HYDERABAD

THE HINDU

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

OP-ED

PAUL KRUGMANS COLUMN The angry rich

nger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterises most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And theyre out for revenge. No, Im not talking about the Tea Partiers. Im talking about the rich. These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people cant nd jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that theyll never work again. Yet if you want to nd real political rage the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason you wont nd it among these suffering Americans. Youll nd it instead among the very privileged, people who dont have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes. The rage of the rich has been building ever since Mr. Obama took ofce. At rst, however, it was largely conned to Wall Never mind the Street. Thus when New York magazine published an article titled The Wail Of $700-billion price the 1%, it was talking about nancial wheeler-dealers whose rms had been tag for extending bailed out with taxpayer funds, but were the high-end tax furious at suggestions that the price of temporary breaks: virtually all these bailouts should includebillionaire limits on bonuses. When the Republicans and Stephen Schwarzman compared an Obama proposal to the Nazi invasion of some Democrats Poland, the proposal in question would have closed a tax loophole that are rushing to the aid of the oppressed specically benets fund managers like him. Now, however, as decision time looms afuent. for the fate of the Bush tax cuts will top tax rates go back to Clinton-era levels? the rage of the rich has broadened, and also in some ways changed its character. For one thing, craziness has gone mainstream. Its one thing when a billionaire rants at a dinner event. Its another when Forbes magazine runs a cover story alleging that the President of the United States is deliberately trying to bring America down as part of his Kenyan, anticolonialist agenda, that the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. When it comes to defending the interests of the rich, it seems, the normal rules of civilised (and rational) discourse no longer apply. At the same time, self-pity among the privileged has become acceptable, even fashionable. Tax-cut advocates used to pretend that they were mainly concerned about helping typical American families. Even tax breaks for the rich were justied in terms of trickle-down economics, the claim that lower taxes at the top would make the economy stronger for everyone. These days, however, tax-cutters are hardly even trying to make the trickle-down case. Yes, Republicans are pushing the line that raising taxes at the top would hurt small businesses, but their hearts dont really seem in it. Instead, it has become common to hear vehement denials that people making $400,000 or $500,000 a year are rich. I mean, look at the expenses of people in that income class the property taxes they have to pay on their expensive houses, the cost of sending their kids to elite private schools, and so on. Why, they can barely make ends meet. And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: its their money, and they have the right to keep it. Taxes are what we pay for civilised society, said Oliver Wendell Holmes but that was a long time ago. The spectacle of high-income Americans, the worlds luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way. Never mind the $700-billion price tag for extending the high-end tax breaks: virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are rushing to the aid of the oppressed afuent. You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more inuence. Its partly a matter of campaign contributions, but its also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra three or four per cent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain feel it much more acutely, its clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes. And when the tax ght is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, theyll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrices. But when they say we, they mean you. Sacrice is for the little people. New York Times News Service

A challenge before the nation

Have some Chief Justices of the Supreme Court indeed been delinquent, or is Shanti Bhushan resorting to bravado? The truth should come out.
V.R. Krishna Iyer hanti Bhushan is a distinguished Senior Advocate of the Supreme Court. The former Union Law Minister has been a public-spirited counsel of corrective strategy. Now he has, in a stroke of seemingly egregious expression of national conscience, raised a historic, heuristic challenge. He has questioned the integrity of the top brethren of the highest judiciary of the Republic, hurling charges of corruption against eight of 16 Chief Justices of the past. He has deantly desiderated them in a militant manner. Take action for contempt of court against me, if you dare, he seems to say. And the media have publicised Mr. Bhushans action, which sounds much like bravado. Now it is left to the nation to move on this matter of paramount importance. This is an astonishing event the rarest of the rare kind. If India is not a coward, if its swaraj is not merely soft and formal but rm and phenomenal, an appropriately high-level investigation, with consequential follow-up action that is punitive and reformatory, is imperative. This is no time to hesitate or involve in an exchange of rhetoric. Nor is this the time for a guarded and diplomatic reaction. This is unprecedented: a succession of Chief Justices have been publicly accused by a Senior Advocate of standing, risking his career. Take action or face collapse. This is not a matter for ordinary public interest litigation. Until now, in no democracy would such an event have happened. There is not a moment now to relax or show amoral indifference or inaction. Should India keep quiet and go into slumber in the face of Operation Bhushan Bravo now, the world will judge this democracy as a bundle of brave words that, when it comes to action, is a op show. This is not an hour to relax or retreat from duty. This is an open offensive against the highest court. The court, with vast powers of adjudication of justice and writ jurisdiction, has been put in the dock, so to say. To remain deaf or

dumb to this situation will be a shock and a shame. When the judicial system suffers seppuku, we become a society sans justice. This is a crisis beyond Mr. Shanti Bhushan and Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia themselves. The extraordinarily epic charge demands a trial. How can the courts close its eyes and pretend to be asleep? Wake up and walk with your head high, and create a tribunal as unique as the situation. To fail here will put the nations reputation under grave suspicion. The judiciary is constitutionally empowered to be critical, to quash and be a corrective. It could issue creative writs or directives binding the functional process of the Executive and the Legislature. What about the judges if they are not efcient, competent and capable, and with a vision and mission to transform the social dimension of any policy or action that is violative of suprema lex? In the United States, Chief Justice Earl Warren produced a racial revolution that U.S. President Eisenhower could not achieve. In the Commonwealth, visionary judges have shown their ability to transmute society through judicial activism. Even in India, public interest litigation has revolutionary potential if our robed brethren are really socialist and secular. They do not always possess in plenary fashion such a dimension in terms of perception or vision. On the contrary, some of them often tend to yield to class bias and political pressure by multinational corporations, or classoriented prejudices. Indeed, some of them seem to be slowly succumbing to corruption by powerful vested interests. This is a grave danger. Yet, the controversy raised by Mr. Shanti Bhushan poses a serious peril before this Republics crimson future. Our tryst with destiny, articulated in the historic address by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, cannot be implemented since nal adjudicatory powers under Article 141 and 144 lie with the highest court. To remain inert and indifferent to

the attack is to be amoral and unethical to constitutional mandates. If this Republic is a live constitutional instrumentality, it has received stab wounds on its chest. Our Supreme Court Judges do have a moral stature. If Parliament has a sense of shame, now is the time to act: it cannot wait till tomorrow. Mr. Shanti Bhushan has dared the court. Of course, he will get an opportunity and has an obligation to the nation to prove the truth of his charges. Not to act on the matter will amount to cowardice, timidity, bankruptcy, and an unworthy submission to his audacious invasion on the credibility of Indias highest moral authority, the Supreme Court. Parliament must act. Let the Prime Minister move a resolution asking the two Houses to meet and pass a motion appointing the highest-ever quasi-judicial body to sit and inquire into any judicatural retreat from their oath of ofce. This will involve issues of grave importance. It is no longer Bhushan vs. the Supreme Court. It is the peoples right to have a paramount Supreme Court of justice. This nation is greater than Mr. Shanti Bhushan and it cannot have a moral backbone if these charges are not publicly enquired into and consequent changes are made so that the Supreme Court may shine supreme. Any Commission or Tribunal that is created should not be conned to the charges in its ambit of enquiry. The public must be able to bring any other charges against the judges of the highest court. This will be a historic, epic tribunal to try its own judges without fear or favour and cleanse the system of any bad elements. Frame a performance prescription, punish any guilty judges. Or if Mr. Shanti Bhushan fails in his bid, let him face the consequences of his phenomenal folly. There should be no secrecy but only transparency, no contempt proceedings to hide delinquent conduct. This will be an epic battle more important than the making of the Constitution a national hearing by a superlative tribunal. I suggest the Chief

Justices of all the High Courts plus the Speaker and the Chairpersons of the two Houses sitting as a body assisted by the Attorney-General and the SolicitorGeneral. During the course of these proceedings, ad hoc judges may be appointed to hear cases. The marathon process will involve sittings on three days a week. The other four days could be set apart for their regular judicial work. Such a tribunal will be unique a brave judicial odyssey. For, never has there been such a spiritual or civil challenge to a nations supreme body. Let us not be afraid of doing the right thing at the right time. Anybody who comes up with charges must suffer punishment if these turn out to be unproven. Nobody can escape after levelling allegations frivolously, nocently, malignantly and mendaciously. Mr. Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan will either go down in history as tremendous challengers of evil or run afoul of the law for having raised frivolous charges. Justice shall be done to the judges, and equally to those who have levelled unproven charges. Those who seek to dele the system through blackmail will be punished, unless they are able to back up and prove the charges.

The collegium
Meanwhile, there is one more item of great relevance and importance to be considered by Parliament. This involves the collegium created by a judgment of the Supreme Court to make appointments and recommend the transfer of judges of the higher courts. This instrumentality is the creature of a judgment with no foundation in the Constitution. It constitutes an usurpation of the powers of the Executive with no guidelines whatsoever. It has played havoc and deserves to be demolished by parliamentary correction, by means of an amendment to the law. The collegium is answerable to none, and acts without transparency. Instead of waiting for a larger bench to eliminate it, a constitutional provision must extinguish this instrument.

Learn non-violence or face non-existence

Interview with Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr.
As the oldest son of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King III is carrying forward the legacy of his parents into the 21st century. President and chief executive of the Martin Luther King Jr. Centre for Non-violent Social Change, Atlanta, his main focus on this brief goodwill trip to India is to reconnect the ties that his father and the King Centre have had in India. Mr. King spoke to Meena Menon of racism, non- violence, and his optimism for the future. Excerpts:
Your movement is committed to civil rights, human rights and non-violence something which your father started. How difcult is it for you to take his dream forward, and is it a burden as some say? I have never looked at it as a burden. I have always seen it more as a blessing, to be at the helm of an incredible legacy, an opportunity; and there are always phenomenal challenges. Wherever there are great challenges, there are also great opportunities. I think this culture and our nation and the world is more violent than it has been we are not as peaceful as we purport to be. There are wars always brewing, whether its Middle East, whether its the conicts that exist here, whether its with Afghanistan or Iraq and others or things that are going on in China theres conict all the time and what we must learn is how to resolve a conict without destroying either person or property. Thats what the nonviolent philosophy teaches us and man has just refused to learn that yet but we got to learn that. My dad used to say we must learn non-violence or face nonexistence and so we are at that point now where it is crucial, critical and essential that we learn non-violence and learn how to live together as brothers and sisters. How do you reconcile this whole philosophy of non-violence in a violent world? How will you spread Gandhis and your fathers message of peace? Part of what we do is a lot of nonviolence training which teaches people how to live together without destroying either person or property. That entails going into school systems and teaching children. Just recently we had a training at the King Centre at Atlanta. I dont know how it works in India, but in the U.S. various parts of the city are cordoned off by zip codes and in one particular area or zip code, 60 per cent of the violence is occurring. We identied 100 or 150 community leaders and brought them mostly young people and taught them the methods of non-violence. This is a six-day training that they will do again and again. The goal is for them to go back out into the community and teach others how to use this method so that no conicts will be engaged in, the violence will be reduced and ultimately the goal will be for it to be eliminated. That can be done online as well but it is always better to come to the [and] nobody even brought that up. To me that attitude is very tragic because we would take an entire religion and condemn it; and to me, again the media is responsible. I dont know if division sells. To me the real issue is there are hundreds or thousands of teachers who are losing their jobs because schools dont have funding. So you need to be focused [on the fact] that your children are not getting educated because there are no funds for education. Not focus on one particular group or community or culture which decides to build a community centre. In the scheme of things they are Americans too. There were Muslims who were killed in 9/11 so its kind of an issue. My grandfather used to say they are not talking about what they are talking about. So its a cultural issue and there is hatred and hostility. Again when we learn the philosophy of non-violence then that issue goes away because we have tolerance, we accept others. I am a Christian but I understand and not just accept I have brothers who are Muslim, I have brothers and sisters who maybe Hindu or Buddhist, maybe even some who are non-religious but they still are my brothers and sisters even though they may not agree with what my Christianity says. But I dont say if you dont believe in this there is something wrong with you. We cant exist in a world like that. Yes, you can condemn those individuals, you can condemn those particular religious leaders but how do you condemn an entire religion. There are a lot of issues brewing and there always have been. I would love to see journalists operate differently. Most recently, the man who was going to burn up the Koran did he burn the Bible after Mc Veigh bombed the building in Oklahoma? I mean its a double standard. First of all it is wrong to take anyones religion or philosophy and decide you are going to desecrate it because you dont understand it.

BP oil spill costs nearly $10 billion

Julia Kollewe

Ps bill for containing and cleaning up the oil spill has reached nearly $10 billion, as the U.S. government declared that the blown-out well has nally been plugged, ve months after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig. The beleaguered oil company revealed that its total cost of the spill had climbed to $9.5 billion. BP also said payouts to people affected by the spill such as shermen, hoteliers and retailers had dramatically increased since it handed over authority for dispensing funds to a White House appointee. BP has set up a $20 billion compensation fund, which has so far paid out 19,000 claims totalling more than $240 million. The fund is run by lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administrations former executive pay

tsar. The oil company previously paid out about $3.5 million a day in compensation, but this has risen to $12.5 million a day since Mr. Feinberg took over. However, BPs incoming chief executive, Bob Dudley, who takes over from Tony Hayward on October 1, told the City a week ago that the company expects to pay out less than the committed $20 billion. The oil well that spewed millions of gallons of crude into the sea has been sealed for good. Thad Allen, the former coast guard Admiral heading the U.S. government response to the spill, declared the well effectively dead following a pressure test by BP on Sunday. The spill was halted in July with a temporary cap while a relief well was completed. That well nally reached the main shaft on September 16, permitting a cement plug to be pumped in. Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

MARTIN LUTHER KING III: It is wrong to take anyones religion or philosophy and decide you are going to desecrate it because you dont understand it. PHOTO: VIVEK BENDRE
centre. At a national level, we are looking at identifying global partners, collaborators or partners; thats part of what we are talking about with some of the leadership here how can we do work together with some of the Indian business leaders and NGOs and others to create a collaborative project that works here in India and also works in U.S. and other places around the world. In terms of racial equality and discrimination in the U.S., which has a long history of civil rights movements, what is the situation today? One of the issues related to race before the elections was that of election of the President. Once he was elected, the discussion changes because racism actually has reared its ugly head in a number of ways... Compared to 40 years ago its far better now as a nation but racism is not totally resolved. For example, if you look at whether or not people of colour, and particularly black people, have access to capital this is not a good example because of the economy, but it is an example. One of the largest problems any business has is access to capital. In the African-American community there is still no access to capital even with an African-American in the White House. The reality is that nobody can get capital much now (laughs). Thats why I said it is not a great example but its real very few people can get access to capital, period. How do we get business to get start up capital, how do we promote entrepreneurship and how do we get this economy out of this tailspin? I think part of that is an equality issue. You still have housing discrimination;

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

>>In the news report, Tathwa 2010 website launched (Kerala editions, September 18, 2010), the name of the website was given as www.tathwa.org It should have been www.tathva.org It is the policy of The Hindu to correct signicant errors as soon as possible. Please specify the edition (place of publication), date and page. The Readers Editors ofce can be contacted by Telephone: +91-44-28418297/28576300 (11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday); Fax: +91-44-28552963; E-mail: readerseditor@thehindu.co.in Mail: Readers Editor, The Hindu, Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860 Anna Salai, Chennai 600 002, India. All communication must carry the full postal address and telephone number. No personal visits. The Terms of Reference for the Readers Editor are on www.thehindu.com

these are individual incidents and this is not in thousands, that is why I say every now and then racism pops its head up. The other day a gentleman was trying to buy a home and it was a several-milliondollar home and when the owners of the property found out he was AfricanAmerican they said it was no longer for sale. And he was paying a premium dollar. It was a three- to ve-million-dollar home that he was going to purchase and they decided not to sell even though they had been trying to for three or four years. He was one of the few people who had capital and [was] ready to purchase. So those are the kind of things that still happen but thats not constant. With all this conict and violence, what These are small examples but by and drives you and gives you the optimism in large we are making progress and I say if such a situation? the economy was doing well, a lot of issues would subside but because the Every morning that I am blessed to economy is doing so poorly, and the world economy too, the Presidents wake up, probably the greatest inspiration I get is from my child. My wife and I hands are full. have a beautiful daughter, we hope to After 9/11 there has been a rise in antihave more children and I want to make Muslim feeling. You have race and the world better for her, so she does not culture issues as well to deal with in it. have to deal with some of the issues that How do you see this resolving? I am having to deal with. She is the only grandchild of Martin Luther King Jr. and Well, the media didnt help and what I Coretta Scott King and its a continuamean by that is that they create an issue tion of our lineage and our legacy and it is perplexing and am dumbfounded. that is where I derive my inspiration. 9/11 was one of the most tragic incidents Before I had her I would draw inspirathat ever occurred on American soil but tion from those in front of me, my father the gentlemen accused of 9/11 I say and grandfather and others who gave accused because it is a different discus- their lives so that our lives were not so sion when you really esh it out were difcult. These men and my mom they Muslim. Why would you condemn all went through and overcame insurMuslims and Muslim activity when you mountable odds to make the world betdid not ask the question somebody ter so cant I just do a little something? should ask the question [that] Tim- Now I am driven by the fact that Ive got othy McVeigh was a Christian and he a daughter and I want the world to be blew up a building in Oklahoma City better for her.

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