Daily Excelsior... Editorial

EDITORIAL

Information Technology Act passed by Parliament unanimously and Presidential approval given on June 9 has been notified by the Government to become effective from October 18. With that first stage has been set in motion for e-business and e-governance. National Controller has been appointed for enforcing the act in letter and spirit. Former Director of Centre for Telematics (C-Dot) Kailash Nath Gupta fits the slot with his vast...more

Off with his head! cried Sonia in Wonderland

By M J Akbar
Sonia Gandhi huffed, and the Congress obediently puffed. You could even put it another way. Sonia Gandhi puffed and the Congress, on....more

Media should rather
be democratic

By Kedar Nath Pandey
Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj's re-appointment as Union Information and Broadcasting minister may have sent disturbing signals to. ..more

Where are all the men...?

By Uma Ramachandran
Single, beautiful, immensely successful fashion designer of Delhi. People rush to greet her when she enters a party. Men talk of the electrifying effect of her handshake. A famous art ....more

EDITORIAL

PANCHAYAT ELECTIONS

It is good news that State is set to be exposed to Panchayat election on January 5 next year i.e less than 3 months hence. Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah makes it a definite deal this time unlike earlier abortions. According to him even if atom bomb falls, there won't be any change in the date. And he says so on the floor of the House. If one goes by the past track record almost every year promise of Panchayat elections was held and the tentative schedule was invariably either March/April or Oct/Nov. This has been happening ever since popular Government assumed power in October 1996. During the interregnum the State was exposed to three Lok Sabha elections. But Panchayati elections remained elusive for reasons best known to the powers that be.

The State has already passed Panchayati Raj Act in 1989. Some of its clauses particularly relating to reservations for women, nominations and devolution of financial powers however remain suspect in public esteem. But these are matters for details based on experience. Amendments can indeed be introduced if so deemed fit as no law is final, not even the Constitution. As things change any law can be improvised. Right now the thrust is in giving practical shape to the Act and have the Panchayati Raj system in place. It is imperative in as much as J&K is the only State which has delayed ushering in of Panchayati Raj. Surely, it is not attributed to insurgency for at least two reasons. First, the State did enjoy relative peace and calm soonafter popular Government assumed command. The situation changed only after Kargil war. Second, there are unexplained reasons that caused repeated abortions of the Panchayat elections. In the normal course the Government has nothing to lose in as much as these elections will be on partyless basis. So there are no political stakes of winning or losing. One can only think of another hidden factor in as muc as financial powers have to be devolved and Panchayats involved in development activities including education and health. It is possible that it is this devolution that might have been considered inexpedient by the ruling clan. This means some sort of accountability at the grass root level. It thus necessitates good deal of home-work once powers have to percolate down to the lowest rung at the village level. It would be watched with keen interest how the Panchayati Raj clicks in this State.

One can also appreciate the announcement of upgradation of Notified Area Committees of Udhampur, Kathua, Anantnag and Baramulla to Municipalities. Chief Minister holds the promise of holding elections for these bodies as well alongside Panchayat elections. Such upgradation is overdue as civic problems have multiplied due to rising population in these districts as also changing life-style that demands better cohesion and delivery. In the same vein, Chief Minister informs that the twin capitals would have Corporations and necessary legislation to that effect would be enacted. This upgradation promise is as old as the Government itself. Session after session, this promise is held only to remain elusive. It is to be remembered that no election has been held for the last 23 years and it is all ad-hocism which is negation of democratic tenets. It is as much the reverse of Naya Kashmir concept enunciated and initiated by Sheikh Sahib. Greater Jammu and Greater Srinagar which stand already upgraded in category status must have the Corporations in place. It may be mentioned that Corporations enjoy much more powers unlike Municipalities including revenue raising channels. If elections to Panchayat and upgraded Municipalities are held on January 5 next year, there is no reason why the twin capital cities should not have the elected Corporations also in place simultaneously.

There are some initial problems like revision of electoral rolls, financial resources for holding the elections, passing of Bill for Corporations or issue of Ordinance thereof. Unless the action starts right from today, it would be difficult to stick on to the stipulated date. It is all the more so becaue many discordant voices would start challenging the calender itself on account of severe wintry conditions when many places remain inaccessible and snowbound. But then that is that. After all weather is not as extreme in J&K as in Siberia and Europe. If democratic institutions function there, including elections, one ought to get used to weather vagaries and extremities in J&K State. When soldiers can brave it all in sub-zero temperatures, daily, people can undoubtedly venture out to exercise their franchise. So let the promise made on the floor of the house be treated as God-promise and fulfilled as such.

IT ACT

But this is only the beginning. The objective is to have total e-governance in the country. The acid test and efficacy of system lies in citizens interaction with Government when receiving bills, filing applications forms and transmitting documents over the net becomes a reality. This necessitates re-orienting the employees besides changing the system and procedures in vogue. For one thing there is no scope for bribe giving or taking because all this is going to happen (e-governance) sitting in home and not face to face with babus. There is thus the imperative necessity of total re-orientation and conditioning of the bureaucracy at all levels which is used to red-tapism from which stems corruption. As e-governance implies paperless work culture and for that matter immediate disposal of the requisitions from the citizens, it looks quite a gigantic task. The employees also have to be trained to adopt computers and get exposed to internet. Given the thrust and the goodwill, nothing is impossible. A few years back one could not have dreamt computerisation of banking. Even staff was opposed to it tooth and nail. Today, it is a fact of life-economical, efficient and fast on delivery. So it would be wrong to assume that such governance is beyond realisation. It may take time but otherwise inevitable. First it will be the districts, then blocks and ultimately all villages. India can pride in having 588 districts. One day there will be total inter-connectivity via the internet.

IT Minister Pramod Mahajan has rightly mentioned three essential inputs namely education, telecom and electricity. Without any of these e-governance or call it IT revolution is impossible. Thus, many embracive reforms are to be put in place. More and more people have to be made computer-savy. Cyber crimes have been taken care of in the IT Act and any attack on the website is now punishable with rigorous imprisonment. Police stations all over the country likewise shall have at least one officers specially trained to tackle cyber-crimes. The order is quite tall, almost beyond imagination yet but the course has been set and road map charted out to make India amongst the first 12 countries that have opted for IT revolution for e-governance and e-business.

Off with his head! cried Sonia in Wonderland

By M J Akbar

Sonia Gandhi huffed, and the Congress obediently puffed. You could even put it another way. Sonia Gandhi puffed and the Congress, on cue, huffed. It is, as they say in their more lucid moments in the spokesmen's corner at the All India Congress Committee headquarters in Delhi, all one and the same thing, bhaiya. The latest huff has been a big one. Sonia Gandhi in Wonderland has given an order: "Off with his head!" The man targeted for such consideration is P V Narasimha Rao. The reason for such dramatic decapitation? Because he is guilty of corruption! He paid money to certain members of Parliament in the summer of 1993 in order to buy a majority in the Lok Sabha, the venerable House of the People, and keep the Congress Government in power. The crime is so heinous that Sonai Gandhi in Wonderland has instructed the Congress to let this evil, evil man twist slowly in the wind till he disappears into Tihar jail.

P V Narasimha Rao will go down in India's history as the Prime Minister who pledged the nation's gold for a loan from foreign banks, provided serious and lasting momentum to economic reforms and liberalisation, trusted charlatans over colleagues in the management of the general elections that he lost, slept while India burnt during the communal conflagration of the winter of 1992, and was sentenced to three years in jail for bribing MPs in his successful efforts to preserve his personal power and fatten the wallets of chosen supporters. Both critics and well-wishers of Narasimha Rao accept his intellectual pedigree. When he succeeded, as in his careful shepherding of economic reform, he was brilliant. When he failed, it was because he was too clever by half. It is ironic that he was sentenced for what might have been the least of his crimes, but that is not the point.

Nemesis reached, as she tends to do his door. Lawyers tend to misunderstand her principles of retribution; Nemesis does not have to understand the law in order to understand justice. Those familiar with Greek tragedy know that the furies are not impelled by the dry language of a statute when they chase kings and heroes, for a law is the handiwork of the powerful, and Nemesis to a higher justice, to the unspoken call a child slaughtered in a communal riot for instance or the grief of a virgin raped. They may have a right to seek justice from a king who ignored the fire. But who is the Congress party to accuse Narasimha Rao of any crime?

For if Narasimha Rao was guilty once, then the Congress was guilty many times over. How can a party that applauded this crime when it was taking place, which enjoyed the benefits of the power that Narasimha Rao and Narasimha Rao alone gave them, today turn around and treat him like a pariah? It is Congress that benefited from this crime. It is Congress ministers and leaders who proposed and received protection from Rao he was in power.

Did Sonia Gandhi not know what was happening in 1992 and 1993, when she sat sphinx-like behind her security cover at 10 Janpath?

If she did not she could have asked one of the Congressmen most faithful to her, a man who wields power in the party in her name at this moment, her current loyalist and fund-raiser, Satish Sharma. Satish Sharma could have told her, and can still tell her, precisely what happened in the bribing of the MPs, ask him what he did, when he did it, and how much all of it cost.

How, Soniaji, is Narasimha Rao guilty and Satish Sharma innocent? How is Sharma a noble and idealistic Congress, with a place at the centre of your affairs, and Narasimha Rao such a villain that the Congress under your direction must banish him from sight? What kind of hypocrisy in this?

Why single out Satish Sharma alone? Which Congress leader of today did not enjoy the power doled out by Narasimha Rao when the bribery was taking place? Those who revolted under the Congress Tiwari banner did so later, and they did not make this bribery case their reason for leaving the party. There were other leaders who felt the whiplash of Rao's revenge when he bundled them into the now dead hawala case, but was all much later. Even in anger they never quite distanced themselves from the summer of 1993: how could they, when all of them were delighted that Rao had managed to save the Congress Government. Why does Mrs Sonia Gandhi not check with the man she has sent on a special mission to save Bengal, Pranab Mukherjee, what he tought about "Pee Bhee" when he was a Cabinet Minister? Why does she not check with dozens of others now her loyalists in the party, the Ghulams and Jakhars and Salmans and Shuklas (the list is endless)? Were they all so naive that they had no idea how they won a majority in the Lok Sabha during the motion of no-confidence? Home Minister S. B. Chavan did not know? Finance Minister Manmohan Singh did not know? If sin was committed when it was shared sin.

Sonia Gandhi should have offered collective penance, not turned away from Narasimha Rao with disdain. I have a recommendation for the court of appeal that will determine, in the first week of November, the actual punishment that Narasimha Rao must undergo. The three-year jail sentence that Rao has received should also be shared by all those who were his ministers in 1992 and 1993. This would send all of them to about a fortnight inTihar, which should not be too high a price for what they took from Rao when he had something to give them.

Sonia Gandhi is, by all accounts, a practising Christian. She must, consequently, have some familiarity with the Bible. Looking at the rabble ready to stone a scapegoat Jesus asked. Who among them shall cast the first stone? Who is without sin? At least the Biblical crowd had the decency to feel embarrassed. Sonia Gandhi, in contrast, has stones in both hands. And the Congress spokesman has issued instructions for the party to follow.

Does Sonia Gandhi think this country is plagued by amnesia? The Indian voter is delighted that a judge has brought accountability to a man who possessed the highest executive authority in the country. The voter also has contempt for a party of fair-weather friends, or fair-weather sycophants, who turn ingratitude into a virtue when a man is down. There is, to repeat, a legitimate queue of people with the full right to criticise Rao bitterly. But the Congress does not belong to this queue; certainly not the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi, who herself was not averse to Government favours when Rao was Prime Minister.

It is with some relief that one notes that the Congress is not without those who understand the Indian people slightly better than their leader. Despite the imperial injunction, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh has gone on record that injustice has been done to Narasimha Rao. Right or wrong is not the issue. Digvijay Singh is only articulating what so many Congressmen feel in private but are afraid to say in public for fear of inviting the wrath of "Madam". When the senior leaders of the party called on Rao after his guily verdict, they did not do so, as Sonia Gandhi did, to be solemn before him and laugh behind his back. They did so because they felt that the verdict was too harsh on him.

Will Digvijay Singh pay a price for "Disloyalty"? He surely weighed this question before he made the statement. He gave his answer in public.

Hell may or may not have a fury like a woman scorned, but in public life you have to handle your scorn carefully. Sonia Gandhi has been politically immature in her treatment of Narasimha Rao; that it was unnecessary only underscores the immaturity. If Sonia Gandhi believes that she can "solve" the Rao problem by expelling him from the Congress, that will be the kind of over-reach that will imbalance her, even topple her. She has already manufactured a virtual split, and this could have repercussions in the party elections for president. She has tried to slice Rao with a pair of scissors labelled double standards, but such scissors have a way of drawing blood from the fingers of users.

You do not have to be a sympathiser of Narasimha Rao to call foolishness by its correct name. Sonia Gandhi is running the Congress through a sieve no stronger than prejudice. When prejudice is burdened by pride, the weight becomes too much for a political party to bear.

Media should rather be democratic

By Kedar Nath Pandey

Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj's re-appointment as Union Information and Broadcasting minister may have sent disturbing signals to those who espouse the cause of entertainment without inhibition. Swaraj has already declared her intention of turning television into a medium that will provide healthy enjoyment to the entire family. This would certainly entail, in the Indian context, emphasis on traditional values and a more conservative world view. Those with a more liberal upbringing might be tempted to dismiss such an approach as restrictive and not in tune with the swift winds of change blowing all across the world.

Swaraj, it may be recalled, in her earlier stint as I & B minister, had been credited with modifying the dress code for Doordarshan's female news-readers. They were asked not to wear transparent sari blouses that could be in any sense termed provocative. It is highly doubtful though that viewers used to watch DD news out of lascivious curiosity alone. Certainly for DD's own sake it would have been better had the news content and projection been improved instead. The state-run media agency has not been able to keep pace with the satellite news channels. Lately, there have been attempts to jazz it up, a sign that I & B mandarins have woken up belatedly to the also-ran status of DD news capsule. Swaraj's appointment has been preceded by the framing of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Act, which came into force from September 1. For cable operators and media-observers, it represented a state's attempt to impose censorship of sorts, with the former fearing that they would be in danger of being penalised for showing sexually explicit programmes or advertisements for products of the prohibited list, telecast by foreign satellite channels.

In protest, the cable operators had suspended telecast for three consecutive days in the last week of September. They called off their strike on securing an assurance from the then I&B Minister Arun Jaitley that the act was not directed against them. Its intent was to inject a measure of accountability into television programming and revenue outlay. Barely 10 days after the strike, Swaraj replaced Jaitley in the high profile ministry.

This change has important implications for the television media. Just as media watchers might have been tempted to think that viewers of satellite channels, largely comprising urban audiences were at last coming of age through exposure to the wiles and ways of the larger world, the possibility of the clock being solved down seems to have surfaced. The one reality in a fluid socio-moral milieu is that there can be no rigid conceptions of what is desirable. Only a static society can permit such stringency. Post-liberalisation Indian society is slowly graduating into a dynamic one, where the measure to conform it to a standard code of family life is fast disappearing. People are willing to concede the existence of unconventional or aberrant relationships and families. The ideal of devoted couples with perfect children, most commonly found in the almost defunct Chunnu-munnu Chandamama tradition, is being increasingly replaced with the ones, more realistic. It would be discouraging if the change in the I&B ministry were to trigger off a reactionary trend, aimed at imposing a conservative uniformity on television programming. Among liberalisation's beneficial spin-offs is the breaking free of television from the straitjacket of convention. While ideally a line needs to be drawn somewhere, it should be more than the prerogative of one individual to determine this. In a village in Maharashtra, for instance, Maulana Abdul Hamid Ibrahim of the local mosque has ordered the predominantly Muslim population to get rid of their TV sets. The cable operator has been driven out of business by this fatwah though reports claim that the man has been compensated for his loss. Dismayed at the dwindling attendance at the mosque on account of the lure of television, the maulana conveyed his ultimatum to the village elders.

A more virulent manifestation of moral high-handedness is found in countries like Iran, which does not permit the airing of satellite channels, and Afghanistan, where the Taliban has gone to the extent of smashing TV sets. This is tantamount to a denial of the totality of life. Some years back, the residents of a group of housing societies threw their TV sets out of the window, or disposed them in other ways, in a bid to counter the deleterious influence exercised by satan's box.

No doubt, an incessant audio visual offensive can make even strong minds weaken or disintegrate. But, nobody can be forced to watch television without a reprieve. Further, light entertainment as distinct from pornography, is a healthy outlet for boredom and stress. Informed news is a vast improvement on propaganda. The adventure, science and nature series have opened up a whole new world for many home-bound viewers. Morality cannot be affirmed in the absence of choices. If maulavis and priests still wield the authority to lay down what they feel is right on the people then their secular equivalents are not likely to relinquish their power. However in an age where the bottomline clearly is money and money-making, other factors may prove to have a peripheral impact. INAV