FRONTLINE

DECEMBER 2, 2011

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INDIAS NATIONAL MAGAZINE

RS.25

INTERVIEW AEC CHAIRMAN

MEDIA PRESS COUNCIL

OBITUARY BHUPEN HAZARIKA

On Kudankulam 33

Time for reforms 88

Renaissance man 128

NUMBER of controversies
The government launches the ambitious Unique Identication number
project as a one-stop solution to the demands of a rising India
leaving questions about its purpose and viability unaddressed

VOLUME 28

NU C L E A R I S S UE S
Srikumar Banerjee,
Chairman, AEC
TH E STAT E S
West Bengal:
Rift in the foothills
Kerala: Government
hanging by a thread
Prisoners & precedents

NUMBER 24

NOVEMBER 19 - DECEMBER 2, 2011

C O V ER S T O RY
33

41

ISSN 0970-1710

Identity concerns

The Unique Identication number project,

symbolic of the new and modern India, is
of questionable legality and viability. 4

115
116

TE L E COM S C A M
Radia shuts shop

43

SC A NDA L
Cricketers in jail

45

WWW.FRONTLINE.IN

C OLUM N
Bhaskar Ghose:
The many Indias
86
Praful Bidwai:
Kudankulam: Time to talk 97
R.K. Raghavan:
Cricket & crime
113
C.P. Chandrasekhar:
Pills, patents & prots
119
UP D A TE
Oppenheimers exit De Beers 60
B OOKS
LE TTE R S

INDIA & P A K I S T A N
MFN status:
Ignorance rules
Political test for Imran
The real barrier
Interview: Union Commerce
Secretary Rahul Khullar
WOR L D A F F A I R S
Julian Assange:
Travails of a crusader
Kyrgyzstan:
Towards democracy
UNESCO: Vote for
Palestine
NATU R AL S C I E N C E
Fungus farmers
M E DIA
Reforming the
Press Council
U.K.: Newspapers code
of practice
P U BL IC HE A L T H
Karnataka:
Child malnutrition
R E P OR TS
Crisis and jobs
FOCU S: F O R T S O F
MAHARASHTRA
Majestic defences
Interview:
Chhagan Bhujbal,
State Tourism Minister
CONTR OV E S Y
Thermal power:
Land grab projects?
OBITU A R Y
Bhupen Hazarika

75
125

48
50
51
52

54
57
61
64

88

RELA T ED S TOR I E S

Interview: R.S. Sharma,

Director-General and
Mission Director, UIDAI 8
Parties in confusion 11
A case for privacy 13
PDS in peril 16
False promises
on health services 19

Enrolment saga 22
How reliable is UID? 25
Interview:
Dr Edgar Whitley,
London School of
Economics 29
Tool of exclusion
from NREGS 122

90

93
99

102

106

110
128

N U C LEA R I S S U ES
Interview with Srikumar
Banerjee, Chairman, Atomic
Energy Commission, speaks
on the Kudankulam
project. 33

On the Cover
Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI.
PHOTOGRAPH: V.V. KRISHNAN
COVER DESIGN: U. UDAYA SHANKAR
Published by N. RAM, Kasturi Buildings,

M ED I A
The new Chairman of the Press
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Katju, wants to make it an
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O B I T U A RY
Through haunting, lilting, often
joyous melodies, Bhupen
Hazarika communicated his
passionate love for
humanity.128
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Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

IDENTITY CONC
The Unique Identication number, symbolic of the new and modern India,
is of questionable legality and viability. B Y R . R A M A K U M A R

The project is steeped in

controversies, which relate to a range
of issues including its purpose and
cost and the reliability of the
technology. Above all, it is being
pushed through without any
legislative debate.
In the Indira years, the slogan was garibi hatao.
In the 1970s and 1980s, peoples aspirations had
focussed on basic essentials roti, kapda, aur makaan. Since the reforms in the 1990s, the emphasis
moved to bijli, sadak and paani. In recent years, as
growth has accelerated and access to basic infrastructure has improved further, aspirations among
the poor have shifted again. Today, its all virtual
things its about UID number, mobile phone and
bank account. With that, they can access services,
benets and their rights. We are looking at a postAadhaar world.
Nandan Nilekani
MODERN India, it would appear, has nally
found the missing link in its superpower story.
Having ensured that all its poor had access to roti,
kapda aur makaan by the 1980s, and bijli, sadak,
paani by the 1990s, it is surging ahead to meet the
new and rising aspirations of its poor. The foundations of this surge are being laid with the Unique
Identication (UID) number, or Aadhaar, which is
also the key to the three virtual things. For Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, Aadhaar is symbolic
of the new and modern India. For Rahul Gandhi,
Aadhaar is the key to bridging the two Indias,
where you take some from the India of opportunity and put them into the India without
opportunity.
Business leaders and the pink press are gaga over
the spin-offs. According to one analysis, Aadhaar
links private-sector businesses to Indias poor in an
unprecedented manner; another is titled: UID:
4

The Biggest Business Opportunity since Liberalisation; and yet another quotes the managing director
of a software giant thus: UID gives us a business
opportunity to prosper in this digital world.
The total cost of the project is estimated at over
Rs.50,000 crore. A business newspaper reveals that
for every rupee of IT spend on the project around
60 per cent will go to hardware vendors. One
consultancy giant estimated that within ve years
into that post-Aadhaar world, India would see a
rst wave of investments totalling $10 billion. From
then on, potential is $12 billion a year.
There is no other government project that has
kicked up such frenzy in recent times. However, in
the midst of this frenzy, myriads of questions are
begging for answers. While there are people asking
these questions, there are also those tired old ways of
dismissing them. Brand them as jholawalas or
lefties or anti-technology guys or those who
broke computers in the [19]80s. The more lenient
of the brandings would be civil libertarians or privacy activists. Whatever they be branded, one thing
in common is that none of their questions has received a satisfactory answer yet.
One place to ask questions in a democracy is
Parliament; however, about six crore Aadhaar numbers have been issued even before Parliament has
taken up the matter for legislative discussion.
Frontline was the rst to publish a critical article
on UID in 2009, which raised a set of questions to
the government (High-cost, High-risk, August 14,
2009). More than two years later, most of those
questions remain unanswered.
THE REAL INTENT:
SECURITY OR DEVELOPMENT?

The Genesis
An important question regarding Aadhaar is
how it will be used. Aadhaar is connected closely
with the National Population Register (NPR) of the
Union Home Ministry. The NPR is a child of the
Kargil War. Following the reports of the Kargil
Review Committee in 2000, and a Group of Ministers in 2001, the National Democratic Alliance
(NDA) government decided to register compulsorily
all citizens into an NPR and issue each a Multi-

F R O N T L I N E

KAMAL SINGH/PTI

ERNS

P R IM E M I N I S T E R MA N M O H A N Singh and Chairperson of the Unique Identication Authority of India Nandan M.

Nilekani at a UIDAI Council meeting in New Delhi.

purpose National Identity Card

(MNIC). Ofcially, the NPR is aimed
at preventing illegal migration. For
this purpose, the Citizenship Act of
1955 was amended and new Citizenship Rules were released in 2003.
As per Rule 7(3) in the 2003 Rules,
It shall be the responsibility of every
citizen to register once with the Local

Registrar of Citizen Registration and

to provide correct individual particulars. Rule 3(3) states that information on every citizen in the NPR should
compulsorily have his/her National
Identity Number. Still further, Rule
17 states that any violation of provisions of rules 5, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 14 shall
be punishable with ne which may exF R O N T L I N E

tend to one thousand rupees.

NPR and Aadhaar
While registration to the NPR was
compulsory and a National Identity
Number was linked to each name, the
2003 Rules did not approve of linking
biometrics with personal information.
If we analyse the annual reports of the
Home Ministry, the sections on the

R.ESWARRAJ

DECEMBER 2, 2011

DOIN G A N I R I S

scan as part of collecting biometric details, at a post ofce in Mangalore on September 27.

MNIC pilot project do not refer to biometric data until 2004-05. In 200506, the rst mention of biometric data
appears. The report noted: Data entry
work for all the 30.96 lakh records
and integration of photographs and
nger biometrics of 17.2 lakh out of
20.6 lakh has been completed. Just
how biometrics got included in the
NPR without sanction from the 2003
Rules remains a mystery.
With the introduction of biometrics into the NPR, the Home Ministry
required technical expertise. The establishment of the Unique Identication Authority of India (UIDAI) in
2008 was partly to meet this requirement. If doubts remained, Home Minister P. Chidambaram claried in
2009 that MNIC has to be issued to
every citizen, for which the government has decided to set up a UID authority. The Home Ministrys annual
report for 2008-09 went a step ahead
and stated: After the NPR is created,
it will engulf the UID database, being
far more comprehensive, and will become the mother database for identity
purposes.
The Home Ministrys plan was the
following. To quote from the Census of
India website: Data collected in the
NPR will be subjected to de-duplication by the UIDAI. After de-duplication, the UIDAI will issue a UID

Number. This UID Number will be

part of the NPR and the NPR Cards
will bear this UID Number. No prizes
for guessing that Aadhaar is already
compulsory. In the UIDAI parlance,
the NPR is a killer application. A
killer application is one that so leverages Aadhaar that every citizen is
forced to get an Aadhaar number.
When the ownership of a mother
database of citizens, including their
biometrics, lies with the Home Ministry, there are reasons to worry. There is
always the problem of functionality
creep, where data collected serves
purposes other than its original intent.
There are many ways in which the
state can use such a database against
its own citizens. The database could be
used to persecute marginalised sections of the population. The police and
the security forces, if allowed access to
the biometric database, could use it
extensively for regular surveillance
and investigative purposes. This can
lead to a large number of human rights
violations. Given that ngerprint
matching is not error-free, such policing may further exacerbate human
rights violations. A democratic society
has to guard against such possibilities.
Questions of duplication
While the UIDAI was established
to supply UID numbers to the NPR,
the onus of data collection was with
6

F R O N T L I N E

the Registrar General of India (RGI)

under the Home Ministry. However,
as an initial step, the UIDAI was allowed to enrol 200 million persons. It
began this process by signing memorandums of understanding (MoUs)
with registrars, who enrolled people
either directly or through other agencies; the RGI was one of these
registrars.
First, duplication of resources and
work was built into this plan. There
was one set of people whose data were
collected by the RGI (Group 1) and
another whose data were collected by
non-RGI Registrars (Group 2). But
data for Group 2 could not be given
to the RGI to be added to the NPR; the
MoU signed between the RGI and the
UIDAI did not allow for this. The MoU
allowed transfer of information only
for Group 1.
In other words, within the UIDAIs
200-million persons, duplication and
wastage was already built in. Persons
in Group 2 now have to enrol again at
an RGI centre. Not surprisingly, ofcials of the Comptroller and Auditor
General (CAG) of India have made a
quiet trip to the UIDAI ofce for an
audit.
Secondly, if duplication is allowed
to cross the 200 million mark, a major
section of the population would have
to enrol twice. This is the reason why

DECEMBER 2, 2011

the Home Ministry is now trying to

recapture the responsibilities of enrolment. On its part, the UIDAI wants to
continue with the old plan; whether
the Cabinet will allow it is not clear yet.
WHITHER PRIVACY?

Another important concern is the projects potential to violate peoples right

to privacy. In most Western countries,
projects to issue ID cards were shelved
because of strong privacy concerns and
adverse public opinion (see interview
with Dr Edgar Whitley on page 29).
Privacy and culture
Is privacy a Western concept that
does not apply to eastern societies
like India, where community-based
life predominates? Such a question is
regularly raised in debates on Aadhaar. What this question ignores is
that the right to privacy has the status
of a shared global value (see A.G. Noo-

ranis article on page 13). While the

nature of notions around privacy differs across countries, every country has
a temporally dynamic notion of privacy built into its culture. In other words,
an interest in self-governed choice is
not a by-product of Western
individualism.
Martha Nussbaum, the renowned
philosopher, has criticised the argument that privacy is a notion without
value in India (see Is Privacy Bad for
Women?, Boston Review, April/May,
2000). She writes that if the history of
India is any guide, it only shows that
India draws certain concrete lines in
different places than does America.
She further argues that if we consider
the general meanings of privacy typically acknowledged as most salient in
American discussions, India also
marks each of the notions as salient,
and ascribes value to protecting the

F R O N T L I N E

concerns that fall under them.

To argue her point out, Nussbaum
cites three cases. First, just as in the
U.S., Indian people recognise that
certain types of information about
oneself are privileged, and that it is bad
for outsiders to publicise them without
consent. Secondly, she argues that in
India, as in the U.S., there is a deep
concern for keeping certain parts of
the body, and certain bodily acts, hidden from the sight of others and also
a more general concern that, whatever
one is doing, one should not be
watched without ones consent.
Thirdly, there is a strong interest in
decisional autonomy or liberty in certain areas especially denitive of the
person. All these lessons, Nussbaum
says, are from among the most ancient and deeply traditional concerns
of both Hindu and Muslim cultures.
It is clear then that privacy can be

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

The aim is inclusion

Interview with R.S. Sharma, DG and Mission Director, UIDAI. B Y G . S R I N I V A S A N

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

IN the massive task of

own State, Jharkhand.
giving individual resiDespite these odds,
dents of the country a
there is huge enthusiunique identity numasm among the people.
ber, the Unique IdentiIn one centre, there are
cation Authority of
four machines that can
India (UIDAI) is the
enrol
approximately
sole project operator.
200 people one kit
The Director-General
does 50 enrolments in a
& Mission Director of
day. If you have 500
the authority, headpeople standing in the
quartered in the capiqueue, it is clear that
tal, R.S. Sharma, an
300 will go back, and
affable and active functhis is actually a very
tionary
overseeing
bad thing because they
eight regional ofces R. S . S H A RM A . He says wait before going back.
across the country, ngerprints present a
We are trying to devise
spared time to speak to challenge.
methods such as tokens
Frontline.
that are issued beforeThere has been criticism that the hand. We have introduced in urban
National
Population
Registry areas such as Delhi an online ap(NPR), created as part of the Census pointment system.
2011 operations with an enrolment
The biometric attributes of the
process similar to that of the UIDAI, residents are going to be used as a
would lead to duplication of work at basic signature for de-duplication
public expense. R.S. Sharma is con- and to ensure uniqueness. The UIdent that the benets will outweigh DAI has decided that the face, all 10
the costs. Asked how the project was ngerprints and both iris scans
progressing, he said all targets so far should be collected at the time of
had been met. Excerpts from the capturing biometric details of the
interview:
residents. This way we will be able to
ensure uniqueness of the IDs. The
How far have you progressed?
other challenge we face is the quality
We have a tentative target of 20
of ngerprints. Capturing ngercrore [200 million] enrolments. We
prints, especially of manual labourshould be able to achieve this beers, is a challenge. The quality of
cause we have already received data
ngerprints is bad because of the
of about 12 crore people. In the eld
rough exterior of ngers caused by
[data of] 14 crore may have been
hard work, and this poses a challenge
received because there is a time lag in
for later authentication.
the data entry process.
We are creating an infrastrucWhat are the glitches?
ture by which one will be able to
There are some places where all authenticate himself or herself
facilities are available, while in other through a mobile device. If you enter
places no infrastructure or power is your name, number and ngerprint
available. Logistical challenges are in the mobile, all this goes to our data
signicant, especially in backward centre where we will check these deregions such as some districts of my tails. For manual labourers, this au-

F R O N T L I N E

thentication will be difcult because

only one or two of the 10 ngerprints
may be good.
It may happen that you may have
a very good ngerprint but the method of capturing is sloppy. That again
causes problems of authentication.
We will be able to ensure the accuracy in 99 per cent of the cases because of the other biometric details.
Even if the ngerprints do not work,
the iris scans will. Issuing a unique
identity will not be a major problem.
But authentication will be, because
ngerprint is the basic mode of authentication.
Why is there a multiplicity of
registrars?
NPR data would be aligned with
ours. What you refer to may be the
existence of multiple registrars,
which might escalate cost and duplication. This issue has been taken to
the Cabinet Committee on UID
presided over by the Prime Minister.
Its members include the Planning
Commission Deputy Chairman and
the Home Minister. We have the
mandate to collect [data of] up to 20
crore [people], which we are completing. Thereafter, who will do the
collection and how, are issues that
the Cabinet will decide.
How will the UID number help
people living on the margins?
It is a means to enable access to
services. In this country it is not you
and me who need identity papers
we have too many of them. But there
are many people who do not have
any papers. Because of that they are
denied access to services. We focus
on people who live on the periphery.
We have organised special camps to
ensure that when we issue, say, 600
million UIDs, they will include those
who need them most.

viewed as a globally valued right, entitlement and freedom. We can also

work within the framework of individual freedoms elaborated by Amartya
Sen. In Sens framework, every freedom can have intrinsic and instrumental values. In the intrinsic sense,
privacy enriches the lives of people in a
substantive way and thus is constitutive of development. In the instrumental sense, privacy can be seen as
contributing to other individual freedoms and socio-economic progress. It
is from this standpoint that Sen has
argued against consequence-independent absolute rights. Thus, the demand to trade-off one freedom for
another (say, the invasive loss of privacy for development) is an untenable demand.
Aadhaar and privacy
It is disturbing then that privacy
concerns are not discussed in any document of the government or the UIDAI. On the contrary, discussions
around Aadhaar have involved open
calls for sharing personal information
with private companies. From 2006
onwards, there was a scheme titled
Unique ID for BPL families, implemented by the Department of Information and Technology. While critics
trace the origin of the UIDAI to the
MNIC project, the UIDAI itself traces
its origin to this scheme. In 2006, a
working group of the Planning Commission examined the possibilities of
improving upon this scheme and introducing smart cards linked to
unique IDs of citizens. The working
group report noted that:
[U]nique ID could form the fulcrum around which all other smart
card applications and e-governance
initiatives would revolve. This could
also form the basis of a public-privatepartnership wherein unique ID-based
data can be outsourced to other users,
who would, in turn, build up their
smart card-based applications. In
the context of the unique ID, part of
this database could be shared with
even purely private smart card initiatives such as private banking/nancial
services
on
a
pay-as-you-use
principle.

NAGARA GOPAL

DECEMBER 2, 2011

C A P T U RI N G F I N G E R P R I N TS AT

a special booth set up at Patancheru in

Medak district, Andhra Pradesh.

The callousness that this report
displays in sharing personal information with private companies is astonishing. In India, one major threat to
privacy arises from here: the promotion of private players in the provision
of social services, such as education,
insurance and health (see Mohan
Raos article on page 19). With the
privatisation of social services, personal data would be transformed into
commodities in the market for Aadhaar numbers. In such a context,
promises to introduce privacy laws become weak tools to gain the trust of
citizens.
IS BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGY
INFALLIBLE?

Among the technological features of

Aadhaar, the collection of biometrics
is most signicant. Apart from biometrics, there is no systemic check to
prevent identity theft. While there is
agreement among biometric and legal
experts regarding critical drawbacks of
biometrics in proving identity beyond
doubt, the Aadhaar project demonstrates extraordinary levels of faith in
the infallibility of biometrics.
First, no accurate information exists on whether errors of ngerprint
matching are negligible or non-existent. A small percentage of users would
always be either falsely matched or not
matched at all.
Secondly, a report from 4G Identity Solutions, a supplier and consultant
for the UIDAI, recognises that people
above 60 years and children below 12
years have difculties in enrolling with
ngerprints. Fingerprints of manual
F R O N T L I N E

labourers are likely to be broken or

eroded, apart from accidental damages to ngers from burns, chemicals,
and other agents. Owing to such bad or
noisy data, the failure to enrol is as
high as 15 per cent in India; this involves a minimum of 180 million persons. If ngerprint readers are
installed at MGNREGS work sites and
PDS outlets, and employment or purchases are made contingent on authentication, about 180 million
persons will be excluded from accessing these schemes.
Biometric Standards Committee
report
Many of the misgivings with regard to biometrics were reafrmed by
the UIDAIs Biometrics Standards
Committee. This committee conducted a sample study of 25,000 persons.
Even in such a small sample, 2 to 5 per
cent of the respondents did not have
biometric records. Error rates increased by 2 to 3 per cent when the
software was untuned to local conditions. The report also noted that sensors would not usually capture
ngerprints accurately when women
apply mehendi on their ngers.
For iris images, the report did not
provide estimates of error because of
the absence of empirical Indian data.
It recommended that iris images
should be used only if they [UIDAI]
feel it is required. The Proof of Concept (PoC) study of the UIDAI also
does not inspire condence regarding
the potential of biometrics to work in
large populations (see R. Ramachandrans article on page 25).
However, despite adverse techni-

DECEMBER 2, 2011

cal reports, the UIDAI decided to proceed with the collection of ngerprints
and iris images for the entire population. Given that the total project cost is
over Rs.50,000 crore, it is but natural
that hard questions are asked on these
spending decisions.
REFORMS IN THE SOCIAL
SECTOR?

We have to rework the system. If we

simply introduce UID without re-engineering the system, it wouldnt
work, said Montek Singh Ahluwalia,
Deputy Chairman of the Planning
Commission, in September. He is
right. Aadhaar would drastically reform the architecture of welfare provisions and qualitatively restructure the
states role in the social sector (see articles on PDS (page 16), MGNREGS
(page 122) and health (page 19)). This
policy has two elements, both of which
are constitutive of neoliberal policy in
India.
The rst is a shift from universalism to targeting. Aadhaar is not intended to expand social service
provisions. Its aim is to keep benets
restricted to targeted sections, ensure targeting with precision, and thus
limit the governments scal commitments. As Manmohan Singh stated in
July 2010: To reduce our scal decit
in the coming years, we must [be]
reducing the scale of untargeted subsidies. The operationalisation of the
Unique
Identication
Number
Scheme provides an opportunity to
target subsidies effectively.
The second is a shift from direct
provision to indirect provision of social
and economic services. Here, existing
institutions of direct intervention are
dismantled and replaced by new institutions of indirect provision. Aadhaar, as claimed, is not a tool of
empowerment; it is actually an alibi
for the state to leave the citizen unmarked in the market for social
services.
Aadhaar as sufcient identity
proof?
A key premise for Aadhaar is that
inability to prove identity is a barrier
that prevents the poor from accessing

services. It is true that the lack of identity prevents a large number of poor
from, say, getting a ration card or
opening a bank account. Will Aadhaar
be sufcient proof of identity to access
these services? Will Aadhaar do away
with the need to present other documents for proving identity? In all
probability, the answers are in the
negative.
For instance, the UIDAI claims
that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
has made Aadhaar a valid identity
proof for opening a bank account. It
also claims that this step would lead to
rapid growth of nancial inclusion.
How accurate are these two claims?
Indeed, through a gazette in November 2010, the government added
the letter from the UIDAI, with the
Aadhaar number, to the list of documents that may be accepted as proof of
identication. However, in a circular,
dated September 28, 2011, the RBI
claried: It is reiterated that while
opening accounts based on Aadhaar
also, banks must satisfy themselves
about the current address of the customer by obtaining required proof of
the same as per extant instructions. In
other words, even with an Aadhaar
number, banks would continue to demand other valid documents.
Aadhaar for nancial exclusion?
Despite the phenomenal spread of
public banking in rural areas after
1969, a large section of the Indian people remain unbanked. One of the reasons is that many of the successes
achieved between 1969 and 1991 were
reversed by the nancial liberalisation
policies after 1991. For instance, a
large number of rural bank branches
were closed down in the 1990s and
early 2000s. In any meaningful nancial inclusion policy, opening of new
rural bank branches has to be a priority. However, the government has
other plans. For the government, the
earlier brick-and-mortar model of
rural banking is pass. The preferred
option is to encourage branchless
banking, and this is where Aadhaar
becomes important.
In a working paper on nancial
inclusion, the UIDAI notes that taking
1 0

F R O N T L I N E

banking to rural areas is an expensive

proposition. Hence, opening rural
branches becomes a social responsibility rather than a business opportunity. It suggests that Aadhaar can usher
in an era of ubiquitous branchless
banking. Instead of opening rural
branches, the bank may simply appoint
business
correspondents
(B.C.), who, with the help of hand-held
biometric devices, perform banking
functions. To promote the B.C. model,
the RBI has already permitted the appointment of for-prot companies as
B.Cs. The size of the B.C. market was
recently estimated at Rs.3,000 crore.
Just by routing MGNREGS wages, the
B.Cs are likely to earn up to Rs.600
crore a year as commission.
The B.C. model has already triggered adverse outcomes in rural areas.
On March 18, 2011, an internal circular of the State Bank of India noted
that B.Cs were found to indulge in
malpractices, such as asking for unauthorised money, over and above the
banks approved rates of charges from
the customers. It noted that gullible
customers are being exploited, posing serious risk to the banks reputation. During discussions with a leading
bank union, I was told that B.Cs regularly extracted Rs.100 to 150 per gold
loan in many south Indian districts.
One newspaper recently quoted a B.C.
employee in Punjab thus: 75 per cent
of B.C. agents are village sarpanchs or
their kin.
To conclude, a project of the size
and cost of Aadhaar should not be pursued without wider discussions among
the public and in Parliament. Such
projects should inspire public trust
and condence. However, the undue
haste displayed by the proponents of
the project raises many questions. The
sad part of the story is that there are no
satisfactory answers.

R. Ramakumar is Associate Professor

at the Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai.
Aadhaar and PDS: Page 16
Aadhaar and health services: Page 19
Aadhaar and NREGS: Page 122

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

In two minds?
The government seems confused on key aspects of the UID scheme, and so is the
main opposition. B Y V E N K I T E S H R A M A K R I S H N A N I N N E W D E L H I

The bureaucracy is apparently

unhappy with the relative nancial
autonomy that the UIDAI has been
accorded. The Planning Commission
questioned the Rs.3,000 crore it was
spending on collecting ngerprints,
iris scans and photographs.

servers are of the view that the UIDAI could face a

third line of trouble from the audit initiated by the
Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). The Finance Ministry rejected a demand from the UIDAI
to increase its outlay from Rs.3,023 crore to
Rs.17,863 crore and enhance its biometric capture
mandate from 200 million to all 1.2 billion. The
Home Ministry questioned the accuracy of the UIDAI data and asserted that the Registrar General
and Census Commissioner of India, which functions
under the Ministry, would complete the collection of
biometrics that it had already initiated as part of the
Census.

FOR all the hype about it, the hallmark of the

UID [Unique Identication] programme is a sense
of incompleteness in terms of both conception and
implementation. The muddled political perceptions
on it within the government and outside emerge
naturally out of these imperfections, This was how a
senior bureaucrat in the Finance Ministry responded when Frontline sought his reaction to the recent
controversial developments vis-a-vis the UIDAI.
The refrain in the Central bureaucracy refers to the
multiple conicts within the government on the programme and the confusion in the political leadership. Interestingly, the principal opposition
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also seems to have got
sucked into this vortex of confusion and has not
articulated a clear position on the project and its
implementation. The Left parties, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or the CPI(M), have
expressed reservations about some aspects of the
project. The CPI(M) leadership has stated that it is
closely monitoring the project and the moves to
bring about legislation on UID and will come up
with interventions as and when required.
In the midst of all this, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has through a number of
sittings considered a Bill to accord legal status to the
UIDAI. While the Standing Committees deliberations are condential, there are indications that
several of its members have questioned the necessity
of such a project. Some wings of the government
have raised similar questions. The merits and the
functioning of the UIDAI have been questioned also
by the Planning Commission. Several political ob-

DOUBTS RAISED BY PLANNING COMMISSION

F R O N T L I N E

The Planning Commission even questioned the approximately Rs.3,000 crore that the UIDAI was
spending to collect ngerprints, iris scans and photographs of a section of the population. In fact, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh
Ahluwalia and the Commissions Member-Secretary
Sudha Pillai reportedly objected to the UIDAIs proposal to raise its implementation costs and the methods adopted by the authority to collect citizen
biometrics. In a letter dated August 30, Ahluwalia
requested the Home Minister to kindly see the note
below with the duplication in the rollout of Aadhaar
numbers by UIDAI and the ongoing exercise of the
national population register by the Registrar General of India. Obviously following up on this, Sudha
Pillai pointed out that a reasoned decision is missing [on] whether iris [scans] really needs to be
collected. She also added that the Planning Commission was keen to avoid the duplication of data
and expenditure.
While these missives and the rejection of the
proposed outlay signify the turbulence in the government in relation to the very purpose of the UIDAI
and the way it has evolved and sought to implement
its schemes, the performance audit initiated by the
CAG in early October involves inspecting the functioning of the UIDAI so far. Naturally, the expenditure incurred by the authority would also come
under the CAG scanner. Several political observers,
including a number of Members of Parliament, are
of the view that the CAG report could raise some
questions on the UIDAIs expenditures, especially in
1 1

DECEMBER 2, 2011

the context of the nancial autonomy

that has been provided to the authority. Supporters of the UIDAI and its
Chairman allege that the CAG audit is
unwarranted since the authority has
been functional barely for a year.
The relative nancial autonomy
accorded to the UIDAI is being perceived as improper by a number of
seasoned bureaucrats, including CAG
Vinod Rai and Sudha Pillai. The style
of functioning of UIDAI Chairman
and Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has also apparently rankled several people in the government
machinery, both politicians and bureaucrats.
Technically the UIDAI is supposed to be under the Home Ministry,
but there have been several occasions
when the authority dealt directly with
the Finance Ministry, giving the clear
impression of bypassing the designated reporting Ministry. This has not
been taken lightly by many in the
Home Ministry, a senior Home Ministry ofcial told Frontline.
DISCOMFITURE FOR
PRIME MINISTER

Clearly, all these pulls and pressures

have put the political leadership of the
United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government in a spot. In particular,
these developments have added to the
discomture of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who apparently had a
major say in initiating the UIDAI project. Naturally, the political spokespersons of the Congress have not made
any effort of their own to clear the air
in regard to the conicting pressures
and pulls within the government machinery. The matter has not gured in
the issues routinely addressed by the
party in its diverse forums.
However, talking to Frontline,
Congress spokesperson Abishek Manu
Singhvi said that the UPA government
was committed to taking the UID project forward. Specically referring to
the contradictory views within the government and in institutions such as the
Planning Commission, he said: Dissent and contrary views are always
welcome in India, but democracy

should not begin to mean that every

person must be convinced and must
express agreement before a public interest, national interest project is implemented. Every issue would
certainly have a contrary view, but debate cannot continue ad innitum and
ad nauseam. What needs to be seen is
that the UID is likely to transform the
face of India by effectively dealing with
the scourge of leakages in public welfare development projects and providing a uniform model of verication for
one of the largest populations in the
world. If these are not good enough
reasons, so be it. Singhvi also added
that the Congress was of the view that
the benets of the UID project far outweighed the apprehensions and complaints about the fear of data and
identity theft as also the reduction of
subsidies and decrease in the number
of beneciaries of welfare projects.

The Left objects

to the way the
project is being
used to
undermine
subsidies for
the poor.
The Left parties, however, are
questioning the ruling partys assertions. Speaking to Frontline, CPI(M)
leader Nilotpal Basu pointed out that
the government and the authority itself had derailed the original idea that
formed the basis for the UID project.
There are several concerns about
the objectives that the UIDAI proposes to pursue now, especially in the way
the project is being channelled to become an instrument for effecting
changes in the subsidy regime. One of
these proposals is the cash transfer
scheme that has been contemplated
for delivering food and fertilizer subsidy. We have expressed our strong
1 2

F R O N T L I N E

protest at this. There is also an apprehension that the UID would become
an intrusionary instrument for reducing the number of beneciaries in poverty alleviation programmes like the
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee
Scheme
[MGNREGS]. Basu added that the
Left parties would inspect the proposed law concerning the UID closely
and would oppose anything that
sought to reverse the existing rights of
the poor.
BJP leader Yashwant Sinha pointed out that he could not make pointed
comments on the merits and demerits
of the UID as he was the Chairman of
the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, which is considering
the Bill to accord legal status to the
UIDAI. But he agreed that the understanding that the UID could not move
forward without the imprimatur of a
legislative act of Parliament was a
sound one.
Sinhas party has broadly welcomed the initiatives on the UID, but
its spokesperson Shanawaz Hussain
cautioned, in keeping with the partys
Hindutva-oriented nationalist perspective, that the authority should take
care not to give the UID to illegal immigrants, especially from Bangladesh.
Hussain told Frontline that the party
was considering other criticisms
against the UID and would formulate
concrete views in the days to come.
Obviously, the two mainstream
parties are thinking on similar lines.
Both seem to support the UID and
both seem confused on crucial issues
concerning the projects conception
and implementation. Whether this
bodes well for the project or not is a
moot question.
There are supporters of the UIDAI
who feel such confusion in political
circles may actually facilitate easier
functioning of the authority. But several others are of the view that this lack
of political direction will facilitate unwarranted and mischievous bureaucratic interference.
It remains to be seen which of
these projections actually dominates
the UIDs trajectory.

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

A case for privacy

The strongest protection possible must be given for the right to privacy in any
statute or scheme, including the UID project. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I

The right to privacy is like the

elephant easy to detect, yet all but
impossible to dene. Statutes on the
subject do exist. But the experience
is not particularly inspiring.
IT is 30 years since a Congress Member of Parliament, V.N. Gadgil, suggested an Act for the protection of privacy, designed, no doubt, to curb press
exposure of the wrongdoings of politicians. In reality, it is all but impossible to draft a statute that
strikes a fair balance between peoples right to know
and the protection of a persons privacy. In India, as
in the United Kingdom, there is no tort of privacy.
Indias law of torts (that is, civil wrongs punishable in
damages) is based on case law, English and foreign.
However, the Supreme Court of India has inferred
right to privacy from the ones explicitly guaranteed.
Article 21 of the Constitution contains a guarantee of
personal liberty and it is obvious that personal liberty
also involves the right to privacy.
The Supreme Court ruled in Kharak Singhs case
in 1962 that the right to privacy is not a guaranteed
right under our Constitution though it struck down
domiciliary visits at night as being violative of personal liberties. A minority, comprising Justices K.
Subbarao and J.C. Shah, held that the right to privacy was an essential ingredient of personal liberty.
In the Nakheeran case [R. Rajagopal vs State of
Tamil Nadu (1994) 6 SCC 632], the court said:
The right to privacy is implicit in the right to life
and guaranteed to the citizens of this country by
Article 21. It is a right to be left alone. A citizen has a
right to safeguard the privacy of himself, his family,
marriage, procreation, motherhood, child-bearing
and education, among other matters. No one can
publish anything concerning the above matters
without his consent whether truthful or otherwise
and whether laudatory or critical. If he does so, he
would be violating the right to privacy of the person
concerned and would be liable in an action for damF R O N T L I N E

ages. The position may, however, be different if a

person voluntarily thrusts himself into controversy
or voluntarily invites or raises a controversy.
There is another aspect to the right to privacy.
India is a party to the United Nations International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 17 of
the Covenant states that no one shall be subjected to
arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy,
family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful
attacks on his honour and reputation. Everyone has
the right to the protection of the law against such
interference and attacks. India ratied the Covenant on March 27, 1979. The instrument of ratication contains reservations to some of the other
provisions of the Covenant, but not to Article 17. This
is a treaty obligation enforceable internationally
through the Human Rights Committee set up by the
Covenant. India has to le periodic reports on its
observance of the Covenant and successive Attorneys General have been grilled by the Committees
members on the pathetic state of Indias reports.
IN U.S. AND U.K.

Even in the United States and Britain, legal recognition to privacy came in slow stages. It began with
an article in 1890 in the Harvard Law Review by
Louis D. Brandeis and his friend and law partner,
Samuel Warren. Entitled The Right to Privacy, it
was widely noticed. In 1928, as a judge of the Supreme Court, Brandeis gave a vigorous dissent upholding this right, which he called the right to be let
alone. This was in Olmstead vs U.S., the famous
telephone tapping case. The majority ruled that evidence, thus obtained, was admissible in courts. The
ruling has suffered much battering since.
English common law recognised no right to privacy. Committees were set up to consider legislation
on the right to privacy, only to nd that no easy
solution was possible. Reconciliation of this right
with the freedom of speech is not an easy task. However, the Human Rights Act, 1998, incorporates as
British law the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms signed in 1950. Article 8(1) of the Convention
says that everyone has the right to respect for his
1 3

DECEMBER 2, 2011

private and family life, his home and

his correspondence. Clause (2) carves
out permissible restrictions, which are
necessary in a democratic society in
the interests of national security, for
the prevention of crime, etc. Several
cases have since been decided in English courts, which are of direct relevance to us. English cases are citable in
our courts.
DATA PROTECTION ACT

In 1998, Britain enacted the Data Protection Act, which lays down the principles and establishes a hierarchy of
ofcials. Data controllers are subject to
the jurisdiction of the Information
Commissioner. It says: Data controllers must also abide by the data protection principles. They are, in brief, (a)
the data must be processed fairly and
lawfully and only for one of the prescribed purposes. For data concerning
sensitive matters, there is a narrower
group of specied purposes; (b) it
must be adequate, relevant and not
excessive for the purpose; (c) it must be
accurate, and where necessary, kept up
to date; (d) it must not be kept for
longer than is necessary; (e) it must be
processed in accordance with the
rights of data subjects; (f) appropriate
technical and organisational measures
must be taken against unauthorised or
unlawful processing and against accidental loss or destruction of or damage
to the data; (g) it must not be transferred out of the EEA [European Economic Area] unless the country to
which it is taken or sent gives adequate
protection for the rights of data
subjects.
The Commissioner can serve an
enforcement notice if she is satised
that a data controller has contravened
any of these principles. An individual
who suffers damage because a data
controller has contravened any requirement of the Act is entitled to
claim compensation. The special provisions for journalistic material gives
exemption from: the data subjection
principles (except those concerning security of data); data subject access
rights; the rights of data subjects to
prevent data processing; the rights of

data subjects to correct inaccuracies;

and rights concerning automated decision-making (see Media Law, by
Geoffrey Robertson, QC and Andrew
Nicol, QC, Penguin, 4th Edition, pages
278-279).
Any law on data protection enacted by the Parliament of India will be
tested on the anvil of Article 19. Section 32 of the British Data Protection
Act provides public interest exemptions for journalistic, literary or artistic material. The test in each case is
public interest. Public interest is a concept
entirely
different from material in which the public
would
be
interested.
In 2004, the Supreme Court of India
decided a case in
which the right to
privacy was involved.
It concerned Section
73 of the Indian
Stamp Act, 1899, and
its amendment by
Andhra Pradesh in
1986. As amended in
1986, it read:
Every public ofcer or any person
having in his custody
any registers, books,
records, papers, documents or proceedings, the inspection whereof may
attend to secure any duty, or to prove
or lead to the discovery of any fraud or
omission in relation to any duty, shall
at all reasonable times permit any person authorised in writing by the Collector to enter upon any premises and
to inspect for such purposes the registers, books, records, papers, documents and proceedings, and to take
such notes and extracts as he may
deem necessary, without fee or charge
and if necessary to seize them and impound the same under proper
acknowledgement.
Provided that such seizure of any
registers, books, records, papers, documents or other proceedings, in the custody of any bank be made only after a
1 4

F R O N T L I N E

notice of 30 days to make good the

decit stamp duty is given.
The Supreme Court Bench, comprising R. Lahoti and A. Bhan, surveyed the case law in the U.S. and in
India, but not in the U.K. It held:
The impugned provision in Section 73 enabling the Collector to authorise any person whatsoever in
respect, to take notes or extracts from
the papers in the public ofce suffers
from the vice of excessive delegation as
there are no guidelines in the Act and,
more importantly,
the Section allows
the facts relating to
the customers privacy to reach non-governmental persons
and would, on that
basis, be an unreasonable encroachment
into
the
customers
rights.
This part of Section
73 permitting delegation to any person
suffers from the
above serious defects
and for that reason is,
in our view, unenforceable. The state
must clearly dene
the ofcers by designation or state that
the power can be delegated to ofcers not below a particular rank in the ofcial hierarchy, as
may be designated by the state.
Besides, the AP amendment of
1986 permitted inspection being carried out by the Collector by having access to documents that were even in
private custody; that is, custody other
than that of a public ofcer. It empowered invasion of the home of the person in whose possession the
documents tending to or leading to
the various facts stated in Section 73
were in existence. Section 73 was devoid of any safeguards as to probable
or reasonable cause or reasonable basis or materials. It, therefore, violated
the right to privacy both of the house
and of the person. The court referred
to the R. Rajagopal case wherein the

DECEMBER 2, 2011

When ordering a pizza...

learned judges held that the right to

personal liberty also means life free
from encroachments unsustainable in
law, and such a right owed from Article 21 of the Constitution.
Right to privacy was upheld again
by the Supreme Court of India in another judgment most recently: Ram

Jethmalani vs Union of India. Delivered by Justices P. Sathasivam and

H.L. Gokhale, it read:
Right to privacy is an integral part
of right to life. This is a cherished constitutional value, and it is important
that human beings be allowed domains of freedom that are free of pubF R O N T L I N E

1 5

lic scrutiny unless they act in an

unlawful manner. [A]s constitutional adjudicators we always have to be
mindful of preserving the sanctity of
constitutional values, and hasty steps
that derogate from fundamental
rights, whether urged by governments
or private citizens, howsoever well
meaning they may be, have to be necessarily very carefully scrutinised. The
solution for the problem of abrogation
of one zone of constitutional values
cannot be the creation of another zone
of abrogation of constitutional values. An inquisitorial order, where citizens fundamental right to privacy is
breached by fellow citizens is destructive of social order. The notion of fundamental rights, such as a right to
privacy as part of right to life, is not
merely that the state is enjoined from
derogating from them. It also includes
the responsibility of the state to uphold
them against the actions of others in
the society, even in the context of exercise of fundamental rights by those
others.
There is an inherent danger in
making exceptions to fundamental
principles and rights on the y. Those
exceptions, bit by bit, would then eviscerate the content of the main right
itself. Undesirable lapses in upholding
of fundamental rights by the legislature, or the executive, can be rectied
by assertion of constitutional principles by this court. We are not proposing that Constitutions cannot be
interpreted in a manner that allows
the nation-state to tackle the problems
it faces. The principle is that exceptions cannot be carved out willy-nilly,
and without forethought as to the
damage they may cause.
To sum up, the right to privacy is
like the elephant easy to detect, yet all
but impossible to dene. However,
this is not to say that statutes on the
subject do not exist. They do, in Canada as well as in the U.S. But the experience is not particularly inspiring. The
best course then is to give the strongest
protection possible for the right to privacy in any statute that may be enacted. That holds for any public scheme,
including the UID project.

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

PDS in peril
The promotion of the PDS as an Aadhaar application would fundamentally alter
its form and character. B Y R . R A M A K U M A R

Scholarly opinion is signicantly in

favour of a return to universal PDS.
However, a powerful lobby of the
ruling elite and a section of
economists are resisting it. Aadhaar
is a tool in their hands to ensure that
universal PDS is never reinstated.
NO scheme of the Indian government would be
transformed more fundamentally by Aadhaar than
the public distribution system (PDS). The nature of
this transformation appears to be taking the form of
a virtual dismantling of the PDS; even if a skeletal
fair price shop (FPS, or ration shop) system continues to exist, it is likely to be squeezed to death sooner
than later.
Universal PDS was established in India in 1965
as part of a national food policy. An important feature of this policy was the integration of food procurement and distribution. The government
procured foodgrains from farmers at a procurement
price and distributed the grain across the country
through the PDS. The policy was formed on the basis
of experience that showed the market to be a poor
substitute for state action in moving foodgrains.
In the period after 1965, the outcomes of state
intervention in the food economy were mixed. On
the one hand, the PDS acted as a check against
exacerbation of regional disparities in foodgrain
consumption (see Food insecurities, Frontline, July 17, 2010). On the other hand, the PDS was not
serving a large section of Indias population and its
performance across States, judged by the off-take of
grain, varied considerably. Thus, by the 1990s, the
challenge was how to extend the PDS to more regions and sections. However, the ofcial policy after
1991 took the PDS on a different trajectory.
In 1997, the government abolished universal
PDS and replaced it with targeted PDS (TPDS). The
1 6

population was classied into above poverty line

(APL) and below poverty line (BPL) households.
Only BPL households were eligible for subsidised
grain. The experience after 1997 shows that TPDS
led to the exclusion of a massive section of the poor
from the PDS. There were major mismatches between households classied as APL and their actual
standard of living.
INEFFICIENCY IS POLICY-INDUCED

Thus, the poor efciency of the PDS under the

neoliberal regime was a policy-induced phenomenon. The critical problem with the PDS today is that
it remains narrowly targeted. Needless to say, Aadhaar cannot address this problem; it is a non
sequitur.
The draft National Food Security Bill, released in
September 2011, does not seek a return to a universal
PDS. Instead, it disingenuously renames BPL households as Priority households and splits APL households into two: (a) General households; and (b) the
rest, who are totally excluded from the PDS. Five
features of the Bill are notable.
First, the share of Priority and General households will continue to be based on the Tendulkar
poverty lines, which were at the centre of the recent
controversy over poverty lines. Second, General
households will be entitled to a smaller quantity of
foodgrains than the Priority households, at higher
prices. Third, the strength of the entitlement right
for General households will be weaker than for Priority households. Fourth, no more than 75 per cent of
the rural households, and 50 per cent of the urban
households can come under the ambit of the PDS.
Fifth, schemes such as cash transfers and food coupons are allowed to replace foodgrain entitlements,
if the government so wishes.
Clearly, the rst four features keep the proposed
system substantially close to the existing TPDS. The
fth feature is intended to undermine the PDS and
replace it with food coupons or cash transfers.
Scholarly opinion in India today is signicantly
in favour of a return to universal PDS. However, a
powerful lobby of the ruling elite and a section of
economists are resisting it. Aadhaar is a tool in the

F R O N T L I N E

DECEMBER 2, 2011

The exaggerated focus on fake ration cards can be challenged from another angle. In the operation of the
PDS, there are two major sources of
leakage. First, there are leakages after
foodgrains leave the godown and before they reach the fair price shop. Secondly, there are leakages between the
FPS and the customers. Any observer
of the PDS knows that the major proportion of leakages belong to the former category, and the latter accounts
for only a small proportion.

C. VENKATACHALAPATHY

PDS REFORMS AND AADHAAR

IN CU DDA L O R E , T A M I L Nadu: The portability proposed under the UID

project is largely incompatible with static fair price shops.

hands of this lobby to ensure that universal PDS is never reinstated.

The ofcial thinking on PDS reforms is already available in Economic Survey 2009-10. The ofcial
thinking on the use of Aadhaar in the
PDS is available in a working paper of
the Unique Identication Authority of
India (UIDAI). It claims that there are
massive leakages in the PDS caused by
the widespread circulation of bogus
ration cards. It claims that Aadhaar
can eliminate bogus ration cards.
Indeed, such an inversion of the
problems in the PDS an exaggerated
focus on leakages and fake ration cards
is a necessary self-justication for the
government and the UIDAI. The government wants to establish that the
existing PDS is inefcient and needs
phasing out. The UIDAI wants to establish that fake ration cards are the
biggest challenge to the PDS and that
any PDS reform has to leverage
Aadhaar.

Indeed, fake ration cards exist in

most States and eliminating them is a
major challenge. However, two important points need to be noted. First, the
proportion of fake ration cards across
the States is small, ranging from 2 to 13
per cent.
Secondly, many States have already identied fake ration cards and
eliminated them even before the introduction of Aadhaar. The annual report for 2010-11 of the Department of
Food and Civil Supplies notes that
208.57 lakh fake ration cards were
eliminated across 26 States, as of December 2010. In many of these States,
the issue of new ration cards and PDS
operations are at advanced levels of
computerisation. Some States have
successfully introduced hologram-enabled technologies to eliminate duplicate ration cards. Further, the frailties
of biometrics in proving identity beyond doubt raises major questions
about such claims regarding Aadhaar.
F R O N T L I N E

1 7

Many States have already begun reforming their PDS networks using
GPS-monitored and coloured trucks
that carry grains from godowns to fair
price shops. SMS alerts are sent to village residents over stock movements at
their FPS, thus empowering them with
information. In all these efforts, the
priority focus was on leakages before
the grain reached the fair price shop.
Aadhaar has no role here. Yet, the government persists with the use of Aadhaar as a necessary premise for PDS
reform. This is where the plan to dismantle the PDS using Aadhaar
unfurls.
According to the UIDAI working
paper, the government needs to liberalise the allocation of fair price shops
to reduce PDS leakages and beneciaries should be given freedom to
choose the best fair price shop. The
paper argues that two aspects of the
Aadhaar-enabled system linking
grain allocation to authenticated offtake, and choice of FPS for the beneciary would enable a signicant
shift from the present approach, where
foodgrain allocations within the PDS
are static, supply-led and divorced
from beneciary demand and choice.
The Aadhaar-enabled approach would
instead help create a demand-led, dynamic system.
According to the paper, systemic
efciency can be improved by substituting fair price shops with food
stamps or direct cash transfers. An
identical view is expressed in the Report of the Task Force on an IT Strategy for PDS and an Implementable

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Solution for the Direct Transfer of

Subsidy for Food and Kerosene
(chaired, again, by Nandan Nilekani),
submitted in October 2011. The arguments in Economic Survey 2009-10
and the UIDAI paper are repeated
here; they include providing beneciaries maximum choice and introducing
token-agnostic
technology
solutions like direct cash transfers. .
The UIDAI paper further claims
that Aadhaar can enable PDS to be
portable. Thus, a migrant worker can
buy his/her PDS quota from anywhere
in India. The claim, of course, has a
deceptive appeal. One would have to
dig deeper to grasp the real intent.
PORTABLE PDS?

At present, each fair price shop has a

specied number of households registered with it and stores grain only for
them. The shop owner would not know
how many migrant workers might approach him and demand grain, and for
what periods. Hence, for lack of stock,
he would turn the migrants away. In
other words, the proposed portability
of the PDS is largely incompatible with
static fair price shops. Even if these
outlets were fully computerised, the
nature of circular and seasonal migration would ensure that the system
could not respond optimally.
If full portability of the PDS is insisted upon and this is what proponents of Aadhaar do there is only one
way out: do away with the fair price
shops, accredit grocery shops to sell
grain against food stamps, and allow
these shops to compete with one another. According to the governments
plan, while food stamps are the medium-term solution, the long-term solution is a shift to direct cash transfers.
Food stamps and cash transfers can be
provided through Aadhaar numbers.
Clearly, a shift to food stamps and cash
transfers would mean an end to the
fair price shop model.
In fact, if we consider a limited
form of PDS portability as adequate, it
could easily be implemented within
the present system, using hologramenabled cards or smart cards. However, nothing short of leveraging Aad-

Proposed
schemes such as
food coupons
and direct cash
transfers are
meant to
undermine PDS.
haar appears palatable to its
proponents. Typically, food stamps are
worth an amount that households can
exchange to buy food from any seller.
However, there are very few countries
that have found success with food
stamp schemes. A number of generic
problems have plagued food stamp
schemes across most countries (see
Madhura Swaminathan, Targeted
Food Stamps, The Hindu, August 3,
2004).
First, food stamps are rarely indexed for ination. With a rise in ination, the real value of the stamps
falls. According to Kaushik Basu, Adviser to the Finance Minister, this can
be addressed by adjusting the value of
stamps annually, on the basis of an
expected ination rate for the next
year. Basu should surely know that this
would be no piece of cake.
Secondly, possession of food
stamps does not always translate into
physical access to food. In many countries, shops either did not stock the
commodities linked to stamps or simply refused to sell commodities against
stamps. Thirdly, food stamps are difcult to administer. There are always
delays in issuing food stamps and
reimbursing the shops. Stamps are also faked on a large scale.
For these reasons, replacing the
PDS with food stamps not only would
be impetuous, but also would inict
new burdens on the poor.
DIRECT CASH TRANSFERS?

According to Basu, a system with directed cash transfers would, arguably,

1 8

F R O N T L I N E

be better thanthe direct delivery of

foodgrains to the poor throughration shops. In direct cash transfers, a
specic amount of money is transferred to a household to meet a specic
need. The argument is that giving cash
can reduce transaction costs of the
government and lead to faster delivery
and expanded beneciary choice.
Can direct cash transfers be an effective substitute to the PDS? Without
judging the utility of direct cash transfers as a complementary effort to
transfer resources to the poor, there
are strong reasons why it cannot be an
effective substitute to the PDS.
First, the emergence of the PDS in
India was part of a national food policy
that tried to address the interests of
consumers and producers. It was an
integrated system of food procurement and distribution. Any dismantling of the PDS would also mean an
end to procurement, which forms an
important institutional support to Indias peasantry. Secondly, money is
fungible. For any household, a cash
transfer would by no means ensure an
equivalent quantity of food purchase
or calorie intake.
Thirdly, by denition, cash transfers are less self-selecting than the
PDS. Self-selection means that households that do not want a particular
provision voluntarily withdraw from
accessing it. A classic example is the
pre-1997 universal PDS in Kerala,
where studies showed a tendency
among richer households to withdraw
from PDS purchases. However, when
transfers are made in cash, the incentive to self-select declines signicantly.
Finally, just as for food stamps, a
rise in ination would lead to a fall in
the real value of cash transfers.
In sum, the promotion of the PDS
as an Aadhaar application would fundamentally alter its form and character. Montek Singh Ahluwalia stated
recently: We have to rework the system. If we simply introduce UID without re-engineering the system, it
wouldnt work. What is clear is that
this re-engineering would be nothing
short of a virtual dismantling of the
PDS.

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

False promises
The claim that the Unique Identication project will facilitate the delivery of basic
health services is dishonest. B Y M O H A N R A O
AMONG the many reasons cited for India to
proceed with the Unique Identication (UID) project that it will facilitate delivery of basic services,
that it will plug leakages in public expenditure, that
it will speed up achievement of targets in social
sector schemes, and so on the most specious is
perhaps the claim that it will help India reach its
public health Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs).
Despite impressive economic growth in the
country, the huge load of preventable and communicable diseases remains substantially unchanged, in

K.N. CHARY

On the contrary, given that many

diseases continue to bear a stigma
in this country, the UID scheme has
the unique potential of increasing
stigma by breaching the anonymity
of the health data collected.

at work with her baby at her side, in Tamil Nadu. The infant mortality rate is very
high for working women, particularly those in the primary sector, a large proportion of whom are
labourers.

A B A S K E T W EA V ER

F R O N T L I N E

1 9

DECEMBER 2, 2011

addition to starvation deaths. Although life expectancy has increased

and infant and child mortality rates
have declined, these declines have
been relatively modest. Infant and
child mortality take an unconscionable toll 2.2 million children every
year. We are yet to achieve the National Health Policy (NHP), 1983, target of
reducing the infant mortality rate
(IMR) to less than 60 per 1,000 live
births in all the States. More serious is
the fact that the rate of decline in the
IMR has been decelerating, from 27
per cent in the 1980s to only 10 per
cent in the 1990s. The same is true for
the rate of decline in the mortality rate
of children under ve from 35 per cent
in the 1980s to 15 per cent in the 1990s.
It is clear that India will not reach the
Millennium Development Goals of reducing IMR, U5MR and the maternal
mortality rate (MMR).
India has higher maternal deaths
than any other country. The NHP target for 2000 was to reduce the MMR
to less than 200 per 100,000 live
births. However, in 2000, between
115,000 and 170,000 women died in
childbirth, accounting for about onequarter of all maternal deaths worldwide. Far from declining over the
1990s, maternal and neo-natal morbidity and mortality rates in India
have, at best, plateaued. High and unconscionable as these levels of maternal mortality are, it is nevertheless
critical to bear in mind that they represent just a fraction of the morbidity
and mortality load borne by women in
the country. Thus, for instance, deaths
caused by anaemia among women who
are not pregnant are twice as many as
among those who are. Similarly, communicable diseases take a much higher toll than that due to pregnancy and
childbirth.
The reasons are complex and stem,
above all, from the lack of political and
nancial commitment to build a public health system that can meet the
challenges. As the National Health
Policy (NHP) 2002 admitted, this is,
at 0.9 per cent of the gross domestic
product (GDP), the fth lowest public
expenditure on health in the world.

The decline in public investments over

the years was matched with growing
subsidies to the private sector in health
care in a variety of ways. Thus we have
the largest, and one of the least regulated, private health care industry in
the world. Evidence from across the
country indicates that access to health
care has declined sharply over the last
two decades. As the government admits, the policy of levying user fees has
impacted negatively upon access to
public health facilities, especially for
poor and marginalised communities
and women.
HIGH PRIVATE MEDICAL
EXPENDITURE

It is to be remembered that along with

poor public nancing, India has one of
the highest private medical expenditures in the world: out-of-pocket expenditure accounts for 83 per cent of
the total health expenditure in the
country. It is thus not surprising that,
as the NHP 2002 notes, medical expenditure has emerged as one of the
leading causes of indebtedness. At the
same time, the proportion of people
not availing themselves of any type of
medical care for nancial reasons increased between 1986-87 and 1995-96
from 10 to 21 per cent in urban areas,
and from 15 to 24 per cent in rural
areas. It is not just the poor; even the
middle classes the upper echelons of
which welcomed globalisation are
nding it increasingly difcult to meet
medical care costs.
The short UID Working Paper on
Public Health astonishingly sees the
UID as helping create demand for
public health in the country. If people
are voting with their feet for the private
sector, which they do not and cannot
trust, it is precisely because the public
T H I S M A T ERNI TY UN I T near the
primary health centre at
Sellamanthadi village near Dindigul
in Tamil Nadu is not in use. Evidence
over the past two decades shows
that access to public health care has
dwindled, spawning one of the
worlds largest private health care
industries.
2 0

F R O N T L I N E

sector does not offer them quality care.

Nor, indeed, is whatever care offered
free of cost. Why then go to a crumbling system that offers little other
than immunisation and family planning? Indeed, there is a huge unmet
demand. In other words, the critical
shortfall in supply of quality comprehensive services. How does the UID
help with that? The UID Working Paper on public health sets out what it
calls killer application to provide citizens an incentive to obtain a UID card
in order to meet health needs. This
unfortunate language apart, the fact
that we have not built a health care
system for the population is hardly
fortuitous.
The Working Paper highlights the
fact that we lack good-quality health
data or indeed even vital statistics. It is
equally true that this should come
from integrated routine health system
and not ad hoc surveys. But how is the
UID to rectify this? People are avoiding the public health system for a variety of reasons: lack of drugs, lack of
doctors, having to pay for services, inconvenient hours, rude personnel, and
so on. Unless these issues are attended
to, data quality cannot be improved.
The UID is no magic bullet.
Thus the UID is not designed to

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Unless issues
are attended to,
data quality
cannot be
improved. The
UID is no
magic bullet.

G. KARTHIKEYAN

meet the public health challenges in

the country and should not pretend to
do so. On the contrary, given that
many diseases continue to bear a stigma in this country, the UID scheme
has the unique potential of increasing
stigma by breaching the anonymity of
health data collected. It thus violates
the heart of the medical encounter,
namely condentiality. By making this
information potentially available to
employers and insurance companies,
the scheme bodes further gross violations of health rights. It is this reason
above all that persuaded many countries in Europe not to accept such
schemes.
The justication that the launch of
the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana
provides a killer opportunity for the
UID scheme to free ride is equally
moot; an evaluation of the RSBY
scheme in Kerala, a State with extremely good health indicators, shows
a number of problems, in particular an
inability to reach marginal groups
(Narayana D., Review of Rashtriya
Swasthya Bima Yojana, Economic
and Political Weekly, vol.xlv, No.29,
July 17, 2010). Anecdotal evidence
from Kerala also indicates a huge increase in costs because of what are
politely called moral hazard prob-

lems. Simply put, doctors in the private sector are subjecting patients to
unnecessary tests and treatment now
that they are assured of payments. In
short, this creates an effective demand for the private sector in a segment of the population hitherto not
availing itself of this because of poverty. It is for these reasons that the High
Level Expert Group of the Planning
Commission rejected recently such a
model of health care universalisation.
The biometric health insurance
cards issued to Delhi slum-dwellers
under the State governments Mission
Convergence scheme requires cardholders to identify themselves with a
ngerprint before they can avail themselves of free hospital treatment. Nongovernmental organisations (NGOs)
involved in the scheme say that they
are inundated with complaints about
malfunctioning ngerprint readers,
which fail to authenticate even after
multiple swipes. Since the scheme is
tied up with private health providers,
users in need of emergency treatment
often end up paying inated fees for
services that they could get at a lower
cost, if not free, at a government
hospital.
One area where the UID card
would be extremely benecial has, of
course, to do with clinical trials. As is
well known, since 2005, India has
opened up as a market for clinical
trials of drugs, and that this is a huge
industry, with MNCs now rushing in.
It is equally a well-known secret that
the trials that are being conducted are
not good trials that the MNCs want.
F R O N T L I N E

2 1

These good wishes are being vitiated

by the trial subjects, the poor guinea
pigs. Again, the evidence is of necessity
anecdotal, but given the poverty levels,
one way of getting quick cash or indeed cellphones is to enlist in several
trials simultaneously. We all know this
is happening and this is one area where
the UID would be useful. That is to say,
the guinea pigs can be carefully monitored not to enlist on more than one
trial. Will it help in identifying side
effects? In obtaining compensation for
side effects or death? Of course not:
the card cannot help here.
While there are systemic problems
for low health access and outreach
(such as low and falling immunisation coverage), to pretend that the UID
scheme offers a solution to the problem is dissembling at best, and dishonest at worst. The UID scheme has
thus little to offer for improvement in
the public health situation in the country. On the other hand, the UIDAI has
much to gain from a link-up with the
public health system.
As the UIDAI Working Paper on
public health puts it, in amazingly bad
language: The demand pull for this
needs to be created de novo or fostered
on existing platforms by the respective
ministries. Helping various ministries
visualise key applications that leverage
existing government entitlement
schemes such as the NREGA and PDS
will get their buy-in into the project ....
and will also build excitement and material support from the ministries for
the UID project even as it gets off the
ground.
Given the signicant potential for
misuse of data, human rights violations and breach of condentiality of
health information, one hopes that the
Ministry of Health will restrain its excitement and undertake a rigorous
analysis of the costs and risks of the
scheme before providing material
support to the UID project. Or is this
expecting too much from a Ministry
that routinely betrays people?

Dr Mohan Rao is Professor, Centre of

Social Medicine and Community
Health, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi.

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Enrolment saga
The incentive of inclusion appears not to be sufcient to get people to enrol for
the UID, so the strategy has shifted to the threat of exclusion. B Y U S H A R A M A N A T H A N

The UIDAIs introducer system, set

up to help enrol those without
documents, is failing the poor. They
may well end up being stripped of
the identity they currently possess.
THE Unique Identication Authority of India
(UIDAI) has ambitious targets to meet. The Unique
Identication (UID) number, or Aadhaar, has been
marketed as a number that will give the poor and the
undocumented an identity so that they can tell the
state they exist. It is being promoted as a means of
reaching services to the poor. It has been projected as
voluntary, with the UIDAI not imposing any compulsion. It has been presented as potentially easing
the way to fullling Know Your Customer (KYC)
norms. It is, then, something to which every resident
is entitled a sentiment that is reected in Clause 3
of the National Identication Authority of India Bill,
2010 and not something that will be mandated.
That is how the project was presented to the public.
The UID, unlike the United States Social Security number, carries no guarantee of any service or
benet. Among those who have multiple identication documents, its appeal was bound to be limited.
These aspects of voluntariness and lack of sufcient incentive to enrol explain the shift in strategy
that was effected early on in the process with one
objective: to increase enrolment. While the UIDAI
continued to insist that enrolment was voluntary, it
worked on agencies within the government to make
the UID mandatory before services could be
accessed.
The strategy to increase enrolment is reected in
the UIDAIs document on Public Health and UID.
The aggregation of records from various population
databases such as those for the census, the public
distribution system (PDS) and voters lists would still
leave a large percentage of the population uncovered. Therefore, every citizen must have a strong
incentive or a killer application to go and get herself
2 2

the UID, which one could think of as the demandside pull.... Helping various ministries visualise key
applications that leverage existing government entitlement schemes such as the NREGA [National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act] and the PDS will
(1) get their buy-in into the project (2) help them roll
out the mechanisms that generate the demand-pull
and (3) can inform a exible and future-proof design
for the UID database.... Health and health-related
development schemes could offer a killer application
for the UID.
In October, the Ministry of Rural Development
indicated in a tender that it intended to link access to
NREGA jobs with the possession of a UID. Academics and activists working on the NREGA protested
that loading the UID agenda on the NREGA would
cause harm to an already fragile system. On May 17,
senior activists responding to media reports that had
begun to circulate that the UID was to be made
compulsory for NREGA benets in Mysore wrote to
the Ministry characterising such a move as unfair,
illegal and dangerous. It is also disturbing to read
from the same reports that the main purpose of this
move is not to provide a facility to NREGA workers,
but to facilitate the completion of UID enrolment,
they wrote.
In September, it was the turn of the Ministry of
Petroleum and Natural Gas to declare by notication
that rells of cooking gas cylinders would be available only to households that had enrolled for a UID.
The incentive of inclusion was clearly not sufcient
to get people to enrol, so the strategy has shifted to
the threat of exclusion. Actually, though, given that
1.2 billion people cannot possibly be enrolled in the
immediate future, this notication is unworkable.
In Kerala, the government has set out to enrol six
million students spanning 15,000 schools so that the
UID may be used to track them through their years
in school. The National Commission for Protection
of Child Rights (NCPCR) has ordered an inquiry into
this potential violation of the right to privacy and
dignity of the children in the State.
Admittedly the UID project is an experiment
not a solution.
In the process of experimenting with biometrics,

F R O N T L I N E

KIRAN BAKALE

DECEMBER 2, 2011

P E OP L E W H O H A D

turned up at a school in Hubli, Karnataka, on September 17 to apply for Aadhaar.

the UIDAI has enlisted registrars with

whom it has memorandums of understanding and enrollers who it has prequalied to do the work of capturing
data. Interestingly, while recognising
that biometrics is sensitive information, it has washed its hands of responsibility for the safety, security and
condentiality of the data during enrolment and passed the buck to the
registrars.
The Guidelines that the UIDAI
has unilaterally framed for the registrars set out principles and procedures, but there is no evidence that
there is any seriousness in enforcing
these. For instance, it reads: The individual from whom data is being collected should be informed the purpose
for which information is being collected and how the data will be used.
There is no evidence of registrars or
enrollers giving this information. In
fact, it seems that neither registrars

nor enrollers have any idea of what use

the data will be.
The enrolment process has thrown
up a host of issues already.
In January, reports emerged about
working-class women in Mumbai being unable to enrol because of blisters
and calluses and the effect of abrasive
detergents on their hands. More recently, in August and October, there
were reports from Bangalore and Delhi that senior citizens were unable to
get enrolled because their ngerprints
did not work. The credibility roadblocks that these reports were setting
up were sought to be removed by the
UIDAI by threatening enrollers with
action if they turned any person
away.
Under Aadhaar, there is no provision to turn away residents who come
to get themselves enrolled, and the
quality of their biometrics cant be decided by the operators on their own,
F R O N T L I N E

2 3

the Deputy Director-General of the

UIDAI reportedly wrote to the newspaper that had carried the news. This
is a prescription for forced capture:
when the ngerprints do not leave an
impression the rst time, they are
pressed against the plate a second and
a third time, and when a fourth attempt fails, the machine gives up, records what is on offer, and the
programme will let the rest of the enrolment proceed. The UIDAI has been
silent on the consequences of forced
capture.
Questions have arisen about persons
with disabilities, some of whom may
not have ngerprints or irises that
meet the biometric standards required
by the UIDAI for enrolment. A citizen
journalist described the difculties she
had in getting an enrolment centre to
accept her data it needed the intervention of an ofcial of the UIDAI
in Delhi before the exercise was done.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

In Pune, a man received his UID

with his wifes photograph appended
to it. An article in The New Yorker
describes how this embarrassment is
sought to be averted: a computer operator sits in an ofce running through
enrolment forms to make a cursory
judgment whether the image matches
the demographic information. That
day, the journalist reports, he had
already inspected more than 5,000
photographs, and he had clicked incorrect 300 times: men listed as
women, children as adults, photographs with two heads in them. It
seems there are innite variations to
the theme of error.
In May, unidentied persons walked away with two laptops and a pen
drive which held data pertaining to
140 persons from an enrolment centre
in a school in Hadaspur, Maharashtra.
The back-up information was also on
the same laptop. The data included
sensitive details relating to passports, voter ID cards, bank accounts,
photographs and a range of other
information.
In July, ve persons were arrested in
Bangalore for issuing fake UIDs. The
UIDAI heard about the racket when
they were approached with complaints
that Global ID Solutions was selling
franchises to customers to take up
Aadhaar enrolment for a non-refundable fee of Rs.2.5 lakh an enrolment
kit. This episode exposed the perils of
indiscriminate outsourcing.
In October, a software error resulted
in hundreds of residents of Colaba in
south Mumbai having their addresses
recorded as Kolaba, Raigarh district.
The enrollers claimed that this was a
software glitch and that enrolees
would just have to return another day
to re-enrol. Only, the guidelines of the
UIDAI do not have a provision for reenrolling any resident.
One of the documents that can be
used for enrolment is a certicate of
identity having photo issued by a
Group A Gazetted Ofcer on letterhead. On November 1, a doctor in a
Tilak Nagar Hospital in Bangalore was
found blindly signing certicates presented to him by touts who were col-

lecting Rs.100 a certicate.

The list grows, indicating an array of
problems, and these are only the visible and obvious errors. It raises questions about how infallible and
incorruptible this system is. The problems being encountered behind the
scenes are not yet known, and there is
still no information from the UIDAI
about how the de-duplication process
is functioning, or how many have ngerprints that will not work to authenticate their identity.
APPROVED INTRODUCER

The Demographic Data Standards

Committee of the UIDAI had created
two demographic categories: those
with documents and those without.
For the latter and the poor are the
primary constituents of this category
the committee recommended a system
of approved introducers. The committee drew an analogy with the opening of a bank account without
documents but with the help of an introducer. The account retains a link
with the introducer. This was generalised and expanded, and the idea of the
approved
introducer
was
institutionalised.
Since the early days of enrolment,
the awkwardness of the introducer
idea has been evident. In January, the
Pul Mithai enrolment centre in Delhi,
which was located in a makeshift
shack, was host to those whose jhuggis
had been destroyed in the many demolition drives the city administration
undertakes. Some of them had voter
ID cards and ration cards and one of
them brought along a driving licence,
but these were not used in the enrolment.
As homeless people, they had been
the subject of a survey conducted under the direction of a Mother NGO
(non-governmental organisation) as
part of Mission Convergence by which
process the Delhi government drew
NGOs into their executive fold. The
survey resulted in a temporary card
which carried their name, gender, approximate age, a photograph and an
ID number that held a coded key to
the point in the map where they were
2 4

F R O N T L I N E

surveyed. It also declared: This card

has been issued on the basis of selfreported information by the cardholder.... In the UID enrolment process, it
was found that errors in age, especially, were quite common. Since they
were ofcially homeless, they were assumed not to belong to an address even
when they believed they were residents
of an identiable spot in the area.
The enrolment form is not complete without an address to which the
UID can be sent. So, an NGO lent its
address. The columns asking for information sharing consent and for being given an Aadhaar-enabled bank
account were ticked without anyone
asking the enrolees whether they had
other views on the subject. A young
man of about 21 years had been the
introducer for 70 people already but
knew none of them. He had no idea
what his responsibilities or liabilities
were should the information about the
people he introduced be found inaccurate.
Some while later, the NGO received the UID numbers at its ofce. A
visit in March revealed that over 250
letters from the UIDAI were addressed to various homeless people
who were proving difcult to locate.
Some months later, a similar situation
arose in Geeta Colony in East Delhi
where, between the date of enrolment
and the time that the letter of information was received, the pavement had
been cleared of dwellers. If banks do
open accounts on the basis of UID enrolment, information will reach as far
as the address on the enrolment form
the poor may never learn of it, and
banks will nd themselves answerable
for misdirected mail and inoperable
accounts.
It is no secret that the introducer
system is failing the poor and exposing
them to the probability of exclusion.
Any alternative that is essayed, which
does not care to know the poor as individuals may well end up stripping
them of the identity they currently
possess.

Usha Ramanathan works on the

jurisprudence of law, poverty and
rights.

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

How reliable is UID?

At the technical level, the question is whether the technology deployed for
identication will return answers that are unambiguous. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N

THE Unique Identication (UID) project, the

national project of the Government of India, aims to
give a unique 12-digit number called Aadhaar to
every citizen of the country, a random number that is
generated and linked to a persons demographic and
biometric information. The key word is unique.
Launched in 2009 with the objective of reaching
various benets such as the public distribution system (PDS) to the poor, better targeting of developmental schemes such as the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(NREGS) and enabling services such as the opening
of a bank account, this uses technology based on a
biometrics recognition system. Signicantly, there
will only be a UID number and no UID card as had
been proposed earlier by the National Democratic
Alliance (NDA) regime.
The advocates of the project believe that this will
eliminate the multiple bureaucratic layers that the
people of the country, particularly the rural poor, are
confronted with and the multiplicity of documents
that they have to present in order to access their
legitimate entitlements, and the channels of corruption that these have bred over the years. But it has
been clearly stated that Aadhaar will only guarantee
identity, not rights, benets or entitlements. It is
only envisaged as a robust mechanism to eliminate
duplicate and fake identities by uniquely verifying
and authenticating genuine beneciaries and legitimate claimants.
After authentication by a centralised database of
biometric and demographic information to which
F R O N T L I N E

K. MURALI KUMAR

Many countries that launched their

biometric identication systems
scrapped the idea subsequently as
there were many unanswered
questions about the reliability of a
biometric system for the purposes
they had considered it.

BI OM E TR I C S C AN N I N G OF ngerprints during
the launch of UID enrolment at the General Post
Ofce in Bangalore on June 24.

service providers will be linked, this unique identication number alone will enable every individual to
access services and entitlements anywhere in the
country and at any time. The centralised database,
Central ID Repository (CIDR), will be maintained
and regulated by the UID Authority of India (UIDAI), which has been set up with the technocrat
Nandan Nilekani, former co-chairman of the IT enterprise Infosys, as its chairman.
So will the system do what it claims it will?
Socio-political issues and those of ethics and breach
of privacy have been raised in this regard in different
quarters. But purely at a technical level, the question
is whether the technology deployed for identication
will return answers that are unambiguous. Can it be
that denitive that the authentication and verication made by matching the presented data with the
stored data for a given individual in the CIDR will be
unique and refer only to that individual? Are there
no errors in such biometric systems?
What is biometrics? Biometrics, as dened by the
report of the Whither Biometrics Committee (2010)
of the National Research Council (NRC) of the Unit2 5

DECEMBER 2, 2011

ed States, is the automated recognition of individuals based on their behavioural

and
biological
characteristics. It is a tool for establishing condence that one is dealing
with individuals who are already
known (or not known) and consequently that they belong to a group
with certain rights (or to a group to be
denied certain privileges). It relies on
the presumption that individuals are
physically and behaviourally distinct
in a number of ways. The UID biometric system is a multi-modal one
and uses data on the ten (single) ngerprints, palm print or slap ngerprint (which combines the features of
ngerprints and hand geometry), iris
characteristics and facial images of every person.
The NRC study concludes thus:
Human recognition systems are inherently probabilistic and hence inherently fallible. The chance of error
can be made small but not eliminated. The scientic basis of biometrics
from understanding the distribution
of biometric traits within given populations to how humans interact with
biometric systems needs strengthening particularly as biometric technologies and systems are deployed in
systems of national importance. A
biometric identication system basically involves the matching of measured
biometric
data
against
previously collected data, the reference database, for a given individual.
Since the sources of uncertainty in a
biometric system are many, this can
only be approximate. So biometric systems can only provide probabilistic results.
SOURCES OF UNCERTAINTY

The sources of uncertainty include

variations in biological attributes both
within and between persons, sensor
characteristics, feature extraction and
matching algorithms. Traits captured
by biometric systems may change with
age, environment, disease, stress, occupational factors, socio-cultural aspects of the situation in which data
submission takes place, changes in human interface with the system and,

signicantly, even intentional alterations. This would be so particularly of

the poor engaged in labour-intensive
occupations such as farming, where
hands are put to rough use causing
weathering of nger and hand prints.
Recently, it has also been shown that
the three accepted truths about iris
biometrics involving pupil dilation,
contact lenses and template aging are
not valid. Kevin Bowyer and others
from the University of Notre Dame,
U.S., have demonstrated that iris biometric performance can be degraded
by varying pupil dilation, by wearing
non-cosmetic prescription contact
lenses, by time lapse between enrolment and verication and by crosssensor operation and that all these factors signicantly alter the matching
done to identify an individual uniquely.
According to the NRC report, there
are many gaps in our understanding of
the nature and distinctiveness and stability of biometric characteristics
across individuals and groups. No
biometric characteristic, it says, is
known to be entirely stable and distinctive across all groups. Biometric
traits have fundamental statistical
properties, distinctiveness, and differing degrees of stability under natural
physiological conditions and environmental challenges, many aspects of
which are not well understood, especially at large scales. (Emphasis added, given its particular relevance to the
UID, which has to deal with 1.21 billion registrations in the database.)
Calibration changes and aging of
sensors and the sensitivity of sensor
performance to variations in the ambient environment (such as light levels)
can affect the measurements. Biometric characteristics cannot be directly
compared, but their stable and distinctive features are extracted from
sensor outputs. Differences in feature
extraction algorithms chiey pattern
recognition algorithms can affect
performance, particularly when they
are designed to achieve interoperability among different proprietary systems. However, in the case of UID,
customised enrolment and extraction
2 6

F R O N T L I N E

software are supposed to have been

used in all systems used by enrolment
(registration) agencies across the
country. The same will have to be done
for systems at the service provider level, where a beneciarys data will be
captured for authentication. Similar
will be the issue with regard to matching algorithms. However, since matching is generally expected to be done at a
centralised database at CIDR, only the
algorithms performance or sensitivity
in handling variations in biometric data presented will be important, but this
needs to be known and quantied.
BIOMETRIC MATCH

A fundamental characteristic of a biometric system is that a biometric

match represents not certain recognition but probability of a correct recognition,
while
a
non-match
represents a probability rather than a
denitive conclusion that an individual is not known to the system. Thus,
even the best designed biometric systems will be incorrect or indeterminate in a fraction of cases, and both
false matches and false non-matches
will occur. Recognition errors of biometric systems are stated in terms of
false match rate (FMR) the probability that the matcher recognises an individual as a different enrolled subject
and the false non-match rate
(FNMR) the probability that the
matcher does not recognise a previously enrolled subject. (Correspondingly,
1FNMR means the probability that a
trait is correctly recognised and 1
FMR that an incorrect trait is not recognised.)
Assessing the validity of the match
results, even given this inherent uncertainty, the NRC report points out,
requires knowledge of the population
of users who are presenting to the system specically, what proportions
of those users should and should not
match. Even very small probabilities of
misrecognitions the failure to recognise an enrolled individual or the recognition of one individual as another
can become operationally signicant when an application is scaled to
handle millions of recognition at-

DECEMBER 2, 2011

tempts. Thus, well-articulated processes for verication, mitigation of undesired outcomes, and remediation
(for misrecognitions) are needed, and
presumptions and burdens of proof
should be designed conservatively,
with due attention to the systems inevitable uncertainties.
Indias current population is 1.21
billion and the UID scheme aims to
cover all the residents. No country has
attempted an identication and verication system on this scale. Though
enrolment for the proposed system is
stated to be voluntary, it will be on an
unprecedented scale because a potential beneciary can be denied access to
a particular scheme or service if the
individual does not enrol himself/herself and obtain the Aadhaar number.
Indeed, many countries that had
launched a biometric identication
system have scrapped the idea as there
are many unanswered questions about
the reliability of a biometric system for
the purposes they had considered it. It
should be remembered that the objective of the Indian system is developmental, rather than security and
related issues that countries of the
West have been concerned with, and is
aimed at delivering specic benets
and services to the underprivileged
and the poor of the country. The envisaged system is also correspondingly
different from those proposed elsewhere. To see if the system envisaged
by the UIDAI meets these criteria and
can deliver unique identication of all,
it is important to understand the way
the system is supposed to work.
THE PROCESS

The process of enrolment that is currently on already about 70 million

have enrolled involves presenting

oneself to one of the agencies, termed
registrars, identied by the UIDAI for
enrolment purposes across the country. This involves the registrar recording the individuals properly veried
basic demographic information
which includes name, address, gender,
date of birth, relationship and capturing biometric information which
includes palm print (slap ngerprint),
ten single ngerprints, iris imaging
and face imaging and this is encrypted and transmitted to the UIDAI electronically,
including
physical
transmission using pen-drives for locations that lack any data connectivity.
In principle, unknown errors or data
corruption could occur at the transmission stage.
Even assuming that the transmission is perfect, data presented during
enrolment need to be compared and
checked to avoid duplication deduplication and thus prevent any
fraud. Otherwise one individual may
end up with two Aadhaar numbers. So
any new set of biometric data ngerprints and iris prints need to be compared with those of already enrolled
individuals and shown to be different
from every other set. This comparison
was trivial when the rst person, Ranjana Sonawne of Tembhli village in
Maharashtra, enrolled because there
was no one before that to be compared
against. But it is clear that when the
nth person goes to enrol, the data will
have to be compared against the already enrolled n1 sets of data. So regF R O N T L I N E

2 7

istrars will send the applicants data to

the CIDR for de-duplication. The
CIDR will perform a search on key
demographic elds and on the biometrics for each new enrolment so as to
minimise duplication in the database.
Can one totally eliminate duplication? As noted earlier, this will depend
on the FNMR which, in a probabilistic
system, will be a nite number, however small. So there will be a small but
nite probability for duplication to occur. It is easy to see that this matching
exercise will involve n(n-1)/2 comparisons, which, as n becomes large, obviously, is a highly computationally
intensive exercise requiring large computing power. The number of comparisons will be several orders of
magnitude more than the numbers enrolled. So in a population of 1.21 billion, when the (1.21 billion+1)th
person comes in to enrol, the CIDR
server will have to perform about 700
million billion (7x1017) comparisons.
This may seem mind-boggling, but a
modern-day high-performance computer can do this pretty fast. And since
such a de-duplication exercise will be
done off-line before issuing the Aadhaar numbers, the time involved in
doing the comparisons is not the issue.
The key issue is the magnitude of probabilistic error in these comparisons. In
case of a false match, for example, the
system will reject a genuine applicant.
A computer cannot resolve FMR and
FNMR cases; it has to be done physically by tracking down individuals
and carrying out the re-enrolmentcum-matching exercise.
One way to improve the performance (reducing error rates) of the biometric system is to use the multimodal
approach. Data from different modalities face, palm print, ngerprints
and iris in the UID case are combined. Such systems obviously require
different kinds of sensors and software
(essentially different algorithms) to
capture and process each modality being used for comparison. Already, using 10 single ngerprints provides
additional information compared with
a single ngerprint and this improves
the performance, especially in very

DECEMBER 2, 2011

large-scale operations. Of course, this

will be computationally intensive, particularly when matching is to be done
from among millions of references in
the database. Multimodality, in addition, will require even greater computational resources.
(Spoong a single ngerprint has
been demonstrated to be possible and
such an impostor ngerprint can be
used to fool a biometric reader. But
this seems nearly impossible to do for
all the 10 ngerprints and the palm
print without being caught. And, combined with multimodal comparison,
chances of such impersonation become extremely low.)
ERROR RATE

The crucial issue, therefore, is the error

rate and how many false positive identications and false negative identication cases can potentially arise? A
Proof of Concept (POC) exercise was
carried out by the Authority with
40,000 subjects, divided into two sets
of 20,000, in rural Andhra Pradesh,
Karnataka and Bihar. This was done to
analyse data from rural groups where
quality of ngerprints is likely to be
uneven.
For POC analyses, only 10 ngerprint data and two iris data were used.
The face biometric was not used. According to the report, the study
which clearly was a multimodal one
observed an FNMR that is a person is
identied to be a different individual
and re-enrolled resulting in duplication of 0.0025 per cent.
Similarly, the study observed an
FMR where a new applicant is rejected because of false matching of 0.01
per cent using irises alone and 0.25 per
cent with ngerprints alone. But the
concluding claim of the report that by
doing analysis as shown in the examples above on real data captured under
typical Indian conditions in rural India, we can be condent that biometric
matching can be used on a wider scale
to realise the goal of creating unique
identities is clearly misleading as the
order of magnitude of such cases of
misrecognition in the real situation involving much larger numbers (say

hundreds of millions) will be pretty

large. The corresponding exercise of
resolving these cases would be huge. If
not resolved, large numbers would either be denied the benets due to them
or large number of impostors would
get benets that are not legitimately
theirs because of inherent errors in the
technology.
Also, as the NRC report emphasises, Although laboratory evaluations of
biometric systems are highly useful for
development and comparison, their
results often do not reliably predict
eld performance. Operational testing
and blind challenges of operational
systems tend to give more accurate and
usable results than developmental
performance evaluations and operational testing in circumscribed and
controlled environments. As against
this one-to-many comparisons at the
stage of identication of an individual
during the enrolment process, the
process of authentication or verication when a claimant presents his/her
UID number is a case of one-to-one
match. The process of Aadhaar authentication, as outlined by the UIDAI, is as follows:
Aadhaar number, along with other
attributes (including biometrics), is
submitted to the UIDAIs CIDR for
verication. The CIDR veries whether the data (demographic and/or biometric) submitted match the data
available in the CIDR and respond
with a yes/no answer. No personal
identity information is returned as
part of the response. And this process
can be done online by the service provider linked to the UIDAI. But the
authentication is based entirely on the
Aadhaar number submitted so that
this operation is reduced to a 1:1 match
(emphasis added).
This means that the Authority has
only to match the presented data with
the copy of the individuals biometrics
that was captured earlier and stored in
the CIDR corresponding to that UID
number. The CIDR will, in turn, say
yes or no to a particular query on, say,
the demographic information of the
individual, which can be veried
against documents such as Proof of
2 8

F R O N T L I N E

Address (PoA) or Proof of Identity

(PoI) by the service provider. This is
quite different from the verication required in biometric systems for security purposes, say entry through
airports, where every verication procedure may be a one-to-many matching exercise. But authentication,
despite being a 1:1 match, could have
its own error rates largely arising from
inevitable human errors, especially in
large-scale implementation for example, transmitting the wrong Aadhaar number or wrongly keyed-in
query and since the system is designed to answer only in yes/no, the
service provider, say NREGA, may not
be in a position to know that the error
has originated at the agency-end itself.
While, in principle, the UID number
holder should be able to crosscheck
what is being transmitted, in the rural
Indian context, given the level of illiteracy, this may not always happen.
More pertinently, the verication
process could itself become the channel of new ways of corruption. Suppose
the service provider deliberately transmits the wrong Aadhaar number during the authentication process and in
return obviously gets a no for an answer to any query pertaining to the
claimant of service or benets that he/
she is entitled to. Now this could become the basis of corruption. The service provider could say that the
service/benet can be provided
which the claimant is entitled to legitimately on payment of x amount of
money.
This socio-cultural trait of corruption will always nd new ways of doing
it, especially when such a project is
sought to be implemented on such a
countrywide scale involving hundreds
of million transactions. It is not clear
how this manual error deliberate or
otherwise at the man-machine interface in the UID system can be
avoided on a real-time basis during the
interaction between a potential beneciary and the service provider. In addition to probabilistic errors in the
biometric identication scheme, perhaps such issues could also become
cause of real concern.

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Why it failed in U.K.

Interview with Dr Edgar Whitley, research coordinator of the London School of
Economics Identity Project. B Y R . R A M A K U M A R

DR EDGAR WHITLEY is Reader in Information Systems at the Information Systems and Innovation Group in the London School of Economics
and Political Science. He has a PhD in Information
Systems from the LSE. His research and practical
interests include global outsourcing, social aspects of
IT-based change, collaborative innovation in an outsourcing context, and the business implications of
cloud computing. He is also an expert in identity,
privacy and security issues relating to informationand Net-based technologies.
Whitley was the research coordinator of the LSE
Identity Project and represented the project at the
Science and Technology Select Committee review of
the scheme. He has written extensively about the
United Kingdoms identity cards programme for
both academic and trade audiences and is a frequent
media commentator on the scheme. His recent publications include work on the technological and political aspects of the programme. In 2009, he
co-authored with Gus Hosein a book titled Global
Challenges for Identity Policies (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, U.K.). He spoke to Frontline at his
LSE ofce on October 18.
Thank you Edgar for agreeing to do this interview.
You would have guessed that the decision to do this
interview is inspired by certain recent events in
India, where an identity project largely similar to
the project in the United Kingdom is being
implemented. In your view, what were the major
F R O N T L I N E

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Biometric matching is not a perfect

process. There is an element of
judgment, and there will always be
the result: This ngerprint is pretty
close to three other ngerprints,
which you then need to check
manually and gure out.

E D G AR W HI TLE Y: "THE R E

was the question of

the schemes legality."

reasons behind the U.K. governments decision in
2004 to bring in an identity card project? Was there
only an internal security dimension to it? Or were
there other dimensions, too, such as
developmental?
In many ways, this is a really great question to
begin the interview, because it is kind of a puzzle that
we have never been able to nd a satisfactory answer
to ourselves. The idea of having identity cards has
been one that almost every Home Secretary had at
least thought about and had some consultations with
civil servants at some stage, before they backed out.
So, in the U.K., in 2002, there was a discussion about
entitlement cards that slowly gave way to identity
cards. I think the idea that there was a single policy
reason or a few policy reasons behind the identity
card project would not t the facts well. If you take
2 9

DECEMBER 2, 2011

entitlements to access public services,

then a few features of the project could
be thought of as leading us to such a
view. If you take national security,
then, certain other features of the project could be thought of as leading us to
such a view. In addition, there was a
real space where I could have jokingly
said about the reasons behind the project as: Oh, it is Tuesday today, so for
today X might be the reason behind
the project. This was partly the way
the description, discussion and arguments for the project evolved over
time, both naturally as a policy development and in response to the challenges and questions that the project
faced at each point of time.
So, by about 2009, when the popularity of the project was faltering badly, to put it mildly, emphasis suddenly
moved to enabling young people, who
did not necessarily have a detailed
credit history or biographical footprints, to be able to prove who they are
for frequent transactions, such as
opening a bank account or registering
for a mobile phone number, and so on.
This particular strategy was a response
to the fact that other claims were not
proving to be successful, as they had
initially hoped. Another argument was
that this scheme would help to build
condence in people working in airports, which was a typical national
security reason. But the airport
unions fought back against it and they
had to limit it to two small trial projects in two small airports. During other times, some of the arguments put
forward were responses to policy design decisions. So, sometimes they
thought it may be better to emphasise
the idea that the ID card can be used to
travel freely across Europe without
carrying passports.
So, the claims and responses kept
changing. That is why I said it was a
great question to begin this conversation. If the idea of having a centralised
database was to address questions of
identity fraud, so that people would
not have more than one identity card,
then there were other ways in which
you could do that without resort to
such centralisation of personal infor-

Evidence
showed that
such schemes
performed best
when set up for
clear, focussed
purposes.
mation. So, I suspect there was a broad
kind of direction; when some aspects
of the project appeared to be faltering
in popularity, other claims were made,
and this process continued as the project evolved.
DISCRIMINATION CONCERNS

Was the entitlement card, linked to

the ID card project, linked to reforms
in the National Health Services (NHS),
that is, to reduce leakages?
It was essentially about concerns
about people who were not entitled to
public-funded services like the NHS
having access to them. So, if students
were entitled to the NHS during the
period of their study, and they didnt
return to their home country, maybe
you could argue that fraud could be
reduced if you insist that the ID card
should be produced at the NHS centres. But there are practical problems
that emerge from this policy. The
counter argument was that this makes
the doctor a receptionist, equates him
to a border ofcial, having to do duties
way beyond what he was reasonably
expected to do. Further, this also rewrites what citizenship or entitlement
actually means.
There is also a very practical risk of
discrimination. If a surgeon is doing
this checking for entitlement, and I, as
a white middle-class male, come along
and say, I am sorry, I dont have my
card with me, but I would like to book a
doctors appointment, will I be treated in the same way as a U.K. national
whose skin colour is not white and rst
3 0

F R O N T L I N E

language is not English? The latter

might be checked more despite the fact
that their entitlement is exactly the
same as mine, and there are consequential concerns of discrimination
that are very serious.
What were the major arguments in
the LSE report?
We had argued that the ID card
system could offer some basic public
interest and commercial sector benets. But we also identied six key areas
of concern with the governments
plans. First, evidence from other national identity systems showed that
such schemes performed best when established for clear and focussed purposes. The U.K. scheme had multiple,
rather general, rationales, suggesting
that it had been gold-plated to justify
the high-tech scheme.
Secondly, there was concern over
whether the technology would work.
No scheme on this scale had been undertaken anywhere in the world. The
India project is, of course, even bigger.
Smaller and less ambitious schemes
had encountered substantial technological and operational problems,
which may get amplied in a largescale national system. The use of biometrics created particular concerns,
because this technology had never
been used on such a scale.
Thirdly, there was the question of
the schemes legality. A number of elements of the scheme potentially compromised Article 8 (privacy) and
Article 14 (discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The government was also in breach of
law by requiring ngerprints as a prerequisite for receipt of a passport.
There was a lot of talk from the proponents about international obligations.
However, the report found no case as
to why the ID card requirements
should be bound to passport
documents.
Fourthly, we felt that the National
Data Register was likely to create a
very large data pool in one place that
could be an enhanced security risk in
case of unauthorised accesses, hacking
or malfunctions.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Fifthly, according to us, an identity

system that is well accepted by citizens
is likely to be far more successful in use
than one that is controversial or raises
privacy concerns. This was important
in order to realise the public value that
citizens would want to carry their ID
cards with them and to use them in a
wide range of settings.
Finally, the cost part. Compliance
with the ID cards Bill would have
meant that even small rms would
have had to pay 250 for smartcard
readers and other requirements,
which would have added to the administrative burdens that rms faced.
You have argued in the report that the
scheme should be regarded as a
potential danger to the public interest
and to the legal rights of individuals.
Was privacy the legal right you were
referring to?
Yes, privacy in terms of the data
controlled by the government. There
was a separate concern about the audit
trail. So, when you entered into a
transaction where you had to produce
your ID card, the design of the system
was such that a record would be kept of
every such verication. Good idea, because it allows you to check for forgery
in transactions. However, the negative
version of that is it provides a detailed
record of every transaction you have
done, which can be of interest to either
people browsing the database or to security services or whoever. The record
here wouldnt be just that your identity
was veried; there would be a little
more data associated with the transaction. For example, you went to
Health Clinic Number 45. They used
your card and your ngerprint there
for verication. They did this at 12:37
hours. There is a series of metadata
associated with that visit that would be
there in the audit trail. And, of course,
it wouldnt take very long to realise
that, actually, Health Clinic Number
45 is a sexual health clinic. If the audit
trail also shows that you were there on
a number of occasions, it might be reasonable to infer certain kinds of things
that you perhaps do not want to disclose. Some things are not necessary to

Government
was in breach
of the law by
requiring
ngerprints for
receipt of a
passport.
be disclosed, but which are being recorded and stored in an accessible way
to various people because of the way
the system is designed.
A second concern was with the way
biometrics was being used. Although
ngerprints and iris scans are useful
ways of linking a person to their biometric, one problem if you take
straightforward images is that they
arent revocable. So, if you have a password for your e-mail account, and you
realise that someone has broken into
your e-mail account, you can always
reset your password. If the biometric is
stolen, the possibility of revoking it becomes almost impossible. Its gone.
Death of privacy is what some argue
in the wake of the massive
technological advances that we have
had. Your comments.
That is just one way of looking at
the technological advances. To my
mind, it is an overly deterministic
proposition. What you are doing here
is not allowing for user choice of designs and not allowing for innovative
alternative designs. Its a too straightforward view. Clearly, there are privacy concerns that are more difcult to
address with the new technologies.
The fact that when you visit a web
page, they know where you came from,
what your browser conguration is,
what plug-ins you have, what screen
resolution, and so on. You could be
pretty uniquely identied just from the
browser. But there are things that you
can do. You can do private browsing,
you can have do-not-track options, you
F R O N T L I N E

3 1

can delete your cookies and if you are

really sophisticated, you could also do
things like onion routing. There are
also opportunities for companies to
declare themselves as privacy-friendly,
and they could be good competitors to
other companies that are not so privacy-friendly. So, the idea of death of
privacy is too simplistic a view.
There are always alternatives;
there are always different ways in
which a society can respond to these
kinds of concerns and issues. There are
always possibilities to have privacy-enhancing means of identication. For
instance, you could have an ID card
with a chip, which has your ngerprint, or a part of it, stored as a template. It is not stored in any central
database, but it is in the chip of your
card and your card is with you.
So, when you have to prove that
you are you, you could just swipe the
card and give your ngerprint, after
which you could be identied as the
bearer of that card. No one gets your
information stored in that card. Thats
a privacy-friendly way of identication.
The rst generation technology
here are chip cards, the second generation technology is stickers on your
mobile phones and the third generation technology is a chip inside your
mobile phone. The chip may have your
name, your database, your ngerprint
template and a little bit more data on
who issued it and all that. But nothing
about where you have been, no audit
trails, no records and thus,
privacy-enhancing.
Are there countries that have tried
these methods?
This has not yet become the obvious way to do it because it takes a while
to get your head around. The point
here is that you need to understand
what it is that you want. Technically,
you only want proof that the person is
himself and a little bit more.
BIOMETRIC MATCHING

You were very critical of the

technology of biometrics being used

Cover Story
in the project. You argued that the
technology envisioned for this scheme
is, to a large extent, untested and
unreliable. Was this assessment
based on technical inputs from
biometric experts? Could you
elaborate on the comments from
biometric experts?
We used some feedback from biometric experts, but we also independently looked at already published
research work on biometrics. Certainly, in terms of the untestedness, the
scales of studies that had been done for
both ngerprints and iris scans were
fairly limited.
There were far better performance
results on a 1:1 match. So, this is Edgars ngerprint on the database, here
is Edgar, we do 1:1 match; this is more
likely to work. But that was not how
the U.K. was planning to use it. The
U.K. was trying to use biometrics to
also prevent duplicate identities. The
idea was that even if I try to enrol
twice, and even if I had created a fake
biographic identity (say, a John Smith
with a different address), when my ngerprint came in for a second time, the
system should come along and say:
We know this ngerprint, and this
belongs to Edgar Whitley and not say,
John Smith. Here, you have to match
every single biometric with every single previous biometric.
Biometric matching is not a perfect
process. There is an element of judgment, and there will always be the result: This ngerprint is pretty close to
three other ngerprints, which you
then need to check manually and gure out. But this increases the cost, let
alone concerns about reliability.
Now, there is always a possibility of
a fraudulent use; that is, if I am really
John Smith, I could have applied with
Edgar Whitleys biographical details.
Thats possible, though difcult.
So, for instance, victims of domestic abuse could be given a completely
new identity with a stolen set of biometrics.
You also have major issues with
gender reassignment, which will create unnecessary interferences into
your private life.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

The U.K. project was to have iris

scans, but they were dropped later.
Was there a reason?
Iris scans were always present in
the documents that were discussed in
Parliament. The proponents of iris
scans claim that they are far better
than ngerprints at differentiating
people. That is because you collect a far
larger number of data points in your
iris scan than in the ngerprint. The
problem with the iris biometric at that
time was that the set-up for the capture of the iris biometric had to be well
managed.

You could have

an ID card with
a chip, which
has your
ngerprint, or a
part of it, stored
as a template.
If there is a sudden good sunshine,
very noticeably the room is brightened
up. So, you need to potentially adjust
your iris-capture device to allow for
those kinds of set-ups. But we know
from the experience of airports that
iris devices often have problems in operating at their full performance level;
airports are designed by architects,
and architects use lots of glass and
open space, which allow for light to
come in seamlessly and brighten up
the space. This creates a lot of problems for iris recognition systems.
There is also interesting empirical
research that shows that as you move
from one version of the technology to
newer versions, you get performance
differences because they capture iris
images slightly differently.
So, you dont get quite the same
results in matching as you move with
versions. These were the reasons why
the U.K. government dropped iris
scans from the plan in 2006.
3 2

F R O N T L I N E

What was the nature of the response

among the British people to the
identity project? Were there mass
protests? Or was it mostly through
the social media that the protest
spread? And, was it due to these
protests that the project was nally
shelved in 2010?
It got scrapped because the parties
that came to power were opposed to it.
In practice, you dont vote on the basis
of your view of one single scheme.
There was a lobby group called
NO2ID, which was very effective in
getting the message out about their
concerns with the whole process. I was
on their mailing list, and every week,
along with the news items on the
scheme, there was also information on
where meetings were to be held, where
you could meet MPs and ask questions
about the scheme, and so on. Scores of
local activists got involved in this,
again from both the Left and the Right.
This was no civil disobedience movement, but just explaining what these
proposals were and what they are going to mean, and trying to convince
people over what some of the dangers
were.
They were also continuously talking to journalists and explaining what
this meant in practice, at levels of detail. They kept telling journalists why
biometrics could not be the magic
bullet. The press coverage was overwhelmingly comfortable with that
critical analysis.
The technology press and its science and technology correspondents
were eager to deal with these questions. They asked those questions. So,
there was general awareness building
in a major way.
Have you been following the Indian
debate around unique ID numbers?
Any views?
I have been following it one step
removed. We have been speaking to
people though. I think in India, too, it
is important to raise these policy questions that I referred to just a while
back.
Thank you very much, Edgar.

Nuclear Issues

DECEMBER 2, 2011

We can allay the fears

Interview with Srikumar Banerjee, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, and
Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy. B Y T . S . S U B R A M A N I A N

AN organisation called the Peoples Movement

Against Nuclear Energy (PMANE) is demanding
that the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project
(KKNPP) in Tamil Nadu be scrapped. The Centre
has set up a 15-member experts group to allay the
fears of the people living around Kudankulam on the
safety of the two Russian reactors that have been
built there. In this context, Frontline met Srikumar
Banerjee, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, in
his ofce in Mumbai on October 27. Banerjee, who is
also Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy
(DAE), said the department was ready to answer
any question on the safety of the VVER-1000 reactors at Kudankulam.
He was proud that in the nuclear eld, we have
run completely alone these years and that the countrys self-esteem has come from this. Banerjee, who
has a B.Tech in metallurgy from the Indian Institute
of Technology Kharagpur and later earned a PhD in
metallurgical engineering, asserted that nuclear
power will give the country long-term energy
security.
Excerpts from the interview:
The Kudankulam issue seems to have reached a
deadlock. Where do we go from here?
The names on the experts panel have been given
by the DAE to the Tamil Nadu government. From
the press, other media and websites, we have collected the questions raised by the local people. We have
seen these questions and we are trying to answer
F R O N T L I N E

SHASHI ASHIWAL

We would like to explain to the

people around [the Kudankulam
plant] that we are not going to
bring anything which is dangerous
either to their lives or to their
livelihood. All this is only for the
benet of the people.

S R I KUM AR BA N E R J E E . I N the background is an

image of Homi J. Bhabha, the father of the Indian
atomic energy programme.

them. If the DAE personnel themselves answer these

questions, the protesters say, We will not accept
them and we want an independent opinion. It is in
this context that the government has given a list of 15
experts, and we have identied their domain of
knowledge and expertise. This will actually make it
convenient for deliberations to focus on specic issues and try to nd answers to them.
We have identied specic subject areas such as
how safe the plant is in case of a seismic event or
when sea-water level rises by processes such as a
tsunami, how the plant affects the livelihood of the
people residing in the neighbourhood, and what the
safety features of Kudankulam vis-a-vis some of the
other VVER reactors are. You may be aware that we
had negotiated with the Russians to provide additional safety features for the Kudankulam reactors.
What are those safety features?
I will come to that later. Then there is the question of radiation in the environment that is going to
3 3

DECEMBER 2, 2011

affect the people. There is yet another

question about the discharge [of coolant water] into the sea. There are two
kinds of apprehensions here that the
sea water will become hot and that it
will become radioactive. For each of
these, we have quantitative, wellfounded and accurate answers. With
these answers, we would like to explain
to the people around [the plant] that
we are not going to bring anything
which is dangerous either to their lives
or to their livelihood. All this is only for
the benet of the people around and
elsewhere because 2,000 MWe of electricity will be generated from Kudankulam 1 and 2 will feed the southern
grid. Out of this 2,000 MWe, 925
MWe will go to Tamil Nadu and the
rest to neighbouring States.
The State government will conduct
the meetings. Our panel will answer
the questions. If there are questions
which need further studies, the experts
on the panel will collect the questions
and perhaps have a second session to
answer them. So I dont consider it a
deadlock. Nothing has happened to
call it a deadlock. There will always be

an open discussion on points, and it is

our responsibility and duty to satisfy
the queries coming up in the minds of
people. The best way [to go about this]
is to organise an open meeting near
Kudankulam. When talking specically of the Kudankulam plant, there will
be specic questions, and we can address each one of them. If people are
unhappy or not satised, let us try to
answer them again with facts and gures and all the tests that have been
done, which are backed by a huge
amount of information. Through that,
we will be able to allay the peoples
fears.
Some leaders of the PMANE insist
that the work at the project should
halt rst and that the experts panel
can talk to people later to allay their
fears.
Physically, the work has halted.
But it is not advisable to do that. What
exactly do they mean when they say the
work should halt? The reactor has
high-temperature systems, owing
coolant and high-voltage systems. So it
is not a matter of switching off the

whole thing and bringing it to a halt.

Whenever you have a coolant in
circuit and you make it stagnant, then
there is the possibility of some undue
corrosion effect on some of the components. Obviously, this is not normally
done. You always run the coolant and
this requires the attention of technicians as well as the supporting people.
So far as the progress of work is
concerned, we were actually expecting
to bring the criticality of the rst unit
by September or October after the fuel
loading. We were just waiting for the
fuel-loading clearance. So this has essentially been halted. There is no big
dispute on this issue. If by halting you
mean that not a single person should
enter the plant, then we are allowing a
major asset of the country to degrade,
and this is not acceptable. Really
speaking, as far as the programme of
work is concerned, we have halted.
People are unable to go inside [the
plant]. We need several thousands of
people to work inside during the last
phase of the work. But we are unable
even to enter the place. So this is the
situation today. So I dont see there is

DECEMBER 2, 2011

any real reason or real point of controversy on whether work has been halted
or not. But you must run the essential
facilities for the safety and long-term
service of the equipment.

been achieved earlier. So, for me it was

a big surprise that people around started agitating like this. I really do not
know why this is happening.
One of the reasons could be that
people saw the Fukushima event and it
has brought about a sense of fear that a
nuclear accident may. Fukushima
happened against the background of a
natural disaster. Maybe, 20,000 died
[in the earthquake and tsunami] but
not in the Fukushima [nuclear] accident. In the Fukushima accident, the
radiation casualty is still none. Zero.

In your opinion, why did the agitation

erupt now when, as you said, you
were so close to starting up the rst
reactor?
I would say that it was a little unexpected because when you go in for a
project, you have to have a cordial relationship with the people around. That
cordial relationship existed all along.
There was an excellent relationship
with the people living around, and our
engineers have been visiting them regularly and taking part in their social
and educational programmes. We
have actually been looking forward to
further enriching our relationship
with the people. Today, when we talk
of this kind of a project, we expect the
reactors to run for 40 to 60 years. So
the relationship between people working inside the plant and those who live
outside has to be excellent because it is
a kind of social relationship. That had

In the Fukushima nuclear accident,

are the casualty gures due to
exposure to radiation really zero?
In Fukushima, the casualty due to
radiation exposure is not there at all
even today. The Fukushima reactors
were 40-year-old vintage reactors. Not
that they were unsafe. They could not
stand the severity of the natural events,
not one but two successive events the
earthquake and the tsunami. Even
then, you would have noticed that all
the reactors stopped at the rst signal
of the earthquake. So there was no
nuclear ssion energy release in these
accidents. They were quite safe on
that.
The problem was because of hydrogen re. Hydrogen got mixed with
air. The removal of the decay heat [in
the Fukushima reactors] was not possible because there was no power in the
whole area and so no pumps operated.
Decay heat means there is some radioactive substance in the reactor and it
decays even after the reactor is shut
down.
Today, reactors, particularly the
VVER reactors, have a passive safety
system, which does not need
electricity.

the two
reactor units of the
Kudankulam Nuclear
Power Project.

A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN

A VIEW OF

The VVER-1000 reactors at

Kudankulam have passive safety
systems, do they not?
These issues were addressed in Kudankulam long before Fukushima
happened. It is possible for us to explain each of these points to the people
in the simplest language to convince
them that one need not worry.

The second reason [for the agitation against the Kudankulam project]
was that a drill had to be conducted,
which was a requirement as per the
Atomic Energy Regulatory Board
[AERB]. That is, before you start up a
reactor, you ensure that, in the remotest possibility of an accident, you
should be able to evacuate the people
from the nearby area. This exercise
was being planned, which again
caused undue fear among people.
There was another event. When
you reach standardisation, steam is
produced. In the hot run, before the
fuel is loaded, steam is created and is
let out. Normally, the steam goes to the
turbine to generate electricity. But
here [in the hot run], it was let out. In
the process, it created a noise which
again was falsely understood by some
people to be an accident. But it was a
very normal operation. It could be yet
another trigger point which caused
fear.
Why was Nuclear Power Corporation
of India Limited (NPCIL) unaware that
such a situation was building up?
The point is the situation did not
build up in a gradual manner. There
was no indication that there would be
serious unrest around that area. There
was no inkling of that. There is denitely an anti-nuclear lobby [at work].
It suddenly used the situation to organise a relay hunger strike, which
amassed a large number of people to
make a protest. We cannot go against
people. It is not a question of shouting
and counter-shouting. How can we do
that? As a [government] department,
we have to act in a responsible manner.
We can only say that we are ready to
answer any question. We are ready to
meet everybody individually and explain the situation. We have all the
facts and gures and [we can] explain
these to them. That is where we stand.
We can also remind people what damage they are doing [to the reactors]
with this kind of action. When there
was an anti-nuclear protest after the
Chernobyl accident, some countries
stopped their VVER reactors. After 10
years of inaction, they revived these

F R O N T L I N E

3 5

DECEMBER 2, 2011

reactors to make them operational. So

imagine the economic loss, which is in
terms of not only the years lost but the
kilowatts of energy lost. The economic
loss has to be seen in terms of development loss.
We are an impoverished country in
terms of power supply. Tamil Nadu
today has a serious power shortage.
Tamil Nadu is also a State which is
aspiring for major industrial growth,
which will happen only when there is
power. Now you have 2,000 MWe
ready for delivery. But a situation has
been created which is not allowing this
to happen. Basically, this is a step towards decelerating the economic
growth process, the growth of livelihood of people and their quality of life.
There was only limited employment in

those areas. So it has to be seen that we

are providing power, which is the most
essential and important ingredient for
economic and industrial growth.

ing all this information because it is

already available. If some more details
are required, that is not a problem at
all. So this is not at all an obstacle to
explain the questions raised by the
protesters. All this can be shown right
away because much of it is already on
the website. Whatever is not there can
also be shared. These are not secret
documents that cannot be shared.
But a very detailed EIA was done as
per the normal DAE notication. Public hearing was conducted. Responses
from the stakeholders were taken, the
review of the appraisal committee of
the Ministry of Environment and Forests was taken. Notication was done
in 2006. So there is total transparency
in the process in the latest condition.
All this was discussed during [the
public hearing] for 3 and 4. The entire
site was cleared then. The site selection
process continued over a long period of
a decade or so. Only the State government offers the sites.

The leaders of the PMANE say that

the DAE has not made public the
environment impact assessment (EIA)
and site selection reports of the rst
two units. It wants them to be made
public. This seems to be an important
demand.
When the EIA assessment was
done for Kudankulam 1 and 2 sometime in 1998 or 2001, there was no
requirement for a public hearing. So it
was not done for Kudankulam 1 and 2.
Subsequently, public hearing was
done in detail for Kudankulam 3, 4, 5
and 6, and there is no difculty in shar-

A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN

The State government offers the

sites?
After it offers, you make a detailed
investigation because you want to
minimise the displacement of people.
In this case [Kudankulam], there was
no displacement issue because nobody
was living there. Secondly, you take
geotechnical information. You see the
potential of an earthquake or a tsunami occurring there. Then you see the
water level rise at what level you
should build your plant. The meteorological studies are done. It is a very
extensive study. We did one more
thing in 2001-02, which was not necessary. We did a thermal ecology study.

A DE M O N S T R A T I O N A GA I N S T the nuclear power plant in Palayamkottai,

80 km from the project site, on November 5.
3 6

F R O N T L I N E

About coolant water being let into the

sea?
Yes. This is a very important issue.
We cannot use European standards
because the European sea temperature
is low. Our average sea temperature
being higher, we did our own study. To
do that study in detail, we have the
Board of Research in Nuclear Sciences. I was the BRNS Secretary when
the study was done. We wanted an
independent opinion. Seven or eight

A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN

DECEMBER 2, 2011

TH E C ON T A I N ME N T D O M E of the second reactor building of the project seen through the barrel hole of the rst
reactor building. A December 2008 photograph.

universities were given the job of doing

thermal ecological studies. They periodically did the sample collection during all the seasons. Every two months,
they did a survey of the area.
They studied the sea temperature
around Kudankulam?
There was a study not only at Kudankulam but wherever nuclear power
stations were already operating [in India]. The studies were done on the
temperature rise in the outfall [in the
sea] near Kalpakkam and Tarapur,
and the river Kali near the Kaiga nuclear power station. They also collected samples to see what organisms,
including microorganisms, were present in those areas because sh depend
on them for food. So this extensive
survey was done over a period of ve
years. They found that the maximum
rise in the temperature by the coolant
water being let into the sea could be
kept at 70 Celsius. Since we have a very

good mixing zone [in the sea], it does

not reach that temperature. It is lower
than that.
It does not reach 70C?
It goes to a maximum of, in the
worst months, 5-60C. Not more than
that. You also have a system of mixing
in a zone with a diameter of 300
metres to 400 m where there will be a
slight rise in the temperature. Slight,
not much. So this has been ensured in
the design. Plus a very expensive water-intake structure has been created.
When you take the water from the sea,
sh will come along with it. So there is
a sh-return mechanism. When the
water comes in, there is a mechanism
by which all the sh can be returned to
the sea. An interesting thing is that this
[coolant water being let into the sea] is
not new. Tamil Nadu has had nuclear
power reactors at Kalpakkam for over
30 years. They know that in Kalpakkam or Tarapur, there has been no
F R O N T L I N E

3 7

degradation in sh catch. The sh have

not been harmed. That part is well
understood. We can prove it. Again, I
dont see any reason why the shermen
around Kudankulam should feel that
their livelihood will be affected.
Another issue that is being raised is
that the radiation level goes up significantly around a nuclear power station. This is absolutely unfounded. The
natural average radiation value that
you get anywhere is 2,400 millisievert
[mSv] a year. That is the kind of dose
in nature.
But this average uctuates considerably [from place to place]. I am talking of Kerala, where it is much higher.
At Tarapur station, it is 2,413 mSv;
2,400 is from nature and there is an
additional 13 mSv near the Tarapur
Atomic Power Station. What is the
AERBs limit? A thousand above
2,400 is the AERB limit. At Narora
[Atomic Power Station in Uttar Pradesh], it is 1.1. At Kaiga, it is 1.7.

TH E P A S S I V E H E A T REM O V A L S Y S T EM uses atmospheric air to cool the fuel core when there is a station blackout. It is
named so because it does not need any pumps or electricity to keep the fuel core cooled and prevent it from melting.
TH E AC T I V E S A F E T Y S Y S T EM S : 1. The containment spray system removes the heat released into the reactor containment
building in the case of a break in the coolant pipeline inside the containment. Through condensation of steam produced in case of
an accident, the containment spray system limits the temperature and pressure values to levels at which containment integrity is
assured and connes the radioactivity to the reactor building. The addition of chemicals to the spray water reduces the
concentration of ssion products in the containment atmosphere. 2. The emergency core cooling system (ECCS) provides for
cooling of the core under a wide range of postulated accidents. In the case of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA), borated cooling
water is injected into the reactor core to remove the decay heat and preserve core integrity. 3. The emergency boron injection
system will bring the reactor to a safe shutdown by injecting highly concentrated boric acid solution into the reactor core in case of
accidents. 4.There are 12 high-capacity hydroaccumulators (water tanks with thousands of litres of water) to ensure that the
reactor is lled with water mixed with boron in the case of a loss of water from the reactor core. 5. Air-cooled heat exchangers
with natural circulation of air are provided on each steam generator to remove the decay heat from the reactor. 6. There are
hydrogen recombiners to form water to prevent the accumulation of an explosive quantity of hydrogen as happened in the
Fukushima reactors. In case of an accident, when part of the fuel gets exposed and the zircaloy cladding around the fuel pellets
reacts with water, hydrogen will split from the water molecule. When this hydrogen increases to more than 4 per cent in the
atmosphere, it leads to an explosion. To prevent this from happening in the Kudankulam reactors, 154 box-like structures, xed in
designated locations within the reactor building, are lled with chemicals, including palladium. If the fuel core melts and the
hydrogen level rises to more than 4 per cent, palladium will force the hydrogen to react with oxygen and turn into water.

So it is just 2401.1 mSv at Narora?

Yes. If you go to Hyderabad, there
is a much higher radiation level. So it is
totally unfounded [that the radiation
level around a nuclear power station is
high]. The monitoring is done in a
systematic and extensive manner. But
if you take a ight from Delhi to Mumbai, you get a high radiation dose. If
you take an X-ray or CAT scan, you get
a tremendously higher radiation dose.
Then you realise that it is an unfounded fear and if you keep saying this to

people who have no access to information or knowledge, then it creates confusion.

This
misinformation
[campaign] is most unfortunate.
We have environment survey laboratories [in each nuclear power station]. They are reporting [the
radiation doses] regularly to the
AERB, which puts it on the website.
These are transparent data, which are
available. They can be veried by anybody. There is no issue on this. There
was the issue raised about the waste.
3 8

F R O N T L I N E

How do you manage the nuclear

waste from the reactors?
In our case, the high-level waste
[HLW] is in the spent fuel. In the
Indian system, spent fuel is never just
stored. It is reprocessed to get plutonium, and that plutonium is used in fast
reactors. So we produce much less
waste compared with countries that
have a once-through fuel cycle. The
spent fuel reprocessing set-up is not in
Kudankulam. There is no plan for such
a thing to be built there.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

At Kudankulam, the reactor is inside a

cylindrical building called the reactor building.
This is capped with a dome that has a primary
containment (inner containment) and a
secondary containment (outer containment).
The inner containment wall and dome are
made of pre-stressed concrete, 1.2 m thick, and
lined with leak-proof 8-mm-thick carbon steel
sheets and designed to withstand internal
pressure and high temperatures during
accidents. The outer containment is made of
reinforced concrete, 0.6 m thick. In the space
between the inner and outer containments, a
vacuum is maintained to prevent any
leakage to the environment. The
inner containment vertical wall and
the dome protect the reactor from
damage during tsunamis,
earthquakes, explosions or from
aircraft crashing on to the building,
or if missiles are aimed at it.

Kudankulam is only for reactors.

Who is thinking of a reprocessing
plant there? Reprocessing plants
[will] come up in other places and they
also do not create waste. We try to see
that we get plutonium out of reprocessing and that plutonium is pushed
into fast reactors.
Ultimately, there is a very small
quantity of HLW. Since the quantity is
very small, it can be converted into
vitried form glass form and it can
be stored for a long time in a suitable
geological repository. For short-term
or intermediate storage, it can be kept
in an underground vault, which is air
cooled. This is how it is being maintained at Tarapur.
I went there recently.
You have seen how much empty
space is there to keep it. At Kudanku-

lam, there will be no issue about nuclear waste.

People fear the storage of liquid
waste. I have seen liquid waste being
stored in underground tanks at the
Kalpakkam Reprocessing Plant
(KARP). Solid waste can be converted
into glass. But how can this liquid
waste be disposed of?
Even the liquid waste at KARP is
reprocessed, and there is nally volume reduction. From there, it is converted into small-sized solid waste.
There is no question of discharging
anything into the sea. There may be
some very small quantity, within the
AERBs or the IAEAs [International
Atomic Energy Agency] limit and only
that is to be discharged. There are very,
very stringent regulations not to release anything above the stipulated
F R O N T L I N E

3 9

limit. So there is no question of discharging anything into the sea. If people think that we discharge our
radioactive waste into the sea, anybody
can detect it immediately. If we do
that, we are committing a very serious
offence. These are all just fears that
have got into the minds of people.
Why have you postponed the decision
to buy the EPR-1650 reactors for
Jaitapur? French Industry Minister
Eric Besson has quoted you as having
said that India would import only
reactors certied by its own
authorities and that you now want
Fukushima certication. What do you
mean by Fukushima certication?
It is called post-Fukushima certication. It means that if we experience
any beyond-design-basis event, every
system has to withstand it. Different

Nuclear Issues
stress tests are given. That is, you allow
certain seismic waves to come in and
see what components can withstand
the seismicity. If there is a ood, you
see where the equipment is and whether it will get ooded? These kinds of
assessments need to be done for every
piece of equipment in the whole plant
area and then you can certify that they
will withstand not only design-basis
accidents but also beyond-the-designbasis accidents.
We will not be buying the full reactors. We will be building them ourselves with some components from
outside. We will have to get a complete
certication rst of all from the country of origin. These countries also have
regulatory bodies which have to rst
say, We have checked and these systems will withstand these kinds of extreme natural events. That is the
prerequisite. Once we have that, our
regulatory authorities will check on
that. Plus the DAE and NPCIL will
check whether everything is acceptable to us. This is called beyond-Fukushima certication because we have
seen something happen in Fukushima
and so we now have to see how plants
will withstand each of these external
events. We are waiting for that analysis
to come and once it is released, we will
be able to consider it.
When is the Pressurised Water
Reactor, which uses enriched
uranium as fuel, on board Indias
nuclear-powered submarine, Arihant,
going critical?
I was actually hoping that it would
be started up by the end of this year,
but I am told now that it will be commissioned in January or February
2012. Some things are yet to be settled.
You are having problems at
Kudankulam and Jaitapur. West
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata
Banerjee has said no to the Russian
reactors coming up at Haripur in her
State. There may be problems at
Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh where
imported reactors will be built. Are
you looking for an alternative site to
Haripur?

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Yes. We are looking for alternative

sites. That is not an issue.
How are you going to meet the target
of 60,000 MWe of nuclear energy by
2032?
People have seen on television that
nuclear power stations can blow up
and it has created a bad impression in
their minds. It is against this background that we are seeing this
situation.
On the other side, the country is
poised for major economic growth.
When there is stagnation the world
over, this is a great opportunity for the
country. This is the right time for India
to grow. This is not Sensex-oriented
growth. It has to be backed by some
solid, real growth in power, food, production of steel, manufacturing capability, etc. and not just some numbers.
We have all the ingredients.
In the nuclear power eld, we have
run completely alone these years,
without any relationship [partnership] with anybody else in the world.
The countrys self-esteem has come
from this. We could do very sophisticated things although we were totally
isolated.
We could develop complete technologies from mining of uranium to
the nal nish of building reactors,
reprocessing, waste management, and
so on. It is indigenously developed and
commercially viable. It is not just doing things at a huge expense but we can
show that we can do things at internationally competitive rates. Our capital
cost of setting up a nuclear power plant
is the lowest in the world. It is our own
technology.
How much is it per megawatt?
Rs.6 crore to Rs.8 crore. Even large
plants where you get the advantage of
size cannot compete with this cost. But
then, why are we buying reactors from
outside? Because we need to grow fast.
Also the most robust systems are these
Light Water Reactors [LWRs]/Pressurised Water Reactors [PWRs]. For
our growth, we cannot just think of one
type of reactor. We want to have a mix,
some Pressurised Heavy Water Reac4 0

F R O N T L I N E

tors [PHWRs] and some LWRs in the

rst phase. In the second phase, we
will go for our own Fast Reactors. I
hope that the logic behind these developments will strike the minds of the
people. Today, there may be a disarrangement but it will not be there forever. They will come to their senses.
On the other side, today, more than
400 million people in India do not
have access to electricity. So it is necessary to grow very fast in electricity generation, and this can be done by
nuclear energy, which is clean energy.
It does not generate carbon dioxide. If
you are going to generate electricity
only by carbon, it will be polluting.
Today, we produce 5 per cent of the
carbon dioxide emission in the world.
It may go up to 50 per cent. So it is not
possible to take that path.
You may say there is solar energy.
You should exploit solar energy, biomass and wind energy, to the fullest
extent. But there is a difference between these kinds of energy paths and
the nuclear path. These are distributed
forms of energy. Nuclear power is a
concentrated form of energy.
There are two kinds of energy
needs. One is from the grid. Another is
local area, for lighting up streets and
homes, and this part can be done by
wind. But you cannot have industrial
growth, large-scale electricity deployment in agricultural pumpsets, etc.
without grid power. What is the way
forward? Nuclear power will give the
country long-term energy security. If
we miss the opportunity now, we will
be miss it forever.
Our energy growth is retarded only
because we are dependent so much on
energy imports. Nuclear power can
eventually give this country complete
energy security and can enable it to
come out of the shackle of energy imports. That is why we are saying nuclear power is important.
We have done this development
[in nuclear power] indigenously. We
are buying a few reactors. That does
not mean we will stop our indigenous
development. We will continue to do
our indigenous development of even
LWRs.

The States/West Bengal

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Rift in the foothills

A section of the Adivasi leadership proposes a Gorkhaland and Adivasi Territorial

PTI

Administration in place of the GTA. B Y S U H R I D S A N K A R C H A T T O P A D H Y A Y

W H E N AK H I L B H A R A T I Y A Adivasi Vikash Parishads leader John Barla (right) and Gorkha Janmukti Morcha
president Bimal Gurung met at Mongpong in Kalimpong district on October 30.

The GJM is trying to project this

development as a boost for its
demand to include parts of the
foothills within the GTAs
jurisdiction. But the top tribal
leadership rejects the alliance.
WITH a section of the leadership of the Akhil
Bharatiya Adivasi Vikash Parishad (ABAVP) of
north Bengal burying the hatchet with its bitter rival
the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), the latters
demand to include parts of the Terai and the Doars
along, of course, with the Darjeeling hills within the
area under the jurisdiction of the proposed Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) may have
gained strength, albeit marginally.
On October 30, certain inuential local leaders
of the ABAVP, including John Barla, president of the
outts Doars unit, and top GJM leaders, headed by
party supremo Bimal Gurung, jointly proposed the
setting up of the Gorkhaland and Adivasi Territorial
F R O N T L I N E

Administration (G&ATA), which will be replacing

the proposed GTA. While the GJM is trying to project this development as a shot in the arm for its
demand to include parts of the foothills within its
jurisdiction, it seems unlikely that the majority of the
tribal people in the region will be agreeable to joining
hands with their bitter Gorkha rivals.
However, it may become a cause for concern for
the State government, as an understanding with
even a small section of the Adivasi population may
provide the GJM with greater scope to exert political
pressure and fuel further resentment among the
tribal, non-tribal and non-Gorkha populations in
the region.
Interestingly, just three months earlier, after the
State government set up a committee headed by
Justice (retd) Shyamal Sen to look into the GJMs
demand to include 196 mouzas in the Doars and 199
mouzas in the Terai in the GTA, the ABAVP had
made it clear that it would not concede even an inch
of land and even threatened to go on an agitation.
The two parties have a history of frequent violent
confrontations over the issue, and one of the main
obstacles to the GJMs demand to include these
areas in its proposed map of Gorkhaland has been
the tribal outts erce opposition to it. As long as
4 1

The States/West Bengal

we were at loggerheads, it was convenient for the State government. But
now that there is a unity of sorts, our
movement has become stronger, a
GJM source told Frontline.
The top leadership of the ABAVP,
however, has rejected the proposed
tie-up. This deal is illegal and was
struck keeping the tribal people of the
region in the dark. John Barla and
those who were party to this did not
have the authority to enter into an alliance. This is our land, and our stand
remains the same: We will not give an
inch of it to the GTA, Birsa Tirkey,
State president of the ABAVP, told
Frontline.
West Bengal State secretary of the
ABAVP, Tej Kuman Toppo, however,
said that the tribal leaders of the Terai
and the Doars were forced to take this
step because of the apparent apathy of
the earlier Left Front government and
the present Trinamool Congress government to the plight of the tribal people in the region.
When we met Mamata Banerjee
to discuss the establishment of the
Adivasi Territorial Administration under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian
Constitution, we did not receive any
positive answer from her. Our people
are poor and our resources limited;
how long can we carry on the agitation? It was both for the benet of the
tribal people in the Terai and the
Doars and for the cause of communal
harmony that we decided to be a part
of the proposed G&ATA, Toppo told
Frontline. He insisted that there had
been no rebellion in the organisation
and that if the people of the region did
not want to be a part of the proposed
set-up, the idea would be dropped.
We will have to convince the people of
the advantages of being a part of the
G&ATA, he said.
UNRESOLVED CONTRADICTIONS

The dissenting group within the tribal

leadership, however, seems to have no
answer to some of the inherent contradictions of the decision. First, Toppo
envisages an arrangement whereby
the GJM and the ABAVP, though parts
of the same body, will function and

independently of each other in their

respective autonomous territories, the
Terai and the Doars for the tribal people and the hills for the GJM.
In the plains, there will be the
ATA and in the hills, the GTA, he told
Frontline. However, such a development can only take place after the Shyamal Sen Committee has come up with
its report.
While the GJM has made it clear
that it will not budge from its demand,
the majority of the 40-lakh strong tribal population in the region is unlikely
to accept quietly a report going in favour of the GJM.
It is, after all, an issue over which
the two sides have had violent clashes
in the last three years. Moreover, it also
suggests that two autonomous territories will exist within one autonomous
body in the State.
Secondly, while the GJM seems determined, at least theoretically, not to
deviate from its ultimate goal of Gorkhaland, even those leaders of the
ABAVP who wish to be a part of the
G&ATA rule out any possibility of seceding from the State. Even if they
demand Gorkhaland, we will never
break away from the State of West
Bengal, said Toppo.
According to Asok Bhattacharya,
former Left Front Minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist)s
heavyweight in north Bengal, the development will ultimately prove a
damp squib. From what we know of
the general sentiments of the tribal
people, they will never want to go
along with the GJM. In fact, those
leaders who initiated this arrangement are already beginning to lose
popular support, he told Frontline.
What still remains unclear is the
sudden change of heart of the dissenting tribal leaders. According to some
political observers, lack of encouraging responses from the State government for their cause, coupled with loss
of condence after their failure at the
Assembly elections, may have prompted this desperate move.
In the last Assembly elections they
lost everywhere they contested, whereas we not only won our seats in the
4 2

F R O N T L I N E

DECEMBER 2, 2011

hills, but were instrumental in the Trinamool Congress victory in at least

seven seats from the plains. They probably realised that it would be better for
them if they threw in their lot with us,
senior GJM leader Harka Bahadur
Chhetri told Frontline.
GORKHA IDENTITY
COMPROMISED

Even in the Darjeeling hills there are

many who are against the aforesaid
arrangement. They feel such an alliance would compromise the hill peoples struggle to establish their ethnic
identity the main pillar upon which
the Gorkhaland movement stands.
Moreover, there is a fear that the
Adivasi representation within the organisation may overshadow the Gorkhas. While there are only three
constituencies in the hills, the Terai
and the Doars, with its sizable Adivasi
population, have more than double
that. This is our movement and the
ABAVP is trying to ride piggyback on
it, a source in the hills pointed out.
The GJMs focus too seems to have
shifted from the long-term prospect of
Gorkhaland to the immediate thrust
on development. Gorkhaland is a protest of the people of the hills against
the humiliation they suffered for years.
The issue of identity is always related
to the economy of the region. If economic development is taken care of,
then a major problem is solved, said
Chhetri. With the signing of the tripartite agreement in July for the establishment of the GTA, the GJM had
indicated a temporary pause in its programme of violent agitation.
Prospects of peace brightened further when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced a large number of
projects in the elds of health, education and infrastructure in the hills for
the GTA to undertake with nancial
assistance from the Centre and the
State.
But now a lot depends on the Shyamal Sen Committees report, as the
GJM had earlier indicated that the
whole agreement would collapse if it
was denied the areas it had demanded
within the GTA.

Telecom Scam

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Radia shuts shop

The 2G scam claims another victim in the form of Vaishnavi Corporate
Communications, which its owner, Niira Radia, shuts down. B Y A N U P A M A K A T A K A M

NIIRA RADIA was a name that was known only

in business and some media circles until tape recordings of her conversations over a period of time with
journalists, corporate honchos, politicians and others were leaked to the media in end-2010.
The transcripts exposed a web of deceit and inuence-peddling that involved lobbyists of telecom
companies, Ministers and ofcials and helped unravel several threads in the 2G spectrum allocation
scam. Today Niira Radias is a much discredited
name in the public relations fraternity.
A media analyst said: She and her band of lobbyists thought they were powerful inuencers who
could get away with what they were doing.... Radia
probably typies the kind of people who rise because
of their associations with inuential people and become so powerful that they think they are beyond the
law.
Radia is embroiled in the 2G scam for allegedly
attempting to broker deals in connection with the
allocation of spectrum. In November, perhaps as a
consequence, Radia shut down her public relations
rm, Vaishnavi Corporate Communications, which
had among its clients the Tata group and the Reliance (Mukesh Ambani) group. She cited health and
personal reasons for doing so.
She may not have broken the law but what she
did was unethical, said a senior police ofcial in
Mumbai. It is a pity that almost 200 people have lost
their jobs, he added.
Radia came to public notice when the Income
Tax Department kept tabs on her as part of its investigations into possible money laundering, reF R O N T L I N E

stricted nancial practices and tax evasion. With

authorisation from the Home Ministry, the department tapped Radias phones for 300 days in 200809. What emerged, among other things, was Radias
alleged lobbying with politicians and journalists for
the appointment of A. Raja of the Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam (DMK) as Union Communications Minister. The leaked transcripts of the telephone conversations also exposed her role in the 2G scam.
Last year the Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI) revealed it had 5,851 recordings of telephone

KAMAL NARANG

Radia came to public notice when

the Income Tax Department kept
tabs on her as part of its
investigations into possible
money laundering, restricted
nancial practices and tax evasion.

C OR P OR ATE LOB BYI S T N I I R A Radia arrives to

appear before Parliaments Public Accounts
Committee in New Delhi in connection with the 2G
spectrum allocation scam.
4 3

conversations between Radia and

well-known journalists, corporate
heads, politicians and senior bureaucrats. They were at some point leaked
to the media, and OPEN magazine carried several of the transcripts. The
tapes, which were made available on
the Internet as well, gave clear details
of how Radia worked the media to use
their inuence to appoint Raja as
Communications Minister after the
United Progressive Alliance returned
to power in the 2009 general election.
Additionally, Radia was heard chatting with the Tata groups chairman,
Ratan Tata, who later petitioned the
government to acknowledge his right
to privacy.
The 2G issue goes back to August
2007 when Raja was Communications
Minister and when the Department of
Telecommunications (DoT) had initiated the process of granting Unied
Access Service (UAS) licences to telecom companies providing mobile
phone services. At this time the Prime
Minister and the Finance Ministry apparently raised concerns over the procedure adopted to issue licences. Raja
rejected these concerns.
Suddenly, in January 2009 the
DoT advanced the issuing of licences
on a rst-come, rst-served basis. The
three telecom companies that were allotted licences Swan Telecom, Unitech and Tata Teleservices sold their
stake at higher prices, which raised
suspicions of irregularities. A complaint led in May 2009 to the Central
Vigilance Commission kicked off the
investigation.
From May 2009 to the present the
2G spectrum scam has not spared anyone. Once Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy came into the
picture demanding a probe and sought
sanction to prosecute Raja, the situation turned murkier. In February 2011,
Raja was arrested in connection with
the scam and a few days later Swan
Telecoms promoter Shahid Usman
Balwa was also arrested. In April 2011,
DMK Rajya Sabha member Kanimozhi was arrested.
Meanwhile, Subramanian Swamy
claimed that Home Minister P. Chi-

KAMAL NARANG

DECEMBER 2, 2011

New Delhi,
where the now defunct Vaishnavi
Corporate Communications had
its ofce on the fth oor.

GO P A L D A S BHAW A N ,

dambaram, when he was Finance

Minister, had a hand in the scam.
Radias name cropped up in 2008
with regard to her involvement with
the Tatas, and the CBI homed in on her
after it got permission to tap her
phone. Once it had substantial evidence of her lobbying, the Enforcement Directorate questioned her, and
she is still under its scanner.
Radia is said to have had complete
control over the Tata groups PR work.
This was around the early 2000s when
she opened Vaishnavi Corporate Communications. The association with the
Tatas opened doors for her and within
a few years Radia had over 50 big corporate clients in her portfolio. They
included Mukesh Ambanis Reliance
group. Numbers are hard to come by,
but it is believed Vaishnavis annual
revenue was close to Rs.100 crore.
Following her involvement in the
2G scam, it was inevitable that Vaishnavi would shut shop. In a press release, Vaishnavi said: For nearly a
4 4

F R O N T L I N E

year now, there have been transcripts

of purported conversations between
our Chairperson Ms Niira Radia with
some reputed personalities from various walks of life. These unveried
transcripts and tapes have been widely
circulated in the media by motivated
and vested interests intent on maligning us, and deecting public attention
from their own wrongdoings in the
telecom sector. Indeed, many of the
purported transcripts being circulated
have absolutely no relevance to telecom at all, and are merely being used
for dramatic effect, and to create the
illusion of wrongdoing on our part.
For the media, access to the Tata
group was only through Vaishnavi
Corporate Communications. It was a
nightmare to get anything out of
Vaishnavi, said a business reporter.
They would only reach us when they
wanted to. In fact, even if you had
Ratan Tatas e-mail or phone number
you could not reach him without
Vaishnavi coming into the picture.
Another reporter had this story to
tell:
In the days following the November 26, 2008, attacks on Mumbai any
information was valuable and essential. People across the country, not just
in Mumbai, were seeking details on
the violent strikes, including at the Tata-owned Taj Mahal Palace Hotel,
which claimed over 170 lives. The Tata
group had at the time enlisted the help
of Vaishnavi Corporate Communications to manage the media. Whenever
mediapersons tried and reach them,
they dodged questions or refused to
answer them.
Eventually, Vaishnavi held a press
conference where Taj heads were to
speak about what happened during
the attacks and about the post-attack
plan of action. When I called the PR
rm to get details on the location and
time, I was told by a staffer: This press
conference is only open to the foreign
press and a selected few others. I was
obviously furious at this discrimination, but there was little I could do as it
was the only point of contact for information on anything connected to
the Tata group.

Scandal

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Crossing the line

The existence of spot-xing in cricket is conrmed with the conviction and
sentencing of three Pakistani players. B Y V I J A Y L O K A P A L L Y

This comes at a time when the game

is battling to keep spectator interest
alive in its longer version. The
punishment is widely seen as a stern
warning to potential offenders.

KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH/AP

STRANGE stories of players

throwing matches emerged from
the cricket elds in the 1990s.
They were unconrmed but
sometimes credible because
matches would take a bizarre
course. One did not want to believe. How could a player compete with the intention of losing?
It is said that Pakistan captain
Imran Khan, smelling a rat, once
made the team take an oath in
Sharjah. Pakistan won the
match in style and with conviction. Sharjah was a venue that
gained notoriety for cricket corruption. Later, it fell from grace
as a cricket centre in the deserts
M A Z H A R MA J E E D , T H E
agent who xed the players, of the Gulf.
The International Cricket
arriving at Southwark Crown
Council
(ICC) woke up late to the
Court on November 3. He had
issue of match-xing, so late, in
pleaded guilty and was
fact, that three cricketers have
sentenced to 32 months.
now earned jail sentences for indulging in spot-xing to make quick money. Allegations of match-xing had surfaced earlier too but
went unpunished for lack of proof. This time, however, the guilty could not escape.
Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad
Amir, disgraced and condemned, have been lost to
cricket. Awesome talent, was how former Pakistan
captain Wasim Akram hailed the arrival of Amir. In
a major blow to Pakistans reputation in the cricket
world, these three were sentenced to various terms in
jail for their involvement in spot-xing. Of course,
F R O N T L I N E

they are not the rst cricketers to be jailed. The

England all-rounder Chris Lewis was imprisoned for
smuggling drugs and the Australia leg-spinner Terry
Jenner, who coached Shane Warne, was put behind
bars for stealing funds. The existence of spot-xing
had been suspected for a long time, but it became a
reality when Butt and Asif were convicted by Southwark Crown Court. Amir had pleaded guilty and
therefore did not go on trial.
At the end of a ve-week trial, cricket stood
battered. Mazhar Majeed, the agent who xed the
three Pakistani cricketers, is the architect of the
biggest scandal to rock the game. Hansie Cronjes
confession, more than a decade ago, to being involved in match-xing led to some unpleasant developments, but three cricketers being handed jail
terms has done greater damage, especially at a time
when the game is battling to keep spectator interest
alive in its longer version.
Butt, a former Pakistan captain, was sentenced
to 30 months, Asif to 12 months and Amir to six
months. Majeed was punished with a 32-month jail
term. They will serve half their sentences in custody
and will then be released on licence. The four were
found guilty of conspiracy to accept corrupt payments and conspiracy to cheat in regard to the Lords
Test against England in August 2010. In a wellcrafted plan, three predetermined no-balls were
bowled. Amir bowled two and Asif one.
Amir, 19, repented of his misdeed. His statement
reected the pain of a young cricketer gone astray.
First, I want to apologise to Pakistan and to everyone that cricket is important to. I do know how much
damage this has done to the game, a game which I
love more than anything else in the world. I did
decide many months ago that I wanted to admit that
I deliberately threw two no-balls at the Lords Test
last summer. But I know this was very late and I want
to apologise for not saying it before. I didnt nd the
courage to do it at the beginning, and I know very
well that made everything much more difcult. Last
year was the most amazing year of my life but also it
was the worst year. I got myself into a situation that I
didnt understand. I panicked and did the wrong
thing. I dont want to blame anyone else. I didnt
4 5

CARL COURT/AFP

DECEMBER 2, 2011

FOR M E R T E S T C A PT A I N Salman Butt arriving at Southwark Crown Court

in central London on November 1. On November 3, he was sentenced to 30
months in jail.
4 6

F R O N T L I N E

want money at all. I didnt bowl the

no-balls because of money. I got
trapped and in the end it was because
of my own stupidity. My dream was to
be the best cricketer in the world. Im a
competitive sportsman and those two
no-balls were the only moments in my
cricketing life where I have not performed to the very best of my ability.
And they were not moments I felt happy to be part of.
The sad episode was summed up
by Justice Cooke: When people look
back at a surprising event in a game or
a surprising result or ever in the future
there are surprising results, followers
of the game who have paid to watch
cricket or who have watched cricket on
TV will wonder whether there has
been a x or what they have watched
was natural.
The ICC was rm in its dealing
with the scandal. Earlier in the year it
banned Butt for 10 years, ve of which
were suspended; Asif for seven years
with two years suspended; and Amir
was given a ban of ve years. He will be
24 when he can play again, but it is
going to be a humungous challenge for
him to convince national selectors in
Pakistan to give him another opportunity.
Amir, with 51 wickets in 14 Tests,
was the youngest bowler to take 50
Test wickets. Asif claimed 106 wickets
in 23 Tests and was considered one of
the nest swing bowlers. But he was
also prone to controversies. He twice
tested positive for steroids and was
once detained in Dubai for three weeks
for possessing recreational drugs.
Lack of guidance, former Pakistan
skipper Rameez Raja once remarked
on Asifs losing his way off the eld.
Butt made his Test debut in 2003 and
gured in 33 Tests. The left-hander
was a sound opener but failed to lead
by example when handed the responsibility of captaincy.
I was not given enough information about the anti-corruption code by
the PCB [Pakistan Cricket Board],
Amir had said. The PCBs response
was: In March 2010, Amir signed the
code of conduct for players when he
was issued his central contract. The

MATT DUNHAM/AP

DECEMBER 2, 2011

TOM HEVEZI/AP

M OHAM M A D AM I R W A LKI N G to
an indoor training session as rain
begins to fall at the Lords Cricket
Ground, London, on August 25,
2010, the day before Pakistan was
due to play England in the fourth
cricket Test match of the series.

code of conduct states that by signing

the same the player commits to abiding by all ICC rules regarding betting,
match-xing, corruption, and any
matter that could call into question the
integrity of the game. Amir acknowledged that he understood the code and
his responsibilities under the same.
Amir also committed that he would
abide by these rules and any others
formulated in this regard.
In fact, Amir stirred an emotional
chord in Michael Holding. The legendary West Indies fast bowler, who
confessed he did not know Amir personally, struggled to hide his tears as
he spoke about the scandal in the company of the former England captains
David Gower and Nasser Hussain. He
could contribute to the game in the
future, was how Holding looked at
Amir.
Haroon Lorgat, ICC chief execu-

tive, said in a statement: The ICC

takes no pleasure from the fact that
these players [Butt and Asif] stepped
outside not only the laws of the game,
but also the criminal laws of the country in which they were participating.
We note that the jury has found Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif guilty
of the criminal offences with which
they were charged and also that Mohammad Amir had pleaded guilty to
the criminal offences with which he
was charged. We hope that this verdict
is seen as a further warning to any
individual who might, for whatever
reason, be tempted to engage in corrupt activity within our sport.
Greed and a lack of education and
opportunities are some of the reasons
given by former cricketers whenever
Pakistan cricket is rocked by controversies. Cricketing greats such as Imran Khan and Zaheer Abbas have
F R O N T L I N E

4 7

M OHAM M A D AS I F D UR I N G the
second day of the fourth cricket
Test match against England at
Lords on August 27, 2010. He
bowled a no-ball during this match.

blamed the PCB for not playing its role

properly.
Former Pakistan captain Rashid
Latif termed it a very good decision. If
anyone is involved in match-xing, he
has to go behind bars. The people of
Pakistan want to watch matches without xing, he said. He was among the
rst to raise his voice against matchxing and had announced his retirement to attract the attention of the
authorities in Pakistan to act on what
he called the cancer in cricket. As one
player remarked, There is frustration
among Pakistan cricketers. They cant
play the Indian Premier League [IPL],
there are no nancial gains for them
like many others. They get to play fewer Test matches. No team wants to
travel to Pakistan. There are many factors that mislead the young Pakistan
cricketer. One hopes this punishment
serves as a severe deterrent.

India & Pakistan

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Ignorance
rules

border on
November 4,
trucks cross
into Pakistan
from India.

The Pakistani street links MFN status to the Kashmir issue despite the fact that
both countries gave each other the status until 1965. B Y A N I T A J O S H U A

Few on both sides know that India

and Pakistan were among the 23
original signatories to the GATT,
which included the Most Favoured
Nation provision.
JUST how difcult it is for either Pakistan or
India to extend an olive branch to the other was in
full evidence early in November when Pakistans
federal Cabinet decided in principle to extend the
Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to India.
Even as Information Minister Firdous Ashiq
Awan and Commerce Secretary Zafar Mahmood
tried to make the announcement at the Cabinet
brieng, the local media were baying for blood, suggesting that the Pakistan Peoples Party-led government was weakening the long-held national position
on Kashmir by granting MFN which many a journalist insists on calling Most Favourite (sic) Nation
status to India. The argument is that there can be
no normalisation of relations with India without
resolving the Kashmir issue.
When Mahmood tried to set it in historical perspective pointing out that Pakistan had granted
4 8

IN ISLAMABAD

MFN status to India in the days of Quaid-e-Azam

Muhammad Ali Jinnah itself the Secretary was
accused of unnecessarily dragging in the founding
fathers name to legitimise this anti-Pakistan
move. The fact that both countries had given MFN
status to each other soon after Partition until 1965
and that India had restored that status to Pakistan
unilaterally in 1996 made little dent on a national
narrative built on animosity to and fear of India.
Consequently, for the next four days, a decision
that has been in the making for some time now
given a series of deliberations the government held
with stakeholders remained mired in confusion to
the extent that Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza
Gilani and Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar had
to step in to clear the air and state categorically that
the Commerce Ministry had been authorised to normalise trade with India and that extending MFN
status was just one part of the process.
This once again showed how difcult it would be
for both countries to resolve issues such as Sir Creek,
Siachen and Kashmir, where yielding even an inch of
land or water will be seen as abject surrender.
Part of the problem lay in the term MFN itself,
which many interpret in the literal sense and see as
some special status being accorded to India.
With hostilities having dominated the India-Pakistan relationship, few on both sides know that

F R O N T L I N E

MOHSIN RAZA/REUTERS

A T THE W AG A H

DECEMBER 2, 2011

India and Pakistan were among the 23

countries that were the original signatories to the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which included the MFN provision.
Writing in Dawn, Abid Hussain
Imam, Associate Professor of Law and
Policy at Lahore University of Management Sciences, said: In fact, recognising that the two countries had
previously constituted the same economic unit, the original GATT included an exceptional clause permitting
the two newly independent countries
to enter into special arrangements
with respect to trade with each other.
Whats more, India and Pakistan
signed 12 trade agreements between
1947 and 1965, as a result of which
there were four points for border trade
in Punjab, including one each in Bahawalpur and Sindh and a customs point
on the Chenab river for timber trade.
The 1965 war ended all this until the
signing of the Simla Agreement in
1972resulted in a nominal resumption
of trade by putting four items on the
positive list.
When the World Trade Organisation replaced GATT as the international structure overseeing the
multilateral trading system, India
granted MFN status to Pakistan and
moved to a negative list approach. Pakistan still maintains a positive list for
trade with India. Under this list, trade
is permitted in fewer than 2,000
items. India has time and again pointed out to Pakistan that maintaining
the positive list approach goes against
the spirit of the South Asian Free
Trade Agreement (SAFTA). Pakistan
has now indicated that it is open to
switching to a negative list approach
vis-a-vis India but is looking for some
reciprocity.
Though the street narrative, including rallies organised by banned jehadi outts in Islamabad, against
MFN status to India suggests that Pakistan was succumbing to U.S. pressure, several reports in recent years
have stressed the need to exploit the
potential offered by regional trade. In
its report on the medium-term development imperatives and strategy for

Pakistan, a panel of economists entrusted with the task by the Planning

Commission stressed the need to build
strong constituencies for peace
through considering rst granting India MFN basis and abandoning the
positive list approach, easing visa
processing to facilitate freer movement of people, an institutional arrangement for banks opening up of
new transportation routes better information exchange, reduction in
NTBs [non-tariff barriers], and creating an enabling environment for investment in joint ventures.
Admitting that holding back MFN
status to India was in itself an NTB,
Pakistani Ministers and ofcials are
hoping for some relaxation from India
on the NTBs to make normalising
trade with India an idea that can be
sold to the people. Though Indian
High Commissioner Sharat Sabharwal
has repeatedly sought to assure Pakistani ofcials and business community
that the so-called NTBs are not Pakistan-specic, the perception here
even among keen advocates of resumption of normal trade with India is
that they smack of an anti-Pakistan
bias.
While trying to address misgivings
within the business community about
MFN status to India by arguing that it
does not mean sleeping with the enemy, the former chairman of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, Majyd Aziz, insisted that India should address Pakistans concerns
regarding the NTBs. They may not be
Pakistan-specic, but they seem to be.
The way shipment from Pakistan is
inspected by your Customs and police,
it would seem that the entire consignment is lled with bombs.
In several interactions with the
business community, Sabharwal has
sought to drive home the point that the
examples of NTBs and Para-Tariff
Barriers quoted include requirements
of technical standard certication,
standard of quality, labelling, marking, packaging, and sanitary and
health regulations. Such regulations
are not unique to India and prevail in
all countries. And such regulations in
F R O N T L I N E

4 9

India apply to all our trading partners

and are not specic to Pakistani
exports.
Also, according to Indian ofcials,
some of the problems being faced by
Pakistani traders will be addressed
once the Integrated Check Post (ICP)
at Attari becomes fully operational.
Conceding that facilities on the Indian
side were poor compared with that on
the Pakistani end, they said the ICP
would have full-body scanners for
trucks, warehouse and cold storage facilities, quarantine laboratories, and
so on. As for the major irritant of visas,
particularly the restrictive regime and
the insistence on police reporting on
arrival and before departure, the hope
that is being held out is that businessmen will stand to benet the most
from the relaxations that have been
agreed to by ofcials on both sides. The
joint working group set up for the purpose as part of the resumed dialogue
process is understood to have suggested a relaxed visa regime for businessmen and it now awaits political
clearance.
Given the entrenched mistrust,
these promises have failed to cut ice
with the naysayers, some of whom
have gone way back into history to cite
Indias refusal to pay Rs.55 crore due
to Pakistan at the time of Partition.
Add to this the fear of being swamped
by Indian goods the way Pakistan has
been by Chinese stuff. Indias contention is that since Pakistani goods are
competing with Indian goods elsewhere, it will be able to do so domestically also.
Seeking to address some of these
fears, the leading economist S. Akbar
Zaidi maintains that MFN status to
India will favour Pakistan more than
India. Research has shown that if
trade between the two countries
grows, since Pakistans is the much
smaller economy, the gains which accrue to Pakistan will be far greater, he
wrote in Dawn, adding that bilateral
trade is expected to double from $2.5
billion in the next three years on account of this decision. `While not such
a big deal for India, this will mean a
huge change for Pakistan.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

arrival at a rally in
Lahore on October
30 organised by his
Pakistan Tehreeke-Insaf demanding
that President Asif
Ali Zardari step
down.

Political test for Imran

GIVEN his cricketing background in
a cricket-crazy nation, Imran Khan
has always got media attention. But,
there has been a qualitative shift in
the coverage since October 30 when
his jalsa (rally) at Minar-e-Pakistan
in the Sharifs stronghold, Lahore,
catapulted him to the centre stage of
Pakistani politics 15 years after he
ventured on this path. Now even his
bitterest critics accept reluctantly
that the cricketer-turned-politician
and his politics, however limited it
may be, will have to be taken into
account while strategising for the
next elections that are technically
over a year away.
While analysts preoccupy themselves with his brand of politics to
gure out whether he will be a gamechanger or a spoiler, his support base
essentially the urban apolitical
youth and the equally apolitical middle class are not bogged down by
such issues. To them, he represents a
change from the present crop of politicians, all of whom are deemed to be
corrupt and ineffective.
That is Imran Khans biggest
selling point. Though he has been in
politics for a decade and a half, he is

still untested in governance. His rivals are all in governance either at

the federal level or in the various
provinces. Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) have
no such baggage and the man himself has the advantage of his reputation of captaining his team to World
Cup victory and setting up a cancer
hospital against all odds.
Such is the general disenchantment with Pakistani politics and its
failure to deliver that his supporters
are not concerned with whether he
has a solid policy plank. Neither does
it bother them much that he is believed to be the latest in a series of
politicians unleashed on the Pakistani polity by the establishment, the
chief arbiters of Pakistans destiny.
His anti-Americanism feeds into
the street narrative as does his diatribe against politicians. That has
been his bugbear from his maiden
days in politics. He entered politics
saying all politics and politicians
were bad, and that remains his refrain. While it has gained currency
now that democracy has returned to
Pakistan, this rant against politics
may also rain on his parade. In the

5 0

F R O N T L I N E

prevailing circumstances, Imran

Khan cannot hope to win seats in the
next elections without poaching on
other parties and opening his stables
to disgruntled politicians seeking an
assured ticket. This contradiction is
lost on his supporters.
That the PTI has remained a
one-man show until now is in itself a
reection of the limited nature of
Imran Khans politics. Heralds editor Badar Alam said in Dawn about
Imran Khans politics: His is, in
fact, anti-politics an ideology that
discredits what he calls professional
politics in order to replace it with,
you guessed it, politics. His party is
a cross between a social movement,
a think tank and a loosely organised
collection of highly educated technocrats and avowed Islamists.
While the middle class is pinning
its hopes on Imran Khan and the PTI
is reportedly rolling up its sleeves to
reap the dividends of the Lahore rally with a similar one planned in
Sindh, the Pakistan Peoples Party
stronghold, his detractors worry
what he signals for Pakistans fragile
democracy.
Anita Joshua

ARIF ALI/AFP

I M R A N KHA N
G E S TUR E S ON

India & Pakistan

DECEMBER 2, 2011

The real barrier

Trade and industry in India point to vested interests in Pakistan which do not
want normalisation of relations with India. B Y G . S R I N I V A S A N

While Indias ofcial trade with

Bangladesh was close to $4 billion,
its ofcial trade with Pakistan stood
at $2.65 billion in the last scal, up
from $1.81 billion in 2008-09 and
$1.84 billion in 2009-10.
THE confusion over Pakistans November 2 announcement of grant of most favoured nation
(MFN) status to India following a meeting of the
federal Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Yusuf
Raza Gilani and the subsequent clarication by him
to the contrary unambiguously points to the fact that
Islamabad remains a prisoner of its delusions and its
denial mode of existence both in politics and in
economics. Against the backdrop of the SAARC
(South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation)
summit being held in the Maldives, New Delhi is of
the rm belief that the regional grouping can achieve
greater cohesiveness and clarity if the simmering
issues between its members are sorted out and also
send a clear signal to the world that this region, home
to some of the poorest people in the world, does
matter in the global reckoning.
The term MFN, fashioned by the erstwhile General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its
latter-day version, the World Trade Organisation
(WTO), is a veritable misnomer. For MFN means a
non-discriminatory regime that more or less all
countries have to extend to each other as members of
the WTO. While India extended MFN status to Pakistan way back in 1995, the latter shilly-shallied,
linking this basic right of trading partners to other
issues, mostly political.
At the fth round of talks between the Commerce
Secretaries of the two countries on April 27-28 in
Islamabad, Pakistan recognised that grant of MFN
status to India would help in expanding the bilateral
trade relations. The Pakistani side informed India
that it would take immediate steps to ensure that a
non-discriminatory trade regime was operationalF R O N T L I N E

IN NEW DELHI

ised at the earliest and added that the consultative

process in this regard has been set in motion and
information from all stakeholders including business chambers and trade bodies is being collected to
replace the present positive list with a negative
list. It was agreed that this process would be completed by October 2011.
In fact, six months ago Islamabad had expressed
its earnestness to move towards the grant of MFN
status and that had raised hopes that it would do so
at least this time. On November 2, Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan told a press conference
that the Cabinet meeting had unanimously decided to grant India MFN status to improve trade relations between the two countries. An ofcial source in
New Delhi told Frontline the same night: We have
been told that the foreign ofce is making a statement that the Pakistan government has decided for
trade normalisation with India and to implement
the decision of the Cabinet, and it is not clear what
the decision of the Cabinet is. What this meant, the
source said, was that what we do is we will normalise
trade and it will culminate in the grant of MFN
status to India. That culmination could be 10 or 15
years from now, the source added.
Trade policy analysts contend that condencebuilding and composite dialogue will be shorn of any
meaning if Islamabad is keener on posturing than on
delivering mutually acceptable solutions for issues
that continue to bedevil bilateral relations. In fact,
the day after the confusion erupted over the issue,
Dawn, the inuential Pakistani daily, argued in an
editorial that if implemented, it would have a farreaching impact on Pakistans security. But it did
not explain how.
Trade and industry analysts in India said this
only strengthened the impression that there are
strong political and commercial vested interests in
Pakistan which do not want normalisation of relations with India.
Interestingly, even as the nal word on the grant
of MFN status has not been said, Pakistans Commerce Secretary, Zafar Mehmood, told a meeting of
the Karachi Chamber of Commerce that another
round of Secretary-level talks would be held in New
Delhi on November 14. Indian ofcials believe that
5 1

DECEMBER 2, 2011

MFN is our right under WTO

Interview with Union Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar. B Y G . S R I N I V A S A N

Can you explain the MFN issue and

why India could not get this from
Pakistan when it had granted the
same to Pakistan in 1995?
MFN is a right available to us
from the WTO principle of non-discrimination in trade. Currently Pakistan uses a positive list approach,
which means only so many goods can
be exported, and this is clearly in
breach of the principle of MFN enshrined in the WTO.
We have been arguing with them
that what is Indias natural right under WTO laws should be given to us.
The loss to India and to Pakistan is
twofold. From our perspective, the
very fact that we are not allowed to
export certain goods goes against the
principle of non-discrimination in
trade and almost singles India out
for discriminatory action. Equally, it
is not that trade does not take place
it takes place through a third country, which means it goes to the Gulf
[countries] or wherever [and] from
there to Pakistan. In the end, Pakistan ends up paying higher prices for
the goods because there is no direct
transaction. How can that possibly
do any good to Pakistan?
The moment you do this sort of
trade through an intermediary you
add on transport cost, which is otherwise unnecessary. For instance, it
is cheaper to ship the same goods
from here to Karachi instead of going via Dubai, or it is easier to send
goods through the Wagah border
rather than to ship or airfreight them

The real point is

that Pakistan needs to
move in two different
stages. First, it must
accept the principle
that MFN is the right
of all WTO members
and if it gives the beneWhat is the ofcial and
ts to all WTO meminformal bilateral trade
bers, why not to India?
ow? How does the
In the MFN system
MFN status make any
there is no such posiR AHUL KHULLA R ,
difference?
C OM M E R C E Secretary. tive/negative list and
The formal bilateral
all items are tradable.
trade is $2.5 to 3 billion, while in- The tariffs at which they are traded
formal trade is at least twice that are MFN tariffs.
amount. The latter is legitimate
The second stage is the derogatrade going from here to an entrepot tions from MFN, which are legiticentre and from there being routed mate under the WTOs regional
to Pakistan. So, combining ofcial trading arrangements (RTAs). Here
trade and the trade routed through you can make trade even freer and
Dubai, the bilateral trade now stands more open than the MFN trade by
at $8 billion.
entering into a bilateral agreement
When you are an MFN, the $5 where you offer tariff concessions.
billion is not going to go through Should Pakistan be willing to do that
Dubai but directly to Pakistan. In a at a later stage, it will be possible for
sense, ofcial trade to Dubai will go us to consider bilaterally. If Pakistan
less by $5 billion. So there is no dif- wants to join SAFTA [SAARC prefference. But the real gain will come erential trading arrangement] and
from the fact that many people who honour its commitments under
are not able to export because of the SAFTA, then it can consider availing
positive list approach will be able to [itself] of the concessions we give to
do now, and that will benet them.
other members of the grouping.
So Pakistan should grant MFN
Is Pakistans carping on non-tariff
status to India and then seek concesbarriers (NTB) by India genuine?
sions on tariffs. Just as we extended
How will MFN status help solve this
to Bangladesh zero-tariff concesirritant on both sides?
sions on textile items recently, at
I think it is more a perceptional some point of time these matters can
issue. I suspect that their main con- get sorted out through negotiations.
cern is not NTBs but tariff barriers. I dont think these are NTBs. There
For instance, Pakistan would like to was some concern about licensing
export textiles to India. There are no and standards for export of cement
NTBs but there are tariff barriers from Pakistan, but many of those
preventing textile exports. These tar- issues have been sorted out. I told my
iffs are xed in terms of specic rates counterpart in Pakistan that if they
and they tend to be high. So what gave lists of sector-specic NTBs
they are seeking is concession on they wanted us to address, we would
these tariffs.
gladly address them.
to Dubai and from there
to Karachi. This means
the consumer in Pakistan ends up paying higher transport cost and the
intermediary
prot
margin.

RAMESH SHARMA

COMMERCE Secretary Rahul

Khullar is the chief negotiator with
trading partners, at the ofcial level.
We should be able to move forward, he told Frontline in this interview following the confusion over
Pakistan granting MFN status to India. Excerpts:

5 2

F R O N T L I N E

DECEMBER 2, 2011

SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

pavilion during the India International Trade Fair in New Delhi in 2009. Pakistan would like to
export textiles to India but does not because of the high specic rate of tariffs. Indian ofcials say that giving India
MFN status would enable Pakistan to negotiate concessions on these tariffs.

A T TH E PA K I S T A N

this meeting will help them understand the level of bilateral relations in
the light of the MFN confusion. Even
as Islamabad has harped on its complaint that the entire trade liberalisation process is linked with the
removal of non-tariff barriers such as
licensing for import and stricter compliance with standards and norms, the
MFN regime can go a long way in arresting the substantial chunk of circular, or informal, trade that supervenes

between the two using a third country

as an intermediary. It would also do
immense good to Indian and Pakistani
traders to focus on quality and delivery
schedules because importers from
both the countries are bound to make
value-for-money judgments using as
benchmarks products from other
countries.
While Indias ofcial trade with
Bangladesh was close to $4 billion, its
ofcial trade with Pakistan stood at
F R O N T L I N E

5 3

$2.65 billion in the last scal, up from

$1.81 billion in 2008-09 and $1.84 billion in 2009-10. In fact, in Indias
commercial engagement with other
SAARC countries, Pakistan takes the
last position. However, the potential
for trade between India and Pakistan
can denitely be realised if Islamabad
makes the move to grant MFN status
to India, which will entail deeper engagement for mutual benet over the
long haul.

world affairs

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Travails of
a crusader
Julian Assange has further legal
options in his battle against
extradition, but funds might prove a
constraint. B Y H A S A N S U R O O R I N L O N D O N

WikiLeaks faces closure if it cannot

raise enough funds over the coming
months. It has been forced to
suspend publishing operations in
order to concentrate on raising
money to ght the blockade imposed
by Western nancial companies.
A YEAR ago, standing on the steps of Londons
Royal Courts of Justice after coming straight from
what he called the bottom of a Victorian prison,
where he had been detained in solitary connement,
Julian Assange declared with some feeling and a
poetic touch that it was great to smell the fresh air of
London again. And, thanking the people around
the world for their support, the WikiLeaks founder
vowed to continue my work and continue to protest
my innocence.
At the time few would have thought that we
would still be talking about it a year later. His legal
battle to clear his name over allegations of sexual
misconduct brought by two Swedish women he met
in Stockholm in the summer of 2010, leading to his
arrest and a warrant for his extradition to Sweden,
continues. There is no early end in sight.
On November 2, Assange was back in court and
stood on the same place that he did a year ago. But
the mood this time was different. He had just lost his
appeal against extradition with the court rejecting
the key arguments presented by his legal team. These
5 4

included the plea that the European Arrest Warrant

issued by the Swedish authorities was legally awed,
and that he would not get a fair hearing in Sweden as
he believed the case against him was politically motivated. He feared that if he was extradited, the Swedish authorities might hand him over to the United
States, which has threatened to prosecute him for

F R O N T L I N E

LEON NEAL/AFP

DECEMBER 2, 2011

LEON NEAL/AFP

S U P P O RT ERS O F AS S A N G E

W IKIL E A K S F O UN D E R J U LI A N

Assange emerges from Londons

High Court on November 2 after
losing his legal battle to avoid
extradition from Britain to Sweden to
face questioning over allegations of
rape and sexual assault.

outside Londons High Court on November 2.

leaking classied and condential

documents.
Judges were not persuaded that
the extradition would be unfair and
unlawful, nor that the warrant was
invalid because it had been issued by a
prosecutor and not a judicial authority. They ruled that the action of the
prosecutor was subject to the independent scrutiny of Swedish judges,
which, as judges of another [European Union] member state, we must
respect.
They also did not agree that the
descriptions of the offences were not a
fair and accurate description of the
conduct alleged against Assange. This
is self-evidently not a case relating to a
trivial offence, but to serious sexual
offences, ruled Lord Justice Thomas
and Justice Ouseley, adding that
Swedish prosecutors had been proportionate in their actions. They held
that, contrary to the defence claim, the
allegation that he had sexual intercourse with one of the women without
protection would amount to an allegation of rape in England and Wales.
Assange showed no emotion as the
verdict was delivered.
Outside the courtroom, there was a
media scrum waiting for him as he
emerged, trying hard to look unrufed,
with a copy of the judgment which he
held up in the air at the request of
photographers. Asked whether he was
F R O N T L I N E

5 5

disappointed by the verdict, he dismissed the question with an ironical grin

and directed anyone who wanted to
know what was truly going on in the
case to his website wedenversusassange.com where the full judgment
was available.
Despite persistent media questioning, especially from the notoriously aggressive television reporters who kept
thrusting their microphones at him,
Assange avoided commenting directly
on the verdict except to highlight what
he regarded as the unfairness of his
situation considering that he had not
been charged with any crime.
I have not been charged with any
crime in any country. Despite this, the
European arrest warrant is so restrictive that it prevents U.K. courts from
considering the facts for a case. We will
be considering our next steps in the
days ahead. No doubt there will be
many attempts made to try and spin
these proceedings as they occurred today but they are merely technical, he
said.
And with that Assange was off, escorted by his close friends and security
detail who formed a protective ring
around him as a large crowd milled
around with people trying to shake his
hand and take his photograph. As he
headed for a waiting taxi, he was
trailed by hundreds of slogan-raising
supporters who said they were out-

World Affairs
raged by the verdict. Among them was
a group of anti-capitalist Occupy London protesters who used a megaphone to voice their support. Occupy
London support you, they cried.
Assange is probably the most
amazing person in recent history whos
upset so many powerful people in such
a short space of time, so its obviously
not a level playing eld, said Ciaron
OReilly, one of the many who had
spent the entire morning outside the
court. A banner xed to the courts iron
railings read: Free Assange! Free
Manning! End the wars.
This was Assanges second unsuccessful stab at having the extradition
warrant quashed. In February this
year, a lower court ruled that he should
be extradited, rejecting the argument
that he would not get a fair trial in
Sweden. The High Court upheld that
verdict.
Assanges friend Vaughan Smith,
whose country house Ellingham Hall
in Norfolk has been his home since his
arrest, said that people are disappointed but Julian has become pretty robust.... You dont get a sense of
dismay. It is a case of soldiering on, he
said.
Assange still has the option of moving the Supreme Court on the grounds
that the case raised issues of general
public importance and has 14 days to
appeal though he would need the High
Courts permission to do so. At the
time of writing (November 7) this report, his lawyers were inclined to appeal. Assange would only say that he
was considering his next steps.
There is also a further stage, postSupreme Court the European Court
of Human Rights. So, on the face of it,
there is still much to play for. One
senior lawyer said he did not think
Assanges legal team would kill it off
`
at this stage because there are some
legal issues at stake. But with legal
bills piling up (his High Court appeal
alone is reported to have cost him in
the region of 100,000; and he could
be looking at a similar bill if he goes to
the Supreme Court) and funds dwindling, his supporters are obviously
concerned.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Judges were not

persuaded that
his extradition
would be unfair
and unlawful.
Vaughan acknowledged that despite a legal defence fund, which was
supported by donations, it was reasonable to assume he is struggling with
his legal fees. There have been suggestions that he might be forced to
throw in the towel because of economic pressures. The well-known legal
commentator David Allen Green
wrote in New Statesman that it is difcult to see why there is now any good
reason for Assange to seek further delay in returning to Sweden, especially
if he has scarce resources for funding
his legal defence.
By now the case is too well-known
to bear repetition. Assange acknowledges that he had sex with the two
women in question but insists that it
was consensual and denies any coercion. Their allegations, he claims, were
an afterthought and part of a larger
campaign to smear him by those he has
exposed through WikiLeaks. His supporters have alleged that he might
have been a victim of a honey trap
engineered by forces embarrassed by
WikiLeaks exposes.
During the appeal hearings, Assanges lawyer Ben Emmerson said
that the women involved in the case
may have found sex with his client disrespectful, discourteous or disturbing, but said that it had been entirely
consensual. He also argued that his
clients actions would not be illegal in
the context of English law. The conduct that is complained of would not
constitute a crime in this jurisdiction,
he said.
Swedish prosecutors have not
charged Assange with any crime but
want him to return to Sweden to answer the allegations. Since his release
on bail in December 2010, his move5 6

F R O N T L I N E

ments are heavily restricted. He has

been living under curfew at Ellingham
Hall and must wear an electronic tag,
besides reporting to the local police
every day. His supporters have likened
it to virtual house arrest.
Meanwhile, WikiLeaks is in deep
nancial crisis and faces closure if it is
not able to raise sufcient funds over
the coming months. It has already
been forced to suspend its publishing
operations in order to concentrate on
raising money to ght what it describes as the unlawful and arbitrary blockade imposed by a number
of Western nancial companies, including the Bank of America, Visa,
Mastercard, PayPal and Western
Union, as part of a politically motivated campaign by U.S. authorities to
destroy WikiLeaks for disclosing damaging classied U.S. documents.
Assange told a crowded press conference in London that WikiLeaks was
facing an existential threat and that if
the nancial blockade persisted it
would no longer be able to carry on its
work. WikiLeaks would need $3.5 million over the next 12 months in order to
survive. The implications of the continued blockade went beyond WikiLeaks and its work, he warned.
If this nancial attack stands unchallenged, a dangerous, oppressive
and undemocratic precedent will have
been set, the implications of which go
far beyond WikiLeaks and its work.
Any organisation that falls foul of powerful nance companies or their political allies can expect similar
extrajudicial action. Greenpeace, Amnesty International and other international NGOs that work to expose the
wrongdoing of powerful players risk
the same fate as WikiLeaks. If publishing the truth about war is enough to
warrant such aggressive action by
Washington insiders, all newspapers
that have published WikiLeaks material are on the verge of having their
readers and advertisers blocked from
paying their subscriptions, he said.
An alternative system to transfer
funds to WikiLeaks is in place to beat
the blockade. Its details are available
on www.wikileaks.org/support.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

World Affairs/Kyrgyzstan

Eurasian pie
Kyrgyzstan is in the midst of building a Western-type democracy in an
undemocratic regional environment. B Y V L A D I M I R R A D Y U H I N I N M O S C O W

VLADIMIR VORONIN/AP

It may nd itself in the crossre of

conicting interests of Russia and
the U.S. Vladimir Putin has a vision
of reuniting former Soviet-bloc
nations in a Eurasian Union. Hillary
Clinton wants to unite Central Asia
in a U.S.-led New Silk Road project.
KYRGYZSTANs crucial
presidential election, held on
October 30, is likely to put to
the test the countrys fragile
democracy and fuel big-power rivalries in former Soviet
Central Asia. It brought victory to Prime Minister Almazbek Atambaev, 55, who won
63 per cent of the votes, well
above the 50 per cent minimum needed to dispense with
a run-off. It was a more than
convincing victory in a race
contested by 16 candidates
but marred by many malpractices. Monitors from the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation
in
Europe
(OSCE) criticised faulty voter
lists, multiple voting and ballot stufng but certied the
P R E SIDE N T - E L E C T
election
as free and peaceful
AL MAZ B E K Atambaev
overall.
speaking to the press in
Kyrgyzstan is in the midst
Bishkek on November 1.
of a daring experiment in
building a Western-type democracy in an entirely
undemocratic regional environment. All other exSoviet states in Central Asia Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have authoritarian or downright dictatorial regimes. The only
F R O N T L I N E

other country in the region that has seen a change in

top leadership since the break-up of the Soviet
Union two decades ago is Turkmenistan, where the
dictator Saparmurad Niyazov died ve years ago.
The Kyrgyz say it is the nomadic tradition that
has made them a freedom-loving nation. Until now
their democratic instincts were displayed in the toppling of two Presidents Askar Akayev in 2005 and
Kurmanbek Bakiyev in 2010. Both were overthrown
in chaotic riots against the rapacious ruling cliques
in the poorest state in the former Soviet Union.
However, parliamentary elections held in October 2010 were internationally recognised as free and
fair. In December, when Interim President Roza
Otunbayeva, appointed to the post after the ouster of
Bakiyev, will step down and make room for Atambaev, Kyrgyzstan, for the rst time, will see power
change hands through the democratic electoral
process rather than through turmoil and violence.
Some experts, however, think that Kyrgyzstan
has chosen the wrong path to democracy. Opposition
leaders, catapulted to power after last years coup,
rewrote the Constitution to prevent new excesses of
sweeping presidential powers. The new Constitution, adopted in a national referendum in June 2010,
transformed Kyrgyzstan from a presidential republic
to a parliamentary one, with the main powers shifted
from a nationally elected President to a Prime Minister chosen by Parliament.
Dr Murat Ukushov, a respected Kyrgyz authority
on constitutional law, says it was a mistake to trans5 7

DECEMBER 2, 2011

plant the advanced European model

of democracy into Kyrgyzstan. Western-type democracy will not work in a
country that lacks an economic and
social basis for democracy, he says.
The introduction of the parliamentary form of government in a vastly unprepared, politically and
economically unstable society that is
torn by tribal, clan and regional divisions is fraught with a power vacuum,
anarchy and ochlocracy [mob rule],
and may lead to the loss of statehood,
he wrote in a recent article.
Ukushov, who helped write the
rst Constitution of independent Kyrgyzstan in the early 1990s, argues that
Kyrgyzstan should adopt the Asian
model of transition to democracy
through authoritarianism and institutionalisation of authoritarian forms
of democracy, which has worked well
in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea
and Taiwan.
He is convinced that Kyrgyzstan
needs a strong-hand regime to cope
with its problems, such as soaring
crime, massive drug trafcking, rampant corruption, extreme ethnic enmities that take violent forms, authorities
that practise double standards, and
lack of public trust in the government.
The paramount task facing Kyrgyzstan today is to enforce law and order,
both in the government and in the
country, using, if necessary, harsh
methods, Ukushov said.
A strong government is one thing
that Kyrgyzstan lacks today. The constitutional reform has devolved powers from the President to Parliament
and the Prime Minister. The President, limited to a single six-year term,
has lost the authority to appoint a
Prime Minister or inuence the budget process. The Parliament elected
last year under the new Constitution is

split between ve regional and clanbased parties that have formed fragile
coalitions.
Russias President Dmitry Medvedev said he had warned the Kyrgyz
leadership of the risks of adopting a
parliamentary form of government,
but his advice was not heeded.
Most candidates in the presidential election vowed to rewrite the Constitution back to the presidential form
of government, but President-elect
Atambaev said he would not touch the
basic law. Im a team player, he said.
I dont want to strengthen the authority of the President.
NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE

Meanwhile, the challenges facing Kyrgyzstans new leadership are overwhelming. One of the most pressing
problems is healing the rift between
the countrys north and south, which
are separated by the high Tian Shan
mountain ridges. Traditional rivalries
between the better-off Europeanised
and Russied north and the poor agricultural south have intensied since
independence. Southern clans gained
the upper hand when northerner

A KY R G YZ W O M A N performing a
traditional ritual during the opening of
a new aircraft ramp at the U.S. Army
base at the Manas International
Airport, Kyrgyzstan, on June 23.
Russia expects the U.S. to close its
base in the country after the military
operation in Afghanistan.
5 8

F R O N T L I N E

Akayev was ousted by southerner Bakiyev in 2005. However, the north has
now regained its dominance following
the impressive victory of its main candidate, Atambaev, over his two main
rivals from the south, former Parliament Speaker Adakhan Madumarov
and former Emergency Services Minister Kamchibek Tashiyev, who came
second and third respectively with 14
per cent of the votes each. Unless the
losers are offered some compensation
for their defeat, they may easily foment
trouble in the explosive south.
Last year Kyrgyzstan saw the worst
ever ethnic violence in the region, provoked by supporters of the ousted
President, Bakiyev. Hundreds died in
the riots that targeted ethnic Uzbeks,
and tens of thousands ed to neighbouring Uzbekistan. Tensions are still
running high as thousands of Uzbeks
remain displaced. They complain of
continued harassment and discrimination, with courts convicting only
ethnic Uzbeks for crimes relating to
last years clashes.
Glaring poverty is aggravating ethnic and regional problems. The countrys per capita Gross National Product

DECEMBER 2, 2011

is less than $700, the ofcial minimal

wages are $2.42 a month and an estimated million working-age Kyrgyz
earn a living as seasonal workers in
Russia and Kazakhstan. The money
they send home about $2 billion is
comparable to Kyrgyzstans budget
and provides livelihood to every second family in a country of 5.5 million
people.
Whether the new Kyrgyz leaders
will be successful in tackling the countrys problems depends on how they
walk the tightrope of relations with the
two main outside players Russia and
the United States, both of which have
military bases in Kyrgyzstan. At his
rst press conference after winning
presidency, Atambaev promised to
shut down the U.S. airbase at Kyrgyzstans main airport Manas when its
lease expired in 2014 and replace it
with a civilian transport hub operated
jointly with Russia.
We know that the United States is
often engaged in conict. First in Iraq,
then in Afghanistan, and now relations
are tense with Iran. I would not want
for one of these countries to launch a
retaliatory strike on the military base,

the President-elect told journalists.

In 2009, Bakiyev also promised to
close the U.S. base but changed his
mind after Washington agreed to triple the rent payments for the base and
launched a reset in its relations with
Moscow. Russia itself has since
opened land and air transit routes to
run supplies for the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) forces in
Afghanistan but has made it clear that
it expects the U.S. to close its base in
Kyrgyzstan after the end of the military operations in Afghanistan.
Washington, however, is in no hurry to
leave the region.

VLADIMIR VORONIN/AP

U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE

Russian analysts believe that the U.S.

will seek new bases in Central Asia as it
pulls out of Afghanistan. This was the
main goal of U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton when she visited Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in October.
The U.S. wants to secure a longterm military presence in Central Asia
and relocate its forces from Afghanistan to the north, to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, said
Alexander Knyazev of the Moscowbased Institute of Oriental Studies.
In the coming years, Kyrgyzstan
may nd itself in the crossre of conicting interests of Russia and the U.S.
as the two former Cold War rivals are
turning their attention again on Central Asia. Moscow and Washington recently unveiled rival plans to promote
regional integration under their leadership. Russias Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set forth a grand vision of
reuniting former Soviet-bloc nations
in a Eurasian Union. Hillary Clinton
used her tour of the region to promote
a no less grand plan of uniting Central
Asia in a New Silk Road project.
Under Putins plan, the Eurasian
Union will be built on the base of the
existing Customs Union, a Russia-led
trade group that also includes Belarus
and Kazakhstan. According to Putin,
who is set to reclaim Russian presidency next year, the Eurasian Union
may take shape as early as 2015 and
could eventually become one of the
poles of the modern world, serving as
F R O N T L I N E

5 9

an efcient link between Europe and

the dynamic Asia-Pacic region.
Curiously, the U.S. New Silk Road
plan has exactly the same goal turn
Central Asia into a trade hub between
Europe and Asia, but under Washingtons leadership. At the Istanbul conference on Afghanistan, the U.S. also
pushed forward a proposal to create a
regional security framework modelled
on the OSCE. Both projects are an evolution of Washingtons earlier plan to
form a Greater Central Asia and are
aimed at building alternative energy
export routes to the pipelines leading
to Russia and China and weakening
their position in Central Asia.
Moscow and Beijing have responded with plans to expand and strengthen the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO), which today also
includes Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. At bilateral
Foreign Ministry consultations in
Moscow in October, Russia and China
agreed to accelerate the process of enlargement of the SCO by granting full
membership to India and Pakistan.
This may happen as early as at the
groups next summit in China in 2012.
Atambaev has declared his intention to ally Kyrgyzstan closer to Russia,
the main source of credits, cheap energy and technological assistance to Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan
joined
a
Russia-led free trade pact, signed by
seven ex-Soviet states, in October and
reafrmed its bid to join the Customs
Union. Its application was approved at
the groups meeting in St. Petersburg
in the same month. Kyrgyzstans membership in the Customs Union will
open the way into the group for Tajikistan, which currently has no borders
with any member-states.
Analysts, however, do not expect
any immediate Russian-American
confrontation over Kyrgyzstan. Moscow and Washington may well agree to
tactical cooperation as long as there is
a common threat of extremism from
Afghanistan.
In times of drought in the jungle,
animals proclaim truce at the drinking
places, said Ivan Safranchuk, an expert on Central Asia.

update

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Oppenheimers exit De Beers

N I C KY
O P P EN HE I M E R :
"A F T E R careful and

MINING giant Anglo American

has taken a controlling stake in De
Beers, the biggest diamond distributor
in the world, spending 3.2 billion on
the 40 per cent holding owned by
South Africas Oppenheimer family.
Anglo, which already speaks for 45
per cent of De Beers, will emerge with
85 per cent once the deal is completed
in a move that will give it a leading role
in the global diamond market.
Although De Beers has endured a
difcult recession with sales and profits plummeting, trading has recovered
with strong demand from emerging
markets such as India and China.
Prices have jumped recently by 40
per cent since the start of the year,
propelled by the growing popularity of
diamond-encrusted rings among Chinese brides.
The government of Botswana owns
the outstanding 15 per cent of De Beers
but has the option to increase its stake
to 25 per cent, which could cut Anglos
stake to 75 per cent.
De Beers was established in South
Africa in 1880 by Cecil Rhodes, the
English-born politician and business-

man who went on to found Rhodesia,

renamed Zimbabwe in 1979. The companys name is synonymous with diamonds and its advertising slogans
have included the ubiquitous diamonds are forever.
Analysts suggested that the Oppenheimers are selling because there is
no clear successor to Nicky Oppenheimer, chairman of De Beers, who is
in his sixties.
Archie Kane at Liberum Capital
said: There is no obvious family member coming through the ranks to take
management control. The Oppenheimers have held sway at De Beers
since the late 1920s.
Traders speculated that Anglo
could one day spin off De Beers into a
separately listed company, something
that Anglo shareholders would
welcome.
Several institutional investors have
complained that the value of Anglos
holding in De Beers is not reected
fully in its share price. At the price
Anglo is paying for the De Beers stake,
the diamond company is valued at
nearly 8 billion.
6 0

F R O N T L I N E

BLOOMBERG

JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP

deliberate
consideration of the
offer, and what is
in the best interests
of the family, we
unanimously agreed
to accept Anglo
Americans offer."
(Right) A selection
of rough diamonds
at De Beers
Buffelsmarine
recovery plant in
this undated
handout.
Anglo and De Beers have always
played down or denied stories that a
deal was in the ofng, but on November 4 chief executive Cynthia Carroll
admitted it was an acquisition she had
long coveted. She said: This transaction is a unique opportunity for Anglo American to consolidate control of
the
worlds
leading
diamond
company.
Nicky Oppenheimer, representing
the family interests, said: This has
been a momentous and difcult decision as my family has been in the diamond industry for more than 100
years and part of De Beers for more
than 80 years. After careful and deliberate consideration of the offer, and
what is in the best interests of the family, we unanimously agreed to accept
Anglo Americans offer.
The Financial Times reported that
when Cynthia Carroll was asked why
she had not bid for the stake when
prices were lower, she replied: Where
there is a buyer, there has got to be a
seller thats the bottom line.
Richard Wachman
Guardian News & Media 2011

World Affairs/Palestine

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Vote for Palestine

Palestine gets full UNESCO membership despite stiff opposition from the
United States. B Y J O H N C H E R I A N

The U.S. response was to walk out

of UNESCO and stop funding it.
Israel also walked out of the U.N.
body and used the vote as an excuse
for more annexations and the
freezing of tax revenues owed to the
Palestine Authority.

due to vote on the issue of full membership in the

middle of November.
As many as 107 countries, making up two-thirds
of UNESCOs membership, voted in favour of Palestine. China, Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil
were among them. This vote will erase a tiny part of
the injustice done to the Palestinian people, Palestinian Foreign Minster Riyadh al Malki said after
the vote. Many of Washingtons European allies,
such as France and Belgium, also voted in Palestines
favour. Among the 14 countries that opposed the
entry of Palestine were the four tiny Pacic Ocean

PA L E S T I N I A N P RES I D EN T M A H M O U D Abbas at
a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation
executive committee at Ramallah in the West
Bank on September 29.
F R O N T L I N E

NASSER SHIYOUKHI/AP

THE overwhelming endorsement by the United

Nations Educational, Scientic and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for the recognition of Palestine
as a full member is a strong signal by the international community to Israel and its main patron, the
United States, that Palestinian statehood is now only
a matter of time. UNESCO is the rst U.N. agency to
admit Palestine as a full member. This diplomatic
victory has come less than two months after Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas formal application for full membership in the U.N. on September
13.
The vote on October 31 in Paris, which upgraded
Palestines status from observer to full member, took
place despite immense pressure from Washington.
The European Union (E.U.) also tried to stall the
Palestinian bid for full membership by offering limited membership on UNESCOs executive committee along with funds to renovate the Church of
Nativity in Bethlehem, believed to be the birthplace
of Jesus Christ.
A Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) ofcial was quoted as saying that the E.U. was trying to
tempt us with money to buy our principles. Sabri
Saidam, adviser to President Abbas, said the UNESCO vote was a rehearsal for the big battle for
full U.N. membership. The U.N. Security Council is

6 1

DECEMBER 2, 2011

nations of Samoa, Palau, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, which are dependent on American largesse for their
survival.
A surprise vote against Palestine
was that of Sweden. Until the late
1980s, Sweden was a pillar of support
for liberation movements worldwide,
playing host to leaders of the African
National Congress (ANC), the South
West Africa Peoples Organisation
(SWAPO) and the Popular Movement
for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
The right-wing government in Sweden
today seems to be blindly following the
U.S. lead on key foreign policy issues.
Sweden chose to abstain on the recent
U.N. vote condemning the U.S. for its
illegal blockade of Cuba despite the
overwhelming majority in the U.N.
once again voting in favour of Cuba.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange,
may have a point when he claims that
the current government in Sweden is
under the sway of Washington. Assange has said that he fears that he may
be deported to the U.S. once he is extradited to Sweden.
Australia, Canada and Germany
also voted against Palestines admission. Australian and Canadian foreign
policies have for many years supported
U.S. foreign policy initiatives faithfully. Germany does occasionally differ
with the U.S. It refused to join the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(NATO) military assault on Libya. But
on Israel, successive German governments, racked by the collective guilty
conscience relating to the countrys
treatment of Jews during the Second
World War, have blindly supported
Israel.
Immediately after Palestine was
admitted into UNESCO, the Barack
Obama administration said that the
U.S. was withdrawing from the organisation and cutting off funding completely. The U.S. was supposed to
contribute $80 million this year,
which is about one-fth of the organisations budget. The U.S. said it was
bound by a 1994 law that forbids nancial ties with any U.N. agency that
gives Palestine full membership before
an Israel-Palestine peace deal is reac-

hed. Washingtons stand is that eventual Palestinian statehood should only

be achieved through negotiations with
Israel, not through forums such as the
U.N.
This is not the rst U.S. withdrawal
from UNESCO. In 1984, when Ronald
Reagan was President, the U.S. withdrew from the organisation citing
growing disparity between U.S. foreign policy and UNESCOs goals. It
rejoined only in 2004. The Bush administration calculated that renewed
participation would help in its diplomatic efforts to win support for the
unpopular war it had launched in Iraq.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said with a
straight face that the UNESCO vote
undermined our shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in
the Middle East. She did not bother to
explain how Palestines entry into UNESCO undermined the peace process.
UNESCOs priority is to bring clean
water to the poor, promote education
in the developing world, and preserve
historical and religious monuments.
Its work in these elds is bound to be
badly affected by the Obama administrations decision to cut off funding.

The vote sends

a strong signal
to Israel that
Palestinian
statehood is
now only a
matter of time.
It is now being asked whether the
U.S. will take a similar decision if and
when Palestine is admitted to other
international bodies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), which aims to prevent nuclear
non-proliferation, and the World
Health Organisation (WHO), which
works to eradicate dangerous diseases.
6 2

F R O N T L I N E

Obama, in his speeches in Cairo and

Turkey at the beginning of his presidency, had promised an even playing
eld for Palestinians.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
during her visit to the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in early 2011, said she
was proud to be the rst U.S. Secretary of State ever to come to UNESCO,
and I come because I strongly believe
in your mission. Within months, the
U.S. walked out of the organisation
and that too because Palestine was bestowed full membership. In his speech
to the U.N. General Assembly in 2010,
Obama had called for Palestinian
statehood. It is another story that he
backtracked on his commitment in
this years speech to the General
Assembly.
Israel, too, announced that it was
walking out of UNESCO. Further, using the UNESCO vote as an excuse to
annex more territory, the Israeli government ordered the building of 2,000
more housing units in occupied East
Jerusalem and the West Bank. East
Jerusalem is the designated capital of
the state of Palestine. The last round of
peace talks broke down in 2010 because of the Israeli decision to expand
its settlements in the West Bank and
Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said after the announcement of new building plans
that Israel had a right and an obligation to build in Jerusalem.
Israel wants Jerusalem as its capital. Even the Obama administration,
which otherwise succumbs to the diktats from Tel Aviv, has so far refused to
recognise the claim of an undivided
Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish
state.
As a further punitive measure in
response to the UNESCO vote, Israel
decided on November 1 to freeze the
transfer of tax revenues owed to the
Palestinian Authority (PA). There are
reports that the Obama administration is also planning to cut off aid to the
nancially strapped PA.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Kimoon said that he was deeply concerned by Israels announcements,
adding that Israel was obliged by in-

THIBAULT CAMUS/AP

DECEMBER 2, 2011

DE L E G AT E S A PPL A UD A F T ER approving the membership of Palestine in a

vote of 107-14 with 52 abstentions, during the session of UNESCOs 36th
General Conference in Paris on October 31.

ternational law to transfer funds

meant for Palestinians in the occupied
territories. The Israeli move meant
that the PA would not be able to pay
salaries to its 1,50,000 employees for
the rst time since 2007. The Israeli
decision to deny Palestinians access to

their own custom tax revenues is an

unlawful punitive measure that Israel
has done in the past [2005, 2006,
2007 and 2011] and will most likely do
so again, the PA said in a statement.
The U.S., which still pretends to be an
honest broker in the negotiations beF R O N T L I N E

6 3

tween the Palestinians and the Israelis, has once again sided with the
stronger side that keeps forcibly occupying land.
Former French Foreign Minister
Michel Roccard remarked that after
the recent UNESCO episode, the U.S.
had lost its moral right to lead the
negotiations to nd a peaceful solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian conict. The
Israeli leadership, backed by its strong
lobby in the U.S. Congress, had been
insisting that the U.S. should follow
Israel out of any international agency
which admitted Palestine.
Richard Falk, the noted expert on
international law and U.N. Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, has
suggested that countries like Turkey,
Brazil, India and Egypt could constitute themselves as a more legitimate
quartet than the horribly discredited
version of a quartet comprised of the
United States, Russia, the E.U. and the
U.N..
Obamas latest act of kowtowing to
Israel will only further alienate the
U.S. from the Arab Street. Obamas
attempt to deny the hatred that Arabs
feel towards the United States and Israel because of the actions of these two
countries is nothing short of the continued refusal of the United States and
Israel to take responsibility for their
own actions by shifting the blame for
the horrendous violence they have inicted on the region on their very victims, wrote Joseph Massad, the
author of the book The Persistence of
the Palestinian Question.
In the middle of this year, 80 members of the U.S. Congress visited Israel.
Both Republicans and Democrats in
the group promised to introduce even
tougher legislation to prevent the possibility of a Palestinian state emerging
in the near future. One Republican
Congressman said he would introduce
a resolution that would endorse Israels right to annex the West Bank and
Jerusalem. A Democratic Congressman went one step further and said
that he would propose a Bill that would
cut off military aid to any country supporting the Palestinian bid for U.N.
membership.

Natural Science

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Fungus farmers
Insects began farming 40 to 60
million years before humans did.
TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHS BY GEETHA IYER

About 330 species of termites, 220

species of ants and 3,400 species of
weevils are farmers, and their
cultivated crop is fungi. Insects have
also been a source of food for
several cultures across the world.
What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where you
come from? the Gnat inquired.
I dont rejoice in insects at all, Alice explained.
Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Series
This is the last part of an
eight-part series on insects.
6 4

leafhopper, Dorthula
hardwickii. It is 28 mm long
including the 12-mm long
abdominal appendage.

PARAG GIRI

THE rst revolution in the history of humankind, the agricultural revolution, began 10,000 years
ago in certain parts of Asia, Africa and Central America. This comprehensively changed the patterns of
human lifestyle. However, the revolution was neither unique nor exclusive to humans. Insects, which
evolved 400 million years (MYA) ago, began farming
40 to 60 million years before humans started
agriculture.
Three different groups of insects independently
developed the ability to farm for their needs. About
330 species of termites, 220 species of ants and
3,400 species of weevils, referred to as ambrosia
beetles, are farmers, and their cultivated crop is
fungi1. Studies in evolution have revealed that in the
case of ambrosia beetles, the habit of farming fungi
rose independently seven times. This habit is not
merely an absorbing story of weevil-fungi co-evolution but also evidence of the existence of the vast

THE LA R G E S T KN OW N

number of beetle species. There are, thus, nine lineages of insect farmers, each with different species,
each of which has its own cultivars and style of
cultivation.
The entomologists Ulrich G. Mueller and Nicole
Gerardo, authorities in this eld, suggest that the
termite-fungi association may have had its origins in
a dead-wood feeding friendship. Both termites and
fungi like to feed on dead wood. Did an accidental
nibble excite the termites palate and give them a
taste for fungi? The process of actively cultivating
fungi may have been a secondary ability developed
by termites.
Plants have always enlisted the services of insects
for pollination. Fungi may have similarly used insects for dispersal of their spores. Opportunists that
insects are, they would have adapted to take advantage of such an offer. Entomologists believe this

F R O N T L I N E

DECEMBER 2, 2011

to be the genesis of beetle-fungal

relationships.
The picture of ant mycophagy is
still far from clear. It is still uncertain
what route ants took to establish their
farming credentials.
Duur K. Aanen et al.2 have found
that the termite-fungal symbiotic association had its beginnings in Africa
about 24-34 MYA. Since its origin, this
association has never lapsed: never has
this species reverted from its farming
state to a free-feeding one. Most termites import cultivars (in the form of
fungal spores) from external sources
during nest initiation. The spores acquired for a new nest are the product of
sexual reproduction between fungi.

However, as the nest expands, the fungal garden grows (on termite faeces)
through asexual reproduction. In this
manner, a fungal monoculture is
maintained in the nest. At the same
time, the termite workers adopt several strategies to prevent monoculture
domination. Two interesting exceptions are seen in the genus Microtermes. The queen of this genus carries
asexual spores in her gut to inoculate
the gardens of her new nest3. In Macrotermes bellicosus, the male (or king)
carries spores for the new nest initiated by the queen.
Fungus-farming ants belong to the
genus Atta, commonly known as leafcutter ants. As in termites, agricultural
F R O N T L I N E

6 5

practice evolved in attine ants only

once and it did not lapse. However,
ants do not import spores during nest
initiation. Instead, they are carried by
the winged female in a small pocket in
her mouth specially designed for this
purpose. When a suitable nest site is
found, she rst starts her fungal garden and begins laying eggs only when
the fungal colony is established. The
queen assists the rst brood of workers
in expanding the garden before retiring to the exclusive job of laying eggs.
In South America, leafcutter ants are
feared by farmers as they are known to
devastate crops and vegetation in their
search for suitable plant material for
their fungal farms.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Ambrosia beetles are wood-dwellers. They too do not import fungal

spores. The spores are either ingested
or carried in special pockets called mycangia. When a beetle hibernates or
migrates from its nest to a new location, it carries the fungal spores with it.
Once it nds a suitable nesting site (a
tree, for instance), it bores a tunnel
into it. The tree will eventually have a
gallery of tunnels where eggs hatch to
form larvae. These tunnels are lined
with a mixture of faeces and woodchips in which the fungal spores hatch
and grow. The fungal farm provides
the developing larvae with ample food
but destroys trees. When beetles abandon their nest, other fungal species begin to grow on the ambrosia fungal
gardens in the trees, causing largescale damage.
Farming entails a lot of work to
keep farms and cultivars healthy. Insect farmers, too, need to work hard to
maintain genetic purity in their fungal
gardens and to remove pests and pathogens, such as mites, nematodes and
the fungal spores of other species.
Each ambrosia beetle cultivates a specic species of fungi. Scientists know
how difcult it is to maintain a pure
culture of fungi in the laboratory, but
insects have managed to do this in the
wild.
How they do it is yet to be understood completely. It is known, however, that they regularly weed their
gardens to remove unwanted cultivars
and constantly monitor them for mutant pathogens that may start an epidemic. They also isolate, maintain and
propagate clones of favourable cultivars in large monocultures and introduce new cultivars and practise
intercropping if needed.
Attine ants use antibiotic treatment when required. These ants grow
a species of Streptomyces bacteria on
certain parts of their body from which
they derive an anti-fungal concoction
effective against fungal parasites. Bacterial strains, including Streptomyces,
have also been isolated from the gut of
termites and from ambrosia beetles.
How well these antibiotics serve the
two insect species is yet to be ascer-

W I N GED T ER M I TE S S E E N

soon after rains. They are a delicacy for many

villagers in India.
tained. But the successful insect farmer may have something to teach
humans.
Insects... are not curiosities; they
are creatures in common with ourselves bound by the laws of the physical universe, which laws decree that
everything alive must live by observing
the same elemental principles that
make life possible. It is only in the ways
and means by which we comply with
the conditions laid down by physical
nature that we differ, said R.E. Snodgrass in his book Insects: Their Ways
and Means of Living4.
Insect-plant interactions are evolutionary phenomena that are millions
of years old. Plants and insects possess
a love-hate relationship; insects pollinate them but many suck the sap out of
a plants life. There are insects that
protect plants, and plants that feed on
insects. It should, therefore, be no surprise that when humans decided to
settle down and till the soil for food,
they found insects that piggybacked on
the plants. Early human communities
dealt with insects in much the same
way that insects dealt with pests in
their farms. They found multiple strategies to limit the damage and also developed a palate for insects. The
ancient adage seemed to be if you
cant beat them, eat them. Termite
queens, beetle grubs, locusts, grasshoppers and even mosquitoes gure
on the food list of humans.
6 6

F R O N T L I N E

THE J E W E L BUG , or Chrysocoris

stolli, is a voracious feeder. It is a
common plant pest.

Early human settlements practised

integrated pest management without
unduly poisoning themselves. They
were perhaps aware that it was not
necessary to eradicate insects; it was
enough if their populations were kept
under control. This, as researches
seem to indicate, was the strategy of
insect farmers too. Somewhere in the
evolution of human agriculture, this
strategy appears to have changed. Humans began to look at bugs as pests
that had to be eradicated out of
existence.
BUGS

Bugs is a term used to describe a wide

variety of small animals that cause
harm to humans. But in the scientic

PARAG GIRI

DECEMBER 2, 2011

I N S E CTS AR E A TTACKE D by
parasites too. Here, Borthogonia, a
leafhopper, with phoretic mites.

beautiful Cantao ocellata, the only representative

Scutellerid bug species in India.

TH E B R IGH T A N D

F R O N T L I N E

6 7

world, true bugs belong to the order

Hemiptera, and they play a signicant
role in human agricultural systems.
For this reason, hemipterans are a
widely researched insect group. Phytophagous insects, as their name suggests, feed exclusively on plants.
Sap-sucking and plant-chewing heteropterans, grasshoppers, several species of beetles and butteries and
moths are examples of insects that
farmers recognise very well. Lesserknown and frequently missed out are
insects that are farmers friends. With
mounting concerns over the use of poisonous pesticides, the chemical aftereffects of fertilizers and increasing soil
pollution, some of these lesser-known
insects are beginning to receive
attention.
The order Hemiptera includes a
large variety of insects that show both
morphological and physiological variations. For a layman, the easiest way to
identify these insects would be to look
for a small triangular chitinous part
visible between the wings. A part of the

TH E N YM PH O F

the strange-looking hooded

grasshopper.

TH E S H O R T - H O R N E D GRA S S H O P P ERS

N E OR THOC R I S S P E CI E S , A wingless
grasshopper. The male has a bright pink abdomen
and the female is quite dull.

(above and right) are masters of camouage.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

A COFFE E LOC US T

(Aularches sp.).
Locusts represent
the swarming phase
of grasshoppers.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

A C A N T H A S PI S Q UI N Q U ES P I N O S A

an assassin bug that feeds on

termites. The beak, or rostrum, is
clearly visible.
forewings are hard and leathery in true
bugs; hence, they are often mistaken
for beetles. The hindwings are completely membranous. Heteropterans
use chemicals for defence, and scent
glands are characteristic of this group.
This is most predominant in bugs
from the Pentatomidae family, whose
smelly secretions have given them the
common name stink bug. This disagreeable odour is accompanied by
beautiful colours and attractive forms.
The scent and the bright, warning colouration are the protective features of
these bugs. Among the most common
of these bugs, familiar to farmers and
gardeners, are seed bugs, leaf-footed
bugs, stainer bugs, jewel bugs, lace
bugs, shield bugs, giant water bugs,
bed bugs, assassin bugs and stink bugs.
The feeding habits of true bugs vary. Two-thirds of all heteropterans are
herbivores. They have mouth parts designed specially to feed on plant liquids. Their proboscis, used for feeding,
comprises needle-like stylets crafted
from the mandibles and maxillae lying
within a groove formed by the labium.
This entire set-up is called a beak, or
rostrum. Herbivores generally feed on
the contents of plants phloem and

A W I N GLES S FE M ALE Haematorrhophus marginatus. The reduviid has

special pads on its foreleg and mid-legs, with which it holds on to prey,
which is sucked dry.

sometimes xylem (food- and waterbearing cells respectively). In addition,

some species feed on owers, ovules
and unripe fruit to supplement their
diet with nutrients, while others derive
these nutrients from microorganisms
in their gut.
Carnivorous heteropterans are as
common as herbivorous ones. Bugs belonging to the Reduviidae family are
commonly called assassin bugs, a description of their hunting ways. These
predaceous bugs feed on a wide range
of small creatures, including other insects. A reduviid belonging to the genus Acanthaspis actively hunts and
7 0

F R O N T L I N E

feeds on honeybees, while an Acanthaspis quinquespinosa feeds on termites. Large aquatic bugs feed on
insects and other creatures in their environment. Collectively, these carnivorous bugs keep a check on insect
populations. But the bed bug, which
feeds on human blood, has no natural
predator.
HOMOPTERANS

There is no difference in the fore- and

hindwing of homopterans; as the
name suggests, the wings are uniformly membranous. All homopterans are
plant feeders and predominantly trop-

DECEMBER 2, 2011

THE P E N TATOM I D , OR stink bug,

produces secretions that give off a
strong odour because of which it is
considered a delicacy and eaten in
some countries.

TH IS A SS A S S I N B UG , Ectrychotes, belongs to the family Ectrichodiinae,

known for its bright colouration. The insect hides under leaf litter and preys
at night.

ical in distribution. Some hoppers may

bite humans, but they rely on plants for
their nutrients. These insects are also
famous for their various ways of communication. Their general form and
appearance is quite different from that
of true bugs. Cicadas, froghoppers,
planthoppers, treehoppers and leafhoppers are all homopterans. Wingless, often un-insect-like in form, they
are detested by gardeners; aphids,
scale insects and mealy bugs also belong to this group.
All homopterans feed on the sap
from the xylem and phloem of plants.
As they are liquid feeders, they also

T H E C O T T O N S T A I N E R bug, or
Dysdercus similis. A yeast that
resides in its head gets transferred
to the cotton plant, staining it and
reducing the value of the lint.
F R O N T L I N E

7 1

THE S HI E LD BUG also produces

unpleasant smells when stressed.
Here, Cyclopelta siccifolia.

or Graptostethus. It
is commonly seen on the Ipomea
plant. It feeds on seeds.

THE S E E D B UG ,

DECEMBER 2, 2011

conflict by enlisting their cooperation.

LOCUSTS

(Calodia sp.) basking on a leaf.

PARAG GIRI

A FORE S T L E A F H O PP ER

L E A F H O PPE R S F R O M N O RT H - EA S T ERN India. Atknosoniella opponens and,

below, Evacanthus sp. They are a xylem (plant water-bearing cells) feeders
and hence excrete copious amounts of liquid.

tend to excrete uid. Cicada sprays are

famous in forests. Some of the ejected
uids, called honeydew, are actively
sought by ants, who in turn provide
protection to these bugs. These homopterans pierce plant tissues to lay
their eggs.
Collectively, their breeding and
feeding habits cause problems for
farmers by injuring plants and paving
the way for infection by pathogens.
The evolutionary versatility shown
by bugs, in being able to occupy a wide
variety of niches in the environment,
brings them into direct conict with
humans engaged in agriculture. However, versatility is indicative of diversity. Human ingenuity needs to take
advantage of this diversity to reduce
7 2

F R O N T L I N E

The word locust has been used for a

variety of insects and crustaceans. Any
insect that appears in large numbers,
like the cicada, for example, has also
been referred to as a locust. However,
the true locust is a short-horned grasshopper. Its close relatives, bush crickets or katydids, are found in the same
habitat and are called long-horned
grasshoppers. Grasshoppers, crickets
and gryllids belong to the order Orthoptera, meaning straight-winged insects. Although found in similar
habitats, katydids and grasshoppers
differ in their food habits, the latter
being a complete herbivore.
The term locust is used to describe
the swarming phase of grasshoppers.
Research has shown that swarming5 is
a result of overcrowding. When there
is crowding and the hind legs of different grasshoppers touch, the production of serotonin a neurotransmitter
found in humans as well is stimulated. The increased levels of serotonin
bring about morphological changes
and an increase in appetite. This results in increased feeding and an increase in the reproductive rate. Thus,
grasshoppers breed profusely and increase in number, resulting in a locust
swarm. One can imagine the devastating effect this has on plants. The
transformation of grasshoppers to
swarming locusts continues to increase because of the increasing rates
of contacts between members of the
growing population.
According to some people, there
existed a custom in certain parts of
India whereby a locust was caught in
its initial growing stages, decorated,
revered and then released in the fond
hope that it will take the swarm away.
When an insect in such large numbers is found destroying carefully
tended crops and is difcult to get rid
of, it seems only natural that humans
would contemplate using them as
food. In this technology-directed century, the axiom of new-wave thinking
is to do more with less. Micro-livestock
refers to the farming of rapidly repro-

DECEMBER 2, 2011

ducing small animals, especially insects. This is still an emerging process.

Despite the strong wave of vegetarianism, livestock farming is not going
to diminish, and with the steady increase in the population, humans will
have to nd ways to produce more food
in less space. Insects have been a food
source for several cultures across the
world. Termite queens are a favourite
food of many villagers in Andhra Pradesh. The many ying termites that
emerge during the rains to start a new
family are collected by the villagers as
food. Even among cultures that have
dietary laws prohibiting the consumption of animals, certain species of
grasshoppers are allowed as food.
Insect-farming operations have a
smaller ecological footprint than other
livestock farming. Insects grow to ma-

AP H IDS (A B O V E A N D right, Aphis nerii, the oleander aphid) are the most
common pests in gardens and are difcult to get rid of. Ladybird beetles feed
on them.
F R O N T L I N E

7 3

turity quickly, reproduce at explosive

rates, occupy less space, require less
water and feed, but have a high food
conversion efciency6. Insects are a
rich source of protein. In contrast to
cattle and poultry, with their increasing number of pathogens, insects are a
safe source of nourishment.
Compare the nutritional value of
common meat products with insect
meat to understand why insects are
beginning to be accepted as a food
source: 6,100 grams of beef provides
humans with 210 calories, 15 g of fat
and 20 g of protein; 100 g of grasshopper meat provides 97 cal, 6.1 g of fat
and 20.6 g of proteins; 100 g of caterpillars provides 268 cal, 17 g of fat and

Natural Science

DECEMBER 2, 2011

TH E F E MA L E A N D the male Lacusa fuscofasciata. Very little is known about

the biology of this fulgorid hopper.

28 g of proteins. Before long we will be

buying Chocolate Chirpie Chip cookies (with crickets) at food courts. Movie theatres in South America sell
roasted ants, not popcorn. This is not a
reality show on television in the United States or India, but the hard-core
reality of life in many countries.
There are already over 1,400 edible
insect species familiar to humans.
Many more are waiting to be discovered. These insects can thrive in environments that are hostile to current
livestock farming and agricultural
practices. Moreover, insect feed can be
a means of waste disposal. Termite
farms could use waste from the wood
and paper or sugarcane industry as
feed; such waste is currently incinerated or thrown into waterbodies.
More importantly, unlike cattle,
insect livestock farming would neither
produce greenhouse gases nor require
the use of antibiotics. In their wanderings between blades of grass and the
wastes from the kitchen, insects
would, if humans agree, adapt to this
new role too from insect farmers to
farm produce and still roam freely.
The Yaqui tribespeople of North
America narrate the story of a confrontation between a lion and a cricket.
Long ago, the lion, in a t of pique at
being ignored by a singing cricket,
challenged it and its army to a war with
his carnivorous animals to establish
that he was the king of the forest. Gleefully, the cricket agreed and came with

T H E F LA T I D HOP P E R , which feeds

on plant sap, can be recognised by
its large, triangular wings.

its army of insects. Ants bit the feet of

the wolves and the leopards, and bees
and wasps stung their bodies and eyes,
forcing the lion and his warriors to ee
and leave the insects alone.
The dominance of insects is a fact.
Given the environmental degradation
of this century, it would be of benet to
humans, and to the earth, if they get to
know insects more closely and enlist
their cooperation.

Geetha Iyer is an author, a nature

enthusiast and an independent
consultant in the elds of education
and environment.
REFERENCES
1,3. Mueller, Ulrich G. and Gerardo,
Nicole; Fungus-farming insects:
Multiple origins and diverse
evolutionary histories; PNAS;
7 4

F R O N T L I N E

Volume 99; No.24; pages 1524715249.

2. Aanen, Duur K.; Eggleton, Paul;
Rouland-Lefvre, Corrinne;
Guldberg-Frslev, Tobias;
Rosendahl, Sren and Boomsma,
Jacobus J.; The evolution of fungusgrowing termites and their
mutualistic fungal symbionts;
PNAS; Volume 99; No.23; pages
14887-14892.
4. Snodgrass, Robert Evans; Insects
Their ways and Means of Living;
Volume 5 of the Smithsonian
Scientic Series (1930) published by
the Smithsonian Institution Series,
New York.
5. Rogers, Stephen M; Matheson,
Thomas; Despland, Emma; Dodgson,
Timothy; Burrows, Malcolm and
Simpson, Stephen J.;
Mechanosensory-induced
behavioural gregarization in the
desert locust Schistocerca gregaria;
Journal of Experimental Biology
(2003); 206 (22); pages 3991-4002.
6. Dzamba, Jakub; Third
Millennium Farming (3MF) Insect
Farming in Cities; University of
Toronto (2009).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have been able to do this series

largely because of the time, encouragement and assistance given
to me by Dr Chandrashekara Viraktamath, Emeritus Professor at
Gandhi Krishi Vignyan Kendra,
Bangalore, a world authority on
leafhoppers. I owe a lot to the taxonomist Dr Prathapan Divakaran,
of Vellayani, Thiruvananthapuram, who was always helpful.
Thanks are also due to the entomologists Dr Priyadarsanan Dharma Rajan, Dr Seena Narayanan
Karimbumkara, Dr K.G. Sivaramakrishnan, Dr J. Poorani and Dr
K.A. Subramanian and to Pranav
Balasubramanian, a Class XI student, all of whom helped me with
identifying the insects. Thanks are
due to my daughter, Sandhya Iyer,
for her critical feedback.
Geetha Iyer

books

DECEMBER 2, 2011

States & the Union

A good mix of historical and contemporary perspectives on redrawing the maps
of States within India. B Y V . V E N K A T E S A N
HE reorganisation of States
in India has not received the
attention it deserves in the
academic world. The question whether the existing
States should be split further and, if so,
into how many States has deed easy
resolution. The issue is so complex and
emotive that any attempt to unravel it
without taking broad positions is a
challenge in itself. Yet, an objective
study of the issue, even if such an inquiry does not lead to answers to all the
questions that could arise, has to be
attempted if only to clear the mist.
Interrogating Reorganisation of
States is one such attempt at brainstorming, which is followed by reection on issues and renement of
concepts in the light of experience. The
essays included in the book are papers
presented at a seminar organised at
the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, in September 2008.
The editors, Asha Sarangi and
Sudha Pai, both academics, maintain
in the introduction that the task at
hand before the contributors was not
whether the reorganisation of States
was a success or failure. Perhaps the
question itself borders on irrelevance
as one cannot think of reversing history even if the ndings, arrived at under
the most objective conditions, point to
failure.
The book, however, makes a significant promise to the reader: to engage
seriously with the theory and practice
within which the rationale of reorganisation was conceptualised and carried forward. In this effort, however,
the reader can easily discern where the
contributors sympathies lie.

IN REVIEW

Interrogating Reorganisation
of States: Culture, Identity
and Politics in India; editors
Asha Sarangi and Sudha Pai;
Routledge and Nehru
Memorial Museum and
Library, 2011; pages 319,
Rs.895.
The editors are clear that the emergence of regional parties and their importance in coalitions formed at the
Centre to form governments could
push demands for creating more
States in the near future. This, the editors suggest, is not to be despised as an
ominous sign, but welcomed as the
continuing process of democratisation
aiming to reach down to new social
F R O N T L I N E

7 5

groups and regions hitherto excluded

from the mainstream of governance.
The editors are condent that it
would not only create and increase political consciousness among the disadvantaged groups in the States, but also
produce new local and regional elites
with participatory and decision-making roles. Such a process, according to
them, is inevitable as regional inequalities widen among the existing States
under the process of globalisation creating more intense competition for
sharing resources in intersecting regions and subregions of the States.
Further division of the existing
States is often opposed on the grounds
that it could encourage centrifugal
tendencies and lead to the dismemberment of India. In his Foreword to the
book, the eminent journalist B.G.
Verghese has sought to rebut this apprehension by making out a case for 60
States by 2050 with an average population of 25 million each, and some
1,500 districts. His discussion on
States reorganisation in the context of
the north-eastern States and Jammu
and Kashmir is insightful.
Arunachal Pradesh, he suggests, is
an extraordinary story that has gone
unnoticed. There is no parallel between the success achieved there and
anything else in any part of the world.
The State is a mosaic of over 110 tribes
of diverse racial and linguistic stock,
numbering from a few hundreds to
tens of thousands, speaking different
languages, professing different faiths
(indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian) but coming together through that
process of nation-building and statebuilding to acquire a new sense of

DECEMBER 2, 2011

identity as Arunachalese Indians. Arunachal Pradesh continues to evolve

and so we cannot sit back smugly but
must use the existing platform for its
further evolution on positive lines, he
says.
Verghese then dwells on non-territorial solution as a key to unravel the
vexed issue of reorganising Nagaland.
The National Socialist Council of
Nagalim (Isaac-Muivah) is demanding Nagalian, or a greater Naga state.
Verghese suggests that this is not a
reorganisation that can be unilaterally
imposed and would require the consent of other parties and States if civil
strife is to be avoided as was experienced earlier in Manipur.
He writes: At the political level,
there is already a Naga Hoho at the
apex of the individual Naga ho-hos or
tribal assemblies, going across all the
Naga-inhabited regions in Nagaland,
Manipur, Assam and Arunachal and
into Myanmar. This has met from time
to time in recent years to consult on
pan-Naga issues. So it is possible to
structure a non-territorial Naga entity
or collective peoplehood if we look at
this in a socio-cultural context. Such
acquiescence would most likely diminish the intensity of the demand and
make people more rational than emotional in judging where their interests
lie.... The alternative would be to frame
a separate Naga Constitution and
forge an organic link between it and
the Indian Constitution as in the case
of J&K constitution. None of this will
mean separation from India and a
non-territorial entity will not entail
further territorial reorganisation of
the north-east of the country. It would
mean accommodating things in a different way.
He elaborates: We do not have to
worry about granting a new Naga entity its own ag, currency, or postage.
Many Indian princely states of yore
had their own stamps, coins and ags.
This did not add anything to their sovereignty. The princely states were
more subject to British dominion than
were the British provinces. Their gun
salutes were a concession to vanity
no more.

Arguing that oversized units are

generally incompetent and inefcient,
Verghese justies the seemingly expensive effort at fragmenting existing
States. However, alongside such fragmentation, he prescribes larger nonpolitical entities such as natural resource regions, river-basin authorities,
transport corridors, economic hubs,
regional energy grids, and agro-climatic zones in order to encourage
functional coordination.
Observers of States reorganisation
often wonder how to describe the contribution of Indias rst Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in redrawing
the countrys map on linguistic lines.
Nehru, despite the broad consensus
during the freedom struggle in favour
of such reorganisation, was hesitant
and apprehensive whether nationbuilding should get precedence over
building of the federation. Yet, faced
with the reality that people were impatient, he facilitated the reorganisation
of States on linguistic lines, after the
submission of the Report of the States
Reorganisation Commission (SRC) in
1955. The SRC had recommended 16
States and three centrally administered territories. Nehrus government
created 14 States and nine Union Territories (UTs) in 1956. During the next
50 years, the number of States doubled
to 28, while the number of UTs came
down to seven.
Verghese writes on the contribution of Nehru:
He ruled a small India with a big
Bharat that scarcely mattered. The
complete merger of Bharat into India
may take several more decades, but
those who have been waiting in a nonexistent queue for thousand years will
not be denied their due.
Indias unity rests on its respect
for diversity. Indias stability depends
on change. The process of becoming
more fully India has an aspirational
aspect which is as important as the
time and space dimensions of nation
building. So the reorganisation of
States has to be seen as a three-dimensional task and a great work in
progress.
The editors elucidate the different
7 6

F R O N T L I N E

approaches of Nehru and B.R. Ambedkar to linguistic reorganisation. Nehru

warned against any kind of passionate
surge in demand for separate States
based on an exclusive ideology of language or religion. He wanted large
States to retain their cosmopolitan
character. He was not fully convinced
of the viability and durability of monolingual States.
Ambedkar, as Chairman of the
Drafting Committee of the Indian
Constitution, supported the demand
for reorganisation of States on a linguistic basis. He strongly argued for
the creation of Maharashtra on this
basis. He considered four basic principles such as development, efciency,
equality and democracy for ushering
in the era of reorganisation of States.
Ambedkar proposed that each
State may have its own language for
purposes of administrative communication with the Centre and other
States, but disregarded the thesis of
one language, one state. In other
words, his view was that people speaking the same language need not be
grouped into one State but there could
be more than one State with the same
language. The formula of one State,
one language, he pointed out, was not
to be equated with one language, one
State. Instead, people speaking one
language might nd themselves in
many States depending upon other
factors such as the requirements of administrative efciency, specic needs
of particular areas and the proportion
between the majority and minority
communities within a State.
For Ambedkar, States in a democratic polity needed to have equitable
size limits since this would ensure proportional distribution of resources
among the States as well as their inhabitants. Like Nehru, he too favoured
a strong Centre to ensure an equitable
survival of different languages, cultures, regions and States within a broader
framework of an inclusive developmental polity.
The editors argue, pointing to recent demands for smaller States, that
large States can become hegemonic
and undemocratic through their nu-

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

DECEMBER 2, 2011

The rst meeting of the States Reorganisation

Commission in New Delhi. From right, K.M. Panikkar, Saiyid Fazl Ali
(Chairman), Hriday Nath Kunzru and P.C. Chaudhuri.

FE BR U AR Y 12, 1954:

merical strength and command over

natural and physical resources, which
can have a serious impact on the federal democratic structure of the country.
In the long journey of reorganisation from 14 to 28 States, the Centre
has changed a few principles into guidelines to deal with demands for further redrawing of existing State
boundaries. These principles, according to Paul Brass (whom the editors
cite in their essay), are as follows: A.
demands must stop short of secession;
B. demands based on language and
culture could be accommodated, but
not those based explicitly on religious
differences; C. demands must have
clearly demonstrated public support;
and D. division of multilingual states
must have some support from different linguistic groups.
Except the major demands such as
Telangana (Andhra Pradesh), Bodoland (Assam), Gorkhaland (West Bengal), Haripradesh (Uttar Pradesh),
Vidarbha (Maharashtra) and Kodagu,
or Coorg (Karnataka), not much is
known about the remaining 26 or so
demands reportedly pending for consideration before the government. As
the editors note, there has been a signicant shift from language and culture that shaped the earlier process of
reorganisation to the one driven by
specic needs of the political economy
of development and socio-cultural
inclusion.
What is surprising is why it took so

long for this shift to take place. As the

editors explain, the colonial state supported commercial agriculture and industry in selected areas such as the
coastal regions, deltas, river valleys
and mineral-rich areas, leaving the
vast hinterland underdeveloped. Such
a distorted pattern of unequal development continued in the post-Independence period as well. The result has
been uneven development in the big
States of India: some districts that
have seen rapid development are surrounded by poorer regions that remain
backward and underdeveloped. The
editors point out that Telangana, Bundelkhand, Poorvanchal, Vidarbha and
the inner tribal regions of Orissa have
continued to remain deprived within
large States.
The three small States of Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand,
which came into existence in 2000,
were not created on linguistic and cultural grounds. Answering the criticism
that mere creation of small States does
not guarantee that they will be wellgoverned, or will experience faster economic development, the editors say
that these three States are not performing badly.
They, however, have a word of caution for the proponents of Telangana:
liberalisation and the emergence of a
growing private sector within the market economy could mean that the formation of a separate State of
Telangana may not benet the people
F R O N T L I N E

7 7

of this backward region. They explain:

After Independence, the rich
landlord class in the coastal regions of
Andhra Pradesh moved inland into the
agro-industry, manufacturing and in
more recent years the information
technology sector in Hyderabad.
Regional inequalities have markedly increased since the early 1990s
with retreat of the state and a growing
private sector increasingly controlling
investment decisions of scarce resources. It will be difcult for the poorly educated and disadvantaged groups
in the underdeveloped regions to obtain employment, particularly in the
better paid and more dynamic sectors
of the economy. The well-educated
and better-off outsiders might benet
leaving the people of the new State
behind, heightening feelings of regional chauvinism. Indeed, the editors
slam the Congress for not following up
its promise to set up another States
Reorganisation Commission (SRC), in
the light of the Telangana demand,
and for going back on the United Progressive Alliance governments agreement with the Telangana Rashtra
Samiti because of the fear of a backlash
from other regions of Andhra Pradesh.
However, after having articulated
the contemporary demands for smaller States, the editors appear reluctant
to suggest any solution in the light of
their excellent analysis. They conclude
with their readers unable to conceal
their disappointment the issue of reorganisation of States in Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere remains a complex
and unnished task before the political leadership at the Centre and in the
States.
The book is structured into four
parts the historical and political context, reorganising the Hindi heartland
(Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand), western and southern India
(Sindhis, Maharashtra, Telangana,
Kannada), and the east and the northeast (Orissa and Assam) with chapter
authors providing a detailed background to the movements in their chosen States. It is a good mix of historical
and contemporary perspectives on the
reorganisation of States in India.

books/review

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Economics of caste
The author establishes how disparity in society is entrenched within the
caste-occupation nexus. B Y R A J S E K H A R B A S U
N the late 1990s, Dalit activists in
many parts of India had started
debating whether the institution
of caste that prevailed in the
country had similarities with the
concept of race as was often conceptualised in the West. In fact, before the
Durban Conference on apartheid and
racism, many Dalit intellectuals believed that caste and race were almost
similar in the context of India. The
question is why these Dalit intellectuals and the Dalit counter-public
tried to insist on this sort of an analogy.
As has been argued by critics such as
Shiv Visvanathan, there possibly had
been attempts by many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working
among Dalit communities to integrate
them at the grass-roots, State, national
and international levels.
Indeed, such a strategy reected an
element of exibility whereby the state
was visualised not only as an agency of
reform but as one whose powers violated the dignity of Dalits in their everyday life. The focus was on
entitlement, and in this ambience the
exercise of rights assumed great significance. In other words, it added fuel to
the arguments of Dalit activists, notably those attending conferences such
as the Durban Conference, that the
reactions to caste and caste-based discrimination were akin to the reactions
that had been set in motion by race and
racial discrimination.
Sociologists have for long argued
that what sets India apart from other
societies is the overwhelming dominance of the caste order. Indeed, there
is an opinion that there are no phonotypical differences between castes and
it is specic, coded substances that differentiate one caste from another.
These differences are often expressed

IN REVIEW

The Grammar of Caste:

Economic Discrimination in
Contemporary India by
Ashwini Deshpande; Oxford
University Press, 2011;
pages 272, Rs.695.
in terms of purity and pollution which
are to be observed very strictly by individuals in their quotidian experience
as human beings. As in terms of race,
physical separation was also given primacy by social theorists working on
Indian communities.
Dipankar Gupta has argued that
what makes caste stand apart from
other forms of stratication is the elaborate and ritualised rules that not only
insist on the observance of these distinctions but also prescribe sanctions
in cases where the norms are violated.
7 8

F R O N T L I N E

In his words, It is this obsessive attention to the slightest variation in ritualmaking that marks out caste from other forms of stratication. More
importantly, while it is difcult to provide a quantitative interpretation of
the impact of caste on Indian society,
its formidable presence in terms of a
hierarchical order resembling racism
continues to bafe scholars interested
in the study of caste both as a cultural
and an economic system.
However, scholars increasingly argue that it is difcult to accept the
provocative position as adopted by
Louis Dumont in his well-known work
Homo Hierarchicus, which says that
pure hierarchy was a state of mind to
which all those within the caste system
abided. This model of an all-embracing hierarchy had a great deal of similarity with the version of the
Indologists of the 19th century who
preferred an uncritical interpretation
of the brahmanical texts such as the
Yagnavalkyasmriti and the Manusmriti. It is now being argued that
caste identities cannot be straitjacketed within a single universalised system, where the pure and the impure
remain unproblematically rm in
times of interaction.
INEQUITY AND POVERTY

What needs to be stressed is that caste

order is characterised not simply by
the contesting notions of hierarchy but
by issues of inequality and poverty. In
her book, Ashwini Deshpande strongly
asserts that caste could be an important group identier vis-a-vis issues
relating to economic disparity and discrimination. A few years ago, there
were articles in academic journals that
Dalit children were being chased out of
schools in some villages of Tamil Nadu

DECEMBER 2, 2011

since they wanted to participate with

the rest of the children in the government-run midday meal programmes.
The dominant castes rejected such action on the basis of their caste pride
and did everything possible to stall
such moves.
More glaring were the reports from
Patna, Bihars capital city, where the
governments public distribution
shops owned by the dominant castes
refused to distribute goods to Dalit
customers until cloth screens were
hung to save them from the gaze of the
so-called polluting presence of the
untouchables. The Indian Institute of
Dalit Studies conducted a survey of 531
villages in ve States of India in 2003
and exposed the patterns of exclusion
and discrimination that beset the
much-publicised
midday
meal
schemes and the public distribution
system.
The author has rightly argued at
the very outset that since the non-economic literature on the Indian caste
system is vast, there may be a question
as to whether an economic enquiry
can make any additional worthwhile
contribution (page 3). She expresses
her discomfort with many of the contemporary writings which emphasise
that the links between occupation and
caste are breaking down and that all
this is resulting in the release of enormous entrepreneurial energies in different parts of India. An economist by
training, Ashwini Deshpande acknowledges that while occupational
structures may have witnessed a rapid
transformation, caste division is ubiquitous in contemporary India.
CASTE-CLASS OVERLAP

The author tries to answer questions as

to whether the lower castes tended to
get absorbed into low-paying and lessprestigious occupations, while there
was a pronounced presence of the upper castes in modern occupations. In
fact, there can be little disagreement
with her proposition that social and
economic mobility is still a distant
dream for members of the lower
castes. In other words, while links between caste and jati can snap, there are

Economic
liberalisation
has not brought
about a change
in the socioeconomic status
of Dalits.
enough examples to lend credence to
the old Marxian logic of a caste-class
overlap in India.
Ashwini Deshpande draws our attention to the growing incidence of the
breakdown of the traditional subsistence economy. But this does not essentially establish the fact that the
inuence of caste is waning; rather
there are signs that it is making its
presence strongly felt in the different
dimensions of the economy. She alludes to a number of studies which
stress that untouchability is not only
present all over rural India but have
survived by adapting to new socioeconomic realities and is taking on
new and insidious forms. She points
out that the extrajudicial power exercised by caste panchayats, particularly
in the sphere of inter-caste romantic/
matrimonial alliances, is proof of the
lasting relevance of caste in rural
society.
However, the author does not intend to conne her study to economic
investigation; her intention rather is to
establish how through a discursive
reading of the past there can be a crucial understanding of the material aspects of disparity, as was entrenched
within the caste-occupation nexus.
Ashwini Deshpandes volume is
based primarily on her own academic
interests spanning over the last decade
vis-a-vis issues of contemporary caste
inequalities in India. Her work takes
an all-India view, recognising the regional and subregional variations.
Apart from a concise introduction, she
brings out the diversities in her work
F R O N T L I N E

7 9

through the various chapters. In one of

the chapters, she discusses the possibilities of employing a few economic
theories to investigate how social identity has impacted on the economic outcome, leading to discriminations in
market settings. She insists that both
classical/neoclassical interpretations
and heterodox traditions, including
Marxian, have stressed that social
identity of the economic agent does
not matter. She contests such understandings by arguing that unfortunate
and stark life experiences have proved
that issues of identity are not so peripheral that they can be ignored by
scholars. She highlights the contradictions inherent in them, despite the
overarching supremacy of neoclassical
economic theories, since social discriminations are found to be acceptable within the market traditions and
within the system of prot maximisation.
In this context, it has been pointed
out that though the conversion of Dalits to other religions, including Christianity and Islam, was inuenced by an
urge to escape from exclusion and discrimination, such conversion did not
ensure the improvement of the social
status of the converted individual.
GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM MODEL

The most interesting part of her argument is that which highlights the assumptions of the general equilibrium
model. This model establishes the
point that prot-maximising agents
could encourage discrimination until
there were policies of afrmative action or a coalition of employers who
were interested in breaking free from
all social stereotypes. The general
equilibrium model suggests that all
employees get paid according to their
productivity, whereas in a world with
statistical discrimination, employees
get paid according to their group identities.
The hallmark of Ashwini Deshpandes analysis is that she tries to explain these complex economic theories
in terms of the discourses which have
taken place on caste and the Hindu
social order since the last decades of

VISHWA KUNDAPURA

DECEMBER 2, 2011

DA L IT W O R K E R S E N G A GED in manual cleaning of pits of public toilets in Kolar Gold Fields, Karnataka. Social and
economic mobility is still a distant dream for members of the lower castes.

the 19th century. Like the present-day

economists, social theorists of the 19th
century argued that the very afliation
to a certain social category determined
the level of wages and issues broadly
related to human security. In other
words, an individual belonging to the
lowest social classes could barely expect highly rewarding jobs.
Ashwini Deshpande feels that despite the popularity of a number of
economic models, there are a whole
range of questions on the caste system
and its role in the economy that are
unanswered. In this context, the author has raised the problems arising
out of conicting social prescriptions.
Subsequently, she also raises the problem of identity formation.
In India, she argues, the usage of
terms such as Dalits and Harijans often gives rise to a great deal of contestation. The ofcial emphasis on the
usage of the term Harijan is found to
be offensive by the advocates of Dalit
identity since they nd it to be too
pejorative if not patronising. The construction of identity is itself a complex
phenomenon, and the self-perceived

identity also displays a degree of homogenisation or enforcement, thereby

creating conicting ideas of self-respect within a particular community.
This identity sometimes appears to be
the real identity, but sometimes it is
also ssured along the lines of class,
territoriality and gender. Possibly, it is
these complexities that economists
lose sight of when they present their
theoretical models based on a singular
consensual identity. In the case of India, most of these studies bring out a
number of interesting dimensions.
LAND REFORM LEGISLATION

The author stresses the fact that while

there are conicts between the middle
and upper layers of rural societies over
issues relating to social distribution,
such conicts are less marked among
the lower castes. The reality is that
members of the Scheduled Castes
(S.Cs) in rural areas continue to depend mostly on upper-caste landlords
for their daily employment. This situation could be directly related to the
lack of initiative on the part of rightist
and centrist political parities of India
8 0

F R O N T L I N E

to support land reform legislation on a

large scale. The example of Uttar Pradesh in this regard would not be out of
place, where Dalit politicians, despite
capturing political power, did not introduce land reform legislation for the
benet of the majority of S.C. families.
Such actions on the part of Dalit
politicians are often based on their
own understanding of social hierarchy
and that of power relations in society.
Presumably, this explicates the rise of
the Chamars as an important force in
Dalit politics in northern India. The
Chamar identity thus gets privileged
over other identities such as all-embracing identities like those of the Ravi
Dasi or Kabir Panthis.
Nonetheless, the discrimination
against Dalits in matters relating to
access to educational institutions and
land ownership cannot be overlooked
by scholars working on contemporary
India. In West Bengal and Kerala,
which have witnessed long years of
progressive governments, the S.Cs
continue to be treated as landless communities. In several other States, Dalits
have
been
classied
as

DECEMBER 2, 2011

non-agricultural
communities
because they are scavengers, leather
workers or those engaged in other menial occupations.
Interestingly, economic liberalisation and globalisation have not
brought about much change in the socio-economic status of Dalits. Indeed,
there seems to be very little evidence,
as the author suggests, of a departure
from the earlier experiences of caste
inequalities. For instance, the economic forces of liberalisation and
globalisation have generated a number of jobs in the outsourcing industry
where recruitment is based on uency
in English and computer literacy. Dalits, because of their educational disadvantages, nd it difcult to compete
for such jobs.
It has also been argued that the
emulation of upper-caste norms by
members of the Dalit communities
have led to the undermining of the role
of women in the family and in the
workplace. This is a change from the
earlier times when these communities
were noted for their relative egalitarianism in gender-related issues. Gita
Nambisan, in her researches, has
pointed out how Dalit girls faced discrimination in schools because of the
double stigma of gender and caste. The
author has highlighted how through a
variety of ways such stigma manifested
itself in the everyday lives of Dalits.
Her in-depth qualitative investigations dealing with gender differences
in education, both at rural and urban
localities, bring out the prevalence of
such a phenomenon.
The author has also highlighted
the caste-class interaction and its implications for the participation of
women in the employment sphere. She
states emphatically that an upperclass background often enabled urban
women to break free from the traditional caste diktats. This is reected in
their greater presence in higher education and professional occupation and
also in their marriage choices. But an
S.C. woman has little option other
than continuing with her traditional
caste occupation. This explains why
women from these communities carry

on with their traditional tasks and become craftswomen, petty traders or

midwives.
Finally, highly educated workers
enjoy appreciable hikes in their wages,
whereas women engaged in menial
work do not. In other words, the author proves convincingly how educational attainment for women have a
direct bearing on their income capability. But the other major issue that
she brings out is the evidence of sharp
discrimination existing within the
earning patterns. Ashwini Deshpande
argues that while this pattern may be
true for all women, the inter-caste division undoubtedly suggests that it is
more so for Dalit women.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

The most important premise of Ashwini Deshpandes work lies in the fact
that despite legislation, the problems
of disparity and discrimination remain
untouched. In fact, the benets of high
growth do not reach the marginalised,
that is Dalits and tribal people. It is on
the basis of such arguments that the
author investigates the impact of the
policies of afrmative action in India.
It has been pointed out that unlike
countries such as Malaysia, there is no
national enforcement mechanism for
afrmative action in India.
It is well known that the upper
caste, elitist bias of the Indian judiciary prevents the adoption of strong
redress measures to end the discrimination against the less-privileged caste
groups. But these issues often get integrated into a bigger debate as to
whether caste should be the determining factor of backwardness. Some sections of Indian society believe that
reservation should be class-based for
two reasons.
First, if the state accepts caste as
the basis for backwardness, it legitimises the caste system, which contradicts secular principles. Secondly, the
traditional caste system on the lines of
the jajmani system has broken down
and contractual relationships have
emerged between individuals.
The implicit belief in such arguments is that the life chances of an
F R O N T L I N E

8 1

individual in contemporary India are

determined by ones economic conditions and not by the membership of
any social group. But the efcacy of the
policies of afrmative action lies in the
fact that the majority of the people who
are eligible for benets remain outside
its connes; the beneciaries are only
certain caste groups which have been
pampered for narrow, selsh political
dividends. This possibly lends strength
to the entire idea of the domination of
the creamy layer as the major beneciaries of state policies.
Nonetheless, through a lot of information drawn from interviews with
students from prominent educational
institutions in Delhi, the author rmly
reiterates that Dalits strongly support
the policies of afrmative action. Yet,
there is a feeling that reservation
should be targeted more towards poor
and rural Dalits rather than second- or
third-generation recipients of quota
admission. While all these policies
have led to the emergence of a Dalit
middle class, the majority of Dalits
continue to be untouched by quotas in
government ofces and educational
institutions. Thus, the quota system
has not been the universal phenomenon for removing caste-based
discrimination.
The author, through her in-depth
analysis based on economic theories,
interpretation of statistics and a
broader discussion of the afrmative
action programmes, will denitely inuence social theorists to debate more
on issues of equity and citizenship. She
establishes that the study of caste and
its role in Indian society, which earlier
had been the domain of anthropological writings, can be taken up by economists to give it a more holistic
interpretation. Rather than downplaying the nature of caste identities and
the encounters between multiple hierarchies, the Indian state and Dalits
should explore in detail the exibility,
mobility and political possibilities of
castes so that such work leads to a
more composite identity and a more
balanced economic strategy based on a
proper inclusion of all the marginalised sections of society.

books/review

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Cricketing legend
A remarkable book on Jack Hobbs, one of crickets all-time greats.
BY R.K. RAGHAVAN

As his years increased he

gradually slackened tempo and
resisted temptation to show his
virtuosity. He found a fresh vein, a
rich one, by playing within himself.
He ripened beautifully, became a
classic in his own day
Neville Cardus on Jack Hobbs
OR a cricket buff, the greatest charm of being in England in summer is to get to
be among the rst to savour
some outstanding books on
the game. There are biographies/autobiographies or simple narratives of a
past international series. A few of them
are readable, and the others, written in
haste to make a quick buck, are to be
scrupulously spurned. Accounts of
seedy happenings on and off the cricket eld do make interesting reading.
Once in a while, however, a well-conceived, sedate and non-controversial
book on a cricketer of yesteryear comes
along and reading it is a sweet sentimental journey back to the days when
the game had neither frills nor super
monetary rewards. Who can deny the
charm of a Neville Cardus or a Jack
Fingleton, who gave such immeasurable pleasure at a time when cricket
was merely a game that appealed to
ones aesthetics?
Released earlier this year, Jack
Hobbs: Englands Greatest Cricketer
by Leo McKinstry is a remarkable
book on one of crickets all-time greats.
During a career that spanned almost
30 years (1905-34), Hobbs scored 197
rst-class centuries (a record that is
still intact) at an average of 50.65.
Playing for Surrey right through his
heyday, his highest score was an undefeated 316 against Middlesex at the

IN REVIEW

Jack Hobbs: Englands

Greatest Cricketer by Leo
McKinstry; Yellow Jersey
Press, London, 2011;
pages 408, 20.
Lords Cricket Ground in 1926. He had
15 Test hundreds, 12 of which were
against Australia. He still holds the
record for the most number of runs
(61,237) by any cricketer in rst-class
cricket. This is a case where the statistics give only a hint of the greatness of a
man whose rags-to-riches story is
something worth retailing over and
over again, if only to inspire young
cricketers.
Hobbs was born near Cambridge
in 1882 to working-class parents. He
was the eldest among 12 children, and
his early life was austere to the core,
marked by the Victorian values of re8 2

F R O N T L I N E

spect, diligence, thrift and self-help.

More than his father, John Hobbs he
was passionate about cricket and
played the game at the local level, besides being an umpire and a groundsman at Jesus College it was his
mother, Flora Matilda, who inuenced
Jacks outlook on life. Flora once said:
Young people should be encouraged
to work. Work never did anyone any
harm, and it does most a great deal of
good. This was how Jack Hobbs the
workhorse was groomed in his impressionable years.
John Hobbs died when Jack was
just 20. Poverty hit the large family
hard, and it was the goodwill its head
had left behind that saw them through.
Not outweighed by the chores that accompanied casual jobs such as a domestic help and a gas ller, Jack Hobbs
made the best out of his continued
access to the facilities at Jesus College.
This was of great help in motivating
him to play cricket seriously. It was,
however, the incredible kindness of
Tom Hayward a Cambridge cricketer
of renown who was to become the
countrys greatest professional of the
times that changed the course of
Hobbss life. Hayward rst saw to it
that Hobbs abundant talent received
local recognition. After making him
play for Cambridgeshire county, which
was still in the Minor Counties League,
it was just a question of time before he
succeeded in bringing Hobbs, reared
on the banks of the Cam river, to glittery London and made his own county,
Surrey, accept him. To Hobbs this was
mind-boggling because he had hardly
stepped out of his rural Cambridge before. Hobbs never looked back.
In his rst match at the Oval, the
headquarters of Surrey cricket, where

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

DECEMBER 2, 2011

with his partner Herbert Sutcliffe, goes out to open

the English innings in a Test match during the South African teams tour of
England in 1924. Hobbs and Sutcliffe formed one of the greatest opening
pairs in cricket history.

JA C K H O B B S (L E F T ),

he turned out in 1907 for the Players

(professionals) against the Gentlemen
(amateurs), he scored a brilliant 88 in
the second innings. This moved even
the great W.G. Grace, who captained
the former team at the age of 58 and
was not usually generous to fellow
cricketers, to remark: Unless I am ve-

ry much mistaken, hes going to be a

star. Coming as it did from the difcult and obdurate character that the
Grand Old Man was, the compliment
gave more than a hint of Hobbs owering class. It naturally motivated
him to reach the height of excellence.
Interestingly, the ludicrous distinction
F R O N T L I N E

8 3

between professionals and amateurs, which led to the institution of

the annual xture, where Hobbs got
the rst opportunity to reveal his
abundant talent, was to confront the
Cambridge lad during most of his career. He was, however, unaffected by
the discrimination which entailed
separate and inferior dressing rooms,
hotels, train carriages and even entrances to the eld of play. His amazing demeanour concealed his modest
upbringing and utter dependence for
sustenance on the playing fee, which
was a mere 275 a year, including bonuses and the winter retainer.
His conduct in the dressing room
a place notorious for its petty jealousies, intrigues and cold responses to a
newcomer was equally remarkable.
This is what possibly induced another
great England batsman to say this of
Hobbs: A quieter, more modest chap
can seldom have played a big part in
the cricket of the world success never
spoiled Jack popular with his brother professionals remained so to his
retirement. It was this disdain for
pomp and glamour that made Hobbs
uncomfortable at Lords but so much
more at home at the Oval.
Chosen to accompany the Marlyebone Cricket Club (MCC) team (as the
England touring party used to be
called then on overseas tours) to Australia in 1907-08, Hobbs made his Test
debut at Melbourne, after England
had lost the rst Test in Sydney. He
made a painstaking 83 which, aided by
a century from the Kent batsman Kenneth Hutchings, helped England gain
a substantial rst innings lead. Although Hobbs failed in the second innings, England eventually registered a
one-wicket victory. Referring to the
criticism that he was too slow in his
rst knock, Hobbs denied he was nervous and said he was deliberately slow
because he wanted to do his very best.
This sense of responsibility and determination to play for his side was the
hallmark of his career. England lost
the series 4-1 despite a good showing
by Hobbs in the fourth and fth Tests.
His innings (57) at Melbourne in the
fourth Test Sydney and Melbourne

books/review
each got two Tests a season in those
days demonstrated his ability to play
on a turning wicket. According to
McKinstry, Hobbs swift footwork,
ability to judge the length of each ball
and his skill in playing it as late as
possible accounted for his success.
WISDEN HONOUR

He was to display the same grit and

technique the following summer in
England when he scored six centuries
for Surrey. His innings against Kent at
Blackheath is still remembered because the rain-affected wicket was an
actual glue pot and was unplayable.
Colin Blythe, Kents masterly left-arm
spinner, mesmerised all but one of his
opponents. Hobbs century on the occasion was so authentic and made under such adverse conditions that one of
his teammates, Bill Hitch, said: To be
at the opposite end to Jack that day
was blinding. You realised your batting wasnt even the same job. The depressing thing was he made it look so
easy. Rightly, the following spring,
Wisden named him one of the ve
cricketers of the year, an honour that
many cricketers the world over even
now look upon as the pedestal of recognition. Hobbs went on to dominate
the international scene for another
two decades when he gave bowlers of
the class of Clarrie Grimmett, Arthur
Mailey, Jack Gregory and Charlie
Macartney a hard time.
A part of his success was accounted
for by the capacity to forge many memorable partnerships on the eld, the
most signicant of which were with
Herbert Sutcliffe and Wilfred Rhodes,
with whom he opened 38 and 36 Test
innings respectively. The famous Surrey and England wicketkeeper Herbert Strudwick was another with whom
he struck a life-long bond. Interestingly, Strudwick was Hobbs landlord and
neighbour in the Mitcham area of
south-west London. The two shared
many qualities: they were both quiet,
genial and conscientious. Both were
practising Christians who made it a
point to attend an Anglican church
whenever Surrey played away from
London.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

The landmark in Hobbs career

was his surpassing the record for the
most centuries (126) in rst-class
cricket held by W.G. Grace for nearly
20 years. There was the general view
for decades that no one would be able
to better it. Hobbs belied this belief
and overtook Grace while playing
against Somerset at Taunton on August 17, 1925, amidst scenes of great
jubilation. The best part of McKinstrys biography is its rst eight pages,
which are dedicated to the build-up
and the drama that surrounded the
momentous achievement.
As soon as Hobbs completed the
hundred and acknowledged the
crowds wild cheers, he took an already
written-out telegram from his pocket
and beckoned the groundsman so that
it could be despatched at once to the
addressee, none other than his wife,
Ada, who was away on a holiday with
their four children. The cryptic wire
read: Got it at last, Jack. Such was the
feverish expectation about beating
Graces record that gripped everyone,
including his family.
While writing about Hobbs and
describing him as an all-time great, the
question that obviously arises is, Was
he greater than Don Bradman? Such
comparisons are odious but nevertheless help one understand the qualities
of the two equally great sportsmen
whom posterity will never forget. According to many critics, Hobbs greater
ability to play on bad wickets those
regarded as real turners gave him the
edge. The comments of the games legendary umpire Frank Chester, however sweeping they may be, bring out the
facts clearly: For all his greatness,
Bradman had neither the technique
nor the skill of Hobbs to succeed on a
sticky wicket.... Sadly, it is not possible to vouch for the accuracy of this
painful downgrading of the Don.
Hobbs went to Australia with the
MCC for the last time in the 1928-29
season despite the fact that he was going to turn 46. He scored one century
and averaged 50.11. In the summer of
1930, in his last season as a Test cricketer, he played all the ve Tests in the
Ashes series at home. He made a mod8 4

F R O N T L I N E

est 301 runs with an average of 33.44.

His nal innings was at his home turf,
the Oval, when he was dismissed for
just nine. There was, no doubt, allround disappointment over this anticlimax to a remarkable career. It
looked as if Hobbs had erred in agreeing to play, unmindful of the fact that
he was already 47 years old and well
past his prime. In all probability he
was allured by the excitement of signing off against his countrys greatest
adversary. He continued to play county cricket, averaging 50 runs a season
until 1934, when the gure dropped to
an appalling 36.70. This was signal
enough for him to call it a day from
rst-class cricket at the end of the
season.
AFTER RETIREMENT

Life after retirement was comfortable,

with none of the worries about having
to make ends meet that he had when
he started playing the game. He had
set up a sports goods shop on Fleet
Street, which gave him a steady income. His many books also brought in
attractive royalties. He settled down in
the elegant suburb of Wimbledon,
where he rst bought a detached house
and later moved into an apartment.
More satisfying was his decision to
keep himself t with rounds of badminton, table tennis and billiards. He
adored his wife, and when she passed
away in 1962 after 56 years of marriage, Hobbs was heartbroken. The
emotional toll of this loss was evident
from the rapid decline of his health
thereafter. He passed away in December 1963. He died in his sleep, a tting
end to a man who was unassuming and
quiet and rarely lost his equanimity.
Tributes came pouring in from different parts of the world. Many of
those who spoke at the memorial service held in February 1964 at Southwark Cathedral in London alluded to
his skill and character. No tribute,
however, was more eloquent than the
one from his dearest friend, Herbert
Strudwick, who said: No ner man
ever lived. Who could dispute this assessment of a cricketer and human being par excellence?

books/in brief

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Electoral fraud
A book that bravely points no ngers at the familiar foreign hands and, in the
context, provides a good survey of Pakistans politics. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I
HIS is a work on a malady
fairly common in the Third
World. Rigged polls lead to
popular
disenchantment
with the political process
and the ideal of democracy. Authoritarian forces exploit the disenchantment.
Written by an academic of impeccable credentials, the book falls broadly into two parts. The rst denes what
constitutes an electoral malpractice.
The rest is an exhaustive survey of the
record of electoral malpractices in Pakistan right until the 2008 elections
and the post-poll machinations that
followed.
The research is thorough. The
book features reports and studies on
the subject, besides interviews that Iffat Humayun Khan has conducted. It
is rich data that she has collected.
Nile Green, Professor of South Asia
History at the University of California,
Los Angeles, writes in his foreword:
The most immediate contextualisation of Benazirs death that the book
provides is that of the 518 other murders committed during the electoral
process between October 18, 2007,
and February 16, 2008, including the
139 people killed by the suicide bomber who greeted Benazirs return from
exile in Dubai. Yet, if these victims paid
the highest price for their participation
in the democratic process, since Pakistans foundation in 1947 many thousands of other citizens have (in both
the gurative and literal senses) paid
prices for more prosaic forms of electoral malpractice. Whether as perpetrators or victims, Iffat Humayun Khan
has carefully documented the place of
many other Pakistanis in this larger
and incremental trajectory of lesser
known malpractices that culminated

BOOK FACTS

Electoral Malpractices:
During the 2008 Elections in
Pakistan by Iffat Humayun
Khan; Oxford University
Press, Karachi; pages 229,
Rs.795.
in the infamous events of December
2007. The book bravely points no
ngers at the familiar foreign hands
but ercely turns the searchlight inwards. It provides, in the context, a
good survey of Pakistans politics.
MALPRACTICES

The chapter Dening Electoral Malpractices deserves to be read widely in

many countries outside Pakistan. It
covers the role of landlords, dynastic
politics and bureaucrats as well.
The techniques are system rigging,
splitting opposition parties, disqualF R O N T L I N E

8 5

ifying opposition candidates, disenfranchising voters and pre-poll

rigging, including misuse of ofcial resources. There is an equally detailed
analysis of poll-day rigging and postpoll rigging. The analyses draw on
works by recognised academics. The
rest of the book is a documented survey
of electoral malpractices since the days
of Ayub Khan until the poll of 2008. In
her opinion:
Despite a seriously awed and difcult pre-election environment, the 18
February 2008 general elections in Pakistan provided a genuine opportunity
for Pakistani voters to express their
will. A relatively peaceful election day
deed widespread fears/expectations
of violence, and fears of systematic manipulation appear to have been blunted. To date, there appears to be a broad
acceptance of the results. Overall, this
election represented a big step forward
on the democratic path. However, the
serious assault on Pakistans constitutional order and fundamental aws in
the pre-election environment prevented the election from meeting international standards, forging the need for
remedial action.
The study concludes with a prescription on preventing electoral malpractices. One hopes that, before
long, an equally well-documented
work will be written on the rigged polls
in the god-forsaken State of Jammu
and Kashmir from 1951 to 2008. Three
of them were lauded by the great democrat Jawaharlal Nehru; the one conducted by Sheikh Abdullah in 1951 and
the ones of 1957 and 1962 conducted
by Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad. He
was wont to say, Vote aap denge; ginenge to hum (you will cast the votes; it
is we who will count them). Well said,
indeed.

Column

DECEMBER 2, 2011

The many Indias

The sleek Metro trains and the wobbly cycle rickshaws are, together, an eloquent
metaphor of an India racing ahead with F1 speed.
FEW weeks ago the rst
ever Formula 1 motor race
in India was held in Noida,
Uttar Pradesh. It was, as
apparently is the custom,
accompanied by huge entertainment
extravaganzas and dazzling parties,
entry to which cost something like
Rs.40,000. But then, tickets to watch
the race cost around the same.
Quite apart from the rich and famous who came to all the events, a
surprisingly large number of persons
came from all over the country just to
watch the race, though I doubt if many
of them also went to the grand parties
afterwards. Perhaps some did, if only
to gawk at the celebrities who were
there in their glittering best.
After this event was over there
were reports that this was proof, if such
proof were needed, that India was indeed a great economic powerhouse, an
emerging superpower. (Actually, going by various declarations within the
country and outside, we have been
emerging for quite a while but do not
seem to emerge nally.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which never loses an opportunity to show Indias terrible
poverty, its horric urban slums and
bedraggled, tatty villages, did a story
on the Formula I event and showed
poor rural folk watching it in wonder,
framed by a broken bullock cart or
something similar. Not that the BBC
was the only news organisation doing
it; almost all the others did this in
greater or lesser degree. And the fact is
they were right. The Formula 1 race
and all that went with it obviously cost
an astronomical amount, so astronomical as to sound ridiculous. This is in
a country where hundreds of children

nanced, and if Formula 1 was not held,

the money would have gone to something else. It is the brisk activity of the
business houses of the country that has
led commentators to declare that India is an emerging economic superpower. Not the rickety rickshaws
outside metro stations or the noxious
slums of Mumbai and Kolkata. This is
an overly simplistic statement, I know
many of those living in those slums
and using the rickshaws work in the
engines of growth set up in the country
by the Ambanis and the Tatas. The
lines are, therefore, a little blurred but
the fact is that India has enormous
contrasts grinding, near hopeless
poverty on the one hand and a burgeoning, well-to-do middle class on the

Point of View
are dying of malnourishment or lack of
basic medical care.
In Delhi, a city where the state and
the media are very proud of the metro
oddly, ordinary people are not really
doing somersaults of joy because of it,
and many grumble about the terrible
crowds and the ugly behaviour of the
goons who travel by it each Metro
station has, swarming around it like
ies, hundreds of rickety cycle rickshaws, which a huge number of commuters use to get home from the
station. The sleek, air-conditioned
Metro trains and the wobbly cycle rickshaws are, together, an eloquent metaphor of what the country is.
Could the enormous amounts
spent on the Formula 1 event have
been used to build health clinics and
schools, to provide the impoverished
with work, and to build roads from
villages that even today have no connection to a hospital or school? No,
because the event was privately 8 6

F R O N T L I N E

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP

BHASKAR GHOSE

DECEMBER 2, 2011

other, and, presiding over all this the

super rich, who have to have their Formula 1 events, private planes and magnicent palaces.
And while the afuent middle class
will continue to grow in size, I think we
should not fool ourselves on one fact.
The rickety cycle rickshaws are not going to go away. They will always be
there for decades and decades to come,
just as there will always be impoverished people in cities and villages. We
have built ourselves that system; without them we will not be the emerging
economic superpower that people say
we are. The BBC and other international news organisations will always
have wonderful material for the stories
they present at regular intervals on the
grinding poverty, disease and dirt in
India. It is essential to round off any
economic story they may do. (How it
must have rankled with the afuent
countries when Tatas bought up Jaguar and Land Rover.)
The state will go on trying to nd
solutions, but it knows it cannot really
nd them because it is mired in corruption corruption that oils the
wheels of democracy. So the National

Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) will always be

awed; crores of rupees will be
skimmed off from it in different ways.
It may be convenient for Union Rural
Development Minister Jairam Ramesh to nd suddenly the dreadful
mismanagement and corruption that
exists in the implementation of the
project in Uttar Pradesh; but he
knows, as do all of us, that it exists in
other States as well, in greater or lesser
degree. He will turn on them, too,
when the time is right, politically.
But that scheme, like some others,
has done some good, and it is as well
that this be put on record. It has put
money in the hands of many of the very
poor in rural areas, which has had a
salutary effect on the economy in those
regions. The fact that more and more
farmers are beginning to protest
against the harsh, exploitative land acquisition laws which, mercifully, will
change soon, one hopes means that
they are beginning to see the coming
prosperity and want their share of it.
There are, of course, other sly forces at
work; those, for example, that obviously organise agitations wherever a

nuclear plant is coming up, be it at

Jaitapur in Maharashtra or at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu. Is it only a coincidence that agitations hold up the
mining for uranium in Meghalaya?
Will other proposed sites for nuclear
power plants also not be areas for agitations, conveniently with women in
the forefront? India with double the
existing number of nuclear power
plants will have that much more clean
power. It looks as if someone or some
group is not very comfortable with the
idea. But that is another story
altogether.
The fact is that even those of us
who want to see a prosperous India,
where wealth is shared in whatever
manner, must accept that we will not
see an end to poverty and deprivation,
ever. It is a necessary facet of our
growth, even if we deny that it is. It
may, however, be possible to minimise
it over a long period of time; and the
little signs one sees of what seem to be
precursors of all-round growth and development must give us the energy and
enthusiasm to persist with our efforts
to build and develop our systems and
society.

THE FI R S T G R AN D Prix of India

under way at the Buddh
International Circuit in
Greater Noida on October 30.

F R O N T L I N E

8 7

Media

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Reforming the
Press Council
The new Chairman of the Press Council of India, Markandey Katju, wants to make
it an instrument of mediation in addition to adjudication. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I

Justice Katju will doubtless hasten

slowly. Leading gures in the media,
print and electronic, owe a clear duty
to help him in this task, besides
exploring other areas supercially
dealt with in the past.
THE appointment of Justice Markandey Katju, a
former judge of the Supreme Court, as Chairman of
the Press Council of India is about the best thing that
has happened to that body in a long while. It is no
exaggeration to say that the PCI commands little
prestige today and less relevance. It is not representative of the press at all. What Justice Katju has
done, in a few days after his appointment, is to infuse
life into it and involve the press in its work. This is a
good step towards making the media feel that it is
their institution.
It is a liberal approach, which he expounded in a
get-together with mediapersons at his residence on
October 10. There are two ways to remove these
defects in the media. One is the democratic way, that
is, through discussions, consultations and persuasion which is the method I prefer. The other way is
by using harsh measures against the media, for example, by imposing heavy nes on defaulters, stopping government advertisements to them,
suspending their licences, and so on.
In a democracy we should rst try the rst method to rectify the defects through the democratic
method. For this purpose, I have decided to have
regular get-togethers with the media, including the
electronic media, so that we can all introspect and
ourselves nd out ways and means to rectify the
defect in the media, rather than this being done by
some government authority or external agency. I
8 8

propose to have such get-togethers once every two or

three months, at which we will discuss issues relating
to the media and try to think of how we can improve
the performance of the media so that it may win the
respect and condence of the people.
If the media prove incorrigible, harsh measures
may be required. But in my opinion, that should be
done only as a last resort and in extreme situations.
Ordinarily, we should rst try to resolve issues
through discussion, consultation and self-regulation. That is the approach which should be rst tried
in a democracy. I, therefore, request the Union government to defer the implementation of its recent
decision regarding news channel licences, so that we
can ourselves discuss the issue thoroughly, and ourselves take corrective measures.
Till now the function of the Press Council was
only adjudication. I intend to make the Press Council
an instrument of mediation in addition, which is in
my opinion the democratic approach (The Hindu,
October 22, 2011).
But the archaic Press Council Act, 1978, is most
unsuited to serve as a platform for such an imaginative enterprise. It was atrophied at its very birth by
imposing (Section 5 (3)) a strange composition of the
Press Council, which ensures its own irrelevance and
cynicism by the press.
Justice Katju rightly holds that the electronic
media should also be brought within the remit of the
Press Council. Indeed, failure to do so would violate
the constitutional guarantee of equality (Article 14).
Equals must be treated alike. Cinematograph lms
are different in that, unlike the print and electronic
media, they are subject to pre-censorship. A ramshackle system of supposedly quasi-judicial institutions is set up by the Cinematograph Act, 1952.
Meanwhile, the electronic media roams at large like
a rogue elephant.
However, if television is to be brought within the
purview of the Act of 1978, as it must be, the statute
will have to undergo a drastic overhaul beginning

F R O N T L I N E

with its title. The composition of the

PCI must be changed fundamentally.
This would provide an excellent opportunity for reform, in which Justice
Katjus PCI can perform the role he
promises as an instrument of mediation. But 2011 is not 1978. The media
are more assertive. No reform will be
acceptable or will work unless it is
based on the largest measure of consensus in the print as well as the electronic media.
To begin with, the PCIs composition must change. Names need not be
mentioned, but it is well known that
over the years it has had members
whose presence on the Council was
nothing short of scandalous. Members
of the print and electronic media
should put their heads together to ensure that the PCI truly represents the
media.
Justice Katju might propose a radical change. The PCI should no longer
be headed by a former judge of the
Supreme Court but by a person elected
by the media itself. Appointment of a
judge by the government adds an outside element to what is a Court of
Honour comprising the media, mandated to discipline its own erring
members. The task will be more effectively performed if the PCI represents
both the wings of the media, print and
electronic, and is headed by one of
their own.
Bar a few honourable exceptions,
the former Supreme Court judges who
served as Chairmen did poor service to
the PCI and brought little credit to
themselves. What is it that inspired a
former judge of the Supreme Court
presiding over the Press Council, Justice N. Rajagopala Iyengar, to write to
V.C. Shukla, easily the most despicable
Minister for Information and Broadcasting we have ever had, on August
13, 1975, during the Emergency, condentially in this conspiratorial vein:
You remember I spoke to you about
the desire of some members to have a
meeting convened for the purpose of
discussing the Emergency and the
Censorship. I had an informal meeting
of the Delhi-based members and I was
able to convince them that this is not

K. MURALI KUMAR

DECEMBER 2, 2011

J U S T I C E M A RK AN D E Y KA TJ U,

Chairman of the Press Council of

India.
necessary or desirable. So this will not
gure in [sic] the agenda of my meeting that is being called (White Paper
on Misuse of Mass Media during the
Internal Emergency; Government of
India; August 1977; page 40). The context brings out the betrayal by the PCI
Chairman. Kuldip Nayar had proposed a resolution condemning restrictions on the press. The judge, a
custodian of press freedom as the PCIs
head, not only sabotaged the move but
wrote to the Minister about his brilliant piece of work to earn brownie
points.
Justice R.S. Sarkaria was another
favourite. He was appointed on a Commission of Inquiry in 1976 against the
Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M. Karunanidhi; as head of the Commission
on Centre-State Relations in 1983,
along with two former bureaucrats, to
deliver the desired report; and later as
Chairman of the PCI, in recognition of
his high services to the state. In 1990,
participants at a seminar were shocked
to hear him argue that it took the United States 200 years to acquire a law on
the freedom of information. Fortunately, we did not wait for those 200
years. But his worst abdication of duty
lay in entertaining an oral complaint
by the Army on press reportage on
Kashmir. It included reports of alleged
rapes of 31 women by army personnel
during the night of February 23-24,
1991. A probe into the veracity of such
a report is one for a Commission of
F R O N T L I N E

8 9

Inquiry to undertake; surely not for

the Press Council of India. Besides,
Regulation 4 of the Press Council (Procedure for Inquiry) Regulations, 1979,
binds the PCI to reject any complaint
that is not in writing and does not
contain the details required under
Regulation 3. The upshot was a report
by B.G. Verghese, which lies discredited today.
The State Human Rights Commission of Kashmir announced on October 19, 2011, that it would probe afresh
the Kunan Poshpora rapes. The press
reported more than once intercession
by the village elders to get the victims
married. So much for Vergheses denial of the charges (vide the writers
Exceeding the Brief, Frontline, October 12, 1991). The Secretary of the PCI
was instructed to invoke, in the teeth of
Regulations 3 and 4, Regulation 15,
which enables inquiries to regulate
their own procedure in respect of any
matter for which no provisions or inadequate provision is made, Regulation 4 notwithstanding. Vergheses
report was widely distributed by the
Government of India. All this under
Sarkarias watch.
ABDICATION OF DUTY

Justice P.B. Sawant had his own demons to slaughter. The nadir was reached in the case of the brave human
rights activist Ravi Nair, whose patriotism was impugned by a newspaper.
The committee (of inquiry) considered the records carefully. It noted that
the impugned report was based on the
information given to the newspaper by
the governmental agencies, the names
of which the respondent-newspaper
had disclosed in his written statement.
The committee further noted that the
newspaper had offered to publish the
retraction if the complainant could get
a declaration from the governmental
agencies. It further noted the apparent
contradiction between the statements
made by the complainant in his complaint and the letter written by him to
the editor in regard to the correspondents effort to verify the facts from the
complainant. In the circumstances,
the committee felt that the impugned

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Newspapers code of practice

THE Press Complaints Commission
in the United Kingdom is charged
with enforcing the following code of
practice which was framed by the
newspaper and periodical industry.
All members of the press have a
duty to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards. In doing
so, they should have regard to the
provisions of this code of practice and
to safeguarding the publics right to
know.
Editors are responsible for the actions of journalists employed by their
publications. They should also satisfy
themselves as far as possible that material accepted from non-staff members was obtained in accordance with
this code.
While recognising that this involves a substantial element of selfrestraint by editors and journalists, it
is designed to be acceptable in the
context of a system of self-regulation.
The code applies in the spirit as well
as in the letter.
Any publication which is criticised by the PCC under one of the
following clauses is duty bound to
print the adjudication which follows
in full and with due prominence.
1. Accuracy
(i) Newspapers and periodicals
should take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted
material.

report was based on the information

received by the respondent-newspaper
from authentic sources and, therefore,
there was no substance in the complaint. The committee decided to recommend to the Council, to dismiss the
complaint. The PCI accepted this. Its
Chairman was Justice (retd) P.B.
Sawant.
This was a gross abdication of duty.
The PCI is enjoined to probe for itself
and require the paper to justify its

(ii) Whenever it is recognised that

a signicant inaccuracy, misleading
statement or distorted report has
been published, it should be corrected promptly and with due
prominence.
(iii) An apology should be published whenever appropriate.
(iv) A newspaper or periodical
should always report fairly and accurately the outcome of an action for
defamation to which it has been a
party.
2. Opportunity to reply
A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies should be given to individuals
or
organisations
when
reasonably called for.
3. Comment, conjecture and fact
Newspapers, while free to be partisan, should distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.
4. Privacy
Intrusions and enquiries into an
individuals private life without his or
her consent are not generally acceptable and publication can only be justied when in the public interest. This
would include:
(i) Detecting or exposing crime or
serious misdemeanour.
(ii) Detecting or exposing seriously anti-social conduct.
(iii) Protecting public health and
safety.
(iv) Preventing the public from

smear. The effect is obvious. If the

agencies plant a story as they do
every now and then the complainant
will need an exoneration from the
governmental agencies themselves. A
person who has such an outlook is unt to be Chairman of the PCI.
Justice Katjus immediate predecessor did not cover himself with glory
either. He was privy to the suppression
of the 71-page report on paid news
prepared by dedicated and able senior
9 0

F R O N T L I N E

being misled by some statement or

action of that individual.
5. Hospitals
(i) Journalists or photographers
making enquiries at hospitals or similar institutions should identify themselves to a responsible ofcial and
obtain permission before entering
non-public areas.
(ii) The restrictions on intruding
into privacy are particularly relevant
to enquiries about individuals in hospital or similar institutions.
6. Misrepresentation
(i) Journalists should not generally obtain nor seek to obtain information
or
pictures
through
misrepresentation or subterfuge.
(ii) Unless in the public interest,
documents or photographs should be
removed only with the express consent of the owner.
(iii) Subterfuge can be justied
only in the public interest and only
when material cannot be obtained by
any other means.
In all these clauses the public interest includes:
(a) Detecting or exposing crime or
serious misdemeanour.
(b) Detecting or exposing anti-social conduct.
(c) Protecting public health or
safety.
(d) Preventing the public being
misled by some statement or action of

journalists Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

and K. Sreenivas Reddy. Through a
vote on July 30, 2010, the PCI shamefully refused to reveal the ndings and,
instead, submitted a 13-page report to
the government. The full report is now
public and should be published in full
in the PCIs Journal. Not Everyone has
access to the Internet. Yet Chairman
after Chairman has demanded punitive powers P.B. Sawant, K. Jayachandra Reddy and G.N. Ray. It is

DECEMBER 2, 2011

an individual or organisation.
7. Harassment
(i) Journalists should neither obtain nor seek to obtain information or
pictures through intimidation or
harassment.
(ii) Unless their enquiries are in
the public interest, journalists should
not photograph individuals on private property without their consent;
should not persist in telephoning or
questioning individuals after having
been asked to desist; should not remain on their property after having
been asked to leave and should not
follow them.
The public interest would include: (a) Detecting or exposing
crime or serious misdemeanour. (b)
Detecting or exposing anti-social
conduct. (c) Protecting public health
and safety. (d) Preventing the public
from being misled by some statement
or action of that individual or
organisation.
8. Payment for articles
(i) Payments or offers of payment
for stories, pictures or information
should not be made to witnesses or
potential witnesses in current criminal proceedings or to people engaged
in crime or to their associates except
where the material concerned ought
to be published in the public interest
and the payment is necessary for this
to be done. The public interest will
include: (a) Detecting or exposing
crime or serious misdemeanour. (b)
Detecting or exposing anti-social
conduct. (c) Protecting public health

such men who reduced the PCI to

pathetic irrelevance.
Chairmen there have been, like
Justice A.N. Sen, who manfully stood
up for press freedom. The ThakkarNatarajan Commission on Fairfax,
comprising sitting judges of the Supreme Court, was out to pillory V.P.
Singh. They responded to press criticism of their conduct by asking for
powers of contempt for commissions
of inquiry. The Government of India

and safety. (d) Preventing the public

from being misled by some statement
or action of that individual or organisation.
(ii) Associates include family,
friends, neighbours and colleagues.
(iii) Payments should not be
made either directly or indirectly
through agents.
9. Intrusion into grief or shock
1. In cases involving personal grief
or shock, enquiries should be carried
out and approaches made with sympathy and discretion.
10. Innocent relatives and friends
Unless it is contrary to the publics
right to know, the Press should generally avoid, identifying relatives or
friends of persons convicted or accused of crime.
11. Interviewing or photographing
children.
(i) Journalists should not normally interview or photograph children
under the age of 16 on subjects involving the personal welfare of the
child, in the absence of or without the
consent of a parent or other adult who
is responsible for the children.
(ii) Children should not be approached or photographed while at
school without the permission of the
school authorities.
12. Children in sex cases
The press should not, even where
the law does not prohibit it, identify
children under the age of 16 who are
involved in cases concerning sexual
offences, whether as victims, or as
witnesses or defendants.

asked the PCIs Chairman, Justice

A.N. Sen, to prescribe a code of conduct. Since we hear a lot about a code
of conduct for journalists, the text of
the PCIs decision deserves to be set
out in full:
The Council considered the letter
of Shri. G.K. Arora, Secretary to the
Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, New
Delhi, dated 31-5-1988 addressed to
the Chairman, Press Council of India,
F R O N T L I N E

9 1

13. Victims of crime

The press should not identify victims of sexual assault, or publish material likely to contribute to such
identication unless, by law, they are
free to do so.
14. Discrimination
(i) The press should avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to a persons race, colour, religion, sex or
sexual orientation or to any physical
or mental illness or handicap.
(ii) It should avoid publishing details of a persons race, colour, religion, sex or sexual orientation, unless
these are directly relevant to the story.
15. Financial journalism
(i) Even where the law does not
prohibit it, journalists should not use
for their own prot nancial information they receive in advance of its general publication, nor should they pass
such information on to others.
(ii) They should not write about
shares or securities in whose performances they know that they or
their close families have a signicant
nancial interest, without disclosing
the interest to the editor or nancial
editor.
(iii) They should not buy or sell,
either directly or through nominees
or agents, shares or securities about
which they have written recently or
about which they intend to write in
the near future.
16. Condential sources
Journalists have a moral obligation to protect condential sources of
information.

and also the observations made in

Chapter VI of the Report of Justices
Thakkar-Natarajan Commission. Out
of deference to the members of the
Commission, who happen to be sitting
Judges of the Supreme Court, the
Council refrains from making any
comments on the observations made
and views expressed therein.
The Second Press Commission
had recommended that it would not be
proper to lay down any code of conduct

SHASHI ASHIWAL

DECEMBER 2, 2011

ME M B E R S O F T H E print and television media outside Arthur Road Jail in

Mumbai on May 3 when the trial court delivered the verdict on Ajmal Kasab
in the Mumbai attack case.

for the press. The Council has consistently taken the stand that it is not
desirable to formulate a code of conduct for the press as the Council is of
the opinion that any such formulation
can only be in broad and general terms
and such formulation will serve no
useful purpose and may have the effect
of impinging on the freedom of the
press. Guidelines are indeed indicated
in Article 19(2) of the Constitution itself. Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of
the Nation and an eminent journalist
himself, suggested that imposition of
any restrictions should come from
within the press and not from without.
Section 13(2)(b) of the Press Council
Act, 1978, lays down that the Council
should build up a code of conduct, and
this the Council is doing through the
various decisions rendered by it. The
British Press Council also observes the
same practice. The Council decided to
reiterate its stand and expressed the
opinion that there was no reason to
depart from the same. But, of course,
a code of conduct can help; provided it
is drawn up by both wings of the media
and their code is annexed, as a schedule, to the new PCI Act, for the reformed
PCI to enforce.
The British Press Complaints
Commission has come under a cloud
after the News of the World scandal.
But the precedent is a useful one; not
for imitiation but for adaptation. The
PCC is charged with enforcing a Code
of Practice drawn up by the press itself (see box). It is not a statutory body
but an exercise in self-regulation

which grew out of public outrage over

repeated violations of privacy. There
were the reports of the Committee on
Privacy headed by Kenneth Younger
(1972); of the Committee on Privacy
and Related Matters headed by David
Calcutt, Q.C. (1990); and by Calcutt
himself (1993) entitled Review of
Press Self-Regulation (Vide the writers article Privacy and public
wrongs, Frontline, October 17, 1997).
The PCI and the Indian Law Institute published two useful compilations of rulings. One was on Violation
of Freedom of Press (1986) and the other on Violation of Journalistic Ethics
and Public taste (1984).
Justice Katju will doubtless hasten
slowly. Leading gures in the media,
print and electronic, owe a clear duty
to help him in this task, besides exploring other areas supercially dealt with
in the past. One neglected area is
media coverage of terrorist outrage. In
the wake of 26/11, some TV reportage
imperilled lives and security by reckless behaviour. The BBC has extensive
internal guidelines for reporting on hijacking, kidnapping, hostage taking
and sieges. They are available on
www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide.
Justice Katju lost little time in dissipating the credit he had initially acquired. The penchant for sweeping
remarks for which he was known in the
outbursts on the Supreme Court
Bench asserted itself soon after he became Chairman of the PCI.
He deservedly received repri9 2

F R O N T L I N E

mands from the Editors Guild and the

Broadcast Editors Association on November 1 and 2. All of which only forties the case for revamping the PCI by
eliminating Supreme Court judges
from the chairmanship and including
the electronic media within the ambit
of a reconstituted Media Council as
suggested in this article. Katju ought
to know that judges of the Supreme
Court exhibit appalling ignorance of
literature when they demand that
avowed works of historical ction
should be historically accurate. You
cannot denounce and persuade at the
same time. It is not for him to speak as
he did anymore than it is open to a
Chief Justice to denounce the Bar or
the Army chief to denounce the jawans. His plea for teeth should be rejected. His comments lack restraint
even when what he says is true.
But not all his comments on the
media should be brushed aside. Some
are fair. For instance, TV anchors assiduously whip up chauvinism in their
contest for Television Rating Points
their current target is China. Four
leading anchors behave like licensed
louts every evening. They promote
sensationalism and revel in aggressive
demeanour. Print media journalists
have to undergo a long grind before
they reach editorial positions.
Only a TV anchor will loftily proclaim while in Ladakh, the McMahon
Line is behind me. He did not know
that the line is our boundary in the
north-east. It does not extend westward. In Ladakh the Sino-Indian
boundary was never dened. Only a
Line of Actual Control exists.
Another TV channel has broken all
norms of professional integrity by reducing itself to a platform for Omar
Abdullah whenever he has been in
trouble ever since he was pitchforked
into the ofce of the Chief Minister of
Jammu and Kashmir nearly three
years ago. To everyones surprise, he on
his part grants it and its correspondent
preferential treatment.
Still and all, Justice Katju should
be given a fair chance for he has some
good ideas and intends to infuse life
into the PCI.

Public Health

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Stunted growth
Child malnutrition in Gulbarga and Bijapur districts is a blot on Karnatakas
image. B Y V I K H A R A H M E D S A Y E E D

IN GULBARGA AND BIJAPUR

As many as 71,605 children are

classied as severely malnourished
or extremely underweight in
Karnataka, according to gures
available until August 2011 with the
State Department of Women and
Child Development.

F R O N T L I N E

V. SREENIVASA MURTHY

Ba Ba Basavanna
Anganwadi Hogona
Avarekaalu Tinnona
Ah, Aaa, Ee, Eee, Bariyona
Mane Kadege Hogona
(Come, Come, Basavanna
Lets go to the anganwadi
Let us eat beans
And write A, B, C, D,
And head towards home.)
AS Savitri Nimbad sings this ditty, the more than
20 children seated in a circle around her repeat each
line in shrill voices. Almost all of them are between
three and six years of age, except for a couple of older
children and a toddler in the arms of her elder sister.
From a distance, the scene children sitting under a
large tree and singing their hearts out is straight
out of an idealised setting in rural India. But it does
not take long to realise what is behind the idyllic
veneer.
Savitri is an anganwadi worker (AWW) in charge
of the 12th anganwadi centre (AWC) in Almel panchayat in Karnatakas Bijapur district. One of the
children forming the ring around her is Ashwini
Devi Bhovi, who is ve years and three months old
but weighs only 13 kilograms. Malur Gundappa
Marnal, also 5, weighs just 10.5 kg. According to the
growth charts released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2010-11 to measure child malnutrition, both of them fall in the extremely
underweight category.

Ashwinis father, Nagappa Bhovi, makes Rs.150

a day working as an agricultural labourer in lands
around Almel. Maize is the most common crop
grown here. Red gram and tur dal are also widely
cultivated. The most productive non-agricultural activity here is stone mining.
A short distance away is the 11th anganwadi
centre in Almel. It also functions under a tree and is
located in an area with a high percentage of Muslims.
Behind where the children sit, pigs forage in a shallow open drain and buffaloes sift curiously through
piles of hay. Firdose A. Momin, the AWW here, is
gathering her group of children to distribute their

C HI LD R E N CA R R YI N G HOM E food packets

distributed at an anganwadi at Jai Bhim Nagar in
Honagunta, Gulbarga district. From 2010, prepackaged ready-mixes have begun to form the
major part of the childrens diet.
9 3

DECEMBER 2, 2011

daily snack of nutri-corn puffs. As she

opens a large bag of corn puffs, a crunchy savoury commonly known by a
brand name, the children get excited.
They relish these puffy yellow balls.
On Firdose Momins arms is Shabana Bi, who is 15 months old and
weighs 6 kg. Shabanas house is just
across the anganwadi, and her mother,
Chand Bi, is carrying Shabanas elder
sister. Their father, Mohammed Rasool, is a construction labourer who
earns Rs.100 a day. Four other adults
live in their small hut in front of which
red chilli is being dried.
Another sickly looking child comes
running behind Firdose as the snacks
are distributed. He is two-year-old
Ameen Mehboob, who weighs 10 kg.
Ashwini, Gundappa, Shabana and
Ameen are among the 71,605 children
who are classied as severely malnourished/extremely underweight in Karnataka, according to gures available
(until August 2011) with the State Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD). They constitute 2.17
per cent of the population of children
between the ages of 0 and 6 in the
State. Of the 33,02,370 children in the
State whose weights were recorded,
21,00,818 were found to be of normal
weight for their age and 11,29,947 were
moderately malnourished.
According to information from the
National Family Health Survey-3
(NFHS-3) of 2005-06, Karnataka
fared the worst among south Indian
States as far as malnutrition among
children was concerned. The same survey pointed out that malnutrition in
the State, as measured by underweight
children below three years, was at 45.9
per cent. Infant mortality rate (IMR)
in the State was 43 compared with
30.4 and 15.3 in Tamil Nadu and Kerala respectively, the survey said.
Malnutrition has been the underlying cause of at least half the deaths of
under-ve children in the country. According to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), one out of
every three malnourished children in
the world is in India. Rates of child
malnutrition in the country are among
the highest in the world. Malnutrition

is more common in India than even

some countries in sub-Saharan Africa,
which have the worst human development indicators in the world. Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh recognised the urgent need to address the
problem of child malnutrition in his
Independence Day speech on August
15, 2011.
INEFFICIENT RECORDING

The accuracy of the gure of 71,605 for

the severely malnourished children in
Karnataka is also suspect. During its
visit to anganwadi centres in Gulbarga
and Bijapur, Frontline found that
many cases of malnourished children
were underreported and the recording
of weights of children was inefcient.
According to the new WHO guidelines, children need to be weighed every month to chart their nutritional
status. But only one in four anganwadi
centres in Bijapur had a weighing machine. In AWC 105 in Honagunta village in Gulbarga district, the AWW
rst claimed that there was only one
severely malnourished child. When
children who were present in the centre were randomly chosen and
weighed, three more turned out to be
underweight. Kalamma Basavaraj
Pattar, the AWW, said she had just
discovered this fact.
The problem in child malnutrition
in Karnataka which, ironically,
boasts the software capital of the country may not seem as dire as in some
other States such as Madhya Pradesh,
but this is because of the relative prosperity of southern and coastal Karnataka which lifts the average across the
State. The incidence of undernourishment is severe in the backward districts of north Karnataka.
For instance, Bagalkot (with 8,957
severely malnourished children), Bijapur (8,983), Bellary (6,411), Davangere (3,724), Belgaum (7,016), Haveri
(4,537), Koppal (4,085) and Raichur
(4,537) are all located in northern Karnataka. Between them, these eight districts (of the 29 districts in the State)
account for 70 per cent of the malnourished children in the State.
Of the 14 anganwadi centres in Al9 4

F R O N T L I N E

mel, only three have permanent structures. The rest operate under trees or
on temple verandahs. Both the AWCs
of Savitri Nimbad and Firdose Momin
were approved in 2006-07, and since
then outdoor premises have served as
places to provide preschool education,
a meal and a snack to children.
According to the DWCD, only 50
per cent of the AWCs in Karnataka
have permanent structures. An AWC
is formed on demand, and on an average there is supposed to be an AWC for
every 800 people (children between
the ages of 0 and 6 form 11.2 per cent of
the population in a representative
sample in Karnataka). Currently, Karnataka has 63,377 AWCs. The importance of an AWC in the prevention of

V. SREENIVASA MURTHY

DECEMBER 2, 2011

N A G A MM A , A N A N G A N W A D I

worker, recording the weight of a child at Jai

Bhim Nagar.
child malnutrition cannot be stressed
enough as it is responsible for the
health of pregnant and lactating women as well as the early years of a childs
life.
Child malnutrition in Karnataka
grabbed attention in October after a
local television news channel broadcast visuals of children from Devadurga taluk in Raichur district who were
on the verge of death due to severe
malnutrition. The Karnataka High
Court took cognisance of the report
and came down heavily on the local
administration. It also demanded a report from the DWCD. In its report, the

DWCD has disagreed with the television channels assessment that these
were cases of malnutrition and has
blamed other causes like premature
birth, child marriage, consanguineous
marriage, juvenile diabetes, and cerebral palsy for the malady. Contesting
this report, activists claim that more
than 2,000 children have died in Raichur since 2009 of severe malnutrition.
DENIAL MODE

Ofcers of the DWCD also dismiss the

activists claim that there is a link between malnutrition and disability.
F R O N T L I N E

9 5

But, according to people like Pramila

of the State Disabled Peoples Organisation working in Bijapur, there is a
direct link between malnutrition and
disability.
Malnutrition in early childhood
has severe consequences in a persons
life as he or she grows up. Considering
the value of early nutrition in a childs
life, the Central government has been
supporting the AWCs along with State
governments. The agship programme of the country to provide nutritious food to young children is the
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).
In Karnataka, critics say that the
food supplied under this scheme has
not been providing sufcient nutrition
to the child. Apart from nutri-corn
puffs, children are provided with a
ready mix of traditional dishes such as
kesari baath, bisi bele bath, and an
energy food. Rice and tur dal are also
provided.
Except for a few noncommittal responses, people whom Frontline met
in Gulbarga and Bijapur gave mostly
negative responses about the food provided. Kalamma Basavaraj Pattar
said: Children do not like the bisi bale
bath masala that is mixed with the rice.
A few parents have also complained
that the pasty energy food that is also
served causes constipation. Padmavathi, the mother of an eight-year-old
in Bhimnagar in the same village, said
as much. Honagunta has ve AWCs, of
which only two have permanent
structures.
In Yedgol, another backward village in Bijapur, Dawalbi S. Kuri, the
AWW, said that some children complained of stomach problems after eating the energy food and that they did
not like the masala mixes. As she was
speaking to Frontline, a sickly child
crawled in. Shankaranand Doddamane is 21 months old and at 9.5 kg is
severely underweight. This AWC has
68 children belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the
Muslim community out of a total enrolment of 101.
The menu in anganwadis was
changed in 2010 following several

Public Health
Iqbal, Director, DWCD. According to
her, each child is given 22 grams of
nutri-corn puffs, 40 gm of kesari
baath, 35 gm of rice, 5 gm of tur dal, 10
gm of bisi bele bath mix and 45 gm of
an energy food a day and this contains
the required nutrition. Children between the ages of 0 and 3 are mainly
given 98 gm of Amylase Rich Energy
Food (AREF). Yet Shamla Iqbal concedes that the situation of malnutrition is serious and wants the budget of
the department to be enhanced so that
better-quality food can be provided.
Under the prevailing conditions
we are spending around Rs.4 per child
per day (pcpd) whereas in Tamil Nadu
it is almost Rs.10 pcpd and children
are given eggs. The amount is much
higher in Maharashtra also. Kerala has
raced ahead because of its efcient local government, she said.
She said there was hardly any coordination between her department and
the Department of Health and Family
Welfare in Karnataka, which was also
responsible
for
tackling
child
nutrition.

V. SREENIVASA MURTHY

complaints across the State about the

siphoning off of food destined for anganwadis at the taluk level. Until then,
children were provided a combination
of ready-mixes and freshly prepared
rice and dal along with local vegetables, green gram and jaggery.
In Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh
and Kerala, local ingredients are used
to prepare food for children at AWCs.
Why cant this be followed in Karnataka as well? asks Y. Mariswamy, State
president of the Samaja Parivartana
Janadolana, an organisation working
on the issues of infant mortality and
child malnutrition.
From 2010, pre-packaged readymixes manufactured by a private contractor in 137 centres across Karnataka have begun to form the major part
of the childrens diet. The distribution
mechanism of these was direct and
there was no middle tier between the
State and the AWC. This helped in
cutting down on corruption in distribution at the taluk and zilla panchayat
levels and in providing regular food for
300 days in a year, said Dr Shamla

DECEMBER 2, 2011

SA VIT R I N I MB A D , T HE anganwadi worker of Almel panchayat, Bijapur

district, in her classroom. Some children at the centre fall in the
extremely underweight category, as per WHO standards.
9 6

F R O N T L I N E

A report prepared by Clifton Rozario, Adviser to Commissioners on Food

Security appointed by the Supreme
Court of India, lists several hurdles in
eliminating childhood malnutrition:
poor quality of food; inefcient identication of children suffering from
malnutrition; failure of ofcials to take
required and necessary steps in regard
to malnourished children; lack of
monitoring; failure of the Health Department to address the issue; infrastructural problems; and the severe
effect of this on the Scheduled Castes
and other backward groups.
In March 2010, then Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa announced a
Comprehensive Nutrition Mission
(CNM). Even though this has been in
place for a year, it has not been sufcient to address the problem.
According to the Karnataka Comprehensive Nutrition Mission Concept
Paper of 2010, ...poverty is a prominent, but not the sole, cause of malnutrition. The fact that the percentage of
people suffering from malnutrition far
exceeds the percentage of people below the poverty line clearly establishes
that malnutrition has other causes as
well.
The idea behind the CNM was noble, but it has not been sufcient to
target the main sources of the problem. With the High Court keenly following the issue, the States
institutions are now pulling up their
socks. The court has directed the
DWCD to form a subcommittee to
look into the high rate of infant mortality in Karnataka.
Back in Savitri Nimbads class under the tree, Ashwini and Gurnal
stretch out their steel plates for the
kesari baath gruel. As the anganwadi
helper ladles out the afternoon meal, it
is easy to become aware of the many
ironies in her ditty. There is no permanent building or even a blackboard.
Open sewers in the vicinity add to the
miserable state of the anganwadi. A
ready mix of kesari baath along with a
savoury is the healthiest meal that
many of these children will get in a day.
How will Basavanna grow up to lead a
healthy life?

Column

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Time to talk
The Kudankulam protesters must not be maligned as misguided by foreign
interests. Dialogue with them on nuclear hazards remains an imperative.
S the popular agitation
against the Kudankulam
Nuclear Power Project
(KKNPP) gains in strength
and determination, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and
its subsidiary, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), have
mounted a multi-pronged attack on
the movement and its leaders, while
claiming that the Russian-designed
reactors being installed are perfectly
or 100 per cent safe.
One part of the attack is that the
agitators are imperilling the safety of
the Rs.13,000-crore project by impeding its normal operation and maintenance through their picketing. In
particular, Reactor 1, which is at an
advanced state of completion, and recently had a hot run, is in danger of
being damaged.
This underscores the protesters
grave irresponsibility. Another part of
the attack is the disinformation spread
through newspapers to the effect that
the movement is backed by anti-nuclear groups, the Church and foreign
activists (The Times of India, November 7). NPCIL chairman S.K. Jain said
activists from the United States, Finland, France and Australia are simply
sitting there.
The second attack is reminiscent of
past campaigns to malign environmentalists who fought against large
dams and destructive mining and industrial projects and made a valuable
contribution to ecological protection
and defence of livelihoods. Anti-nuclear groups naturally support the Kudankulam protests on well-reasoned
grounds.
It is their legitimate job to do so.
But it is pernicious to introduce a denominational/communal
element

Beyond the
Obvious
PRAFUL BIDWAI
here. The protesters include people
from all communities.
My telephone conversations with a
number of people around Kudankulam conrm that there are no foreign
activists there. The only foreigners
present recently were the Russian engineers invited by NPCIL itself.
The charge is particularly deplorable because it comes from an organisation that is bent on rewarding
foreign nuclear manufacturers with
lucrative reactor contracts for their
governments support to the U.S.-India nuclear deal and its endorsement
by the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) and Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG).
Former DAE secretary Anil Kakodkar put it straight to the Marathi
daily Sakaal (January 5): We also
have to keep in mind the commercial
interests of foreign countries and
companies America, Russia and
F R O N T L I N E

9 7

France were the countries that we

made mediators in these efforts to lift
sanctions, and hence, for the nurturing
of their business interests, we made
deals with them for nuclear projects.
Worse, such propaganda about the
foreign hand behind the protests
guts the possibility of a genuine dialogue with the agitators, mandated by
the Centre. The whole rationale of the
Prime Ministers October 7 meeting
with the peoples delegation, in response to the Tamil Nadu Cabinets
call for suspending construction at Kudankulam until peoples apprehensions about safety are allayed, was to
facilitate dialogue and rational debate.
To return to the rst line of attack,
DAE Secretary Srikumar Banerjee has
claimed he had serious concern
about damage to the reactors: It is
not a plant which can be just switched
on and off.We have done the hot run.
We cant go from hot run to a freeze
condition. We have to have a minimal operational system. S.K. Jain
said: [a reactor] is not a car factory
where you can switch off the systems
and close.... You have simulators, ventilators, computer and electronic systems you have to maintain them.
There is as yet no nuclear danger at
Kudankulam. Reactor 1 has not gone
critical that is, had a nuclear ssion
chain reaction. For all intents and purposes, it is like a car factory, which too
has simulators, ventilators and
computers.
Contrary to the suggestion of a nuclear activity, a hot run involves loading of dummy fuel assemblies (without
uranium) into the reactor, and then
taking the temperature of the primary
coolant water to the operating temperature of 2800 Celsius, according to
site director M.K. Balaji (The Hindu,

Column
June 5). After the three-week-long hot
run, the reactor would be disassembled, not just shut down, and the reactor vessel, pipelines, gauges and safety
devices inspected. The runs purpose is
to see how the coolant circuit operates
and whether pipes, pumps, and so on
work properly.
Until Reactor 1 attains criticality,
its safety will not be affected in the
least if operations are suspended even
for months. Kudankulam is already
delayed by 10 years. Shutting down
reactors even after they have gone critical is not rocket science. All reactors
are periodically closed for maintenance. Many have been shut down
safely or for good most recently in
Japan and Germany, and earlier in the
U.S., France, Britain, Italy, and
elsewhere.
Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has lent a degree of legitimacy to
the DAEs campaign by alleging that
geopolitical and market forces (the
layer presumably meaning rival nuclear suppliers to Russia) are behind the
Kudankulam protests. He was categorical that the reactors are 100 per
cent safe, because they have multiple
sophisticated safety features, and because 99 per cent of their spent fuel
would be reprocessed.
NUCLEAR WASTES

Now, reprocessing is a known hazardous and expensive activity, which also

produces nuclear wastes, with all their
intractable problems. Many components of nuclear wastes have long halflives (period during which they naturally decay to half their original mass)
such as 24,000 years (plutonium-239)
and even 710 million years
(uranium-235).
Science knows no way of storing
wastes safely for such long periods,
leave alone neutralising them or disposing them of. No geological formations can be trusted to be stable for
millennia and ensure that the wastes
will not leach into the environment.
As for safety, no technology is 100
per cent safe. All technologies carry a
nite risk. Risk is particularly great in
relatively high-pressure high-temper-

DECEMBER 2, 2011

ature systems such as nuclear reactors,

which concentrate enormous quantities of energy in small volumes. The
work of safety and organisation theory
analysts such as Charles Perrow (of
Normal Accidents fame) and Scott Sagan tells us that reactors are highly
complex systems whose subsystems
are, internally, tightly coupled, with
the danger that a small mishap or abnormal event in one subsystem can get
quickly transmitted to other subsystems, malfunctions get rapidly magnied, and the whole system goes into a
massive runaway crisis. Fail-safe or
fail-soft mechanisms can easily
break down.
That is what happened at Fukushima, where a station blackout initiated
by an earthquake and tsunami caused
a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA),
leading to three core meltdowns and
huge releases of radioactivity, whose
effects have not fully unfolded, or been
understood and studied. The accident
is still continuing and the reactors remain crisis-bound.
A station blackout is not a rare
phenomenon. LOCAs are known in
virtually every reactor type with long
operating experience.
FLAWED METHOD

Engineers try to make reactors safer by

designing them to recover from various initiating failures, and installing
multiple protections, all of which
would have to fail before radioactivity
is released (defence-in-depth). To
quantify risks, engineers use a mathematical method called probabilistic
risk assessment (PRA). The physicist
M.V. Ramana says that PRA conceives
of accidents as resulting from one of
many combinations of a series of failures, and computes the probability of a
severe accident resulting from these
event-trees or fault-trees (Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, April 19).
Japans nuclear safety agency used
PRA to extend the Fukushima Daiichi
stations licence just one month before
the accident. PRA is also cited by reactor manufacturers to make tall claims
about safety. However, PRA is a deeply
awed method and has been ques9 8

F R O N T L I N E

tioned on both theoretical and empirical grounds. A Massachusetts

Institute of Technology (MIT) study in
2003 says that uncertainties in PRA
methods and databases make it prudent to keep actual historical risk experience in mind when making
judgments about safety.
That experience says ve core
meltdowns have occurred in the global
record of 15,000 reactor-years of operation. At this rate, one can expect a
meltdown every eight years in the
worlds 430-odd reactors.
Conceptually, PRA uses chain-ofevent modelling which cannot account for the indirect, non-linear, and
feedback relationships that characterise many accidents. These risk assessments do a poor job of modelling
human actions and their impact on
known, let alone unknown, failure
modes. Therefore PRA-based conclusions about overall accident probabilities are undependable.
Perhaps the only robust conclusion one can draw is that no two major
accidents are alike. This means, unfortunately, that while it may be possible to guard against an exact repeat
of the Fukushima disaster, the next
nuclear accident will probably be
caused by a different combination of
initiating factors and failures. There
are no reliable tools to predict what
that combination will be, and therefore one cannot be condent of being
protected against such an accident.
This grim conclusion warrants sobriety, caution and abundant humility
on the part of our nuclear establishment. It should thank the Kudankulam protesters for raising the issue of
nuclear safety, and highlighting its
paramount importance. It should also
reconsider its certication of the
French-designed Jaitapur reactors in
Maharashtra as safe when their design
has not even been frozen or shared
with it, and about which hundreds of
queries have been raised in Finland,
Britain, the U.S., and even France.
There must be a moratorium on all
further nuclear activity unless an independent, broad-based, credible safety
review is conducted.

Reports

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Wanted: more jobs

The annual report of the International
Institute for Labour Studies projects
a grim future for employment
prospects. B Y T . K . R A J A L A K S H M I

WITH the United States and much of Europe

grappling with the slowdown in their economies and
the resultant social unrest, the publication of the
World of Work Report 2011: Making Markets Work
for Jobs could not have come at a more opportune
moment. Brought out by the International Institute
for Labour Studies, which was established in 1960 by
the International Labour Organisation, the report
projects a grim future for employment prospects.
Quality employment growth remained weak
throughout 2009-10, with temporary jobs dominating employment growth in advanced economies. The
debt crisis in Greece fuelled by austerity measures
and cutbacks and the we are the 99 per cent protests in the U.S., despite its national jobs plan, exemplify in a sense the nature of the current crisis.
Jobs have to be put back on the global agenda and the
responsibility for doing so lies with national governments, asserts the report.
The situation since the collapse of the investment
bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 has taken a turn for
the worse despite some initial signs of recovery. The
difference is that in 2008-09, the early years of the
recessionary phase, there was an attempt to coordinate policies, especially among the G20 nations.
Countries are now increasingly acting in isolation,
which leads to more restrictive policies and the pressure of greater competitiveness. The overall impact
F R O N T L I N E

LUKE MACGREGOR/REUTERS

It says that not enough attention

has been paid to jobs, a key driver
of recovery, and more importance
has been given to appeasing
nancial markets. It points out that
labours share of income has lost
ground to capital.

A P R OTE S T AG A I N S T job cuts in central London

on November 5. Many of the demonstrators had
marched from Jarrow in north-east England,
recreating a 1936 march against unemployment.
9 9

DECEMBER 2, 2011

of this, coupled with restricted demand and reduced household

consumption, has been to squeeze labour in every conceivable manner.
And labour in turn has become pessimistic about employment and wage
prospects. The report says that not
enough attention has been paid to jobs
as a key driver of recovery and more
importance has been given to appeasing nancial markets, to scal austerity and to nding ways to help banks
without reforming the processes that
led to the present crisis. More often
than not, employment policies are examined through a scal lens, says the
report.
It says that the world economy has
now entered a new phase of economic
weakening, with some European
countries re-entering recession. Although the impact on the labour market may be felt only after six months,
the slowdown is bound to have a much
quicker and stronger impact on employment. The report estimates that
employment in advanced economies
will not return to pre-crisis levels until
2016. But, more importantly, it focusses on the growing social unrest and
says that in 40 per cent of the 119
countries surveyed the risk of social
unrest has grown considerably since
2010. Fifty-eight per cent of the countries show a growing percentage of
people who report a worsening in their
standard of living. Governments are
seen unable to deal with these new
situations, and condence in the ability of governments to deal with them
has also taken a beating.
Contrary to the general perception,
the rise in the levels of social discontent had its epicentre in advanced
economies. The same discontent had
receded in Latin America and stabilised in sub-Saharan Africa, which until some years ago ranked very low in
many social and economic indices. The
spillover effect in developing and
emerging economies is also visible in
declining exports and job creation.
The depressed demand in importing
countries coupled with their unstable
nancial situations and low investment has begun to affect growth pro-

spects in the emerging economies as

well. One method of ensuring some job
recovery is through making credit
available to small rms. A survey of
small rms in the European Union revealed that the lack of adequate nance was their most pressing
problem. For developing countries,
the report recommends greater and
targeted public investment, including
in agriculture.
The other casualty in this crisis has
been wages. The report says that over
the past two decades, the majority of
countries have witnessed a decline in
the share of income accruing to labour.
Compared with gains in productivity,
there has not been an accompanying
increase in the real incomes of wage
earners and self-employed workers.
This wage moderation has not resulted
in any added investment; presumably,
all the gain went into prots that were
not used for any employment generation. Wage moderation, says the report, contributes to exacerbating
imbalances, which coupled with the
inefciencies of the nancial system
led to and is perpetuating the crisis.
Had there been a balance, the shortfall
in demand would have been addressed.
The onus is on governments to devise policies through social dialogue,
well-designed minimum wage instruments and collective bargaining accompanied with renewed efforts to
promote core labour standards. Interestingly, the dividend pay-out ratio in
the emerging economies of Brazil, China and South Africa has remained constant. In Latin America, for example,
in Peru, prot-sharing is compulsory;
in Ecuador, it is supported by legislation. In France, too, there is some form
of compulsory sharing of prots. The
report says that studies show that
highly skewed executive pay has a detrimental effect on corporate earnings
and productivity and has a depressing
effect on the morale of rms.
While the nature of employment
growth remains largely temporary in
character, in emerging economies the
trend has worsened towards more informal forms of employment. What is
1 0 0

F R O N T L I N E

of equal concern is that long-term unemployment rates have gone up globally owing to the prolonged labour
market recession.
The report says that the global social climate has worsened. The unrest
seen in West Asia, North Africa and
also parts of South Asia, including regime change in a few countries, is not
conned to those regions alone. The
report says that there has been a significant increase in the number of street
demonstrations and protests in advanced countries, and quoting a global
survey of 150 countries, it says that
socio-economic insecurity has heightened across the world.
Uniformly, it has found that a vast
majority of people are dissatised with
their jobs. Dissatisfaction over jobs is
seen to be the highest in central and
eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) and subSaharan Africa and lower in the countries that went through the Jasmine
revolution. This begs the question

YANNIS BEHRAKIS/REUTERS

DECEMBER 2, 2011

ANTI-AUS T E R I T Y D E MO N S T RA T O RS P U S H police fences blocking a street

leading to Parliament during clashes in Athens on October 19. The report
says that in 40 per cent of the 119 countries surveyed, the risk of social
unrest has grown considerably since 2010.

whether eastern Europe and the CIS

beneted at all from the collapse of the
Berlin wall and the new situation that
was thrust on them as a consequence.
Among the advanced economies, the
problem is more acutely felt in Greece,
Portugal, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia and
Spain, where more than 70 per cent
express dissatisfaction over jobs. Unemployment and lack of disposable income are seen as the prime drivers
behind the current social unrest.
The report errs partially in its understanding of the social unrest caused
by rising food prices. It argues that it is
the rapidly growing populations in developing economies that are increasing
the pressure on limited food supplies
and causing a rise in food prices and
social unrest. The inequitable distribution of food consumption and expendi-

ture on food and the decline in

investment in agriculture also need to
be looked at in this context. Considering
the low disposable income of the poor,
they are certainly not consuming more.
One of the more important features
of the report is the section on the falling
share of labour in income. For several
decades, it says, labours share of income has lost ground to capital. The
wage share declined in almost threequarters of the 69 countries for which
data exist. The fall has been more pronounced in the emerging and developing economies, such as India, than in
advanced ones, and more pronounced
for unskilled workers. The decline in
wages has not resulted in reducing unemployment. The report admits that nancial globalisation has resulted in a
decrease in the bargaining power of
F R O N T L I N E

1 0 1

workers. It recommends that the decline in the wage share should be arrested in the interests of generating
demand and employment.
There is no doubt that an incomegenerating strategy will lead to greater
demand and employment without aggravating scal decits. The wage
share decline has been the sharpest in
North Africa since 2000 and the lowest in Latin America, which somewhat
explains the lack of social unrest there.
The report candidly says that the
global economic outlook has only deteriorated since 2010. On current
trends, it says, nearly 80 million jobs
will need to be created to return to
pre-crisis employment levels, and the
present slowdown shows that only
about half of the jobs needed are going
to be created. While the share of prot
in the gross domestic product (GDP)
increased between 2000 and 2009 in
83 per cent of the countries analysed,
the share of wages declined and so did
productive investment. On the other
hand, corporate prots have accumulated. The report debunks the adage
that wage moderation leads to job creation. It instead calls for a comprehensive income-led recovery strategy,
which, it says, will help stimulate investment and reduce excessive income
inequalities.
However, this is not all. The income gaps between people within
countries continue to be horrically
high. At one end of the spectrum, there
is a vast majority subsisting and grappling with astronomical food prices
while a minuscule minority is spending far more than its capacity and requirement.
What is needed is a long-term
strategy and more government intervention. National governments can do
far more on their own, provided they
have the political will to do so. There
cannot be a disproportionate focus on
social measures and the labour market
when it comes to reducing public debts
and decits. It is clear that there have
been several developments that have
contributed to the crisis. Social unrest
is but the natural outcome of the crisis
created by capital.

FOCUS FORTS OF MAHARASHTRA

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Majestic defences
Maharashtra has an abundance of
forts that are now being promoted
as holiday destinations.

PICTURES COURTESY: MTDC

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

TH E HI L L F O R T

of Pratapgad in Mahabaleshwar, built by the Maratha warrior king Shivaji.

The hill forts at Daulatabad

and Raigad and the sea forts at
Murud-Janjira and Sindhudurg
are examples of the ingenious
architecture of olden days.
THERE is perhaps no historical monument that
exudes a sense of history as much as a fort does. This
can be attributed to the brute force of its architecture
and the stories and myths that surround it and even
the plain bloodlust it was witness to.
The history of the region that is now Maharashtra was unceasingly violent for centuries. This explains why the region has the maximum number of
forts in India. A passage between the north and the
south, the volcanic Deccan plateau was a constant
witness to violent conquests and defeats. The topography of the land was also ideal for building defences
1 0 2

in the form of forts that were impregnable. And 350

or so of them were built.
Today the Maharashtra Tourism Development
Corporation (MTDC) is doing its best to encourage
people to visit the forts by providing all facilities and
branding them as family holiday destinations. The
majestic hill forts in the State include the ones at
Daulatabad, Ahmednagar, Shivneri, Rajgad, Raigad, Pratapgad and Panhala.
The climb up the Daulatabad fort is exhausting,
yet exhilarating. Finally, at a height of over 183
metres, the hardy tourist can survey the countryside
below with a sense of wonder. The fort must have
been the most impregnable place in the area at the
height of its glory. Adding to its locational advantage
are numerous cunning architectural devices.
Most forts around the world were penetrated or
invaded because of treachery from within the enemy rarely overcame the defences of a fort. Ancient
architects, who seemed to have an astute understanding of military strategy, followed the physical
contours of the land in structuring the forts and used

F R O N T L I N E

FOCUS FORTS OF MAHARASHTRA

DECEMBER 2, 2011

THE I S LA N D FOR T

of Murud-Janjira near
Mumbai, a popular
weekend getaway.

a dash of cunning creativity to add

ingenious features to them. Daulatabad abounds in such ingenuity. Fort
designs concentrate on two aspects
invincibility and, failing that, escape.
At Daulatabad there is a narrow passage of extreme darkness that has a
gradual treacherous slope. When the
enemy soldier pursued the eeing residents through this, boiling oil was
poured from an aperture above. The
scalded enemy soldier would then race
down the sloped oor towards a low
window at the end of the passage, only
to plunge into the moat 200 feet below
where crocodiles awaited him.
The Haathi darwaza,or Elephant

TH E S H I V N E R I F O R T

gate, at the Ahmednagar fort is another such device. It is a towering outer

gate with metal spikes and leads to the
moat. Its purpose was to deter elephants, which the enemy used as battering rams.
The fort also has a swinging bridge,
or the jhoolta pul, over the moat. Its
widely spaced planks for ooring were
an ingenious way to prevent enemy
battalions from rushing across it. The
fort is now under renovation and a
budget of Rs.20 crore has been set
aside for the landscaping.
The hill fort of Rajgad is well
known for its long association with
Shivaji. Before it was christened Raj-

near Pune was the birthplace of Shivaji.

1 0 4

F R O N T L I N E

gad, or the fort of kings, by Shivaji, it

was known as Murumdeo and was under the Nizamshahi and the Adilshahi
rulers. By A.D. 1648, it came under
Shivajis possession. In fact, in A.D.
1659 Shivaji went to meet the Mughal
general Afzal Khan from Rajgad. It
was his favourite fort and he refused to
hand it over to the Mughals even when
he had to surrender 23 other forts.
There are many historic forts along
the coast too such as those in Murud,
Sindhudurg, Suvarnadurg, Vijaydurg,
and Jaigad. The island fort of MurudJanjira, in Murud village in Raigad
district, has for long been a popular
weekend getaway for Mumbaikars. It
is one of the strongest coastal forts in
the country and is still in very good
shape. Originally, it was a wooden
structure built by Koli shermen (the
Kolis were the original inhabitants of
Mumbai) in the 15th century. Over the
centuries, the fort was dominated by
the Nizamshahis and the Siddhis were
its last owners.
The sea fort of Sindhudurg is at the
southern end of the State. Shivaji took
the help of Portuguese experts to construct it in the early 1660s. The fort has
a temple dedicated to Shivaji, where
the king is depicted without his trademark beard. About 20 Hindu and
Muslim families who date their ancestry to the early days of the Sindhudurg
fort live within its premises.

FOCUS FORTS OF MAHARASHTRA

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Massive potential
Interview with Chhagan Bhujbal,
State Tourism Minister.

The State government has

earmarked a budget of Rs.25 crore
for the current year and will put in
more resources in the future to build
Brand Maharashtra.
CHHAGAN BHUJBAL, Maharashtras Minister
for Tourism, has grand plans for exploiting the
States tourism potential. Excerpts from an interview
he gave Frontline:
What are the States strengths and focus areas in
the tourism sector?
Our State is blessed with almost everything except snow-clad mountains and deserts. We are
proud to have the highest number of forts and caves
in the country. The white sand and blue waters of the
Konkan beaches are remarkable. The State has
about 169 tigers, apart from other wild animals, in its
34 wildlife sanctuaries. It has ve of the 12 Jyotirlinga temples [dedicated to Siva] in the country, the
Ashtavinayak temples, three and a half Shaktipithas
[temples dedicated to Parvati] and the shrine of Sai
Baba in Shirdi and the Shani Shinganapur [dedicated to Saturn]. Naturally, these are our focus areas.
Do you think Maharashtra has lagged in the tourism
sector in spite of its strengths?
Maharashtra enjoys a leading position in the
industry and commerce sectors. It is true that our
focus remained on these sectors and also infrastructure in the past. There is great potential in tourism,
particularly for employment generation. It is not
that we had not paid attention to tourism in the past;
it was not a priority area.
How do you plan to utilise your strengths?
An aggressive marketing strategy is the key. The
State government has earmarked a budget of Rs.25
1 0 6

PTI

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Shivajis headgear at the

inauguration in Nagpur of the play Janta Raja
based on the life of the warrior king. A le picture.

C HHAG A N B HUJ BA L I N

crore for the current year and will put in more resources in the future to build Brand Maharashtra.
When people nd Maharashtra an interesting place
to visit, the demand for services will increase, which
in turn will provide opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Our target is to create demand, the other things will
follow.
It is said Maharashtra does not have the required
infrastructure. How do you plan to overcome this?
Maharashtra has very good infrastructure in
terms of roads and airports. Most districts have an
airstrip and there are regular ights to places like
Nagpur, Pune, Aurangabad, Nanded, Latur, and
Kolhapur. The major roads are now four-lane highways. National Highway 17 from Mumbai to Goa is
our next priority.
In terms of tourism infrastructure, we have a
long way to go. This has to be done in a phased
manner depending on the availability of resources
and needs. At present we have undertaken sectorspecic projects, such as eco-tourism in the Vidarbha region, coastal tourism in the Konkan area, and
the Ajanta and Ellora tourism project. Work is also
in progress at Elephanta Caves, Harihareshwar
[Raigad district], Kunkeshwar, Mithbav [Sindhudurg district], Bhandardara [Ahmednagar district],
and Toranmal [Nandurbar district]. The rst phase
of development of tourist facilities at select forts and
at the Ashtavinayak sites are going on. The government has released Rs.10 crore per project. Tourism

F R O N T L I N E

FOCUS FORTS OF MAHARASHTRA

COURTESY: MTDC

Kolhapur, Raigad and Sindhudurg.

We are also planning to launch package tours on these routes.
What actually drives domestic tourism in the State is religious tourism.
Health and hygiene are major concerns at most religious places. We will
work out a model in coordination with
local bodies and temple trusts.

INSID E T H E D A UL A T A B A D fort,
situated on a 183-metre-high hill.

signage will be in place in six months.

Can you outline the specic plans for
developing beaches, forts, wildlife
areas and religious tourism?
We have identied the gaps and
have plans for the specic development of these areas. To promote wildlife tourism, the MTDC is establishing
tourist resorts at places such as Sakoli,
Khindshi, Chhaprala, Pench, Bor, Tadoba and Chikhaldara. Forest trails,
camp sites and nature interpretation
centres will be developed by the Forest
Department.
Around 36 beaches have been
identied for development. The roads
leading to them are being improved.
Integrated beach facilities and beach
safety will be in place soon. The MTDC
has plans to upgrade its beach resorts
in addition to creating new ones.
The State has around 350 forts, of
which some are historically important.
A fort circuit plan will cover the districts of Pune, Satara, Ahmednagar,

What is the response to Kalagram, an

exhibition of art and culture that
opened recently in Aurangabad?
With the help of the Union Ministry of Tourism, we started the Aurangabad Kalagram to showcase our rich
art, craft and culture. There are 106
stalls and an open-air theatre here.
Many artists and craftsmen have taken
advantage of this facility. In the past
two or three months, more than one
lakh people have visited the kalagram.
Around eight acres have been earmarked in Filmcity, Mumbai, for a
similar project there. We also plan to
set up a shilpgram (artists village) in
Majalgaon in Andheri East, for which
land has been reserved.
Why is the State not promoting agrorural tourism?
I agree that agro-rural tourism has
great scope in Maharashtra, as its agriculture sector is well developed and
the rural connectivity is good. This will
be an interesting experience for urban
dwellers. Many farmers have successfully started rural tourism centres. We
have a Mahabhraman scheme under
which service providers can register
with the MTDC. Wine tourism in Nasik and Pune is gaining popularity with
foreign tourists.
What about your dream project
relating to the Raigadfort?
I have a dream of making Raigad
fort a prime tourist destination as it
was built during the time of Chhatrapati Shivaji. We have written to the
Union Ministry of Culture to hand
over this fort to the State government
for restoration and conservation. Once
we get permission, we will make Raigad fort a monument of national pride
in two years time.
1 0 8

F R O N T L I N E

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Is the luxury train Deccan Odyssey

back on track now?
In order to attract foreign tourists,
I have planned to resume services of
this luxury train. For this, I have held
several discussions with the Union
Railway and Tourism Ministries.
From 2004 to 2008 this train was
doing regular tours in Maharashtra.
But following the terrorist attack on
Mumbai in November 2008 and a
sudden change in the Railways policy
things changed. Now, in addition to
regular tours in the State, the train
makes pan-India tours with the help of
private operators. We are planning to
operate a Mumbai-Shirdi tour from
this season once the formalities with
the Railways are completed.
Could you tell us about Sea World in
the Konkan?
We have decided to take up this
project in Sindhudurg district. The
Konkan area is most suitable for such a
project owing to the water quality and
marine life. This integrated project is
proposed to be implemented under the
public private partnership model. This
will be the biggest tourism project in
India and will have the capacity to divert tourist ow from West Asia and
other Asian countries.
How will your government help
private players who have innovative
tourism projects?
Tourism Policy-2006 aims at attracting private investment in tourism.
Fourteen tourism projects have been
identied for scal incentives under
this policy. If an entrepreneur comes
with an innovative product, it will be
considered on merit. Many hotels and
entertainment parks have taken advantage of this scheme. All necessary
support envisaged under the policy
will be provided to potential investors.
We are planning to develop MTDC
properties under the PPP mode. Consultants have been appointed to suggest specic projects. Private investors
looking for opportunities in Maharashtra are most welcome to participate.

Controversy

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Land grab
projects?
An independent study says some 250
thermal power projects that have got
clearances may be meant just to grab
land and water resources.
BY LYLA BAVADAM

The total capacity of these projects

far exceeds the countrys projected
power requirement by 2032. There
are still more projects to be cleared,
with the potential to produce a total
of 508,907 MW.
THERE have been a growing number of headlines that speak of an energy crisis and the energy
decit in India in the last few years. The disparities in
the demand-supply scenario, the increasing prospects of disruptions in the global supply of fuel and
the consequent results of higher import bills, the
problems of losses during transmission and distribution and a host of other issues have been debated.
The public sector monopoly over this sector has
been blamed for the energy crisis. So, after liberalisation, when the sector was thrown open to private investors, it was generally considered to be a
protable business opportunity. In fact, more than
250 companies have applied for and received environmental clearances to set up thermal power projects in the coming years. In the generally accepted
analysis of the energy situation, this seems to be a
good thing. But there is another side to the story.
For quite some time there has been talk of a vast
number of thermal power projects coming up all
over the country, but apart from certain regions,
such as the Konkan (Frontline, February 11), where
details were available, there was no central database
1 1 0

that provided information on the rest. Prayas Energy

Group, a non-governmental, non-prot organisation that works on the theoretical, conceptual and
policy issues in the energy sector, was curious about
the widespread talk about big projects and decided
to nd out more. (It is worth noting that Prayas was
instrumental in the analysis of the infamous power
purchase agreement of the Dabhol Power Company.)
Girish Sant of Prayas said he and his colleagues
decided to start off by looking at the website of the
Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) since
the Ministry played a part in issuing clearances. Here
they found a bulk of information that conrmed
much of what they had been hearing. The information was appalling enough for lead authors Shripad
Dharmadhikary and Shantanu Dixit of Prayas to dig
deeper and publish a report.
Thermal Power Plants on the Anvil: Implications and Need for Rationalisation starts with a
seemingly straightforward announcement: A massive expansion of the thermal power generation capacity of the country is on the anvil. Without much
ado, the report then drops the bombshell that the
MoEF has liberally granted environmental clearances to about 250 coal- and gas-based thermal
power projects that will produce a total of 192,913
MW of power a proposed capacity that far exceeds
the countrys projected requirement until 2032!
Delving further, they were shocked to discover that
there were more projects, yet to be cleared, with the
potential to produce, totally, 508,907 MW.
Simple calculations showed the following. As of
April, the existing total installed electricity generation capacity in India was 174,361 MW. Of this, the
total thermal capacity was 113,000 MW. The green
signal from the MoEF for the new plants will result
in a capacity increase of about 192,913 MW from
coal- and gas-based plants. The pending projects are

F R O N T L I N E

B. VELANKANNI RAJ

DECEMBER 2, 2011

FAR ME RS A N D F I S H E R F O LK at a rally protesting against the thermal power projects proposed in Tharangambadi in
Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu, in December 2010.

likely to get clearance because in the

last four years the MoEF has made it a
point to clear all thermal power
proposals.
This means that in the coming
years the country can expect to see
plants with around 701,820 MW being
built. And this is only in the thermal
power sector. Coal-based plants account for about 87 per cent of these
plants in-waiting. The report says,
These additions are more than six
times the currently installed thermal
capacity of 113,000 MW. They are also
three times the capacity addition that
would be required to meet the needs of
the high-renewables-high efciency
scenario for the year 2032 projected by
the Planning Commission Integrated
Energy Policy report.
With this basic information in
hand, the MoEFs green signal seemed
all the more bafing. It could be argued that this was strategic future
planning, but there was something
about the clearing of the capacity of a
mammoth 192,913 MW of power that
held the attention of the authors. Coming up against bureaucratic roadblocks, they led a Right to
Information (RTI) plea addressed to
the Environment Impact Assessment
Centre of the MoEF, asking how so
many thermal power projects were
given clearance. The response said that
if the site of a project was not found to

be appropriate the promoters were

asked to change it. Thus, in effect, a
project was never rejected merely
asked to change location.
The MoEF, for its part, reiterated
that environmental clearances were
given after the Ministry was satised
that environmental planning was part
of the future projects.
Studying the issue even more
closely, the researchers came to a conclusion that may seem anti-development, but, when studied closely,
makes a strong argument for itself.
They concluded that with large areas
of land being acquired for these projects, and water being allocated for
these unnecessary plants, this may
turn out to be a land and water grab
story. They noted that the clearing of
so many gigantic projects indicates a
complete disconnect between the governments actions in the power sector
and the actual power needs of the
country.
The location of the projects were
also suspect, the authors found. Out of
a total of 626 districts in the country, it
is inexplicable why the projects are being sited in only 30 (4.7 per cent of the
total number of districts). Fifteen districts have plants with capacities totalling 10,000 MW or more each. And
several districts are contiguous, which
will increase the impact of the plants.
The Central and State sectors have
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 1

about 82 per cent share in the existing

thermal power plants. But the private
sector accounts for 67 per cent of the
proposed projects. So intense is the
corporate interest that 10 private companies account for 160,000 MW of the
total mega wattage. Among the 10 are
Reliance, Adani, Welspun, Essar, Indiabulls, Tata Power and Vedanta. Attempts to contact Reliance and Tata
Power, the two largest investors in the
list, proved fruitless.
It is now not uncommon for large
corporations to buy up vast tracts of
land. Some years ago a prominent real
estate dealer of Mumbai told this correspondent that he had been instructed by his client, one of the countrys
largest corporations, to buy land anywhere in India as long as it was over 10
acres (one acre is 0.4 hectare) and had
a water source. Knowing that land
would be the most valuable commodity in the future, the company wanted
to hold the aces at the appropriate
time. Interestingly, the company in
question is one of the top 10 on the list
of corporates wanting to set up thermal power plants.
The allocation of land, coal and
water is a major concern. The report
argues: These projects in the pipeline
represent a massive overcapacity in
the making. Thus, valuable and scarce
natural resources of land, water, gas
and coal will be allocated to projects

Controversy
that are ultimately not required.
Land for such gigantic projects is
invariably acquired forcibly with the
government applying the Land Acquisition Act citing public purpose. The
authors wryly say, Given that the thermal capacity in pipeline is far in excess
of that required, it is clear that many of
these plants will not serve a public purpose. Hence, the use of the Act to acquire land for such plants cannot be
justied. The current Act is so structured that there is no provision to return the land once acquired to the
original owner even if the project does
not materialise. In such a case, the
promoters can use the land for their
own prot. The researchers say, Some
of the plants may even be promoted
primarily to obtain such benets.
Almost 85 per cent of the projects
in the pipeline are coal-based. A large
proportion of them rely on domestic
coal which is in short supply even
existing power plants do not get their
full requirement. Obviously, supplying
new plants will spread the resource
even thinner, ultimately resulting in
coal imports. No study has been done
about the coal reserves in the country.
Sant told Frontline that there were
about 20 to 40 giga tonnes of coal
reserves but their location was not
clear. If they are in forest reserves, then
they are in a no-go area for mining. He
said that if the reserves were no more
than 40 giga tonnes, the coal would
run out by 2030. Clearly, there has
been a lacuna in planning; these proposed projects are mere ghosts and the
actual aim is to grab land and water
resources. There is also a health issue
involved Indian coal is very high in
mercury content. Currently there are
no limits set for mercury emissions
from power plants, though this can
have grave consequences for the brain,
the heart, kidneys, lungs and the immune system.
Allocation of water rights is the
other contentious issue. Coal plants
are notorious for using as much as four
litres of water per kWh of generation.
About 72 per cent of the cleared plants
are inland and about half of these are
in the river basins of the Ganga, the

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Godavari, the Mahanadi and the Brahmani. Even presuming that a river basin can supply the needs of the thermal
power plant, it is not acceptable because it would most likely be eating
into the water share of the local populace. And given the vagaries of the
weather, there will invariably be conict in times of drought. Who then gets
priority the power plant or the local
people? Past experience with the privatisation of water, as in the Sheonath
river case in Madhya Pradesh, has
shown that priority is invariably given
to corporate interests.
The report estimates that the consumptive water needs of the plants
with Environmental Clearance Granted will themselves be close to 4.6 billion cubic metres per year. In these
circumstances, several water conicts
appear to be in the making. Here, too,
there is an example from the past. Neither the industry nor local people will
benet if water supply stops as had
happened in April last year in Chandrapur district where the Maharashtra
State Electricity Board had to shut
down its plant on account of water
shortage. Ironically, Chandrapur is
slated to have plants with a total capacity of 8,000 MW.
Again, using a thumb rule from the
Central Electricity Authority, Prayas
estimates that coal-based plants consume about 3.92 million cubic metres
of water per 100 MW per annum.
There are such plants for 117,500 MW
inland. This means these plants will
require about 4,608 million cubic
metres of water. That is enough to irrigate about 920,000 ha of land in a
year or provide drinking and domestic
use water to about 84 million people or
7 per cent of Indias population every
day for a year, the report says.
In 2009, the MoEF used the Comprehensive Environmental Pollution
Index and identied some areas in the
country as critically polluted. Shockingly, a total capacity of 88,000 MW of
the proposed thermal projects is located within or near these Critically Polluted areas. Coal-based thermal power
plants are infamous for sulphur dioxide emissions, coal ash disposal issues
1 1 2

F R O N T L I N E

and the release of toxins such as mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium. Even
if there are regulations (in the case of
sulphur dioxide, these are not even
clear) it is doubtful whether the air and
water supply will be able to dispose
and disperse the mammoth emissions.
In the past, dykes of ash ponds have
collapsed resulting in ash slurry inundating areas. But even stored coal ash
is hazardous because it affects ground
and surface water supply as well as
ambient air.
Playing the devils advocate, Prayas
argues that the delicensing of thermal
power generation will automatically
mean that market forces will weed out
excess and inefcient capacity. In other words, even if plants have got the
clearance and resources are allocated
to them, they will be governed by the
market. While this may be so, it does
not take away from the crucial fact that
companies may already have got what
they wanted land and water. And,
they would have got all this with subsidies. They will have proted even if
the plants fail. The real victims will be
those who have been displaced for a
worthless project, the taxpayers whose
money was misused, the environment,
and, of course, the country as a whole.
Prayas has called for revamping
the clearance process, a moratorium
on new clearances, and improved coordination between the different agencies involved. It further recommends
that from the 200,000 MW that have
already been given environmental
clearance, projects with very high social and environmental impacts, projects that do not have broad local
acceptance, and projects leading to
sub-optimal use of transmission, fuel,
land and water should be put on hold
and a reassessment be made of the
long-term demand for power.
Using already available information and that obtained through RTI,
Dharmadhikary and Dixit try to prove
that the thermal power projects in the
pipeline are clearly a massive overcapacity in the making. They say this
leads to the conclusion that there is an
ulterior motive: that of reserving vast
expanses of land for future prot.

Column

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Cricket & crime

In convicting the Pakistani cricketers, Justice Cooke has sent an unmistakable
message to all cricketers that venality and cricket did not go together.
NITED
KINGDOM
Crown Court Judge Jeremy Cookes decision on
November 3 to send three
Pakistani cricketers Salman Butt, Mohammmad Asif and Mohammad Amir to jail, along with
cricket agent Mazhar Majeed, has
been generally welcomed by many past
players and the followers of the game.
The prominent reaction immediately
after the judgment was that the three
players had brought disgrace to what
was until the other day a gentlemans
game, and hence they deserved to go
jail. Interestingly, I did not nd any
sympathy for them even among some
of the Pakistani journalists I spoke to,
when all of us were waiting for the
Crown Court number 4 in Southwark
to open its doors to a large crowd of
scribes (that included former England
captain Mike Atherton reporting for
The Times) and the general public who
had come to watch the penultimate
days proceedings in London.
Cookes order (available on the
Net) was punitive but not harsh. Many
of us certainly grieve that instead of
representing their home country and
playing the game on the hallowed turf
of Lords, Oval or Old Trafford, the
three young Pakistanis had been made
to languish in the Wandsworth prison,
Greater London. It is not that the
judge was cruel.
Actually, in fairness to him, it must
be said that he had tried to fuse sternness with charity while framing his lucid and historic judgment; historic,
in the sense that for the rst time,
cricketers were being sent to jail for
criminal misconduct on the eld. In
convicting the three cricketers and
sentencing them to varying periods of
imprisonment, the judge had ignored

Law and Order

R.K. RAGHAVAN
the plea of a few in the sporting fraternity that jailing the players was too
drastic an act, which could damage the
morale of cricketers. The hint thrown
was that the offenders should be let off
with a warning and admonition.
The judge obviously considered
such a course of action as too lenient
for the grave offence of cheating the
spectators who had paid to watch a
match that they believed was being
played on fair lines. While taking this
unequivocal stand, Justice Cooke did
not allow himself to go overboard by
inicting the maximum term of six to
seven years. He managed to show himself to be humane and sober by awarding relatively short terms of
imprisonment. He seemed to rest content with transmitting the unmistakable message to current cricketers,
wherever they are playing, that venality and cricket did not go together,
particularly when rewards from the
game had become really attractive over
the years.
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 3

It was refreshing to note that, while

imposing the sentence, he ordered that
if the delinquents conducted themselves well in prison, they could be released after completing half their
terms. This was a gesture rarely seen in
judicial forums. It was, therefore, evident that Justice Cooke was a reformist to the core, and not one who was
exploiting an opportunity to inict undesirable pain on the three youngsters.
In my view this should be the essence
of criminal justice in a modern democracy: reform and not a mere technical
and cold application of the law.
Justice Cooke will long be remembered as a level-headed presiding ofcer who deserves to be emulated. My
assessment is that he rmly believed
no crime should go unpunished. At the
same time, such punishment should be
given only with the intent of making
the offender feel penitent for his or her
action. This was especially so when
crime did not involve violence or directly ruin the livelihood or reputation
of the victim. Not many might agree
with this liberal philosophy. Nevertheless, such a position assumes relevance
in the context of the raging debate in
India over whether those facing a trial
should or should not be given bail during the currency of a trial.
Bail is an interim provision before
a charge is proved or disproved in trial.
It is not meant to be punitive. Once the
judge is convinced that an accused
who is let out on bail will not be able to
intimidate those who were going to
depose against him or her or otherwise
tamper with material evidence that
had already come on record, a liberal
application of the law on bail seems
very much in order. A known practice
in the United States and other countries is the electronic surveillance of an

DECEMBER 2, 2011

accused released on bail so that he or

she does not get an opportunity to
damage wantonly the prosecution
case. There is no reason why this procedure cannot be employed in India at
least in high-prole cases involving economic crime. We also possess the
technology to integrate this facility
with our judicial system. This would
greatly save prison space, at a time
when prisons are overcrowded.
But then the initiative for this major reform will have to come from the
judiciary. An investigating agency may
always be expected to oppose bail to an
accused, lest it be suspected of being
soft or in cahoots with an offender facing trial. It is for the judiciary to bring
in an element of objectivity.
The spot-xing incident raises at
least two major issues. The rst is how
to make the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) of the International Cricket Council (ICC) more credible,
vibrant and effective. The unit came
into being in 2000 in the wake of the
match-xing scandal that came to
light that year. I had the unique opportunity to oversee the investigation
done by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2000. While identifying the culprits both bookie and
cricketers the CBI made a number of
recommendations on how to check
graft and other crime in the game.
These were broadly accepted by the
Board of Control for Cricket in India
(BCCI) and implemented with reasonable seriousness. In course of time, the
ICC also fell in line with them.
The appointment of Sir Paul Condon, a distinguished British police ofcer who had earlier headed the London
Metropolitan Police, as the chief of the
ACSU was another move that lent
weight to the drive against corruption.
Condon was succeeded last year by Sir
Ronnie Flanagan, another reputed ofcer who had led the Police Force of
Northern Island. Solid leadership was,
therefore, not lacking in streamlining
anti-corruption work in cricket at the
international level. The point, however, is that the ACSU is a slender body
with modest resources. Any criticism
that it did not have a clue about the
1 1 4

F R O N T L I N E

recent spot-xing episode is therefore

ill founded.
One cannot expect miracles from
it. It is possible that the ACSU can do a
lot better with greater bandwidth. Ultimately nothing will work unless ethics becomes part of a cricketers life
when he is actually playing the game.
There is a great mentoring role
that the national cricket administration can play. Mohammad Amir, the
youngest of the three cricketers convicted by the court, is known to have
made a statement that he had not received enough inputs from the Pakistani administrators on the dos and
donts, and that if only he had been
advised properly he would not have
strayed as he did at the 2010 Lords
Test. Considering that Amir was hardly 18 years old when the alleged misconduct took place, his defence sounds
credible.
The fact that he came from an essentially rural background, possibly
with only modest education, makes us
believe that if he had been guided
properly, he may not have erred. We in
India have also a new crop of cricketers
some from what are normally regarded as backward areas not exposed to the treacherous manipulators
in our cities. They need to be protected
through down-to-earth counselling.
Or else they will fall victim to predators
who are a regular feature in the cricket
rmament. I am certain that the current enlightened BCCI leadership is
well aware of its responsibilities in this
vital area.
Another measure in the direction
of keeping the game clean would be to
enact a law that would ensure all our
sportsmen behave well on the eld.
The need for special legislation is mentioned by some well-meaning people. I
am not very sure that such a new law
will ever carry enough deterrent. Even
if it did, will we not be injecting an
element of fear into the environment
where a free and uninhibited demonstration of skills is of the essence? Anyhow, there is no harm in continuing a
discussion on the desirability of a law
that would help keep our cricketers
away from temptations.

The States/Kerala

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Hanging by a thread
The edgling UDF government in Kerala is bogged down in troubles of its own
making. B Y R . K R I S H N A K U M A R

IN THIRUVANANTHAPURAM

The constant drift from principles to

appease coalition partners or to
support errant leaders is already
proving to be hazardous for the
UDF government.

V. SUDERSHAN

the 140 seats despite initial expectations of a comfortable majority and an anti-incumbency upsurge
against the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government. The election outcomes in many regions reected the impact of a number of scandals and
allegations against prominent UDF leaders and the
rivalries within the coalition and within the prominent parties in the coalition.
Even as the new UDF government was just settling down with a high-prole, 100-day fast-track
IT is not clear what would eventually bring down governance programme involving all government
the United Democratic Front (UDF) government in departments, the old charges of corruption and alleKerala or when, if at all, it would happen. But, within gations of involvement in other scandals caught up
the next six months, the nine-member ruling coali- with its leaders, casting a shadow on its future.
Jacobs death, therefore, came at a critical time
tion led by the Congress will have to face a byelection
that could see its slender majority in the Assembly for the UDF government, whose frail majority was
already forcing it to counter carefully every other
becoming even more skimpy and uncertain.
If the tumultuous Assembly session that ended issue raised by the Opposition in the Assembly.
With the UDFs strength reduced, there was conon November 3 can be taken as an indicator, persisting scandals, corruption charges and appeasement cern over the Assembly membership of the Governof errant coalition partners might prove costly for the ment Chief Whip, P.C. George (Kerala
UDF as it tries to ward off a possible defeat at Pira- Congress-Mani), after Sebastian Paul, a former CPI
vom, a central Kerala constitu(M) Member of Parliament, raised a
ency near Ernakulam, where a
question against his appointment.
byelection is due.
Paul claimed that the appointment
In the Assembly elections
of George, as the Government Chief
Whip with the rank of a Cabinet
held in April, T.M. Jacob, a seaMinister with all the attendant facilsoned politician, administrator
ities went against the ofce of prot
and leader of the Kerala Congress
laws under Article 191 of the Consti(Jacob), won Piravom, with a
tution. As per Article 191, a person
thin lead of 157 votes and become
who holds an ofce of prot under
the sole representative of his parthe State or Central government
ty in the Assembly. He was the
shall be disqualied for being choMinister for Food, Civil Supplies
sen as, and for being, a member of the
and Registration in Oommen
Legislative Assembly unless the
Chandys Cabinet. But Jacob,
State legislature passed a law exsuffering from pulmonary hyperempting the particular ofce from
tension and related troubles, was
disqualication. In the absence of
in and out of hospital since then
such a law exempting the post of
and his last stint as a Minister
Chief Whip, could George continue
ended abruptly with his death at C H I EF M I N I S TE R OOM M E N
a private hospital in Ernakulam Chandy. The ruling coalition will as an MLA? This was the question
nd it tough to ward off a
referred to the Governor. The Goveron October 30.
nor has sought the opinion of the
The UDF came to power in defeat in the impending
Election Commission on it, as reMay 2011, winning merely 72 of byelection.
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 5

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Prisoners & precedents

quired under the Constitution, and is

expected to announce a nal decision
based on its advice.
However, since then, another appeal questioning the status of the Opposition Leader under the ofce of
prot laws too has been submitted to
the Governor by a journalist, P. Rajan.
Given the risk an adverse decision
from the Election Commission and the
Governor would pose for the governments survival, the State Cabinet took
a decision hurriedly on November 9 to
promulgate an ordinance exempting
the posts of Chief Whip and the Opposition Leader from the denition of

rishna Pillai before

its largesse. The considgranting
him
erations for exercise of
remission.
power under Articles 72
The Supreme Court
[or] 161 may be myriad
has dealt with the quesand their occasions protion of remission in a
tean, and are left to the
number of cases. The
appropriate government,
earliest one is Maru
but no consideration, nor
occasion, can be wholly
Ram vs Union of India
irrelevant, irrational, dis(1980) in which Justice
criminatory or mala
V.R. Krishna Iyer held
de. He held the power
that party favouritism
to pardon, grant remisshould not be the basis
sion and commutation,
of exercising power un- R . B ALA KR I S HN A
being of the greatest moder Article 161 of the P I LLAI , Kerala
ment for the liberty of the
Constitution by the Congress (B) leader.
citizen, could not be a law
Governor. In Maru
Ram, the court dealt with the chal- unto itself but must be informed by
lenge to Section 433(A) of the Code of the ner canons of constitutionalism.
A judgment that has a bearing on
Criminal Procedure, which xed 14
years as mandatory minimum sen- the Balakrishna Pillai case is Swaran
tence for lifers. The court held this Singh vs State of Uttar Pradesh
provision was consistent with Article (1998). In this case, a legislator of the
State Assembly, who had been con161 and was constitutionally valid.
Justice Krishna Iyer, on behalf of victed of murder, left the prison in
the Bench, held in Maru Ram that less than two years as the Governor
although the powers under Article 72 granted him remission of the remain(corresponding power to remit or ing period of his life sentence.
A three-judge Bench of the Supardon by the President) and Article
161 were very wide, it could not run preme Court found that the State govriot. He said the government was not ernment had kept the Governor in the
and should not be as free as an indi- dark about certain vital facts that
vidual in selecting the recipients for went against the prisoners eligibility
S. GOPAKUMAR

THE release of former Minister R.

Balakrishna Pillai from prison along
with a number of others on November
1 in a goodwill gesture by the Kerala
government will have to face legal
scrutiny. Opposition Leader V.S.
Achuthanandan has led a petition in
the Supreme Court challenging the
special remission given to Balakrishna Pillai by Governor M.O.H. Farook
under Article 161 of the Constitution
on the advice of the United Democratic Front government. His contention is that the State governments
decision to release the leader of a
long-standing constituent of the ruling Front was a colourable exercise of
power and that it had committed contempt of the court that had sentenced
Balakrishna Pillai to one-year rigorous imprisonment in the Idamalayar
Hydroelectric Power Project case.
The Government Order of October 24 says that the remission is applicable to prisoners having good
behaviour and those not having adverse remarks. It also directs the Additional Director General of Police
(Prisons) to ensure that the Kerala
Prisons Rules 1958 are complied with
strictly. The question is whether the
Governor was aware of the alleged
violation of the prison rules by Balak-

ofce of prot. The ordinance is expected to have retrospective effect in

order to protect persons who have held
such posts earlier.
All this has triggered much anxiety
in the UDF about the way scandals,
allegations of corruption and misuse of
power against its leaders are coming to
the fore once again and on how they
are going to affect the government.
SPECIAL REMISSION

For instance, a day after Jacobs death,

using the pretext of the State Reorganisation Day 2011 (November 1), the
government granted a special remis1 1 6

F R O N T L I N E

sion of sentence (under Article 161 of

the Constitution) to prisoners in the
State having good behaviour and no
adverse remarks against them. Nearly
2,500 prisoners lodged in various jails
got their sentences reduced for varying
periods and 138 of them were released
immediately.
Among those who came out of jail,
however, was the controversial former
Minister R. Balakrishna Pillai, leader
of another Kerala Congress group,
which, too, has only a single representative (his son, the Minister for
Forests, Sports and Cinema, K.B. Ganesh Kumar) in the Assembly. Balak-

DECEMBER 2, 2011

rishna Pillai had been convicted by the

Supreme Court in the Idamalayar Hydroelectric Power Project case for a
term of one year. But never the one to
let go of his familys feudal trappings
and his claim of being the only surviving founding leader of the UDF coalition, Balakrishna Pillai (as well as his
UDF colleagues) sought to portray it
all as personal vendetta by Opposition
Leader V.S. Achuthanandan, who had
pursued the case for over two decades
to ensure Balakrishna Pillais conviction by the Supreme Court (Rash of
scandals, Frontline, March 11, 2011).
Once in jail, Balakrishna Pillai act-

S. MAHINSHA

for remission. The Bench blamed

the government for depriving the
Governor of the opportunity to exercise his powers in a fair and just
manner and said the remission order fringed on arbitrariness. The
court quashed the order of the Governor and directed the government
to reconsider the petition of the
prisoner for remission in light of the
material which the Governor had
no occasion to know earlier.
In another case (Satpal vs State
of Haryana, 2000), the Governor
remitted the sentence of a prisoner,
a Bharatiya Janata Party activist,
without knowing the total period of
the sentence that he had undergone. The Supreme Court deplored
the haste with which the le had
been processed and the unusual interest and zeal shown by the authorities in the matter of exercise of
powers to grant pardon. The Bench
noted that the prisoner was at large
while the remission order showed
him to have been in jail. It also
noted that he had not surrendered
to serve the sentence notwithstanding the Supreme Courts direction
disposing of the appeal led by the
State in 1998.
These legal precedents are likely
to determine the outcome of the
Balakrishna Pillai case.
V. Venkatesan in New Delhi

that a weak coalition

ed the reluctant prisoner,
structure would continue
complaining of lack of fato demand from it and
cilities and poor treathow far it would go on.
ment
by
the
jail
Though not in subauthorities despite his
stance, but in the way it
age and ill-health. Eviwas sought to be tackled
dently, a wounded Balakby its victims, the Idamarishna Pillai was not
layar case nds an echo in
satised with the relief in
the ice cream parlour sex
the form of a hospital stay
scandal case too, in which
that was conveniently ofthe prominent Muslim
fered by the UDF governLeague leader P.K. Kunment subsequently. And,
as a senior leader of the P . K. KUN HA LI KUTTY, halikkutty continues to
coalition that ran the Minister for Industries. remain the prime target
of several serious allegagovernment, he wanted
something more from it, which came tions. Despite the harsh revelations
in the form of his release from the including accusations of inuencing
hospital room two months before his the judiciary with bribes that tumjail term was to end.
bled out as a result of a pre-election
Achuthanandan said his release spar between Kunhalikkutty and his
amounted to a travesty of justice and relative and former condant K.A.
approached the Supreme Court Rauf, the Muslim League managed to
against the remission of sentence (see win 20 seats in the Assembly. It is now
separate story). Balakrishna Pillai had the most powerful group within the
served his term at the Central Prison UDF after the Congress, which has ononly for 93 days. He was then sent out ly 38 seats (after contesting in 84
on parole for the maximum 75 days, seats). Kunhalikkutty himself won
and ever since his return, was lodged in Vengara, a party stronghold in Malapa private hospital where he continued puram district, with a 38,237-vote
to enjoy ve-star facilities and the margin. But with Raufs allegations,
luxury of being in constant touch with which he has now raised in courts too,
his family members, Ministers and the nature of the case itself has
UDF leaders and illegally using several changed, from being a sex-for-money
facilities, including mobile phones.
scandal case to a more serious one in
Other Opposition leaders claimed which the accused, now including
it was a challenge to the democratic some senior High Court judges and
conscience of the people of Kerala and law ofcers, are being charged with
an affront to the Supreme Court, an blatant misuse of power and corrupinstance of political corruption by tion of a grand scale to alter evidence,
the government and capitulation to doctor statements and engineer fathe arm-twisting by Balakrishna Pil- vourable judgments.
lai and Ganesh Kumar. The LDFs
No doubt, the ruling coalition
claim was that it would send the wrong would be dreading the day the case
message that even Supreme Court eventually catches up with its principal
verdicts could be overcome if one had target. Ominously for Industries Mininuence in government and money ister Kunhalikkutty and the UDF govpower. Incidentally, Balakrishna Pil- ernment, though the High Court has
lais imprisonment, after nearly two rejected the plea made by the Opposidecades of court battles by Achutha- tion Leader for an inquiry by the Cennandan, was the rst instance in Ker- tral Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into
ala of a former Minister being jailed on it, the court has instead said that the
a corruption case. His release from ongoing police inquiry should be conprison has raised several questions ducted under its direct supervision
not merely about its legality or moral- from now on. Again, it would be a rare
ity but also about the compromises instance in Kerala of a case thus being
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 7

The States/Kerala

DECEMBER 2, 2011

crisis for the Oommen

Chandy government,
with the Opposition demanding the Chief MinPALMOLEIN CASE
isters resignation on
To further increase the
moral
and
legal
pressure on a weak govgrounds.
ernment, the LDF had
The Chief Minister
been tactically hunting
initially expressed his
Oommen Chandy too in
readiness to step down
the 20-year-old palmobut was promptly dislein import case ever
suaded from doing so by
since it came up for V . S . A C H U T H A N A N D A N .
coalition leaders and his
hearing before a special He has led a petition in
party high command. He
court judge in Thiruva- the Supreme Court
then transferred the Vignanthapuram
in challenging the special
ilance portfolio under
January.
remission given to
him to his trusted party
Former Chief Min- Balakrishna Pillai.
colleague, Revenue Minister K. Karunakaran,
the rst accused in the case, had ob- ister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan.
tained a stay order from the Supreme He took the moral high ground by anCourt in August 2007 against the trial nouncing that he would not go on approceedings at the lower court. Until peal against the courts directive for a
the death of Karunakaran in Decem- further investigation and that the very
ber 2010, Chandy was only the 23rd same public prosecutor appointed by
witness in the case. But as the trial the LDF government would continue
restarted after Karunakarans death, to argue the case in the trial court.
What Kerala then saw was a
arguments in a discharge petition led
before the trial court by Chandys for- wholehearted strategy unleashed by
mer colleague in the Karunakaran the UDF to derail the court proceedCabinet, then Food Minister T.H. ings and the probe. For one, on SepMusthafa, gave a pre-election oppor- tember 24, Judge Haneefa recused
tunity for the LDF, then in govern- himself from the case following harsh
ment, to demand a further inquiry public statements against him by P.C.
George and letters sent to the Goverinto Chandys role in the import deal.
Following this, the State Vigilance nor and the President alleging that the
and Anti-corruption Bureau, which judges order was politically motivated
initially sought the courts sanction for and that he had acted beyond his brief.
further investigation on several The case, which ought to have othergrounds and especially with a focus on wise been heard in November on the
the role of Chandy, led its report on basis of the Vigilances further investiMay 13, the day the Assembly election gation, now stands transferred to anresults were out, concluding that fur- other special court in Thrissur.
ther investigation could not reveal the
Subsequently, another accused in
involvement of any other person in the the palmolein case, Jiji Thomson, an
case. The court, however, rejected the Indian Administrative Service (IAS)
agencys report and, on August 8, the ofcer who was the Managing Director
Enquiry Commissioner and Special of the State Civil Supplies Corporation
Judge P.K. Haneefa directed it to con- at the time of the palmolein import (in
duct further investigation into the in- 1991), approached the High Court
volvement of Oommen Chandy and questioning, among other things, the
submit a report within three months. Vigilance Court (Judge Haneefas) orThe observations made by the der and claiming that the court had no
judge while issuing the order, which power to order suo motu a further insome UDF leaders claimed appeared vestigation. At the time of writing this
like a judgment delivered before an report the High Court was yet to give
inquiry, proved to be the rst major its verdict on Thomsons submissions.
supervised directly by
the High Court.

1 1 8

F R O N T L I N E

But, no doubt, the Opposition is

going all out against the government.
Yet another allegation of corruption
mainly targeted at Chandy is with regard to a pollution control, capacity
expansion and diversication project
(A toxic hotspot in Kerala, Frontline,
June 17, 2005) sought to be implemented by the government-owned
Travancore Titanium Products Ltd.,
Thiruvananthapuram, during Chandys earlier stint as Chief Minister.
(The issue was raised rst by Congress
leader and former Minister K.K. Ramachandran Master soon after he was
denied a ticket in the 2011 elections.)
The political atmosphere remains
surcharged after the recent Assembly
session, among other things, with
Achuthanandan and another CPI(M)
MLA, former Minister A.K. Balan, ling separate cases for damages against
Ganesh Kumar and P.C. George for
making derogatory comments against
them at a public meeting in Kollam
district. It is a recurrent theme in Kerala politics of late to put ones own
government or coalition in trouble by
being a blabbermouth at public meetings. But the comments, made a few
days before Balakrishna Pillai was to
be released, inamed political passions in the State to such an extent that
it actually diverted a lot of attention
from the governments move to release
Balakrishna Pillai from jail.
It is strange that the reasons for the
troubles of the edgling UDF government are mostly all of its own making.
Many of the allegations raised against
prominent leaders are not implausible
and leaves enough room for doubt. The
constant drift from principles to appease coalition partners, for example,
or to support errant leaders is already
proving to be too hazardous for the
UDF government even as Chandy appears bent on creating an image of
fast-track, transparent governance.
Given his partys and the UDFs
meagre strength in the Assembly,
Chandy should know that if his governance agenda fails, the focus will immediately shift to the strange troubles
that the UDF and its leaders nd
themselves in.

Column

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Pills, patents & prots

The draft National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Policy, 2011, seeks to create a
situation in which the gains of the post-Independence policy regime will be lost.
EARD often is a rumour
that India is a country
that has been cautious in
liberalising its economic
policy. As a consequence,
it is argued, the country has been saved
from the many difculties and crises
that have aficted many other nations,
developed and developing. However,
for those who are closely following the
evolution of Indian economic policy
since 1991, the basis for these rumours
is unclear. Liberalisation in India has
indeed been slow on occasion because
of the fortunately messy complexity of
a democratic polity. It has also been
slackened by the loss of popular support and social sanction for the countrys
still
dominant,
centrist
formation, the Congress. But these
have not held back the ideologues and
advocates of the so-called reform.
Over the last decade, if there is a common element in policy, that has been
the near continuous pursuit of liberalisation, despite the restraints that
the countrys history and polity and the
poverty and deprivation of its population set on the process.
The net result has been the liberalisation of policy across the board,
ranging from restraints on trade and
foreign investment to controls on investment, production and prices. India today is among the more liberal of
developing economies, despite the
presence of a plethora of toothless or
ignored instruments of control. And,
the process still continues.
Among the more recent instances
of liberalisation, being pursued even
when controls have served the country
well, are policies on patents, foreign
investment and pricing in Indias
pharmaceutical industry. It is widely

Economic
Perspectives
C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR
accepted that regulation and control in
the pharmaceutical sector had resulted in a situation where the country had
managed to ensure access to cheap
medicines for its population, with no
damaging shortfalls in the availability
of life-saving and other crucial drugs.
REGIME OF INTERVENTION

Besides the normal controls that had

characterised Indias regime of intervention aimed at reining in markets
and directing development, three sets
of measures were particularly important in the pharmaceutical sector. The
rst was Indias decision to require
leading foreign rms operating in its
markets to dilute their foreign shareholding to 40 per cent of total equity.
Though these transnationals dragged
their feet in complying with this requirement and nally did so only by
creating a wide shareholding structure
F R O N T L I N E

1 1 9

that allowed the retention of their control, the measure did restrain their
power and enhance the transparency
of their operations.
Second, Indias earlier position on
patents, which recognised process patents and not product patents, had a
salutary effect on drug availability and
pricing. Indian scientists and engineers had the capability not just to
de-synthesise patented drugs to identify their chemical composition but also to nd alternative process routes to
manufacture them. This ensured that
the production of medicines with important therapeutic qualities could not
be monopolised by foreign patent
holders. Drugs were available not only
in adequate quantities but at reasonable prices. In the event, the foreign
rms, rather than lose out on Indias
large market, chose to stay on and
market their own versions, even if at
prices much lower than those they
commanded in markets abroad.
Finally, starting from 1963, the
government through its drug price
control policy, set ceilings on the prices
that could be charged on different
drugs. Those ceilings were cost-plus
prices, accounting for costs of production and adding on a margin, with the
focus of control being the essentiality
of a bulk drug or a formulation. The
control on prices formalised the governments policy of keeping essential
and life-saving drugs affordable, even
while seeking to provide a reasonable
return to producers, both foreign and
domestic. Indias success in implementing these policies was helped by
the large size of its market, even if a
substantial share of that market was
supported by the out-of-pocket expenditure of individual consumers and

V.S. WASSON

DECEMBER 2, 2011

TH E N E T R E S UL T

of the new policy has been a spate of acquisitions of leading drug rms by foreign producers.

not by state expenditures on provision

of health services. A large market
made aggregate prots signicant
even when prot margins were
capped.
This was not to say that the powerful transnational rms did not ght
back and seek ways of circumventing
controls. They delayed equity dilution,
attempted to stall drug replication
through alternative routes, spent huge
sums trying to win over doctors who
made the consumption decisions for
patients, and used mechanisms such
as transfer pricing to escalate costs in
order to conceal and transfer prots
abroad. Transfer pricing involved the
parent company or its third-country
subsidiary selling intermediates and
bulk drugs at inated prices (when
compared with available substitutes)
to its Indian arm.
Since margins under the price control regime had to be added on to
cost, nal product prices too were

inated through this process, with

those prices including prots that were
concealed as costs and transferred to
some segment of the global operations
of transnational rms. These strategies notwithstanding, Indias regulatory regime in this sector was a great
success.
Given this history, one would expect that a cautious policy of liberalisation would leave untouched
policies with regard to the pharmaceutical industry. Why tamper with a regime that has not created problems
such as shortages, has prevented exploitative pricing and has, in fact, been
recognised as a resounding success?
Yet, liberalisation has been pursued
here too. The rst casualty in such liberalisation was, of course, the patent
regime. The argument in favour was
that India did not have an option. To
be a member of the worlds multilateral trading regime and the World Trade
Organisation (WTO), it had to sign on
1 2 0

F R O N T L I N E

to the Uruguay Round agreement and

the intellectual property regime it embodied. This required, among other
things, the acceptance of product patents.
There is, however, no evidence that
India led the ght to limit the damage
to developing countries on this count,
or demanded suitable exceptions in an
area impinging on the peoples health.
The net result was that the exibility
domestic manufacturers had earlier
that is, the exibility of looking for an
alternative process to replicate old and
new patented drugs for the domestic
market no more exists. As a result,
the danger of drug price ination due
to monopoly was now real and already
visible in the case of patented drugs.
There are, however, two other ways
in which the indigenous drug industry
can continue to play a positive role in
ensuring the availability of reasonably
priced medicines. The rst is by entering the production of drugs that go off

DECEMBER 2, 2011

patent protection because of their having crossed the period for which patent
protection is valid. Domestic rms can
create generic versions of these drugs
that can compete with branded products to bring down prices. A large
number of drugs, which are estimated
to constitute a signicant share of domestic drug consumption, are slated to
go off patent over the coming years. So
even this limited exibility could make
a signicant difference.
But here, it is feared that one aspect of the liberalised policy of the government could prove to be an
impediment. In 2000, the policy with
regard to foreign direct investment
(FDI) in the pharmaceutical industry
was liberalised. Under the new policy,
FDI in the sector was brought under
the automatic route, and the ceiling
on foreign shareholding was removed
allowing for foreign ownership of up to
100 per cent.
The net result has been a spate of
acquisitions of leading drug rms by
foreign producers. Among the recent
acquisitions by transnational rms
have been the takeovers of Matrix Lab
by Mylan, of Dabur Pharma by Fresenius Kabi, of Ranbaxy by Daiichi Sankyo, of Shanta Biotech by Sano
Aventis, of Orchid Chemicals by Hospira and of Piramal Healthcare by Abbott. An overwhelming proportion of
recent FDI inows into pharmaceuticals production has been in such acquisitions rather than in greeneld
projects.
What this does is that it places domestic capacities and capabilities that
could have served as competitors to
foreign producers in foreign hands.
Besides the fact that this would inuence pricing, given the oligopolistic
position and the global strategy of
these rms, it could lead to a decline in
the production of generics. Firms with
patents for new formulations targeted
at diseases that can also be treated by
off-patent generics may choose, after
acquisition, to hold back on the production of such generics or raise their
prices to protect branded products.
The implication of this is that with
the liberalisation of FDI policy, the ef-

fort to keep medicines affordable has

become even more dependent on price
control.
It is in this context that the recently
released draft National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Policy, 2011, gives cause
for concern. Ever since 1994, market
criteria have been introduced into the
drug price control policy. As of then,
commodities chosen for price control
were identied on the basis of the total
turnover of the drug concerned in the
domestic market and the share of leading producers in that market.

Since 1994,
market criteria
have been
introduced into
the drug price
control policy.
So it was not essentiality as dened by the nature of the disease for
which the drug was relevant and the
characteristics of the population predominantly aficted by that disease
that rendered a drug eligible for price
control. Rather it was the size in value
of the market for a drug and the degree
to which its production and sale was
concentrated that mattered. This did
mean that medicines that the rich need
and could afford could be included under price control, whereas some medicines important for the poor may be
excluded. The dilution did push up
prices in the case of quite a few drugs.
However, where imposed, the ceiling
price was determined by the cost of
production plus a margin for post-production expenses and prot.
MARKET-BASED PRICING

But now, on the grounds of expanding

the drug price control list, the government is choosing to dilute price control
even further. The draft policy claims to
be concerned with reverting to the essentiality criterion (dened as the inF R O N T L I N E

1 2 1

clusion by experts in the National List

of Essential Medicines) as opposed to
the economic criterion or market share
principle. In the process, drugs constituting a much higher 60 per cent of the
domestic market are reportedly to be
brought under price control. However,
according to the All-India Drug Action
Network, the list of the top-selling 300
medicines prepared in October 2003
by ORG-Nielsen accounted for more
than Rs.35,000 crore of sales, which
amounts to almost 90 per cent of the
retail market. Yet, at least 60 per cent
of these top-selling 300 medicines are
not in the National List of Essential
Medicines (NLEM).
Moreover, on the grounds of the
complexities involved in regulating the
prices in such a large section of the
industry, the draft policy recommends
a shift away from cost-based pricing to
market-based pricing. According to
the latter, the ceiling price for a drug
would be xed on the basis of the
Weighted Average Price (WAP) of the
top three brands by value. So the price
charged by leading producers when
the policy comes into operation would
provide the benchmark for xing the
ceiling. These prices tend to be higher
than that of low-ranked competitors,
because of the market power of the
dominant rms.
Thus, the shift from what the regulator considers reasonable to what
the market leaders consider appropriate amounts to a substantial dilution
of price control, with even subsequent
changes in the ceiling being linked to
changes in the wholesale price index
for manufactures. What is more, the
prices of patented drugs are to be determined separately by a special committee constituted for the purpose,
with no clear guidelines enunciated.
As of now the policy appears complex and its effects uncertain. But in
principle what it does is to take one
more step away from regulation, creating an environment in which all the
gains of a well-crafted and highly successful post-Independence drug policy
will be lost. Liberalisation is indeed
thriving in India, even in areas where it
can be least justied.

Cover Story

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Tool of exclusion
The UID in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act may simplify the
administrators task, but will not make a poor mans task any easier. B Y N I K H I L D E Y

A.M. FARUQUI

The NREGA does not need the UID;

it is the UID that is trying to
piggyback on the NREGA despite its
potential to create inefciency and
confusion. Something like the
NREGA requires simple, localised
systems in the hands of the people.

G UR B A AH I RW A R O F Akona village in Madhya

Pradesh showing his NREGA job card. The job
card is much better than the UID, and if that is not
lled as required, there is a collective vigilance
mechanism in the form of a transparency wall.
1 2 2

EVERY time there is talk of tinkering with the

National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), it is time we recalled how and why the Act came
into existence. The passage of the NREGA was Parliaments response to a peoples movement that grew
out of the recognition and articulation of the needs of
the rural poor.
It made peoples right to seek work a legal right.
It was chronic poverty that propelled it, and the focus
was uncomplicated: work must be provided on demand. It is work-in-progress and its foundations are
still being strengthened. It has had considerable impact in the villages. But this success is nascent and
fragile and any change that is brought into it must
not undermine what has been achieved. Any change
should be preceded by rigorous debate in which the
voices and views of those for whom this law was
made are given centrality.
The unique identication (UID) project has
made many claims in attempting to get into the
NREGA, but there are serious problems with what is
being suggested.
Let us take a look at these claims. It is said that
the UID will weed out duplicates and ghost beneciaries, that it will enable the opening of bank
accounts and so take care of the leakages and corruption in the payment of wages and, thus, enhance the
efcient functioning of the system. This is in contrast
with the way in which transparency and accountability are being worked out in situations which keep
the solution as local as the problem.
The wall is a case in point. On the wall in the
village are painted the names of all the NREGA
workers, how many days they have worked, and how
much they have earned for doing that work. If you
want to put people in the driving seat of a programme and that has to be done by giving them
information, that information has to be localised.
The problem is that often information is in the
hands of the system. This may simplify an administrators task, but it does not make a poor mans task
any easier. By putting the information on the wall,
they have taken the information out of the dabba
the computer and put it amongst people and into
their hands.
Much better than the UID is the job card, and if

F R O N T L I N E

DECEMBER 2, 2011

that is not lled as required, then the

wall acts not only as a fallback for the
worker but also as a collective vigilance
mechanism. If you expand the acronym MIS, it is plain that it is information that drives the programme
from the management point of view.
That is a management tool, not a process of strengthening democracy or establishing
transparency
and
accountability in governance.
SCAM IN LABOUR

NREGAS SUCCESS

One of the NREGAs greatest successes was that, unlike ration cards, NREGA job cards were given very quickly.

So there was no exclusion. Why? Because this was simple technology. You
lined up, the sarpanch identied you,
and you got your job card which had
your photograph on it. Even if you did
not have the photograph, you were allowed to work. You were identied by
your neighbours, your mate, your superviser everyone knows you.
One big problem with the UID is
the whole registration process. If the
UID does not cover everyone who may
seek a job under the NREGA, and the
UID is used as a tool in determining
entitlements, it actually becomes a tool
of exclusion. The NREGA gives everyone a right to demand work and receive work within 15 days. Being
dependent on the whims and competencies of a technology and its administrative structure is a clear
infringement of that right.
It also opens the door for manip-

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

The scam in labour has been where

people who do exist but never go to
work pick up a wage. Biometrics does
not help there at all; it actually makes
it easier to cheat the system.
The web wall and the wall in the
village are effective in these contexts
and help control corruption in the
whole village. The information on the
wall for all the world to see takes care

of ghosts and duplicates in the system.

The big corruption story in the
NREGA is around material use 20
bags of cement and book 100; buy cement at Rs.200 and show it in the
books as Rs.300. This, the UID will
not control. And this is 40 per cent of
the expenditure. The wall has a summary and details of materials for all
works in the village, making local
checks possible.
We are looking for top-down management solutions when what is needed is for people to monitor their own
works and development expenditure.
What is needed is not the government
watching the people, but people
watching every paisa of expenditure.

A TR ANS PA R E N C Y W A LL with NREGA information such as the names of all workers, how many days they have
worked and how much they have earned, in a village in Ranga Reddy district of Andhra Pradesh.
F R O N T L I N E

1 2 3

Cover Story
ulations of power. Because all NREGA
systems have been in the hands of the
panchayat and block ofcers, it has not
been possible for anyone in authority
to deny people their right to a job card,
without which you cannot exercise
your right to get work. However, when
an external technology is introduced,
the solutions to errors and problems
are no longer local and the entire system comes into question. The UID has
to guarantee 100 per cent coverage
with no exception before it can be considered for use in this system; even one
person left out or denied work for not
having a UID will mean a failure of the
NREGA.
As for opening bank accounts, it is
anachronistic to talk about using the
UID in the context of NREGA payments through banks. This has substantially been achieved following a
policy initiative that dates back to
2008, which required that all NREGA
payments be made through banks or
post ofce accounts. This was when
the UID project had not even begun.
Even if we nd that biometrics are
useful for increasing the efciency in
making payments and our experience raises questions about this assumption it would make more sense
to have a localised biometric system
rather than linking up with something
on a centralised server. A local system
can deal with anomalies that a centralised system cannot. From the point
of view of the NREGA, there is no
reason to want to link to a central server, and there is every reason for keeping it local. This will also avoid all
questions that have been raised by civil
rights activists about the misuse of information about separate silos being
converged.
Now, when biometrics do not
work, which is not uncommon in places where work makes ngerprints
noisy and where cuts and bruises
abound, there is a provision for
manual override. This, of course, creates opportunities for juggling with
the payments, but the alternative is not
paying the worker. Until something
more sound is found, this will have to
do, and, despite banks protesting at

DECEMBER 2, 2011

this tweaking of the process, it continues because there is no better way of

using technology. If this were tagged
on to a central system without whose
recognition the worker would not get
paid, that would leave the worker in
dire straits.
There have been efforts at de-duplication where a biometric database
from Andhra Pradesh was sent to a
technology institute. The result has
been extremely discouraging; de-duplication simply could not be done.
That has so far been a failed
experiment.

Unlike ration
cards, NREGA
job cards were
given very
quickly. So
there was no
exclusion.
In the NREGA, it has generally
been found that machines, including
computers, should be used only in areas where there is a manual backup or
where an alternative exists because
you cannot hold up peoples rights that
are caused by glitches in technology or
in the functioning of devices. The talk
of using the UID even to check attendance at worksites opens up the possibility of points in time when the
machine will not work on site, not having an alternative available in a remote
area and the whole system being
thrown into disarray.
This was the concern that provoked a protest letter with over 280
signatures about a tender dated October 11, 2010, issued by the Ministry of
Rural Development indicating that
the contract would include UID compliant enrolment of job card holders
under the MGNREGA [Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act] scheme.
1 2 4

F R O N T L I N E

There too, while endorsing the use

of technology in ways that enhance
transparency, empower labourers and
are cost effective, the letter said: Such
technology has been used with success
in Tamil Nadu.
For instance, it combines SMS reports on daily attendance with random
spot checks to curb the problem of fake
muster roll entries. Localised use of
biometrics, independent of UID, to
speed up payments can be considered.
Biometrics and UID are not the same.
In Rajasthan, simpler measures have
been put in place, such as transparency walls.... We therefore demand
that neither the NREGA employment
nor wage payments be linked to UID
enrolment. Employment of 100 days
under MGNREGA is the only universal entitlement that the rural poor enjoy.
In May 2011, social activists had to
reiterate their concern when the media
carried reports that the UID was going
to be made compulsory for NREGA
benets in Mysore.
To those who are watching the
processes from close, it seems clear
that the NREGA does not need the
UID; it is the UID that is trying to
piggyback on the NREGA despite its
potential to create inefciency and
confusion. Something like the NREGA
requires simple, localised systems in
the hands of the people. There is nothing what the UID provides that cannot
be done as competently and in a more
reliable fashion.
In the NREGA, where peoples
hands are callused with work, where
worksites cover some of the most extreme climatic conditions, where connectivity is at its most precarious,
where dust and heat can ruin any machine and where the UID can make the
system completely machine-dependent, it seems clear that the dependency
on machine-based technology, which
spells potential disaster, should be
avoided.

Nikhil Dey works with the Mazdoor

Kisan Shakti Sangathan in
Rajasthan. This article is based on
his conversation with Usha
Ramanathan.

letters

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Qadda
I FEEL sad that the rebels,
world leaders and the United Nations failed to evolve a
peaceful consensus in Libya
as was done in Egypt and
Tunisia (Cover Story, November 18).
France, the United
Kingdom and their allies in
NATO are responsible for
instigating the violence in
Libya through air strikes
and for Muammar Qaddas death. He could have
been taken into custody by
the international forces and
tried in the International
Court of Justice. The U.N.
needs to break its silence
and answer how many more
such countries have to be
sacriced in the name of democracy and change.
SYED KHAJA
NEW DELHI

THE Libyan strongman

could hardly lay claim to
having spotless human
rights credentials. But the
way in which NATO forces
went about shelling Libya
and hounding its charismatic leader makes his bad
track record in human
rights pale into insignicance.
With the invasion of
Iraq under the pretext that
it had amassed weapons of
mass destruction and the
extrajudicial killings of Osama bin Laden and Anwar
al-Awlaki, the United States
and its cohorts have been
faithful to an expansionist
logic of their own: to raise
and support monsters who
can cause havoc to the regimes and countries that are

not willing to implicitly toe

the U.S. line and to eliminate them when either its
ultimate interests are served
or when the monsters end
up threatening the U.S. vital interests.
S. BALU
MADURAI

NATO leaders chose to attack Libya, leaving out

countries like Syria when
uprisings occurred there.
Many innocent civilians, including children, were
killed in the nearly eight
months of ghting in Libya.
Was this the price that had
to be paid to oust a dictator?
RITVIK CHATURVEDI
NEW DELHI

WITH the bloody and inhuman murder of Qadda,

the Libyan crisis came to an
end. But the whole episode
raised more questions than
it answered.
Western
imperialism
launched attacks in the
guise of protecting democratic principles and human
rights. Qaddas only fault
was that he refused to follow
the U.S. diktats. Now the
U.S. and other Western
countries will surely get a
huge share in the lucrative
oil business.
NEERAJ KUMAR JHA
MADHUBANI, BIHAR

PEOPLE might be celebrating Qaddas death because

they feel that they have nally got rid of a tyrant. It is
unfortunate for Libya that
he was not brought to trial
in the manner of Hosni
Mubarak.
A. MEGHANA
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
U.K.

QADDAFI did not want to

give up power, which led to
civil war in the country. He
ignored the U.N. and started killing his own citizens to
stop the revolution. Only after the U.N.s sanction did
NATO and France directly
get involved. Had they not
intervened, the world would
have been a mute spectator
to bloodshed.
Should Libyan business
contracts be given to countries that were mute spectators?
K. STEPHEN DANIEL
SECUNDERABAD

PERHAPS the greatest lesson to be learnt from the

death of Qadda is that he
was killed by his own people. In his lifetime, Qadda
was mocked for his extravagant dress sense, retinue of
all-female guards and the
fancy titles he bestowed on
himself. In death, he should
be remembered only as an
autocrat of the worst kind.
J. AKSHAY
BANGALORE

WHILE it was sad to see

Qadda being dragged and
brutally killed, it was not very surprising for he got what
he deserved. After all, one
must reap what one sows.
The killing of Qadda by his
own people should serve as a
lesson to all those who misuse power.
S. BALAKRISHNAN
JAMSHEDPUR
JHARKHAND

Team Anna
THE sheen is off Team Anna (Crusaders in the dock,
18). Some of its members

F R O N T L I N E

1 2 5

are facing allegations of nancial irregularities, and

there is no transparency in
the working of its core committee. Prashant Bhushan
wanted the meetings with
the government to be telecast live, but has any meeting of the core committee
been telecast live? Why is
the team shying away from
an independent audit of its
accounts?
Even without a Jan Lokpal Bill, the former Communications Minister and
some prominent businessmen are now in jail in connection with the 2G scam.
This
anti-corruption
movement is building a personality cult around Anna
Hazare. Also, why is the
teams website silent on the
court cases led against Anna Hazare?
DEENDAYAL M. LULLA
MUMBAI

CAG
THIS is with reference to
the article on the Comptroller and Auditor General
(Reckless activism, November 18). A.G. Noorani
has rightly analysed the
powers and limits of a public servant. His words are
valid for highly evolved societies where the majority of
the citizens are aware of
their rights.
Indians are still in cocoons of misinformation
and illiteracy and they need
someone to act beyond rulebooks.
By exhorting young men
in the Civil Services to recapture lost space from the

letters/response

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Dr Vivek K. Agnihotri
Secretary-General, Rajya Sabha
New Delhi

Fallacious assumption
THIS is with reference to the article
Unhealthy precedent (November
18). It purported to criticise the decision of the Chairman of the Rajya
Sabha to wind up the committee
probing into the allegations levelled
against Justice P.D. Dinakaran. According to the writer, the committee
should have been allowed to complete its task and its premature closure has set a dangerous precedent.
The article appears to have overlooked constitutional provisions and
the provisions of the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, and the Rules made
thereunder. If these provisions had
been taken note of, the statements
made in the article would not have
been made.
Article 124 (4) of the Constitution provides for removal of a judge.
Though it refers to a judge of the
Supreme Court, by reason of Article
218 of the Constitution, the provisions of Article 124 (4) and (5) also
apply to a judge of the High Court.
Article 125(5) provides that Parliament may by law, inter alia, regulate the procedure for the
investigation and proof of the misbehaviour or incapacity of a judge under Clause (4). Thus, the question of
investigation and proof of misbehaviour or incapacity arises only in the
context of removal of a judge and not
in any other context, much less for
judicial accountability. It is for this
reason that Section 3(2) of the Judges Inquiry Act provides that if a motion under Subsection (1) is
admitted, the Chairman shall keep
the motion pending and constitute a
committee for the purpose of making an investigation into the
grounds on which the removal of a
judge is prayed for. Thus, this is the
whole purpose of an inquiry under
Article 124(5) and under Section
3(2) of the Judges (Inquiry) Act.
The article seemed to proceed on

the baseless assumption that the

committee was constituted for the
purposes of an inquiry generally into
the conduct of alleged misbehaviour
of a judge. This assumption is fallacious inasmuch as the investigation
deals with the grounds on which the
removal is prayed for. If the judge
resigns, then there is no question of
proceeding for his removal.
The distinction sought to be
made in the article with regard to
Justice Dinakarans case and Justice
[Soumitra] Sens case is unjustied
and baseless. In Justice Sens case,
signicantly, after the Rajya Sabha
passed the motion to remove him
from ofce, the Lok Sabha did not
proceed with a debate only because
in the meanwhile Justice Sen had
tendered his resignation. The impeachment process was not taken
further in recognition of the fact that
there was no question of removal of a
judge who had already resigned.
The assumption that the judge
was allowed to scuttle an inquiry
against him by simply resigning is
based on a complete misconception
and misunderstanding of the legal
provisions as set out above. The inquiry is not a general or roving inquiry but an inquiry for the purpose
of investigation of grounds for removal of a judge.
It is further to be noted that after
his resignation, Mr Dinakaran was
called to appear before the committee on September 10, but he did not
do so. Therefore, if the inquiry committee had submitted its report to
the Chairman, Rajya Sabha, without
hearing Mr Dinakaran, it would
have been an ex parte report, and it
can be safely assumed, that Mr Dinakaran would not have submitted a
reply to it.
Therefore, the material in the
public domain would have been totally one-sided. Further, as hap-

1 2 6

F R O N T L I N E

pened in the case of Mr Soumitra

Sen, the House would have decided
not to pursue the matter in view of
the resignation of Mr Dinakaran.
The motion, it should be noted, was
for the removal of the judge, and
owing to his resignation, he had, in
effect, ceased to be a judge. In view of
the facts and circumstances of the
case, after careful consideration, it
was felt that the committee had
served out its purpose and it was not
required any further. The decision to
constitute the committee was made
by the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha
and he alone was competent to wind
it up. There are precedents available
in other countries where the proceedings initiated against sitting
judges abated after they submitted
their resignations.
The purpose of this letter is not to
enter into an unnecessary debate or
speculation regarding the two Supreme Court judgments referred to
in the cases led by Justice Dinakaran. Equally, it is not desirable to
comment on the views of persons
quoted in the article except to say
that even one of the signatories to the
motion to remove Justice Dinakaran
described the Chairmans action as
technically correct.
The winding up of the committee, however, does not mean that Dinakaran has been absolved of his
wrongdoings, if any. The law of the
land is there to deal with him as a
citizen of this country, in the normal
course. Further, whatever action the
executive or civil society now takes
will reveal the truth or otherwise of
the allegations made and it will naturally be available in the public
domain.
Therefore, what the Chairman,
Rajya Sabha, did was fully in accordance with what is provided in the
statute and is also supported by the
precedents available.

DECEMBER 2, 2011

unscrupulous, he may have

crossed the line. But let us
not kill the CAGs exuberance. India needs many
such outspoken ofcers.
S.V.L.N. NAGESWARA RAO
PANCHKULA, HARYANA

Ramayana
THE controversy over A.K.
Ramanujans essay on the
Ramanyana is just another
instance of intolerance of
Hindutva elements and abject submission to their
pressure by academicians
(The rule of unreason, November 18).
Students should be
trained to examine critically
what is narrated. Otherwise,
history will be drab and uninteresting.
Ramanujans essay gives
an enterprising teacher opportunities to engage students
in
discussion.
Teachers who are afraid to
think independently and express themselves will not be
successful
in
their
profession.

THE article is well argued

and comprehensive but I
have been grossly misquoted on page 128. For example, I did say that the
politics of hurt religious or
other sentiments is making
critiques of religion or what
is dened as religion increasingly untouchable in
public discourse.
This is very different
from the idea conveyed in
the quote, why has religion
become an untouchable in
historical research?
Similarly,
while
I
strongly feel that the Delhi
University Academic Council should not have voted on
the specic academic matter of the Ramanujan essay
and that its decision is ironically anti-academic, antiintellectual and anti-democratic, I never said that the
Academic Council should
only deal with administrative matters.
MUKUL MANGALIK
PROFESSOR IN HISTORY,
RAMJAS COLLEGE
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI

S.S. RAJAGOPALAN
CHENNAI

NO one in his right mind

can question the erudition
and the scholarly credentials of Ramanujan. The essay
Three
Hundred
Ramayanas looks at different ways the great epic has
been retold in various contexts. The different versions
do not in any way diminish
the importance of the epic.
On the contrary, they enrich
it.
But bigots who believe
that there is only one version of the Ramayana fail to
accept this. What is denied
by them is the richness embedded in the plurality.
J.S. ACHARYA
HYDERABAD

Death penalty
CAPITAL punishment is
not the harshest punishment (Clear Confusion,
November 18).
For terrorists and hardened criminals, the death
sentence is not an adequate
punishment. In fact, it is a
relief for them from the hellish solitary life in high security prison.
They should be awarded
sentences that last their natural life, not imprisonment
for just 14 years. A dead terrorist will be a martyr for
other terrorists. A criminal
languishing in jail will serve
as a deterrent.
So all death sentences

should be commuted to lifelong imprisonment.

S. RAGHUNATHA PRABHU
ALAPPUZHA, KERALA

probe the role of some senior Congress leaders in the

scams have not been
accepted.
V. KRISHNAMOORTHY

Maruti
IT is heartening that the
Maruti crisis ended following a tripartite agreement
involving the workers, the
management and the Haryana government (Truce
for now, November 18).
It was an agitation that
involved the countrys leading car manufacturer. The
government should view the
developments seriously and
do whatever is necessary for
the development of the Maruti Suzuki venture.
T.V. JAYAPRAKASH
PALAKKAD, KERALA

Politics
BHASKAR GHOSE laments that the strident note
of the BJP does not change
perhaps because many instances of corruption pop
up from the UPAs cupboards (The basic structure, November 4). He says
that the UPAs woes are
mainly due to its allies such
as the Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam and the Nationalist Congress Party.
Here, one would like to
ask whether it is not the duty of the chairperson of the
UPA or the Prime Minister
who heads the government
to pull up the allies when
they do things that by no
stretch of imagination can
be considered right or in the
interest of the nation.
Besides, his contention
that the scams involve
mainly the Congress allies
is not correct because, as
pointed out by L.K. Advani
recently, the demands to

F R O N T L I N E

1 2 7

MADURAI

Jnanpith awards
THE write-up on Jnanpith
Award winners Srilal Shukla and Amar Kant was quite
informative (Moral historians, November 4).
However, the writer
failed to mention the fact
that Srilal Shukla, who was
a postgraduate in English
literature from Allahabad
University,
considered
Charles Dickens his role
model.
He once admitted that
the kaleidoscopic texture of
his magnum opus Raag
Darbari and quite a few of
the characters of the novel
were profoundly inspired by
Dickens Pickwick Papers.
ANIL JOSHI
NAINITAL
UTTARAKHAND

2G scam
THE article Shifting spotlight (November 4) on the
2G scam makes out that
Prashant Bhushan led the
P. Chidambaram application and that I was associated.
Not true. Prashant was
asked by the court whether
he supported me. He said he
did. He brought no new
facts on le.
DR SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY
PRESIDENT
JANATA PARTY

ANNOUNCEMENT
Letters, whether by surface mail or
e-mail, must carry the full postal
address and the full name, or the
name with initials.

Obituary

RITU RAJ KONWAR

DECEMBER 2, 2011

B H U P EN H A RZ A RI K A S I N G I N G Bihu songs at a Rongali Bihu

celebration in Guwahati on April 17, 2003 .

Renaissance man
Through haunting, lilting, often joyous melodies, Bhupen Hazarika (1926-2011)
communicated his passionate love for humanity. B Y A R U P K U M A R D U T T A

A re had burnt in me since

childhood to change society. The
rst lyric I ever wrote was for him
[Sankardev]. It expressed juvenile
anguish at the hatred and violence in
society, as also the desire to guide it
towards love and brotherhood.
POET, musician, lyricist, lm director, writer,
thespian, artist, winner of the Dadasaheb Phalke
award in 1993 and the Padma Bhushan in 2001,
Bhupen Hazarika, who died on November 5 at the
age of 85, was the quintessential Renaissance man.
1 2 8

Although he was instrumental in bringing about a

revival of Assams music and cinema and showcasing
the States culture before the world, his far-reaching
achievements meant that Assam could no longer
claim him as its own. By the time he died, Bhupen
had become the cultural icon of the whole of the
north-eastern region of India and a jewel in the
pan-Indian cultural crown.
Through haunting, lilting, often joyous melodies,
some with cerebral and philosophic depths that
transcended the bounds of mere entertainment, he
communicated his passionate love for humanity.
On a cold, wintry night/ Let me be a smouldering
re/ Warming the tumbledown cottage/ Of some
poor, unclad peasant such simple yet powerful
words convey humanism, which breeds greater trust
than any rhetoric could. I have saved/ Lifes tears to
myself/ I have given away instead/ Lifes laughter

F R O N T L I N E

DECEMBER 2, 2011

this was the mission of an artist who

effortlessly communicated to his audience his innate zest for life while camouaging the struggles he had to
undergo to attain the stature he had.
The sky gave me boundless vision/
And the tempest its terrible power/
The thunder gave me its resounding
voice/ And the courage of righteousness/ Armed with the voice of thunder/ And the power of tempest/ I shall
make the horizon/ Tremble with my
singing. Surely few cultural personalities in India or elsewhere have
packed such ery emotions into words,
simultaneously inspiring people and
emerging as a beloved cultural father
gure.
BONDING WITH RIVERS

WH E N H I S B O D Y arrived in Guwahati
from Mumbai on November 7.

PTI

Bhupen jocularly called himself a jajabor, or a nomad. I have been a nomad

since my birth, he wrote in his autobiography. I have no xed address. A
ighty wandering life has been written
on my forehead. Strangely enough,
the township of Sadiya in Assam, situated close to the India-Myanmar border, where he was born on September
8, 1926, was completely swept away
when the Brahmaputra changed
course during the great earthquake of
1950. It was as if his beloved river had
conspired with fate to wipe away all
traces of his birthplace and enhance
the rootless, nomadic nature of his
persona.
His father, a teacher, migrated to
Guwahati in 1929 in search of better
prospects. Their home was situated
near the Brahmaputra, and carefree
days of childhood spent upon its
banks, or swimming in its waters,
forged an eternal bond between Bhupen and rivers. Whether it is the Siang,
the Padma, the Ganga or the Volga,
rivers appear constantly in his lyrics as
living presences, not only carrying memories of the civilisations erected on
their banks but also watching over the
destinies of communities. For instance, he repeatedly referred to the
Brahmaputra as a unifying element

F R O N T L I N E

1 2 9

DECEMBER 2, 2011

Rabha. The two took him under their

wing, becoming mentors in the broadest sense. Intensely idealistic, both
considered themselves as belonging to
the tradition pioneered by Mahapurush Sankardev, the Vaishnav saintpoet who in the 15th century brought
about a socio-cultural renaissance in
Assam. The Jyoti-Rabha duo revealed
to young Bhupen the most important
facet of Sankardevs achievements
that he used music, dance, drama and
literature to bring about social reform.

RITU RAJ KONWAR

ARTIST OF THE MASSES

A T THE I N A UG UR A T I O N of the Dr Bhupen Hazarika Cultural Museum at

Srimanta Sankaradeva Kalakshetra in Guwahati on January 25, Bhupen
playing his old harmonium. The museum will display about 4,000 items
owned by him.

among the astonishingly variegated

ethnic communities of the north-eastern region. The mighty Brahmaputra, he wrote in one of his lyrics, Holy
site of the great synthesis/ Has for untold centuries been propagating/ The
message of unity and harmony.
As his father had joined the Revenue Department, the family constantly
moved to different places where he was
posted. At Dhubri, the rst posting,
young Bhupen met Pramathesh Barua, the legendary director of Devdas,
who was there for a while shooting a
lm called Mukti with Kanan Devi.
This encounter led to a life-long fascination with lms, and it was no coincidence that years later he returned to
Dhubri to shoot his lm Mahut Band-

hure aided by none other than Pramathesh Baruahs son, Prakitish. At

Dhubri, which was a meeting ground
of Assamese and Bengali cultures, not
only did Bhupen become procient in
Bengali but he also added new tunes to
his childish repertoire, particularly the
unique Bhatiali songs of the shermen, later to be incorporated into
many of his compositions.
In 1935, his father was transferred
to Tezpur. The most signicant phase
of the young and impressionable Bhupens life began there. Tezpur at that
time was the springboard of a revivalist movement in Assamese literature,
music and theatre, led by two titans of
the regions cultural scenario, Jyotiprasad Agarwalla and Bishnuprasad
1 3 0

F R O N T L I N E

A re had burnt in me since childhood, Bhupen wrote in his autobiography, to change society that re is
still burning. I was greatly inuenced
by Sankardev. The rst lyric I ever
wrote was for him. It expressed juvenile anguish at the hatred and violence
in society, as also the desire to guide it
towards love and brotherhood. Jyoti
and Rabha at that time were on a mission to rejuvenate Assams moribund
socio-cultural scene and enlisted Bhupen as their youngest foot soldier. Jyoti
instilled in him the aesthetic philosophy that was later to be the cornerstone of his poetic and cinematic
creations, revealed to him the strength
and beauty of words, and taught him
the subtler nuances of his craft. Rabha,
a communist, shaped the revolutionary instincts of the impressionable lad
and deepened Bhupens innate love for
ordinary people, thereby helping him
to become a gana-shilpi, or an artist of
the masses, later.
At that time the duo was planning
to make a gramophone record of a musical play titled Joymati, a heroine in
Assams history. Since there was no
recording studio in Assam, the 10year-old lad accompanied the duo to
Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1936. The
recording at Aurora studio was so perfect that the Senola Company recorded
a solo album by Bhupen, making him
stand on two wooden boxes so that he
could reach the microphone. His name
on that maiden solo album was printed
as Master Bhupen Hazarika (amateur) and the publicity blurb described him as The youngest artiste of

DECEMBER 2, 2011

F R O N T L I N E

1 3 1

ANUPAM NATH/AP

DECEMBER 2, 2011

BHUPEN WITH HIS SON,

Tez (left), and grandson, Akash, in Guwahati in

PTI

2007.

R E C O R D I N G A C A S S ET T E

in Guwahati in 2002.

His Masters Voice of India.

Jyotiprasad and Bishnuprasad belonged to an earlier period of Assamese cultural renaissance. Bhupen
soon detached himself from that phase
and forged his own distinct identity to
usher Assamese culture into the modern era. Having matriculated from
Tezpur in 1940 and passed his Intermediate in Arts from Cotton College,
he enrolled in Banaras Hindu University in 1942. His stay at BHU broadened his horizons. My entire thought
process changed after I went to Banaras, he wrote. Whenever I met a

Marathi or Gujarati student, I realised

how similar they were to me. Among
my fellow students were Africans, Indonesians, Japanese a Muslim
friend of mine was even studying Sanskrit! It was then that the seed of universal humanism was planted in me.
By the time he returned to Assam in
1946, he had developed an all-India
sensibility.
THE IPTA CONNECTION

After teaching for a while, he joined All

India Radio (AIR) in Guwahati in
1948 and also began composing lyrics
1 3 2

F R O N T L I N E

and setting them to music. In 1948, he

joined the Indian Peoples Theatre
Movement (IPTA), an organisation of
theatre and lm personalities, musicians, artists and intellectuals with the
objective of bringing about social
change through ne arts. Although the
movement failed because most of its
members were lured away to lucrative
careers, Bhupen was one of the few
all-India gures who remained true to
the original ideals of the movement
and retained his identity as a singer of
the masses.
The roving minstrel next went to
the United States in 1949 after receiving a scholarship from the prestigious
Columbia University, New York,
where he completed his M.A. in mass
communication and later secured a
doctorate. There were two signicant
happenings in Bhupens life during his
stint in the U.S. He fell in love with a
Gujarati girl named Priyambada M.
Patel. Following a whirlwind courtship, he married her in 1950. His son,
Tez, was born in 1952. In the same
period, Bhupen developed intimate
contact with the legendary AfricanAmerican singer Paul Robeson. He
was a social-singer with the power to
change, Bhupen later wrote. Like
Jyotiprasad and Bishnu Kokaideu
(brother), he was responsible for
moulding my philosophy of action. I
too wanted to be a singer with the
power to change society.
Back in Assam in 1953 along with
his wife and child, Bhupen was confronted with the harsh realities of life.
AIR red him for overstaying his leave,
and for two years he earned his livelihood by singing at functions until he
got a job as a lecturer at Gauhati University. However, it proved to be a
short stint for he resigned in protest
when the university deducted three
days pay because he was late in returning from a peace conference in Helsinki. This was the last straw for Priyam,
who came from an afuent family and
could not live in an atmosphere of perpetual poverty. She left him and went
back to her paternal home. The separation was a devastating personal
blow. Yet, perhaps, it was preordained.

PTI

PTI

R E C E I VI N G THE P AD M A Bhushan
from President K.R. Narayanan in
New Delhi in 2001.

PTI

REC EI V I N G T H E FI R S T ever Asom

Ratna Award on January 29, 2009,
from Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi.

the painter
M.F. Husain on his 75th birthday, in
Mumbai in 2001.

W I T H F O RM ER PR E S I D E N T

A T A F U N C T I O N in Guwahati where
he was conferred a DLitt by
Dibrugarh University on April 1,
2007.
F R O N T L I N E

1 3 3

RITU RAJ KONWAR

B E I N G G R E E TE D B Y

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam at a Sangeet

Natak Akademi awards function in
Mumbai in July 2003. Bhupen got
the Akademis award in 2008.

RITU RAJ KONWAR

To be shackled with familial ties had

perhaps been a handicap for the
jajabor.
Pain, wounded pride, conict with
detractors, monetary problems and
the ceaseless struggle to establish himself as an artist all these brought
about a stupendous explosion of creativity within him. His life from that
point to almost the nal moments became a fascinating meander. Composing lyrics and setting them to music,
cutting albums or singing on the radio,
editing journals, writing books and for
the print media, making lms scripted
and directed by himself, delving briey
into politics, Bhupen left very few avenues untrodden. Accompanied by his
brother, Jayanta, another singing genius, he toured the length and breadth
of Assam and other north-eastern
States, entertaining and enlightening
audiences in cities, townships, rural
hamlets.
He touched the soul of his audiences as he sang about the day-to-day
realities of common peoples struggle
for existence. He envisioned for them a
classless society where there would be
no oppression and injustice and where
tribal and non-tribal people, Hindus,
Muslims and Christians, would live in
harmony thereby becoming a voice of
the mute multitude. The ame of genius, overcoming constraints of place
and milieu, always enlarges the space
upon which it sheds its lustre. Gradually, his meanderings took him all
across India and abroad; his ability to
sing in Bengali and Hindi enabled his
cultural contributions to take on panIndian dimensions even as he achieved
international fame.
It would require tomes to portray
the multifarious achievements of the
Renaissance man who strode like a colossus across the cultural scenario in
the second half of the 20th century. He
was a rare amalgam of lyricist, composer, vocalist and instrumentalist. He
wrote over a thousand lyrics in various
languages, of immense thematic and
emotive power and rendered them in
innovative music, many of which retain the simplicity of the folk tradition.
His lyrical compositions possess the

SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY

DECEMBER 2, 2011

R E C E I VI N G THE LI FE TI M E

Achievement Award from Chief

Minister Tarun Gogoi on February 8,
2008.

Obituary

RITU RAJ KONWAR

DECEMBER 2, 2011

P E OP L E PA YI N G R E S P EC T S

to Bhupens statue in Guwahati after hearing the news of his death on November 5.

syntactic magic, metaphorical endowments and philosophical depth of

great poetry. His classic lyric, Sagar
Sangamat Katana Saturilu, is a brilliant example:
Though for so long have I swum
In the conuence of oceans
I am not tired.
Yet, the waves
In the ocean of my mind
Continue to be restless.
An endless, eternal ebb and ow of
tides
In the breast of the ocean of my
mind
DADASAHEB PHALKE AWARD

His cinematic creations accompanied

his musical and intellectual pursuits.
Beginning with Era Bator Sur in 1956,
he directed over a dozen lms and documentaries, including classics such as
Pratidhwani, Chikmik Bijuli, Siraj,
Miri Jiyori, Mahut Bandhure (Bengali), and Mera Dharam Meri Ma (Hindi). He won the Presidents National

Award for best lm three times and

also the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke
award for life-time achievement. He
sang and composed music for numerous Bengali lms, which made him a
household name in Bengal and Bangladesh.
His musical compositions for
award-winning Hindi lms such as Ek
Pal, Rudaali, Papiha and Pratimurti
took him to dizzying heights in Hindi
lm music. His all-India status was
reected in the legendary artist M.F.
Husains request to him to render the
music for the lm Gajagamini. You
paint with your songs, Husain had
told Bhupen. I try to sing through my
brush. If the two of us get together,
maybe we would be able to produce
something unique!
The timeless elements of Bhupens
craft, its variety and vastness, the mingling of the aesthetic and the altruistic,
place him in the tradition of poet-reformers such as Sankardev, Rabindranath
Tagore,
Nazrul
Islam,
1 3 4

F R O N T L I N E

Jyotiprasad and Bishnuprasad. The nal decades of his life brought him
numerous accolades, including the
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the
Indira Gandhi Smriti Puraskar, the
Padma Bhushan, the Sankardev
Award and Asom Ratna. He sang in
concerts in cities across the world, including New York, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Leningrad, London and Tokyo.
From regional to national and then to
international limelight, the Renaissance man who was born in the easternmost tip of India travelled far
indeed.
The millions who thronged the
route of his last journey in Guwahati,
the homage paid to him from every
nook and corner of the State and the
north-eastern region, testify to the
sense of loss that engulfed the region at
his death. Yet, Bhupens demise is not
merely a loss to this region, it is a loss
for the entire nation.

Arup Kumar Dutta is a writer and

a columnist.

Published on alternate Saturdays.WPP No.CPMG/AP/SD-15/WPP/11-13 & MH/MR/South-180/2009-11.Postal Regn. No.TN/ARD/22/09-11. RNI No.42591/84