Handcuffed In Khaki

(Source of the Article is outlook magazine)

It was good of Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram to cheer up the top brass at the conference of inspector-generals and director-generals of police in New Delhi. Of course, the home minister must have got a silent horse laugh when he said top officers should protest against frequent transfers. The civil services can hinder or render government but can't stand up to politicians.

Does it occur to these statesmen that they are patting the wrong backs—backs and backsides so patted and petted their owners can live comfortably even when not in their bosses' best books, which can be said of no other job? To politicians, the DGPs, IGs and SPs may represent the police. We citizens know a completely different face—and back—of the keepers of law and order.

Rudyard Kipling noted in Kim: "Native police mean extortion to the native all India over." He was careful not to probe any deeper. The native police were the tool of a force whose business was extortion. It ceased to matter whether they extorted on their own behalf or on behalf of their masters. To us natives, alas, the symbolism of the police constable has not vastly changed in a century.

India's administrative system is essentially one that Sher Shah Suri designed nearly 500 years ago. Akbar fine-tuned it, the British altered it to suit their ends, but its main purpose was always the same —efficient tax collection. Justice came a tardy second when it figured at all. The chief innovation of the Raj was the creation of the district collector, an autocrat in his fief.

After independence, we retained the system devised to extract the most juice out of us. (A thick-headed press still uses the word "rule" instead of "govern" to describe the political function!) For more than 30 years, the district collector continued to be a petty despot. Now, I understand, collectors are designated district magistrates, and the post is considered very junior in the hierarchy. That is only because the breed has proliferated. There are so many more IAS officers than there used to be, or need to be.

The police was used by the Raj to keep a subjugated people beneath the yoke. There were no citizens of India. "Law and order" meant the tax-gatherer's law, the conqueror's order. (It still does—see how the home minister speaks of first destroying the Naxalite threat and then addressing its causes.) Justice was something to be bought and sold. (It still is—look at the celebrity hit-and-run cases.)

We have done nothing to change this system. The "native" police, under the Raj, were the enforcers, the sharpest weapons of oppression. They still are and use methods devised to suppress freedom fighters. The forced confession, the custodial death, the intimidation of relations, the very lathi—nothing has changed.

I have the utmost sympathy for the policeman. Ill-trained, ill-paid, set to menial work by his officers, reviled by the masses he has sprung from, his lot is not a happy one. In Delhi, in the mid-80s, I hobnobbed with a good number of cops, from DCPs down through SHOs to constables. (I even interviewed then police commissioner Ved Marwah.) The DCPs were slick and well-fed and spoke of their commitment to the public weal and the wonderful modern training policemen were being given. They still do this. What that really means is that IPS officers who are good boys get to do their MBAs on public funds, or go to academies abroad for a couple of years. The only public weal the constable knows is one inflicted with a lathi.

In those days, head constables, asis and other supervisory ranks got Rs 1,000-1,500 a month. They had to provide themselves with two sets of uniforms out of this. Many of them were from rural Uttar Pradesh and sent what money they could to their families, with which they spent a month or two every year if they got leave. Their "training" amounted to some lectures by the brass.

I am not in touch, but I don't see any material change. The police mean extortion all over India. Doctors are also coming to mean the same. But doctors are relatively empowered. Do constables get to make representations to the various police reforms commissions? Do the eminent people on these commissions visit the thana unannounced? An honest IPS officer can make a deal of difference. The home minister is idealistic in asking top officers to protest transfers, but he is in the right. So is the prime minister, when he speaks of focusing on the thana. I only wish they would take a turn at cheering up the constables.

Draught Management

Source: The Hindu

During episodes of food scarcity caused by drought and failure of the rains of the kind that looms over large parts of India today, district authorities in India are still substantially guided by updated versions of Famine Codes that were initially d eveloped by colonial administrators. Their main objective was to save lives at minimal cost to the colonial exchequer. There is considerable irony that updated versions of these colonial Famine Codes continue to be the principal guide to public authorities in times of natural disaster in free India.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the people of India were ravaged by a series of cataclysmic famines, precipitated less by failures of nature and more by colonial policies, such as of rack-renting, both legal and illegal, neglect of agriculture, “free-trade” policies and additional levies for wars. There are terrifying contemporary accounts of these famines, such as of rivers “studded with dead bodies”, of whole settlements being wiped out by hunger and epidemics that followed in their wake, of desperate loot and plunder, and the cumulative tragic loss of a numbing 15 million women, men and children.

Initial codification

Initially, the colonial government had no cohesive policy to deal with these emergencies, except to prevent hoarding and crime, which was followed by ad hoc relief measures such as stray food kitchens, poorhouses and public works. The Famine Commission appointed in 1878 resulted in the first Famine Code, and this was adapted as a national model, adapted in different regions of British rule. These Codes provided comprehensive institutionalised guidelines to colonial administrators. These included instructions to anticipate famines, and to save life but explicitly at the lowest possible cost to the exchequer, by providing employment at subsistence wage, and “gratuitous” relief to the “unemployable”.

In independent India, State governments variously adapted and amended these Famine Codes. However, the shadow of the values of colonial administration continues to fall long on the culture and practices of the executive in crafting its response to food scarcity, even 60 years after freedom.

The first continuity is that all Famine Codes, both colonial and contemporary, cannot be enforced in any court of law. They lay down duties of various public authorities, but contain no provisions that enable citizens (or subjects) to take these authorities to court, or to penalise them, if they fail in performing these duties, even if this leads to the preventable death and suffering of people. In democratic free India, governments continue to often act late and inadequately, but people who are denied food have no legal recourse to hold them accountable.

British Codes were explicit in casting a duty on public officials to spend the minimum that was necessary, only to prevent the loss of lives, and nothing beyond that. The 1941 Bengal Famine Code, for instance, puts it starkly: “Government is obliged to limit its assistance to what is absolutely necessary for the preservation of life. When life is secured, the responsibility to the afflicted ceases and the responsibility to the tax paying public begins”.

Inhuman conditions

This minimalising of relief was accomplished in part through a series of stern “tests”, to discourage all but those unfortunate persons who were most in most drastic need to report for work. For this, wage seekers had to agree to undertake hard monotonous work, in bleak and austere camps, far away from homes. There is evidence that Indian famine practices were the model used later in concentration camps in the Holocaust.

At one level, much has improved since Independence. As in the past, governments rely mainly on public works for ensuring adequate food to households in trying times of food scarcity. Enduring small public works closer to the homes of people affected by scarcity are now recommended, and there is legislation to ensure equal wages for men and women and for banning child labour (although some field studies report that children continue to be observed in some relief works, helping their parents).

But wages are still fixed at bare subsistence levels, just sufficient for survival of the person and dependents. Drought Codes of most State governments today still contain no provision for raising wage rates in times of great distress. Instead, they actually reduce it on the specious grounds of reaching larger numbers. Workers in practice (in relief and even NREGA works) are paid on not just the basis of daily attendance, but on the amount of work done, an illegal and exploitative “double whammy”. The worker cannot leave if the work required is completed early, and is not paid more if more work is done. In effect, the minimum wage is also the maximum wage.

Not enough

The Famine Codes of the past recognised that non-farm rural poor persons, like artisans and weavers, may be very hard hit by famine, but did little to address their food needs, although they were not equipped physically and culturally to participate in the kind of manual labour that is required in public relief works. Although weavers and other artisans continue to suffer enormous setbacks today, even more so because of their highly unequal integration with global markets, and reports pour in of both starvation and suicides by weavers, they are neglected even in contemporary Codes.

Those who are most vulnerable in times of food scarcity are old people, single women, disabled people and children. Colonial Codes contained niggardly provisions for them of “gratuitous relief”, and contemporary governments have not graduated even today to a comprehensive regime of social security. The easiest way would be to upgrade current food programmes in times of scarcity, with ICDS centres serving twice the quantities of food, as well as feeding the infirm and destitute; schools should provide meals round the year and even to out-of-school children; and families in scarcity areas should receive larger quantities of cheap grain.

Breaking free of the past

 

As prospects of food scarcity resulting from failures of the monsoon once again looms over large parts of the country, we must seize the moment to break away decisively from the dubious colonial legacy of Famine Codes. The duties of the State to people threatened with hunger in such times must be codified in a law which must surge much beyond the minimalist agenda of past Codes, which continued to ensure little more than to prevent mass deaths in famines at minimum cost to the State exchequer. A law to guarantee the right to food should instead need to contain cast-iron provisions to protect all men, women and children from food denials, hunger, malnutrition and starvation, both in conditions of unusual emergency and in more normal times. It is only then that we will finally break with our colonial past; and free ourselves from our collective memories of suffering and death, resulting from State failures which condemned millions of people to live and die with hunger.

In some of the major scarcities and droughts from the 1960s to late 1980s, there was relatively greater fiscal freedom to local officials to respond to actual demand for work, but from early 1990s, relief work is seriously constrained by resources, and only minimalist interventions are permitted. NREGA rectifies this with its statutory guarantee of work, but it still is not an open-ended warranty, as it ensures 100 days of work and that too for only one person in each rural family a year, regardless of the specific exigencies of emergency situations. Public works continue to be closed before the onset of the rains, rather than with the reaping of the harvest, as in colonial times, and these can be periods of most severe food deprivation.

Making Panchayat Raj Work

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In the ancient City States of Greece, the people directly used to participate in the governance of their territory. In modern nation-states, such participation is obviously impossible and representatives directly elected by the people undertake the responsibilities of government. India from time immemorial has had a genius for finding via media solutions to every problem. Thus Ancient India combined the principle of direct democracy with the authority of the king and fostered Panchayats in each village to look after their affairs.

The Panchayat system of governance, wherein a small village was an independent political entity and acted as an administrative unit, is unique to India. The word ‘Panchayat’ means governance by five persons. It finds reference in the ancient scriptures, taking us back to Vedic times, and continued for centuries to govern, guide and direct the daily lives of the people. Panchayats had judicial and magisterial powers too and made villages autonomous with full authority over their jurisdiction. The Panchayat is best suited to the Indian social norms inasmuch as Indian society believed in devolution of powers, decentralisation of the authority and upliftment of the self, family, community, village and so on. India is perhaps the only country in the world today, which can boast of a continuity of history, culture, religion and society spanning thousands of years.

In this continuity, Tamil Nadu occupies pride of place in the Panchayat Raj system. The civilisation of the past not merely exists but throbs with life. The study of the stone inscriptions in ‘Uthiramerur’ throws abundant light on the administration of villages during the reign of the Cholas and the method of elections to village councils. “Historians have recorded that, even a thousand or so years ago, in the Chola kingdom there was such an enviable democratic rule, wherein the concept of democracy and purity of public administration were beautifully blended. If the Britishers feel proud of their unwritten constitution, we could feel proud of our written Constitution, written a thousand years ago and left for posterity inscribed on stones.”
Though statutory recognition had been accorded to Panchayt in the Government of India Act of 1919, village Panchayats assumed importance only with the beginning of the Planning Era. Parliamentarians returned for the first time on adult franchise from rural areas clamoured for greater attention towards rural development and against the earlier urban bias. The concept of Block Development and Community Projects took shape and marked development of village roads, schools and medical facilities took place. In places like Tamil Nadu the people offered enthusiastic cooperation for local development works and made their contribution also.

Subsequently Panchayats began to languish and the States practically killed the institution by not holding Panchayat elections for decades. Bureaucracy replaced the elected Panchayats and there was no way of compelling States to hold Panchayat polls.

As Vice-President of India I spoke in one Governors’ Conference of the necessity of constituting vibrant Panchayat bodies and suggested that the Constitution be amended and Panchayat elections be made compulsory just as the State Assemblies and Lok Sabha elections are. This idea received the warm support of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the process of consultations started therefrom.

The passage of the Seventythird Amendment to the Constitution of India has once again made Panchayat Raj the focus of considerable public attention. The amendment essentially lays down certain ground rules with basic structural framework, so that it can withstand external interference and establish itself as an effective and strong people’s institution. Accordingly, Tamil Nadu has enacted the New Panchayats Act, namely, the Tamil Nadu Panchayats Act 1994 (Act No. 21 of 1994) which came into force on April 22, 1994.

Panchayat reforms contemplated in recent times, and the consequent laws adopted in various States including Tamil Nadu, do have significance from the point of view of democratising and decentralising the administration of the institution. The proposed policy of reservation of seats for the underprivileged SC/ST population and women, in the governance of the institutional set-up at the grassroots, is widely commended by intellectuals, politicians and policy-makers. The reservation of 30 per cent of the seats for women in Panchayats has particularly been welcomed.

But none of these would however make any impact unless there is decentralisation of power, delegation of authority and adequate resources for the implementation of programmes. India has witnessed phenomenal growth in agriculture, industry, power, communications, and science and technology. We have achieved self-sufficiency in food and established a sizeable buffer stock. In value added by manufacture and volume of industrial production we are within the first fifteen in the world. Our infrastructure growth, particularly power and communications, is very impressive. At the same time fortyfive years of planning has resulted in centralisation of economic and political power. It has widened the gap between the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural population. It has also led to greater concentration of economic power in fewer hands. It cannot be denied that the rural and weaker sections have also improved their conditions, but only by a trickle. The use of sophisticated labour saving machinery, inescapable in countries with shortage of manpower, has in our country accentuated the scourge of unemployment.

Therefore a new approach to rural problems appears urgent and immediate.

THE first step in this direction is to shift the emphasis to villages and plan from the bottom. Village needs have to be surveyed by the village Panchayats through the Gram Sabha and priorities drawn up and aggregated at the Block level. The Basic Needs Approach should play a greater role in the Panchayats’ planning. Panchayats should have the authority to plan all the following:
village roads; public parks and common land; wells, tanks and minor irrigation works; public health, sanitation and drainage; primary education; primary health care; rural employment and rural industries.

There should be uniformity within the State in this regard. Once this is done, Centrally sponsored rural schemes should be withdrawn. Central schemes very often do not suit local priorities. Many of the Centrally sponsored schemes of the Planning Commission had no relevance to the people in the North-Eastern States. The Plannning Commission, headed by Dr Gadgil, of which I was a Member, wanted Centrally sponsored schemes to be drastically pruned.

A doubt arises whether such a scheme of rural self-sufficiency is compatible with a Market Economy where items like soaps, matches and articles of daily consumption are produced cheaply through large scale mechanised units. If the objective is clear that economic development must ensure improvement in the condition of the masses, necessary policy measures in furtherance thereof should be pursued.

The greatest handicap for the Panchayat Raj institution is the financial constraint. The suggestion that the Centre should directly allocate financial assistance to Panchayats is self-defeating. It is negation of the principle of decentralisation. Local resources for local needs should be our aim. Though resource mobilisation in the village itself is difficult, every effort should be made to raise local resources to meet local programmes. Perhaps they can mobilise large resources if they link local contributions to the programmes. Tax compliance will be greater in the programmes. Tax compliance will be greater in the Panchayat as the tax payer is under consant watch by his fellowmen in the local area.

At the same time substantial devolution from the State to the Panchayats on a permanent footing, not depending on the whims of the State governments alone can solve their problems. To delegate larger functions to the Panchayats without devolution of resources will render Panchayat Raj a mockery.

In order that the State may provide adequate funds to the Panchayats, there should be greater decentralisation and allocation of a fair share of resources from the Centre. In the federal distribution of functions in India, all departments involving ever increasing expenditure fall within the States. Education, health, medical care, etc. with enormous expenditure and no returns cause a great strain on the States’ resources.
While high yielding taxes like Union excise duties, customs, income tax and corporate taxes were allotted to the Union Government, low yielding taxes like sales tax, motor vehicles tax, entertainment tax and excise on liquor besides dwindling land revenue came to the States. Realising the inequality of this distribution, the Constitution provided for a Finance Commission for the purpose of redressing the hardship. So far ten Finance Commissions have been appointed to determine the volume and method of effecting the Central transfers to the States.

This system has not proved satisfactory because of the quinquennial uncertainty and speculation regarding allocation of divisible taxes and duties. Besides, the categorisation of taxes as shareable and non-shareable led to some undesirable consequences. The Centre was more liberal in granting concessions in the shareable taxes than in the non-shareable ones. Even in this Budget the Finance Minister gave away the States’ share which is 85 per cent of income tax by raising the exemption limit but did not show the same generosity in the non-shareable corporate tax.
I am not against the Budget proposal but I am only pointing out how the Centre is more easily persuaded to give up shareable taxes rather than the exclusively Central resources. Similarly the Central Government abolished estate duty which is levied by the Centre but entirely assignable to the States. Earlier, I had myself once protested in the National Development Council against raising basic excise duties on sugar accruing to the Centre but not additional excise duties accruing to the States. The Central Government has shown no interest in levying taxes under Articles 268 and 269 assignable to the State such as taxes on railway fares and freight or on sale or purchase of newspapers and on advertisements published therein including those on radio and television because they have no share in it.

Thus the States have been starved of even the resources identified for them in the Constitution. I would like some economists to examine the extent of the loss of State resources on account of non-implementation of Articles 268 and 269 of the Constitution and surrender of divisible resources by the Centre through budget concessions.

In the Centre-State fiscal relations, the States’ share should be well defined. The States’ resources should be certain and not depend on the moods of the Centre. Time for rethinking on the distribution of resources commensurate with the relative responsibilities of the States and the Centre has arisen.
A more sensible method of fiscal distribution between the Centre and the States would be to pool all tax revenue from customs, excise, corporations, incomes, cesses, penalties etc., and allocate by a provision in the Constitution one-third to the States and two-thirds to the Union Government.

The Finance Commission may be asked to distribute the total States’ share among the States according to the criteria defined in the Constitution itself. This will ensure elasticity in the States’ resources when there is buoyancy in the revenues and also introduce an element of certainty in the resources distribution.

The States should have adequate resources if Panchayat Raj has to be fully and properly implemented. Besides devolution of greater resources to the State consistent with the States’ heavy responsibilities does not brook delay. Decentralisation and devolution of functions and resources are the hallmark of true federalism. If in the first fifty years after our independence, there was greater centralisation for the purpose of strengthening the nation economically and politically, the next fifty years should ensure that too much of centralisation does not stifle the freedom and initiative of the States.

Duplication by the Centre of functions allocated to the States can cause both delay and expense. Once adequate resources are provided to the States further devolution of resources from State to Panchayats should be made through an independent body like the State Finance Commission, taking into account the respective needs of the State and the Panchayats. Such allocation shall not be subject to reduction during the currency of the allocation. Unless this is done, all talk of Panchayat Raj will result in waste of time, energy and money.

Text of the address delivered by the former President at the inauguration of a seminar on “Decentralisation and Panchayati Raj”, Madras, March 19, 1995

RISAT-2 and ANUSAT

In its fifteenth mission carried out from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR (SDSC SHAR), Sriharikota today (April 20, 2009), ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C12) successfully placed two satellites - RISAT-2 and ANUSAT - in the desired orbit.

RISAT-2 is a Radar Imaging Satellite with the capability to take images of the earth during day and night as well as cloudy conditions.

At the time of launch, RISAT-2 weighed about 300 kg and was realised by ISRO in association with Israel Aerospace Industries. The satellite was placed in an orbit of 550 km height with an inclination of 41 deg to the equator and an orbital period of about 90 minutes. This satellite will enhance ISRO's capability for earth observation, especially during floods, cyclones, landslides and in disaster management in a more effective way.

The 44 metre tall PSLV-C12 weighing 230 ton was launched from the Second Launch Pad (SLP) at SDSC SHAR in the Core Alone configuration without the use of six solid strap-ons. In this mission, in addition to RISAT-2, PSLV also carried A 40 kg micro satellite named ANUSAT, built by Anna University, Chennai. ANUSAT is the first experimental communication satellite built by an Indian University under the over all guidance of ISRO and will demonstrate the technologies related to message store and forward operations.

Integration of PSLV for the C12 flight commenced at the Second Launch Pad in SDSC, SHAR on February 26, 2009. Following this, the first, second, third and fourth stages of the vehicle along with the satellites were fully integrated. After a 48 hour countdown, the vehicle and the satellites successfully underwent various levels of functional checks at the launch centre.

In this flight, PSLV carried the indigenously developed Advanced Mission Computers and Advanced Telemetry System, which guided the vehicle from lift-off till the injection of the two satellites in the desired orbit.

PSLV-C12 lifted off from the Second Launch Pad at 6:45 am IST (0115 UT) today with the ignition of its first stage. The important flight events included the separation of the first stage, ignition of the second stage, separation of the payload fairing at about 115 km altitude after the vehicle had cleared the dense atmosphere, second stage separation, third stage ignition, third stage separation, fourth stage ignition and fourth stage cut-off.

The main payload, RISAT-2, was the first satellite to be separated in orbit at 1100 seconds after lift-off at an altitude of 550 km. About 60 seconds later, ANUSAT was separated.

With this successful launch, the versatility and the reliability of PSLV has been proved again underscoring its importance as the workhorse launch vehicle of India. Today's launch was the fourteenth consecutive success for PSLV. In these launches, PSLV has placed a total of sixteen Indian satellites and sixteen foreign satellites into Polar, Geosynchronous Transfer and Low Earth Orbits. It may be recalled that during its previous mission on October 22, 2008, PSLV had successfully launched Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which is now exploring the moon from lunar orbit.