Political and Social Issues: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Nov, 2011

India ranked 134th

• The U.N. study has ranked India at 134 out of 187 countries in terms of human development even as it observed that life expectancy at birth in the country has increased by 10.1 per cent a year over the last two decades.
• In the 2010 Human Development Report, prepared by UNDP, India had been ranked at 119 out of 169 countries.
• Neighbouring Pakistan was ranked at 145 (0.504) and Bangladesh at 146 (0.500).
• It said between 1980 and 2011, India's HDI value increased from 0.344 to 0.547, an increase of 59 per cent or an average annual increase of about 1.5 per cent.
• However, the report pointed that the HDI of 0.547 was below the average of 0.630 for countries in the medium human development group and below the average of 0.548 for countries in South Asia
• The HDI is a measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life; access to knowledge; and a decent standard of living.

In massive raid on brothels, Mumbai Police rescue 119 girls

• The Mumbai police busted a prostitution racket in the heart of the city and rescued 119 girls.
• The day's action has been touted as the biggest raid this year. “Previously, we rescued 33 girls in a raid, some 24 girls in another raid. This is the first time we have rescued so many girls in one raid,”
• “There were 13 brothels situated on three floors, where 119 females had been forced into prostitution by these brothel owners.”
• four or five of the rescued girls seemed to be minor.
• The rescued girls hailed from Jharkhand, West Bengal, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. “Generally such girls are lured by the agents, who say they will get them good jobs and a lot of money if they come to Mumbai. When the girls come here, they [the agents] force them into prostitution,”
• A case has been booked against the arrested at the D.B. Marg Police Station under Sections 3, 4, 5 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.

CRPF celebrates 72nd birthday

• Without innovative training no force can become elite
• CRPF Director-General K. Vijay Kumar said the force was laying more emphasis on training. Specialised training schools were being set up to upgrade the benchmark. Also the force was training the police in some States. He asked for more allowances for personnel serving in Left-wing extremist areas.
• The trophy for “Innovation in Training” was presented to Counter-Insurgency and Anti-Terrorist School, Silchar, Assam.
• The force came into existence in 1939 at Neemuch, MP, as the Crown Representative's Police.

Transmitted social tensions & cycle of prejudice

• The regularity of communal tensions and clashes in India is unfortunately accepted as part of the country's fabric. Communal frenzy, as seen in Gujarat, Delhi, Mumbai, Kandhamal and post-Babri Masjid, was considered a problem of law and order.
• Yet solutions to problems that beget such acts do not seem to be India's top priority. The proposed Communal Violence Bill has divided political parties, with undercurrents that are strongly coloured by religion.
• Religious bigotry divides people, leading to misunderstanding, intolerance, fear, hatred, social ostracism, violence and loss of livelihood and life.
• India was always feudal, with its diverse and warring provinces and kingdoms. Its ancient civilisations, vast land mass, diverse geography, varied regional narratives, different provincial histories, distinct languages, assorted traditions and dissimilar cultures meant that its heterogeneity was always a source of tension among its numerous social groups and regions.
• In addition, repeated military invasions and cultural exchanges resulted in significant numbers converting to and following different religions, practising distinct traditions and appearing as discrete cultures. India as a unified nation and single national entity is a relatively recent concept.
• Historical accounts have recorded that ordinary people, divided by religion and driven by a need for revenge, resorted to rape, arson, looting, violence and murder against former friends, neighbours and fellow citizens. Stories of the Partition recall and record victimhood on a massive scale, on both sides of the divide.
• Feelings of helplessness and lack of closure of people's experiences were passed on to their children. It was now up to subsequent generations to avenge their humiliation.
• The transmitted social tensions of the past perpetuate the cycle of prejudice.
• Religious differences, commonly used to defend culture and tradition, are employed to exaggerate minor variations and divide a people; social constructs, articulated centuries ago, are the grounds for today's schisms. Discrimination in employment, housing and business perpetuate communal resentment.
• The diversity within India, the injustices of the past and superficial differences among its people provide a fertile ground for breeding misunderstanding and hatred of the “other.”
• While illiteracy, superstition and schooling sans an education are mainly responsible for bigotry, politics also plays a role. Leaders of diverse persuasions highlight the differences and magnify insecurities for political gain.
• Modern technology and mass media are used to amplify such discontent and rekindle old fires.
• Research into the holocaust suggests that the perpetrators of horrific crimes were not insane, psychopathic or coerced.
• The fact that people, who usually practise ahimsa in their daily lives, seem to provide implicit support for the occasional communal riot and sporadic mass murders suggests that transferred prejudices and unacknowledged hatred have blinded their conscience.
• The country needs to learn from its history. India needs a new narrative, which honestly confronts its past and its politics.
• We, as individuals and society, need to identify prejudice and bigotry transmitted through generations; we need to recognise caricatures and negative stereotypes of others passed on by our familial narratives and our factional histories. We need to re-evaluate all our firmly held beliefs and generalisations. Diligent assessments usually suggest that they are cognitive illusions.
• India's larger struggle is to choose the broad option of a multireligious and multicultural society over the narrow option of restricting our identities based on religion, language, caste and region.
• Religious freedom, guaranteed in modern societies, is said to have two components: freedom of religion and freedom from religion. More of one usually means less of the other. India seems to have chosen the former, often resulting in a chaotic public domain in which religious ideas are allowed to jostle with one another.
• We should not trade our humanity and friendships for religious bigotry.
• There is need to underscore the complexity of the human situation and our limitations in understanding, which unite us, rather than focus on rigid doctrines and exclusivist agendas that divide us.
• People who say “later” to religious and communal harmony actually mean “never.” The time for healing is now.

New procurement policy to help small enterprises

• The Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved a procurement policy asking the government departments and public sector undertakings (PSUs) to give preference to micro and small entrepreneurs (MSEs), including those belonging to SC/ST entrepreneurs, while making purchases.
• All Central ministries and PSUs will have to ensure that a minimum 20 per cent of all their total annual purchases of products or services are from MSEs.
• Defence armament imports will not be included in computing the 20 per cent goal for the Ministry of Defence.
• However, the procurement policy would be voluntary in nature for three years and made mandatory after that.
• PSUs are expected to buy goods worth Rs.35,000 crore from the MSEs

Formula One in India

• In a country of nearly 1.2 billion people where over 60 per cent are below any commonsensical definition of the poverty line, it is quite natural that motorsport, especially Formula One, is associated with the rich, new Indian elite.
• Recently P.T. Usha, one of the greatest athletes the country has produced, trashed Formula One as a criminal waste of money.
• the truth is F1 is a sport and a business. The top Indian business houses vying for advertising space during the inaugural Grand Prix
• The sport could also act as a powerful vehicle for the steadily growing Indian automotive sector to position its brands globally. After all, the engine maps and components used in the F1 car are not very dissimilar to the ones in a road car today.
• India's ability to organise top-end, world-class events, especially after the fiasco of the run-up to the Commonwealth Games, has been re-established.
• F1 races in Asia — the Korean, Chinese, and Abu Dhabi — outside Japan tend to be handicapped by a lack of understanding of the sport, which has led to a rapid fall in spectator interest. It is here that young cohorts of the ‘Facebook Generation' of avid F1 fans could give India an edge.

New Army training course breaks new ground

• The South Western Command of the Army has made a new start to impart astronomical and astrological learning to its ranks through a four-month training course devised by the Jaipur-based Bhara tiya Prachya Jyotish Shodh Sansthan.
• While we sort out horoscopes of our sons and daughters to get them settled in a career or marriage, why this knowledge not be put to use in the Army?
• The course includes theory and practical of the subjects in question and is aimed at training the ‘Dharm Gurus' for wider roles. If so far their assignments were confined to holding ‘puja' at the battalion-based temples they would perhaps help the Army in future in its strategic manoeuvres.

EC turns down Team Anna's suggestion on “Right to Recall”

• The Election Commission has turned down Team Anna's proposal to amend the law to introduce the “right to recall” option against non-performing elected representatives through a referendum
• Move would bring instability as those who lose an election could start a campaign (for recalling the representative) from day one.

  “This will also hamper development activities because of frequent elections and repeated imposition of the Model Code of Conduct,”
• There were various implications involved in the implementation of the suggestion — such as the minimum percentage of voters who might file the petition for recall; verification of authenticity of thousands of signatures; whether those signatures are given voluntarily or under coercion; minimum time after which a petition for recall could be presented; the exercise of calling for a referendum in a constituency; and the holding of another election where the petition succeeds.
• On the “Right to Reject” proposal, they were told by the EC that it had proposed to the government in December 2001 to introduce a button in the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) so that electors could exercise ‘none of the above' option.

Lt. Col. honour for Dhoni, Bindra

• Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Olympic gold medallist shooter Abhinav Bindra officially became honorary lieutenants colonel in the Territorial Army

Shortcomings and malignant provisions

• There is unanimity of opinion that corruption at the higher levels of governance can be fought by a strong, credible, effective and independent Lokpal mechanism.
• Corruption and repression — cousins in such situations — hijack developmental processes.
• Corruption is a cancer affecting our nation's political, economic, cultural and social life. It is necessary to eliminate it.
• In the Indian system of governance, a fundamental flaw is that it is impossible for the Central Bureau of Investigation, the premier anti-corruption investigative agency that is subordinate to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), to even commence an inquiry or investigation into allegations of corruption against the higher bureaucracy — which often acts in concert with the political executive — without the prior approval of the Central government under Section 6A of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act.
• The golden key to combating corruption is to fashion an anti-corruption police force completely independent of the executive.
• Few major provisions which are insidious and malignant in the Government Lokpal Bill. Unless these are dropped, the Bill will be a ticking time bomb.
• It means a total of two politicians, four superior court judges, the CAG and the CEC. Surely, such a Selection Committee would inspire greater public confidence.
• The Prime Minister should be under the Lokpal. Article 361 of the Constitution grants immunity from criminal proceedings only to the President and the Governors (earlier the Raj Pramukhs) during their term of office. No immunity from criminal or civil liability has been granted to the Prime Minister.
• Under the normal procedure, the police have the power to investigate, gather physical and scientific evidence, interview and interrogate individuals who can assist the investigation and, thereafter, furnish their final report to the appropriate court under Section 173 of the Code. It is then for the court to either frame charges against the potential accused or discharge them. During the investigation and the final report (popularly known as the charge sheet), there is no question of giving any opportunity to show cause or disclose to the accused the material or the evidence collected.
• The prospective accused will act as an active terrorist to destroy the Lokpal's efforts. Apart from going for judicial review at every stage, alleging lack of adequate opportunity to be heard, the potential accused, after inspection of the material, would have the opportunity to approach witnesses, intimidate or corrupt whistleblowers, and fabricate evidence and interfere with the investigation. These provisions are a ticking time bomb which can be detonated by the prospective accused at a time he chooses.
• Clause 17 of the government Bill and related clauses expand the definition of “public servant” to include non-governmental organisations/ societies/ their office-bearers who receive donations from the public. Even autonomous NGOs not controlled by the government but aided by it are brought within the definition of ‘public servant.' This is the most mischievous provision with a view to harassing, intimidating and blackmailing NGOs/societies
• Under the Constitution, there are checks and balances on the political and bureaucratic executives. Broadly they are the judiciary, the CAG, and the CEC. Members of the higher judiciary, the CAG and the CEC cannot be removed by the political executive except by impeachment. This secures for them an independence from the executive which enables them to invalidate, audit and check the excesses of the executive. However, the anti-corruption machinery as indicated above is completely flawed.
• If the CBI is not under the Lokpal, turf wars and jurisdictional disputes between the CBI and the Lokpal will lead to litigation, scuttling the efficient working of the Lokpal.
• The Lokpal as contemplated by the government will be misused by the executive to silence the anti-corruption movement.
• In conclusion, remember what Mahatma Gandhi said: “All compromise is based on give-and-take, but there can be no give-and-take on fundamentals. Any compromise on fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.”

Single tribunal planned for water disputes

• Ministry of Water Resources has proposed a Standing Tribunal to adjudicate on inter-state water disputes
• The idea is to have a single tribunal of about five judges with benches to resolve disputes.
• “All disputes from time to time could be referred to the standing tribunal. At present the law does not stipulate that. Whenever a request is made by one State, we constitute a new tribunal appointed by the Cabinet. We will have to amend the statute for this.”