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HIMALAYAN MIRROR
ENGLISH DAILY PUBLISHED FROM GANGTOK
HIMALAYAN MIRROR
DECEMBER 25 2014 VOL 9 NO. 104
Four years later
Four years ago, a frustrated Tunisian street vendor
set himself — and much of the Arab world — on
fire. His act of defiance proved to be the catalyst
for demonstrations that led to the ousting of then
President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had been
in power for nearly 25 years.
Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution had a domino
effect across Arab nations chafing under the yoke
of long-running dictatorships; protests erupted in
Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Syria. For a moment,
as the leaders of Libya and Egypt were forcibly
removed, the Arab world seemed to be on the
verge of a historic transformation. But that
promise of democracy has been frittered away —
a coup deposed the elected Muslim Brotherhood
government in Egypt; Libya has been torn apart
by tribal factionalism and Syria is in the grip of a
bloody civil war.
In this context, Tunisia’s presidential run-off
election, and its largely peaceful transition to full
democracy, offers hope. Tunisians elected Beji
Caid Essebsi, a veteran with ties to the Ben Ali
regime, with 56 per cent of the vote, over Moncef
Marzouki, the interim president.
The poorer south overwhelmingly voted for
Marzouki, but was outweighed by the more populous north. This stark rift poses challenges for the
new president, who must alleviate concerns that
his government will be as autocratic as Ben Ali’s,
especially as his party, the secular Nidaa Tounes,
composed of the remnants of Ben Ali’s now-dismembered outfit, also defeated the Islamist
Ennahda party in parliamentary elections in
October this year.
But it will need Ennahda — or other parties —
to pass legislation to cope with the country’s
foundering economy and high rates of unemployment.
Still, despite outbreaks of violence and the
assassination of opposition figures in the past two
years, Tunisia’s largely peaceful and fair election
is a bright spot in the region.
Just scrap it
The Rajasthan government has muscled through
an ordinance to disqualify its uneducated citizens
from contesting the coming panchayat polls —
only those who have studied till Class VIII are eligible to stand for election on the general seats.
That’s a remarkable change in a country where the
Constitution allows anyone above the age of 25,
irrespective of sex, caste or education, to contest
elections to the Lok Sabha and the state assemblies. In ramming through this ordinance, the
Vasundhara Raje government has gone against the
spirit of the social contract enshrined in the
Constitution.
When the founding fathers of the Indian republic were debating the draft Constitution in the
Constituent Assembly, among the thorny questions before them was the question of franchise.
With an overwhelmingly poor and illiterate electorate, universal adult franchise seemed to be as
much a risk as a leap of faith. But in plumping for
a right to vote for all — whether man or woman,
educated or illiterate, the landed or the landless —
they broadened the base of Indian democracy,
allowing a vast variety of voices and perspectives
to expand and temper the process of representation. In refusing to make education a criterion for
candidates, it rejected a narrow — and elitist —
definition of political talent. Arguably, that foresight has also given Indian democracy its depth
and powerful appeal, allowing large sections of
the impoverished and unempowered not just a
voice in government, but also a stake in governance.
The Rajasthan government’s ill-advised move
potentially discriminates against a large section of
the rural population, especially women (the literacy rate for women in the state is 45.8 per cent,
lower than the national average, and far less than
the state’s male literacy rate: 76.16). It stands to
reason, too, that this skews the playing field
against other minorities and sections without
access to education, for example, the Dalits and
tribals. The argument that this would be a corrective against the reported misuse of panchayat
funds lazily conflates corruption with a lack of
education. There is great irony in the state pushing
through such institutional bias, especially in
Rajasthan, which has a strong and vocal civil society movement at the grassroots. Such a law has no
place in a republic of the people.
You will reciprocally
promise love, loyalty and
matrimonial honesty. We
only want for you this day
that these words constitute
the principle of your entire
life and that with the help
of divine grace you will
observe these solemn vows
that today, before God, you
formulate.
- Pope John Paul II
EDITORIAL
GANGTOK, THURSDAY 25 DECEMBER 2014
Atal Bihari Vajpayee: A proud Hindu
who exemplified Indian ethos
Mayank Chhaya
A
s Atal Bihari
Vajpayee turns 90
on Dec 25, he
remains one of the finest
practitioners of India's
enlightened pluralism as
embedded in its ancient
civilization rather than an
obligation as mandated
by the constitution of a
young nation-state.
Vajpayee, now a shadow of his former self, has
straddled public life
before and after India's
independence
since
1942. He is the last of the
generation of leaders
whose worldview is
avowedly Indian and
therefore universal.
For someone who as a
Class 10 student wrote
this
about
himself,
"Hindu body and mind,
Hindu life, Every vein
carries my Hindu identity
(Hindu Tan Man, Hindu
Jeevan, Rag Rag Hindu
Mera Parichay)", it is not
as if Vajpayee has ever
been unambiguous about
what informs his sense of
identity. However, what
has set him apart from
the rest of the political
crowd within his own
Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) is his innate sense
of moderation and decency. He has been known to
attribute that strength to
his Hindu grounding.
In a speech soon after
he lost the parliamentary
election to Madhavrao
Scindia in 1984 in
Gwalior,
Vajpayee
referred to that poem and
said: "People say that the
Vajpayee who wrote that
is not the same as the
Vajpayee who does politics. There is no truth in
it. I am Hindu. How can I
forget that? No one
should
forget
that.
However, my Hindutva
is not constricted, it is not
narrow."
Vajpayee also firmly
subscribes to the idea
that India is a Hindu
nation but a secular state,
a distinction between
"rashtra" and "rajya"
which, he said, Vinayak
Damodar Savarkar, one
of the most controversial
pioneers of the Hindu
movement,
made.
"Buniyadi
taur
par
Bharat ek Hindu rashtra
hai is sey koi inkar nahi
kar sakta aur asweekar
nahi
kar
sakta"
(Fundamentally, Bharat
is a Hindu nation. No one
can deny that or find it
unacceptable), he said
during that speech to
commemorate Savarkar
in Pune.
Some three decades
later, even as he leads a
firmly retired life, there
is no reason to believe
that his view has undergone any significant
change.
Notwithstanding that
Vajpayee, drawing on his
soul as a poet and inquisitiveness as a former
journalist, developed a
decidedly reasonable and
moderate approach to
public and private life.
Having interacted with
him frequently throughout the 1980s and 1990s,
I can say with some certainty that he imbibed the
essence of Jawaharlal
Nehru's humanism more
than any other Indian
politician who followed
him. And yet he retained
his distinctly right of
centre political ideology.
It has often been said
of Vajpayee that he is the
right man in the wrong
political party. Once you
get past the cleverness of
that wishful thinking you
realize that he is very
much emblematic of the
Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) he conceived of in
his mind along with Lal
Krishna Advani.
"Virdohi dalon me
mere mitron ko mere
bare mei lagta hai ki
aadmi to acchha hai lekin
ghalat dal mein hai.
Unko main kahunga
aadmi bhi sahi hai aur dal
bhi sahi hai (My friends
in the opposition like to
think that I am a good
man in a bad party. Let
me tell them that I am the
right man in the right
party)," Vajpayee told me
in 1990.
Contrary to the popular
belief, Vajpayee has
always been on the side
that he genuinely thinks
is representative of
Indian ethos. At the same
time, he has been acutely
conscious of the extreme
tendencies within his
party that he thinks often
cross the line.
Ironically, the lowest
point in his long and
illustrious public life was
also perhaps his highest
at the personal level.
Within three days of the
demolition of the Babri
Mosque pm Dec 6, 1992,
he was both self-assured
enough and profoundly
disturbed to declare the
demolition as the BJP's
"worst miscalculation".
A deeply anguished
and aggrieved Vajpayee
chose only two journalists, this writer and his
colleague Tarun Basu,
chief editor of IANS, to
publicly bemoan that
moderates like him in the
party had been cast aside
in the run up to the
demolition. During a
two-hour conversation at
his then Raisina Road
residence,
Vajpayee
spoke with characteristic
candour on record and
even more strikingly off
it.
However, even in those
terrible times for his
party and him personally,
he managed to stick to
his position that the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS), the BJP's
ideological parent, considered the action to be
against "Hindu ethos".
Vajpayee has been a
unique political figure in
India's history since its
independence in the
sense that he has stood
for almost everything
that the so-called hard
right Hindu political philosophy would require.
Yet, because of the way
he has constructed his
ideas and, equally importantly, the way he has
articulated them he has
managed to remain a
broadly centrist and reasonable voice. He is a
great example of soft,
poetic enunciation of
hard ideas. He used to be
amused by the image of a
cuddly nationalist that
many outside the BJP
had come to harbour
about him.
"It is almost as if they
are trying to mitigate
their guilt about liking
me personally even while
not approving of my
party," (Aisa lagta hai ki
jaise mujhe pasand karne
se un mei paida ho rahe
dosh ko kum kar rahen
hain kyunki unko meri
party pasand nahi hai),"
is how he put it once.
He has been someone
who passionately pursued that rare right of
centre ideology at a time
when the country was in
the grip of left leaning
socialistic thinking. His
economic
philosophy
was that of a pragmatist
liberalizer who had faith
in India's entrepreneurial
impulses. His foreign
policy was in line with
the national consensus at
play since the time of
Nehru, which was one of
non-alignment driven by
national self-interest. His
cultural outlook has very
much been in keeping
with his deep grounding
in the Hindu worldview.
At one point or another, Vajpayee has spoken
about some of the same
subjects which have
come to the fore of the
national discourse again.
For instance, in his Pune
speech 30 years ago he
also spoke about how
"dharmantaran" (converting to another religion) had also become
"rashtrantaran" (switching national loyalties). In
that context, he cited the
examples of countries
like Indonesia which,
despite being Islamic,
continued to maintain its
cultural underpinnings.
He said they may have
changed their form of
worship but not their culture. Notwithstanding all
such assertions, even his
worst detractors would
happily grant him consistent cultural moderation,
political reasonableness
and high parliamentary
behavior.
Born in Gwalior in
1924, Vajpayee came of
age in the midst of a
tumultuous campaign for
India's independence. He
spent his formative years
contrasted against a
national upheaval that
eventually created one of
the world's greatest freedom movements. In
many ways, Vajpayee
was profoundly influenced by the national
sense of purpose that he
saw and was very much a
part of during the freedom movement even
though he may have
come to it from a position of someone like
Savarkar.
During his tenure as
prime minister, he did
manage to follow the
philosophy of the state
being nonpartisan. While
some of it may have to
do with the compulsions
of coalition politics, it
was mainly because of
the way Vajpayee has
always approached the
idea of India, "Raj
Dharma" as he calls it.
One can always get into
the specifics of his
accomplishments
as
prime minister, such as
turning India into a fullfledged nuclear power by
ordering nuclear tests
almost as the first order
of business after taking
over in 1998. However,
Vajpayee's greater contribution to India's national
life generally and politics
specifically has been to
steadfastly offer a competing but moral and
righteous vision of the
country as well as maintain very high standards
of public discourse in
service of true democracy. (IANS)
Give and trade
Devashish Mitra
A
few months ago at
the WTO, India,
along with a couple of other countries, had
blocked
the
Trade
Facilitation Agreement
(TFA) because of its concern over the possibility
of being challenged at the
WTO over its minimum
support prices, which the
government equated with
food security. Subsequent
negotiations with the US
have resulted in a formal
WTO agreement allowing
public stockpiling of
foodgrains through MSPs
without challenge from
trading partners. This is a
temporary fix that will
remain in place until
member countries are able
to work out a permanent
solution. At the general
council of the WTO in
November, representatives of member countries
unanimously approved
the public stockpiling
agreement and the TFA.
The next step for the
implementation of these
agreements is ratification
by each member country’s
government.
The TFA aims to
remove red tape in customs procedures in all 160
WTO member countries.
Under this agreement,
member countries will
make an effort to reduce
customs-related paperwork, provide more transparency in procedures,
reduce clearance delays at
ports, provide clearer and
timely information about
rules, tariffs and procedures through printed
publications and the internet, institute a system of
appealing customs decisions, and provide information to involved parties
in case their goods are
being detained at ports
etc. For the implementation of these provisions in
poorer countries, financial
assistance will be provided, both through the WTO
and the World Bank.
In today’s world, the
production process of a
good or service is highly
fragmented, in that different tasks are performed in
different locations across
the world. Each task is
located where it is cheapest to perform. This kind
of a global production
chain or network minimises the cost of production. However, it requires
timely delivery of intermediate inputs from one
part of the world to another. For example, radiators
manufactured in Chennai
have to reach Detroit on
time to be attached to
automobiles being assembled there. This fragmented nature of modern production makes the TFA
even more important and
valuable.
The TFA is also important since it is the first
successful step in the
WTO’s Doha Round of
trade negotiations, started
more than a decade ago.
While the WTO has been
active in dispute resolution, rule-making and
bringing about optional
agreements such as the
one related to information
technology products, the
TFA is the first truly multilateral agreement after
the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
was transformed into the
WTO under the Uruguay
Round. As a result of the
TFA, to quote WTO director general Roberto
Azevedo, the WTO’s
negotiating work is “back
on track”. In other words,
WTO member countries
can build on this success
and start negotiating on
agricultural protection
and subsidies as well as
non-agricultural market
access and other developing country issues. These
issues arise mainly from
their dissatisfaction with
limited market access in
agriculture, textiles and
apparel in developed
countries in return for
their efforts in the area of
intellectual
property
rights protection and large
tariff reductions on manufacturing imports.
While there are concerns that agricultural
support remains quite
high in developed countries, some commentators
point out that this support
has actually gone down
substantially in recent
years. This has been an
important issue in WTO
negotiations
between
developed and developing
countries. In the pre-WTO
era of the GATT, developing countries were granted tariff concessions without the need to reciprocate. These countries need
to realise that they are
now in a world where further negotiations will
require an exchange of
concessions or reciprocity. At the same time,
developed countries also
need to be aware that
large developing countries such as Brazil, China
and India can no longer be
ignored or pushed around.
Only if countries keep
these new realities in
mind can further progress
be made in negotiations
on issues initiated by the
Doha Round.
What are the next steps
for India? It is easy to be
tempted, because of the
slow progress of WTO
trade negotiations, to
change course and ink
preferential trade arrangements (PTAs) or regional
trade
agreements.
However, it is important
to remember that though
many of these PTAs take
the form of free trade
agreements (FTAs), FTAs
are not exactly free trade.
An FTA among a subset
of WTO countries is discriminatory and protectionist with respect to
countries that are outside
that agreement and also
diverts imports of certain
products away from such
non-member countries,
even when they might be
the most efficient producers. Also, if India were to
sign an FTA with a major
developed country such as
the US or a group of
developed countries such
as the EU, it would have
limited power in such
negotiations. This is in
sharp contrast to negotiations at the WTO, where
India has greater bargaining power due to opportunities to form coalitions
with countries that have
common
interests.
Moreover, as seen in the
case of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, signing an
FTA with developed
countries comes with
accepting very stringent
intellectual
property
rights protections as well
as labour and environmental standards, which a
developing country cannot
really
afford.
(Courtesy : The Indian
Express)