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EDITORIAL In one of its worst indictment of financial irregularities in J&K State, CAG has found that there is hardly a department or ministry that believes in accountability. This stands duly manifested by non-submission of Utilisation Certificates amounting to Rs 13,468 crore. This itself proves total messy situation on the financial front. One the one ......more The super-cyclonic storm that hit Orissa coastal areas has caused massive devastation. While it would be quite sometime before actual human loss could counted, the very fact that tidal waves upto 10 meters high blended with stormy wind speed between 250 to....more |
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Taliban's
unease over By Om Kachru Social
girl child - Flower that withers before blossoming The
Congress (I) in the morgue ! |
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EDITORIAL In one of its worst indictment of financial irregularities in J&K State, CAG has found that there is hardly a department or ministry that believes in accountability. This stands duly manifested by non-submission of Utilisation Certificates amounting to Rs 13,468 crore. This itself proves total messy situation on the financial front. One the one hand state is constantly complaining of resource crunch and wants centre to dole out liberally to bail out the State from dire strait. On the other hand it miserably fails to submit utilisation certificates for the amounts already received from various ministries under several heads from the central coffers. Education Ministry alone fails to render 109 utilisation certificates for total amount of Rs 6,264 crore. This is closely followed by Urban Development Ministry which likewise fails to submit certificates for an amount of Rs 5,182 crore. Other defaulting ministries are Agricultural, Art & Culture, Health & Medical Education, Social Welfare, General Administration and even Law Ministry. Besides, there are at least nine departments and 35 Boards who have not furnished their accounts for several years. CAG refers to other irregularities of overspending without budgetary and underspending in various critical sectors. There is also the report of excessive payments made in quite disregard of the laid down guidelines and rules which clearly points out extraneous considerations outweighing healthy financial norms. There is the mention of hundreds of irregular appointments by passing Recruitment Boards and Committees. On the face of it such dubious conduct of official business in every sphere indicates the abysmally low depths to which officialdom and the system has sunk. Worst still is the adverse comment on the State-assisted handicraft cooperative societies. According to CAG in Jammu alone 78% of the societies are either defunct or face imminent closure and the 87 which are functional are otherwise unviable. This instantly proves lack of scrutiny, guidance and supervision by the Government which obviously calls for drastic surgery of those who facilitated financing of such cooperatives and failed to keep close watch on them. It has definitely caused massive loss to State coffers. CAG has quoted only Jammu. One can imagine what it could be like in the valley as regards State assisted handicraft cooperative societies. It is evident that river Tawi could not consume all the societies while Jhelum appears to have clean-swept them all. Land acquisition formalities, procedures and payment have also invited adverse comments of the CAG. It says that there are delays that range between two to nineteen years. Such delays obviously have led to massive cost escalation which is a clear loss to the exchequer. There is massive shortfall of upto 51% in many cases as regards Commerce and Industry Ministry. CAG points out that the concerned have not maintained any registers or records for loan recoveries amounting to Rs 188 crore. No further proof is needed asto why State remains resource starved and benefits of large central allocations failing to reach the targeted population which in turn has given rise to alienation from the mainstream besides massive corrosion to the credibility of the Government. Budgetary control deficiencies stand adequately manifested when the CAG confirms expenditure of Rs 9544 crore against the budgetary provision of only Rs 6373 crore. One really wonders the utility of budget if it is to be exceeded by almost fifty percent. This is height of indiscipline at all rungs which has landed the State in the present crisis situation. It may be apt to point out that nothing special occured during 1997-98 to warrant excess expenditure of Rs 3712 crore. Pay Commission implementation kept payment of arrears in abeyance and the expenditure was only on current account. Other than that there is no special item warranting such reckless expenditure in gross violation of financial norms. While gubernatorial spell had many constraints due to highly hostile environ, the popular Government was installed in largely peaceful environs. Financial irregularities instead of getting checked seems to have aggravated manifold during popular Government's spell. The password is unaccountability to either the people or those who provide the funds for various development schemes and projects. If only funds had been utilised properly, there would not have been any problem in submitting utilisation certificates. CAG might have commented adversely on other States as well but one is yet to come across such an adverse report as regard J&K State. Even now it is not too late to streamline the dubious and suspect system that brings bad name to the State and does no credit those at the helm. The super-cyclonic storm that hit Orissa coastal areas has caused massive devastation. While it would be quite sometime before actual human loss could counted, the very fact that tidal waves upto 10 meters high blended with stormy wind speed between 250 to 300 km confirms the magnitude of the tragedy. While guess game is on, the fact remains that none of the official agencies have reached the inaccessible devastated areas so far because of pouring rains and snapping of road and communication links. It is feared that many villages who had borne the major brunt of the unprecedented cyclone of the century are totally washed away. Even if one hopes that some could survive, the tragedy may have consumed not less than 50,000 hapless people. The BBC in its morning bulletin estimates loss of one lac people. The magnitude of destruction can best be imagined with almost 25 lakh housing units either damaged or totally destroyed. The impact of cyclone is quite visible in that even the State capital finds its secretariat and other official premises almost beyond recognition. On the relief front, the centre has lost no time in having aerial view of the devastation. The visitors include PM, Home Minister Advani and George Fernandes. Prime Minister has declared it as a national calamity which makes the State eligible for massive grants for rehabilitation works. Rs 300 crore are immediately placed at the disposal of State Government and it is upto the State to prove its credibility. The NDA Government has already proved that it has not bias against Congress ruled State as regard humanitarian succour on such mass tragedy. Centre has also pressed into service Army, IAF and Naval units for rescue/air dropping/restoration of communication links. Ultimately onus of entire rehabilitative exercise rests on the State Government although funds would be provided by the centre. It is quite thoughtful of Prime Minister to despatch all Central ministers and MPs hailing from Orissa to render all possible on-spot succour and advice for the gigantic task that lies ahead. |
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Taliban's
unease over Osama bin Laden The fugitive Saudi promoter of international terrorism, Osama bin Laden, has become a liability for Taliban leadership after the American sanctions against the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and the Security Council resolution of October 18 condemning international terrorism. Arab and Western intelligence networks appear to have penetrated deep into the Taliban movement and the assassination attempt on the Supreme Commander of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, Mullah Mohammad Omar, last month is indicative of this. Though supposed to be a handiwork of Hazaras, a neighbouring country is reported to have provided the logistic support to the plot. According to delayed reports, one of the 10 persons killed in the blast was Mullah Omar's younger brother. The Saudi intelligence revealed after their encounter with Mullah Omar in June 1998 that bin Laden has become an 'unwelcome burden". The Saudis felt that they managed to strike a deal for extradition of bin Laden on the condition that he will be tried only in Saudi Arabia and nowhere else. And even in Saudi Arabia he will be tried by an Islamic court. This reported deal was supposed to have been executed quite discreetly so that no blame was put on Taliban for a non-Pushtoon-type behaviour towards their honoured guests. However, the deal fell through at the last moment due to Mullah Omar's reservations over the entire operations. Subsequently, while Saudis kept their lines of communication with Taliban and Pakistan open to bring pressure through Islamabad, the American retaliation in the form of financial and commercial sanctions in July seems to have totally altered the situation. The reported assault by bin Laden's mercenary forces in Kargil and Kabul is considered by many a demonstration of his loyalty to Mullah Omar. It is a different matter that in both the operations Pakistan army and the mercenary force of bin Laden met considerable amount of losses. Taliban acquired a pressure point by providing safe haven to some of the radical elements in the Islamic world. The most contentious person wanted in his connection is Osama bin Laden. Born in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden, 42, gave up worldly pleasures in 1980s and fought against the Red Army and Afghan communists. The subsequent civil war involving Afghan Mujahideens disappointed bin Laden and prompted him to go to Sudan when President Omar Al-Bashir government, with backing from Hassan Turabi's Islamic movement, was pursuing a purist Islamic agenda. However, the Sudanese were not able to resist the American and Saudi pressure to expel him. After five-and-a-half years of stay in Sudan, he was forced to return to Afghanistan on May 18, 1996. Since his arrival in Afghanistan, bin Laden has been expressing his opposition to the presence of foreigners, especially the US, in his homeland. Bin Laden, whose family owns transport and construction business in Saudi Arabia, has been very critical of King Fahd and his foreign policy. However, unlike bin Laden, his family remained loyal to the monarchy and expelled him from the clan. All the three sons of Sheikh Oman Abdul Rahman, the blind aalim (priest), who is languishing in the prison in the US for the World Trade Centre bombing, are leading supporters of bin Laden. They are Mohammad Abdul Rahman, Ahmad Abdul Rahman and Asim Abdul Rahman, Shawqui Islam Bolo, brother of Khalid Islam Bolo, the man who eliminated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, is also reported to have joined bin Laden. In June 1998, the formation of the Islamic International Front was announced to fight the US presence in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries, a matter dear to the heart of bin Laden. A section of Afghan leadership is also raising a question in public that why the Saudi fugitive should be provided shelter in Afghanistan when there are any number of other Islamic countries. "Bin Laden is an Arab and an Arab country should look after him, when Afghanistan is already taking a lot of beating on its own why add the bin Laden problem to it," said the Afghan Ambassador in Tehran in an interview with the Iranian news agency, IRNA, recently. The alienation of the majority of Pushtoon community against bin Laden is on and it will not be a surprise if any of them take a pot shot at him in the coming months. According to Western intelligence sources, a group seems to have been formed calling itself "Takfir" which has issued a fatwa for the assassination of bin Laden. The group is supposed to be operating from somewhere in Europe and consists of highly nationalistic and militant Afghans who left Afghanistan during the last 10 years. Therefore, it is being increasingly asked whether Osama bin Laden days are numbered. - CNF |
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The Congress (I) in the
morgue ! Senior Congress leader V. N. Gadgil has said that time has come to "re-examine" all the basic concepts of the party ideology including secularism in the wake of the organisation's worst electoral debacle. The results showed that at least 70 per cent of people had voted against the Congress in the elections giving rise to the basic issue whether people have rejected the party because of its ideology or some other reasons. Stating that Hinduism has an appeal to a large number of population, he said that this section was not able to relate to the Congress ideology as they did not agree with some of its features in the present context. Listing democracy, socialism, secularism, non-alignment, self-reliance and planning as the basic concepts of the party, he said that each of this has to be re-examined through a thorough debate in the organisation. Asserting that the issue of secularism had gained prominence during the pre-Independence days when there were apprehensions of a separate Pakistan being created, Mr. Gadgil wondered as to how much it was relevant in present times. For Congressmen, Nehruvian secularism and socialism is the talisman to fight electoral battle. And after more than 50-year this ideology with changing social and caste matrix is not giving the desired result to the party. In ideological realm Karl Marx, Fredrick Engels, Lenin and Mao have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Then, why not Nehruvian "secularism"? Myth-making has been a major intellectual pursuit of the Hindu civilisation, and the contemporary Hindu intelligentsia, no matter what colour of mask _ tiranga, red or saffron, it prefers to wear, carries strong traits of its "glorious" past. The caste intelligentsia was aware of the fact that India's oldest and largest political organisation could not produce one single political personality to whom adjectives such as "progressive", "modern", "liberal", etc., could suit, and therefore, they zeroed it on Nehru. He had studied in Europe, admired European life-style, and his proximity to the Mountbattens were reasons enough to paste the above adjectives on him. Asghar Ali Engineer, an outstanding spokesperson of the just decayed "Secular Front", cannot be faulted for his songs of Nehruvian secularism. His recent elegy (Demeaning Secularism, The Hindu, May 4, 1999), only symbolically mirrors the Brahminical content of "secularism" as being practised in contemporary India. "Thus, secularism has lost its philosophical appeal," this is how he sums up his analysis on the recent crisis. While tracing the genesis of secularism in India, he lauds the role played by the Congress during the freedom movement. "The philosophy of secularism guided the freedom movement," asserts Engineer. In particular, he names Jawaharlal Nehru and Abul Kalam Azad, who "were firmly committed to secularism". He further says, "Nehru severely criticised obscurantist practices and wrote several letters to chief ministers not to associate themselves with any religious ritual in their official capacity," Asghar Ali is known for his learning but mere learning does not necessarily make a person rational and/or objective. The caste-intelligentsia deliberately highlights the above professed "ideals" of Nehru, and in the same spirit, censors his "social doctrine". For, on caste question, Nehru puts the entire Sangh parivar and even the Left to shame. Dr. Ambedkar, in his paper, Thoughts On Linguistic States (Vol. 1), asks: "Did not Prime Minister Nehru on August 15, 1947, sit at the yajna performed by the Brahmins of Benares to celebrate the event of a Brahmin becoming the first Prime Minister of free and independent India and wear the Raj Danda given to him by these Brahmins and drink the water of the Ganges brought by them?" Nehru may have actually written to Chief Ministers advising them against participating in religious rituals. But how do we describe this conduct of Nehru? An act of obscurantism or of progressivism? Further, why does Nehru limit his instructions to chief ministers, only to "official" matters? What was Nehru's "social doctrine"? The caste intelligentsia has taken no pains to elaborate this aspect, so crucial to understand the vision of any Indian. His Discovery of India, a marvellous book, as Albert Einstein chose to describe it, is a much celebrated scholarly contribution of Nehru. The book is also considered as the best reflection of the Nehruvian "philosophy" of life. While discussing the 'Indian Social Structure' (p.247), Nehru found it necessary to quote Sir George Birdwood where the latter had suggested: "So long as the Hindus hold to the caste system, India will be India; but from the day they break from it, there will be no more India." Birdwood says other things also about India, with which Nehru disagrees, but not on the caste question. In fact, Nehru quotes Birdwood only to support his pro-caste thesis. Look at how "the child of renaissance" responds to the above quote: "But there is some truth in what Sir George Birdwood said," assert Nehru. He goes on to argue that: "The break-up of a huge and long-standing social organisation may well lead to a complete disruption of social life, resulting in absence of cohesion, mass suffering and the development on a vast scale of abnormalities in individual behaviour, unless some other social structure, more suited to the times and to the genius of the people, takes its place." The above "abnormalities in human behaviour" reasoning of Nehru puts all Hindu scriptures to shame, not even Manusmriti gives any "scientific" basis in defence of the caste system. And to our knowledge, we are yet to come across any of the Shankaracharyas, or any other Dharmacharya, or Leftist outfits, who while upholding the caste system, ever ventured out to defend it by invoking medical reasons. In the same chapter, Nehru has argued: "The caste system does not stand by itself; it is a part, and an integral part, of a much larger scheme of social organisation. It may be possible to remove some of its obvious abuses and to lessen its rigidity, and yet to leave the system intact." Lest apologists of Nehruvian secularism accuse us of selective quoting, we recommend them to refer to the chapter on Theory and Practice of Caste _ The Joint Family (pp 250), where he justifies origin of the caste system. In his own words: "The function of each group or caste were related to the functions of other castes, and the idea was that if each group functioned successfully within its own framework, then society as a whole worked harmoniously." He further explains the "weakness" and "strength" of the caste system. He argues: "Because of its political lack of cohesiveness it facilitated foreign conquest; because of its social strength it made recovery easy, as well as assimilation of new elements. It had so many heads that they could not be cut off and they survived conquest and disaster." This is only the tip of the iceberg, where Nehruvian "secularism' goes all out to defend caste system, and incidentally, it is this aspect of Nehruvian philosophy which is least discussed. Nehru, all along his life, held that it is the institution of caste which provides "cohesion" and "stability" to Indian society and, therefore, he sought to keep the caste system intact, lest any change lead to the disintegration of Indian society. We very well understand that the breaking up of the caste system may lead to "development of abnormalities in individual behaviour", but also understand that the victims will be members from the privileged caste, and not the victims of the caste system. While we cannot appreciate a situation whereby our emancipation may cause "abnormalities" in a large section of people, we at the same time cannot continue to suffer for the sake of some strange socio-psychological state of a section of people, as was being indicated by Nehru. The Congress was able to maintain this "structural cohesion" for over four decades, and with its decline the "cohesion" which Nehru talks about has begun showing cracks. The Left, instead of a applying Marxian principles to help accelerate that process, has jumped over to embrace Nehruvian "secularism" to safeguard the structural cohesion. To us, one cannot be a secularists while being rank casteist at the same time. We are too keen to break the "cohesion", and demand a public debate on Nehru's "social doctrine". We can never forgive Nehru for his obscurantism, and will also not forget those forces, be it socialists or the domesticated Left, which are making a fresh bid to invoke Nehruvian "secularism". Secularism and dynastic politics has been the bane of the Congress party well over a decade. It is not that Congress functionaries do not know all this. But the bulk of them also know that any revolt against the dynasty will be squelched and they will be cast into political wilderness. They are bound to languish there because, lacking in charisma and standing, they cannot stage a comeback. The question is will it be a case of the death of a party foretold or of Lazarus coming back to life? The latter can only happen if Ms. Sonia Gandhi places her party above self and family. This means discouraging her son and daughter from trying to succeed her, and if they insist on joining politics, allow them to start at the very bottom and allow them to work their way up the hard way like any other activist of their age group. Secondly, she must send the coterie packing and restore transparency and democracy in the functioning of the party. Finally, she should make a public announcement that she should under no circumstances become the Prime Minister of India. This will remove the biggest hurdle in the way of the Congress' revival. As the recent election results show, the people of India accept her right to be an MP and a party leader but will not have her as their Prime Minister because of her Italian origin. The people of India also revere those who, like Bhishma of Mahabharata and Mahatma Gandhi in our time, renounce power and its rewards. Ms. Sonia Gandhi's stock will rise the moment she renounces prime ministerial ambitions, and this in turn will help to revive the party. It is basically a question of whether Ms. Sonia Gandhi wants to be Prime Minister or to serve India without holding governmental office. Father James Long, Sister Nivedita, C. F. Andrews, Annie Besant and Mother Teresa, to cite some examples, came to India as foreigners and did not become Prime Minister. They are, however, remembered with deep affection for what they have done for this country. Ms. Sonia Gandhi may carve out a similar position for herself if she follows their example. On the other hand, she will invite acrimonious criticism and perhaps destroy the Congress if she continues trying to be Prime Minister. And in the end, she may never succeed in becoming that. The decision is hers. INAV |
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