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| March 06, 2007 | Tuesday | Safar 16, 1428 |
Spread of Talibanisation
Doing away with dowry
Only 2.5 per cent rate of growth
Rethink public financing … later
THE BJP is in serious danger of declaring victory in the quarter-finals. There is already a strut in the air that has not been seen since the now-forgotten Venkaiah Naidu was predicting that the party might even get 300 seats, so strong did he see the wave in its favour. We all saw how that wavelet stopped far short of Delhi: the BJP could not even win in the capital, its traditional bastion.
SAUDI King Abdullah and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad sitting together is a glorious sight. What has brought them together — one an American ally, the other Washington’s arch foe — is a common concern about the sectarian conflict in Iraq with the ominous possibility that it may spill over to other countries. Lebanon is especially vulnerable to a second civil war if the government or the opposition takes rash action. But first Iraq. The country is in the grip of a frenzy of violence which does not have sectarian dimensions alone. A still taken from a video showing the execution of the kidnapped Iraqi interior ministry officials testifies to the kind of madness that has overtaken the country in the wake of the Anglo-American victory. Whatever Saddam Hussein’s fault, there was no Shia-Sunni conflict during his time: the Iran-Iraq war saw the Shia and Sunni elements in the two countries showing no extra-territorial loyalty. Since April 2003, however, violence of which sectarian killings is a major part has destroyed the very fabric of Iraqi society. The battle between the US-led forces and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Army of Mehdi in Najaf and the fierce fighting in Fallujah had no sectarian overtones.
Of late, things have been increasingly becoming sectarian, though it goes without saying that the suffering of the Iraqi people cuts across the sectarian divide. The number of internal refugees and those who have moved to the neighbouring countries is nearly four million, and there is no possibility that the Maliki government is in a position to restore peace in Iraq, much less start the process of post-war reconstruction. In Lebanon, pro- and anti-Syrian passions have resurfaced since the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005. While the government of Mr Fouad Siniora enjoys Saudi and American backing, Syria and Iran support Hezbollah, whose resistance to the Israeli invasion in July-August last year turned its leader, Syed Hasan Nasrallah, into a hero for the Arab and Muslim people. The differences between him and Mr Siniora last December led to violence, raising fears that civil war could again grip the country, in which case the gainer will be Israel.
Against this background, the meeting between the Saudi monarch and the Iranian president could turn out to be seminal because they have agreed on a common approach to the Iraqi question and decided to use their influence with the governments in Baghdad and Beirut, and with militias and political leaders, to emphasise the danger which an escalation of the sectarian tensions poses to the Middle East. During the talks in Riyadh on Saturday, the two leaders agreed to preserve Iraq’s unity, while Mr Ahmedinejad said his government was helping the kingdom in promoting calm in Lebanon. Let us hope that all sides in Iraq and Lebanon will heed the two leaders’ call to counter “the attempt to fuel the fire of sectarian conflict” which they said posed “the greatest danger” to the Muslim world. While there is no doubt that others would like to fish in the troubled waters, basically it is the responsibility of Arab governments and leaders to avoid conditions that others could exploit. A worsening of the sectarian conflict could lead to Iraq’s break-up and possibly touch off a process of the Middle East’s fragmentation. Mr Ahmedinejad’s visit to Saudi Arabia and the concord with the Saudi king show the two leaders’ awareness of the gravity of the situation and their resolve to prevent it.
ACTS of lawlessness being committed in what appear to be attempts at ‘Talibanisation’ of certain tribal areas and those of the Frontier are an open challenge to the government’s writ. In the town of Khar in Bajaur Agency barber outlets offering beard trims and music shops have been blown up by the ‘local’ bands of the Taliban; in district Kohat’s semi-autonomous areas, women school and college teachers have come under increasing threat by similar groups. The Khasadar escorts provided by the government to accompany women teachers to and from their schools and colleges are practically unable to give them security, saying tribal loyalties prevent them from any engagement with the militants in case the teachers are attacked by the latter. Little by little, it seems, more and more territory is coming under the hold of extremists who are out with a mission to impose a Taliban-style rule in their respective areas. The provincial and the federal governments seem unable or unwilling to contain the militants’ march which is holding state institutions and the normal way of life hostage to their ways. Perhaps it is inaction on the part of the government which has prompted a number of American Democrat senators and Republican officials to suggest that the US should conduct direct raids on militants in those areas. This affront to state sovereignty no less so than the free hand the authorities’ inaction has given to the militant groups and elements trying to impose their brand of Islam on the tribal and adjacent areas.
The government must ensure that its writ and the rule of law prevail in all areas comprising Pakistan. The tribal Maliks do not seem to be able to maintain the government’s writ in the troubled areas any longer. The signing of ‘peace’ accords with militants in North and South Waziristan, too, does not seem to have paid off. The militants, for all practical purposes, have taken these as a sign of official weakness. This notion has to be corrected by ensuring that no one is allowed to run a parallel system. Any challenge posed to state sovereignty, whether from within or outside, must be firmly dealt with.
SINDH Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad seems committed to eradicating the curse of dowry. Late in January he directed officials to find ways to use public funds for marrying deserving couples. On Sunday, he asked NGOs and philanthropists to promote simpler wedding ceremonies and work for ending customs like dowry as these are back breaking for parents of girls. One has seen just how much pressure is brought to bear on parents when marrying their daughters off to families that are remorseless in their dowry demands. Gone are the days when parents gave what they felt their daughter needed when she married. Now there is a sick competition that goes on with parents jostling to give more than they can afford. It is only natural that a trickle-down effect will take place with parents going into heavy debt while planning a wedding for their daughter, some going into utter bankruptcy in meeting dowry demands. That women are punished or even burnt by greedy in-laws for not bringing enough dowry only shows how abhorring the practice is.
The government can only do so much in raising awareness about the ills of this custom; NGOs and enlightened sections must play a role in this regard as they have with so many other social ills. What the government can do, however, is revise the Dowry and Bridal Gift Restriction Act of 1976. This law, which fixes a monetary limit on dowry and how much can be spent on weddings, needs to be updated. But there is no point in passing a law if it is not going to be properly implemented. Especially since the influential find ways of sidelining it. The law must be implemented and those who violate it must be held answerable. Only then will society be rid of social ills like dowry.
There is good news for the party, but good is a comparative word. The NDA began to ebb when the BJP started to lose the urban vote. Its revival has started exactly where its decline began, in the cities. Mumbai went back to the Shiv Sena and BJP in the municipal elections; and the urban seats in Punjab, where there was a massive pro-BJP swing, have brought Parkash Singh Badal to power. But this is only the starting point of the endgame in the current phase of the power struggle. Yes, the pace of the game will become faster, and in the month between the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and the elections for the President of India (whose electoral college includes MLAs) it could become frenetic. But the final result could go in either direction.
There is good news also for those Congressmen — a substantial section which exhausts its frustration by muttering under the breath — who are convinced that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sent the “Hindu” vote back to the BJP by appeasing Muslims. Not to worry, my friends: all this talk about helping Muslims was only lip service. When the time came to deliver in the budget, the prime minister had nothing to offer. We’ve seen the pattern before; Dr Singh’s government has repeated it. Other deprived sections like the Dalits and Backwards get concrete benefits; Indian minorities get enquiry commissions. Dr Singh’s historic contribution to Indian Muslims is the Sachar Commission report. I hope he will do them a favour now, and stop talking about this report, particularly because his sincerity once fuelled high expectations. Lip service can be a very cruel form of betrayal. Dr Singh even suggested that 15 per cent of expenditure should be allotted to welfare and economic empowerment schemes for Muslims, since they constitute a little less that 15 per cent of the population.
So what happened when the honourable finance minister presented the budget to the Lok Sabha?
Let us check out paragraph 36 of the budget speech. “Last year, I made a modest contribution of Rs16.47 crore to the equity of the National Minorities Development and Finance Corporation.” The finance minister admits that it was modest; we should be thankful for small mercies. This year, the war drums were sounded, so how did he respond? “Following the Sachar Committee report, NMDFC would be required to expand its reach and intensify its efforts.” So, a meagre Rs63 crore is added to the share capital. The next paragraph notes that there are a number of districts with a concentration of minorities, but does not specify how many, for that might be both revealing and embarrassing. What is the provision? Rs108 crore. It is so small the money may not be visible by the time it reaches the district headquarters. Add to this scholarships worth Rs210.60 crore for all “minority communities”.There are around 150 million Muslims in India, and about 50 million Sikhs and Christians. The total allocation for them is less than Rs320 crore.
The annual expenditure of the Union government is Rs680,521 crore. Do the math. Send your answers to the prime minister. He lives in Delhi and the post office should find him quite easily.
For a comparison, read paragraph 33: the allocation for schemes benefiting only Scheduled Castes and Tribes is Rs3,271 crore, and for schemes in which they will get at least a 20 per cent benefit, the sum is Rs17,691 crore. In addition there are scholarships worth Rs790 crore for the children of these communities. These SC/ST communities need all the help they can, so funds for minorities do not have to come out of their budgets. There is enough money elsewhere. But there is no will to help the minorities.
This thin gruel did not come without prodding. In an extraordinary gesture, the prime minister actually wrote to his finance minister late last year suggesting that the findings of the Sachar report should be taken into consideration. It took a reminder from the prime minister’s principal secretary and a formal letter from the Marxist MP Brinda Karat to persuade the finance minister to read what his leader had said. He might as well have ignored it completely. As the budget reveals, the letter produced a molehill instead of a mountain. If a prime minister cannot get his finance minister to read his letters, he can’t be much of a prime minister, can he?
The budget is as dismissive of the poor as it is of minorities. There is a kind of implicit contempt for have-nots: if they don’t like what they see, they can lump it.
The penultimate paragraph of the speech lists the balance sheet after three years in power. “The UPA government has delivered on the promise of savings and investment … It has delivered on the promise of growth”. But “it will deliver on the promise of making growth more inclusive”. When it comes to including the poor in the benefits of growth, the verb moves into the future tense. When shall this “will” come? There are no timelines indicated. But there is a formula: “given the right mix of policies, the poor will benefit from growth that is driven by savings and investment and that is more inclusive”. Have we got the right mix of policies yet?Dr Manmohan Singh first chanted the growth mantra in 1991, fifteen budgets ago. Its proponents believe that the poor will benefit from a “trickle-down” effect. For a decade and half it has been just that: the gush has gone in the direction of bank-balance Indians, savers, investors and share marketers. The poor have been condemned to a trickle from a municipal tap. Government propagandists keep churning out the statistic that the growth rate has crossed nine per cent; no one talks about the fact that the growth rate in agriculture is only 2.5 per cent.
This is the central reality. A part of India may be growing at 20 per cent, but most of India is growing at the rate of three per cent.
This might work in a dictatorship like China, but democracy demands a different dialectic. One critical problem with the UPA government is that the prime minister and his finance minister speak from a dictionary that is music to the confederations of industry and unintelligible to the poor. A budget is not just a description of the national economy; it is also a critical means test of its politics. Theoretically, Dr Singh has two budgets left under his stewardship, unless one of the laws of Indian democracy catches up with him: if you are not in control of events, events will be in control of you.
The defeat of the Congress in Punjab is remarkable for one reason. The first Sikh prime minister of India could not persuade the Sikh voter to stay with the Congress. This is a tribute to the voter’s maturity, for she (women polled in higher numbers in Punjab than men) is no longer swayed by the false sentiment of accidental identity. She measures her vote on the scales of her vegetable shop. She is the judge and the jury, and she is hearing the evidence.
Only one thing is certain: the time between the quarter-finals and finals will pass in a rush.
The writer is editor-in-chief of The Asian Age, New Delhi.
EVEN more newsworthy than a man biting a dog is a political candidate turning down money from the US Treasury. Yet it’s possible that, next year, both major party nominees for president will decline to accept about $80 million in federal funds generated by a taxpayer check-off, confident that they can raise more on their own.
Seemingly resigned to this break with three decades of tradition, campaign reformers are seeking swift congressional action on a more generous system of public financing for the 2012 presidential election. But the reformers, led by Sen Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis), the co-sponsor of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, may be drawing the wrong lesson from the increasing irrelevance of public financing.
The lesson isn’t that the subsidy isn’t generous enough. It’s that the current system of public financing for presidential races is an idea whose time is past. Congress shouldn’t rush into fixing the broken system for 2012 until the lessons of the 2008 election cycle are fully digested.
No one doubts that the public financing system is in trouble. In 2004, both President Bush and Sen John F. Kerry (D-Mass) declined to accept matching funds in the primary season because doing so would have imposed curbs on what they could spend. In the general election, however, both nominees forswore private money and accepted $75 million each from the Treasury.
— Los Angeles Times