower at their disposal to organize
processions ostensibly in defence of the Prophet, but, in truth, to consolidate their own power
and prestige within the community.
Gandhi was right that religious reform is largely brought about by critics within the tradition. It
was because he was a Hindu that he could successfully challenge the Sankaracharyas when they
defended the pernicious practice of untouchability. By the same token, it may only be that when
Muslim liberals are numerous and organized enough that practices such as polygamy and the
triple talaq can be abolished.
At the moment, they are not. One of the peculiarities of liberal discourse in India is that while
there are many Hindu writers and politicians ready to criticize Hindutva fanatics, Muslim writers
and politicians are hesitant to take on the bigots in their own community. It is disappointing to
see even professedly modern, cosmopolitan politicians like Salman Khurshid and Omar
Abdullah so reluctant to openly confront the likes of the Owaisi brothers and Azam Khan.
Back in 1937, Gandhi suggested that Hindus should stay clear of criticizing Muslim precept and
practice, and vice versa. Perhaps in the peculiar conditions of colonial rule one had to be careful,
since the British wanted Indians to divide, so that they could rule. But now that we are all
citizens of an independent and democratic republic, the same constraints do not apply. To be
sure, one need not be unnecessarily provocative. But one must still have the right to offer
friendly advice, and even criticism, to fellow Indians, regardless of what religion or community
they belong to. What Kamlesh Tiwari said cannot be defended. But the reaction, in Bangalore,
Malda and other places, was surely a tragic misdirection of the talents and energies of these
Muslims who also happen to be Indians.
Gandhi's own prudence and restraint was a product of the times he lived in. But now, in 2016, all
thinking liberals must speak out against bigotry and narrow-mindedness, whether it emanates
from Hindus or from Muslims, and whether they themselves are Hindu, or Muslim, or neither.
48
RAILWAYS
TRIBUNE, JAN 19, 2016
Rlys may hike fares to bear burden of 7th pay panel
Finding ways to bear the burden of implementation of the 7th Pay Commission, the Indian
Railways is mulling a hike in passenger rail fares.
Officials in the Ministry of Railways contemplating the move after the Finance Ministry has
rejected the public sector behemoth's demand for Rs 32,000 crore as revenue grant and instead
suggested it to look for measures to improve revenue to meet its requirements.
Union Minister for Railways Suresh Prabhu in a kind of "SOS" had sought a grant of Rs 32,000
crore from the Finance Ministry to implement the 7th Pay Commission recommendations, while
maintaining that his ministry would be able to bear the cost in two to three years.
The country's largest public sector is also finding it hard to meet the revenue target set for freight
due to tough competition from road carriers. Officials in the ministry said there was a very little
scope to further increase in freight charges.
They said at present, the Railways payout on salary, allowance and pension was almost about 50
per cent of the total revenue. But once the recommendations of 7th Pay Commission are
implemented, the outgo would jump to 68 per cent of current revenue mop up, they added.
Even while the Railways chose to fully absorb the windfalls out of the sharp slump in crude
prices, it is in no position to implement the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission
"without making an upward revision of the passenger fare" of the Sleeper and 3rd AC, said the
officials.
The Railways has kept the dynamic fuel adjustment component of the passenger and freight fare
in abeyance ever since crude prices slipped into a free fall. At present, the crude is below $30 per
barrel.
Politically too, the officials said, this year is not going to be tough for the ruling BJP to take the
unpopular decision of a hike in passenger fare, as five states are scheduled to go to the Assembly
polls.
PIONEER, JAN 20, 2016
35 SEC COMPULSORY WAIT TO BOOK TICKETS ONLINE: IRCTC
49
After reports of over 18,000 hacking attempts on its website, the Indian Railway Catering and
Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), which facilitates online railway ticket booking facility, has taken
a slew of measures including a 35 seconds compulsory wait to book tickets online, difficult
captchas for hassle-free booking by genuine ticket seekers and curb activities of touts.
IRCTC Chairman and Managing Director AK Manocha said that it is not possible to book ticket
online before 35 seconds’ mandatory wait as it has been done to prevent faster booking by
unscrupulous elements using any other means. “We have taken certain security measures to
prevent manipulation of the ticketing site and at the same time the site has been upgraded with a
substantial investment to enable the system to book 15,000 tickets per minute,” Manocha said at
a Press briefing on the subject.
When countered about the 35 seconds time limit, Manocha said none can fill the form before the
new time limit due to the difficult captcha. Manocha said even then they came to know about
some automated script softwares available with the touts for faster bookings. “Thus to prevent
that, very difficult captchas have now been introduced,” he said.
Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) MD Sanjay Das said 35 seconds is the minimum
time required to fill the information necessary for booking ticket online. “We cannot make it any
longer otherwise there will be a long queue which will again be counter-productive,” said Das.
CRIS provides the software to IRCTC.
About the possibility of hacking the site to cause disruption in the service, Das said foolproof
arrangements have been made to prevent any unauthorised intrusion or hacking of the site. The
organisation has engaged Standardisation Ticketing and Quality Control, a website security audit
expert, to check the system and they have certified that the site is safe.
“There have been about 18,500 attempts in the past to intrude into the system which can be
called as denial of service attackers. We have taken necessary security measures to prevent such
incidents,” Das said.
Online booking of train tickets has gone up to 58 per cent of the total tickets booked by railways.
In order to facilitate the genuine passengers, Tatkal booking time has been staggered from 10 am
to 11 am for AC classes and 11 am to 12 pm for non-AC classes.
50
TAXATION
ASIAN AGE, JAN 19, 2016
Halve TDS to 5 per cent, says panel
Soon your deposits will attract a lower tax deduction at source (TDS), if the government accepts
the recommendations of Justice (rtd) R.V. Easwar Committee on the simplification of incometax laws.
The committee on Monday recommended that the TDS rates for individuals be reduced to five
per cent as against the present 10 per cent.
It also recommended levying lower short-term capital gains tax (SCGT) on annual earning of
less than Rs 5 lakh to enco-urage people to invest in stock markets. The panel said that the
income from share trading below Rs 5 lakh should not be considered as the business income.
The committee recommended that TDS of five per cent should be applicable if interest earned by
an individual on bank deposit or private deposit is over Rs 15,000. The current threshold for
bank deposits is Rs 10,000 and private deposits Rs 5,000 — beyond which a TDS of 10 per cent
is levied.
A 20 per cent TDS is deducted if the interest earned from the National Saving Scheme is over Rs
2,500. The committee has recommended that a five per cent TDS be imposed if withdrawal is
above `Rs 5,000. The five per cent TDS will apply if the interest on securities is more than Rs
15,000. Currently, 10 per cent tax is deducted at source if the interest on securities is over Rs
2,500.
This move will help senior citizens who have to pay TDS even if they are not liable to pay
income-tax and have to go through the tedious process to get a refund.
“It is a matter of record that a number of annual threshold limits in respect of TDS have just not
come to be revised over the years,” said the report, adding that the committee halved the TDS as
80 percent payers come under the less than five per cent tax bracket.
The limit on rent income threshold for TDS is proposed to be raised from Rs 1.8 lakh annually to
Rs 2.4 lakh. The threshold for fees for professional or technical services is recommended to be
raised to Rs 50,000 from Rs 30,000 but TDS rate is proposed to be retained at 10 per cent.
51
TERRORISM
DECCAN HERALD, JAN 22, 2016
Police, not military, can fight extremism
At least 20 people, most of them students and teachers at the Bacha Khan University (BKU) at
Charsadda near Peshawar in Pakistan were killed in a major terrorist attack on Wednesday
morning, laying bare yet again the vulnerability of places of learning to terrorist attacks. The
identity of the attackers is yet to be established. While a Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader has
claimed responsibility, the outfit’s main spokesperson has denied links with the assault.
However, the needle of suspicion points in the TTP’s direction. Education has been an important
target of the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban. Schools and colleges have repeatedly come under fire
as they are seen to be providing a modernist vision, which is at odds with the Taliban’s
obscurantist thinking. Additionally, attacks on schools have maximum shock value and are easy
to execute as they are soft targets. Wednesday’s attack at Charsadda has stirred grim memories
of a similar assault by the TTP a little over a year ago on a school for children of the armed
forces. That attack left 135 children dead. In the wake of the 2014 Peshawar school attack, the
Pakistani government displayed a new resolve to fight terrorism. It promised to target all terrorist
groups without distinction. It came out with a 20-point National Action Plan (NAP) and only a
few weeks ago, the military trotted out numbers of slain terrorist to showcase its success in
taking on terrorists. However, the attack on BKU lays bare the hollowness of the military’s
claim; the terrorists’ capacity to unleash violence and mayhem remains very much intact.
Using the military to fight terrorism often does more harm than good. It undermines civilian
institutions. Homes rather than terrorist hideouts are destroyed in random bombing as the
military cannot match the local police’s intelligence network. Thus, it is a blunt instrument that
results in massive human rights violations, which in turn fuel militancy and anger against the
state. High-profile responses to terrorism such as hanging of terrorists found guilty in the attack
do not deter others from indulging in terrorism. Importantly, the good terrorist-bad terrorist
distinction continues to shape the Pakistan military’s counter-terrorism strategy.
Pakistan needs to substitute its current military-focu-sed counter-terrorism strategy to one that is
led by the police and based on strong intelligence input. If the NAP is meant to combat terrorism
in Pakistan, it must be reworked to empower civilian institutions and strengthen public
confidence in the state, as well as weaken extre-mist ideologies and radicalisation. A strategy
that focuses on violence and revenge cannot defeat extremism.
52
TRANSPORT
STATESMAN, JAN 19, 2016
Good: But enough?
The strongest message to emerge from the 15-day odd-even pollution-control experiment in
Delhi is that the citizen is so concerned about the poor quality of air he is condemned to breathe
that he is prepared to abandon his customary law-defying ways and support a clean air initiative.
A degree of desperation is what triggered the unexpectedly high level of compliance: not the
threat of a hefty fine, probably not even the publicity overdrive. It is important not to perceive
that positive response as an endorsement of the odd-even policy, for the “collateral”
inconvenience/disruption is unlikely to be accepted on a longer term. It would also be critical
that those in authority junk political rhetoric and the hysteria of environment activists - there are
varying scientific assessments on the scheme’s impact - and interpret that response as a demand
for more permanent remedial action. In fact it would be dangerous to run away with the idea that
less traffic was the desired objective, for then the logical conclusion would be that the partial
“lock-down” be converted into a total curfew. Is that possible? The odd-even formula was
actually hitting a soft-target - the individual. And the string of “exemptions” only confirmed that
skewed approach. Now that the public has expressed itself in favour of less-contaminated air it is
time for both state and central government to tackle “real” issues such as completing the “bypass” loops, expediting Metro projects, upgrading “local” trains on the trunk routes, cracking
down on builders who ignore dust-reducing techniques, shutting down chimneys of all
description.
A serious bid must be made to end the petrol-diesel price difference which prompted the surge
for diesel cars. The price of diesel at fuel stations must be substantially raised: since truckers fillup at transport centres a lower price could be charged there - for trucks only. A concerted effort
to de-congest the city is needed, major wholesale markets must be moved over 100 kms away the business community is resilient enough to counter the impact on Delhi’s “distributive”
commercial character. The central government would also do well not to concentrate all its
offices in Delhi; and with due respect to the uniformed community it is time that “marching
orders” are issued. The WW-II depots could be re-located, so too many of the newer “facilities”
that threaten to reduce Delhi Cantonment to a concrete jungle. The Western Air Command, for
example, could be moved to a more “operationally-relevant” centre, and modern
communications militate against all the directorates at the Service Headquarters functioning in
the Capital. And farmers in the hinterland prevented from burning wheat stubble. A series of
steps rather than a single one will be decidedly more effective than nailing the single-car family
to a politically-contrived cross.
53
TELEGRAPH, JAN 19, 2016
CTC swallows staff nest egg
The Calcutta Tramways Company (CTC) has illegally spent Rs 27 crore deducted from the
salaries of its 5,600 employees as contributions to a co-operative fund over four-and-a-half years,
an offence as serious as an employer defaulting on provident fund deposits.
Calcutta High Court on Monday asked the state-run company to deposit Rs 27 crore with the
West Bengal State Co-operative Credit Society by June 30 and file an affidavit within February
5, providing details of where the money went.
"The employees have a legitimate claim over the money they had earned and the company's
management is bound to pay the amount to them," Justice I.P. Mukerji said.
The order was in response to a petition by members of the Calcutta Tramways Company
Employees' Co-operative Society Ltd in mid-2014.
Contributions to the co-operative fund are around seven per cent of an employee's basic salary.
The amount is meant to be deposited with the credit society so that employees get loans
whenever they require them, based on individual eligibility. An employee gets back the corpus
accumulated over the service period with 9 per cent interest at the time of retirement.
Legal experts said the CTC management's failure to deposit the money deducted from the
salaries of its workforce with the co-operative credit society was tantamount to a violation of
statutory obligations. "Had the entity been a private employer, an offence like this would invite a
jail term," said lawyer and Congress leader Arunava Ghosh, who is representing the petitioners.
Under section 59 of the West Bengal Co-operative Societies Act of 2006, an employer who
deducts an amount from an employees' wages as contributions to a co-operative society has to
"pay the amount to the society within 15 days of the date of deduction".
If the employer defaults in making the deposit, "he/she shall be liable to make the payment to the
co-operative society together with interest at 12 per cent per annum".
The rule book also states that "the entire amount shall be recoverable from the employer or the
drawing and disbursing officer by the co-operative society.... and such amount shall rank in
priority in respect of the liability of the employer or drawing and disbursing officer as wages in
arrear".
The fourth schedule of the act says that failure of the employer to make deductions and payment
under section 59 would be liable for "imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months
or fine which may extend to Rs 1,000 or both".
Lawyer Ghosh had said while filing the petition last year that the company had no authority to
retain the amount it had deducted from employees' salaries for any purpose.
54
On Monday, Justice Mukerji asked CTC managing director Nilanjan Shandilya to file an
affidavit stating his views on the employees' contention.
The state government provides an annual subsidy of Rs 120 crore to the CTC, which includes
around 75 per cent of the salaries of the 5,000-odd employees along with pension and other
benefits. Sources in the tram company said the annual outgo on salaries is around Rs 13 crore, of
which around Rs 10 crore comes from the government. It is supposed to earn the rest of the
amount.
"It is obvious that the CTC didn't earn enough after deducting operational costs to pay even 25
per cent of the salaries of the employees," a senior officer in the transport department said. "So it
decided to tap contributions to the employees' co-operative to make up for the shortfall, based on
the assumption that it would deposit the money back once revenues became better."
The CTC is the only state-owned transport company that has so far leased out its depots to
augment its earnings. The company is projected to earn Rs 200 crore by leasing out surplus land.
In an affidavit submitted on Monday, managing director Shandilya admitted that the company
had failed to deposit employee contributions to the co-operative fund. Advocate Saptangshu
Basu, appearing on behalf of the managing director, said: "Only 75 per cent of the salaries of the
tramways employees is paid by the government. The remaining 25 per cent amount, which
amounts to Rs 3.8 crore, the company has to pay. The company cannot even realise operational
costs from (tram and bus) traffic. It has no other source of income. So the amount deducted from
the salaries could not be deposited."
The lawyer requested the judge for an order directing the state government to release more funds
to the CTC.
The petitioners' counsel told the court: "The employees demand that the company pay (to the
credit society) at least 50 per cent of the total amount deducted from their salaries with
immediate effect."
Lawyer Ghosh read out statistics from official documents to prove the extent of the default.
55
"From mid-2011 till November 30, 2015, the company did not deposit a sum of Rs 27,96,95,000
with the appropriate department. As a result of this, the employees would lose money in terms of
dividends. What will the government do at the time of their retirement?" he said.
Advocate Basu didn't dispute the figures but said the CTC was in no position to deposit the
money with the co-operative society.
Justice Mukerji declined to give time beyond June 30, besides seeking a detailed explanation
from the CTC for not being able to transfer the contributions of its employees to their cooperative accounts for so long.
56