edit, governance now, feb 1-15, 2011
The Karnataka governor has lowered the dignity of office by playing dirty politics right from day one
Karnataka governor HR Bhardwaj may well be legally right in sanctioning prosecution of chief minister BS Yeddyurappa but, by doing so, he has clearly overreached his position to set the state on a collision course. Quite predictably, it has also snowballed into a bigger confrontation between the state and the centre and the two main political parties of the country, the Congress and the BJP. This was not only avoidable but also quite unnecessary. Days before Bhardwaj gave the nod for prosecution, the state cabinet had advised him to wait until two investigations into the allegations of corruption and nepotism against the chief minister were completed. The cabinet’s letter to him specified that the state Lokayukta and a judicial commission of enquiry were looking into different aspects of these allegations. Surely, he could ignore the advice (which the apex court upheld in the M.P. Special Police Establishment vs. State of Madhya Pradesh case of 2004, as union home minister P Chidambaram points out), but given the delicate nature of his relations with the state, Bhardwaj should have been advised caution and restraint by the centre. This was not the case and it was evident in Chidambaram’s statement the morning after. Bhardwaj’s action provoked another debate on the rationale of a constitutional figurehead who may be prone to playing politics.
And Bhardwaj, a former union law minister who was dropped by the UPA in its second term, has a history of playing dirty from day one of his new assignment. First, he made the government uncomfortable by harping on past communal incidents and then, with every crisis that the state government faced he turned more aggressive. He publicly sought information on illegal mining and corruption charges against ministers. By the time the government faced revolt within its ranks last October, he was at his worst. It was not only highly improper of him to ask the speaker of the assembly not to disqualify 16 rebelling legislators before the vote of confidence, he went on to recommend president’s rule when the government won the motion in a voice vote. He described the assembly proceedings as a “farce” and “unconstitutional”. It embarrassed both the centre, which rejected his recommendation, and his party, the Congress, which issued a statement saying that “as far as the governor is concerned, the party has nothing to do with him.” Bhardwaj then devised a face-saving exercise by seeking a second vote of confidence. Yeddyurappa won that too but the governor was not to sit quiet. Just days later he publicly reminded the chief minister that he was waiting for files relating to allegations of corruption.
The year 2011 began on an inauspicious note. The governor abandoned his customary joint address to the legislature and walked out after the opposition created ruckus over the ruling party’s description of him being a “Congress agent”. This was followed by another unsavoury incident. In response to the ruling party’s plan to hold a statewide protest against him, he shot back saying this was akin to “ulta chor kotwal ko daante”. By this time, Yeddyurappa had forwarded the cabinet resolution regarding the prosecution sanction. He was livid and wrote a strongly-worded letter protesting against the language and questioning the governor’s motive.
The prosecution sanction came less than 48 hours later and Chidambaram was wise enough to add that he was not going into the “merits” of the case while defending the governor’s right. Yeddyurappa may have his share of blemsishes and certainly his isn’t the cleanest of governments but by acting the way he has, Bhardwaj has not only lowered the dignity of his office he has created a political crisis which is contrary to his constitutional mandate. His opponents are right; the governor deserves to be recalled.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Mystery of the missing tribals
Governance Now, Feb 1-15, 2011
More than 40,000 Jhodias, the ‘principal tribe’ of Orissa’s Kashipur, find themselves disenfranchised for reasons nobody’s willing to admit or accept
Malati Jhodia, a young woman of Siriguda village in Orissa’s Kashipur, could have led a better life had she got what is legitimately hers, a scheduled tribe certificate. In absence of it she was denied the job of an anganwadi worker last year, which would have meant a princely sum of Rs 2,000 a month. Apart from her tribal status, the fact that she is a young bride from the village would have gone in her favour. Now she has to struggle as an ‘asha karmi’ (health worker) to find a pregnant woman willing to go to a government hospital for delivery so that she gets her quota of Rs 600.
For Pabitra Jhodia, her 26-year-old neighbour, it is tough to arrange for books, stationery, school bag and uniform for his six-year-old son who goes to a government school. His only source of cash is alashi, a mustard-like plant grown for oilseeds, that fetches him Rs 2,000-3,000 a year. His daughter will soon be going to school. Had he got his certificate as a tribal, he could have sent his son, and then the daughter, to a residential school meant for them which would have taken care of all their expenses, including food, until class 10.
I couldn’t meet Khit Jhodia’s 10-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. Both were away at the time, herding their cattle somewhere up in the hills. The father regrets having pulled them out of school because he couldn’t afford it any more. If only he could get the certificate identifying his tribal status, the children’s education would have been taken care of.
About 30 km away, in Dimundi village on the outskirts of Utkal Alumina’s plant in Kucheipadar, a Jhodia youth sits in gloom as he narrates how his family had to shell out Rs 23,000 as donation to study in an ITI institute in Koraput from the compensation amount they received for their land acquired for the company. “No Jhodia of Kashipur is getting certificate as a tribal. I went to the tehsildar several times; the most recent one was four months ago. The tehsildar said I belong to the general category,” he says.
Missing Jhodias
There are, in fact, thousands of Jhodias who are being deprived of education, stipends, scholarships, cycles meant for girl students, jobs, subsidised loans for housing and agriculture and many such benefits that the government provides for the tribals in this picturesque land of rolling hills in the Maoist-affected Rayagada district. Without their certificates, they are being treated as general category people.
This is quite intriguing. For, the district gazetteer of Koraput, 1966, clearly spells out the “caste and tribes” of Kashipur in these words: “The principal tribes found are the Jhorias, the Pengu Khonds and the Khonds.” (Just as ‘d’ in Odisha and Odia became ‘r’ in Orissa and Oriya then, Jhodias were spelt Jhorias.)
There wasn’t a problem until late 1980s. The first ST list of Orissa, notified in 1976, mentions ‘Paroja’ as the scheduled tribe (serial number 55), in the present context. The Jhodias were recognised as a ‘sub-section’ of Paroja (“endogamous section of the Paroja”). There exist hundreds of land and settlement records and certificates issued by the district administration showing that the Jhodias belong to the Paroja tribe.
There are also several official communiqués from the district collector of Rayagada to the Kashipur tehsildar between 1989 and 2010, confirming their tribal status and directing that such certificates be issued to them. The last one was written on May 13, 2010, by the present collector, Dr Nitin Bhanudas Jawale, the concluding line of which reads: “Hence, these instructions be strictly followed and no such eligible persons in whose RORs (record of rights) his caste (has been) mentioned as Jhodia and he otherwise belongs to non-tribal group be denied ST certificate.”
When the 1976 list was amended and published in 2003, ‘Paroja’ was replaced with several variations of Paroja, its sub-sections including variations of Jhodia, but not ‘Jhodia’ per se. There were, in fact, 12 communities that replaced
‘Paroja’ – Parja, Bodo Paroja, Barong Jhodia, Poroja, Chhelia Paroja, Jhodia Paroja, Konda Paraja, Paraja, Ponga Paroja, Sodia Paroja, Sano Paroja and Solia Paroja. Inclusion of ‘Jhodia Paroja’ seemed to provide some leeway, but it was not to be.
While seeking to include Jhodia in the ST list, the state government had issued executive instructions that Jhodia ‘being synonymous’ to Jhodia Paroja and a section of the notified tribe Paroja, the members of the Jhodia community should be recognised and extended the benefit of the ST, after field verification.
This didn’t work because of a 1996 supreme court order. In the Nityananda Sharma vs State of Bihar case, the apex court had said the presidential order notifying the lists of SCs and STs, and the subsequent amendments to these lists made by the parliament, were “conclusive” on which no courts had jurisdiction for interpretation.
The present tehsildar, Sushant Singh, admits that the Jhodias used to get the ST certificates earlier and availed all benefits thus accrued but this was discontinued after the apex court order, which left no scope for interpretations. He says he now issues ST certificates only to those whose land and settlement record (carried out in 1993-94) mentions their caste either as ‘Paroja’ or ‘Jhodia Paroja’. Not the others. As it happened, most of the community members who had faced no inconvenience in the past and were unaware of what awaited them, had recorded their caste as ‘Jhodia’, the usual practice, during the land settlement of 1993-94. That landed them in a soup.
Mystery Deepens
According to Makarand Muduli, president of the Paroja Samaj, a body set up in 1997 to fight for the restoration of tribal status to the Jhodias, there are about 23,000 Jhodia voters in Kashipur alone and the population of the community is over 40,000. A majority of them have lost their tribal status. In protest, they had even boycotted the last assembly elections in 2009.
Muduli, a Jhodia, says the problem first surfaced around 1987 when some community members were denied the ST certificate. Protests that followed forced the state government to provide intermittent relief but after the 1996 apex court judgment, this was no longer possible.
Under pressure, the state government started sending proposals to the centre to include ‘Jhodia’ in the ST list since 1989 but it was a clumsy effort. The last proposal before the 2003 notification was made on November 20, 2002. The centre sat over it and the state conveniently forgot it until 2006. In 2006, the centre said the registrar general of India (RGI) had “rejected” the proposal on four grounds: (a) the state’s recommendation about Jhodia is based on a single village study; (b) as per the socio-economic features given, Jhodia is not a tribe but a caste, as they suffer from social disabilities and treated as untouchables by the caste Hindus; (c) the report doesn’t reveal similarity in socio-cultural traits between Jhodia and Paraja; and (d) published literature doesn’t support Jhodia as synonym of section of Paraja.
The state responded back the same year with some more details, which was clearly not adequate and was rejected two years later in 2008. Taking the second rejection by RGI as a plea, the tribal affairs ministry at the centre also rejected it. Now, a fresh broad-based ethnic study covering five blocks of four districts (Rayagada, Koraput, Nawrangpur and Kalahandi), prepared by the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute (SCSTRTI) of the government of Orissa, has been submitted (May 2010). Given the current pre-occupation of the RGI with the census, it is unlikely to be taken up any time soon.
Mining Interest
Given their presence and the historic nature of injustice, one would have expected the political parties to kill each other to champion the Jhodia cause. But the fact is, just the opposite has happened. This is not unusual for Orissa. Not a single political party, save a marginal player like the Communist Party of India (CPI), has supported any of the revolts brewing against mining and industrial projects in the state. And it is not difficult to understand why.
Kashipur drew attention to itself first because of starvation deaths in the 1960s and 1980s and later, the discovery of its rich bauxite deposits. Once NALCO, a public sector unit, started mining the Panchapatmali hills and set up its refinery in adjoining Koraput district in mid 80s, Kashipur became the next target. Industrial houses lined up to sign MoUs with Orissa. Utkal Alumina, a joint venture of Hindalco and Alcan Aluminium, came into being in 1993 and by September 1995, it had received environment clearance from the centre to mine the Baphlamali hills and set up a plant in Kucheipadar. L&T and Balco (which Sterlite took over in 2001) too signed up MoUs to mine the Kuturumali and Sasbahumali, respectively, around that time. Soon, Aditya Aluminium too jumped in and will be setting up its plant and a mining venture shortly. But surveys of villages around the bauxite carrying hills had begun in late 1980s.
Notice the remarkable coincidence of a peaking interest in bauxite with the beginning of the trouble for the Jhodias of Kashipur.
Fifteen years of protests and the consequent violence and deaths saw many (Tata and Sterlite) fleeing the scene. Norsk Hydro of Norway abandoned its plans for a joint venture when persecution of the tribals became too much of an ethical issue for it to ignore. But Utkal Alumina persisted, despite a huge uproar over the Maikanch killings in December 2000 in which three people were shot dead and several others were injured by the state police. All the dead were officially identified as the Jhodias – Abhilas Jhodia, Raghu Jhodia and Jamudhar Jhodia. So were the injured. That gives another clear clue. Three villages under the Utkal Alumina’s Baphlamali mining project – Mikanch, Paikkupakhal and Andrakanch – are all Jhodia-dominated ones.
“Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel”, a book by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das, provides an account of how all the constitutional rights of the tribals were bypassed to acquire their land in Kashipur. The pattern was confirmed by the N C Saxena committee earlier this year which looked into Vedanta’s Niyamgiri project in Lanjigarh (adjoining Kashipur in Rayagada).
According to Rayagada collector, 3,432 acre of land have been acquired for mining and 2,638 acres (2,155 acre of which is private) for alumina plants in Kashipur block. These are spread over 27 villages. Land in four more villages is being
acquired for Aditya Aluminium.
Giridhar Gamang, who as chief minister in 1999 claimed to have forwarded a proposal to include the Jhodias in the ST list, is unequivocal in blaming the mining lobby for the tribal community’s plight. “The industry manipulated the case (to rob the Jhodias of tribal status) in fear that the land acquired on their behalf would be taken away,” he said.
But Achyut Das of Agragamee, a Kashipur-based NGO, is closer to truth. Having fought for restoration of the tribal status to the Jhodias and suffered on account of this, Das sums up the situation: “The tribal status of the Jhodias was never an issue before the mining interest came in. The centre and the state colluded to deny them their legitimate rights.”
prasanna@governancenow.com
More than 40,000 Jhodias, the ‘principal tribe’ of Orissa’s Kashipur, find themselves disenfranchised for reasons nobody’s willing to admit or accept
Malati Jhodia, a young woman of Siriguda village in Orissa’s Kashipur, could have led a better life had she got what is legitimately hers, a scheduled tribe certificate. In absence of it she was denied the job of an anganwadi worker last year, which would have meant a princely sum of Rs 2,000 a month. Apart from her tribal status, the fact that she is a young bride from the village would have gone in her favour. Now she has to struggle as an ‘asha karmi’ (health worker) to find a pregnant woman willing to go to a government hospital for delivery so that she gets her quota of Rs 600.
For Pabitra Jhodia, her 26-year-old neighbour, it is tough to arrange for books, stationery, school bag and uniform for his six-year-old son who goes to a government school. His only source of cash is alashi, a mustard-like plant grown for oilseeds, that fetches him Rs 2,000-3,000 a year. His daughter will soon be going to school. Had he got his certificate as a tribal, he could have sent his son, and then the daughter, to a residential school meant for them which would have taken care of all their expenses, including food, until class 10.
I couldn’t meet Khit Jhodia’s 10-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. Both were away at the time, herding their cattle somewhere up in the hills. The father regrets having pulled them out of school because he couldn’t afford it any more. If only he could get the certificate identifying his tribal status, the children’s education would have been taken care of.
About 30 km away, in Dimundi village on the outskirts of Utkal Alumina’s plant in Kucheipadar, a Jhodia youth sits in gloom as he narrates how his family had to shell out Rs 23,000 as donation to study in an ITI institute in Koraput from the compensation amount they received for their land acquired for the company. “No Jhodia of Kashipur is getting certificate as a tribal. I went to the tehsildar several times; the most recent one was four months ago. The tehsildar said I belong to the general category,” he says.
Missing Jhodias
There are, in fact, thousands of Jhodias who are being deprived of education, stipends, scholarships, cycles meant for girl students, jobs, subsidised loans for housing and agriculture and many such benefits that the government provides for the tribals in this picturesque land of rolling hills in the Maoist-affected Rayagada district. Without their certificates, they are being treated as general category people.
This is quite intriguing. For, the district gazetteer of Koraput, 1966, clearly spells out the “caste and tribes” of Kashipur in these words: “The principal tribes found are the Jhorias, the Pengu Khonds and the Khonds.” (Just as ‘d’ in Odisha and Odia became ‘r’ in Orissa and Oriya then, Jhodias were spelt Jhorias.)
There wasn’t a problem until late 1980s. The first ST list of Orissa, notified in 1976, mentions ‘Paroja’ as the scheduled tribe (serial number 55), in the present context. The Jhodias were recognised as a ‘sub-section’ of Paroja (“endogamous section of the Paroja”). There exist hundreds of land and settlement records and certificates issued by the district administration showing that the Jhodias belong to the Paroja tribe.
There are also several official communiqués from the district collector of Rayagada to the Kashipur tehsildar between 1989 and 2010, confirming their tribal status and directing that such certificates be issued to them. The last one was written on May 13, 2010, by the present collector, Dr Nitin Bhanudas Jawale, the concluding line of which reads: “Hence, these instructions be strictly followed and no such eligible persons in whose RORs (record of rights) his caste (has been) mentioned as Jhodia and he otherwise belongs to non-tribal group be denied ST certificate.”
When the 1976 list was amended and published in 2003, ‘Paroja’ was replaced with several variations of Paroja, its sub-sections including variations of Jhodia, but not ‘Jhodia’ per se. There were, in fact, 12 communities that replaced
‘Paroja’ – Parja, Bodo Paroja, Barong Jhodia, Poroja, Chhelia Paroja, Jhodia Paroja, Konda Paraja, Paraja, Ponga Paroja, Sodia Paroja, Sano Paroja and Solia Paroja. Inclusion of ‘Jhodia Paroja’ seemed to provide some leeway, but it was not to be.
While seeking to include Jhodia in the ST list, the state government had issued executive instructions that Jhodia ‘being synonymous’ to Jhodia Paroja and a section of the notified tribe Paroja, the members of the Jhodia community should be recognised and extended the benefit of the ST, after field verification.
This didn’t work because of a 1996 supreme court order. In the Nityananda Sharma vs State of Bihar case, the apex court had said the presidential order notifying the lists of SCs and STs, and the subsequent amendments to these lists made by the parliament, were “conclusive” on which no courts had jurisdiction for interpretation.
The present tehsildar, Sushant Singh, admits that the Jhodias used to get the ST certificates earlier and availed all benefits thus accrued but this was discontinued after the apex court order, which left no scope for interpretations. He says he now issues ST certificates only to those whose land and settlement record (carried out in 1993-94) mentions their caste either as ‘Paroja’ or ‘Jhodia Paroja’. Not the others. As it happened, most of the community members who had faced no inconvenience in the past and were unaware of what awaited them, had recorded their caste as ‘Jhodia’, the usual practice, during the land settlement of 1993-94. That landed them in a soup.
Mystery Deepens
According to Makarand Muduli, president of the Paroja Samaj, a body set up in 1997 to fight for the restoration of tribal status to the Jhodias, there are about 23,000 Jhodia voters in Kashipur alone and the population of the community is over 40,000. A majority of them have lost their tribal status. In protest, they had even boycotted the last assembly elections in 2009.
Muduli, a Jhodia, says the problem first surfaced around 1987 when some community members were denied the ST certificate. Protests that followed forced the state government to provide intermittent relief but after the 1996 apex court judgment, this was no longer possible.
Under pressure, the state government started sending proposals to the centre to include ‘Jhodia’ in the ST list since 1989 but it was a clumsy effort. The last proposal before the 2003 notification was made on November 20, 2002. The centre sat over it and the state conveniently forgot it until 2006. In 2006, the centre said the registrar general of India (RGI) had “rejected” the proposal on four grounds: (a) the state’s recommendation about Jhodia is based on a single village study; (b) as per the socio-economic features given, Jhodia is not a tribe but a caste, as they suffer from social disabilities and treated as untouchables by the caste Hindus; (c) the report doesn’t reveal similarity in socio-cultural traits between Jhodia and Paraja; and (d) published literature doesn’t support Jhodia as synonym of section of Paraja.
The state responded back the same year with some more details, which was clearly not adequate and was rejected two years later in 2008. Taking the second rejection by RGI as a plea, the tribal affairs ministry at the centre also rejected it. Now, a fresh broad-based ethnic study covering five blocks of four districts (Rayagada, Koraput, Nawrangpur and Kalahandi), prepared by the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute (SCSTRTI) of the government of Orissa, has been submitted (May 2010). Given the current pre-occupation of the RGI with the census, it is unlikely to be taken up any time soon.
Mining Interest
Given their presence and the historic nature of injustice, one would have expected the political parties to kill each other to champion the Jhodia cause. But the fact is, just the opposite has happened. This is not unusual for Orissa. Not a single political party, save a marginal player like the Communist Party of India (CPI), has supported any of the revolts brewing against mining and industrial projects in the state. And it is not difficult to understand why.
Kashipur drew attention to itself first because of starvation deaths in the 1960s and 1980s and later, the discovery of its rich bauxite deposits. Once NALCO, a public sector unit, started mining the Panchapatmali hills and set up its refinery in adjoining Koraput district in mid 80s, Kashipur became the next target. Industrial houses lined up to sign MoUs with Orissa. Utkal Alumina, a joint venture of Hindalco and Alcan Aluminium, came into being in 1993 and by September 1995, it had received environment clearance from the centre to mine the Baphlamali hills and set up a plant in Kucheipadar. L&T and Balco (which Sterlite took over in 2001) too signed up MoUs to mine the Kuturumali and Sasbahumali, respectively, around that time. Soon, Aditya Aluminium too jumped in and will be setting up its plant and a mining venture shortly. But surveys of villages around the bauxite carrying hills had begun in late 1980s.
Notice the remarkable coincidence of a peaking interest in bauxite with the beginning of the trouble for the Jhodias of Kashipur.
Fifteen years of protests and the consequent violence and deaths saw many (Tata and Sterlite) fleeing the scene. Norsk Hydro of Norway abandoned its plans for a joint venture when persecution of the tribals became too much of an ethical issue for it to ignore. But Utkal Alumina persisted, despite a huge uproar over the Maikanch killings in December 2000 in which three people were shot dead and several others were injured by the state police. All the dead were officially identified as the Jhodias – Abhilas Jhodia, Raghu Jhodia and Jamudhar Jhodia. So were the injured. That gives another clear clue. Three villages under the Utkal Alumina’s Baphlamali mining project – Mikanch, Paikkupakhal and Andrakanch – are all Jhodia-dominated ones.
“Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel”, a book by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das, provides an account of how all the constitutional rights of the tribals were bypassed to acquire their land in Kashipur. The pattern was confirmed by the N C Saxena committee earlier this year which looked into Vedanta’s Niyamgiri project in Lanjigarh (adjoining Kashipur in Rayagada).
According to Rayagada collector, 3,432 acre of land have been acquired for mining and 2,638 acres (2,155 acre of which is private) for alumina plants in Kashipur block. These are spread over 27 villages. Land in four more villages is being
acquired for Aditya Aluminium.
Giridhar Gamang, who as chief minister in 1999 claimed to have forwarded a proposal to include the Jhodias in the ST list, is unequivocal in blaming the mining lobby for the tribal community’s plight. “The industry manipulated the case (to rob the Jhodias of tribal status) in fear that the land acquired on their behalf would be taken away,” he said.
But Achyut Das of Agragamee, a Kashipur-based NGO, is closer to truth. Having fought for restoration of the tribal status to the Jhodias and suffered on account of this, Das sums up the situation: “The tribal status of the Jhodias was never an issue before the mining interest came in. The centre and the state colluded to deny them their legitimate rights.”
prasanna@governancenow.com
Hunter's guide to fight corruption
governancenow.com, jan 31, 2011
Punish the guilty. Period.
‘March against corruption’ across several cities of the country last Sunday, which was spearheaded by RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and in which anti-corruption crusaders like Prashant Bhushan, JM Lyngdoh, JF Ribeiro and Medha Patkar, among others, participated, makes two broad points. One that corruption is no longer a non-issue and that people are angry enough to come out to the streets in thousands (about 25,000 participated in the march in Delhi, according to Kejriwal) to register their protests. And secondly, that a pitch is being laid for an eventual enactment of the Lokpal as the apex anti-corruption watchdog.
The last time corruption was a big issue and shook the establishment, leading to the enactment of the central vigilance commission (CVC), was in 1995 when the Jain Hawala scam broke out. Delhi-based businessmen, the Jain brothers – SK Jain, BK Jain and NK Jain – were accused of paying Rs 65 crore to political bigwigs that included LK Advani, Madan Lal Khurana, VC Shukla, Arif Khan, Sharad Yadav, Balram Jakhar, P Shiv Shankar and more than 100 others. A bulk of it was through the hawala routes and included suspected money transfer to the Hizbul Mujahideen militants. Vineet Narain, a journalist, spearheaded the crusade that led to a historic Hawala judgment of the supreme court – which prepared the ground for legislating CVC to insulate CBI and ED and fixed two years' term for the directors of CBI and ED.
Given the similarity of the run-up to the historic Hawala judgment, I called up Vineet Narain to ask if he participated in the march and if not why not. He said he did go to the function but walked away because he thought it would lead to nowhere, just as it was then in mid-90s.
Narain makes two broad points to justify his walkout. One, he says setting up an institution, Lokpal in this case and CVC in the earlier instance, will serve no purpose. “I had asked the supreme court at that time: What is the need for CVC? If you want to empower the CBI, give it autonomy!” He laments how the entire establishment got busied with preparing the CVC Act, ignoring the actual investigation and prosecution of the accused. The CBI didn’t provide evidence in the court, except for the Jain diaries which had mentioned details of the payment. The courts acquitted all the accused citing lack of independent corroborative evidence.
Narain also laments that had enough attention been paid to punishing the accused, things would have been different. “Did CVC make any difference?” he asks as he points to the fiasco over the appointment of current incumbent, PJ Thomas, and wonders aloud: “Who knows when the Lokpal will come into being and what kind of man will he be.”
Narain has a simple solution to fight corruption and illustrates it through a well-known quiz for the kids: After a hunter shoots and kills two of 100 birds sitting on a tree how many will be left on the tree?
He is for the hunter’s approach. Take up three or four high-profile corruption cases (and there are plenty of them now – 2G, CWG, Adarsh society, IPL, Swiss account etc), make exemplary cases of them by punishing the guilty and things will fall in place!
Last Friday, the prime-minister-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi addressed people on the corruption issue and said “systemic reforms” were needed to root it out. Earlier UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had forwarded her "5-point agenda" to fight corruption. Following this the prime minister set up an empowered Group of Minister (eGoM) under his number 2, Pranab Mukherjee, to find ways and means to do so. Kejriwal and others are batting for their version of the Lokpal bill.
But I would rather endorse Narain's: Forget eGoMs, systemic reforms and Lokpals. If you are serious, focus all your energy on fixing responsibilities and giving exemplary punishment to those involved in 2G, CWG, Adarsh society and other scams. That will scare away the birds of similar feathers!
Punish the guilty. Period.
‘March against corruption’ across several cities of the country last Sunday, which was spearheaded by RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and in which anti-corruption crusaders like Prashant Bhushan, JM Lyngdoh, JF Ribeiro and Medha Patkar, among others, participated, makes two broad points. One that corruption is no longer a non-issue and that people are angry enough to come out to the streets in thousands (about 25,000 participated in the march in Delhi, according to Kejriwal) to register their protests. And secondly, that a pitch is being laid for an eventual enactment of the Lokpal as the apex anti-corruption watchdog.
The last time corruption was a big issue and shook the establishment, leading to the enactment of the central vigilance commission (CVC), was in 1995 when the Jain Hawala scam broke out. Delhi-based businessmen, the Jain brothers – SK Jain, BK Jain and NK Jain – were accused of paying Rs 65 crore to political bigwigs that included LK Advani, Madan Lal Khurana, VC Shukla, Arif Khan, Sharad Yadav, Balram Jakhar, P Shiv Shankar and more than 100 others. A bulk of it was through the hawala routes and included suspected money transfer to the Hizbul Mujahideen militants. Vineet Narain, a journalist, spearheaded the crusade that led to a historic Hawala judgment of the supreme court – which prepared the ground for legislating CVC to insulate CBI and ED and fixed two years' term for the directors of CBI and ED.
Given the similarity of the run-up to the historic Hawala judgment, I called up Vineet Narain to ask if he participated in the march and if not why not. He said he did go to the function but walked away because he thought it would lead to nowhere, just as it was then in mid-90s.
Narain makes two broad points to justify his walkout. One, he says setting up an institution, Lokpal in this case and CVC in the earlier instance, will serve no purpose. “I had asked the supreme court at that time: What is the need for CVC? If you want to empower the CBI, give it autonomy!” He laments how the entire establishment got busied with preparing the CVC Act, ignoring the actual investigation and prosecution of the accused. The CBI didn’t provide evidence in the court, except for the Jain diaries which had mentioned details of the payment. The courts acquitted all the accused citing lack of independent corroborative evidence.
Narain also laments that had enough attention been paid to punishing the accused, things would have been different. “Did CVC make any difference?” he asks as he points to the fiasco over the appointment of current incumbent, PJ Thomas, and wonders aloud: “Who knows when the Lokpal will come into being and what kind of man will he be.”
Narain has a simple solution to fight corruption and illustrates it through a well-known quiz for the kids: After a hunter shoots and kills two of 100 birds sitting on a tree how many will be left on the tree?
He is for the hunter’s approach. Take up three or four high-profile corruption cases (and there are plenty of them now – 2G, CWG, Adarsh society, IPL, Swiss account etc), make exemplary cases of them by punishing the guilty and things will fall in place!
Last Friday, the prime-minister-in-waiting Rahul Gandhi addressed people on the corruption issue and said “systemic reforms” were needed to root it out. Earlier UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi had forwarded her "5-point agenda" to fight corruption. Following this the prime minister set up an empowered Group of Minister (eGoM) under his number 2, Pranab Mukherjee, to find ways and means to do so. Kejriwal and others are batting for their version of the Lokpal bill.
But I would rather endorse Narain's: Forget eGoMs, systemic reforms and Lokpals. If you are serious, focus all your energy on fixing responsibilities and giving exemplary punishment to those involved in 2G, CWG, Adarsh society and other scams. That will scare away the birds of similar feathers!
Latest PJ? Thomas says "I am still the CVC"
governancenow.com, jan 31, 2011
Make no mistake. The egg is on government's face as it can't even sack him
Embattled central vigilance commissioner P J Thomas side-stepped questions on his continuance in office in the wake of a corruption case against him and remained characteristically defiant.
"I am still the CVC. The matter is in court. So no comments," Thomas told reporters on Monday. This, after the media had been running stories for much of the past week that Thomas had just "24 hours" / "48 hours" left in his post.
The egg is clearly on government's face as it is not even able to sack Thomas. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that of late the government has been making inane submissions and trying to fib its way through the apex court in the matter relating to Thomas' appointment as the central vigilance commissioner (CVC).
Days before telling the court that the selection panel had no information about the pending criminal case against Thomas (a lie which has been nailed by Sushma Swaraj, leader of the opposition and a member of the selection panel), the government had not only strongly defended him, it had, in fact, rebuffed the court saying that it was “outside the purview of the supreme court” to even question his suitability and integrity.
So, what makes the government behave the way it does? The only logical explanation is that having committed a blunder, it now finds no room to wriggle out. To sack him is no option and let's see why it is so.
The CVC Act of 2003 provides detailed grounds on which Thomas or a fellow vigilance commissioner can be removed from office. Section 6 of the Act says this can be done “only by order of the president on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity after the supreme court, on a reference made to it by the president, has, on inquiry, reported that the central vigilance commissioner or any vigilance commissioner, as the case may be, ought on such ground be removed”.
The trouble is having hardly attended office, Thomas has done little to attract charges of “proved misbehaviour or incapacity”. And since the process involves the supreme court, which will have to inquire and confirm the charges before recommending such removal, he has nothing to fear.
The other grounds on which Thomas can be removed are: If he “is adjudged an insolvent”, convicted of “moral turpitude”, engages in any “paid employment outside the duties of his office”, suffers from “infirmity of mind or body” and has acquired financial or other interest that is likely to “affect prejudicially his functions”. There is nothing on record to warrant any of these charges either.
What can the government do other than circulating rumours about Thomas quitting on his own in the “next 48 hours”? Precious little. Thomas knows this and is therefore, keeping his counsel. He also knows that he would find no other employment with the government or in any public sector enterprise once he quits. So why quit!
Make no mistake. The egg is on government's face as it can't even sack him
Embattled central vigilance commissioner P J Thomas side-stepped questions on his continuance in office in the wake of a corruption case against him and remained characteristically defiant.
"I am still the CVC. The matter is in court. So no comments," Thomas told reporters on Monday. This, after the media had been running stories for much of the past week that Thomas had just "24 hours" / "48 hours" left in his post.
The egg is clearly on government's face as it is not even able to sack Thomas. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that of late the government has been making inane submissions and trying to fib its way through the apex court in the matter relating to Thomas' appointment as the central vigilance commissioner (CVC).
Days before telling the court that the selection panel had no information about the pending criminal case against Thomas (a lie which has been nailed by Sushma Swaraj, leader of the opposition and a member of the selection panel), the government had not only strongly defended him, it had, in fact, rebuffed the court saying that it was “outside the purview of the supreme court” to even question his suitability and integrity.
So, what makes the government behave the way it does? The only logical explanation is that having committed a blunder, it now finds no room to wriggle out. To sack him is no option and let's see why it is so.
The CVC Act of 2003 provides detailed grounds on which Thomas or a fellow vigilance commissioner can be removed from office. Section 6 of the Act says this can be done “only by order of the president on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity after the supreme court, on a reference made to it by the president, has, on inquiry, reported that the central vigilance commissioner or any vigilance commissioner, as the case may be, ought on such ground be removed”.
The trouble is having hardly attended office, Thomas has done little to attract charges of “proved misbehaviour or incapacity”. And since the process involves the supreme court, which will have to inquire and confirm the charges before recommending such removal, he has nothing to fear.
The other grounds on which Thomas can be removed are: If he “is adjudged an insolvent”, convicted of “moral turpitude”, engages in any “paid employment outside the duties of his office”, suffers from “infirmity of mind or body” and has acquired financial or other interest that is likely to “affect prejudicially his functions”. There is nothing on record to warrant any of these charges either.
What can the government do other than circulating rumours about Thomas quitting on his own in the “next 48 hours”? Precious little. Thomas knows this and is therefore, keeping his counsel. He also knows that he would find no other employment with the government or in any public sector enterprise once he quits. So why quit!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Adopt ‘adarsh’ policies, Mr Ramesh, ad hoc ones will not do
governancenow.com, Jan 17 2011
Why didn’t your ministry stop the controversial building project in 2003 itself?
Environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh loves publicity, more so if it comes free. It would, therefore, have been naïve not to expect him to issue a demolition notice to the Adarsh housing society which he has done now.
Do bask in glory, Mr Ramesh, but please answer a few questions. The first question is: Why this notice to the Adarsh society now? The 31-storey building that you think deserves to be completely demolished for “egregious violation” of environment laws, got the occupation certificate on September 16, 2010. Which means, the construction activities have already been completed for people to move in.
Presumably, construction began after the Adarsh society applied for environment clearance from your ministry in 2003. Your ministry wrote back on March 11, 2003 saying the appropriate clearing authority under the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 1991 was the state government – rather the Maharashtra State Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA).
So, your ministry and MCZMA knew about the case way back in March 2003. Why did both of them go to sleep for the next seven years?
MCZMA has, in its deposition before your ministry, said it had issued notice to the Adarsh society on lack of environment clearance on November 3, 2009. Why did it take six years for it to do so?
The second question, therefore, is: What action do you propose to take against your ministry officials and those of the MCZMA?
The third question pertains to the violation of the CRZ notification of 1991 vis-à-vis section 3(2)(v) of the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986 itself. As your communiqué mentions, this section “provides for ‘restriction of areas’ in which any industries, operations or process of class of industries, operations or processes shall not be carried out or shall be carried out subject to certain safeguards. Construction of buildings falls with the category of ‘process’ ”.
Find us one more individual, Mr Ramesh, who agrees with this interpretation of “process”. Why is the language so vague and prone to misinterpretation? Is this deliberate or do you expect us to believe that the literacy level of your officials is so poor? No wonder the Adarsh society is protesting, arguing that it didn’t violate any the law as this section deals with industries, not housing societies.
The Adarsh society is also right in questioning the locus standi of MoEF, citing the ministry’s March 11, 2003 letter, which said the state government was the clearing authority. To which, your communiqué mentions that your ministry has clarified that the CRZ notification was amended on April 22, 2003 (a month later) withdrawing that power from the state government because of “misutilisation” of power. But you are silent on whether this amendment was communicated to the Adarsh society at that time and what action was taken to ensure that the amendment was followed by other applicants.
The Adarsh society is a fait accompli, Mr Ramesh, just as many other big-ticket projects that your ministry first cleared and then issued notices about violations of law when public outcry reached unmanageable levels - Lavasa project in Pune, Vedanta’s smelting and refinery plants in Orissa, Jindals’ thermal plants in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, Lafarge’s mining in Meghalaya and so on. It would be naive again to expect that the Adarsh society would actually be demolished.
Why didn’t your ministry stop the controversial building project in 2003 itself?
Environment and forests minister Jairam Ramesh loves publicity, more so if it comes free. It would, therefore, have been naïve not to expect him to issue a demolition notice to the Adarsh housing society which he has done now.
Do bask in glory, Mr Ramesh, but please answer a few questions. The first question is: Why this notice to the Adarsh society now? The 31-storey building that you think deserves to be completely demolished for “egregious violation” of environment laws, got the occupation certificate on September 16, 2010. Which means, the construction activities have already been completed for people to move in.
Presumably, construction began after the Adarsh society applied for environment clearance from your ministry in 2003. Your ministry wrote back on March 11, 2003 saying the appropriate clearing authority under the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 1991 was the state government – rather the Maharashtra State Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA).
So, your ministry and MCZMA knew about the case way back in March 2003. Why did both of them go to sleep for the next seven years?
MCZMA has, in its deposition before your ministry, said it had issued notice to the Adarsh society on lack of environment clearance on November 3, 2009. Why did it take six years for it to do so?
The second question, therefore, is: What action do you propose to take against your ministry officials and those of the MCZMA?
The third question pertains to the violation of the CRZ notification of 1991 vis-à-vis section 3(2)(v) of the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986 itself. As your communiqué mentions, this section “provides for ‘restriction of areas’ in which any industries, operations or process of class of industries, operations or processes shall not be carried out or shall be carried out subject to certain safeguards. Construction of buildings falls with the category of ‘process’ ”.
Find us one more individual, Mr Ramesh, who agrees with this interpretation of “process”. Why is the language so vague and prone to misinterpretation? Is this deliberate or do you expect us to believe that the literacy level of your officials is so poor? No wonder the Adarsh society is protesting, arguing that it didn’t violate any the law as this section deals with industries, not housing societies.
The Adarsh society is also right in questioning the locus standi of MoEF, citing the ministry’s March 11, 2003 letter, which said the state government was the clearing authority. To which, your communiqué mentions that your ministry has clarified that the CRZ notification was amended on April 22, 2003 (a month later) withdrawing that power from the state government because of “misutilisation” of power. But you are silent on whether this amendment was communicated to the Adarsh society at that time and what action was taken to ensure that the amendment was followed by other applicants.
The Adarsh society is a fait accompli, Mr Ramesh, just as many other big-ticket projects that your ministry first cleared and then issued notices about violations of law when public outcry reached unmanageable levels - Lavasa project in Pune, Vedanta’s smelting and refinery plants in Orissa, Jindals’ thermal plants in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, Lafarge’s mining in Meghalaya and so on. It would be naive again to expect that the Adarsh society would actually be demolished.
Price of putting up with Pawar
Edit, Governance Now, Jan 1-16, 2011
The minister has acted far too often in the interest of hoarders and against the aam aadmi whose cause he is supposed to champion
Going by Sharad Pawar’s words and deeds in the past several years, you can be pardoned for thinking that he heads the ministry for blackmarketeers and hoarders, rather than food and agriculture that he actually does. Look at what he said last month when the onion prices jumped from Rs 20 a kg to Rs 70 a kg in the course of one week. He said: “Onion prices will remain high for two-three weeks and the situation is likely to improve only after that.” This is nothing short of an open invitation to the blackmarketeers and hoarders to keep doing what they do best for two to three weeks more. What did he base his assessment on? Expectation of fresh arrival of onions in the market from Maharashtra and Rajasthan. And how did he explain the sudden spike in price? Unseasonal rains, of course. He didn’t say a word on banning export or importing onions to improve the situation. In fact, at an inter-ministerial meeting a day later, on December 21, Pawar actually rejected the proposal to import onions. Similarly, he didn’t say a word on why he didn’t make timely arrangements to avoid this situation given the fact that the unseasonal rains hit some of the onion-producing states in the months of October and November. Surely, he and his ministerial staff had sufficient time.
But then you don’t expect Pawar to do something sensible. Every time he opens his mouth you wish he wasn’t there. There have been several instances when he acted against the interest of the aam aadmi and the farmers whose cause he claims to be championing. Remember when the sugar price skyrocketed some months ago, he was accused of stalling import of raw sugar on a plea he is using now: That farmers would benefit from the price hike. He knows, just as well as any lay man, that such price rise is a bonanza for the blackmarketeers and hoarders, not the farmers. Food inflation has remained high, mostly in double digits, for the past three years. There has been a huge outcry throughout the country which eventually led to an unprecedented boycott of the general budget by the opposition parties in parliament. Pawar remained untouched. One day the media corned him and demanded to know what he was doing to check the all-round rise in prices of food grain, pulses, oil, fruits and vegetables. He ignored the question but dropped a bombshell, saying that the milk prices would soon go up because of scarcity in north India. Right or wrong, milk prices went up immediately, adding to the woes.
In August, the Maratha strongman decided enough was enough. At a party function, he said, suo motu, “The country has been fighting inflation since 1952, and every finance minister has faced the crisis. But, for last three years, the agriculture minister is being held accountable for it.” Later, he went on to say that inflation was a “collective responsibility” of the government. He was also heard saying that the middle class and the upper middle class were in a position to “bear the price rise”.
Disgusted with his antics, Devinder Sharma, noted food and trade policy expert, wrote in his blog in March last year: “Any strong government, if it wasn’t faced with the compulsions of coalition politics, would have removed the food and agriculture minister by now. The Congress cannot wait any longer. It must get rid of Sharad Pawar, and you will see the prices coming down.”
Not that he cares. Soon after taking over as the ICC president, Pawar told reporters in New Delhi on July 5: “I met the prime minister today and have requested him to reduce my burden. In fact, I have been after the prime minister for the last six months and telling him please relieve my burden... I want more time with my party and ICC. Mujhe rahat milna chahiye (I need relief).” Yes, indeed. It is high time too. Please Mr Prime Minister, do us a favour and relieve him right away!
The minister has acted far too often in the interest of hoarders and against the aam aadmi whose cause he is supposed to champion
Going by Sharad Pawar’s words and deeds in the past several years, you can be pardoned for thinking that he heads the ministry for blackmarketeers and hoarders, rather than food and agriculture that he actually does. Look at what he said last month when the onion prices jumped from Rs 20 a kg to Rs 70 a kg in the course of one week. He said: “Onion prices will remain high for two-three weeks and the situation is likely to improve only after that.” This is nothing short of an open invitation to the blackmarketeers and hoarders to keep doing what they do best for two to three weeks more. What did he base his assessment on? Expectation of fresh arrival of onions in the market from Maharashtra and Rajasthan. And how did he explain the sudden spike in price? Unseasonal rains, of course. He didn’t say a word on banning export or importing onions to improve the situation. In fact, at an inter-ministerial meeting a day later, on December 21, Pawar actually rejected the proposal to import onions. Similarly, he didn’t say a word on why he didn’t make timely arrangements to avoid this situation given the fact that the unseasonal rains hit some of the onion-producing states in the months of October and November. Surely, he and his ministerial staff had sufficient time.
But then you don’t expect Pawar to do something sensible. Every time he opens his mouth you wish he wasn’t there. There have been several instances when he acted against the interest of the aam aadmi and the farmers whose cause he claims to be championing. Remember when the sugar price skyrocketed some months ago, he was accused of stalling import of raw sugar on a plea he is using now: That farmers would benefit from the price hike. He knows, just as well as any lay man, that such price rise is a bonanza for the blackmarketeers and hoarders, not the farmers. Food inflation has remained high, mostly in double digits, for the past three years. There has been a huge outcry throughout the country which eventually led to an unprecedented boycott of the general budget by the opposition parties in parliament. Pawar remained untouched. One day the media corned him and demanded to know what he was doing to check the all-round rise in prices of food grain, pulses, oil, fruits and vegetables. He ignored the question but dropped a bombshell, saying that the milk prices would soon go up because of scarcity in north India. Right or wrong, milk prices went up immediately, adding to the woes.
In August, the Maratha strongman decided enough was enough. At a party function, he said, suo motu, “The country has been fighting inflation since 1952, and every finance minister has faced the crisis. But, for last three years, the agriculture minister is being held accountable for it.” Later, he went on to say that inflation was a “collective responsibility” of the government. He was also heard saying that the middle class and the upper middle class were in a position to “bear the price rise”.
Disgusted with his antics, Devinder Sharma, noted food and trade policy expert, wrote in his blog in March last year: “Any strong government, if it wasn’t faced with the compulsions of coalition politics, would have removed the food and agriculture minister by now. The Congress cannot wait any longer. It must get rid of Sharad Pawar, and you will see the prices coming down.”
Not that he cares. Soon after taking over as the ICC president, Pawar told reporters in New Delhi on July 5: “I met the prime minister today and have requested him to reduce my burden. In fact, I have been after the prime minister for the last six months and telling him please relieve my burden... I want more time with my party and ICC. Mujhe rahat milna chahiye (I need relief).” Yes, indeed. It is high time too. Please Mr Prime Minister, do us a favour and relieve him right away!
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