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Emergency papers found, minus Indira signature

2010-12-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

The original paperwork related to the proclamation of Emergency on June 25, 1975 and its draconian enforcement for 21 months has come into public domain thanks to the tenacity of RTI applicant M G Devasahayam.

NEW DELHI: Six months after pleading ignorance about their whereabouts, the National Archives have come up with records of the infamous Emergency. Tell-tale gaps in the information though could well have been responsible for the delayed disclosure about a phase that the present rulers have much to be embarrassed about.

The original paperwork related to the proclamation of Emergency on June 25, 1975 and its draconian enforcement for 21 months has come into public domain thanks to the tenacity of RTI applicant M G Devasahayam, who had Jayaprakash Narayan in his custody for six months as the then deputy commissioner of Chandigarh.

Though his application was shunted from the Prime Minister's Office to the home ministry and then to the National Archives, what forced the authorities to give up their blocking tactics was Devasahayam's recourse to a complaint under RTI as that could have had penal consequences for those denying information.

The reams of documents given to Devasahayam betray extraordinary attempts to distance Indira Gandhi from much of the illegal decisions responsible for Emergency and its excesses. Though the signatures of other dramatis personae, President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed downwards, are available on the Emergency records, there is none of Indira Gandhi herself in any of them.

The omission of Indira Gandhi's signature is most glaring in the file relating to the manner in which she had bypassed the Cabinet while asking Ahmed to sign the Emergency proclamation late in the night on June 25, 1975.
While the original proclamation bearing Ahmed's signature is available, there is only a typed copy of the PM's ''top secret'' letter that had recommended imposition of Emergency under Article 352 of the Constitution.

According to the file, the copy of Indira Gandhi's historic letter was obtained by the home ministry from the President's Secretariat. The original letter signed by Indira Gandhi was probably taken out of the file at some point and kept away in her personal papers, which are in the control of her family.

Whatever the reason for the missing original, the file nails the claim made by Indira Gandhi in her letter that she had information suggesting that ''there is an imminent danger to the security of India being threatened by internal disturbance.'' The file does not contain a shred of material backing such threat perception on the fateful day.

In fact, the file reveals that the first assessment of the alleged threat of internal disturbance was made more than a fortnight after the imposition of Emergency. It was in the form of a report on the situation before and after June 25, 1975 from the Intelligence Bureau submitted on July 11. This shows that India's hard-fought democracy was suspended on the perception of one individual, without any institutional checks.

The file is a treasure trove for historians as it brings out, among other things, the manner in which the Cabinet gave post-facto approval to Emergency at a meeting held at 6 am on June 26, 1975. It bears out the Shah Commission's finding that none of the Cabinet ministers was privy to the unprecedented decision to impose Emergency. Yet, the Cabinet and bureaucracy without demur facilitated the Emergency measures that followed quickly: imposition of press censorship and draconian amendments to preventive detention laws.

CORRUPTION & COMMUNALISM

2010-11-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

Title: CORRUPTION & COMMUNALISM
Author: M.G. Devasahayam
Publication: The Tribune
Date: July 1, 1999

Value-judgement in politics


THE last thing the people of this country expect the politicians to do
is to pronounce value-judgements. Yet this is precisely what the
politicians seem to be doing, if the recent spate of statements on
corruption vs communalism is any indication.

In the seventies, during the JP movement, Jayaprakash Narayan had
written, "As I diagnose the root cause of the country's critical state
of health, I identify it unhesitatingly as corruption and precipitous
fall in the moral standards of our politics and public life." Now, a
quarter century after these anguished words were written by the Second
Mahatma, peddlers of coalition politics are traversing the length and
breadth of the country, propagating the "gospel" of venal corruption.
Statements and pronouncements like "corruption is preferable to
communalism", "corruption is not a public issue" and "corruption cases
against Ms Jayalalitha are nothing but political vendetta", are
ringing loud in the electronic media and staring from the newspapers
almost every day.

Ironically, of all the politicians, communists, once known for probity
in public life, are turning out to be the greatest apologists for
corruption! From the"venerable" Harkishen Singh Surjeet to the local
factotum N. Shankariah, almost the entire Left appears to be working
over time to sanctify corruption and give respectability to Ms
Jayalalitha and others, who are facing charges of bribery, criminal
misconduct and misappropriation of public funds.

Afflicted by this virus and emboldened by the weakness and meekness of
our judicial process, several other political entities have entered
this bandwagon and are flooding the media. There are any number of
people with sanctimonious statements of value judgement. The most
distressing statements to emanate thus far are from Dr Manmohan Singh
in his capacity as Mrs Sonia Gandhi's emissary to Ms Jayalalitha and
certain functionaries of the Tamil Manila Congress (TMC). These are
distressing, in fact agonising, because while Dr Manmohan Singh
commands high respect for honesty and integrity in public life, the
TMC is a movement born out of a public backlash against the Congress
party's striking electoral alliance in 1996 with the "Queen of
Corruption", as they used to describe Ms Jayalalitha! Considering the
fact that they are doing this just to get a handful of seats (not more
than 10, as reported) to contest in the forthcoming Lok Sabha
elections is, indeed, unfortunate.

Be that as it may, these statements sanctifying corruption and giving
certificates to its avid practitioners cannot be allowed to go
unchallenged and unquestioned. While the ills of communalism are known
and should be countered effectively, it need to be realised that
corruption is like AIDS which sucks up and destroys the basic value
system on which a society is founded and has no cure if allowed to go
beyond a certain stage. Furthermore, unbridled corruption in
government and public life could be a major causative factor in
instigating and inflaming communal passions and disturbances. Besides,
corruption, by slowing down economic development and accelerating
poverty, is a major factor in causing and sustaining social
inequalities and tensions.

Nobel laureate, Gunnar Myrdal in his famous treatise, "Asian Drama -An
Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations", has candidly brought out the
political and economic dangers of corruption. According to him, on the
political side, "the significance of corruption in Asia is highlighted
by the fact that wherever a political regime has crumbled- in Pakistan
and Burma, for instance, and, in China - a major and often decisive
cause has been the prevalence of corruption and misconduct among
politicians and administrators and the resulting spread of unlawful
practices among businessmen and the general public. The problem is of
vital concern to the governments of South Asia, because the habitual
practice of bribery and dishonesty paves the way for an authoritarian
regime, which justifies itself by the disclosures of corruption and
the punitive action it takes against the offenders. Elimination of
corruption has regularly been advanced as the main justification for
military takeovers."

Turning to economic development, Professor Myrdal has this to say:
"Corrupt practices are highly detrimental to any efforts to achieve
modernisation ideals. The prevalence of corruption raises strong
obstacles and inhibitions to development. The corruption that is
spurred by fragmentation of loyalties acts against efforts to
consolidate the nation. It decreases respect for and allegiance for
the government and its institutions. It often promotes irrationality
in planning and limits the horizons of plans."

India, being ranked among the 10 most corrupt countries in the world
by Worldwatch, always has the danger of collapsing politically and
economically if corruption is allowed to survive and sustain itself in
the system of governance. A recent World Bank study on the impact of
corruption in developing countries, including India, depicts the
following picture:

* Macroeconomic stability is undermined due to the loss of government
revenue, excessive spending and leakages. The costs of this
instability are mostly borne by the poor.

* Foreign direct investment is severely constrained. Sometimes even
stopping totally.

* Since corruption increases the costs of doing business and small
firms bear a disproportionately large share of these costs, small
entrepreneurs are badly affected.

* Since corruption compromises on pollution norms, the environment is
endangered.

* The poor suffer the most since they get to low quality public goods
and services, and have no "exit" option such as private schooling and
healthcare.

* There is a negative correlation between the level of corruption and
the level of investment in the economy. This severely constrains
economic growth and employment generation.

Besides this negative impacts, large-scale corruption can be
instrumental in causing death and destruction like illicit liquor
tragedies, accidents due to faulty construction/equipment and the
consumption of spurious drugs and medicines. What is worse, by
spawning inequity and injustice, corruption many times is the
underlying cause for the growth of terrorism and militancy, that have
taken a heavy toll of human lives.

Corruption is the single major factor in keeping India poor and
backward despite having the best of natural and human resources. It is
a major destabilising factor in politics and economics. If the modern
day "advocates" of corruption are allowed to have their way, they may
as well wind up the Indian judiciary and scrap all the laws and
statutes that help in punishing the corrupt. By pronouncing that
"cases against Ms Jayalalitha are politically motivated", they are
casting aspersions on the independence and integrity of India's higher
judiciary, which has more than once held that there is prima facie
case for the trial of the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

By stating that "corruption is not a public issue", these worthies
are, in fact, clamouring for this heinous practice to be declared
legal and respectable! They are also insulting the intelligent , and
indeed mocking at the common man who is carrying the burden of "the
loot of the public exchequer" on his frail and slender shoulders.

It is a fallacy to compare corruption with communalism and pronounce
value-judgement. In fact it is a crude attempt to hoodwink the people
and institutions of this country and to protect the venal elements
that have brought the nation to such a sorry pass. Those who state
that "corruption is not a public issue" should remember the fate of
Rajiv Gandhi in the 1989 elections and of Ms Jayalalitha in 1996, when
corruption was the major issue and led to their downfall.

Communalism is no doubt a scourge and a menace that needs to be
combated with all our might. But by no stretch of the imagination
could this be made into a smokescreen for justifying corruption at
high places, which is far more venal and debilitating to the nation
and its civil society.

At the height of the national Emergency in the seventies, a set of
Congress sycophants had sought to make pronouncements like "discipline
is preferable to democracy." But the electorate in the ensuing 1977
elections roundly and soundly repudiated this. This time around also
the Indian electorate, known for its innate wisdom, will surely reject
attempts by political busybodies to "dry-clean" corruption using
communalism as the "washing agent."

The shame of misrule

2010-10-16T04:53:00.000-07:00

Imagine the first Mahatma Gandhi-led independence to usher in on Aug 15, 1947, a democratic polity, and imagine Mrs Indira Gandhi, his follower, destroying all democratic institutions by imposing the emergency some 28 years later on June 25, 1975. The nation celebrated a second independence when she was routed at the polls in January 1977.

It is not an insignificant coincidence that a journalist reported, on the eve of Aug 15, that the Congress has "destroyed" all papers relating to our second independence in January 1977. If only history could be so easily rewritten.
Imagine the first Mahatma Gandhi-led independence to usher in on Aug 15, 1947, a democratic polity, and imagine Mrs Indira Gandhi, his follower, destroying all democratic institutions by imposing the emergency some 28 years later on June 25, 1975. The nation celebrated a second independence when she was routed at the polls in January 1977.

Typical of Congress' furtive ways to cover up its misdeeds, the home ministry claims it does not have the emergency proclamation issued by then President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. Nor does it have any record of the decisions taken on the arrests of thousands on the basis of false allegations, the appointment of certain people to key posts and the manner in which the statutory provisions governing detentions were breached.

This means that anyone aged 30 or younger will find it difficult to obtain any hard information about what happened during those dark days. Many of us remember the courage of Jayaprakash (JP) Narayan, who challenged Mrs Gandhi's misrule, and the pain he suffered when he was subsequently imprisoned.
M.G. Devasahayam, who was then district magistrate of Chandigarh where JP was detained, drew the authorities' attention to JP's deteriorating health. As Devasahayam writes in his book, the reply came from the then Defence Minister Bansi Lal, who basically said, 'let him die'.

I am surprised that there was no furore in parliament on the disclosure of the disappearance of the papers on the emergency. Neither Mulayam Singh nor Lalu Prasad Yadav, nor even the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, raised the topic.

The home ministry fixes responsibility for the missing records on the National Archives of India, saying that it is the "repository of non-current records". The National Archives says that nothing was transferred to its safekeeping. Yet the Shah Commission, which dug into the misdeeds committed during the emergency, said on the last day of its proceedings that it was depositing all the records with the National Archives.

The Shah Commission held 100 meetings, examined 48,000 papers and issued two interim reports. While the Janata government was still in power, I checked with the National Archives and was assured that the records of the commission's verbatim proceedings were intact.

Apparently, the destruction of evidence started after Mrs Gandhi's return to power in 1980. Copies of the Shah Commission report disappeared even from the shop where official publications were available. The report by the National Police Commission, which made praiseworthy recommendations to free the force from the pressure of politicians, was shelved because it had been constituted by the Janata government. Mrs Gandhi walked out of a police medal distribution ceremony when her aide told her that the medals were for work in exposing excesses during the emergency.

The Congress cannot rehabilitate Mrs Gandhi by hiding records of her misdeeds. It must face the fact of her authoritarian governance. She did great things and her fervour for nationalism allowed the country to hold its head high, but she also had her limitations. She was responsible for ousting morality from politics and effaced the thin line that separated good from bad, moral from immoral. We are still suffering from the hangover.

With her extra-constitutional authority exercised by her son Sanjay Gandhi, she effectively smothered dissent and corroded Indiaâ��s democratic values. It's a pity that the press went out of its way to conform to the dictates of the government. L.K. Advani was quite right when he chided the press: "You were asked to bend but you began to crawl."

The reason why the system, which was derailed during the emergency, has not been able to return to its moorings so far is the unaccountability of bureaucrats and politicians. No one found guilty by the Shah Commission has been punished. In fact, those who indulged in excesses were given out-of-turn promotions and appointments to key posts. The rulers should heed the advice of the Shah Commission: "The government's primary responsibility is to guarantee protection to those officials who refused to deviate from the code of conduct which should be accepted not only by the officials but also by the political authorities."

I am not surprised that Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has remained silent over the missing records. He is too close and beholden to the dynasty. Yet he has done laudable work in expanding the contours of the Right To Information Act. Mrs Gandhi did not even consult the cabinet before asking the president to sign the proclamation of emergency order. The cabinet was called the following morning to retrospectively endorse it. It's understandable that the home ministry cannot explain this without blaming Mrs Gandhi personally. She even wanted to close down the courts but was assured that the judges would fall in line. The Supreme Court went to the extent of upholding five to one the imposition of the emergency.

True, it is all history. But the Congress cannot rewrite it. The failings of the government and its leaders should never be fudged because the nation's conscience is at stake. Coming generations should know how and where the country's institutions were compromised and democracy derailed. It is only by laying the truth out in black and white that future emergencies and associated authoritarian rule can be avoided. And I hope the dawn of our second independence is never overtaken by the twilight made up of the brutalities and excesses that shame us.

By Kuldip Nayar The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi.

Dr. Abdul Kalam's Letter to Every Indian

2010-09-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

Dr. Abdul Kalam's Letter to Every Indian

Why is the media here so negative?
Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognize our own strengths, our achievements?
We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?
We are the first in milk production.
We are number one in Remote sensing satellites.
We are the second largest producer of wheat.
We are the second largest producer of rice.
Look at Dr. Sudarshan , he has transferred the tribal village into a self-sustaining, self-driving unit.. There are millions of such achievements but our media is only obsessed in the bad news and failures and disasters.
I was in Tel Aviv once and I was reading the Israeli newspaper. It was the day after a lot of attacks and bombardments and deaths had taken place. The Hamas had struck. But the front page of the newspaper had the picture of a Jewish gentleman who in five years had transformed his desert into an orchid and a granary. It was this inspiring picture that everyone woke up to. The gory details of killings, bombardments, deaths, were inside in the newspaper, buried among other news.

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.. Why are we so NEGATIVE? Another question: Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? We want foreign T.Vs, we want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology.

Why this obsession with everything imported. Do we not realize that self-respect comes with self-reliance? I was in Hyderabad giving this lecture, when a 14 year old girl asked me for my autograph. I asked her what her goal in life is.. She replied: I want to live in a developed India . For her, you and I will have to build this developed India . You must proclaim. India is not an under-developed nation; it is a highly developed nation.

..YOU say that our government is inefficient.
YOU say that our laws are too old.
YOU say that the municipality does not pick up the garbage.
YOU say that the phones don't work, the railways are a joke. The airline is the worst in the world, mails never reach their destination.
YOU say that our country has been fed to the dogs and is the absolute pits.

YOU say, say and say.. What do YOU do about it?

Take a person on his way to Singapore . Give him a name - 'YOURS'. Give him a face - 'YOURS'. YOU walk out of the airport and you are at your International best. In Singapore you don't throw cigarette butts on the roads or eat in the stores. YOU are as proud of their Underground links as they are.. You pay $5 (approx. Rs.. 60) to drive through Orchard Road (equivalent of Mahim Causeway or Pedder Road) between 5 PM and 8 PM. YOU come back to the parking lot to punch your parking ticket if you have over stayed in a restaurant or a shopping mall irrespective of your status identity… In Singapore you don't say anything, DO YOU? YOU wouldn't dare to eat in public during Ramadan, in Dubai .. YOU would not dare to go out without your head covered in Jeddah.
YOU would not dare to buy an employee of the telephone exchange in London at 10 pounds (Rs..650) a month to, 'see to it that my STD and ISD calls are billed to someone else.'YOU would not dare to speed beyond 55 mph (88 km/h) in Washington and then tell the traffic cop, 'Jaanta hai main kaun hoon (Do you know who I am?). I am so and so's son. Take your two bucks and get lost.' YOU wouldn't chuck an empty coconut shell anywhere other than the garbage pail on the beaches in Australia and New Zealand ..
Why don't YOU spit Paan on the streets of Tokyo ? Why don't YOU use examination jockeys or buy fake certificates in Boston ??? We are still talking of the same YOU. YOU who can respect and conform to a foreign system in other countries but cannot in your own. You who will throw papers and cigarettes on the road the moment you touch Indian ground. If you can be an involved and appreciative citizen in an alien country, why cannot you be the same here in India ?

In America every dog owner has to clean up after his pet has done the job. Same in Japan ..
Will the Indian citizen do that here?' He's right. We go to the polls to choose a government and after that forfeit all responsibility.
We sit back wanting to be pampered and expect the government to do everything for us whilst our contribution is totally negative. We expect the government to clean up but we are not going to stop chucking garbage all over the place nor are we going to stop to pick a up a stray piece of paper and throw it in the bin. We expect the railways to provide clean bathrooms but we are not going to learn the proper use of bathrooms.
We want Indian Airlines and Air India to provide the best of food and toiletries but we are not going to stop pilfering at the least opportunity.
This applies even to the staff who is known not to pass on the service to the public.

When it comes to burning social issues like those related to women, dowry, girl child! and others, we make loud drawing room protestations and continue to do the reverse at home. Our excuse? 'It's the whole system which has to change, how will it matter if I alone forego my sons' rights to a dowry.' So who's going to change the system?
What does a system consist of? Very conveniently for us it consists of our neighbours, other households, other cities, other communities and the government. But definitely not me and YOU. When it comes to us actually making a positive contribution to the system we lock ourselves along with our families into a safe cocoon and look into the distance at countries far away and wait for a Mr.Clean to come along & work miracles for us with a majestic sweep of his hand or we leave the country and run away.
Like lazy cowards hounded by our fears we run to America to bask in their glory and praise their system. When New York becomes insecure we run to England . When England experiences unemployment, we take the next flight out to the Gulf. When the Gulf is war struck, we demand to be rescued and brought home by the Indian government. Everybody is out to abuse and rape the country. Nobody thinks of feeding the system. Our conscience is mortgaged to money.

Dear Indians, The article is highly thought inductive, calls for a great deal of introspection and pricks one's conscience too….. I am echoing J. F. Kennedy's words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians…..

'ASK WHAT WE CAN DO FOR INDIA AND DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO MAKE INDIA WHAT AMERICA AND OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES ARE TODAY'

Lets do what India needs from us.

Forward this mail to each Indian for a change instead of sending Jokes or junk mails.

Thank you,

Dr. Abdul Kalam

I humbly request you to forward this to every Indian……

(This is from a mail I received)