Polite Indian

The Government Of India has a history of paying inadequate compensations to the residents if the land is to be acquired for development purposes. I wonder why? Is it because the govt doesn’t value people’s property? Or it because it doesn’t value people at all? In every case there is a lot involved and in some cases it is difficult to judge who is right or wrong but can you think of someone being paid a price as low as Rs 24 per sq. yard for a piece of land close to Delhi? The land that should be sold for 4-5 lacks per sq yard is being bought for Rs 24 per sq yard? Yes, the govt is paying the Nangal Dewat villagers that kind of money for the proposed airport.

At current market rates, the price of his land would be about Rs 4-5 lakh per square yard but the Government is offering him Rs 24 per square yard. It’s the price that was fixed in 1972, when the land was first acquired.

In 1972 the govt had agreed to buy the land from the villagers at Nanagal Dewat at Rs 24 per sq. yard. At that time that might have been a fair compensation but after 30 years now it seems inadequate. And the govt. wants to go ahead with the original plan. I think the compensation should be re-evaluated now and should be made at fair market price. The DDA in its zeal to seal the deal before the commonwealth games is not paying any attention to the courts order as well.

The villagers of Nangal Dewat even went to the High Court seeking proper rehabilitation and compensation. The court then issued a stay order but the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) took no note of the order.

DDA instead told the villagers to vacate the village in 24 hours or else they would lose whatever little compensation they were entitled to.

While I think it is OK for the govt. to acquire property in the name of development, It is imperative of the govt to pay adequate compensation and relocation for the affected. The general observation is that govt. has failed to do so. I wonder why?

I am sure there is more to it than meets the eye. Maybe the govt. has its own reasons to do such a seemingly unfair deal. Can someone point out the arguments for the govt? Can some one make a case that the govt is doing the right thing? I would be more than glad to learn the other side of the story to get the complete picture.

Till then I wonder why?

Lately there has been a lot of discussion about uniform civil code. And the discussion keeps popping up from time to time. Lot of the discussion happen without even understanding what does uniform civil code mean.

Article 44 of the Constitution of India states that

The State shall endeavour to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India.

Now there it is in writing and it is often argued, why has it not been implemented when the constitution clearly states that?

How different are the laws for different communities?

Going by the intensity of the discussion around it seems that India has completely different laws for hindu, muslims, christians etc. While it is true that there are different laws but to what extent and for what category? It is difficult to say what % of laws are common to everybody in India but according to this article 99% of the laws in India apply to everybody.

The heated debate on Common Civil Code that one comes across today makes it appear that the greatest problem faced by India is nothing but the lack of a Common Civil Code. Political propaganda has obscured the fact that the rest 99 % of the laws in the country is ‘common’ for all and it hasn’t made any difference.

So if 99% of the law is common then what is different that needs a UCC? The controversy is about ‘codification of personal laws’.Personal laws imply laws relating to family like marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption etc. The discussions that I have had with many people often goes in the direction as if it is something to do only with the muslims and they somehow have a special privilege compared to others. This is not true. Every religion has its own laws that they want to preserve. A quick look at the wikipedia entry reveals the following…

Each and every religion does not want to lose its right to practice religious laws. Here are a few quick facts for you to understand the problem:

• In Muslim personal law, they are allowed to have four wives, can give divorce by saying talaq three times, and after divorce the ex-husband is not responsible for ex-wife’s maintanace.
• In Hindu inheritance rights, sons, and not daughters, can inherit the property. Or that a wife has fewer rights than her in-laws over her husband’s property, but a husband has more rights than his in-laws over his wife’s property.
• In Christian law; a husband can get a divorce on grounds of adultery, while a wife has to prove adultery and cruelty.
• Christians are not allowed from willing property for charitable and religious purposes (Section 118 of the Indian Succession Act).
• In Islam, polygamy is permissible but not in other religions. According to the government statistics, only 5.2% Muslim men are polygamous while 5.8% Hindus, 9% Scheduled Caste, and 14% tribals have more than one wife.
• In Punjab it is a common practice that all brothers marry one woman so that their property is not divided, and it is permissible by the Indian constitution.
• Currently, Hindus, themselves, have different Hindu Personal Laws in every state of India. It will be a good start if Hindus have a Hindu Personal Law that is uniform for all Hindus in every state across the country.
• A Sikh is allowed to carry a dagger (Kripan); if others carry it, they will be arrested by the police.
• There is separate tax system for Hindu undivided families not for non-Hindu undivided families (Hindu Undivided Family code).

Most of the controversies related to UCC involve muslims and that is because their personal is the most visible in our society. I for one support the implementation of the UCC. There are many who support UCC as a reactionary step but I will dwelve into my reasons to support in a bit.

Do we already have a Uniform Civil Code?

Some argue that India already has a uniform civil code and this is true to a great extent. India has passed the Special Marriage Act according to which none of the restrictions of the personal law apply. The requirement howver is that one has to specifically choose to get married under the act. Meaning when a person gets married he can do so under any act i.e. the Hindu Marriage Act, Muslim Personal Law or the Special Marriage act.

Note that not every muslim is opposed to the idea of UCC and not every hindu is for it. But one wonders how many proponents of the UCC have their marriages registered under the SPA.

My Stand on UCC

As I have said before, I am for the implementation of UCC and that implementation can come in two modes. One where the parliament enacts a law and the other is where every community undergo reforms to make the laws fair. I am open to both. The only problem with the second one is that every community will take its own sweet time to come up with the reforms.

My main gripe against lack of UCC is the condition of women. In each of the personal law and in every community it is the women that are at a disadvantage. No community has worked at a satisfactory pace to improve that and hence I think the govt. cannot just sit on the side and let that happen. Empowered women in a society bring a big change. Like the say educate a man and he learns, educate a woman and the whole family learns. All the personal laws are so heavily biased against women that it will take ages to come out of it unless the govt intervenes. Communities are doing their bit although at a very slow pace. The formation of Women MPL was a step in that direction.

Some argue that we should not have UCC just to maintain the diversity that India has. The argument has merit and in an ideal case I would love to have that. But given the current scenario the logic to maintain diversity at the cost of women is not acceptable.

I have had many a discussions and here is one. Even though I support UCC, I don’t think that the lack of it is the biggest problem that India faces.

Education is a topic that is very dear to me. I have always wanted to do something in this area. Something Big! Don’t know when I will be able to do that but till then I will continue to dream of that. In the meantime I have come accross this organization called Schools For India. They seem to have taken the first step in that direction.

The objectives of the trust are admirable. I always thought that something like this will be needed to bring rural India in the mainstream.

To design, construct, establish, run and maintain educational schools in various
districts in India.

To apply the Trust Fund or any part thereof for the general purposes of
designing, constructing, establishing, running and maintaining of schools and in
payment of all rents, rates, taxes, cost of insurance, repairs and other
outgoings payable from time to time in respect of the schools or any property
on which schools are constructed.

They have plans to setup schools in all parts of rural India. And they have big plans.

6000 schools across the country have been planned. Each of the schools will
have the capacity to teach 945 students, including up to 15 special children from
Primary to secondary school.

This is an amazing effort and I think it has huge potential. If done right they can achieve the objective of opening 6000 schools by 2020. It is a huge task and in that they will need every help they can get. They are doing some right things like roping in the corporations to sponsor one or more cluster for a period of 15 years. This willgive a chance to the corporations to discharge their corporate responsibilities to some extent. A similar model will be followed for celebrities.

In addition to this I think they would do good to focus on the revenue model of the schools. The schools should not be run entirely on donations. Donations should be used for the initial setup of school infrastructure and to get it off the ground but the daily maintenance and running of the school should come from a continuing source. In this case it will be fees. It is a very important point to consider.

Another thing that I think they can do is open one good school in urban area where they can get more success and use the profit from there to run a couple of schools in the rural areas. If they see success here then the model can be repeated. It is important to have a revenue source for plans like these to succeed and depending solely on charity can prove detrimental.

On the whole it is a very commendable effort and I wish them well. I for one definitely want them to succeed.

Bharat Punarnirman Dal is a political party started by a bunch of IITians. Now they are planning to fight the upcoming Uttaranchal, UP and Punjab elections.

Young men like Ravi Kishore and Ajit Shukla - who both studied aerospace engineering at IIT Mumbai - are now hoping to engineer a social change through their party, the Bharat Punarnirman Dal (BPD).

Mainstream politics, dominated by money and muscle power can be a scary place to be for the educated middle class, but these young IITians are changing all that.

Says BPD spokesperson , Ravi Kishore, “The time has come when we stopped talking and instead start acting. We are creating a platform for people who want to make a change now and we have come here to deliver that change.”

These young men don’t have a fixed ideology, money or cadre to call their own.

They say all they have is integrity and big plans for the country - plans to hire people who will be solution providers, make sure the administration is clean and most importantly, retire politicians at the age of 60.

Says BPD President, Ajit Shukla, “It’s not about the money. Everyone has to begin somewhere. People will ultimately follow you if you have the conviction.”

And it’s on this belief that they are fighting the upcoming Uttaranchal, UP and Punjab elections.

I always wanted that a new party should be formed by intellectuals to take on the big political parties of today. The existing parties have very little good to offer to the nation and whatever they do have to offer comes only after their own benefit is taken care of. Politics first and nation later.

I hope BPD might be able to make a difference. If they are successful in only a couple of states then it might encourage the educated sensible youth to take up politics. If they start the process right and guard their integrity well and still achieve success it will be beginning of a new era in Indian politics.

Their attitude seems to be that of a corporation and they want to run their party as that. It is good that they want to retire politicians after 60. I would think that it would be a retirement only from active politics but they could still be part of the think tanks.

Now only time will tell if the IITians can make good politicians or not. I think it might be interesting to keep an eye on them. If they do what they say they will do I think we all should support them for that.

The Hindu reports

This gross under-presence of Muslims in virtually every sector is presaged by substantial inequalities in education. Muslim enrolment and retention rates at the primary and secondary levels are lower than the national average and this further magnifies existing inequalities at the college level as well as in the labour market. For virtually every socio-economic marker of well being, the Muslim is well below the national norm — not to speak of the level commensurate with her or his share of the national population — and the evidence suggests these inequalities are not decreasing over time.

This bleak statistical picture is rendered drearier still by new trends visible in many cities. Muslims, for example, find it extremely difficult to rent and buy property outside of “Muslim areas” in some metros. Apart from several journalists, I even know of one former Muslim Union Minister in Delhi whose Hindu colleagues had to intercede to find him a flat. In Mumbai, the situation is perhaps worse. Many Muslim businessmen have problems accessing credit, besides having to run the gamut of uncooperative officials who look upon them with suspicion at every turn. Even in politics, as Iqbal A. Ansari’s recent book, Political Representation of Muslims in India, 1952-2004, has shown, Muslims have consistently been under-represented in the Lok Sabha and all State Assemblies since Independence except Kerala. Only half as many Muslim MPs and MLAs get elected as one might expect based on their population share. In the absence of our political parties throwing up a large enough number of Muslim elected representatives, clerics and obscurantists are only too willing to step into the breach.

……

In India, the first task of the government must be to guarantee formal equality of opportunity by dealing firmly with discrimination in the labour, housing and credit markets as well as educational system. Without instituting a system of reservation — which would generate more political heat than tangible benefit for Muslims — the Government must send out a clear and unambiguous message that the social cohesiveness and future growth prospects of the country require government departments and private firms to encourage the recruitment of Muslims. But in order to generate substantive equality of opportunity and uproot inequality and exclusion from their roots, the government has to guarantee better access to education at every level for Muslims, Dalits, Tribals, and OBCs.

Link via Krish

cartoon link via Bhupinder Singh originally published in The Tribune.

Is the Muslim under represntation because of discrimination alone? What are the other reasons?

IBN Live reports.

Says a farmer, Munna, “We’ll not celebrate Diwali. No one will light candles or diyas and there is no food. People are dying of hunger here.”

The meagre compensation these farmers have received for the drought situation they have been facing since 2003 has robbed them of all sparkle this festive season.

The Uttar Pradesh government’s relief cheques that are as low as Rs 3 have left these farmers checkmated - literally - for banks don’t encash cheques that are less than Rs 100.

Says Munna, “The government has done nothing for us. Crops have dried up and farmers are dying.”

And it’s not just the compensation amount that’s making a mockery of their plight.

This is what Munna will have to do to encash his cheque of Rs 35. He will have to spend Rs 50 to travel to the district headquarters, where the revenue officer is likely to charge him Rs 200 for accepting the cheque.

He will then have to put in another Rs 250 to open a bank account. Little wonder that Munna prefers to leave the ‘compensation’ cheque untouched.

…

The irony of the entire situation is that some of the Rs 3 cheques that were issued cost Rs 4 to print - which is more than the compensation amount.

One wonders who to pity at this time - the poor farmer who is the recipient of this pittance or the socialist government of the state of Uttar Pradesh which is bursting a two-kilometer long cracker to celebrate this Diwali.

Watch the video here
Link via atlantean

Pathetic state of affairs I must say.

Last week I saw Lageraho Munnabhai. As it is I am a great fan of comedy. And a comedy with a message?…The icing on the cake. The movie does an excellant job of portraying the relevance of Gandhian principles in contemproray world.

Lot of people may not agree with Gandhi on some of the issues. Some people agressively talk against him i.e. his personality and indulge in what I call Gandhi bashing. As I have noted in one of my earlier post, Gandhi too was a human and as such, prone to errors. But the issues that he made errors on cannot negate the positve impact that he has had on Indian society and polity. He laid down some important principles in life and following them is not always easy. That is why most people dismiss his principles as impractical and take the easy road.

One scene from the movie where Munna has to apologize to Circuit and you can see Munna’s inner struggle in doing that. It was indicative of the amount of courage needed to do that. As Gandhi rightly said, apologizing needs a lot more courage than offending!

Another scene where the old man goes to get his pension released, is a classic. The scene demonstrated how it is possible to “expose” a person without resorting to violence, threat, abusive language or anything of that sort. The clerk was so ashamed of his act that he had to immediately sign the papers.

But the Gandhi bashers will pick up only not so positive aspects of Gandhi’s life and highlight them. One example that I have seen quoted often is ,”If Gandhi wanted to clean his toilet then so be it but why does he have to FORCE his wife to do it?” Now this becomes such a big issue because it portrays Gandhi as forcing someone to do something against his own wishes. But if you look at this from a regular household perspective, My wife forces me to clean the toilet! If I say no, she whines and then eventually I get up clean it. Does this make my wife a bad person? Hell No!!! The point of quoting such example is that you should look at the familial matters as just that…familial matters.

Back to the movie…Gandhigiri, a new term from the movie is bound to be picked up by everyone. I hope that becomes the IN Thing! The director has done a wonderful job in promoting Gandhigiri.

On his birthday I urge everyone to take another look at Gandhian principles and try to employ them in their personal lives. Ignore what you don’t like about him and adopt what you like. It will be a great tribute to the old man, aptly called the Father of the nation!

With the recent controversy on Vande Mataram, some people started wondering why did we choose Jana Gana Mana as our national anthem. One such instance is here at silkboard. Another one here at Amardeep’s Blog tries to analyze whether Tagore wrote this for King George or not.

Interesting comments on both the blogs. Some even go to the extent of saying that Vande Mataram should have been the national anthem instead of Jana Gana Mana.

To sir with love
A girls’ college in Punjab where there are
no teachers and where the students pay
no tuition fees and are taught to abhor
cheating in exams 

Yesterday on Dateline Punjab they had a story of a school that had no teachers! At first I couldn’t bellieve it but they had a good 15 minutes coverage on it and explained how it all worked. Later I googled it up and found the link. Here it is for all of you. A unique school by all means!

Hats off to them for pulling off something like this.

Vande Mataram is a great song. It arouses patriotic feelings amongst most Indians but singing it or not is in no way an indication of patriotism or lack of it.

One can argue that if in a country singing Vande Mataram is regarded as a symbol of patriotism, what’s wrong in singing it and showing your patriotism? Why can’t we understand that if religious beliefs come in the way of that then there is no good forcing anyone? On the flip side once can ask, how is it a National song when about 15% of the population can’t even sing it? How can one disregard the religious sentiments of an entire community? Should everyone live like the majority wants them to live? Next thing the hindutva brigade will ask is imposing hindu laws as the uniform civil code! This coercion to make people go against their religious beliefs should stop once and for all.

There are some interesting posts here and here