Democratic & Administrative Reforms

03-23-2006, 03:47 AM

Anybody know about this org ?

http://www.freedomindia.com/index.html

04-05-2006, 09:30 PM

http://www.prsindia.org/

04-24-2006, 02:18 PM

hi friends. i'm new to this forum. this is my first post.

i wish to start a discussion on 'forcible democratization' by an ideal democratic state from a purely theoretical point of view (and not with a direct reference to usa, india or any other nation-state 'cos these may not be ideal democracies - but we can quote examples; examples of incorrect behavior also help us understand what is right and wrong). if there already exists a thread that discusses this, please point it here (for my/our reference).

my thoughts: democratic states, in theory, are called upon to be evangelistic (much like some religions). it is one of their 'moral' imperatives. this can be achieved through exhortation, promotion of their gospel, dialogue, sanction, spreading newsletters by helicopters, or through forcible democratization. when forcible democratization, or a just war, is justified is something few scholars have been able to come to an agreement on; otoh there is a lot of literature about how such a state ought to behave after it has forcibly invaded another country to democratize it. i'm not interested in discussing the latter. i'm interested in discussing, i) is this a moral imperative of an ideal secular democratic state? and ii) if yes, what are the preconditions for it's waging a just war or a forcible democratization on another nation-state? and other issues connected with events that precede this theoretical and hypothetical 'just war' or forcible democratization. any links to literature in the net, on this subject, would also be appreciated. for the purposes of this discussion, i'd imagine that an ideal democracy is a 'secular democracy (with a strong federal character if it's constituents are in the shape of a federation).' thus, theoretically, such a state can wage a 'just war' even against a religious democracy if necessary?

04-24-2006, 10:37 PM

Welcome to the forum Mowgli..

I dont understand just-war mainly because I have never seen anybody declare -> i want to fight an unjust war.

How is it a moral imperative to spread democracy ? I have never heard of it..

05-02-2006, 02:03 AM

By Arun Nehru
QUOTEBJP leader Pramod Mahajan continues to struggle for survival and we pray for his recovery. I cannot find words to describe my shock and sorrow at the unfortunate development. There are many issues we must reflect on, as such incidents, in different shapes and forms, will continue to take place in the future. Accidents involving important political leaders and political assassinations have a way of throwing lives out of gear, and, over the last week, we have seen how much Mr Mahajan's tragic shooting has affected our activities.

Dynastic rule is no longer an ailment restricted to the Congress; it has spread to all regional parties with a single "supreme leader". This has further extended into the domain of even individual MPs and MLAs and - barring the Left - the number of parties with sons, daughters, and even relatives controlling political power between them is a legion. It is obvious that families used to the trappings of power seek to continue their hold over it through dynastic succession.

The cost of "politicking" has hit through the ceiling, and we are now talking about hundreds of crores of rupees that different families now possess to control the power strings. The complexion of every political party has changed and it is only natural that, in addition to political disputes, there are now disputes involving financial matters. Ignoring them can have very severe consequences.

I have written on several occasions on the need to make political contributions transparent and transactions accountable. I think lack of a credible system has made honest politicians corrupt, as the system cannot be changed by any one individual. Indeed, the system is made of individuals and unless change effected from the top, things will not change.

Trusts and institutions dedicated to leaders big and small involve hundreds of crores of rupees, and very often the person who controls the party also controls the assets. Sibling rivalry can often be the case of dispute with deadly consequences. All this may have little to do with Mr Mahajan; but it is no secret that he was the major fund-raiser for the party. Besides these skills, he was charismatic, politically bright and had a future. The wide array of reactions from across the political spectrum stands testimony to this fact.

In such positions as Mr Mahajan had, it is not unusual for political leaders to have hundreds of requests for favours and financial assistance and most of these have to be turned down. These result in a great deal of heartburn and friction. Violence is only a few steps away and there can be little defence even if it comes from within the family. Political parties are not corporate houses and unless we reform the system of political funding, we will simply not produce the leaders of the future with the integrity levels required by the masses. We will continue to have poor political parties run by rich leaders.
Link

05-09-2006, 01:23 PM

The definition of a democracy is a state that protects the individual liberties of its citizens. Since you're talking about an ideal democracy, we don't necessarily need to discuss whether the US is or is not an "good" democracy.

By and large, most religious states are built on favoring one set of beliefs over others. In other words, some citizens are favored over others. This makes them non-democratic - they violate individual liberty. Democracy could be regarded as being a religion, except that it allows undemocratic individuals to believe and proselytize others. In practical terms, this works because seemingly-similar people actually have major disagreements with one another and democracy allows this disagreement to be expressed openly without resorting to civil war.

To use an analogy - I like sugar in everything. This is a dietary idiosyncracy. I require that all foods sold in my nation have sugar in them. Another guy believes in letting people eat what they want. We can term this an idiosyncracy, but when this is foisted on the nation - I am *still* individually free to eat as much sugar as I want. Hindus in India can band together and establish a Hindu commune among themselves if they want. What they cannot do is force someone who wants to exist this commune to stay in it.

Do democracies have the right to forcibly democratize non-democratic nations? This is similar to asking whether society has a right to "liberate" individuals that are being kept in a commune against their will. Society absolutely does. Communal nations are inherently immoral, as are non-democratic nations. Democracies always have the right to "liberate" them by force.

This is also why the US was justified in using force and bloodshed to crush the Confederate secessionists. The Confederacy enjoyed handy majority support in its area. But it was seceding to form an undemocratic nation - based on supremacy of one segment of the population. This was immoral, even if majority supported. The US attacked them, and rightfully so. If the British Empire were democratic (rather than white-supremacist) and Indians wanted to secede to form a Brown-controlled nation, Britain would have been morally correct to attack and force India to democratize. If you remember, all the initial protests in India were about more liberty for individual Indians within the British Empire.

05-29-2006, 10:43 PM

QUOTE
The democratist crusade: intervention, economic sanctions, and engagement.
World Policy Journal;
12/22/1994;
Hendrickson, David C.

The US has often used economic sanctions to buttress its crusade to support democratic institutions in other countries and to express its displeasure over the policies of certain governments. Well-known examples of the use of sanctions to punish erring countries include those meted out in the 1990s to punish the Haitian military junta, the Iraqi dictatorship and the Yugoslavian government. However, since sanctions are not always as effective as the US would like them to be as the cases of Yugoslavia and Iraq have shown, it may now be necessary to review their use as a diplomatic weapon.

The promotion of democracy and human rights through economic sanctions has become one of the most important components of contemporary American foreign policy. For two decades--since the congressional legislation of the mid-1970s--the imposition of economic sanctions on states whose governments violate human rights, including the right to live under a democratically elected government, has become a regular feature of American foreign policy. The enlargement of democracy, the Clinton administration has said, ought to replace the containment of communism as the foremost objective of American foreign policy. Economic sanctions--imposed against a number of countries, threatened against many others--is an important aspect of that quest.

There is no fixed understanding of the democratist enterprise today. In its justification for the occupation in Haiti, the Clinton administration seemed most insistent on the need to maintain democracy and prevent human rights abuses within the Western Hemisphere; the emphasis placed on geographical propinquity in the president's September 15 war message seemed, by implication, to cast doubt on the importance of this project elsewhere, an interpretation buttressed by his decision, in May 1994, to delink human rights and trade in its policy toward China. The regionalist emphasis in human rights policies, to be sure, has always been pronounced: the oil-producing monarchies of the Persian Gulf, to take the most striking example, have never been seriously pressed by the United States to change their internal institutions. There is,too, a more general fear in the West that democratization in the Islamic world may bring to power, as was threatened in Algeria, fundamentalists who are implacable in their opposition to the United States and other Western countries. Yet despite the limitations and exemptions that seem almost certain to attend any active attempt to promote democracy and human rights in the world, the appeal of this enterprise over the past decade and more indicates that the American public is favorably disposed to it in principle, if not always (because of the potential costs incurred) in practice.

Crusaders for democracy and human rights share the belief that the universal appeal and intrinsic justice of their objectives serve to override the traditional legal prohibition against interference in the internal affairs of other states, but there are still significant internal tensions within the broader movement. 

Human rights activists came largely out of the political left. Protesting against "counterrevolutionary America," they called in the 1970s for a rupture of U.S. relations with such rightist authoritarian regimes as South Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Nicaragua, and South Africa. The democratist project was more an innovation of the Reagan administration, whose object initially was the support of insurgent groups against communist regimes (Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola).

By the late 1980s, however, a certain junction had been effected that bridged the older ideological divide. The Reagan administration withdrew support from rightist regimes in the Philippines and Haiti, and the Democratic left harshly condemned Chinese repression at Tiananmen. Success, moreover, gave a fillip to the enterprise. The "third wave" of democratization, which began in 1974 and brought near its crest the breakup of the Soviet Union and the adoption of democratic institutions in South Africa, coincided in large part with the shift of American policy in the mid-1970s and seemed to attest dramatically to the wisdom of an activist prodemocracy policy.(1)

Just as there are differing priorities among those who wish to actively enlarge the domain of democracy and human rights, so too there is a wide variety of actions imprecisely though conventionally identified with economic sanctions. Sanctions may include restrictions on travel and financial remittances, cutoffs in military or export aid, adverse changes in trade status (e.g., the elimination of the sugar quota or the denial of most favored nation status), or prohibitions on loans from private banks or international financial institutions.

Significantly, acts customarily identified with sanctions range from such measures as the withdrawal of military aid--which is clearly within the moral and legal discretion of the sanctioning government and is not owed to anyone--to steps that involve the active destabilization of the target regime, up to and including measures, such as economic blockades, that were once always considered acts of war. Acts conventionally identified with "economic sanctions," in other words, occur on both sides of the legal barrier traditionally distinguishing peace from war, just as they fall on both sides of the moral barrier distinguishing the withdrawal of aid from the infliction of injury. Recovering the significance of those distinctions is an important purpose of this essay.

The Problem of Intervention 

Perhaps the most striking feature of the democratist crusade is its illegality under the traditional standards of international law. That law forbade intervention in the internal affairs of states. According to that older conception, which prevailed during much of the greater part of the Westphalian system (1648-1945), the members of international society consisted of states, not of individuals. Individual rights entered into the fabric of the law of nations only insofar as a state might take umbrage at an offense against one of its subjects or citizens. In that system, as the legal scholar W. E. Hall wrote, every state had the right "to live its life in its own way, so long as it [kept] rigidly to itself, and refrain[ed] from interfering with the equal right of other states to live their life in the manner which commend[ed] itself to them."(2) The rule, of course, was often honored in the breach. Partly because of those frequent violations, and partly because its operational meaning in particular contexts might be twisted by artful diplomatists, it is sometimes held that the rule against nonintervention was not a fundamental norm of the law of nations; but this view rests upon an elementary confusion. We might as well maintain that the prohibition against murder is not part of domestic law because the norm is often violated or its violators escape their just reward.

In the light of our contemporary policies, it is ironic to recall that it was the U.S. government that did the most to establish the primacy of this rule in the nineteenth-century law of nations, a practice that changed only with Woodrow Wilson's Mexican policy in 1913. Summarizing that doctrine in 1852, Daniel Webster noted that from President Washington's time down to the present day it has been a principle, always acknowledged by the United States, that every nation possesses a right to govern itself according to its own will, to change institutions at discretion, and to transact its business through whatever agents it may think proper to employ. This cardinal point in our policy has been strongly illustrated by recognizing the many forms of political power which have been successively adopted by France in the series of revolutions with which that country has been visited.(3)

That traditional understanding was restated by John Bassett Moore, then legal counselor of the Department of State, at precisely the moment that Wilson was moving to overturn it: "The Government of the United States having originally set itself up by revolution has always acted upon the de facto principle. We regard governments as existing or as not existing. We do not require them to be chosen by popular vote. We look simply to the fact of the existence of the government and to its ability and inclination to discharge the national obligations." The reason for this policy, Moore explained, was that we could not become the censors of the morals or conduct of other nations and make our approval or disapproval of their methods the test of our recognition without intervening in their affairs. The government of the United States once boasted that the Pope, the Emperor of Russia and President Jackson were the only rulers that ever recognized Don Miguel as King of Portugal. This action on the part of President Jackson was ascribed to "our sacred regard for the independence of nations."(4)

The United States has frequently departed from this standard in the twentieth century, the departures having grown far more frequent in the last decade; nevertheless, the nonintervention principle underlying this doctrine of recognition continues to find expression in contemporary treaties and agreements. Prohibitions against intervention in the internal affairs of states are reaffirmed, often in the strongest terms, in all the governing charters and declarations of contemporary international law. At the same time, there has grown up alongside the traditional prohibition against internal intervention a body of human rights law that strongly affirms the rights of individuals, declarations that increasingly contain statements of the democratic entitlement. 

It is often held that the United States and its allies have secured widespread agreement to the proposition that the norms commanding the observance of democracy and human rights have entirely displaced the traditional prohibition against intervention, thereby virtually obliterating the substantive content of "domestic jurisdiction." According to legal scholar Thomas Franck, a "democratic entitlement" has emerged in recent years that enjoys a "high degree of legitimacy" within international society.(5) But this view is highly questionable, for three reasons. 

First, the fact that these contradictory norms appear side by side in international legal documents may more plausibly be read as indicating a state of confusion rather than of consensus within contemporary international law. Second, nowhere in the charters and declarations that ostensibly speak for all people (as opposed to those with a merely regional significance) is authorization given to employ either economic or military coercion to fulfill the rights proclaimed. Indeed, many such declarations clearly deny any such inference.(6) There is a striking contrast, finally, between the purported near universal agreement on these norms and the reality of profound dissensus among actually existing nations and regimes. It is no doubt the case that the cumulative weight of international legal norms gives outside states a right of comment (or, as the case may be, of denunciation) in the case of human rights abuses. It is far more difficult to tease out of this body of law the authority to undertake coercive internal interventions.

But the case for observing the nonintervention norm need not rest on its legal standing. More impressive are the prudential reasons that support nonintervention, above all the contribution its observance makes toward peace. Nonintervention is one of the central devices by which the society of states has traditionally managed differences and accommodated itself to the plural and heterogeneous character of the human race. Coercive democratization, by contrast, is dangerous precisely because it aims for a degree of homogeneity in the political organization of human beings that has never existed and that, in all probability, will never exist. It is a revolutionary enterprise. It not only divides the international system between democratic and nondemocratic states, but proposes hostile measures that are intended to force authoritarian states into the democratic camp or punish them severely if they do not give in. It proposes no policy of peaceful coexistence; it propounds no ethic of "live and let live."

That this policy is justified in the name of peace is perfectly understandable. All such homogenizing projects in international history--whether of the revolutionary variety associated with Jacobinism and Bolshevism or the counterrevolutionary variety associated with the Counter-Reformation and the Holy Alliance--have rested upon the same justification. Because democracies do generally maintain pacific relations with one another, moreover, the democracy-equals-peace argument commands widespread assent.

Insofar as the experience among democracies is made to justify aggressive measures against nondemocracies, however, the argument is a non sequitur. Because democracies do not fight each other, we are urged to undertake war or war-like measures against nondemocratic states, the ultimate goal of perpetual peace forming the ground for the commencement of economic sanctions and possibly of war. The pacific relationship that democracies tend to have with one another provides no justification for any such policy.

The questionable authority to undertake coercive democratization is only slightly improved by the support it receives from the United Nations or other international organizations. It is true that multilateral authorization corresponds broadly to intuitive notions of international legitimacy. The broader the scope of concerted action, the more it seems the action has the sponsorship of international society as a whole. It may constitute insurance against the pursuit of purely selfish interests, and provide a valuable source of restraint. Without denying the value of acting in concert with the United Nations or regional security organizations, one may still note a few oddities in what exactly is happening when we speak of action by the "international community."

The role of American leadership, in the first place, clearly seems to be crucial; the effectiveness of interventions conducted by the "international community" has been heavily dependent on American initiative, financing, logistical support, or military power. In the cases where the so-called international community has acted in recent years (e.g., Iraq, Somalia, Haiti), it has usually done so at the behest of this country. Normally, the consensus is achieved through American pressure, and it often happens that states swallow real misgivings over the wisdom of U.S. action so as not to prejudice their relations with this country. It is doubtful that "consensus" is the right term to describe what is happening; in its basic characteristics, it seems rather to be an elevated exercise in ward heeling. 

A second oddity has to do with the authority of international organizations to undertake the democratist crusade. In the case of Haiti, both the U.N. Security Council and the Organization of American States authorized economic embargoes that had the restoration of democracy as their object; and the Security Council (but not, significantly, the OAS) authorized the use of U.S. military power to accomplish that objective as well. Still, one searches in vain through the U.N. or OAS charters for the authority to do so. Whether wisely or not, these organizations were erected squarely on the foundation of the equal sovereignty of states. They contain no guarantee of a republican form of government, such as exists in the U.S. Constitution.(7)

But let us waive these objections for the moment--conceding that the "constitution" of international society can undergo growth, and that to bind it too closely to the original understanding is to deprive it of its capacity to adapt to the changing needs of the international society it is meant to serve. Let us also concede that the movement for democracy and human rights is part of the warp and woof of international politics today, and that this has support from voices all over the world, in every civilizational time zone. Having noted the objections to the journey, let us go ahead and set sail on this mission to make every state a liberal democracy. What do we find when this objective is paired with the instrument of economic sanctions?

Economic Sanctions: Unintended Consequences and Innocent Bystanders 

The image of embarking on a voyage is not inappropriate, for the principal forerunner of today's trade embargo is the naval blockade. In strategic thought, economic sanctions exemplify the strategy of attrition, that is, the attempt to wear down the enemy by striking at the whole of its economic life, which is ultimately the basis of its military power. In the classic economic boycott, like the airtight naval blockade, sanctions move toward the total elimination of economic and diplomatic intercourse with the target state, of the sort described by Woodrow Wilson in 1919 in characterizing the measures that would be taken against aggressors under the League of Nations: "We absolutely boycott them.... There shall be no communication even between them and the rest of the world. They shall receive no goods; they shall ship no goods. They shall receive no telegraphic messages; they shall send none. They shall receive no mail; no mail will be received from them."(8) Such a strategy represents an attempt to punish the enemy so badly that it has no choice--on any rational calculation of costs and benefits--but to submit.

Attrition's main competitor in strategic thought is a strategy of forcible disarmament, in which military operations are aimed, as the phrase suggests, at forcibly disarming the military power of the adversary. The great promise of the economic blockade is that it allows you to harm the enemy without hurting yourself. Unlike military operations aimed at forcibly disarming the adversary, you need not risk your soldiers. In the most favorable circumstances, this kind of operation against the enemy's economy is capable of establishing a radical asymmetry between what you pay and what the adversary suffers. That is why it is so attractive. A condition of what political economists call asymmetrical interdependence will not always apply; and where it does not apply economic sanctions will begin to appear much less attractive. But even when this condition does apply--when, that is, we can inflict a lot of pain on the other guy without suffering too much ourselves--there are problems to be encountered.

Historically, two great liabilities have attended this strategic concept, both of which are relevant to the contemporary policy of spreading democracy through economic sanctions. The first is that this kind of long-term squeeze is normally incapable of achieving the desired outcome, a liability that is exacerbated in proportion to the scale of the objectives sought. If, as is often the case today, the objective is the removal of the enemy government from power--which an insistence on democratic procedures will normally require--the ability of economic sanctions to achieve the desired outcome is highly doubtful.

That failure, in turn, raises again the question of whether it is advisable to do directly what you had previously tried to do indirectly. Though economic sanctions have normally been conceived as an alternative to war--certainly they were by Jefferson and Wilson--the total boycott or embargo tends historically to be associated closely with military action, either because military force is necessary to enforce the thoroughgoing blockade or because the situation produced by sanctions may produce strong incentives to go to war. The trade embargo against Panama in 1988 and 1989 displayed this dynamic; the embargo against Haiti did the same. They are only the latest instances of a frequently recurring phenomenon.(9)

The pressure to go to war--to move toward a strategy of forcible disarmament--that often ensues from the failure of draconian economic sanctions is related to the second liability that attends the economic squeeze, which is its indiscriminate character. Unlike military operations directed at the enemy's military power, this inflicts punishment on the entire economy and society. This distinction between discriminate military operations aimed at forcibly disarming the enemy's armed forces and a strategy of attrition that inflicts punishment on the entire economy and society may, of course, break down in practice. Under conditions of modern warfare, a strategy of forcible disarmament will often mean the intensification rather than relaxation of such indiscriminate punishment, especially if "military necessity" is given a broad definition; the saving grace of such a strategy is that it offers the promise of a rapid resolution and a quicker return to peace.

Three particular disadvantages are associated with the economic embargo. It badly hurts the most vulnerable sections of society, the sick, the young, and the aged. Given the circumstances in which it is applied, it can have no result but that. Yet acts that inflict foreseeable suffering on civilian populations have always been considered the most objectionable feature of interstate conflicts; international law has always been intent on minimizing such actions to the degree compatible with military effectiveness. In deference to such objections, nearly all the recent embargoes--such as those against Iraq, Serbia, and Haiti--have exempted food and medical supplies from their terms.(10) Concerned states and nongovernmental organizations, moreover, usually mount compensating efforts to supply food and medicine. Despite these efforts, sanctions always reach in practice items critical to the well-being of the civilian population; the general destruction of economic life that is the avowed purpose of such embargoes swamps the halfhearted compensating efforts that accompany them. However emphatic we are in insisting on the humanitarian exemption, therefore, it cannot be taken seriously as a description of existing practice.

A second liability is that the sectors of the economy that suffer most from external sanctions are those that have the most intercourse with the rest of the world and tend to be more amenable to its influence. Such was the case in South Africa; it remains the case today in Cuba. This baneful effect is exacerbated by the near total blackout in embargoed societies of information from printed sources.

Finally, economic sanctions may hurt neighboring economies in whose well-being we have a stake. The revocation of most favored nation status for China would have dealt a serious blow to the economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Southeast Asian countries that have developed close ties with China. The trade embargo against Yugoslavia, though employed as a measure of collective security against Serbian aggression in Bosnia-Herzegovina and not as part of the democratist crusade, has had a ruinous effect on the economies of surrounding states. If it were seriously enforced, it would undoubtedly sink the prospects for Macedonia, already reeling from Greece's closure of the border between the two states.

Despite the effects on neighboring economies, neither the international community nor the Western powers has provided a commensurate level of financial compensation to states injured by recent economic sanctions. A particularly unfortunate side effect of sanctions is that economic activities come to be dominated by criminal organizations, a stranglehold they are not likely to easily yield when the conditions that gave rise to them are no longer present.

The consequences for innocent bystanders may not be intended, but they are foreseeable. It seems wholly implausible to allow refuge in the justification that because good consequences were intended we can wash our hands of responsibility for the evil consequences that in fact occur. The justification for this behavior, if there is one, must be on the theory that it is permissible to do evil so that good may come, that the norm against harming the innocent must be overridden by the greater good of ensuring liberal democratic government.

Economic Engagement: The Chinese and South African Cases 

The debate over whether economic sanctions can contribute to democratization or human rights is the obverse side of another question: the extent to which the introduction of the institutions we associate with market capitalism--private property, exchange relations dictated by the market rather than state bureaucracies, an expanding scope for economic transactions across borders--contributes to political liberalization. Proponents of economic sanctions typically argue that the maintenance of trading relations or other types of economic interaction strengthens the coercive apparatus of the state. If we trade with repressive regimes, in other words, we strengthen their ability to maintain their control, over their own societies. On this view, trade is the enemy of reform.

The opposing view holds that, over time, the existence or expansion of commercial contacts strengthens the society against the state; it expands the domain of civil society--the arena of economic, social, and cultural life that exists independent of the state; and it lays the foundation for the greater realization of human rights and, ultimately, points toward democratization. Trade, on this view, is the ally of reform.

In contrast with the disadvantages associated with sanctions, the maintenance of economic ties with undemocratic or otherwise oppressive regimes at least has the advantage of improving the material condition of their people or, conversely, of not making them more miserable than they already are. It is useful to consider this question, in the first instance, not in relation to civil and political rights, but to the provision of "basic human needs."(11) There are many countries--Indonesia and China, for example--whose regimes have plenty of blood on their hands but who have nevertheless performed admirably in raising the material condition of their people. In Indonesia, the number of people living in absolute poverty has dropped, according to the World Bank, from 60 percent of the population two decades ago to 15 percent today. There has been a comparable change in China. Millions of people are entering "middle-class-dom," ensuring a greater measure of economic security for themselves and their families. Though the vast satisfaction of basic human needs that it has brought and will bring is good in itself, and not dependent on whether it leads to benign consequences in the political realm, this great Asiatic transformation probably will have benign consequences in several respects.

In assessing the significance of this epochal change, some historical perspective is necessary. For much of this century, not only was East Asia an exporter of war (we fought, after all, three wars there from 1941 to 1975), the whole region underwent a Joy Luck's club of internal catastrophes--Korea and Indochina flattened by civil wars and outside intervention, mass murder in Indonesia against the Chinese minority, all the insanities of the Cultural Revolution in China, genocide in Cambodia. Against this background, the fact that the weightiest of Asian societies--China--has turned toward economic development as its primary objective is a highly welcome change. The elevation of economic calculation over ideological fanaticism (or, to employ older terminology, of interest over passion) signifies a profound and auspicious civilizational turn.

This change is likely, in the first place, to promote a pacific bearing in external relations stemming from the realization that material well-being depends on peace. It would be absurd to conclude that this effect, by itself, is capable of swamping all the other motives that lead states to make war. There are many features of the emerging Asian system--extensive territorial disputes, uneven rates of economic and military growth, and nationalist attachments far more powerful than those existing in western Europe--that make hazardous any expectation of prolonged stability. Nevertheless, the early theorists of capitalism were right, I think, in expecting that the pursuit of wealth--what an earlier generation had termed avarice--would operate to diminish the weight in human personality of the demonic forces that normally lead human beings to pursue their bloody wars and revolutions.(12)

Second, the continuance of economic contacts seems likely to moderate, though not probably break, the authoritarian mold of the Chinese regime. That change is unlikely to be automatic. There are plenty of examples of regimes that combined capitalism with authoritarianism for long periods; China seems a good candidate to do the same. It seems also apparent the state may gain in power from the satisfactions brought by trade; as the legitimation of the regime will partly depend on its ability to satisfy rising expectations, trade will strengthen it.

Still, there are a number of effects that operate in the opposite direction, and that give the society greater power as against the state. One is the awakening to the external world of ever-widening circles of people. Trade allows them a window on the world; it also allows the world a window on them. Over time, the advance of modern communications means that the state loses control over the ability to determine the structure of social reality.

The penetration of capitalist techniques weakens the power of authoritarian and totalitarian states in a second way. To prosper, the state must make its peace with the power of the market. Governments that are otherwise arbitrary will find it in their interest to institute many of the legal protections of a liberal regime, at least those centering around stability of private property. Their protracted maneuvers to ensure a good credit rating also demonstrate, under the watchful eye of domestic factions, that the regime can be moved. Finally, market economies tend to produce growing numbers of people who enjoy means of support independent of the state bureaucracy, and who are increasingly important cogs in the machinery of wealth creation. The expectation seems justified that at some point their political power will grow accordingly.

The ultimate import of these considerations is necessarily speculative; much less so is how China would respond were the United States to impose commercial penalties in order to force it to reform its domestic practices. The potential bend in this government is strictly limited, for the obvious reason that China's rulers see the submission to such conditions as being a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the regime. (One suspects, indeed, that the arrests made before, during, and after Secretary of State Warren Christopher's mission to China in early 1994 had as their sufficient motive that they would constitute an act of defiance against the United States.) Even if one believes that free trade supports political authoritarianism (as the left has always charged), we are still being asked to sacrifice a clear interest on behalf of a policy that will produce nothing in the way of positive consequences. This looks suspiciously like a stupid gesture, not an act of moral courage.

Do the considerations that make the maintenance of commercial relations persuasive in the case of China extend also to the country--South Africa--over which bitter debate raged between "embargoers" and "engagers" in the 1980s? The question is very difficult to answer with any assurance, if only because both strategies were attempted, with neither fully displacing the other before the historic shift of the De Klerk government in moving decisively against apartheid and toward a democratic standard. One suspects that neither of these external forces was of decisive importance in producing this historic change, the specific sources of which must instead be sought in the effect of communism's fall on changing the program of the black majority while also allaying the fears of the white minority. This made reconciliation a possibility; the statesmanship of De Klerk and Mandela brought it to a glorious, though precarious, consummation.

It does nevertheless appear that external sanctions played an important, if secondary, role in producing the great transformation. It may be that economic development--and the corresponding pressures "to open up skilled jobs to blacks, to establish legal black trade unions, to improve black education, to permit the free movement of labor, and to expand black purchasing power"(13)--would have helped produce political liberalization over time, but South Africa experienced little in the way of economic development in the 1980s: unemployment grew from 26 to 43 percent from 1980 to 1991 (with the total number of unemployed rising from 2.5 million to nearly 6 million persons).(14) The lack of such development was attributable to many factors beside external sanctions, including internal resistance and the collapse in the price of gold; in addition, some external sanctions--particularly those generated by the divestment movement, which forced American companies to sell their South African holdings at fire-sale prices--had effects that were the opposite of those intended. Nevertheless, sanctions did impose serious costs on the South African economy; such costs, in turn, gave increasing urgency to the specter of an ever-growing black lumpenproletariat, bringing the Anglophone business community and ultimately the Afrikaners much closer to seeing the necessity of change.

That sanctions were a qualified success in the case of South Africa does not show that they will be successful elsewhere. The more general experience with sanctions to support a change of government strongly suggests the opposite conclusion. Even in the South African case, moreover, sanctions worked only through the morally suspect method of immiseration, and they also did serious damage to the economic base on which Mandela must now build.

The Hemispheric Conundrum 

It is in the Western Hemisphere--more particularly, the Caribbean and Central America--where the democratist crusade has been most vigorously pursued in the recent past, and where it promises to be of critical importance in the future. Given the inherent disparity of power between the United States and our sister republics to the south, the conditions for successfully pursuing economic sanctions are better satisfied here than anywhere else. As is noted by the authors of the most comprehensive study of the effectiveness of economic sanctions, such methods are most successful when they "pick on the weak and helpless."(15)

In this hemisphere, to recur to our earlier terminology, the interdependence is truly asymmetrical. The only retaliation of which target states are capable comes in the form of refugee crises; so long as we are sufficiently hard-hearted, that danger can presumably be contained. In this hemisphere, too, the Organization of American States has given its imprimatur to the imposition of economic sanctions against nondemocratic states. The kind of objections that might be raised against this enterprise in the Confucian or Islamic worlds--whose governments seem uniformly to regard it as an arrogant assertion of Western values--do not apply in this hemisphere with anywhere near the same force. Finally, the movement toward democratic institutions that occurred throughout Latin America in the 1980s remains shaky in some instances. As President Clinton emphasized in his address justifying intervention in Haiti, the failure to act against coupmakers in this hemisphere may render more precarious the durability of this historic move to democratic institutions.

Of all the justifications for the democratist crusade, it is probably the last that carries the greatest weight. When Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the Good Neighbor Policy in 1933, bringing to an end the U.S. interventions of the preceding era, an increase in authoritarian governments did follow in its wake. When the Johnson administration proclaimed the Mann Doctrine in 1964, retreating from the democratic tendencies of the Alliance for Progress, the same result occurred. During the Cold War, to be sure, the United States often gave active support to authoritarian governments in Latin America, a reflection of the fear that the practical alternative to authoritarianism was not democracy but communism; the end of the Cold War has happily brought that reflex under control. Even in the absence of U.S. support for authoritarians, however, it might still be argued that a failure to make an example of Raoul Cedras and Fidel Castro would weaken the ability of other democratic regimes within the hemisphere to sustain themselves against their internal enemies.

In the end, however, that consideration seems inadequate to justify a guarantee of a democratic form of government in this hemisphere. As the experience in Haiti shows, even weak and unpopular governments can hold out for a very long time against trade embargoes. A combination of factors--apparent not only from Haiti but also from previous interventions, such as in Panama--makes it difficult not to move to military intervention. The credibility and prestige of the U.S. president is called increasingly into question; the suffering among the civilian population caused by the breakdown of economic life, together with refugee crises exacerbated by the embargo, makes it seem imperative to do something. At that point, military intervention is about all there is left to do.

Strangely enough, however, there is almost no support within the hemisphere for U.S.-led military interventions to restore democracy. In the Haitian crisis, our sister republics did us the favor of supporting every step along the way toward military intervention--save of course the occupation itself. The Clinton administration refused to take the matter to the OAS for the same reason it refused to get authorization from Congress: the votes in either place would almost certainly have failed. From this experience, one can only conclude that the multilateral declarations the OAS has issued in recent years in favor of representative democracy--most prominently the Santiago Declaration of 1991--do not mean what they seem to mean. They clearly do not betoken support for a military guarantee of democratic government. Nor may they necessarily be understood as indicating support for economic embargoes; predominant opinion among hemispheric states, though it favored sanctions in the case of Haiti, is decidedly opposed to similar measures in the case of Cuba. This general attitude, one suspects, is most unlikely to change. The attachment of the Latin American republics to the nonintervention norm is too deeply rooted in their historic experience, where it has served as a shield against the well-meaning officiousness of the colossus to the north, for it to be easily surrendered, even if it subjects them to the criticism of willing the end (democracy) but not the means.

Domestic opinion in the United States is generally subject to the same reproach. Though it generally supported the tightening of economic sanctions against Haiti, the prospect of military intervention to restore democracy was distinctly unattractive to the public. Since Congress, following public opinion, would not approve, the president was forced to rest his authority on a joint appeal to executive prerogative and Security Council legitimation. The Council's authorization, however, is not a substitute for congressional approval, as was repeatedly emphasized in the debates over U.S. ratification of the U.N. charter in 1945. Equally unconvincing is the appeal to presidential authority. The Haitian case had none of the exceptional features--the need, for instance, for surprise or for immediate action--that presidents have relied on in the past to justify bypassing Congress.

It is difficult to believe that this disregard of constitutional principle is the best way of advancing the cause of democratic constitutionalism. In the case of Haiti, what made this procedure still more difficult to understand was the obvious prudential risks that were posed by it. To begin an open-ended occupation without securing congressional approval would seem a surefire method for putting oneself out on a dangerous limb. The president will have to be inordinately lucky and amazingly skillful in Haiti if he is to avoid having Congress saw that limb off.

A policy of nonintervention toward Haiti after the coup d'etat against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, one must acknowledge, would have left his prospects of returning as very remote indeed. The U.S. military occupation of Haiti, moreover, surely represented a more honorable course of action than the perpetual maintenance of an inhumane embargo. Yet it still remains doubtful that the occupation will be judged successful a few years hence. Having removed the previous holders of the police power, the occupiers now face the unwelcome (and, in an alien culture, inherently problematic) task of holding it themselves. Those occupiers, in deference to domestic opinion, have also foresworn the task of "nation building" in circumstances where they must take it up in earnest or risk near-certain failure.

Will U.S. policy toward Cuba follow the same trajectory as that toward Haiti and Panama? The danger that it may do so ought surely to prompt a reconsideration of the 35-year-old embargo. Whatever the weight of its initial justification, to persist in it and even move more aggressively toward its tightening, as the Clinton administration has done, is a policy that seems grossly wrongheaded. The sole remaining legitimating principle of the Castro regime is its repeated insistence that its failures stem from American aggression. We may well conclude that this charge is, in fundamental respects, mistaken, and that the failures of the Cuban model are to be attributed, above all, to the regime's attachment to Marxist principles, which do not work because they cannot work. It is nevertheless distinctly unlikely that any Caribbean state, even if its political and economic institutions had been designed by James Madison and Adam Smith, could have succeeded economically in the face of our relentless opposition; by all accounts, in any case, our hostile measures have exacerbated those failures and made the material condition of the Cuban people far worse than it would otherwise have been. In some quarters, this is judged a great success.

A different policy would aim to open up the island to American trade, tourism, and communications; would drop the hostile measures we have undertaken for over a generation; would end the state of virtual war that now exists between the two countries. Its objective would be to prepare for the day--which is surely coming--when the transition to democracy takes place, contributing to the likelihood that it occurs peacefully rather than violently. A peaceful transition is a consummation devoutly to be desired; current U.S. policy works strongly against it. One is tempted to rest this change of policy solely on the ground, with Jefferson, that the "exchange of surpluses and wants between neighbor nations is both a right and a duty under the moral law."(16) But it does nevertheless seem likely that an American initiative toward a more normal relationship would hasten rather than delay Cuba's move toward economic and political liberalization.

A Decisive Change in American Policy 

Economic sanctions and war are the two primary coercive instruments to which states resort in order to achieve their goals. Just as one can draw attention to the moral and prudential liabilities that attend the latter without being a pacifist, so one can draw attention to the costs of economic sanctions without categorically forbidding their use in diplomacy. Given the role they have come to play in American diplomacy, such a conclusion would in any case be somewhat absurd. The practical question is not whether the United States should or will cease employing economic sanctions but whether some limits can be placed on its readiness to do so.

When paired with the goals of democratization or human rights, draconian economic sanctions are particularly suspect. They can only have effect by wreaking serious damage on a broad range of civil activities, yet they are normally incapable of inflicting sufficient deprivation on the holders of power to make them surrender. The maintenance of economic contacts, by contrast, will normally promote certain forms of liberalization. Both these considerations point toward the need for a decisive change in American policy.

Such a turn in policy does not require the United States to cease distinguishing between the free and unfree worlds. The distinction between the two, in fact, should be at the center of our understanding of American purposes in the world. Though the area of the free world is not coterminous with the area embraced by U.S. security commitments, there is a genuine connection between the two.

Through asylum, economic aid, publicity, or practical help in the way of institution building, the United States can and should take steps to bolster the cause of free government. We should clearly not aim, in our stance toward the unfree world, for anything approaching the degree of cooperation and mutual concordance that should be our objective within the democratic zone of peace. The question is how far our hostility should extend toward states that are not within the zone.

The great fear associated with the adoption of a less hostile policy is that it will encourage the forces of despotism in the World, producing a sharp contraction in the number of free governments. On this interesting question in philosophical history, I confess to having a greater degree of confidence than the pessimists in the appeal of free institutions. The ideals and institutions underlying American constitutionalism--representative government, freedom of speech and of opinion, the separation of church and state, the judicial protection of private property and individual rights, a stable currency--have often succeeded, in cultures vastly different from our own, in bringing prosperity and freedom within the framework of law. That is a very impressive achievement, especially given the far greater liabilities associated with all the available alternatives in politics and economics. The practical advantages offered by free institutions in delivering the goods that people tend to want gives them an insufficiently appreciated strength. If we could learn to act on that idea, we could afford to dispense with the often ineffective and normally inhumane embargoes to which U.S. policy still often remains wedded.

Notes 

This essay was initially written for a colloquium on "Market Economics and Political Change," sponsored by the Colorado College North American Studies Program in March 1994. 

1. See Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

2. William Edward Hall, A Treatise on International Law, 6th ed., edited by J. B. Atlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1909), pp. 43-44.

3. Cited in John Bassett Moore, ed., A Digest of International Law (Washington, DC: GPO, 1906), p. 126.

4. "The Mexican Situation," May 14, 1913, in Arthur S. Link et al., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 17 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 437-38.

5. Thomas M. Franck, "The Emerging Right to Democratic Governance," American Journal of International Law 86 (January 1992), pp. 90-91. Franck anticipates the day when "compliance with the democratic entitlement" would be "linked to a right of representation in international organs, to international fiscal, trade, and development benefits, and to the protection of U.N. and regional collective security measures." To similar effect, see Morton H. Halperin, "Guaranteeing Democracy," Foreign Policy, no. 91 (Summer 1993), pp. 105-22.

6. See the documents in Michael Krinsky and David Golove, eds., United States Economic Measures Against Cuba: Proceedings in the United Nations and International Law Issues (Northhampton, MA: Aletheia Press, 1993).

7. It may be argued that the U.N. charter does not and cannot confine the Security Council in a defined ambit of authority and that the council's discretion is in fact unlimited save by the requirements of its voting provisions. It is doubtful, however, if its unlimited discretion in matters relating to "international peace and security" reaches so far as to obliterate the domestic jurisdiction of the state. The Security Council, at least, appears to acknowledge that its actions must be founded in the charter and do not reflect simply its unlimited discretion. Thus, in justifying the American-led intervention in Haiti, the council thought it necessary to justify its authority in relation to Article VII and its cognizance of the Security Council's jurisdiction over "international peace and security." What was not apparent from Resolutions 917 and 940 was the relationship that the Haitian crisis posed in fact to "international peace and security."

8. Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 63, p. 68.

9. Examples in American history in which economic coercion played a crucial role in accelerating the drift to war include the two wars with Great Britain of 1775-83 and 1812-15 and the oil embargo against Japan in 1941.

10. An exception to this general stance is the Cuban Democracy Act, which bans any shipments to Cuba, including food, from U.S. subsidiaries and which imposes highly restrictive rules on the donation of medical supplies.

11. See R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).

12. See Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).

13. Huntington, Third Wave, p. 98.

14. "A Survey of South Africa," Economist, March 20, 1993, p. 4.

15. Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Jeffrey J. Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990), p. 114.

16. Jefferson to William Short, July 28, 1791, in Paul Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 5 (New York, 1892-99), p. 364.

David C. Hendrickson is associate professor of political science at Colorado College and a book reviewer ("United States") for Foreign Affairs.

COPYRIGHT 1994 World Policy Institute

07-11-2006, 05:49 AM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/specool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='specool.gif' /> Volunteers educate villagers on using RTI

- Sidharth Pandey

Monday, July 10, 2006 (New Delhi):

Over 16,000 Indians have pledged never to pay a bribe again as the national anti-bribery campaign enters its eighth day.

Thousands more have successfully used the RTI or the Right to Information Law to get their due without having to pay a bribe.

"In my village there is a government scheme under which poor people get grains at very low cost," said one participant.

"I noticed that this scheme was being misused by some influential people in the village," added another.

Yet another person who took part in the anti-bribe campaign filed an RTI against these people at the BDO and he got all the related information within eight days.

"According to the information, I found out that these people were indeed misusing the government scheme for their benefit. It has been my endeavour to educate villagers about the RTI Act," said an RTI volunteer.

"I have told them that RTI is a tool that empowers and helps us in the fight against bribery," he added.

Application procedure

To file an RTI application, there is no pre-designed form for Central government department, while state government have their own format.

On any white sheet of paper, address the letter to the Public Information Officer of the government department that you want information from.

State the information that you want. You do not have to give a reason for wanting the information.

Different states have their own prescribed fees. For Central Government Departments, the application fee is Rs 10. Different states have their own prescribed fees.

You can also post the application. It is incumbent upon the department to reply within 30 days.

08-23-2006, 08:44 AM

QUOTEPublic service law
Shailaja Chandra, Pioneer, 23 August 2006
The much berated civil services could do with greater support from the legislature and judiciary in order to be more effective

Some days ago there was a television programme to discuss the draft of Public Services Bill, 2006. The panellists were all former civil servants, adept at ordering others. I too was on the panel. The bill addressed the absence of values and ethics, the need to make the public services professionals, politically neutral and instrument of good governance. Every conceivable aspiration about Government being participatory, transparent, accountable as mentioned in the draft law. Our usual punch lines having been incorporated in the draft, we were left with little to add. So in one voice we lamented how laws could not change anything; how civil servants already have ingrained ethical values from day one; how there will always be rotten eggs in the basket who, law or no law, will ever remain rotten.

A week later, I had an opportunity to listen to a group of Members of Parliament speaking on the same subject - the absence of ethics and values in public life. Each one of them berated the state of corruption and lamented the nadir to which the system had sunk. The fact that professionals expensively trained at public cost are increasingly making forays into the civil services drew angry protests. The fact that middle-aged entrants joining the civil service could hardly become instruments of change was also decried. It is well known that increasing the age of entry into the civil services, introducing an Indian language (read mother-tongue) as one of the examination papers, permitting interviews in regional languages were all calculated to promote regionalism. As a result many members of the All-India services are today incapable of thinking nationally, much less globally.

Given this background the public service law cannot set the Yamuna on fire. First, it encompasses only the All India services and the Central services. The public, which seeks health care and education, electricity and water, fair play in taxation, good roads, unadulterated food, and proper enforcement of law, has little direct interface with the All India services or the Central civil services. Their daily interaction is with local and junior level functionaries like inspectors, licensing authorities, clerks, junior engineers, overworked doctors, insensitive policemen, shirking teachers, overcrowded buses and unsafe roads. In none of these areas do they ever meet the higher echelons of the civil service, Central or State. Therefore, if the public is to be benefited, the public service law must first address the problems that the citizen face, which cannot be overcome by demanding ethics and values from an insulated superior central bureaucracy.

A public services law is not a new idea. Historically, it was introduced in Australia, New Zealand and several other countries where lateral induction of professionals was undertaken in a big way. The newcomers had to be oriented in the concepts of allegiance to the constitution, the law and democracy. India has very few lateral entrants and for the foreseeable future they will remain a handful. Therefore, drawing an analogy with developed countries is not appropriate.

What the draft public service law does however provide is for the establishment of a Central Public Service Authority for good governance. The authority has a 12-point charter but an overarching responsibility is to recommend to the Government tenure for public servants. The law recognises that public servants need to be protected from victimisation and adverse consequences of refusing to follow inappropriate or illegal directions. But the Authority has only a recommendatory role. Government is expected to "consider" its recommendations but has the right not to implement them and give its reasons to Parliament. A stronger provision is called for if the public authority is to be taken seriously.

One provision, which is striking States that if a transfer, is made before the specified tenure, (generally three years) the public servant has to be suitably compensated for the inconvenience and harassment caused to him. We may yet see an end to the "off with his head" syndrome that has destroyed the careers of too many dedicated District collectors and demoralised some of the most resilient officers.

A federal Health Secretary in Pakistan, where I had gone as a part of a delegation became expansive after dinner. According to him, "bureaucracy the world over is the same. You refuse to compromise, call it a day, go home, and tell your spouse that from tomorrow you are writing your memoirs. Before long you become unwanted in your own house. A month later you check what your successor did with the same problem over which you marched off in such a huff. You discover that he compromised just 5 percent more than you were prepared to. He got to keep the job that you were eased out of. Therein lies the dilemma," concluded the Pakistani. How much are you prepared to compromise?

Public service law or no public service law, the civil service reflects only one aspect of the governance of a country. What about the other two institutions, those who actually make the laws and those who sit in judgement on both?
http://dailypioneer.com/indexn12.asp?main_...#092;nter_img=1

08-29-2006, 07:09 AM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/argue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='argue.gif' /> To ringfence babus from netas, a bold new civil service law in the making
G. AnanthakrishnanPosted online: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print EmailReforms: Draft Bill sets down a code of conduct that will allow officers to say no to superiors

NEW DELHI, AUGust 28:A strict, enforceable code of conduct that measures efficiency in tangible terms, rewards and punishes, a transparent system of transfers, the power to stand up and say no to a superior if his order violates the code, insulating the officer from political interference and protecting whistleblowers. These are among the sweeping reforms suggested in what could be the first attempt to ensure, legally at least, a merit-based and an apolitical bureaucracy.

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The Department of Personnel and Training has drawn up a draft Public Services Bill, 2006, and sent it to the Administrative Reforms Commission for its suggestions. The new law, when passed, will be applicable to the IAS, IPS, IFS and all Central services.

According to the draft, obtained by The Indian Express, a âPublic Service Codeâ will be drawn up by the Government in consultation with a Central authority within a year of the law coming into effect.

This code will specify, in concrete terms, the dos and donâts for public servants to work âwith due regard to diversity...without discrimination of caste, community, religion, gender or class.â It will establish a mechanism to monitor performance and efficiency.

âThe interface between the political executive and public service will be clearly established (by the Code) based on the principles of political neutrality, professional excellence and integrity,â says the draft.

Any breach would incur punishment ranging from a reprimand, a reduction in classification or salary to termination of service.

The author of the code, the Central Authority, which will play a pivotal role under the Act, will remain free of political interference. Chairperson and members of the Authority shall be appointed by the President on the recommendations of a Committee comprising of the Prime Minister, a Supreme Court judge and the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

The Chairperson and members will, however, not be MPs or MLAs or hold any office with any political party.

Another major feature of the law is the stress on a merit-based public service. To achieve this, according to the draft, a Performance Management System will be drawn up for all employees under which there will be performance indicators and measurement of the outcome and impact with regard to development priorities.

Grades under this will be taken into account in matters of budget allocation to the departments and other entitlements.

There is also a provision to address the civil servantsâ concern about the stability of service. For this, the bill calls on the Central Authority to ensure that âtransfers and postings of public servants are undertaken in a fair and objective manner and that the tenure of the Public Servant in a post is appropriately determined and is maintained consistent with the need to maintain continuity and the requirements of good governance.â

It even goes to the extent of giving a public servant the freedom to decide whether he or she should or not carry out an order of a superior, if such an order is against the Code.

In such case, the Central Authority will give the officer the opportunity to raise the issue at an appropriate forum without fear of victimisation.

The draft Bill also calls on the government to put in place a scheme to protect whistleblower public servants in the system, who report suspected improper governance and actions in their workplace.

Meanwhile, the Administrative Reforms Commission has shot off queries to the representatives of society and civil servants on the draft Bill. Going a step ahead, the ARC wants to answer questions like whether only career-based civil servants were always best suited to occupy top governmental positions or whether there could be lateral entry.

Carrying forward the question of merit, it has also sought to know if system of weeding out as existing in the armed forces could be extended to civil services too. Though the ARC was to give its report by August end, sources said this was unlikely as many states had not yet responded.

anantha.krishnan@expressindia.com

10-18-2006, 07:00 AM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/argue.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='argue.gif' /> Diagnose the Ailments of Indian Democracy and find Rx thereof
The independent India of 500 princely states had it's PM even before it became free. Though Sardar Patel could unite these states into 25 or so states but late joiner Kashmir with it's article 370 has become the biggest headache. While Nehru was modernising India, the rural base became insecure. Lal Bahadur Shastri avenged Nehru's China debacle by defeating Pakistan in 1965. It was left to Indira Gandhi to usher in green revolution. Rajiv did not know what to do faced with Bofor charges in middle of his term and thereafter he was ineffective. This was followed by VP Singh whose reservation policy was opposed by Congress who is promoting this today. Chandershekhar, Devgowda and Gujral filled in the blanks but it was PV Narsimha who for the 1st time started the process of freeing shackles of license quota raj. Vajpayee looked very impressive but did not secure the rural basis. Let us see what MMS will do.

Ailments and Treatments:

1. We are in political mess as Parliaments and Legislatures have duplicate power of framing the laws as well as being the executives. The Supreme Court has very rightly said that these institutions take executive action and then legitimise it.

Rx: Don't expect from MPs and MLAs to divest their own power. The only way to do this is thru proposals voted by voters to have separate executive and legislative branches.

2. While everybody else protected their occupations, farmers' endangered occupation was not taken care of.

Rx: Everything associated with farming e.g. even the profits made by hoteliers on agricultural products be shared with farmers.

3. Reservations remain the holy cow untouched by any political party especially in coalition politics though Ambedkar himself put it for 5 yr terms of parliament to be renewable at every term.

Rx: Those who have reaped the benefits of reservations should be immediately taken out of it.

At this point, I will leave it to all of you to add what you dianose as ailments and treatments thereof besides discussing what I have said.

Jai Hind

11-19-2006, 07:33 AM

Sushma Swaraj says India should have presidential govt QUOTENew Delhi, Nov 18: Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj has advocated presidential form of government for India, saying a leader in parliamentary system does not strike a direct rapport with the people.
..........
"If we have to get rid of this malaise, we will have to adopt presidential form of government in place of the present parliamentary system," the deputy leader of the party in Rajya Sabha said.
..........
"The time has come when the whole electoral system needs to be reviewed. Parliamentary democracy does have its own demerits. A leader under this system fails to strike a direct rapport with his people," she wrote.
...........
The former Union Minister, whose party led a coalition of more than 20 parties in power at the Centre, appeared to favour one-party rule instead.

"This (parliamentary) system leaves much room for manipulation and making and unmaking of alliances. In a one-party rule, there is less chance for such possibilities. But, during the last decade, an era of coalition with great scope for manipulation has set in," she said

04-22-2007, 11:33 PM

Beyond dynasty, towards competenceQUOTEAre we going to waste a decade or so acquiescing or has the time come to start thinking about a correction in our system of democracy? Has the time come to demand a referendum on the kind of political system we want?

One of the letters I received in response to last weekâs column came from a former chief justice of Himachal Pradesh, who suggested that we begin a public debate on why we should not switch to a presidential system of government. This column supports the idea from the bottom of its Fifth Columnist heart.

The two most obvious benefits of directly electing a president are that he (or she) would need to prove that he had the support of the whole country, and the second is that he could choose his cabinet from outside the ranks of our elected representatives.

Governance in the 21st century requires administrators who are technically competent to handle their jobs, not men who are there just because they are the peopleâs choice. One of the reasons why Indian infrastructure is being built at bullock-cart pace despite lagging so much behind the rest of the world is that our ministers for power, transport, urban development and, for instance, telecommunications, are often men without any knowledge of the subject they are in charge of.

We can no longer afford on-the-job training. If the Indian economy is doing better today than ever before, it is despite government, not because of it. But think how much faster things would happen if we had good governance? Itâs time to talk of change.

04-25-2007, 05:44 PM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/specool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='specool.gif' />

I use scientific methods to political problems: Kalam
[25 Apr, 2007 l 1249 hrs ISTlPTI]
STRASBOURG: As a head of the state he might be handling national and international issues, but President A P J Abdul Kalam depends on scientific methods to solve most political problems.

âDefinitely, without a doubt, I will choose science. Even now, as President, I do not engage in politics but use scientific methods and scientific experiences to solve political problems,â said Kalam last night during an interaction at the International Space University here. He said this when he was asked to choose one between science and politics.

During the interaction, which lasted for over an hour, Kalam also said the âchances of Indian women landing on the moon or on the Marsâ were high.

âThree of the astronauts who have taken on space missions have been of Indian origin â Rakesh Sharma, Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams. Two out of three are women,â said 75-year-old Kalam, much to the delight of the audience.

Earlier, while delivering his lecture, the president made it clear to the young scientists gathered in the hall that India's space programme had no military interests.

âIt has been built to be locally relevant when globally challenging, and its foundation is the quest of India and other space-faring nations to use the collective wisdom of the humanity to solve the socio-economic problems of our society,â said Kalam.

Kalam also said that âno nation has sovereignty over space.â

âWhen we explore space, the fact that it belongs to the whole humanity can act as a motivator for natural collaboration between nations. It is a platform for sharing ideas and technologies and to work towards a sustainable world with peace and prosperity,â said Kalam.

He called upon all the nations to build an international space satellite service station as an âinternational ventureâ so that the life of the satellites can be extended to ensure continued applications to the world community.

The president said the Indian Economy was in an âascent phase.â

âThere is considerable growth in the manufacturing and service sectors. We have a mission of spreading this economic growth throughout the country including the rural sector,â said Kalam.

07-24-2007, 09:28 PM

Deâmo-narchy, Deâmo-narchization, & Demonarchization of Democratic Republic of India -1
By Shree Vinekar

08-31-2007, 06:59 AM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/furious.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='furious.gif' /> Boy dies amid political tamasha

Pioneer News Service | Shimla

Posted online: August 30, 2007
Indian political parties have once again on Thursday proven that they are more interested in their own political gains rather than caring for common people's pains.
In a tragic fallout of a political street wrestling, a four-year-old boy died while being taken to a hospital after the ambulance carrying the sick child got stuck in traffic during clashes between the ruling Congress and Opposition BJP workers here.
Even emotional appeals of the mother of the sick child to the police and party workers on Thursday to let the ambulance pass as the boy needed urgent medical attention fell on deaf ears.
The boy identified as Dinesh was being brought from Sarkahat Ghat in Mandi district, about 100 km from the State capital but the ambulance despite its blaring siren could not proceed as the road blocked by the protestors. Upon requesting the police, they informed the parents that they were busy in dealing with the furore.
Being refused by the political workers and the police Dinesh's father got off the ambulance carrying the boy in his arms and rushed to the district hospital, which was about 500 metres away, in the midst of the parallel rallies in front of the Vidhan Sabha. Dinesh is the only son of his parents.
As the political drama unfolded in the race against time to save him, the boy running high temperature and suffering from diarrhoea died on the way to hospital.
Adding to agony of the inconsolable parents, the doctors at the hospital informed that the boy was brought brain dead and they could have saved him had he been brought 15 minutes earlier.
The Himachal Pradesh Government ordered a probe into the death of the boy. The probe report is to be submitted in a fortnight and if need arose further inquiry would be ordered to fix responsibilities for the death of the boy.
The death quickly triggered another blame game with the Congress and the BJP trading charges.
The Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh went on to blame BJP for the tragedy while BJP leader PK Dhumal said Congress should be blamed saying it was the responsibility of the administration and police to ensure that the ambulance was given the right of way.
But the question that remains unanswered is: Can both political parties deny their responsibilities for the death of the child?

09-10-2007, 04:25 AM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/india.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='india.gif' /> Though US system of Prez is ideal yet it will be better if we can adopt French system of Prez whereby Prez is directly elected and rest everything is like Parliamentary system of democracy albeit Prez appoints a PM amongst the Parliamentarians and the team of other executives. The only thing we can add is the separation of powers i.e. you can be either Parliamentarian or executive if it's already not there in French system. You can't invest 2 powers in 1 individual. Separation of power is must.
Moreover we already have panchayati democracy along these lines in many states whereby Panches and Sarpanch are directly elected by people. Even this model can be elaborated at national level if we don't want to follow any other system.

**acharya** · 09-11-2007, 07:24 AM

The Moving Finger Writes

Parochialism has no place in a nation state
By M.V. Kamath

When are we going to bring this childish behaviour to an end? When is India going to be for Indians?

The Chandigarh Tribune recently (January 23) carried a story that makes one cry. It would seem that Satya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi commenting on the demand for a separate Telangana said that âit is a sin to cut up the country or states into pieces (because) it is not good for the country or for the peopleâ.

The comment obviously was made in all good faith. Sai Baba had donated Rs 200 crore from a trust under his name to complete a project to bring the waters of the Krishna River from Andhra to Chennai which was a major contribution. A function had been organised in Chennai to felicitate him and his remarks were not intended to hurt anybody. But obviously those who want a separate Telangana state could not stomach Sai Babaâs comments and are reported to have made some extremely insulting remarks.

A Congress MP and active protagonist of Telangana Madhu Yashki Goud reportedly wanted to know whether Sai Baba knew anything about the problems of the Telangana people and of the âflouride issue in the Nalgonda areaâ. May be he does, may be he doesnât. The issue is much simpler. Is there a genuine need for further division of existing states? Uttar Pradesh was considered too large and it presented a genuine problem. It was resolved amicably. Bihar presented a similar problem. That too, hopefully has been resolved to everyoneâs satisfaction.

The first thing that we must realise and accept is that India is a composite nation. The British, following their conquest, set up their âPresidenciesâ without giving any thought to linguistic or ethnic issues. After Independence, and after much discussion and argument the concept of linguistic states came to be accepted. In Kerala, Malayalam speaking Muslims wanted a district with their own majority. It was a wrong demand but a communist-run government conceded it. At the rate in which dalits are being beaten-up, a time may come when they may demand dalit-majority districts of their own. When will all this stop? We all know what happened at Khairlanjis where a dalit woman was stripped and assaulted.

According to a survey made some time ago by the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), in India, on an average two dalits are assaulted every hour, three dalit women are raped every day, two dalits are murdered and two dalit houses burnt down everyday. And this is happening to a community that forms 19.8 per cent Indiaâs population. One out of every five Indians is a dalit. If we accept the Telanganist logic, we will soon have to set-up separate districts for dalits. Where will all this end? This is a country with over 22 major languages and a hundred times more dialects but which has survived for over ten thousand years and no doubt will survive till eternity come. But we canât leave it at that. This is where we need the right kind of leadership that goes beyond party lines.

There is more anxiety among our leaders for power than for working for social integrity. Politics in India is no longer ideology-based. Stated in simple terms, it is caste-based and we should be ashamed of ourselves. This is a fact known to everybody and one has only to study the situation in states like Uttar Pradesh or even Karnataka to realise how we have divided and sub-divided ourselves without the slightest hesitation.

Actually we are revelling in our caste distinctions. During the old Congress regime in Gujarat, the party was openly spelling out its political strategy of appealing to KHAMâKshatriyas, Harijans, Adivasis and Muslims. When will this kind of political criminality ever stop? Time was when in Mumbai the Shiv Sena was opposed to the presence of so-called madrassis. In Assam, ULFA wants no Hindi-speaking labour.

If ULFA has gone into organisational murder, one has to hark back to 1979-80 when Parliamentary elections were held on the basis of 1979 electoral rolls which had been highly inflated by the inclusion of Bangladeshi infiltrators. Such was the resentment amongst Assamese that a mass movement erupted. If Assam has to have peace all the Bangladeshi migrants who are detected and declared illegal foreigners must be deported.

Now we hear that Kashmir is for Kashmiris. When are we going to bring this childish behaviour to an end? When is India going to be for Indians? But to go back to Telangana for a while. The charges are that it is a neglected area. Surprisingly enough, when linguistic states were in the offing, the central leadershipâthen it was Congressâwas not in favour of Vishal Andhra. In October 1953 no less than Nehru himself criticised the concept as âbearing the tint of âexpansionist imperialismâââwhatever that meant. But subsequently he was to change his views due to pressures from the leaders of the Andhra region.

It may be remembered that in the early fifties, seven out of ten Congress committees and 73 out of 105 Congress delegates were in favour of the formation of a Telangana state. The State Executive of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) and ten members of Parliament also lent their support to the demand for the formation of Telangana. In the end the voice of the leaders from coastal Andhra Pradesh prevailed.

It was stated that they wanted easier access to the coal available at Singerni in the Telangana area. The proponents of Telangana felt that their homeland was being exploited, even as many in Assam think that the rest of India is exploiting Assamese oil reserves without adequately compensating the Assamese people. This is a matter for deep study and sympathetic understanding.

What we need is a committee to study the availability of various resources in different states, the manner in which they are utilised and the ways in which the reservoir states are made to feel that they are properly compensated and not just robbed. As for Telangana the feeling is that it has been converted âinto an internal colony as a result of the economic development process pursued by successive governmentsâ. As has been noted in Economic and Political Weekly âthe movement for separate statehood seeks to articulate the demand for a fair share of the resourcesâ. Fair enough. And that applies not just to Telangana but to Assam and other areas as well. We donât need a Sachar Committee but a committee of scholars who can look at all issues fairly, keeping in mind the essential unity of India. All problems have solutions; What is needed is objectivity, not running down people or sending armed forces to put down dissension. Down the centuries we have been one nation. And so we will continue to be.

09-12-2007, 06:43 AM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blow.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blow.gif' /> And how much a simple step of 1 elected leader cutting across all states can banish the parochialism is everybody's guess!
Jai Hind!

05-29-2009, 08:24 PM

QUOTEMamata returns Tata cheque Â
OUR BUREAU
Tata, Mamata
May 28: Mamata Banerjee has ordered Trinamul leaders to âimmediately returnâ an election donation of Rs 28 lakh from the Tatas.

âDidi flew into a rage and asked Mukul (Roy) to immediately return the cheque. She was very upset at the fact that an organisation that had blamed her for the Nanoâs exit had offered the Trinamul Congress money,â a party MP said from Delhi.
...
The Tatas confirmed having offered the donation. âThe money was indeed offered to Ms (Mamata) Banerjee. However, please note that the Tatas do not distribute the money. The Tata Electoral Trust offers money to any party that meets the criteria laid down in its mandate,â a Tata spokesperson said in Mumbai.

Tata firms provide money to the trust, set up in 1996 as one of Indiaâs first corporate endeavours to bring about transparency in election funding, but have no say in its distribution.

The trust distributes 50 per cent of its corpus before the elections in the ratio of the seats that qualifying parties have in Parliament. The rest is handed out after the elections, in proportion to the seats won. If Trinamul received the money after the elections, it is possible that it either did not qualify or didnât have sufficient MPs in the last Lok Sabha. Mamata was the only one.

âThe Tata system of electoral funding is so transparent that funds were sent even to Trinamul, which had obstructed the implementation of the Nano project,â a source said. He declined to say how much was given to the Congress or the Left parties.

The trust has three members: senior Supreme Court advocate Dinesh Vyas, industrialist Ardeshir Dubash and social worker Shirin Bharucha.
............

 A Trinamul general secretary said the Rs 28 lakh was possibly worked out on the basis of Rs 1 lakh for each of the 28 nominees the party had fielded in the elections. 

..............
Pharmaceutical major Ranbaxy also used to provide equal amounts to the Congress and the Akali Dal, as reflected in its 2004-05 books. It is not known if the company, sold to Japanâs Daiichi Sankyo last year, did so this time.

This is how industrial houses pay money to elected officials and buying favors.
Ranbaxy was Congress stooge or Congress looked other side and let Ranmabxy to adulterate life saving medicines. Congress helped them to get UN deals. But bad Karma had destroyed Ranbaxy family and company.

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