Tsr subrimanian

Eknath rao

The effect of the Bhakti movement is described by Justice Ranade in these words: "Like the Protestant reformation in Europe in the 16th century, there was a religious, social and literary revival and reformation in India, but notably in the Deccan in the 15th and 16th centuries. The religious revival was not Brahmanical in its orthodoxy, it was heterodox in its spirit of protest against forms and ceremonies and class distinctions based on birth, and ethical in its preference of pure heart and the law of love, to all other acquired merits and good works. This religious revival was the work also of the people of the masses, and not of the classes. At its head were saints and prophets, poets and philosophers, who sprang chiefly from the lower order of society, tailors, carpenters, potters, gardeners, shopkeepers, barbers and even scavengers more often than Brahmins." Literature and Language The literature and language of the Marathas also acted as a unifying force. The hymns of Tukaram were sung by all the classes and they served as a bond of unity among people who belonged to different sections of society. The songs in Marathi dialect and Marathi language played an important part. According to J.N. Sarkar, "Thus a remarkable community of language, creed and life was attained in the Maharashtra in the 17th century before political unity was conferred by Shivaji. What little was wanting to the solidarity of the people was supplied by his creation of national state, the long struggle with the invader from Delhi under his sons, and the imperial expansion of the race under the Peshwas. Thus in the end a tribe - or collection of tribes or castes - was fused into a nation, and by the end of the 18th century a Maratha people in the political and cultural senses of the term had been formed, though caste distinctions still remained. Thus history has moulded society." Saints Many saints like Chakradhar, Namdeo, Dnyaneshwar and Eknath lived in Maharashtra before Shivaji was born. They preached the virtue of service, sacrifice, generosity, equality and brotherhood. They created in the minds of people the feeling that all men are equal and no one is high or low. The work of these saints can be compared to that of a farmer wh

According to Richard Eaton, from early 14th-century when Maharashtra region came under the rule of the Islamic Delhi Sultanate, down to the 17th-century, the legacy of Tukaram and his poet-predecessors, "gave voice to a deep-rooted collective identity among Marathi-speakers".[40] Dilip Chitre summarizes the legacy of Tukaram and Bhakti poets, during this period of Hindu-Muslim wars, as transforming "language of shared religion, and religion a shared language. It is they who helped to bind the Marathas together against the Mughals on the basis not of any religious ideology but of a territorial cultural identity".[41]

New right

Explaining What Makes Something 'New'

Every time we turn around, something 'new' is being marketed to the public. It could be a new computer, a new phone, a new car, anything. So what makes something 'new?' Well, hopefully a new product is going to be relevant to current everyday life. Perhaps it's an improvement over the older versions of the same thing or adds features that the old versions didn't have.

But this isn't limited to just the newest iPhone or luxury sedan. It works the same way with political movements. Sometimes events cause a new political movement to rise up, claiming to have the right answers to pressing policy questions that current political movements do not possess. The New Right is one such movement.

Definition

The New Right refers to the movement of American conservatives in the 1970s and 1980s that rose up in opposition to liberal policies on taxes, abortion, affirmative action, as well as foreign policy stances on the Soviet Union. This movement lent substantial support to the Republican Party, leading to Republicans winning control of the U.S. Senate in 1980, and the election of Ronald Reagan as 40th president of the United States the same year.

Issues

Reagan and Ford at 1976 Convention

The New Right movement began forming in the 1960s and 1970s as its members were dismayed by increased sexuality in the public arena, rising crime, liberalization of abortion, and social unrest caused by the Vietnam War, the conflict between the United States and communist North Vietnam that lasted from roughly 1965 to 1975. Organizations were formed such as Young Americans for Freedom and the College Republicans, often populated by white, middle-class Protestant suburbanites.

Among the issues that animated the New Right was the upcoming Panama Canal treaty that gave control over the Panama Canal to its mother country. Many conservatives opposed the treaty, feeling the U.S. should retain control over the canal. New Right members also balked at what they viewed as appeasement towards the Soviet Union. While running against President Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, Reagan criticized both the treaty and the Ford policy of détente, which was an effort to relax tensions with the Soviets through negotiations. Instead, Reagan believed that the U.S. should build up its military might to deter Soviet aggression.

Jerry Falwell in 1984

The organization of social conservatives also fueled the New Right. In 1973, the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to an abortion in the Roe v. Wade ruling. Opposition to the ruling sparked a parallel movement called the Religious Right, made up largely of Protestant Christians who opposed liberal policies on abortion and homosexuality. This movement was led by individuals such as Jerry Falwell and Reverend Pat Robertson. Many Religious Right activists found common cause with the New Right and joined its ranks, giving strong support to New Right candidates and Reagan during his runs for president. This is what has led many critics to conflate the Religious Right with the Republican Party.
An important anchor for the New Right is a strong belief that market-based economics is the most effective means for delivering economic growth commensurate with the expectations of our citizens. The New Right would, however, concede that market-based systems tend to accentuate disparities in income and wealth. They recognise that in a democracy such as ours — where we received universal suffrage at much lower levels of economic development than any other democracy in the world, and where the vast majority of voters live in poverty — it is especially difficult to make a politically compelling case for economic policies that favour growth over equality.

Demonstrating that market-based systems can be fair — that they can be compatible with the democratic quest for social justice — is therefore of vital importance. The ability to properly regulate markets and redistribute income effectively is essential, and forms the basis for the New Right’s views on the role of the state.

The New Right are not advocates for a minimalist state. Markets cannot substitute for the state. The state must enable entrepreneurship and private enterprise such that these become the primary engines of job creation. It cannot become the default provider of jobs for all that are disadvantaged; nor can it be allowed to become the fiefdom of a few cronies. The state must have robust regulatory capacity to keep markets competitive. It must be able to intervene for the public good where and when markets fail. It must have an administrative machinery capable of ensuring effective delivery of essential public goods to all citizens. And it must provide an adequate safety net, transparently, and efficiently, to those that fall behind. While subsidies and transfers should remain important instruments for redistribution, the state must surely pursue every opportunity to improve their design — such as by moving to a system of direct cash benefit transfers linked to Aadhaar-seeded bank accounts — in order that they target the deserving, while eliminating waste and corruption.

Pub admn

Harish Chandra Gupta has been found guilty because there were some shortcomings in the application for the allotment of a coal block. 

Newspaper reports indicate that a CBI court has found former coal secretary Harish Chandra Gupta guilty of corruption and criminal conspiracy in the allocation of a coal block. There are a large number of other cases waiting in the wings for his prosecution. All these imply some irregularity in allocation and Gupta, as chairman of a committee which used to look into these cases, is said to be responsible. This case raises certain critical issues of governance. Whether this will encourage officers to take decisions fearlessly is now debatable. It takes away the protection enjoyed by honest civil servants.

When we joined the civil service more than five decades back, many situations were discussed. A guiding principle was that if you are honest and act in a bonafide manner, there is nothing in our system which can cause you harm. The “mantra” of success was your acting in a bonafide fashion.

Later, as cabinet secretary, I had several occasions to address young officers. I tried to instill the philosophy of uprightness, fair play and honesty and argued that the government always protected bonafide actions. It is extremely worrisome that these guiding principles are now being torn to pieces and a new philosophy is emerging which does not distinguish between honest mistakes and criminal actions.

Gupta is considered one of the country’s most honest civil servants. He has been found guilty because there were some shortcomings in the application for the allotment of a coal block. All such allocations were made by an inter-ministerial committee in consultation with state governments. The block was allegedly given in violation of the prescribed procedures. All coal block allocations have, since then, been cancelled and allocations are now made through auctions.

There is no charge that he, or other civil servants also convicted in the case, got any advantage, benefit, money, property or financial gain or made any other gains, financial or non-financial. It is difficult to understand a corruption case in which a guilty person has received no benefits or even planned to get them. What sort of criminal conspiracy is this where you neither get any advantage nor expect any benefit and yet you are held guilty for conspiring?

Administrative systems all over the world are based on the ability of senior officers, leaders of teams, to take risks. Such leadership invariably focusses on outcomes with members of the team acting together to achieve results. At times, in taking such decisions, mistakes are made. In the normal course, these are reviewed and corrective action is taken. Even in the private sector, which many of us admire for delivering excellent results, some decisions don’t work out. Such mistakes are a part of governance structures. With this case, we are sending a clear message: “Do not take risks. Just focus on procedures.” It is a recipe for disaster in a developing economy.

In the 1950s, public investment used to be predominant with private investment lagging behind. The major driver of economic growth is now the private sector. In fact, in the 1990s, there were amendments in the coal act to permit the allocation of coal mines for captive use by private power, cement and steel units. Initially, there was not much demand. As the economy expanded, demand picked up. Private investments increased simultaneously. This required a larger number of approvals from the government for coal blocks, iron ore mines, land, water and environment.

It is necessary for the courts to interpret the law on corruption in a way that is consistent with these new economic realities. The courts must appreciate that bonafide mistakes do not constitute a criminal offence. Our courts have very often used the process of judicial review for public good. Many fundamental rights of citizens today flow out of a very positive interpretation of our “right to life” provided under Article 21 of the Constitution. In fact, the right to education as a fundamental right was first construed from that article.

The current law on corruption suffers from two major problems. First, it does not require mens rea to find public servants guilty. This is a major requirement in laws on corruption in most countries. This is also a part of the UN Convention against Corruption. Under section 13(1)(d)(iii) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, a public servant is guilty even if no advantage was asked for by him or accrues to him or there is no quid pro quo.

Second, the concept of public interest, in violation of which public servants are deemed guilty of corruption, is not defined in the act. If a decision is taken which has immense economic benefits for the nation but is not consistent with previously announced guidelines, how should that be treated?

With an expanding private sector, due to the large increase in economic activity, the possibility of mistakes by public servants has increased. Unless bonafide decision-making is protected, we may be promoting a culture of indecision — a supine civil service will be busy passing papers from one desk to the other.

Not taking decisions is more harmful than taking the wrong decisions. While the latter can be corrected and the country can then move on to the desired direction, indecision evokes the story of the donkey who is said to have sat on the vertex of an isosceles triangle and died of hunger while not able to decide the shorter route to the base where plenty of green grass was available. By punishing honest civil servants like Gupta, we may be promoting a civil service which shuffles files from one desk to the other with no outcomes. Our nation cannot afford this.

Public choice

Climate rich

Paris summit 2015 is cop21
Green climate fund at cancun summit 2010
The Index of Economic Freedom is an annual index and ranking created by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal in 1995 to measure the degree of economic freedom in the world's nations.

Vaccine

India accounts for 20% of global pneumonia deaths under the age of five; Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) to be rolled out in H.P., U.P. and Bihar.

India on Saturday rolled out the long-awaited anti-pneumonia vaccine as part of the government’s Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP). The vaccine will protect children against severe forms of pneumococcal disease, such as pneumonia and meningitis.

The vaccine programme aims to protect nearly 270 lakh newborns against 12 preventable diseases every year.

Universal immunisation

“Our goal is to ensure that no child dies in the country from vaccine preventable diseases. We stand committed to reducing child deaths and providing a healthier future to our children. While these vaccines in the private sector were accessible to only those who could afford them, by making them available under the UIP, the government is ensuring equitable access to those who need them the most, the underprivileged and underserved,” Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda said while launching the vaccine.

Pneumococcal disease is the leading cause of vaccine-preventable deaths in children under five years of age globally and in India. India accounts for nearly 20% of global pneumonia deaths in this age group.

The three-dose pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) will be rolled out in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, six districts of Uttar Pradesh and 17 districts of Bihar as a part of the first phase. The vaccine will give protection against 13 types of pneumococcal bacteria which cause pneumonia disease.

Green energy coridor

Rs 43,000-cr ‘green energy corridor’ plan for renewable energy

The Government plans to launch a Rs 43,000-crore ‘Green Energy Corridor’ project to facilitate the flow of renewable energy into the national grid. The project will be implemented with the assistance of Germany who has promised provide developmental and technical assistance of €1 billion for the project.

The government has taken lessons from the massive power grid failure that hit the North, East and North-East regions of the country on July 30-31 in 2012 which called for attention to strengthen the electricity distribution network in the country.

 What is “Green Energy Corridor Project”?

The Green Energy Corridor Project is an upcoming project which aims at synchronising electricity produced from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, with conventional power stations in the grid.

The Project:

Objective: Synchronising electricity produced from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, with conventional power stations in the grid.

Cost: Rs 43,000-croreThe whole project has been divided into two parts:Inter State: To be developed by State utilitiesIntra State: To be developed by Power Grid Corporation of India (PGCIL)

Germany, who has expertise in making smart grids that integrate renewable energy into national grid will be assisting India in this project. Germany has promised provide developmental and technical assistance of €1 billion for the project

What is the problem in integrating electricity generated from renewable energy to conventional power grids?

The problem is Voltage Fluctuations. The conventional grids face difficulty in absorbing renewable electricity because of its varying voltage and supply. The planned transmission system would be made dynamic to handle the variations leading to an integrated grid across the nation.

What is the current status of electricity generation in India?

At present, India has 27,541.71 MW of installed renewable capacity excluding hydro power stations. The country has a total installed capacity is of 2,23,625.60 MW.

Town vending

The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act, 2014 came into force on May 1, 2014.

It was one of the last pieces of legislation passed by the United Progressive Alliance-II government. In its intent, it is similar to the other pro-people laws passed in the UPA years, such as the Right to Education, Right to Information and the Food Security Acts.

In the spirit of these progressive pieces of legislation, this law (henceforth the Street Vendors Act) seeks to bring in greater transparency and functional democracy in urban governance. But as is often the case in India, passing a law is one thing, and enforcing it is another. With this particular law, the biggest hurdle to implementation, it appears, is the implementers themselves.

The background

Street vendors, or hawkers as they’re more widely known, have been around for as long as civilisation. There has never been a city — ancient or modern — that did not have traders vending their wares informally in public spaces. Indian cities are no exception, as the tradition of natural markets or mandis testifies.

With the onset of colonial modernity, however, India acquired a set of municipal laws that overnight criminalised the vast majority of street vendors. They instituted a system of licensing. But the licences issued were few and far between. As Indira Unninayar, a Supreme Court lawyer who has fought cases on behalf of street vendors puts it, “There were always far fewer licences than the number of hawkers. The whole idea was to perpetrate a regime of illegality so that the municipal authorities and the police could carry on an extortion racket.”

Even the Supreme Court, while pointing out that street vendors have a fundamental right to their occupation as per Article 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution, has acknowledged the exploitation of hawkers by state authorities.

In its landmark judgement of September 9, 2013 in the Maharashtra Ekta Hawkers Union vs. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbaicase, the apex court stated, “street vendors … are a harassed lot and constantly victimised by the officials of the local authorities, the police, etc, who regularly target them for extra income and treat them with extreme contempt.”

Hawkers kept approaching the court to seek relief from this harassment. Says Ms. Unninayar, “Usually the courts don’t ask the government to enact a law. But the judiciary was so overburdened with all these cases over hawking rights that the Supreme Court finally asked the government to enact a law to regulate vending rights. Despite that, when no law was forthcoming, it gave the 2009 National Policy on Urban Vendors the weight of law until such time a law came into force.”

The Streets Vendors Act, largely drawn from the 2009 policy, was finally passed in 2014.

The Street Vendors Act 

The Street Vendors Act, 2014 is a truly innovative solution to the problem of balancing the livelihood rights of hawkers and the right to free movement of pedestrians and traffic.

The legislation lays down four fundamental provisions: one, there will be a survey of all existing hawkers; two, instead of licences, certificates of vending will be issued to all existing hawkers identified in the survey; three, vending and non-vending zones will be demarcated and all hawkers accommodated in the vending zones; and four, no hawker will be evicted from his/her spot unless and until the survey has been done and certificates of vending issued.

The centrepiece of the Act is the Town Vending Committee (TVC), which will have representation from street vendors, traffic police, police, Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), market associations, and the planning authority, among others, and be headed by the municipal commissioner.

It is the TVC which is mandated to organise the survey, decide on vending/non-vending zones, issue certificates, decide on vending fees that the hawkers should pay the municipality, publish the street vendor’s charter, and so on.

Simply put, the Street Vendors Act takes the powers currently concentrated in the municipality and police and distributes them among the various stakeholders who will have their say via the TVC. And since the street vendors are the biggest stakeholders — it is a matter of their livelihood — to ensure that their interests are protected, the law mandates that members representing them should be not less than 40 per cent of the TVC.

Additionally, in what ought to give major relief to the hawkers, Section 27 of the Act, titled ‘Prevention of harassment of street vendors’, states explicitly that this law must override any other law that has a bearing on hawking rights, and that no street vendor shall be harassed “under any other law for the time being in force”.

But the harassment continues 

The Street Vendors Act is not a model law — the State governments don’t have to pass similar laws in order for it to come into effect. It is a national law and it is already in force. And yet, the harassment of hawkers by the cops and local bodies continues. In Delhi, it continues despite explicit orders issued by the Delhi government to both the police commissioner and the heads of all the municipal bodies.

To take just one example, last year, on the eve of Independence Day, hawkers in the Jama Masjid area were evicted from their areas for security reasons. This happens every year. They are usually allowed back to their spots a day or two later. But last year — barely four months after the passing of the Street Vendors Act — they were not allowed to resume their trade, and were sent away by cops who told them there would be no longer be any market in the area.

Says Sandeep Kumar, 45, a socks vendor, “We met the DCP, the JCP, the Police Commissioner, the Home Minister. All we wanted was for the law of the land to be enforced, so that we could continue our trade. But none of them was ready to help us. We finally went to the court.” Once again, the Delhi High Court ordered the municipality and the police to let the evicted vendors back. But all this took time, and the vendors had no income for about five months.

“I have been a hawker for 18 years,” says Anwar Ali, 32, a footwear vendor, “but these five months were the worst days of my life. I have a wife and children to support. With the cops not letting us ply our trade, we were sinking deeper into debt, and our lives were in turmoil. Thankfully, the High Court came to our rescue.”

But still the harassment did not end. It merely took a different form. Says Iqbal, 32, who sells watches, “Now the cops insist that goods can only be kept on the ground. No benches or shelves or tables are allowed. Not even an overhead sheet to protect the goods from the sun.”

Adds Fatima, who sells utensils, “Because of this new rule that the cops have invented, our clothes fade in the sun. Our wares get muddy when it rains. People kick our goods by mistake as they walk past. Tell me, how can we keep food items on the floor?”

Nafisa Begum, 42, a sweetmeat and water pouches vendor, claims that two weeks back, in gross violation of the Delhi High Court order, a cop from the Jama Masjid police station came and distributed all her goods free to passers-by. Her crime? She had displayed her goods on a small wooden platform. “I had taken a loan to purchase my goods. Now I have to borrow again and start from scratch.”

When contacted, a senior police officer from the central district under the jurisdiction of the Jama Masjid police station said, “Elevated sale platforms provide room to potential terrorists to plant explosives in crowded areas. They are disallowed from using them in line with anti-terror procedures across the city.”

Is the law being diluted? 

The design of the Street Vendors Act is such that it requires municipalities to come up with ‘schemes’ for the implementation of the law. Most municipalities are yet to frame these schemes. But those that have a draft scheme ready seem determined to dilute the Act back to status quo.

“It is very obvious that in their schemes, the municipalities are bending the law,” says Arbind Singh, national coordinator of the National Association of Street Vendors of India. Mr. Singh gives several examples of the law being diluted in the scheme (yet to be notified) drafted by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) as well as the North Delhi Municipal Corporation. “For instance, the NDMC scheme says cooking will not be allowed. Now, will you have chhole bhature cooked beforehand? Isn’t the very USP of street food that it is prepared in front of you? How can you say cooking will not be permitted?”

Also, whereas the Act specifies that a survey of existing vendors should be carried out, the schemes mandate issuing of public advertisements about the survey. “The moment it is advertised, vested interests will get people to set up temporary rehris(wheelcarts). Fake vendors will try to come in. The very purpose of on-the-spot survey of already existing vendors will be defeated,” says Mr. Singh.

A more fundamental problem with the schemes is that many of the issues which, as per the Act, are to be decided by the TVC, are being usurped by the municipality. For instance, it is the TVC which is supposed to make recommendations on matters such as the vending fees, conduct of the survey, issue of certificates, and charter of self-regulation for vendors. The municipality is only supposed to ratify them — the TVC, after all, is headed by the municipal commissioner. But in the NDMC scheme, the municipality becomes the key decision-maker, and the TVC, a glorified consultant.

“Given that the stakes are so high, one cannot expect the municipalities to cede control so easily,” says Ms. Unninayar.

What are the stakes? 

A 2001 report by the journal Manushiestimated that five lakh vendors of Delhi were being fleeced of Rs. 480 crore annually by government functionaries. A 1998 study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, which only looked at hawkers on BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation land (accounting for perhaps half the total number of hawkers in Mumbai), reported that about Rs. 385 crore were extorted by the police and municipal officials every year.

These studies were done more than 15 years ago. And these are just two cities. Sharit Bhowmik, National Fellow of the Indian Council for Social Science Research and an academic who has done extensive research on street vendors, says that if we take into account inflation and growth in the number of hawkers, by now, “the extortion rackets must be worth at least Rs. 1,000 crore in Mumbai and Rs. 600 crore in Delhi.” In the absence of recent data, what it must be worth nationally can only be speculated upon.

If the municipal officials and the cops stand to lose so much, then resistance from these quarters is not surprising. But they are not the only hurdles.

“The RWAs are another big challenge,” says Ms. Unninayar. “The elitist sections of the middle classes think of hawkers as encroachers, as a nuisance that blocks footpaths, creates traffic congestion, and dirties the place.”

But it is precisely these problems — traffic congestion, hygiene, pedestrian rights, etc — that the Street Vendors Act seeks to address by decentralising decision-making and empowering the local TVC.

Another middle class concern that the presence of hawkers in residential areas could give a free run to anti-social elements, and increase crime. “The opposite is the case,” says Mr. Bhowmik. “When hawkers were evicted some time back in Vile Parle (East), about 250 women wrote to the local MLA asking for them to be allowed back, because they did not find it safe or convenient to walk a deserted stretch of 1-2 km to buy vegetables.”

Mr. Bhowmik also believes that the municipalities, which have a vested interest in the status quo, sometimes deliberately instigate the middle classes against the hawkers by demarcating arbitrary vending zones in their development plans. “If you put hawkers on Carter Road, which is a totally upper class area, first, what will the hawkers sell there? Second, there were no hawkers there to begin with. Third, you will just get the upper classes worked up against hawkers. On the other hand, the BMC wants an area with high hawker-concentration, such as Dadar, to be a no-hawking zone.”

Another strategy said to gaining favour among municipal officials is to initiate eviction drives — on some pretext or the other — before the hawker surveys are done, so that there would be no or very few hawkers left in an area when the survey mandated by the new law is conducted. Then they can claim that there were no existing hawkers, which means so many fewer vending certificates for hawkers.

The way forward 

Street vendors, Mr. Bhowmik points out, are service providers. “Even the middle classes benefit from their provision of essential goods at low cost and convenient locations. For the poor, nearly 80 per cent of their purchases are from street vendors.”

The street vendors’ enormous contribution to the economy rarely gets acknowledged. On the one hand, they subsidise the urban poor, who cannot afford to shop from malls or supermarkets for their necessities. On the other, they are a cheap distribution network for small and micro-enterprises in the informal sector that make toys, clothes, utensils, and other household goods from moulded plastic at a low cost.

These small industries cannot afford to sell their goods via conventional retail outlets. But they employ a large number of workers. If we take the number of people employed in these micro-industries, and add them to the total number of street vendors, it becomes clear that hawking sustains a great deal of employment. And in a country with a decade of jobless growth behind it, hawkers are asking for neither jobs nor handouts — only to be left alone.

Only economic stupidity or epic callousness would want to keep destroying the livelihoods of street vendors, who are, at the end of the day, a valuable class of entrepreneurs. Yet, the mindset of sections of the middle class, not to mention the municipal bureaucracy and the police who have their own reasons, remains largely hostile to hawkers.

In its very name, this legislation speaks of “protection of livelihood” of street vendors. The abiding irony is that the entities from whom protection is sought, are the ones mandated to provide the protection.

The future of this law may ultimately be determined by our civic imagination — how we envisage our cities, and our public spaces.

Do we want them to be seamless freeways for smooth circulation of pedestrians and vehicular traffic? Do we want a city of income-based ghettos where the lower income groups carry on their economic activity out of sight of the higher income groups? Or do we want our neighbourhoods to be spaces for social and communal life, where people from different socio-economic classes get to interact, transact, form social bonds, and together create a rich tapestry of urban living?

sampath.g@thehindu.co.in

Ritch

At one point in the Syrian conflict when it appeared a walk in the park for the Nato forces — when Turkish fighters were all over the Syrian airspace, when they even downed a Russian SU-24 fighter for alleged airspace violations — Russia decided to step in forcefully to alter equations. How? By deployed its latest S-400 Triumf air defence system. 

There were a lot of other moves the Russians made, many in tandem with China at the political level. But the immediate game changer happened in the battlefield dynamics. Suddenly, the Turkish F-16s went miles out of Syrian airspace. They even stopped coming close to avoid an accidental provocation. 
Unfair Advantage 

Instead, Ankara reversed its policy to invite Russia to bid in a tender to build an anti-missile defence system. The US and its Nato command were stunned at the Russian deployment. 

With that one move, Moscow sent out the message that it wasn’t posturing, but digging its heels in nice and proper in Syria. A single weapons system had fundamentally altered the balance of power in the Syrian battlefield and outside. 

It’s the same S-400 Triumf system on which Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin shook hands and firmed up a deal last week in Goa. India will buy five of them at an estimated deal price of Rs 30,000 crore. 

It was the item with the biggest price tag on the defence bill. But it’s the one that fills up a critical missing piece in India’s air defence system. So why is the S-400 such a game changer? Put simply, it’s a mobile platform that can launch eight missiles at one go and at a speed faster than most fighter aircraft. 

But the critical bit is its sophisticated jamming-resistant panoramic radar that can detect a plane as far as 600 km away. And its missiles can engage the target at a range of 400 km onwards. 

Significantly, it can also zero in to a moving target much more accurately. There’s no other system with such range. The best US counter is the Patriot missile system with a range of about 100 km. 

The S-400 would virtually cover most of Pakistan. Which means Pakistani fighters would become greatly vulnerable, tilting all battlefield equations against the Pakistan Air Force. 

India plans to deploy three of these against Pakistan and two against China, one each on the western and eastern sectors of the Line of Actual Control (LoAC). 

The calculus is that even the Chinese would have to depend largely on their aerial capabilities for any deep offensive into India. So, this acts as a major deterrent. 

Interestingly, the Chinese are also buying six S-400s from Russia. But Beijing’s plans are to deploy them largely against any US-led thrust. In many ways, this system could end up reconfiguring the deterrent matrix in the region over a period of time. 

But strictly from an Indian context, the spin-offs on strategic decisionmaking would be almost immediate: one that will provide more latitude and security to the political authority, at least on the volatile Pakistan front. 

The first effect is on the roundingoff of India’s three-tier air defence loop. At the first level are short-range surface-to-air missiles, basically the indigenously-developed Akash with a 20-40 km range. Then, the mediumrange surface-to-air missile of about 70 km range. And now the S-400s. 

Gunning for Triumf 

Add to that the quick reaction surface-to-air missile India is developing with Israel, and Indian air defence preparedness looks quite solid. The next level could be the missile shield, whichis still technologically in the works. Missile-based air defence is more of an old Soviet concept. 

The US dep ended on aircraft-based systems, the idea being that best air defence is possible by looking top-down, not down-up — a compelling logic that, however, works best when political authority has the flexibility to allow its air force to operate well beyond its own airspace. This is easier for the US or a military alliance like the Nato. 

For India facing a volatile adversary like Pakistan, air space violations are at best adventurous; at worst, catastrophic. A slight movement of troops can lead to a scramble of jets. It happened in 2008 when an R&AW plane ran a reconnaissance sortie along the LoC after the Mumbai attacks. Even this time, air forces on both sides ran hectic exercises after the Uri attack. 

The S-400 system increases risks for the Pakistan Air Force several times over. Also, the ‘keep-off limits’ message is a useful deterrent. It also helps isolate any rogue or terrorist controlled aircraft well before it reaches the Indian airspace providing crucial time to the political authority to reach a decision. 

Urban conference

The sixth edition of Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (APMCHUD) held in New Delhi has adopted New Delhi declaration to adopt Urban Plus approach. This was the first such meeting held to discuss ways of realising the New Urban Agenda that was finalised during the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (also known as “Habitat III” conference) held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016. Its theme of conference was ‘Emerging Urban Forms-Policy Reforms and Governance Structures in the Context of New Urban Agenda’. It was attained by representatives of Asia Pacific countries that account for over 55% of global urban population. It adopted Implementation Plan and New Delhi Declaration. The next biennial APMCHUD Conference will be hosted by Iran in 2018.  New Delhi Declaration Strongly advocated planning for urban and adjoining rural areas in an integrated manner instead of looking at them as independent entities. Called for thorough review of existing policies and formulation of new policies to promote New Urban Agenda adopted at UN Habitat III Conference in Quito, Eucador in October 2016. It stressed on the need for effective governance structures in urban areas noting that governance as the key to sustainable development. Implementation Plan Recommends Formulation of National Human Settlement Policies to promote inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable city and human settlements. Land regulation policy mechanisms such as land pooling to ensure inclusive and participatory planning, integration of land use and transportation planning across defined boundaries of cities. Enforcement and incentivasation of timely execution of infrastructure projects, formulation of comprehensive urban parking policies and community participation in urban planning. Adopt urban resilience as criteria for investment to withstand and absorb disasters and shocks and maintain normal services and quickly return to normalcy.

Read more at: http://currentaffairs.gktoday.in/tags/new-delhi-declaration

Kitch

'Indira Gandhi proved herself a great war leader, but failed as a statesman,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).

IMAGE: Prime Minister Indira Gandhi with Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in Shimla, July 1972.

Secured in Dhaka, but squandered in ShimlaJ N Dixit: The Errors of Simla

The 1971 India-Pakistan and the Shimla Agreement of July 2, 1972 are some of the most important events of the 20th century history of the Indian subcontinent.

While the 1971 war has been extensively analysed and commented upon, the Shimla conference that dealt with its aftermath has not attracted enough research as it ought to have.

Analysing the decision making process at the Shimla talks of 1972 is important. The decisions taken/not taken then continue to affect the Indian subcontinent and even more importantly the rationale, mindsets and logic on display then continues to be part of Indian decision-making on war and peace even 45 years after the event.

In 1999, after a first post nuclearisation skirmish at Kargil, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, another Indian stalwart leader, followed in the footsteps of Indira Gandhi.

The Indian syndrome of inability to exploit battlefield victory and frittering away the advantage gained at the cost of soldiers' blood continues. It is therefore of utmost importance for future and not merely of historical interest to analyse and understand the events of July 2, 1972.

It is necessary to understand the context of national euphoria that existed then. Indira Gandhi was the flavour of the season and as one senior Congress leader Dev Kant Borooah went so far as to coin the phrase 'Indira is India.'

At the Shimla conference in 1972, Indira Gandhi was at the zenith of her power. The Shimla agreement therefore escaped critical scrutiny.

During the 1971 war, Mrs Gandhi's strategic perception and control on the five fronts (diplomatic, political, economic, military and psychological) was superb. She used persuasion, hindrance and coercion on all five fronts without opening hostilities.

Military force was only used as a last resort. Men of the three defence services rose to the occasion and displayed tactical initiative and skill of a high order.

The war was a triumph for individuals who transcended an out-of-date institutional politico-military decision-making system. The 1971 war culminated in the capture of 93,000 Pakistani prisoners and a unilateral declaration of a cease fire by India after our ground forces had made minor incursions into West Pakistan.

The main agenda at Shimla was to deal with the aftermath of the 1971 War and usher in durable peace between India and Pakistan.

There was widespread concern and anxiety in Pakistan over the prisoners of war in India's hands. There were unanimous demands in the press and Pakistan national assembly for their early repatriation. Some Pakistani politicians said, 'Pakistanis are prepared to sacrifice their land for the sake of the prisoners -- it is better to have the POWs returned than to have the land back.'

Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto kept blowing hot and cold. Bhutto spoke with two voices. In Pakistan he said, 'Your (POWs) humiliation is our humiliation and we will bend backwards to see to it that no a moment is wasted for correct results (their release).'

With India, Bhutto would show no great concern for the POWs' early return. In these circumstances, there was nothing immoral or illegal about using the POWs issue as leverage to ensure a just and durable peace.

It was nobody's case to demand war indemnity from Pakistan, or to hold onto territory across the international border forever. However, the issue of repatriation of POWs, Bangladesh's insistence on the trial of war criminals (about 195 POWs were charged with specific charges of genocide and serious violations of human rights), the climate of public opinion in Pakistan for their early return, the elimination of the army as a factor in the formulation of Pakistan's policies, and the withdrawal of Indian troops from Pakistani territory could all have served as levers to put pressure on Pakistan to accept a no nonsense fair and just solution to the Kashmir problem.

Foreign observers, basing their views on those close to Bhutto, have pointed out that 'Bhutto was willing to forsake the Indian-held two-thirds of Kashmir and agree that the ceasefire line, to be negotiated, would gradually become the border between the two countries.'

However, India seems to have been confused about its war aim. The Shimla Accord was never linked to the issue of POWs and the withdrawal of Indian troops from Pakistani territory. This was a major blunder on Indira Gandhi's part.

When D P Dhar (one of Indira Gandhi's key advisors) went to Pakistan for a pre-summit dialogue with Pakistani leaders, he was more concerned with the issue of recognition of Bangladesh by Pakistan than the core issue of finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem.

While India held all the cards at Shimla, it was Bhutto who called all the shots. It was then being propagated that the greatest merit of the accord was that the two countries decided to renounce the use of force against each other.

It is comic that a ten times stronger India was seeking security guarantees from a weak Pakistan. But even that commitment was jettisoned when Bhutto talked of a 1,000-year war, and later when Pakistan breached the accord by launching cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.

Some career diplomats and commentators on foreign affairs have tried to sell the line that after the 1971 war, India was faced with only two courses of action: Either the Shimla Accord or something on the lines of the Treaty of Versailles. They gave an erroneous impression that between these two extremes there was a complete vacuum.

In fact there were many other possibilities, shades and gradations for a solution to some of the more vexatious problems between the two countries.

The International Herald Tribune pointed out that the 'Shimla conference apparently could reach agreement on none of the substantive issues dividing the two sides.' It was obvious that Indian negotiators never seriously linked those issues with the Shimla Accord.

The plain truth is that India's political leaders and bureaucrats failed to assess Pakistan's predicament correctly, did not have a clear national aim, and were ignorant of the basic axioms shaping the role of the armed forces in democratic governance.

Our negotiators lacked the realisation that diplomatic treaties, which are not backed by military power, are worthless. They did not involve our military leaders in security policy planning.

After winning a stunning victory, Indian leaders behaved as if the armed forces had done something immoral or committed a sin. In the Indian mind 'statesmanship' is inexorably linked with 'peace.'

Not unlike (due to false Gandhism) our penchant to celebrate and flaunt 'weakness' and equate it with morality. Indira Gandhi proved herself a great war leader, but failed as a statesman.

At Shimla we accepted Kashmir as a 'dispute.' We also gave equal status to Pakistan by permitting it to retain land occupied by it in J&K, thus sowing the seeds of Kargil- like adventures in the future, all this when we held all the cards and Kashmir was not the cause of the 1971 War.

Indira Gandhi got carried away by euphoria, trusted Bhutto and let down the country and its soldiers.

In the end, all we were left was an empty promise by Bhutto: 'Aap hum per bharosa ki jije (Trust me).'

Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a former head, war history division, ministry of defence.

With the grateful acknowledgement of 

Failed nuclear deterrence

Why no products company all service only

Service companies, by contrast, can use their own R&D to identify future trends. This can give them the means of solving anticipated problems before these impact a client’s business, perhaps also adding new capabilities to increase competitiveness.

Important as these R&D directions are, they are far removed from what a software product company does. Software services companies differ from software product companies in everything from size, marketing, sales and customer support to R&D and strategy.

Services and products are not usually offered within one company. It would no more suit TCS or Wipro to masquerade as a product company than it would Microsoft to pose as a services company; Hewlett Packard is a rare exception. What are often referred to as ‘products’ from Indian companies are in fact branded offerings for financial services, like TCS’s BaNCS and Infosys’s Finacle: almost-ready software systems that can be configured and customised to a client’s requirements in a fraction of the time it would take to develop, say, a full banking or insurance system.

As a rule, software products have been developed by small, agile companies. The idea behind PowerPoint originated with a small company called Forethought; Word and Excel were created by Microsoft in the early 1980s when it was a small company. Product development is typically funded by venture capital companies, which filter out 90 per cent of new products that will fail to survive the risky route to market success and guide the remaining 10 per cent to an eventual IPO and sale.

Though services companies and product companies belong to different business species, R&D can provide a link from one to the other. Tools developed by a services company must be robust and effective if they are to be used by project teams.

Such tools will inevitably have a much wider market (not just among other service companies) if they are spun off and managed in an independent company. Done with care, this need not deprive the creating company of its advantages and can help to realize the full value of the innovation in the tools.

×

That is a route no Indian services company has yet ventured to take.

( Dr. Mathai Joseph is a computer scientist and a consultant, and was earlier a senior research scientist at TIFR, Mumbai)

Draft national policy on software products

Need Product Companies for India’s Growth

Posted on Friday, Feb 9th 2007

By Sujai Karampuri, Guest Author

I insist on high tech product companies for India. No matter what we do with our IT-ITES sector, we will not scale dramatically to be able to become a true economic power. The GDP of India in 2005 is $720B of which the IT-ITES sector contributes less than 3.2% (it has improved in 2006 to approximately 4.5%). According to report from Goldman Sachs, Indian PPP measure of GDP will exceed that of US in 2038 and will be at approximately $23 trillion.

How do we get there from here? Do we just sit back and hope our current IT-ITES sector, which is primarily driven by services, will deliver us there or do we really take this as a dream and try to make it real?

Only a technology product company can add the right kind of money into India at a faster and quicker pace using smaller manpower. Just look at some of the statistics here (mostly from 2005):

* Total output of Indian software industry for 2005 is $22.6 B (and for 2006 it is slated at ~$40B).

* The number of people directly employed by Indian IT-ITES sector is 1.3 million.

* India is currently producing approximately 180,000 engineers for IT-ITES sector.

* The rate of increase in output of employees is currently at 5.5% over the previous year.

* Assuming a steady increase for the next five years, the output in year 2010 would be approximately 220,000.

According to NASSCOM, India is poised to make $70 B in 2009 with a workforce of 2.2 million. This projection assumes that each employee with earn approximately $32,000 in 2009 while it is approximately $22,000 in 2005.

Now look at this for comparison:

* Microsoft currently makes $40 B with 60,000 employees while Nokia makes $40 B with 40,000 employees. (each employee approximately makes $600,000 to $1M).

* These two companies alone with a work force of 100,000 (in 2005) make more than the projected output for India in 2009 (with 2.2 million workforce).

No matter what we do, contribution of IT-ITES will be marginal in contribution towards Indian GDP unless something dramatic happens. And that can happen only with more technology product companies.

Case of technology product companies

How do you think most developed countries have been able to remain competitive? According to NSF (National Science Foundation, USA), “High-technology industries are driving economic growth around the world”. According to the Global Insight World Industry Service database, “the global market for high-technology goods is growing at a faster rate than for other manufactured goods”.

“Even during the recent, slow-growth, ‘post-bubble’ period (2000–03), high-technology industry continued to lead global growth at about four times the rate of all other manufacturing industries.”

According to NRC, Hamburg Institute for Economic Research, and Kiel Institute for World Economics 1996, “High-technology industries are R&D intensive; R&D leads to innovation, and firms that innovate tend to gain market share, create new product markets, and use resources more productively. These industries tend to develop high value-added products, tend to export more, and, on average, pay higher salaries than other manufacturing industries. Moreover, industrial R&D performed by high-technology industries benefits other commercial sectors by developing new products, machinery, and processes that increase productivity and expand business activity.”

What is the output of high-technolo
Why No Product Companies in India?

Posted on Saturday, Mar 3rd 2007

By Sujai Karampuri, Guest Author

I have already written an article called, ‘Need Product Companies In India’s Growth.’ Before I start writing on what we need to do, I would like to talk about some of the most important reasons that curtail us from spawning product companies. Some of them are obvious-history, post-independent economic policies, our social structure, etc. But I don’t like to list 10+ different reasons for each problem. I like to concentrate on 2-3 top reasons. Here, I list what I think is the top reason why we don’t have technology product companies.

Our obsession with stars and brands

I agree stars are important. It’s the obsession with those stars where I see the problem. We (as Indians) are obsessed with stars and brands. We don’t need to look deep to realize this about us. Our Cinema (unabashedly called ‘Bollywood’) and Cricket has many examples. The whole focus is on one or two individuals while the rest are completely unknown. It applies to our technology space as well. IITs are a brand. Therefore, anything to do with technology in India is referred to IITs while hundreds of universities and other institutes get no mention at all. If an IITian starts a paan shop, the heading goes, “The IITian left his cushy job to start a paan shop right across the street…” If they start some dumb political party, the article reads, “The IITians instead of going to US have sacrificed their careers to start a political party to better India…” A mere contraption of no significance from IITian gets the attention of starving media. This media is more interested in writing ‘This IITian has done…” than writing what he has actually done. The media is only feeding into our own obsessions. They reflect our sentiments- that of ordinary people, the families, and the societies.

The same is true of our software-services companies. Why we did not look at other important industries is because these services companies were hogging the limelight for more than 20 years now. In fact, they are hogging the complete light while the rest of the industry is languishing in the dark. Bangalore, which is supposedly the ‘Silicon Valley of India’ (which I don’t agree at all), has lavish office spaces (look at Infosys and ITPL) which almost resemble a developed world. These are the same office spaces which have been glorified by the likes of Thomas Friedman (who has added more fuel to the celebration of our mediocrity). On the other hand, the same Bangalore provides extremely worse conditions to the industrial sectors where hardware and manufacturing houses are located. I have visited some of these manufacturing places- they don’t have roads, they are connected by muddy paths which have huge cracks in the middle, they don’t have water or electricity and this place looks like a remote village of India in the 16th century. The attention of whole of media, political administration, elite, institutions, investors, has been directed towards software-services companies while other industries do not get basic amenities. Software-services companies get lands at very low price; they get tax-holidays, exporting and importing is easy for them. Meanwhile, the manufacturing and other industry of India is putting with policies of old economy. Here is what I have to say to these software-services companies:

‘Thank you, you have done a good job of re-branding India. You have changed our image from being a land of snake charmers to the land of software programmers’. But my thanks stops right there. ‘You are also the culprit of taking away complete attention from other important industry. You rob us of passion of the young minds to make them Xerox machines. Your growth is welcome, but its avarice and appetite is overwhelming. We are not able to proceed to the next step. Our fear is we will get stuck right here’. There are examples galore where many countries got stuck to a label and that actually turned out to be their doom. South American countries which rode the wave of globalization have now realized that they got ‘stuck’ at being providers of raw material to the Western world. East Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, etc, are faced with similar situation, where the competition from Taiwan and China has robbed them of their advantage of being the manufacturing houses. There is danger in being slotted that way. ‘We don’t want to be slotted that way.’

What our media, the analysts, the writers, etc, did in their over-enthusiasm and over-excitement is a great damage to India. They said, ‘Since we completely skipped industrial revolution, there was no need to go back to that.’ They insisted on continuing with services industry and professed it was good enough for India. They cited some examples (which are actually very rare) of product-making companies (like IBM) moving to take up services, and justified their jobs and their companies. The media lapped if up, furthered this notion, and made it a ground rule for India. Their message was: ‘If West has products and technology, China has manufacturing, we in India have services!’ The VCs furthered it, the investors furthered it, the entrepreneurs furthered it, and even the government joined hands. Thomas Friedman made millions selling the same idea back to India while making sure he and his country continued to dominate the technology markets.

Young minds of India, even those with passion and enthusiasm to create and innovate, get bogged down by the pressures- created by us- the media, the elite writers, the parents, the teachers. They end up taking up a career at Infosys and Wipro just because of its brand. Seven years of working there, he is not good for a product making company anymore. He is already institutionalized. Only few make it out of that vicious cycle only to face even bigger issues that confront them.

As a step one, we need ground breaking examples. To unshackle ourselves of this caste-ist mentality where in we accept our position in the hierarchy of technology businesses, where we get slotted into one type of industry by the virtue of what our ancestors did. These examples have to be the tough ones. They have to ride their boat against the strong tide. But they have to do it. I see some companies around me taking up this struggle, it’s a long way to go, but I also see that once one case gets successful, suddenly there will be new articles written and soon India will be seen differently.

The industry (even those involved in software-services) needs to consciously promote product companies. Is there a vested interest? Yes, there is. No nation, no industry, no man can make loads of money for himself while the rest around him are paupers. It just doesn’t work. Such disparities are not sustainable. One has to create an ecosystem. Those in the ecosystem need to be making loads of money. That money has to translate to the societies and communities that we live in. That’s when we can go the next higher level of making more monies. A society which has very few stars while the rest are all paupers is not a sustainable system.

Even the software services companies will benefit if there is technology product company ecosystem in India. Where would I want to outsource my work when we become a successful product company? To other Indian software services companies, of course!

English News Bulletin – May 17, 2017 (9 pm)

Polish

The police’s perception of public safety and their own role is changing, but too slowly

The Nirbhaya ruling on May 5, where the Supreme Court confirmed the death penalty for four of the accused in the gang rape and murder case of a paramedical student in Delhi in 2012, is also an occasion to examine certain fundamental assumptions about policing. This takes into account protests after the incident that squarely blamed the Delhi Police for its failure to protect the victim. It is debatable whether the police alone were blameworthy here. Both the state and community at large have a role in shaping public safety, especially that of women and children.

A reading of Kautilya’s Arthashastra will help one understand the genesis of the state and how it needed to legitimise its authority through the evolution of the police as we know it today. The creation in 1829 of the Metropolitan Police in London and the setting up of a similar organisation in New York and other large cities in the U.S. paved the way for organising the police in many western democracies and for our own police forces set up by the British in the early 1900s. The focus of law enforcement was initially on disciplining unruly elements disturbing public peace rather than on hunting for criminals depriving others of their life and property. Crime was petty in those days, not requiring any sophisticated methods of investigation and detection. Now, it is not only widespread and violent but also sophisticated with the abundant use of technology. A fallout is rising fear in a community, especially among elders, women and children. It is my conviction that the police force must address this fear in a focussed manner. It is my lament that many unenlightened governments in our country do not evaluate police performance by this yardstick. Police pliability to serve political ends rates higher in their agenda.

A trust deficit

What does the common man expect of the police? Several surveys point to a demand for protection of life more than guarding individual property. With the phenomenal expansion of the geographic area to be policed and the mind-boggling increase in the number of lives to be guarded, the Indian police, more than in many western democracies, have been stretched and outnumbered. There are only about 140 policemen per 100,000 people, a very poor ratio when compared to other modern democracies.

The strongest criticism against the police is of their preoccupation with the problems of the political party in power and those of the rich and famous. This resonates with the dictum that all are equal (in a constitutional democracy), but some are more equal than the others. This is why the 10,000-odd police stations in the country are shunned by the better-off sections, who prefer organising themselves to ward off threats or buy safety services from other sources. The phenomenal rise in private security agencies accounts for the growing lack of trust in the state police. This is a shameful but real state of affairs in most of India.

Lessons from abroad

What is the way out? Drawing lessons from elsewhere in the world is not beneath the dignity of the Indian police. Learning in public administration is a recognised healthy exercise the world over. I am not for a moment suggesting that this is not happening at present. I am only pleading for a greater readiness to sink our egos and borrow from the best practices of foreign police organisations.

Two recent happenings — one each in the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and the Metropolitan Police, London (Met) — come to mind readily. Under its legendary Commissioner, Bill Bratton, more than a decade ago, the NYPD instituted a COMPSTAT (short for COMPuter STATistics) programme, that analysed crime with the help of computers, identified crime hotspots and took preventive action, such as intensified patrolling. Police commanders in New York were made to report to the commissioner each week explaining how they were tackling crime in their jurisdictions. This mechanism not only brought about greater attention to crime in the field but also enhanced police accountability at the grass-root level.

The NYPD has recently gone beyond COMPSTAT by hiring a reputed private agency to survey public opinion on police performance. Focussed questions over mobile phones and the responses obtained look at how to fill visible gaps in policing. The effectiveness of this unique tool will depend on how forthcoming and honest the respondents are. Variants of this have indeed been tried in a few of our cities by some smart police leaders. We have not heard enough about their outcome to comment on their utility.

Contrary to popular belief, London is now a high-crime city. There is not only public concern over looming terrorist threats but also over youth crime. There are at least three or more stabbings a day carried out by teenagers. Although guns have made a recent entry, it is crime using sharp and small knives that is fuelling anxiety. The Met has launched a major campaign against street crime that involves frisking and seizure of knives — a visible, street-level operation that has enhanced security perceptions. The use of large manpower has been the hallmark of this operation. Physical checks of youth in the streets has added an element of deterrence. This is analogous to the ‘stop and frisk’ practice of the NYPD, whose focus on the non-white population has often drawn flak, especially from African-Americans. Mr. Bratton and his successors have had to tone down the exercise. This is a real danger that the police face while working for greater public safety. Any overzealousness is liable to make the police a villain. Given the high corruption among the police in India, procedures such as ‘stop and frisk’ carry the risk of greater public harassment and dishonesty at the cutting-edge levels.

Some hope in India

In my view, there are at least two features which offer a glimmer of hope for community safety in India. The first is the availability of a corps of leadership in the form of technically savvy young Indian Police Service officers who have a stake in working closely with the community to carry out experiments in the field to upgrade safety at minimum cost to the government. They can borrow from several studies under the rubric of ‘evidence-based policing’.

The second is the spread of Internet use at all levels of the police. An offshoot is the use of social media in day-to-day policing. Information on crime incidents and criminals is as a matter of course conveyed to the public in many urban centres with encouraging results. Citizens are also encouraged to report crime through email or over social media. This practice gives no option for the police but to act without fail and swiftly. The participation of the print and visual media in this dialogue gives further fillip to the exercise of sensitising the police to the community demand for safety through police processes.

The police’s perception of public safety and their own role here is changing, but only slowly. Many of us are impatient over the pace at which it is happening. We must realise that the Indian police is a behemoth and will respond faster only if there is constant pressure exerted on it by well-organised community leaders and the media.

R.K. Raghavan is a former CBI Director, and Member, International Advisory Board, Institute of Criminology, Cambridge University, U.K.

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Goldish

   

OPINION EDITORIAL

 EDITORIAL

Gold shines: on reducing India's demand for gold

MAY 17, 2017 00:02 IST

UPDATED: MAY 16, 2017 23:58 IST

Increasing access to alternative assets will help reduce India’s demand for gold imports

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s long-drawn-out effort to tackle the desire for gold does not seem to be bearing fruit. India’s gold imports witnessed a huge jump in April, increasing threefold to $3.85 billion from $1.23 billion in April 2016. In March, the jump driven by jewellery demand was even higher as gold imports stood at $4.17 billion, compared to $974 million a year earlier. This suggests that Indian demand for gold is robust and that policymakers will have to continue worrying about its impact on the country’s trade deficit for a long time to come. The trade deficit in April was $13.2 billion, the highest since November 2014, compared to $4.8 billion in the year-earlier period. The 20% increase in exports to $25 billion was overcome by a 49% increase in imports, which stood at $38 billion. The jump in gold demand is particularly significant given the many steps taken to reduce it in recent years. For instance, the demonetisation of high-value currency notes last November coincided with India’s gold demand dropping to a seven-year low of 675 tonnes during 2016, according to the World Gold Council. Earlier, as part of his efforts to push Indians to decrease their gold purchases, Mr. Modi had introduced the gold monetisation scheme that aimed to reduce gold imports by using deposits to increase domestic supply. But, as of early 2017, the amount of gold that had been deposited under the scheme was less than 1% of overall gold demand in 2016.

It is no secret that Indians tend to favour gold over other income-generating financial assets. This has, for a long time, led to concerns about savings being wasted on a dormant metal instead of being invested in productive business activities. While such concerns may be valid, policymakers would do well by first tackling the issues that have explained the average Indian’s preference for gold. The metal’s predominant utility as a hedge against inflation, which protects the average investor lacking sophisticated financial acumen from a depreciating rupee, cannot be ignored. Ironically, the Centre’s sudden demonetisation decision has possibly undermined confidence in the rupee as a store of value, adding to the yellow metal’s attractiveness. Capital conservation is an important reason for investment in gold by Indian households. Gold’s lure cannot be explained only as a reserve for illicit wealth or tax evasion. Access to better and more formal financial market instruments remains a pipe dream for the majority in a country where talk of financial inclusion remains at the level of opening a basic bank account. Any significant strides on this front will require structural reform of the financial sector that encourages more competition to spur financial innovation and access. Until such time, gold is likely to remain a favourite asset, with gold imports adversely impacting India’s external trade balance.

Happiness and society

India ranked a lowly 122 on a list of the world’s happiest countries, dropping four slots from last year and coming behind China, Pakistan and Nepal. Norway ranks as the happiest country in the world, according to The World Happiness Report 2017, which ranks 155 countries by their happiness levels. Norway jumped three spots from last year, displacing Denmark, which had held the top spot for three out of the past four years.

India comes in on the 122nd spot, down from 118 in the 2013-2015 report, which maps happiness on the parameters of GDP per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity and perceptions of corruption.

Nations such as China (79), Pakistan (80), Nepal (99), Bangladesh (110), Iraq (117) and Sri Lanka (120) fared better than India on the ranking.

The report was released here today at an event celebrating International Day of Happiness. It is the fifth report to come out since 2012.

“The World Happiness Report continues to draw global attention around the need to create sound policy for what matters most to people — their well-being,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network that produced the report.

Naxalism

Apart from schedule 5 implementation
Pesa etc.. mgnrega has also shown to yeild benefits against naxal and tribal or sc disgruntlement

During the  recent blast killing 76 crpf men no local police was there showing lack of integration with state gvt..whose primary responsibility is law and order

Finally land to the tiller will only help wnd this.

Naresh chandra committee..recommendation

Kps gill says that naxalism has been on the wane

From RS tv sarokar program

Rakhigari indus valley

Bigger than Mohenjo-daro, claims expert

The discovery of two more mounds in January at the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi in Hisar district, Haryana, has led to archaeologists establishing it as the biggest Harappan civilisation site. Until now, specialists in the Harappan civilisation had argued that Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan was the largest among the 2,000 Harappan sites known to exist in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The archaeological remains at Mohenjo-daro extend around 300 hectares. Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Ganweriwala (all in Pakistan) and Rakhigarhi and Dholavira (both in India) are ranked as the first to the fifth biggest Harappan sites.

“With the discovery of two additional mounds, the total area of the Rakhigarhi site will be 350 hectares,” asserted Professor Vasant Shinde, Vice-Chancellor/Director, Deccan College Post-Graduate & Research Institute, a deemed-to-be university in Pune. The two mounds are in addition to the seven mounds already discovered at Rakhigarhi, about 160 km from New Delhi. The eighth and ninth mounds, spread over 25 hectares each, are situated to the east and west of the main site. Villagers have destroyed much of these two mounds for cultivation. A team of archaeology teachers and students of the Deccan College discovered them when they surveyed the site in January.

Dr. Shinde, a specialist in Harappan civilisation and Director of the current excavation at Rakhigarhi, called it “an important discovery.” He said: “Our discovery makes Rakhigarhi the biggest Harappan site, bigger than Mohenjo-daro. The two new mounds show that the Rakhigarhi site was quite extensive. They have the same material as the main site. So they are part of the main site. On the surface of mound nine, we noticed some burnt clay clots and circular furnaces, indicating this was the industrial area of the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi.”

Dr. Shinde had earlier led the excavations done by the Deccan College at the Harappan sites of Farmana, Girawad and Mitathal, all in Haryana.

On the surface of mound eight were found terracotta bangles, cakes, and pottery pieces, typical of the Harappan civilisation, said Nilesh P. Jadhav, Research Assistant, Department of Archaeology, Deccan College.

Artefacts found

From January 10, the Deccan College team has excavated five trenches on the slope of the mound four and another trench in the burial mound numbered seven. The excavation in mound four has yielded a cornucopia of artefacts, including a seal and a potsherd, both inscribed with the Harappan script; potsherds painted with concentric circles, fish-net designs, wavy patterns, floral designs and geometric designs; terracotta animal figurines, cakes, hopscotches and shell bangles, all belonging to the Mature Harappan phase of the civilisation. The five trenches have revealed residential rooms, a bathroom with a soak jar, drainages, a hearth, a platform etc … The residential rooms were built with mud bricks. The complex revealed different structural phases, said Kanti Pawar, assistant professor, Department of Archaeology, Deccan College.

Much of the Harappan site at Rakhigarhi lies buried under the present-day village, with several hundreds of houses built on the archaeological remains. The villagers’ main occupation is cultivation of wheat and mustard, and rearing of buffaloes.

Making cow dung cakes is a flourishing industry. There is rampant encroachment on all the mounds despite the Archaeological Survey of India fencing them. Amarendra Nath of the ASI had excavated the Rakhigarhi site from 1997 to 2000.

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An important problem about the Harappan civilisation is the origin of its culture, Dr. Shinde said. The Harappan civilisation had three phases: the early Harappan from circa 3,500 BCE to circa 2,600 BCE, the mature Harappan which lasted from circa 2,600 BCE to circa 2000 BCE, and the late Harappan from circa 2000 BCE to 1,600 BCE.

Dr. Shinde said: “It was earlier thought that the origin of the early Harappan phase took place in Sind, in present-day Pakistan, because many sites had not been discovered then. In the last ten years, we have discovered many sites in this part [Haryana] and there are at least five Harappan sites such as Kunal, Bhirrana, Farmana, Girawad and Mitathal, which are producing early dates and where the early Harappan phase could go back to 5000 BCE. We want to confirm it. Rakhigarhi is an ideal candidate to believe that the beginning of the Harappan civilisation took place in the Ghaggar basin in Haryana and it gradually grew from here. If we get the confirmation, it will be interesting because the origin would have taken place in the Ghaggar basin in India and slowly moved to the Indus valley. That is one of the important aims of our current excavation at Rakhigarhi

Nthng u can do coz its 142 and 136 and..

Muhajir

Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (Arabic: حزب المجاھدین‎‎, Ḥizb al-Mujāhidīn, meaning "Party of Holy Warriors" or "Party of Mujahideen"), founded by Muhammad Ahsan Dar in September 1989, is a Kashmiri separatist group. It is designated a terrorist organisation by India,[2]the European Union[3] and the United States,[4][5][6][7][8] active in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir since 1989. The current supreme commander of the group is a Sayeed Salahudeen.

Holding a pro-Pakistan Ideology, the group is considered to be the largest indigenous militant group in Kashmir. In 1990 Ahsan Dar had more than 10,000 armed men under his command.[9]

Foreign involvementEdit

Eamon Murphy has alleged in his book The Making of Terrorism in Pakistan: Historical and Social Roots of Extremism that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have provided training and funding to HiB.[10] However the book has been criticized for not containing accurate information.[11] It has been reported by the Delhi-based Indian non profit organization Institute for Conflict Management that Jamaat-i-Islami founded Hizbul Mujahideen at the request of the ISI to counter the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front(JKLF) who are advocates for the independence of Kashmir.[12]

Harappan burial

Harappan civilization: Burials sites and practices 

The Harappan civilization was one of the earliest civilizations in the Indus valley area. It’s time period roughly extends from around 2500-1900 BC. The civilization owes its name to the city of Harappa, where the burial sites were found. The funerary practices of the Harappan people help us in forming and shaping ideas about their culture and conceptions of the natural, super-natural, life and death. 

There are over fifty-five burial sites in the Indus valley were found Harappa. The principal sites are Harappa Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi, Lothal, Rojdi, and Ropar. The burials are interpreted primarily as reflections of social structure and hierarchy. This interpretation tends to be in sync with the Tainter school of thought. The strongest evidence for this interpretation would be burial sites in Harappa, cemetery R-37 and Cemetery H. 

R-37 is the smaller site compared to cemetery H, and has about 200 burials. Archaeologists believe it was a restricted cemetery that was used by a particular group or family that lived in Harappa. The “strong genetic affinities among female population (n=84)” (ii, 263,264) in the R-37 cemetery prove that the cemetery was only used by the members of a closely related family or group. These genetic affinities that are exhibited in the female population show that the Harappan people practiced natural locality, a system in which the newlywed couple moved to live with the woman’s side of the family. Therefore clearly the R-37 cemetery proves that individuals of high class and status in a society were treated very differently and had a separate burial site. 

In general, the burials in the Harappan period were all in brick or stone lined rectangular or oval pits. The body was usually interred clothed shrouded or in a wooden coffin in the north south direction in a straight direction. It was important that the body did not come into contact with the ground. The only evidence of wooden coffins is the presence of a wooden stain in the body of the corpse. The bodies of the individuals were usually buried with their jewelry which usually consisted of bangles made from shell, steatite beads, etc, and the men usually wore earrings. Copper mirrors have been found only amongst the bodies of the females which show a specificity of grave goods by gender. The burials at Kalibangan, the other large burial site are of three types. Type 1 – the bodies were buried in a supine position similar to R-37 with skeletal remains. Type 2 – pot burials in circular pits. Type 3 – Large pots which were found interred in rectangular or circular pits with no skeletal remains. Type- 1 burials are very similar to the ones at R-37, and have skeletal remains in the supine position. The pot burials are an interesting and rare type of burial in which the bodies of the individual are crammed into pots and buried. This type of burial is quite unique and quite violent comparatively. The Type 3 burials at Kalibangan don’t have any skeletal remains in them but there are a few areas where the earth is charred which could possibly be because of cremation. But “the most important individual in the cemetery is an older male. He was interred in a old brick chamber with 70 pottery vessels” (Wright 216). The man was also decked in jewelry of expensive nature which includes jade and gold beads and other fine stones. Clearly this individual is of high importance in the society we can tell by the energy expenditure associated with this funeral. On average an individual has 0 to 40 pottery vessels interred as grave goods, but the individual who had 70 pots was clearly outranked others in the cemetery proving that the Harappan civilization was a society which gave a lot of importance to hierarchy and status. 

A few unique burials were found in the grave sites of Lothal, Ropar, and Rojdi. In Ropar a man was found buried with a dog. In Rodji two infants were found buried beneath the floor of a house. In Lothal three multiple burials have been found. This could possibly be the practice of sati but it is doubtful. The unique burials in this site show that not all burials were solely centered on social hierarchy and status. 

Mohenjo daro is one of the biggest cities excavated in this civilization but it has no cemeteries. But there were a few bodies that were found scattered throughout the city in disarray. They are referred to as the “tragedy sites”. There are 5 tragedy sites found all over Mohenjo daro with a total of 42 skeletons. The first, HR tragedy area has a total of 13 skeletons consisting of adults and 1 child. The skeletons seem to be in a state of trauma and it was as if they had been buried in a state of action with weapons in their hand. Another site is dead man’s lane where only one skeleton was found. Then there is the VS area tragedy which had 6 skeletons of adults and 2 children. Another had 9 and the well-room tragedy had 2 skeletons found on the stairs leading to a well. The burials that have occurred in Mohenjo daro are unlike any other. They are the only ones in which the skeletons are arranged in scattered disarray and show signs of trauma. The causes of these burials have been hypothesized due to loss of civic rules and order in the city or an invasion of some kind. But these clearly do not tie into the energy expenditure model. 

So from the various different burials in the Harappan civilization area there are a lot of unique burials but most normal burials are based on social class and hierarchy. Like the R-37, Cemetery H at Harappa and the Kalibangan cemetery. Therefore the Harappan civilization was a civilization that gave a lot of importance to social class structure and hierarchy.

culture mapping and ek bharat sshreshta bharat

Demographic and development mapping exercises are often carried out by the Indian government but the Cultural Mapping Project is definitely a first for the country. The project, initiated by the Ministry of Culture, will create an authentic and comprehensive database of the cultural topography of the country. This unique databank will also be an artist repository that can be used in the future by the Ministry for the purpose of providing grant-in-aids under its various schemes.

PHOTO SOURCE

Cultural mapping is a process to identify and document the cultural resources or assets of a community. These assets, inextricably tied to a particular time, place and people, are vital for fostering civic pride and need to be celebrated, preserved, and developed. While the mapping covers a wide range of tangible resources such as arts, heritage organisations, cultural occupations, and industries, it also explores the areas of intangible cultural assets – the stories and traditions that shape our identity as a nation.

PHOTO SOURCE

The Cultural Mapping Project of India will preserve, promote, and share the country’s cultural heritage using modern technology. The details of this mammoth undertaking are being collated by the Centre of Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT) in New Delhi, with the help of state governments. Established in 1979, CCRT is a premier autonomous institution that works to strengthen the cultural foundation of the country by making education culture-based and meaningful.

CCRT and its sub-committee of experts have drawn up a data form that splits the arts into three broad categories – visual, performing and literary. As several traditional art forms, particularly those limited to a community, are dying due to lack of interest, the data form also encourages artists to specify if their art is dying. The CCRT form can be accessed here.

To strengthen the database on performing arts, the Ministry has also involved autonomous organisations like the Sangeet Natak Akademi and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in the project. A web portal has also been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for the online collection of data directly from artists.

The initiative has received a tremendous response from artists of various genres, with people from the remotest corners of the country participating in the project. So far, more than 55 lakhs artists from across the length and breadth of the country have undergone the documentation procedure and the number is increasing every da