MNREGS and UP’s unquenchable thirst for loot

Governance Now
oct 16-31, 2011

For the past three months a team of 250 accountants and auditors from the comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) has been grappling with an enormous amount of data on various schemes of rural development and health in Uttar Pradesh. More than ` 17,000 crore has been spent on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) alone in the past five years and this team’s job is to audit the expenses.
After struggling with the tonnes of data provided by the various state government agencies (there are more than 7,52,000 projects under MNREGS in the current year alone), the team is reported to have sought 250 more auditors and accountants to decipher the riddle. But still they are at their wits’ end. The tools of auditing and accountancy are woefully inadequate to verify the mountains of money the Mayawati government claims to have spent under the MNREGS and National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
Take the implementation of this NRHM scheme in a Bahraich village. Under the scheme, the government gives direct cash help of ` 1,400 to each child-bearing woman in rural areas. According to records, 250 women in the village were given the dole in just one financial year, 2010-11.
A generous state administration indeed, except that there’s a problem. The village has only about 500 families. That would mean that there was a pregnant woman in every second household and that most of the women were of child-bearing age and that all of them were pregnant at the same time!
“This is more of a biological riddle than accounting,” said an officer closely associated with the audit.
Of late, the union rural development ministry has been grappling with more than just biological and accounting riddles. When it put the Uttar Pradesh government’s MNREGS funds disbursement under the lens in May, it turned out that it was dealing with all kinds of impossibilities: logical (such as ` 6.6 crore being spent to erect seven brick enclosures to guard saplings), geographical (such as a road from Taj Mahal to Red Fort being built in Corute village of Varanasi district), mathematical (such as labour being paid ` 44 lakh for 19,178 persondays at ` 120 per personday) and even astrophysical (such as compressing 1,000 days into six months so that they could pay one labourer for 1,000 days of work between April and September). Not to forget the supernatural such as roads and drains worth crores laying themselves out without human intervention or help (e.g., a ` 10 lakh-road in village which was laid without using any labour)!
We have been told fact is stranger than fiction but in Uttar Pradesh fiction wins hands down. For its sheer farcical genius and for its absurdly simple yet extremely well organised methods of mammoth loot, UP could well be unparalleled. Even fiction is generally weaved around a grain of fact. But the governance machinery here carries no such burden in its brazen and inhuman loot of funds meant for the rural poor. A spot visit by four Governance Now reporters to six districts revealed how criminal falsehoods were masquerading as sacred facts.
Our reporters, led by Yash Vardhan Shukla who scented the scoop, visited no less than 16 projects picked randomly from the MNREGS management information system (MIS). The MIS is filled by the concerned state government departments and the rural development ministry puts it up on its website. (That is the other stunning aspect of this MNREGS scam, it is out there in public domain!)
As you will see in the following pages, the violations are screaming and the gall of the corrupt is stupefying. Here is a common thread of violations that runs through all these projects:
n There are huge gaps between “estimated cost” and “actual expenditure”. In most of the cases the actual cost is not just 10 or 15 percent higher but several thousand times high.
n MNREGS was meant to reverse the top-down approach to planning and execution of development projects. Our reporters invariably found that the villagers had no role in deciding the development work. And when something happened, they had little clue about the costs involved. Social audit by the gram sabhas is almost unheard of.
n MNREGS was meant to help the unemployed and hence contractors were kept out and material cost was limited to 40 percent of project cost. In most cases, that is not the case. There are cases where projects worth a crore and more have been implemented without engaging any labour including one in which a pond was dug without any payment made for man or machine. But material (bricks) worth ` 2 crore was purchased.
n And for all violations that were caught, the state administration has only one answer: a clerical mistake in data entry by the MIS operator!
By all indications whatever is going on in Uttar Pradesh in the name of central welfare schemes is a crime against society. Those involved in the crimes seem quite unafraid of consequences or are sure that there shall be none. That is the reason why a data entry in a village in Varanasi has shown ` 1.01 crore spent on a road project titled “Agra ke Taj Mahal se Dilly ke Lal Kila Tak”! Oh, the audacity of the UP babus!
The truth of the matter is, there is nothing that can be done. Even the union rural development ministry that provides the funds can’t do much. When minister of state Pradeep Kumar Jain ‘Aditya’ called a meeting in Varanasi in May 2011 to take stock of the irregularities, the district magistrate skipped the meeting and the next in the chain of command, chief development officer (CDO) S K Singh, dismissed every glaring irregularity as a “data entry mistake”.
Beyond going on tours and writing letters to the state government, the union ministry can do little. After his enquiry tour, ‘Aditya’ wrote: “On the whole the district administration has shown a lack of interest in the affairs of MNREGS. The DPC (district planning commissioner who is the district magistrate himself) has no interest in the MNREGS projects and their implementation. There is serious dereliction of duty on the part of the district administration. This requires a serious enquiry.”
We can be quite certain that the enquiry will never happen because only the state government can order it. We will never know how much white money has been converted into black money using the MNREGS route because in Varanasi district alone it funded no less than 13,018 projects in just one year. Here alone, ` 66.64 crore was disbursed under MNREGS in just one year (2010-11). It is impossible to verify all the projects of Varanasi district, forget lakhs of them across the 72 districts of Uttar Pradesh and many more across the country.
Uttar Pradesh alone has spent more than ` 17,000 crore on MNREGS in five years (over ` 1,29,000 crore nationally). Multitude stories of diversion and leakage of MNREGS funds have hit the national headlines from across the country. So this set of scams from Uttar Pradesh should not even have merited a squeal.
If we are screaming, it’s only because in UP the MNREGS loot has gone way beyond leakages and diversions. Here the demon is devouring the funds. If this continues and spreads to other states, it will undermine the welfare scheme to the extent that sooner than later questions will be raised on the wisdom of continuing the MNREGS.
John Maynard Keynes had said that economic growth can be generated by hiring people to dig holes and then hiring some more to fill them. In the following pages, you will see how well the UP administration has understood Keynes and generated an entire new economy for itself. Here’s an economy that needs to be sent into depression right away. n

Making sense of the poverty debate

Governance Now
Nov 1-15, 2011   

Junking poverty line and removing caps on the number of beneficiaries of social welfare schemes are good policies to follow, except that the government is less than keen to live up to its own words

What is poverty line?
It is the planning commission that fixes the ‘poverty line’. As per the planning commission’s last affidavit before the apex court, this line represents an “expenditure” of ` 32 per head per day on food, health and education (but not house rent) in the urban areas and ` 26 per head per day in rural areas – both at June 2011 price level.
For a family of five, this works out to be ` 4,824 per month in urban areas and ` 3,905 per month in rural areas. Any family spending this or a lower amount a month is considered a below poverty line (BPL) family.
The calculations are based on the Tendulkar committee’s recommendations of 2009 which drew the line at ` 18 per head per day of expenditure in urban areas and ` 15 per head per day of expenditure in rural areas, at the 2004-05 price level. This was scaled up to the June 2011 price level to reach the current poverty estimate.
The scaling up means the BPL population has gone up to 40.74 crore from a little more than 37 crore earlier.
The Tendulkar committee worked out the poverty estimate from the data collected by the national sample survey organisation (NSSO). This means, it was an indirect assessment and not actually based on a direct survey of the poor families.
In 2002, an attempt was made to identify the BPL families directly on the basis of 13 socio-economic indicators but it got mired in litigations and eventually came unstuck.

What is socio-economic and caste census of 2011?
This is a first of its kind census being carried out at the moment to identify the BPL families directly by generating “information on a large number of social and economic indicators relating to households across the country”.
It will do the following: (a) rank households based on their socio-economic status, so that the states and union territories can objectively prepare a list of families living below the poverty line in rural and urban areas; (b) make available authentic information on the caste-wise breakup of population in the country and (c) provide the socio-economic profile of various castes.
Three sets of parameters are being used for the purpose of identifying the BPL families – automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion and ranking based on seven deprivation indicators.
It is the findings of this census, to be available sometime next year, that will form the basis for identifying the beneficiaries of various welfare schemes, as per the October 3 joint press briefing by planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh.

Controversy over poverty line
The planning commission was accused of doing a lazy job, when it merely scaled up the old Tendulkar committee’s poverty estimate, which several leading economists and food right activists said best suited to benchmark the “destitution line”, rather than the poverty line. The paltry sums – of ` 32 in urban and ` 26 in rural areas – were not sufficient to provide healthy living conditions and good education in the current economic conditions, they argued.
Ground realities are quite stunning. Forty-six percent of the country’s children below the age of three continue to be malnourished, according to a government report. A recent World Bank report said 2.4 crore Indians are pushed into poverty every year because of the unbearable health-care expenses. And India continues to remain in the bottom pile (ranked 67 among 81 countries in 2011) in the global index of hunger.
Therefore, when Ahluwalia and Ramesh said on October 3 that the poverty line was being junked, it gladdened the hearts of many. They announced two policy changes: one, from now onwards the planning commission’s poverty estimate would ‘not’ be used to select the beneficiaries of the social welfare schemes and, two, there would be ‘no’ capping on the number of beneficiaries. The beneficiaries would be henceforth determined on the basis of the socio-economic and caste census 2011 findings.
But a few days later, Ahluwalia reversed his stand, provoking another round of uproar. In a letter to attorney-general Goolam Vahanvati, who will represent him in the supreme court in connection with the right to food, he said he was not abandoning the poverty line and that the beneficiaries of subsidised foodgrains would be capped to “fit” the provisions of the food security bill.
The bill proposes food entitlement to be capped at 75 percent in rural areas – of which 46 percent will be “priority households” or the BPL families – and 50 percent of urban population – of which 28 percent will be “priority households” or BPL families.
Incidentally, the October 3 briefing had also introduced an element of ambiguity by adding that “an expert committee will be appointed to ensure that this methodology is consistent with the provisions of the food security bill as it finally emerges”. Its import was clear only when Ahluwalia wrote the letter to Vahanvati later insisting that the number of beneficiaries will be subject to the provisions of the food security bill.

Why is poverty line or BPL tag important?
Right now, a large number of welfare schemes of the union and state governments are linked to the poverty estimate and the beneficiaries are selected on the basis of their BPL status. Some of such central schemes are: public distribution system, national old age pension, Indira awas yojna, national family benefit scheme, pradhan mantri gramodaya yojna, swarnajayanti gram swarozgar yojna, Jawahar gram samrudhi yojna, rashtriya swasthya bima yojna and so on. The state governments have an equally impressive number of such schemes.

What is the way out?
Going by the policy statement of October 3, by Ahluwalia and Ramesh, the logical step is to remove the cap proposed in the food security bill.
The socio-economic and caste census will provide more accurate data to identify the needy requiring help. It, therefore, makes little sense to adhere to an arbitrarily fixed poverty line.
The natural question that follows from this is: why is then Ahluwalia not proposing what seems to be the next logical step but creating confusion? The answer lies in his continued insistence on keeping the subsidy under a tight leash – but only when it comes to social welfare schemes,  never when it involves industry. For example, he has never uttered a word against “revenue foregone” on the corporate income tax that amounted to more than ` 80,000 crore for the financial year that just ended. n

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Don’t fiddle, dismantle MPLADS

Governance Now, edit, Oct 1-15, 2011

Ramesh’s prescription of social audit is no-brainer

Jairam Ramesh loves to hog the headlines and play to the gallery. This he did through his tenure as the environment and forests minister admirably and frequently without making an iota of difference to the pathetic watchdog’s job that the ministry has been doing. He is at it again, this time as the rural development minister. First he introduced a poorly drafted and self-defeating Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill of 2011 in the last parliamentary session  and then called a press conference to give credit to Rahul Gandhi for it. Now he has hit the headlines saying that the MPs are “not ready for the social audit of the MPLADS”. As it turns out, this was in retaliation to increasing criticism of his ministry’s flagship project, NREGS.

Now, it is common knowledge that NREGS suffers from various irregularities and has created little assets. Until June 30, 2011, the “social audit” of NREGS was a self-certifying work which helped only in keeping the irregularities under the carpet. If the outsiders like the civil society can today participate in any meaningful way in the social audit it has nothing to do with Ramesh. The change happened when he was still the minister for environment and forests. Given his previous track record, it is difficult to foresee him making any meaningful change to the functioning of his new ministry that squanders a huge amount of budget contributing precious little to improve life in rural India.

As for the MPLADS, social audit may be what is needed because, like NREGS, this scheme also has done little to justify its existence. In fact, a recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India struck at the very roots of the scheme saying that 18 years after the scheme was introduced there was just “no mechanism” yet to ascertain the “locally felt needs” that it is supposed to cater to. All the government-appointed bodies that examined it from time to time – National Commission to Review the Working of Constitution, the second Administrative Reforms Commission and National Advisory Council – have asked for dismantling it immediately because running a development scheme is not only not the job of the legislators, it undermines local self-government bodies that the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments tried to empower. Coming as it did soon after the economic reforms of 1991 that dismantled the license-permit raj and took away much of the discretionary powers of the MPs, the MPLADS was seen as partial restoration of their clientelist politics. As a former Rajya Sabha MP, Nilotpal Basu, said at a seminar recently, it was meant to bribe the MPs. When it was launched, the Narasimha Rao government was in a minority and had to survive by engineering the JMM bribery. And the recent hike in the fund made available to the MPs under this scheme, from Rs 2 crore to Rs 5 crore, came in the wake of a series of scams – IPL, Adarsh, 2G, CWG, Isro spectrum sale and others.

More than needing a social audit, MPLADS deserves to be scrapped altogether. That would have several advantages. Nearly Rs 20,000 crore that is put at the disposal of the MPs over a period of five years can then be put to better use. Without a fund to splurge, the MPs will be motivated to attend the district level planning, which they are supposed to but don’t because they have their own development scheme to run. It would also allow empowerment of the local self-government bodies that 73rd and 74th amendments intended. Dismantling the MPLADS will also mean putting to better use the official machinery needlessly engaged to monitor the scheme. Ramesh would be well advised to clean up his own stable and engage constructively with MPs, rather than indulging in petty nitpicking that serves no purpose.

Congress and vote bank quota

Governance Now, edit, Oct 1-15, 2011

Govt plans quota for Muslims, not development plans Sachar panel wanted
Union law minister Salman Khurshid announced on September 18 that the government was planning to bring in reservations for Muslims in educational institutions and government jobs. He didn’t provide details but going by his disclosure that the Andhra Pradesh model was being considered, it may be safely assumed that the plan is to provide four percent reservations for the religious minority group. So long as we continue with our policy of reservation as a means to empower the socially and economically backward segments of our society, there can be no argument against the latest move. After all, if reservations can be given on the basis of caste then why not on the basis of creed? And there is no denying that Muslims are one of the most backward communities in the country.

The reservation, however, is different. The Congress-led union government’s concern is not so much about improving the Muslim lot but to win their votes and thus, the next elections. It is vote-bank politics. That is why every now and then we have some group or other staging bandhs and blockades to press for a share in the reservation pie. The Jats enjoy reservation in some northern states but cut down water supply to Delhi a few months ago because they want reservation in union government jobs. The Gujjars of Rajasthan get reservation benefits as part of the OBC but want a larger share by being included in the list of the scheduled tribes. In Rajasthan, even upper caste Brahmins and Rajputs want reservation.

In 2004, the Congress-led UPA set up the Sachar committee to prepare a report on the social, economic and educational conditions of the Muslims. The committee suggested various welfare measures – more ‘regular’ schools, dedicated welfare funds, better representation in local bodies, better access to credit facilities, encouragement to mixed localities etc. Reservation was not one of those. The union government is yet to implement any of those measures (see interview with economist Abusaleh Shariff in this issue).
Instead, it set up the Ranganath Mishra commission which proposed 10 percent reservation for the Muslims and another five percent for other minority groups in education and government jobs. It is this measure Khurshid said his government was eager to implement, but only for the Muslims because they form a significant chunk of the vote bank (a little more than 13 percent of the population). With the looming UP assembly elections, chief minister Mayawati too is following the same path and has demanded reservations for the Muslims, as well as for the poor among the upper castes.

In January 2009, the Kerala high court made an interesting observation while dealing with the state government’s move to provide a quota for the poor students from the forward castes in educational institutions. The court said it was time to bring down the reservation in both government jobs and educational institutions because the socio-economic condition of the beneficiaries – scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes – had undergone “revolutionary” changes and that it was also time to “awaken these communities from the slumber of satiated insouciance”. While the revolutionary changes the court talked about may be relevant to the discourse on the conditions of the targeted groups in that particular state, or those of the neighbouring states, but not for the entire country, reservation has been turned into a political sop nobody is willing to give a second look at.

There are far better ways of achieving genuine and lasting improvement in the socio-economic conditions of the underprivileged. Access to quality education and vocational training, access to easy credit facilities for setting up private business, access to good health care and civic infrastructure etc are some of these measures. As we argue in our cover story, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has achieved remarkable success in improving the lot of everyone, including the Muslims, through such measures. Reservation only increases the hunger for more handouts without fundamentally altering those conditions that necessitate it in the first place.

This is NIA. Wonder why we can't beat terror?

Governance Now, Oct 1-15, 2011

The most exasperating aspect of terror strikes in our country is the perpetrators’ supreme confidence. They had, in a way, issued a warning on May 13 by putting a bomb at the Delhi high court’s parking lot. It didn’t kill anyone and the matter was casually dismissed by our security and intelligence agencies as a ‘minor’ incident. And then they revisited the spot on September 7, killing 15 and injuring more than 50, and sent not one but four separate emails to claim responsibility. One of these mails even warned of an impending strike at a shopping mall. Is the office of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), probing both the incidents from a rented office in the Supreme Forum mall of Jasola in southeast Delhi, their next target? It could well be so. 

You want to know the secret of their confidence? Read on.

Politicisation of Terror

Barely three weeks after the ghastly 26/11 terror strike that killed 260 people, the government enacted the National Investigation Agency (NIA) Act 2008 to set up NIA as a tool to fight terror. Its mandate was “to investigate and prosecute offences affecting the sovereignty, security and integrity of India, security of State, friendly relations with foreign States and offences under Acts enacted to implement international treaties, agreements, conventions and resolutions of the United Nations, its agencies and other international organisations and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto” as home minister P Chidambaram himself outlined it at the end of the bill.

There have been several terror strikes since then – at German Bakery of Pune in February 2010, at Chinnaswamy stadium of Bangalore in April 2010, firing on foreigners outside Delhi’s Jama Masjid in September 2010, at Dashashwamedh Ghat of Varanasi in December 2010, at Zaveri Bazaar and elsewhere in Mumbai in July 2011 and two blasts outside the Delhi high court in May and September 2011. These strikes are believed to be the handiwork of the usual suspects – HuJI, SIMI, IM and so on.

NIA is the obvious choice to take up these cases, you would think. But wait. Except for the Delhi high court blasts, these terror attacks are not probed by it.

You would wonder what NIA is doing then, apart from probing the Delhi high court blasts. Well, it is probing the terror cases that happened before it came into existence: the Malegaon blast of September 2006, Samjhauta Express blasts of February 2007, Ajmer Sharif blasts of October 2007, Modasa blast of September 2008 and the Sunil Joshi murder case of December 2007.

Why so? Look closely for answer. All these latter cases are suspected to be the handiwork of the ‘saffron’ terrorists.

There you are. NIA is, primarily, tasked to probe the ‘saffron’ terror.

No, you are not wrong to assume that NIA has been turned into a political tool already, something that has happened with all our police and intelligence agencies too. So, what would you expect when the BJP or BJP-led coalition comes to power? Turn NIA on its head. Won’t it?

Just see how electoral (or vote bank) politics determines even our fight against terror.

The Jammu and Kashmir assembly (whose new session begins from September 26) has admitted a resolution seeking “amnesty” for Afzal Guru, who was awarded death sentence in 2004 for his involvement in the 2001 attack on our parliament. Recently, the home ministry asked the president to reject his mercy petition pending since 2006. The HuJI, in its mail, said the attack on Delhi high court was in retaliation to this.

In August, the Tamil Nadu assembly passed a “unanimous resolution” appealing the president to “reconsider” the mercy petition of the Rajiv Gandhi killers – Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan. Around the same time, the Madras high court stayed their execution. Ram Jethmalani, the BJP MP who pleaded their case, was quoted as saying afterwards: “The high court is doing justice. Be sure.”

This followed yet another similar episode. In May this year, the president rejected mercy petition of Devender Pal Singh Bhullar of Khalistan Liberation Force – sentenced to death for the 1993 Delhi blast that was targeted at Youth Congress leader Manjit Singh Bitta – hours after the supreme court issued notices on a writ petition questioning a long delay in his execution. Various Sikh bodies now want the Punjab assembly to request the “commuting” of his death sentence. Politicians cutting across party lines have joined the chorus.

Recall how, when Digvijaya Singh, twice chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and Congress general secretary, had to criticise Pakistan for harbouring Osama bin Laden after the Abbottabad operation in May this year, he had to add an honorific ‘ji’ while referring to the dreaded terrorist (“Osamaji”).

More recently, a day after the September 7 blast, former defence minister who was chief minister of UP several times, Mulayam Singh Yadav declared in Delhi without any apparent provocation: “Whenever there is a terror act, a particular community is looked at with suspicion. This is not good. It should stop. It is dangerous.”

Also recall how the BJP-run state governments dragged their feet when it emerged that the ‘saffron’ terror was behind some of the terror incidents like the Malegaon and Samjhauta Express blasts. This was one of the reasons why NIA was given the job to “reinvestigate” those cases. (And that is also why the BJP-ruled states are not cooperating with NIA in investigations.)

With so much politics at play and so many politicians and political parties willing to defend even the confirmed and convicted terrorists, any wonder the terrorists are having a free run in this country?

9/11 and 26/11
What did the US do after 9/11? They appointed a National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the US and took a comprehensive look at the failures, institutional and otherwise. The report ripped apart the security and intelligence mechanisms of the US, described the Congressional oversight mechanism as “dysfunctional” and suggested radical changes. The changes were brought in –a new Department of Homeland Security with overarching and wide range of powers, a tough Patriot Act, more teeth to the FBI and so on. This highly critical and unsparing report was made public and is available in bookshops across the world.

Compare this to our 26/11. It was the state government which appointed the Pradhan committee to go into it, but with a limited mandate – “lapses to act on intelligence inputs”, “lapses to promptly act or react” by the Mumbai police and “to make appropriate recommendations”.  It was assumed from the very beginning that 26/11 was the failure of the state police alone. There was no need to probe into the role of any other agency or agencies – state intelligence unit, central intelligence agencies like Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), Joint Investigation Committee (JIC) or enforcement agencies like Coast Guard, National Security Guard (NSG) and the naval commandos (involved in fighting the terrorists before NSG stepped in) etc.

And the results of even this limited exercise of the Pradhan committee were not made public. After the report was leaked to the media, a Marathi version of it was tabled in the assembly. As for acting on its recommendations, no change has been noticed on the ground.

We simply don’t have a culture of introspection, accountability or taking the responsibility for such gross failures that the US agencies did and hence, are better placed to add teeth to their counter-terror activities.
Chidambaram, who replaced Shivraj Patil as home minister after 26/11, did initiate some measures at the centre. Here is a low down on these measures:

* The Multi-agency Centre (MAC) was set up under the IB’s supervision. Its mandate is to “pull” more information and intelligence from state capitals and “push” more information and intelligence into the security system.

This is a duplication of what the JIC, functioning under the National Security Advisor (NSA) in the PMO, is supposed to do. Those in the know say MAC meets every day and is “slowly taking shape”. But it has made no visible or discernible difference yet to the fight against terror. More on this later.

* NIA was set up. As noted above, it has been turned into a political tool. Moreover, instead of creating a new infrastructure of its own, the agency has borrowed manpower from various state police, central intelligence agencies and paramilitary forces. Close to half of its investigators are from the central paramilitary forces with no experience and training in investigation.

* A “security meeting” was started on a daily basis. The NSA, home secretary, RAW secretary, IB director, JIC chairman and special secretary (internal security) of MHA attend this meeting.

* NATGRID is being set up to provide “quick, seamless and secure access” to 21 sets of database available with government departments. The cabinet gave its clearance only in June this year and it is expected to be operational next year.

Former home secretary G K Pillai, who played a significant role in developing the new security architecture, says it should have come up a year ago but didn’t, because “no one is willing to part with information. They (concerned departments and agencies) are used to a culture of telling only when asked, not otherwise”.

* A National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) is proposed to be set up. This would be a body under the MHA and perform “functions relating to intelligence, investigation and operations”. All intelligence agencies would be represented in NCTC. In fact, it will have NIA, NTRO (National Technical Research Organisation), JIC, NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau), NSG, NATGRID and CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems) within its fold.

RAW, ARC (Aviation Research Centre) and CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) will function under its “oversight” and representatives of intelligence agencies of the armed forces will be its members.

The whole concept, and even the very title of NCTC, is a direct lift from the 9/11 Commission report. Chidambaram banks a lot on this to achieve his goal – “to disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat the terrorist groups”. Close to three years since 26/11, NCTC is still at the drafting stage.

Reason? Pillai says: “There are issues of territory, turf and ego between departments.” This is self-explanatory.


* A Central Foreigners’ Bureau (CFB) has been proposed to keep a tab on undesirable foreign elements. This is a long term project – four to five years – for which more than Rs 1,000 crore is needed. There is little information about its progress.

* A separate department or ministry for “internal security” has been proposed. Chidambaram wanted to recreate the US Department of Homeland Security. Nothing has been heard on it since he last spoke about it in December 2009.

Ajai Sahni, a counter-terrorism expert and executive director of the New Delhi-based think tank Centre for Conflict Management, has this to say on Chidambaram’s biggest anti-terror tool, NCTC: “We don’t need super bureaucrats discussing (security issues) in New Delhi. We need operational intelligence and coordination. NCTC will be as useless as JIC. We need NCTC when there is (adequate) flow of intelligence from the ground.”

His prescription: “Our basic need is to create intelligence and operational capabilities at the grassroots level.” 

Pillai provides some startling facts and figures. He says, our police forces need 18,00,000 more personnel to reach the target of 230 policemen for every 1,00,000 population. Our national average at present is a pathetic 130/1,00,000.

IB needs 4,500 personnel. The government recruited 800 personnel in 2009 (that is the number we can handle at a time for the purpose of their 18-month training). These 800 personnel will go to the field, after completing their training, this year and it will take three to five years for them to develop sources.

His conclusion? “Our intelligence level is still the same as that existed in 2008 (before 26/11).”

Terror strikes in the UK and US prompted their intelligence agencies to focus their attention on suspicious segments of society, carry out extensive community contact programmes that continue till date, carry out extensive surveillance, identify and isolate suspicious elements and develop quick response teams. These steps paid rich dividends. We haven’t attempted any of these.

A former joint director of IB, M K Dhar, says the problem with our intelligence agencies is that they have very little assets in susceptible communities where homegrown terror modules live and thrive.

To make matters worse, he says, the moment a raid happens or an ‘encounter’ takes place in a Muslim-dominated area, various human-right groups, NGOs and political parties jump in and make life miserable for our security forces.

There are other systemic issues too – lack of transparent and merit-based recruitment and arbitrary posting and transfer of police personnel.

It is too well known that no government recruitment takes place without paying money anywhere in the country. (“Corruption starts with the very appointment of the policeman”, says Pillai.) The National Police Mission Division (NPMD) of the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) devised a transparent recruitment policy, which cuts out “discretionary powers” of the politicians, and the home ministry circulated it to all state governments. Only UP followed it and recruited 19,000 personnel last year. UP has also set up a Civil Service Board, supposedly independent of the political masters, to regulate posting and transfer of police officers in the state. But the average tenure of an SP in the state is four months.

That is so, because orders come to the board directly from the chief minister’s office and it complies.
Having paid money for the job and living at the mercy of politicians day in and day out, cops can hardly be expected to do justice to their job. Moreover, their primary job is to maintain law and order and VIP security. Intelligence comes third in the list of priorities for which little time or resources are available.

“Why is the law and order situation bad in the country?” asks Pillai, before answering it himself: “Because no officer can be held responsible or accountable if he is not in control of his force.” He adds that accountability exists and works in our armed forces because the officers themselves decide these matters.

Dark World of Intelligence
Our intelligence and security agencies live and work in complete secrecy. They don’t exist or work outside some inaccessible files. Every possible thing that one probably needs to know about the US Department of Homeland Security or FBI – mandate, mission, budgets, ways and means to interact and inform or know about terror threats and terrorists – is available on their websites. Ours simply don’t exist.

The US Congress has an oversight committee to review, monitor and supervise functioning of their intelligence and security agencies. The 9/11 Commission report said this about its functioning: “Congressional oversight for intelligence – and counterterrorism – is now dysfunctional. Congress should address the problem. We have considered various alternatives….” (Congress is to the US what parliament is for us).

Can you think of a similar mechanism or report in India? Sahni says that to expect accountability in intelligence agencies when there is “not even a rudimentary accountability” in any government department is foolish. He draws attention to how even a constitutional body like the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) came under fire from the government, no less than the PM himself, for exposing 2G, CWG and ISRO Spectrum scams. Our intelligence and other security agencies are reporting to the very same politicians.

Here is a secret revealed. CAG submitted a special audit report exposing massive corruption in NTRO and actions of its officials leading to compromise with national security to the PMO in February this year. This happened because of a whistleblower, V K Mittal, and a daring CAG, Vinod Rai. The PMO, instead of acting on it, constituted another probe and entrusted the task to RAW chief Sanjeev Tripathi. Tripathi recently returned the brief, expressing his inability to probe the matter. All that the PMO officials now say is that it is an “unfortunate development”.

Dhar says he and other like-minded people have been demanding parliamentary oversight over our intelligence and security agencies, just as it exists in the US. Vice president Hamid Ansari made an impassioned plea for setting up a parliamentary standing committee to make intelligence agencies accountable to the legislature while addressing the R N Kao Memorial Lecture in January 2010. Manish Tewari of the Congress has moved a private member’s bill in this regard too, but there is little political will to make it happen.

Now you know the secret of terrorists’ supreme confidence: An overdose of politics even when it involves confirmed and convicted terrorists and complete absence of accountability and transparency in our governance system.


Box 1
Chidambaram’s new architecture
Multi-agency Centre (MAC): Part of IB and meets every day. Its job is to “pull” more information and intelligence from state capitals and “push” more information and intelligence into the security system.

Daily security meeting: Home minister takes this meeting every day, around noon, which is attended by NSA, home secretary, secretary (RAW), DIB, chairman of JIC and special secretary (internal security) of MHA.

NCTC: The proposed body to take NIA, NTRO, JIC, NCRB, NATGRID, CCTNS and NSG under its wings. RAW, ARC and CBI to be under its oversight. Intelligence units of the armed forces will have its representation too. It will be part of the MHA.

NATGRID: to provide “quick, seamless and secure access” to 21 sets of data base available with government departments.

NIA: Established in December 2008 to investigate terror cases.
Central Foreigners’ Bureau: To monitor foreign nationals

Old and existing architecture

Intelligence elements: IB (reports to HM), RAW (reports to PM), JIC, NTRO, ARC (report to NSA), National Security Council Secretariat (reports to NSA).
Armed forces have their own intelligence agencies and an umbrella body, DIA.
Agencies specialising in finanacial intelligence – directorates in Income Tax, Customs and Central Excise, Financial Intelligence Unit, Enforcement Directorate.
Enforcement elements: CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, Assam Rifles, SSB, NSG.
Administrative elements: MHA, PMO and cabinet secretariat

Toothless Tiger
Terror cases with NIA
1. Delhi high court blasts, May and Sept 2011
2.    Malegaon blast, Sept 2006
3.    Samjhauta Express blasts, February 2007
4.    Ajmer Sharif blasts, October 2007
5.    Modasa (Gujarat) blast, September 2008
6.    Sunil Joshi murder case, December 2007

All except the first happened before NIA came into existence and which are suspected to be the handiwork of ‘saffron’ terror groups. And in none of these cases the state governments are cooperating with NIA.

Terror cases not with NIA1.    German bakery blast of Feb 2010
2.    Blasts at Chinnaswamy stadium, Bangalore, April 2010
3.    Firing at foreigners outside Jama Masjid, Sept 2010
4.    Blasts at Dashashwamedha Ghat, Varanasi, Dec 2010
5.    Mumbai blasts of July 2011

In none of these saffron terror groups are suspected to be involved but happened after NIA came into being.

Tantra

The word tantra, which is generally derived from the root “tan”—to spread, is difficult to define as it loosely admits of very wide latitude of meaning.
The scriptures declare that “Hum” the formula perexcellence of the great void known as
the thunderbolt because of its adaptablity and hence adamantine nature is the vital word
of divine emancipation revealed in the vajrayana school of Buddhist thought & assimilated
into Hinduism through the tantras. It is the key word designating the meditating Buddha
“Aksobhya” because of his imperturbable nature. Quite early in the history of the great
vehicle (Mahayana) feminine divinities found their ways in the pantheon. One such was
prajnaparmita, the perfection of insight, the personification of the qualities of the
Bodhisattva.

Later the Buddhists and Bodhisattvas, who were thought of as males, were
like the gods of Hinduism, endowed with wives who were the active aspect, the “force”
or “potent” (sakti) of their husbands. The God was believed to be transcendent and aloof,
while the Goddess was active in the world; thus the God might be best approached
through the Goddess. The productive activity of the divine was thought of in terms of
sexual union an idea as old as the Rig Veda with the spread of these ideas sexual
symbolism and even sexual intercourse as a religions rite were incorporated into the
schools of both Hinduism and Buddhism.
With these ideas was combined a new magical mysticism. The lesser vehicle
(Hinayana) taught that release was obtained by the gradual loss of individuality through
self-discipline and meditation; the Great vehicle (mahayana) added that the grace and
help of the heavenly Buddha’s and Bodhisattvas assisted the process.
Vajrayana
The followers of the new teachings taught that it could be best attained by acquiring magical power, which they called vajra (“Thunderbolt” or “diamond”). Hence the new school of Buddhism was called Vajrayana the vehicle of the Thunderbolt. In the 7th century Hiuen sang found certain monasteries permeated with magical practices.

The chief divinities of the new sects were the “Saviouresses” (Taras), the spouses
of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. There were also a host of Lesser divinities, many
called by the names of demons, such as “out caste women” (matangis) “demonesses”
(pisacis) “Sorceresses” yoginis and “she-ghouls” (dakinis). The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas
with their Taras were approximated to the less amiable members of the Hindu pantheon,
and were often depicted with many arms in ferocious poses.

Tantra
As in the days of Brahmanas, it was though that these deities should be compelled
rather than persuaded. The text books outlining the means (Sadhana) of doing this were
called Tantras and hence the new cult is often referred to as tantric.

By pronouncing the right formula (mantra) in the correct manner, or by drawing the correct magical symbol (Yantra), one might force the gods to bestow magical power on the worshipper and lead him to the highest bliss.

Among the many formula of tantric Buddhism, one is specially famous- the “six syllable” (sadaksara) OM MANI PADME HUM- “Ah ! the jewel is indeed
in the Lotus !” may be sexual in its original significance, mystically repeating the divine
coitus of the heavenly Buddha and prajnaparamita and of Avalokitesvara and his Tara.

Tantric Buddhism did not neglect the techniques of mental training which were part
of all chief religions of India, but their direction was altered. Their primary purpose now
was to obtain super normal power. The meditations of the Vajrayana were often positively
psychopathic.

The practitioner of the system might so hypnotize himself as to imagine
that he was reborn from the womb of a Tara, or he himself might become Tara, to kill his
father the Buddha and take his place.
In sexual union with a female devotee he and his partner would become Buddha and Tara or he himself might become Tara. In the sexual rites of tantric Buddhism all taboos were lifted. Even incest was permitted; for what was sin to the ignorant was virtue to the initiate and so as well as ritual copulation meat and alcohol were indulged in at the tantric covens. These things were however done under strict control and only by initiates at sacred ceremonies.
The tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana) flourished in the time of Bhauma-karas. The
Bhanjas of Baud (Khinjali mandala) were their feudatories who showed their loyalty to
Bhauma rule. Therefore this cult was extended to Khinjali mandala with Baud as its chief
center. The findings of Buddhist antiquities and monuments in Baud region clearly indicate
the existence of tantric cult.

Courtesy Orissa government site....Tantric Buddhism in Bauda and its Development

Postcards from the Republic of Hunger

March 29, 2010, Governance Now
People of Balangir district of the infamous KBK region of Odisha want food, not government schemes to provide food

Starvation deaths and Orissa have become synonymous. It does not raise eyebrows anymore. Nobody loses sleep over them, least of all the local administration. A series of reports has appeared in a national daily pointing out that about 50 people have perished to hunger in Balangir (one of the three districts infamous as KBK, along with Korapur and Kalahandi) alone in the past two to three years. Not even a perfunctory inquiry has been ordered. The local media has, more or less, ignored the tragedy. If at all, the issue is being debated by civil society groups but the bone of contention is that the figure might be exaggerated. The state human rights commission has made a bold move to visit the affected areas but its report will take some time.

A quarter of a century ago, when starvation deaths first shook the nation’s conscience, big plans were made and a lot of money was pumped in to provide food and reduce poverty in the KBK region. A long-term action plan (LTAP) was made, which was then rechristened with some modification as a Revised LTAP plan. Then came the Biju KBK plan. The KBK districts were reconstituted into eight districts to improve administration. All that planning is meaningless now because all that has been done on paper. There is nothing on the ground to show.

The KBK region continues to languish in poverty, particularly Balangir. A huge chunk of population migrates out every year in search of work. Though there are no official records, civil society groups put the figure at 100,000 (of a total population of about 15 lakh). Most of them go to Andhra Pradesh to work at brick kilns. They go half-fed, suffer from various diseases because of poor nutrition and die young. According to Umi Daniel of a non-governmental agency, Aide et Action, South Asia, who studies problems of migration and related issues, the average life expectancy of the migrants is 40 years.

The government has various schemes to ensure that nobody goes hungry. Subsidised ration is provided to BPL and APL families. Then there are ICDS, mid-day meal scheme, Antyodyaya Anna Yojana and Annapurna Yojana to take care of the needy. But a large number of these migrants, who qualify as BPL families, don’t get any benefit. The BPL list has not been updated since 1997. No BPL also means they are denied other benefits like pension for widows (one has to fill in the BPL card number in the form), Indira Awas Yojana and other such schemes. The food-for-work carried out under the KBK plan has been discontinued. Work under NREGS is hard to come by because the average number of days of work is less than half the mandatory 100 days. And since the migrant families are mostly landless and the state has poor irrigation facilities, it is that much harder for them to work in the fields as farm labourers. Months leading to the monsoon are, therefore, the toughest to survive.

The central government may be working towards a right to food bill but these migrants of Balangir are doomed to die young--to disease and starvation, thanks to an inept government and years of negligence and absence of alternative sources of employment.