Janamuktikami July 2013 Available

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‘Odisha Gave Undue Benefits to Posco India’

press trust of india

BHUBANESWAR, 7 APRIL: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has accused the Odisha government of extending undue benefits to South Korean steel major Posco in allotment of a piece of land in the state capital here.

“The company extended undue benefit in allotment of land, disregarding zonal regulation and charging of premium at a reduced rate,” the CAG in its latest report tabled in the Assembly yesterday said.

The CAG observation was made based on the performance audit on the land allotments by the state government's General Administration department headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. The auditor has come across widespread irregularities in land allotments.

The CAG report said that the country arm of South Korean Steel major POSCO-India had applied for allotment of a plot measuring 12,000 square feet for its Chairman-cum-Managing Director's (CMD) residence-cum-guest house in 2006.

However, later it enhanced the requirement twice to 25,000 sq ft in April 2007 and later 2 acres for the same purpose.

“Though the same area was earmarked in the Comprehensive Development Plan of the Bhubaneswar Capital city for commercial use, the company was allotted 1.700 acres land in January 2008 at a premium of Rs 25 lakh per acre against prevalent market value of the land of Rs 64 lakh per acre resulting in a loss of Rs 66 lakhs to the state government,” the CAG has observed.

The CAG report also observed that the land was lying vacant till June 2012.

“The company, thus, was extended undue benefit in allotment of land disregarding zonal regulation and charging of premium at a reduced rate,” the CAG said in its report.

CAG raps govt for other arbitrary land allotments

BHUBANESWAR, 7 APRIL: The CAG has rapped the Odisha government for allotting valuable land here without any proper policy for the past 12 years.
The latest CAG report for the year ending 31 March 2012, that was tabled in the Assembly yesterday, said the General Administration (GA) department allotted 464.47 acres in Bhubaneswar in 337 cases during 2000-12 to individuals, government offices, government undertakings and private bodies for establishment of hotels, hospitals, educational institutions and NGOs. Of the 464.47 acres, NGOs/organisations were allotted 183.44 acres by the department headed by Mr Naveen Patnaik.
“Although the GA department was entrusted with the management of this land since 1952, yet no rules, regulations, manuals for allotment of land have been framed by the department for the past 60 years ... The department has no comprehensive data on total land available, allotted and encroached upon,” the report said. A test check of 164 cases of the total 337 found that the process of land allotment lacked a defined policy and procedure and absence of any rule or criteria gave room to arbitration in allotment. Of the cases checked, 63 pertained to other than government parties. Of these, 16 applications for land were disposed off within a year while in the rest delays ranged from a year to 24 years, it said. pti

Source: The Statesman, 8 April 2013
http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=450972&catid=36

Sugar Decontrol to up Subsidy Bill by Rs. 2,500 Crore: Chidambaram

The government's subsidy bill will shoot up by Rs. 2500 crore per year on account of decontrol of sugar, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Saturday.

The Cabinet decided on Thursday to decontrol the Rs. 80,000-crore sugar industry. While the move does not affect open market prices, the government will pay the difference between ex-mill price of Rs. 32 and the public distribution system (PDS) price of sugar.

The finance minister said that the states will have to make their own arrangements. "States are free to obtain sugar from competitive bidding and from sugar mills," he said, adding that the difference will be born by the government as a subsidy for two years.

In October last year, a panel headed by Dr C Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, had recommended the removal of two control measures -- the regulated release mechanism and the levy sugar obligation -- immediately and of other restrictions gradually.

At present, the sugar sector is controlled from production to distribution. Through the release mechanism, the Centre fixes the sugar quota that can be sold in the open market. Under the levy system, it asks mills to contribute 10 per cent of their output to run ration shops costing the industry Rs. 3,000 crore a year.

The government currently buys sugar from mills for about Rs. 20 per kg and sells to ration card holders for Rs. 13.50 per kg.

Under the decontrolled regime, the sugar requirement of states for the public distribution system (PDS) will be met through purchases from the open market and the states will be given a fixed subsidy based on their existing allocations.
Source: http://profit.ndtv.com/news/commodities/article-sugar-decontrol-to-up-subsidy-bill-by-rs-2-500-crore-chidambaram-320558

Karnataka Ministers’ Assets Grow 665 Per Cent

statesman news service

BANGALORE, 4 APRIL: The average assets of a minister in Karnataka increased by 665 per cent at Rs 6.96 crore between 2004 and 2008.

This has been revealed by the Association of Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch bodies comprising over 1,200 non government organisations and other citizen-led organisations. The findings follow analysis of 24 ministers’ assets from a batch of 27.

The results are based on the affidavits filed by them during the 2004 and 2008 elections. The progress between 2008 and 2013 would be known after they file their papers before contesting the 5 May Assembly polls.

According to Mr Tirlochan Shastri, member ADR, the exercise is part of an effort to educate the voters on bringing about  better governance and  cleaner elections This is being done under the Karnataka Election Watch, a non-political body which is plumbing for making the elections fair and transparent.

He told newsmen here that ADR’s analysis also revealed that 18 out of the 24 ministers whose assets were studied were crorepatis. This is not all. About 61 per cent or 131 out of 215 legislators whose details were examined turned out to be crorepatis in 2008.

In fact, BJP legislator from Vijaynagara constituency in Bellary–Hospet belt, Mr Anand Singh, topped the list with his wealth pegged at Rs 88 crore  followed by Mr V Somanna who accounted for Rs 11 crore and Mr A Asnotikar  a close third at Rs 10.4 crore. All of them were ministers in the BJP government.

Responding to queries, the ADR members explained that the average asset per MLA in Karnataka Assembly in 2008 was Rs 5.98 crore, at least  in the case of 214 out of the 224 legislators. Against this ,in 2004,   the average possession of  about 186  legislators  stood at Rs 1.29 crore.

Interestingly, the Karnataka MLA's average assets, at Rs 5.98 crore, were  the highest in comparison to his counterparts from the southern region. The Tamil Nadu legislator’s average assets, for example, in 2011 stood at Rs 3.98 crore and that of the Andhra Pradesh MLA’s at Rs 3.98 crore. The Kerala legislator, in turn, proved to be a poor cousin in that his average possession  in 2011 did not exceed Rs 1.43 crore.

Personal wealth and possessions apart,  the NEW found that  42 per cent ,or ten of the 24 ministers who were investigated, had “self-declared" criminal cases against them.

This information was based on the affidavits that they had submitted to the Election Commission before the 2008 elections. Further, two others had declared that there were serious charges of murder, attempt to murder, kidnapping and theft against them.

Source: The Statesman, 5 April 2013

http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=450528&catid=36 

CAG Indicts Modi Govt for ‘Undue’ Favours to Corporates

press trust of india

GANDHINAGAR, 3 APRIL: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has come down heavily on the Gujarat government and state Public Sector Undertakings for causing a loss of nearly Rs 580 crore to the exchequer by bestowing “undue” favours to large corporate entities.

The major industrial houses to whom the Narendra Modi government played the benefactor included Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Essar Steel and Adani Power Ltd (APL), the report for the year ended 31 March, 2012, said.

The government auditor's report, tabled in the state Assembly yesterday, also said the state government tweaked rules to grant land to automaker Ford India and engineering and construction major Larsen and Toubro resulting in loss of revenue. “Gujarat State Petronet Ltd (GSPL) was responsible for deviating from the agreed terms of recovery of gas transportation charges from the specified entry point of the company's pipeline network and this led to passing of undue benefit of Rs 52.27 crore to RIL,” the report said.

CAG was of the view that GSPL had failed to safeguard its own interest and passed on undue benefit to RIL. Similarly, it noted that Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd (GUVNL) did not adhere to terms of the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), which led to short recovery of penalty of Rs 160.26 crore and passing of undue benefit to Adani Power Ltd (APL).

The CAG also indicted the Gujarat government for regularising 7,24,897 square metres of land “encroached” by Essar Steel Company Ltd (ESCL) at Hazira in Surat at “unjustifiable” price, resulting in short recovery of ad hoc occupancy price to the extent of Rs 238.50 crore.

“Government land measuring 7,24,897 square metres was encroached by ESCL in Hazira, Surat district. On request of the company, the government decided in July 2009, to regularise the encroachment by levy of 2.5 times of ad hoc value of land at Rs 700 per square metre, on the ground that the land in a nearby area was given to L&T,” the report said.

“We noticed that Rs 700 per square metre considered by the government for working out the ad hoc value was not justifiable,” the CAG report said.

The report said the state government granted land to Ford India and Larsen and Toubro at concessional rates “playing around the rules”.

L&T was alloted government land for manufacture of super critical steam generators and forging shop for nuclear power plant. The price of land was fixed by the District Level Valuation Committee instead of State Level Valuation Committee rate which resulted in forgoing of revenue of Rs 128.71 crore, it said.

The government auditor said the state government had allotted around 460 acres (18,63,687 square feet) valued at Rs 205 crore to Ford India Private Limited without price fixation by the State Level Valuation Committee. The report, however, did not mention the quantum of loss to state exchequer on this account. “It is desirable if the government followed a uniform policy for allotment of government land to safeguard its revenue and public interest at large,” the report said.

Source: The Statesman, 4 April 2013

http://www.thestatesman.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=450362&catid=36

Janamuktikami April 2013 Available

April 2013 Issue of Janamuktikami is now available online.

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Twisted Truth

Lessons of the 1962 War With China

subrata mukherjee

I

EVER since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) it has been universally accepted that a well-defined boundary is the first pre-requisite of a modern state. Post Independence, the boundary issue between India and China assumes crucial significance and yet remains unresolved to this day. China claims to have resolved its border disputes with several countries, except India. Within this country, the popular perception is that it was wronged and that China was the aggressor in 1962. India lost disastrously and the effort to fix responsibility continues even 50 years after. 

In China, the issue is peripheral. In its reckoning, the 1962 war was the consequence of India not accepting the truth about the border problem. As observed by Wang Hong Mei, the Indian government ought to re-educate the public about the basic cause of the dispute and correct the ‘truth of a twisted truth’.
In the 1914 Shimla convention between Britain and Tibet, the McMahon line was established as the official border between British India and China, denying Chinese suzerainty over Outer Tibet. However, McMahon was summoned to London as he had presented a different map to the Chinese representative. Britain distanced itself from the question of  legitimacy of a well-settled border between India and Tibet. The British administrators ensured that its cartographers showed the McMahon line as the settled and legitimate border between the two countries.
On 29 October 2008, David Miliband, the British foreign secretary in the Labour government, announced that the Shimla Accord of 1913, which led to the agreement between India and Tibet resulting in the promulgation of the McMahon line, was an anachronism and part of a colonial legacy. He  apologised to China for the lapse. This announcement had the support of Lord Chris Patten, the last British Governor-General of Hong Kong, who described it as ‘quaint eccentricity’.
When India became independent, it inherited all the British territorial agreements, including the McMahon line, as the legitimate border since 1914. The then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, as the architect of India’s foreign policy,  refused to entertain the Chinese proposals for a negotiation in 1954. He argued that since the McMahon line marked the border between India and China, there was no need for negotiations on a settled issue. However, as Karunakar Gupta has pointed out, India has accepted the legitimacy of the McMahon line; China has not signed the Shimla convention and rejects any agreement between Tibet and Britain as it violates Chinese sovereignty over Tibet and that the Chinese stand is legitimate.
Gupta’s perception is a classic example of two rights in the Hegelian sense. The Chinese position is consistent as both the two previous regimes, the imperial government and Chiang Kai-shek’s regime, had also rejected the agreement. If the McMahon line is accepted as the border, it covers only the eastern sector of the border but not the western and central sectors.
According to AG Noorani, on 1 July 1955, Nehru shut the door to negotiations on the India-China boundary question. He rejected Zhou En-lai’s proposal put forward on his visit to India in 1960 on the eastern border, accepting the McMahon line. India also refused to accept the actual line of control in the western sector ceding the Aksai Chin area to China. Nehru unilaterally drew the lines where the border was undefined and also ordered the destruction of the old maps.
In the crucial years between 1959 and 1962, there was considerable ad-hocism in Nehru’s policy towards China and related issues. In 1959, when Ayub Khan proposed a joint defence mechanism between India and Pakistan, Nehru’s reply was: Against whom? On 16 March 1959, China cautioned India not to have two fronts. Nehru concurred with Defence minister Menon’s assertion that both Communism and non-alignment pursued the same objective. Apart from rejecting any barter between the western and eastern frontiers, Nehru ignored the American assurance to China that it would  not intervene (27 June 1962). The Soviet Union, in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, advised India to settle the border issue on China’s terms. In the larger geo-political perspective of the Soviet leadership, India was  accorded a relatively minor rating.
The Chinese attack was simultaneous in all the areas; it was led by the hardened veterans of the Korean War. It was swift and decisive. But the Indian response was half-hearted and poorly coordinated. Menon attended the UN General Assembly session on 17 September 1962 and returned on 30 September. Nehru left Delhi on 8 September 1962 to attend the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conference and after visiting Paris, Lagos and Accra returned on 20 September. Nehru again left for Colombo on 12 October and returned on 16 October. Meanwhile, during the exchange of  notes  between Indian and Chinese officials, Nehru ordered the Indian army ‘to throw the Chinese out’ (12 October 1962). The two most senior army commanders and the Director of Military Operations were away from Delhi.
Nehru ignored Menon’s interference in crucial army postings and promotions and even in strategic matters. It was a measure of disgust within the military that General Thimayya threatened to resign. Though he persuaded the General to stay on, the Prime Minister did not rectify the serious shortcomings of the army. The news of Thimayya’s resignation was first published in The Statesman. Nehru’s speeches and White Papers also  impeded the diplomatic process. When the war began there was a panic reaction from Nehru and he convinced himself that it would be a long-drawn conflict and that China would follow an expansionist policy.
NJ Nanporia, who later became the Editor of The Statesman, had asserted in 1962 that the Chinese favoured negotiations and a peaceful settlement and that India should continue with the talks. China’s intention was clear ~ it wanted India to learn a lesson and withdraw. Nehru with all his knowledge of history never imbibed what George Washington did, specifically that a recently independent  nation ought to concentrate on a long process of nation-building exercise in which tactical adjustments even with one’s enemy and rival were imperative. He even seemed to forget Mahatma Gandhi’s dictum of the “beauty of compromise”.
 Fifty years after the war, Indian opinion is broadly divided into two categories ~ (a) criticism of China for its treacherous act; and (b) blaming Menon and the then intelligence chief BM Mallik. Nehru has been considered to be naive. Maxwell’s India’s China War and Karunakar Gupta’s numerous publications are strictly avoided by the think-tanks and security analysts. China takes credit for maintaining peace for 50 years and its position has not changed from that of Zhou in 1960 except that along with the barter proposal it also wants to stake a greater claim in the eastern sector of Arunachal Pradesh.
The tendency of not analysing the shame and humiliation of 1962 threadbare is reflected in the government’s decision not to publish the Henderson Brooks/Bhagat Report on the 1962 debacle and an astonishing statement that the HimmatSinghji Committee Report on the North-east borders is ‘untraceable’. This clearly indicates that we are still fearful of facing the truth of 1962. The Henderson-Brooks report, from which extensive references have been made by Maxwell, is believed to be a serious indictment of the role of Nehru, Menon, the Defence Ministry, the Army headquarters, several generals involved in the conflict as well as the Congress and opposition parties. The Congress leadership remembers 1965 and 1971 but not 1962. The book edited by President Pranab Mukherjee entitled 125 years of the Congress is an example of this political expedience. As a nation, we all have a collective responsibility to unearth the truth of the disaster which SarvepalliRadhakrishnan had once described as ‘credulity negligence’.

II

IN 1962, the entire Assam region was left practically defenceless. The District Magistrate of Tezpur had fled. The Indian press preferred safety to news coverage. The underground Nagas did not take any advantage of the situation and Pakistan, on the advice of the USA and Iran, refrained from opening another front.

In the 1955 Bandung conference, which was convened primarily on India’s insistence, Pakistan, already tied to the USA through SEATO, was essentially against China’s participation. However, at the conference, Zhou assured Pakistan that it had no dispute with it. India did not initiate any talks on the border and Zhou did not criticise the West in his speech and instead stressed on Asian-African unity. It was a master-stroke as it ended China’s diplomatic isolation and helped it to forge a feeble but a tactical de facto bloc against the West. China needed this front in order to consolidate its position in the context of the Sino-Soviet split. Patel’s warning in 1950 that for China, nationalism was more important than communism proved to be prophetic.

Nehru’s Tibet policy was based on certain principles ~ (a) not to push China to an extreme position; (b) China would not be able to maintain a credible number of troops in a distant and difficult terrain divided into three difficult borders; and (c) China would not involve itself in an attack on India. But Nehru was also convinced that after the cakewalk in Goa and the supply of sophisticated weapons both from America and the Soviet Union, ‘the military balance has changed in favour of India’. His “forward policy”, by virtue of which India wanted China to vacate all Indian territory, was implemented within this policy framework. In 1953, Nehru started this process of redrawing. It included Aksai Chin within India; this ran counter to the British policy of keeping it out of India as proclaimed in 1899. The Chinese road-building activity in this area came to light in 1957 and could not be ignored by India. This was the beginning of the India-China conflict which culminated in the war of 1962. By 1961, Nehru’s “forward policy” had taken shape creating 60 forward posts, 43 of which were situated north of the McMahon line. Intermittent clashes took place before the massive invasion by China on 20 October 1962. India was caught with its pants down  and Nehru admitted the government’s failure in the RajyaSabha in 1963. He said: “What India has learnt from the Chinese invasion is that in the world of today there is no place for weak nations and that we have been living in an unreal world of our own creation’. China signed a boundary agreement with Pakistan on 2 March 1963 which facilitated an alliance between them.

According to Noorani, China had initially ignored Pakistan’s effort to forge an alliance with it. But when it seemed to be in accord with the country’s foreign policy, it went ahead. The close equation with Pakistan is still manifest. The alliance provides for agreements on broad principles but along with a boundary protocol running over hundreds of pages. What precipitated matters was Nehru’s hobnobbing with the Soviet Union and his efforts to exert pressure on the Chinese. This exacerbated the situation to a point of no return. As such it is difficult to agree with RamchandraGuha’s assertion that there would have been a war either way, even if there was no Nehru or his “forward policy” and close ties with the Soviet Union. Nehru had enough opportunity to settle the issue.

The Opposition blundered in the run-up to the war. Its attitude was based primarily on the perception of short-term gains. Maxwell blamed the Right-wing Opposition leaders of the day, notably Kripalani, Masani and Rajaji for the crisis.  

DeenDayalUpadhaya compared Nehru to the effete 19th century ruler of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah. The then Prime Minister was blamed for the lack of preparation and his “weak and timid nature”. RammanoharLohia, the socialist leader, gave a clarion call for getting all the territories under Chinese control to be vacated by force. He also echoed the Jana Sangh line of beefing up the country’s strength. Rajaji wanted the policy of non-alignment to be jettisoned. He called for a close association with the Western powers led by the USA. He identified China as the aggressor. However, he never supported a unilateral adventure of an isolationist nation and wanted an alliance with world powers which were against communism. Upadhyay called for mobilisation and Lohia for collective social action. Only Rajaji advocated a new strategic alliance with the Western powers. In his own way, MahavirTyagi responded to Nehru’s statement that Aksai Chin is a barren area, where nothing grows. He took off  his Gandhi cap, pointed to his bald scalp and asked Nehru whether he would have conceded it too! None of them really led the government towards a formula to settle the issue with China. Both the Congress and the Opposition were engaged in myopic politics.

There was no conceptual framework for the formulation of foreign policy. No wonder that formulation has fluctuated since 1947 to the present day.  There is no broad theoretical framework that can be valid even within a larger time-scale. It is this critical shortcoming that provoked Ram Jethmalani to remark that non-alignment was a “lofty pretension and a cruel joke as no non-aligned country came to our rescue in 1962”. But have we really learnt the lessons of 1962 which RamchandraGuha calls ‘a study in failure’? As GiriDeshingkar has pointed out, ‘during Nehru’s initial years in power he was more or less the sole maker of  the China policy’ and ‘as the imperial legacy claimed more and more of Nehu’s imagination it got reflected in India’s official cartography’. 

In 1950, the new Indian map showed the McMahon line as ‘undemarcated’ and the middle and the western sectors as ‘boundary undefined’. But in the map published in 1954 the McMahon line becomes the firm boundary as also the boundaries in the middle and western sectors. In the 1950 map, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan were shown outside India but in the 1954 map, both Sikkim and Bhutan were shown as part of India. Nehru’s three basic assumptions of unilateralism, pan-Asianism and as the key mediator between the two blocs and the non-aligned nations were rejected by China. S Gopal cites many instances of Nehru’s attempts to mediate not only between the USA and China but also between the USA and the Soviet Union. Even during the Indochina conflict, China never fully trusted India and rejected the notion that it needed mediation by anybody.

Unlike the Japanese who learned their lessons after Commodore Perry’s victory in 1853, we have yet to learn the lessons from history. From the past blunders we must realise that a nation is respected as an entity when it has the capacity to solve its major problems, ensuring firm and well-defined borders with all its neighbours in a spirit of accommodation and by admitting past mistakes and misgivings. 

The desperation of Nehru after the debacle of 1962 was reflected in his belated efforts to solve the problem of Kashmir with Pakistan with the release of Sheikh Abdullah and making extraordinary efforts to reach an understanding with Pakistan. The efforts came to nought and the process was abruptly halted after Nehru’s death, proving yet again that no new perspective had evolved even after the war with China.

We still aspire for a big-power status and a permanent seat in the UN Security Council knowing very well that our prospects are uncertain. Assuming that it materialises, it will not enhance our status within the comity of nations until we can demonstrate to the world that India has arrived as a nation, is governed properly, is capable of addressing its basic contradictions and can create an atmosphere within its neighbourhood to usher in a pluralistic security community.

The Statesman

5 & 6 December 2012