A lesson from the Nandigram carnage

Mohammad Isa Ansari
HT, May 11

Ever since humans have existed forced displacement has been a constant feature in world history. Compulsory displacements that occur for development reasons embody a perverse and intrinsic contradiction in the context of development.

Either for reasons of war, natural disaster, over population, economic hardship, infrastructure construction or for the needs of infrastructure development ie to build infrastructure for new highways, power generation, dams, rural and urban water supply and SEZ projects, industries, irrigation, transportation, or for urban developments such as hospitals, schools, and airports, population displacement always changes lives and shapes existences.

Such projects are, however, indisputably needed. They improve many people's lives, provide employment and supply better services. In the same way, these projects also create major impositions on some population segments due to people's loss of livelihood and their potential impoverishment.

When communities are forcibly displaced, the existing production systems are dismantled, much valuable land and buildings, and other income generating assets are lost.

Links between producers and their customers are often severed and local labour markets are also disrupted. Symbolic markers, such as places of worship, religious mela grounds and ancestral graves are disturbed too. Links with the past and with people's cultural identity is also affected.

However in recent years, one social issue that has caused intense discussion among academics, social activists and planners is the forced displacement of people from their productive assets, particularly land and housing due to infrastructure projects. Though the process of acquisition of land for setting up mining, irrigation, transportation or mega SEZ projects is not new, the magnitude of adverse impacts was never comprehended in the past as it is today.

The liberalisation of the economy, growing needs of public infrastructure in the country have threatened traditional sources of sustenance of people. More and more agricultural lands and built up properties are being acquired for the purpose. The situation is aggravated due to the conversion of agricultural lands voluntarily or involuntarily into public infrastructure.

All this has unleashed a situation where more and more people are being displaced from their communities and traditional ways of life. How many of them are co-opted into the new economic order and how many remain victims of development is the question.

There is a growing awareness of the sweeping powers of government, under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 (amended Act of 1984) that empowers to acquire private lands and properties in public interest.

Growing social activism against such sovereign domain of government is not only in response to untold hardships and miseries caused to the affected people but also a protest against the very mould of development that alienates people from their traditional sources of sustenance.

Therefore, the growing pace of development under liberalisation, the intensity of displacement has also increased.

Unaccustomed to new ways of life, the affected people face a hostile situation where they have to compete as individuals, different from their community based settings in this race of development.

The past few decades have witnessed rapid economic growth in the country and the process forms a part of planned development. This is manifested in the setting up of large-scale projects in power generation, mining, industry, road infrastructure and irrigation and even in creating new urban settlements. This entails large-scale land acquisition and even demolition of homesteads.

The project implementing authorities, which used to be mostly public sector organisations in the past but have recently included the private sector in a big way, opt for compulsory acquisition of land or homestead mainly under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 and now, under the Amended Act of 1984.

The intensity of such land acquisitions has grown so high that many rural communities are threatened with separation from their traditional sources of livelihood and social networks. Therefore, the growing speed of development has resulted in a situation where more and more families, mainly in rural areas, are getting separated from their productive assets and they hardly get fair treatment from the projects in terms of their resettlement and rehabilitation.

They have no say in the legitimacy of setting up such projects as the government is empowered with legal rights in the name of public interest to acquire their property and assets under the Land Acquisition Act.

The power to acquire private property for public use is an attribute of sovereignty and is essential to the existence of a government. The power of eminent domain is recognised on the principle that the sovereign state can always acquire the property of a citizen for public good, without the owner's consent.

The right to acquire an interest in land compulsorily has assumed increasing importance as a result of requirement of such land more and more everyday, for different development projects.

The growing social activism against development projects has, however, blurred the distinction between a right project and a wrong one. If one takes the stand that present development essentially promotes consumer culture within a capitalistic framework and is not suitable for a majority of Indian people, most of the development projects can be considered as anti-people.

The growing speed of development under liberalisation has increased the intensity of such displacement to the extent that communities living in their traditional settings are getting displaced with the loss of their traditional sources of livelihood.

Once displaced, the affected people are pushed into an open-market situation as individuals competing for their survival in a hostile new environment. A majority of them prove to be losers in this new race of development.

Therefore, it is a need for objective studies to assess its dimensions, and it invites the attention of policy-makers, NGOs and social scientists for a sustainable Relief and Rehabilitation (R&R) policy in the country. In the absence of such a policy, the nexus between affected people, government and politicians is bound to cause immense damage to the country.

To sum up, the violence at Nandigram threatened to halt the inexorable march of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). In this perspective, land acquisition is seen as an offshoot of the mould of development and it drew wide attention in which thousands of affected families and like-minded people came forward against this project.

The media and NGOs not only focussed on the inadequacy of R&R programmes but also questioned the very basis of such projects. The issue is now being debated in a wider socio-political context, in which land acquisition for the development purpose is a sensitive matter and needs to be looked at in a humane way.

If there were more transparency and openness in the land acquisition process from all concerned, the suspicions would vanish.

Only monetary compensation for the land to be acquired is not a solution; the Social Impact Assessment (SIA) must also be well understood and addressed adequately.

Mohammad Isa Ansari is a social scientist attached to New Delhi-based Intercontinental Consultants and Technocrats Pvt Ltd. He can be reached at isa_ansari@yahoo.com.

What happens when the water runs out?

Kalpana Sharma
The Hindu, 8 May

One billion people in the world lack proper access to potable water. A good number of them are in India. It is incumbent on the state to ensure that the poor are not denied their right to basic necessities.

THE POWER crisis in Maharashtra has occupied many column centimetres in local newspapers. Understandably so as with the onset of summer, life without electricity is hell. It is that in any case in most parts of rural Maharashtra where daily power cuts of up to 15 hours have been the norm for many months. In cities and towns, the power cuts are shorter but still unbearable. Only Mumbai has been spared.

But what no one is talking about is the looming water crisis. One of the fallouts of climate change, the consequence of global warming, will be on water sources. The drying up of water sources will have a direct impact on water availability. As urban areas grow, their demand for water will increase. If on top of this, governments aim to provide 24 hours water to all urban residents, then the demands of the city on the hinterland will escalate hugely. Who will mediate the competing demands between urban water needs and rural survival? Already, the choice of ensuring that urban areas get power while rural areas suffer is laying the ground for inequality and injustice.

At the G8 meeting in Berlin scheduled for June 8, civil society groups plan to launch an End Water Poverty campaign. In India poverty and water poverty go hand in hand. A campaign to bring water to the poorest is closely linked with any campaign to deal with poverty. One billion people in the world lack access to potable water. A good number of them are in India.

The reason the middle class does not agitate quite as much about water as it does about power is because it has the capability to buy water. If municipal water fails, middle class localities order a tanker or two and pay. If the water is released at awkward hours, they have powerful pumps to fill overhead tanks that then ensure water on demand. If the water is not potable, they can afford purification within their homes or buy bottled water — that defining symbol of the commodification of something that ought to be freely available. For the poor, water is available for a few hours, at inconvenient times, and often of poor quality.

The solution that is being offered to deal with the water problem is better management. The government and several municipal authorities, including the one in Mumbai, argue that the problem is not just inadequate supplies of water but bad management practices that affect distribution. Mumbai's residents, for instance, at least on paper gets more water per person a day than residents in most other Indian cities. But although the city gets over 3,000 mld (million litres a day), it loses around 600 mld through leakages and theft. Therefore, officials of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) believe that more efficient management systems need to be in place.

At a recent meeting of Mumbai citizens on the water problem, a senior official from the water department of the MCGM acknowledged that 45 per cent of water meters did not work and that fixing leaking and old pipes was a major headache. Under the existing system of management, an engineer in the BMC has no power to sanction funds to fix a leak even if it is taking place before his eyes, he said. By the time he gets the requisite sanctions, thousands of litres of clean water would have gone down the drain. Therefore, like others in the MCGM, he too felt that the water crisis could be resolved if distribution was handed over to private management.

Is this privatisation of water by the backdoor? Will the municipality ultimately hand over management to private companies and gradually back out altogether from the business of water distribution? In Mumbai, an experiment along these lines is already being tried in K-East ward, an area with a population of close to one million people. A section of the local residents are strongly opposed to it.

Those opposing private sector involvement in water distribution point out that there are dozens of examples from around the world of water privatisation that has gone completely wrong. A new book, brought out by Manthan Abhiyan Kendra (Water: Private, Limited, Issues in Privatisation, Corporatisation and Commercialisation of Water Sector in India by Gaurav Dwivedi, Rehmat and Shripad Dharmadhikari) lists these failures. They range from the famous privatisation effort in Cochabamba in Bolivia that led to the overthrow of a government to others in practically every continent. For instance, between 1996 and 1999, Shenyang, in China, tried out privatisation of water. Ultimately, the state-owned company returned to distribute the water when the price of bulk water became untenable. Another telling example is from Potsdam in Germany where the unjustified hike in water tariffs resulted in the municipality terminating the contract with a private company. In Nairobi, Kenya, a privatisation contract was cancelled for similar reasons.

In most cases, people have rejected private control of what is seen as a public good. Private businesses are interested in the bottom line, in making a profit. Thus, instead of accessibility, affordability and equity, the values that dominate are financial viability and cost recovery. Although in the initial phases, there are assurances that tariffs will not be raised, in time they always go up due to apparent increased costs.

The supporters of privatisation argue that ultimately a more efficient distribution system will benefit the poor, as water will reach them instead of being wasted. Yet, even if it reaches them, will they be able to afford it? One of the schemes reportedly being considered for Mumbai, although the MCGM denies it, is that of prepaid water meters. Like a prepaid card for a cell phone, residents would have to recharge their cards and only then would they be able to access water. If they don't have the money to recharge their cards, then there will be no water. So rich or poor, you pay as you get. Except that the poor most often cannot pay.

The justification given for such systems is that lack of water is forcing the poor to buy water from private sources at exorbitant prices. In some of the most crowded wards of central Mumbai even today pavement dwellers buy their water from "bishis" — men who walk around with a leather water container slung on their backs. These vendors get the water from a private well. Because of the anomaly in our water policy, the water under the ground belongs to the person who owns the land on which a well is located while the surface water, in lakes and rivers, belongs to the government. As a result, the landless and homeless in the cities, including the slum dwellers, still depend on the mercy of the municipality, or the private water vendor. And the rates they pay work out to more than 10 times of those with access to a regular supply of municipal water.

Yet, the solution to cutting out such private water vendors is not a distribution system that is equally unaffordable. A 24-hour supply of water means little to people who will not be in a position to pay the charges if private companies take over distribution and justify raised tariffs in the name of cost recovery.

Before privatisation of water distribution is accepted, we need to have a close look at the success and failures of the private sector in water elsewhere in the world. The record has been murky with unjustified costs being charged by private companies.

While no one will argue that better distribution of water, or for that matter electricity, and cutting wastage are essential, when there are systemic inequities, such as the absence of decent housing that also means little or no water and electricity, just efficient distribution is not enough. In cities, the wastage is not just due to leakages but the profligate use of water by the better- off. Like electricity, this is the section that needs to be told about saving water, because current usage patterns will ensure that there is never enough water.

Yet, even as governments and municipalities work out schemes to bring in water to cities, they fail to launch campaigns that will make the water-rich aware of a scarce resource.

The state sector has failed on many fronts and has not necessarily been the most efficient. But good management practices and private ownership are not coterminous. Also, where equity and accessibility have to be guaranteed, it is incumbent on the state to ensure that in the name of efficiency, the poor are not denied their right to basic necessities like water, or for that matter sanitation and decent housing.

China battles Internet addiction

Pallavi Aiyar
The Hindu, 9 May

The number of Internet users rose from virtually zero in the 1990s to 137 million by the end of 2006. Of these at least 15 per cent are under the age of 18; and 2.3 million minors could be classified as addicts.

IN A nondescript compound on the southern outskirts of Beijing, groups of youngsters in military fatigues run in disciplined lines, sweat pouring down their foreheads in the noon sun. Drill sergeants bark relentless orders right in their faces, which on closer inspection are revealed to be painfully young. Inside the combat outfits many of those marching, running, and performing a variety of callisthenics are only 13 or 14 years old.

This is a military training camp, but the youngsters in question are not soldiers in training. They are in fact Internet addicts receiving treatment at a government-funded, military-run Internet Addiction Treatment Centre, located in Beijing's Daxing County.

Alarmed by a China National Children's Centre (CNCC) report that claimed 13 per cent of Internet users under the age of 18 were addicted to the Net, online addiction has emerged as the focus of a concerted campaign by the Chinese Government to battle what the Communist Youth League calls "a grave social problem" that threatens the nation. The number of Internet users in China has spiked from virtually zero in the 1990s to 137 million by the end of 2006. Of these at least 15 per cent are under the age of 18 and, on the basis of the CNCC report, 2.3 million minors would be classified as addicts.

In the last few months, local media in China have been awash with highly publicised cases of obsessed Internet game players flunking out of school with some committing suicide and even murder. In 2005, a Shanghai court gave an online gamer a life sentence after he was found guilty of stabbing a competitor to death for stealing his cyber-sword — a virtual prize earned during game-play.

More recently, in March, China's official news agency Xinhua, quoted a Beijing Reformatory for Juvenile Delinquents report stating that almost 35 per cent of its detainees were "goaded into committing crimes, mostly robbery and rape, by violent online games or erotic websites."

The Daxing addiction treatment centre is the first and largest of eight government-funded "rehabilitation camps" set up around the country, intended to address the special needs of juvenile Internet addicts. On average, the centre houses 70-80 patients, although during school vacations, the number of its wards can shoot up to 250.

The majority of the patients are 14 to 18 years old, although the youngest to have been treated at the centre was 11. Ninety per cent are male and, according to Tao Ran, the centre's director, most are addicted to online games although Internet chat, online pornography, and gambling have also been known to cause addictive behaviour.

The centre is part military boot camp, part hospital, and part juvenile detention centre. Treatment consists of a mixture of psychological counselling, drugs, and military-style discipline. Mr. Tao says the centre can boast of a 70 per cent success rate with most patients needing a one to three-month-long course of treatment.

The treatment period can however be tumultuous since the majority of addicts are involuntarily committed to the centre by their parents. The dormitory areas are thus cordoned off with prison-style metal grills and hefty padlocks. In the past patients have tried to escape. One even slashed his wrists, although quick intervention saved him.

Given its relatively recent origins, the nature of Internet addiction remains somewhat of a global controversy. At issue is whether or not heavy Internet use should be defined and treated as a mental disorder. Mr. Tao, who built his career treating heroine addicts in the 1990s, has little patience for such debate. He says that having researched and treated a variety of addictions both physical and psychological over two decades he is convinced that Internet addiction is virtually the same as other types of more conventional addictions both in terms of its symptoms as well as the negative impact it has on the addict's ability to function normally in society.

Thus if deprived of the Internet, addicts can quickly turn nasty and resort to theft and violence in order to secure money for use in Internet bars. In addition, they often stop eating and sleeping for days at a stretch causing serious harm to their health.

Mr. Tao says the patients brought to the clinic usually suffer from a mixture of anger, loss of self-esteem, depression, bad nutrition, insomnia, and lack of self-control. The military discipline at the centre helps them to regain a schedule and builds up both their physical strength and mental discipline. The intensive counselling aims to gradually restore their self-confidence and to help them re-establish positive goals. Some 30 per cent of cases are additionally treated with drugs including anti-depressants and even anti-psychotics.

Unreasonable pressure

According to Mr. Tao, the underlying cause for this trend of rising cyber addiction is unreasonable pressure from parents and schools to excel in examinations. Unable to bear the constant criticism and expectations, youngsters come to depend on the Internet as an "escape" from real world stress.

"For me online games were an environment that I could control and where there were no restrictions placed on my freedom," recalls Sun Qian Han, a 24-year-old patient at the Daxingcentre.

Mr. Sun began to play Internet games in 1998. In the beginning, he spent only three or four hours a day online but gradually his addiction grew to uncontrollable proportions. In 1999 he spent three months non-stop at an Internet Café, sleeping three or four hours at most, playing games for 20 hours at a time.

An excellent student, Mr. Sun dropped out of school although with his parents' support he finally managed to graduate in 2005, four years later than his contemporaries. He is currently enrolled at a Polytechnic in Yunnan province but every few months finds himself sliding back towards an online binge. He thus voluntarily checked himself into the Daxing Centre two weeks ago, although his parents foot the $1,200 monthly fee.

Steps to curb addiction

Over the last two months or so the government has announced a host of measures it says are aimed at curbing Internet addiction. These include an ordinance issued in March banning the opening of any new Internet bars in the country for the remainder of the year. In addition, Net bar owners have been ordered to install anti-addiction software on their computers and to be extra vigilant in collecting information on users including their real names, age, and identity card numbers.

Critics have pointed out that this campaign meshes a bit too conveniently with China's broader efforts to control the Internet. Access to many major online international news sites are blocked in China and some 50,000 personnel are employed to monitor Internet traffic, censoring information that is deemed too politically sensitive by the government.

But Mr. Sun believes the new measures will be helpful, if implemented strictly. His worry is that most Net bar owners put profit first and are thus loathe to turn underage users away or to implement any regulations that would be detrimental to their business. "All of us addicts are above average in our IQ," he says towards the end of the interview. "But our talents and energy are wasted by this addiction." Mr. Sun intends to stay on at the centre for another few weeks before heading back to his college in Yunnan. He is studying to be a software engineer.

Food shortage likely in global rush for biofuel: U.N.

John Vidal

Winners and losers in multi-billion dollar industry — small farmers at risk.

THE GLOBAL rush to switch from oil to energy derived from plants will drive deforestation, push small farmers off the land, and lead to serious food shortages and increased poverty unless carefully managed, says the most comprehensive survey yet completed of energy crops.

The United Nations report, compiled by all 30 of the world organisation's agencies, points to crops like palm oil, maize, sugarcane, soya, and jatropha. Rich countries want to see these extensively grown for fuel as a way to reduce their own climate changing emissions. Their production could help stabilise the price of oil, open up new markets and lead to higher commodity prices for the poor. But the U.N. urges governments to beware their human and environmental impacts, some of which could have irreversible consequences.

The report, which predicts winners and losers, will be studied carefully by the emerging multi-billion dollar a year biofuel industry, which wants to provide as much as 25 per cent of the world's energy within 20 years.

Last year, more than a third of the entire U.S. maize crop went to ethanol for fuel, a 48 per cent increase on 2005, and Brazil and China grew the crops on nearly 50 million acres. The European Union has said that 10 per cent of all fuel must come from biofuels by 2020. Biofuels can be used in place of petrol and diesel and can play a part in reducing emissions from transport.

Positives too

On the positive side, the U.N. says that the crops have the potential to reduce and stabilise the price of oil, which could be very beneficial to poor countries. But it acknowledges that forests are already being felled to provide the land to grow vast plantations of palm oil trees. Environment groups argue strongly that this is catastrophic for the climate, and potentially devastating for forest animals such as orangutans in Indonesia.

The U.N. warns: "Where crops are grown for energy purposes the use of large scale cropping could lead to significant biodiversity loss, soil erosion, and nutrient leaching. Even varied crops could have negative impacts if they replace wild forests or grasslands." But the survey's findings are mixed on whether the crops will benefit or penalise poor countries, where most of the crops are expected to be grown in future. One school of thought argues they will take the best land, which will increase global food prices. This could benefit some farmers but penalise others and also increase the cost of emergency food aid.

"Expanded production [of biofuel crops] adds uncertainty. It could also increase the volatility of food prices with negative food security implications," says the report that was complied by U.N.-Energy.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

THE REALITY BEHIND THE WORLD'S WORKSHOP - The flaws in the Chinese economic miracle

Jean-Louis Rocca
Le Monde diplomatique, May 2007

China, with its unique mix of authoritarian government and rampant capitalism, is often portrayed as a fast-growing and malignant cancer that threatens the rest of the world's economies. But the reality is far more complex. China is struggling with mass migration, skills shortages and millions of unemployed graduates.

China and its teeming armies of workers seem to have become the focus of all our economic anxieties. We worry that the People's Republic will become the chief demon in a futur nightmare for our world: a capitalist-communist global power that combines leftwing authoritarianism with capitalist exploitation. We fear that our own people will become unemployed because of the outsourcing of production to China, the world's workshop.

But we have to think about Chinese labour differently, and not concentrate solely on the workshop aspect of the economy. We need to take account of a disparate, sometimes contradictory mix of economic, political and cultural elements. The labour-intensive industries with their industrial revolution exploitation affect only a fraction of China's enormous population. They cannot function on their own without interconnecting with other types of labour.

Agriculture is the only sector of the Chinese economy that has not been transformed by the new capitalism. Its labour force has not been turned into merchandise; the return to small family holdings of land has not led to new kinds of labour exploitation, nor has membership of the World Trade Organisation. Only collective ownership of land, currently being tested by a growing market in "utilisation rights" (1), still shows the traditional conservatism of the state. Agricultural labour policy remains highly political. There are of course considerations of food security, but the policy also allows the government to control a population that, if deprived of its means of production and social network, could turn migrant and invade the cities.

The government's aim is not to prevent migration but to regulate it; to prevent brutal urbanisation and allow migrants to return to their villages if the economy declines. The reality fits this strategy since most migrants do not see departure as a total break with their native villages. Agriculture remains as a fallback position, while the social network provides a structure for population movements, since most migrants are introduced to their employers by friends or family.

Around 120 to 150 million migrant farmers are subject to capitalist exploitation. More than half these peasant-workers (mingong) work in factories or on building sites. The remainder find jobs in catering and hotel businesses, retailing, security or even in garbage recycling (2). Some 80% of migrants abandon their land without actually leaving the countryside. They work in local industry; 50% never leave their native province. Their working conditions are not necessarily better than those of their peers in the global-supply sweatshops on the east coast, but their experiences do not match the traditional picture of the capitalist hell that is, for example, endured by China's miners.

Leaving for the cities

The authorities have changed the way they view migrations. Their social aspect was almost totally ignored during the 1980s and early 1990s, when liberal ideas about managing the labour force blended with a view that the migrations would not be large-scale or permanent. More recent developments, notably China's membership of the World Trade Organisation, have forced leaders to look more closely at rural employment. The stagnation of agriculture, and the importance to China's growth of the construction industry and sectors that are not capital intensive, have made the migrations strategically valuable. Researchers and civil servants now predict the progressive urbanisation of a large segment of the migrants, and some believe their living conditions should be improved to boost slackening domestic consumption.

The government is even considering an economic policy for migrants which includes housing them in cities hit by property speculation, giving those with no social security access to health care, educating their children (most have no access to schools) and persuading bosses (not just
capitalists but the heads of state construction companies) to actually pay their workers. These are not just grand philosophical principles, nor are they the effect of outside influences on Chinese disorder. These vital issues will set the conditions for continued growth in relative social
stability.

A trend that could be called "social capitalism" has emerged, popular among sociologists, journalists, congress delegates, civil servants and Chinese Communist party (CPP) members, which holds that while capitalism is good, it must go hand-in-hand with social policy. Proponents believe that a mechanism for redistributing wealth is necessary; wage increases for the lowest paid would boost flagging domestic demand.

The same people defend the idea that Chinese society should become more middle class as the only way to prevent a class war between rich and poor; and they believe some migrants should have access to this new middle stratum. This idea clashes, sometimes violently but usually discreetly, with the views of the free marketeers, who disapprove of social policy. The division doesn't reflect the reformist/conservative divide, though.

Some social capitalists have a nationalistic vision of capitalism and dream of Chinese state multinationals ruling the world. Others favour amore mercantilised capitalism. The economic liberals are not united; some are ultra-liberal, others favour a modicum of social policy. A hardline economic liberal may be a virulent anti-democrat and believe that only a strong government can control the market, and be hawkish in
international relations. The labour issue has arisen at a time when a small elite, not just CCP leaders and senior officials but also "elected" representatives, leaders of mass movements and the intelligentsia, is expressing a wide variety of opinions.

Adopting a social policy for migrant workers raises financial problems and might affect the future of the Chinese economic miracle. Many leaders ask if raising the cost of labour and providing social benefits might not be detrimental to China's competitiveness. Some point to the shortage of unskilled labour in certain areas of Guangdong province and ask if it is the result of a refusal to accept the conditions and wages
offered by the world's workshop, or the result of recent massive investment to open up the Chinese west? Or is it a demographic effect of the one-child policy (3)? The answer is probably "all of the above".

Migrants are not going home

It is clear that improved wages and living conditions, especially in Shanghai and in Fujian province where employers complain less of a labour shortage, have tempted many migrants to leave Guangdong province and head north. Perhaps migrants now have better knowledge of the labour market. The recent 23% increase in the minimum wage in Shenzhen shows that the remuneration of the new working class is a major issue. The mass return of migrant workers to the country is now considered hypothetical; surveys show that many farmers believe that their own futures lie in the cities. And the development of western China is only beginning. Perhaps the geographic trend is a result of changes in production along the coastal region. Labour-intensive industries are gradually moving to central China, while the eastern seaboard is turning to higher value-added employment. This redistribution would explain the emergence of a few local social security initiatives; companies on the coast need to ensure that they have access to a better-skilled and stable workforce.

China also has unemployment, which should be remembered by those who see it as the empire of labour. The official unemployment rate may be low; 4.1% of the urban population in 2006, although this does not include unemployed migrants or "off-post" workers who have lost their jobs but still depend on their company (the xiagang zhigong) (4). Nor does it include the unemployed who have reached the end of their entitlements, or the young jobless who have never paid contributions and are not entitled to benefits. Though there has been a significant increase in job applications since 2004, these are mostly for "informal" jobs (feizhenggui) without contract or social security. In urban areas "official" jobs are in the minority. Many former state employees remain out of work or only find jobs in the informal sector as auxiliary traffic police or security guards (5).

The most recent estimates reveal a tense situation. In 2006 the state provided 25m jobs for the urban population, 9m of them to labour market entrants, 3m to migrants (that this category was mentioned at all shows how the official line has changed) and 13m to workers who had lost jobs because of restructuring in the state sector. In reality, only 11.84m work contracts with social security entitlements were created
in 2006 (6). This year 24 million young people are expected to enter a labour market with only 12m new jobs (including places left by retirees) (7). The gap will be filled in part by unofficial jobs.

Effects on the young

The repercussions of the industrial restructuring in the second half of the 1990s that ended the jobs of millions of workers are still being felt. Urban unemployment is no longer confined to the older generation of "iron rice bowl" workers. The pretexts used to get rid of them implied that this
surplus generation was unable to adapt to market change and had to be sacrificed to make way for better-educated and more adaptable youth. But research in 2005 in the cities of Dalian, Tianjin, Changsha and Liuzhou showed that unemployment among 15-29 year-olds was 9% compared with 6.1% for the urban population as a whole.

According to Shen Jie, a sociology researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: "Most young people are in jobs with no social security or stability. They work long hours for poor wages." These are unskilled school leavers with the equivalent of a high-school diploma. They are unlikely to be in competition with the migrants for dirty jobs but do not
have the training for jobs in the new sectors.

Cohorts of jobless young people are looked after by residents' committees and street offices, the lowest administrative levels. They are given temporary tasks in the non-trade community sector such as security or maintenance, or hold low-level jobs in the trade-related activities that
are developing, such as hotels, restaurants and stores. Quotas are reserved for them in jobs considered inferior but still better paid and more highly prized than those given to the migrant workers. These young people are gradually forming a welfare-supported proletariat between the middle class and the migrants. The better off may refuse lowly jobs and live off their parents, who, if they can afford it, may send them
abroad to obtain a qualification from a second-rate business or hotel management school. (France is one of the most popular destinations.)

But unemployment also affects young graduates. These have risen from 1.07 million in 2000 to 4.13 million in 2006; by 2010, 23% of the young will be graduates (8). The Chinese economy is having trouble absorbing such numbers. They were almost half the 9 million young people who entered the labour market in 2006 expecting to find work in the "new sector". An estimated 60% of 2006 graduates did not find jobs that year.

There is a paradox; major Chinese and foreign enterprises complain of a shortage of skilled, tech-savvy labour, yet young graduates are unable to find jobs (see `Graduates without prospects', left). Employers claim that their education does not reflect market requirements, and there is
a lack of mobility among job seekers. China's development model is still predominantly based on unskilled labour. Graduate starting salaries are very low. According to a survey in 2005, 20.3% earn less than $129 a month and 65.4% get a maximum $259. These low financial rewards are hardly likely to foster a new Chinese middle class.

Few hard facts

Faced with the seriousness of the situation, the last session of the National People's Congress discussed a law promoting employment and setting some major objectives; to improve coordination between the cities and the countryside, provide free "job shop" services, remove all segregation in employment, bring in new measures for unemployed young people without university or secondary school qualifications,
develop professional training, and provide greater assistance to young graduates in finding their first jobs. But translating these measures into reality depends on what concrete measures national and local authorities will take.

There are few hard facts about Chinese labour. Surveys are infrequent and fragmentary and the categories used in official statistics are rarely reliable. The labour force is used according to political/economic thinking primarily motivated by stability. The existence of a state-aided sector limits competition between urban and migrant workers. The
state is able to keep part of the population in the countryside by maintaining a traditional sector of activity there, while restricting the flow to the cities. Modern jobs being developed in sectors such as telecommunications, finance and advertising provide jobs for some children of former state workers left by the wayside following the restructuring of state enterprises. The government enables these young people, who will fill future, or existing, employment needs, to join the workforce and work their way up to more sophisticated production.

This would not be possible with a fully centralised and all-knowing labour management policy which would result in growing unrest. The police are likely to have a different point of view of social stability in relation to migrant living conditions than would cadres in charge of economic policies or social security management, or ideological chiefs
and the official unions. These potential differences of opinion provide opportunities for action by associations defending the rights of migrants. They can explain that the best strategy is to show local government and bosses that a well-treated workforce is both more efficient and more
stable. This would gain them the support of many trade unionists who hope that the present conflicts between workers and private-sector bosses will make their movement legitimate. As one explained:"Opposing the illegal actions of capitalists does not mean opposing government policy. On the contrary, it means upholding the law."
________________________________________________________

(1) Land remains state-owned but the farmers own the right to
use it and hence to rent it.

(2) Major Chinese cities are mostly cleaned by these
recyclers who wander up and down the main streets in search
of waste that can be sold (at a low price) to salvage
companies.

(3) Chinese economists are having a lively debate on this.
See Philip Bowring, "Labor need haunts China", International
Herald Tribune, 8 April 2006.

(4) These are workers who have been laid off but are still
being paid by their work units. This category will soon
disappear and the xiagang zhigong will gradually join the
unemployed.

(5) See Martine Bulard, "China breaks the iron rice bowl", Le
Monde diplomatique, English edition, January 2007.

(6) 2006 Chinese government report.

(7) 2007 Chinese government report.

(8) See David Langue, "Chinese paradox: A shallow pool of
talent", International Herald Tribune, 25 April 2006.



Translated by Krystyna Horko

We need to talk about narcoanalysis

Sriram Lakshman
The Hindu, 2 May

Narcoanalysis is steadily being mainstreamed into investigations, court hearings, and laboratories in India. However, it raises serious scientific, legal, and ethical questions. These need to be addressed urgently before the practice spreads further.

A suspect was ` narcoanalysed' in Bangalore in a 2004 double murder case. In the drug-induced state, she spoke about a knife and purse allegedly involved in the crime but neither was recovered by the police. The outcome: acquittal owing to a lack of evidence. The judge also ruled that the narcoanalysis report and videograph could be used only for investigative purposes and not to convict suspects.

NARCOANALYSIS HAS become an increasingly, perhaps alarmingly, common term in India. It refers to the process of psychotherapy conducted on a subject by inducing a sleep-like state with the aid of barbiturates or other drugs. In a spate of high profile cases, such as those of the Nithari killers and the Mumbai train blasts, suspects have been whisked away to undergo an interview drugged with the barbiturate sodium pentothal.

This practice has also garnered support from certain State governments as well as the judiciary. Politicians have fallen into the habit of hurling the term `narcoanalysis' at opponents. In 2006, Karnataka Congress leader H. Vishwanath suggested that Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy should undergo narcoanalysis in the Chenamma Trust bribery case. The Home Ministry's Directorate of Forensic Sciences plans to expand narcoanalysis facilities nationwide. It is not surprising then that there are about 300 people in the narcoanalysis queue at the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Bangalore alone.

It would appear that the narcoanalysis beast has acquired a life of its own. It is increasingly knocking at the doors of courts and finding ready acceptance as a device to get at the truth during police investigations, though its scientific basis and value are under strong challenge. It is for this reason that the scientific, legal, and evidentiary issues relevant to the narcoanalysis debate need to be critically discussed.

Narcoanalysis is rarely used for therapeutic purposes today. The reliability of the practice has been questioned by leading psychiatric and forensic experts. Dr. P. Chandra Sekharan, the highly regarded former Director of the Forensic Sciences Department of Tamil Nadu, has characterised the practice as an unscientific, third-degree method of investigation.

It is surely significant that while `truth serums' have been in use since the early part of the 20th century, they are not used in most developed countries today. During and after the War years, United States armed forces and intelligence agencies continued to experiment with truth drugs. The CIA has admitted to using these as part of its interrogation tactics. But a declassified CIA interrogation manual says that while truth drugs can be useful in overcoming resistance not dissolved by other methods, the actual content of what comes out during the interrogation can be "psychotic manifestations ... hallucinations, illusions, delusions or disorientation." At the 1977 U.S Senate hearings on its secret mind-control project, the CIA acknowledged that "no such magic brew as the popular notion of truth serum exists."

Studies have shown that persons who make truthful confessions are those who were likely to confess had interrogators persisted with regular methods; and that persons who lie can continue to manifest a lie even under the influence of a so-called truth serum. Moreover, the investigator can induce and communicate his own thoughts and feelings to the suspect. The scientific literature indicates that if narcoanalysis has any extra-therapeutic uses, it may be in making a suspect feel that he has revealed more than he actually did. With repeated questioning, it may be possible to reduce ambiguities although these cannot be eliminated.

Two objections

Scientific scepticism and the absence of controlled studies have not deterred Indian investigating agencies from running to the FSL in Gandhinagar or, more likely, Bangalore — the narcoanalysis hub for various police departments across the country. FSL, Bangalore, conducts sodium pentothal narcoanalysis in conjunction with three other tests — psychological profiling, polygraph (`lie-detector') tests, and brain mapping. Polygraph tests, which one can learn to `pass' or `fail,' are used for screening and confirmation purposes only. Brain mapping, a premature if promising technique not entirely free from controversy itself, indicates whether a subject's brain stores experiential knowledge about a certain object. Narcoanalysis is used when investigators need oral elicitations from a suspect. For instance, if brain mapping indicates that the suspect stores information about a blue getaway car allegedly used in the crime, the narcoanalysis, according to the FSL, Bangalore, is used to provide information such as the number of the car, where it is parked, and so on.

Dr. B.M. Mohan, Director of FSL, Bangalore, claims that he has data to prove his contention that narcoanalysis has a 96 to 97 per cent total success rate. Included in the definition of `total success rate' is the discovery of information that either triggers a relevant section of the law or may be cross verified with other tests (such as brain mapping). According to Dr. Mohan, findings that discredit narcoanalysis are usually based on studies of scopolamine and sodium amytal and are not applicable to sodium pentothal, which is used by the Indian laboratories. He adds that during narcoanalysis the tendency is to sleep if not questioned, rather than hallucinating or fantasising.

There are two problems with this argument. Using sodium pentothal is not a new advance in narcoanalysis. Two experts at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore interviewed by The Hindu pointed out that internationally the psychological fraternity has used sodium pentothal for decades; and discontinued its use in all but the rarest cases, partly because there is no guarantee that the drug will elicit factually accurate information. Secondly, Dr. Mohan's contention that it is difficult to manifest fantasies in narcoanalysis is questionable. False memory is an extremely well-researched area according to Dr. Chittaranjan Andrade, a professor of psychopharmacology at NIMHANS. While patients under narcoanalysis may find it difficult to lie consciously depending on the depth of the narcoanalysis, they can say things that are not true and on the surface of their minds. Dr. Andrade explains the case of a suspect who is repeatedly accused of a crime during regular interrogation: "The same thing goes on during the narcoanalysis. He remembers `you've done this, you've done this.' He says, `I have done that.'"

When science has outpaced the development of law or at` least the layperson's understanding of it, there are unavoidable complexities regarding what can be admitted as evidence in court. In the United States, where science often interfaces uncomfortably with the law, the Supreme Court offered four criteria, part of the Daubert Standard (1993), by which to judge the credibility of a scientific principle held by a minority of practitioners: hypothesis testing; peer review and publication; knowledge of error rates; and acceptability in the general scientific community.

Pseudo-science

We must give narcoanalysis its due and grant that it has provided valuable leads to the police in some instances. However, one swallow, or even many swallows in this case, do not a summer make. It is logically consistent for even a pseudo-science to produce reliable outcomes in particular cases. The overall reliability and science behind the practice can only be determined after statistical analysis of a sufficiently large sample.

The irony of the situation we face in India is that the science behind narcoanalysis, as we know it, has not leapfrogged the courts by any stretch of imagination. The Bangalore research results and methods have been neither peer-reviewed nor published. Regarding publication of the data, Dr. Mohan says he will go public with the FSL data in three to four months (from March 2007) and is willing to debate its implications at international forums. But it is unlikely that studies based on some 300 criminal investigations will yield controlled experimental data. The feedback that goes into defining the success of the analysis is provided in part by police questionnaires. Here lurks a conflict of interest.

Legal aspects

There are other significant legal aspects to the narcoanalysis debate. In a 2006 judgment (Dinesh Dalmia v State), the Madras High Court held that subjecting an accused to narcoanalysis is not tantamount to testimony by compulsion. The court said about the accused: "he may be taken to the laboratory for such tests against his will, but the revelation during such tests is quite voluntary." There are two fallacies in this reasoning. First, if narcoanalysis is all that it is made out to be by the Bangalore FSL, the accused will involuntarily answer questions posed to him during the interview. The second fallacy is that it is incorrect to say that the accused is merely taken to the lab against his will. He is then injected with substances. The breaking of one's silence, at the time it is broken, is always technically `voluntary.' Similarly, it can be argued that after being subject to electric shocks, a subject `quite voluntarily' divulges information. But the act or threat of violence is where the element of coercion is housed. In narcoanalysis, the drug contained in the syringe is the element of compulsion. The rest is technically voluntary.

In 2004, the Bombay High Court ruled in the multi-crore-rupee fake stamp paper case that subjecting an accused to certain tests like narcoanalysis does not violate the fundamental right against self-incrimination. Article 20(3) of the Constitution guarantees this: "No person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself." Statements made under narcoanalysis are not admissible in evidence. However, recoveries resulting from such drugged interviews are admissible as corroborative evidence. This is, arguably, a roundabout way to subverting the right to silence — acquiring the information on where to find the weapon from the subject when, in his right senses, he would not turn witness against himself.

Arguments have been made that narcoanalysis constitutes mental torture. It works by inhibiting the nervous system and thus lowering the subject's inhibitions. It is not difficult to interpret this as a physical violation of an individual's mind-space.

The State police departments are responsible for generating demand for the process. The decision to conduct narcoanalysis is usually made by the Superintendent of Police or the Deputy Inspector General handling a case. A high-ranking official in the Karnataka Police told The Hindu that police departments in India have poor skills when it comes to collection, collation, and presentation of evidence before the courts. Consequently, when there is enormous pressure on a police department to solve a case, sending suspects to narcoanalysis not only buys time but also gives the impression that something concrete has been done about the case.

Some officials connected to law enforcement argue that narcoanalysis can be of great use in instances where witnesses turned hostile; rape cases where issues of consent are being debated; and cases where the investigating officer is hard pressed for time or working to disrupt offences planned for the near future, including terrorist acts.

Scope for abuse

This ticking-bomb terrorist case argument has also cropped up frequently in the media after the 9/11 attacks. It has been championed by Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who argues for legitimising torture in select scenarios, for example when a hypothetical bomb is waiting to explode. There are many arguments against the selective use of normally banned cruel practices. Authorities are likely to abuse the power to decide which situations will warrant such exceptions, even when such extraordinary situations are explicitly laid out by law. It will be difficult to find a fool-proof way to determine which suspect is concealing information about a hypothetical bomb. It will often be impossible to know if there is a bomb ticking in the first place. These questions of discretion aside, when a country claims to be committed to human rights and against torture, one may ask if there can ever be a situation that warrants a deviation from its commitment to such principles.

While the expert studies and court opinions available internationally have granted that there may be some use in narcoanalysis, the overwhelming evidence is that narcoanalysis is by no means a reliable science. In the face of a near-consensus internationally, one or two Indian forensic labs claim to have new evidence and studies claiming remarkable success rates for the process. They must now prove their claim that narcoanalysis is backed by sound science. In the absence of proof, narcoanalysis must necessarily be suspended, especially given its ethical and human rights implications.

State governments need to work with the central authorities to enhance the investigative capabilities of their police departments. The police now hand over one of the most crucial parts of the investigation to a clinical psychologist conducting narcoanalysis. Interrogation is an art as well as a science. It takes enormous amounts of training and patience — skills evidently lacking in much of the police force and increasingly outsourced to Bangalore. The central government must make a clear policy stand on narcoanalysis — because what is at stake is India's commitment to individual freedoms and a clean criminal justice system.

Judicial power

Freedom ~ freedom for citizens like you and me ~ can only be secured through Courts ~ not through Parliament or through executive governments

By FALI S NARIMAN
The Statesman, 30 April

It is not without significance that when we are discussing separation of powers under the Constitution we have in the person of the Speaker and the former Chief Justice of India the two highest representatives of the two great organs of State ~ Parliament and the courts.

In their august presence I feel like the priest who was newly appointed to his parish and who went to make a courtesy call on his Bishop. The Bishop welcomed the new padre and solemnly told him that in his Sunday sermons he must praise those who are in Heaven and never forget to condemn all those who are in Hell. The priest shuffled a little and then excused himself saying: “I am sorry my Lord I cannot. Because I have friends in both places.”

I too have friends in both places: I have spent six rich and eventful years with law-makers and learnt much from them, and I have spent a professional lifetime with lawyers and judges. Having been on both sides of the fence let me give you my views.

As to when judicial power should trump legislative and executive power, and when if at all parliamentary power can or should trump judicial power: I think the truthful answer is: it all depends, it all depends on public acceptability of court decisions in high-profile cases.

“Judicial Activism” ~ is a much talked about phrase: but really it is only one manifestation of judicial power: a famous lawyer in England Anthony Lester recently described it ~ parodying Lord Acton’s ~ hackneyed ~ phrase. Seeing what English Judges do, he would have English Judges say (and I quote):

“Judicial power is wonderful, and absolute judicial power is absolutely wonderful”.

In India, the content and reach of judicial power is not defined ~ neither in our Constitution nor anywhere else.

Many believe that written constitutions that give power to the courts to strike down legislation made by a country’s elected Parliament is undemocratic: it enables unelected judges (they say) to thwart the wishes of the elected representatives of the people in Parliament. There may be something to be said for this point of view.

But it is too late in the day to complain. For more than 57 years we have been working a Constitution which is federal in nature with allocated subjects of legislation separately and exclusively given to the States and to the Union; there is also a chapter on Fundamental Rights: all laws and all executive action inconsistent with them are expressly declared to be “void”. Some authority then would have to be the final arbiter ~ in a controversy. And that arbiter under our Constitution is ultimately the country’s highest court.

It has been said that where there are no judicially manageable standards our courts should not interfere; they should leave it to the elected representatives of the people. This is correct - in theory of course.

After 60 years of Independence, and after 14 general elections to the Lok Sabha, and all the publicity that is given to proceedings in Parliament, ordinary people ~ people who have voted their elected representatives into Parliament ~ remain generally unsatisfied as to how MPs function: if and when they function at all! Almost every session of Parliament during the last few years has been marred by some dispute or contention of the moment ~ not of any grave national importance: there is hardly any serious debate on topics of all-India concern!

For two successive years now an important measure like the annual Finance Bill has been passed in each House of Parliament in a matter of minutes, without debate or discussion ~ amidst din and shouting. There is something wrong somewhere.

And the reason for what the Prime Minister recently characterised as a “judicial over ~ reach” is: ~ that since power grows by what it feeds on, Judicial Power also grows by accretion, by the mere circumstance that other constitutional bodies and authorities set up to legislate and to pass administrative orders have failed when called upon to act.

I suggest that the “judicial over-reach” the Prime Minister spoke about is the direct result of legislative and executive neglect or “under-reach”: poor performance in the making of laws and their execution. If judges need to introspect (I confess that they do: and frequently too), politicians also need to introspect and ask themselves whether they have fulfilled the aspirations of the people who put them at the wheel of governance. If judges are to get off the backs of parliamentarians, politicians and bureaucrats ~ those who claim the right to govern must come up with a much better record of performance: only when they do, will the people of this great country give us back majority governments both in the Centre and in the States.

In our Constitutional History of 57 years, judicial power has kept vacillating ~ contracting at times, expanding at times ~ according to the exigencies of the moment. During the internal Emergency of June 1975 up to March 1977 it had contracted ~ almost to vanishing point: and one of those who fought against that internal Emergency was our eminent parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee to whom liberty is the very blood of life.

In his entire political life Somnath Chatterjee has always fought against tyranny and religious bigotry ~ that was why he was opposed to the internal Emergency of June 1975: that was the time when judicial power under our Constitution was at its lowest ebb.

As I said judicial power had contracted to its lowest level with the now notorious case of ADM Jabalpur (1976) when India’s then Chief Justice proclaimed in a judgment ~ a judgment which needs to be overruled (and I quote)

“Liberty itself is the gift of the law” (mark you the gift of the law ~ i.e. the gift of Parliament) and (the judgment goes on) “and it may by the law be forfeited or abridged.”

This was endorsed by a majority of four judges in a Bench of five ~ the great Justice Khanna alone dissenting ~ the majority decision made the Maintenance of Internal Security Act sacrosanct and beyond all judicial review.

Fortunately for us, this concept of liberty is not the rule of law on which our Constitution has been founded. It is a rule by law. If the rule of law is rule by judges (as it is frequently said to be) the-rule-by-law is the law that elected representatives make without any possibility of questioning it by the Judicial Arm of the State. I would like to live under a rule of law rather than under a rule by law. It is true that other countries have prospered in rule-by-law regimes. A Government which governs a State by law alone achieves economic progress quicker than a country like ours governed by the rule of law. Everybody praises China, but in that large country, as well as in that other small country the Republic of Singapore, even in this liberalised twenty-first century, do you know that you still require a police permit to hold a public meeting ~ a meeting just like this, to discuss a subject just like this, and I assure you in neither country would such a permit be granted! Let us reflect on this when we speak on a subject like Separation of Powers.

I am most heartened that the pendulum swung away from Chief Justice Ray’s grim dictum in the post-emergency period when both the Courts and Parliament (mark you even Parliament) said that Article 21 - our life and liberty clause - can never be suspended and it is, I believe, by this single act of Parliament when it amended our Constitution to provide that the right to life and liberty could never be suspended even during an Emergency that has given supremacy to the judicial branch of Government over all other branches.

I do not subscribe to the view that there has to be a “balance of power” amongst the three organs of the State, except for a limited purpose which I will mention presently. But I am definitely of the view that the Judicial Power howsoever defined cannot be trenched on either by Parliament or by the executive.

Do remember that it was so trenched on when the Ninth Schedule to our Constitution was deliberately added way back by the First Constitution Amendment of 1951 ~ which provided that all laws ~ whether Central or State ~ which Parliament chose to put in a Schedule to the Constitution ~ the Ninth Schedule ~ were to be totally immune from all judicial review. Even if such laws violated fundamental rights and had been struck down by Courts ~ all such laws got automatically revived: and continued as valid! This total denial of Judicial Power enacted by Article 31B was initially tolerated only because the laws that were initially put in the Ninth Schedule were land reform laws.

But later judgments of the Supreme Court said that laws which were placed in the Ninth Schedule were not confined to land reform laws. And what happened? Taking advantage of this pronouncement by the highest court the Government of the day during the 1975 Internal Emergency:

~ First put MISA ~ the dreaded security law ~ also in the Ninth Schedule ~ making its noxious provisions impervious to all judicial review;

~ And next enacted the Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Act 1976, an act to control and muzzle the free Press and put that Act also in the Ninth Schedule!

It is only when internal Emergency was lifted, (thank God it was) and elections were held, and the Janata Government came to power on a wave of popularity ~ as a backlash to the internal Emergency ~ that a new Parliament ~ mark you Parliament itself ~ deleted MISA from the Ninth Schedule and repealed the Press Gagging Act: i.e. it left the life and liberty clause and freedom of the press guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a) virtually free of all executive and legislative constraints.

Freedom ~ freedom for citizens like you and me ~ can only be secured through Courts ~ not through Parliament or through executive governments.

I do not think it is permissible to speak about the omnipotence of Parliament in all things, nor to talk about clipping the wings of the judicature ~ or saying that jJdges are going too far.

Yes, you may criticise this or that judgment of the Supreme Court or of the High Courts which have needlessly interfered in PILs ~ so called Public Interest Litigation ~ with the day to day governance of the country which ought be left to the elected representatives. It is such PILs that have given our higher judiciary a bad name.

If the PILs had retained the character which first prompted the Supreme Court to recognise them ~ there would have been no problem viz. to afford to the poor and indigent a foothold and an audience in courts ~ that was in fact the original intention. But now PILs have swarmed into all walks of public life.

Needless furore

Having no personal interest at all these PILs ask courts to pronounce on this or that administrative or executive policy, and often our courts are willing to oblige in the euphoria generated by that aphorism of Lord Lester viz: that “absolute judicial power is absolutely wonderful”.

Of course the judiciary has to set it its own house in order which it is the job of the Chief Justice of India to oversee.

Very recently after Parliament unanimously passed an Act to give OBCs representation in centrally administered institutions like IIMs and a stay was granted by the Supreme Court on its implementation in the current academic year commencing June 2007, there was a furore: to my mind a needless furore. The furore was because government did not make the right application when at last it did our Chief Justice (in my respectful submission rightly) gave judicial power a new meaning by holding that the Court (and no one elest) would pronounce on the validity of the Act or any of its provisions but on an earlier date viz. 8th May without disturbing the stay already granted. This was an exercise of judicial power with judicial wisdom.

Parliament too must ~ like the judiciary ~ set its own house in order. And the fact that it has at the instance of the Hon’ble Speaker contemplated action with such promptitude in the recent human trafficking scandal in which some MPs are allegedly involved is a good sign. It has kept the judges off the back of politicians in managing their own affairs.

But from this to say that the judiciary just cannot interfere with any action of the government and any action of Parliament which affects persons outside the four walls of the House is totally erroneous.

As to action within the four walls of the House, Parliament is and must be supreme and I have said so on innumerable occasions and the Hon’ble Speaker is aware of my views: as to how individual members of Parliament are to be treated by Parliament is for Parliament alone ~ not a matter for the courts. And I think the court was wrong in entertaining petitions by persons who were dismissed from Parliament by the unanimous vote of Parliament as Members when they were found to be corrupt.

This much I concede to Parliament but laws passed by Parliament, and decisions taken by the Executive are all subject to the overall scrutiny of the court for legality and constitutional transgressions.

But, to give due credibility to our judiciary the time has now come to restore the position that obtained in 1982 when the Supreme Court relaxed the necessity of a litigant having to show personal interest in every matter filed in court ~ but only for those too poor and indigent and ignorant and hence unable to approach the courts. In the latter case alone ~ someone on their behalf could apply to the courts for relief.

I am a strong believer that if this is done, Judicial Power will be restored to its proper role and place, and if you like to call this the “balance of power”, then very well the balance of power will be maintained.

But no usurpation of Judicial Power by the executive or the legislatures can be tolerated because that is not how our Constitution has been framed.

Yes, the judges of the High Courts and of the Supreme Court have been given a very important position in our constitutional scheme but the institution of the courts especially the established Courts can only survive if people ~ right thinking people ~ retain confidence in them. So judges too must at all times and at all places be seen to be behaving ethically, with honour and within the Constitution and the law.

To conclude I heartily welcome a discussion on the topic of separation of powers and we will all learn much from what is said by the Hon’ble Speaker and the Hon’ble Chief Justice.

The fear

The only thing I fear in a seminar or debate such as this is that a climate of opinion may be created where Judicial Power gets eroded. Let me emphatically say with all humility and with respect that this is something which I absolutely resist: any such an erosion in my humble view is directly contrary to the clear intention of our Constitution. Individual judges ~ good, bad and indifferent ~ may come and go but the Constitution can never be judged or perverted by the indiscretion of one or more of the judges of the Superior Courts.

The Constitution has entrusted to our highest court the custody and control of the Constitution ~ and of all institutions created under it. The width of Judicial Power is as long as its reach, subject only to its acceptability by the people: everything turns on the first three words of our Constitution WE THE PEOPLE: The opening words do not say: “WE THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE”.

Ample Judicial Power administered with ample judicial wisdom: that is the need of the hour: not a curtailment of Judicial Power, but wisdom in its administration.

The author is an eminent jurist. These were his remarks at the Katju Memorial Lecture on 26 April 2007

An impossible mission, rewarding, exhilarating

K. Narayanan
The Hindu, 30 April

The key element in a daily newspaper is speed — speed in every facet of its operations, be it writing, editing or deciding the choice and display of news. The mechanical aspects such as putting together the paper, printing, and distribution also involve speed, but these are not, I would think, as stressful as the cerebral part of the newspaper industry.

The production team might disagree with me, because of the experience on Tamil New Year's day, and the days following, when parts of Chennai city went without The Hindu, because of some settling-in problems in the new printing unit that started functioning at Maraimalai Nagar, on the outskirts of the city. The Readers' Editor's office was flooded with phone calls throughout the day; I can very well imagine what the marketing staff went through.

Moving away from this digression and getting back to the speed and stress of the editorial department: Post-production reviews can reveal the flaws in what was done and throw up ideas on how a more polished effort could have been made. Self-criticism and constructive criticism by peers can spur the urge to do better. But that I feel is an ideal and is seldom practised.

Readers who pick out the real and perceived flaws are seldom aware of the causative factors — mainly the speed at which the work is done. Many are quick to point out errors in printing, syntax, and of course facts. Some go deeper as does Devraj Sambasivan, a part-time teacher of English in Alappuzha (Kerala). He has sent me some published reports in

The Hindu, re-edited by his students as a class exercise, effecting a 10 per cent reduction in wordage. It is a good effort, but as I pointed out to Mr. Devraj, such polishing and chiselling is possible when your eye is not on the clock.

* * *

A more serious point he raises is about contributions to readers' mail. "News items on regional pages seem to find their way unobstructed from the reporter's scribble pad to the broadsheet. But the staff seem to be hyperactive with regard to readers' mail which undergo insensitive and unimaginative and sometimes atrocious manipulation," he says. Rather strong words, but a comparison of the original and the published versions of Mr. Devraj's contribution shows there is some justification for the comments. It is in this context that Mr. Devraj asks me whether "your observations and suggestions [on editing] are considered in-house. More than on the factual errors which you more often than not promptly acknowledge and rectify, I focus on the standard and quality of the edited content that finds its way to print."

In these columns, I comment on quality and standards. There it ends — these are my views, not edicts. If someone benefits, that will be a matter for satisfaction. I receive feedback from readers, next to nothing from the staff. What I do is meant to "enable corrective action to be taken," as the Editor-in-Chief said. What action is taken, I am not aware of.

That seems to be the experience of newspaper ombudsmen elsewhere too. Some of them have given expression to this.

Israel Rosenblatt, who was ombudsman of Maariv of Tel Aviv from 1991 until he retired three years ago, describes ombudsmen as "the last idealists in a too commercialised, overpacked-with-prejudices journalism. Or to use a poetic metaphor ... the legendary Dutch boy, trying to block the flood in the dam with his finger ... To succeed as an ombudsman, you have to be not only right, but also very wise. A mission sometimes impossible."

* * *

Marcela Beraba, who served Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil as ombudsman for three years wrote in a farewell piece on April 1, 2007: "I leave the job without the leap in quality which I hoped and desired being accomplished ... Pressures by readers are here to stay and that is good ... The impression I have in these years of observation is that companies have their complete focus on the business side and the discussion about content in the newspaper stopped being a priority with the weakening of news rooms."


* * *
Her job as readers' representative at the San Diego Union-Tribune for nearly 15 years was satisfying and frustrating, said Gina Lubrano (she took voluntary retirement in December 2006 as part of the downsizing of the editorial department — a trend seen in U.S. newspapers). Satisfying because she was able to correct and sometimes make amends with people who felt hurt or offended. Frustrating when the paper was wrong and when it needlessly offended readers. Ms. Lubrano continues to work as executive secretary of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen.


* * *
But Ian Mayes, whom I consider a role model for newspaper ombudsmen, finds his 10-year stint at The Guardian (which ended on March 31, 2007 — he has moved on to write the history of the paper) "rewarding and sometimes even exhilarating." "The Guardian has set high standards and then opened a door to let the world watch its struggles to live up to them ... It is perhaps lamentable that The Guardian has been unable to prevent the repetition of petty but irritating mistakes particularly those which seem to indicate a lack of care or attention to the language. It is folly not to have an interactive relationship between newspapers and readers."

That, I think, should answer Mr. Devraj's doubts on what ombudsmen can and cannot do.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

The politics of trade routes

Atul Aneja
The Hindu, 30 April

Russia, China, and India are looking for new and safe trade routes linking Asia with the markets of Europe.

RUSSIA'S RESURGENCE, the rise of China, and a promising India have opened up another frontier in the ongoing tussle between the East and West for global influence. The three countries are looking for trade routes that are safe, cost-effective, and less prone to geopolitical impediments.

The new routes from Asia to Europe, seek to integrate markets in Europe, Russia, Central Asia, China, Iran, Pakistan, India, and South East Asia. The possibility of West Asian countries joining this emerging transport architecture in the future is also high.

From a geopolitical perspective, the new routes would lessen the overwhelming reliance of partner countries on the Suez Canal for trade with Europe. Russia is especially keen on reducing its dependence on the Dardanelles and Bosporus straits. For long, Russian ships sailing from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk have relied heavily on these channels which pass through Turkey, a key member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Turkish and Russian authorities have often been at odds with each other over the passage of Russian tankers through these straits.

Russia has been making a concerted effort to ensure that a large volume of the Euro-Asia trade transits through its territory. It has been making major investments to refurbish its domestic transport infrastructure and is rapidly developing its ports along the Caspian Sea coast.

It is also modernising its rail and road network to enable efficient transfer of cargo towards Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, and Rotterdam. Russia already has a well-developed rail network thatconnects its Black Sea and Caspian Sea ports. Consequently, it can handle large volumes of cargo sourced from Asia, without worrying too much about congestion at its ports.

Major Asian ports, such as Mumbai, Lianyugang and Tianjin in China, and the Iranian transport hub of Bandar Abbas are the starting points of some of the new routes.

Among the large number of inter-continental transport lines being developed, the North-South corridor passing through the Caspian Sea and then Russia is promising. After transiting through Russia, the rote terminates on the Baltic Sea coast.

Starting points

Indian ports on the Arabian Sea coast such as Mumbai are the starting points of this corridor. Ships then head towards Bandar Abbas in the Persian Gulf. A road and a rail link connects Bandar Abbas with Iran's Caspian Sea ports of Bandar Anzali and Amirabad. From there, cargo is trans-shipped northwards towards Astrakhan on the Russian Caspian Sea coast. The final leg of the journey begins there. Goods are taken across the Volga corridor towards Moscow and St. Petersburg, and into northern Europe.

The North-South route is both shorter and cheaper than the alternative — the Suez Canal corridor which takes containers through the Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic, the North Sea, and the Baltic coast.

It has the potential of reducing transit time from 10 to 20 days. The cost per container can also be decreased by $400-$500. The North-South Corridor intersects other east-west transport routes passing through China, Central Asia, and Europe. Consequently, cargo can be trans-shipped in a cost-effective manner to other destinations as well.

Focussing on the Caspian Sea, Russia has been developing the ports of Makhachkala, Lagan and Olya energetically. Located strategically on the western Caspian coast, Makhachkala is the capital of Russia's Dagestan province. It plays a vital role in connecting Russia with the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. A regular ferry service capable of handling heavy cargo connects Makhachkala with Turkmenistan's eastern Caspian port of Turkmenbashi. From here, a rail line passing through a large segment of the Turkmenistan's Karkum desert extends further east towards Dushanbe, the Tajik capital. A ferry service from Makhachkala also makes regular runs to Kazakhstan's rapidly developing Caspian port and oil terminal of Aktau. Makhachkala port has emerged as an important terminal for transferring Caspian oil to Novorossiysk straddling the Black sea.

In recent years, China has emerged as another promising gateway to Central Asia and Europe. The eastern Chinese port of Lianyugang and the Dutch port of Rotterdam are connected by a 10,900-km rail link. The track connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans passes through the border province of Xinjiang before entering Kazakhstan through Urumchi.

Tianjin, further north of Lianyugang in China, has also become a springboard for trade with Europe and the countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

India has been making active use of both the North-South corridor and the Tianjin route for trade with Central Asia. "Currently Bandar Abbas port is handling most of the export-import freight movement from India to the Central Asian Republics. The railway network laid during the period of the erstwhile Soviet Union is being utilised for further deliveries [from Bandar Abbas] to major Central Asian cities," says Satish Chandra, president of the India-CIS Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Senior officials pointed out that there was a greater likelihood that containers loaded at ports along the east coast would transit through the China route. As trade between India and China gathers momentum and political tensions begin to ease, both sides can consider the possibility of developing another East-West transit corridor.

India is considering a plan to build 150 km of rail track across Mizoram and another 200 km inside Myanmar. This can connect with a line China is planning to extend into Myanmar through its Yunnan province. If these links are established, Myanmar could become a bridge through which Indian goods can be sent into China, Central Asia, Russia, and Europe.

With new lifelines of international commerce passing through China, Central Asia, Iran, and Russia, India's stakes in deepening its relationship with these countries have risen substantially.

U.N. facing backlash on emissions action plan

Amelia Hill, Juliette Jowit and Robin McKie
The Hindu, 30 April

THE WORLD'S leading climate change experts will this week outline highly controversial plans to save the world from global warming. Their proposals — which include a major expansion in nuclear power, the use of GM crops to boost biofuel production, and reliance on unproven technologies, including the underground storage of carbon dioxide — will put the United Nations' climate group on a collision course with a host of environmental groups.

The proposals for saving the planet are outlined in a draft version of "Mitigation of Climate Change" by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is the third part of the panel's 2007 analysis of global warming. Previous reports have focused on the science of climate change and its likely impacts. The third and final report concentrates on measures that can be taken to save the Earth from the worst, most catastrophic effects of rising temperatures triggered by the pumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Crucially the IPCC panel insists that it is "technically and economically" feasible to stabilise greenhouse emissions — but only if countries are prepared to pay the extra costs of transforming everything from energy supply networks to agriculture to waste. By 2030, the report estimates that the cost of stabilising greenhouse gases at levels that are considered the maximum for avoiding catastrophic climate change would cost between 0.2 per cent and 0.6 per cent of global wealth.

As well as plans for more nuclear power, genetically modified biofuels, and carbon capture and storage, the report sets out a vision of the future that is a mixture of existing policies, such as energy efficiency and renewable energy from wind and wave farms, and more futuristic ideas for hydrogen car fleets and "intelligent" buildings which can control energy use.

On Saturday night, Tony Juniper, executive director of the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth, said far more fundamental lifestyle changes were needed than had been considered by the U.N. group. Nuclear reactors are dangerous and land clearance and chemical pesticides and fertilizers used to grow fuel crops can cause huge environmental damage, he added. "Structural change to the economy, behaviour change and culture change — those have to be elements in a world of decarbonisation," said Mr. Juniper.

However, other groups criticised the IPCC for not being sufficiently robust in its support for technological fixes to the world's climate problems.

Bruno Comby, president of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, said nuclear power should provide an even bigger proportion of energy than that envisaged by the U.N. scientists and politicians. "Nuclear is not the only solution, but it's the biggest solution," he said.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006