Money in black

Corruption in India has undergone a qualitative shift from the days of licence Raj to the era of liberalisation. Opportunities for making money have come in handy for politicians, who were also dealing with a new political situation of fragmentation and instability.

In the days leading to the 2008 Assembly election in Karnataka, slum-dwellers in Bangalore were startled to see small bundles flying in through their windows at night. The rolls of currency, covered with polling slips, marked a new low in political corruption. Distributing cash to voters began around 2005, according to some accounts, starting with municipal elections in parts of the country, but by 2009, it became brazen in several Lok Sabha constituencies, particularly in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

T.M. Selvaganapathy, former Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP, who was disqualified in April after being convicted in a scam that dates back to 1995 when he was Rural Development Minister in the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government, said: “In Tamil Nadu, an established model of bribing voters has been established in which whoever pays more will win ... The remedy is that that the Election Commission needs to take over the enforcement of the model code by its own staff rather than leave it to the district administration.”

Corruption underwent a qualitative shift with the advent of liberalisation in the early 1990s — from “retail to wholesale,” as the former Central Vigilance Commissioner N. Vittal put it. Earlier, doling out licences and awarding government contracts were the primary sources of corruption, done on a piecemeal basis; post-liberalisation, formulating policies that benefit select players and discretionary distribution of natural resources created an abundance of rent-seeking opportunities for politicians. A politician in a north Indian State is said to have changed his nameplate from “Notary and real estate agent” to “Minister and real estate agent.”

New opportunities for making money came in handy for politicians, who were also dealing with a new political situation of fragmentation and instability. Money was needed in huge quantities to keep the “system” stable and functional — demonstrated by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha bribery case in which the former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao was accused of bribing MPs for winning a parliamentary vote. In several States, the chief ministers sent suitcases to MLAs regularly to keep them happy.

Beyond generating resources to service the vested interests within the system, politicians also began to dabble in industry, resulting in the emergence of a new class of politician-entrepreneurs. Ministers and lawmakers sat on top of immense wealth created by magical enterprises they built overnight, in a blatant display of their ability to use political power for personal profiteering. The voters were watching all these, and in some ways, the splurge of freebies and subsequently, the distribution of cash to voters were attempts to keep their anger in check.

Alongside the march of corruption, several counterbalancing forces were taking shape. Judicial and civil society activism and assertive roles of institutions such as the Election Commission and the Comptroller and Auditor-General quickly flagged corruption as a matter of serious public concern. New legislation such as the Right to Information Act enabled the fight against corruption. Sometimes, articulation of presumptive loss due to corruption created such revulsion among the public that display of ill-gotten wealth suddenly appeared an unattractive idea. For instance, former CAG Vinod Rai estimated losses in 2G spectrum allocation in 2008 at Rs. 1.76 lakh crore and windfall gains to those who got coal blocks allocated from 2004 to 2009 at Rs. 1.85 lakh crore. The Anna Hazare movement turned the fight against corruption shriller.

Mr. Rai, whose biography was released recently, told The Hindu: “I sincerely believe that anyone who has something to narrate and want to contribute to ethical governance must write. Even if 10,000 copies [of the book] are sold, it shows that people are interested in knowing more about how their government functions.”

The Election Commission’s strict enforcement of the curbs on electoral spending and coordination with multiple enforcement agencies to check the flow of liquor and money has reduced the advantage prosperous candidates had.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) is one civil society organisation that has been at the forefront of several campaigns that checked political corruption. Last year, the Delhi High Court directed the Election Commission to collect data on the criminal records of candidates. This data, along with candidates’ educational qualifications and wealth of their dependents, was made public and mandatory. Another petition by the ADR under the Right to Information Act (2005) led the Chief Information Commissioner to order political parties in 2008 to disclose the sources of their contributions of more than Rs. 20,000, which has led to a curious situation of “crowd-funding” by some parties that account for most of their income in individual contributions less than the threshold.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that convicted legislators sentenced to more than two years in prison would be disqualified from Assemblies and Parliament, even if their appeals in higher courts were pending. Former Railway Minister Lalu Prasad and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa thus lost membership of the respective Houses they were elected to. In Tamil Nadu, this caused widespread protests in support of the convicted leader. Electoral reforms can further improve the situation, but election funding is no longer the sole or the most important cause of corruption. More transparency in the engagement between the industry and politics is called for.

Conviction and resultant removal from public office of two prominent political figures within a short interval has signalled that corruption can have unpleasant consequences for the corrupt. But the road ahead is long and uneasy. “Politicians retain an amount of deference due to their position despite being convicted. Ms. Jayalalithaa’s case took 18 years. Application of laws during the investigation is improper and despite stringent laws politicians manage to get away,” ADR founder Jagdeep Chhokar told The Hindu

The liberated soul

“If you really want to judge the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another, watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man”. ~ Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga

Every important personality in history runs the risk of being misinterpreted and misunderstood. Mahatma Gandhi is no exception. In his lifetime he was criticised rather than worshiped. After his death, he has been worshiped more often without being followed, and dismissed or misinterpreted without being read. He was an enigma to his compatriots due to his inconsistencies. In his words, “I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent.   When anybody finds any inconsistency between any two writings of mine, if he has still faith in my sanity, he would do well to choose the latter of the two on the same subject”.

The thoughts of Gandhi are based on his instinct. He had once advised that anyone who wished to follow him after his death should simply look at what he did and how he did it, rather than look for any doctrine.  He was once asked by a western reporter to convey a message to the people of India. He quickly took a scrap of paper and wrote a sentence which read: ‘My life is my message’.

The Mahatma was a completely integrated personality. He believed that life cannot be lived in compartments and tried to weave insights, derived from different disciplines. Truly, he was a practical idealist. He never did or said anything that he had not practised, and he also never expected another person to do anything which that man did not believe in.  He was introspective as well as self-critical. He wrote his deeply moving autobiography titled, The Story of My Experiments with Truth ~ an authentic account of his self-introspection and experiences expressed with courage, simplicity and candour, rarely found in such books on personal history. Experiments are interactions between the self and the objective world. Indeed, his Experiments with Truth are mankind’s treasure.

The Mahatma’s personal life was a shining example of ‘simple living and high thinking’. He moulded his way of life to that of the deprived, the exploited, the poor, the hungry, the ignorant, and the daridranarayana who constituted the large majority in the country. When he on his way to attend the Round Table Conference in London in 1931, a customs official at Marseilles had asked him whether he had anything to declare. He replied: ‘I am a poor mendicant. My earthly possession consists of six spinning wheels, prison dishes, a can of goat’s milk, six homespun pieces of loin cloth and towels and my reputation which cannot be much’. He once declared, ‘If I have to be reborn, I should be born an untouchable so that I may share their sorrows and suffering and the affronts leveled at them, in order that my endeavour to free myself and them from that miserable condition’.

He never subscribed to the principle that the end justifies the means. To him, the means are as important as the end. “There is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the ends as there is between the seed and the tree”.

To quote Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Mahatma’s grandson: “If Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had an addiction, it was to the same universe of written communication. Few have written letters as prodigiously as Gandhi, fewer with this thrift, cogency and clarity, his letters remaining, mostly, straight-laced and serious, but sometimes bursting into a laugh. There were days when Gandhi did not eat, when he did not speak. Scarce was the day when he did not write a letter” When he got tired of writing with his right hand, he used his left hand to write. He believed, “I do not feel like signing letters written by somebody else. My personal touch is lost, and a worker will not feel satisfied unless he receives the letter in my handwriting!”

Once an American journalist had the cheek to ask the Mahatma, “Mr Gandhi, do you have a sense of humour?” He looked at him for a while and replied; “If I had no sense of humour I would have committed suicide a long time ago!” In fact, his sense of humour always cheered others without hurting their feelings. In June 1942, Louis Fischer, the well-known American journalist, had to travel from Wardha railway station in a rickety tonga to meet the Mahatma at Sevegram. As soon as he entered the kutir, Gandhi sensed his discomfort and smilingly remarked: “Well, you must have travelled from the railway station in an air-conditioned coach!” Fischer was immediately able to laugh at his discomfort. One day an Italian bishop visited Sevagram to take a photograph of the Mahatma who was sitting in a corner of his cottage with a mud-pack on his shaven head to beat the intense summer heat.   Gandhi greeted him with a smile ~”Why waste your film, father? People will ask you whether Gandhiji had broken his skull!”

In 1931, Gandhi visited the King at Buckingham Palace. He wore a loincloth, sandals, a shawl and his dangling watch. When a journalist made a somewhat snide remark he responded: “The king had enough on for both of us”. When a year later Winston Churchill called him a “half-naked fakir”, the Father of the Nation thanked him for the “compliment” and wrote that “he would love to be a fakir but was yet to be one”. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, “His is a liberated soul, if anyone strangles him, I am sure he would not cry. He may laugh at his strangler, and if he has to die, he will die smiling”.  Bernard Shaw had once remarked that though Gandhi could commit any number of tactical errors, his essential strategy continued to be right.

India’s dominant impulse during British rule was marked by fear.  He had raised his determined voice against this all-pervasive fear ~ “Be not afraid.” The essence of his teaching was fearlessness.   “Cowardice is violence double distilled”.

Mahatma Gandhi did not belong to India alone. He stood for the fundamental principles that are ever so essential for the welfare of humanity as a whole. His life, his thoughts and his methods are relevant to this day.  The Gandhian philosophy can be ignored only at our peril.  In his tribute to the Father of the Nation on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1939, Albert Einstein wrote, “Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth”.

India signs off 8th in Asiad medals tally

India on Saturday ended its 17th Asian Games campaign at the eighth spot on the medals tally, a drop of two positions from the previous edition of the mega-event which drew to a close here.
India signed off with 57 medals -- 11 gold, 10 silver and 36 bronze. The tally dipped considerably compared to the 2010 edition in Guangzhou, China.
In 2010, the country had ended sixth with 65 medals -- 14 gold, 17 silver and 34 bronze.
As expected China ended their campaign on top claiming 342 medals. The Chinese contingent walked away with 151 gold, 108 silver and 83 bronze medals.
Hosts South Korea finished a distant second with 234 medals -- 79 gold, 71 silver and 77 bronze. They were followed by the Japanese, who notched up 200 medals, including 47 gold, 76 silver and 77 bronze.
Thus, the line-up of top-three remained the same as the previous edition.

First rechargeable solar battery

Integrating the function of a solar panel that captures light, and a cheap battery that stores energy into one hybrid device, researchers has successfully invented the world’s first solar battery.
The device will help bring down the costs of renewable energy by 25 percent, the researchers said.
The key to the innovation is a mesh solar panel that allows air to enter the battery, and a special process for transferring electrons between the solar panel and the battery electrode.
Inside the device, light and oxygen enable different parts of the chemical reactions that charge the battery.
“The state of the art is to use a solar panel to capture the light, and then use a cheap battery to store the energy,” said Yiying Wu, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University in the US.
“We have integrated both functions into one device. Any time you can do that, you reduce cost,” he added.
The invention also solves a longstanding problem in solar energy efficiency, by eliminating the loss of electricity that normally occurs when electrons have to travel between a solar cell and an external battery.
Typically, only 80 percent of electrons emerging from a solar cell make it into a battery.
“With this new design, light is converted to electrons inside the battery, so nearly 100 percent of the electrons are saved,” the researchers said.
The study appeared in the journal Nature Communications.

Dr. Jitendra Singh says India’s youth is destined to lead tomorrow’s science

The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that while India’s youth is destined to lead tomorrow’s science, it is the youth scientists who will lead tomorrow’s India. On the eve of National Science Exhibition and Project Competition for youth under the aegis of "Inspire" programme beginning tomorrow at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, the Minister of State gave his message, here today, Dwelling on the wide dimensions of “INSPIRE” (Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research) programme for the youth, Dr. Jitendra Singh said that this is one of the most innovative programmes developed by Department of Science & Technology headed by him and is aimed to attract talent to the study of science at an early age, thus helping to build the vital human resource pool for science and technology with a long term foresight. Dr. Jitendra Singh said that ever since he took over the charge of Ministry of Science & Technology four months ago, it has been his constant endeavour to catch young minds with innovative aptitude at their formative stage, so that foundation of future India based on science, rests in the hands of the best talent available. In this regard, he cited the introduction of a scheme called “SEAT” – Scheme for Early Attraction of Talent, which aims to attract talented youth to study science by awarding them for their work and another scheme called “SHE” – Scholarship for Higher Education, which aims to encourage talented youth to undertake higher education in science programmes by providing them scholarships and arranging for them summer attachment/ fellowship with established researchers. The Science Exhibition cum Project Competition beginning tomorrow will follow a scientific method to select the best of the best, said Dr. Jitendra Singh and explained that initially two students are selected from each middle and high school of the country, who then participate in district-level project competition, following which the best 5-10% entries from the district level are selected for participation at the State level and eventually the best 5% entries from the State go on to participate at the national level. Referring to his recent decision making it mandatory for over 5000 scientists working in the Department of Science & Technology to take at least 12 hours of classes in schools and colleges in each academic year, Dr. Jitendra Singh said that this would enable scientists to come out of the confines of laboratory and play the role of mentors to potential scientists of next generation.

The second chance

What stands out at the end of Narendra Modi’s whirlwind tour of New York and Washington is the prime minister’s demonstration of political will and diplomatic ingenuity to rekindle the romance with America that had gone cold in recent years. In less than a week, Modi has turned the gathering pessimism about India’s relations with the US into an optimistic storyline. The results from the visit might be a while coming, but Modi and President Barack Obama have restored direction and energy to bilateral relations.

After Obama’s visit to India nearly four years ago, bilateral ties hit a plateau and headed soon enough to the south. In its first term, the UPA surprised the world with its openness to transforming the relationship with the US. In its second, it returned India to its bad old ways.

Delhi signalled it was not open for political or economic business with America. It preferred to posture rather than engage on differences and was hesitant about building on the many possibilities for partnering with America that emerged. Above all, the UPA government was paralysed by an ideological ambivalence towards America.

During his visit to the US, Modi sought to convince the American corporate sector that India is back in business, signalled a readiness to engage on difficult issues like climate change and trade, and seized the moment for deepening defence and security cooperation. Modi also ran an impressive campaign of public diplomacy to mobilise the Indian American community and the political classes in Washington in favour of rejuvenating the bilateral partnership.

None of this was foreseen either in Delhi or in Washington. Coming from where he did, Modi, it was widely assumed, had little incentive to warm up to the US. His party, the BJP, had turned negative on America when it sat on the opposition benches during the decade-long rule of the UPA. It abandoned the legacy of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had declared that India and the US were natural allies, and joined hands with the CPM in opposing the civil nuclear initiative. On top of that, America made Modi a political untouchable by withdrawing his visa for 10 long years. Indeed, many in Delhi argued that Modi should not travel to the US unless there was an apology from Washington.

In overruling these sentiments and taking the first opportunity to visit Washington, Modi recognised that expanding cooperation with the US is critical to effectively pursuing India’s domestic development agenda as well as to raising its relative position in

-the world. The joint statement issued after his talks with Obama stated Modi’s appreciation of the US unambiguously: “Prime Minister Modi emphasised the priority India accords to its partnership with the US, a principal partner in the realisation of India’s rise as a responsible, influential world power.” This thesis is certainly not new. The idea was first articulated by the Bush administration in 2005, when it stated that it was in America’s interest to assist India’s rise to great power status. If there was much scoffing at this in the foreign policy establishment, the Congress virtually panicked at the thought of drawing close to the US. Even as he underlined the importance of American partnership in facilitating India’s rise, celebrated shared democratic values and highlighted the common interests in the region and beyond, Modi set his own terms for an equitable and mutually beneficial relationship. On the question of economic reform, Modi made it clear that he was going to do it his own way and was not going to simply tick off the American checklist. The PM promised to make it easy for Americans to invest and do business in India, and invited them to take commercial decisions on the basis of practical evaluation of the new possibilities in the country rather than an abstract discussion on reforms. Modi also brought a new pragmatism to resolving the multiple differences with the US. In the past, standing up to America had become a domestic political end in itself, whether it was trade, climate change or civil nuclear liability. India’s past grand-standing was rooted in a lack of national self-confidence and the inability to assess its own long-term interests at home and abroad. In contrast, Modi is saying a self-assured India is now ready to address difficult issues in a practical manner and on the basis of mutual give and take. On geopolitics, too, Modi is shedding the traditional diffidence that marked India’s engagement with the US. In South Asia, India has long been wary of American partnership with Pakistan and, more recently, of US dependence on Rawalpindi to secure its interests in Afghanistan. As the northwestern marches of the subcontinent enter a more turbulent phase, Modi is eager to explore new opportunities for cooperation with the US in stabilising Afghanistan and in countering the sources of international terrorism in Pakistan. In Washington, Modi has been more vigorous than his predecessors in highlighting India’s converging interests with America in East Asia. He is also a lot less hesitant on engaging the US in the Middle East, a region of vital economic interest and great political sensitivity for India. Rekindling a romance is never easy. In 2005, when America unveiled a bold new approach towards India, Washington was at the apogee of the unipolar moment and Delhi was politically unprepared. A decade later, the US has greater stakes in India’s success and Modi has brought much-needed clarity to Delhi’s strategic calculus on America. If the expansive agenda unveiled by Modi and Obama is matched by bureaucratic purposefulness in Delhi -and Washington, India and America have a second chance at building a strategic partnership of considerable consequence. - 

Upgrading Indian rockets for future Mars missions

For future missions, ISRO will have to turn to the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and GSLV Mark III that can lift much heavier spacecraft than the PSLV.

After the stunning success of its very first shot at Mars, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will need to take those capabilities forward, despatching bigger, and more advanced spacecraft in the years to come. That, in turn, requires rockets that can carry such probes on the first leg of their journey and place them in orbit around Earth.

For its first attempt with the Mars Orbiter, ISRO turned to the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), a rocket with an impeccable track record. Initially, it seemed that this launcher would not be powerful enough for the task and every aspect of the mission had to be carefully optimised in order to make that possible, according to V. Adimurthy, the space agency's senior adviser for interplanetary missions. He led a study team whose 2011 report laid out how India could send probes to the Red Planet.

For future missions, ISRO will have to turn to the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) and GSLV Mark III that can lift much heavier spacecraft than the PSLV. The former, equipped with an indigenous cryogenic stage, had its first successful flight only in January this year. An experimental launch of the Mark III, with a non-functional cryogenic upper stage, is to take place shortly. (The rocket’s operational cryogenic engine and stage are still under development.)

ISRO needed to carry out a system study of how the GSLV and GSLV Mark III launchers could be used to carry probes for Mars, observed its chairman, K. Radhakrishnan “Certainly for the next mission we have to go for [a spacecraft with] higher mass.”

The space agency would not be in a position to send a spacecraft to that planet during the 2016 launch opportunity, he told this correspondent. The launch window that opened in 2018 would be the earliest that the next mission to Mars could go. It was also necessary to be clear what science such a mission could carry out, he added.

In order to utilise the GSLV and GSLV Mark III, the cryogenic engines on those rockets will need ‘multi-start’ capability so that they can be shut down after one burn, undergo a period of coasting and restart, noted Dr. Adimurthy. This was crucial for placing a spacecraft in the proper orbital orientation around Earth, a prerequisite for its eventual injection on a trajectory to Mars. A new liquid propulsion stage for carrying out the trans-Mars injection too was needed.

“Such improved systems will eventually pave the way for larger spacecraft to go into orbits closer to Mars, and have lander and rover operations on the planet’s surface,” he said.

Starting, shutting down and restarting a cryogenic engine in space is complicated, noted S. Ramakrishnan, who retired recently as director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO’s lead centre for launch vehicle development, and earlier headed the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre that develops liquid propellant engines needed for the space programme.

Restart capability has not yet been demonstrated with the GSLV’s cryogenic engine. As for the cryogenic engine being developed for the Mark III, “once we do the initial engine-level tests, we can look at introducing the restart capability,” he remarked.

ISRO has designed and ground-tested a ‘Payload Assist Module’ using a liquid-propellant engine that powers the PSLV’s fourth stage. This module had originally been developed so that the GSLV could launch Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) satellites, a proposal that ultimately did not materialise.

The module could go atop the GSLV or GSLV Mark III and enhance their capabilities to send probes to Mars, said Mr. Ramakrishnan.