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Official trips abroad: Govt seeks details of outcome, spending
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Official trips abroad: Govt seeks details of outcome, spendingThere is also a separate column on “Essentiality Grading” to indicate if the officer or minister’s inclusion was “mandatory, absolutely essential or essential”.Written by Amitabh Ranjan After introducing stringent guidelines on official trips abroad, the government has initiated scrutiny of such trips by ministers and bureaucrats to check the intended outcome as well as the visit’s funding and spending. All ministries have been asked to submit lists of foreign deputations and overseas training since April 2013 providing the size of delegation, purpose of each visit, countries visited, duration, names of delegates, estimated source of funding and the expenditure on each officer. It also wants the PAN and Aaadhaar number of the officers — deputy secretary and above — and the ministers who went on these trips. Information has been sought for visits undertaken during fiscal years 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 (until September). There is also a separate column on “Essentiality Grading” to indicate if the officer or minister’s inclusion was “mandatory, absolutely essential or essential”. Each department also has to put down its remark on the outcome of the visit and submit the data to the Finance Ministry’s expenditure division this month. Though the official reason for this exercise is to analyse the data so as to regulate future visits with a view to make them “more efficient and effective”, sources said this was part of the government’s exercise to clamp down on on non-essential visits. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has been rejecting proposals on ministers’ foreign visits even after a go-ahead by the Ministry of External Affairs. It recently asked the ministers to be “judicious” before submitting such proposals for secretaries and additional secretaries of their department. In June last year, the government tightened the procedure for official foreign visits by bureaucrats, directing that such proposals should go through the PMO and Screening Committee of Secretaries for approval. Noting that norms for foreign visits were not being followed, it said clearances from PMO, Ministry of External Affairs and Home Ministry were necessary for going abroad and that details of such visits should be uploaded every quarter on the website of the ministries. DEFNCE, NATIONAL BUSINESS STANDARD, DEC 15, 2015 Govt appoints judicial commission on OROPIn the OROP agitation, veterans demand identical pensions for all those who retire at the same rank, with the same length of serviceAjai Shukla OROP may lead to review of govt's medium-term spending planOn a Janmashtami deadline, Govt announces OROP; RSS gets the creditBlack money law helps OROP soldier onVeterans reject OROP award, plan to intensify agitationDay after drub, ministers cagey on social media With the appointment of a one-man judicial commission to look into the implementation of the one rank, one pension (OROP) scheme for ex-servicemen, the government has tried in vain to signal flexibility in resolving this vexed dispute. On Monday, the defence ministry (MoD) named Justice L Narasimha Reddy, retired chief justice of the Patna High Court, as the head of the one-man commission. A MoD release says the committee will make recommendations on "removal of anomalies that may arise in the implementation of the OROP", which the government notified on November 7. It will also address inter-service anomalies, and "any other matter referred by the Central Government." In the OROP agitation, veterans demand identical pensions for all those who retire at the same rank, with the same length of service. Ex-servicemen argue they performed the same job in service and must make ends meet in identical economic conditions today. Before OROP, veterans who retired in earlier years when salaries were lower got far lower pensions than those retiring today. A pension, which is payable for life, and then at half rate to a veteran's widow, amounts to half the salary drawn on the date of retirement. On September 5, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar announced OROP, but the ex-servicemen agitation continued, with their leaders discontent with the implementation. Now the Justice Reddy commission has six months to submit its recommendations on issues that will be raised before it. It may also submit interim reports, if necessary. Ex-servicemen bodies at the forefront of the agitation, like the United Front of Ex-Servicemen (UFESM), first cautiously welcomed, then rejected, the commission. Colonel (Retired) Anil Kaul, media head of the UFESM told Business Standard: "The commission provides an additional forum for redressing veterans' grievances against the OROP award. We don't want to go to court unnecessarily; if the judicial commission can resolve our issues, that would be the best course." But a statement put out later by the UFESM took a far stronger line, rejecting the judicial commission since the UFESM had earlier recommended the commission should have 3-5 members, including two ex-servicemen. Now, for the first time, the UFESM talked openly about legal redress. "The way forward is to approach the Supreme Court which would be taken proceduraly (sic) as per the advise (sic) of our counsel Ram Jethmalani very shortly," said the UFESM in a late-evening statement. Business Standard understands that Jethmalani has offered to represent the ex-servicemen gratis. The government has sent mixed messages about its willingness to compromise. On December 1, Parrikar met with UFESM leaders and promised to continue finding a settlement. Former army chief and minister of state for external affairs, General (Retired) VK Singh, was nominated as a channel of communication. The UFESM says that by appointing a judicial commission, "the door kept open with a mediator in the form of Gen VK Singh has been shut on our Face too (sic)." On Saturday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, speaking at the Aaj Tak Conclave in New Delhi, had flatly ruled out compromise. Jaitley insisted that most ex-servicemen have gratefully accepted the government's OROP award, with only "fringe elements" continuing the agitation. UFESM officeholders say there are two key sticking points in the way of a settlement. First, the OROP award mandates that the pension in each pay grade would be based on the average salary that grade. The UFESM insists pension must be based on the top salary in each scale. Second, ex-servicemen demand that all pensions be based on salaries as on March 31, 2014. The OROP award bases them on the median salary of calendar year 2013, depriving ex-servicemen of one annual increment. A third contentious issue - denying OROP benefits to ex-servicemen who opt in the future for premature retirement - appears to have been dropped by the UFESM. Say UFESM leaders, anonymously: "The bill to meet our two demands would be just Rs 3,000 crore, over and above Rs 8,300 crore that the government has put as the annual cost of OROP. Given that just 14 per cent of this would be paid out to officers, and 86 per cent would go to enlisted men, the government should not withhold it." The resilience of the UFESM agitation and its on-going programme of rallies across the country have surprised the government. EMINENT PERSONALITIES STATESMAN, DEC 9, 2015 Quest for dignity Tarun Kumar Modernity in the subcontinent is generally regarded as an outcome of colonialism. It opened up numerous possibilities and prompted a variety of reactions from society. Baba Sahib Bhim Rao Ambedkar was a prodigy despite his depressed class origins, indeed a segment of the population that often lacked the culture of education. There is little doubt that modernity facilitated the spread of learning. Indeed, education and interface with the West helped him to develop a pragmatic, rational legal outlook. He developed a positive approach towards solving problems. He was inspired by the American social scientist, John Dewey. Equipped with this enlightened outlook he confronted the acutely hierarchical social reality. The social arrogance of the upper castes was revolting, going by his personal experience in the princely state of Baroda, where despite occupying a significant position in the Gaekwad administration he was often humiliated. He was kept at a distance and discriminated against. Files were thrown at his table. He was not served water by his peon. Such personal experiences soon made him realize that Mahatma Gandhi had inspired social penance of caste Hindus. Entry to temples or access to wells or common dining were all superficial attempts that could not break the cultural straitjacket of caste-based discrimination. Casteism was not merely a vulgar social practice; it was ritually ordained and culturally inscribed and could not be wished away by mere social tinkering and political positioning. He was indeed at his radical best when he wrote Annhilation of Caste. His detractors might call his approach utopian, but given the extent of the social malaise, so surgical a prescription was not a surprise. The obnoxious nature of caste-based discrimination provoked Ambedkar to burn the Manusmriti on the occasion of his historical Mahad Satyagraha in 1927 for securing the right of untouchables to drink the water of the Chawdar tank in Mahad town in Maharashtra. He was convinced that caste could not be reformed (contrary to Gandhi’s hope) but only annihilated. And the annihilation of caste implies the abolition of Hindu ideology because it is formulated in the Shastras and Smritis. Thus, Ambedkar wished to replace the Hinduism, which was a ‘religion of rules’, with ‘true religion’, the religion of principles, which is the basis for civic government. The book provoked a response from the Mahatma itself, who called it a ‘challenge to Hinduism’ and Ambedkar’s quest for liberation, autonomy and distinctive nationhood of depressed classes was met with a profound response by the Mahatma Rs fast unto death. It was a crucial moment for Ambedkar, he was in a dilemma. The eventual climbdown led to the Poona Pact which was a bitterly frustrating experience for him. In that moment of stress, Ambedkar’s pragmatic streak made him realize the vulnerability of the Dalits who were scattered across tiny hamlets throughout the country. Slowly but surely, he eventually regained his rational mindset and he became a constitutional genius who shaped the legal covenant of free India. He built into the Constitution legal safeguards against discrimination and abolished untouchability while bringing in legal and political equality. This compelled him to be a revolutionary and to concurrently put his foot in the corridors of power whenever it was possible. His genius lay in his capacity to use both these facets of his personality to achieve his ultimate goal of securing a dignified existence for Dalits. While concluding the process of framing the Constitution, he warned that unless the legal and political freedoms are backed with social equality, the system would not last. In this rational-cum-legal framework he tried to reform Hinduism by pushing for the Hindu Code Bill. This evoked a strong reaction and ended his honeymoon with the establishment. Ambedkar had made a profound sociological analysis of Indian reality. He had declared that he was born a Hindu but would not die as one. Ironically, like his arch opponent Mahatma, he also realized that the sweep of modernity was a half-way house; but while Gandhi went on to develop an overarching critique of modernity, Ambedkar’s task was quite complex. He sought cultural sustenance that could support the legal structures of modernity. Modern nationhood per se under a new set of legal rules would not be able to do away with pre-modern cultural rigidities and practices that had been the bane of Dalits for centuries. What troubled him was the dual existence of a Dalit who was a legal citizen in free India but sociologically subordinated to the hegemonic structures that had their roots in scriptural sophistry and this needed to be countered culturally. In this sense, he draws a unique parallel with WE Dubois who was acutely aware of the dual consciousness of a Black in America and that of a Negro and American. This realization forced Ambedkar to relentlessly seek an indigenous alternative and this ultimately brought him to his cultural substitute Rs Buddhism. He thought that it was only by relinquishing the cultural baggage of Hinduism and embracing the rational and humanist precepts of Buddhism that there was a possibility of an alternative and dignified social existence. He realized that the sense of dignity for a Dalit was a vulnerable social commodity; its modern safeguards were not strong enough to sustain it and thus another bulwark was needed to secure it. In his reckoning, this bulwark was Buddhism, given its rational worldview and rejection of caste. In doing so he was evolving a kind of liberation theology that was at once rational and contemporary. His foray towards Buddhism also opens the larger issue of cultural props that become imperative to fortify modern existence and is somewhat akin to Rousseau’s notion of civil religion. Perceived through the prism of the present, however, it has meant that he left behind a dual and somewhat ambivalent legacy Rs Ambedkar the cultural radical, and Ambedkar the father of the Constitution. But the real problem is not with the legacy of the icon, it is with us. We have either not appreciated the depth of his thought and its inherent implications or have just gone along with his routine deification wherein the statues glow with adulation but overshadow the intellectual content. The writer is a civil servant and the views are personal. ENVIRONMENT DECCAN HERALD, DEC 15, 2015 COP21: Not ideal but best deal possible The landmark climate agreement reached by 195 countries in Paris on Saturday is the first event in history whereby all countries together have decided to regulate their actions to ward off a common threat to their ways of life and wellbeing. It has come after years of arguments, setbacks and slow progress. When it finally came, it is not the most ideal and best deal to tackle the problem of the warming of the earth and climate change, but it may be the best possible in a milieu of differing and even conflicting interests of countries over the issue. The responses to the agreement have ranged from elation to reservation to even disappointment, but no one would dispute that it is a major step forward. Some scientists have claimed it would change the world for the better. But the best way to look at it is to consider it as a foundation on which more can be done later. The agreement charts a low-carbon future for the world and has adopted a goal of well below 2 degrees Centigrade for temperature rise, and set up a regime of financing of developing countries to make the transition from the fossil fuel age to an era of sustainable energy production and consumption. The agreement will go into effect from 2020 and it is based on the voluntary cuts of greenhouse gas emissions promised by individual countries. It also accepts the principle of common but differentiated responsibility which ensures equity by making developed nations foot a part of the bill to be paid by developing countries for the sacrifices they have to make by reducing their carbon footprint. The poorer countries have been promised finances and technological transfer for adaptation and mitigation. The promised financial and technological support will be inadequate, but the need for accommodation and consensus made the poor countries accept a minimal deal. All developing countries, including India, have welcomed the agreement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that climate justice has got a boost and there are no winners or losers in Paris. If sincerely implemented by all countries, the agreement will achieve far larger cuts in emissions than piecemeal initiatives have done in the past. It has also set a more ambitious aim of further reducing the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade in future. The non-binding nature of the deal is a worry, but there is some hope in the common commitment. Even with the agreement the climate will get worse, but it may help the world to avert the worst climate catastrophes that can make the earth unlivable. INDIAN EXPRESS, DEC 8, 2015
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