SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, BANGALORE MARCH 25, 2012

ALL THAT MATTERS

17

A friendly neighbours betrayal

RIGHT & WRONG
SWAPAN DASGUPTA

THERE ARE REALLY NO CROCODILES IN MY POND

A mafia don with 48 criminal cases pending against him, UP's youngest MLA in 1993, a feudal lord of yesteryear and now UPs minister for prisons. Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya, 43, has had a chequered and notorious career in and outside politics. The grandson of Raja Bajrang Bahadur Singh the founder vice-chancellor of Pant Nagar University and first governor of Himachal Pradesh Raja Bhaiya speaks to Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui about life as a don and a neta FOR THE RECORD
You are now a minister though Akhilesh Yadav had stated that no tainted MLA would find a place in his cabinet. How do you explain that? I may have been an independent candidate but have always been a supporter of SP and my loyalties have always been reciprocated by the party That I . have criminal cases listed and pending against me is purely a political issue. Just look at the dates on which these cases were lodged and the dispensation in place at that time; you will have all your questions answered. But you are known as a mafia don The problem is this perception that the media has created by describing me as a mafia don-turned-politician. Even if we assume that criminal cases were lodged against me during the early stages of my political career, that does not make me a mafia don-turned-politician. I have been an MLA since 1993. Now I am 43 this means that my political career has been longer than the socalled phase of a mafia don. So technically speaking, the media should now identify me as a politician (laughs). There has not been a single criminal case against me where money was involved. I have never been accused, even by my enemies, of a contract killing or kidnapping for ransom. Belonging to a royal family we have had our history , of rivals for generations now and the criminal cases were lodged as a result of such rivalries. Such things lead to situations where two people come face to face knowing pretty well that only one of them would survive. What will you do in such a situation? The first case against you was lodged when you were barely 19. What could have been the political motive then? Dont tell me that the series of criminal cases slapped on me since 2003 were genuine; that I was rightly booked under Pota. Had there been any element of truth in the allegations, the then government in power would have prepared a fool-proof case against me to the extent that the next government would not have been in a position to withdraw the cases. You are now minister for jails and for food and civil supplies. What are your plans? If there is anybody in the government who has an idea of the ground realities of the prison department, it is me. I have spent 25 months in jail. I know the conditions in which the inmates live and die. I will not have to depend on high level inquiry commissions to find out the problems of the jail department. This will surely help me a great deal in handling the department more effectively . So we can expect some prison reforms? Of course. The reforms that I will initiate may not make sense to the common man but I am sure they will go a long way in making a difference for the jail inmates. Legend says you have crocodiles at your palace in Kunda. It is folklore and nothing else. I think someone got the idea from a Bollywood movie Shaan. The film shows how the villain in the film feeds his enemies to hungry crocodiles. I am yet to come across any criminal or mafia don who opts for such filmy ways. But there is no smoke without fire Maybe it was only fog and the media mistook it for smoke. (laughs). No, seriously let me give , you a perfect example. I am sure you must have heard about the monkey-man who wreaked havoc in the NCR a few years ago. News channels showed people claiming to have seen the monkey-man. The same channels also showed the authorities as saying it was a mere hoax. Tell me, does it exist? That is precisely how the crocodile came into being in my lake. Is politics for you about power or people? Politics is about power for the people. No one votes so that his candidate sits in the opposition. So why should I win my seat and still sit in opposition? For some time, I contested elections on the SP ticket; then I returned as an Independent because being with a party was taking its toll on my own people. Can anyone dare to vote or contest against you and still lead a normal life? This is notoriously exaggerated. Gone are the days when one could terrorize people into voting for or against a candidate or to force someone to withdraw his candidature. You think today you can threaten someone to vote in your favour? Forget it. It can work once or twice. Not five times in a row If you work for your people . you survive; if not, you will disappear into thin air Thats the prime principle of politics. .

From the late 1980s till the end of the long civil war in 2009, travelling to Colombo was both a joyous and deeply depressing experience. The happiness came from the warmth and generous hospitality of the Sri Lankans, particularly the residents of the suburb Colombo-7 who opened their doors to a Bengali. Legend has it that that Vijaya, the first king of the Sinhalese, came by sea from Bengal. But this welcome was always tempered by sadness. Many of those with whom i had struck an instant rapport were deadkilled by an assassins bullet or a bomb explosion. Their faces still haunt me: Lalith Athulathmudali, one of the most erudite and clever politicians i have encountered; Ranjan Wijeratne, the fiercely outspoken ex-planter; the soft-spoken Tamil constitutional lawyer Neelam Tiruchelvam; and the genial TULF leader A Amirthalingam whose blood-splattered residence i visited just an hour after he was gunned down. Although Laliths murder remains an enduring mystery the others were all killed by the most vicious terrorist or, ganisation ever created: the LTTE. Those who havent experienced Sri Lanka of those days will never fully comprehend the colossal tragedy of an idyllic island being transformed into the killing fields. Nor will they gauge the horrifying extent to which the LTTE transformed large numbers of a hitherto docile, industrious and peaceable community of Tamils into carbon copies of Pol Pots Khmer Rouge. Under the one-party state envisaged by LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran, Tamils of the northern and eastern provinces had two choices: acquiescence or death. The LTTE didnt merely kill prominent Sinhalas and Rajiv Gandhi: it eliminated almost every Tamil opposed to it and hounded the Tamil middle classes out of its barbaric Eelam and, indeed, out of Sri Lanka. Life in South Asia is said to be cheap. The LTTE made it worthless in Sri Lanka. By the middle of the civil war, brutalisation had become the norm in the island that once symbolised serendipity Tamils killed Tamils, Sinhalas killed Sinha. las, and they both killed each other with a staggering degree of recklessness. When the civil war erupted, the Sri Lankan army was essentially a ceremonial force. By the time it dispensed with Prabhakarans Tigers in 2009, it had become a re-

IN MOURNING A woman in Colombo protests over the UNHRC vote against Sri Lanka for alleged human rights violations during the war against the LTTE. Lanka has rejected the vote

doubtable fighting force. Of course, there was spectacular brutality in the last days of the civil war and civilian casualties were staggeringly high. But ask any IPKF veteran and you will know that the LTTE never distinguished between its fighters and ordinary women and children. Indeed, many of those women and children in civilian clothes turned out to be hardened LTTE fighters. The suicide bomber was the creation of the LTTE well before the Al-Qaida had become a global menace and so was the human shield behind which the Tigers operated. This is not to justify the trigger-happiness of the Sri Lankans in the last days of the civil war when a reported 40,000 civilians were killed. It is merely to indicate that there was a context to the viciousness of the waras vicious as the last months of the war against Germany during World War II. The human rights lobby that secured the condemnation of Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Commission debate last Thursday cited civilised niceties and international law to pour scorn on a small country They didnt take into account that . what happened in the summer of 2009 wasnt military action against unarmed civilian demonstratorsas happened during the initial stages of the Syrian uprisingbut an ugly war . What is particularly galling is Indias effrontery in voting against Sri Lanka. If any country was secretly delighted and relieved that Colombo had finally put an end to the LTTE menace, it was India. India, after all, had nurtured the LTTEone of Indira Gandhis most short-sighted and cynical movesbefore realising that it had created a monster that was potentially capable of infecting Tamil Nadu with its poison. Yet, for the sake of his governments survival, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meekly acquiesced in the condemnation of a country that had preserved itself against overwhelming odds. Indias vote was a colossal betrayal of a country that is trying hard to forget the past and begin afresh.
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Pawan Saxena

Indias young and restless must have their fling

IN PRINCIPLE IN PRINCIPLE SRIJANA MITRA DAS IN PRINCIPLE
Kolaveri Di, a red topi, 183. The most refreshing things hitting the Indian public recently all came from someone under 40 years of age. Only youth links Southern film star Dhanush, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and Indian cricket sensation Virat Kohli. Otherwise, each did his thing, his way Dhanush singing with self-deprecating humour, terming his record-buster 'flop song'. Akhilesh abjuring helicopters to cycle across UP's rallies, gullies and bahubalis. Virat Kohli slamming 183 runs off 143 balls, slashing with the ferocity of youth, eyes ablaze with an Arjuna-like focus, tense enough to erupt in a cloudburst of cussing, generous enough to boost Rohit Sharma and win India a hard game. These achievements glow more when you consider how hard it must have been to do it their way and not how Rajinikanth, Mulayam Singh Yadav or Sachin Tendulkar might have. In India, the shocker is young people being themselves, unconventional individuals having a fling with life that's fun and atypical, not conformist yea-sayers, yet rewarded for it. In a country where studies estimate 54% of the population is under 25, you'd expect to see far more young people splashing paint on the establishment's walls, orating words that singe the winds, creating innovations that energise lives. Instead, you see a country's USP tied-up early sewn into the suits of cyni, cism, yoked to the long queues and quick bribes of a nation exhausted by its own corruption, convinced that for a young person to get anywhere, they must be privileged or middle-aged. Reverse-ageism rules India top cinema stars too 'mature' to play students, most politicians too elderly to sprint on a treadmill, several sportsmen failing basic suppleness when their shirts come off. ing questions why do such few young voices lead India's public sphere? Far from leadership, why do we try pushing our young into a mould forever? Why do we imagine that without convention 'guiding' them, our youth will only flop? Interestingly we weren't always un, willing to acknowledge youth as anything but folly Embedded in epic culture, . our popular imagination was vibrant with stories of Rama, Krishna, the Pandavas, young people on an adventure called life, fighting, loving, discovering their way across desire, pain and peace. They made mistakes and that was the point. You learnt like that, not by inuring yourself to anything unusual. And certainly not by refusing to lead just because you weren't 65 yet. India developed respect for youth Kalidasa, Birsa Munda, the Buddha, Rani Jhansi each was a young person, fired by unusual ideas, leading others. A fundamental shift came during the freedom movement via friction between Bhagat Singh and Mahatma Gandhi who disapproved of Singh's fiery pushing at the British Raj, his communism and nonviolence. Singh was a youthful shout; the Mahatma, a wisely-considered speech. The two were bound to clash the Mahatma won the day the encounter re, shaping India's ideas of youth as callow, open to dangerous influences, requiring firm hands and fulsome philosophy to keep it under control. This attitude seeped into post-Independence India, Bollywood the only place where young people were ever shown having their fling with life. Everything else politics, academia, business became a hot-spot for the grey-haired. Little wonder today, despite huge youth numbers and deep musical passion, India has no real pop music scene its own, crazy guitars, sitars on fire. That's been subsumed by a hair-dyed public sphere where the young are only to work, not be heard. This way India's shooting itself in the , foot. Nations empowering their young win big. Post-war Americas Baby Boomers energised its workforce and more. They grew into a moral force, guiding the jaded middle-aged to rejuvenating idealism. Thus, the Vietnam war was opposed, Barack Obama chosen, a public sphere created with icons from Malcolm X to Mark Zuckerberg. By contrast, Indias surprised when the Lokpal movement attracts huge crowds of 30-somethings. But popular responses to social campaigns, anti-social outrages like the KeenanReuben case, increasingly oddball Bollywood or Indian fiction, abuzz with young people saying something indicate attitudes towards our young are changing. The faster this happens, the better. If we empower the young, we gain from their energy innovations and ideals. If we , dont, there'll be more cussing like Kohlis but not in jubilation.
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EYES ABLAZE Young Virat Kohli could play a key role in Indian cricket in the future

These are visible spheres; check out daily life. It's rare to see a young person heading a company chairing a discussion, , even leading an RWA. None of this belittles the glories of age but raises intrigu-

Poverty has truly fallen: its no statistical fudge

SWAMINOMICS
SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR
Mandy Glinsbockel /Demotix/Corbis

REVERTS
No safety catch
Excessive use of guns in films is affecting impressionable minds ("Gun-ho in Bollywood", Intersections, March 18). Youth are increasingly taking out guns over trivial matters. Sharda Bhargav

Why this coal-averi di?

ment or other clearances. Today the law does not allow you to do this anymore and rightly so. Consider the economics: Rs 100/tonne royalty + SRIVATSA KRISHNA some levies and taxes is what the private sector comIndia has 1/10th of the worlds coal panies pay for coal versus the prices: Rs 1000/tonne is reserves. How can the nation as a CILs (Coal India) lowest grade coal notified price, ewhole, and not individuals inside or auction price is Rs 2800/tonne and imported coal is at outside government, benefit from it? Rs 3000-4000/tonne. The cost of coal production is Rs If India can auction spectrum, why 400-500/tonne for private miners and about Rs 700/ cant it auction coal, without increas- tonne for PSUs. The windfall gain made by private deing the price of the end product to its velopers by artificially keeping their coal input costs citizens? And what should the auc- low, is not passed on to the customers by them in powtion design process be for private companies whose er, steel and cement. end product is priced in the free market competitively The caveat, of course, is that the cost of producversus those whose end product is not? tion and attendant investments that are made downThe recent leaked incomplete report of the CAG stream and the price effect of all the blocks not comraises one fundamental question on whether India ing into production at the same time, need to be should auction its scarce natfactored in while calculatural resources or not as also ing gain or loss. In fact, the about the decision making CAG report should benchprocess inside government mark the unintended gain for doing so. In June 2004, the to the average of imported coal ministry rightly decid, coal price and the median ed to auction coal blocks, but price of CIL, less the cost of the Cabinet note floated all production, for that is what over, and six valuable years power producers would were lost trying to figure out have had to turn to, if they how to do it. June 28, 2004 was did not get coal block allocathe cut-off date decided by tions and not CILs lowest the ministry of coal and only price, as they have done. applications before that date As per Section 3.3 (A) (I) had to be considered and not of the Coal Mines Nationalthose received after. Whereas ization Act 1973, public utilthe bulk of the allocations apities are exempt from the pear to have happened after NO POWER TO THE PEOPLE IN THE COAL RUSH competitive bid process to this cut-off date and even afbuy coal, where their endter the amendment was introduced in Parliament in use products tariff has been set through a bid proc2008! ess. This is to ensure that the cost of power does not go Between 2004-2009, 155 precious coal blocks, val- up for the citizen, since the pricing mechanism of ued conservatively at about $214 billion were allotted most public entities is cost-plus and fuel is a pass after the in-principle decision to auction was taken, through to the citizen. through a not very transparent process and anecdotal Take Reliances Sasan in MP where even though stories of huge kickbacks on every allocation is ban- the end power tariff was competitively set, however died about. Thus even if there is no windfall gain, the usage of excess coal from these blocks for other there has certainly been some unintended gain to projects within the companys portfolio that maybe some private companies, thanks to not following the selling power at tariffs higher than that of the origiauction route. But every unintended gain need not nal project could come under scrutiny for this alloca, be seen as a loss to the exchequer since the law itself tion is believed to have been obtained fraudulently . allows public and private entities to be treated differ- Decisions taken on these blocks would also have a ently And ironically after the amendment happened bearing on the mines attached with the Tilaiya UMPP . in 2010, not a single coal block has been auctioned and in Jharkhand. of the 200 allotted in all, only 30 are functional! The thought that refuses to escape ones conJindal Steels Tamnar 1 project in Chhattisgarh is sciousness is what if the coal blocks allotted by CIL just one example where it has made super normal were priced at market prices, and if CIL was free to profit of 200% in excess of invested equity by selling price coal at market prices, what would the unintend, power in the merchant market, ever since it was com- ed gain or loss be? The skynay the GDP- is the , missioned and it obtains coal from the Gare Palma limit! mine which was allotted to it, captively allocated, in The author is an IAS officer the late 1990s. Likewise Tata Power, Adani Power, ReMy Times, My Voice: Like this article? liance and several others have all been allotted mines SMS MTMVCOL<space> Yes or No to at a price far below market price, but on most of them 58888. Charges applicable. Rs 3 per sms development has not begun due to lack of environ-

TOP OF THE MIND

The government is corrupt and incompetent. People are, quite rightly , sceptical of its integrity. But it has not fudged the poverty data to exaggerate the fall in poverty as alleged by , innumerable politicians and TV anchors. I have long criticized government statistics as too often being misleading or plain wrong. But those critics of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, who claim he has rigged the poverty line downward, are more wrong than any statistical department. The commission is surely guilty of gross incompetence. It said in an affidavit to the Supreme Court last year that the poverty line for 2009-10 was Rs 32 per day in urban and Rs 26 in rural areas. Barely six months later, it now says those were merely back-of-the-envelope estimates, and that detailed state-wise data on inflation now show that the poverty line was actually Rs 28.65 in urban and Rs 22.40 per day in rural areas. The Commission may think its okay to release provisional data and later revise them, but it was truly daft to submit a figure to the Supreme Court which it knew could be wide off the mark. If it was unsure of its figures, why did it not tell the Supreme Court to wait for the hard data? When the initial poverty line estimate of Rs 32/day in urban areas came out last year, TV anchors and politicians screamed that nobody could live on so little. Last weeks downward revision of the poverty line rural areas has produced an even greater howl of outrage. The outrage is entirely justified on the ground of Planning Commission incompetence. But it is quite unjustified on the ground of fudging. Abhijit Sen, the Planning Commissions left-wing member-economist, would never tolerate fudging to exaggerate the fall in poverty and he has certified the accuracy of the , new poverty line. Lets do a reality check on what the standard dal-roti diet costs the poor. Opposition politicians, NGOs ,and TV anchors have challenged Montek to show one can live on Rs 28.65 per day at a time when a litre of milk , costs Rs 37 and six bananas may cost up to Rs 30. They have castigated Montek for sitting in an ivory tower, totally out of touch with ordinary folk and reality . Sorry but the facts show otherwise. Those out of , touch with reality and prices are the critics, not Montek. Politicians and TV anchors are well-off, and consume tandoori chicken and fried fish plus milk and fruit. But poor folk live essentially on dal-roti. Any housewife will tell you that wheat costs up to Rs 20 per kilo and chana dal up to Rs 45 per kilo. A standard daily calorie intake of 2,000 calories can be met by 400 gm of wheat (1,600 calories, cost Rs 8) and 100 gm of

Picture perfect
The delightful cartoon "Dr Singh's ICU" ("Collective Irresponsibility", Special Report, March 18) sums up succintly and vividly the Prime Minister's dilemma over the chaotic political situation. Wing Commander (Retd) Shashank Bendre

No limits please
AT THE BOTTOM Hundreds of millions of people across the world live on just half of the World Banks global poverty line of $1.25 a day

chana dal (400 calories, cost Rs 4.50). The total cost comes to just Rs 12.50. Labourers doing hard physical work may need 3,000 calories/day but even that im, plies just Rs 18.75 worth of dal-roti, well below official poverty lines. The World Bank has a global poverty line of $1.25 terms, adjusted for low prices in poor countries through purchasing power parity (PPP). The leftist star of Jawaharlal Nehru University Prof Himanshu, esti, mated last year that the PPP dollar was worth Rs 19. So, the World Bank poverty line of $1.25 translates into Rs 23.75 per day This is slightly above the govern. ments rural poverty line of Rs 22.40 but far below the urban Rs 28.95, and roughly equal to the all-India average poverty line of Rs 24.25. The World Bank poverty line has been accepted globally for decades, so it is somewhat ridiculous for Indian critics to suddenly declarequite erroneouslythat people cannot live on so little. The harsh reality is that hundreds of millions across the globe are living on half as much. That is a tragedy But it does demon. strate that neither the World Bank nor Montek Ahluwalia is setting poverty lines below starvation level. The Planning Commission says the proportion of poor Indians has fallen from 37.2 % in 2004-05 to 29.8% in 2009-10. Sceptics say the fall is too sharp to be true. I would argue the very oppositethat the fall in poverty is actually even sharper than indicated by the 2009-10 survey That year was a terrible drought year, and this . would have artificially inflated the poverty rate. Another NSSO survey is being done in 2011-12, and i am willing to bet that this will show a big fall in poverty over 2009-10because the 2011 monsoon was normal. Any takers? My Times, My Voice: Like this article? SMS MTMVSA <space> Yes or No to 58888. Charges applicable. Rs 3 per sms

Apropos "China dresses up one-child policy..." (All That Matters, March 18), in economies like Japan, Europe and Russia, people restricted the size of the family. and are now faced with a large ageing population. Don't overdo population control; instead have individually preferred family sizes. K U Mada
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