Pragati Issue9 December 2007 Community Ed

8/14/2019 Pragati Issue9 December 2007 Community Ed

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No 9 | Dec 2007

ISSN 0973-8460


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Contents

PERSPECTIVE

2 Ironies on the road Raj Cherubal The unlikely new heroes in the saga of the return of the right toproperty

4 The killing fields of Bengal Arnab Ray Behind the story and the intellectual outrage over Nandigram

8 The new Manhattan project Atanu Dey Energy security calls for government investment in renewableenergy

FILTER10 Securing Pakistans crown jewels; Still with Musharraf; Arm-ing Pashtuns...again; SIMIs networks; Wither India-Russia rela-tions; Chinas nuclear deal with Kazakhstan

IN PARLIAMENT

11 A new section on the issues before parliament: prepared byPRS Legislative Research

IN DEPTH

12 Improvingfiscal responsibility Mukul G Asher

Institutional reform is a must for medium-term fiscal manage-ment

ROUNDUP

14 A crisis profound Harsh V Pant Indian universities need reform, not fatalism

16 Doctors across borders Rohit PradhanSome conclusions about emigrating doctors are hasty

18 The Akhond of Swat Manan Ahmed A closer look at the separatist religious movement

BOOKS

20 Banally in lovewith India Chandrahas Choudhury

A review of Shashi Tharoors The Elephant, the Tiger, and the Cell Phone

PragatiThe Indian National Interest Review

No 9 | Dec 2007

Published by The Indian National Interest - an independentcommunity of individuals committed to increasing public awarenessand education on strategic affairs, economic policy and governance.

Advisory PanelMukul G Asher

V Anantha NageswaranSameer Wagle

Sameer JainAmey V Laud

EditorNitin Pai

Editorial SupportChandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan

Acknowledgements

Priya KadamMint

Matthew Logelin (Cover Photo)Contact: [email protected]

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PROPERTY RIGHTS

Ironies on the road

The unlikely new heroes in the saga of the return of theright to property RAJ CHERUBAL

TRIBAL ACTIVISTS in Tamil Nadu petition gov-

ernment not to lease out their land, blared anInternet news headline. To a property rightschampion and sarcastic analogy seeker thissounded like, I own the house yet governmentdecides to lease out my toilet, forcing me to peti-tion it to stop. Either the property is mine or not,give or take a few genuine public goods, which isit?

Later, as an outsider eager to impress, I men-tioned this to a group of young tribal activists fromTamil Nadu gathered in New Delhi. One of theactivists sheepishly admitted that it was they whohad put up the petition. To my amused Why? heshrugged, smiled with obvious embarrassmentand said, What else can we do?. That aboutsums up the state of property rights in India.

Our constitutional contempt for property rights

has turned into bird of prey, feeding mainly on thepoor and the defenceless. Today it pecks and tearsat everyone from street hawkers to farmers andtribals. It has distorted and corrupted land mar-kets and turned governments, who really ought to be night watchmen into greedy land brokers. Howelse do you explain Nandigram? Destruction of property rights, aimed at zamindars and maharajas,has come to prey upon the very poor it was meantto help.

Indian citizens once had a fundamental right toproperty. But the chipping away at this right be-gan as early as 1951, even as the ink on the Consti-tution was drying. Various socialist leaders con-tinued the hammering as it was fashionable to doso. The nal blow came from the Janata govern-

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ment, a hodge podge of self-styled socialists andcapitalists that abolished the fundamental right in1978.

Interestingly, todays newspapers are full of stories of protest of government- and politician-assisted land grabs. But most of protesters would

claim to be against private property rights, as theyare part and parcel of the evil capitalist system.

But here is the question to all those members of the Left protesting, say, in Nandigram: What areyou protesting against? The murder of innocentpeople deserves condemnation from one and all,liberals and socialists. But what else? Land tak-ing by government, for public purpose withoutcompensation? But thats perfectly legal. Thiswas your cherished idea. Since you made the bed,dont you have a moral obligation to lie on it? Yet

you fault Liberals and their supposed greed forproperty.Ironically, while Liberals, the only people who

have the principled right to protest Nandigram orsimilar land grabs are no where to be seen (exceptin some rareed newspaper columns) it is the

Maoists who are battling on behalf of privateproperty owners against abuse of eminent domain by fellow Communists. Orwell must be grinningin his grave!

One can sense the Liberals dilemma and gleecoexisting within the same skull. While it is fun towatch Communists squirm, it is difcult to criti-cise a business friendly, reformist Communist chief minister. Heres the rub: chief ministers come andgo, parties come and go and being pro-capitalist isnot necessarily being pro-capitalism. Liberalswould do well to stick to their principles.

The time is fast approaching when pro-pooractivists have to reconsider their socialist leanings.Take abolition of private property rights. This isusually done in the name of the poor and as a wayof redistributing ill-gotten wealth of the proper-tied class. But bizarre as it may sound, it is thepoor who need property rights protected by ruleof law, and not the rich. De facto, all over theworld, the rich and the powerful already enjoythese privileges and defend them with might.

Try this experiment in Cuba or North Korea,countries based Communist ideology and hence,theoretically, sans private property rights: tryevicting Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il from their

residences, the peoples palaces. In a land withno private property rights, it would only be fair foranyone and everyone to occupy any and everyproperty, wouldnt it? Let the average Jose or Kimhave his fair turn. Possible? I dont think so. In-terestingly, Kim Jong-il in North Korea even enjoys

hereditary property rights as he inherited his pal-ace from his father.

No doubt property rights, included in rule of law, will protect the factories and palaces of therich. But it will also protect the lands of smallfarmers, minerals and mines of tribals, knick-knacks of street hawkers, decrepit vehicles of therickshaw- wallas and host of other petty property of the vast majority of Indians. Protection that only acomplex and evolving property rights system canprovide. It is time all pro-poor activists accept this.

Three unlikely groups may end up as catalysts,intentionally or not. Tribal activists have nallyforced the passage of the Scheduled Tribes andOther Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. Though yet to be notiedand facing opposition from conservationists, it has

forced us to accept that tribal lands belong to tribals and not to everyone (read governments). Ku-dos to Communist leaders like Brinda Karat forlending a public face to the campaign.

Dalits have been struggling for decades to re-gain their depressed class lands. Moved by theirpitiable condition, the British passed an ordinancein 1892 to assign some forest and wasteland pan-chami landto Dalits. Though framed withinstringent conditions on its tradability, these lands,running into lakhs of acres, were usurped by pow-erful non-Dalits exploiting poverty and gullibilityand employing outright deceit. Rise in Dalit po-litical power, if sustained, is bound to bring thisproperty rights issue to a boiling point.

Lastly, Janadesh March, a mammoth rally or-ganised by Ekta Parishad, a grassroots Gandhianorganisation, received much attention from acrossthe political spectrum. From the list of demands ontheir website it is obvious that a lot of thought hasgone into them. Some of the demands might, byempowering the wrong people in governments,

boomerang on small and medium landowners.But others, like devolution of authority, setting

up of fast track courts for speedy settlement of property disputes, legally enforceable national

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It is the poor who need property rights protected by rule of law, and not therich. The rich and the powerful can secure them with might. The time is fast ap-proaching when pro-poor activists have to reconsider their socialist leanings.


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rehabilitation policy that supersedes the Land Ac-quisition Act, 1894 for empowering the displaced,modernisation and computerisation of land re-cords management for greater transparency of land records, among others, may very well lay thefoundation of an effective and transparent prop-

erty rights system.The god of property rights lies in the details of

such a system. As more and more of the poor de-mand and receive property, hard questionsaboutregistration, titles, transparency, tradability, stan-dardisation, inheritability and much morewill

have to answered, thereby strengthening propertyrights. For without this, transfer of public land tothe poor many, will only be an indirect gift to thepolitically connected few.

Sweet irony will be when actions, today of mostly socialists, in the aid of the poor, end up in

ushering a transparent capitalist system that bene-ts all.

Raj Cherubal is vice president at Centre for Civil Soci-ety. His personal blog is at liberationraj.org

NANDIGRAM

The killing fields of BengalBehind the story and behind the intellectual outrageARNAB RAY

AMAR NAAM, tomar naamVietnam "My name, your name, Vietnam". Resonating

across the streets of Calcutta and the villages of Bengal, this slogan of the late 60s and early 70swas as much a cry of solidarity for the Vietcongghting the Americans as it was emblematic of thegrowing popularity of the philosophy of Commu-nism among an entire generation, a political ideol-ogy that dened itself primarily by its support forthe "little guy", the downtrodden and the op-pressed, as they fought the depredations of theWest, evil corporations, landlords and the oppres-sive rule of the Congress. Tapping into thisgroundswell of Bengali idealistic passion, came topower a man who had positioned himself per-fectly to ride the wave, branding himself as the"Sarboharar Neta" (the leader of those who havenothing).

A man by the name of Jyoti Basu, the leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), orCPI(M).

Bengal was never the same again.

After nearly thirty years of Communist domin-ion in West Bengal, in what can only be called po-etic irony, a word that rhymes with Vietnam hascome to symbolise the political ideology of a new

generation that denes itself primarily by its sup-port for the "little guy" as they ght the same set of enemies as before but with the oppressive rule of the Congress Party being now replaced by the op-pressive rule of the CPI(M).

That word is Nandigrama human tragedy, anindictment of the extra-constitutional authority of the democracy-crushing CPI(M), and a politicaldagger in the hands of both the religious right andthe "actual" Left to draw blood from their commonenemy, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

Will Bengal ever be the same again? Before we try to understand the signicance of

Nandigram, let us rst try to get out of the way acommon misconception. Nandigram is hardlyabout resistance to the acquisition of land for Spe-cial Economic Zones (SEZs)the original notice byHaldia Development Authority was quickly with-drawn.

One activist, on being asked why the strugglecontinues even after plans for the chemical hubhave been ofcially abandoned said "Why won't

they take the land? They still might. So we willcontinue with our agitation". It's all about thestruggle, the original cause be damned.

So then what is Nandigram?

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It is a violent dog-ght for power being waged by the CPI(M)'s old guard on one side and the newTrinamool hired toughs backed by the Maoists onthe other, a conict that had been simmering forquite a long time and only needed a spark to setalight.

Those who believe that the Bhoomi UcchedProtirodh Committee (BUPC) is an organisation of unarmed, peaceful Robin Hood-like peasants whohave been resisting the "evil government" fromencroaching on their land might form an alto-gether different impression if they see images of policemen with their heads bashed in being takenaway, unarmed protestors hurling stones at thepolice from a neat pile of bricks that seem to havespontaneously materialised out of nowhere, pan-chayat ofces vandalised, a rotting body of a po-

liceman being recovered from the river, and themost harrowing of them allthe wife of ShankarSamanta, a CPI(M) leader, detailing how her hus- band was dragged out of his house, hacked intopieces and set are.

all goes to show that the BUPCs people are notSnow Whites just as CPI(M) activists are no Cin-

derellas. In fact the BUPC has quiet a bit of bloodon their angelic halos. They had created unrest byspreading rumours of sinister plans to grab land,even after the government had publicly droppedall plans for land acquisition. They had driven out,through violence, villagers who held political be-liefs different from theirs. They had looted, killedand raped. They had set up an alternate authorityin the barricaded villages where people could notenter until vetted by the local Trinamool Congress

Party toughs.Against this backdrop, it is incumbent upon

any government to take action to restore the ruleof law. There were however many options open tothe West Bengal government to do that within theframework of legalityincluding calling in theArmy. However the government took none of these optionssimply because they were not in-terested in merely afrming the rule of law.

Instead, they were more concerned about met-ing out raw retribution for the atrocities that had

been perpetrated on the CPI(M) cadre and to re-assert the hold of the Marxists on rural Bengal.This is why, a crack army of the worst of CPI(M)goons from every corner of the state, using humanshields drawn from the local population, marched

upon Nandigram in a commando-style operation before going on a rampage of pillage, murder andrape while the police, also keen to seek revenge, backed them up.

The icing on the cake was provided by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who justied

this dastardly extra-constitutional act of wantonviolence as the "tit" for the "tat", "our boys" paying"their boys" back in the same coin, completely for-getting his constitutional responsibility to protecteveryone in the state.

Vir Sanghvi explains this as the traditionalCommunist mindset that makes no distinction be-tween state and party. More precisely in the cur-rent context, it was more about asserting one of themost basic premises of Left rule in Bengal: whatthe Party giveth the Party taketh away.

To understand this a bit more, we need to look at why the CPI(M) has been politically impregna- ble in rural Bengal for more than thirty years.

CPI(M)'s stranglehold on rural power in Bengalstands upon several pillars. The rst is inltra-tionevery government institution is staffed byReds and anyone who is not Red is made irrele-

vant. The second is redistributionforcible acqui-sition of land and wealth from larger landlordsand redistribution among cadres: a sure shot wayof creating a large support base. The third is perco-lationletting the fruits of power percolate downthe Red power structure making a large number of people complicit in minor forms of corruption. Incontrast, other parties tend to concentrate the benets in the hands of the top brass, leaving therank and le disgruntled. And the fourth is in-

timidationin the cities it was through "scienticrigging" and in the villages it was through acts of barbaric violence against anyone who tried to chal-lenge the party: Dead bodies turning up in pondsor in the paddy elds from time to time leavingvillagers in no doubt as to who called the shots.

However as the years have gone by, a new gen-eration of farmers have emerged. They no longerhaving the same sense of obligation towards theCPI(M) that their fathers had. This has led to anerosion in the support base of the CPI(M) with

many of the old strong hands graduating to theTrinamool Congress. With Chief Minister Bhat-tacharya spelling out grand strategies of industri-alising Bengal's rural landscape, a palpable senseof fear of being displaced has taken root among

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Nandigram is a violent dog-ght for power being waged by the CPI(M)'s oldguard on one side and the new Trinamool hired toughs backed by the Maoistson the other.


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the rural population, a fear that has been adroitlyfanned by Trinamool and Maoist elements to getfarmers to take up arms.

A violent breakout had become inevitable. Andwhen mayhem, initially targeted at CPI(M) took place in Nandigram, it became imperative for theParty to assert its power over life and death if onlyto set an example, if only to show that their ironcontrol over the red dominion is as unforgiving asit always has been, if only to prevent a dominoeffect all over the state.

What the CPI(M) did not bargain for was themassive public upheaval in Bengal and the tidalwave of opinion directed at Chief Minister Bhat-tacharya that found expression through SMSs, on-line petitions, mass emails, discussions on socialnetworking sites and a silent walk through the

heart of Kolkata attended by thousands of people.While the only silver lining from this whole epi-sode may have been this show of conscience fromthe people of West Bengal, what has been amusingto observe is the outpouring of vitriol against MrBhattacharya and the CPI(M) from the Left-leaningcultural leaders of the statethe Left Front's tradi-tional redoubt.

This has wrongly been interpreted by many asan expression of disillusionment by the Bengaliintelligentsia with Communists after the heinousevents of Nandigram.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bengali intellectuals are livid not at the

CPI(M) in particular or the philosophy of Com-munism in general, despite the fact that it is an

idea that has beenconned to the dust- bins of history else-where in the world.They are just infuri-ated with Buddhadeb

Bhattacharya and hispolitics. Because he isnot Left enough. For many of the sameintellectuals had beenperfectly silent duringthe dark days of the80s and the 90s whenAnanda Margis, members of a religious sect,were being shot down

by CPI(M) goons whilethe law looked theother way, whenCPI(M) goondasrode on bikes bran-dishing pipe-guns

preventing entire localities from voting, and whenMr Jyoti Basu brushed atrocities on women away by saying "such things keep happening".

As long as Kolkata was brought to a standstill by massive rallies against the imperial Americansand their instruments of evil like the GeneralAgreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT), as longthe militant trade unions of CITU sent anothermultinational packing from the city, as long as MrBasu handed out plots in Salt Lake at throw-awayprices from the chief minister's quota to the city's"cultural elite" (read Leftist intellectuals), every-thing was just ah-ok. Mr Basu once famouslyasked why people ever complain about CPI(M)rule after all the plots of land he has given to thepress, the artists and even the Opposition.

Nothing that happened in those happy days of

Jyotiism was worth protesting about or writingcitizen's reports onnot the reign of terror of theCPI(M), not the total suppression of contrarianopinion in all the institutions and not the mar-ginalisation of intellectuals whose views did nottally with the Left.

Things however started changing once MrBasu, the darling of the intellectuals, steppeddown and Mr Bhattacharya took over. No oneknew how different he actually was from hispredecessor before he became the chief minis-teras a minister he was as dogmatic as the rest,preferring to spend his time translating revolu-tionary works into Bengali and analysing obscure"Leftist" movies.

But then something changed.

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He rst put the cat among the pigeons by say-ing that unregulated madrasas were being used tospread messages of jihad . Immediately there wasan outcry from many Left intellectuals as evenhinting that there exists a concerted movement of radical Islam is blasphemy for "radical humanists".

Then started his active wooing of foreign invest-ment, even the Salim Group of Indonesia, once the bete noire of the Bengal Communists for having buttressed the anti-Communist General Suharto.Mr Bhattacharya's aggressive industrialisationdrive was in sharp contrast to Mr Basu's summer-time sojourns in European capitals, the ofcial rea-son for which was attracting "foreign investments".

However unlike his predecessor, Mr Bhattacha-rya was actually getting evil capitalists into thestate. He was undermining the authority of the

mighty trade unions, trying to get rid of the preva-lent bandh culture (or as the intellectuals would

say 'putting curbs on democratic expression of dissent') and dreaming of rapidly industrialisingBengal's countryside, an endeavour that would

provide opportunities for the many Bengalis whohad to leave the state due to the closure of indus-tries in the 70s and 80s because of militant tradeunionism and lack electric power, to come back again.

So what's wrong in all this? For a state whose intellectuals have a tendency

to glorify poverty and consider the act of con-demning capitalists and "imperialists" preferableto the ight of capital and loss of jobs, Mr Bhat-tacharya represents all that is not Bengali Com-munism. For hardcore Leftists nding it increas-ingly difcult to explain why the CPI(M) centralleadership opposed the same policies at the Centrethat Mr Bhattacharya followed in West Bengal, Mr.Bhattacharya is a gigantic embarrassment to the"cause".

Surely such a person had to go! In the midst of this disillusionment with the

non-Marxist rule of Buddha mixed with a

nostalgia-tinged desire to return to the old days of militant trade-unionism and the comfortable sta-

sis of Jyoti Basu's "pure Marxist" rule comes Nan-digram, an unifying rallying point for the "realLeft" to land some hefty chin punches to Buddha.

The divided loyalties of the Bengali intellectu-

als, torn between their Marxist ideals and loyaltyto the hand that gives, has been perhaps best cap-tured by Mrinal Sen, a noted lm-maker, walkingin two marches on successive days: one taken out by "Citizens against Buddhadeb" and one takenout by the CPI(M) in support of the Chief Minister.

Lastly, Nandigram has been a gift from abovefor an increasingly irrelevant Mamta Banerjee andfor the religious Right, who after years of beingpilloried by the Left for atrocities on innocents intheir states, are enjoying kicking the Reds where it

hurts. They have even accused the Left of commu-nal violence against minorities, forgetting of

course to mention that many of the victims andmany of the accused are Muslims.

Once the smokescreen has cleared, political

blood drawn and the sense of outrage has dissi-pated, what's left in Nandigram is a human trag-edy of epic proportions whose the victims have cutacross all political lines.

What's even more horrifying however is whatlies in the future.

With the continued perpetuation of the tradi-tional Marxist power idiom of violent cadre-ismand the accompanying reactionary "itching-for-violence" Maoist-Trinamool presence in rural Ben-gal, Nandigram-like incidents will remain just onerumour, just one notice, just one bullet away fromhappening.

Arnab Ray blogs at greatbong.net

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For hardcore Leftists nding it hard to explain why the Partys central leader-ship opposed the same policies at the Centre that were followed in West Ben-gal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is a gigantic embarrassment to the "cause".

Are you looking for daily news and analysis? Visit our blogs

Analysis and Opinions at http://www.nationalinterest.in/News & Updates at http://signal.nationalinterest.in/


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ENERGY SECURITY

The new ManhattanprojectEnergy security calls for government investment in renew-able energy ATANU DEY

THE STORY of human civilisation is principallythat of an increasing ability to nd and exploit en-ergy sources. Until relatively recently in humanhistory, animals and humans were the principlesources of energy. Slavery was an unfortunate con-sequence of that need for energy. Coal later pow-ered the industrial revolution. The discovery of petroleum oil about 150 years ago literally fuelledsuch phenomenal growth that it increased human

population six-fold to its present over 6 billion.But oil is an exhaustible resource and the sup-plies are diminishing even as the demand for en-ergy is increasing. This leads to not just a steadilyrising price but also an increase in global conictinduced by the erce competition for the increas-ingly scarce resource. The advanced industrialisedcountries advanced and industrialised precisely because they developed the science and technol-ogy required to transform potential sources of en-ergy into usable energy. Unfortunately, their legacyinvestment in what is now called conventionalenergy sources forces them into continued de-pendence primarily on oil and to some extent onnuclear ssion power. They are prisoners of theirown ingenuity in being the rst to exploit non-renewable fossil fuels.

The greatest constraint that developing coun-tries face is that of energy availability. Energy isthe primary resource in the sense that all other re-sources, such as land and water, can be substitutedto a considerable degree by energy. Yet billions of people cannot hope to satisfy their energy needs

by emulating the developed countries simply be-cause they are late in the game. Their only hopelies in exploiting energy sources that are secureand renewable. One such source is clear as broad

daylightsolar. The annual solar energy incidenton every square mile is approximately equivalentto 4 million barrels of oil. To capture that ef-ciently enough to make it commercially viable re-quires technologies that do not exist today.

India imports about 70 percent of its current oilneeds. It can barely afford that, to say nothing of what it will be like when oil prices continue to hithigher peaks and its needs increase in pace with its

growing economy. It lacks nuclear fuels, and has todebase itself begging to be given access to them.India cannot continue to ignore reality: its con-

tinued economic growth and development ispredicated on it developing the technology to ex-ploit solar energy, and base its industrial, transpor-tation, commercial, and household energy needs to be met through the derived electrical energy. Every bit of modern technology India uses has been de-veloped elsewhere. It would be a welcome changeif it developed the technology that would be itslifeblood. Developing technology is a matter of will, vision, and sometimes dire necessity. TheManhattan project and manned missions to themoon are examples of what can be achievedwithin a short time if the will exists.

India cannot afford not to develop solar energytechnology for a number of reasons. First, eventu-ally someone will, and then once again India willhave to perhaps grovel for access to it. Second, andconversely, if India develops the technology, notonly will it have it for its own use, it would be ableto sell that technology to other nations. Third, In-

dia does not have a very large legacy infrastruc-ture system built on oil. It therefore has the oppor-tunity to build its infrastructure that is electricityoriented. For instance, Indias transportation needs

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can be met more rationally primarily by a extend-ing the rail network backbone instead of roads,cars, airports, and aircraft.

Developing solar technology is not going to becheap. But the alternative is going to be immeas-urably more expensive. Heres the scenario using ball-park gures. India somehow acquires the vi-sion and the will to invest US$100 billion andwithin the next ve years develops efcient solarenergy technology. That investment reduces itsdependence on foreign energy imports on average by US$100 billion every year for the foreseeablefuture. The returns on investment will be im-mense. Furthermore, if India were to be the leaderof solar energy technology, it could earn from li-censing that technology to other economies.

The question naturally arises: why arent othersdoing it if it is such a great idea. First, the privatesector cannot match the funding ability of a largegovernment. Second, other large governments donot face the immediate necessity that India facesand besides they are invested in their legacy sys-tems. Another question relates to why the marketcannot be depended upon to create the solution. Itis well known that markets fail when there arevery high xed costs. Only a government has theability to fund the high xed costs and thus correctfor the market failure. Later the xed costs can be

recovered through taxing the inevitable increase inthe national income.With the will to invest US$100 billion, India can

acquire the best brains in the world to work on theproblem. That spending will have important for-

ward and backward linkages that will have multi-plier effects throughout the economy. Researchand development capacity will be built in the pri-vate sector and in educational institutions. Mil-lions of productive jobs will be created by the needto develop the infrastructure required for the newindustries that result from such a massive project.

India today is a large economy with a GDP of around US$ 1 trillion. The majority of its billionplus population is stuck at a subsistence level andfaces an energy constraint. Indias economy cannotgrow to US$ 10 trillionwhat it minimally has to be if it is to be become a developed econo-mywithout it having a secure, renewable, non-polluting, affordable source of energy. InvestingUS$100 billion may appear large but in the contextof the Indian economy of the near future, it issmall change. That investment works out toaround US$100 per capita, an amount that is wellworth the thousands of dollars of returns it cangenerate every year.

The biggest challenge India faces is not a lack of ability to create the energy technology which willensure a prosperous future. It is rather the lack of vision to foresee the future and then muster up thewill to being the leader. India has to ask itself: isntit time for it to create, innovate, transform and leadinstead of being a large country of followers in the

eld of science and technology?

Atanu Dey is chief economist at Netcore Solutions in Mumbai and author of the Rural Infrastructure & Serv-ices Commons (RISC) model. His blog is at deeshaa.org

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Securing Pakistans crownjewelsTHERE IS always the worryabout Pakistans nuclearweapons going loose, saysstrategic analyst K. Subrah-manyam, If that happens wewill be second in the line of attack. The rst target will bethe US, but if the jihadis can-not get to Washington, Indiawill certainly be next.

But Subrahmanyam adds,So long as the Pakistan armystays a cohesive force, thenuclear assets will remainsecure. It is not a question of whether General Musharraf

is in control or not. The issuehere is so long as the Pakistanarmy remains a professionalarmy, it will remain in effec-tive control. Subrahmanyam believes that even if Mushar-raf goes, his successor willmake sure the nuclear setupis well guarded.- Seema Guha, Can Pakistans

nukes get loose , Daily News& Analysis, 21 Nov 2007

Still with MusharrafMusharraf is not even

like the shah of Iran. He is notthe living embodiment of aregime, as the shah was. He isnot irreplaceable. He is notthe lone savior of a wholeway of governance. He is buta general, and not an espe-cially effective one at that.

There are other generals.With all the billions of dollarsin aid the United States pro-vides to Pakistan, it ought to

be possible to discuss withthe Pakistani military alterna-tives to the man who sopoorly serves their interests.Musharraf may be willing tolose American aid in order toremain in power, but that isunlikely to seem attractive tothe men who work for him. Itought to be possible to nd ageneral who is willing to letPakistan return to a demo-cratic path and meanwhile doa better job of ghting Paki-stans real enemies.

Much is riding on theBush administrations abilityto steer its way through thistransition in Pakistan. Presi-

dent Bushs claim thatMusharaf can be trusted tolead Pakistan toward democ-racy is not credible. In its better moments, the UnitedStates has known when to tellsuch leaders that their timewas up.- Robert Kagan, Musharraf and

the con game , WashingtonPost, 22 Nov 2007

Arming Pashtuns...again!THE TRIBAL proposal, astrategy paper prepared bystaff members of the UnitedStates Special OperationsCommand, has been circu-

lated to counterterrorismexperts but has not yet beenformally approved by thecommands headquarters inTampa, Fla. Some other ele-ments of the campaign have been approved in principle by the Americans and Paki-stanis and await nancing,like $350 million over severalyears to help train and equipthe Frontier Corps, a para-military force that has about85,000 members and is re-cruited from border tribes..- Eric Schmitt, Mark Mazzetti

and Carlotta Gall, U.S. Hopesto Use Pakistani TribesAgainst Al Qaeda , New York Times, 19 Nov 2007

SIMIs networksPROSCRIPTION, THOUGH,has done little to disruptSIMIs networks. Several keyleaders succeeded in escapingill-planned police sweeps

against the organisation, andcontinued to work out of camps in Bangladesh andPakistan. Some States atlyrefused to cooperate withpolice action against SIMI,pointing to the Union Gov-ernments failure to actagainst Hindu fundamental-ist groups involved in vio-lence, like the Bajrang Dal.

As early as 2002, SIMIoperatives Sayeed Shah Razaand Amil Pervez were ar-rested in Kolkata with largesupplies of explosives. In2003, Intelligence Onlinereported that as many as 350Indians working in West Asia

had been recruited by SIMIsympathisers to ght theUnited States. SIMIs nameagain featured in investiga-tions of the 2006 serial bomb-ings in Mumbai, when keysuspects, notably Rahil Ah-mad Sheikh, turned out tohave had past links with theorganisation. In UttarPradesh, too, SIMI linkageswere thrown up in investiga-tions of the 2005 serial bomb-ings just as they have beenin the course of the mostrecent attacks.

Fighting SIMI, it is clear,will take more than arrest

warrants and intelligencework: a coherent strategy toclean up the toxic politicallandscape from which it aroseis desperately needed.

- Praveen Swami, SIMI andthe cult of the Kalashnikov ,The Hindu, 28 Nov 2007

Wither India-Russia rela-tions?THE POLITICS are no longerright. New Delhis dancewith Washington is timed insync with Moscows adoptionof a hard line towards thewest. The trilateral Russia-China-India talk shop is anineffectual band-aid over adeep sword cut, becauseMoscow has few expectationsfrom either India or China.

Russias Ministry of For-eign Affairs complains that both Asian giants pay lipservice to multi-polarity, and

the primacy of the UN, whileactually aligning their foreignpolicies to the US in order togain short-term objectiveslike the lifting of sanctions,preferential trade relations,and an easier visa regime.- Ajai Shukla, From

Russia...with a bill , Broad-sword, 21 Nov 2007

INDIA APPEARS to havefailed in persuading its prin-cipal military ally, Russia, tostop China from supplyingRussian-made RD-93 aircraftengines to Pakistan, accord-ing to a report in Janes De- fence Weekly.

Pakistan and China arepartners in the Joint Fighter-17 (JF-17) Thunder pro-gramme.

Pakistan Air Force (PAF)Air Chief Marshal TanvirMahmood Ahmed told theBritish journal that the PAFexpected to receive the rsteight JF-17s powered by RD-93 engines in the next fewmonths.

- China to export Russian jet engines to Pakistan: PAF,Daily Times, 21 Nov 2007

Chinas nuclear deal withKazakhstan

KAZAKHSTAN HASagreed to share its uraniumresources with China in ex-change for equity in Chinesenuclear power facilities in astrategic deal that bringstogether the worlds fastestgrowing uranium and nu-clear electricity producers.

The president of Kaza-tomprom, Kazakhstans state-owned nuclear power com-pany, said: We will swapshares in uranium productionfor shares in Chinese atomicfacilities This is the rsttime China has allowed anyforeign company to become ashareholder in its atomicpower industry enterprises.

Two of Chinas leadingnuclear power companies,would team up to take a 49per cent stake in a uraniummining venture in Ka-zakhstan with Kazatompromretaining a 51 per cent stake,

Mr Dzhakishev said. In ex-change, Kazatomprom wouldtake equity in Chinese nu-clear fuel processing or elec-tricity generation plants.- Isabel Gorst, Kazakhstan in

nuclear deal with Beijing ,Financial Times, 18 Nov2007

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OverviewThe Winter Session of Parlia-ment is underway. Announc-ing an early and shortenedsession, Lok Sabha and RajyaSabha are chalked to be insession for 17 sittings over aperiod of 23 days, betweenNovember 15th and Decem- ber 7th, 2007.

Among the 16 bills listedfor consideration and passingthis session, those that havedrawn a fair amount of inter-est include:

The Banking Regulation(Amendment) Bill, 2005 pro-

poses to amend the provi-sions related to acquisition of banks, voting rights andtransactions with relatedcompanies.

Anyone who wants toacquire more than 5% share-holding of a bank must seek prior approval from the Re-serve Bank of India (RBI).The cap of 10% on votingrights of shareholders is be-ing removed; voting rightswould be in proportion toshares held. The bill allows banks to take permissionfrom RBI to lend to compa-nies in which any of its direc-tor is engaged as a director oremployee; these transactionswere earlier prohibited.

RBI has been given thepower to inspect associateenterprises of banks. All co-operative societies wouldrequire a licence from RBI todo banking business. The bill

has been stalled for over ayear on opposition from theleft parties, primarily on theprovisions related to acquisi-tions and voting rights.

The Payment and SettlementSystems Bill, 2006 designatesRBI as the regulator to over-see the various payment andsettlement systems in thecountry.

The bill lays down therequirements of a settlementsystem. Importantly, it rec-ognises net settlements, andauthorises RBI to permit bothgross and net settlement pro-cedures.

The Factories (Amendment)Bill, 2005, is an amendmentto the Factories Act, 1948.There was a section in theoriginal Act that preventedwomen from working infactories in the night shift.Following writ petitions bywomens organisations thatthese provisions were dis-criminatory, some HighCourts had struck down thisclause as unconstitutional.The proposed Bill allows thestate government and otherauthorities to permit womenworkers in factories at night,provided they have consulted

with the concerned employeror representative workersorganisation. The real issuerelated to this bill is the trickytask of striking a balance between the risk of exploita-tion of women workers andtheir right to earn a living.

Under various labourlaws, enterprises employingmore than 19 persons have tomaintain 53 registers and le11 returns. The Labour LawsAmendment Bill, 2005 ex-empts enterprises employingup to 500 persons from thisrequirement. They have tomaintain two registers andle one return in the pre-scribed form.

The Communal Violence(Prevention, Control andRehabilitation of Victims)Bill, 2005 , is part of the UPAgovernments CommonMinimum Programme to

introduce a comprehensivelaw to deal with communalviolence. The bill authorisesthe state government to de-clare an area as communallydisturbed under certain spe-cic conditions and allowsthe district magistrate orappropriate authority to takeall measures necessary tocontrol the violence. It dou- bles the punishment undervarious laws (such as theIndian Penal code and theArms Act) for crimes denotedas communal violence andestablishes Special Courts totry these offences. It dis-cusses provisions to protect

the identity of witnesses. TheBill proposes a system of compensation includingpayment of immediate com-pensation at 20% of the totalcompensation. Major issueswith regard to the Bill relateto implementation. The mainproblem in the current systemis the low rate of convictionin cases related to communalviolence. In the absence of measures to ensure physicalprotection of witnesses andimproving conviction rates,increasing the punishmentsmay be of no effect.

The Maintenance and Wel-fare of Parents and SeniorCitizens Bill, 2007 , makes it alegal obligation for childrenabove the age of 18 and heirsto provide nancial mainte-nance to parents and seniorcitizens who are unable totake care of themselves. TheBill allows state governmentsto set up maintenance tribu-nals in every sub-division towhich senior citizens may lea case and if granted, obtain amandatory maintenance feeof up to Rs 10,000 per monthfrom their child or legal heir.One of the major issues re-lated to the Bill is that theonus of well-being of seniorcitizens is being placed ontheir children, and not beingtaken up by the State (asmandated by the DirectivePrinciples of the Constitu-tion).

The AIIMS and PGIMERAmendment Bill, 2007 amend the service conditionsof the directors of AIIMS,New Delhi and PGIMER,Chandigarh. The bill speci-es that the director shall beappointed for a term of veyears but will not hold ofceif he reaches the age of 65years. In case of any incumbent director who does notmeet these conditions, heshall be immediately relievedof his post with a compensa-tion of three months pay andallowance. The bill alsoauthorises the central gov-ernment to remove the direc-

tor at any time if it is of theopinion that it is in the publicinterest to do so. This billcomes in the wake of thedirection of the Delhi HighCourt to the government of India and the AIIMS to for-mulate a policy to cover con-ditions of service of its em-ployees including the direc-tor. The immediate implica-tion will be on the currentdirector of AIIMS, who isnow 65 years old.

The Armed Forces TribunalBill, 2005 and the SashastraSeema Bal Bill, 2006 . The

Armed Forces Tribunal Billcreates an Armed Forces Tri- bunal to adjudicate on dis-putes relating to service mat-ters and appeals arising outof verdicts of courts martialof members of the Army,Navy and Air Force. TheSashastra Seema Bal Bill pro-vides for the constitution andregulation of an armed forceof the Union for ensuring thesecurity of the borders of India. The Bill establishes aself-contained statute bywhich this force (previouslyreferred to as the SpecialService Bureau, which guardsthe Indo-Nepal and the Indo-Bhutan borders) may be regu-lated.

Two Bills have been intro-duced to regularise Ordi-nances. The National Capi-tal Territory of Delhi LawsBill, 2007 seeks to maintain

status quo on unauthoriseddevelopments and encroach-ments. This law would stopthe current process of sealingand demolition of unauthor-ised structures by the mu-nicipal corporation followingdirections from the SupremeCourt.

The Payment of Bonus Bill,2007 raises the eligibility limitfor bonus to employees fromRs 3500 per month to Rs10,000 per month.

Compiled by Priya Parker, ananalyst with PRS LegislativeResearch, www.prsindia.org

IN PARLIAMENT

11 No 9 | DEC 2007

PRS Legislative Research: Winter Session 2007


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PUBLIC FINANCE

Improving fiscalresponsibility Institutional reform is a must for medium-term scal man-agement MUKUL G ASHER

AS PREPARATIONS are underway for the Centralgovernments 2008-09 Budget, it is an appropriatetime to discuss sustainability of the overall scaltargets set under the FRBM (Fiscal Responsibilityand Budget Management) Act of 2003.

This Act set the medium-term target of elimina-tion of Revenue Decit (current receipts less cur-rent expenditure) to zero by 2008-09 and to gener-ate surpluses thereafter. It also sets the Fiscal De-

cit (total expenditure less total receipts net of bor-rowing) target of no more than 3 percent of GDP by 2008-09. The Act also recognises the scal risk of liabilities arising from government guaranteesand the like (called contingent liabilities), and setslimit on them.

The ofcially projected Revenue Decit of theCentral government for 2007-08 is 1.5 percent of GDP (4.4 percent in 2002-03), while the Gross Fis-cal Decit is projected at 3.3 percent (5.9 percent in2002-03). Many States have also passed their ownFRBM Acts. Their passage suggest that there is aconsensus that a sustainable medium term frame-work is an essential element for sustaining high-growth, and for generating 140 million jobsneeded between 2005 and 2020.

In spite of this consensus, it appears that theFRBM Acts target of eliminating the RevenueDecit is unlikely to be met. The attainment of Fis-cal Decit target of 3 percent of GDP can only bemet if the 2008-09 Budget exhibits an unlikely re-straint on populist expenditure schemes in antici-pation of the impending General Election in 2009.

Ongoing deliberations of the Sixth Pay Commis-sion for civil servants add to further uncertainty.

The annual issuance by the UPA government of oil, fertiliser and other bonds which are off-budget,

are already estimated to be between 1.5 and 2.0percent of GDP. With oil prices near USD 100 per barrel and rising input costs for fertiliser produc-tion, this may rise even further. The refusal by thegovernment to reconsider this practice, or even torevise subsidy levels according to world prices,not only compromises FRBM targets, but also putshigh sustained growth at risk. Such behaviour bythe UPA (or any other governments in the states)

must be punished in the electoral arena.The quality of scal consolidation achieved sofar also requires improvement. Much of the pro-gress has been due to robust nominal GDP growthof around 12 percent; and due to increases in effec-tive tax rates, combined with limited efforts to-wards broadening of the tax base.

Progress in expenditure management and inobtaining better outcomes from the outlays hashowever been painfully slow. Without it, theFRBM targets are vulnerable to growth slowdown,a prospect that cannot be ruled out in the currentuncertain external environment.

The FRBM Act, like the Stability and GrowthPact (SGP) set by the European Union (EU) for itsmembers, relies heavily on quantitative limits to budgetary decit as a share of GDP. The EU decit(it also has a 3 percent target) is however based onan accrual budgeting which besides being com-plex, can only be calculated ex-post. This preventsscal correction during the ongoing scal year.

India uses cash budget which is simpler, andcan be calculated monthly. For this reason, even as

India widens the use of accrual and outcome budgeting, cash budget should continue to formthe basis for quantitative scal targets. Regardlessof the budget used, formal and informal norms,

IN DEPTH



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and institutional checks and balances should se-verely limit any recourse to nancial jugglery, suchas one-off policy measures.

Reliance on quantitative targets however has amajor limitation of de-emphasising the quality of public nance policies in general, and of the proc-

ess of achieving the scal targets in particular. Re-peated concerns expressed by successive primeministers that outlays are not being effectivelytransformed into outcomes (while contradictingthemselves by launching more and more expen-sive and complex schemes such as the NationalRural Employment Guarantee Scheme) stronglysuggests that promotion of appropriate institu-tional and organisational changes (involvingwhole gamut from laws, regulations, organisa-tional and governance structures, budgeting pro-

cedures, civil service recruitment and promotioncriteria) should receive high priority.The 2008-09 Budget should incorporate specic

steps towards modernisation of tax administra-tion, making it consistent with Indias US$1.1 tril-lion dollar economy with external sector approach-ing 45 percent of GDP. The Central Board of DirectTaxes (CBDT) should be given substantial auton-omy to achieve the revenue and other goals, withinsistence on high degree of accountability andtransparency. Human resource and technological

aspects of the tax administration require urgentreforms.

It is high time to reconsider the role of therevenue secretary. Any potential inter-service is-sues should be ironed out in the larger public in-terest in rationalising the responsibilities of the

revenue secretary and of the CBDT.There is also a need for more sophisticated

revenue forecasting based on prudent economicassumptions. The establishment of an autonomouscentre devoted to policy-relevant research on taxadministration and for developing data-miningand revenue forecasting capacities merits seriousconsideration. The February 2008 budget speechwould be an appropriate juncture to signal theUPAs commitment to this initiative.

A framework should be laid to achieve greaterco-ordination between the CBDT and the customsand excise tax administration as this would be cru-cial in smoothly implementing the proposedGoods and Services Tax (GST). About half of theGST revenue is usually obtained at the importing

stage, and in many countries such lack of co-ordination has been resulted in the poor perform-ance of the GST. The process of creating consensuson administrative modalities, design and revenuesharing between the centre and the states must bepursued with greater urgency.

The central issue of quality of public nancepolicies and management is also equally crucial atthe state and local levels. They should not feelcomplacent as their scal positions are even morevulnerable to slower growth and other exogenousfactors. In particular, modern nancial manage-ment practices, and focus on results need to beemphasised by them.

Many states have passed their own FRBM Acts.A better co-ordination between expenditure plansof the states negotiated with the Planning Com-

mission and the FRBM targets of the States is re-quired.For the municipalities and other urban bodies,

such reforms will be essential to access nancialand capital markets (e.g. through securitisation of property tax revenues) to nance capital expendi-ture. By 2030, about 45 percent of Indias popula-tion, numbering about 625 million people will beliving in urban areas and their periphery. Giventhe general neglect of the urban bodies, institu-tional and organisational scal reform is consid-

erably overdue and urgent. Isolated attempts at budget reforms, such as in Ahmedabad and Ban-galore are encouraging, but insufcient. The aimmust be to develop an active municipal bond mar-ket by about 2015.

To ensure a sustainable medium-term scal

framework, the nance minister should explicitlyrecognise the need for better scal institutions andorganisational arrangements, and propose specicmeasures in his February 2008 Budget speech. Thiswould help ease a major constraint in securingIndias economic future. The linkage betweenmunicipal scal management by the centre, thestates and the electoral outcomes needs to be madestronger. There is no substitute for competence ingovernance and in government.

Mukul G Asher is professor of public policy at the Na-tional University of Singapore

IN DEPTH

13 No 9 | DEC 2007

The 2008-09 Budget should incorporate specic steps towards modernisation of tax administration, making it consistent with Indias US$1.1 trillion dollar econ-omy with external sector approaching 45 percent of GDP


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HIGHER EDUCATION

A crisis profoundIndian universities needs reform, not fatalismHARSH V PANT

IT TURNS out that not a single Indian universitymade it to a list of top 200 higher educational insti-tutions in the world. As many as ten Chinese uni-versities made it. Meanwhile the Vice Chancellorof Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) wrote a let-ter to the parents of his students threatening toconvert the academic session into a Zero Year if there was a repeat of violence that occurred on thecampus in September.

Amid all the claims about the rise of India as amajor player in the international system, it is oftenignored that India continues to face some funda-mental obstacles in its drive to achieve its full po-tential. One of the most signicant of which is thecrisis in Indias higher education system, some-

thing that goes unnoticed amid the glare of theengineers, doctors and managers that seems to beemerging from Indias premier professional insti-tutions such as the IITs and the IIMs.

While a recent national conference of univer-sity vice chancellors, Arjun Singh, the Union hu-

man resources development minister, describedhigher education in India as a sick child and askedthat it should be given a new direction so as to beable to better serve the cause of the nations youth.Seeking a road map on higher education from thedelegates, he asked them to dene the content,extent, methodology and basic ingredients of higher education.

While Mr Singhs comments certainly need to be welcomed it is surprising that it took him morethan three years to address what should have beenhis top priority when he assumed ofce. It is alsointeresting to note that some of the ministers own

actions in the past three years have not exactlyserved the goals of improving the quality of highereducation in the country.

Knowledge is the key variable that will denethe global distribution of power in the 21st centuryand India has also embarked on a path of eco-nomic success relying on its high-tech industries.But given the fragile state of Indias higher educa-tion system, it is not clear if India will be able tosustain its present growth trajectory. While Indiasnearest competitor, China is re-orienting and in-vesting in its higher education sector to meet thechallenges of the future, India continues to ignorethe problem as if the absence of world-class re-search in Indian universities is something that will

rectify itself on its own.While India may be producing well-trained

engineers and managers from its agship IITs andIIMs, it is not doing so in sufcient numbers. Thereis also a growing concern that while private engi-neering and management institutions are ourish-

ing due to their rising demand, their products arenot of the quality that can help India compete ef-fectively in the global marketplace.

India has the third largest higher educationsystem in the world, behind only the United Statesand China, that produces around 2.5 milliongraduates every year. Not only is this catering toonly around 10 percent of Indias youth but thequality of this output is mixed. Leaving aside theIITs, the IIMs, and some other institutions such asthe All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the In-dian Institute of Science, and Tata Institute of Fun-damental Research, we nd a higher education

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Indian universities, which should have been hubs of intellectual activity,are more in the news for political machinations than for research excel-

lence


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sector that is increasingly unable to bear theweight of the rising expectations of an emergingIndia.

Indian universities, which should have been

hubs of intellectual activity, are more in the newsfor political machinations than for research excel-lence. Years of under-investment in higher educa-tion and a mistaken belief in providing uniformsupport to all universities irrespective of the qual-ity of their output has resulted in academics lack-ing both adequate support to provide top-qualityeducation and incentives to undertake cutting-edge research. India needs research-oriented uni-versities to be able to participate in the globalknowledge-based economy to its full potential.

In his perceptive meditation on the state of higher education in America, The Closing of theAmerican Mind , Allan Bloom concludes that a cri-sis in the university, the home of reason, is perhapsthe profoundest crisis for a democratic nation.Though the crisis that he was drawing attention toarose from a different set of issues facing the USacademia in the 1960s and 1970s, the present crisisin the Indian universities is equally profound andhas the potential to directly affect the future of In-dia.

This brings us to the larger issue that is at stake

in this debate about the future of higher education.Because of the demands of the market, most stu-dents today nd engineering, medicine or man-agement to be the most lucrative options to study.And the education system is such that it has cre-ated an articial divide between various streams.

The context in which its engineers, its doctors andits managers are emerging is not shaped by theliberal ethic of higher education, something thatshould be its very essence. Social science and hu-manities are being devalued today vis--vis sci-ence and technology which can have some serious

consequences.Democracy requires a questioning citizenry

brought up on liberal education that gives its citi-zens the ability to interrogate and investigate theclaims of authority. The real value of liberal educa-tion comes from a distinctive quality of mind andcharacter that encourages the ability to exploremoral and political questions from a variety of perspectives. Indias higher education has longceased to ask big questions, the most important of which should be: What kind of citizens is the In-

dian education system producing?Some scholars have pointed out that a processof privatisation of higher education is underway inIndia, a result not of some comprehensive pro-gramme of education reform but as a consequenceof the collapse of the public sector and the with-drawal of the middle classes. This is indeed a wor-risome trend. The government must realise that just by pumping more money into the system or by building more universities it will not be able toremedy the underlying rot.

With the National Knowledge Commissioncalling for a fundamental change in higher educa-tion and the HRD Minister nally realising thatsomething drastic needs to be done, the stage ishopefully set for a radical overhaul of the highereducation sector. It would be a grave travesty if agovernment led by an educationist himself fails todo anything to stem the rot in Indias higher edu-cation.

.

Harsh V Pant teaches at Kings College, London

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15 No 9 | DEC 2007

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17/23

EMIGRATION

Doctors acrossbordersSome conclusions about emigrating doctors are hasty ROHIT PRADHAN

THE EMIGRATION of health professionals fromdeveloping world to member countries of the Or-ganization of Economic Cooperation and Devel-opment (OECD) remains a highly contentious is-sue. In America itself, according to the AmericanMedical Association (AMA), International MedicalGraduates (IMGs) constitute approximately 25% of the physician population. Indians are by far thelargest groupnearly 20% of American physicianswere trained in India. According to some calcula-tions, of the nearly 24,000 medical graduates India

produces every year, 1200 eventually emigrate.A recent study by Manas Kaushik, Abhishek

Jaiswal, Naseem Shah & Ajay Mahal in the Bulletinof the World Health Organisation has approachedthe emigration of physicians from a slightly differ-ent angle. The researchers have looked at physi-cians trained at Indias premier medical school, AllIndia Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), andhave concluded that nearly 54% of its graduates(1989-2004) currently reside abroad. Focusing onquality of physicians emigrating, they have shown

that general category students (those who did not benet from reservations) are more likely to leaveIndia for greener pastures abroad.

The ndings are easy enough to explain. Medi-cal profession in the West remains highly competi-

tive, and AIIMS graduateswith their superiortrainingare at a distinct advantage. Quite clearly,this emphasis on quality also means that studentswith the highest academic achievement wouldcontribute disproportionately to the ranks of emi-grating physicians. Indeed, it is surprising that theresearchers have declared the lower proportion of emigrating physicians among the reserved cate-gory students as an unintended benet of af-rmative action programs. It is premature toreach such a nding without comparing the rates

of emigration among afrmative action beneciar-ies in AIIMS with students of other medicalschools. It is reasonable to hypothesise that emi-gration rates would be higher among AIIMSgraduates across all categories.

Such issues apart, the main question remains:Are the researchers justied in arguing that inter-vention should focus on highly trained individualsin the top institutions that contribute dispropor-tionately to the loss of human resources forhealth? There are two ways to answer this ques-

tion.First is to ask whether the health profes-sionand highly skilled physicians--can beviewed separately from the larger pattern of mi-gration. According to the United Nations, in 2000,175 million people were living outside their coun-try of origin. Around 65% of the migrants have been classied as highly skilled. According tosome estimates, 20% of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduates have moved abroad.Therefore, focusing merely on physician immigra-tion without appreciating the context of a rapidlyglobalising world is patently misleading. In fact,physicians move abroad for similar rewards asother high skilled professionals: higher salaries, better technology and better standards of living.

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Instead of subsidising higher edu-cation and then attempting to curbemigration, the emphasis must be

where state intervention is directlyrequired: rural areas and primaryhealth care.


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An approach which fo-cuses on emigration of specic groups ratherthan the economic, po-litical, and social contextswhich make emigration

desirable is staringthrough the wrong endof the telescope.

Second, is the Indianhealth system really af-fected adversely by theemigration of physiciansand other health profes-sionals? Currently,around 600,000 doctorsare registered with the

Medical Council of India.The physician-populationratio of 56 per 100,000 is inadequate and below thelevels recommend by the World Health Organisa-tion. However, the distribution is heavily skewedand the physician-population ratio in urban areashas been estimated to approach 200 per 100,000which approximates the physician concentrationin developed countries. In other words, India facesa severe shortage of physicians in rural areas, aproblem which is not amenable merely to in-creased number of physicians. How many of theseAIIMS graduates would have practised in remoterural areas? In fact, it is questionable if AIIMS andother centres of medical excellence have justiedthe public expenditure on them. The budget of AIIMS500 Croresmay be smaller than the re-search budget of an average American university but still it consumes a large proportion of thehealth budget. While so much attention is focusedon tertiary care centres, the latest round of Na-tional Family Health Survey (NHFS-3) has clearlydemonstrated the abysmal state of Indian public

health system. Infant mortality still remains high(57 per 1000) while less than 50% of India childrenare fully immunised. None of this requires the in-tervention of highly skilled health person-nelrather the oppositea renewed focus ongeneral health practitioners and other health per-sonnel.

The entire issue of migration needs to be exam-ined in a broader economic context. Migration, likeglobalisation, need not be a zero-sum game. Toview it merely as loss and gain is to miss theimmense economic opportunities it affords. Themovement of high-tech personnel between Indiaand the developed world has beneted both theparties. India is among the leading recipients of foreign remittances. This apart, many highly

skilled individuals have moved back to India andhelped fuel the Indian IT and services boom. Asimilar trend is being witnessed in the medicaleld with non-resident Indian doctors investing ingreeneld hospital projects.

Over the next few decades, with the demo-graphic shift, the developed world will face anincreasing shortage of trained health personnel. Innursing alone, according to the American NursingAssociation, a shortfall of 200,000 is expected by2013. India is uniquely placed to take advantage of this emerging opportunity. After all, almost everyfactor which allowed India to emerge as theworlds most competitive destination for IT andoutsourcing is present in the case of medical edu-cation. If medical education is liberalised, Indiacan emerge as the health sciences outsourcing des-tination of the world. It will not only improve thestandards of medical education in India, but canalso help fund a much-needed expansion of India'spublic health system.

The emigration of health professionals to thedeveloped world should be addressed from a dif-ferent paradigm. Instead of subsidising highereducation and then attempting to curb emigration,the emphasis and the resources must be directedwhere state intervention is directly required: ruralareas and primary health care. Similarly, by creat-ing conditions conducive for operation of freemarkets in medical education, the India can hopeto exploit the immense arbitrage opportunities of migration and globalisation.

Rohit Pradhan is a resident commentator at The In-dian National Interest

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17 No 9 | DEC 2007

Are the doctors in?

P h o t o : B a l a j

i B h a r a d w a j


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PAKISTAN

The Akhond of SwatA closer look at the separatist religious movement MANAN AHMED

WHO OR WHY, or which, or what, is MaulanaFazlullah of Swat? Recent headlines from Pakistanhave been grimpitched battles with many re-ports of casualties and mass migration of civiliansfrom the conict region. Yet, the foreign mediahasnt really focused on Maulana Fazlullahper-haps thinking that the story of Talibanisationcovers this particular mullah just as well as it doesany other. At a cursory glance, it all does blend in.The overall deterioration in the North WesternFrontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally Ad-ministered Tribal Areas (FATA) in recent yearsspecically in Waziristan, the Malakand Agency

regions, Dir, Bajaur, Swat and areas around Pe-shawaris often called Talibanisation and isoften pegged to the aftermath of the Afghanistanwar of 2001. There is, though, a longer history thatoffers some additional venues of thought. At thevery least, it tells us to pay attention to the localeven as we highlight the trans-national aspects of movements like the Taliban.

Shah Ismail (1789-1831) and Sayyid AhmedBarelvi (1786-1831), specically, are pivotal guresin the memory and history of Swat. In the late1820s, they waged a religious war against Maha-raja Ranjit Singhs forces for the control of Pesha-war. They succeeded briey, declared themselvesan emirate where the creed of the Prophet Mo-hammed held sway, and were swept away in1831killed in battle. Shah Ismail and SayyidAhmed, though defeated, emerged as an integralpart of the narrative of anti-imperialism. Not sim-ply for their militant struggle for the establishmentof an Islamic polity, they came to represent a pro-found connection to the revivalist thought of nine-teenth century Muslims in India. Shah Ismail was

the grandson of Shah Waliullahthe progenitor of the Deobandis who have continued to enjoy awide following in NWFP. It is more fashionablenowadays to connect Shah Waliullah to Abdul

Wahhab and build an argument about some uni-tary fundamentalist strain of Islamic thought but that is a wrong notion. There are crucial differ-ences, not only in history but in the theologicalarguments underlining Deobandi and Wahabbiideologies of revivalist Islam. The Deobandi, inparticular, combined the idea of a polity based onIslamic Sharia and free from foreign inuenceswith a more quixotic attempts to migrate or set-tle a Caliphate in Afghanistan. (The migration of thousands of Muslims to Afghanistan in 1920needs historical attention.)

The mountainous regions between Kabul and

Peshawar and across Baluchistan and Gilgit re-mained an odd absence in the centralising ideol-ogy of Pakistan. Partly it was due to the linguisticand ethnic communities that stretched beyond thenation-state. Partly it was a function of the lack of political legitimacy for any federal government inthe region. The Pakistani State, created with une-qual halves of East and West Pakistan, provedunequal to the task of imagining itself. In 1971,Bangladesh emerged out of the political chaos andopportunism and military destruction wrought byWest Pakistani armies. In 1972, Pakistan embarkedon a new path to re-afrm itself.

Zulqar Ali Bhutto, the father of BenazirBhutto, was the chief architect of a program of Is-lamisation to glue together the rest of Pakistan. Helooked towards the pan-Islamic movement to posi-tion Pakistan as an international entity that wasntsimply a footnote in the red hot Cold War. BhuttosIslamisation efforts continued under General Ziaul Haq, who overthrew Bhutto in 1977. Except thatunder Zia ul Haq, they became the Sunnicationefforts to counter his (and Saudi) fears of a Shia

revolution sweeping out of Iran and across theMuslim world. The frontier, as always, of theseefforts was the NWFP. It is around this momentthat the Soviet-Afghan war overshadows all local

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narratives but it will be interesting to study themovement of Pashtun men out of NWFP territo-ries and into the urban centers of Karachi and La-horeand further to Riyadh and Dohafor eco-nomic reasons. We are sorely lacking scholarshipthat can trace these movements back to the origins

where petro-dollars (from doing labour in the Gulf states) transformed these small communities. It isone sad casualty of our current myopia that we areinterested only in the monolithic account of Soviet-Afghan war and the Talibanisation and continueto stress top-down factors in our analysis.

In November 1994, the year old government of Benazir Bhutto faced a crisis in NWFP. Some of thePashtun tribal chiefs, led by a Maulana Su Mu-hammad proclaimed that Sharia needed to be en-forced in NWFP. His movement, the Tehrik Nifaz-iShariat Muhammadi (Movement for the Establish-ment of the Path of Muhammad), enjoyed wide-spread support. He was shutting down airportsand businesses and making life hard for theBhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party. So, she cut a deal.It may be shocking to remember that this sameBenazir Bhutto who is now proclaiming herself asthe sole secular leader was none too shy about cut-ting such deals where it suited her. The Musharraf regime also turned to TNSM and Maulana SuMuhammad to try and operate in the Swat region.In late 2001, after the United States launched Op-eration Enduring Freedom against Mullah OmarsTaliban regime in Afghanistan, Su Mohammedgathered a force of several thousand tribesmen toght against American troops. But this force didnot survive the encounter with the Northern Alli-ance. Su Mohammed himself survived the cam-paign but was arrested by Pakistani authoritiesupon his return. The American air strike on Bajaurin November 2006 and the Lal Masjid crisis thisyear put an end to the partnership between theTNSM and the Musharraf regime.

The reason is Maulana Fazlullah and his decla-ration of open hostility against the Pakistan mili-

tary. Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Maulana SuMuhammad and has organised his own armycalled Shaheen commandos. He is young30 or32and comes from Imam Dheri area in Swat.Around a year or so ago, as the Imam of the semi-nary in Imam Dheri, he established an FM radio

channel in the area to deliver sermons and becamea local celebrity. After the Lal Masjid crisis, he de-clared jihad on the state of Pakistan. His ShaheenCommandos now control Matta. In early October,in an act reminiscent of the Taliban regime in Af-ghanistan, Fazlullahs forces blasted off the head of

a 23-feet tall statue of the Buddha at Jehanabad.And the ght is slowly reaching the capital.

Maulana Su Mohammed has apparently beenreleased after General Musharraf imposed martiallaw, even as the Pakistani Army has commencednew operations against Fazlullahs forces in Swat.The use of helicopter gunships and heavy artilleryagainst the insurgents is believed to have led to anexodus of the civilian population from the region.

This is certainly a complex and deeply trou- bling development for the state of Pakistan. Therise of local militias and the oppressive reaction bythe military was certainly a contributing factor inthe secession of East Pakistan. And a similar pat-tern is clear in Balochistan. The recent killing of Mir Balach Khan Marri, a Baloch rebel leader, issure to have wide repercussions for that separatistmovement.

So to wrap it up: separatist religious movementin Swat, separatist nationalist movement in Balu-chistan and a separate Musharraf from his dicta-torship movement in the rest of the country.Things can only get better, no?

Manan Ahmed is the prime suspect in the Chapati Mystery, at chapatimystery.com

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19 No 9 | DEC 2007

It may be shocking to remember that Benazir Bhutto who is now proclaimingherself as the sole secular leader was none too shy about cutting deals with

TNSM where it suited her.


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BOOK REVIEW

Banally in love withIndiaCHANDRAHAS CHOUDHURY

A NEWSPAPER col-umn is, as demon-strated by its bestpractitioners, a mi-nor but neverthelessdemanding art form,the essence of whichis to give memorableexpression to thetopical by linking itto deeper realities.Those who carry it off most successfully on theIndian sceneRamachandra Guha, Vir Sanghvi,Girish Shahane, Santosh Desai, Mukul Kesavan,

Swaminathan S. Aiyardelight and provoke usnot only with their command over their subject but also their air for shrewd generalisation andthe economy and lucidity of their expression.

Sadly none of these qualities are visible inShashi Tharoor's The Elephant, the Tiger and theCellphone , a ragbag of columns and op-eds inwhich ancient platitudes, second-hand insights,and tacky witticisms are aimed at the reader with aquite breathtaking conviction. Tharoor has never been a very good columnist anyway, so his unwise(but in some ways perfectly characteristic) decisionto gather up his jottings only serves to exposemore clearly his considerable shortcomings in therealm of both thought and expression.

Let us begin with the thought. India, pro-nounces Tharoor, is an ancient civilisation of greatdiversity and richness, "a conglomeration of lan-guages, cultures, ethnicities", "a land of contrasts".Our pluralist ethos is our greatest strength, yet because we have so many differences we oftenlapse into anarchy and division. Our economy is booming and our middle-class expanding; the

cellphone is the symbol of this economic revolu-tion. But a large chunk of our population still lan-guishes in poverty, and if we dont attend to thisproblem then, in Tharoor's heavy-handed meta-

phor, the elephantwhich is turninginto a tiger mayturn back into anelephant.Tharoor asks us tomark also thatelected leaders areoften corrupt andunprincipled, anda blot on the name

of democracy. Corruption is so endemic that thesize of the black economy is probably as large asthat of the white economy. To turn now to cricket:

cricket emerged in a foreign land, but its spiritualhome now is India. Cinema: movies are the greatIndian national pastime, and Bollywood domi-nates popular discourse in India. Health: Indiansare somehow acutely conscious of personal hy-giene but unmindful of public sanitation. Themango: the mango is the king of fruits, but it sellsat prices that make it the fruit of kings. AlthoughTharoor is an Indian writer writing about India forIndian readers, his writing is somehow pitched atthe level of, say, a Norwegian writing about Indiafor Norwegian readers.

Tharoor's interpretation of particulars is asdismaying as his stultifying generalities. Nowhereis he more wearisome than when composingelaborations on his favourite theme: the Nehru-vian idea of India's unity in diversity. Take his re-ections on the rise of the cricketer Irfan Pathan.That Pathan, a Gujarati Muslim and the son of amuezzin, could play for India and attain the popu-larity he did in the wake of Gujarat 2002 is forTharoor "a testament to the indestructible plural-ism of our country". This is dubious in itself, but a

further advertisement of pluralism, Tharoor avers,was the Indian team itself, a champion side "in-cluding two Muslims and a Sikh, and captained bya Hindu with a wife named Donna". Tharoor here

BOOKS


Review

The Elephant, the Tiger, and the CellPhone: Reections on India, The Emerging 21st-Century Power

by Shashi TharoorArcade/Viking, 512 pages, 2007


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carelessly confers an honorary Christianity uponSourav Ganguly's wife Donaone cannot see anyother reason why her name merits a mentiontoll up a blank in his pluralist headcount.

Elsewhere Tharoor recounts an incident, whichhe knows only through the testimony of "two

American scholars", of a Muslim girl whose fatherrefused to let her play one of Krishna's dancinggopis in a play, but had no objection to her playinga stationary Krishna holding a ute. Anybody cansee that this story is marked by doubt and confu-sion (and distaste for low activities like dancing) asmuch as assent, but for Tharoor it is "a lovely storythat illustrates the cultural synthesis of Hinduismand Islam in northern India". Tharoor sees himself as a proud carrier of the Nehruvian torch, but ishappily oblivious to how complacent and patron-

ising a Nehruvian he is.Nor is Tharoor much more edifying when talk-ing about another of his pet subjects, "the new In-dia". Watching the excitable cricketer S Sreesanthslog a bullying South African fast bowler over hishead for six and follow it up with a frenzied wardance, Tharoor is convinced that this incidentepitomises "all that is different about the new In-dia" - bold, fearless, condent. As the ag-bearersof the bold new India and the secular and pluralistIndia respectively, Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan may,to go by Tharoor's reading, be the most meaning-ful pair of new-ball bowlers in the history of cricket. Tharoor continues: "Sreesanth's India is the

land that throws out the intruders of Kargilthatwins Booker Prizes and Miss Universe contests." Ifelt embarrassed even reading such twaddle.

Of course we have still not approached one of Tharoor's main subjects, one that looms almost aslarge in the book as the India he loves so. Thistopic begins with the same letter as India andstops right there: it is the writerly self, the "I". Tha-roor is a highly energetic and committed self-promoter: in fact some of the most ingenious writ-ing in his book takes the form of his acrobatics of self-aggrandisement.

Consider these two examples. Coming across aphotograph of a sadhu chatting on a mobile phone

at the Kumbh mela, Tharoor remarks that this con-trast "says so much about the land of paradoxesthat is today's Indiaa country that, as I wrotemany years ago, manages to live in several centu-ries at the same time." In another passage aboutIndia as a land of contrasts and extremes, Tharoor

closes a paragraph with the lines: "Any truismabout India can be immediately contradicted byanother truism about India. I once jokingly ob-served that 'anything you can say about India, theopposite is also true.'"

What is going on here? In these lines we ndnot one but two Shashi TharoorsShashi Tharoorpresent and Shashi Tharoor pastsupporting eachother in conrmation of the most trite characterisa-tions. Tharoor is not only saying something that allof us keep saying, but also insisting that he said

the very thing earlier, as if by a continuous processof self-quotation he can lever the thought into thedomain of his personal copyright. The Elephant, theTiger and the Cellphone abounds with such predict-able moves out towards India on the one hand andpreening gestures in towards the self on the other.

Not all of Tharoor's book is so tedious. In onechapter he argues persuasively that Hindutva, anideology without any base in Hinduism even if itshares the same root word, is in effect a separatistmovement, one that appeals to a majority ratherthan a minority. Another section offers some usefulproles of little-known or neglected gures. Butmost of Tharoor's writing is just noise. Although

we know from Tharoor that "anything you can sayabout India, the opposite is also true", there is littlechance about the same diversity of opinion about a

work so banally, so fatally, in love with India asThe Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone.

Chandrahas Choudhury is a freelance writer based in Mumbai, and blogs at middlestage.blogspot.com. Cour-tesy: Mint.

BOOKS

21 No 9 | DEC 2007

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Tharoor is not only saying something that all of us keep saying, but also insist-ing that he said the very thing earlier, as if by a continuous process of self-quotation he can lever the thought into the domain of his personal copyright.


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Pragati - The Indian National Inter-est Review comes to you from an inde-pendent community of individuals committedto increasing public awareness and educationon strategic affairs, economic policy and gov-ernance.

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