Daily Excelsior... Editorial

EDITORIAL

By Sisir Basu

The Government has once again decided to increase the prices of petrol and diesel by Rs. 2 and Re. 1. Over the last two years this would be for the fifth time that the Government is resorting to price increase in view of rising oil prices in the international market. Why pass on the burden of increased prices to the consumers when there exist mechanism to tackle the situation by way of subsidizing oil prices. . . .more

Rahul must unwrap
his vision

By Amulya Ganguli

Stealing organs
from the poor

By Praful Bidwai

EDITORIAL

CAG lets cat(s)
out of the bag

Forest area continues to be encroached upon in the State. More than 3000 hectares of it has been usurped in nine forest divisions. Plans for forest management were prepared by only 12 of 28 divisions across the State. Of them the plans of just four divisions (Jammu, Reasi, Ramnagar and Langet) have been approved by the Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF). Those of eight others have been pending for sanction for a period ranging from two to 10 years. These schemes were devised between 1996-97 and 2004-05. This is not all about the mess that has eroded our green gold. Quite a few more skeletons have begun rattling. Under the State Forest Conservation Act the forest cover must be raised over degraded area equal to or twice the area diverted for non-forest purposes. The cost of compulsory afforestation has to be provided by the beneficiary. The scrutiny of relevant records tells a different tale. Between April 2002 and August 2006, 2243.32 hectares of forests have been used for other purposes. In return a meagre 719 hectares (32 per cent) have been added. Worse still, no records have been maintained at apex level of expenses payable on account of mandatory plantation. Crores of rupees are pending on this count in 10 divisions (Batote, Doda, Jammu, Kishtwar, Kupwara, Marwah, Poonch, Ramnagar, Sopore and Udhampur). The Government thus remains in the red to the tune of Rs 188.55 crores in some instances for as long as two decades. The irony is that money so collected in a few cases has been lying idle. The Government had received Rs 79.34 crores between 1992 and 2007. It formulated no project for utilising it. It did release a sum of Rs 3.34 crores to 20 divisions (up to March 2005) for required substitution but without having schemes in hand. There is non-application of mind as well in certain examples. Two social forestry divisions got reimbursement to the tune of Rs 5.11 crores from the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for diversion of 265.10 hectares of land under their charge for construction of the Lakhanpur-Jammu highway. They not only did not employ it for the intended objective but also kept the entire amount in a current account thereby also losing interest they could have earned from a fixed deposit.

These startling findings are by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its latest report. However, this is not the end of the financial indiscipline plaguing our woods. The CAG has come up with many more anomalies. Havoc has evidently been played with the scheme of rehabilitation of degraded forests. It envisages the target to be achieved by plantation, building of check dams, water harvesting and natural regeneration. Quite a substantial sum of Rs 18.11 crores was spent on it in five financial years from 2002 to 2007. There was no reduction in the degraded forest area. Instead, it increased by 43 per cent during the corresponding period! The total degraded area which went up to 10 lakh hectares from seven lakh hectares constitutes half of the State's total forest coverage. Where did the money claimed to have been spent go? Does it need any elaboration? There is hardly any aspect of our forests that does not stink. The same unfortunately is true of other sphere of government activity. The Jammu Development Authority (JDA) is no exception. Its un-recovered premium from shops, plots and its other possessions has crossed Rs 56 crores. The CAG has observed: "The JDA neither planned nor prioritised its operations which was evident from non-preparation of detailed plans at micro level, resulting in execution of unplanned, piecemeal and adhoc project. Works were taken up in anticipation of administrative approval and technical sanction and without acquisition of land or survey." In a sharp indictment it adds: "The Authority lacked focus and direction, which was reflected in non-maintenance of basic records of developed assets and their disposal resulting in double and irregular allotments besides loss of revenue. Non-existence of internal control mechanism also deprived the Authority of an effective tool of monitoring its performance." Some projects were either abandoned midway or stretched beyond stipulated deadlines resulting in "time/cost overrun, unauthorised, irregular, avoidable, wasteful, unfruitful/idle investments." The General Provident Fund Organisation of the State Government too has drawn fire. It is supposed to be repository of life-long savings of employees and pensioners. Instead, it is afflicted by irregularities and deficient financial control. A big question-mark does arise following CAG's discovery that vouchers worth crores are missing along with supporting details. CAG has also come across indiscriminate allotment of new account numbers. As a consequence there is increase in inoperative accounts from 21 per cent (one lakh) to more than 25 per cent (1.29 lakhs) from April 2004 to March 2007. Do some of us miss a heartbeat or two on reading this?

It is only a tip of an iceberg if we take into account the CAG's comprehensive examination of the State Government's finances. It has let too many cats out of the bag. One and all admit that the CAG does a meticulous job. It goes into minor details with surgical efficiency. It is small wonder then that its reports are well documented and provide much-needed basic material for booking corrupt officers. It has always been felt that a close coordination between the CAG and vigilance organisations can go a long way in providing an administration free from loot of public exchequer. Legislators are expected to study these reports and ensure strict application of correctives by concerned ministries and departments. Often, however, it has been seen that they don't get time enough to go through each and every paragraph. This is something that negates extensive research. That explains why a few conscientious citizens have pleaded for scrapping the CAG itself. This is a demand that arises more than anything else from a sense of hurt in view of the absence of effective follow-up. For the State Government which has publicly pledged itself to eradicating corruption the CAG reports contain enough ammunition to translate its aim into a reality.

Subsidies aren’t all that bad

By Sisir Basu

It is high time the Government re-evaluated its obsession with removing subsidies on oil prices and opted for a long-term energy policy based on the nation's needs. Exposing Indian industry and consumers to the vicissitudes of global prices by either dismantling the Administrative Price Mechanism or attacking the Oil Pool Account (OPA) are proving too burdensome for the national economy because we have to simultaneously dismantle import tariff boundaries in keeping with our WTO commitments.

The OPA is meant to be self-financing over a period, unless the government takes away the surplus. The APM (administered price mechanism) is based on the retention concept under which refineries; marketing companies and pipelines are compensated for the operating costs and are allowed a return of 12 per cent post-tax net worth. The efficiency of the APM depends entirely on the ability of the system to keep the OPA in balance. Until the late 1980's, the account was in surplus and it had become an extra source of income for the Government. However, the 1990's saw a growing deficit. By 1997, the OPA recorded a deficit of $5 billion. Unfortunately, in India, the Government has in the past taken away massive amounts of money from the OPA and utilised the surplus to meet the increasing revenue gap. If the domestic price of refined petroleum is allowed to go up and down, most industries, and particularly the transport sector, would be unable to cope with the resultant uncertainties. Farmers and ordinary Indians will suffer as well.

The "reformers" have pointed out the inefficiency of the subsidy system. The effects are mainly on those products that are very important industrial raw materials for steel, cement, and chemical industries, the backbone of any modern economy.

If we add the recent decisions by the "reformers" to reduce import taxes on products already produced in India, the total effects of the combined attacks of high price of petroleum, lower import taxes and a strong rupee will devastate Indian industries. India's Rs. 1, 30,000-crore chemical industry, the backbone of the country's basic industry, is undergoing a silent transition. The overall impact would be serious. Also, there has been a sharp drop in import tariffs, posing significant challenges to the chemical industry. The argument that lower import tariffs would encourage more foreign investment is unfounded. Even when the entry barriers have been pulled down, there has been no significant improvement in FDI levels. In China, energy demands are rising constantly to keep up with economic growth. The country is already expected to pay an extra $9.2 billion to import the 980 million barrels of oil it needs this year. Government price adjustments have protected emerging Chinese consumers from the jump in international energy prices. There is a debate over whether China's massive crude import for this year, up about 40 per cent from 2005, represents real demand. Some analysts reckon the Chinese Government has ordered state oil companies to hold inventories. China may have stocked as much as 300 million barrels of oil since early last year. Chinese officials said work is going on to build the initial phase of a strategic oil stockpile, which could start to be filled within the next year.

What should India do? It is unfortunate that rather than having comprehensive energy planning, India, since 1991, has abandoned planning altogether and decided to go along with a mysterious "economic reform" policy. The result is the present crisis. The solution for India is to go back to the comprehensive planning of the energy sector and the economy, as one cannot happen without the other.

The transport policy, based on road system and private transport, is unfeasible for India given its limited petroleum reserves. India should develop public transport system based on electricity and develop more and more railway transport instead of road transport. Given the massive coal reserves for thermal power plants and India's expertise with nuclear power, it is the best option. There should be subsidies for solar energy, which can meet the demands from the residential sector in a big way. Private ownership of cars should be discouraged by tax increases on car ownership. In public transport, electricity instead of petroleum can be used in a big way by converting diesel-fuelled buses into trolley buses which can run on electricity with the same speed. Trams, restricted only to Kolkata, should be introduced in every city and in the link road between the cities and nearby towns. More railway lines should opened between the major cities. In these ways, the demand for oil from the transport and the residential sector can be controlled. However, industrial demands for petroleum cannot be reduced without major changes in technology. For that case, import controls and increased tariffs on imports to protect Indian domestic industries and to reduce India's total import cost are the answer.

The recent crisis is the result of the false doctrine of "economic reforms" and the unwise decision of the Ministry of Finance to withdraw money from the OPA without compensating it when needed. Without subsidies, the costs will escalate and in the near future the government will be forced, to give either direct subsidies to the industries and farmers, or to provide special loans and tax-breaks to help them to recover. The eventual cost will be much more than the subsidies for the OPA.

Another fear is the growing inflation due to the rise in domestic prices of oil products, which would affect the poor much more than the industrialists or rich farmers. If the government wants to reduce inflation by increasing the interest rate, the cost of borrowing will go up; there will be more industrial failures and unemployment. These are the perils of a privatised economy, which a planned economy can avoid easily through cross subsidies and direct infusion of investments.

The costs of subsidies to the OPA are very insignificant compared to the uncollected tax (about Rs. 95,000 crore) or the unpaid loans (about Rs. 150,000 crore) from the nationalised banks. If the government would make tax avoidance a criminal offence and use bankruptcy procedures as the mandatory instrument to collect both unpaid loans and taxes, the revenue situation of the government will improve significantly. As a result, the country can tide over this crisis of the oil-price-rise easily without throwing the burden on the poor. INAV

Rahul must unwrap his vision

By Amulya Ganguli

Within days of reports that Rahul Gandhi had spent a night in a Dalit household, television channels showed him taking lessons in paragliding. The gulf between these two novel experiences for the new Congress general secretary underlined the distance that he would have to cover before he could hope to be accepted as a figure of importance on the political scene and not a dilettante to whom politics is a part-time occupation.

To be fair, the lifestyle of major personalities in Indian politics has generally had the stamp of the upper class, and was consequently far removed from the quotidian lives of ordinary people. The apocryphal story of the noted Bengali Congressman of the pre-independence period, J.M.Sengupta, asking his valet to lay out his "meeting ka kapda" typified this distance. Only the Mahatma tried seriously to bridge the gulf, but his efforts provoked Sarojini Naidu's part-cynical, part-humorous comment: "if the Mahatma only knew how much it cost the Congress to keep him poor".

It is not being suggested that unless the leader lives like a follower, he cannot inspire trust. On the contrary, the followers usually prefer their leaders to be a cut above them - even a patrician like Jyoti Basu with a touch of hauteur. What is more to the point, however, is that neither tokenism nor elitist hobbies can seem odd if a politician exhibits certain qualities of mind and heart.

For a start, he must be able to convincingly articulate a vision based on an obvious grasp of existing realities with all their nuances. If Rahul's father and grandmother could score sweeping electoral victories in 1984 and 1971, the reasons were precisely the fact of their ability to touch a chord in the popular mind, evoking the hope that their aspirations would be fulfilled.

The secret of Rajiv Gandhi's success, for instance, was his vision of taking India into the 21st century while Indira Gandhi raised the expectation of wiping out poverty. It is another matter that both amounted to false promises. Rajiv Gandhi was mired in the old Congress malady of corruption while Indira's "socialism" proved to be a fake one. But, even then, their achievement was that they had something distinctive to say. Rahul's problem is that so far he has stuck to routine political rhetoric without iterating his own specific ideas.

Arguably, a general secretary cannot freely air his own views. They must be in line with the party's, especially because he is still regarded as young and inexperienced. Such views may also be misconstrued if he is to hold forth on subjects with which he is not directly concerned. At the same time, it will be absurd to claim that he is just an ordinary office-bearer. His special position as a scion of the party's first family is no secret. The deference shown to him by the other members is evidence of his distinctiveness. What is more, the unwritten consensus within the party is that he is destined for bigger things.

But, as of now, there is no sign that either he is ready to assume greater responsibilities or that he will develop the capabilities to play a larger role. It still seems that he is only in politics because of the insistence of his mother and would have been happy to lead a private life of his own. But since he has taken up, willy-nilly, what can be described as his family's profession, it might have helped if he had shown an aptitude for certain skills. Rajiv Gandhi's training as a pilot made him familiar with the world of computers and modern gadgetry, which impressed an India which was still accustomed to typewriters being used in offices and where laptops and ATMs were unheard of.

It is possible, of course, that Rahul has had to be extra cautious because of his party's coalition arrangement at the Centre. He obviously has to be careful about what he thinks, for instance, about the economic policies or the nuclear deal lest he should ruffle sensitive feathers. The only time he is said to have spoken out on a controversial subject was when he countered CPI (M) M.P. Brinda Karat's opposition to the entry of foreign universities during a parliamentary committee meeting. But even if he lets only his elders in the party to tiptoe through the minefield of contentious issues, he can at least present his vision of India, as his great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, did when he referred to the industries and dams as the temples of new India and explained how India's many religions and cultures had to live in harmony if the country was to stay united.

Much of it may seem platitudinous, but they are still highly relevant at a time when a major party doesn't mind being called a Hindu nationalist organisation and the small regional parties continue to cynically exploit sectarian sentiments to build vote banks. As a young man unattached to the government but representing the legacies of his forebears, Rahul is someone who can outline the high principles behind customary platitudes with considerable effect if only because he commands greater media and public attention than any other general secretary. It will also show that the hopes placed in him by his family and the party may be fulfilled.(IPA)

Stealing organs from the poor

By Praful Bidwai

No words are too strong to condemn the ghoulish and barbaric kidney transplantation racket in the National Capital Region, with its frightening scale, brazen violence against the victims, and ramifications across several states, if not nations. Dr Amit Kumar alias Santosh Raut's massive organ trade operation involved 3 hospitals, 5 diagnostic centres and 10 laboratories, and more than 50 accomplices, including doctors and nurses, "spotters" and touts who would lure hundreds of potential donors with the promise of jobs, and thugs and gunmen who would force them to part with their kidneys.

The racket was unearthed thanks to the initiative of an earnest young woman police officer, Manjul Saini. But it's inconceivable that it could have carried on for years across Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi without collusion on the part of the police.

Besides adding to the Raut gang's culpability, this highlights the gravity of the comprehensive police failure in enforcing the law, in particular, the Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA) 1994, which illegalises the sale of human organs and giving and accepting a reward for their donation. The Act allows organ donations by close relatives without government clearance. But all other relatives wish to donate must appear before and be cleared by an expert Authorisation Committee.

THOA however has a big loophole. It dispenses with prior approval of the Committee if the donor feels "affection" or "attachment towards the recipient". This is so vague as to permit extensive mercantile abuse on a potential donor's unverifiable declaration. Most organ trade racketeers simply ignore or defy the law, as Raut did. Since the entire operation is illegal and clandestine, they don't even bother to use the THOA loophole.

The Raut racket follows a familiar pattern, noted in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad to Mumbai and Delhi all the way to Chandigarh and Amritsar. Rich clients suffering from end-stage renal disease, many of them foreigners, are contacted by and drawn into an international organ trade network at the centre of which are unscrupulous doctors who prey upon the very poor, who are often in deep debt. These potential donors are misled into believing they'll get jobs and eventually induced into selling a kidney for as little as Rs 40,000 to a maximum of Rs 1 lakh.

The international kidney bazaar is highly evolved, with extensive cross-border transactions and a hierarchy of preferences and prices. Thus, kidneys from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or the Philippines sell for as little as $1,000 to 2,000. A Romanian kidney goes for $3,000. A kidney from Turkey costs $10,000 or more. Mexico, Brazil and South Africa fall in between. The victims are always desperately poor people who have lost everything, including hope.

The donors are usually quickly discharged and left to fend for themselves without being warned of possible risks and hazards from their surgery. There's no follow-up treatment nor an attempt to monitor if they themselves need dialysis in case their remaining kidney malfunctions in the future. Many donors end up ill and destitute-as soon as they have run through the money or partially repaid their debt.

Many poor countries have no laws to regulate organ trade. In India's case, the law came years after the legal kidney transplants had become an established business. In any case, the police have comprehensively failed to enforce THOA.

On a good guess, a major reason for this failure, apart from large bribes paid to ensure its silence, is the belief that the victims got a modicum of "justice" because they were "compensated" to the extent of Rs 40,000 to 100,000 for the removal of a kidney, and that they can, after all, survive with just one kidney. The only "injustice", many of our law-enforcers believe, is that of disproportion: the racketeering doctors, middlemen, touts and brokers make much larger sums, totalling Rs 15 to 20 lakh.

This belief, probably shared by a section of the Indian elite-which, for instance, finds nothing wrong in the use of child labour-betrays utter contempt for human life and the principle of inviolability of the human body, which is foundational to any civilised society. It justifies the invasion and raiding of flesh-and-blood people to steal their vital organs, which don't regenerate themselves.

True, there's a big gap between the numbers affected thus, estimated at 1.5 lakh in India, and the number of kidneys transplanted (under 4,000). Another 6,000 get dialysis. The rest just perish. But that gap can't be filled by exploiting poor. Rather, what we need is more and cheaper dialysis facilities, cadaver-based transplants (from the brain dead), and encouragement to patients' relatives to donate their kidneys. Kidney donations have few adverse effects if properly managed with follow-up, etc. The public must be educated to make kidney donation pledges much in the way cornea donation campaigns appeal to them.

Cadaver-based transplants are the each of our major cities every day. Yet there have been only 500 cadaver-based transplants since THOA came into being. But to bring the option into being, we need to simplify and speed up cumbersome medico-legal procedures for organ donation, create transplant registries, and permit round-the-clock post-mortem examinations, besides raising public awareness.

Unfortunately, the government seems to be moving towards easing organ transplant norms by diluting THOA and creating a system of "incentives" and allowing "organ-swapping" between willing but incompatible donors. This may be open to abuse.

Meanwhile, the problem of preventing rackets of the Raut kind cannot be ducked. The inhuman practice of violating the bodies of the destitute and ultra-vulnerable people must be firmly put down and severely punished. This must provoke serious and critical reflection on the neoliberal economic policies we are pursuing, under which growth aggravates destitution at the bottom of the social pyramid. It must also trigger genuine police reform.

Yet, there is a smart and reliable way of detecting and zeroing on clandestine organ transplants. All their recipients are given immuno-suppressant drugs to prevent transplant rejection, such as cyclosporin, tacrolimus and mycophenolate. These are only made by a handful of companies like Roche, Novartis and Panacea, which know exactly which hospitals/clinics order them. The likes of Raut's Palam Vihar hospital can be easily tracked down and raided. Will the government muster the will to do this? (IPA)