From death to life: Supreme Court does it right, AIADMK politicises it

The right to life is sacrosanct. This is the message from the Supreme Court which on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of three convicts — Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan — in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The court rightly stated that an “inordinate and unreasonable” delay in the disposal of the mercy petitions of the convicts rendered the “process of execution of death sentence arbitrary, whimsical and capricious and, therefore, inexecutable”. The verdict is also proof that the judiciary’s outlook is in keeping with the international call for doing away with the death sentence or awarding it only in the ‘rarest of rare cases’ where there is irrefutable evidence.
After the Tamil Nadu governor had rejected the trio’s mercy petitions in April 2000, the ministry of home affairs submitted the mercy petitions for the President’s consideration in July 2005 — after a delay of more than five years. Finally, in September 2011 the President rejected their mercy petitions but by then the convicts had waited for agonising 11 long years. The apex court’s observation that a “mercy plea can be decided at much faster speed than what is being done now” is spot on and has been proved by the Centre, as in the hanging to death of Afzal Guru. Guru was convicted for the 2001 Parliament attack and in 2002 he was sentenced to death. In February 9, 2013, six days after the President rejected his mercy plea, Guru was hanged to death in a stealthy manner. Here all the systems came in to place and a decision was taken within a ‘reasonable time’.

While the apex court’s decision to commute the death sentence of the three to life is understandable, the Tamil Nadu government’s decision to seek the release all the seven convicts in the case is questionable. The AIADMK government, in its hurry to score a political point over its rivals, should not overlook the gravity of the crime. These seven people have been convicted for murder — in this case no less than the assassination of a former prime minister. Political parties should refrain from trying to make capital out of this issue to reap benefits in an election year. This sends a wrong signal and obscures the laudable objective of setting aside the death penalty.

Telangana-Seemandhra divide stalls Parliament

The second day of the last session of the present Lok Sabha saw a ruckus in Parliament over the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh — into Telangana and Seemandhra. Scenes of MPs walking into the well of the House, shouting slogans and stalling its proceedings have now become par for the course, they were a constant feature in the previous sessions as well. Congress leader and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N  Kiran Kumar Reddy sat in protest against the Centre’s bifurcation move in Delhi and met President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday to request him to stop it. If this was not embarrassing enough, some Congress MPs even gave a notice of no-confidence against the prime minister. The political atmosphere has been so badly vitiated  that the Union Cabinet’s review on the proposal will not be of much help to the Congress. If the party were to drop the issue at this juncture, it would show the central leadership in poor light and would further antagonise the Seemandhra region. However, the political dividends of pressing ahead with the bifurcation are minimal, especially after the Andhra Pradesh assembly rejected the Centre’s bifurcation Bill.

Jaganmohan Reddy

For a party that has been in power in Andhra Pradesh since 2004, the Congress has shown an alarming lack of skill in addressing the Telangana issue. This last-minute enthusiasm suggests that the party is more interested in the poll arithmetic than the welfare of the people from both the regions. If the party thought that the bifurcation would improve its chances of winning the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the Seemandhra region, the protests from the region and its MPs have cast doubts on that. The Congress’ dilly-dallying has given a new lease of life to K Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi. The Congress also underestimated the support base of YSR Congress (YSRC) chief Jaganmohan Reddy. In 2009, Andhra Pradesh, by voting in 33 of the 42 MPs, played a crucial role in the giving the requisite numbers to the Congress-led UPA to form the government at the Centre. With the YSRC, the TRS and Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP gaining momentum, and the revolt within the state Congress unit, the party’s prospects in the assembly and general elections don’t look too bright at the moment.
If the discussion on the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh has reached this state, the blame is squarely on the Congress’ poor political management. Gone are the days when Delhi would decide and the states would nod in approval. The Congress has sown the wind by ignoring the sentiments of the people of Andhra Pradesh, and it is now reaping the whirlwind of discontent and protest.

Telangana: Congress disagrees with Kiran Kumar Reddy's script for Andhra Pradesh

N Kiran Kumar Reddy

‘The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing’ — this phrase best  describes the present crisis the Congress is facing in Andhra Pradesh. The Congress-led UPA at the Centre wants the creation of India’s 29th state Telangana, by bifurcating Andhra Pradesh, but the leaders in Hyderabad are literally in two minds. While chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy is opposing the move, his deputy, Damodar Raja Narasimha, is for a separate Telangana state. In a move that highlights this divide and which puts a question mark over the Centre’s plan to introduce a Bill for a separate Telangana in Parliament, Reddy on Saturday issued a notice to Speaker Nadendla Manohar seeking a motion for returning the draft Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill to the Centre. Mr Reddy rejected the Bill stating that it did not give a ‘reason/basis’ for the bifurcation of the state. On Monday, the divide came out in the open with repeated adjournments of the assembly and with Mr Narasimha even demanding Mr Reddy’s resignation.
At the heart of the debate are the sentiments of the people on the Telangana and Seemandhra sides — both sides feel that they have been given short shrift. While one side of the divide blames the government for delaying the creation of the Telangana state, the other side criticises the ‘unjust’ division of the state and its resources. The state government, and the Centre, should have seen this coming. They should have taken the people from both sides of the divide into confidence, listened to their grievances and arrived at a formula that was acceptable to all parties. It was not for want of time that the party finds itself in the present mess — the call for a separate Telangana has been on for decades and it has been more than three years since Justice BN Srikrishna handed over his committee’s recommendations on the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
No matter how things pan out in Andhra Pradesh, one thing is clear: the Congress has failed to read the mood of the people. It has for far too long been unclear on its commitment to the creation of Telangana. This suggests bad political management and will have an impact not only the on the state elections but also on the Lok Sabha elections, both to be held in a  few months. If opinion polls are anything to go by, the Congress, which had won 33 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state in 2009, will find it very hard to even get half of that tally. For a Congress that has been on the backfoot after the drubbing it received at the recent assembly elections held in four states, this is not good news.

Uttar Pradesh: Mulayam’s Hindi is Akhilesh’s English

'Son, the Hindi for ... SIM card is...' 

Recycling is an environment-friendly process and old things, as much as possible, should be recycled. However, it’s another thing to recycle old ideas, especially the redundant ones. Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s call to ban the use of English language in Parliament should be seen in this light. Mr Yadav was speaking at a function at Etawah in Uttar Pradesh where he said that many leaders had a ‘double standard’ when it came to Hindi, as they asked for votes in Hindi but spoke in English in Parliament. His suggestion to use one’s mother tongue in Parliament is a flawed one and does not act in the favour of his idea to promote Hindi. The mother tongue of more than half of the members of the Lok Sabha is not Hindi and if one were to take heed of the SP leader’s suggestion, there would be more than 20 different languages spoken on the floor of the House. The resultant scene can only be described as pandemonium.
To look at English as a vestige of our colonial past is wrong, as today the language belongs to all its users, both native and non-native speakers. In a multi-lingual country like India, where dialects of the same language change every 100 kilometres, English is the lingua franca and linguam primarium. English is a thread that connects various states and cultures. Many states in India have suffered because of an aversion towards English — the case of West Bengal is an example. India’s IT/ITES revolution owes its success a great deal to the language. Many of the political leaders who talk about the need to shun English make it a point to send their children to English-medium schools and to universities in the US, the UK or Australia.
This fall back on the attitude towards the usage of English by the Samajwadi Party leader shows the party’s paucity of ideas in this election season. Uttar Pradesh, where the party runs the government, has recently been in the news for the wrong reasons like the communal tension in Muzaffarnagar, which saw many people die and scores of people living in relief camps months after the riots. The healthcare scenario, with a high infant mortality rate, is not very impressive and there is a lot of scope for improvement. Rather than focusing on these and other pressing issues, Mulayam Singh’s statement has shown that the hope placed on a young Akhilesh Yadav as the chief minister of the most populous state in the country was misplaced. The young chief minister of UP, who himself holds a degree from the University of Sydney, Australia, must work towards dispelling the impression that his government and party are resorting to retrograde ways to reach out to the people and instead take all the steps towards putting the state on the development path. Shunning English is not a step in the right direction.

NCTC: Congress gives terror plan a quiet burial

With home minister Sushilkumar Shinde saying that the government will not bring a Bill on the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) in Parliament it is almost certain that it is curtains on P Chidambaram’s proposal for an integrated counter-terrorism centre. The main reason cited for not pursuing the NCTC idea is that there has been vehement opposition to the centre from various chief ministers. What seems to have turned the tide against the move was the opposition from Congress chief ministers. The June 5 chief minister’s meeting on internal security highlighted one crucial aspect that when it comes to matters regarding internal security there is no cohesion between the Centre and states. The Mumbai 26/11 attacks and the many other attacks that followed exposed, beyond doubt, the gaping holes in India’s security network. With the May 25 Maoist attack still fresh in the mind it was hoped that states, looking beyond federalist confines, would come together to address some of the pressing internal security problems India is facing today.
Law and order is a state subject and state governments fear that the proposed NCTC will compromise the existing structure and give the Centre superseding powers tampering the current autonomy they enjoy. The National Intelligence Grid (NatGRID), meant for gathering intelligence from various sources, was opposed for privacy violations and safety of information. Even the Multi-Agency Centre (MAC), which was praised by Shinde at the June 5 meeting, hasn’t been fully operational. The Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) is yet to take off. More than a dozen chief ministers expressed their reservations and even after the government proposed a watered-down NCTC, after agreeing to keep it out of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and curtailing its power to make arrests, there seems to be not many takers. These also included Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan and recently elected Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah.
In the territorial wrangles between different states and the Centre, the point politicians miss is that the extremist forces, both within and outside the country, do not factor state boundaries —they use it to their advantage, and make the most of a dithering government. For any tangible progress to be made, a co-ordinated approach is required in which all states are equal stakeholders. The Centre and states should come together and form a comprehensive plan to tackle terror. The communion between agencies will have to be in tandem with more intelligence gathering at the ground level. Even for a proposal like the NCTC to make a difference, there is a need for getting more forces that can gather information at the ground level and hawk-eyed surveillance wherever possible. Unless such progress is made, for which greater political will is required from all parties, the government will still fail to protect its citizens.

Four years of UPA2: Where's the party tonight?

Photo by AP

The Congress-led UPA, which completed four years into its second term, may not be popping open champagne bottles but it deserves a pat on the back. In an era of coalition politics, where national parties have lost ground and have been confined to regional pockets of power, and where regional parties have had a field day at the national level, it is no mean task to complete nine years in power. Riding on the success of schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Right to Information Act and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan implemented in its first term, in its second term the UPA continues to keep the momentum. The government has been able to maintain a respectable financial atmosphere at a time when economies around the world are struggling in the red, though a lot more needs to be done to ensure that the economy does not slip any further and improves, like giving a push for industry and opening the economy further. Under the UPA 2 poverty figures have fallen from 37.2% in 2004-05 to 29.8% in 2009-10. By the execution of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru the government has sent a strong message that it is not a soft power and that there is no compromise on national security. On the foreign policy front it is a mixed bag. New Delhi’s handling of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives could have been better. However, in its dealing with China and Afghanistan the government has shown great finesse. India has shown great resolve in maintaining political and economic interests with Myanmar, Vietnam and even Japan, while at the same time not straining its ties with China.

There are many things that the UPA could have done differently to avert the negative criticism it is receiving. A bolder and more aggressive prime minister — much like the Manmohan Singh during the Indo-US nuclear deal — would have helped evade much of this criticism. The government seems to have been plagued by allegations of corruption and just when it tides over one scam it is greeted by another. Also a part of the perceived failure of the UPA 2, and an issue the BJP is highlighting as the government’s failure, comes from the government’s inability to pass important Bills such as the food security Bill and the land acquisition Bill. However, if the UPA government has not been able to table the Bills in Parliament it was mainly because opposition parties, headed by the BJP, resorted to frequent disruption of proceedings. The mulish stubbornness of the opposition saw the last two sessions of parliament going virtually without any business done. The principal opposition is the government-in-waiting — a fact the BJP seems to have forgot. While the BJP has been vitriolic on its attack on the PM and has taken great pains to tar the government black, it has failed to suggest measures it would take in the event of the party comes to power in the next general elections.
While the opposition aided by an alert media have been quick to highlight the pitfalls of the government — and they have rightly done so, the government has failed to go to the people with its positive steps it has initiated over the years.

Bollywood Loses the Plot and Trivialises the Issue

Film stars discovering themselves on television shows, be it reality shows, chat shows or even soaps, is not a recent phenomenon. There is also nothing novel about the media frenzy — doctored without doubt — surrounding it. These days with TV rivalling cinema as we know it there isn’t much surprise that many film stars — even the so-called superstars — are testing new waters. Even though only a handful of these film stars who have ventured into the small screen have tasted success, it nevertheless is still a very enchanting milieu.
The entry of Aamir Khan — last of the troika Khans in Bollywood to do so — with an ‘Oprah Winfrey type show’ into every Indian living room was pitched sky-high. Three episodes old Satyamev Jayate is the talk of the town — or at least that is what the media keeps reminding us by saying that the show has broken all known records on TV viewing records and has forced law-makers take decisions.
It is telecast at the ‘Mahabarat’ slot —11 am on Sunday. Telecasting at a coveted timing, however, will alone not do the trick. Unlike the epic, Satyamev Jayate does not have drama, grandeur and flamboyance. What it has, instead, is an artificial, thrust-down-your-throat packaging of reality. If the producers of Satyamev Jayate thought they could replicate the Mahabarat success, it only goes to show their overconfidence in their marketing genius. Mahabarat is an Indian epic, with almost all the essential ingredients to keep one glued to the TV. That it was based on a religious text helped in its success.
Satyamev Jayate, on the other hand, speaks about taboo issues that are unfortunately prevalent in our society but none would want to address. This in no way is to undermine the importance of the topics that are discussed, but how many people would want to spend a lazy Sunday morning listening to issues that many cringe at?
The promoters of the show have heavily relied on the image of Aamir Khan as a crusader for social causes and have taken great pains to show that the issues discussed are close to his heart. The fact that female foeticide is close to the actor’s heart will make good Page 3 news or will make headlines in news channels that have unashamedly blurred the lines between news and entertainment. The question is: how does it matter to someone who is taking such a decision, wrong as it is, either due to ignorance or pressing circumstances whether Aamir Khan is against the practice? Film stars or celebrities have not been able to create such a profound impact in society. If that was the case, law and order would have been much better in the country given the number of police-officer roles the popular film stars have portrayed.
In the effort of covering Aamir Khan in an activist armour the promoters of Satyamev Jayate have actually done harm to his image as an entertainer. That, one presumes, explains the clarification given by the actor shortly after first episode of Satyamev Jayate stating that he was just an ‘entertainer’. It perhaps seems that it was seen as necessary to disassociate the ‘star’ from the ‘cause’, not because the ‘cause’ was not worthy to be associated with the ‘star’ but because contrary to expectations the ‘cause’ was hampering the image of the ‘star’.

An overkill of activism is eating into the ‘entertainment’ quotient Aamir Khan is commanding, and there is little argument that projects he is associated with are the most anticipated ones in Bollywood. In addition to the quality of the film and publicity surrounding it, what gives an Amir Khan movie an edge is the fact that unlike many other stars there is a certain invisibility about the actor from the public eye and rampant speculation about the project/film. Satyamev Jayate brings him in the news almost every day, into the living room space and thereby killing an anticipation that earlier existed. One wonders how this will affect his Talaash, which is now slated for a November 2012 release and by then Satyamev Jayate would have run its whole season and Aamir Khan would have addressed almost all social evils in the country. Would this constant reminder of what ails our society hamper Aamir Khan’s glow? After all, who likes someone who always points out the mistakes in us?
Finally, recent news reports linking Satyamev Jayate to Parliament passing a Bill on child molestation and Rajasthan seriously considering addressing female foeticide is wrong on two counts. First, it trivialises these important social evils. One only wishes addressing these issues was such an easy task. Secondly, to say that our politicians wake up and take note only if celebrities speak is a sad state of affairs.