Good laws, bad implementation

Rights may be self-evident and constitutionally secured; however, they do not automatically implement themselves
In the last two years the highest courts in the country have responded to a mass call for more protection for women. Alongside, there have been many judgments from non-constitutional decision-making bodies like khap panchayats and kangaroo courts sanctioning violence against particular women or curtailing womens freedom in significant ways. Why is it that while there has been a legal expansion of womens rights in India, the societal trends that maintain a violent order against women have remained intact? Recently, a 20-year-old Santhal tribal woman was raped by 12 men in West Bengal on the orders of a kangaroo court called a salishi sabha. Her crime was to have fallen in love with a man outside her community. The couple were tied up and tried and asked to pay Rs.25,000 as payment. The man was able to pay but the woman could not. The headman reportedly decreed that she could be enjoyed by several men and that they could have fun with her. The tone of this diktat parrots what Nirbhayas rapists said they were out to have some fun and a good time. She later died after having sustained massive injuries but left behind a mass political movement calling for more rights for Indian women. Societally sanctioned rape and sexual assault is not new in India. It has been repeatedly established that Indian men assert a claim over the bodies of women because somehow, families believe that in Indian society a woman exists as an appendage to some man in her life father, brother, son or husband. If a woman steps across an invisible line (lakshman rekha), where her behaviour is seen as outrageous and unacceptable, then many people still believe that she is opening herself up to sexual assault. The most recent such pronouncement came from Ms Asha Mirje, a member of the Maharashtra State Commission for Women who stated: Rapes take place also because of a womans clothes, her behaviour and her presence at inappropriate places. In other words, for many people in society (including many women) such a woman deserves what she gets. Over the years, violence against women in various forms has reached epic proportions. An estimated 30 to 70 million girls are missing in India since 1950, i.e., they dont make it out of the birth canal. In 2011, the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES) on gender attitudes showed that 68 per cent of the Indian men surveyed (n=810) agreed that women should tolerate violence to keep their families together, while 65 per cent believed that sometimes a woman deserves to be beaten; 37 per cent of men (n=929) had physically assaulted their intimate partner at least once; 24 per cent had committed an act of sexual violence against someone in society and 20 per cent had committed sexual violence against their partners. The most interesting finding from the TrustLaw study was this one 92 per cent of those surveyed knew of the laws pertaining to violence against women. What does this figure tell us about what is happening in India to women?

Rights and resentment

The figure quoted above tells us that legislation alone is not going to stop violence against women from occurring. For every piece of progressive legislation that has upped the ante on womens rights in India, there is still the struggle against first responders who are often reluctant to register a case of rape or sexual assault. The reporting of rapes is very low in India. Most women do not report assault for a variety of reasons. Last year, Indias National Crime Records Bureau data revealed that in 2012, 24,923 rape cases were reported across India. Out of these, 24,470 were committed by parents/family, relatives, neighbours and other known persons. This leaves us with a total of 453 cases of stranger rape. In essence, men known to the victim committed 98 per cent of reported rapes. This itself is a staggering figure. A second cause of concern that emerges from the data is that we have to think about why, despite far-reaching legislation, rape and sexual assault is still common. Romit Chowdhury suggests that for Indian men the demonstration of masculinity, which has always problematically rested on harassing women, has now also become linked to breaking the laws that protect women. Rape and sexual assault are not only occurring in homes, streets and offices, but also take on a unique group dynamic in situations of communal riots where a womans body become a site of violence in the battle between caste or religious groups. Sexual violence was a strong component of the rioting in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh; 13 rape and assault cases were reported. It is suspected that some cases have not yet been reported because the women, now in refugee camps, have refused to step forward as they are afraid of losing their honour. Last year, the landmark Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 expanded the definition of rape to include more than just vaginal penetration. Stalking, voyeurism, acid attacks were brought under the Act as punishable crimes. The age of consent was raised to 18 years, below which all penetrative sexual acts will now constitute statutory rape. A rape shield clause was included, where the character of the victim was rendered irrelevant to establishing her consent. However, marital rape did not find its way into the Act and neither was rape and sexual assault removed from the purview of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA). Imperfections notwithstanding, these are still very far-reaching changes. However, for every such legislation passed by the Lok Sabha and courts, there has been a gradual stripping away of the rights of women as well. In fact, the gender situation in India needs to be understood through this process of rights expansion and the pushback it gets from society.
Women in rural India

One of the agents of mass pushback against womens rights is kangaroo courts in India. These clan-based khap panchayats and sabhas have had a long history in India. Khaps are unconstitutional and informal law-giving bodies that have captured much rural terrain in north and eastern India. Why they have re-emerged recently as strong political bodies is still a mystery but one that suggests that they have more than just traditional authority. Khaps in rural India have been asserting much power over the lives of people in rural India, the weakest of whom are women of all communities.

In the last two years alone, khaps have sanctioned several honour killings and have suggested a level of misogyny that is completely at odds with what the leading courts in the country are articulating. For instance, in the State of Haryana, there are several local khaps. Two such jat caste bodies imposed dress codes on women, and one even said that girls are agents who pollute society and bring a bad name to the community. For these bodies, policing women is easy. In rural India, police presence is low and many local notables have links with local law enforcement agents. These notables are also involved in the functioning of khaps. So, they are reasonably confident that their diktats policing womens behaviour will not be challenged. What is transpiring in contemporary India is a backlash against an expansion of rights for women that stops women from building capabilities, economic careers and acquiring some independence from male figures in their lives. Second, since khap diktats are singular statements that send messages to all women, they instill fear in young women and families with daughters, successfully silencing any protest that could arise against their rulings. The Indian state has been quite reticent in initiating any action against khaps even though it is apparent that khap diktats are blatantly undercutting womens rights and thereby contradicting the verdicts of the highest constitutional law-making bodies.
A mismatch

This process giving rights with one hand, while the other takes it away shows that people resent an expansion of rights for women and go to extreme lengths to make sure that the law of the land has no stronghold in their local communities. The Indian state may make many laws that protect women. However, none of this means much unless law enforcement agencies actually implement the law. This mismatch between the existence of good laws and their actual implementation is itself a commentary on state capacity in India. Many years ago, Francine Frankel and M.S.A. Rao drew our attention to social structures of dominance in India and how they inhibit, negotiate or encourage state power. The Indian state has failed Indian women by allowing khaps to issue diktats that contradict constitutionally sanctioned rights women have. In ignoring the khap question and not taking them head-on as groups that violate human rights, the Indian state seems to be saying that its job is done when it passes good legislation. Rights may be apparent or selfevident and constitutionally secured; however, they do not automatically implement themselves.

The myriad woes of the bus commuter

A crush of sweaty and smelly riders, as the driver goes on his own trip
For those not fortunate enough to own a car or a motorcycle, getting into a bus, especially when it is at the end of the days work, is a daily test of ones faith. Once you make it past the footboard, you are carried in by a tidal wave. And once you are inside, it is a different story. People are basically sandwiched against each other. You dont know if the one standing behind is being a pervert or just trying to breathe. Hope for the best.

It gets worse for women. Obviously. Prepare to be fondled every which way to Sunday. The midriff is often mistaken for hand-holds. Bare skin is misconstrued as a request for a free massage. Most women are proficient in the art of elbowing and karate chops. In time, you start envying women in burqas. The bus drivers here have the Schumacher Complex. They were denied a rightful place in the Grand Prix, and they give vent to their anger on the road all the time. They have a strong sense of rights and wrongs. Sometimes he may feel a passing motorist has shown disrespect to him. And when he feels wronged, there is no stopping him. Literally. He will speed up, expecting the lowly cars and bikes to make way for him, the air-horn leading the way. Once he catches up with the motorist, he will let loose a string of expletives that will leave you in silent contemplation of the many things the driver considers an insult. As a youngster, I learnt to swear in the regional language from the friendly neighbourhood driver. (In English, I learnt from Samuel L. Jackson.) The typical bus driver is the master of suspense. You will have no clue about when the bus is going to halt. The nave bus-virgins will assume a bus will slow down before it stops. What they dont realise is that the laws of physics do not apply here. The bus stops when the bus stops. The driver has mastered the art of bringing the bus to an absolute standstill from a speed of 80 kmph, just like that. Of course, the law of inertia dictates that the passengers, who were travelling at a speed of 80 kmph until a milli-second ago, grab whatever scrap of the bus they can find, in order not to be thrown out through the windshield. A hundred hands lifting up in the air in desperate unison, means a hundred armpits make contact with the air, and the smell that emanates is well *sob* And on those rare occasions when you manage to find a seat, prepare to be stared at, all meaning one thing you are in my seat, jerk. Out-staring the starers is an art in itself. And the minute you lift your posterior even an inch, there are 10 others jostling to fill the space. Once you are outside, smelling of armpits, pervaded by a quiet desperation, and breathing in the wonderfully polluted air without stepping on someone elses toes, you can check pockets and bags to make sure everything is where it is supposed to be. Having to travel in the bus, is the main reason why so many of the middle-class people in India are religious. I mean, if there is no God, the only thing standing between you and certain death is the bus driver, and that is not a reassuring thought.

For prudent long-term investments in real educational development

The system needs to be reformed, quickly enough. And spending on the sector needs to be channelled properly and prudently.
Indias position in the emerging world of globally interconnected economies will doubtless be dictated by how successful it is in overcoming the severe limitations of its educational system, which is the foundation of sustained development. Our countrys future depends on the educational advancement of its people. Despite heavy expenditure on the sector over the decades, the rules of the system have proved to be significant hurdles to improvement. The system remains non-adaptive. This can only be explained by the fact that it works for the benefit of those who regulate it, and not for the larger social good. Achieving constructive improvement will be a cumbersome task because powerful vested interests will impede them. To forestall this, the educated have to take up the cause of those who desperately need an efficient education system. A solution has to be found for the existing problems, starting with recognising the fact that our past policies have failed to produce stated and anticipated results. Strategies to evaluate what has not worked and why, is a essential first step in the task of reforming the educational system. Over the past few years, Indias educational system has seen various developments. Many reform steps formulated for its improvement have been sought to be implemented. Changes in terms of technological methods have brought in new gadgets and teaching methods. Some organisations have shown an overwhelming interest to take initiatives to develop the education system. Methodologies of training that have been put into practice to develop teaching skills have changed the scene. Many renowned private schools are coping with the changing environment of education and building a platform on which students can excel globally. The changing elements have also led to the commercialisation of the education system. Commercialisation is not a concept that suits the sector well. Disseminating education is a function that involves a lot of prestige, going beyond monetary rewards and benefits. But unfortunately, many educational institutions have today forgotten the essence of the education process that is meant primarily to pass on knowledge to the younger generation and to society at large. Making others life miserable for commercial success is not forgivable. If earning money is the only goal, there are several other methods and business activities that could serve the purpose. The fields of education and knowledge dissemination should be saved from such threats: in todays world, it is one of those rare gifts we can transfer to the younger generations with honesty. A teacher is a person whose hindsight can become your foresight. Teachers can make and mould a nations future by imparting moral values and enabling young minds to imbibe knowledge. But many of todays tutorials and coaching centres are not working in the same spirit. Many a coaching centre is just a commercial outfit that helps some to earn their livelihood, but the future of the youngsters they engage with, often remain a question mark. This is a line anybody can choose with minimum investment. It does not a matter if the person concerned knows at least the basics of the subject concerned.

These days we find numerous coaching centres. They typically start as home-tuition centres and later become big commercial ventures involved in selling education. Clearly, education is being commercialised. Education is one of the main factors that determine our attitude. As in the case of having a meal, it is not how much you consume that matters but how much you digest and use. In reality, we are knowledge and wisdom in information, but the thirst remains. A good education system ought to teach us not only how to make a living but also how to make a healthy livelihood. Allocations Public spending on education has to be channelled properly. Around 2 per cent of GDP is spent, but ineffectively and inefficiently. There is a need for some revolutionary rethinking on how to optimise the allocation in a proper manner. Instead of funding schools, perhaps the government could achieve better results by funding students. Education providers, whether they are in the public or private sector, will have to compete for students to impart value-oriented morality in education, besides passing on knowledge of quality in the subjects of their interest. The growing economy of India needs a large number of citizens with a range of professional skills. The system should be able to ensure their employability. To achieve a proper blend of skilled people, vocational education has to be accorded utmost attention. The number of vocational institutions will need to grow. Published figures show that India produces some 350,000 engineering graduates including IT professionals each year, compared to 600,000 in China and 130,000 in the United States. The number appears reasonable, until one recalls that only about one out of four engineers is employable in this country. This creates the paradoxical situation of vast numbers of unemployed engineers on the one hand, and employers desperately seeking skilled engineers and manpower on the other. This needs to change.

For better bedside ways

Here is some advice to those who plan to visit a sick person at home:
Making occasional visits to the homes of dear ones, sometimes unannounced and even on weekdays, and inviting friends and relatives to spend a day or two with you at home, are all part of Indian tradition. The time machine has taken us to an age where life is controlled by the touch of a finger, and yet we are very busy. In the meantime, we now need to learn to tolerate visitors coming in at odd hours even when there is a sick person at home. In my hometown recently, the worst of my experiments with visitors was when my father fell seriously ill and was almost

bedridden for some days. There was hardly a day when my siesta is not disturbed. Painful evoked in me both anger and tears. Here is some advice to those who plan to visit a sick person at home: Do not spend more than 15 minutes with a sick person, unless your presence is unavoidable. A visitor who violates this very first rule is nothing but a nuisance to an unhealthy person who might badly want to take a nap, go to the toilet or have food in a relaxed manner. When my father was admitted in hospital, my mother and I were taking care of him on the one hand, and trying to be hospitable to visitors on the other. It was suffocating to see visitors entering in herds once visiting time started. Do not take the whole family, especially kids, with you when you go to a sick persons house, so that noise and disturbance are minimised. Even if you pay a visit at an odd hour, act wisely. If you reach there in the afternoon, speak comfort to the family and leave within 10 minutes so that the patient can take food and medicine at the right time. Remember, the one who takes care of the patient also needs rest and food at the right time in order to have the energy.
Conversations

Be careful of the words you speak. Some people start conversations on socio-political, economic, domestic and international issues and often forget to put a full stop. Others keep asking the sick person: What medicine do you take? Which doctor treats you? Then there is gratuitous advice: Dont go for Ayurveda, continue with English medicines and on and on. Please try to understand that a person who tries to kill the pain in his body is not comforted, rather is irritated, by your loud discourse on unimportant matters in his presence. Avoid unnecessary comments. When I was tending to my fathers wounds, one person would say, Put more Dettol. Another would volunteer thus: Dont press that hard. If you cannot offer a helping hand, then it is better to keep quiet. A girl who takes care of her father every day knows her job. Or else, try to offer good, practical advice. While leaving, make sure the house is neat and tidy, instead of creating more burden for the people in the house. For example, if you see any eatable lying on the floor, throw it in the dustbin and do not leave it for ants. Push back chairs to their proper places. Close the door before you leave and do it quietly to keep flies and mosquitoes out. Hygienic surroundings are important. Do not disturb a sick person with phone calls, or at least see that you end the conversation as soon as possible. The patient as well as the caregiver might not have the time to take calls, or may not be in a frame of mind to do so. The plight of sick people should be understood. Privacy, peace and calm are important for them.

95neethu@gmail.com

The agony and ecstasy with appliances

The more of them you have, the better your lifestyle? Not necessarily
As I write this Im actually waiting for the guy to come and fix the washing machine. Nearly 10 days ago, my husband, trying to take the clothes out, broke the door hinge. Of course we can always fix it. So I called the servicing agency the next morning. I gave the details of the machine, model, date of purchase and address, and described the problem. I was told someone would come that day. As that did not happen, I called again the next day. Another person answered the phone and I had to give him the details all over again. I specifically told them to come with the required tools, so that time need not be wasted. A technician came that afternoon, removed the rest of the existing hinge from the machine and left. I was told there were different types and he wanted to get the right one. The next day when I called, I was told they did not have part and would order it from another city. What they were waiting for, I could not understand. I requested them to do the needful and kept the phone. After two days, when I called, I got the reply: Today it will be fixed. That was yesterday. It has become my routine to call them every day after breakfast and get this reply. And so Im waiting... One would think that the more appliances you have the better your lifestyle. It is not necessarily so. My husband enjoys buying appliances to make life easier for me or so he says. Good intentions, no doubt. If a colleague talks of an appliance, it is sure to find its way home the next day. The colleague may not mention the negative side or the problems one may have to face after making the purchase. One friend told my husband about the treadmill he bought and how he exercised in the morning and evening while watching TV. A treadmill reached home the next day. I had a tough time persuading my husband not to keep it in the hall as that would eat into the space available. It found a place in a room upstairs and it remains there. Dont ask me if it is ever used. I have my share of phobias regarding gadgets in general and home appliances in particular. I might prefer to lead a simpler life without them. For one, I cannot read the literature, and start using the appliance while nursing a mortal fear of breaking a part or spoiling it. I can happily keep away from laptops, video players and so on. But I am forced to learn about the mobile phone, mixer-grinder, refrigerator, washing machine, and so on. If the lady of the family does not use them, who will? You can be blessed in having smart children who are tech-savvy and who will do the work for you. But you see, they cant stay with you forever. They need to move out for the sake of

education, a job and starting on their own. Your busy husband never has the time to explain things for you. I have found an easy way out of this: not to use those appliances. In recognition of my husbands 15 years of service, the office gave him coupons worth Rs.10.000. We thus added five more appliances to the existing ones at home. Do I have to tell you how (if) I use them? One disadvantage of having so many appliances is that they take turns to be under repair. If they are many in number, the chances are that you will have to wait for a different service person each day. You probably have no idea of how servicing is done. A couple of months back our air-conditioner started emitting a strange sound. This will happen a while after it is switched on. The time lag can be five minutes or 30 minutes or even two hours, depending on the mood of the equipment on that particular day. Just when you are about to drift into blissful sleep, it would start. After calling the service provider for 10 days without break, someone showed up. When they came, it did not make any sound. So they returned. But it continued to roar at night. Again, I called them. When the technicians came, they inspected it and said some blade had to be changed. After two days when I asked them why they were not replacing it, I was told the airconditioner was of old model and they did not have the spare parts. I told them to change whatever they wanted if only it would remove the noise... Two weeks later, Im still waiting... People ask me if I feel bored at home. No. I wait for different service personnel each day and there is variety in the excuses they give. How interesting life is!

Compulsion by stealth
The UPA governments response to questions on Aadhaars voluntariness continues to be marked by intentional ambiguity. Compulsion by stealth is used to camouflage the use of Aadhaar as a neo-liberal policy tool
This debate is about our specific disagreement on the meaning of that one word, i.e. the Government now seek to persuade us that voluntary actually means compulsory. That was Nick Clegg in the United Kingdoms House of Commons in March 2006. Mr. Clegg and others were opposing the Labour governments decision to renew passports only if the applicants possess a national ID card. The debate, apart from being hilarious, bordered on the bizarre. The government was so keenly interpreting a sentence in the Labour Partys manifesto that at one point, Lord Phillips of Sudbury remarked: It staggers me that we are still discussing that point. Try that argument out on anyone in the high street or in a pub and you will get an are you mad? look. The Labour Partys 2005 manifesto had said: We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports. In other words, while renewing passports, citizens could choose whether to apply for an ID card. However, the government decided to insist on ID cards while renewing passports. Home Secretary Charles Clarke offered the justification that

passports are voluntary documents. When the House burst into laughter and jeers, Mr. Clarke clarified: Well, of course they are No one is forced to renew a passport if they choose not to do so! For Mr. Clarke, voluntary pertained to whether one wanted a passport, and not whether one wanted an ID card. Edward Garnier, a Conservative member, suggested, The problem facing the Government is that they have as usual misused the English language. Lord Phillips said: I am afraid that my primary schoolteacher, Miss Lovelace, would have given Mr. Clarke 0 out of 10 for that. A similar drama has been unfolding in India since 2009. Is Aadhaar compulsory? If so, what is its legal basis? Without Aadhaar, can one buy subsidised cooking gas? The United Progressive Alliance governments response to these questions is marked by intentional ambiguity; the phrase was originally used by Edgar Whitley and Gus Hosein in their research on the U.K. ID cards programme. The strategy of intentional ambiguity has had elements of obfuscation, misinterpretation, inconsistency and dishonesty. Camouflage job The first attempt of the government at obfuscation was on the relationship of Aadhaar with the Home Ministrys National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC). The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was conceptualised in the mid-2000s as a technical agency attached to the Home Ministry. The UIDAI was to de-duplicate biometric data of citizens collected under the Multipurpose National Identity Card (MNIC) project and link it with NRIC. Registration into the NRIC was compulsory after the passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2003 (there is no place for biometrics in NRIC under the 2003 Act, but let us defer that discussion). However, when established in 2009, the UIDAI was attached to the Planning Commission with a proposed developmental objective. Yet, the National Identity Number in the NRIC and Aadhaar were nothing but the same. A strategy was then evolved with two objectives: (a) camouflage Aadhaars unceasing security dimension, and (b) ensure faster enrolment into the UIDAI database. Thus, officially, the government held that Aadhaar was voluntary. On its website, the UIDAI still introduces Aadhaar as a voluntary service that every resident can avail irrespective of present documentation. In practice, the policy took a different trajectory. First, in the same breath that it denied that there was any security dimension to Aadhaar, the UIDAI piggybacked on the Home Ministry and designated the Census Commissioner as its Registrar. Thus, whoever enrolled into NRIC automatically received an Aadhaar number. Second, the UIDAI attempted to cajole public service providers to make service provision contingent on the submission of Aadhaar. For such public services, the UIDAI had a name: killer applications. In 2010, a UIDAI document argued: Every citizen must have a strong incentive or a killer application to go and get herself a UID, which one could think of as a demand side pull. Over time, leading proponents came out clearly on the governments real intentions. At Davos in January 2011, Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia spoke most directly: We will simply make it

compulsory for those benefiting from government programmes to register for the UID number. The same month, Mr. Nandan Nilekani made a daring attempt to sanitise the term compulsory: Yes, [Aadhaar] is voluntary. But the service providers might make it mandatory. In the long run I wouldnt call it compulsory. Id rather say it will become ubiquitous. In what was a reactionary spin on the rights-based framework, Mr. Nilekani stated in November 2012: If you do not have the Aadhaar card, you will not get the right to rights. Obfuscation was giving way to misinterpretation. There was a method behind the mad hurry to force enrolment. Elections were drawing near and the government needed to showcase one application that effectively leveraged Aadhaar. Further, the Prime Minister was eager to expedite the use of Aadhaar in social sector schemes to further targeting and cut fiscal deficit. Thus, the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) programme in the provision of gas cylinders was chosen as the prime killer application. There were smaller killers too: for not having Aadhaar, post-matriculation scholarships were withheld for Dalit and Adivasi students; provident fund transactions were disallowed for salaried employees; salaries were not paid to government employees in Maharashtra; even marriage registrations were disallowed in Delhi. For the future, the option of cash transfer was kept open when the Food Security Act was passed. Scared, people ran from pillar to post for Aadhaar. A delighted Mr. Nilekani declared that Indians had voted with their feet for Aadhaar. Having forced more people to enrol, the government billed the DBT programme as a gamechanger. However, the UPAs ministers themselves openly differed on the utility of the scheme. On December 22, 2012, Mr. P. Chidambaram claimed that the DBT scheme was pure magic. Just two weeks later, Mr. Jairam Ramesh disagreed; DBT was an experiment, and not a single jaadu ki chhadi [magic wand]. Anger and harassment By then, however, public anger was building up. More people began to detest the imposition of indirect compulsoriness. Threats posed by the project were being discussed on a wider scale. But most importantly, enrolment of residents, the generation of Aadhaar and the seeding of Aadhaar into bank accounts were all proceeding very slowly. Gas agencies regularly harassed consumers with threats of ending subsidised provision of cylinders. Members of Parliament raised the issue in Parliament. In 2013, Planning Minister Rajiv Shukla made the assurance that, Aadhaar card is not mandatory to avail subsidised facilities being offered by the government like LPG cylinders, admission in private aided schools, opening a savings account, etc. Still, there was no end to harassment by gas agencies. On August 23, 2013, a Rajya Sabha member pointed out the inconsistency in the governments actions. Mr. Shukla replied: It would not be made mandatory. It is not mandatory. If any public sector undertaking is doing it, we will correct it. The relief lasted just four days. In a shocking act of dishonesty, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas issued a notification on August 27 titled Aadhaar mandatory to avail LPG subsidy. Like Mr. Clarke had done, this notification literally turned the idea of voluntariness on its head. It stated that voluntariness applied only to the purchase of cylinders at subsidised prices,

and not to the purchase of cylinders itself; even without Aadhaar, consumers could continue to buy cylinders at the non-subsidised price. At this point, concerned citizens approached the Supreme Court. In an interim order on September 23, 2013, the Court directed: No person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory. Yet, consumers continued to receive text messages from gas agencies demanding Aadhaar numbers. On January 22, 2014, the Madras High Court had to intervene and restrain gas agencies from such an insistence. On January 30, Aadhaar-linkage to gas subsidy was put on hold and referred to a committee, while compulsoriness was to continue for all other schemes. Questions of voluntariness of Aadhaar remain, and intentional ambiguity continues. Why this intentional ambiguity? In my view, the government sees Aadhaar as the fulcrum of a larger neo-liberal transformation of its social policy. It is the governments commitment to neoliberalism that has manifested in its practice of compulsion by stealth. The outcome has been a rapid erosion of public confidence in the project and the credibility of the government. It was no different in the U.K. either.

Interpreting a federal Constitution

The rejection of the Telangana Bill by the Andhra Pradesh Assembly must not be dismissed as having no legal consequences as that would render the constitutional process of consultation entirely nugatory
The Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill, 2013, which creates the State of Telangana, has been decisively rejected by the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly and Council. This rejection, together with the recording of 9,072 amendments and expression of views on its various clauses by its MLAs, and 1,157 like suggestions by its MLCs, has brought the process of the creation of new States in India into renewed focus. As has been opined previously in the pages of this newspaper, the constitutional position in this context is straightforward: Article 3 of the Constitution vests Parliament with the power to form a new State, provided that the Bill creating such a State is introduced on the recommendation of the President and he has referred it to the legislature of the affected State for expressing its views thereon. This would suggest that the views of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly will have no legal effect; the formation of Telangana is solely the prerogative of the government of India. While this may indeed be the position of the law as it stands today, the unprecedented nature of the rejection of the Bill by the Andhra Pradesh Assembly requires the legal interpretation of Article 3 be reconsidered. Such reconsideration is also prompted by the changing nature of Indian federalism, aptly demonstrated by the curious situation of a Congress government at the State level defying its counterpart in power at the Centre.
Unprecedented rejection

The key distinction between this instance and earlier disputes raised in relation to the formation of a new State lies in the fact that never before has an Amendment Bill been rejected by the State legislature in question. Both in Babulal Parate (Supreme Court) and Pradeep Chaudhary (Supreme Court, 2009) seminal judgments of the Court dealing with the creation of Bombay and Uttaranchal respectively, the issue before the Court was whether it was open to Parliament to amend the final Bill after the State legislature had expressed its views on an earlier, unamended version. In both cases, the Supreme Court, adopting a literal interpretation of Article 3, held that there was no requirement that an amendment to a Bill forming a new State would also have to be referred to the State legislature concerned. Such interpretation is arguably correct the proviso to Article 3 simply states that the Bill must be sent to the State legislature concerned for expressing its views within a specified period. The provision is silent on whether later amendments have to be referred, as well as on the effect that the views of the State legislatures will have. Thus read literally, even a wholesale rejection of the Bill can be ignored by Parliament, since Article 3 merely gives State Assemblies a consultative role their views are not binding on Parliament in any way. However, to treat the States views as carrying merely formal value, as has been widely suggested, would render the constitutional process of consultation entirely nugatory in a matter of national importance. The current proviso to Article 3 was introduced by the Constitution (Fifth Amendment) Act, 1955. Before this amendment, the President could only introduce an Amendment Bill in Parliament after referring it to the State legislatures concerned for their views. This was a time-consuming process, allowing States to vacillate in responding, thereby frustrating the efforts of the government of India. This amendment was necessary to lay the groundwork for the smooth passage of the States Reorganisation Commission Report that recommended a radical redrawing of State boundaries and creation of new States. By adequately circumscribing State power, it was felt that no single State could hold up the process of reorganisation. But what if a State rejected the proposal to create a new State outright? Both the proviso to Article 3 as well as the Rajya Sabha debates prior to its passage are silent on this specific question. The reason for such silence is aptly demonstrated in a speech by MP Professor N.G. Ranga who said in the House, I am glad really now that this Bill has come to be introduced instead of the Congress Party trusting itself to its capacity to get the local majorities, which are also Congress majorities, to express the views of the legislatures. (Rajya Sabha Debates, December 15, 1955). The proviso was thus brought in at a time when such disagreement between the Centre and States was not a real possibility. Neither did Parliament envisage nor did it legislate for such a situation. The rejection of the Telangana Bill by the Andhra Pradesh Assembly is evidence of a dramatically changed time. For the legal interpretation of Article 3 to ignore such change would be an anachronism. It would also be inconsonant with the Supreme Courts characterisation of the Constitution as a living tree capable of continuous growth with concomitantly changing scenarios.
Bommai case

Such reinterpretation of provisions of the Constitution that have bearing on its federal character has precedent. In terms of the legality of the imposition of Presidents Rule in States under

Article 356, the Supreme Court in S.R. Bommai v. Union of India (Supreme Court, 1994) overruled its own precedent in the case of State of Rajasthan v Union of India (Supreme Court, 1977). While holding that the power of the President to impose Presidents Rule is not above and beyond judicial review entirely, the Court narrowed down the circumstances and the manner in which such powers could be exercised. The premise of this shift in constitutional jurisprudence was that the principle of federalism was part of the basic structure of the Constitution, and this principle could only be deviated from in exceptional and extraordinary circumstances, i.e. where constitutional rule was not possible in the State. In doing so, the Court recognised the pitfalls of a literal minded construction of the Constitution as was done in the Rajasthan case. In the absence of any checks on the exceptional power of the President to impose Presidents Rule and give federalism a go-by in the name of upholding the Constitution, the Court recognised that the Constitution itself could be subverted. The Supreme Courts course correction in Bommai has a deeper lesson. That Indias constitutionally envisaged federal structure has a strong centralising tendency is beyond question. Such a tendency is not unique to India. Federal states the world over Canada, the United States, Australia all display discernible centripetal forces irrespective of differences in their federal structure. But the decision in Bommai and now the Andhra Pradesh Assemblys rejection of the Telangana Bill marks a significant change in this dynamic. It provides recognition to a more balanced union, with Centre and States seen increasingly as coordinate entities. At a time when the Chief Minister of West Bengal trumps the decision of the government of India to sign an international accord, the sole prerogative of the Central government, and the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu prevents Sri Lankan cricketers from playing in Chennai despite them having valid visas for travel in India, such a reworked understanding of federalism in India is both realistic and pragmatic.
Towards a new federalism

In the face of such changes, to merely parrot an originalist constitutional vision of a strong Centre while interpreting legal provisions is to take a blinkered view. The centralising tendency in Indias federal structure was adopted at a time when it was necessary to weld Indias disparate elements together into a nation. This was a task for which the government of India was uniquely positioned and required a supporting constitutional architecture. Thus, the federal provisions of the Constitution were as much lofty vision as political strategy. Such strategy now requires a careful recalibration since such a tool for nation-building, if used unthinkingly, will be seen purely as central hegemony. Such forced unitarity will be more harmful than a genuine recognition of a more equal federal structure that is perfectly consonant with the idea of India. This does not in any way mean that the Andhra Pradesh Assemblys views on the Telangana Bill should be the last word on the matter. Such an inference would be plainly unconstitutional. However, it is necessary that the Central government be required in law to adequately take into consideration the reasons why the Andhra Pradesh Assembly rejected the Telangana Bill. This obligation should be discharged in writing, demonstrating a proper application of mind with accompanying reasons as to why each recommendation has been accepted or rejected. Without such consideration, the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill, 2013, if passed, would seriously lack legitimacy and be inconsonant with the dynamic federal spirit of the Constitution.

(With inputs from Sakshi Aravind) (Arghya Sengupta and Alok Prasanna Kumar are research director and senior resident fellow respectively, at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, a New Delhi-based legal policy think tank.)

Condemned to die, but not to wait

At the core of the Supreme Courts finding is the now well-established notion that to keep a death row convict inordinately waiting for his or her turn to enter the gallows is an act of torture in this case, an act of state-sanctioned torture
On Tuesday, January 21, 2014, a three-judge bench of Indias Supreme Court reaffirmed the value in due process of law, even in its application to those whom we as a society have shunned, by commuting to life imprisonment the sentences of 15 convicts on the death row. The commutations, in Shatrughan Chauhan v. Union of India, were primarily ordered on grounds of delays by the President in disposing of petitions filed by felons praying for mercy. The Court held that to execute a person who has been kept on death row for years on end with no answer to his or her plea for clemency, is an act of torture that violates the prisoners fundamental right to life. Such acts of clemency would have hardly occasioned in most other civilised societies where the death penalty has been abolished. However, given that the cry for capital punishment keeps cropping up in India like some unkillable movie gorgon, to borrow a phrase once used by Nicholas Jenkins in The New Yorker, the decision is a welcome reminder of the constitutional values that we most cherish. Assimilation of settled law The legal issue at stake in Chauhan was simple: are the powers of pardon vested in the President and the Governors under Articles 72 and 161 of the Constitution amenable to judicial review? The Court held that these powers carried with them a concomitant constitutional duty for the authorities exercising the powers to conform to due process. Therefore, in exceptional cases, where the authority concerned may have abdicated its responsibility in acting contrary to requirements of due process, its decisions would be amenable to judicial scrutiny. In Chauhan, the Court was confronted with instances where mercy petitions filed before the President and various Governors had been kept in abeyance for several years, with no answer forthcoming from the authorities. There were also other cases where the convict in question had developed serious mental illness during the period of his or her incarceration, raising substantial doubts over the fitness of the prisoner to be subjected to an execution. The Court ruled that such delay or mental illness constituted supervening circumstances, requiring the President or the Governors to exercise their constitutional duty in granting pardon. When they fail to do so, as was the case with 15 convicts on death row, it becomes incumbent upon the Court to intervene in the interests of preserving the due process of law.

In many ways, this conclusion in Chauhan is not particularly novel; it is rather an assimilation and reaffirmation of settled law, specifically as laid down by the Supreme Court previously in T.V. Vatheeswaran v. State of Tamil Nadu (1983) and Triveniben v. State of Gujarat. But Chauhan makes the important point that an inordinate and inexplicable delay in execution would preclude carrying out the sentence even in cases where the convict in question had committed an offence of terrorism. In so deciding, the Court has overruled its own recent decision in Devender Singh Bhullar v. State of NCT Delhi. In Bhullar, decided in May 2013, a two-judge bench had ruled that a delay in disposing of a mercy petition was, by itself, insufficient ground for commuting the sentence of those convicted to death under anti-terrorism statutes. In correcting this anomaly, Chauhan reiterates a long-standing constitutional value: the Constitution demands that the state treats all those subject to its powers as having equal status; when there is no constitutional basis for differentiating between convicts found guilty of offences such as murder and convicts found guilty of terrorism offences, any delay in execution is to be treated equally, as a violation of due process, irrespective of the offence committed. At the core of the Courts finding is the now well-established notion that to keep a death row convict inordinately waiting for his or her turn to enter the gallows is an act of torture in this case, an act, virtually, of state-sanctioned torture. Take, for example, Praveen Kumar, 55, one of the writ petitioners before the Supreme Court. He had been convicted of a quadruple murder and had been sentenced to death in February 2002. In October the following year, the Supreme Court confirmed his sentence. Soon after the sentence had reached finality, Kumar petitioned the President seeking mercy on the grounds that he had been subjected to solitary confinement ever since the trial court had found him guilty. In December 2003, the Presidents office forwarded Kumars request to the State Governor concerned for consideration under Article 161. The Governor, having reviewed the various judgments of the courts, declined to exercise his power by a decision dated September 30, 2004, following which the President was once again seized of the petition. It ultimately took the President until March 26, 2013 to decide and dismiss the plea for mercy. As a result, Kumar, who had been sentenced to death in February 2002, had spent 11 years and 10 months in custody at the time of filing his writ petition. Capital punishment, in most civilized societies is regarded rightly as an abomination; but to keep a prisoner sentenced to death for an additional period of punishment is neither envisaged by law nor is it protected by the Constitution. As the Court rightly held in Chauhan, the right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 includes within it a right to be treated with a certain dignity, even if you are a convict on the death row. Article 21 which now by interpretive design recognises a right to due process is applicable not merely to you, me and every other average citizen, but also to those condemned to the gallows. Any inordinate, unexplained delay in determining the merits of a mercy petition filed by a convict on the death row would be an infraction of that right. It is easy to wonder why the most brutal of men and women deserve the protection of the law; but when due process is disregarded for monstrous criminals, it also becomes simpler to disregard it for the rest of us. Internal conflict The decision in Chauhan, while a timely reminder of the importance of preserving our most cherished ideals, however also reveals a glaring internal conflict in the Courts approach to civil rights jurisprudence, particularly in its application of comparative constitutional law. It seems, as

the law scholar Nick Robinson has previously argued, there are many Supreme Courts of India. This is most evident when the approach in Chauhan is compared to the decisions in Bhullar and more recently in Suresh Kumar Koushal v. Naz Foundation, which concerned the criminalisation of homosexual acts. In Chauhan, the Court was visibly receptive to protecting the human rights, even of condemned prisoners (including convicted terrorists), and considered foreign legal precedent with an open mind. In fact, the Court went as far as to find that decisions of the United Kingdoms Privy Council have received the same respectful consideration as the decisions of the Indian Supreme Court. In contrast, in Bhullar, the Court spoke deprecatingly of the bandwagon which espouses the cause of terrorists and raises the bogey of human rights. And in Koushal, the Court similarly chastised the Delhi High Court for extensively relying upon the judgments of other jurisdictions in its anxiety to protect the so-called rights of LGBT persons. This fractured and vacillating approach of the Supreme Court is of grave concern, especially given that it affects the most crucial aspect of its judicial function: the protection of our fundamental rights. As the highest constitutional court of the country, it is imperative that the Court adopts consistent practice in its adjudicating; one way to achieve this is to ensure that important constitutional questions are settled by a bench of no less than five judges of the Supreme Court. For now, however, it appears that we must make the best of what appears to be a one step forward, two steps back approach of the Supreme Court. (Suhrith Parthasarathy and Goutham Shivshankar are advocates in the Madras High Court.)

Interrogating the anti-graft platform

A pro-business anti-corruption programme can only have a short-run perspective. Over time, as it leads to inequity, slowdown in the economy, and social discontent, the rulers will have to turn authoritarian
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has announced its intention to fight against corrupt leaders from all parties in the coming general election. So, anti-corruption seems to be its main plank since it has not yet announced anything else. Its success in the recent Delhi Assembly election was largely on an anti-corruption plank. Even the promises of cheaper/free water and electricity to the electorate were based on ending corruption in the provision of these services. Beyond these and a few other issues, the AAPs vision regarding India has yet to emerge. Given the pent-up anger of the electorate against inflation and corruption, a limited agenda was enough in Delhi. Would a purely anti-corruption plank also work at the national level for the same reason? Other political parties have been forced to adopt an anti-corruption stance. Clearly, the AAP has succeeded in changing the political discourse in the country. The rapid adoption of the Lokpal Bill, the promise of passing other pending anti-corruption bills and the buzz around selecting clean candidates points in that direction. Corruption has become a key issue since it results in daily hardships for the aam aadmi whether it concerns employment, prices, education, drinking water, electricity, dealing with the police, the bureaucracy, the judiciary and so on. The nation faces crucial problems both at the

macro and the microeconomic levels. Tackling these problems requires addressing their wider economic, political, social and institutional contexts and not just corruption. Another impression being created is that problems can be resolved by bureaucratic or political fiat.
Implications of black economy

To tackle corruption, its cause needs to be correctly identified. The basis of corruption is the growing black economy propelled by widespread illegality in a variety of economic activities and the disruption of the democratic institutions. It has grown from four-five per cent of GDP in 1955-56 to more than 50 per cent of GDP now. As an offshoot, corruption has become rampant. Given its all-pervasive character, the black economy has become systematic and systemic and that is why it has widespread macroeconomic, social, political and institutional implications. These cannot be tackled only by checking corruption. The macroeconomic aspects of the black economy result in wider inefficiencies of the system. It leads to poor quality of goods and services and higher costs. It causes wastage so as to create shortages so that higher profits can be generated through speculation. It reduces the rate of growth of the economy much below its potential, leading to missed development. Expenditures do not lead to outcomes and targets are not fulfilled in say, education. It leads to a flight of capital so that a poor country faces a shortage of capital. In India, businesses have formed a nexus with politicians and the executive to generate black incomes. This triad has turned politics on its head. It manipulates policies to suit favoured businessmen who make extra profits and share it with the other two. The gains of this small group are at the expense of all others and this aggravates disparities. Representation has lost much of its meaning since the elections have largely thrown up those who take the vote of the people but after winning, work for vested interests and against the interests of the people they represent. Even the leaders of the most deprived sections have quickly turned corrupt after coming to power. No wonder people have lost hope in the systems capacity to deliver to them and become more and more sectarian and divided along caste, community and regional lines. Today, hope has revived and people are looking for new, clean leaders. Corruption is associated with the public sector while the private sector is portrayed as its victim. So, less of government is suggested for reducing corruption. Businesses support such a policy since it gets them greater freedom in the market which translates into a higher degree of monopoly, a capacity to fix prices and boost profits. The flip side of such a policy is that the aam aadmi has to depend more on the markets. While this may be welcomed by those who gain from the markets, it is detrimental for the poor who are marginal to it, like, women, Dalits and Muslims.
Businesses and anti-corruption

The markets often cannot cater to the basic needs of the poor (not just those below the poverty line) because of their low incomes relative to the prices. Today, 23 years after the largely marketbased policies were introduced after 1991, the marginalised face shortage of work, low wages because of massive underemployment, reduced subsidies resulting in higher prices and increasing costs of education and health. Further, advertising is resulting in changing tastes and

demand for newer products thus causing the poverty line to rise. There is the paradox of increasing poverty in spite of rising incomes. In brief, a business-led anti-corruption agenda would benefit the aam aadmi incidentally; to the extent of reduction of waste. But, because of a tilt of policies towards businesses, they would lose much more and in the net, would be worse off in spite of the reduction in corruption. For example, most government schools today provide indifferent education. If an anti-corruption regime privatises these schools which will charge higher fees, the poor would not be able to afford them and would be worse off. Even the somewhat better off middle class would lose since it also has limited purchasing power and confronts a situation similar to the poor. The issues of the marginals may get marginalised. Why are businessmen in India, who have gained through crony capitalism and pro-business policies, interested in an anti-corruption plank? They want to safeguard the massive amount of capital they have accumulated in the last two decades. They have rapidly invested their surpluses into land (say, SEZs), other natural resources like mines, forests, spectrum and so on. Since 2010, exposs of big scams threatens these investments. Movements have sprung up against large projects, from POSCO to Kutch and Kudankulam to Haryana. So, businesses want to legitimise their gains and launder their image by distancing themselves from those who have been caught in the scams. Further, they want efficient capitalism to multiply their capital rapidly. Hence, a section of businessmen support the anti-corruption movement. They also see an opportunity in the present anti-corruption mood of the public to legitimise capitalism by diverting attention to corruption in government they do not want reformed capitalism or a welfare state. But, can there be efficient capitalism without tackling the black economy of which businessmen are the dominant part? So, the fight against corruption alone can only be a limited one. A pro-business anti-corruption programme can only have a short-run perspective. Over time, as it leads to greater inequity, a slowdown in the economy and social discontent, the rulers would have to turn authoritarian to quell rising social and political discontent. What is the alternative? Tackling the black economy through a pro aam aadmi programme would make the government functional rather than minimal. It would lead to a positive sum game and be neither pro- nor antibusiness. It would lead to an appropriate mix of state and market-led development which would cater to the marginalised sections of society without promoting sectarianism. Tackling the black economy would also help overcome the deep macroeconomic imbalances current account deficit, fiscal deficit, inflation, slow growth, stagnating industry and so on. Flight of capital would decline, turning the current account deficit into a surplus. The fiscal deficit would turn into a fiscal surplus, generating enough resources in the budget for improving social and physical infrastructure education, power and so on. It would lead to reduction in costs (as overinvoicing declines) and a fall in inflation. As more direct taxes are collected, less of indirect taxes would be required and this would lead to lower prices. Also, as the fiscal deficit falls, government borrowing would fall thereby reducing its interest burden, the largest single item of expenditure. Finally, as policies begin to work, inequity declines and the investment

productivity rises, the rate of growth of the economy would rise. Thus, tackling the black economy would be a long term and equitable solution. To check the growing black economy requires political will to cut the triad, make institutions functional and promote movements for greater democratisation. There are then two paths for checking corruption. A short run limited microeconomic and ahistorical plank which would be a zero sum game that would marginalise the poor. The other would be a democratic path and positive sum game along which the black economy would be tackled and many of Indias macro and microeconomic problems resolved. (Arun Kumar is Sukhamoy Chakrvarty Chair Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, JNU, Delhi.)

Culture vultures of Sindh

The brash and unthinking endangerment of antiquity on the altars of cultural resistance against the Taliban is a fine illustration of Pakistans conundrums
The logo chosen by the government of Sindh in Pakistan for the Sindh Cultural Festival is immediately familiar an S encased in a diamond; it is the logo for Superman, the hero who has delighted audiences around the world for decades. To indigenise this borrowed bit, the insides of the Sindh Festivals S are filled in with burgundy and black in the traditional block print design of the Sindhi ajrak pattern. It is perhaps an apt pilfering; a superhero is indeed required to save the cultural heritage of Sindh, its languishing folk music, its shutdown art galleries, and its burnt down cinemas all damning proof of a silenced cultural discourse. If the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) were to have its way, that hero, prescient and powerful, would be Mr. Bilawal Bhutto, the son of the slain Benazir Bhutto and Mr. Asif Zardari. If Supermans S has been the letter dominating the festival, Mr. Bilawal Bhuttos smiling face and stilted Urdu, sometimes flanked by one or both of his sisters, have reigned over its events. On February 1, 2014, at the inaugural ceremony of the two-week saga, beaming, smiling Bilawal, the author of so many brave, anti-extremist tweets, vowed to save Sindhs culture against the obscurantism of the Taliban. Before an audience of hundreds, mostly political functionaries and friends and relatives of party leaders, his sister, Ms Bakhtawar sang a rap song in English. Its lyrics exhorted Pakistanis to stand tall on their soil with pride.
Another story, of neglect

The stage on which the Bhutto children stood, as also the soil on which it had been erected to showcase their efforts at cultural regeneration, has a story. In the darkness behind the stage stood the 3,000-year-old Mound of the Dead, the iconic centre of the ancient city of Moenjodaro. In past years, this remnant of the Indus Valley civilization has been the site of just neglect and disrepair.

None of that is surprising in a country where history has been the handmaiden of the political ambitions of this or that ruler; the ruins of Moenjodaro have not added much to most strategic calculations. The dust has blown across its desolate mud buildings, the water table has risen, threatening the excavations, and the delicate mud bricks from which the inhabitants wrought their dwellings have begun to erode. This has been the story until now. Sometime late last year, the leadership of the PPP, which controls the government of Sindh, decided that the inauguration ceremony for the festival must be held in Moenjodaro itself, and its proceedings undertaken on a stage directly in front of the historic Mound of the Dead. Against this decision no opposition could stand. It did not matter that the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared such a construction, of the stage, so close to the Mound excavation an improper activity that threatened the universal value of the archaeological site. It mattered even less that conservationists at the Department of Museums and Archaeology reminded the Sindh government officials that the Antiquities Act of 1975 prohibits any human activity within 200 feet of any national heritage. The massive stage was thus constructed in the middle of Moenjodaro and with the old Mound as its photographic backdrop. Hundreds of workers, more than the site has ever had for its preservation or excavation, drilled and dug and dragged. They bought electric poles, wooden platforms and plastic chairs and all the other trappings needed to hold a grand event of unprecedented cultural regeneration. On Twitter, the superhero under construction, Mr. Bilawal Bhutto, gathered volunteers, saying, If u would like 2 volunteer 2 help me preserve, protect & promote Sindhs heritage email festivalsindh@gmail.com. In a letter, the UNESCO representative, Kozue Nagata, made a last-ditch effort on behalf of maimed Moenjodaro: We appreciate the effort to revitalise the long-lost culture, she said, but it should not be done at the cost of destroying the ruins and structure of the site. Sadly, the resuscitators of culture were too busy to listen.
A rabid ravaging

Culture and context are wed, and in Pakistan, the context is one of a rabid ravaging of all forms of cultural expression. The blasting of Buddhas, the bombing of Sufi shrines, and the banning of representational art and music are all mainstays in the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistans arsenal of terror. In killing-laden Karachi, 400 kilometres from Moenjodaro, the Taliban have killed a hundred people in blasts, murders and shootings in the single month of January. Beginning February with music and dance, the sale of artefacts and the display of tradition seems commendable. So it would be, were it not for the details of destruction wrought within it. The brash and unthinking endangerment of antiquity on the altars of cultural resistance against the Taliban is a fine illustration of the countrys conundrums. If the forms of resuscitation were sowed in democratic groundswell and provided opportunity for political expression to the millions of Pakistani youth and not simply the scions of feudal families, they would represent an authentic and widely relevant oppositional discourse against the Taliban, one that is desperately needed. Like the stage erected for the Sindh Cultural Festival, built such that it destroys the very

heritage it seeks to protect, the PPP-led effort to inaugurate and foment a form of cultural resistance has become instead the hollow manipulation of a cultural cataclysm for the launch of the next generation of Bhutto heirs. (Rafia Zakaria is the author of the forthcoming The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan.)

Immunisation as a matter of justice

The critical issue in India, where the pentavalent vaccine is being rolled out, is raising the coverage levels of immunisation
Immunisation is not an election issue. It should be. Seth Berkley, CEO, GAVI Alliance, is not known for mincing his words. Throw in the immense experience he brings in from the area of vaccination, and he is easily the most articulate global proponent of immunisation. In India recently to meet with the heads of government and to bring together leaders of society to pitch into the vaccine effort, Dr. Berkley spoke with The Hindu on a range of issues germane to universal immunisation, Indias recent polio success, and the plan of action for the future. The GAVI Alliance is an international organisation that works at saving childrens lives and protecting peoples health by increasing access to immunisation in poor countries. With funding from governments across the world, it takes forward its agenda of making vaccines available to children, assisting developing nations to gain access to vaccines at affordable rates, with the firm belief that immunisation is a matter of justice. The critical issue here in India since we now have permission to roll out the pentavalent (the combo protection against diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP), hepatitis B, Haemophilius influenzae type b) vaccine throughout the country is to get coverage levels up. It is essential to create a demand for vaccines and, at the same time, deal with irresponsible stories that talk of side effects without any validation. This is one of the ideas behind creating an Advisory Council for GAVI in India: to get a group of people from all sectors to discuss how we might help in these issues, besides being voices in Indian society to counter any negative voices out there, Dr. Berkley explains. He is also thrilled that India has recently committed to being a donor to the international vaccine effort; promising GAVI $4 million over the next four years. Indias anti-polio programme He doles out much praise for India, clearly astounded by its recent success with eradicating polio. It is believed that Indias achievement of stopping the transmission of the wild polio virus by immunising all children between 0-5 years, provided a big boost for the global effort to defeat polio. It is incredible! It shows to me what India can do when it focusses. The world thought it was impossible, India did it on a scale that no one can imagine: mobilising front-line workers volunteers, NGOs, local politicians.

Also, the spin-offs from the polio effort for the country have been momentous. If you look at a place like Bihar that had incredibly low immunisation rates, we have already seen polio teams turning their attention to routine immunisation, seen coverage going up from the low 30s (percentage) to about the 60s (percentage). In places like that we can take it higher. Ideally, about 90 per cent of the community must be immunised. While in the South we have a coverage rate of about 85-90 per cent, in the North, it hovers around the 30s. Clearly, a nation cannot remain content with an average immunisation of 60 per cent. So, the challenges indeed remain huge, despite the massive mobilisation for polio that seems to have paid off. For Dr. Berkley though, his calling and work depends on remaining hopeful, in believing that more children will continue to be covered, and not be felled by vaccinepreventable diseases. In that vein, he says, Let me start out with the positives. Five years ago, India had more cases of polio than anywhere in the world, but it was able to mobilise and reach every child, in essence. This should have emboldened India in terms of what should be done; it shows what is possible and what can be done today. Lessons learnt and vaccinations Of course, routine immunisation is a little more complicated routine, injections [unlike the oral polio vaccine] need more trained health workers, and people have to come to a facility instead of doing it door-to-door, as with polio. Remember, that is also the system that is needed to ensure that polio does not get back into the country. As you know, your neighbours have not done as well as you. So, while we have to keep polio coverage levels up, we must be able to use the skills, micro plans, and social mobilisation from that exercise for a range of other vaccinations which will have a dramatic effect on childrens lives. He goes on to add, We recently approved a grant of over $100 million for India, to work on improving the delivery of vaccines, and that is going to focus on some of the least-performing districts, trying to transition some of the polio workers to do a better job on routine vaccination, improve surveillance and get a better understanding of the supply chain. The task at hand is urgent and the country cannot allow it to be beset by doubts spiralling into controversies over the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Dr. Berkley says, In a place like India we fool ourselves, or, we are completely isolated from our population to say these diseases are not real; they dont occur. When you roll out vaccines, you have a dramatic effect on morbidity and mortality. It is true that in places these diseases have almost disappeared, but people move and organisms move, but until we end up eradicating an organism, it is essential to protect children. He adds: My understanding is that if you look at any of the leaders in India in science, there is no controversy. There is absolutely incontrovertible proof of both the burden of disease and the effect of vaccine. Indeed, there are a few people who continue to bring up these questions. They are isolated, but that is not to say they havent been listened to by the media. The roll out of the pentavalent vaccine has been hotly debated in India, and there are claims that children have died after being vaccinated, and consequently the demand to shelve the vaccine. Dr. Berkley does not dismiss this outright. Instead, he explains that there is a component in the

pentavalent vaccine that can cause fever in children, but that is even true of the older DPT vaccine. So you cannot say there arent any side effects, but they are not significantly worse than they were with the DPT. Usually, the side effects come from the whole cell pertussis component, not from [additional] Hepatitis B or HIB components. One thing you can do is to educate parents that children will sometimes have fever after vaccinations; after all they are learning how to fight off a bad infection. Dr. Berkley also thinks one of the key ways to take this fight on is through the National Rural Health Mission, which will build systems to guide such efforts. I hope that assurance will survive an election. India has not stepped up in terms of financing health as it could have. We are not talking of absolute amounts, because the economy is growing, but the relative amount, because India is low, in comparison with the other countries in the region. He pauses, and then allows a sentence to hang in the air, as ominous as the future it signifies, When a child dies of preventable diseases it is a tragedy, but when thousands die because we are not rolling out tools that we have that are inexpensive, and are available .

Tech industry is trying out its election muscle

Silicon Valley has traditionally stayed aloof from politics. But richer and more powerful than ever, the tech industry has become increasingly involved, both in lobbying and in fund-raising.
In Sunnyvale, California, the land of technology start-ups, Ro Khanna is its political version. Backed by many of Silicon Valleys top investors and executives at Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other tech companies, Mr. Khanna, a 37-year-old patent lawyer who has never held elected office, has mounted an aggressive campaign for the seat from the 17th Congressional District in the heart of the Valley. Mr. Khannas ambitions, and those of the tech elite behind him, are clear. A Democrat, Mr. Khanna is trying to oust a fellow Democrat, Representative Michael M. Honda, who remains popular after seven terms and has been endorsed by President Obama and the rest of the Democratic establishment. Using the jargon of tech start-ups, Mr. Khanna says he will be a disruptive force in Washington. Thanks to techs support, Mr. Khanna has significantly outraised Mr. Honda. Four months before the primary, the challenger has $1,975,000 in cash on hand, or more than triple the incumbents $623,000, according to campaign finance records filed last Friday. Whether or not this political start-up is ultimately successful, Mr. Khannas campaign underscores the tech industrys push to elect candidates who will further its interests in Washington, even if that means, as in this race, trying to replace a party stalwart with a relative unknown.

A liberal, pro-labour Democrat with a passion for civil rights, Mr. Honda, 72, is generally regarded as being on the side of the tech industry, but not as aggressive a champion as other congressmen in the region. The tech community is looking for advocates who will be really, really outspoken for tech, and Ro fits that mold, said Ron Conway, who is one of the industrys most influential investors and is backing Mr. Khanna. While it is unusual for tech leaders to rally in such a way around a candidate, Mr. Conway added, Im hoping its a wave of the future that continues, because its crucial for the tech community to have a really active voice in Washington. Mr. Khanna, who was a deputy assistant commerce secretary from 2009 to 2011 and now represents tech companies in intellectual property cases at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, one of Silicon Valleys most prestigious law firms, talks of the need for Government 2.0 and a reset of Congress. The author of Entrepreneurial Nation, a book on manufacturing and American competitiveness, he has been endorsed by Googles executive chairman, Eric E. Schmidt; Facebooks chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg; Yahoos chief executive, Marissa Mayer; and many other tech luminaries. After knocking on the doors of potential voters here in Sunnyvale on a recent afternoon, Mr. Khanna said of his list of tech endorsers, Everyone who is seen as a person of the future has endorsed our campaign. Facing a serious challenge for the first time since being elected to Congress in 2000, Mr. Honda said he represented the interests not only of tech companies but also of the wider district. Its about experience, the time you spent in the community, your record and peoples expectations, he said recently, after leading a seminar on science education at Ciscos headquarters in San Jose. At a time when the tech industry has drawn a backlash in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the tech elite are increasingly portrayed as concerned with their narrow privileges at the expense of society at large, Mr. Hondas supporters have labelled Mr. Khanna a Silicon Valley groupie whose wealthy donors are trying to buy a congressional seat. Venturing forth Silicon Valley has traditionally stayed aloof from politics. But richer and more powerful than ever, the tech industry has become increasingly involved, both in lobbying and in fund-raising. And some of its boldface names have shown strong support for particular candidates, including Cory Booker of New Jersey in his successful run for the United States Senate and Mayor Ed Lee of San Franciscos campaign for a full term. Many of Mr. Khannas backers were behind Mr. Lees election, particularly Mr. Conway. In a fund-raiser for Mr. Khanna last year, Sean Parker, a founder of Napster, is seen in a video shot by The San Francisco Chronicle saying, I think were starting to come into a realisation of our own power and of our own capability, not just as innovators and technology pioneers, but also in a political sense.

Tech support has also given Mr. Khanna the means to hire political advisers who worked on Mr. Obamas re-election campaign, including Jeremy Bird, the former national field director. Rusty Rueff, a tech industry veteran, said he was an example of Silicon Valleys political transformation. Apolitical until 2011, when he began backing Mr. Obama, Mr. Rueff, 51, now sits on a committee advising Mr. Khanna, only the second political candidate he has supported. His formative years, hes had a screen in front of him, and then not only has he grown up around it, hes written about it, hes been involved on the legal side, Mr. Rueff said. He identifies with us, and we identify with someone who thinks that way. For his part, Mr. Honda, a former public-school teacher, held several local and state public offices before going to Congress. He is a Japanese-American whose views on politics and civil rights were molded by his familys internment during World War II. Over the years, Mr. Honda has nurtured many Asian-American political candidates, some of whom are in the 17th District, the first majority Asian-American district in the mainland United States. Larry Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State University, said that while Mr. Honda had supported the tech industry over the years, he had defined himself through his passionate campaigns for the poor, public education and civil rights. He bleeds little guy, Dr. Gerston said. Mr. Hondas aides said the congressman had supported immigration changes, science education, nanotechnology and other issues that Silicon Valley cares about. They point to Intel, Google, Oracle, Yahoo and other tech companies whose political action committees are helping in his reelection. Asad Jamal, chairman of ePlanet Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said he was backing Mr. Honda because of his support of technology as well as his socially progressive issues. Silicon Valley has a culture of backing new people in start-ups, and Ro is very persuasive and a good candidate, Mr. Jamal said. But Mike is exceptional and has a proven track record. Dilawar Syed, another tech entrepreneur backing Mr. Honda, said Silicon Valley cares about broader issues beyond tech, including social justice, and is not monolithic. You have to look at the whole thing and not get confused by the endorsements of some individuals, he said. Still, the list of Silicon Valley individuals endorsing Mr. Khanna which also includes Marc Andreessen, the Netscape co-founder; John Doerr, the venture capitalist; and Randi Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Zuckerberg Media and the sister of Mark Zuckerberg, a Facebook founder has given the challenger instant credibility. The average size of individual contributions to Mr. Khannas campaign is double to triple those of Mr. Hondas. In the latest filing, of the 220 individual donors to Mr. Khannas campaign, 27 listed their occupation as C.E.O., four as chief financial officers and about 40 as being involved in investments.

The money gives Mr. Khanna an advantage in what could become one of the costliest congressional races in the nation. Though both candidates are Democrats, they are expected to face each other in a general election in November under Californias top-two primary system, after a primary in June. A Republican candidate, Vanila Singh, an anesthesiologist who, like Mr. Khanna, is IndianAmerican, is also running in the solidly Democratic district. Pointing to the example of Meg Whitman, the tech executive who spent part of her fortune in an unsuccessful bid for governor in California, Mr. Honda said: We know that money is not everything. People in this area understand that you need funds, but you dont buy the election. But Mr. Hondas supporters have gone further. Democracy for America, the group founded by Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, endorsed Mr. Honda while describing Mr. Khanna as a Silicon Valley groupie and a candidate whose big-money donors are intent on buying Mikes congressional seat. Mr. Khanna, whose campaign has not accepted donations from political action committees, waved away that accusation. He said he simply had a better understanding of the global economy and of Silicon Valleys place in it. For example, he said, he favours changes to tax policy suitable for a global economy, including ones that would make it easier for American companies to repatriate overseas profits without being taxed under certain conditions. I wear tech groupie as a badge of honour, he said. Its a fundamental difference in our campaign.

Paralysis in science policies

Neglect of research in higher education has led to very low research intensity. Ninety per cent of our universities end up as teaching institutes where research is given a low priority for lack of funds
In the last few years, the government has announced a number of policies in science and technology which include bills on patents, specialised innovation universities and regulatory measures. These are supposed to power Indias growth engine via science and technology and, at the same time, enable the country to keep pace with the comity of nations. Unfortunately, the Manmohan Singh governments policy paralysis is not just confined to the social and economic sectors, but also manifests itself quite prominently across various segments of science and technology institutions including research in universities. The failure of the government in this area stems from poor governance mechanisms, as from low priority accorded to science and technology in the overall budget.
Falling behind R&D

Ever since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) came to power, Dr. Singh has promised to increase the gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD). He committed two per cent of GDP and reiterated it every year since 2007 at the annual session of the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA). In the last nine years, Indian GERD to GDP either stagnated at 0.9 per cent or even relatively declined adjusted to inflation; 58 per cent of GERD is consumed by the strategic sectors (atomic energy, defence and space research) and about 29 per cent is met by the private sector. So, what is left for civilian R&D, spanning a dozen or so science agencies, is rather pathetic. Look at what is happening in Asia! The Chinese GERD witnessed a dramatic increase from one per cent to 1.84 per cent of GDP in the last decade. In 2012, Japan spent 3.26 per cent, South Korea 3.74 per cent, and Singapore 2.8 per cent. After a decade, the government announced a new Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2013 or STIP 2013. The scientific community and the nation were left disappointed as the government had failed to fulfil its earlier commitment. There has been no commitment to increase public R&D. The government will only match the private R&D investment to bring it to the level of two per cent of GDP. When is this going to happen?
Realistic goals?

The new policy envisages positioning India among the top five global scientific powers by 2020, increasing the number of full-time research and development personnel by two-thirds within five years, and increasing publications from the current 3.5 per cent of global share to around seven per cent by 2020. Not only this, the policy aims at increasing the publication record in the worlds top one per cent of journals fourfold. India has already fallen behind China and emerging economies on these indicators. For instance, India produced three times the science output of China in the 1990s with a comparable GERD. Today, China has overtaken India by more than three times. It is the same in the case of patents. Why have we fallen behind so much? This is not unrelated to massive R&D investments by China in the last decade. The continuing policy paralysis in science and technology is visible across various segments of S&T. Even after the Fukushima disaster, Dr. Singh has been relentlessly batting for new nuclear plants costing several billions of dollars in the coming decade. The newly inaugurated plant complex at Gorakhpur, Haryana, is estimated at Rs.23,502 crore. According to research studies, just 25 per cent of the future nuclear budget for renewable energy sources (wind, solar, biomass etc) will generate almost double the energy planned in a more sustainable manner. Ninety per cent of water in India is consumed by agriculture, yet we have no inclusive energy-water policy. The list runs across several sub-sectors. Let us look at two of them. R&D in higher education has been the prime victim of policy paralysis. There are over 600 universities and 30,000 colleges with a GERD of around 18. Though universities contributed 52 per cent of the total national research publication output in the last decade, they were allocated a dismal 4.1 per cent of GERD. In fact, this has been the case for six decades since independence. Universities in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 25 countries accounted for 20 per cent and Japanese universities accounted for around 15 per cent of GERD in the last decade. Even Chinese universities increased their share of GERD from five per cent in the 1990s to 12 per cent currently. The neglect of research in higher education has led to very low research intensity; 90 per cent of our universities end up as teaching institutes where research is given a low priority for lack of funds. Policy measures to increase research intensity

in universities and nurture them to attain world-class standards in China, South Korea, Singapore and Japan were a part of their respective national innovation strategies since the 1990s. Such policies enabled two to six universities in these countries to be listed in the Worlds Top 100 University Rankings in recent years. India could not register even one. Just four to five universities figure in the list of 400 or 500. STIP 2013 is silent on strengthening research in higher education. Ninety per cent of the National Knowledge Commissions recommendations remain unimplemented as much as the proposal to create 14 innovation universities. Until the higher education sector is given its due importance in the national innovation system and allocated at least 10 per cent of GERD, it will continue to remain sub-critical at the national level and we will fall behind our Asian neighbours.
Innovation

After the President of India declared 20102020 the Decade of Innovation, STIP 2013 proposed new schemes such as the Risky Idea Fund and Small Idea Small Money. The government launched the India Inclusive Innovation Fund (IIIF) under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model, with the government chipping in with just two per cent of the budget. But private partners have hardly evinced any enthusiasm to invest in this scheme. Is the government serious? The policy paralysis in science and technology innovation can be seen from the dismal amount of money allocated to a dozen innovation schemes under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Out of the total budget of Rs.2,998 crore given to the DSIR in 2011, only Rs.155 crore went to innovation schemes. And, of the Rs.2,349 crore given to the DST in 2012, only Rs.57 crore went to innovation schemes. With 90 per cent of Indian labour in the informal sector and faced with dwindling fortunes of rural agricultural activity, millions will migrate from the rural to urban areas in the coming decade. The UPA government launched a number of schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme; Bharat Nirman; Indira Awaas Yojna; Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission; Health Mission, among others. Besides problems underlying their governance and implementation, which are well known, they lack an institutional framework to infuse employment potential with skills, training and grass-root innovation. There is hardly any serious policy perspective or thinking to create institutional avenues for vocational training to infuse skills to labour in the informal sector. There are about 7,500 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) with the overall intake capacity of 75,000. With the growing demand for technicians and an expanding informal sector, one can imagine the task ahead. Long-term solutions to problems here are so complex and are becoming even more interconnected. We have so far failed to evolve any strategy to connect with these schemes at the bottom of the pyramid. IIIF is a good scheme if it gets off the ground with a full budget. In any case, such schemes managed by corporate fund managers are relevant more at the middle of the pyramid and not the bottom. We urgently need to build and strengthen intermediary institutions to forge linkages between formal and informal institutional structures. It is time the government wakes up to addressing the impending S&T policy paralysis before it is too late. (V.V. Krishna is professor in science policy, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, School of Social Sciences, JNU, Delhi.)

Two agencies on a collision course

From the Intelligence Bureaus point of view, the Ishrat Jahan investigation is definitely a blow to its morale. Its long-term impact is incalculable No amount of incentives will restore the zest for counterintelligence work
The Central Bureau of Investigations decision to chargesheet a former Special Director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) (whose rank is that of a DGP in the State Police cadre) and three serving officers of the same bureau in the sensational Ishrat Jahan case in Gujarat should shock us. It is a sad day for both the organisations whose support to the cause of national security and the upholding of the rule of law hardly needs overemphasising. Although their respective territories are demarcated, the two are now on a collision course. This is despite the fact that they need each other, and that whenever they have worked in harmony, they have achieved the near impossible. Since they have undoubtedly lent great stability to our polity, to do anything that would dent their image is a sacrilege.
Need for balance

I would like to make it clear that berating the CBI and IB as being handmaidens of the government is being unfair to the many dedicated officers who serve them. Even their most ardent supporters will admit that the two bureaus are not without their faults. Perhaps, they have much to hide especially the CBI, which is always in the public eye and is under immense judicial scrutiny. On the contrary, the IB is a low profile outfit which, unlike the CBI, has no legal status or authority. I know that both have their detractors who are ready to throw the first stone at them at every conceivable opportunity. Some are only too delighted to be able to drive a wedge between them. We should not allow them to succeed. The Ishrat Jahan case provides these forces an opportunity to do this. This is why what has happened in the Ishrat Jahan case demands both responsible comments and a balanced perspective. There are some basic facts on which there can be no disagreement. No democracy can condone the killing of any of its innocent citizens by a state agency. And when the victim happens to be a woman, the crime gets compounded a million times. This is what is being alleged by the CBI. The four IB officers did not by themselves kill Ishrat Jahan. But they did a lot to facilitate the crime committed by some Gujarat policemen. What drove them to carry out this barbaric act is anybodys guess. According to press reports, the CBI charge sheet is silent on this. Now that the court concerned is to take cognisance of the CBI charge sheet, it would be extremely inappropriate for any of us to comment on the CBIs controversial decision or any evidence adduced by it. I am happy that an aggrieved IB, true to its wont, has not gone to town with its point of view. All its entreaties to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and the CBI for a review of its resolve to go ahead with the charges against the four IB men have been in vain.
Compliance with law

Despite some occasional differences there is nothing here to suggest that the CBIs action was motivated by its animus toward the IB. Also, in a court-monitored case, the investigating agency has no option to overlook the misdemeanour of another public organisation. Compliance with settled law overrides every other consideration, including the morale of the national security agencies. This is what has happened here. The judiciary was breathing down the CBIs neck giving it little room for manoeuvre to accommodate the IBs sensitivities. The pressure of human rights activists is another factor that would have weighed heavily on the CBIs mind in making the move. In my view, this is one of the few occasions on which activists have been on the right course, and we must compliment them for their vigilance. From the IBs point of view, the Ishrat investigation is a blow to its morale. Its long-term impact is incalculable. It is conceivable that few IB operatives will hereafter venture to go beyond their routine and stick their necks out in a questionable extralegal operation. This negativism will definitely spell doom for innovation and daring, the hallmarks of an outstanding intelligence officer. No amount of incentives will restore their zest for counterintelligence work. This is true even if one concedes that Rajinder Kumar and his three junior colleagues who stepped out of the routine and assisted the Gujarat Police in pursuing terrorist elements were possibly overzealous and reckless. After all, what is the dividing line between unbridled enthusiasm and a conformity to the law? This is particularly so when the transgressors of the law and the perceived code of conduct are not guilty of looking for personal gain or aggrandisement. This is the tragedy of the whole episode. The law cannot possibly discriminate between those who have committed downright criminal acts and those who have abetted them, except in terms of severity of penalty. If during the trial, it is decisively proved that Rajinder Kumar and his three IB juniors were guilty not of personal ill-will but were simply misguided and reckless, the court could take a lenient view while sentencing them. But this is only wishful thinking in the interests of an organisation that has done yeoman service to stabilise the security situation in the country.
Neighbourhood threat

In the final analysis, the lesson will not be lost on those in the neighbourhood. What is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan is a matter of concern. The unabashed appeasement of the two Taliban groups through the opening up of a dialogue either openly or covertly (as in Afghanistan) is a warning that the Taliban will not be averse to training its guns on us through their affiliates. No less an expert than M.K. Narayanan, former DIB and National Security Adviser, had expressed concern over this. Therefore, the Ishrat prosecution has come at a wrong time. This is not fanciful. I would like to challenge anybody who disputes this unintended connection between a demoralised security agency and a terror outfit that has very recently received a boost by bringing two troubled Constitutional governments to their knees. We will have to keep our fingers crossed and do everything possible to restore the morale of Indias premier intelligence agency. The judiciary cannot also be impervious to this task of a delicate fusing of the rule of law and national security. (R.K. Raghavan is a former Joint Director of the Intelligence Bureau and former Director, CBI. He is co-author of Indian Mujahideen, Springer 2013.)

Plan for worlds largest power-generating lagoon

The promoters want to follow up an initial 850m project for Swansea Bay with four even larger lagoons with a capacity of 7,300MW enough to meet 10 per cent of Britains electricity needs.
The first stage of a 12-billion scheme to build a series of tidal energy plants in Britain started on Saturday as a planning application is submitted for the worlds largest power-generating lagoon in south Wales. The promoters want to follow up an initial 850m project for Swansea Bay with four even larger lagoons with a capacity of 7,300MW enough to meet 10 per cent of Britains electricity needs. Tidal Lagoon Power has put in a development consent order under the Planning Act 2008, but must persuade the government to provide subsidies of 156 per MW/h even more than that going to offshore wind farms. The project must also overcome scepticism about tidal power following the collapse of the much larger Severn Barrage power generator in the same region. Our intention is to supply 10 per cent of the U.K.s domestic electricity by building at least five full-scale tidal lagoons in U.K. waters by 2023, before the U.K. sees any generation from new nuclear, said Mark Shorrock, chief executive of Tidal Lagoon Power, who has launched successful wind and solar schemes. The project, which envisages an area of 4.5 sq.miles cordoned off by a breakwater, would have an installed capacity of 320MW with an annual output of 420GW/h and a design life of 120 years. A six-mile sea wall up to 20m high would need to be built, but Mr. Shorrock says only a little over half of this wall would be visible from the land at low tide, and barely a few metres showing at high tide. The power will be generated as incoming and outgoing tides the daily equivalent of 100,000 Olympic swimming pools worth of water pass through turbines. Mr. Shorrock said it was essential to build more than one tidal lagoon: Economies of scale bring immediate advantage. A second lagoon will require a lower level of support than offshore wind, for a renewable power supply that is both long-lived and certain. A third lagoon will be competitive with the support received by new nuclear, but comes without the decommissioning costs and safety concerns. The second project would cost 2.3bn and be based in Colwyn Bay, with a third costing 4bn located in the upper Severn estuary. Two more at a cost of 4.5bn would follow, on as yet unspecified sites.

Mr. Shorrock, who has already constructed 280MW of wind and solar plants, said he had potential financial backing from the Macquarie Groups infrastructure funds and would like to bring in U.K. pension funds as investors. He said the projects would be far cheaper and more productive than the 30bn Severn Barrage scheme, which was first turned down by the government in 2010 amid huge opposition from many environmentalists. He said he had support from the local community and leading green activists for the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, which as well as providing light and warmth for 120,000 local homes could also become a centre for sailing and other recreation. Sean Christian, special sites spokesman for the wildlife lobby group RSPB, said he welcomed the fact that projects in the Severn estuary were now focused on tidal power lagoons rather than shore-to-shore barrages. This technology will have less impact on fish and other wildlife than the barrage proposals, which conservationists have spent several years fighting in the estuary, and which the government has repeatedly rejected. However, it could still have major impacts on the estuary and its wildlife, and we will need to look at the details of each lagoon proposal closely. Tidal Lagoon Power has built a potential team of British-based suppliers who would help with the scheme, including Alstom, Sheffield Forgemasters and Atkins. The equivalent of 1,850 fulltime jobs are promised during construction. David Tonkin, chief executive for the U.K. and Europe at the engineering company Atkins, said: The tidal lagoon concept ... is a great example of how innovative engineering could be used to harness our natural resources and provide clean, sustainable and predictable power for thousands of homes. If given the go-ahead for planning and the subsidies, construction is due to begin in the first half of next year, with the first power being generated in 2018. It would be a boost to local employment opportunities, especially while it is being constructed. Ian Isaac, who runs NSA Afan, a community-based regeneration organisation, said: Swansea Bay tidal lagoon will be the first of its kind in the world. Importantly, it will be an innovative approach to tackling high levels of unemployment in the area.

When roads take their toll on users

The alternative to high tolls over a long period is in ensuring that such projects are better monitored and contractors held accountable
Road tolls have become a red rag for Maharashtras Opposition parties. Among the first in the country to privatise road construction, the State is now facing protests which range from sporadic violence to agitations led by the Shiv Sena and its rival, Raj Thackerays Maharashtra

Navnirman Sena (MNS). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has even promised to make the State toll-free if voted to power. Ironically, road privatisation in the State was introduced in a major way when these political parties were in power. Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) projects boomed during the Shiv Sena-BJP regime which ruled from 1995 to 1999. Former BJP president Nitin Gadkari was then the Public Works Department (PWD) Minister who ushered in the era of road privatisation. Since then, 137 private road projects have been cleared in the State. These account for a road length of 4,685 kilometres, just two per cent of Maharashtras developed road length of 2.42 lakh kilometres. However, its these private roads which link major junctions and highways especially to the States big cities. Both the Shiv Sena and the MNS allege that the public is being fleeced by exorbitant and unjustified tolls, and that the money generated is being siphoned off instead of being used for road maintenance. Allegations of a political nexus between the ruling parties and contractors have also muddied the debate. Before political parties entered the picture, anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare led an agitation against road tolls in 2011. He demanded the scrapping of at least 20 of the States 174 toll booths. In many cases the toll contract itself is unfair because its based on low traffic projections. Second, the government rarely monitors tolling agencies or checks how many vehicles have passed through the toll booth. So, there is room for manipulation, alleges Vishwambhar Choudhari from Mr. Hazares movement.
Lack of monitoring

Two official reports do point to the lack of monitoring in road contracts. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), whose report was tabled in the State Assembly in December 2013, said there were instances where the toll operator continued to recover money from road users even though the recovery period had lapsed. In most cases, the toll collected was not used for road maintenance, it said. It listed the example of the Khamgaon-Jalna Bypass Link Road, saying: During the period of toll recovery, the contractor did nothing to maintain the roads. He completed only 60 per cent of the work but recovered 90 per cent of the money and then disappeared. Despite this, the contractor was not blacklisted. In 2006, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) 2004-05 report had indicted the high profile Mumbai-Pune Expressway. The project was built by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited (MSRDC) but the toll collection contract went to Ideal Road Builders. In 2004, the company received the toll collection contract for a fee of Rs.918 crore. However, the CAG report said this was much too low. Even if only 60 per cent of the toll revenue was to be considered, the reserve price would have worked out to be Rs.2,236 crore, it said.

Toll politics

Maharashtra has 174 toll booths. Of these, 40 are for projects of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), 79 for roads which come under the PWD and 55 for projects under the State utility, the MSRDC. Since the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) controls both the Public Works Department (PWD) and MSRDC departments, it has become the main target of the toll agitation. There are many political interests involved with the contractors. Many politicians have also routed money into this, alleges Dr. Choudhari. A retired PWD official even alleges that toll contracts are rigged by the State to allow only a monopolistic cartel of contractors to make the cut. Among the pioneers in Maharashtras toll business was the construction company, Ideal Road Builders (IRB), whose founder Dattatraya Mhaiskar was considered close to then PWD Minister Mr. Gadkari. The firm received several large road projects during Mr. Gadkaris tenure. The link came under scrutiny more recently in 2012 when it emerged that Mr. Mhaiskar had lent money to Mr. Gadkaris Purti Power and Sugar Ltd. He later said the loan was given in his personal capacity. IRB split into two entities a few years ago. IRB Infrastructure Developers is controlled by Mr. Mhaiksars elder son, Virendra. The second company is Mumbai Entry Point Ltd, controlled by the younger son, Jayant. Virendra Mhaiskar says the allegations of political proximity to Mr. Gadkari or more recently to the NCP are unfair. Making such allegations without any proof is unfair. We have already clarified that our company gave no loan to Mr. Gadkari, he told The Hindu. He also questioned why his company should be singled out by protesters when it handles very few projects. We are handling only five projects in the State of the 19 in the country. There are many private players in this business. And the bidding process is strict and competitive especially for national projects which have an electronic bidding system, he said.
Is there an alternative?

Senior State politicians point out that Maharashtra cannot afford to build highways without help from the private sector because it doesnt have the money. This is the system being followed even in the U.S. and China, says PWD Minister Chhagan Bhujbal. NCP chief Sharad Pawar also says this is the only route to building high quality roadways quickly, which will then boost development in the State. Since privatising road construction, the State has cleared projects worth over Rs.15,200 crore, money it cannot afford to pump into roadways on its own, senior officials say. The demand to shut down toll booths and take on this liability is not practical, officials point out. There are two types of private projects. The BOT route where the contractor builds the road and recovers his

money through toll. And the other model, where the State utility funds the road and appoints a contractor to recover toll. The former is more in use. The alternative then is in ensuring that such projects are better monitored and contractors held accountable. This includes enforcing a transparent bidding process and stringent tracking of toll recovery by State agencies. While some toll plazas track the vehicular count electronically, this system clearly needs to expand much more. The state also needs to ensure that contract conditions on road safety and maintenance are met. Allowing private players into the public domain does not mean the state can dispense with its own responsibilities, says transport expert Sudhir Badami. Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan himself has admitted that there is need for more regulation. Since no public hearing is taking place and the whole process of toll is not transparent, there is some anger among people. There should be a regulatory authority, he told the media recently. Perhaps, a regulator is just what the State needs. priyanka.k@thehindu.co.in

A lonely fighter lost among patriarchs

Rani Gaidinliu and many like her remain absent from our books, our memory, our politics, our public spaces and our discourses
Rani Gaidinliu does not appear in Indian history textbooks. In the pantheon of Indian freedom fighters, revolutionaries and liberators her name remains unfamiliar. She is unknown to most Indians, a fading memory and myth to her own people. Rani Gaidinliu was a spiritual leader, a reformer, a guerrilla warrior and a freedom fighter who served 14 years, making her one of Indias longest incarcerated political prisoner. Gaidinliu was born on January 26, 1915 at Nungkhao, a Rongmei village in Manipur. She was 16 when she became the leader of the Heraka movement after its charismatic leader Jadonang was executed by the British. While the Heraka movement was long aware of the civil disobedience movement in British India, it was Gaidinliu who first used Gandhijis name and identified her peoples struggle against oppression and self-determination with the larger national movement gaining ground in India. Through armed resistance, she quickly transformed a religious-indigenous rebellion into a revolutionary movement for independence. In a note recorded in June 1932, C.P. Mills, Deputy Commissioner, Naga Hills, stated that, The real danger of the movement is the spirit of defiance. The Empire fearing the spirt of defiance launched a manhunt for the 16-year-old rebel leader. The Assam Governor-in-Council authorised the overwhelming force of the 3rd and 4th Assam Rifles and the entire Manipur Police force. After a year long search and capture operations, Gaidinliu was arrested on October 17, 1932. She was tried and convicted on a charge of murder, waging war against the British crown and sentenced to life imprisonment. When Nehru met

Gaidinliu, she had already been imprisoned for five years. Nehrus efforts and subsequent failure to secure Gaidinlius release from the British is well documented. She would remain a prisoner for another decade, before being released from Tura Jail on October 14, 1947, after India became independent. The newly independent Indian State quickly recognised Gaidinlius potential as a symbol of Naga separatism. Upon her release the Indian government imposed severe restrictions on her movement and she was not permitted to return home to her people till 1957. The Naga National Council (NNC) leaders found her ideology, vocal opposition to the insurgency and Christian missionary presence an obstacle to the Naga separatist struggle. With the growing NNC threat against her life she went underground once again in 1960. She was honoured as a freedom fighter and awarded a Padma Bhushan, but toward the end of her life she became a neglected figure. Rani Gaidinliu died alone and disillusioned in 1993.
Insiders and outsiders

Year after year, volumes are written and continue to proliferate the public space about patriarchal figures like Gandhiji and Nehru. Indian history, even when written as a history of struggle, continues to exclude figures like Rani Gaidinliu. The Rani and many like her remain absent from our books, our memory, our politics, our public spaces and our discourses. We have treated their history as someone elses history or even, not history at all. Their absence is ubiquitous. History plays a powerful constitutive in determining an individuals sense of personal identity. It contributes to citizenship, that implies full membership to democratic exercise and the ability to influence ones destiny by having a significant voice in decisions. But, historically the Indian rectitude of citizenship has distinguished between insiders and outsiders. In the last 67 years we have celebrated the glorious self-images of the dominant, those who look a certain way, speak a certain language, make a certain claim of belonging and peddle a certain kind of hatred justified in the name of nationalism. If we are to write the history of Indian citizenship from the point of view of the others and the outsiders, it would be the story of systematic disaggregation of their citizenship, lost not at the point of a gun but rather by legislative action that has institutionalised prejudice. The most important right we possess is the right that we shall be governed only by laws we have given consent to; and this is the great guarantee of our freedom enshrined in the Constitution. One that India has persistently denied to its citizens of the Northeast. For instance, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) has been in effect in the seven Northeastern States of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya since September 11, 1958. AFSPA empowers the Indian security forces with unilateral power to detain, torture and kill to maintain order, alongside a legal immunity for extra-judicial killing. Here the law operates in and through its own suspension, and legitimacy always trumps disproportional use of lethal force. The grey areas of State authority grant the licence to kill and legitimises it through a judicial process. Normal laws of the state do not apply here, the state can transcend and transgress the rule of law in the name of larger public welfare. AFSPA violates Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution that guarantee the protection of life and personal liberty and protection against arbitrary arrest and detention. What exactly does equality before law mean, when individual citizens of the same Republic are subject to different laws and rights?

Rani Gaidinlius life is an allegory of the larger problems confounding Indias Northeast. If history is the narrative of our past, of who we are and how we came to be, then the Indian state has successfully excluded 44 million Indians who live in Indias Northeast from the historical, political and cultural memory of what it means to belong. The greatest repression, perhaps, is to deny and deprive people of their history. Today, the Northeast has a new national and local consciousness, along with a new history. Not of its valiant resilience, egalitarian communities, but forever the disturbed region, the countrys buffer, infamously connected to insurgencies, violence, persistent backwardness and a place of exclusion. In it are the terrible predicaments rising out of mainland Indias predilections, and even prejudices. Any rapprochement with the Northeast must begin with Indias recognition that equal citizenship, along with the idea of belonging transforms a state into a Nation. The human need to belong is not simply intangible, it is also an irrevocable condition. (Suchitra Vijayan, a lawyer and political analyst, previously worked for the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda.)

Indias missing women

Even though fair elections are held at regular intervals for State Assemblies and Parliament, they do not reflect the true consent of the people because a large number of women are missing from the electorate
On her arrival in India recently, the words of Gloria Steinem, American feminist and leader of the womens liberation movement, sounded like bells tolling for all women in todays modern Indian society. I came [to India] and what was here a half-a-century ago is still here and yet there is everything else. Studying data on the sex ratio in India over 60 years supports her grim observation. In this essay we provide a political economy explanation for the persistence of gender inequality in Indian society over the long run. The much debated Womens Reservation Bill proposes to reserve a third of all legislature seats for women, at national and State levels in India. If passed, this Bill would uplift the general mood of the nation which has been engulfed by a heightened sense of gender inequality over the last year. Following the brutal rape and murder of a 23-year-old student of physiotherapy in Delhi last year, there was massive and prolonged outpouring of public anger across the nation. India has never looked more unsafe for women. The Bill is going to assuage a hurt population. It is, however, unlikely to solve the fundamental problem that Indian women suffer from. Within a democratic system, policies are implemented by a government that is formed by the consent of the governed. In India, even though fair elections are held at regular intervals for State Assemblies and the National Parliament, they do not reflect the true consent of the people because a large number of women voters are missing from the electorate. We estimate that more than 65 million women (approximately 20 per cent of the female electorate) are missing and, therefore, these elections reveal the preferences (or the will) of a population that is artificially skewed against women.

Worsening sex ratio The phrase missing women was coined by Amartya Sen when he showed that in parts of the developing world, the ratio of women to men in the population is suspiciously low. The worsening sex ratio (number of females per 1,000 males) in countries such as India and China reflected the gross neglect of women. He estimated that more than 100 million women were missing due to gender discrimination. It was commonly believed that boy preference at birth and the mistreatment of young girls were the main reasons. Some careful and subsequent data work by Anderson and Ray showed that excess female mortality is a more universal phenomenon which holds for all age groups in these countries. They provided detailed decomposition of the missing women by age and cause of death and a particularly sinister observation was that the number of excess female deaths from intentional injuries or reported violence was disturbingly high in India. There is unanimous agreement among experts that this phenomenon is one of the most momentous problems faced by the developing world in modern times. The general sense is that it can be corrected by political action and public policy. It is in that regard that we explore the role of democracy in solving the missing womens problem. We analyse Indian electorate data over 50 years and study whether solutions to this dangerous trend can emerge from within such a political system. Using Dr. Sens methodology, we compute the sex ratio in the electorate across all the States in India over 50 years. The electorate includes all the people who are registered to vote in elections. In the next step, we use Kerala, the State with the best sex ratio in the electorate, as a reference for all the States to compute the number of missing women. This simple analysis throws up three shocking facts. First, in the last 50 years of Indian democracy, the absolute number of missing women has increased fourfold from 15 million to 68 million. This is not merely a reflection of the growth in the overall population, but, rather, of the fact that this dangerous trend has worsened with time. As a percentage of the female electorate, missing women have gone up significantly from 13 per cent to approximately 20 per cent. Second, the adverse sex ratio of the electorate in India has not changed significantly over the last 50 years. In fact, when we look at different States, we see that it has become worse for most of the large backward States like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. This disappointing trend means that there are many more missing women voters in the population. Hence, fewer female voters will voice their opinions through elections. Political decisions which are based on election outcomes therefore underrepresent the female population. They are not a true reflection of the female policy preferences. Third, with the exception of a very few States such as Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, the sex ratio in the electorate is far worse than the general sex ratio in the population. This means that not all the women who are eligible to vote in Indian elections are registered to vote and, therefore, they are missing from the electoral list. In backward States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, this

difference is as high as 9.3 and 5.7 percentage points which translated into millions in absolute numbers. The worsening sex ratio of the Indian electorate has deep and long lasting consequences given the democratic system of governance. Within a democracy, politicians compete to get elected and though it is well recognised that men and women differ in their policy preferences, the adverse sex ratio of the electorate will make it unlikely that the preferences of women get significant attention. Competitive electoral politics In fact, because of the missing women, the competitive electoral process will perpetuate genderbiased policies in India. The problem here is that the politicians respond to the preferences of the existing electorate in the population and not to the counterfactual. If the 65 million missing women were present within the electorate, they would have an important influence in shaping government policies. What is troubling in a democratic system of governance is that even if a politician is not biased against women in his policy preferences, the electoral competition will ensure that he chooses policies in favour of his average electorate which is increasingly male-dominated in India. This is why gender-biased practices and policies will be perpetuated over the long run in a democratic system like Indias unless there is an exogenous shock to this system. This problem is akin to a market failure for democracy. Indeed, this could potentially explain why the existing political framework is inadequately equipped to address this pressing concern and why gender bias has persisted in Indian society. It is also not surprising that even though India has had a very good track record of holding regular elections and a democratic form of government, it remains one of worst performers in the Gender Inequality Index (GII) of the World Bank. The GII captures the loss in achievement within a country due to gender inequality and is based on measures of health, labour force participation and empowerment. In the Human Development Report, 2012, India performs more poorly than neighbouring Pakistan in the GII despite having a higher per capita income and a democratic government. More strikingly, it is ranked 133rd out of 146 countries and even lags behind war-torn countries such as Iraq and Sudan. Mixed results To what extent, then, can womens reservation in Parliament and the State Assemblies address the gender bias problem in India? In our opinion, this will have a very limited impact. The underlying assumption with the Womens Reservation Bill is that women as policymakers are more sensitive to women-related issues. However, it is crucial to note that India has experimented with womens reservation at the level of the panchayat or village councils since the mid-1990s. This has generated very interesting research on whether womens reservation has had any impact on the allocation of resources towards women. So far, the evidence from this experiment is mixed some find evidence in favour of a positive impact while others do not find any impact of this reservation.

The impact of the reservation, I believe, will depend on the exact nature of the reservation policy. For example, if seats are reserved on a quick rotation basis then there might be no longterm policies favouring women and thereby having minimal impact. On the other hand, if seats are reserved for a certain number of election rounds then the impact would depend on the basis of the reservation at the constituency level. Here, we are inclined to propose a reservation policy based on the gender ratio in the constituency reserve those seats where the gender ratio of women to men is the worst. The fundamental reason for this is that an adverse gender ratio is a measure of neglect of women in that society. So, if the objective of womens reservation is compensatory justice then it should start with those constituencies where the neglect is the highest. The competitive electoral process, however, is likely to undo the impact of any womens reservation policy. The logic of this is that if both men and women have equal rights to vote, then even in reserved constituencies where there are fewer women compared to men, women political candidates who compete with each other to get themselves elected might choose policies which favour men. Once again, the competitive electoral process even in the presence of womens reservation, might perpetuate gender-biased policies. In a nutshell, the competitive electoral process in Indian democracy with or without womens reservation will fail to deliver policies that are not gender-biased. In the presence of missing women, whose consent cannot be taken into account in the electoral process, democracy will fail to deliver policies that promote womens welfare (especially in those situations where there is a divergence in opinion between men and women). India can begin to address this disaster by first recognising that an adverse gender ratio is a human rights problem which is an outcome of the sustained, gross neglect of women. And the solution for this lies outside the competitive democratic system. (The writers are professors at the Indian School of Business. Shamika Ravi is also a Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution, India Center, New Delhi.)

Voting in the time of smartphones

Drawing-room campaigns do not work in a country like India where large sections do not have houses to live in, leave alone television or the Internet
How time flies and often it is the arrival of an election that reminds that we are five years older since we last voted. I still cant believe that 10 years have passed ever since I had taken the Tamil Nadu Express from Chennai one night to spend two months in Uttar Pradesh, reporting on the public mood in the run-up to the 2004 general election. I even recall the tiny details: the simple dinner at a rest house in Rae Bareli, the spicy lunch at a hotel in Allahabad, the tea-break on the road to Ayodhya.

At the time, India was shining or so the rulers claimed. If you went by the advertisements released by the government in newspapers and television, India, under the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, was making rapid strides in the path of progress. There was peace in the country, peace with the neighbours, highways were being built, poverty was on the decline, the unemployed were getting jobs and, above all, the country had become a nuclear power and earned the respect of the international community. Projection vs. ground reality This happy picture, painted by the BJP in its India Shining campaign, went very well with the image presented by the Congress of being a party in a shambles. Sonia Gandhi was still being considered a foreigner; Rahul Gandhi was only 33; its top leadership mostly comprised men who were well beyond seventy and couldnt be counted as charismatic campaigners; Manmohan Singh had nearly retired from public life; above all, the party had no projected prime ministerial candidate. So if you were to watch the run-up to the 2004 election from the comfort of your drawing room, you would have believed that the battered Congress stood no chance against the dynamic BJP, which had made India shine. But the ground reality was different, as I found out when I went from one town to another in U.P., talking to the lay voter (and not just to the taxiwallah). It was evident that life had remained unchanged for the common man, and that the India Shining campaign only rubbed salt into his wound. As the election dates drew nearer and top BJP leaders began hitting the dusty roads, they probably began to realise that little had been done for the masses. L.K. Advani, in his election speeches, was suddenly adding a footnote to the India Shining campaign: We are only saying that India has begun to shine. We never said that India has shined. The footnote had come a little too late in the day. Even though there wasnt a wave for or against the BJP, the anti-incumbency anger was palpable at the ground level but not at all visible from the drawing room. In Allahabad, for example, public resentment against Murli Manohar Joshi, the Union Minister and the sitting MP, was so pronounced that I wondered whether I should say so in my dispatch. It was unthinkable that Mr. Joshi would lose on his home turf and I did not want to make a fool of myself by writing him off. I eventually wrote what I saw and heard. When the results were declared, Joshi did lose and so did the BJP. Time flies we are suddenly into 2014 and yet another general election is round the corner. Back in 2004, even Gmail was a year or two away (I remember sending my reports from a Yahoo ID), but today we also have Facebook and Twitter and, above all, smartphones that provide us round-the-clock access not only to these social networking sites but news as well.

Online propaganda Also back then, only journalists and columnists could give news and views, but today everybody who has a computer and a smartphone is entitled to expressing an opinion and being read too. So much so that at times you find an intimidating online mob out there, ready to lynch newsmakers who are pronounced guilty by the ever-shrill television channels. Needless to say, the election campaign has acquired a new dimension: online propaganda. I have about 1,800 Facebook friends of them nearly 60 per cent are not politically inclined. Among those who have political leanings, 40 per cent are in favour of Narendra Modi, another 40 per cent in favour of Rahul Gandhi, and the remaining 20 per cent neither in favour of Mr. Modi or Mr. Gandhi but strongly against the Aam Aadmi Party. Am I going to be swayed by their opinion? Maybe yes. Maybe not. Is the election going to be decided on the basis of their opinion? Certainly not. Drawing-room campaigns, as had been demonstrated in 2004, do not work in a country like ours where the vast majority does not even have houses to live in leave alone drawing rooms equipped with TV or an Internet connection. The results of the 2014 election, therefore, will be decided by Indians who probably dont even own a phone leave alone a smartphone. If we havent heard that Indians voice yet, thats only because we have been too busy listening to the Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi debate. But we shall hear his voice, loud and clear, when the votes are being counted.

A traumatic past and a stifling present

The Tamils of Sri Lankas Northern Province do not have it easy even five years after the war ended. But the language of war crimes alone would not address their problems
With its failure to convincingly address allegations of war crimes, or implement a meaningful process of reconciliation over the last five years, Sri Lanka finds itself trapped by international pressure ahead of the UNHRC meet in Geneva. All along, criticism of the countrys human rights record has come largely from rights groups or sections of the Tamil diaspora some still espouse the separatist cause. But clearly, mounting international pressure now is something that Sri Lanka will find hard not to miss. To add to this, the Northern Provincial Council (NPC)s resolution passed at its fifth council session recently, calling for an international inquiry into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka came as a shocker to the government. With such a move from a democratically-elected body representing northern Tamils, the call for an internal probe only gained more legitimacy and steam.

The NPC resolution and the remarks by visiting United States envoy Nisha Biswal on the international communitys frustration over the pace of reconciliation in Sri Lanka have visibly irked Colombo. Soon enough, Sri Lanka lashed out at the U.S. envoy, terming her remarks as unsubstantiated, and at times, patronising. Having failed to focus on ground realities all this while, Sri Lanka now appears to be hurriedly channelling its energy and might towards thwarting the resolution. Senior Sri Lankan ministers and bureaucrats are busy travelling the length and breadth of the globe to make a strong case for its post-war progress, and lobby against a potentially strong resolution in Geneva. Unfailingly highlighting the countrys flagship accomplishments since the end of the war what it proudly terms infrastructure development and economic growth the government is working overtime to garner support ahead of the Council session less than two months from now. Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga and External Affairs Ministry Monitoring MP Sajin de Vass Gunawardene were in Washington recently to meet legislators, policymakers and officials, to convince them of Sri Lankas progress on the reconciliation front. Minister D.E.W. Gunasekera, who went to Vietnam, returned with a robust assurance of fullest support, The Sunday Times in Sri Lanka reported. Other ministers, the Sunday papers political column noted, had been assigned various UNHRC members, including Brazil, Kuwait and the Philippines for this campaign. Embedded message Sri Lanka says that a third U.S.-sponsored resolution against it is totally unwarranted. Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris who, on his recent visit to New Delhi, met envoys of 82 countries, urged them to reflect objectively on the situation in Sri Lanka and its achievements since the end of the war, according to media reports. The Minister also protested against the selective manner in which Sri Lanka was treated at the UNHRC sessions by certain members, the state-owned The Sunday Observer reported. At this point, the U.S. seems inclined to table a resolution that would call for an international probe. Ms Biswal did not explicitly say so during her visit to Colombo but repeatedly emphasised that the patience of the international community was wearing thin. The U.S., she said, preferred a Sri Lanka-led process of reconciliation, but international pressure, she repeatedly said, was mounting. Sri Lankas failure to fully implement recommendations of its own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), that even the earlier HRC resolutions commended, has contributed further to the growing scepticism, going by Ms Biswals remarks.

The climate is tense with indications both, from Ms Biswals address and from other diplomatic sources in Sri Lanka pointing to an increasing possibility of a strongly-worded resolution in Geneva. It has been so ever since British Prime Minister David Cameron who was in the country for the Commonwealth Summit in November 2013 served a virtual ultimatum to Sri Lanka. Following his visit to Colombo and Jaffna, he set a March 2014 deadline for Sri Lanka to complete a credible probe. Failing that, he said, an international probe would be inevitable. Indias stand While the U.S. may appear to be taking a softer line compared to the U.K., Ms Biswals emphasis on the international communitys frustration seems to point to more than what was said. India, which voted in favour of the resolution at the last two sessions, will be closely watched. With the Palk Bay conflict already putting India on a weak wicket, it will only present a greater dilemma should the resolution turn out to be very strong. While a deviation from Indias earlier voting pattern seems unlikely, it would be interesting to see how New Delhi handles the pressure from Tamil Nadu given its own parliamentary elections this year and Colombo. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, has been arguing that it would need more time. It probably will. The aftermath of a war has a lifespan of its own. All the same, the absence of meaningful and consistent engagement by the Sri Lankan state with the war-torn Northern Province evokes concern. Highways and an assured supply of electricity which the government has been fairly successful in providing are necessary, but far from sufficient. Food insecurity The realities facing the people of the north are way more complex. There is an acute need for jobs. With the rising cost of living, households particularly those with women heading them are struggling to make ends meet. Many public institutions, including those that lost land to the armys high security zones in the Northern Province, are crying for attention and support. Fishermen of the north are badly hit. With the failure of successive monsoons, food security is emerging as a serious concern. The region is still heavily militarised. The Sri Lankan government may not acknowledge these problems anytime soon, as the rhetoric, for both the government and those opposing it, seems to begin and end with war crimes now an all-too-familiar game of allegations and denial. While allegations of war crimes and human rights violations keep surfacing from time to time justifiably so after a brutal war that allegedly claimed several thousand civilian lives it is important that we simultaneously shine the spotlight on some of these current challenges. Caught between a traumatic past and a stifling present that together threaten to drain the community of any little hope and promise they might see, people of the north do not have it easy

even five years after the war ended. And speaking the language of war crimes alone may not be adequate to address this. To start with, it would only make it far too easy for the Sinhala hardliners in the south to instantly dismiss charges, with well-thought-out conspiracy theories readily lending themselves to the cause. Moreover, it is likely to breed more hostility, distancing Colombo even further away from the north. The rhetoric, therefore, has to be broadened to capture some of the nuances of the everyday struggle of an ordinary person in the north. Undoubtedly, while it is important to fix accountability for the atrocities committed during the war, it is equally crucial to see if the end of the war has actually translated to peace. When the Sri Lankan government ended the war in May 2009, it had a golden opportunity a chance to tell its own citizens that it cared. Five years, as the Sri Lankan government often says, may be inadequate to complete its reconciliation process, but it is certainly enough time to make a meaningful beginning. Was that beginning made? Maybe Sri Lanka does not have to wait for March every year to answer this question.

Inside the culture of covert killing

Killing is a lot easier to do than building capacities for surveillance, investigation and prosecution. The Ishrat case is about a republic thats allowing itself to dissolve into a state of criminal injustice
Early in the summer of 1988, as scorching winds of death blew across Punjab, a short, wiry man entered the Golden Temple, invisible among the great throngs of pilgrims gathering at the shrine from across India. Inside, he was greeted as an honoured guest by Surjit Singh Penta, the Khalistan terror commander who had made the temple his fortress. For the next several days, Mr. Penta worked with his visitor, an officer assigned by Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, wiring up the temple with explosives. The threat, he was certain, would deter India from considering storming the temple, as Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had done in 1984. New Delhi ignored Mr. Pentas threats: the bombs were duds, and the man Mr. Penta thought was an ISI officer would serve, decades later, as Director of Indias Intelligence Bureau (IB). Nine days into an almost bloodless siege, the terrorists surrendered Like many intelligence officials, Ajit Kumar Doval has never discussed what happened in the Golden Temple. Those who served during the period, though, speak of skilful deception operations that allowed the penetration of the networks linking Mr. Penta to the ISI; of the interception and disappearance of the Pakistani intelligence official as he made his way across the Punjab border to Amritsar. The President of India later handed Mr. Doval a small silver disc, embossed with the great wheel of dharma and a lotus wreath, and the words Kirti Chakra. Now, as former Intelligence Bureau (IB) special director Rajinder Kumar faces trial for the extra-judicial execution of Mumbai college student Ishrat Jehan Raza and three others, Mr. Dovals story tells us something important. The Ishrat case is just part of a culture of killing. That culture is, in turn, a symptom of a much larger dysfunction. For decades now, Indias government has dodged a serious debate what a viable legal framework for counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism might look like, how it is to be administered and who will make sure it isnt abused. It has simply ignored hard questions of capacity-building and accountability. Delivering death Few in the IB privately dispute the contours of the Central Bureau of Investigation's (CBI) case whatever Mr. Kumars individual culpability may or may not have been. In February 2004, the IB was able to locate two Gujarat-based jihadists, trained in Pakistan, on the basis of information recovered from the body of a Poonch-based Pakistani Lashkar-e-Toiba operative, Ehsan Illahi. The two Gujarat-based men, referred to in CBI documentation as just C1 and C2, were persuaded or intimidated, or bribed to change sides. C1 and C2 informed their Lashkar handler, Muzammil Bhat the key military commander of the 26/11 plot that they were ready to stage an attack against top political leaders in Gujarat, including Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The IB was waiting for Gujranwala-based Lashkar-e-Toiba operative Zeeshan Zohar, despatched to Gujarat in April on Mr. Bhats instructions. They were waiting for his Sargodha-born colleague Amjad Ali Rana earlier injured in fighting in Jammu and Kashmir. They were waiting, too, when Pune resident Javed Sheikh showed up but with a young woman who hadnt, until then, figured in the story. From immigration records, we know this: on March 29, 2004, Pune resident Javed Sheikh flew to Oman, on passport E6624023, identifying him as Praneshkumar M. Gopinath Pillai a travel document obtained illegally, in addition to an earlier one in his Muslim name. He flew back to Mumbai on April 11. He purchased the second-hand car that was to carry him to his death. And he repeatedly communicated, the IB says, with Mr. Bhat who finally authorised him to travel to Gujarat in June, believing C1, C2, and the two Pakistani fidayeen were ready to initiate their attack. No one knows what Ms Raza Ishrat was doing with Sheikh; nothing, bar 26/11 convict David Headleys second-hand claim that she was a suicide bomber, is on record. Her family insists she was just an innocent teenager, hired by Sheikh for a non-existent perfume business. From witness statements recorded by the CBI, theres reason to believe the officers involved considered sparing Ms Razas life, with some arguing that she would be too terrified to speak about what she had seen. There were others, though, who werent willing to take the chance. Theres just no way any democracy can countenance their choice. Leave aside moral questions: police officials who have the power over the life and death of terrorists today can, tomorrow, use it against political opponents and all the rest of us. Encouraging such acts isnt patriotism: it is a sure-shot way of turning us into Pakistan, or worse. Yet, few principles survive encounters with reality unscathed. Everything has a context and so did Mr. Kumars acts. The dilemmas of democracies From history, we know this: the values democracies espouse are at some distance from what they actually do: nothing Mr. Kumar is alleged to have done is different, in its ethical elements, from the Central Intelligence Agencys drone war or Russias secret wars in the Caucasus. Last year, a bipartisan investigation held the United States guilty of torture through its post 9/11 wars. In 2009 alone, 33 separate allegations of torture were brought against British soldiers in Iraq. The U.S. practised large-scale torture and secret executions in its war against Vietnam. And Kenyan veterans of the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s won the right to sue the United Kingdom for what their lawyers say were unspeakable acts of brutality. Even the most ethical of all wars, the great struggle to defeat German Fascism, was riven through by gigantic atrocities: the Nazi death camps; the firebombing of Dresden; the Soviet war atrocities during their epic advance into Berlin. There is no moral equivalence between the fascists and their enemies, but the actual practice of war doesnt have victims and villains. Fritz Knchlein, executed in 1949 for murdering 126 British prisoners of war, is now known to have

himself been tortured in the London Cage, a secret camp hidden among the posh villas of the Kensington Palace Gardens. For influential traditions of human rights discourse in and outside India, the law represents a kind of secular version of divine will: a credo that will build a utopian order, free of the filth of politics. The law liberals venerate, John Gray has noted in a stellar essay, isnt a free-standing institution towering majestically above the chaos of human conflict. Instead, Gray pointed out, modern law is an artefact of state power. Western governments, he went on, blunder around the world gibbering about human rights; but there can be no rights without the rule of law and no rule of law in a fractured or failed state. The Indian republic, fractured from the moment of its birth, faced stark choices between order and law which are not, as we fondly imagine, the same thing. Its ill-trained, ill-equipped and understaffed criminal justice system just didnt have the resources to deliver justice. Killing is a lot easier to do than building capacities for surveillance, investigation and prosecution. Torture thus came to substitute for criminal investigation; the bullet through the back of the head for prosecution and punishment. The awful truth is this worked: each life not lost in Punjab or Tripura or Andhra Pradesh is a powerful argument for the proposition that the morally-condemnable can also be praiseworthy. The costs of victory Yet, these victories have come at an unacceptable price. They absolved governments of responsibility for actions that engendered crisis in the first place: theres never been a Commission of Inquiry into Prime Minister Indira Gandhis sponsorship of religious reaction in Punjab, to cite just one example. They also freed the state of any compelling incentive to change its behaviour. India's police and intelligence services aren't fundamentally better off than they were decades ago. Police forces, the government's own data shows, dont meet even basic norms. The intelligence services are grossly understaffed and underskilled, with the bulk of staff committed to duties which have nothing to do with national security. Indias security services may be able to stamp out insurgencies, but not ensure the maintenance of a public culture based on law, the keystone of a democracy. Were left, thus, with a perpetualmotion machine of killing, unable to stop the republic from dissolving into a state of criminal injustice. praveen.swami@thehindu.co.in

The promise of regularisation

There is little transparency in the regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi

Earlier this week, acting on behalf of the Delhi government, the Chief Minister wrote a letter to the President asking for a probe against the former Chief Minister, reportedly for alleged irregularities in the regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi. This follows the Delhi Lokayuktas finding in November 2013 that the issuance of the PRC [provisional regularisation certificates] on the eve of the elections [in 2008] was a populist measure intended to woo voters. It also found that some unauthorised colonies (UACs) received the PRC despite having submitted incomplete applications. UACs, which are estimated to house 30 per cent of Delhis population, were promised regularisation in 2008, and again in the manifestos of the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Congress, prior to the Delhi elections of 2013. In his first address to the newlyelected Delhi Assembly this year, the Lieutenant Governor announced that an action plan for regularising unauthorised colonies within a year is being drawn up and this plan shall be implemented rigorously in a time-bound manner. To understand this issue, it is important to understand how this problem arose. Processes in the past Prior to 1993, Delhi saw several waves of UAC regularisation. In 1993, however, when the government was looking to regularise 1071 UACs, Common Cause Society, an NGO, approached the Delhi High Court questioning the process. In response, the Court restrained the government from regularising any further UACs in Delhi and directed it to prepare and submit guidelines for the process of regularisation. In 2007, the government placed the guidelines before the Court. In 2008, it resumed its call for applications from UACs seeking regularisation. The Resident Welfare Associations of these UACs had to submit various documents such as land details, certificates, layout plans and undertakings to abide by the approved layout plans and provide land for social infrastructure. It received applications from 1639 colonies. Subsequently, an addendum to the 2008 regulations, introduced before the elections in November 2008, allowed the Government of NCT of Delhi (GNCTD) to issue PRCs to UACs. Soon after, these were issued to 1218 of the applicant colonies. In September 2012, the government issued an order finding 895 UACs eligible for regularisation. The order specified that these were selected based on two conditions: they did not lie on forest and ridge areas and protected area and did not hinder the provision of infrastructural facilities under the Master Plan 2021. In spite of the order, government and media reports have treated the colonies listed in the 895 UACs order as de facto regularised. However, a closer look at this order reveals that only 312 of the colonies those located on private land stood regularised at the time of the order. Of these, only a subset that are on private land owned by private owners are plots eligible to be registered for sale or transfer, an outcome central to any definition of regularisation.

The order also said the remaining 583 colonies listed, which are partly or fully on public land, would be regularised only after the GNCTD recovered the cost of the public land from residents. For these colonies, the relevant land-owning agency would also have to complete certain steps, such as withdraw land acquisition notifications and amendments in revenue records, before the land can be registered. In other words, the regularisation of these 895 UACs was far from complete. The Comptroller and Auditor General and the Delhi Lokayukta have pointed out that there has been little transparency in this regularisation process. Indeed, it has been a complicated mess with many gaps. Complications First, the two levels of selection were opaque. Initially, the basis for selecting the 1,218 UACs from 1,639 applicants to receive PRCs remains unclear. Further, those UACs which were found not eligible were not informed of the exact reason for their ineligibility. Second, according to the addendum to the 2008 regulations, government agencies were supposed to complete regularisation procedures within a year of issuing a PRC. Instead, it took the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Delhi Development Authority, and the GNCTD four years to notify the regularisation of any UAC. Interviews with residents in unauthorised colonies like Sangam Vihar, several blocks of which were among the 1218 UACs, reveal that the PRC was followed by little action. Third, the present status of the 583 of the 895 UACs, that lie fully or partially on public land, is not clear. There is no publicly available list of colonies for which the costs of public land have been subsequently recovered a requirement for regularisation. Finally, the 2021 Master Plan of Delhi states that regularisation must ensure that minimum necessary services and community facilities are provided to enable improvement of physical and social infrastructure. Data released by the GNCTD on its website indicates that, as of March 2013, agencies have been allocated for development works in 830 of the 895 colonies, and such works reportedly were completed in 461 of them. However, the recent draft CAG report on the matter reportedly noted that the status of these works could not be verified. Our own interviews in A and B blocks of Sangam Vihar, which were among the 895 regularised, show that while the GNCTD data specified that work was completed, there is little change in service provisioning on the ground. This gap between government data and ground reality can, in part, be explained by the ambiguity in government language and data. The government does not specify what works mean, nor does it specify what the current status of the works is in these 895 colonies. Many recent media reports indicate that the new government will be undertaking the regularisation process for the 1600-odd unauthorised colonies all over again. For administrative clarity and transparency, it should take the following steps:

First, coordinate with the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi and the Delhi Development Authority to complete various steps for regularisation as per timelines already specified in the 2008 regulations. Second, on completion of these steps, it should publicly notify which UACs have been regularised and why. Third, the benefits of regularisation in terms of development works have to be explained. Fourth, the process of registration of deeds by individual plot owners has to be detailed. These steps will demonstrate commitment by the current government to its publicly declared mandate of better and transparent governance. Furthermore, making the status of UACs clear to both its residents and others in Delhi will enable them to be fully integrated into the city fabric, just like the formal planned colonies of Delhi. (Shahana Sheikh and Subhadra Banda are with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi)

Drone use highlights questions for journalists

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has opened an investigation of the drone, which was used by an on-call employee for a Connecticut television station. The FAA is developing new rules as the technology makes drones far more versatile, but for now operators can run afoul of regulations by using them for commercial purposes, including journalism. The case of the Hartford crash, in which the victims body was left hanging out of a mangled car, highlights some of the safety, privacy and ethical issues that journalists will wrestle with as interest grows in using drones for newsgathering. Here was a dead body still on the scene. We had covered it the best we could, said Lt. Brian Foley, a Hartford police spokesman, who said drones have been appearing more frequently at crime scenes. You dont want the family to see that. The stations general manager, Klarn DePalma, said it constantly evaluates new technology and is eager to see regulations spelled out for drones, but he said the temporary employee in question was not on assignment for them and has never been paid for drone video. We dont even own a drone, he said. The FAA said on Monday that it has issued 12 warning letters to drone operators, which can include orders to stop operations. It said in a statement that its investigations are intended to determine whether operators violated FAA safety regulations. A law passed by Congress two years ago requires the FAA to integrate unmanned aircraft of all sizes into the domestic airspace by late 2015, but its clear the agency wont meet that deadline. The FAA has been working for more than four years on regulations to permit small drones those weighing less than 55 pounds to be used for commercial purposes, but it has missed deadline after deadline for proposing those regulations.

Last month, the FAA again moved back the date it expects to propose those regulations to November of this year. Even then, it will be just a proposal. It takes months and often years before proposed regulations become final. The FAA is tackling small drones that are flown under about 400 feet below where most manned aircraft fly first because theyre the easiest. Regulations to permit commercial use of larger drones are even further behind. Drones hold appeal for journalists because they would allow new perspectives and access, particularly in areas that are not reachable by helicopter or could pose dangers to people. New models can cost as little as $500. But regulators have to weigh free-speech considerations against concerns for safety and invasion of privacy. A small handful of media organisations have received warning letters since 2011, when an iPad newspaper owned by Rupert Murdochs News Corp. was flagged for using a drone to film tornado damage around the country, according to Matt Waite, a journalism professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Last July, the journalism schools at Nebraska and the University of Missouri-Columbia were ordered to stop flying drones outdoors until they obtain government authorisation. Mr. Waite, who founded the universitys Drone Journalism Lab in 2011, said that once permission for commercial drone use is granted, journalists will need to consider psychological distress that a dozen or more drones buzzing overhead could cause people who become targets of media attention. Another issue, he said, will be the safety risks in deploying devices, each weighing several pounds, with rapidly spinning blades. What is a permitted risk? What is a responsible risk? Those two may be two different things, Mr. Waite said. Aerial drones, long associated with the military, increasingly have been adapted for civilian use. They have been deployed widely to document the scale of disasters and, at the Sochi Olympics, they are being used to help broadcast the events. Mr. Waite said film companies also use drones extensively on closed sets, but because the work of journalism is so public, it stands to face more government scrutiny. This is why youre going to see journalists getting in more trouble, he said. As a journalist, whats the point of going to the trouble and getting pictures if youre not going to publish? AP Keywords: Drones, FAA

The promise of regularisation

There is little transparency in the regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi

Earlier this week, acting on behalf of the Delhi government, the Chief Minister wrote a letter to the President asking for a probe against the former Chief Minister, reportedly for alleged irregularities in the regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi. This follows the Delhi Lokayuktas finding in November 2013 that the issuance of the PRC [provisional regularisation certificates] on the eve of the elections [in 2008] was a populist measure intended to woo voters. It also found that some unauthorised colonies (UACs) received the PRC despite having submitted incomplete applications. UACs, which are estimated to house 30 per cent of Delhis population, were promised regularisation in 2008, and again in the manifestos of the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Congress, prior to the Delhi elections of 2013. In his first address to the newlyelected Delhi Assembly this year, the Lieutenant Governor announced that an action plan for regularising unauthorised colonies within a year is being drawn up and this plan shall be implemented rigorously in a time-bound manner. To understand this issue, it is important to understand how this problem arose. Processes in the past Prior to 1993, Delhi saw several waves of UAC regularisation. In 1993, however, when the government was looking to regularise 1071 UACs, Common Cause Society, an NGO, approached the Delhi High Court questioning the process. In response, the Court restrained the government from regularising any further UACs in Delhi and directed it to prepare and submit guidelines for the process of regularisation. In 2007, the government placed the guidelines before the Court. In 2008, it resumed its call for applications from UACs seeking regularisation. The Resident Welfare Associations of these UACs had to submit various documents such as land details, certificates, layout plans and undertakings to abide by the approved layout plans and provide land for social infrastructure. It received applications from 1639 colonies. Subsequently, an addendum to the 2008 regulations, introduced before the elections in November 2008, allowed the Government of NCT of Delhi (GNCTD) to issue PRCs to UACs. Soon after, these were issued to 1218 of the applicant colonies. In September 2012, the government issued an order finding 895 UACs eligible for regularisation. The order specified that these were selected based on two conditions: they did not lie on forest and ridge areas and protected area and did not hinder the provision of infrastructural facilities under the Master Plan 2021. In spite of the order, government and media reports have treated the colonies listed in the 895 UACs order as de facto regularised. However, a closer look at this order reveals that only 312 of the colonies those located on private land stood regularised at the time of the order. Of these, only a subset that are on private land owned by private owners are plots eligible to be registered for sale or transfer, an outcome central to any definition of regularisation.

The order also said the remaining 583 colonies listed, which are partly or fully on public land, would be regularised only after the GNCTD recovered the cost of the public land from residents. For these colonies, the relevant land-owning agency would also have to complete certain steps, such as withdraw land acquisition notifications and amendments in revenue records, before the land can be registered. In other words, the regularisation of these 895 UACs was far from complete. The Comptroller and Auditor General and the Delhi Lokayukta have pointed out that there has been little transparency in this regularisation process. Indeed, it has been a complicated mess with many gaps. Complications First, the two levels of selection were opaque. Initially, the basis for selecting the 1,218 UACs from 1,639 applicants to receive PRCs remains unclear. Further, those UACs which were found not eligible were not informed of the exact reason for their ineligibility. Second, according to the addendum to the 2008 regulations, government agencies were supposed to complete regularisation procedures within a year of issuing a PRC. Instead, it took the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Delhi Development Authority, and the GNCTD four years to notify the regularisation of any UAC. Interviews with residents in unauthorised colonies like Sangam Vihar, several blocks of which were among the 1218 UACs, reveal that the PRC was followed by little action. Third, the present status of the 583 of the 895 UACs, that lie fully or partially on public land, is not clear. There is no publicly available list of colonies for which the costs of public land have been subsequently recovered a requirement for regularisation. Finally, the 2021 Master Plan of Delhi states that regularisation must ensure that minimum necessary services and community facilities are provided to enable improvement of physical and social infrastructure. Data released by the GNCTD on its website indicates that, as of March 2013, agencies have been allocated for development works in 830 of the 895 colonies, and such works reportedly were completed in 461 of them. However, the recent draft CAG report on the matter reportedly noted that the status of these works could not be verified. Our own interviews in A and B blocks of Sangam Vihar, which were among the 895 regularised, show that while the GNCTD data specified that work was completed, there is little change in service provisioning on the ground. This gap between government data and ground reality can, in part, be explained by the ambiguity in government language and data. The government does not specify what works mean, nor does it specify what the current status of the works is in these 895 colonies. Many recent media reports indicate that the new government will be undertaking the regularisation process for the 1600-odd unauthorised colonies all over again. For administrative clarity and transparency, it should take the following steps:

First, coordinate with the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi and the Delhi Development Authority to complete various steps for regularisation as per timelines already specified in the 2008 regulations. Second, on completion of these steps, it should publicly notify which UACs have been regularised and why. Third, the benefits of regularisation in terms of development works have to be explained. Fourth, the process of registration of deeds by individual plot owners has to be detailed. These steps will demonstrate commitment by the current government to its publicly declared mandate of better and transparent governance. Furthermore, making the status of UACs clear to both its residents and others in Delhi will enable them to be fully integrated into the city fabric, just like the formal planned colonies of Delhi. (Shahana Sheikh and Subhadra Banda are with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi)

Drone use highlights questions for journalists

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has opened an investigation of the drone, which was used by an on-call employee for a Connecticut television station. The FAA is developing new rules as the technology makes drones far more versatile, but for now operators can run afoul of regulations by using them for commercial purposes, including journalism. The case of the Hartford crash, in which the victims body was left hanging out of a mangled car, highlights some of the safety, privacy and ethical issues that journalists will wrestle with as interest grows in using drones for newsgathering. Here was a dead body still on the scene. We had covered it the best we could, said Lt. Brian Foley, a Hartford police spokesman, who said drones have been appearing more frequently at crime scenes. You dont want the family to see that. The stations general manager, Klarn DePalma, said it constantly evaluates new technology and is eager to see regulations spelled out for drones, but he said the temporary employee in question was not on assignment for them and has never been paid for drone video. We dont even own a drone, he said. The FAA said on Monday that it has issued 12 warning letters to drone operators, which can include orders to stop operations. It said in a statement that its investigations are intended to determine whether operators violated FAA safety regulations. A law passed by Congress two years ago requires the FAA to integrate unmanned aircraft of all sizes into the domestic airspace by late 2015, but its clear the agency wont meet that deadline.

The FAA has been working for more than four years on regulations to permit small drones those weighing less than 55 pounds to be used for commercial purposes, but it has missed deadline after deadline for proposing those regulations. Last month, the FAA again moved back the date it expects to propose those regulations to November of this year. Even then, it will be just a proposal. It takes months and often years before proposed regulations become final. The FAA is tackling small drones that are flown under about 400 feet below where most manned aircraft fly first because theyre the easiest. Regulations to permit commercial use of larger drones are even further behind. Drones hold appeal for journalists because they would allow new perspectives and access, particularly in areas that are not reachable by helicopter or could pose dangers to people. New models can cost as little as $500. But regulators have to weigh free-speech considerations against concerns for safety and invasion of privacy. A small handful of media organisations have received warning letters since 2011, when an iPad newspaper owned by Rupert Murdochs News Corp. was flagged for using a drone to film tornado damage around the country, according to Matt Waite, a journalism professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Last July, the journalism schools at Nebraska and the University of Missouri-Columbia were ordered to stop flying drones outdoors until they obtain government authorisation. Mr. Waite, who founded the universitys Drone Journalism Lab in 2011, said that once permission for commercial drone use is granted, journalists will need to consider psychological distress that a dozen or more drones buzzing overhead could cause people who become targets of media attention. Another issue, he said, will be the safety risks in deploying devices, each weighing several pounds, with rapidly spinning blades. What is a permitted risk? What is a responsible risk? Those two may be two different things, Mr. Waite said. Aerial drones, long associated with the military, increasingly have been adapted for civilian use. They have been deployed widely to document the scale of disasters and, at the Sochi Olympics, they are being used to help broadcast the events. Mr. Waite said film companies also use drones extensively on closed sets, but because the work of journalism is so public, it stands to face more government scrutiny. This is why youre going to see journalists getting in more trouble, he said. As a journalist, whats the point of going to the trouble and getting pictures if youre not going to publish? AP

The promise of regularisation

There is little transparency in the regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi

Earlier this week, acting on behalf of the Delhi government, the Chief Minister wrote a letter to the President asking for a probe against the former Chief Minister, reportedly for alleged irregularities in the regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi. This follows the Delhi Lokayuktas finding in November 2013 that the issuance of the PRC [provisional regularisation certificates] on the eve of the elections [in 2008] was a populist measure intended to woo voters. It also found that some unauthorised colonies (UACs) received the PRC despite having submitted incomplete applications. UACs, which are estimated to house 30 per cent of Delhis population, were promised regularisation in 2008, and again in the manifestos of the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Congress, prior to the Delhi elections of 2013. In his first address to the newlyelected Delhi Assembly this year, the Lieutenant Governor announced that an action plan for regularising unauthorised colonies within a year is being drawn up and this plan shall be implemented rigorously in a time-bound manner. To understand this issue, it is important to understand how this problem arose. Processes in the past Prior to 1993, Delhi saw several waves of UAC regularisation. In 1993, however, when the government was looking to regularise 1071 UACs, Common Cause Society, an NGO, approached the Delhi High Court questioning the process. In response, the Court restrained the government from regularising any further UACs in Delhi and directed it to prepare and submit guidelines for the process of regularisation. In 2007, the government placed the guidelines before the Court. In 2008, it resumed its call for applications from UACs seeking regularisation. The Resident Welfare Associations of these UACs had to submit various documents such as land details, certificates, layout plans and undertakings to abide by the approved layout plans and provide land for social infrastructure. It received applications from 1639 colonies. Subsequently, an addendum to the 2008 regulations, introduced before the elections in November 2008, allowed the Government of NCT of Delhi (GNCTD) to issue PRCs to UACs. Soon after, these were issued to 1218 of the applicant colonies. In September 2012, the government issued an order finding 895 UACs eligible for regularisation. The order specified that these were selected based on two conditions: they did not lie on forest and ridge areas and protected area and did not hinder the provision of infrastructural facilities under the Master Plan 2021. In spite of the order, government and media reports have treated the colonies listed in the 895 UACs order as de facto regularised. However, a closer look at this order reveals that only 312 of the colonies those located on private land stood regularised at the time of the order. Of these, only a subset that are on private land owned by private owners are plots eligible to be registered for sale or transfer, an outcome central to any definition of regularisation.

The order also said the remaining 583 colonies listed, which are partly or fully on public land, would be regularised only after the GNCTD recovered the cost of the public land from residents. For these colonies, the relevant land-owning agency would also have to complete certain steps, such as withdraw land acquisition notifications and amendments in revenue records, before the land can be registered. In other words, the regularisation of these 895 UACs was far from complete. The Comptroller and Auditor General and the Delhi Lokayukta have pointed out that there has been little transparency in this regularisation process. Indeed, it has been a complicated mess with many gaps. Complications First, the two levels of selection were opaque. Initially, the basis for selecting the 1,218 UACs from 1,639 applicants to receive PRCs remains unclear. Further, those UACs which were found not eligible were not informed of the exact reason for their ineligibility. Second, according to the addendum to the 2008 regulations, government agencies were supposed to complete regularisation procedures within a year of issuing a PRC. Instead, it took the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Delhi Development Authority, and the GNCTD four years to notify the regularisation of any UAC. Interviews with residents in unauthorised colonies like Sangam Vihar, several blocks of which were among the 1218 UACs, reveal that the PRC was followed by little action. Third, the present status of the 583 of the 895 UACs, that lie fully or partially on public land, is not clear. There is no publicly available list of colonies for which the costs of public land have been subsequently recovered a requirement for regularisation. Finally, the 2021 Master Plan of Delhi states that regularisation must ensure that minimum necessary services and community facilities are provided to enable improvement of physical and social infrastructure. Data released by the GNCTD on its website indicates that, as of March 2013, agencies have been allocated for development works in 830 of the 895 colonies, and such works reportedly were completed in 461 of them. However, the recent draft CAG report on the matter reportedly noted that the status of these works could not be verified. Our own interviews in A and B blocks of Sangam Vihar, which were among the 895 regularised, show that while the GNCTD data specified that work was completed, there is little change in service provisioning on the ground. This gap between government data and ground reality can, in part, be explained by the ambiguity in government language and data. The government does not specify what works mean, nor does it specify what the current status of the works is in these 895 colonies. Many recent media reports indicate that the new government will be undertaking the regularisation process for the 1600-odd unauthorised colonies all over again. For administrative clarity and transparency, it should take the following steps:

First, coordinate with the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi and the Delhi Development Authority to complete various steps for regularisation as per timelines already specified in the 2008 regulations. Second, on completion of these steps, it should publicly notify which UACs have been regularised and why. Third, the benefits of regularisation in terms of development works have to be explained. Fourth, the process of registration of deeds by individual plot owners has to be detailed. These steps will demonstrate commitment by the current government to its publicly declared mandate of better and transparent governance. Furthermore, making the status of UACs clear to both its residents and others in Delhi will enable them to be fully integrated into the city fabric, just like the formal planned colonies of Delhi. (Shahana Sheikh and Subhadra Banda are with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi)