LIST OF NEWSPAPERS COVERED

ASIAN AGE

BUSINESS STANDARD

DECCAN HERALD

ECONOMIC TIMES

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

HINDU

HINDUSTAN TIMES

INDIAN EXPRESS

PIONEER

STATESMAN

TRIBUNE

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CONTENTS

BACKWARD CLASSES 3-5

CIVIL AVIATION 6-7

CIVIL SERVICE 8-12

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENN 13

EDUCATION 14-26

ELECTIONS 27

EMINENT PERSONALITIES 28-32

EMPLOYMENT 33-35

GOVERNORS 36-37

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 38-40

JUDICIARY 41

LABOUR 42

PANCHAYAT 43-44

POLICE 45-46

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT 47

PUBLIC FINANCE 48-50

RAILWAYS 51-52

RURAL DEVELOPMENT 53-54

SMALL SCALE INDUSTRY 55

TERRORISM 56-57

URBAN DEVELOPMENT 58-61

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BACKWARD CLASSES

HINDU, FEB 22, 2016Govt. blinks, Jats to get OBC statusVIKAS VASUDEVA

The Jat agitation in Haryana claimed one more life on Sunday, taking the death toll to 11, as the State remained on edge even as the government decided to bring a Bill to grant other backward class (OBC) status to Jats.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Home Minister, the National Security Adviser, the Army chief and the Delhi Police Commissioner with Jat leaders.

BJP leader Anil Jain, in-charge of party affairs in Haryana, told reporters that the Jat community would get reservation in jobs, and a Bill would be brought in the next session of the Haryana Assembly.

After the meeting, most Jat leaders appealed for an end to the quota agitation, saying the community’s demands have been met.

All India Jat Sangharsh Samiti, led by Hawa Singh Sangwan, told The Hindu that Jats should trust the government and give it time to implement the decision. “I appeal to everyone to stop the agitation. They [the government] have given us an assurance, so we should wait and see.”

Fresh incidents of violence and arson were reported in the State as the agitation entered the ninth day. Rohtak, Bhiwani, Jhajjar, Jind, Hisar, Hansi, Sonipat and Gohana continue to be under curfew.

A security guard of the State Bank of Patiala branch in Jhajjar was trapped on Saturday night, after a mob surrounded it. Police persuaded the mob to let him go before it torched the building.

( With additional reporting by Ashok Berwal )

HINDU, FEB 22, 2016Unreasonable demands

The recurrence of violent protests led by relatively well-off communities demanding reservation, be it Patidars in Gujarat last year or Jats in Haryana this year, is perplexing. The Jats are a relatively prosperous land-owning community in Haryana and are regarded as being high on the “social ladder” in the region. Their political and social might is even more evident in the influence they wield in rural areas and in the leadership of the dominant political parties in the State. The National Commission for Backward Classes had in the past come out with specific reasons against the inclusion of the Jats in Haryana in the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) list.

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This was overruled by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre through a notification in March 2014, promising a special quota for Jats over and beyond the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in jobs and higher education. It was left to the Supreme Court in March 2015 to reiterate the reality and to quash the decision of the UPA to include Jats in nine States among OBCs, stating that “caste” alone could not be the criterion for determining socio-economic backwardness. Clearly, even if the demands do not make any constitutional or legal sense, the bipartisan consensus over extending reservations has emboldened protestors among the Jat community. After all, the Bharatiya Janata Party in power too had voiced support for the implementation of the March 2014 notification.

Yet, the demands for reservations from these powerful communities is also a consequence of the success of the system of reservations that formed the most significant component of the Mandal Commission recommendations, implemented for the past 25 years, apart from the 65 years of reservations for Dalits and Adivasis. The larger goal went beyond the uplift of the underprivileged and the historically backward; the purpose was to reduce the gap between the “upper” and the “lower” strata in the social hierarchy. That communities which have identified themselves with the upper strata of society also seek “backward” status suggests that through public sector representation and expansion in access to higher education the “economic gap” has been narrowed, or is at least seen to be narrowing. Specifically in the case of Jats, despite higher economic and social standing, there has been a reduction in landholding owing to distribution over generations and a squeezing of rural incomes due to the persisting sluggishness in the agrarian economy. It is a combination of these structural issues over time, besides the relative success of the reservation programme, that has fuelled the unreasonable demands made by Jats. In the case of the more prosperous and diverse Patidars in Gujarat, the demands for reservation were a thin pretext to do away with the system of reservation itself. The agitations, in a way, point to the need to review the list of castes counted as OBCs and to deepen the definition of creamy layer. An opportunity for this was provided through the Socio-Economic and Caste Census, but it was missed.

TRIBUNE, FEB 22, 2016Peace first: Violence solves no problem

A progressive state like Haryana cannot afford to lose its peace. Arson and communal clashes have disgraced the state and it will take quite some time to undo the damage. What the state is witnessing right now can by no stretch of imagination be called an agitation to demand reservations for Jats. Over the past few days it has transformed from a demonstration against the government to a grave communal situation. The Khattar government has been found wanting in responding to the situation, despite the 'minute-by-minute' monitoring by the Centre. At many places the ordinary citizens were left at the mercy of marauding mobs. The BJP leadership failed to see it coming, and when it did, the administration stood almost paralysed.

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The blame for the tearing apart of the uneasy social harmony that Haryana has lived with for decades has to be taken equally by the government and the opposition parties. Unless a major intervention is made to restore the peace and communal equilibrium, the political leadership across the board will have to live with the consequences for a long time. The BJP has failed to give the Jats the confidence that they have a stake in the government; while some of its own Jat leaders have tried to fish in troubled waters to further their interest. One non-Jat MP openly inciting caste hatred needed to be restrained right at the start. The Opposition shares the blame at two levels. Congress and INLD Jat leaders first backed the protesters, and then made only half-hearted appeals for calm.

The most distressing part is that all stakeholders are aware that giving reservation to the Jats under the OBC category will not clear the Supreme Court test, even if a law were to be passed. It is incumbent upon the non-political Jat leadership to present demands that can be worked upon. Instigating or indulging in violence will not further their cause. Haryana has for long known underlying social tensions emanating from the amalgam of diverse communities, but these have been precipitated by the daily discourse of personal, religious and caste identities since the advent of the BJP in the state as well as at the Centre. The sooner the state returns to normal life the better for all.

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CIVIL AVIATION

FINANCIAL EXPRESS, FEB 16, 2016Air India to hire all pilots on contract

In a departure from its current practice, state-owned carrier Air India has decided that in the

future, it will hire all pilots on contract, thus doing away with the permanent-employee status for

them.By: Malyaban Ghosh and Bilal Abdi

In a departure from its current practice, state-owned carrier Air India has decided that in the

future, it will hire all pilots on contract, thus doing away with the permanent-employee status for

them.

Sources said that the airline is set to hire 532 pilots in the future and of these, 200-250 will be

recruited in the current year. The practice of hiring pilots on a contractual basis was started last

year when Air India recruited 70 pilots who are currently undergoing training. Now, the airline

has decided to institutionalise this practice.

The fresh decision comes after the carrier recently rationalised the pay structure of the pilots of

Air India (AI) and the erstwhile Indian Airlines. It has laid down certain rules and regulations

that pilots have to adhere to in order to be eligible to draw their allowances.

For instance, if pilots refuse to fly at the last moment and therefore have to be replaced by other

pilots, the former will stand to lose their flying allowance. In order to avail of full benefits, a

pilot needs to complete 40 flying hours per month and should be available for 150 days in six

months, and cannot refuse to fly four hours before the take-off.

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“We are trying to use our manpower in the most efficient way possible. We have seen instances

where pilots have refused to come on board just an hour before the take off. It results in delays

and decreases operational efficiency in a highly competitive market,” AI officials said.

Recently, Air India has taken a number of steps to ensure discipline of its employees. For

instance, it has increased the bank guarantee and service surety bonds of new pilots to R1 crore

from R50 lakh earlier, to discourage pilots from moving out of the organisation after completing

their training.

According to officials, it is also trying to fully automate its rosters for duties of pilots, ground

staffs and engineers like private airlines.

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CIVIL SERVICE

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 18, 2016NonIAS officers are top choices for Modi government for the crucial Joint Secretary positions

NEW DELHI: Call it a nudge from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) or a default choice for government given Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officers seem unwilling to join the Centre officers from nonIAS services have never had it as good as now for the crucial Joint Secretary positions. ET studied all appointment orders issued for Joint Secretary posts under the Modi Government to find that out of the nearly 260 such appointments made so far, as many as 100 posts were bagged by nonIAS officers, who for long have been considered the poor cousins of the elite IAS. Key ministries like Home, Petroleum, Defence, Mines, Road Transport and Power have seen multiple nonIAS appointments as Joint Secretaries the key policymaking position in the bureaucracy hierarchy at the Centre. "It is a matter of suitability for the post, as well as availability," Minister of State for Prime Minister's Office and Ministry of Personnel, Jitendra Singh told ET, when asked if there was a conscious decision on appointing more non-IAS officers to JS level posts. The offer list with the Centre explains Singh's comment. Out of 38 officers on the offer list as on date for JS level positions, only 5 are IAS officers. This indicates not many IAS officers fancy central deputations currently and wish to stay put in their respective states. "We see two reasons behind this one a nudge from PMO to accommodate other services at Joint Secretary post; but the real reason seems the sheer shortage of IAS officers on offer list. The government has little choice," a senior government official told ET, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He explained that while nearly 75 IAS officers either opted for premature repatriation to their state cadres in 2015 or were sent back to states by the Modi Government, there was no matching offers from IAS officers to come for central deputation at JS level posts.

DECCAN HERALD, FEB 22, 2016LIGO-India, a victim of red tape

Indian bureaucracy is infamous for its procrastination tactics. The delay may be justified sometimes, for better cross-checks and reviews, but there are ample number of occasions when mere red-tapism blocks progress. Given that background, the NDA government's recent announcement of establishing a Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory in India (LIGO-India) may appear prompt as it comes within a week of physicists spotting the elusive gravitational wave that had escaped detection for the last 100 years. The project, in reality, was a five-year-old one and cleared by the Planning Commission as one of the mega-science proposals, which the science departments were pursuing in the last decade. Since the commission’s approval, the LIGO-India project document was gathering dust till the time the Internet grew abuzz with the news of an exciting possibility of gravitational-wave detection. Due to inaction on the proposal for five years, the government now has little other option but to accord an “in-principle” approval as the cost of the Rs 1,260 crore project needs to be recalculated taking inflation and increased land price into account. The observatory requires 300 acres of land.

LIGO-India is not an isolated case. The same trend was seen with other mega-science projects

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like the Indian Neutrino Observatory (proposed in 2002), which after receiving the Cabinet's approval in January 2015, is now stuck with the Tamil Nadu government. There is no clear answer from the government on why it took such a long time to formalise India's linkage with prestigious international projects like Square Kilometre Array, Thirty Metre Telescope and why the government is still sitting on the proposal of upgrading India’s membership at CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) to the level of an ‘associate member.’ Notwithstanding its significant contribution in particle physics research at CERN, India continues to be an ‘observer’ while Pakistan and Turkey are now ‘associate members.’ It is not that associated costs are prohibitory, but the government has remained silent for the last three years. Scientists in biological or medical laboratories recount numerous stories when they received the approval to import reagents or biological material many months later, by which time rival groups in Western laboratories had already conducted that particular experiment.

Since time is of vital importance in a fiercely competitive scientific world, India’s researchers are always handicapped thanks to the bureaucracy. In almost every Indian Science Congress over the last 15 years, successive prime ministers promised reduction of red-tapism in research. On the ground, however, changes are little and cosmetic. Unless the government prioritises science and sensitises officials, Indian scholars are unlikely to deliver world-class science and bright students will tend to migrate abroad.

TRIBUNE, FEB 16, 2016Punjab: IAS officer refuses to obey transfer order for 10 daysUnseen ‘dedication’

Ten days after his transfer, Gurdev Singh Ghuman refuses to relinquish the important charge of Joint Director in the Rural Development Department and continues to clear files, attend office even on weekends (which otherwise is a holiday) and has even issued sacking orders for some contractual employees — all in back date!Ruchika M Khanna & Rajmeet Singh

An IAS officer of the Punjab cadre — transferred with “immediate effect” following the registration of two FIRs against him — refuses to obey the state government’s orders.

Ten days after his transfer, he refuses to relinquish the important charge of Joint Director in the Rural Development Department and continues to clear files, attend office even on weekends (which otherwise is a holiday) and has even issued sacking orders for some contractual employees — all in back date.

Sounds unbelievable, but its true! The officer, Gurdev Singh Ghuman, who was booked by the Vigilance Bureau in two cases last month — in a disproportionate assets case and under the Prevention of Corruption Act — has been attending office in the Rural Development Department

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though he was transferred with “immediate effect” on February 4. He was then transferred as Special Secretary, Programme Implementation.

It was only this evening, after The Tribune went to the office of the Rural Development Department in Mohali to investigate how he was continuing on a post from which he was transferred, that he finally relinquished charge.

Though The Tribune team tried to meet him in the office around 3 pm, it was told by his personal staff that “he was busy”.

Surprisingly, the officer continued to attend office, which is right next to the office of his immediate superior/reporting officer — the Secretary, Rural Development — but the matter was not reported either to the Personnel Department or the Chief Secretary.

Though no one mentions this on record, sources say that the proximity of this officer to a senior minister in the state government was the reason that he continued to work so blatantly despite being transferred.

Chief Secretary Sarvesh Kaushal initially told The Tribune that he would get the issue immediately verified. Later, he said that he had ordered two inquiries against Ghuman.

“The Secretary Personnel has been asked to inquire into how the officer did not comply with his transfer orders and relinquish charge immediately. I have also asked the Secretary Rural Development to examine all the orders passed by the officer between February 1- 15. All these orders will be re-evaluated,” he said.

Ghuman was first booked by the Vigilance Bureau on December 28, 2015 for having assets disproportionate to his known sources of income. He has been accused of having spent Rs 1.64 crore more than his income. The second FIR was registered against the IAS officer on January 13 on charges of submitting fake travelling bills. He has been booked under various Sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 18, 2016NonIAS officers are top choices for Modi government for the crucial Joint Secretary positions

NEW DELHI: Call it a nudge from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) or a default choice for government given Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officers seem unwilling to join the Centre officers from nonIAS services have never had it as good as now for the crucial Joint

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Secretary positions. ET studied all appointment orders issued for Joint Secretary posts under the Modi Government to find that out of the nearly 260 such appointments made so far, as many as 100 posts were bagged by nonIAS officers, who for long have been considered the poor cousins of the elite IAS. Key ministries like Home, Petroleum, Defence, Mines, Road Transport and Power have seen multiple nonIAS appointments as Joint Secretaries the key policymaking position in the bureaucracy hierarchy at the Centre. "It is a matter of suitability for the post, as well as availability," Minister of State for Prime Minister's Office and Ministry of Personnel, Jitendra Singh told ET, when asked if there was a conscious decision on appointing more non-IAS officers to JS level posts. The offer list with the Centre explains Singh's comment. Out of 38 officers on the offer list as on date for JS level positions, only 5 are IAS officers. This indicates not many IAS officers fancy central deputations currently and wish to stay put in their respective states. "We see two reasons behind this one a nudge from PMO to accommodate other services at Joint Secretary post; but the real reason seems the sheer shortage of IAS officers on offer list. The government has little choice," a senior government official told ET, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He explained that while nearly 75 IAS officers either opted for premature repatriation to their state cadres in 2015 or were sent back to states by the Modi Government, there was no matching offers from IAS officers to come for central deputation at JS level posts.

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 18, 2016Officers can now get sevenyear foreign posting tenure: Government NEW DELHI: The Centre today eased norms to allow officers to stay on foreign posting and central deputation for a maximum period of seven years from the existing five years. It has been decided that if the administrative ministries and other borrowing organisations wish to retain an officer beyond five years, they may extend tenure of deputation, where absolutely necessary in public interest, upto a period not exceeding seven years at a stretch, the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said. This shall be done with the approval of the minister of the borrowing ministry or department concerned with which the officers are administratively concerned, it said. The move comes after various ministries and organisations approached DoPT for relaxation of the fiveyear deputation tenure condition citing "exigencies". DoPT has now asked all ministries that "no case of extension shall be referred to it". Further, in cases where the necessity to have deputation tenures longer than seven years is felt, the administrative ministries, departments or borrowing organisations concerned may amend the relevant recruitment rules of such deputation post accordingly, after following the requisite procedure. "No extension of deputation beyond seven years is to be allowed unless provided in the relevant recruitment rules of such deputation post. It is reiterated that no case for extension beyond five years shall be referred to DoPT," the latest directive issued to all central government ministries said. DoPT had last year issued a directive and warned officers that they may lose their job for overstaying on foreign posting. Some babus had termed it as a harsh rule and were allegedly lobbying for its revision, official sources said. In a related development, the Finance Ministry recently issued guidelines on

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foreign tours. Bureaucrats can go on a maximum four overseas trips in a year, as per the new norms

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 18, 20162,200 senior central government officials under CBI lens

NEW DELHI: As many as 2,200 senior central government officials are under the scanner of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for their alleged malpractices including corruption. In past one year, CBI has registered FIR against 101 such officials that included senior bureaucrats, officials from public sector undertakings, defence personnel and bank officials. CBI director Anil Sinha said there has been a quantum jump in number of cases registered using the surveillance mechanism. "The registration has increased by 94% from 2014 when CBI had registered only 52 cases to 101 cases this year," Sinha said. Some of these cases being investigated by the agency include a case against IAS officer Sanjay Pratap Singh which was raised in December last year and disproportionate assets case against Himachal Pradesh chief minister Veer Bhadra Singh. The agency said the cases were registered after it came to the light during its monitoring that the concerned officers had demanded bribe to grant favours. CBI also filed 1,044 charge sheets last year which is the highest by the agency during the last five years. This includes chargesheet against former congress MP Naveen Jindal, former MoS coal Dasari Narain Rao among others.

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 16, 2016Over 3,500 government employees arrested

Over 3,500 government employees were arrested today in three districts of Coimbatore, Tirupur and Nilgiris, when they attempted to stage picketing in front of the respective district collectorates, to press their charter of demands, police said. The employees, affiliated to different unions, raised slogans in support of their 20point charter of demands, including old pension scheme and filling vacancies, for which they were on indefinite strike for the last one week. While over 1,000 were arrested in Coimbatore, some 1,500 were arrested in Tirupur and about 1,000 in Udhagamandalam in Nilgiris district, police said.

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ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOMENT

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 18, 2016Amitabh Kant gets twoyear tenure as Niti Aayog CEO

NEW DELHI: Amitabh Kant, who was recently named as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Niti Aayog, will have the tenure of two years. The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved the appointment of Kant as CEO, Niti Aayog with a tenure of two years, an order issued by Department of Personnel and Training said today. He will assume the post after his retirement as Secretary in Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), this month end. Kant, a 1980 batch IAS officer of Kerala cadre, was in January appointed as first full time CEO of Niti Aayog. The Centre had in January last year appointed former Planning Commission Secretary Sindhushree Khullar as the first CEO of the National Institution for Transforming India (Niti) Aayog. After completion of Khullar's tenure as Niti Aayog CEO in December last, Kant was given additional charge of the post

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EDUCATION

HINDUSTAN TIMES, FEB 19, 2016Smriti Irani gives ‘slacking’ vice-chancellors an earfulNeelam Pandey

A day-long conference meant for vice-chancellors of central universities on sensitisation and promotion of equity in higher educational institutions had them under fire from the HRD minister for not performing up to the mark, sources said on Thursday.

The ministry had organised a conference of all central university VCs in Surajkund, Faridabad which was chaired by HRD minister Smriti Irani.

Sources said that the minister expressed her displeasure over the fact that most of the VCs had not responded to queries sent by her department for putting in place a grievance redressal mechanism.

Soon after the first session on sensitisation of administrators on issues faced by SC/ST began, Irani hit out at the officials and told them to set their house in order.Addressing the VCs in her 15 minutes long speech, Irani asked them to perform better and scolded them for not responding to the queries sent by the ministry regarding appointment of ombudsman, equal opportunity cells as mandated by the University Grants Commission (UGC) among others.

Sources said that she even threw out a member of the faculty that had organised the event for attempting to take her picture. The minister was angry over delay in updating the curriculum and asked them to look into the issue immediately. She reprimanded a few VCs who had reportedly dozed off during one of the sessions too and scolded them for interrupting the presentations.

In the meeting it was decided that an anti-discrimination officer will be appointed in every university, a grievance redressal system will be put in place and new courses will be introduced on various subjects such as ‘inter-faith studies, dialogue of culture and civilizations, citizenship and value education among others.

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To increase Gross Enrolment Ration in higher education from the existing 23.6% to 30% it has been decided to run evening colleges. Vice-chancellors and senior faculty members will be sent on a week long course on leadership and management at two select IIMs.

STATESMAN, FEB 19, 2016A V-C’s denouement

As distressing as the allegations against the outgoing Vice-Chancellor of Visva-Bharati University were the crass expressions of celebration and angst, even assaults on faculty members, that greeted Monday’s dismissal of Prof Sushanta Datta Gupta, indeed the first instance of the head of a central university being moved out. A not dissimilar and ugly response had greeted the previous V-C’s exit as well. It is more than just a coincidence that two central universities are now contending with campus turmoil, not to forget the tragedy at Hyderabad Central University. The controversy in Santiniketan could well have been settled last September had the VC’s resignation been accepted by the HRD ministry after Calcutta High Court had turned down his petition challenging the Centre’s fact-finding committee. By asking him to continue despite the welter of charges and the judiciary’s response, the Centre has merely prolonged the crisis and uncertainty at the top to the detriment of academics. Sure, the President as Visitor must of necessity take a call on the issue. Mr Pranab Mukherjee was initially against his removal, pending a more thorough enquiry and a “hearing (of the VC) in person”. Apparently, the immediate provocation for the dismissal was the Attorney-General’s presentation. The nearly six-month gap between Prof Datta Gupta’s resignation and dismissal has prompted the campus circuit to engage in puerile speculation, in effect lend a political spin to the matter. It was even alleged in certain circles that Rashtrapati Bhavan - with a Congressman at the helm - was opposed to his replacement as it feared that the BJP dispensation would appoint a pro-party academic to head Visva-Bharati. This is direly presumptuous and the campus circuit must await the next appointment before jumping to conclusions. Less easily explained is the fact that it took the HRD ministry five years to realise that while the V-C was drawing his pension from JNU, he was accepting his salary from Visva-Bharati. The audit and accounts mechanism of the central government ought to have flagged the anomaly much earlier. Added to the major charge of financial irregularity are those on dubious appointments, fairly common in the Santiniketan context.

In the net, the campus atmosphere has been vitiated yet again. The episode appears to have split the faculties and employees’ union and the student fraternity no less. And regrettably, the academic schedule has been the major casualty in Tagore’s creation. On closer reflection, this isn’t a matter that can be of overriding concern to students, the different factions of teachers and non-teaching staff. They can well avoid their contrived distraction. The search for learning is the

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primary casualty; and this is the strand that binds the three central universities - JNU, Hyderabad Central University, and Visva-Bharati.

ASIAN AGE, FEB 19, 2016Varsities to fly tricolour on 207 ft mast on campuses: HRD ministryThe resolution is applicable to JNU too as it is a central university, officials said.

Surajkund: All central universities will fly the national flag on a 207 feet high mast at a prominent place on their campuses, HRD ministry said on Thursday, a move that comes in the backdrop of the massive controversy over alleged anti-India protests in JNU.

Officials said that a "unanimous" decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of Vice Chancellors in Surajkund, which has been called by Human Resource Development Ministry led by Smriti Irani.

"A proposal had come on raising the national flag on University campuses which was accepted at the meeting," a senior HRD ministry official said.

The resolution is applicable to JNU too as it is a central university, the officials said.

Sources said that the move has been taken to instill a "sense of unity and integrity" among students in institutions of higher education.

The HRD ministry called the meeting of VCs after the death of dalit scholar Rohith Vemula at the University of Hyderabad triggered a massive controversy and brought the spotlight on problems faced by disadvantages sections.

However, days before the proposed meeting, a demonstration in JNU triggered another row as alleged anti-India slogans were raised at the campus after which Delhi police arrested the JNU students union president on charges of sedition.

The government has come under attack after the arrest of JNSU leader Kanhaiya Kumar and subsequent attack by lawyers on students and mediapersons in Patiala courts. Protests have also been held in many parts of the country including in Jadavpur University in West Bengal.

INDIAN EXPRESS, FEB 18, 2016JNU: Freedom Of ScreechAs a police officer, and citizen, I find JNU debate an assault on public interestWritten by Abhinav Kumar

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India is bitterly divided about the arrest of the JNU students’ union (JNUSU) president,

Kanhaiya Kumar. The tendency to paint the issue in black and white is regrettable. For detractors

of JNU, it is a clear case of sedition. For supporters, it is about the autonomy of a university and

freedom of speech. Both are absolutist positions, and from the point of view of a concerned

police officer and citizen, both are an assault on the public interest. Unfortunately, our shrill

public discourse allows for few nuances. It is now a debate less about the freedom of speech and

more about the freedom of screech. Caught in the middle is Delhi Police and its leadership. It has

been called a stooge of the ruling party and worse. On the other side, people are decrying its

actions as too little, too late.

The Constitution, CrPC and IPC do not treat freedom of speech as absolute and subject it to

various restrictions. Article 19(2) provides for reasonable restrictions. The CrPC provides for

preventive arrest when a breach of peace is apprehended, whereas the IPC contains several

sections that provide for punishment for different types of hate speech. India is not unique in

providing for legal restrictions on certain types of offensive speech. Of course, the sedition law is

a legacy of the Raj. But successive governments of all political persuasions haven’t removed it

from the statute books, and have invoked it. This says something about its continued relevance.

In Kedar Nath, the Supreme Court not only circumscribed Section 124A, it also held it to be

constitutionally valid. This was in 1962, decades before Punjab, Kashmir and countless other

terror strikes that India has faced.

HINDU, FEB 16, 2016What is a university?KALPANA KANNABIRAN

Vice chancellors hold charge of the university in trust. To give the police a free hand militates against the very spirit of the university as a space for critical engagement

We live in strange and difficult times. The elected national government, holding office under an oath of allegiance to the Indian Constitution, proclaims commitment repeatedly, and without exception to “Bharat Ma”, the Hindu scriptures and divine intervention. It governs in the name of

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Hindutva and criminalises all dissent using the slogan of “national interest”, by which it means the interest of the Hindu Rashtra.

Freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom to organise are guaranteed as fundamental rights under the Constitution. The right of dissent and agitation are ingrained in the fundamental rights. The Constitution sets out a plural framework and refuses any scope to define the country in religious terms. The national interest in this scheme is constitutional rule. To recall B.R. Ambedkar, it is only constitutional morality that must guide the government, not any whimsical invocation of narrow-minded, parochial figureheads and mythical characters.

It is time to remind the holders of public office that once they have formed government, whatever their personal politics might be, they are constrained to rule in strict accordance with the constitutional framework. Mere assumption of political power does not confer the power to propagate narrow party and supra party ideologies in derogation of constitutional principles. It is a matter of deep regret that today we have actually fallen to the level where even this simple fact needs to be stated.

Tolerance of intolerance

It is our right as citizens of this free country to question the government, to question arbitrary and capricious rule, and to organise against injustice and demand the supremacy of the Constitution above all else. For us to allow the untrammelled use of the charge of sedition to quell dissent and freedom of expression amounts, to reiterate Amartya Sen’s words, to being too tolerant of intolerance. Indeed, I would even say that it amounts to us abdicating our collective responsibility to uphold the Indian Constitution. It is time to recall Mahatma Gandhi’s historic defence of seditious speech: “…I have no desire whatsoever to conceal from this court the fact that to preach disaffection towards the existing system of government has become almost a passion with me… I hold it to be a virtue to be disaffected towards a Government which, in its totality, has done more harm to India than any previous system” (Mahatma Gandhi before Judge Broomfield, March 10, 1921). We have come full circle.

The orchestrated trigger for the Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentarians and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad in both the University of Hyderabad and in Jawaharlal Nehru University was student protest and debate against the death penalties awarded to Yakub Memon and Afzal Guru. These are issues that have already been subjected to public debate and they consist of two parts: first, whether the death penalty constitutes judicial murder; second, whether Memon and Guru were given a fair trial. The debate has involved a close study of jurisprudence, international human rights standards and the fair conduct of the trials. A sizeable section of intellectuals and human rights defenders from across the country expressed the view that the death penalty without exception violates the constitutional guarantee of the right to life. Others held the firm belief that both Guru and Memon were executed without a fair trial. This is a debate that must be carried out, not only in this case but in every case where the death penalty is ordered. There was even a debate on this very question following the December 16, 2012, gang rape in Delhi and

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before the Justice J.S. Verma Committee. While the victim’s parents demanded the death penalty in the rape case, in the case of the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Congress President Sonia Gandhi herself wrote to President K.R. Narayanan requesting clemency for those convicted for killing her husband. These are difficult, heart-wrenching, but necessary debates and no repressive clampdown can suppress the flow of ideas, questions and fundamental interrogations of the meaning of justice.

Asking questions

An important part of education, particularly higher education, is to learn to ask questions and to develop the capacity for disobedience and reasoned arguments. What is the promise of the university? Lest we forget: “Where the mind is without fear/ and the head is held high/ Where knowledge is free/ Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls/ Where words come out from the depth of truth/ Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection/ Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way/ Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit/ Where the mind is led forward by thee/ Into ever-widening thought and action/ Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, Let my country awake.”

Vice chancellors (VC) hold charge of the university in trust — not of political powers but of the university community in which students are the core. To call in the police or act on their advice and abdicate responsibility, or to give the police a free hand militates against the very spirit of the university as a space for critical engagement and free-flowing debate. The reduction of the position of VC to being a watchdog of the government is a danger of unimaginable magnitude and destructive of the fabric of higher education — the structure will determine form, content, possibilities and importantly, futures.

Finally, back to the question of national interest. The Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha observed Republic Day as a “black day” in Meerut and has been consistently organising protests against the Constitution of India. The leaders of this group have also declared their intention to install a statue of Nathuram Godse. This was a public show of strength in the service of a Hindu Rashtra widely reported in national newspapers — but clearly none of our ministerial compatriots saw this either as an assault on national interest or as an incitement to violence. Yet, when Rohith Vemula organised a protest against the execution of Memon and JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar spoke out in defence of the Constitution of India, our parliamentarians and ministers rose to defend “the nation”.

Which nation is this? Whose country? To end with Faiz Ahmad Faiz: “ Hum dekhenge, laazim hai ki hum bhi dekhenge ...”

(Kalpana Kannabiran is Professor and Director, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad. She is an alumna of the University of Hyderabad and of JNU.)

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No repressive clampdown can suppress the flow of ideas, questions and fundamental interrogations of the meaning of justice

HINDU, FEB 16, 2016Sedition and the governmentSUHRITH PARTHASARATHY

The arrest by the Delhi Police, at the behest of the Home Ministry, of Kanhaiya Kumar, president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students’ Union, on complaints of sedition, represents the latest deplorable attack on free speech by the Indian state. The move presents with vivid clarity the government’s pointed efforts at quelling any and every form of dissent. It also, through the invocation of Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, provides a stark reminder of the sheer depravity of some of our antiquated, colonial-era laws.

Mr. Kumar’s arrest followed a complaint made by assorted members of the right-wing students’ body, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). According to the ABVP, Mr. Kumar was present at a meeting inside the JNU campus organised to protest against the hanging of the 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, in which several “anti-national” statements were supposedly bandied about. Thus far, the evidence presented fails to point to Mr. Kumar having actually uttered anything remotely bordering on the controversial. But even assuming he went as far as to question the integrity of the Indian state, his arrest ought to be viewed as a serious affront to liberal democratic values.

In the case of Section 124-A of the IPC, which defines sedition in wide, expansive terms, and punishes the act with imprisonment for life, the danger doesn’t lie merely in its abuse, or even in its potential for causing anti-democratic mischief. Unlike other provisions that might assume a pitiless character based on the nature of their usage, Section 124-A is intrinsically draconian. The problems in the clause are obviously apparent in its wordings, and the purpose that it unequivocally seeks to achieve: a suppression of all kinds of opposition.

A relic of our colonial past

Although sedition was originally a part of the IPC, as drafted by Thomas Macaulay, it was bizarrely dropped from the law when it was enacted in 1860. A decade later, the offence was introduced into the IPC as Section 124-A, following explicit recognition from the colonial government that the earlier omission was based on a mistake. The provision, as it reads today after some amendments, defines sedition as any action — whether by words, signs or visible representation — which “brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India”. Tellingly, the section also contains a clarification to the effect that the word “disaffection” includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity.

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This definition of sedition, as is only plainly evident, is exceedingly broadly worded. Its vagueness certainly did wonders for the colonialists. They famously used the clause in three separate, successful trials of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, and, also, later, in prosecuting Mahatma Gandhi in 1922. “Section 124-A under, which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the IPC designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen,” said Gandhi, in response to the charges made on him.

During the course of the British rule, there was a general consensus that Section 124-A was intended to indict any speech that as much as questioned the moral superiority of government, that harboured any sentiments of ill feeling towards the state. Policies of government, the judiciary largely agreed, could be questioned, so long as one didn’t excite hatred, contempt or disaffection. As the lawyer and jurist A.G. Noorani once wrote, what this really meant was that the government had to be “loved, not hated”.

The limits of free speech

In 1942, for the first time, the courts in India raised pressing questions against the use of sedition as a weapon to chill all innocent forms of dissidence. Sir Maurice Gwyer, the chief justice of the Federal Court, ruled that “public disorder, or the reasonable anticipation or likelihood of public disorder, is the gist of the offence”. In so doing, he drew a necessity for a link between words uttered and actual threat of violence for maintaining a prosecution of sedition. But Gwyer’s ruling fell short of devising any rational test to determine how this link had to be drawn, as to how imminent an act of violence had to be for the state to prosecute a speech or expression. Nonetheless his reasoning gave to the offence of sedition an iota of legitimacy. Just years later, though, before the Constitution came into force, Gwyer’s good work was undone by the Privy Council. The offence of sedition, it wrote, in 1947, was concerned only with the “exciting or attempting to excite in others certain bad feelings towards the government”. Any requirement for a connection between speech and violence was nonchalantly dispelled.

After the Constitution was adopted in 1950, it appeared Section 124-A would soon be denounced as an abhorrent relic of our colonial past. After all, efforts made by some members of the Constituent Assembly to include sedition as an express ground for limiting speech in Article 19(2) had been successfully resisted. Moreover, the reasoning adopted in the two earliest free speech cases decided by the Supreme Court — Brij Bhushan v. State of Delhi and Romesh Thapar v. Union of India — also pointed to the incompatibility of laws of sedition with the Constitution. In both these cases, efforts to ban publications on the purported threats that they posed to public safety were ruled unconstitutional, since the exception in Article 19(2), as it read then, was restricted to dangers to the security of the state. When the first amendment to the Constitution was introduced, to include public order as a specific limitation to free speech, Prime Minister Nehru was still categorical in his belief that the offence of sedition was fundamentally unconstitutional. “Now so far as I am concerned [Section 124-A] is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place both for practical and historical reasons, if you like, in any body of laws that we might pass,” he said, in Parliament. “The sooner we get rid of it the better.”

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Yet, more than 65 years later, sedition continues to not only remain in the IPC, but also occupies a pride of place in the state’s arsenal. This is because, astonishingly, in spite of two different High Courts having found sedition unconstitutional, in 1962, the Supreme Court upheld Section 124-A, in Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar . Here, the court adopted a flawed premise that the law was enacted in the interest of public order, which was by then one of the specifically recognised limitations to free speech. Although this ruling is in accord with elements of Gwyer’s reasoning, it is clear, as we saw earlier, that the colonial government thought of seditious speech as punishable on its own accord. They saw no requirement for the establishment of any link between such expressions and the maintenance of public order. Even when the first amendment specifically included the interest of public order as a recognised limitation to free speech under the Constitution, seditious speech was still considered as being outside the contours of such constraints. In other words, our lawmakers at the time thought of sedition as being antithetical to the guarantee of free speech. But the court in Kedar Nath Singh ignored all the apparent contradictions in allowing sedition to remain on the IPC. While grounding the legality of the provision on supposed public order considerations, the court also failed to establish any rational test on how to determine when speech in disaffection of the government could be construed as causing a disruption of public order.

A weapon to crush opposition

In the decades since Kedar Nath Singh , Indian free speech jurisprudence has gone through substantial change. The court has proceeded towards expounding something resembling a practical theory that distinguishes advocacy and incitement. In 1995, the court acquitted some men who had raised a number of seemingly incendiary slogans in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, on the grounds that there existed no link between the slogans and actual threats to public order. Last year, in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India , in declaring unconstitutional the notorious Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, the court ruled that speech howsoever offensive, annoying or inconvenient cannot be prosecuted unless its utterance has, at the least, a proximate connection with any incitement to disrupt public order.

However, in spite of the Supreme Court narrowing the scope of sedition, and in spite of the more recently evolved tests to determine when mere speech or expression can be prosecuted, governments have routinely invoked Section 124-A with a view to restricting even benign forms of dissent. To argue against sedition does not tantamount to arguing in favour of absolute free speech. That words which directly provoke violence or which directly threaten the maintenance of public order deserve censure is unquestionable, especially given India’s constitutional structure. But that’s not what the offence of sedition seeks to achieve. At its core, it is a devastating provision that is meant to assist in crushing all opposition to the ruling dispensation. Its use continues to have the effect of chilling free speech and expression in India. Section 124-A of the IPC negates the right to dissent, which is an essential condition of any reasonable government. Viewed thus, it is Section 124-A that is “anti-India”, that is opposed to the idea of a legitimate, liberal democratic state.

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(Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising at the Madras High Court. He is also currently working on a biography of the Supreme Court.)

At its core, Section 124-A is a devastating provision that is meant to assist in crushing all opposition to the ruling dispensation. Section 124-A of the IPC, pertaining to sedition, negates the right to dissent, which is an essential condition of any reasonable government. Viewed thus, it is Section 124-A that is ‘anti-India’, that is opposed to the idea of a legitimate, liberal

HINDUSTAN TIMES, FEB 17, 2016President approves sacking of Visva-Bharati V-C Dattagupta

President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday approved the dismissal of Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Sushanta Dattagupta, the first instance of sacking of the VC of a central university. Dattagupta was scheduled to retire in November this year.

Earlier this month, the HRD ministry had sent the file recommending the dismissal of Dattagupta to the President, who is the Visitor of all central universities. Dattagupta is facing charges of administrative and financial irregularities. The President’s approval came after the Union law ministry and the attorney-general said there was nothing illegal about the recommendation seeking the removal of the VC.

President Mukherjee had twice returned the file relating to Dattagupta to the HRD ministry, the latest in November last year, asking whether denying the VC a “hearing in person” on allegations levelled against him was legally tenable.

HT had reported several times that Dattagupta was facing charges of serious financial irregularities. Even though he was drawing his salary from Visva-Bharati, he continued to draw pension from an earlier assignment. Under the law, he was required to have his pension amount deducted from the pay he received from Visva-Bharati as the VC.Dattagupta was also charged with making several irregular appointments by creating post for which he had no sanction.

BUSINESS STANDARD, FEB 16, 2016Delhi University gets Yogesh Tyagi as vice-chancellorYogesh Kumar Tyagi was selected by the President to head the university from among four names

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No DU Vice Chancellor's tenure has been a cakewalk: Singh Hyderabad Central University campus divided by caste Yale University, Ashoka University to expand collaboration ABVP sweeps Delhi University students' union poll HRD Ministry sends proposal to sack Visva-Bharati VC back to President

South Asian University professor Yogesh Kumar Tyagihas been appointed the new vice-

chancellor of Delhi University after his name was selected by PresidentPranab Mukherjee from

among four persons. Last week, the human resource development (HRD) ministry had forwarded

the four names to the President who, as Visitor of Central Universities, makes the final selection.

Apart from Tyagi, who is the Dean of the Law Faculty at South Asian University, the other

names on the panel were JNU professor Rameshwar Nath Kaul Bamezai, former IIT professor

and UPSC member Hemchand Gupta and Bidyut Chakraborty, a professor in the DU Political

Science department. According to reports, Tyagi was the front-runner for the position as he was

the HRD ministry’s choice.

Earlier, it was reported that while appointing the JNU Vice Chancellor, the President had ignored

the HRD ministry's preference and appointed IIT professor M Jagadesh Kumar to the post. Tyagi

will assume charge of the new assignment from Dinesh Singh, whose tenure saw controversy

over the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP), which was later rolled back after

intervention by University Grants Commission.

TRIBUNE, FEB 23, 2016Surendra S. JodhkaNurture & protect JNU’s constructive nationalism

Institutions like the JNU have expanded the idea of India. If not in a varsity, where else can we debate our differences? Rulers cannot have a selective approach to citizens’ rights and entitlements. Citizenship cannot be a privilege only of those who vote for the political party in power.

Much has been spoken and written on the recent events in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), following a protest by a small groups of students on February 9, 2016. These have been both critical as well as supportive of the university. The fact that some students appear to have raised slogans in support of Kashmir's azaadi, and also celebrated Afzal Guru, those critical of the university were quick to brand it an institution that encourages and nurtures separatist elements

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and therefore the entire university was a den of anti-nationals. Some have gone to the extent of suggesting that it should be shut down.

However, the number of those who defended JNU is also not small. Universities everywhere have students with a range of political opinions and occasionally they do come to confront each other or the local authorities. Unless there is a threat of violence, such cases of "indiscipline" are dealt with by the internal process of inquiry and punishment. Like other such institutions, JNU not only has such provisions, they have been working quite actively and effectively. Despites its charged political atmosphere, rarely have we heard of any cases of violence being reported from

JNU. What was the need then to not allow the university to sort out its issues internally?

Allowing dissentA large section of people with liberal opinion, from India and abroad, has also spoken in support of JNU. And they are not all Leftists or uncritical of the so-called anti-national tendencies. They have pointed to the legitimate role of the university in allowing political disagreements and dissents of all kinds, as long as they do not resort to violence. If not in a university, where else could we discuss and debate our differences? If Kashmir is an integral part of India, not only do Kashmiris have a legitimate right to study in the universities and colleges across the countries but should also have the right to debate and discuss issues that concern them.

The popular opinion outside its campus views JNU as a "den of Leftists," where the teachers and students all subscribe to the Communist ideology. This is far from true. Like any other universities, in India or abroad, the JNU faculty holds a wide range of political opinions and, as elsewhere, some of them would be Left-leaning political opinions. But the numbers of those who would openly subscribe to Right-wing politics is also not any less significant. JNU, indeed, has a large number of Left-wing groups, who compete with each other but also with others, the "free-thinkers", the Congress and AAP-affiliated student bodies and the ABVP.

As would be the case with other campuses, common students do not necessarily align completely with one or the other organisation. Candidates and their personalities also matter. During the last elections of their union, JNU students elected three of their representatives from different Left-wing organisations but also elected one from the ABVP. Some other candidates of the ABVP also polled a good number of votes.

More interestingly perhaps, unlike most other university campuses, JNU students' union elections are an entirely students' affair, with no involvement of the administration or the teaching faculty. Political campaigns are also carried out without the use of money and muscle

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power, again a rare thing in Indian university campuses. These are undoubtedly the best liberal democratic practices that every university in India should imbibe. How would these make JNU students anti-national?

By now we also know that some of the videos that were initially shown in the electronic media as evidence of anti-India sloganeering by the JNU students were in fact morphed and doctored. While the actual truth would hopefully emerge in due course, these revelations have already shocked many people and the number of those speaking and writing in support of JNU is steadily swelling. Hopefully, the controversies currently surrounding the university will soon die down. The popular media will soon find other compelling issues confronting the people of India, with its ever-restive populace. The powerful and violent agitation of Jats in Haryana for their inclusion in the OBC list is already making big news.

Lessons for the nationHowever, what is currently happening in JNU has many important lessons for us as a nation. Perhaps the most important one is to learn to recognise the value of being a Constitutional democracy. Even when elected by a sizeable majority, those in power have to swear by the Constitution and its substantive provisions. Political ideologies could influence the nature of economic policies or styles of governance, the rulers do not have the right to be selective in their approach to rights and entitlements of citizens. Citizenship cannot be a privilege only of those who vote for the political party in power and share their political ideology.

The same holds true for institutions. All institutions, not only the judiciary and the bureaucracy but also the university, need to be treated with a sense of purpose and autonomy. It is through these institutions that a constitutional democracy delivers its promise of citizenship. This becomes even more critical in countries like India, marked by a range diversities and vicious forms of inequalities. Public universities like the JNU have played a constructive role in the process of nation-building through its admission policy of giving opportunities to those from historically deprived regions and communities and friendly environment. It has helped in producing a new elite that has expanded the idea of India and made it more inclusive. Institutions like JNU need to be celebrated for their positive role in instilling among its student a sense commitment to the empowerment of the poor and the marginalised. For this to continue, the autonomy of institutions like JNU needs to be protected from external pressures that is founded on a mistaken and a fragile notion of national identity.

The writer is a Professor of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, JNU and a Senior Fellow, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities, New Delhi.

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ELECTIONS

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 18, 2016No state civil service officers over 52 for poll duty: Centre

NEW DELHI: The Centre has asked states not to recommend state civil service officers, especially those above 52, for general observer duties in a directive before the forthcoming assembly polls. Such officers were not found in good health in earlier assignments, the advisory said. Establishment Officer (EO) Rajiv Kumar's January letter to all states and the Union home secretary said the Election Commission had sought a panel of 1,100 IAS officers of 1988 2007 batches for appointment as general observers for assembly polls to Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Puducherry to be held in the first half of 2016. "It has been noticed that there is a tendency on part of some state governments to nominate large number of state civil service (SCS) officers. Some of these officers are found either not in good health or above 52. The Election Commission of India has, therefore, desired that if the state governments nominate some SCS officers, then they should take care to ensure that they are preferably not over 52 years of age and are in good health," says the letter written by Centre's EO Rajiv Kumar. The letter says "names of officers who are on long leave, long term training, within the country or overseas, who are having medical illness and hence will not be in a position to do field election duty during this period have to be avoided." Officers facing any disciplinary action as recommended by ECI or any department are also not to be recommended. It has also been pointed that ECI wants to deploy IAS officers falling within the allottment year 1998 to 2007 and they only may be considered for nomination. "In case your State has difficulty and would like to nominate the officers outside this zone of consideration, you may do so by relaxing one or two years maximum. However, that would be subject to the final approval of ECI," the letter says.

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EMINENT PERSONALITIES

STATESMAN, FEB 23, 2016Remembering an extraordinary manKK KhullarOf an angel were to descend from the heavens and proclaim from the heights of Qutab Minar: Discard Hindu-Muslim unity and within 24 hours Swaraj is yours, I will refuse the preferred Swaraj but shall not budge an inch from my stand. The refusal of Swaraj will affect only India while the end of our unity will be the loss of our entire human world”. It is a fact of history that while other leaders accepted partition of the country on the basis of the Two-Nations Theory of Jinnah, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, whose death anniversary was on Monday, stood firm and steadfast.

In his famous book ‘India wins Freedom’ he wrote: “It is one of the greatest frauds on the people to suggest that religious affinity can unite areas which are geographically, economically and culturally different”.

His mastery over history was unparalleled. Born in Mecca on 11 November 1888, his father Maulana Khairuddin was a noted scholar, a sufi and a strict disciplinarian. His mother Alia was the daughter of Shaikh Mohammad Zahir Vatri of Medina. His original name was Feroze Bakht but he became Abul Kalam and the name stayed. Educated within the four walls of his house in Calcutta he was well-versed in Persian, Arabic, the Holy Quran and later in English and French.His early influences were Maulana Shibli Naomani and Altaf Hussain Haali, the two great pillars of Urdu literary criticism. An ardent votary of freedom from a very young age, Azad often quoted Lok Manya Tilak who said ‘Freedom is my birthright’. Allama Iqbal inspired him whom also he quoted:

“Bandagi mein ghut key reh jati hai ik Joo-i-Kam-Aab Aur Azadi mein Behr-e-Bekaran Hai Zindagi” (In servitude life is reduced to a tiny stream while in freedom it becomes a boundless ocean).

Azad made his debut in politics when the British Government partitioned Bengal in 1905 on religious grounds. The Muslim middle class supported the partition but Azad rejected it outright. He took active part in the agitation, joined secret societies and revolutionary organisations, came in contact with Sri Aurobindo Ghosh and Shyam Sundar Chakravarti. He stood for a united iNdia and never deviated from his resolve. He was firmly of the view that India has kept its unity by its composite culture and liberal education.

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At the age of 20 he went on a tour of Iraq, Syria and Egypt and met the young Turks and Arab nationalists including Christian radicals. The tour proved very useful to crystallise his thoughts on neo-colonialists who were exploiting those countries and how India could help them. On return he started a journal in Urdu named Al-Hilal in 1912. It was this journal where he aired his liberal views.

“Rationalist in outlook and profoundly versed in Islamic lore and history, wrote Nehru in ‘Discovery of India’, he interpreted scriptures from the rationalist point of view. Soaked in Islamic tradition and with many personal contacts with prominent Muslim leaders of Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Iran, he was profoundly affected by the political and cultural developments in these countries. He was known in Islamic countries probably more than any other Indian Muslim”.

The journal Al-Hilal became extremely popular and in two years its circulation rose to 30,000 while the British Government watched with suspicion. The inevitable happened when in 1914, the Government confiscated the press and banned the publication of the journal under Defence of India Act. Azad was arrested and sent to Ranchi jail where he suffered untold hardships.

Released from jail he resumed his educational and cultural writings which were formerly confined to the editorials of Al-Hilal. “He spoke in a new language”, wrote Nehru. It was not only a new language in thought and approach, even its texture was different for Azad’s style was tense and virile though sometimes a little difficult because of its Persian background. He used new phrases for new ideas and was a definite influence in giving a new shape to Urdu language as it is today.

The older conservative Muslims did not react favourably to all this and criticised Azad’s opinion and approach, and yet not even the most learned could meet Azad in debate and argument, even on the basis of scriptures and tradition. Azad’s knowledge of these happened to be greater than theirs. He was a strange mixture of medieval scholasticism, 18th century rationalism and modern outlook. There were a few among the older generation who approved of Azad’s writings, among them being Shibli and Sir Sayyaid Ahmad Khan of Aligarh Muslim University.’

After the confiscation of ‘Al-Hilal’, Azad brought out a new weekly called Al-Balagh but that too came to an abrupt end when Azad was interned in 1916. He remained in jail for four years. When he came out he was an acknowledged leader and took his seat with the great and mighty of the Indian National Congress. In 1920 he met Tilak and Gandhi which was the turning point of his life. “Meeting them”, he said, “was like meeting Himalayas”.

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Gandhi had launched the ‘Khilafat Movement’ under the Deoband School. In Firangi Mahal, Lucknow, Gandhi and Azad met almost daily. His popularity was so high that at 35 he was elected as President of the Indian National Congress, the youngest ever to hold that august office. In 1942 during the Quit India Movement he was elected as chief spokesman of the Congress, a distinction he also had during negotiations with the cabinet Mission in 1946 at Simla.

But his most glorious period came when in 1947 an Interim Government was formed with Azad as a Member for Education and Arts. On 15 August 1947 when India attained independence he became free India’s first Education Minister with a cabinet rank where he achieved a number of distinctions and established many institutions of excellence to promote education and culture.

Among the new institutions were Indian Council of Cultural Relations (1950), the three National Akademis viz Sangeet Natak Akademi (1953), Sahitya Akademi (1954) and Lalit Kala Akademi (1954). The Maulana felt that the cultural content in Indian education was very low during British rule and needed to be strengthened through a curriculum which should be enriched in as many manifestations as possible. Children should be enabled to develop sensitivity to beauty, harmony and refinement. Education must bring out the fine synthesis between change-oriented technologies and the country’s continuity of rich cultural traditions. In 1956 he was responsible for the establishment of the UGC (University Grants Commission) for disbursement of grants to Indian Universities and maintainance of standards by them. He believed, like any great educationist that if universities discharged their functions well, all will be well with the nation.Apart from being a great scholar in Urdu, Persian and Arabic he wanted the retention of English language for educational advantages and national and international needs. However primary education should be imparted in the child’s mother-tongue, in particular of the linguistic minorities as guaranteed in the Constitution of India. On the technical side he established the IITs, at Kharagpur in 1951 followed later by those at Bombay, Madras, and Delhi. A school of planning and architecture came into existence in 1955. He stood for the Common School System, the Neighbourhood Schools and School Complexes to remove segregation in Education.

As Chairman of the CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education) he stood for free universal elementary education for all children irrespective of caste, colour, creed, sex and location upto the age of 14 which became a cardinal principle in the National Policies of Education 1968, 1986 and 1992. He often said that the benefits of education and the penalties of ignorance run concurrently. But there should be no compulsion on parents in education, it should be persuasion, by motivation, by incentives or what is being called today as Inclusive Education. In his vision of education compulsion should be on the Government to provide enough schools to accommodate the challenge of over-population.

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But he was always worried about students' unrest. Secular to the marrow of his bones, Maulana’s advice to students was “Bury communalism once for all”. Presiding over the meeting of the CABE on 7 February 1954 he said: “What worries me most is the extent and magnitude of student unrest and the fact that it is very often without any relation whatsoever with the supposed cause. Such unrest among the students strikes at the root of our national culture. The student of today is the potential leader of tomorrow. He will have to sustain the social, political and economic activities. If he is not properly trained and does not develop necessary resources of character and knowledge he cannot provide the leadership which the national will need”.

As an orator Azad had no equal among his contemporaries. When he spoke the audience listened to him spell-bound. Recalling the memories of the Roman and the Greek orators, there was magic in his words, his language was chaste, civilised, dramatic. Words came to him as in a fountain. In October 1947 when Delhi Muslims were leaving for Pakistan, tens of thousands of them, he spoke from the ramparts of Jama Masjid like an ancient oracle: “Behold, the high towers of Jama Masjid are asking you: Where have you lost the pages of your history? Only yesterday your caravans had performed ‘Wazu’ (Ablutions) on the banks of Jamuna. And today you are afraid to live here. Remember that you have nourished Dilli with your blood. Now you are afraid of tremors. Time was when you yourself were an earthquake. You fear darkness while you yourself symbolised light only recently. The clouds have poured only dirty water and you have raised your trousers for fear of being drenched. Your forefathers had dived deep into the seas, cut across the mighty mountains, laughed away the lightnings, answered the thunder of the skies with the velocity of your laughter, changed the direction of the winds and turned the typhoons that they have been misled to a wrong destination. It is an irony of fate that those who played with the destinies of kings are victims of their own destiny today. And in doing so they have become so forgetful of their God as if it never existed. Go back, it is your home, your country”. It looked as if a teacher was reprimanding his students for doing something wrong and was putting them on the right path. the teacher in him was always alive whether it was a cabinet meeting, a dining table, an office file.

The effect of this speech was dramatic. Those who packed up their baggage to migrate to Pakistan returned home with a new sense of freedom and patriotism. There was no mass migration thereafter. In the history of oratory, the Jama Masjid speech of Maulana Azad can only be compared with the Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln, Birla House speech of Nehru on Gandhi’s assasination and Martin Luther’s speech ‘I have a dream’.

Azad was a voracious reader and a prolific writer, in Urdu, Persian and Arabic. ‘India wins freedom’ (1960), his political biography was translated from Urdu to English. His translation of the Quran from Arabic to Urdu in six volumes was published by Sahitya Akademi in 1977. Till

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today it is considered as the best translation of the Holy Book of which several editions have come out. Titled ‘Tarjaman-e-Quran’ continues to be his ‘Magnum Opus’. His other books include ‘Gubar-e-Khatir’, ‘Hijr-o-Visal’, ‘Hamari Azadi’, ‘Mera Aqeeda’.

At the time of his death he had neither any property nor any bank account. No AC, no fixed or unfixed deposit, no car, no fridge. In his personal almirah were found some cotton ‘Achhkans,’ a few Khadi kurtas and pyjamas, some desi chappals, two pairs of sandals, an old dressing gown and a used brush but there were hundreds of rare books which are now the property of the nation.

The writer is a former Director, Ministry of HRD, Department of Education.

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EMPLOYMENT

STATESMAN, FEB 22, 2016World over, these are hothouses of discontentAsoke Basu

Political leaders of the world beware! Today, irrespective of your type of government, the unemployed and underemployed youth in your countries are a disruptive force that may dishevel your robe of legitimacy and grip on your power. These are the frustrated young men and women, from school dropouts to college graduates, who are being ignored by their governments. For many of them, access is blocked to the full rights of citizenship and economic mobility.

Who are these youth? According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations, some 75.1 million young people around the world were looking for jobs in 2010, and the number is growing. Instead of getting an early start in life, according to the ILO report, these youth are ‘three times more likely to be unemployed than adults’. The report predicts a ‘scarred generation of young workers facing a dangerous mix of high unemployment, increased inactivity, and menial work in developed countries, as well as persistently high working poverty in the developing world.’

In the underdeveloped economies of the world, the situation is especially dire. Nearly 80 per cent of unemployed people in those countries are youth between the ages of 15 and 24, of whom a third have only ten years of schooling or less. Moreover, the ratio of unemployed youth to unemployed adults in these nations is growing. For example, in Thailand at present, there are 6.1 unemployed youth for every unemployed adult. In Indonesia, that ratio is 5.6 to 1; and in the Philippines, the ratio is 3.4 to 1. The situation is even worse for girls than it is for boys. The ILO report concludes that ‘being young and female continues to pose a double challenge for the current generation of young women looking to find decent jobs’.

The noted social scientist Robert Solow considers labour market as a ‘social institution’, which he argues is more realistic because work and the loss of it should be far removed from the ‘textbook’ measures and models. Sociologists have found that the social origin of unemployed workers is heavily tilted toward minorities, the rural poor, and women. In a study commissioned by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the authors found that ‘unemployment begets unemployment’, by what sociologist Mira Komorovsky called the ‘multiplier effect’. In other words, attitudes toward work are shaped by joblessness over months and years, breeding hopelessness over time.

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In the West, minority youth is most alienated. They lack analytical skills to meet the demands of post-industrial societies. This situation is particularly noticeable among the new immigrants in the advanced economies of the West. The youth unemployment data sets from the Netherlands illustrate our point. Joblessness increased for those who immigrated from Turkey (+13 %), Morocco (+51%), Surinam (+4%) and the Antilles (+75%).

In the United States, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics that in January 2016 although the unemployment rate was 4.9 per cent, African-American population was double that of the white. Moreover, this situation has remained the same for the past six decades. Much of the ethnic division can be attributed to the amount of education. While overall jobless rate in 2014 was 5 per cent, for those who did not complete high school diploma, the unemployment rate was 9 per cent.

As long ago as 1895, the French sociologist Gustav Le Bon noted that ‘collective’ protests begin with a small, amorphous, disenchanted youth group that ventures beyond reasonable social norms. Often, these nascent movements sprout from unemployed masses who make up the rules of the game as they go along. However, at some point, a demagogue emerges who coalesces these aimless youth into a critical mass. That’s when the discontent becomes explosive.

Sociologists are hesitant to draw global generalizations about the specific factors that contribute to the rise of protest movements, since nations and cultures are different. Nevertheless, they have found a common theme in the way self-identity becomes submerged in collective movements. Disaffected youth are the most vulnerable idealists to be manipulated by leaders who invoke the mantra of change, or even revolution.

Consider the case of Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates from Hausa to ‘Western education is a sin’. This terrorist organization is a renegade group of armed men (and even some women), who are routinely recruiting disaffected youth from Nigeria and the bordering countries of Benin, Chad, and Niger. The Global Terrorist Index estimated that Boko Haram, which was initially organized by a charismatic cleric, killed 7,000 innocent people in 2014 alone. Tunisia is another tinderbox. It has been estimated that more than 50 per cent of college graduates in Tunisia are out of work. One could argue that the solution to terrorism is jobs. In fact, Haouas, Sayre, and Yagoubi (2012) have attributed the lack of job creation in Tunisia to inefficient educational planners who ignore the sizeable mismatch between productive vocations and market demands.

In India, according to the census of 2011, more than a quarter of the nation’s youth, identified as individuals between the ages of 15 and 29, are perennially unemployed. There are two sharp

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edges to their woes. First, since labour is cheap, the formal and informal business sectors, especially the small mom-and-pop stores, survive by paying minimum wages that do not cover their workers’ living expenses. Second, the educational system favors wage manipulation, if not outright stagnation, by producing graduates who lack needed skills. In fact, the unemployment graph looks like an inverted pyramid, with unemployment higher for college graduates than for illiterate youth.

As long ago as 1986, Lakshman drew an abysmal profile of the human cost of underemployment and the loss of self-identity in India. More recently in 2006, Pal has noted that India’s unemployed youth must be considered a ‘distinct’ social category, whose anger and frustration against the government and the system of education are the seeds of protest movements. For these marginal classes, democracy is a pure fiction. They would agree with Wittgenstein (in Tractus 1922) that in order for ‘ideal language’ to have pragmatic teeth it must be proportionate to the ‘real’ life.

In modern-day India, college and university campuses are political hothouses of discontent. The vestigial youth parties, once encouraged by independence from Britain movements, have hit an ideological pothole. If the state party bosses agree that socioeconomic mobility for all youth is a constitutional obligation, the first and most pragmatic way to resolve both intra- and inter-party chaos on campuses is to agree, however voluntarily, to cease all political activity there. By all account, this suggestion is not Pollyannaish; instead, it must be considered by the political leaders as an urgent appeal to commit youth’s crumbling future to the common good of all. That will free educators to prepare their students to see the world through clear lenses of critical thinking and logical analysis. Academics, likewise, must avoid rehashing the arcane rhetoric which argues that the Indian people are the trolls of postcolonial elites. India needs only to claim that customs, beliefs, and traditions can complement civic motives while meeting manpower targets for the good of the country.

Genuine education means that youths are given full moral rights of citizenship. Then the air of openness and inclusiveness will fill the hearts and minds of all. Long ago, Buddha had it right: Bahujana sukhaya, bahujana hitaya, ‘For the happiness of the many, for the welfare of the many.’

The writer is an emeritus professor of sociology.

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GOVERNORS

PIONEER, FEB 16, 2016GOVERNORS AND THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL ROLES

The apex court’s verdict in the Arunachal Pradesh case must reinforce the gains in constitutional law made in the post-Bommai era so as to curtail political mischief and uphold the best traditions of democracy

Although the era of reckless use of Article 356 is now behind us ever since the significant judgement of the Supreme Court in the Bommai case, there is no running away from the fact that political ingenuity can manufacture situations that no legal draftsman or judge can ever anticipate. The latest imbroglio in Arunachal Pradesh, leading to imposition of President’s Rule in the State is a case in point.

The State has come under Central Rule following a bizarre turn of events last December following dissensions in the ruling Congress. The drama unfolded as follows: Rebel MLAs wanted the Assembly to be convened to vote out the Government; the Government was in no hurry to convene the Session; the Governor bypassed the State Government and summoned the Assembly; the Speaker, aligned to the Chief Minister, disqualified 14 of the rebels and “locked” the State Assembly complex; Congress rebels teamed up with Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs in the opposition and some independents, “convened” the State Assembly in a community hall and “impeached” the Speaker; thereafter, they met in a local hotel and “voted out” the Chief Minister and elected a rebel Congress MLA in his place.

Following these events, the Governor sent a series of report to the Centre and informed it of the constitutional breakdown in the State and the Centre responded by imposing President’s Rule in the State. The Assembly has been kept in suspended animation. The matter is now before a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court virtually put an end to the gross misuse of Article 356 by the Union Government when a nine-judge bench delivered its verdict in 1994 in what is popularly known as the Bommai case. The conclusions of the court in this case can be summarised as follows:

i) The validity of the proclamation issued by the President under Article 356(1) is judicially reviewable to the extent of examining whether it was issued on the basis of any material at all or whether the material was relevant or whether the proclamation was issued in the mala fide exercise of power. When a prima facie case is made out in the challenge to the proclamation, the burden is on the Union Government to prove that the relevant material did in fact exist and such material may be either the report of the governor or other than the report.

ii) Article 74(2) is not a bar against the scrutiny of material on the basis of which the President had arrived at his satisfaction.

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iii) It will not be permissible for the President to exercise powers under sub-clauses (a), (b) and (c) of clause (1) of Article 356 to take irreversible actions till at least both the Houses of Parliament have approved of the proclamation. It is for this reason that the President will not be justified in dissolving the legislative Assembly by using the powers of the governor till at least, both the Houses of Parliament approve of the proclamation.

iv) If the proclamation issued is held invalid, then notwithstanding the fact that it is approved by both Houses of Parliament, it will be open to the court to restore the status quo ante to the issuance of the proclamation and hence to restore the Legislative Assembly and the Ministry.

v) In appropriate cases, the court will have the power by an interim injunction, to restrain the holding of fresh elections to the Legislative Assembly pending the final disposal of the challenge to the validity of the proclamation to avoid the fait accompli and the remedy of judicial review being rendered fruitless.

vi) While restoring the status quo ante, it will be open to the court to mould the relief suitably.

vii) Secularism is a part of the basic structure of the Constitution. The acts of the State Government which are calculated to subvert and sabotage secularism as enshrined in our Constitution, can lawfully be deemed to give rise to the situation in which the Government of the State cannot be carried on in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution.

This is now the law of the land and this judgement has the following implications in respect of the developments in Arunachal Pradesh. Article 74(2), which shielded the advice given to the President from judicial scrutiny, stands partially breached. This Article says “The question whether any, and if so what, advice was tendered by Ministers to the President shall not be inquired into in any court”. The Bommai judgement has declared that Article74 (2) is not a bar against the court scrutinising the material “on the basis of which the President arrived at his satisfaction”. Therefore, unlike in the pre-Bommai phase, the reports submitted by the Governor of the State are subject to the court’s scrutiny; Second, the Bommai judgement prohibits the Union Government from taking any irreversible actions like dissolution of the State Assembly and ordering of fresh elections until the two Houses of Parliament have ratified the imposition of President’s Rule. Hence, the Assembly has been kept in suspended animation. Further, the two Houses of Parliament have to ratify the Centre’s decision within two months. However, in the present case, since the ruling coalition does not enjoy a majority in the Rajya Sabha, ratification of President’s Rule by the upper House seems highly unlikely. As regards the conduct of the Governor, all that can be said on his behalf is that he did not order a parade of MLAs in Raj Bhavan like Governors did in the pre-Bommai era. Instead, he wanted an early floor test in the Assembly. But, could he convene the Assembly without the advice of the State Cabinet? And can the Assembly meet in some community hall? The conduct of the Speaker too will come under close scrutiny. We must await the verdict of the Supreme Court on all these issues and hope that advances made in the post-Bommai era in constitutional law and in enforcing the best traditions of democracy, is further reinforced to curtail political mischief.

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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

PIONEER, FEB 16, 2016TWO NATIONS, ONE CIVILISATION Anirban R Banerjee

India and Nepal, two democratic nations that are part of the larger Hindu civilisation and whose people are bound together by centuries-old cultural ties, must stick together and jointly fight the challenges they face

Now that India and Nepal have removed the major roadblocks at the Ruxal-Birgunj checkpost, the myth that the people of Nepal and India are enemies must be demolished. Nepal has a demographic profile that is younger than India’s 50 per cent of the population of Nepal is below 25 years of age group. This generation of Nepalese is literate, exposed to technology, inspired and forward looking.

Nepal’s energy industry has a huge potential to develop through hydropower and other non-conventional sources. Industries can be set up all along the India-Nepal border which will generate jobs and help the service industry grow. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative to start long-pending projects, widen the roads for trade and develop multi-model trade hubs will give a major boost to Nepal’s trade and industry.

India should also work on developing rail connectivity with Nepal to boost development. Nepal, India, Bhutan and Bangladesh account for six per cent of the gross domestic product of the world and about 18 per cent of the global population. The landmark Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal motor vehicle agreement, signed on June 15, 2015, will provide great opportunities for synergistic economic gain.

An India-Nepal trade and industry corridor, with connectivity to Myanmar and the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has enormous potential. India has a 1,751km border with Nepal and the development of roads between the two countries will lead to the promotion of trade and tourism. This will create opportunities for the youth of Nepal and India.

India and Nepal should also develop a joint skill development mission to help Nepali youth. Similarly, an India-Nepal start-up initiative, setting up entrepreneurship collaboration and start-up incubation centres, will boost growth and employment. Nepal and India should jointly work towards setting up of a management institute in Nepal and a Nepalese institute of technology in India. India can also help Nepal with it’s expertise of organic farming in Sikkim.

It is said that the history of Nepal is the history of its Army. The Nepal Army is known for its discipline and professionalism. Its contribution towards the building the modern day Nepal is enormous. The Nepal Army, along with the Indian Army, saved many lives in the aftermath of the 2014 earthquake.

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There were many hindrances towards the emergence of the Nepal-India partnership, as India’s Nehruvian political leaders for the past six decades, failed to give a strategic direction to this bilateral. An ineffective Indian bureaucracy has never been able to realise the true potential of the great people of Nepal.

A section of the Indian media lacks the depth of knowledge and understanding of our common vedic culture. Insensitive reporting by such media persons adds to the complications.

The growth of the Islamic State and radical Islam has dangerous implications for both India and Nepal, according to global security experts. Illegal activities like human trafficking, drugs trafficking, arms smuggling and the fake currency racket are endangering Nepal’s economy.

Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency aims to destabilise the region by spreading terror networks and organised crime. The increased focus of the Islamic State, as brought to light by the arrest of 27 Bangladeshi jihadis in Singapore, exposes the alliance of the Islamic State, the ISI and Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami. The demand by Muslims in Nepal for special status and the re-arming of Maoist factions pose a threat to Nepal.

According to Western intelligence, Islamic State-ISI network has recruited Muslims from Nepal and is now training them in camps in West Asia and Afghanistan. The increase in Gulf- funded madarssas in Nepal, the spread of Saudi-backed Wahhabi radical networks, and the rise of foreign-funded institutions and NGOs pose a challenge to Nepali sovereignty.

Such elements want a black economy in Nepal that will stall development and investment in the country and create social unrest. India and Nepal need to take note of the changing geo-political situation across Asia. Particularly the rise of the Islamic State and the increased military aggression of China and its ally North Korea has ramifications for South and South East Asia.

Chinese companies supplied oil to Nepal at double the rate of what Indian company had quoted. Thus, we can’t expect China or any other nation to mitigate the suffering of our own people. As pointed out by many leaders in Nepal, enforcing the new Constitution with secular, republican character was against the majority public opinion of Nepalese who favoured the preservation of Nepal’s Hindu character.

According to a Pew Research Centre poll, which assessed the aspirations of the Nepali people, an overwhelming majority want Nepal to be a Hindu state. However, the Maoists and a section of the international lobby, which were uncomfortable with the Hindu character of Nepal and the possibilities of a democracy with a constitutional monarchy, hurried the promulgation of the new Constitution.

Notably, the rule of the Ranas was not without achievement. Till the abolition of constitutional monarchy in 2008, the people in Nepal could always fall back upon the Palace in times of crisis. Now, the absence of this age-old institution is felt across Nepal.

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Nepal, the land of the brave Gurkhas and also the birthplace of Lord Buddha, has a unique place in our history and a special place in our hearts. Nepal is the holy place for all Hindus and Buddhists, as Mecca is for Muslims and Jerusalem for Jews and Christians

Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s sympathy for the Maoist in Nepal had translated into the previous Left-wing UPA Government’s unconditional support for the Maoist, which helped give the latter a strong hand to decide the political agenda of Nepal.

We also need to completely free the Nepal-India relationship from the clutches of the lobby at Jawaharlal Nehru University. We need to engage our youth, military, businesses and technocrats to develop a strategic relationship. The people of Nepal and India must not be hostage to an ideological dogma that’s long been dead in the rest of the world.

We need to get rid of ideology that hinders economic growth and diverts our attention from the emerging economic and security challenges. The Indian Army and the Nepalese Army have close and historic relations with each other, and the Indian Prime Minister is committed to building a strategic Nepal-India partnership.

India and Nepal are two nations but one people. We should remember the words of the great king Prithvi Narayan Shah in Divya Upadesh, and what Chanakya taught us. Nepal and India today are like a yam between two stones West Asia’s wahhabi radicalism and China’s military aggressiveness. Nepal and India are both democracies, and both are part of Hindu civilisation. Both countries must fight all challenges with unity and determination.

The writer is the author of Leadership Excellence Principles My Father Followed. He specialises in human resource

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JUDICIARY

STATESMAN, FEB 18, 2016A legal conundrum

Justice CS Karnan of the Madras High Court, on order of transfer to the Calcutta High Court, has been an iconoclast. He has defied the order of the Chief Justice of India, TS Thakur, by passing an unprecedented suo motu stay order and demanded the CJI file, through his subordinates, a written statement explaining the reasons for the transfer by 29 April. He also asked the CJI not to interfere in his jurisdiction as he was in the process of finalising a judgment on merits. The High Court is at its wits’ end not knowing how to cope with this piquant situation. Impeachment is not the answer as Justice Karnan, a Scheduled Caste member, could easily mobilise support in Parliament to thwart such a move. Transfer is the normal practice to deal with recalcitrant judges but it has not worked in Karnan’s case. He came into prominence by a judgment of far-reaching consequences that a bachelor who has completed 21 years of age and a spinster of 18 years can be declared man and wife if they have “consummated their sexual cravings.” Even if the woman did not become pregnant after having sexual relationship with a man but there was admissible evidence to show the existence of such a relationship, then also the couple could be declared as husband and wife. Marriage formalities such as tying a mangalsutra, the exchange of garlands and rings, or registration, were only to comply with religious customs for the satisfaction of society.

A protégé of former CJI K Balakrishnan, Karnan’s selection as Judge of the Madras High Court itself was mired in controversy and exposes the shortcomings of the collegium system. His social relationship with brother judges of the High Court has been such that 21 of them had signed a petition complaining against him. Karnan too has been making complaints to the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes threatening to file criminal charges against them under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The controversy was worse confounded when a Division Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justices JS Khehar and R Banumathi passed an order staying “the operation of all or any administrative/judicial orders passed by Justice Karnan after the issuance of his transfer from Madras High Court dated 12 February 2016, unless specially assigned to him by the Chief Justice of the High Court.” Karnan described the order as racist and threatened to drag the two judges to Parliament and seek their impeachment. Whatever may be the merits of the case, transferring Karnan to the Calcutta High Court for “better administration” of justice will not wash. If he is not good enough for administration of justice in the Madras High Court, how can he better the administration of justice in Calcutta High Court?

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LABOUR

HINDUSTAN TIMES, FEB 17, 2016PF interest rate hiked, small savings suffer cut by 0.25%

The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) hiked on Tuesday the interest rate on provident fund from 8.75% to 8.8% for 2015-16, while reducing the returns on short-term small savings instruments by 0.25%.

Union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya said the PF measure was an interim hike, open to revision.

“Looking at the situation, we are declaring a 8.8% hike for the workers,” he told reporters after chairing a meeting of the EPFO’s central board of trustees in Chennai.He said the hike underlined the Centre’s commitment to the working class.But trade unions were upset with the token 0.05% increase in the interest rate on provident fund that constitutes a key component of savings for millions of workers in India.

The EPFO’s financial audit and investment committee raised hopes in January, saying its earnings in 2015-16 were good enough to offer an interest rate of 8.95%.“Papers presented by the EPFO say 8.95% interest rate was feasible. But it was not done. All the central trade unions have registered their protest,” said DL Sachdeva, the national secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress and a member of the EPFO’s central board of trustees.

Projections reveal that the EPFO will earn more than Rs 34,844 crore in 2015-16, meaning it will have sufficient funds to offer an interest rate of 8.95%.Provident fund interest is directly related to the EPFO’s annual income from investments.

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PANCHAYAT

INDIAN EXPRESS, FEB 16, 2016Haryana: Rs 210-crore reward for unanimously elected sarpanches, panches, panchayats

Khattar announced that a reward money of Rs 50,000 would be given to every unanimously

elected panch of the village, Rs 5 lakh to every unanimously elected sarpanch and Rs 11 lakh to

the panchayat in case the entire panchayat is elected unanimously.

THE HARYANA government will give Rs 210-crore as “reward money” to the panchayats that

have been elected unanimously in the recently concluded elections to Haryana Panchayati Raj

Institutions. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar made this announcement Monday in Rohtak

while addressing the gathering during the oath-taking ceremony of newly elected sarpanches.

Khattar announced that a reward money of Rs 50,000 would be given to every unanimously

elected panch of the village, Rs 5 lakh to every unanimously elected sarpanch and Rs 11 lakh to

the panchayat in case the entire panchayat is elected unanimously.

Development and Panchayats Minister O P Dhankar told The Indian Express that, “the reward

money is to be used for development of the villages. At places where elections take place

unanimously, it leads to unification among the villagers. A feeling of brotherhood is created.

Funds worth crores are given to all villages every year for development work. The reward is a

matter of honour for the villages where representatives were elected unanimously”.

Elections were held held for 416 members of 21 zila parishads, 3001 posts of 126 panchayat

samitis and 62,492 posts of sarpanches and panches for 6198 gram panchayats.

Of these, 39,249 members got unanimously elected. These include 274 sarpanches, 118

panchayat samiti members, two zila parishad members and 38,555 panches.

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Khattar also announced an increase in honorarium of the sarpanches, from Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000

per month and for the panches, from Rs 600 to Rs 1000. The first meeting of all panchayats

would be held on February 24.

The Chief Minister said the state government has made arrangements to ensure systematic

functioning of newly elected panchayats. At least four meetings of the gram sabhas would be

held in a year. An 11-member committee would be constituted to supervise the functioning of the

panchayats so as to conduct social audit of works being done by the panchayats.

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POLICE

INDIAN EXPRESS, FEB 18, 2016Alok Verma to take over as Delhi police commissioner

He will also have to work with the Arvind Kejriwal government that has had repeated stand-offs

with the Centre since it came to power a year ago.

The Central government has cleared the name of senior IPS officer Alok Verma as the next Delhi

Police Commissioner, and a formal order is expected soon, senior government sources said

Wednesday.

Verma, currently posted as director general of Tihar prison, is expected to take over from Delhi

Police Commissioner B S Bassi, who will superannuate on February 29. He is likely to have a

tenure of 17 months as the police chief.

Verma will take charge as chief of the Delhi Police in the wake of a controversy over alleged

anti-India slogans raised during a protest march at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the

subsequent police crackdown. Police have received flak for allegedly going slow against those

who indulged in violence at the Patiala House Courts Complex.

Alok Verma became the director general (DG) of Delhi Prisons on August 6, 2014. Verma, a

1979-batch Indian Police Service officer of the Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram and Union Territories

(AGMUT) cadre, was posted as special commissioner of police (CP), administration, with Delhi

Police.

Verma has held many posts in Delhi Police after he joined the AGMUT cadre. He was the

deputy commissioner of police, south district, before being deployed on central deputation. He

served as the Inspector General of Police in Andaman and Nicobar islands before returning to

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Delhi Police. He was appointed the joint commissioner of police, crime and joint CP, New Delhi

range, before moving to Puducherry as the director general of police (DGP).

He returned to Delhi Police as special CP (intelligence), and later served as special CP, vigilance,

as well. He then took charge as the DGP of Mizoram, before returning to Delhi Police as special

CP, administration, considered the no. 2 post in the force.

He will also have to work with the Arvind Kejriwal government that has had repeated stand-offs

with the Centre since it came to power a year ago.

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POLITICS AND GOVERNMJENT

HINDU, FEB 18, 2016Cabinet recommends lifting of Central rule in ArunachalMEHBOOB JEELANIDissidents lack numbers to form government: Azad

A day after the Supreme Court refused to stop the dissident leaders and the Governor in Arunachal Pradesh from forming a new government, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday sought the revocation of President’s rule in the State imposed on January 26.

Anticipating the Cabinet’s recommendation, Congress leaders met President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday to update him of the case.

Congress leaders met the President to counter the dissenting MLAs, who led by Congress leader Kalikho Pul met Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa on Monday. The dissidents had staked a claim to form a government. Mr. Pul was accompanied by 19 rebel Congress MLAs, along with 11 BJP legislators, and two Independents.

On February 11, the Congress sought the Supreme Court’s intervention to “restrain” Mr. Pul from being sworn in as Chief Minister. But the court rejected the plea.

Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad told The Hindu that the party presented the case to Mr. Mukherjee, explaining that the dissident leaders lacked the numerical strength to form a government as it has 45 members in the 60-seat Assembly (of which two MLAs have resigned). “They don’t have two-thirds majority. Out of the 21 [dissidents], 14 MLAs have been removed. If any new government is allowed, it will be formed on illegal grounds” Mr. Azad said. Ever since the political crisis started, the Congress has accused the BJP of fomenting unrest in the State to unseat its government. The crisis started when Mr. Rajkhowa issued an order stating that the “removal” of the Speaker should be on top of the agenda in the Assembly session on December 16.

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PUBLIC FINANCE

HINDU, FEB 23, 2016A fine balance on the BudgetM. GOVINDA RAO

It is Budget time again, and a lot of things have been written and spoken about what the Finance Minister should and can do. Indeed, every section of the community has expectations. No one wants to pay more in taxes and everyone wants more and better public services. While everyone wants to bequeath considerable wealth to their progeny, myopia sets in while it comes to government borrowing even as it involves a burden on the future generations.

Even in the best of times, Budget-making is a very difficult exercise in India. Given the depressing global environment, marked slowdown in domestic manufacturing and increasing expenditure demands, the challenges this year look formidable.

The spend-or-save dilemma

The revival of investment climate requires structural reforms besides substantially increasing public investment since private sector investment is stagnant. At the same time, the government will have to leave enough savings for the private sector to borrow at a reasonable rate of interest which requires it to contain its claim on the household sector’s financial savings.

In India, aggregate tax-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio is just about 17 per cent. Gross tax collection at the Union level is just a little over 10 per cent and after devolution, the Union government gets just about 6.5 per cent. With the non-tax revenue collections amounting to about 2.5 per cent, the total revenue available to the Union government is less than 10 per cent of GDP. This year, in addition to meeting competing demands from various departments, the Finance Minister is saddled with the problem of recapitalising the public sector banks which are saddled with huge non-performing assets, provisioning for pay revision and meeting additional requirements for “One Rank One Pension (OROP)”.

It is therefore not surprising that the discussion has veered around the need to increase government expenditure even if this requires violating the fiscal deficit target. While the Chief Economic Adviser in his mid-year review and subsequently in various fora has strongly argued for increasing public investment by pausing once more on the fiscal deficit target, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor as well as the vice-chairman of NITI Aayog have emphasised the need to conform to the targets. The stance the Finance Minister will take in the Budget will be keenly watched.

Indeed, this is a major dilemma, but breaching the deficit target to increase expenditure is only an easy route riddled with serious repercussions. The problem is that at a time when the financial saving of the household sector is just about 7.6 per cent of GDP, even if the government

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conforms to the fiscal deficit target of 3.5 per cent, with the total deficit of the States at 2.5 per cent, the consolidated deficit will be about 6 per cent; the States have to take the additional burden of over 1 per cent of GDP under UDAY (Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana). Additional borrowing will leave very little room for the RBI to reduce the interest rates, and even if it is forced to, the banks will find it difficult to transmit it to the borrowers simply because they will not have enough money to lend.

Furthermore, interest payments at the Union level are estimated at about 50 per cent of the net tax revenue and 40 per cent of its net revenues. With nominal GDP growing at lower than the real GDP, further addition to debt will increase debt-GDP ratio at a much faster rate. More importantly, there is the question of credibility. The government has paused four times since the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act was passed in 2003; it has redefined the targets and more often than not, it has observed the targets by breaching it. Credit rating agencies will be keenly watching the stance.

Raising additional resources

Surely it is important to increase public investment to revive the investment climate, particularly when the global environment is fragile and exports are declining. Injection of additional expenditures through pay increases and the OROP provision will increase consumption demand. The way to increase public investment is to find other resources.

First, there is no strategic objective served by the government continuing to hold the stocks of blue chip companies under SUUTI (Specified Undertaking of the Unit Trust of India). Offloading this could yield about Rs.60,000 crore.

Second, the volume of taxes held stuck in disputes is Rs.5.8 lakh crore, and over 60 per cent of it has been in the last five years. Creating a mechanism to resolve the disputes, even if only 20 per cent of this is recovered, could fetch the government over Rs.1 lakh crore and, more importantly, it will create a more favourable investment climate. The Kelkar committee has provided useful guidance for reviving the public-private partnership projects, including the ways to deal with legacy issues and immediate implementation could untangle significant investments. As it is, the road sector has shown a good performance and the implementation of the Kelkar committee’s report can give it a further fillip.

Tax and expenditure reforms

On the taxes front, the Finance Minister in the last Budget has indicated that he will phase out tax preferences for the corporate sector and reduce the rate of tax to 25 per cent in the next three years, and his actions on these will be keenly watched. More importantly, the government will have to show its seriousness in introducing the Goods and Services Tax by rationalising the excise duty and service tax structures. This requires, in the case of excise duty, pruning of the exemption list, reducing the threshold from the prevailing Rs.1.5 crore, limiting the list of items

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taxed at low rates to essential commodities and reclassifying them into general rate category, and unifying the rates of tax to two. In the case of service tax, the exemption list will have to be increased from the prevailing Rs.10 lakh and items in the negative list and exemptions will have to be pruned further. It would also be useful to merge the cesses and surcharges with the basic levy and make the general rates of excise duty and service tax uniform. I do not see much change in the personal income taxation though there may be marginal increase in exemptions and savings incentive.

On the expenditure side, the government will have to expand the JAM (Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile) initiative and move over to cash transfers wherever feasible, particularly on items like gas and kerosene subsidy. The subsidies in 2015-16 are budgeted at Rs.2.43 lakh crore and actual outgo will be lower on account of low oil prices. Food and fertilizer subsidies continue to proliferate, and it is important to rationalise and target them. Increasing the price of urea is important not only to contain the subsidy but also to promote balanced nutrient intake. Unfortunately, the Union government has continued to expand centrally sponsored schemes rather than limiting them to a few meritorious services where the minimum standards of services must be ensured across the country. Perhaps, the Finance Minister should discontinue the less important schemes and fund those that are important adequately.

(M. Govinda Rao is Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, and Non-resident Senior Fellow of the National Council of Applied Economic Research.)

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RAILWAYS

BUSINESS LINE, FEB 16, 2016Railway employees vote for indefinite strike from April 11MAMUNI DAS/ADITI NIGAM

In a strike ballot held last weekend, almost 95 per cent of railway employees have voted in favour of an indefinite strike with effect from April 11 — if the Centre fails to reach a negotiated settlement on their 11-point charter of demands.

The strike ballot by rail unions was held following a meeting of the National Joint Council of Action (NJCA) of central government employees on February 8, which decided to proceed on indefinite strike from 6 am on April 11 if their demands are not resolved.

NJCA is a joint body of federations and unions representing 32 lakh employees in Central government departments, including postal, railway and defence workers.

Indian Railways is the largest government employer with 13 lakh employees.

The strike ballot was held by the All India Railwaymen Federation (AIRF), the largest railway union, and the National Federation of Indian Railwaymen (NFIR), among others.

“About 94.87 per cent of 9.69 lakh employees have voted for an indefinite strike from April 11,” Shivagopal Mishra, General Secretary, AIRF, toldBusinessLine .

The Demands

The rail unions are demanding settlement of issues raised by the NJCA on the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission, scrapping of the Bibek Debroy report on restructuring of the Railways and the National Pension Scheme, no privatisation/outsourcing/contractorisation of governmental functions, no foreign direct investment in Railways and Defence, filling up of all vacant posts, and regularisation of casual/contract workers, among others.

In a statement, Mishra, who is also the NJCA convener, announced that notices for withdrawal of labour i.e. strike, would be served to the respective employers on March 11, while urging the Centre to take immediate steps to arrive at a “negotiated settlement”.

NFIR said failure to do so would lead to strike notices being served on “General Managers of the Zonal Railways, production units etc., on 11th March 2016, and the indefinite strike in Railways shall commence from 11th April 2016.”

If the strike does take place, this could well be the “biggest and historic” strike by Railway employees, “the responsibility of which shall lie with the Government of India,” AIRF said in a statement. In 1974, George Fernandes, the then President of the AIRF, had led a 20-day strike.

(This article was published in the Business Line print edition dated February 16, 2016)

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TRIBUNE, FEB 16, 2016Nation: Airport-like trolleys at rly stations could be nextAman Sood

An integral part of every railway station, the coolies or porters could be in line for a complete transformation, one they would wish does not eventually throw them out of business.

To lighten the burden that involves carrying luggage on the head, the Railways have formulated a plan to provide the coolies with trolleys similar to the ones at airports. The pilot project, if it does get approval, would be launched at select railway stations with ramps to facilitate trolley movement.

The proposal, that could find mention in the railway budget this year, includes replacing the trademark red uniform with a brass armband with clothes carrying brand endorsements and giving the porters a new designation, something akin to assistants.

“The idea is to employ the coolies in a better manner, so they are able to sustain on what they get from customers and provide additional facilities,” said a senior railway official.

JanShakti Railway Coolie Union (JRCU) president Ramji Singh said he had come to know that trolleys would be made available at railway stations soon and this issue would be discussed at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on February 20 on the occasion of ‘Coolie Diwas’.

“Our concern is that around one lakh coolies in the country can feed their families and the Railway Minister must address these issues in the February 25 budget,” he said, adding that advertisement revenue should be spent on the welfare of coolies.

The coolies are not deemed railway employees and their income is what they earn by carrying luggage. They get a free second-class railway pass and PTO (Privilege Ticket Order) for self and two sets of uniform annually. They also get free medical treatment at Out Patient Departments of railway dispensaries.

The recruitment of coolies basically runs on the system of badge transfer. The porters who no longer consider themselves fit to work can surrender their badges by transferring it to a nominee — usually a relative.

An MP, privy to the initial discussions, said the idea is to ensure that the coolies are not thrown out of trade, are accorded more respect and the passengers also get the benefit.

General Manager, Central Railway, Sunil Sood, said the matter was not in his knowledge.

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RURAL DEVELOPMENT

BUSINESS STANDARD, FEN 22, 2016PM Modi launches Rurban Mission from ChhattisgarhExpects to attract Rs 5,000-cr investment in next three years to give villages an urban look

Now, Modi govt to make villages smart President Mukherjee calls for tolerance again Modi attacks Bihar poll alliance Govt plans dedicated portal to support innovative ideas President to launch Imprint India today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday launched the ambitious Shyama Prasad Mukherji

Rurban (rural-urban) Mission from Chhattisgarh's Dongargarh block, which aims to draw an

investment of over Rs 5,000 crore in three years to "transform rural areas to economically,

socially and physically sustainable spaces."

The Rurban mission would replace the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's

Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (Pura) initiative. Rurban would create village

clusters to minimise rural migration to cities through skill development programmes.

"If there can be smart cities, why can't there be smart villages," Modi said here, while addressing

a mammoth gathering after the launch of the scheme on Sunday afternoon.

Rural migration was increasing but could be contained by providing quality of life in villages, he

said. Development should ensure that the soul of a village remained intact but amenities were

like those in cities.

The prime minister said till now national schemes and projects were launched from Delhi. But he

decided to start the Rurban Mission from Dongargarh's Kurubhat village – about 110 km from

Chhattisgarh's capital Raipur. The intention of launching national schemes from a small centre

was to move the government out of Delhi and ensure it reached villagers, he said.

Under the scheme, 300 clusters would be developed with an investment of Rs 5,100 crore in

three years. Four clusters would be developed in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon, Dhamtari,

Kawardha and Bastar districts. This year, 100 clusters would be taken up under the project.

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Modi said the country's economic growth should not be centric to 50 big cities. "For the

development and growth of the country, the economy should grow at the village level also," he

added.

The prime minister also laid the foundation stone for an electronic manufacturing cluster that

would come up on 70 acres in Naya Raipur.

About 61 units would be set up in the cluster with an investment of Rs 2,000 crore. Modi also

launched the Chief Minister Housing Scheme that would build low-cost houses.

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SMALL SCALE INDUSTRY

STATESMAN, FEB 17, 2016Small & Medium

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan is not far from the crux of the Indian economic problem when he says that small and medium enterprises ought to be an integral part of economic development. It follows that substantially more ought to be done through better policies and implementation to sustain small and medium enterprises. They are the backbone of any market economy and their role ‘is critical for the Indian economy’, in the words of the governor. Corporate heads have mulled over government’s lack of big thinking when it comes to economic reform and ‘Make in India’. A free market is as free as the enterprises that function in it; without adequate infrastructure and growth environment, the inherent dilemma of the market is revealed whereby companies and people running them are punished due to hurdles that are not of their making, and usually fall in the domain of state regulations. Job creation in small and medium enterprises is important for overall employment growth and economic development. The Centre does not seem to be as concerned with job creation in the economy as it is with achieving higher growth figures. Growth must translate into higher salaries, better living conditions, and lesser inequalities; or the top one per cent will grow at over 1000 per cent per year, the rest will struggle at the infamous Hindu rate of growth if that.

Challenges faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are absence of right technology and finance options and lack of skilled labour and strategic understanding, which contributes to low production capacity and failure to grow and seek new markets. The Centre and state governments must rationalise the tax system that inhibits growth, develop infrastructure and transport facilities, foster a culture of innovation where best business practices are available, train people so that they have the skills and competence to work efficiently in SMEs, minimize regulations and the associated red-tape, and create a societal culture that respects growth rather than eyeing prosperity as suspect. And once the SMEs start to grow they should have the business opportunity and government assistance to expand and seek new markets across states and internationally. In any free market, over 90 per cent of the jobs are provided through SMEs. But the Centre and the states behave as if their economies are bereft of SMEs and all that matters for growth and jobs are gargantuan Special Economic Zones (SEZ). The latter in some states have come to reflect the politics of over-development. Small and Medium enterprises are essential to a growing economy as they create more jobs, increase economic growth and make development inclusive. To run a SME is to be an entrepreneur. This ought to be the Government’s creed.

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TERRORISM

STATESMAN, FEB 16, 2016Proof that paths can changeMadeeha Ansari

Is violence erupts through fissures across the world, people everywhere are struggling to understand it. Paris. San Bernardino. Charsadda. Those reeling from the horror of the headlines are often compelled to ask, ‘Who are these people?’

Who are these people capable of indiscriminate brutality against men, women and children? Is there some common grain that numbs their sentience and capacity to feel for their victims? In the borderless phase of the war on terrorism, who is the enemy?

The most incomprehensible are those perpetrators whose choices cannot be explained by a history of deprivation or injustice. Those with access to a certain kind of education and material comfort, whose personal lives are not affected by the destructive forces of international politics. What, for instance, would motivate a couple with a baby daughter to open fire at a holiday party in San Bernardino? Or an IBA graduate to become involved in terror plots in Karachi?

As part of the search for answers, the Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies held a roundtable last year, on the role of youth in curbing both urban violence and violent extremism.The first person to address the gathering from a Skype screen was a young Norwegian Muslim “who had turned his own life around more than once.” Yousef Bartho Assidiq spoke with refreshing honesty about his past - his personal choice to convert to Islam, and the sense of isolation from family and peers that followed. During his phase of estrangement, Yousef drifted towards the local Islamic centre, where he found a friend and mentor. This friend represented a radical faction at the centre, and Yousef found himself drawn into a spiral. Watching this soft-spoken young person on the screen, it was difficult to believe him when he said, “I could have been in Syria today.”

One of the most powerful aspects of his story was, of course, geography - Yousef had a regular childhood in Norway, which has for years been ranked as “the happiest country in the world”. He defied the stereotype - this was not the brainwashed product of a madressah in a remote corner of a fragile state. His narrative, therefore, is particularly important in understanding what can make the difference for an individual toeing what he called the ‘thin line’ between joining a violent movement, and going a different way.

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In many ways, Yousef’s narrative corroborated the theory that basic human needs go beyond the physical, and that intangible social needs can determine the path of the individual. According to late diplomat John Burton, the non-material needs of identity, participation, recognition and security are essential - and when these are unmet, trouble follows.

The conflict within Yousef reached its peak after the Danish cartoon controversy. His group began pushing for reaction that went beyond rhetoric - a violent backlash against the cartoonists. He was almost drawn in, until his mother asked to attend one of his meetings. It was while watching her face during his own speech - neutral, devoid of judgement or opinion - that he came to his decision.

Today, Yousef runs a deradicalisation programme that reaches out to young people like himself, who may be experiencing a sense of isolation in dealing with regular issues. The strategy is simple - social contact, acknowledgement and recognition of identity. It’s what Burton would have called ‘pro-vention’ - proactive prevention of conflict.

That’s not a popular term in the world today. More than anything, the backlash to extremism is itself turning violent, alienating entire communities. Fear of the radicals has created a constituency for Donald Trump’s hate speech, and have validated the masks donned by men attacking refugee children at Stockholm station. In some places, like Tajikistan, policies have taken a turn towards the ridiculous - facial hair has been banned for men, and for women, wearing black.

All these seemingly unrelated reactions have unintended cumulative effects. They reinforce an identity group that sees itself as oppressed and isolated, out of people who would otherwise have no reason to find themselves in the same corner. And it’s happening everywhere, even as each new incident of global terrorism reinforces the nebulous nature of the ‘enemy’.In all this, Yousef’s story is proof that paths can change. In the war without end, that is the brightest possibility.

On the Pakistan front, too, there are lessons to learn from it before being demoralised by the apparent failures of counterterrorism. The greatest is that military might and policing can only go so far. If conflicts were simply due to inherent aggressiveness, coercive tactics would succeed in containing them. But even while there is need to push back against those who create terror, there is also a place for introspection - and ‘pro-vention’. It is when we start identifying where the damage is happening, that we will be able to make sense of our piece in the global picture.

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URBAN DEVELOPMENT

ASIAN AGE, FEB 16, 2016Swachh Bharat: Mysuru cleanest, Chandigarh next

The Quality Council of India survey has ranked Mysuru at the top in terms of cleanliness again after 2014, followed by Chandigarh, Tiruchirapalli and the NDMC area of the national capital.

Visakhapatnam, Surat, Rajkot, Gangtok and Pimpri-Chindwad (Maharashtra) were also among the top 10 clean cities. The least clean cities included Dhanbad, Asansol Itanagar, Patna, Meerut, Raipur, Ghaziabad, Jamshedpur, Varanasi and Kalyan Dombivili. The rankings of the Swachh Survekshan Survey conducted by QCI were announced by Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu in the national capital.

As part of the “Swachh Bharat Mission”, the survey was commissioned across 73 cities, including 51 cities that have a population of over 10 lakh each and 22 capital cities that are not as heavily populated.Mr Naidu said cities from the south and west continue to do well overall but those in other parts of the country, particularly in the north, are beginning to catch up with the traditional leaders.The last cleanliness survey was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities.

“This is meant to help the cities know where they stand in absolute terms and in relation to others, besides what more needs to be done by each city to ensure sanitation. In that sense, the survey is more holistic, participatory, purposeful and meaningful for future guidance and evolving a course of action,” he said. Mr Naidu added that the results of the survey were analysed to identify the top leaders, aspiring leaders, cities where accelerated efforts need to be made and the slow-movers.

The last cleanliness survey was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities with a population of one lakh and above and its results were announced last year. This was before the launch of the “Swachh Bharat Mission” in October 2015.

“Swachh Survekshan-2016 is primarily intended to measure the impact of the efforts under the Swachh Bharat Mission launched after the survey of 2014,” Mr Naidu said.

Based on the comparison of the marks and ranks of the two surveys, Mr Naidu said the “Swachh Bharat Mission” has had a positive impact in urban areas in terms of sanitation, attitudes of urban local bodies and citizens.

The minister stated that of the 73 cities surveyed, 32 have improved rankings since the last survey, including 17 from the north, six from the west, five from the south and two each from the east and northeast.

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The top 10 cities in terms of sanitation and hygiene in order of rank are Mysuru, Chandigarh, Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu), New Delhi Municipal Council, Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Surat, Rajkot (both in Gujarat), Gangtok (Sikkim), and Pimpri Chindwad and Greater Mumbai (both in Maharashtra). The bottom 10 cities are Kalyan Dombivili (ranked 64), Varanasi, Jamshedpur, Ghaziabad, Raipur, Meerut, Patna, Itanagar, Asansol and Dhanbad.

Of these 32, the top 10 movers who have substantially improved their ranking in the 2016 survey are Allahabad (improved by 45 places), Nagpur (40), Visakhapatnam (39), Gwalior (34), Bhubaneswar (32), Hyderabad (31), Gurgaon (29), Vijayawada (23) and Lucknow (23).

Among the municipal bodies in the NCT of Delhi, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) improved its rank from seven in 2014 to four in 2016, South MCD from 47 to 39 and North MCD from 47 to 43, while East MCD slipped from 47th place in 2014 to 52nd in 2016.

The top 10 cities which moved down in the rankings in 2016 (top 10 bottom movers) are Jamshedpur, Kochi, Shillong, Chennai, Guwahati, Asansol, Bengaluru, Ranchi, Kalyan Dombivili and Nashik. While Jamshedpur moved 53 places down this year, Nashik slipped 23 notches.

A total of 33 cities have slipped in terms of rank in 2016 when compared to the previous survey. These include 11 of the 28 cities included in the survey from the north, eight of 15 cities from the south, seven of 15 from the west, five of seven from the east and two of eight from the northeast.

Regarding the methodology used for Swachh Survekshan-2016, Mr Naidu said that out of a total of 2,000 marks for assessing the performance of 73 cities, 60 per cent of marks was assigned for solid waste management-related parameters, 30 per cent for construction of toilets and five per cent each for city-level sanitation strategy and behaviour change communication.

The Quality Council of India deployed 25 teams of three trained surveyors each to visit 42 locations in each city, covering major zones like railway stations, bus stations, religious places, major market places, planned and unplanned residential areas, including slums, and toilet complexes.

Deccan herald, feb 19, 2016Clean cities ranking, comic relief

The Centre’s “Swachh Survekshan-2016” report on Monday, ranking our cities in terms of cleanliness, comes as kind of a comic relief in the midst of a serious crisis of urban governance in the country.

Part of the Narendra Modi government’s much-hyped Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, this exercise by the Union Urban Development Ministry ranks 51 cities with million-plus population and 22 state

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capitals on various cleanliness parameters. So we have Mysuru city adjudged the country’s cleanest city, Chandigarh the second cleanest, Tiruchirapalli the third cleanest and so on. Mysuru city has the distinction of being the country’s cleanest city for the second year in succession. While this is a feel-good recognition for the city, a large number of Mysureans would actually be wondering if their city qualified to be the cleanest one in the country, how bad the state of affairs must be in other cities!

The fact is that our cities and towns cry for attention. Many of them risk decaying rapidly. The system of constitutionally mandated elected urban local governments notwithstanding, urban governance is in a shambles. Rampant corruption and misgovernance coupled with lack of adequate financial resources have created a huge mismatch between the rapid pace of urbanisation and the slow pace of physical infrastructure creation, be it new dwelling units, water, electricity, public transport, and provisions for sanitation. There is no meaningful attempt to address this crisis-like situation, as authorities at different levels merely indulge in blame games. Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu wants us to believe that the annual ranking of the cities injects an element of competition among city administrations to excel. However, in the last one year since the annual ranking exercise was launched, there is hardly any evidence of this even with a lure of some financial incentives for the better performers.

What is badly required is some serious review of the system of urban governance. A few years ago, Delhi experimented by splitting the Municipal Corporation of Delhi into three separate entities, on the assumption that urban governance had suffered as the city expanded in a big way. But now it is felt that the experiment is a disaster. The real issue under the existing scheme of division of power, the elected urban local bodies in our cities lack functional autonomy and financial resources. There are too many service-providing agencies outside the control of the urban local bodies. Unless these fundamental issues are addressed at the national level, quality urban governance will remain a mirage and our cities will become large, polluted urban slums.

ECONOMIC TIMES, FEB 17, 2016Ministries to compete with each other in Swachh Bharat drive

NEW DELHI: To improve the impact and visibility of PM Narendra Modi's pet project Swachh Bharat, the Centre has planned to divide the responsibility of its campaign to all 53 union ministries and also, make them compete with each other to promote it.

In a meeting held on February 3 with representatives from every ministry and cabinet secretary, it was decided that every ministry take up complete responsibility for the publicity of Swachh Bharat for 15 days in a year and organise at least 200 events each across the country. The details of what every ministry did during the two week duration will be monitored by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation through a portal, and at the end of the year, name of the ministry that did the best to promote the programme will be published, top officials of the government told ET.

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Till now, since the programme was launched in 2014, there is a twoweek of promotion in October followed by all ministries which officials feel is not working enough to keep the momentum of the programme alive. Last year till July, the Government has spent Rs 94 crore on advertisements alone for the Swachh Bharat Mission. Getting all ministries to share the burden of its publicity and not leave it on the ministry of drinking water and sanitation that is anchoring it, would also increase and distribute the effort and money spent to publicise it, officials said.

"Now, every ministry will be asked to upload pictures on a portal which will be studied and evaluated at the end of the year. The idea is to make every ministry fund the project and keep it visible throughout the year.

Many senior officials in the government feel the programme has taken off well but is losing steam," a senior official told ET To be kicked off from April 1 this year, a tentative time table for the execution of the campaign has already been sent to top government officials by the ministry of drinking water and sanitation which will be shared with the ministries soon.

While ministry of sanitation wants to coordinate the campaign around World Toilet day in October, Tourism ministry has chosen to publicise the campaign in September around world Tourism Day, Health ministry wants to take charge of the programme around national cancer day, while DRDO will be doing it around physicist Homi Bhabha's birth anniversary in October.

This step being monitored by top government officials is also a message to all ministries that all of them are equally responsible for the implementation of the Prime Minister pet project. Every ministry has also been asked to appoint a nodal officer for the swachh bharat programme. "We want the ministries to do more than just organising one hour clean up drives or marathons. They must put more minds to work and come up with ideas that can push the programme.

For instance, the Urban Development can promote the idea of segregating biodegradable and nonbiodegradable wastes while the water resources ministry can take up the issue of polluted lakes. We are also coming up with a list of probable ideas every ministry can do in its two week of promoting the programme," the official added.

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