Issue 67 Vol III, July 15, 2008

F O C  U S

Uprooting democracy
Gobind Thukral

DURING the past couple of months Punjab has been in an election mode. We had one assembly by poll from Amritsar, followed by panchayat samiti and zila parishad elections and then on June 30 elections were held for 95 municipal councils / nagar councils, including eight nagar panchayats. For the first time, electronic voting machines were used in these polls. This means after the assembly elections in February 2007, we have now brand new democratic institutions at the grass root level. Money [crores of rupees] and effort [thousands of poll officials] have been worth sparing. This should portend well for a democratic Punjab and democratic India.

Tragically it does not. Take the Amritsar assembly by election. No one had any doubt that the Akalis would not win this seat. Yet the Chief Minister, Mr. Parkash Singh Badal went overboard in campaigning and his party had to pay a fine Rs 20 lakhs or so imposed by the Election Commission of India for misusing government resources like helicopter and cars etc. Does this bring glory to a leader of the status of Mr. Badal? This election was mired in violence. A fairer election might have brought fewer votes to the ruling party, but enhanced its prestige as a democratic party.  It has had a long glorious past of struggler and democratic functioning and was never the domain of a single family. There is no gainsaying that it would have enriched the traditions of democratic polity. After all, elections do not mean a certain percentage of voting, but electing representatives freely and fairly in an unspoiled atmosphere.

We all know what happened during the zila parishad and block samiti elections. Newspapers were full of reports that spoke in detail about the misuse of government machinery; all sorts of government officers were involved and the dirty tactics were used with impunity. Even journalists reporting the elections were not spared. There were graphic accounts and pictures to demonstrate how the ruling coalition of Akalis and the BJP conducted itself. Worse was the use of money and muscle power to entice the voters and here Congress , badly split otherwise  and spitting venom made every effort in that direction.  Same happened during the panchayat polls and in the election of sarpanches later. Newspapers also reported the worst level of corrupt practices. Liquor, both from vends and illegally brewed [how boast about our ingenuity at brewing], opium, bhuki [poppy husk]and other inducements followed.  What glory is that for Punjab?

In Punjab for the past two decades, democracy for one reason or the other has been getting the worst beating. We had long spells of governor’s rule, perhaps more than any other state except Jammu and Kashmir and Nagaland. We were witness to killing of candidates and abductions and not only violence but rigged elections too. Akalis at one time were forced to boycott as fear ruled the minds and hearts of all Punjabis. With much trouble and after losing hundreds of young lives, tearing apart social fabric and sullying economic life, we are back to some kind of ‘democratic’ governance. Yet, how democratic we really are.

 Panchayat polls have always favoured the ruling party or parties. Our village folks normally assume that by siding with the ruling party, they could get official patronage. Swim with the tide is the catchphrase for most. Exceptions are always there. They were this time also. The questions that trouble the mind are what necessitated the ruling alliance to throw all norms to the winds and indulge in corrupt practices and violence when it could have managed it otherwise. Perhaps there was lack of confidence or perhaps if the politicians do not indulge in these practices, they feel something amiss. Tragically these are not the Akalis or the BJP alone, the Congress had done worse and if a chance comes it could replicate its old dirty tricks. All these are bad omens for the largest democracy of the world. And for Punjab, the land of gurus and pirs, this is a double jeopardy.

Mr. Badal now boasts, “Despite the vast magnitude of the electoral exercise, the people of Punjab and the administrative machinery joined hands to ensure smooth conduct of the poll. This had thoroughly belied the propaganda of the Congress leaders that the total rout of their party was the result of any foul play. The polling remained totally peaceful, free and fair and this was a ‘victory for grass-root democracy in the urban and semi segment’. Punjabis voted with enthusiasm and utmost responsibility to set an example for the rest for the country in dignified democratic conduct.” Breathtaking indeed.

And listen to what Punjab Congress President Mrs. Rajinder Kaur Bhattal has to add, “Congress party has captured about half of the Municipal Councils in Majha and Doaba and its performance is at par with SAD deducting the seats obtained by its ally BJP. In Doaba and Majha the Congress has won only 7 out of 57 Vidhan Sabha seats but MC election results have reversed the trend. In Malwa SAD has indulged in large scale rigging, booth capturing and violence to win the seats. She also alleged that SAD had created atmosphere of fear and members of a particular sect [Dera Sacha Sauda) didn't turn out to vote.”

Bhattal also maintained that her party men “braved an onslaught by Akalis and fought to save the democracy. She said that police was working as private army of ruling alliance. "We tried to get help from Election Commission, Human Rights commission and Judiciary to get justice and got some support.  Akalis didn't understand the democratic language.”

We have indeed added a new chapter in subterfuge. And, meanwhile hail  democracy Punjab style.

BACK

Getting connected in rural Punjab
Professor Sukhpal Singh

THE excessive commercialization of agriculture in Punjab is now well known but how much rent seeking with what implications is going on is not so well known. The recent scheme of the PSEB called ‘own your tube well’ (OYT) is one such small but crucial example of how ruinous this rent seeking has become. Under the scheme, any farmer could own his/her tube-well with electric connection, provided he/she has paid a refundable security deposit of Rs. 25,000 and paid for its installation cost which includes not just digging up of the bore well, putting in the submersible pump set and the electric motor, but also, buying and installing his/her own transformers and electric lines with poles and wires to the point of connection. Once this is done, the farmer is eligible to get an electric connection from the PSEB after he/she has paid the challan fee of Rs. 500. This is the ‘official’ version of the scheme and ‘officially’ it can cost anywhere between Rs. 60,000 to Rs. 2 lakh per tube well connection depending on the distance from where the electric lines are to be drawn. The official cost of the transformer is Rs. 45,000.

Due to the limited number of electric connections planned to be released and the crucial role of excess to groundwater with free power in making a traditional crop (read wheat-paddy/cotton) small farm viable, already there was rent seeking going on in terms of ‘extra money’ being sought by government approved dealers of tube well and electric equipment and the PSEB’s lower and middle rank officials wherein a transformer was being sold at Rs. 65,000 instead of the official price of Rs. 45,000, and more money being asked for to get the connection files approved.

Just to illustrate the case of rent seeking in the scheme, a small farmer with up to 5 acres of land can apply for connection under the OYT. Once he has paid the challan fee, security deposit and got the equipment installed at ‘market rates’ of equipment, he is asked to get a ‘sealed transformer’. Otherwise, the transformer may not be approved by the PSEB local officials. But, the ‘transformer with a seal’ is priced at double the ‘official price’ of the same. Thus, a small farmer is being literally asked to ‘seal his own fate’ by making to invest Rs. 1-2 lakh on the tube well and an equal amount to get it connected.

When the rent seeking assumed large proportions, the PSEB decided to end the scheme with effect from June 1, 2008. But, that was the beginning of the ‘suicidal OYT’ as small farmers who had not been able to excess electric connections for decades earlier due to the ‘bigger getting best” and “better placed getting best’, thus causing extreme inequity in ground water access and very farming activity itself, and had spent lakhs of rupees on making OYT arrangements on their farms, had to resort to end their lives in desperation. They had invested money on tube wells and transformers which was a sunk cost if they could not afford ‘more money’ to get them connected. There have been cases of farmers committing suicides in some villages immediately after the news of the suspension of the scheme spread. There may be many others who have gone unreported or many others who are contemplating the same step and are only waiting for another small shock to get rid of the hard realities of being a small farmer in a so-called green revolution region.

Though the PSEB has ordered an enquiry into the OYT scam, those familiar with the working of the State machinery and the politics in the state have already concluded that no heads are going to roll except some scapegoats as those involved are stakeholders in both the OYT rent seeking as well as the government and the administration in the state. The booty of OYT is shared widely across various stakeholders in the scheme except the farmers. The farmers want the scheme to be restarted without realizing the consequences it can lead for their livelihoods and the local agro-ecology.

The story of free power to agriculture in the State is a story of tragedy being written in different scripts again and again by the successive state governments. The farmers are desperate as excess to free groundwater with free power is a licence to viable farming in the State in the short-term. The farmers are cutting their own feet as it is not in their own long term interest to get free power or free water. No one knows how many smaller farmer lives will have to be sacrificed before the farmers and the State government and the people realize the folly of free power and free water. In the longer term, ‘getting OYT’ or ‘not getting it’ amounts to only freedom to commit suicide later or sooner. It is unfortunate that no one in the state, who matters, realizes the long-term implications of the so-called farmer friendly policies of the State government. Let’s hope the ‘land of five rivers’ does not turn out to be a ‘land of suicides of five acre farmers’.

[Professor Sukhpal Singh teaches at  IIM, Ahmedabad]

BACK

Deceptions surface in Indo-US nuclear deal

THE Indian government has taken a major step towards completing its controversial nuclear cooperation deal with the United States by moving the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency for approving an inspections (safeguards) agreement it signed last year with the IAEA secretariat pertaining to civilian nuclear reactors. Praful Bidwai, a former newspaper editor and now of the IPS says, “The news has been greeted by the domestic political opposition with howls of protest and accusations of deception and a violation of the commitment the Manmohan Singh government made just a few days ago to seek a vote of confidence from Parliament before approaching the IAEA Board of Governors.”

Meanwhile, the text of the safeguards agreement, which the government claims is classified and confidential, has been leaked. About 10 hours after it was posted on several websites by arms control groups on Wednesday night, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs made it public yesterday -- only to draw acerbic criticism of its contents.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is in a minority in Parliament after the Left parties, on whom it was dependent for support for more than four years, withdrew it two days ago. The Left parties' decision came after the government reneged on its promise not to move the IAEA Board without considering the findings of a joint UPA-Left committee on the nuclear deal, set up last year.

In a dramatic U-turn, the Samajwadi Party, a regional party based in northern Uttar Pradesh state, has decided to back the deal and support the government. But it is not clear that the SP's 39 members of parliament (MPs) can help the UPA stitch together a parliamentary majority after the Left's 59 MPs withdrew support.

The Left has sharply attacked the UPA for approaching the IAEA despite being a "minority government". It says Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in an unseemly hurry to push the deal and demands to know what he discussed with U.S. President George W Bush when they met in Japan earlier this week on the sidelines of the G8 summit.

The Right, led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, has accused the government of "deception at midnight" for surreptitiously moving the IAEA.

Both opposition groups have criticised the safeguards agreement as falling well short of the solemn commitments Singh made to the Indian Parliament in March 2006.

Singh had told Parliament that the agreement would be "India-specific" and India would obtain assurances of uninterrupted fuel supply, and the rights to build a "strategic fuel reserve" and take "corrective measures" in case of an interruption in supplies.

"However, the agreement circulated amongst the Board of Governors does not contain these assurances in the main text; it does so only in the preamble," says M.V. Ramana, an independent nuclear affairs analyst at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in the Environment and Development in Bangalore. "And the preamble does not have operative significance or legal force."

"Besides," adds Ramana, "the body of the text is almost identical to the language of the standard safeguards agreement the IAEA signs with non-nuclear weapons states, called INFCIRC (Information Circular) 66 in the Agency's jargon. This will make it open to the criticism that it fails to defend India's strategic autonomy as a de facto nuclear weapons state, as Singh promised to do. Nor does it explicitly guarantee uninterrupted fuel supplies."

The Right has already launched an attack on the agreement along these lines. The BJP has accused the government of violating the assurance contained in the original text of the deal signed between Bush and Singh in July 2005 that India would have "the same benefits and advantages" and the same obligations as other "states with advanced nuclear technology" such as the U.S., a term widely interpreted to mean nuclear weapons-states.

On the other hand, the agreement has drawn flak from arms control and nuclear disarmament groups both in India and internationally because it unduly favours India.

Says Sukla Sen of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, a broad-based network of more than 200 Indian peace groups: "The agreement is fatally flawed because it is part of a larger deal that allows India to keep its nuclear arsenal and make more fuel for nuclear weapons. It detracts from the objectives of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, and will have a negative global impact."

Similarly, U.S. Congressman Edward Markey, a senior member of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, and co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation, has described the agreement as "worse than useless" and "a sham".

He was quoted as saying: "This pathetic safeguards agreement not only seriously undermines the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it also sends the exact wrong message to Iran: that international nuclear safeguards are only for show. With this agreement, the IAEA has thrown its principles out the window and has abandoned its most important responsibilities."

Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association (U.S.) has also slammed the agreement, and says, it "contains conflicting language on what India might be able to do if it resumes testing and fuel supplies are terminated".

According to the preamble, India may take unspecified "corrective measures" to ensure fuel supplies in the event that they are interrupted. But Paragraph 32 of the text says that India and the IAEA will jointly determine whether and when a facility may be withdrawn from safeguards. This is different from the normal INFCIRC 66 agreement which gives the IAEA "the sole authority" to do so.

Kimball added that if India interprets the agreement as allowing it to remove facilities or materials from safeguards in the event of a fuel supply interruption (which would only likely happen in the event that India resumes testing), this would violate the principle of permanent safeguards over all nuclear materials and facilities. It would also contradict the requirement established by the U.S. Congress in implementing legislation passed in 2006 [called the Hyde Act] that the safeguards last 'in perpetuity and are consistent with IAEA standards and practices'.

As the debate on the nuclear deal moves on to a different plane, two things are clear.

First, the Indian domestic political opposition is highly unlikely to be satisfied with the government's interpretation that the safeguards agreement as drafted meets the requirements of the promised "India-specific" agreement with all its assurances.

"It is plain that the agreement will not fly and receive anything approaching consensual or broad-based support in India," says Ramana. "It will remain controversial and highly divisive."

Second, the agreement will face some resistance, possibly in the IAEA Board of Governors, and almost certainly in the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group, which must grant India clean and unconditional exemption from its nuclear commerce rules, which prohibit trade with a country that has not signed the NPT and does not accept full-scope safeguards on all its nuclear facilities in perpetuity.

The deal must clear these hurdles in record time if it is to be taken up by the U.S. Congress before it adjourns on Sep. 26 prior to the Nov. 4 elections.

According to The Washington Post, the Hyde Act mandates that Congress must be in 30 days of continuous session to consider it, and there are less than 40 days left in the session. So the deal "appears unlikely to win final approval in the U.S. Congress this year".

That leaves only a short interval, the next couple of weeks, for both the IAEA and the NSG to clear the deal. It is improbable that this will happen.

The Indian government's "victory" in taking the deal to the IAEA in the teeth of strong domestic opposition may yet turn out to be pyrrhic.

BACK