Reservation for women, not this way

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised on the floor of the House that the women’s reservation bill will be enacted at the earliest. But I hope he will go about it in a democratic manner and not try to shove the existing reservation scheme down everyone’s throat, as the Congress, under pressure from the Left parties, tried to do. The bill in its present form is a classic example of the growing gap between pious promises and actual results of government policies and legislation in India. We need a thorough debate on the proposed legislation so that some glaring infirmities in the bill can be removed before it becomes law, especially since it requires an amendment to the Constitution.

The bill provides for reservation on a rotation basis through a lottery system, which means that two-thirds of the incumbent members will be forcibly unseated in every general election and those remaining will stay in limbo till the last moment. Such compulsory unseating violates the basic principle of democratic representation and is fair neither to men nor women. It jeopardises the possibility of effective planning to contest by nurturing a political constituency for both male and female candidates.

Second, women will be ghettoised and forced to fight elections only against other women. This will deny them the legitimacy of being mainstream politicians. Third, as male legislators will be forced to surrender their seats for a term to women, those who have worked to nurture their constituencies will likely insist that the seat be given to a woman from their family. Since a seat will be reserved once in 15 years, males pushed out of their constituency are likely to field female relatives or even proxy candidates as a stop-gap arrangement and women will not get the chance to cultivate deep roots in their constituency. This is how the biwi-beti-bahu brigade came to dominate our elected bodies, even at the panchayat and zila parishad levels where this rotation system has already been imposed. Finally, the bill is completely silent about women’s representation in the Rajya Sabha and legislative councils.

It is unfortunate that the UPA government did not consider more viable, alternative proposals. The alternative bill proposed by Manushi, the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and Lok Satta had received the endorsements of the Election Commission and several political parties. The alternative bill proposes that a law be enacted amending The Representation of the People Act, 1951, to make it mandatory for every recognised politicalparty to nominate women candidates for election in at least one-third of the constituencies. If a recognised party fails to do this, for the shortfall of each woman candidate, two male candidates of the party shall lose the party symbol and affiliation and all recognition-related advantages. This bill has several advantages over the one tabled in Parliament.

First, parties will be free to field women candidates where they can offer a good fight rather than in pre-fixed lottery-based constituencies, where they may or may not have viable women candidates. Thus, there is flexibility and promotion of natural leadership. Second, women candidates will be contesting both against female and/or male candidates of rival parties. The democratic choice of voters will not be restricted to compulsorily electing only women in one-third constituencies while the other two-thirds are treated like male monopolies.

Third, unlike the lottery system of reserved constituencies, where women’s presence is likely to get ossified at 33 per cent since there would be resistance to letting women contest from non-reserved constituencies, this model allows for far greater flexibility in the number and proportion of women being elected to legislatures. If women are candidates for one-third of all seats contested by each party, theoretically they could win a majority of seats, all on merit. Fourth, it obviates the need for a quota within a quota as is being demanded by certain OBC parties. Since the onus of fielding women candidates will be left to each party, those concerned about increased representation of backward class women can field as many as they think appropriate.

The rotational reservation scheme is likely to face endless delays and obstruction because it requires an amendment to the Constitution. Thereafter, it has to be ratified by at least half  of the state legislatures. Given the overt and covert opposition to this bill within all parties, including the BJP, the bill will face endless hurdles along the way. In contrast, the alternative bill can be passed by a simple majority in the two Houses, since all it requires is an amendment to the Representation of the People Act.

However, whatever the form and shape of the women’s reservation law, we cannot overlook the tragedy inherent in the fact that 67 years after Independence, women need to seek the quota route to entry in politics. This acquires more poignancy because, when the Constitution was coming into force, most prominent women leaders refused to accept the principle of reservation as a route to political power. They did so in the belief that as in the Mahatma Gandhi-led freedom movement, they would be able to carve out a respectable space for themselves without being offered crutches. While in post-Independence India women have been successful in entering all other professions on the basis of merit, politics is one field where they have remained marginalised. This is because a polity where money and muscle power dominates doesn’t make space even for honest men, and is therefore intrinsically hostile to women as a group. Only those who can

outperform or gang up with men in crime and corruption are likely to survive in the existing scheme of things. Modi understands better than anyone else that radical governance and electoral reforms are needed to cleanse our politics of crime and corruption. That alone will make politics women-friendly.

Nobel laureate, activist Nadine Gordimer dies

Nadine Gordimer was first a writer of fiction and a defender of creativity and expression. But as a white South African who hated apartheid’s dehumanisation of blacks, she was also a determined political activist in the struggle to end white minority rule in her country.

Gordimer, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991 for novels that explored the complex relationships and human cost of racial conflict in apartheid-era South Africa, died peacefully in her sleep at her home in Johannesburg on Sunday. She was 90 years old. Her son Hugo and daughter Oriane were with her at the time, Gordimer’s family said in a statement on Monday.

The author wrote 15 novels as well as several volumes of short stories, non-fiction and other works, and was published in 40 languages around the world, according to the family.

“She cared most deeply about South Africa, its culture, its people, and its ongoing struggle to realize its new democracy,” the family said. Her “proudest days” included winning the Nobel prize and testifying in the 1980s on behalf of a group of anti-apartheid activists who had been accused of treason, they said.

Per Wastberg, an author and member of the Nobel Prize-awarding Swedish Academy, said Gordimer’s descriptions of the different faces of racism told the world about South Africa during apartheid.

“She concentrated on individuals, she portrayed humans of all kinds,” said Mr. Wastberg, a close friend. “Many South African authors and artists went into exile, but she felt she had to be a witness to what was going on and also lend her voice to the black, silenced authors.”

Gordimer struggled with arthritis and rheumatism but seemed to be in good spirits when they last spoke three weeks ago, he said.

“Our country has lost an unmatched literary giant whose life’s work was our mirror and an unending quest for humanity,” South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, said in a statement.

Prof. Adam Habib, vice-chancellor and principal of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, described Gordimer as a “revered intellect.”

During apartheid, Gordimer praised Nelson Mandela, the prisoner who later became president, and accepted the decision of the main anti-apartheid movement to use violence against South Africa’s white-led government.

“Having lived here for 65 years,” she said, “I am well aware for how long black people refrained from violence. We white people are responsible for it.”

Gordimer grew up in Springs town, the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Britain and Lithuania. She began writing at age 9, and kept writing well into her 80s.

She said her first “adult story,” published in a literary magazine when she was 15, grew out of her reaction as a young child to watching the casual humiliation of blacks. She recalled blacks being barred from touching clothes before buying in shops in her hometown, and police searching the maid’s quarters at the Gordimer home for alcohol, which blacks were not allowed to possess.

That “began to make me think about the way we lived, and why we lived like that, and who were we,” she said in a 2006 interview for the Nobel organisation.

In the same interview, she bristled at the suggestion that confronting the human cost of apartheid made her a writer.

“If you’re going to be a writer, you can make the death of canary important,” said Gordimer, a small and elegant figure. “You can connect it to the whole chain of life, and the mystery of life. To me, what is the purpose of life? It is really to explain the mystery of life.”

She said she resisted autobiography, asserting that journalistic research played no part in her creative process.

Telling Times, a 2010 collection of her non-fiction writing dating to 1950, offers some glimpses of her own experience. She wrote in a 1963 essay of a meeting with a poet giving her an idea of a life beyond her small home town and her then aimless existence.

Gordimer’s first novel, The Lying Days appeared in 1953, and she acknowledged that it had autobiographical elements. A New York Times reviewer compared it to Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country, saying Gordimer’s work “is the longer, the richer, intellectually the more exciting.”

She won the Booker Prize in 1974 for The Conservationist, a novel about a white South African who loses everything.

Among Gordimer’s best-known novels is Burger’s Daughter, which appeared in 1979, three years after the Soweto student uprising brought the brutality of apartheid to the world’s attention.

Some readers believe the family at its centre is that of Bram Fischer, a lawyer who broke with his conservative Afrikaner roots to embrace socialism and fight apartheid. The story is salted with real events and names including Fischer’s. The main character is a young woman on the periphery of a famous family who must come to terms with her legacy and her homeland.

“Gordimer writes with intense immediacy about the extremely complicated personal and social relationships in her environment,” the Nobel committee said on awarding the literature prize in 1991.

In her Nobel acceptance speech, Gordimer said that as a young artist, she agonised that she was cut off from “the world of ideas” by the isolation of apartheid. But she came to understand “that what we had to do to find the world was to enter our own world fully, first. We had to enter through the tragedy of our own particular place.”

After the first all-race election in 1994, Gordimer wrote about the efforts of South Africa’s new democracy to grapple with its racist legacy. She remained politically engaged, praising South Africa for the progress it had made, but expressing concern about alleged backsliding on freedom of expression.

“People died for our freedoms,” Gordimer, who had had works banned by the apartheid government, told The Associated Press in a 2010 interview. “People spent years and years in prison, from the great Nelson Mandela down through many others.”

When PM becomes CEO

When reviewing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s six weeks in office, the analogy that seems most appropriate is that of a chief executive officer of a large corporation who knows that his future depends on growing the enterprise while satisfying the sometimes conflicting expectations of its chief stockholders. The prime minister presides over what he and others hope will be India Inc. His budget signalled a focus on economic growth. Indeed, the rush of money from global investors to India in the past several months has pushed the Sensex to a record high above 26,000.

Modi has indicated great admiration for four other countries whose leaders have similar CEO styles: China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. The leaders of Japan and China were quick to respond very favourably to his electoral success, in part because they saw a new leader who is committed, above all, to economic development and growth, and could thus provide opportunities for them to deepen the bilateral relationship.

Modi’s task as India’s CEO in pursuit of a similar growth model is helped by the BJP’s strong parliamentary majority, his unchallenged control of the BJP and a public that seems prepared to give him a lot of slack, at least for now, This gives him some initial room to make bold decisions early in his tenure.

Fiscal discipline has been a major theme in the early days of Modi’s tenure. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the Modi government will avoid “mindless populism”, and railway fares and freight rates have been increased to raise the money needed to cover the costs of operations, maintenance and expansion. The government responded to protests by partially rolling back the fare increase, suggesting that it will not let economic reforms get too far in front of public opinion.

On the primary task of growing the economy, there are, however, policy differences within his ranks. A large part of the Sangh Parivar supports economic self-sufficiency, while Modi’s own record as chief minister in Gujarat suggests that he favours increased foreign investment. This dilemma comes out clearly on the topic of foreign investment in the multibrand retail sector. His initial opposition is likely shaped by the resistance to any opening up of this area by one of the BJP’s core constituencies, the small “mom and pop” retail store owners.

Now in power, he may modify this earlier stand on foreign investment in retail. One area of reform that has been discussed is changes to investment policy in the foreign online retail sector. India currently allows 100 per cent FDI in business to business (B2B) e-commerce but not business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce. Jaitley’s budget speech signalled that the government plans to open up e-commerce to foreign investment.

Inpursuit of economic growth, the prime minister will almost certainly have to address the legal disincentives for investment caused by outdated labour and land legislation. However, changes of policy in these areas, too, are deeply controversial, as the BJP’s own labour affiliate, among others, is likely to oppose changes in the 1950s-era labour laws. Nonetheless, Modi has recently indicated that his government plans to revise the new land acquisition law and undertake reforms of India’s labour laws. The BJP government of Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan has already announced very significant changes in the state’s labour laws in ways that would encourage business investments.

As the prime minister pushes to get the economy moving to create the jobs demanded by the young voters who turned to the BJP, there is likely to be a temptation to bypass environmental issues and other regulatory impediments to speed up the decision-making process. While some of these changes are necessary for efficiency, fears that his government will ignore the environment, worker safety and education legitimately fuel some of the early criticism of his government.

However, the prime minister is operating in a political world where he needs to convince the public that his policy model is producing the results he promised and that young voters expect. This objective requires a close reading of the public’s reaction to his policy moves. To promote feedback, Modi has been a strong advocate for using social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook as a means to improve communications between people and governments.

As the country’s CEO, Modi’s goal of rapid economic growth creates strong incentives for social stability, both internally and externally. Throughout the campaign, Modi used a new language, possibly signalling a redefinition and orientation of Hindu nationalism that is more inclusive, by focusing on making India more prosperous and secure in ways that improve the lives of Hindus, Muslims, Christians and everyone else.

Modi caused a stir during the campaign when he said that his first thought is toilets before temples. His language may be influenced by the RSS’s emphasis on karmayoga, referring to its notion of selfless service to society. If Modi continues to focus on an inclusive message of the benefits of development and growth for all Indians and is successful in using his significant influence in the Sangh Parivar to change its views, he may be able to orient the BJP in ways that resemble the moderately conservative centre-right European Christian Democratic parties, which espouse Christian ethics while advocating for broadly inclusive policies.

For now, a critical challenge going forward will be to keep the Hindutva hardliners under control. While Modi has generally avoided wading into sensitive topics, the government’s directive to give preference to Hindi on social media created immediate controversy, forcing the administration to clarify that all Indian languages are important.

The recent elevation of Amit Shah as BJP president, who is both deeply loyal to Modi and has a successful record in delivering electoral campaigns, is clearly designed to strengthen Modi’s hold on the party. However, inlight of the controversy arising over remarks by Shah during the recent campaign, Modi will need to ensure that future electoral tactics fit a model of national stability and inclusiveness that supports an atmosphere for development and growth.

While not a signature component of his electoral campaign, Modi has rapidly signalled that external relations with India’s neighbours would garner executive attention. Modi’s decision to invite the leaders of the Saarc to his inauguration and to make Bhutan his first foreign destination indicates that good external relations and, in particular, positioning India to exercise influence in regional diplomacy and economic cooperation, is a top priority. His foreign policy is likely to very explicitly link India’s geo-strategic interests with its economic policies.

The prime minister has accepted invitations to visit Japan, China and the US, countries of significant economic and security importance. His external affairs minister also has a busy travel schedule to further the same goals. In Sushma Swaraj’s June 25 visit to Bangladesh, she suggested to both countries the economic advantages of Bangladesh serving as a link between India and Southeast Asia. Operating from the perspective of a CEO, Prime Minister Modi is very likely to reorient the task of Indian embassies abroad to shift their focus from political to economic issues.

Modi’s challenge will be to balance the economic perspective of a CEO with the political compulsions of a politician. His skills at juggling these priorities will become most apparent after the current honeymoon period ends, which may well coincide with the debates that arise from the policies proposed in the current budget.

Port Call at Vladivostok and Exercise Indra 2014

Ships of the Eastern Fleet of the Indian Navy, viz., Shivalik, Ranvijay and Shakti, under the Command of Rear Admiral Atul Kumar Jain, VSM, Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet, arrived at Vladivostok today. Indian Navy officials were welcomed by the representatives of the Russian Pacific Fleet Command, Diplomatic corps of India and the honour guard with the orchestra of the Pacific Fleet Headquarters on the 33rd pier of Vladivostok ship quay. The major aims of the visit are strengthening and development of friendly relations between the navies of the two countries and conduct of joint Naval exercise INDRA 2014. In the exercise, the Russian Navy will be represented by guided-missile cruiser Varyag, destroyer Bystry, large landing craft Peresvet along with supply vessels (changes are possible). Air assets of the Pacific Fleet and Indian Navy will also be actively involved in the exercise. The first Indo-Russian bilateral naval exercise was conducted in May 2003 on both the Western and Eastern seaboards of India. Training and improvement of mutual maritime operations are the main aims of the exercise. The exercise will be spread over six days and will comprise harbour and sea phases. From 14 to 17 July, during mooring of the ships at Vladivostok, leadership of the two navies will undertake planning and training for joint operations. The sea phase of the exercise will be held from 17 to 19 July off Peter the Great Bay in the Sea of Japan. During the sea phase, ships of the two countries will engage in tactical manoeuvring, defence against un-alerted raids, cross deck helicopter operations, rendering assistance to a ship in distress, replenishment at sea, joint management of anti-submarine, anti-air and anti-surface warfare. Joint missile-artillery strikes on surface and air targets are also planned to be conducted during the exercise. The exercise will culminate with a farewell ceremony for IN ships at sea.

Airports at Bhopal, Indore and Raipur to be Declared International Airports

The Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Shri G.M. Siddeswara informed the Lok Sabha today that presently the Government is considering the proposals to declare Bhopal, Indore and Raipur airports as international airports. The upgradation of an airport as international airport depends upon various factors like traffic potential, demand from airlines for operation of international flights and presence of facilities like a runway length of 9000 feet to cater to medium capacity long-range aircraft or equivalent type of aircraft, ground lighting facilities, Instrument Landing System for operation of aircraft at night and availability of Customs, Immigration, Health and Animal and Plant Quarantine

National Centre for Research & Development in Bulk Drugs

To fill the crucial existing gap in Research and Development in bulk drugs a National Centre for Research & Development in Bulk Drug (NCRDBD) is to be set at NIPER, Hyderabad with a project cost of over 52 crore rupees and with an operating cost of over 37 crore rupees for five years. Approvals for the purpose have been given. The performance of Bulk Drug sector is one of the critical factors that affect the overall efficiency and cost competitiveness of the pharmaceutical sector. There are nearly 2500 bulk drugs manufacturing units in India. The estimated turnover of the Bulk Drug Industry in 2012-13 was around 12.5 billion US dollars. The industry has shown a Cumulative Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17 percent in the last three years and has a share of about 10% of the global bulk drugs market of about US$ 110 Billion. However, the import of Bulk Drugs has seen a CAGR of 18% during last three years indicating an increasing level of dependence on international supply for this critical input of pharmaceutical sector. This is further compounded by the fact that more than 60% share in imports of Intermediate for Active PIs is from a single country. The centre is to be set up to urgently address these concerns and make the industry cost competitive. In Bulk Drug Industry, the reduced processes and improved technology can help in reducing the cost significantly. The NCRDBD would be an innovative R&D provider in the field of bulk drugs and offer competitive and eco-friendly technologies in specified areas products and processes. This center will also provide centralized research facilities and technologies, analytical facilities and consulting services for process improvement and optimization. It would give special emphasis to the empowerment of MSME sector. The Pharmacy Industry specially the SME sector requires such center since the individual units cannot afford to have their captive R&D facilities.

President of India to present Gandhi peace prize 2013

The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee will present the Gandhi Peace Prize for the year 2013 to Shri Chandi Prasad Bhatt tomorrow (July 15, 2013) at a function at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The Gandhi Peace Prize was instituted by the Government of India in 1995 on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. This annual award is given to individuals and institutions for their contributions towards social, economic and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods. Previous recipients of the award include Dr. Julius K. Nyerere, former President of Tanzania; Dr. A.T. Ariyaratne, Founder President of Sarvodaya Sharamadana Movement, Sri Lanka; Dr. Gerhard Fischer of Germany; Rama Krishna Mission; Baba Amte; Dr. Nelson Mandela and Grameen Bank of Bangladesh (jointly); Dr. John Hume, Ireland; Bhartiya Vidya Bhawan; Mr. Vaclav Havel, former President of Czechoslovakia and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa. It carries a plaque, citation and an amount of Rs. one crore.