Issue 58 Vol III, February 29, 2008

F E A T U R E S

Most Pay Bribes to Civic Officials in Punjab
L K Verma

WE have all known this, experienced it at one level or other. Either you pay a bribe or have powerful support to get a government or civic job done. It is a well-known fact that government jobs, which aren’t very tedious, can be had after paying off hefty sums and for transfers too, money talks or a good ‘sifarish’.

Now a study supports our beliefs. A government sponsored survey has found out that 76.5 per cent of people pay bribes to officials in various municipal bodies of the state to get their work done. The finding is an outcome of a study conducted by the Institute for Development and Communication (IDC) for the Department of Planning, Punjab Government. The study discovered that 76.5 per cent of the respondents had paid bribe on one occasion and most of them (82.3 per cent) had paid it to one person only.

In a damning indictment of the municipal bodies, the survey showed that 74.9 per cent of the people were dissatisfied with their grievance redressal system. The Jalandhar municipal body fared most poorly with only 2 per cent of the respondents saying that the civic body was prompt in dealing with grievances.

It was not a voluntary act on the part of the bribe givers as 94.1 per cent of the respondents admitted that the person concerned had asked for money to redress their problems regarding basic amenities such as water, sewerage, streetlights and roads. Besides paying bribes, 37.1 per cent of the people also felt the need to approach an influential person to get their complaints redressed.

Almost half of the respondents did not wish to pay bribes for work at the MC-level, but were forced to do so. However, in many cases, bribe did not prove to be the ideal solution. Nearly 44.1 per cent of the respondents complained of harassment even after paying the bribe. Only 23.5 per cent felt that their work was done immediately after they paid the amount demanded, said the study.

A large number (37.4 per cent) of respondents felt that middle-level officials were the most corrupt and only 8.1 per cent pointed a finger at the councilors. A majority of the complaints (45.2 per cent) were related to poor water supply followed by faulty streetlights, potholed roads (11.3 per cent) and choked sewerage (8.1 per cent).

In Hoshiarpur, poor or polluted water supply accounted for half the complaints, while building construction made up for one-fourth of the grouses. In Moga and Amritsar, blockage of sewerage and poor water supply were the major grouses.

The reasons for corruption, according to the study, ranged from poor work culture, faulty management, lack of proper planning, absence of transparency, to ad hoc allocation of resources.

The people surveyed made keen proposals and they said transparency and involvement of locals at grassroots would improve the delivery system.

Principal Secretary, Local Bodies, Dharambir Singh Bains, however, blames the old and poor urban infrastructure for the corrupt system. “Urban infrastructure is nearing a collapse in the state for want of investment in the last decade and half. Some unscrupulous elements take advantage of people who want better services. The answer lies in massive investment to upgrade the urban services which we are doing this year.”  This has some truth in it, but does that mean if we out more money into the system it would become transparent. It is poor governance, lack of responsibility at the political and administrative level and rampant corruption that leads to such a messy situation.

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Shahid-e-Azam Bhagat Singh’s portrait at the Vancouver Transit Union
Gurpreet Singh writes from Vancouver

TO mark the 100th birth anniversary of Bhagat Singh, the Vancouver Transit Union office has installed his portrait along side the poster of the LATIN American revolutionary, Che Guevara. The portrait of Bhagat Singh was gifted by an Indo Canadian Union member, Harbhajan Atwal to the office in the presence of Indo Canadian bus drivers.

The ceremony has added another milestone in the history of the Indo Canadian community. Carlos Moreira, the Latino representative of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 111 and the office in charge happily agreed to have Bhagat Singh’s portrait installed next to Guevara’s poster in his room.

An admirer of Che, Carlos appreciated the role of Bhagat Singh in organizing labour movement and spearheading a struggle against imperialism. He equated his mission with that of Che Guevara. While pointing out to  two pictures. Kirpal Bains, a former CAW leader commented that Bhagat Singh is in a good company. He said that both these leaders stood for the rights of the workers and the oppressed people.  A sign on the entrance of the office read, "Racism Free Zone’’. It is pertinent to mention that Che and Bhagat Singh were also the champions of the human rights and social equality.

The installation of his picture in a union office is a fitting tribute as Bhagat Singh who was arrested for throwing a bomb in the parliament to partially oppose a British law that was designed to suppress the Trade Union movement. He was also the editor of Kirti (Worker) and had emphasized on workers’ unity and class struggle to prevent human exploitation, which he felt would continue even after the British left India.

Incidentally, his portrait was installed a few days before the birth anniversary of his uncle, Ajit Singh, another towering leader who had organized Pagdi Sambhal Jatta Lehar, a farmers’ movement 100 years ago. Ajit Singh was also a role model of Bhagat Singh.

Last year, a series of events were organized and statements were issued to mark Bhagat Singh’s birth centenary in British Columbia. The municipal government of Burnaby issued a proclamation and declared September 27 as Bhagat Singh Day.

The BC’s official opposition party, NDP congratulated the South Asian community. Strangely the NDP which is a social democratic party claims to be the follower of Bhagat Singh’s ideology, the party has started distancing itself from the worker unions.

Not to be left behind, the BC Liberal government also issued a similar statement. Interestingly, the BC Liberal party follows the right wing ideology and is accused of ruthless cut backs in social services and scrapping of the human rights commission making BC the only province in Canada without such commission.

Although these were tokenistic gestures, but they might serve as important steps to showcase Bhagat Singh to the west that knows a lot about Gandhi and too little about him.

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Nepal’ internal crisis resolved: Autonomy for Mahdes
Micky Sharma

Nepal’s interim government has shown sign of maturity by accepting the demand of more autonomy for the Mahdes, the Terai region bordering India. In a major breakthrough, Nepal government on February 27 signed a peace deal with a key agitating Madhesi group, accepting its major demand for an autonomous Mahdes region to end a stand-off that was threatening to derail the upcoming elections and causing concern to India.

The United Democratic Madhesi Front said it will take part in the April 10 Constituent Assembly elections and end the 16-day strike that had paralysed the southern Terai region after its leaders signed the eight-point agreement with Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala in Baluwatar.

Over 150 people had died in the agitation since early last year by the ethnic Indian Madhes community of Terai in southern Nepal which alleges discrimination by the hill people. India has made it clear to the Nepal government that it will have to address the issues of the community for a successful Constituent Assembly polls.

Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitoula said the elections will be held as scheduled on April 10, but as the deadline for the filing of nomination has ended, the Election Commission will be asked to make a special provision to allow Madhesi leaders to submit their nomination papers. He also urged the other armed agitating groups in the region to come forward for talks.

Shedding its reluctance that had stalled the talks earlier, the government has agreed to formation of an autonomous Madhes region with clear demarcation of powers to be outlined by the new Constituent Assembly.

Earlier Nepal’s Seven Party Alliance authorised Nepal’s Seven Party Alliance authorised Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala to strike a deal with the agitating ethnic Indian Madeshi groups to end the strike in Terai.

During a meeting at Koirala’s residence, the top brass of CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist asked him to resolve the crisis by forging an agreement with the agitating United Democratic Madhesi Front through dialogue.

Earlier, Violence has  unsettled the Himalayan country as the police shot dead a protestor in southern Nepal on February 27 as violence flared up the region which has already been crippled by a general strike for more than two weeks.

The police gunned down a protestor during unrest in the town of Duhabi, 410 km from Kathmandu.

The police claimed that the protestor was killed due to his violating the curfew imposed in the area due to the already tense situation. The tension in the region remained high following the situation even as the police claimed to have the situation under control.

This incident of shooting has brought the death toll in the region to six, during the past two weeks, as the southern part of Nepal reeled under continued violence. In the violence that has ensued in the last fortnight the number of casualties has touched almost 300, including police officials as well.

At least five towns in the region have been clamped down with a curfew due to the dwindling security situation in the area. There have been various incidents in the region which have forced the authorities to clamp down a curfew in almost five cities of the region. There also have been various incidents reported of violent protestors clashing with the police, which have added to the already thin line of normalcy running through the region.

The southern plains known as Terai have been almost entirely paralyzed for the past fortnight due to the indefinite general strike called by ethnic United Democratic Madhesi Front. The UDMF is demanding a six-point plan including autonomy for the entire region with the right to self determination.

The ethnic leaders have time and again accused the government of handling their problems with a half-baked attitude, and not with the intent to have a meaningful dialogue over the crisis.

“The government is not sincere about holding negotiations with us,” UDMF chairman Mahanta Thakur has said. “We will continue our protests”, he added. The strike has isolated the region and also crippled transport leading to shortages of food, medicine and fuel across the nation.

So where does Nepal move from here? People of a particular region asking for autonomy or wishing to secede from the parent country are no news to the Asian region. Almost all countries in South-Asia have their internal issue brewing all the time. The least Nepal can do is avoid committing the follies its neighbours have made. Negotiation might be easier said than done, but any attempts to crack the whip can have long term affects on the situation. And in the current day situation no country should even think about an excess as ‘Kosovo’ is the flavour of the season. Commitment and honest will to handle the people’s grievances are the only way forward for this strife-torn area.

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Iraq: The Economic Costs of War

WITH record oil prices, rising family debt, and a slowing housing market, crisis. Even 45 percent of economists expect a recession this year. With the Bush administration spending $10 billion a month on the war in Iraq, it is therefore not surprising that Americans increasingly view withdrawal from Iraq as a way out of this economic slump.

According to a Washington based think tank, the Center for American Progress, “In fact, 68 percent of the public rank pulling out of Iraq first on a list of proposed economic remedies, beating out tax cuts…There is great concern, anxiety, and angst about economic security.  Former senator John Edwards feels, "All of these things are made worse by the war in Iraq. ... People don't understand why we're spending $500 billion and counting at the same time we have 47 million without healthcare, 37 million people living in poverty."

According this think tank, the Bush administration was anxious to go to war, but not anxious to pay for it. In April 2003, then-administrator of the Agency for International Development Andrew Natsios pledged that American taxpayers would pay no more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq. In March 2003, Paul Wolfowitz infamously predicted that Iraq would be able to "finance its own reconstruction." In reality, total Iraq war requests and authorizations have amounted to $624 billion. Yet just two months after announcing the invasion of Iraq, Bush ordered the first major wartime tax cut in history. The debt was $5.7 trillion when Bush took office; it will be $10.3 trillion by the time he leaves.

Economists predicted this fall-out. In 2002, Gerd Hausler, director of international capital markets at the IMF, said that "a serious conflict with Iraq would not be a very healthy development" for the financial markets. Robert Shapiro, undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration stated, "If the [Iraq] conflict wears on or, worse, spreads, the economic consequences become very serious." More recently, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote in Vanity Fair, "The soaring price of oil is clearly related to the Iraq war. The issue is not whether to blame the war for this but simply how much to blame it."

President Bush now stated that the Iraq war has nothing to do with the faltering economy. "I think actually the spending in the war might help with jobs...because we're buying equipment, and people are working," he said. The Iraq war has created jobs -- for the administration's defense contractor allies. Bush's most recent budget is a windfall for contractors. Between 2000 and 2005, procurement was the "fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending." Five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, however, national unemployment is going up. Between December 2006 and December 2007, the national unemployment rate increased by 13.6 percent in seasonally adjusted terms, from 4.4 to 5.0 percent.

"At a time of mounting deficits, when we are spending about $10 billion a month in Iraq, issues such as reforming the health-care system and repairing the national infrastructure are likely to remain neglected," write John Podesta and Lawrence J. Korb of the Center for American Progress and Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington Post. "The United States has too many national priorities that cannot be realized if yet another beleaguered administration prolongs this costly and unpopular war." Indeed, Bush seems to deem domestic priorities as "excessive spending." He recently vetoed a bill to provide expanded health insurance for 10 million children, and then requested $172 billion more for the war. When the Senate passed a broad stimulus package that offered an extension of unemployment benefits and help for borrowers caught in subprime loans, the White House again called it unaffordable government spending.

While the Bush administration is devoting substantial resources to the conflict in Iraq, it is paying less attention to what happens when U.S. troops return home. A recent American Journal of Public Health study estimated that in 2004, "nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and unable to get care in veterans' facilities." This number has jumped dramatically since 2000, when there were 290,000 uninsured veterans. Recently discharged veterans are also "having a harder time finding civilian jobs and are more likely to earn lower wages for years." These costs will only continue to grow the longer the United States remains in Iraq.

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