Buddham Smaranam Gachhami….

By Pinaki Bhattacharya

The troubles in Tibet this spring reminded one of another summer forty-four years ago in what was then South Vietnam's capital, Saigon. On 11 June, 1963, a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, sat cross-legged on a busy Saigon street intersection; doused himself in gasoline and lit himself afire. The picture became a poignant reminder to the world of all imperialist outrages for all times to come.

American news correspondents who were present in the city then had been forewarned the day before by a Buddhist monk. He had told them that a 'big thing' would happen the next day. Nevertheless, most of the hacks that day had decided to ignore the advance billing. They were bored with the languishing story of the conflict of Buddhist monks with the South Vietnamese Government, continuing for more than a month.

The Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, was protesting against the US-backed Ngo Dinh Diem regime's repression of its own embattled people. Eventually though, the CIA staged a coup against the Diem regime; killed him and put another military ruler in his place, only to continue the losing war against the communist north.

Today's American correspondents might not have been informed in Beijing, or even Lhasa about the Buddhist upsurge in Tibet. They would have been busy with then on-going Chinese National People's Congress session. Or their bosses in Washington and New York might have felt harassed by the ever expanding crisis of the American economy, with just the week of the Tibet story being dominated by the American Federal Reserve's panicked reaction. Mortal fear seemed to have engulfed the US central bank with a Wall Street crash of the multi-billion dollar, Bear Stearns, a financial behemoth.

In fact, the predominant story of the past few months had been the economic crisis in the USA. The front pages of the world's newspapers were too full with stories of the American economic woes. The headlines had been fuelled in no small measure by the now unseated 'demi-god' of high finance, Alan Greenspan writing in the Financial Times that the current US turmoil is the worst since Second World War.

However, the ceremonial lighting of the Olympic torch was also approaching. Moreover, its intended destination was Beijing. Would that have made the contrast between a rising China and an USA on the decline starker, under the circumstances? Surely, the path of the torch could have been peppered by demonstrations of embittered Chinese, but that would have garnered, at best, sidebar coverage. Would that have been enough to divert the world's attention from the failing financial institutions - pillars of modern Western establishment - to something else?

For the USA the misfortune lay in the fact that they did not find a Thich Quang Duc. The fiery sense of indignant righteousness that could have propelled a Dalai Lama follower to self-immolate either in Lhasa or in Dharamshala or anywhere else in the world was missing. Instead, what was seen on the streets of Tibet was marauding Tibetans threatening lives and limbs and vandalising properties of Han Chinese settlers in pure sectarian disgrace. Of course, the clapper boys of the international media, including their brethren in Indian national media were at attendance to elevate the same into a great frontier of a battle for 'self-determination.'

Indeed, the Palestinians have possibly had a laugh at the faint attempts of the Tibetans to register their anger. The former, battle-hardened in the intifada against one of the most armed security forces of the world, Israel Defence Forces, have succeeded on many occasions to turn the face of a media towards their plight. This is the media whose moguls still suffer from the bunker mentality of Holocaust concentration camp victims.

Having said that one has to keep in mind that the Chinese have invested an enormous amount of their face on the Olympic Games, 2008. That is a vulnerability they would now have to live with till end-August when the Games wind down. Beijing should have known better that there were no debutante's balls in Big Power politics. Thus, as a stark reminder to all who care, the Chinese predicament is not born of its scientific socialism but is a product of its emotional nationalism. Yet, the Chinese cannot possibly plead ignorance.

They know that the CIA's decades-long subversion of the People's Republic - in which India also was a willing party at least till the end-1950s - was ended when Richard Nixon showed his desperation for a relationship with Beijing in light of the Cold War. So Beijing should have known that it was astrategic to invest so much in a global sporting spectacle that was susceptible to the machinations of a few.

But be that as it may, Beijing should also know that Great Powers do not leave loose ends. They would have to acknowledge that the Dalai Lama leads a sizable section of the Tibetans as their spiritual leader. China would have to acknowledge his pre-eminence and sit across a table with him to discover what he wants for his former land. A gesture like that would disarm many Tibetans who have otherwise borne the brunt of a lack of economic development in the country's west.

For all of India's fulminations, even New Delhi would fall in line then. Because howevermuch it works under the pressure of the Americans and their fellow- travellers in the country's policy establishments, they could not but read history's lessons: that the USA is declining, and China rising. CNF

Opening floodgates of corruption

By Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala

The Sixth Central Pay Commission has recommended implementation of a Performance Related Incentive Scheme to reward good employees and improve the quality of Government work. Government departments will be allowed to retain one-half of the savings made by them as bonus to their employees. Say the Public Works Department is spending Rs one crore a year for the maintenance of a particular road. It manages to do the same work in Rs 50 lacs. One-half of the savings of Rs 50 lacs will be distributed among the employees as performance-related incentive. This scheme is full of pitfalls because it is difficult to estimate the savings that are made. It is possible for the officers of the PWD to put less tar coal on the road, 'save' Rs 50 lacs and distribute Rs 25 lacs among them as incentive! Previously the officers sold the tar in black and faced the danger of being apprehended. Now they can appropriate the same amount legally!

Further, the scheme has been made optional. Para 2.5.11 of the Sixth Pay Commission Report states: "Voluntary adoption of PRIS at the Departmental level and below...will allow flexibility and directness of rewards linked to the changes in the work processes..." This implies that inefficient departments that need performance audit most can opt out of the scheme. Government employees are doubly benefited in this dispensation. They can opt into PRIS if they anticipate savings due to some reason; and they can opt out if they have more to gain from corruption.

The final impact of flexibility and delegation depends upon personal objective of the concerned officers. The police will use flexibility to increase their weekly extortions if their objective is personal gain. This was the message of the famous play Ghasiram Kotwal. The cruel Kotwal was honest and efficient. In the result he chopped off the hands of an innocent person whom he suspected to be involved in a theft. One contractor told this writer that his truck was seized by the police authorities for illegal lifting of sand from the river bed. He paid a bribe of Rs 8,000 and had his truck released. He stopped lifting sand thereafter. The SHO of the Police Station then sent repeated messages to him requesting him to start lifting sand-after making payment to the SHO. Flexibility to such SHOs will only lead to more corruption and tyranny. These officers will be able to legally claim 'savings' in addition to the bribes. The Pay Commission has opened a window to legalize corruption. Officers can now manipulate works and appropriate the 'savings' legally!

The Commission makes it appear as if it advocates external and independent review of such performance. It is said in Para 1.2.2: "The PRIS recommended by this Commission envisages a (reward) for higher performance that would be judged by... an external independent agency." This was in the right direction. An external agency will be better able to assess whether the savings made in maintenance of a road are due to higher efficiency or poor maintenance; and whether higher receipts of sand are due to efficiency or police tyranny. Alas! The need for external and independent assessment of performance is undone later in the report. It is said in Para 2.5.25: "Independent evaluation of deliverables, service quality and stakeholder satisfaction with performance by external agencies should be considered... Employee input should also be included as a necessary part of the evaluation process." Look at the quote closely. Independent evaluation should be 'considered' while employee input is 'necessary'. In other words, independent external evaluation is not essential in the Commission's framework. The Government employees would be within the parameters set by the Commission in themselves determining the savings and in appropriating them.

The Commission has actually de-linked salaries of Government employees with performance though it is pretended otherwise. Para 1.2.23 says: "The Administrative Reforms Commission is presently functional... Thereafter, the Government had also constituted the Expenditure Reforms Commission. While the issue of increasing productivity, efficiency and a result oriented approach... has been addressed in the Report, the Commission has refrained from making comprehensive recommendations on the issue of organizational reforms." There are two components to this argument: How to bring in administrative reforms; and how to link salaries of Government servants with performance. The Pay Commission was justified in not dwelling into the former task of making a roadmap of administrative reforms as that was the mandate of another Commission. But the Pay Commission had the solemn responsibility to work out ways to link the existing salary of Government employees with their performance. The Commission says this has been done through PRIS. But this is only one-half of the story. The absence of punishment for underperformance implies that the Pay Commission condones the same. In the result, the Administrative Reforms Commission will not dwell into this issue because it is outside its scope; and Pay Commission will not dwell into this issue because Administrative Reforms Commission is looking into it!

Incentives alone will not bring about a change in the way our Government works. Both carrot and stick are required to tame the horse. Bhishma says in Mahabharata that fear of punishment holds people in the path of righteousness. Kautilya says in Mahabharata that spies should be appointed to watch the conduct of Government officers; and again spies to should be appointed to watch upon the spies. The Manu Smriti says "Mostly Government employees snatch the wealth of others and deprive them. The king should protect his people from them." The import is that incentives alone will not suffice-it is simultaneously necessary to punish the wrongdoers. But the Pay Commission washes its hand from solving this vexed issue. Para 2.5.27 says: "Performance indicators... indicate whether services have improved or declined... They help identify... underperformance. Underperformance would also have to be addressed and resolved specifically." The Pay Commission maintains an eerie silence on how this 'resolved specifically' will be done? It passes the buck of meting out punishment to the corrupt and underperformers to an unspecified and unknown entity and creates a façade as if it has sought to create efficient Government. The corrupt and inefficient have nothing to fear, courtesy the Sixth Pay Commission.

Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh had said immediately after taking oath that reform of governance would be his top priority. He deserves kudos for bringing in the Right to Information Act. In the same spirit he should reject the Pay Commission's 'incentives only' approach. Instead he should consider the following. One, institute a separate spy agency that would on its own initiative trap corrupt Government officers. Two, provide for capital punishment for corrupt Government officers as done in China. Three set up an independent agency to send confidential questionnaires to the customers of all Government departments and solicit the public's views on the integrity and efficiency of each employee. Those rated high should be given increments and those rated negative should be given decrements. Such an approach will undo the damage wrecked on the country by the Sixth Pay Commission.

Connectivity through internet

By Smt. Esther Kar

In its short life, Internet has become an agent of revolutionary change and is one of the fastest tools to promote and defend freedom and to facilitate democratic access to information and knowledge. It has emerged as today’s greatest instruments of progress and has gradually become a part of the vital infrastructure of global social, economic, cultural and political life. The Internet’s effect on our lives is pervasive. Over the past decade, the use of e-mail, the web and blogs have become part of the daily routine of more than a billion Internet users.

Today the Internet access touch points have outgrown the traditional PC based Internet browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox) to desktop applications, mobile phones and satellite navigational devices in vehicles and living rooms. More and more people are buying movie tickets, air tickets, travel pacakages, railway tickets, paying bills online.

Online gaming is projected to increase by 141% by 2011 in the Asia Pacific Region and mobile gaming to increase by 119% by a leading gaming industry. Very soon we will see the dawn of the video age when video will be used for buying, communicating, learning and socializing. Online chat and blogs is reducing the gap between private and public life of the present generation. Cyber cafes have taken over pubs and bars for socializing in spite of the opposing forces of regional borders, copyright, censorship, network blocking, etc.

On the Flip Side

The internet revolution is yet to happen in India, like the way it has happened with cell phones and cable TV. While it’s common to see everyone from auto drivers to senior citizens with cell phones, you will rarely find an auto driver who visits a cyber cafe to check his email. This has to do with opportunity cost involved in spending time in cyber cafes and most importantly the lack of services to target a large part of India. The Internet too largely uses (ASCII) American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This alienates many communities from the boon of computers and Internet.

The fact remains that most of India’s billion people are denied access to the Internet–and not only because they don’t have a connection or a computer. The digital revolution is leaving them behind because they don’t speak English, the dominant language of the Web.

Even if there is room for further growth among English-language users in India, far greater growth could be unleashed. Hindi is the world’s third or fourth most widely spoken language. Yet it is not even in the top 10 languages on the Internet, according to InternetWorldStats.com. A recent trend of regional content is preferred by more and more Internet users.

It is recognized that the content has to be in a language that is understood by many users. In the internet space, this is highly unbalanced currently. 12 out of 6000 popular languages spoken globally account for 98% of web content, with English most prominent among them. Worldwide efforts are on to provide user-friendly tools for language independent search and retrieval, and machine translation of text from English to another language and vice-versa.

Dearth of content in other Indian languages could limit the growth of the number of Internet users in the country as growth is almost saturating among English speaking users in India. Between 5 and 10 percent of India’s population speaks English. (Estimates of the number of English speakers in India vary widely from 5 percent of the population, or 50 million people, all the way to more than 30 percent, or 350 million people). Internet proliferation is difficult within the limited domain of English language content.

A multilingual Internet will increase local interest in Internet content and increase the possibilities for all language groups to share and access information in their own language.

The challenges in increasing local content include the standardization of fonts and Internationalized domain names, an issue the Indian government is already working on. There needs to be relevant content in local languages (price of crops for farmers, weather conditions for fisherman etc) to see use of the internet in rural India. Some small steps are being taken to increase local language content but it is too early to say whether they have in any way spurred Internet usage.

Different internet products in India have different audiences, a good portion of Indian net users are still constrained by what the Indian net has meant to them: thus far, everything-in-one portals such as Rediff and Sify. In the context of entertainment, lifestyle and recreational activities, local language versions have a niche market.

Local language newspapers have gone online, webduniya.com offers content in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam and a government-led project Vidyavahini, which aims to use the Internet to train teachers and provide educational materials on the Internet, plans to develop content in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Bengali, in addition to English.

High-speed networks will make it possible for professionals to work in ways never before possible. For instance, scientists around the world can share specialized equipment like electron microscopes.

Today, Virtual Collaborative Clinics connects medical facilities allowing doctors to manipulate high-resolution, 3-D images of MRI scans and other medical imaging. Not only can doctors consult and diagnose, but they can simulate surgery by using a "CyberScalpel." Virtual surgery gives surgeons an opportunity to practice before even entering the operating room, reducing the time required for the actual procedure. Using this kind of virtual technology, local hospitals can access resources and skills only available at larger institutions. The technology may soon be used to provide remote health care to astronauts on extended space journeys.

A New Kind of Web

While PCs were once the primary means of accessing the Internet, we’re now seeing Internet-enabled devices such as PDAs and cell phones that send and receive e-mail and access the Web. Soon, everything from your car to your refrigerator will be connected to the global network, communicating with each other wirelessly.

Electrolux, best known for its vacuum cleaners, has developed the ScreenFridge, an Internet refrigerator that manages your pantry, among other things. It e-mails a shopping list to your local supermarket and coordinates a convenient delivery time with your schedule. Say hello to a brave, new world.