VOX POPULI IS BACK! VOX POPULI IS BACK! VOX POPULI IS BACK!
Contents:
1. Empty Gestures & Littler Men
2. Undermining The Institutions Of Democracy
3. Bank NPA’s : Who's Paying For Them?
4. Rapes That Dot The Country's Geography
Empty Gestures & Littler Men
Narendra Modi's hurriedly cobbled up trip to China in April to meet President Xi is one of those empty gestures like dropping in on Nawaz Sharif for a cup of tea in Pakistan while returning from an overseas trip a few years ago. Nothing happened with Pakistan and importantly our relationship deteriorated to the extent that today it is at the nadir for the last two decades or more. One hopes that the same thing does not happen in the case of China. The lack of maturity being shown is coupled with the fact that Modi always wants the spotlight on himself and will go to any extent to ensure that full well knowing that sometimes these gestures will fall flat. Thus the April China trip was on the same day when the two Koreas were meeting and the whole of Asia, the US and the rest of the world would be looking towards that meeting. Modi wanted to rub of some of that shine onto himself by scheduling a meeting with Xi. It is a wonder that Xi agreed for Modi to come over since the Korea issue was an important issue for China and Xi would at most have probably given a cursory ear to Modi. The way the world looked at the Modi-Xi meeting was reflected in the BBC news the next day when the coverage was all about the Koreas meeting and there was absolutely no mention of the Modi-Xi meeting. From the media photos in the Indian press that were carried one can see Modi and Xi's pictures with dancers, visiting an exhibition etc. which are of the kind that are done at retreats on the sidelines of summits. One can safely say that it was an opportunity completely wasted. With no major issue touched like Dokalam or others as one newspaper put it, Modi had expressly gone to request Xi not to rock the boat on the shared borders between the two countries until the 2019 elections in India were over.
Talking of littler men, the controversy generated out of President Kovind not presenting all the National Film awards is a shame. The artistic community involved in our film fraternity spend a lifetime in their craft and for which they sometimes get nominated and win the National Film awards. Many get the award only once in a lifetime while others may get it a number of times. Thus for the majority of the awardees it is an important and memorable occasion of their lives to go up and collect the award from the President of India. President Kovind not recognising this simple fact is a shame. Could he not spare a few hours in recognition of the work of the awardees? We are living in the times that littler men and women are being given positions that they are not deserving of and out of that in the false sense of pride that they are filled up with, come up with unseemly and irrational conditions in the performance of their official duties. All past Presidents have given out awards for which they have had to spend hours and have not complained about it. Maybe we will have President Kovind declare that he will give out the Padma awards only up to the Padma Vibhushan while the awards after that like the Bhushan and Shri which are larger in number be given by the Vice-President!
Undermining The Institutions Of Democracy
Narendra Modi and his government progressively and with great deliberation has undermined the democratic institutions of this country. The first act of this unholy drama was not to renew the term of Raghuram Rajan as RBI Governor. This act was done with a complete lack of finesse with the delineated purpose of getting rid of the not-so-amenable Rajan and getting in Urjit Patel, who considering his new arrival could be taken advantage of to push through the ill-conceived and badly managed Demonetisation exercise. Post-8th Nov 2016 taking advantage of the new Governor, the Central Govt. financial bureaucracy led by the likes of Shaktikanta Das & Hasmukh Adhia, more the former than the latter, took over the RBI completely issuing circulars after circulars, many contradicting each other, knowing full that the RBI would be held responsible for all the repercussions. With Urjit Patel sidelined for the first month or more of his assignment, he had no option but to run away from the media in Gujarat since he was not in the know of things and was unsure of fielding the barrage of questions on the Demonetisation exercise that were likely. Never in free India had a sight been seen of the RBI Governor fleeing from the media! With Urjit Patel thereafter settling down into his job, he commenced paying back the Executive for giving him the assignment by first accepting that the Demonetisation exercise was recommended by the RBI in their Board meeting held on the morning of 8th November 2016 thus letting the Central government off the hook. Later Urjit Patel continued to stonewall the media and even a Parliamentary Consultative Committee on how much of the demonetised currency had come back with the claim that the RBI along with the banks are still 'counting'. Close to two years are coming to pass but RBI have not yet come out with confirmed figures on how many of the demonetised notes came back. The lack of clear cut numbers on the returned demonetised notes stopped the RBI from closing their books of accounts in the year 2016-17, the first time in ages. Thereafter the RBI finalised the accounts by declaring a reduced dividend to the central government by about Rs. 30 crores from what they would normally pay. The question is if RBI accounts were closed for 2016-17 then the amount of demonetised notes that did not come back were obviously estimated, if so why were these figures not revealed to the public. Why is the RBI Governor playing to the tunes of his political masters and indirectly defending them since this data once revealed would obviously provide fuel to the Opposition's fire before and during any of the elections that have been held since early 2017? Similarly in terms of interest rates, the economic conditions like inflation etc. were not amenable for a review of the rates being lowered since early 2017. Even then Urjit Patel marginally adjusted them a tad lower to again play fiddle to his political master's tunes. Thus ever since Urjit Patel has taken over the reins at RBI the autonomy and independence of that institution has become suspect. In cricketing terms, RBI was the first wicket to fall in the Modi government’s plan to undermine the democratic institutions of this country.
The second wicket to fall was the office of the EC - Election Commission when A K Joti was made Election Commissioner and then CEC in July 2017. Joti had served under Narendra Modi as Chief Secretary when Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat. Whether it was pre-planned or happened by circumstance, it was Jothi who was the CEC when the Gujarat elections were to be held. We all know how the Gujarat election dates were pushed out to accommodate Narendra Modi's visit to Gujarat when a number of vote gathering measures were announced and helped the BJP's principal vote puller to be in the public eye, when actually the Election Code of Conduct should have been in force. It was only after Modi returned to Delhi from Gujarat and gave Joti the green signal were the poll dates announced. As we all know the Gujarat elections were a close call for the BJP and if Modi had not been able to make his whirlwind tour with the public sops prior to the elections, the results could well have been different. It would have then been another story completely for Gujarat as well as the rest of the country. This trend of undermining the position of the EC has continued since then and for the upcoming Karnataka elections we had the dates leaked by a BJP functionary to the media even before the CEC had announced them to the media. The question is how does the BJP know of the dates in advance unless they are giving it to the EC! This is the extent to which the EC has been subverted by the present political dispensation.
The third wicket to fall was that of the Supreme Court. Ever since the Narendra Modi led BJP Government came to power in 2014, the battle of attrition between the government and the Supreme Court was continuing. With a pendency of cases running into crores across the courts in the country, there has been a severe shortage of judges more so at the Supreme Court. Even after the collegium of judges give their recommendations the CJI and the Supreme Court have to wait for the say-so of the Government before the judges can be appointed to the High Courts and the Supreme Court. This love-hate relationship has continued through the tenure of many CJI's to varying degrees with some going in for outright confrontation to some others extending the hand of co-operation to government. With the present incumbent, CJI Dipak Misra facing the same dilemma, he apparently decided to become the willing collaborator by trying to please the government and thus win favour for the judiciary. This is where Misra made the mistake since the government follows the approach of - 'no give but all take'. The government interpreted this collaborative behaviour as acquiescence and started playing hardball to get the Supreme Court under Its thumb. In the meanwhile Misra's approach towards the government was seen in other circles mostly by the Opposition political parties that Misra was the government's man. A number of judgments along with the dissent among the Supreme Court judges on the 'favourable roster' that added fuel to the fire has led to a motion of impeachment against the CJI since dismissed. Thus we are seeing how a lack of leadership by Misra as CJI has made the Supreme Court fall into the hands of the Executive as is again evidenced with the refusal of the Executive to elevate a Justice K M Joseph to the Supreme Court despite the collegium's recommendation. One must also say here that the Supreme Court and the judiciary has not really applied themselves seriously to the pendency of cases in the courts and continues to be procedure bound rather than concentrating on speedy delivery of justice.
Apart from the above numerous other officials at all levels of the bureaucracy and the country's investigating bodies have been rewarded for giving favourable reports and/or judgments to the ruling junta functionaries which exonerated them from multifarious criminal cases of all varieties. An example of this is that Narayanan who headed the SIT that went into the 2002 Gujarat riots in which Narendra Modi was an accused and who was fully acquitted, was given the post of Indian Ambassador of Cyprus, a cushy posting to loll in the sun of the Mediterranean. Similarly other members of the SIT were given important and influential postings. We have lately seen Maya Kodnani being acquitted in the 2002 Gujarat communal riots cases on flimsy grounds mostly lack of evidence since the police do not put in any efforts to investigate such cases knowing full well that they will be thrown out of the courts. Then you have the Justice Loya case who had acquitted Amit Shah, BJP President in a murder case, where it is not clear whether the judge died of natural causes or was murdered.
This is how with institutions getting compromised both governance and the process of delivering justice have been subverted in this country under the present government eroding the foundations of Indian democracy.
Bank NPA’s : Who's Paying For Them?
PNB Chairman has said that by Dec 2018 the bank would be out of the woods as far as the Nirav Modi/Choksi financial bungling scam. Another headline recently reported that NPA’s of some Rs. 2000 crores would be written off by Banks this year from the pile of Rs. 10 Lakh crores. Yet another headline in the financial papers reads that NPA’s will be on the increase in 2019. Clearly our banking system is in a major mess with the person in charge, the Finance Minister with serious and debilitating health issues, first it was the heart and now it is understood to be the kidney, which precludes his giving adequate attention to his onerous responsibilities. Thus before we have a multi-organ failure of the country's banking sector and the situation goes beyond the point of salvage we need to first get a fully functional and competent Finance Minister. The point is does Narendra Modi have anyone in mind and that is the moot question. There are no choices available for the Prime Minister with the possibility of calling back Yeshwant Sinha from retirement being out considering that he is singing a skewed tune compared to the government line and having called for Arun Jaitley's resignation many times in the past it would appear by appointing Sinha that the government was running the ship with an incompetent person in Jaitley. With Yeshwant Sinha having now quit the BJP, Narendra Modi has not much choice left to replace the Finance Minister. Since the Nirav Modi/Choksi scam of some Rs. 10,000-12,000 crores, multiple banking scams have surfaced across the country with different banks running from Rs. 2000 to Rs. 6000 crores mainly relating to loan default and/or utilisation of funds other than for stated purpose leading to inability to clear loan dues since in the first place they were never intended to be repaid. This is clearly the case in the latest disclosure of the nexus between IDBI and Aircel promoter C Sivasankaran. This is one end of the scale of bank customers while at the other end common customers operating savings bank accounts are being harassed no end, with charges levied if minimum balances are not maintained and the latest is that account holders will be charged each time that they use the ATM. In Vox Populi I had written sometime back in an earlier issue that there will come a time when bank account holders will be charged for just stepping into the bank, so much for a service oriented industry! These are the same account holders that are forced to shoulder the brunt of the write-off of the NPA's. Thus the common man will be paying through his nose for the shenanigans of bank officials and the mercenary money-grabbing ways of others like industrialists and those who avail big-time loans.
The Nirav Modi/Choksi scam at PNB is clearly a case of collusion with bank officials involved up the chain of command or responsible for their negligence and/or laxity on the job. Similar irresponsibility is shown in the other cases involving the scams and/or NPA's where there has been deliberate manipulation to clear loans and due diligence was given the go-by by bank officials. This is not to say that the entire banking system is rotten but one can safely say that majority of the top management in banks, both public as well as private, can be held guilty to the charge of connivance at one time or other or for one case or another when it comes to loans sanctioned that have since become NPA's. There is therefore the need for a complete revamp of India's banking sector before good money for re-capitalisation is again thrown at bad people, practices and procedures. This bail-out money could well be used for much needed alternate development activity around the country where many a deserving program is being starved of funds.
Rapes That Dot The Country's Geography
The Unnao, Kathua and Surat rape cases with their callousness and brutality show that after the Nirbhaya incident in 2012 nothing really has changed in the way that women particularly children and even infants are seen by men not as human beings but as objects to satisfy their lust and sexual aberrations. The Ordinance brought in to accord the death penalty to rape offenders convicted of raping girls below the age of 12 is absolutely the correct measure. There was a need to have an exemplary punishment that would act as a deterrent to offenders and with it the declaration that the government had the will to enforce it. After the Nirbhaya incident when it was declared that all rape cases would be handled by fast-track courts one has come to realise that such courts have turned to be misnomers being caught in and unable to get out of the rigmarole in the Indian legal process and allowing the rape cases to drag on. The ambiguity or confusion on handling rape cases in the fast-track category can be understood with the government recently coming out with an announcement that rape cases involving victims who are minors will be dealt in the fast-track category! So what is the truth?
If one looks at the frequency of rape cases across the country particularly where victims are below the age of 16 years and link it with the locales where the rapes have occurred, the age group and occupation of the offenders, one comes to the preliminary conclusion that we should not let our girl children remain unsupervised. Where the parents by virtue of economic compulsion have to go out for work be it in urban or rural areas and there is no one in the family who can keep an eye on the children we find the children are at risk particularly the girl child. Thus the girl child needs to be under supervision as much as possible and kept in a safe environment. One of the methods could be is that we have our NGO's actively involved in this program by providing social shelters in localities particularly urban slum areas and in villages through the anganwadi system so that the girls are under some protective care. These shelters operating from 8am-8pm can be offered free of charge for the lesser privileged families and a nominal charge levied on those who are well off. Progressively these shelters can be moderated to become training centres for the children for inculcating skills and for socio-cultural activity. Thus we will not only have our girls protected but also become more accomplished.
The other thing that can be done is to ask all children not to accept any inducements like sweets, ice-cream or other food items from non-family members or strangers. Under the pretext of offering children these inducements the offenders take advantage of them. For this a concerted advertisement program has to be undertaken by the DAVP, one does not know whether it exists anymore, to educate children and their parents the risks of accepting things from strangers. This program can be expanded to cover schools where the idea can be reinstated in the minds of the children again particularly the girl child. But how much this will work is doubtful since the range and variety of inducements in these days of TV advertisements is extensive and very appealing and to have a child refuse something that he desires requires a great amount of will-power and self-discipline which their parents have to inculcate.
Then there is the issue of family values that needs to be tackled where added to the bravado that the young males exhibit generally, we find that in northern India the boys in the family tend to be handled more permissively than the girls. This leads to the boys targeting girls beyond the normal teasing what we call ched-chad and looking at them more as an object to satisfy their lust. This happens more as a group behaviour. Such tendencies can only be controlled by the parents of the boys and senior family members instilling the proper values of respecting girls other than in the family and putting them under a code of rigorous discipline. Any incidents which comes to the parent or guardian's notice should be immediately dealt with by exemplary punishment. This is easier said than done since social strata Issues and the impudence that wealth and power brings will come in the way and for seniors in the family to modify and change traits is a generational exercise. Nonetheless a start needs to be made.
Again if you analyse the incidents of rape in the last decade or so, you will find that it is probably the deprivation of sex which drives the rape impulse in offenders most of the time. That is why you have car pick-up drivers taking advantage of single women, Ola/Über drivers performing indecent acts when women passengers are alone as also trying to rape them, rapes happening at construction sites, slums etc. Recognising that we have a problem we as a society need to take a courageous decision and legalise prostitution. Once there is an avenue for men to exercise their sexual urges one hopes that the incidence of rapes will reduce. The other is a more broader approach and that is to have people stay as much as possible in their native places. We are today encouraging more of our people to leave our villages and move to urban areas. This leads to separation from their families and is one of the reasons for the increase in rape cases in slums and housing clusters in our towns and cities. In the villages the men stay with their wives and there is always a sense of nervousness to attempt rapes since they are known in the village. In the places they move to like slums the curtain of anonymity that is the fact that they are not known encourages the proclivity to rape. Overall this encouragement of migration of population to urban areas is a Western thought which will not work in India. In the West the migration was encouraged so that land areas could be freed up and organised agriculture implemented. In India what is happening is that the urban migration is one of the reasons that leads to land going fallow which will end up with drastic food shortages nearer to famine in the future and in the interim prices of food will be driven up taking it beyond the reach of the needy since food will then become imports dependent. The related negatives of urban migration in the Indian context among others are slums and higher cases of rapes.
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