Allow peaceful Parliamentary proceedings
Men, Matters and Memories

By M L Kotru

‘‘We are working overtime to finish democracy in the country’’, a cry of deep anguish, not mine, but of the Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, as MPs, mostly from the Opposition parties, and on one recent occasion some even from the UPA benches, trooped into the well of the house to stall the day's business. As someone who had the privilege of watching Parliament at work some 45 years ago I have on purpose excluded myself from Somnath Chatterjee's deep sense of hurt. As an ordinary citizen, bereft of the privileges which our MPs enjoy, I would instantly be hauled over coals for having denigrated our Parliament and the way it functions.

This was not the first time that Speaker Chatterjee was forced to express his sense of disgust over the cavalierness of some of our MPs. I remember his saying once ‘‘You should be ashamed the way you are behaving and you are on TV’’. He has been heard reminding his flock that their shenanigans, with the Lok Sabha TV focussed on them, made them and the House look ridiculous. ‘‘It’s a matter of sorrow for me’’ that the members on the one hand want to discuss issues raised by them but are unwilling to allow discussion.

Even the question-hour, devoted to Government answering starred questions which enable an MP to put a supplementary question as well with a follow up by more than two or three MPs, is not spared. And question-hour normally is treated with great seriousness wherever parliamentary democracy is practised. It used to be the case with our Parliament as well, both Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

The budget session, like the one that is on currently, was used with great dilligence and usually brought out some glaring omissions or alternatively led to incisive scrutiny of how the monies allotted to the various Ministries were spent. The debates on demand for grants would turn the focus on working of key ministers like Defence, External Affairs, Agriculture et al. These debates literally subjected the working of the various ministries to the minutest scrutiny.

Unfortunately, parliamentary practice and procedures have yielded to the pressure of populism and it has now become fashionable for Parliament to ‘‘guillotine’’ such debates a day or two before the session comes to an end. It suits the Government because the allocations made by it to various Ministries go virtually unchecked except when a particular member(s) may be interested in some aspect of a demand. And not unoften even in such cases the Ministers get away with a bald statement that they will send a written reply to concerned MP.

The budget session, was usually looked forward to with great expectation, by the two Houses but has now unfortunately been reduced to a mere exhibition of usual turbulence-noisy, unruly, unmanageable.

And the ruling party benches are as much responsible for the growing mess as the opposition benches. Take Laloo Prasad Yadav's rail budget as an instance. I am sure that not even 30 percent of what he voluble Lalooji said was at all heard by the members. They were busy raising issues totally unrelated to the Railways. In the process Laloo set a record, taking a full two hours and more to finish his speech. Laloo obviously saw it as an hour of his personal glory even finding time to mouth a loud ‘‘Chak de railway’’. And he did indeed cut an impressive figure as he trooped out of the chamber followed by a retinue of his party MPs- acknowledging, as it were, the Railway Minister is marathon feat.

I remember the day when the late K Hanumanthayya, the Railway Minister of the day, was asked by the Speaker, G S Dhillon to present the rail budget as soon as the discussion on the listed call-attention motion had ended, some 20 minutes before the house was to break for lunch. The Minister promptly got up and started to read out his speech; barely 15 minutes later the chair asked him to wind up. Poor Hanumanthaiyya was perplexed and replied ‘‘Sir, I haven’t even begun’’. To which the Speaker's riposte was ‘‘Okay you finish it within an hour after lunch’’. Which the Minister did and the House, unlike during afternoons now, was packed.

When Somnath Chatterjee warned the Lok Sabha members the other day, as a I said at the beginning, that MPs were working overtime to ‘‘finish democracy in the country’’, it is not as if the Speaker is totally helpless. Rare indeed is the occasion now when the chair asks a member, interrupting the proceedings, under which rule he was trying to obstruct the business at hand. The Lok Sabha has its own rules and procedures and if the Speaker were to an go through the past record he would find many precedents of the chair having ‘‘named’’ a member (s) who, once he had been named, would leave the house or would be led out by the Marshals of the house.

I remember the Nath Pais, the H.V. Kamaths, Madhu Limayes and even the Marxist Jyotirmoy Basu interrupting the proceedings but always with the rule book held in their left hand and quoting the relevant rule. I remember a former Speaker, aware of an otherwise brilliant parliamentarian's weakness for the amber stuff, advising him to go out for a breather to the Central Hall and resume his ‘‘battle’’ against Hindi later. The member who was very annoyed with a Ram Rajya Parishad MP's congenital dislike for non-Hindi speaking and ‘‘beaf-eating’’ people brought the House down in peals of laughter demanding of Jawaharlal Nehru to throw this (the Hindiwallah MP) out, simultaneously shouting ‘‘I eat beef, I eat beef’’. It was then that the suggestion for a breather came from the chair which the Kerala MP good humouredly accepted.

Or, when Speaker Sanjiva Reddy, up against another voluble Jana Sangh MP from Rajasthan, refused to allow the proceedings to continue as long as he was not given the Hindi verson of a Bill. In the rising din, rare those days, Speaker Reddy got up and demanded absolute silence in the House, ‘‘I am on my legs. No one will speak’’. No one did. Then, a pause, followed by a direction to the obdurate Rajasthan MP, ‘‘ It is your turn now. Mr...... to make noise’’. The MP simply slumped into his seat even as Sanjiva Reddy asked the Secretariat to let the MP have the Hindi version. Sanjiva Reddy, for the most part, depended on what you may call comon sense.

Even as the Lok Sabha Speaker was expressing his exasperation with his MPs, in the Rajya Sabha the Chairman, Mr Hamid Ansari sought to find a way out of the constant disruptions that routinely cause the chair to adjourn the House. In an unprecedented step the Vice-President, as Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, referred a complaint by a member raising the question whether those disrupting the House did not attract breach of privilege of fellow MPs scheduled to ask questions during the question-hour. Chairman Ansari was right in referring the matter to the privileges committee of the house.

The refusal by fellow MPs to stop them from asking questions during question hour by disrupting the proceedings constituted a breach of their previleges, the complaining MPs argued before the chairman. ‘‘This is an infringement of our rights as members of the house’’, they said. There are those, though, who believe that Ansari's move may not yield desired results. Our MPs, for reasons best known to them only, have yet to codify their privileges; obviously they would not approve of a code that would subject them to any stringent discipline. Be that as it may, even in the present situation, it is not as if the Speaker of the Lok Sabha or the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha cannot discipline members. If only they enforce the existing rules of procedure.

Initiatives for women scientists

By Prabhavati Akashi

The celebrated scientist Marie Curie once said, "Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all, confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained."

Over the years women in India have overcome the traditional mindsets and have excelled in professions like teaching, medicine and pure sciences. Women have made important contributions in all walks of life and made inroads into new fields like engineering and information technology. In India, of the women science graduates, 88 % of the science degree holders are in pure science, 8% in medicine and 3% in engineering and technology. Recently there has been a spurt of women joining the engineering and information technology fields and the number of women in computing and internet industries have also registered a sharp rise. Still the percentage of women scientists sustaining R&D careers in science is very low compared to the number of women postgraduates in science. This may partly be attributed to break in career due to marriage, child birth and rearing. Moreover in a country as large as India there are a lot of regional disparities depending on the socio-economic background which decide the choice of careers.

National Task Force

The Ministry of Science and Technology has set up a National Task Force for Women in Science in December 2005, having a tenure of three years to look into the issues related to women in science and recommend measures to facilitate the practice of science by women. The Task force is headed by an eminent woman scientist Dr Mahtab Bamji.The fourteen member Task Force has scientist and technologists drawn from different streams of science and technology. During the past two years the Task Force has interacted with women scientists in different parts of the country covering R&D Institutions, Universities and colleges and based on the inputs provided have come up with some interim recommendations. These include recommendations on Policies and Programmes to Facilitate Study and Practice of Science by women, Medium and Long Term Policies and Programmes and Support Systems to reduce Stress etc.

National Conference To Showcase Achievements

The National Task Force for Women in Science and the Scientific Advisory committee to the Prime Minister suggested that a conference of women scientists from different field of science and Technology should be organized at a National level with an objective to showcase the scientific achievements of women scientists to the nation and also enthuse the senior scientists to undertake a programme of mentoring young women scientists and also to encourage school girls from rural areas to take up science education. The conference being organized in New Delhi this year to mark the International Women’s Day will be inaugurated by the Hon’ble President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil.

National Award

The National award for women’s development through application of Science and Technology has been instituted by the Department of Science and Technology to recognize the contribution of individuals who have worked at the grass root level for women’s empowerment through application of science and Technology .The award is given every year and carries a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh along with an citation.

Gender-enabling Measures

The Ministry of Science & Technology has also pioneered several gender-enabling measures to increase the share of women in R&D after a career break.

The women scientists’ fellowship scheme is a pioneering initiative designed with a gender sensitive perspective. The three components of the fellowship scheme give women scientists a spectrum of opportunities to choose according to their aptitude, need and family situation. These schemes have been initiated to enable women scientists and technologists to enter scientific professions after a break in careers through special incentives.

The fellowships schemes are under three categories:

* WOS-A is designed for women scientists who would like to continue in basic science and applied sciences;

* WOS-B is for women scientists who would like to work on S&T based empowerment at the grass root level ;

* WOS-C is for women who prefer a flexible approach to their work or would like to work from their homes.

Since the inception in 2001 these schemes have benefited over 3000 women scientists.

Protshayaki

A Women Scientist desk "Protshayaki" has also been set up to act as a nodal point for gender related issues. Regular Gender sensitization workshops are organized and a Manual on gender issues in technology transfer has been prepared.

Women Technology Parks

The Department of Biotechnology has supported a Biotechnology Park at Chennai to promote Biotechnology based entrepreneurship among women scientists. The biotechnology park has emerged as a replicable model. The Department of Science and Technology has also facilitated over a dozen Women Technology Parks (WTP) in rural areas aimed at providing a platform for rural women to access technologies relevant to them and to provide requisite handholding to use the technologies.

Gender Budgeting Cell

The Department of Science and Technology was one of the first to set up a gender budgeting cell and through an intense gender budgeting exercise within the department has been able to increase allocation under the Women Component Plan substantially. (PIB)

Encourage education with employment

By C. Jayanthi

Lack of skilled human resource will be the single largest deterrent to speedy development in the country, according to a recent McKinsey report. The sectors expected to drive job demand in India are manufacturing, IT&ITeS, retail, communication and transport. The manufacturing sector accounts for about 15% of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while the share of the services’ sector in the GDP of India has increased to 56% in 2006-07. The need to vocationalise education is higher than ever before.

Meanwhile, India does have a problem. According to a Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and Ministry of Labour and Employment report, although India has over 65% of its population below the age of 26 years, only 5% of the Indian labour force in the age group of 20-24 years has obtained vocational skills through the formal system while the percentage in industrialized countries varies between 60% and 96%. Almost 63% of school students drop out at different stages before reaching Class X. While only about 25 lakh vocational training seats are available in India, about 1.28 crore people enter the labour market every year.

Most school dropouts do not have access to skill development, reducing therefore, their chances of employability. To address this country’s increasing skills shortage, the Government is setting a Rs 31,000 crore skill-development mission. This will help in extending training facilities to 1 crore people per month. During last year’s Budget presentation in Parliament, the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had announced that the Government had taken up a programme for upgradation of 500 ITIs over a span of five years, starting from 2005. He said: "Revised courses in the first lot of 100 upgraded ITIs were started in August 2005 and in the second lot of 100 upgraded ITIs in August 2006.

I expect that another 300 ITIs will be covered by August 2009. That would still leave 1,396 Government ITIs. I propose that the 1,396 ITIs be upgraded into centres of excellence in specific trades and skills under public-private partnership." Meanwhile, IT and BPO sector could employ 90 lakh people by 2010, according to a NASSCOM-McKinsey Report 2006. Manufacturing in the next decade in the country is expected to create 2.5 crore jobs. According to a recent CII-ICRIER study on Higher Education in India, the global IT off shoring market is to the tune of Rs 30,000 crore, "of which India may be able to garnet Rs 60 crore by 2010". The report also mentions that India could achieve Rs 16, 500 crore in merchandise trade by 2009-10, creating an additional 2.1 crore new jobs. As far as research is concerned, only 10% look to getting into research—a primary need for all industries for their future growth.

Meanwhile, the additional 1% secondary education cess announced in last year’s Budget is reported to have generated an additional revenue of Rs 5,300 crore, according to government sources, while the 2% education cess levied through the Finance Act 2004, yielded Rs 8, 748 crore in 2006-07, used primarily to finance the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (Education for All) scheme of the Government. Meanwhile, Last year, a Ma Foi survey (Global Search Services) predicted that over 10 lakh jobs would be created across sectors in India. Despite, its 100-crore population, imparting the right skills for an emerging market will test the country’s institutions of learning. As far as higher education is concerned, the Government aims to increase the enrolment rate from the estimated 10% of the population by the end of the Tenth Plan (2007) to 15% by 2011-12 in the Eleventh Plan. India has come a long way from 1950s, when the enrolment rate in higher education was a mere 0.7%.

According to Government figures, even a 5% net increase in the number of students will result in an additional increase of about 84 lakh during the period 2007-12. Of this, about 50 lakh will be in general education and the remaining in technical and professional education. (PIB.)

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