GovNow V1 I4 LowRes

Dial D for Dr Devinder A Delhi-based nephrologist brings state-of-the-art healthcare to his native village in Himachal.
p.08
Riding piggyback on the tiger The government comes off looking ridiculous as Aircel appropriates Project Tiger.
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March 16-31, 2010 | Vol.01 Issue.04 | Rs 30
The Great
Robbery
Railway
The great railways success story is a fable. The seven-year fare-freeze is a lie. Rail ministers have been piling all kinds of hidden surcharges on us. Cheating!
p.26
Founders Team
Gautam Adhikari Markand Adhikari Anurag Batra Editor B V Rao Managing Editor Ajay Singh Peoples Editor Anupam Goswami Deputy Editors Prasanna Mohanty, Ashish Mehta, Ashish Sharma Assistant Editor Samir Sachdeva Special Correspondents Brajesh Kumar, Trithesh Nandan Principal Correspondents Geetanjali Minhas, Danish Raza, Jasleen Kaur Correspondents Shivani Chaturvedi, Neha Sethi, Sarthak Ray, Sonal Matharu Design Parveen Kumar, Noor Mohammad Photographer Ravi Choudhary General Manager Business Development Suparnaa Chadda suparnaa@governancenow.com Sales Sr. Manager Sales Gautam Navin (+91-9818125257) gautam@governancenow.com Marketing Asst. Manager Marketing Shivangi Gupta shivangi@governancenow.com Subscription/Distribution Asst. Manager Distribution Pranay Dixit (+91-9999809095) pranay@governancenow.com Manager IT Santosh Gupta Asst. Manager HR Monika Sharma Design consultants LDI Graphics Pvt. Ltd. www.liquiddesigns.in info@liquiddesigns.in Printed by Markand Adhikari and published by Markand Adhikari on behalf of Sri Adhikari Brothers Assets Holding Pvt Ltd. Printed at Utkarsh Art Press Pvt Ltd, D-9/3, Okhla Industrial Area Phase I, New Delhi, 110020. Tel: 011-41636301, and published at 24A, Mindmill Corporate Tower, Sector 16A, Film City, Noida 201301. Tel: 0120-3920555. Editor: BV Rao Volume 01 Issue 04 UPENG03560/24/1/2009-TC www.governancenow.com feedback@governancenow.com
contents

22 Interview with Agatha Sangma
I can make a useful contribution in terms of drinking water and sanitation
43 StP: A hole in the inclusive goal
26 The great railway robbery

The tax incentives to the IT companies are a big revenue loss to the government and their extension may constraint the inclusive agenda of the UPA.
You thought there was no increase in fares and it was yet another populist rail budget. Here is the fine print: how railway minister after railway minister has cheated the aam admi with statistical jugglery. By Jai Mrug
38 Whos that riding piggyback on the tiger?

18 Picture this!
Anti-Congress forces may not be able to sustain their rare show of unity, but their coming together itself signals a significant shift in contemporary politics.
40 Billed for dilution Maharashtra government seeks to subvert the efforts

of civil society to devolve power to the local bodies in urban areas.
08 carry on doctor
Devinder Singh Rana, a Delhi-based nephrologist, brought state-of-the-art healthcare to his native village in Himachal Pradesh. For children of migrant workers in the haunted urban village, Saksham provides education and hope The inspiring story of a saffron-clad man, his green gospel and the rebirth of a river.
14 nurturing childhood in nithari
The government has come off looking ridiculous as a private telecom player has appropriated the tiger conservation movement for brand-building.
12 Saffron is the new green

50 Last Word

Our columnist on joys and sorrows of homecoming.

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EDITORIALS
Fear of the fair sex
Leaders ranged against the womens quota bill have no tenable argument
n one of his moments of candour, the legendary Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Indias first civil supplies minister said, We want legislators as political goondas. Though Kidwai, himself a nononsense minister and a crusader against hoarders, might have said this in jest his words proved to be truly prophetic. The manner in which certain regional leaders tried to bully the dominant view of parliament on womens reservation bill ironically reflects the precise mindset that the legislation seeks to guard against. Even as 33 percent reservation for women in Lok Sabha and state assemblies has become a reality, though, the objections raised by the nay-sayers merit attention. Sharad Yadav put it succinctly when he said that parkati (women with short hair) would rule the roost after the reservation. Mulayam Singh Yadav inferred that wives of uppercaste bureaucrats would get elected in absence of any clause to reserve seats for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) within the quota for women. Lalu Prasad virtually declared a yuddh (war). But why do they marshal all their resources to scuttle this legislation? If you go by the logic of history, you will realise these leaders have
Why do the regional satraps like Mulayam and Lalu marshal all their resources to scuttle this legislation?
conjured up their objections out of thin air. Indias democratic transition since 1952 has consistently encouraged the rise of the plebeians. Upper caste members comprised over 64 percent of the Lok Sabha in 1952, their numbers nearly halved in 2004 and 2009. All this has been achieved by active participation of the social underdogs in the democratic process. Obviously the upper caste-dominated Congress leadership retained its stranglehold till it enjoyed the confidence of the OBCs. With the emergence of Ram Manohar Lohias brand of socialism, this link weakened and ultimately broke loose when OBC leaders started asserting their independence. The subsequent emergence of Chaudhary Charan Singh in UP, Karpoori Thakur in Bihar and Chiman Patel in Gujarat in the 1970s marked the assertion of intermediary castes. The empowerment of OBCs got a further fillip in the post-Mandal phase transforming the political landscape of the Hindi heartland. Studies conducted on the demographic composition of UP and Bihar assemblies prove that the OBCs dominate assemblies in both the states (from 30 to 40 percent). The process of empowering the marginalised has gone to the extent that re-establishing the political hegemony of the upper castes is almost unthinkable in Bihar. Similar is the case in UP, where upper castes are reduced to playing second fiddle either to Mayawatis BSP or Mulayam Singhs Samajwadi Partyboth products of social empowerment of the marginalised. The rise of the OBCs in social and political status is quite evident in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and even in Gujarat despite its projection as a bastion of Hindutva. This trend reflected at the national level as well as the representation of OBCs in Lok Sabha ranged between 25-30 percent in 2004 and 2009 elections against their 40 percent share in population. An
So, whats new comrades?

he Maoists now claim to have developed an alternative development model. If you remember, while dubbing the Maoists as the biggest internal security threat since 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also been taunting the rebels and their civil society sympathisers by saying that they didnt have an alternative vision or development plan. More than four years later, these sympathisers have come out with their alternative model and circulated it at a press conference in New Delhi on March 5. The note, titled What the State Wants to
Maoists also happen to have an alternative development that looks suspiciously like the mainstream one -- except for the Peoples Militia
Destroy is the Alternate Development Model, is unsigned but carries names of 38 ideologues and intellectuals. Most of them are unknown and hail from Sangrur, Patiala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Taran Taran, Sirsa and Bhatinda. One or two are from DU sand JNU. The alternative model they talk of has been developed in the Dandakaranya, the forest spreading through Chhattisgarhs Bastar into border districts of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. This is where the rebels run their Janatana Sarkars. This is how the model is prefaced: It will give us a glimpse of what the Maoists hold as a vision for the progress and development of our
countrydevelopment which is indigenously and self-reliantly built, one which is peopleoriented and is constructed in the course of the peoples democratic participation, and the one which cares for this land and its resources. .such development will free us from the stranglehold of imperialist capital and its dictates.a course of action which can only be executed by the truly patriotic. What are the key points of this model? The note says lakhs of acres of land has been distributed among the peasants; women have been given rights over land; developed agriculture from the primitive form of shifting cultivation to settled farming; introduced a wide range of vegetables like carrots, radish, brinjal, bitter gourd, okra, tomato etc; planted orchards of bananas, mangoes, guavas etc; have built dams, ponds, water channels for breeding fish and for irrigation; dug wells for safe drinking water and set up rice mills.
GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010
analysis of the educational background of these MPs shows that there is an increasing influx of more educated OBC MPs who are not dependent on traditional loyalties and have emerged leaders in their own right. This positive trend must be understood in view of the womens reservation bill. Like OBCs, women in India have faced a long history of suppression and oppressive male domination. By any yardstick women constitute the biggest social chunk among the marginalised. In Bihar, women have proved to be agents of good governance after 50 percent seats were reserved for them in local self-government. This prompted chief minister Nitish Kumar to change his stance on the bill which he oppsed in 1996. The internal dynamics of Indian politics is not as simplistic as is being made out by Sharad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Yadav. In fact, the biggest fear of these regional satraps comes from the fact that they are finding power slipping through their fingers and going to their better halves. Perhaps it is this imminent power shift within their households is what worries these leaders the most.
Some Gandhi-brand home truths

Montblanc has apologised for hurting our feelings for misusing Gandhijis name. But the real culprits are yet to do so.
ontrary to the popular perception, Gandhiji continues to be relevant today especially to marketing executives and Narendra Modis. Montblanc, a German firm that manufactures ink pens costing more than a small car, brought out last year a limited edition series named after Gandhi. The company insists all it wanted to do was to pay tribute to the Great Soul, but the media cried foul. They said Gandhi is not a commodity, the father of our nation is not a brand more so, when the product in question violates Gandhis insistence on austerity (he himself preferred to use a pencil till it was reduced to a stub and wrote on the back of envelopes). An enraged citizen filed a case before the Kerala High Court. In reply, the company has apologised if it hurt sentiments of any Indians and assured the court that it was withdrawing the special edition. If Gandhi were around, he would have laughed off the German firms plan. He might have even asked for a commission in the form of contribution to his Harijan fund remember, he used to sign his autographs in exchange for money that would go to improve the lot of the marginalised. But a PIL, he would not have filed. Gandhi is an icon of the millennium. We cant
readily think of a comparable name barring those figures many of us consider gods. As can be expected for such a person, many have used his name for selfish motives, in his time as well as in ours. Apple, the computer firm, used his photograph in an advertising campaign. But are these companies any worse than the Congress and other political parties that keep talking of following in Gandhis footsteps while doing precisely everything else? Few things both Modi supporters and detractors agree on is that he is not a secular leader and yet the man is as much fond of Gandhi-name-dropping as any other politician. Gandhi spoke of the welfare of the very last man, he spoke for harijans and landless labourers. He used words like antyodaya, gram swaraj and sarva dharma sambhav, words either forgotten or given suitable new meanings. All the Indian state, that is, all of us put together, has been doing is to go resolutely in the opposite direction. Gandhi must have foreseen this future when he said speed is not important if we are going in the wrong direction. So, here is a request to Dijo Kappen, managing trustee of the Centre for Consumer Education, Kottayam, who filed the PIL against Montblanc: if turning Gandhi into a brand name is a crime, forget the German company and go for the real culprits.
Other elements include, running schools and hospitals, publishing books and magazines in Gondi language, providing remunerative prices for Tendu leaves, bamboo, timber and other forest produce; establishing Peoples Courts to settle disputes; stopping sexual harassment and rape; and building up Peoples Militia for defence in almost every village. But hey, what the heck, every NGO worth its name has been doing all these! What is new in this list? Or innovative? Or alternative? Besides, check out with the ministries of rural development, social welfare, tribal welfare, panchayati raj or agriculture, all these ministries run these schemes! Yes, their implementation sucks and corruption rules, but the point is, the model exists. The only thing new with the Maoists alternative model then is the Peoples Militia and that raises a simple question: In these model villages where everything is run for the people,
The only thing new with the Maoists alternative model then is the Peoples Militia and that raises a simple question: In these model villages where everything is run for the people, by the people and of the people (there you go again, isnt that what the rest of us call democracy?) who is the Peoples Militia protecting from whom?
by the people and of the people (there you go again, isnt that what the rest of us call democracy?), who is the Peoples Militia protecting from whom? And how many villages have been blessed by this alternative model given that the Maoists control 40,000 square kilometres as Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told a parliamentary panel last September? The Maoists note does not tell us that. And since none can enter the area under Maoist influence without their express clearance and escort, we have only their word for proof. Too bad if you cant believe them, your problem. At the said press meet Arundhati Roy openly admitted: Yes, I am a Maoist sympathiser. She also said the battle between the government and the Maoists is a clash of two imaginations and wondered how talks would help because they had no meeting ground. Is this alternative development model a third imagination?
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LETTERS
Time to change Indian Standard Time

Eye-opener
Your article (The line that divides India, February 28) on the need for two separate time zones should be an eye-opener for the policy makers of our country. Such an insight is necessary for the equal development of the different regions of our nation, especially the northeast, as it also lags behind due to geographical isolation. Hence, we hope there will be no more delay in the implementation of two different time zones for India. Sudhir C Handique immediately. Niranjan Kumar Das
Waste no more time
Could not sleep
The time zone article in Governance Now really shook me up. Couldnt sleep the whole night thinking about it. The northeast has been really taken for a ride for all these years. God help our Northeast. Mary Khongsit
Dear Jahnuda, just read your article on time zone in Governance Now. Waaao... Never realised that our northeast has been made a loser for 62 years. Please try to make it happen at the earliest. We are with you. Dilip Mohan Hazarika
Will PM go through it?
Who is to blame?
The article has absolutely blown my head away. Incredible piece of writing, I must say. Hope Dr. Manmohan Singh goes through it. Sanjib Dey
Dear Jahnuda: Thank you for the well researched article on time zone published in Governance Now. Yes, its very alarming for the northeast. More than the rest of India we should be blaming ourselves not being aware about this issue. It must be done
Mind-blowing!
Your article in Governance Now on time zone is mind-blowing. Its an eye opening for all the northeasterners. It must be done immediately. Isaaq Thantluanga
Democracy and secularism
I would specifically like to take up the word Democracy with respect to Religion (You tell us, January 26) I guess this touches upon the line - Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship and therefore to a certain extent secular. The true test of a democratically elected government is in essence to vote into power a set of leaders who therefore forsake all sense of ownership to caste, creed, denomination, sex etc. I expect a strong reaction to this saying it is only an ideal and I completely agree. Secondly, being secular essentially means that the state of India does not ascribe to any one religion as the national religion. Instead it accepts and recognises all present and future religions under the right or liberty to worship of ones god or even the right to be an atheist or an agnostic. However, I do believe that the ultimate strength of a democracy is not to act partial in any given situation towards or against any particular faith or creed. Practising the policy of appeasement of different faiths at different points in time ensures that the cumulative of the same gets equated across religions is also not viable. Given a rational, thinking democracy, who is going to equate how many faces smeared on Holi with colour is equivalent to how many faithfuls are allowed to encroach on public space to pray on Friday ? Therefore, I propound that the right to worship should be delineated from the freedom to worship. To me they are not the same. I would vote in the favour of the right to worship since it grants me a right to behave in a manner that is responsible and mindful of worship.
religion within the confines of places of worship or ones home at the very least. That to me is the true state of a matured secular democracy and I think we have failed our founding fathers unless we can work towards the elimination of such freedoms that impinge on the freedoms of other individuals. Andrew Williams Mumbai
However, the freedom to worship places an unnecessary burden on the state to provide the means to freedom of worship. I state my case with an example. (a) Processions to help Catholics celebrate Corpus Christi (b) Hindus celebrate weddings (c) Muslims pray on Fridays Permitting the usage of public space for such activities should not be the responsibility of the state nor should the state make efforts to ensure the same. The problem with trying to grant such a benefit is that in doing so, on each occasion, you impinge on the right of every other religion to move freely without being hampered by the rights being practised by some other individual. A procession by one religion ensures that people of all other religions are stuck in traffic jams, at the mercy of the slow-moving procession ahead. I am sure that the founding fathers would have wanted to guard against such an occasion where in the eagerness to grant the freedom of worship to one citizen, the state would impinge on the freedom of movement of other citizens. I, therefore, think its a challenge to any secular democracy to restrict the worship of ones
Shiv Sena and mockery of democracy
Very well written sir! (Dealing with Shiv Sena, February 28) Indeed, these political parties are being very anti-constitutional in their work and no one has had the guts to do something concrete against them. Its a mockery of democracy, where on one hand we talk about freedom to work and live in any part of the country and on the other hand there is supreme amount of violence on account of a trivial issue. No one is against any language in this country, in fact we are taught to respect all languages, but this tirade will disturb democracy and the unity of the nation. One should never divide a nation on the basis of a language. Amrita (on email)
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6 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2009
Ela Bhatt gets yet another global prize

la Bhatt, the founder of the Self-Employed Womens Association (SEWA), has been chosen for the Niwano Peace Prize this year for her contribution to the uplift of poor women in India. She will receive the award in Tokyo in May. The 77-year-old social worker has
people
I
Yet another feather in Nilekanis cap
nfosys Technologies co-founder Nandan Nilekani will head a technology advisory group, which the government plans to set up for creating reliable and tamperproof IT projects. He is already heading the ambitious Unique ID project. A Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects (TAGUP) is proposed to be set up under the chairmanship of Nandan Nilekani for creation of reliable and secure IT projects, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced in his budget speech. An effective tax administration and financial governance system calls for creation of IT projects which are reliable, secure and efficient, the finance minister noted.
been recognised as one of the pioneers in the development of the most oppressed and poorest women of India for more than three decades. It was way back in 1972 when she set up the SEWA as a trade union and now it has over 12 lakh members. One of its centres is active in wartorn Afghanistan too.
Green gospel
says the spiritual leader. Besides raising awareness on the Yamuna pollution and the need to save it, we will also launch cleanliness drives on the banks of the river all along its stretch. Several NGOs have promised their support in this campaign and we hope that the Delhi government will also join us in this effort, he says. (Also see: Saffron is the new green, p 12-13)
rt of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has led many environmental sustainability programmes and is now launching a three-month campaign to clean up the Yamuna in New Delhi. We are responsible for the present condition of the Yamuna. Therefore, if we all get together to clean the river, the efforts will definitely bear fruit,
Oath of transparency instead of secrecy

ur legislators and ministers on assuming office take oath of secrecy an anachronism in this era of transparency and the RTI Act. So a group of village sarpanches, who got elected in the recent Panchayati Raj elections in Rajasthan, have resolved to take an oath of transparency rather than the usual oath of secrecy. They have thus pledged to declare their assets and function transparently.
Normally it is oath of secrecy for most of the posts. However, it is the other way round for these people who have got elected using only honest means and very limited resources, Nikhil Dey of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan said. Everyone knows that now it is a big challenge to be a sarpanch and honest as each of them will handle a Rs 1 crore fund coming under the NREGS annually.
people politics policy performance

Self-less Governance
A good doctor gives back

Devinder Singh Rana, a Delhi-based nephrologist, brought state-of-the-art healthcare to his native village in Himachal Pradesh.
Brajesh Kumar / Dasmal ust about everybody in Himachal Pradesh seems to have heard of Dasmal, a small village 170 km from the state capital and 10 km off the Shimla-Manali highway in Hamirpur district. It has neither inspired Rudyard Kipling, who came visiting the state every year during his stay in India, nor is it home to a Ruskin Bond. Tucked away behind tall deodar trees in the foothills of the Himalayas, it is not a tourist destination either. Instead, it is the native village of Dr Devinder Singh Rana, a Delhi-based nephrologist, who brought home state-of-the-art healthcare facilities by setting up a healthcare centre here in February 2007. Equipped with ultrasound, X-ray, ECG, telemedicine and hemodialysis facilities, Parvati hospital has proved to be a boon to not just Dasmal but also around 100 neighbouring villages and towns. A metalled road laid by the state government recently leads to the hospital, located at the highest point of the village, where services began with just one doctor and one paramedic. Now four doctors and 10 paramedics attend to as many as 80 patients a day for as little as Rs 15 for consultation. Chanchal Devi, 59, resident of the neighbouring Tikkar village, has been coming here regularly for the past one year for her weekly dialysis. Her nephew Ranjit Thakur says it costs Rs 700 per dialysis here, which is just a fifth of the amount they had to shell out earlier when they used to travel all the way to the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI) at Chandigarh. While the nearest dialysis centre in Chandigarh is at a distance of 300 km, the nearest government
GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010
Ravi Choudha ry
br ajesh kumar
(Above) Dr Devinder Singh Rana at his office in the Ganga Ram hospital. (Right) The Parvati hospital in his native village Dasmal.
hospital at the district headquarters in Hamirpur is just 30 km away. Shakuntala Sharma from Bilaspur, for instance, has however travelled around 50 km to reach here. Sharma, who had been suffering from excruciating back pain for quite some time, came here on the recommendation of a friend who advised her to choose Parvati hospital over the government hospital in Hamirpur. Just a few sessions of physiotherapy later, her pain eased and she started smiling again. Both she and her son Somesh Sharma, who accompanied her, said they couldnt thank Dr Rana enough. That is my village and they are my people. Who will take care of them if not I? asks Dr Rana. Though he finally managed to launch the hospital in his native village only in 2007, he had been planning something along these lines ever since he got through medical college in Shimla in 1972, and later went on to do a Masters in medicine at PGI, Chandigarh in 1977 and then a specialisation in nephrology from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi in 1980. The next year he joined Sir Ganga Ram hospital, where he served in various capacities before becoming chairman of the department of nephrology and honorary secretary in the board of management. People from his village and neighbouring areas had, however, been flocking to him for treatment and advice right from his student days in Chandigarh. His fellow students aptly named his room Himachal room, which turned into Himachal Bhavan after he settled down in Delhi and got his own house in Rajinder Nagar. But Dasmal wouldnt have had the fortune of Parvati hospital if misfortune had not struck Dr Rana one cold winter night 45 years ago and changed his lifes goal posts. Until that day all that young Rana wanted to do was to follow in his fathers footsteps for a career in the army. But fate had other plans for him. His mother had been keeping unwell right through the winter and that night was particularly bad. Her temperature just wouldnt drop in spite of all home remedies. So his uncle and he started the long walk to fetch the nearest compounder who lived some miles away. We walked nonstop that cold
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Self-less Governance
br ajesh kumar
GOOD DOCTORS GOOD FRIENDS: Dr Kunwar Mehar Singh and wife Veena at the Parvati hospital in Dasmal.
winter night in pitch darkness for almost three hours, he recalls. It was then that it struck him like a bolt of lightening. Dasmal needed a doctor more than an army officer. What could an army officer contribute to this village, I thought. Instead if I became a doctor, I could make sure another young Rana would not have to walk for three hours to get a compunder. Many young Ranas may have walked the road in the time that Rana became Dr Rana and then a very successful nephrologist before he could find the resources to fund his dream. But five years ago he realised his dream when he enticed some friends and relatives to form a society to run a school and hospital. The society, Parvati Education & Health Society, named after his mother, supports computer education in a the village government school besides running the hospital. Running a hospital in a rural area is, however, even harder than setting it up. But he found just the right person in Dr Kunwar Mehar Singh, one of his classmates in the medical school. Dr Singh had taken premature retirement from army medical corps and was living a retired life in Noida. Dr Rana cajoled him out the city life and made him the chief medical officer of Parvati hospital. The sheer commitment of Dr Rana
towards his people made me make up my mind to come down here and settle down along with my wife, says Dr Singh. With both their daughters married and settled abroad, Dr
People from his village used to flock to him for treatment and advice right from his student days in Chandigarh. His fellow students aptly named his room Himachal room, which turned into Himachal Bhavan after he settled down in Delhi and got his own house in Rajinder Nagar.
Singh and wife Veena find solace in the service of Dasmal villagers. While Dr Singh attends to regular patients, his wife acts as an administrator for the hospital. My job is to ensure this place runs without any difficulty and the patients who come here get quality healthcare, she says. Recently, the hospital added a physiotherapy section with 15 beds on the first floor of the hospital. Because of the difficult terrain, we often get patients with severe pain in the back. So we added this facility so that they do not have to travel to Shimla, says Veena. Dr Subhash Sharma, a physiotherapist, was similarly approached by Dr Rana. One day I received a call from Dr Rana. He introduced himself and informed me about this hospital and asked me if I was interested in the offer, recounts Dr Sharma. Since I belonged to Himachal Pradesh, an offer to serve my own people excited me and it did not take me long to make up my mind. Dr Rana made good use of his association with Sir Ganga Ram hospital too. When telemedicine centres tarted in the Delhi hospital in 2007, Dr Rana made sure he got one for his village too. The centre at Parvati hospital is linked to the Sir Ganga Ram hospital through video conferencing and thousands of rural patients have been benefiting from the specialisation available in the capital. Telemedicine facilitates consultation with the experts at Ganga Ram hospital through video conferencing whenever complicated cases come to us, says Dr Kunwar Mehar Singh. Dr Rana also ensured that his hospital got a dialysis machine. People in and around my village had to travel all the way to Shimla or Chandigarh, so we had to have our own facilities, he says. The Rotary Club of Hamirpur donated a dialysis machine in May 2009, making Parvati hospital only the second in the entire state to have this facility. The district administration too appreciates Dr Rana. We provide all the help he requires in fulfilling his pious objective. I have sanctioned Rs 3.5 lakh for expansion of the hospital, says Abhishek Jain, district collector of Hamirpur. Word has travelled to Delhi too which honoured him with a Padma Shri last year. Carry on doctor. n

Ecology As Religion
Green is the new saffron

Trithesh Nandan / Sultanpur Lodi dark grey river, full of effluents and garbage is as common a sight across urban India as a chai stall. Kali Bein, which flows through Sultanpur Lodi in Punjabs Kapurthala district, was no different. Today, however, the river seems to be coursing through a picture postcard. And the credit for this transformation goes not to any government scheme or green NGO but a religious leader, Balbir Singh Seechewal. Baba Seechewal, 47, took up the cudgels in July 2000 and with a missionary zeal worked relentlessly for six long years till the Kali Bein regained its pristine glory. Now people call him the Green Baba and officials too acknowledge his contribution. Babas work is commendable, says Babu Ram, the member secretary of the Punjab Pollution Control Board. He is categorical that Babas private initiative has immensely added to pollution control efforts in Punjab. Fifty years ago, we used to worship nature but not now. If we can follow this up, we will be able to prevent further harm to environment. We only stand to gain by going back to the roots, says Baba. Attired in an ochre rob, he is sitting in his large ashram on the river bank, relaxed. Visitors come and touch his feet and he gives them saplings instead of blessings. Grow trees, is his advice to them. When he travels across the state, which is quite often, he spreads the green gospel. At his ashram, he gazes at the river with a parents
The inspiring story of a saffron-clad man, his green gospel and the rebirth of river Kali Bein
loving gaze for the favourite child. For centuries, the Kali Bein had been the lifeline of people in this part of Punjab. But heavy industralisation here since the 1970s choked the river. It became a repository of effluents and garbage instead of fresh water. Rajesh Bhatia, the headmaster of a local school, remembers the time when the river was a skeleton and the riverbed was largely barren with scant vegetation. Pal Singh Nauli, a local resident, says the river was capped with tons of garbage and silt and choked with weeds and water hyacinth. The river was hardly visible as some people had encroached the riverbed for farming at various places, says Nauli. In those days, Baba was involved in community service, mainly building village roadshe was nicknamed the Sadakwala Baba and the green cause was nowhere on the radar of this college dropout. One day he came to know about the water problem from the villagers. As he inquired further, he realised the gravity of the problem a dead river polluted with effluents and people suffering from its effects. Baba knew well that the Kali Bein was a religious and cultural landmark sacred to the Sikhs. The founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, is believed to have bathed in its holy waters. In fact, it is believed that the first Sikh guru had begun the holy march from the bank of this river where he attained enlightenment. Baba found his inspiration from the Guru Granth Sahib, Air is the Guru, Water is the Father, and Earth is the great Mother for all, and threw himself to the task. Everyone needs water. We need water just as we need air to breathe, Baba says with a smile. He held a meeting of a few villagers and told them what was needed to be done. He took a few kar sewaks and launched the mission, one step at a time. First, he convinced the locals to stop sewage flowing into the river. He went inside the riverbed at Sultanpur Lodi to remove the weeds while his followers removed silt, some working with machines. It took them three years to clean up the riverbed at Sultanpur Lodi. Water hyacinth had covered the river, choking the flow of water. Baba saw to it that it was removed. Next, pucca ghats were constructed on either side of the river. Once the Sultanpur Lodi stretch was done, Baba turned to cleaning the Bein from its starting point, Dhanoa, to Subhanpur in 2004. This took another year. It was all easier planned than executed. There was stiff resistance to the plan, initially, and the government did little to help. Thats why it took six years to clean up the river, says Baba, Otherwise, it would have taken just three years. These obstacles did frustrate him but adversity only brought the best out of him. His faith was his motivation. Spirituality and the rivers association with Guru Nanak Dev kept him going, he says. As he and his followers worked on the river, Baba chanted slogans like Jan jan jagna hai; vatavaran bachana hai (everyone must rise and save the environment). And people responded. About 3,000 kar sewaks assisted him for six years. It is a model of peoples participation that can be replicated elsewhere, says Surinder Manan who made a documentary, on the Kali Bein in 2007, that bagged the Indian Documentary Producers
T r i t h esh nandan
Baba Seechewal shows how pure the Kali Bein water is now
Associations (IDPA) Gold Award. The final leg of cleaning up the river was started in 2005, with volunteers going downward from Sultanpur Lodi. By 2006, at most of the places through its 160-km stretch, the river was cleansed and the riverbed was deepened. Then, clean water was flown into the Kali Bein from the Tarkina barrarge. Today more than 100 villages are benefitting as the groundwater has been recharged, says Manan. Baba adds that the water table has gone up in the area where the river flows. The story does not end there. Baba is now concerned about the maintenance of the river. He is making every effort so that drains do not pour polluted water into the river. For this he ensures alternative arrangements for sewage. Treated sewage is being supplied through pipelines for irrigation in the nearby areas. In the process, Baba has created an army of environmental crusaders comprising local people. Harbans Singh, an English teacher at the local college, says, There has been enthusiasm over Babas work on environment in the area. Former president APJ Abdul Kalam termed Babas work as a noble mission when he visited this area in
Fifty years ago, we used to worship nature but not now. If we can follow this up, we will be able to prevent further harm to environment. We only stand to gain by going back to the roots. Air is the Guru, Water is the Father, and Earth is the great Mother for all.
2006. Baba was also nominated as a member of the Punjab Pollution Control Board in 2009. But Babas work is not done as there are many more rivers in need of his healing touch. Now he has turned his attention to the Chitti Bein, which flows into the Sutlej. The Chitti Bein has turned black with pollutants, raw sewage, garbage and years of neglect, giving out unbearable stench, notes Baba. He also plans to clean up the Buddah Nallah of Ludhiana the two rivers that need government intervention, according to Baba. I accepted the challenge of cleaning up the Kali Bein. To me all rivers are the same. If the cleaning up of a river can happen in Punjab, it can happen anywhere in India. By cleaning the Kali Bein, I have set an example for others, says Baba, who was named by the Time magazine as a Hero in the area of environment in 2008. These days, he is also active in the social sector and his plan includes opening more schools and colleges to improve intellectual and spiritual literacy. Any individual can make a difference; positive acts will lead to improvement of life, says Baba. n

Bit By Self-less Bit
Nurturing childh
Photos: ravi choudhary
Jasleen Kaur
othing can quite prepare you for Nithari. An urbanised village in Noida, an eastern suburb of the national capital, it could well be any other poorly planned locality in this part of the country. But try as you might you will find it hard to shake off apprehension and revulsion, two dominant emotions that grip you as you head closer. In a place perhaps
forever scarred by association with a pair of serial killings, who have also been accused of cannibalism, the air cannot but be menacing. It was here, after all, that just over three years ago, the mystery of the missing children began to unravel bit by bludgeoning bit. But as you struggle to grapple with the ghosts within, it is children who come to your rescue in Nithari. The hubbub that greets you emanates from a courtyard full of four-to-15-year-olds. The signboard outside reads Saksham, which literally means capable, and here underprivileged, mostly first-generation learners, are being enabled to secure better futures for themselves. Seven-year-old Raja is all excitement as he has graduated to making sense of the alphabets strung together in some familiar permutations. Son of a local tailor, Raja has proved
to be a quick learner. Raja has been here for just four months. He has learned faster than the others in his batch, says Nadira Razaq, who co-founded Saksham with nine friends in 2003. We dont want him to keep revising the same lessons again and again. He is a bright student. We will move him to a new level soon. If Raja, with support from his parents, perseveres, he can aspire to join a governmentrun Navodaya Vidyalaya where education is provided free of cost and children are admitted to the sixth standard through a national examination conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education. Sunita, also seven years old, will need to work harder than Raja to catch up because till recently she was forced to spend time looking after her younger sister as well while her mother was out for work. Most children
hoods in Nithari
Left) Children learning abacus in a newly-started batch at Saksham where younger children are kept busy until the elder ones attend their classes; sevenyear-old Raja learning his lessons during the morning classes in Nithari village had to take care of their siblings when their parents went out to work. To help such children to continue their studies, we recently started a special batch for younger children where they spend their time until the elder ones attend their classes, says Madhavi Menon, an educator who is also among the founders of Saksham. Though Saksham is a non-profit charitable trust that runs informal literacy programmes, it has managed to get 150 first-generation learners admitted to schools, four of them to the nearest Navodaya Vidyalaya. Teaching at Saksham is spread over two shifts, beginning with a morning batch from 9 am to noon and an evening batch from 3 pm to 7 pm.
We had to pull in several children again and again to the school. These children were used to free life. But once they started learning, they began to develop an interest and started coming on their own.
Nadira Razaq, Co-founder, Saksham
Children have been organised into classes, based on their level of learning. The morning slot is reserved for those children who have never been to school. Here they learn to read and write and when they have studied for at least three years, they are enroled in a nearby government school. The evening batch comprises those who are enroled in schools but still continue to come here. Razaq recounts how Saksham acquired a force of its own over time. A joint director with Indian Railways, she had started teaching around 15 underprivileged children from her neighbourhood in Noida a decade ago, just to do her bit for the community and provide basic literacy to the children who had missed out on the opportunity of going

Bit By Self-less Bit
to school. A majority of the children came from migrant families hailing from West Bengal and Bihar. We had to pull in several children again and again to the school, recalls Razaq, Thats not surprising because these children were used to free life. But once they started learning, they began to develop an interest and started coming on their own. When the number of children increased, Razaq decided to move out of her home to a bigger, rented place in the neighbouring Nithari village. Some of her friends joined her in due course, her individual effort grew to a community project and ten of them together formed the trust in December 2003. As the number of children grew further, Razaq decided to opt for the Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) from Indian Railways in 2006, 10 years before she was due to retire. Now, more than 450 children come to study here, says Krishnan Dubey, president of Saksham. We will need more space if we have to accommodate more children. Additional space would require additional funds as well. While the owners provided the premises free of cost for the first year, later they started charging Rs 6,000 a month. But over time, they chipped in by constructing three classrooms for the benefit of the school. Yet, Razaq says the total budget is still just around Rs 20,000 a month, including salaries of the teachers. That is perhaps because some of the teachers include senior students who pass on their learning to the younger lot after their regular school hours. Seven such student-teachers are currently employed here. Five of them are students while two have never attended any formal school. If we had hired professional teachers, they wouldnt have shown such personal interest, says Razaq. These girls are paid Rs 700 per month in the beginning and then they keep getting increments. Sonam, who came to Delhi from Nepal with her husband five years ago, is one such student-teacher. She came here first to enrol her son Basant but started studying herself along with her son. Now, she attends the evening classes and teaches children up to the third standard in the morning session. Over time, besides influencing people in the vicinity into adopting education Saksham has begun to win friends and wellwishers as well. Schools in the neighbourhood have started donating to them used or discarded books. Global Education Fund, an international non-governmental organisation, too, recently sent them five cartons of books. It is hard to find such good books here, says Razaq, Even if you do, you will have to spend a lot on it. Such gifts are really helpful. Interestingly, though, Razaq says the
Saksham has changed my childrens lives. My elder son Sunil got admission into Navodaya three years ago and my younger son Nitish got admitted last year. We did not even know about Navodaya Vidyalayas. My children can now do well in their lives).
Nand Lal Construction site supervisor
bigger problem is not funds but volunteers. There are just around 10 people who are directly involved in the project. Then there are a few who volunteer whenever they can find the time. Sanjay Kumar, a lecturer at Delhi Universitys Hansraj College and founder of the theatre group Pandies, is one such volunteer. He and his group have been teaching the children the basics of theatre, including script writing and acting. Nadiras effort has brought Saksham to this stage. These children have tremendous talent and they are very creative. We just provide them the platform. They have performed on stage thrice till now, says Kumar. One of these performances centred around the serial killings in Nithari. Besides imparting literacy, Saksham is engaged in community service in other ways as well. Among other initiatives, it has recently started tailoring classes for girls and basic computer literacy for all. Whats more, it organises free medical check-ups for the entire village every week and distributes medicines free.
I come here for the check-up and bring along medicines with me, says Dr R. Podar, who comes every Thursday. These medicines are provided by the Jain Trust. If required, we also refer patients to the hospitals. Nand Lal, a supervisor at a construction site, believes he has benefited the most from Saksham. Two of his sons are among the four students from Saksham who have been admitted to the Navodaya Vidyalaya. Saksham ne mere bachchon ki zindagi badal daali. Mere bade bete Sunil ka Navodaya me dakhila teen saal pehle hua aur chhote bete Nitish ka pichhle saal. Humein to Navodaya ke baare me pata bhi nahin thha. Mere bachche ab zindagi me bada naam kama sakte hain (Saksham has changed my childrens lives. My elder son Sunil got admission into Navodaya three years ago and my younger son Nitish got admitted last year. We did not even know about Navodaya Vidyalayas. My children can now do well in their lives). Nand Lals wife, Asha, is thankful too. My elder daughter has given the entrance exam this year. Earlier I did not want her to go to Navodaya but Nadiraji educated me about the importance of schooling, says Asha. Amresh Kumar, principal of the Navodaya Vidyalaya at Dhoom, Manikpur, is pleasantly surprised when he is told about Saksham. We take care of these children and give them education when they come to us at Navodaya. But to prepare these children to compete at this level is really a good initiative, he says. Quite. And while Nithari may find it difficult to live down the macabre memory of the serial killings that propelled it to notoriety, Razaq and her associates are making sure that it will also continue to instil hope in an increasing number of young lives. n
Veteran leader Nanaji Deshmukh is no more

anaji Deshmukh, veteran leader who was closely associated with Jan Sangh and the RSS, passed away on February 27. He breathed his last at a hospital at Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh. He was 95. He was actively associated with Jayaprakash Narayan in the total
politics
rime Minister Manmohan Singh has admitted that the government has failed to control rising sugar prices, which he blamed on the cyclical nature of sugarcane production (precisely what Governance Now reported in the cover story of the March 1-15 issue.) There is a cycle which has been noticed for almost 50 years in the behaviour of sugarcane production. Every two or three years this cycle occurs, with upward pressure on prices, followed by a steep fall in prices. We have to find ways and means to stabilise the sugar economy despite this behaviour and to see that in future, a crisis of sugar can be stabilised at reasonable level irrespective of the cyclical nature of the production of sugar, Singh said in parliament. Strange that the cycle has been going on for half a century and no ways and means have been found so far to stabilise the prices.
revolution movement, opposed the Emergency rule, and was instrumental in bringing anti-Congress leaders together under the banner of the Janata Party that came to power in 1977. He, however, refused to become a minister. Moreover, he retired from active politics at the age of 60 only to take up constructive social work.
Bitter sugar: PM admits failure
Maoists are coming just wait till 2050

aoists are planning to rise in armed revolution and overthrow the Indian state by 2050. This claim comes from a Maoist pamphlet and has been quoted by Home Secretary G.K. Pillai himself who admits the state is ill-equipped to put significant pressure on them. The overthrow of the Indian state is not something they are willing to do tomorrow or
the day after. Their strategy, according to a booklet they circulated, is that they are looking at 2050, some documents say at 2060, Pillai said at a seminar. More worrying was his comment that the insurgents have not been under any significant pressure yet, as their core armed cadres have remained intact and out of reach of the Indian state.
Women, empowered?
fter years and years of talks, the Womens Reservation Bill has finally got going. The Congress, BJP and the Left parties have issued whips to their MPs to vote in favour of The Constitution (96th Amendment) Bill, which would reserve 33 percent seats in the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies for women. The Janata Dal-United, among the parties that opposed the bill, has seen a divide as Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has termed the womens quota as an ideas whose time has come. However, given the opposition, the could not be passed in the Rajya Sabha on the Womens Day.

Diversity In Unity
Picture this!
Anti-Congress forces may not be able to sustain their rare show of unity, but their coming together itself signals a significant shift in contemporary politics
Ajay Singh magery builds perceptions. Especially in contemporary India where politics is often more about perceptions than substance. But when you see visuals of Sushma Swaraj with Brinda Karat and Sharad Yadav holding hands with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad outside Parliament on budget day, the imagery challenged perceptions built up over nearly two decades.
Is there any meeting ground between the BJP and the CPI(M) or the JD(U) and the RJD? After all, the ideological positions of these parties are too fixated to allow a public show of meeting of minds even on a common cause. Prakash Karats CPI(M) has been doggedly pursuing an orthodox Marxist line which is often at odds with his own pragmatic comrades. At its Indore national executive, the BJP leadership for its part, dropped even the pretence of being an independent political entity and displayed its obsequious loyalty to the RSS. Similarly, there is hardly any meeting ground between Lalu
What brought these disparate and desperate opposition leaders together was the fear of the Congress regaining its pole position in national politics.
Prasads RJD and Nitish Kumars JD(U), both of which are set for a bitter showdown in Bihar elections just six months down the line. What has indeed brought these disparate opposition leaders together in this session of parliament is the fear of the Congress regaining its pole position in Indian politics. In the postAyodhya and post-Mandal phase of politics, anti-BJPism was in vogue as the Congress got relegated to the background, often responding to the agenda set by the BJP or the Mandal forces. But with the Congress having scored over 200 seats in the last Lok Sabha polls, the paradigm shift in national politics is quite discernible. The feeling that the Congress no longer requires the crutches of the Left or any other regional satrap has, however, pumped up arrogance in the ruling establishment. This was evident in the manner in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh brushed aside the oppositions contention on the vexing issue of price rise. Despite protests by even alliance partners like Trinamool Congress and the DMK, Sonia Gandhi endorsed Pranab Mukherjees inflationary budget which is expected to fuel price rise further with a hike in petrol and diesel prices. A rather aggressive prime minister rubbished BJP veteran LK Advanis argument about our policy on Kashmir and Pakistan and being nudged by the USA. The resurrection of an aggressive, arrogant and confident Congress leadership is all too evident. On the other hand, the anti-Congress secular forces which used to rally around the Congress against the BJP on the pretext of saving secularism are finding themselves irrelevant in the new context. With Rahul Gandhi making forays into UP and Bihar, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad are far more worried about the Congress than the BJP on their home turfs. The internal dynamics within the Congress are such that even senior leaders are perplexed by dual loyalties between AICC chief Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It is quite strange that the PM

Diversity In Unity
has been reduced to being no more than a political cabinet secretary, said the chief minister of an important state while referring to the overweening influence 10 Janpath wields over the PMO. At the same time, the prime minister, by virtue of being chief executive of the government, has often displayed an independent streak on certain issues related to foreign policy. For instance, Singh refused to balk at the protest over the joint statement he issued with his Pakistani counterpart at Sharm-al-Sheikh even though Congress tried to distance itself. On the issue of price rise, the PMs statement that the economy has the capacity to bear the price rise has not gone down well with the party. Sonia Gandhi later called it a serious issue. Obviously caught in this dual loyalty, governance is the worst casualty. Anti-Congress forces, meanwhile, though disarrayed, got an issue to corner the government. But sceptics say the opposition unity is an optical illusion. Though former BJP president Rajnath Singh maintained that a strong opposition was necessary for the smooth functioning of democracy, he was not confident of sustaining this unity. In fact, all parties in the opposition should sink their ideological differences and make common cause with people on price rise, Singh said. But that is easier said than done. The oppositions vulnerability became evident on the issue of womens reservation bill where Sharad Yadav digressed from the stated position of the NDA to support the bill. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had to intervene to make his partys line in consonance with the NDAs position. Despite the oppositions vulnerability, anti-Congressism has quite a history. The opposition was much disarrayed in 1973-74 when a student revolt against corruption of Gujarat chief minister Chimanbhai Patel, then known as Chiman Chor, engulfed the entire country. The arrogant and abrasive style of Indira Gandhi, described only a year previously as durga even by her adversaries after the 1971 IndoPak war, evoked popular upsurge. In 1971 elections, Indira Gandhi
rode on the popular wave of garibi hatao slogan and decimated even veterans of freedom struggle like Morarji Desai and C Rajagopalachari. Indira Gandhi not only tinkered with the judiciary by superseding three judges for the post of the chief justice of India (CJI) but also subverted the established institution. Her younger son Sanjay Gandhi emerged as a new extra-constitutional authority who rode roughshod over senior party leaders and cabinet ministers. Indira Gandhis aversion to parliamentary democracy was amply reflected in a letter she wrote to her friend in 1963 where she stated in unambiguous terms, Democracy not only throws up the mediocre person but gives strength to the most vocal howsoever they may lack knowledge and understanding. Like her mother, Sanjay Gandhi was too autocratic to be guided by democratic spirit. He famously remarked, Future generations will not remember us by how many elections we had, but by the progress we made. His vision of progress included forced vasectomy and urban reconstruction. In such circumstances
Even as the Congress appears confident of deflecting any challenge by projecting Rahul Gandhi, the resurrection of anti-Congressism may realign Indias political contours.
emerged venerated freedom fighter Jayaprakash Narain to lead the movement against Indira Gandhi. Anti-Congressism proved to be the ultimate glue to hold the opposition in 1975 when Indira Gandhi declared emergency. Anti-Congressism peaked in 1977 in the Lok Sabha elections when a motley group of opposition parties merged as Janata Party and defeated the Congress. But in less than three years, Gandhi won 353 seats in Lok Sabha elections in 1980 following factional fights within the Janata Party. Between 1980 and 1987, the Congress retained its primacy even during the time of Rajiv Gandhi. But anti-Congressism picked up momentum in 1987 when VP Singh raised the banner of revolt against corruption in high places, following sensational but unfounded revelation about Rajiv Gandhis involvement in the Bofors pay-off. VP Singh cobbled together an alternative platform with the BJP and the Left parties and won the elections in 1989. But the index of unity among anti-Congress forces was so fragile that the coalition could not last till 1991 when the Congress bounced back under PV Narasimha Rao after Rajiv Gandhis assassination. During Raos five-year term, the Congress was pushed to the margins by the emergence of an aggressive Hindutva forces under the BJP and assertive OBC forces represented by regional satraps. After the demolition of the Babri mosque on December 6, 1992 anti-Congressism was effectively replaced by anti-BJPism. Even after 2004 elections, a diffident Congress which was marginally ahead of the BJP in terms of Lok Sabha seats had been seeking support from the Left parties and regional parties to stop the BJPs march to power. But the partys comfortable position changed the entire scenario in 2009. There is no doubt that an insensitive ruling establishment would fuel popular sentiment against the Congress. Even as the Congress would appear confident of deflecting these sentiments by projecting Rahul Gandhi, the resurrection of anti-Congressism may realign Indias political contours. n
How competitive is your constituency?
ust how competitive is your parliamentary constituency? How well does it deploy resources at its disposal? And how exactly does it compare with the other constituencies in the state or, for that matter, constituencies across the country? Oft-asked as these questions may be, by voters as much as the investors eyeing a slice of the fast-growing development pie, the answers are as scarce as they are complex. But come next month and a first-of-its-kind ranking will provide a ready reckoner of development and productivity across 100 parliamentary constituencies, to begin with. Amit Kapoor, honorary chairman of Institute for Competitiveness, which is releasing the rankings in conjunction with the Centre for Public Policy Research, spoke to Governance Now about the study, the methodology employed and its uses. The rankings will be released at Asia Competitiveness Forum, being held on April 28-29 in New Delhi, where Governance Now will be a media partner.
Noo r Mohammad
Capital market and governance
First, how do you define competitiveness?

Well, simply as return on capital employed or, in other words, output over input. Gross domestic product per capita is generally how productivity is assessed and that is how we measure it as well.
look at the supporting infrastructure, including the governance structure, the educational institutions and so on. So we take into account the totality of socio-economic and socio-political factors prevalent in an area, including demographic profile, labour participation and so on. All these indicators then aggregate to a ranking of constituencies.
What correlation have you found between competitiveness and governance? And in that respect, how can this study help?
Why did you choose the parliamentary constituency as the unit of study?
We have been conducting studies on competitiveness across cities and states for the past three years but we felt the need to get down to smaller units for analysis. Take Maharashtra, where nearly 80% of the output is generated by just about seven centres and where you also have Vidarbha region. So there are huge disparities within states. Break it down further and you find similar disparities within cities as well. A parliamentary constituency offers just the right scale for such a study.
There is, of course, a direct correlation between governance and competitiveness. Bihar is a prime example where better governance has led to an improvement in competitiveness. Coming to your second question, our ranking will help pinpoint the gaps which the policy-makers and the investors can fill. Policy-makers will get to know just where to tinker the policy, investors will know where exactly to invest. The voters will know what to demand of their representatives, who, in turn, will get to know what to focus on. We want to make it very clear that this is a ranking of constituencies, not the members of parliament.
So how do you get down to actually comparing competitiveness across constituencies?
Why just 100 constituencies?
Our study is based entirely on hard data and statistical analysis based on around 60 indicators. Competitiveness depends on factor conditions, including land, labour and availability of capital. Then there are the demand conditions, meaning the quality and kind of products that the people seek, whether they make do with basic or perhaps just subsistence level products. Next we look at the level of enterprise and the diversity of companies. This is important because competition leads to innovation and the lack of competition inhibits innovation. Then we
We are launching with 100 constituencies in six states where we are very sure of the data available. But within three years, we will be able to cover all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies.
Is availability of data an issue?
Contrary to the popular perception, the government produces some amazing data at the district level, albeit with a time lag, but it requires hard work to collate data from different government agencies. Then you require statistical expertise to analyse the data. So, while availability of data is not an issue, it will take some more time to collate and analyse data from all constituencies.
SSOCHAM organised a national conference on Capital marketGrowth with Governance in the capital on February 11 to address, deliberate, suggest, and strategies action plans and road maps. The event received overwhelming response from various market players and participation from industry captains. Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid was the chief guest of the event and RBI Deputy Governor Dr Subir Gokarn was the guest of honour. The keynote address was delivered by Naina Lal Kidwai, group manager and country head of HSBC India. Inaugurating the conference, Dr. Gokarn said it would be the priority of the central bank to ensure growth and sustainability in the capital market for investors. He suggested that climate change would become a major issue in coming days and companies that take all possible precautions for emission reduction would receive the highest attention from investing companies. Therefore, the corporate world should attach maximum significance for corporate social responsibility in fair proportion with corporate governance. Speaking on the occasion, Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs, R. Bandyopadhyay said that under the new Companies Act, the government would define very explicitly the role of independent directors as also put a fixed ceiling for individuals to become independent directors only in few companies against the current practice in which no ceiling is prescribed for. This will ensure accountability for independent directors so that corporate mis-appropriation are put on hold. Kidwai said that India needs to reduce its over-regulations for the corporate world so that the capital market which determines the mood of Indian economy is strengthened on sustained basis. Among others who spoke on the occasion were Mr. Prithvi Haldea, Co-Chairperson, ASSOCHAM Capital Markets Committee, Mr. Paul Joseph, Principal Advisor, MCX-SX, Ms. Bharti Gupta Ramola, Executive Director, PWC, Mr. P K Nagpal, ED, SEBI, Mr. Subhash Agarwal, Co-Chairperson ASSOCHAM Capital Markets Committee, and Mr. D S Rawat, Secretary General ASSOCHAM.

Governance Intern
INTERVIEW
A g at h a s a n g m a
he first thing you notice as you enter Minister of State for Rural Development Agatha Sangmas office at Krishi Bhawan is that her petite frame does not match with her rather big chair. The next thing you notice is that her desk is free of the usual clutter papers, briefs, files and the paraphernalia. The daughter of P.A. Sangma, veteran Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader from the northeast, was first elected to the Lok Sabha in May 2008 through a by-election, and became a minister of state soon after getting re-elected from Tura in Meghalaya in May 2009. She takes pride in calling herself the second youngest minister in the cabinet. In an interview with Neha Sethi and Brajesh Kumar, she talks about being a 29-year-old minister, her ministry that is implementing the UPAs flagship welfare scheme NREGA, and the northeast. Excerpts:
What prompted you to join politics?
Joining politics was more of a party decision. The personal choice in this decision was limited for me. I just had one day to decide whether I wanted to file nomination papers for elections or not.
Was it easy for you to join politics as you are from a political family?
Of course it was easier for me. I had a strong platform and people recognised me. We had a name in the area and people had faith in my father.
People tend to club all the states when they talk of the northeast region
What role do you think you have been playing as a young minister?
It has been a short period since I became a minister. It has just been a few months. There is a time and place for young MPs to prove themselves. I think there is no point in trying to do something just to make yourself visible or to prove your point. I am here trying to understand the situation in the ministry. It is not difficult to understand what to do in this ministry. I have exposed myself to seven to eight issues that I want to concentrate on. the rural development ministry, my goal is to provide for sanitation and drinking water in the rural areas of the country. And let me tell you its a huge challenge on both fronts. As far as sanitation goes my ministrys target is to make the country open defecation free (ODF) by 2012. But, I personally think it is unrealistic. There are variety of reasons for which we will miss the deadline. Some the reasons are cultural barriers and beliefs, insufficient funds and non cooperation of states. However, the ministry is seized of the importance of the making the country ODF. Since it has a direct bearing on the health of the people and to an extent on the tourism sector, the ministry will ensure the target is achieved as early as possible. I have been travelling around the country meeting state officials
How did you feel on winning the first election?

I was in a daze... Things were happening very quickly.
You were an MP for about a year and now a minister. How different it is being a minister from being an MP?
Both positions have their own perks. But being a minister keeps you more occupied. It streamlines your work and keeps you more focussed. The area focus of your work is more precise and limited once you are a minister. A minister of state has to deal with the entire ministry and rural development ministry is a very large one. It is a very powerful ministry. It concentrates on development of rural areas. Being part of a ministry simplifies the work as it is more focussed.
As a minister of state for rural development (drinking water supply and sanitation) what are your priorities.
Since I am responsible for the sanitation and drinking water supply department of
Ravi choudhary
What are the areas that you want to concentrate on apart from your ministryrelated work?
The issues that I am keenly interested in apart from my portfolio are education, environment and health. But I also think that they can be incorporated in the work that I am already doing. Convergence of work is really important.
How are you trying to integrate your other interests with your ministry work?
Almost 60 percent jobs under NREGA are already on water conservation. We are promoting green jobs under NREGA. Some projects that are going on are for revival of traditional water bodies and rooftop harvesting. There is a lot of scope for innovation in these jobs. State governments should also be proactive. There is a need to make rural economy sustainable.
Ten percent of Indias budget is allocated for the northeast region. The real question is how these funds are being used by the various states. As a minister of state for rural development I am taking up water harvesting in a big way. Mizoram is doing very well on harvesting rain water. I have written to the chief minister of all the states to follow the Mizoram example. I am so concerned about the sanitation in the region. I am doing all I can to provide sanitation to the every part of the region.
People from the northeast often complain of discrimination. What do you think can be done to change this?
and pushing them to achieve the target. In the case of providing drinking water supply, the sustainability is the key. While at present we are mostly using the ground water, the focus has to be shifted on using surface water. We need to make people aware of water harvesting. My ministry is working hard on making water harvesting a priority. Also we want to ensure people switch to cost effective, environment friendly methods of water purification. Use of terra fill technology as against reverse osmosis is being encouraged.
Are you satisfied with the governance in the northeast region? How do you think you can contribute as a minister of state for rural development?
There is vast scope for improvement in that area. The schemes that are formulated are great and for the benefit for all. But there is a huge question mark on the implementation of the schemes. There are gaps which need to be filled up. Governments in the northeast need to equip themselves. They need to point out the gaps and fill them up. We see a lot of haphazard infrastructural planning in that area. For example, the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department starts laying down water pipes in many states without understanding how sustainable the water source is. It is only later that they assess the actual potential of the source. People tend to club all the states together when talking of the northeastern region. The whole northeast region cannot be seen as a homogeneous entity. There is a lot of difference in the governing of each state. Sikkim is one of the best governed states in the region. It is a very progressive state. Arunachal Pradesh, on the other hand, is a very difficult state because of the high-level of corruption. Meghalaya is a dormant state. The problem there is an unstable government. The state is not progressing at the pace that it should. Manipur is dealing with two problems at the same time: insurgency and corruption. The Indian government is providing a lot of funds for the development of the region.
What do you think have been your achievements in the ministry?
People from other parts of India need to accept that people from the northeast are as much part of India as they are. There needs to be an attitudinal change. They need to accept them as individuals and not in a superficial way. The integration of the northeast with Indian history and culture can play an important role. There is hardly any talk of the contribution of the northeastern people in the Indian freedom movement. This needs to be taught and highlighted in schools all over India. They (students elsewhere) also need to be taught how culturally rich the region is. Another solution is two-way access. There is a need to have better educational institutes in the area so that students from other regions in India can go to study there. They will then be able to understand our culture and us in a better way.
I cant really take credit for anything but I have raised my voice and pushed for the green part of NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). I have tried to push for work on the green side of NREGA. Ecosan, or ecological sanitation, is another initiative that I have been working on. It is a system of sanitation which requires no water. There is a need to have 100 percent sanitation in the country but if we go on the model of urban India then we will be unable to sustain it. The current model uses a lot of water. Under this system, the solid and liquid human waste is segregated. But this system is more expensive than the traditional system, like any other sustainable system. And to be able to implement it on a large scale will be a problem.
What do you think should be done for the development of the northeast?
Instead of concentrating on developing a region, we should talk about developing rural India. (Urban) Indias growth story should be replicated in rural India too. Rural India should be included in Indias growth.
What do you have to say about the demand for a separate time zone for the north east region?
Its a genuine demand and as highlighted by the cover story of your magazine, a proactive effort is desired in this direction. Insufficient daylight indeed hampers productivity and a separate time zone will address the issue. I will take up the subject in the northeast MPs forum and formulate a policy to pursue the demand. n
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PDS funds down by half
performance
19 bids for Unique ID project
inance Minister Pranab Mukherjees budget has slashed funds allocated to strengthening the public distribution system after last years allocation remained largely unutilised. In the expenditure budget for 2010-11, the net spending on monitoring of food and civil supplies and strengthening of the public distribution system has been cut by more than 25 percent. The overall allocation for monitoring and research in foodgrains and management
and strengthening of PDS was Rs 40.40 crore in 2009-10, but the expenditure was only Rs 14.60 crore. For 2010-11, the outlay under these heads has been brought down to Rs 29.69 crore. For the PDS, it has been cut down to Rs 3.91 crore in 2010-11 from Rs 7.20 crore in 2009-10. Mukherjee later said the PDS was not geared up to do its job efficiently and was only adding to the huge difference between farm gate and retail prices.
he Unique Identification Authority of India has received 19 bids for its first infotech project for application development services. Applicants include TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and IBM. The process of evaluating these firms is on and will be over by March-end or early April, according to a report. Meanwhile, the budget allocation for UIDAI has gone up a whopping 16 times from Rs 120 crore in last years budget to Rs 1,900 crore for 2010-11 as the authority prepares to issue the first set of UIDs between August 2010 and February 2011. The plan is to issue 60 crore UIDs over the next five years, UIDAI chief Nandan Nilekani has said.
alnutrition is a shame for India, as the prime minister has repeatedly stressed. But beyond making such statements very little has been done to provide right food to hungry children of the poor. Now Karnataka has made a start in that direction. A nutrition mission to bring down the number of children suffering
Karnataka sets up Indias first nutrition mission

from malnutrition in the state has been proposed by the BS Yeddyurappa government in its budget. The pilot project has been allotted Rs 5 crore. The mission to eradicate malnutrition is said to have the strong backing of Chief Secretary S V Ranganath and is the brainchild of Veena S Rao, an IAS officer of Karnataka cadre who recently retired as secretary to the government of India.
More money for local bodies
ll panchayats and municipalities will get 2.5 percent of central tax revenues, according to a recommendation of the 13th Finance Commission. Thus, they will have a stable flow of funds to improve their services. So far, the local bodies used to get funds only in the form of grants, and this radical departure will enable them to borrow additional funds from the bond market.
All local bodies need to be supported through a predictable and buoyant source of revenue, substantially higher than current levels, in addition to their own tax revenues and other flows from state and central governments, the commission said in its report. The finance panel has recommended a basic grant of 1.5 percent plus 1 percent linked with performance.
Not Fare! Heres how Railway

Dont you believe the railway ministers when they tell you they have not increased passenger fares in seven years. You are paying through your nose for a variety of hidden surcharges that can be summed up in one word: cheating!
Jai Mrug
ailway ministers in India have never tired of proclaiming their commitment to passenger safety, comfort, new trains and route extensions all the while keeping passenger fares unchanged. In fact, the last person to make honest claims about hiking fares and rationalising them was Nitish Kumar. However, the subsequent RMs did not think it prudent to keep announcing hikes. The railways seemed to have learnt more than a lesson or two from their peers in the skies the low-cost airlines. Lalu Prasad decided that the railways too
ys is cheating you
should offer low-cost travel like the no-frills airlinesthey launched the Garib Rath. In retrospect, one feels that this was not the only thing that the railways learnt from the low-cost airlines. The railways claims about not hiking fares are in many ways as deceptive as the low price tickets of the nofrills airlines. Surcharges, which should be the exception, have now become the normthey keep taking new avatars. Safety and comfort get special mention every time but never the necessary budgets and, worse, some operational practices of the railways (as we shall see later) adversely impact safety. The genesis of the current state of affairs lies somewhere in the late 1990s. In 2000, the budget that was presented by Mamata Banerjee showed the worst of the railways. The dividend that the railways were due to pay the central exchequer was deferred and the railways showed a very modest surplus of Rs 700 crore. She had not hiked fares, freight rates were hiked moderately, a huge pension liability was staring at the railways and railway minister after minister made claims of enhancing revenue generation by improving efficiency and internal accruals. Year after year, the numbers belied those claims. In the spring of 2001 Banerjee quit following the Tehelka scandal and Nitish Kumar took over. He focused on rationalising faresincreasing second-class fares (which were the most subsidised) and either reducing upper class fares or increasing them by far lesser amounts. Freight tariffs were also rationalised to focus on segments where the railways had lost out to the road and pipelines. Meanwhile, the railways was besieged by a spate
photos: Ravi choudhary
of accidentsmany of them derailments and bridge failures. Successive governments had failed to invest in asset regenerationmany built by the British. Forced to act, Nitish created a non-lapsable fund of Rs 17,000 crore to be mobilised and spent over five years exclusively for the purpose of asset renewal. Thus the safety surcharge came into effect on October 1, 2001; varied from Re 1 to Rs 100 depending upon the class and the distance travelled by the passenger. Ideally, this fund should have lapsed sometime in 2007 after it accomplished its target

The Railway Revenue Trick
of mobilising Rs 5,000 crore from the passenger community. However, it continued and the base fares today are inclusive of this surcharge. This, being a direct levy on passengers roughly depending on their class of travel, it is not as devious and deceptive as the other means deployed by the railways to raise funds from passengers. The Tatkal scheme was launched in the late 1990s with an additional coach in the trains. Those who frequently travel by trains would recall coaches being called T-1 and TS-1; TS being the acronym for Tatkal Seva. These were the Tatkal coaches and they were in addition to the regular ones. In FY 2003-04, the railways, slyly, without making any public announcements, changed this norm. Without investing in additional rakes, 10% of all seats were moved into the Tatkal quota. This was a decision with a huge impact on the availability of tickets to the common man. This was Indian Railways officially entering the black market of ticketsof course in addition to the existing touts who make it impossible for a genuine passenger to have her request entered first into the computer at eight in the morning when the bookings open for a new calendar date. Indias booming middle class produced a whole host of customers ready to pay the premium of Rs 300 and Rs 150 being charged by the railways for the air-conditioned and the second-class Tatkal tickets. The railways saw a handsome double digit growth (17%) in its passenger revenues without any additional investment from their side. IR now decided to be
kind to touts so that they too could thrive. When the Tatkal scheme was launched it was indeed supposed to be an emergency service for the needy. Therefore, a person booking the Tatkal ticket had to produce his identity at the time of booking and carry it along with him during travel. This ensured minimal role for touts in booking Tatkal tickets. The railways did away with the norm of demanding identity at the time of Tatkal booking. The touts once again landed a proactive role. With the advent of Lalu Prasad in 2004-05, the railways slowly started experimenting with increasing Tatkal seats. It was all done in a discreet fashion through internal memoranda and never through public announcements. This continues till today and has reached gigantic proportions. The railways does not have the gumption to state the truth and even the white paper that Mamata Banerjee released recently to debunk Lalus claims of greatness, is just a half lie in itself. The paper makes a very innocuous statement that the number of seats under the Tatkal scheme increased from 5.6% in 2005-06 to 14.2% in 2008-09. The document makes it appear that these were the seats allocated under the Tatkal scheme and their quantum was 5.6% in 2005-06, 6.8% in 2006-07, and 10.9% in 2007-08. Nothing could be farther from truth. No bureaucrat or commercial manger would allocate seats in decimal percentage points for the Tatkal quota. This number indicates the number of seats sold and not initially allocated, when the reservation begins. It is the initial allocation which creates the artificial scarcity of tickets and pushes
Without investing in additional rakes, 10% of all seats were moved into the Tatkal quota. This was a decision with a huge impact on the availability of tickets to the common man. This was Indian Railways officially entering the black market of ticketsof course in addition to the existing touts who make it impossible for a genuine passenger to have her request entered first into the computer at eight in the morning when the bookings open for a new calendar date.
more and more passengers towards touts and purchasing Tatkal tickets at a higher price. This has made ticket availability even in the lean period a difficult proposition. The great railway success story of the past few years rides on a series of rip-offs and outright cheating of the aam aadmi. Heres my list:
RIP-OFF
The rake composition of a train is the number of coaches of each class that constitute the train. On October 2, 2009 the 9131 Kutch Express completed 25 years for commuters between Mumbai and Gandhidham/Bhuj. The Western Railway on this day published the rake composition of this train. We shall use this recently-published rake information as a starting point to identify the percentage of Tatkal seats withheld by the railways at the time reservation begins for a new calendar date. The Kutch Express has one AC two-tier coach and two AC three-tier coaches, besides 12 second-class sleeper coaches. The capacity of one AC twotier coach is about 46-48 berths
the Tatkal loot
(mostly 46) and the capacity of one standard AC threetier coach is 64 berths. Two AC three-tier coaches would mean that the available capacity is 128 berths. So, on February 2, 2010, I queried for berth availability under the Tatkal quota on the Kutch Express. I found that 32 berths were set aside for this quota, which is an astonishing 25% of the total berths (screenshot on right). With a similar query for the 2163 Dadar-Chennai superfast express I found 32 out of the 128 AC three-tier berths kept aside for Tatkal (see screenshot). This is more than what the touts used to gobble up in tandem with ticketing clerks in the non-computerised reservation era! This is the benign IR for you. A study of several Rajdhanis also reveals a substantially high number of seats being earmarked for Tatkal. Well, we talked of only the bourgeoisie people who travel by the AC class, lets talk of the aam admi, the mascot of the current ruling alliance. According to the press release, the train under study (Kutch Express) has 12 sleeper class coaches. With 72 berths per sleeper coach, this cumulates to 864 sleeper berths in the entire train.
W eb S I T E S C R E E N S H OT - tatkal q uota on K utch expRESS
The screenshot on the right shows 259 seats kept aside for Tatkal a staggering 30% of the berths! So much for the aam admi. Even if we assume the railways added one more sleeper coach the percentage would be a staggering 27.6%. Clearly, the aam admi is the most looted in the railways scheme of things. If the railways claim of selling about 14% of seats under Tatkal were to be taken at face value, then this train should have had 1,824 second class sleeper berths, which would mean that the trains should have 25 reserved sleeper class coaches aloneimpossible, right? So the white paper is actually a hide paper as far as the modus operandi of passenger pricing is concerned. Similarly, on the 2163 Dadar-Chennai the following scenarios of availability were observed. Assuming that this train has about 12 sleeper class coaches the percentage of Tatkal berths here works out to 21%. In most popular trains the allocation nears 20%. Nowhere is it near 14%.
RIP-OFF
Web SITE SCREENSHOT - tatkal quota on CHENNAI EXPRESS, sleeper class
The next biggest act of deception by the Indian Railways has been the classification of superfast services. The railways have an archaic norm which states that any train which exceeds an end-to-end average speed above 55 kmph could qualify for the superfast status. Starting 2005, the railways began playing with the technicality of the timetable. The timetables designed with buffers and speed constraints provided ample opportunity for reducing the run time of trains without any significant augmentation in track capacity or technological upgradation. Lets take one of the neo-convert
SUPERFAST SNAILS

superfasts. This is train 2139, Mumbai-Nagpur-Sewagram Express. In a distance of 837 km between Mumbai and Nagpur the train has 31 halts, which means on an average a halt every 26.2 km. With a whole host of cuts in the schedule of the train, the average speed of the train was just brought above 55 kmph55.17 kmph to be preciseand the train was classified as superfast. A superfast train means that on every second class ticket you levy a surcharge of Rs 20 and on a higher class ticket you levy a surcharge of Rs 30. Beginning 2004-05, the railways slowly started converting the most ordinary trains to superfast. In this context, the white paper is honest in admitting that 19 such upgraded trains did not see any reduction in their travel time. What it does not state is that most saw reductions between five minutes and one hour, which is insignificant given improvements in signalling and the redundancy of long halts. The white paper claims that the railways upgraded 13 trains in 2005-06, 170 trains in 200607, four in 2007-08 and two in 2008-09. However, the overall number of superfast trains makes this number look a little suspicious; a little too small. Of the 1,440 listed mail/express trains on the website of the Indian Railways, about 514 are superfasts, which means more than a third. This, without any improvement in the physical infrastructure or technological upgrades. If the railways were to have some of their capacity de-bottlenecked every other train (50%) would make it to the superfast category! A very simple thumb ruleevery time you book a train ticket and if
Class Base fare Averaged Tatkal Premium
Web SITE SCREENSHOT - fare en q uiry
your train number starts with 2, it is a superfast. Rest assured you are paying a surcharge. Almost every train worth travelling by between our many metros has been classified as a superfast.
A superfast train means that on every second class ticket you levy a surcharge of Rs 20 and on a higher class ticket you levy a surcharge of Rs 30. Beginning 2004-05, the railways slowly started converting the most ordinary trains to superfast. Most trains saw reduction in running time of five minutes to one hour only.
Tatkal Premium (%) Super Fast Premium
RIP-OFF
The railways learnt a couple of more things from the no-frills airlines. For example, when you cancel a ticket you should not take home the full amount in refund. So, in 2005-06, they doubled the cancellation fees. Worse, if you have a Tatkal ticket you could take home only 25% of what you paid; after paying a heavy premium. Another ridiculous charge levied by the railways is the charge for internet booking. Worldwide, any airline actually offers you a discount if you book tickets through the internet. Our very own Air India not
Average cancellation premium Average cancellation premium (%) 0.3821918 0.42694497 0.80213904
3 4
4.5 4.5 3
CANCELLATION
RIP-OFF
NET LOOT
only provides you a ticket Rs 250 cheaper, if booked on the web; if you are a frequent flyer you get 500 frequent flier miles as well. Welcome to the Indian Railwaysif you book on the web you are to pay a charge of Rs 40 for upper-class tickets and Rs 25 for second-class tickets. (In the current budget the charges were reduced from Rs 25 to Rs 10 for second-class and Rs. 40 to Rs 20 for upperclass tickets. Thank Mamata for small mercies.) Worse, if you cancel your tickets, this money is not refunded to you. Its like a gate entry fee that the railways take from you. A user who makes a booking on the internet accesses the website of the Indian Railways for no more than seven to eight minutes. The IRCTC website is indeed a milch cow of the Indian Railways. By recent estimates, 25% of the railway passenger tickets are sold through the IRCTC website. In the year 2009, IRCTCs turnover just from ticket sales amounted to over Rs 4,000 crore. So heres a revenue stream that can keep giving money like a kalpataru.
Average internet reservation premium (%) 0.342465753 0.474383302 0.668449198 Cumulative Percentage hike
Super fast Premium (%)
Average internet reservation premium 5 5 2.5
AC 2 Tier AC 3 Tier Sleeper class
1460 1054 374
50 60 22
3.42 5.69 5.88
30 30 20
2.05 2.85 5.35
6.13 9.44 12.70
RIP-OFF
However, the award for the most foolish surcharge goes to the one called the surcharge for booking tickets from stations other than the originating station. It is not the magnitude of this surcharge but its logic which in the internet era is absolutely incomprehensible. It works this way: Suppose you are an aam admi, standing in the queue to book your ticket from Delhi to Lucknow and suppose you book your return ticket from a reservation centre in Delhi you would pay an extra reservation charge of Rs 10 (see the screenshot to the left). This could have been justified in a pre-internet era when telegrams were the only means to book return tickets. In the era of internet there could be no differential cost to book a ticket in a software system from any point A to any point B. This surcharge shows the intellectual bankruptcy of IR when it comes to finding innovative surcharges. And who pays for it? The aam admi who stands in the queue to book the ticket. It does not apply to internet booking as the railways surely does not underestimate the common sense of internet users (see the screenshot on the facing page). We could now make a couple of assumptions to arrive at a final estimate of how much over and above the base fare one could actually be paying to the railways: n For our exercise, we take a long distance trip of about 1,400 km. This is the Mumbai-Delhi track distance and will serve well for benchmarking. n Given the substantially higher number of berths found allocated for Tatkal in the random study, we assume an average of 17% to 20% of the seats that would go under the Tatkal hammer this year.
REMOTE BOOKING
A result of the reduced wagon turnaround are rail and weld fractures that were reported most commonly in all divisions. If the railways have managed to pull through without any major mishaps, they should thank the previous regime of Nitish Kumar when major investments in infrastructure upkeep were undertaken.
n About 15% of the tickets undergo cancellation/rescheduling in their life cycle. We average the Tatkal premium over all the tickets so as to arrive at the incremental cost per ticket. Similarly, the enhanced cancellation fees and internet reservation fees are distributed per passenger to obtain the incremental impact. Superfast and other surcharges are calculated over the base fare to obtain a percentage of increment over the base fares. The table on the facing page summarises the cumulative incremental ticket price. The table shows the cumulative percentage increase in fares after the application of variety of surcharges. It is the least 6% for AC two-tier, a substantial 9% for AC three-tier and the highest for sleeper class 13%. Indeed, it is the aam admi who has been taxed the most.
The story of miraculous increase in freight revenues is somewhat similar but with larger ramifications for the overall safety of the network. While tactical pricing drives the story of passenger revenues the story and freight revenue is driven by tactical pricing as well as capacity utilisation. To tap the revenue potential of illegally overloaded wagons, the railways simply legalised higher axle loads thereby taking away the upari kamai of its freight booking officials and converting it to the official revenue of the railways. While that was a master stroke, it made a regular official practice of what would have otherwise been a malpractice not keeping with the health of the infrastructure. This legalising of higher axle loads was carried out in one stroke preventing adequate time for field trials for safety, optimal load examinations, impact on track maintenance and the capacity of locomotives. Unpublished in the White Paper are several accounts of the impact of this overloading. According to internal memoranda moving between various zonal offices and Rail Bhavan, there has been a substantial increase in the amount of rail fractures one particular railway zone reported an increase of 42%. Increased instances of sick detachment a term used for wagons that need urgent repairs were also reported. In many instances important equipments in electric locos are reported to have failed. Another zonal railway reported that wagons had to be detached en route due to bulging and wheel burns and that the overloading of wagons severely impacted some of their old bridges. Rail and weld fractures were among the most commonly reported impacts. If the railways have managed to pull through without any major
RIP-OFF
FREIGHT FRIGHT

mishaps, they should thank the previous regime of Nitish Kumar when major investments in infrastructure upkeep were undertaken. The railways also enhanced their freight revenue by reducing wagon turnaround time. What this meant is that earlier freight trains were examined every time they returned to the base station. Now they were examined only after they ran 7,500 km. In many ways this was a compromise with safety, however it meant faster turnaround and greater revenue. Also during the iron and steel boom in the middle of this decade the railways deftly reclassified these commodities which automatically produced higher revenue for them. According to Shagun Mehrotra and Sudhir Kumar, the authors of Bankruptcy to Billions (Oxford University Press), the railways made Rs 9,000 crore by consecutively raising the freight fares for iron ores using a variety of means.
RIP-OFF
The concept of higher utilisation of rake capacity with decreased turnaround time was also extended to passenger services. First it was decided that trains that had large waiting lists would all have 24 coaches so that the railways would play on the economics of volumes and enhance the revenue per train. For this purpose it was required that extra coaches be drawn from the current rolling stock. This would not have been possible without rake optimisation or reducing the number of rakes required per service. For example, if the Rajdhani between Mumbai and Delhi were to take 24 hours instead of the current 17, it would take three sets of trains to maintain this Rajdhani as a daily service between Mumbai and
TURNAROUND TRICKS
Clearly, there has been no true revolution in the railways. Its just that they learnt to be street smart. In fact, most of their policies have achieved quite the opposite of what they profess as their commitment year after year.
Delhi. However, as it takes about 17 hours right now, it is possible to offer a daily service with just two sets of rakes. Each one travels overnight in the opposite direction. To achieve this optimal utilisation IR has sought to reutilise rakes without significant terminal time, often leading to poor maintenance and cleanliness. They also increased the minimum distance requiring primary maintenance from 2,500 km to 3,500 km. This has led to trains turning around without sufficient clean-up and maintenance. The Ahmedabad-Jammu Tawi Express turns around immediately at Jammu Tawi (despite having travelled about 1,500 km) to move to Bathinda and at the Ahmedabad end (after again having travelled 1,500 km) turns around to go to Veraval within six and a half hours. Several daily services that earlier utilised four rakes are now being run in three rakes. This has led to passengers complaining of dirty trains right from the point of origination. These quick turnarounds not only impact cleanliness but also the punctuality of trains.
RIP-OFF
The most severe indictment of the railways is, however, on the safety front that was borne out effectively by the serial accidents that we witnessed in late December and January. This brought most observers back to a promise Nitish Kumar made in his earlier budget speeches beginning February 2003 that of installing the Konkan Railway (KR) developed and patented Raksha Kavach on all broad guage routes in India in
SAFETY SHOCKER
a period of five years. The Raksha Kavach or ACD (anti-collision devise, see visual to left) is an automatic braking system that communicates with trains moving around in close vicinity, railway stations and level crossings. The moment the device detects another train on the same track within a distance of three km it automatically applies brakes and brings the train to halt within 1.3 km. A study commissioned by IR itself in 2002 found that the ACD could avoid about 82% of the accidents that occur on IR. The railways estimated in 2003-04 that it would take them about Rs 1,800 crore to implement this system all over the broad gauge network in a period of five years. The railway ministers repeated their promise year after year in budget speeches but dogged by bureaucratic delays and alleged interference of other lobbies, the ACD today covers just 1,736 km of the North East Frontier Railway. The worst cut is of course the fact that the money required for this entire exercise is a mere three to four percent of the Rs 50,000 crore surplus the railways claims to have earned during 2004-09. But, yes, many more years shall be declared year of passenger safety. Clearly, there has been no true revolution in the railways. Its just that they learnt to be street smart. In fact, most of their policies have achieved quite the opposite of what they profess as their commitment. The revenue enhancement is clearly myopic as it compromises the future of the network and its reliability. In the light of the Sixth Pay Commission it is not even sufficient. And, yes, the person most duped is the aam admi. Now tell her the fares will not go up again! n Jai Mrug is a rail transport expert and political commentator. jai.mrug@gmail.com
Prabha Raghunandan, Homemaker from Jharkhand
V. K. Thakur, Engineer, Resident of Dhanwal
I am a frequent traveller. I take this train some six times a year. The food served in the train could get better. The air travel is more expensive. The rail connectivity is better. If I take the flight, it will be a complete wastage of time as Ill have to travel a few hours by road to reach my destination. So the train routes are better for me. The time taken by the train could be lessened. They could reduce it from 17 hours. I am okay with the arrival and departure timings of the train.
The time taken to reach Delhi from Howrah or vice versa is too long. This can be reduced. They can make the trains faster. They should have the departure at 6 pm instead of 5 pm. And the train should reach the destination by 7 am the next morning so that the entire day can be utilised. The trains have also been running late. Just last November-December, the trains were running as late as 12 hours behind schedule. Safety is a big concern for us. They come out with the budget every year but they do not give attention to safety and time. They may increase the fare if they want, but they should ensure total safety.
Photos: Ravi Choudhar y
M. Ahsan, Dhaka, Works with DUK Communications
Dr. Mala Srikanth, Public health consultant
I am a tourist and I cannot speak much Hindi. Reserving the tickets was such a big problem. There is not much information available. I had to ask my friends to book the tickets for me. Also, the railways should have a list of authorised agents whom we can trust and who dont overcharge. They should regulate this sector more. The timings should also be changed. You end up wasting an entire day if the train arrives later in the day. It should reach the destination around 6.30 or 7 am so that by 9 am one is settled to start work.
The railways are doing a phenomenal job. For the reservations and booking, the entire procedure is so transparent. I would any day choose to take a train over the low cost airlines, which are not so low cost anyway. I can read, I can stretch my legs. If the time is changed, that would really help. If we reach a city early in the morning, we can use the entire day. The airlines, though they start early in the day, mention only the time taken in the flight but actually one ends up spending some five hours one way. Civic amenities at the railway stations and in the trains must improve though.
Didi dont dupe us

Jai Mrug n April 2001, the Thane District Railway Passengers Association received a letter from the Western Railway headquarters. It stated that RETS (Reco.Engg.cum-Traffic Survey) for the new line between Dahanu Road-Nashik Road was completed and the project report was sent to the Railway Board in March 2001. The report indicated the length of the railway lines and its costs. They were also informed duly of the Railway Board keeping the project in abeyance in May
2001. The budget speech of February 24, 2010 listed the line as a new line to be surveyed a survey for a line that had already been surveyed and projections made for! That is the undercurrent of many of the populist measures announced by railway ministers successively in many of their budget speeches. Many if not all are mere rehashes of unfulfilled, mostly undeliverable promises made in previous speeches. The list of socially desirable lines along with the new lines proposed to be taken up adds up to a humongous 169. A quick analysis revealed this was not the only such line. The Yamuna Nagar-Patiala line that appears in the list of socially desirable lines already appeared as a new line
in the budget speech of 2005-06. Ditto for the Etah-Kasganj line and the Murongselek-Pasighat line. Rest assured, more than 90% would not see the light of the day in the next 10 years. That is, in a nutshell, the tenor of the budget a list of promises that might just not be kept and are often redrafted from past budget speeches. The operating ratio of the Indian Railways that has swung into the early 90s (92.3%) could be expected to stick there or even go higher. This effectively means that all the financial recovery that was achieved in the past five years will be undone shortly. While IR must be given credit for enhancing capacity utilisation, optimising rake utilisation
Photos: Ravi Choudhar y

and reducing down times, the overall subsidy to the passenger sector is still estimated to be of the order of Rs 14,000 crore. The Sixth Pay Commission is largely to blame for this. It increased the proportionate expenditure for running passenger services by a whopping Rs 10,000 crore, and the overall personnel cost of the railways by at least Rs 12,000 crore. In one stroke the pay commission undid years of financial improvement brought about by the railways. The only other solution for this would have been to enhance employee productivity to offset the costs imposed by the pay commission. That would involve touching some core practices of the IR and no railway minister would dare do that. The railways are therefore going to run empty again and the projections for enhanced revenue are based on some fallacious assumptions. According to Mamata Banerjees projections, the non-core revenue is expected to grow from
please
Rs 150 crore to Rs 1,000 crore. Its not the first time that the railways is trying to tap non-core revenue. In the late 1990s the railways floated the RailTel Corporation to lay optical fiber cables along their right of way and enhance revenue by leasing them out to telecom operators. In budget after budget the railways made tall claims about the revenue projections of RailTel. It was designated to provide various services such as broadband internet, voice telephony on internet, cable TV, national long distance telephony in urban as well as rural areas. In 2000 RailTel projected profits to the tune of Rs 500 crore. However, as late as last year it posted a dismal profit of only Rs 40 crore on a revenue of Rs 214 crore. That is the sort of growth
The Yamuna NagarPatiala line that appears in the list of socially desirable lines already appeared as a new line in the budget speech of 2005-06. Ditto for the EtahKasganj line and the Murongselek-Pasighat line. Rest assured, more than 90% would not see the light of the day in the next 10 years. That is, in a nutshell, the tenor of the budget a list of promises that might just not be kept and are often redrafted from past budget speeches.
you get in non-core revenue. Just a fortnight ago IR closed down some 50 cybercafes saying they could not run them. Budget after budget railway ministers make tall claims about harnessing non-conventional sources of revenue and they invariably end up in a damp squib. The other source of expanding the revenue base is of course freight. While the projections are heightened there is no allocation to decongest capacity on the golden quadrilateral which provides about 55% of the freight traffic. Of the 33 sections proposed for constructing new lines under the target of 1,021 km only nine directly/indirectly feed the golden quadrilateral. They do not enhance its capacity but increase its reach by feeding to the golden quadrilateral. Of the 19 gauge conversion sections that are to be completed in 2009-10 only three have anything to do with the golden quadrilateral. Of the 15 sections fixed for gauge conversions in the coming year only one might alleviate some traffic on the golden quadrilateral. Another area that is commonly highlighted in the budget speech as a ritual is the High Speed Passenger Corridor. Six corridors were proposed to be built for the same: Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar, PuneMumbai-Ahmedabad, HyderabadDornakal-Vijayawada-Chennai, Howrah-Haldia, Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam and Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna. All that the government has managed to spend on the same is a sum of Rs 15 crore towards prefeasibility studies for the PuneMumbai-Ahmedabad route. The estimated cost for the same is approximately Rs 100-150 crore/km. Given the fact that land acquisition is the other very important factor involved in these activities, it is unlikely that fast progress will be made on any of these issues. The Dedicated Freight Corridor is another issue that finds repeated mention in rail budgets. The railway minister said in his budget speech 2007-08 that the construction of the Dedicated Freight Corridor would start in that financial year and would be completed by the end of the 11th plan, that is 2012. Even right now the construction has progressed very meagerly. The

PPP is among the most frequently used terms in the budget, but how remains a question.
projected cost that was Rs 30,000 crore when the project was envisioned is now pegged at Rs 40,000 crore. As of now only 80% of the required notices for land acquisition are out. As the railways did not put together a formal business plan in place, it has taken a while to secure the funding. As late as the end of 2009 construction contracts for only 105 km of the Eastern Freight Corridor and 54 bridges on the Western DFC were awarded. With so many constraints the first train on the Dedicated Freight Corridor is
unlikely to ply before 2017, the end of the 12th five-year plan. Like most other schemes in the budget the above two are sought to be rendered through the PPP mode. PPP is among the most frequently used terms in the budget. How through PPP remains a big question. When she presented the interim budget in July 2009, Mamata Banerjee stated that in the previous budget (presented by Lalu Prasad) there was a provision of Rs 3,400 crore to be mobilised through the PPP route, of which Rs 3,300 crore would never
materialise. She then altered the overall plan allocation with some support from the Gross Budgetary Support. Effectively, she stated that the railways would be able to mobilise only Rs 100 crore through PPP in FY 2009-10. How, within a timeframe of less than a year, the railway minister has invested so much faith in the PPP mode again remains to be understood. In the 2007-08 budget speech Lalu Prasad said that meter gauge lines did not contribute significantly to profits and would need to be converted to broad gauge. The minister expressed the intent to convert most of them to broad gauge by the end of the 11th five-year plan (2012). The meter gauge and narrow gauge lines together span about 19.2% of the network. The progress in gauge conversion has, however, been tardy. What the railways has failed to understand so far is that several meter gauge lines offer a brilliant opportunity to decongest the existing golden quadrilateral. The saturation numbers on the golden quadrilateral are as follows: The Mumbai-Delhi arm of the golden quadrilateral is saturated to the extent of 71%, the Delhi-Howrah arm is saturated to the extent of 70% and the Mumbai-Chennai section is saturated to the extent of 60%. If the Ahmedabad-Delhi broad gauge line (which was converted from meter gauge to broad gauge in the last decade) were to be fully doubled then it could easily decongest the existing Mumbai-Delhi corridor and provide enhanced capacity for freight from Kandla and Pipavav ports as well till the dedicated freight corridor were to be constructed. The JaipurRatlam-Indore-Khandwa-AkolaPurna line, if completely converted to broad gauge and doubled, would offer an alternative to the already congested North South corridor. In fact, only strategic gauge conversion and doubling would help reduce the congestion on many of the quadrilateral lines, enhancing capacity, punctuality and reducing wear and tear of assets. In the budget speech made in FY 2008-09, the railway minister promised just that to cater to the needs of the cement Industry and decongest the existing arm of the golden quadrilateral that they used. They promised to
The budget fails to identify any means for capacity enhancement along the golden quadrilateral.
double the Daund-Gulbarga section as well as to electrify the entire section from Pune to Guntakal. This would have covered more than half the section between Mumbai and Chennai. That has hardly made any progress though it is on the golden quadrilateral. In fact, only a small additional distance between Solapur and Mohol has been doubled while tenders have just been invited for doubling between Gulbarga and Hotgi (Solapur). Electrification remains a distant dream. In spite of repeated commitments to strengthening the golden quadrilateral most of these important projects have been left to the Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) or without any allocation. In the late 1990s, close to 15% of the trains announced in the budget had to be either closed or never started. The number is much lower now but the announcements are regularly made before taking the planned capacity into account. About three trains announced in the previous budget are yet to be started and with the long list of trains announced this year, their commencement could well spill into the latter half of 2011.
The budget speech read like a social and cultural welfare ministers speech with the talk of hospitals, schools, sports academies, museums, hostels, CFL lamp distribution, insurance, houses, cultural integration across borders, diagnostic centres, outpatient departments and ecological parks dominating the first 20 pages and more than 45 minutes of the budget speech read in parliament.
The budget speech overall read like a social and cultural welfare ministers speech with the talk of hospitals, schools, sports academies, museums, hostels, CFL lamp distribution, insurance, houses, cultural integration across borders, diagnostic centres, outpatient departments and ecological parks dominating the first 20 pages and more than 45 minutes of the budget speech read in parliament. West Bengal certainly takes the cake in the budget. Some interesting statistics: of the 93 multi-functional complexes proposed to be developed in the budget, 20 (that is, 21%) are in West Bengal. The first centre for excellence in wagon prototyping is to be in West Bengal. The new rail axle factory and the coach mid-life rehabilitation workshop are also to be in West Bengal. Of the five wagon manufacturing factories to be set up, two (40%) are in West Bengal. The workshop for heavy axle load wagons for the Eastern Freight Corridor is in West Bengal. Of the six locations identified for the Kisan Vision project, four (67%) are in West Bengal. The two museums that the railways are supposed to fund are also in West Bengal. Such an imbalance in allocation is certainly in bad taste for a federal democracy. The budget fails to identify any concrete means for capacity enhancement along the golden quadrilateral; how to achieve a quantum jump in freight; and how to raise employee productivity that would make them look reasonably priced in the light of the Sixth Pay Commission. If the last factor is not attended to any amount of revenue enhancement measures will yield a naught whenever a new pay commission recommendation is implemented. That is a systemic problem that modern governments need to address. The first two remain in the hands of the railways. Make no mistake, Lalu Prasad too did not address the first two, he simply had a booming iron ore economy and a sleight of the pen (enhancing wagon carrying capacity in one stroke) that helped him look like a magician. How Mamata or others in Rail Bhavan will find their magic mantra remains to be seen. Else, welcome to Air India part 2. n

Government Files
Feeling rich, Pranab-da?

The pre-budget bulge in your purse is just a routine trick your babus and the industry play on every Finance Minister every year...
ravi choudhary
Rohit Bansal t took actor Aamir Khan to highlight what veterans in the tax machinery have repeatedly failed to bring out in the open. The day after the budget, the actor used his quick quote in a leading newspaper to ask why refunds by the income tax department were unduly delayed. Aamir also complained about the inherent harassment that honest taxpayers have to go through to procure their refunds. I wondered where the actor got this idea till I met the retired tax policymaker who cursorily mentioned this to Aamir. But there was something else he spoke of too. He told me of an unreported phenomenon that had me gasping at the babuss ingenuity in pumping up the direct tax revenue collections just before every budget to make the honourable Finance Minister look good. It appears that each year before March 31, the tax chiefs of important circles ask top corporates, banks and high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) to deposit excess amounts of advance tax. A normal HNI in Delhi or Mumbai may be requested to put in an extra Rs 1 crore. A large corporate could be told to place a deposit of Rs 1,000 crore! Surprisingly, these folks comply. For two reasons. First, they obviously want to help out the taxman concerned to achieve the revenue target given the circle she heads. Two, because the money, in most cases, is in any case parked in their treasury operations, and it will earn very decent interest when it is returned
courageous decision. It is hoped that the direct tax code next year will focus on this.
Telecom towers cant be infrastructure, surely....
TAXING ROLE: Aamir batted for the small, honest taxpayer, but the tax officials have other things to worry about such as revenue targets.
as a refund (corporated refunds can be fast tracked, you see). The implication of this quid pro quo is that the relevant tax circle meets its target, the FM looks good when he presents the annual revenue his boys have garnered and the corporate or HNI concerned earns interest besides bailing out their local assessment officer. By next year, almost no one bothers to point out that the nation-wide tax collection figures were inflated anywhere around 20-30 percent. This goes on every year. But theres one constituency that does suffer. Ordinary refund seekers find themselves last in the queue for refunds. Some really resource-less types are put on the hold until April next year. This is unfair. Music director Anu Malik just last week said hed like to see Aamir Khan as the FM. Aamir is neither equal to the task nor stupid enough to give this a minutes thought. But certainly, given his quick uptake, he can use his stardom to bring out unfairness embedded in our policy fine print. As widely reported, the top finance ministry team met him ahead of this years budget. Perhaps, Aamir should take the cue and apprise himself of more such injustices; but doing so, he should remain selective and modest, and not fall prey to lobbies or go around blowing his own trumpet.
CII, FICCI stumped By FM
The redeeming feature of this years budget was that industry lobby organisations CII and FICCI dint have space for much headway. This isnt a reflection of the lack of effort or the formidable advocacy skills of Chandrajit Banerjee or Dr Amit Mitra. Even as the devil in the detail unfolds, it is fair to say that finance minister Pranab Mukherjee left little room for the apex chambers to swing any unexpected concessions. This, in fact, is the way it should be. Most tax concessions have gone on for far too long. They have given undue discretion to junior officers and have done little to enhance the prestige of chartered accountants who have to hang around income tax offices on behalf of the seeker. Cleaning up the entire edifice of largesse is a
It is hard to meet a top official and not find him polite and helpful. But the lower you go down the rung, the going gets tougher. This isnt just true for a DGP versus a police constable. It is equally true for those who are batting for Indian infrastructure. For all the lip service that policy statements pay to Indias need for bijli, sadak, paani and bandwidth, would you believe that there still isnt a coherent and commonly accepted definition of what exactly qualifies as infrastructure. A tax assessment officer looks at his book in a different way. The bank has a different yardstick. But the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has taken this question to a different plane. When faced with the case whether telecom towers qualified as infrastructure, two departments within our apex bank have taken an opposite position on whether the lender should get special sops reserved for lending to infrastructure. The department within RBI managing non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) feels towers are infrastructure, after all our cell phones wont function the next second without them. But the department within the same RBI managing policy directions to banks has rejected this argument. The NBFC wing has since change its mind too! n Rohit Bansal is CEO of India Strategy Group, Hammurabi & Solomon and an HBS alum.
An idea whose time has come

long with other public intellectuals from the northeast, noted filmmaker Jahnu Barua has been campaigning for a separate time zone for the region (he in fact wrote the cover story of Governance Now February 28 issue on this timely topic). Acting on their representations, the Assam government has convened a meeting of experts in April. It will also urge the other states in the
policy
Does PM want to dilute RTI Act?
region to undertake a similar exercise to build up a consensus before moving the central government. Speaking in the Assam assembly, Congress MLA Bhupen Bora referred to Baruas presentation on the need for a separate time zone for the northeast. Assam Science and Technology Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said in reply: I assure the house that we will take a cabinet decision and raise it with the centre.
n the day that Congress chief Sonia Gandhi said the RTI Act was the most significant achievement of the UPA government, a news item appeared in the media, saying that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in favour of bringing amendments to the law. The news referred to a reported correspondence between Gandhi and Singh, in which the party chief has apparently sided with the NGOs who have opposed any move to change the law, while the prime minister seems to favour changes albeit after consulting stakeholders. The latest talk of amendments comes after the Delhi High Court brought the office of the chief justice of India within the ambit of the law, the reports noted. The RTI activists have once again opposed any move to weaken the law, but at least one leader has come out to support changes Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy says the Act needs safeguards to protect the nation from anti-national elements.
Forget Bt Brinjal, even Bt Cotton has problems

against the pink bollworm pest in four districts of Gujarat. The company has asked farmers to shift to its next generation seeds. The critics now say that the finding only confirms that Bt does not grant full protection against pests. This bolsters their case against Bt Brinjal, too.
ven as the nation has been debating the pros and cons of introducing Bt Brinjal, biotech messiahs did not fail to remind us of the wonderful results of Bt Cotton, and even those against new technology did not contest the claim. But now Bt Cotton seed manufacturer Monsanto has admitted that the Bt crop is no longer effective
hen the Rajya Sabha discussed the controversy over paid news, the government said it was considering giving more powers to the Press Council of India to tackle the menace. The PCI, an autonomous body set up under the Press Council Act, 1978, has been asking for more powers We have got fresh proposals from them, which are currently under consideration, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said in the upper
More teeth to Press Council to fight paid news

house. She said the PCI had been writing to successive governments to enhance its powers, but the issue came to the limelight when some leading media organisations and other stakeholders complained about the the paid news phenomenon during the Lok Sabha elections. It has been reported that the owners of some media organisations have financial relationships, including share-holdings, with advertisers, Soni noted.
So much for people power
Illustr ation: Ashish Asthana

People in Governance
Instead of setting an example for other states, Maharashtra is getting ready to kill the Nagar Raj Bill in the womb. The irony: the bill was conceived by civil society right here in Mumbai.
Geetanjali Minhas
he Nagar Raj Bill represents at once the triumph and trials of civil society in India. Mumbais civil society persisted for nearly two decades to come up with a model legislation to devolve power to the lowest administrative levels in urban areas. The struggle paid off in 2006 when the Centre approved of the Nagar Raj Bill they came up with and recommended to all states seeking funds under the Jawarharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), to use it as the model to pass their own Acts to devolve powers to urban local bodies as suggested in the 74th amendment. But, four years after what seemed like their crowning glory, the same civil society groups of Mumbai are now fighting with their backs to the wall trying to prevent the government of Maharashtra from deliberately delivering a stillborn Nagar Raj Bill in the place where it was conceived. If the Maharashtra government succeeds it will effectively prevent any real transfer of power to the citizens. Heres how. Much like devolution of power to panchayats in the rural areas, the model Nagar Raj Bill seeks to create a model of local self-governance in urban areas, with a ward committee (on the lines of the panchayat) and an area sabha (on the lines of a village gram sabha). The idea is to involve and empower the citizen at the lowest level of governance, which in turn will ensure participation, transparency and accountability in the system. At the base of the governance pyramid, then, up to 1,700 registered voters will elect an area sabha representative who, in turn, will be a member of the local ward committee. The ward committee will comprise area sabha representatives and 10 civil society representatives from non-governmental organisations, for example, among other such citizens. Mumbai, then, will have 9,000 area sabhas. Area sabhas will help prioritise schemes and forward them to the ward committee for including
The Maharashtra Bill proposes that the area sabha representatives will be nominated by the municipal corporation and not elected by the citizens, thereby denying any real transfer of power.
them in the municipal budget. Besides that, they will help in selection and verification of beneficiaries, suggesting development works at the neighbourhood level, including location of streetlights, community water taps and other public amenities, and helping in tax collection. The ward committees will also help in collection of taxes, besides preparing its annual budget and ensuring peoples participation in executing development projects. The Maharashtara government has, however, sought to dilute several key provisions of the bill. For instance, it permits clubbing five polling booths to form one area for electing an area sabha representative. The model bill allows combining not more than two polling booths, so as to ensure that power is indeed devolved to the smallest unit of governance. Worse, the Maharashtara bill proposes that area sabha representatives will be nominated by the municipal corporation and not elected by the citizens as envisaged in the model bill. This means, the political party controlling the municipal corporation will get to control the ward committees as well, thereby preventing any real devolution of power to the citizens. Thats not all. While the model bill mandates that the chairman and members of ward committee shall have the right to seek information from the chief municipal officer and the government, the Maharashtara bill has no similar provision. The list of such omissions goes on. State politicians appear either ignorant of or divided over the issue. Peoples participation should not work parallel to the corporator, says Vinod Tawade, general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, As per the bill, the government will appoint the ward committee. In such cases, there should be no power struggle between the corporator and the civilians. Even if the corporator is elected, individual responsibilities should be well defined. Small area sabhas of 1,200 to 1,500 voters will be difficult to manage. Interestingly, Ashish Shelar, municipal councillor, also of the BJP, says, The Maharshtra government has amended the bill in a manner that its spirit is missing. For the sake of complying with the JNNURM stipulations, it is just filling in the blanks. Shelar, an advocate, elaborates The exclusion of commercial users from the area sabhas is not in keeping with the spirit of the bill

People in Governance
Hansel DSouza (from right), with Nirmal Jhangiani and Surendra Srivastava: making common cause with common citizens
as there will be no interaction between the residents and the commercial users. Besides that, area sabhas should have the power to get sanction of financial and administrative support as every area has its own specific requirement in terms of infrastructure. Lastly, the authority of the municipal commissioner to disqualify an elected corporator goes against the spirit of democracy. Krishna Hegde, spokesperson of the ruling Congress party, predictably supports the bill and says without commenting on the debilitating omissions, The bill is good and it should be implemented. Supriya Sule, a member of parliament from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), says her party will support the bill as it promotes good governance. Municipalities are getting bigger and more populated and it is becoming difficult for them to work efficiently and their efficiency is crucial. It is a very important bill and it will not be passed without deliberations, says Sule, daughter of NCP chief and Union food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. While politicians appear busy guarding their turfs and scoring points over their rivals at the same time, the civil society activists who actually envisaged and drafted the model legislation know their struggle is far from over. Jayaprakash Narayan, a bureaucrat-turned-activistturned-politician, actually drafted the model legislation that was eventually accepted by the Centre in 2006. Narayan, a former Indian Administrative Service officer resigned from the civil services in 1996 and launched the Lok Satta (peoples power) movement in Andhra Pradesh. Later, in 2004, he became a member of the National Advisory Council, an advisory body set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The body, set up to monitor the implementation of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance governments Common Minimum Programme, piloted schemes including the JNNURM which mandated reforms aimed at citizens participation in governance. Narayan, a physician by training and a civil servant by profession, first became enamoured with the idea of
decentralisation of power when he came in touch with the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Despite the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments the states are very flustered with transfer of power, says Narayan, founder president of Lok Satta party and a member of the Andhra Pradesh assembly, For the past 60 years, a strong nexus between MLAs and officials has persisted as there is tremendous incentive in centralisation of power. MLAs, because they spend huge sums of money which they must recuperate in multiples, and officials, because their authority will be eroded if people are the empowered, have a common cause in resisting decentralisation. While the 73rd amendment deals with devolution of power to local bodies in villages, the 74th amendment refers to municipal corporations and ward committees in urban India. Hansel DSouza, social activist and Citizens Consensus candidate from Juhu, Mumbai, in the last assembly elections, says he drafted a four-page note on ward committees, arguing in favour of decentralisation of power. Researchers at Lok Satta in Hyderabad then worked on the draft and researched local governance systems such as counties and boroughs, which finally led to the model Nagar Raj Bill. Nagar Raj bill is based on three principles: participation, accountabilty and transparency. Participation of the people, accountability from the functionaries, administration and elected representatives and functioning of the corporation in a transparent fashion, says DSouza, who adds that this will naturally upset the prevalent system of governance in the country. Our governance is based on the ancient British system where the commissioner was a direct appointee of the government. The commissioner is responsible for execution, the corporation has little or no say in the execution, and the mayor is only a rubber stamp who just chairs the council meeting. Nirmal Jhangiani, chief spokesperson of Nagar Raj Bill Samarthan Manch, which represents around 30 organisations in Mumbai, laments, In Mumbai, 24 wards have been clubbed into 16 wards, with 8-10 corporators per ward. But if there is just one corporator for 16 lakh people, there has to be something wrong with the system. Surendra Srivastava, founder of the Maharashtara chapter of Lok Satta, points to the crux of the ongoing tussle when he says, Local government is a state subject. That is why, the Centre left it to the state governments to implement the Nagar Raj bill. But state governments never want to transfer power to the ward committees, which is why the Maharashtra bill is also flawed. On August 5, 2009, the government graciously decided to set up a committee to review the bill and submit its report within three months. That committee has not even been set up yet! So much for pepole power. n

Budgeting for e-Gov
Tax incentives to the IT companies is a big revenue loss to the government and their extension may constrain the inclusive agenda of the UPA.
Samir Sachdeva s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee read his budget speech, information technology industry waited for an announcement on the Software Technological Park (STP) scheme, which essentially grants tax breaks to the export-oriented IT firms. The scheme is to end in March 2011 and the industry was expecting one more extension. Mukherjee, however, made no mention of it, leaving everybody guessing if an extension will be announced any time in the new fiscal or if it is the end of the tax holiday. This means, the debate over the tax breaks will also continue. On one side, you have Infosys Technologies founder N.R. Narayana Murthy who argues against it and on the other side are cabinet ministers Anand Sharma and A Raja, Nasscom president Som Mittal and the corporates. Here are the arguments for and against continuation of the scheme: Why the STP scheme should end IT industry has enjoyed the tax holiday for over a decade now Most tax benefits go to large organisations The government wants a planned development of IT Investment Regions (ITIRs)/SEZs Why the STP scheme should continue Budding IT entrepreneurs need support SMEs will be affected the most New IT investments will shift entirely towards SEZs IT industry has a huge employment potential and should be promoted Well, there are arguments either way. But dont you think IT barons asking for tax benefits is like Ratan Tata or Mukesh Ambani asking for a BPL card? The state aid was required when the industry was in the nascent stage but an industry that has grown to the size of $50 billion looking for sops is rather unbelievable. continued. Exports from these units have grown from Rs 20,051 crore in 2000-01 to Rs 250,000 crore in 200910 (graph below).
250000 180155 2005-06 100965 2006-07 144214 2007-08 207358 2008-09
A hole in the inclusive goal

A
200000 Rs. in Crores 150000
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
(Source: www.stpi.in)
Growth of STPI
The communications and IT ministry set up the STPI in 1991 as three autonomous societies at Pune, Bangalore and Bhubaneswar to facilitate the establishment of the IT industry by providing physical infrastructure. The three societies were merged into a single corporate entity and later STPIs at Noida, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram were established. Today there are over 51 STPI centres across in India. In 1991, IT companies/units focused on software exports were given benefits in income tax, duty-free exports and central sales tax (see table on next page), which the industry wants
Meanwhile, STPI is not the only scheme under which the Department of Information Technology offers tax exemptions to IT companies. The government also offers incentives and concessions under the following: Export Oriented Unit (EOU) scheme Electronics Hardware Technology Park (EHTP) scheme Software Technology Park (STP) scheme Special Economic Zones (SEZ) scheme And then the states too offer a slew of benefits, ranging from free land to relaxations in legal compliance in
2004-05
2000-01
20051
50000
29523
37176
51458
74019
100000

Budgeting for e-Gov
Illustration: Ashish Asthana
Budget and IT industry

ontrary to the industry expectations, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee remained silent on extension of the STPI scheme in his budget speech. With no announcement the tax benefits enjoyed by the IT industry for over a decade will come to an end from March 2011. The FM has also proposed an increase of minimum alternate tax (MAT) from 15% to 18% in the budget. The IT industry has reacted in a mixed way to the silence of non extension of STP scheme and the increase in MAT. Nasscom president Som Mittal said that, While overall the budget is positive, we are disappointed with the increase in MAT which will be a burden on small and medium businesses who are still struggling with the impact of the global recession. There was also no move towards announcing parity of incentives between the STPI and the SEZ scheme which is again necessary for small companies and development of tier 2 and tier 3 cities. In line with our recommendation, the IT Taskforce formed by Department of Technology (DIT) had also strongly recommended that the STPIs be brought at par with the SEZs. The tax benefits under the STPI Scheme are available till March 31st, 2011 and we will engage with the Government and through the Ministry of IT to represent for an equitable benefit to the SME sector. S Mahalingam, CFO, Tata Consultancy Services, mentioned that We do not expect any major impact of the increase in MAT on export-focused IT outsourcing companies. The
impact would be only on cash flows. Further, the STPI scheme was left untouched which means that the tax break on STPIs would expire at the end of March 2011. This would significantly increase the tax burden on the smaller players.
Infosys Technologies in its response to Governance Now mentioned that, Non extension of the STPI scheme proved to be a major disappointment for the software services export sector. Exports from SEZs are eligible for exemption for a period of 15 years in all as 100% of profits are tax exempt in the first five years, 50% in the next five and 50% in the last five years provided the profits are invested in specified areas. Many of the older units have already come out of the tax benefits offered under STPI because they are over 10 years. It is the smaller firms that have set up STPI units in last few years that will be hit though the government will not gain much in terms of tax inflows. Col. Sharad Bhatt, sr. vice president, Kaynes Te c h n o l o gy, brought in the SME prospective when he noted, The STP scheme has brought in immense benefit to the IT industry especially the SME sector and the non extension of the same will be detrimental to the growth of the SMEs. The movement to SEZs of the STPI units may also be difficult in case of smaller organizations as the SEZs require totally fresh investments. The SMEs will be the biggest losers in the same
establishing a new industrial unit. (see the table below). Incentives for IT industry
EHTP/STP/ EOU Units Income Tax exemption under section 10A / 10B of income Tax Act Export profits 100% tax exempt upto March 2011 SEZ Units 100% Income Tax exemption on export profits is available to SEZ units for 5 years, 50% for next 5 years and 50% of ploughed back profits for 5 years thereafter. Capital goods, raw materials, components and other inputs.
Permission for duty free imports
Capital goods, raw materials, components and other inputs. Refundable
Central Sales Tax
Exempted
(Source: www.mit.gov.in)
So, the question is: why does the IT industry need tax exemptions? According to Nasscom, the Indian ITBPO industry is expected to reach $49.7 billion in 2009-10, a growth of 5.5 percent despite the global recession. The top 50 IT companies contribute to 60 percent of these revenues and 90 percent of the profits. With such volumes and profits, does the industry actually need tax sops? The industry argues that the benefits will help the small and medium enterprises, but in that case the benefits should be limited to SMEs. Also, the STP scheme is for the export-oriented units and is thus creating an impediment in the growth of the domestic IT industry. Shouldnt the government support the companies in operation in domestic market? Moreover, majority of the STP units
are falling out of the STP scheme as they have already completed their 10 years of exemption, so on whose behalf are the lobbyists asking for an extension? Also, after an initial stimulus to the IT industry, the government is now looking for planned growth. Its policy of carving out ITIRs will not shape up, if the IT units continue to operate as STP units spread across homes and small establishments. With the growth in the industry the IT units have to now grow as IT SEZs and ITIRs and therefore a sunset to STP scheme is even more important.
Revenue loss due to tax breaks

Corporate Sector Deduction of export profits of STPI units (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of EHTP units (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of units located in SEZs (sections 10A and 10AA) Deduction of export profits of units located in EPZs (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of units located in FTZs (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of Export Oriented Units [EOUs] (section 10B) Total (in Rs Crore) Revenue forgone 2008-09 2009-10 12,321 14,651
67
80
2,677
3,183
60
71
55
65
Revenue loss
Now, the plain fact is that all these tax breaks and concessions dont come free if the government could have generated revenue on this count, some or the other sector would have benefited. For comparison, the central plan outlay for agriculture and allied sectors for year 2010-11 is Rs 12,308 crore and the total budget estimates for the agriculture ministry for year 2010-110 is Rs 11,880 crore. The revenue that government will forgo for tax concessions to software technology parks is estimated at Rs 14,736 crore. The opportunity cost of the sops to the IT industry can be imagined. The revenue loss due to various incentive schemes to government of India is as high as Rs 26,976 crore for 2009-10 but over 96.5 percent of this is due to tax forgone for the corporate houses and the loss for 2009-10 due to small organisations like partnership firms, association of persons etc is just Rs 942 crore. (Table along side).
6,714
7,984
21,894
26,034
Non-corporate Sector
(Partnership firms, Associations of Persons or Bodies of Individuals) 78 85
Deduction of export profits of STPI units (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of EHTP units (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of units located in SEZs (sections 10A and 10AA) Deduction of export profits of units located in EPZs (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of units located in FTZs (section 10A) Deduction of export profits of Export Oriented Units [EOUs] (section 10B) Total (in Rs Crore)
(Source: www.indiabudget.nic.in)
Nil
Nil
359
391
11
12
416
453
865
942
Opportunity cost of STP scheme
The budget estimates for department of information technology for 201011 is Rs 3,067 crore which amounts to 20% of the tax concessions given by just one of the societies of the department under one of the schemes. If the department instead of giving the sops invests the money in the domestic sector IT projects it will create a huge demand for e-governance projects leading to cascading growth.
Inclusive growth
The policy of the state has to be
determined by the national concerns and not by the concerns of the companies or individuals. The state gives various tax benefits to its constituents because it wants development of that particular sector. The government was focused towards exports in 1991 when the STP scheme was introduced. But now the priorities of government have changed to reforms through e-governance and therefore the preference to IT companies operating in domestic sector have to be considered.
The UPA government has a focus on inclusive growth and therefore the finance minister has rightly focused key expenditure towards the social sector. The IT companies in domestic sector will gain from the announcement of the Mission Mode Project in commercial taxes and allocation of Rs 1,900 crore for the UID project. The creation of a Technology Advisory Group for e-governance is another step towards promotion of IT within India. The National Knowledge Network, computerisation of Employment exchanges, establishment of Bharat Nirman Common Service Centres are all in direction of inclusive agenda of the UPA government. But giving tax exemption to just one elite sector does not fit in the overall mission of this government. When the state cannot discriminate against any citizen on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, how can it discriminate on basis of profession? Why should it be that if an individual has an export oriented software unit, he has to pay no corporate tax but if he is protecting the national borders as part of the armed forces tax is deducted at source from his salary? We have small and medium enterprises in other sectors operating in tier II, III or IV cities as well but they are also paying taxes. Why only the STP units should get exemptions and extensions? It appears that the IT sector has become used to such exemptions and does not want to give it away. There appears to be no rationale for continuing exemption to big IT companies whose CEOs are now in the list of richest men of the country. Even former Infosys chairman Narayana Murthy has also mentioned in one of his past interviews that the tax exemptions to IT industry should be stopped immediately and if required may be limited to companies having profits less than five crore. Anyway, it appears that the sectors which have the strongest lobbies will get tax exemption. Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma and Communications and IT Minister A Raja are already pitching for the extension of the scheme despite the silence of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. It needs to be seen if the finance minister listens to the aam admi or khaas companies. n

Tiger Tales
Hello, Jairam.. Somebodys hijacked Project Tiger!

The government comes off looking ridiculous as a Aircel appropriates the tiger conservation movement for brand-building. Sleep on, sirs.
Ajay Suri
lease step aside. Telecom giant Aircel has taken it upon itself to save the Indian tiger; and it will brook no interference from any quarter. Having bagged the support of crickets newest poster boy, Mahinder Singh Dhoni, as well as global NGO World Wildlife Fund (WWF), its success in the noble venture is assured. The Environment Ministry can now safely put the locks on the Project Tiger office. Jairam Ramesh, too, can afford a sigh of relief. Still having doubts that our abandoned, 1411 tigers have met at last the messiah in Aircel? Go climb a tree. But on second thought, dont. Because, then, you are liable to run afoul of Idea, Aircels rival which has launched an equally worthy campaign to save our trees! A few elementary questions, however, persist in the mind.
With Aircel in the drivers seat, where does it leave scores of wildlife workers and enthusiasts big and small, known and obscure who, all this while, have been working silently or loudly to pull the beleaguered tiger from the jaws of extinction? Do they figure at all in Aircels grand scheme? Now, visualise this: somewhere in the deep jungle, a group of five forest guards with antiquated guns are huddled under a shaky watchtower. For the past six months, they havent been home. The nearest town is 65 km away, the nearby muddy rivulet is their only source of drinking water and a worn-out transistor remains their only link with the outside world. They are the real saviours of our tigers. Want to meet these hardy men? They can be found at Fulai Chour, a forgotten forested corner of Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand. Holding their ground against possible poachers strike, they ensure the tiger remains alive if only in their part of the park.
Courtesy: Mohd. Aslam Wa rsi
They are the people whom Aircel or Ramesh will never find. Or bother to. The same group, but with different names, can be found scattered across Indias 38 tiger reserves in the marshes of Dudhwa, in the grass-lands of Kanha, in the militancy-riddled Manas, in the mangroves of Sunderbans, even in the ridiculed Sariska and Panna. They work silently, battling the elements with no fat salary cheques to fall back upon but they happen to be the tigers strongest allies. Taking the improbable position that Aircels is not essentially a brand-building exercise, where does it leave our Environment Ministry, the Project Tiger officials and the babus of tiger reserves whose primary responsibility it is to ensure the tigers survival? They seem to have ended up with egg on their faces. The fact is, the telecom companys blistering ad campaign on ground and on television has pushed most stakeholders to the point of non-existence. The government and the Environment Ministry in particular can be faulted on several counts for letting a private entity hijack the tiger conservation movement. Take environment minister Jairam Ramesh, for instance, and his namby-pamby approach at this most crucial juncture in Indian tigers future. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha on March 3, Jairam shunned plain talk and took refuge in typical politicians jargon. Of course, he admitted the need for outside bodies like the World Bank to come to the rescue of Indias pride. India, he said, is participating in the global tiger initiative (sic) of the World Bank to the extent of building up the capacity of knowledge institutions involved in the field of wildlife management and forestry. Besides this, it will participate in events like pre-summit tiger workshops and the global tiger summit. If Ramesh is drumming up the need for more finances to save tigers, he should at least do his homework. Till 2008-end, the National Tiger Conservation Authority of the environment ministry sanctioned Rs 150 crore for
Where does this leave the Ministry of Environment, the Project Tiger officials and the babus whose primary responsibility it is to ensure the tigers survival? Aircels campaign has pushed all stakeholders to the point of non-existence.
tiger conservation, but till date not one state has fully utilised the funds. Ramesh completely ignored the root cause of the governments failure: the growing rift between the Centre and the states. In the process, his ministry has been reduced to a hapless bystander. The facts speak for themselves: The amendment brought about in 2006 to the Indian Wildlife Protection Act led to the formation of National Tiger Conservation Authority which is supposed to act, among other things, as a nodal funding body to the states. In turn, each of the 17 tiger states is required to set up a steering committee with the respective chief minister as president. Want an update on this ambitious move? Till date, only eight states have formed the steering committees. And the list does not include the three tiger states of Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Assam! Another crucial offshoot of the same amendment concerns setting up Tiger Conservation Foundations for all national parks. The foundations would ensure delivery of funds from the Centre to national park authorities directly, bypassing the cumbersome state machineries completely. A revolutionary approach, it would give the much-needed financial teeth to the park authorities. You will assume, naturally, that all states would have lapped up this
opportunity. Not so. Four years and minus 300 tigers later, only Kerala, Karnataka and Arunachal Pradesh have done so. Ashok Kumar of Wildlife Trust of India among the very few respected tiger experts in the country feels political will alone can tilt the balance in favour of the big cat. Whats needed is a gigantic effort, seen only once in India, that too 38 years ago, when Indira Gandhi launched Project Tiger. While not entirely dismissing Aircels initiative, Kumar wonders why its ads cater only to English-speaking viewers. Tigers, meanwhile, continue to take the knock. Sixty-six fell prey to poachers in 2009; 15 have perished this year alone. In the past seven years, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have lost 50 percent of their tiger population. Corbett National Park, with the healthiest tiger population in the country (180-plus, by last count) stands out as a puzzling irony. Maybe its the intricate lowerHimalayan landscape web of hills, sprawling grasslands, thick stretches of sal forest, river Ramganga, healthy prey population which has kept its tigers intact; maybe its something else which other park authorities can learn from. Corbetts field director Ranjan Mishra smiles at the suggestion. But he has a few nuggets of advice: A tigers most important friends are people living around the tiger reserves. As long as they want, the tiger shall live. But inside the reserve, a well-knit team of forest officials, equipped with state-of-the-art communication equipment is a must. What you give is what you get. Giving peanuts will only attract monkeys. With the tigers fate at the cross-roads, the almost-forgotten words of John Seidensticker, of Smithsonians National Zoological Park in Washington DC, come to mind: The tiger lives in a world of sunlight and shadow; always secretive, never devious; always a killer, never a murderer; solitary, never alone; for it is an irreplaceable link in the process and the wholeness of life... Catchy lines for a television ad, did you say? n suriajay@gmail.com

Governance In Action
On coming home
Bikram Vohra ome comes the hero at 3.45 am and now I am 23rd in the slowest moving immigration line at Delhi airport. Obviously. If I am in the line an immediate chemistry occurs. The officer will go off for a tea break and everyone else ahead of me will have problems with their documents. Either that or he will close shop and tell us to move to the tail end of the other lines. This is Friday March 5, 2010 and rudeness is rife led by a Akhlishwar Kumar who clearly does not like his life behind the counter. A lady with a baby is being hounded by him. He is treating her like dirt on his shoe. Another is insulting a clutch of laborers for not knowing English and mucking up the form. Hey, yo, man, wake up, these are Indians coming back to India, print the flipping idiot forms in Hindi or Malayalam or Marathi, whatever, the Brits left 60 years ago, why is the Indian immigration arrival form only available in English as are the rules on the back? Mr Foreign Minister and Mr Home Minister rise and shine, smell the coffee, answer the question. We are the only country in the world that does not offer a language alternative. There is a third official guy who is on the right of our line who is talking loudly about these great unwashed workers and how they cannot fill a simple formchalle aathe hain phoren se. Good to be home. Add to that the mystique of Indian immigration leafing through every page of your passport plus booklets seeking mystical enlightenment and your progress is reflective of your math effort in school. Ponderous. And so, that gives me enough time to think about why I have to fill in this flimsy form and worry if I have got the country of domicile part correct. And when I start to think I really zip to 100 kph in six seconds and now I am wondering why do they need to know what they already know and they know I know they know. If my mobile phone regularly shows me messages from every business house who knows my birthday
and sends me updates on their sales and all the credit card companies have inside knowledge of all my purchases, why has the government not yet figured it out? It is not as though they are short of staff. My birth date is also on my driving licence, my ration card, on the last six passports for which I have applied and thirty three other documents of an official nature. Why, I ask myself as I fall to seed 16 in the slave coffle of a queue, are they still doubtful about place and date of birth and how, in the great cosmic sense, will it change anything? Guys, there are tsunamis happening. And then I think of this Australian who wrote a violent letter to his Prime Minister on this issue and he said he had filled in at least 200 immigration forms on every landing so why again? Right, mate. We shuffle forward. Thought processes are now roaring at full speed. Think of all the forms you have filled with exactly the same details. Now, think of all the trees that have been slaughtered so they can make paper so you can fill in all the details again. What is the point? The other day I get this property tax form at my home in Delhi. It comes registered and I have to sign for it. Fine. Then, right there on the front page is question three. Give details of full address. Seeing how it has just been sent to me at my address surely this signifies that it is my address and you know the full details of my address already so why do you want to know it again. Dont say, in case you have changed addresses because if I had changed address then I would not have received the registered letter at my address. Also, what is a half address or a 75 per cent address as weighed against a full one? See, I can make sense when I try. On my last trip home we received my mother in laws pension confirmation form asking that she visit in person to confirm she was alive or send an affidavit signed by a Class I officer (as if the rest of us were the great stupid masses as compared to these gazetted guys, whatever that means) attesting that Illustr ation: Ashish Asthana she was still a-okay. My mother in law has been dead ten years. Small mercy perhaps that we dont have to hare around for a gazetted officer. Now, if only I did look like my passport photograph I wouldnt have to suspect the immigration man was sizing me up for a date as he looks me up and down. And then it is a my turn and he asks me the one question that I have not figured out the reason for its immense importance. When did you last come to India? Say what? Please look in passport and show me stamp. You show me the stamp, mister, that is your job. Is it, says who, stand there please. He said please. And in front of my eyes, some mini sultan from the bureaucracy is swanning past with five suitcases, two porters, two Customs officers, two policemen, one airline flunky and three guys in civilian gear fighting for the right to grab his handbag. Life must be good in gurrment. n

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Dial D for Dr Devinder A Delhi-based nephrologist brings state-of-the-art healthcare to his native village in Himachal.

March 16-31, 2010 | Vol.01 Issue.04 | Rs 30

22 Interview with Agatha Sangma

I can make a useful contribution in terms of drinking water and sanitation

43 StP: A hole in the inclusive goal

26 The great railway robbery

38 Whos that riding piggyback on the tiger?

40 Billed for dilution Maharashtra government seeks to subvert the efforts

14 nurturing childhood in nithari

12 Saffron is the new green

Our columnist on joys and sorrows of homecoming.

Fear of the fair sex

So, whats new comrades?

GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

Some Gandhi-brand home truths

Time to change Indian Standard Time

Waste no more time

Could not sleep

Will PM go through it?

Democracy and secularism

Shiv Sena and mockery of democracy

6 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2009

Ela Bhatt gets yet another global prize

Oath of transparency instead of secrecy

people politics policy performance

A good doctor gives back

GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

people politics policy performance

10 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

people politics policy performance

Green is the new saffron

12 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

people politics policy performance

Photos: ravi choudhary

14 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

people politics policy performance

16 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

Veteran leader Nanaji Deshmukh is no more

Bitter sugar: PM admits failure

Maoists are coming just wait till 2050

people politics policy performance

people politics policy performance

20 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

How competitive is your constituency?

Capital market and governance

First, how do you define competitiveness?

So how do you get down to actually comparing competitiveness across constituencies?

Why just 100 constituencies?

Is availability of data an issue?

people politics policy performance

What prompted you to join politics?

How did you feel on winning the first election?

22 GovernanceNow | March 16-31, 2010

What do you think have been your achievements in the ministry?

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PDS funds down by half

Karnataka sets up Indias first nutrition mission

More money for local bodies

Not Fare! Heres how Railway

photos: Ravi choudhary

people politics policy performance

the Tatkal loot