FEATURE


COALITION COMPULSIONS AND
LICENCE TO LOOT

Elections to the Loksabha is over. UPA has returned to power with much better strength. The strength Congress acquired as the dominant party in the UPA has reflected in its obvious responses in ministry formation, post election. Old ally, the RJD is not there, Communists are not there. Many parties have been greatly weakened. The only party that came back with the same number was DMK of Karunanidhi ‘Sons & Relatives Pvt. Ltd’. He brought in 18 MPs, but wanted 9 ministries. Trinamool Congress, the new coalition partner has 19 MPs, and she is not pressurising. Karunanidhi, the Kalaignar, is insisting on 9 berths in the ministry and that he will choose the portfolio.
With Congress having won an incredible 206 seats, Sardar Dr Manmohan Singh is very upbeat and would not like to take any nonsense from anybody including DMK. But Kalaignar does not understand this new found confidence of the Prime Minister. He insists that his son, his daughter along with his grand nephew shall be made cabinet ministers so also the old cabinet ministers TR Baalu and A.Raja. But Dr Manmohan Singh the, PM has his own ideas. He wouldn’t want TR Baalu and A. Raja. So also, he will not let DMK have 9 ministers in the council of ministers.
DMK Supremo, the Kalaignar, the great Karunanidhi was not ready to accept the new ground realities. Its not the same old Sardar Manmohan Singh. It’s the new man on the top. Yes he is not a Loksabha member, but he is not overtly bothered. He has been made the Prime Minister by the Congress President. However having already pulled 5 years as P.M., he is far more assured and confident, and is not in a mood to be pushed around by his own party colleagues or by those from the coalition partners. He has, kind of, discovered himself.
But, the Kalaignar, the great dramatist that Karunanidhi is, tried his histrionics. And the desired effect did come-by, albeit little tapered. He didn’t get his desired 9 but 7 ministries. And one of his confidant, TR Baalu, was given a go by. Dr Manmohan Singh, the consecutive term Prime Minister, after Nehru and Vajpayee, held his ground to some extent. Of course, his problem is, he has a high command, and has to go by the commands from higher party echelon.
Coming to ‘Singh is King’ Dr Manmohan Singh did show a bit of toughness, which is very essential for a Prime Minister. He held his ground despite DMK threat of pulling out of the govt. The UPA already had the unconditional support of many parties, with around 330 seats. Hence there was absolutely no threat even if DMK walked out.
Especially smarting under the opposition accusation of being a ‘weak’ Prime Minister, he had a point to prove. Dr Singh reportedly pleaded with the DMK supremo to allow him to constitute a government that has clean image and runs for a full 5 years without the burden of past allegations. That was a perfect stand. And party high command should have no problem standing by the P.M., given the history of both TR Baalu and A. Raja having taken the government for granted and displayed contempt for the authority of P.M., so also the serious charges of corruption and interference in ministry functioning. Thus Dr Singh was on strong ground in insisting on not including highly controversial ministers and not continuing those ministry with same persons, where they were involved in some or the other controversy.
While, it was good to see the ‘weak’ prime minister putting his foot down, it was very disappointing to see the personal predicament of Kalaignar Dr. Karunanidhi. His problem reportedly had roots to his 3 wives, and he was obliged to make all of them happy by giving ministerial berths, to their children, just like he made his one son Stalin, the Dy. Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. So for him, running the Government was like managing his fiefdom, a private estate. Tamil Nadu has always been like this after the Annadurai era. That’s not his fault. Whether managing Tamil Nadu or managing India, poor Karunanidhi and his third wife Rajathi Ammal, the mother of Kanimojhi, did not know the difference. For them it was like an extended household. But hold it, what about Tamil voters in Tamil Nadu, what do they think, its all OK? Its all normal?
After all DMK is the party of have nots, backward classes and Dalits. In his eagerness to keep his wives and children happy, he even hoped that both Baalu, an OBC, and A.Raja a Dalit, would opt out. So, even at the cost of disappointing his party stalwarts he was asking for ministerial berths for his son, daughter and grand nephew. Karunanidhi, the nonagenarian, as he enters the twilight years of his life seems to have given up any sign of modesty while peddling the cases of his children and relatives. What do you call this? Do you think, its bizarre? Its brazen, to say the least.
Mr. Muthuvel Karunanidhi, the Kalignar, the undisputed Supremo of DMK, is a very small man by any measurement of socio political decency. He has so openly told the world, and Indians in particular, damn the principles, but let me and my family hog. Its me and mine, take it or leave it.
But sadly where are the southern news papers and journals writing about these macabre events? Shouldn’t all Indians know the low depth to which DMK leadership has sunk, in their open demand for ministries which has the potential to loot?
The saddest part of the whole imbroglio was, that DMK chief appeared totally disinterested in the dossier prepared on TR Baalu, and A R Raja. These two DMK ministers in the outgoing cabinet had caused serious financial damage to the country. The dossier had listed their controversial practices during the earlier ministership. It’s a well known fact that TR Baalu, as Surface Transport Minister used to interfere in the day to day functioning of the National Highway Authority of India, due to which 4 chairmen left the NHAI in less than 3 years time. This has undermined road development project worth some Rs 10,000/- crores.
The NDA, which accused the UPA of derailing the Golden Quadrilateral Project was not wrong. It is a well known and well documented fact that highway development seriously suffered due to TR Baalu, and look at this election, the Tamil Nadu electorates have again voted the very same person back to power. So, what really make these voters vote such candidates like TR Baalu or A Raja?
According to the dossier, since Baalu was changing the terms of road contracts according to his whims and fancies, many contractors opted out. Hence of the 60 projects planned only 7 could be awarded. The dossier on Raja says, controversies kept erupting ever since he joined the ministry of communication after the exit of Dayanidhi Maran, who was sacrificed at alter of Karunanidhi family politics. Raja was involved in many controversial decisions in granting licence to many cellular operators without following the norms which caused the exchequer huge financial loss. No wonder, reacting to a petition Delhi High Court had observed “Spectrum sold like cinema tickets”. He even got into major row with both PM’s office and Finance Ministry, informs the dossier. The first controversy erupted within 2 weeks of his assumptions of office. It related to cancellation of a BSNL tender worth US $ 4.8 billion for procuring GSM equipment. It was only after the intervention of solicitor general that ‘BSNL will have to pay heavy damages if it cancelled the contract’ that the tender finally went through, claims the dossier. According to the dossier, transperancy was a major casualty during Raja’s tenure as communication minister.
These are probably, the proverbial ‘tip of the iceberg’. However it is clearly indicative of where the wind is blowing. It is, therefore, very important to expose such serious misconduct in the administration of the state and its finances, both as a duty of the 4th estate, so also in the interest of the country and probity in public life.
I & C Feature


ON DOCTORING BUSINESS DEALINGS
“I don’t give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it is hell.”
Harry S Truman.
Monetary economy has been anything but a boon to mankind. Rather, it is only after the monetary economy became the rule mankind has been suffering all kinds of ills. This has been studied scientifically in the Innu community off the coast of Saskatchewan, Canada, in the small islands of Innu land, as also in the isolated community of Italian immigrants living in a small village, Roseto, near NewYork. Monetary economy has given birth to the plastic card economy with its attendant hazards. The recent epidemics of suicide and divorce in America have a lot to do with this mindless growth of bland materialism. While money could buy anything, money finds it difficult to buy happiness.
Business is the other word for making profit. Profit at any cost seems to be the latest mantra. Transparency and authenticity are given a go by. Most people in business fail to walk their talk. Cut throat competition seems to be the order of the day. Most people in business seem to think that having a hidden agenda is the right thing to do in business. The largest casualty in business has been the common man. Moral standards have almost disappeared in the arena. Any one who makes money by any means is respected by society. Money power is the most effective weapon. Money makes people lose their sense of fair play and better judgment.
Large multinational corporations are the most degenerate in this area. Most of them commit heinous white collar crimes against society little realizing that it is they that contribute to all suffering on the planet. Many recent revelations validate the above claim. A cursory glance would satisfy the reader.
Tobacco barons had documentary evidence in their files, as revealed by the recent findings in the archives of some of the giants in the field, of the dangers of smoking for human health. They have been trying to pour billions of dollars for sports sponsorship with an altruistic façade of encouraging sports. Their real reason was to encourage smoking among young children. Their data did show that while an adult learning to smoke might smoke for ten to fifteen years before dying of tobacco damage, a child would at least smoke for twenty five years before meeting its maker in heaven. From their profit point of view the latter are better targets.
Large European alcohol manufacturers created the myth that mild drinking is good for human health, making use of the inexact science of epidemiology, which has been a total failure when applied to chronic illnesses although it helped mankind to find the causes of illnesses in the field of acute epidemics of infectious diseases. The truth is that even a drop of alcohol is not good for health. It is true, though, that mild drinkers are in better health compared to heavy drunkards, but the teetotalers have the best health prospects. A large WHO study report by two scientists showing the above facts did not see the light of the day, thanks to the money power of the interested players. Similar are the stories of the large pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Drugs with dubious records are being pushed for sale using all kinds of research data to falsify the truth. Technology applied to medical care is no exception. It is shocking to know that, on an average about 225,000 people die every year in the US because of medical interventions of which a good 100,000 die due to drug side effects! Nearly three million people suffer from chronic problems because of medical interventions, but the divine interventionalists and their business masters sell falsehood and half truths day in and day out. A recent book by the former editor-in-chief the New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, The Truth About Drug Companies (Randpon House) bares all the hidden agends of the drug companies in great detail.
The word humanism is a neologism. “The name humanism can be applied to an ethic based on human nobility. Turned towards both study and action, it recognizes and exalts the greatness of human genius and the power of its creations, opposing the brute force of inanimate nature. What is essential remains the individual’s effort to develop in himself or herself, through strict and methodical discipline, all human faculties, so as to lose nothing of what enlarges and enhances the human being. Goethe wrote in the second part of the Faust: Reach towards the highest form of existence by the dint of uninterrupted effort. Humanism lays the foundations of individual and collective morality; it establishes law and creates an economy; it produces a political system; it nourishes art and literature.”
I used the word medical humanism to describe the need for humane touch in medical care delivery. Similarly, business needs to be humane for it to benefit mankind. As of now the profit driven monetary economy has made the rich richer and the poor poorer. The gulf has been widening even in the affluent countries in the west. This inverse-care-law would eventually destroy humanity. Even now the problems for both the rich and the poor seem to come from the opposite camp. While the rich are afraid of the poor since the latter are the thugs, the muggers, the murderers, and the car jackers, the poor are afraid of not knowing where their next meal comes from because the rich take more than ninety per cent of the world’s resources. Fear is the key for their unhappiness.
Unethical business, devoid of humanism, might be very profitable in the short term but in the long run it is bound to have its effects on the perpetrators of the crime. Business ethics is simply business humanism. Do unto others as you would be done by is a good dictum. Until and unless the poorest of the poor get their needs of food shelter and an opportunity to work met this world would never be peaceful. Our short cut methods of trying to destroy the terrorists and arrest and punish the criminals will not solve the problem. As long as oppression, suppression and denial persist crime will also thrive. The rich better read the writing on the wall before it is too late.
If the business world realizes the need for transparency and authenticity in their business they would be automatically making business very ethical. Ethical dealings are always legal as well, but all legal dealings that the business world dabbles in need not be ethical in the first place! Most business houses take refuge in the legal protection that they think they get but they throw the ethical principles to the winds. Recent fall from grace of the non-banking financial institutions in India is a good example. Most civil courts have given them protection but the poor depositor who has put all his life’s earnings for a peaceful evening in life has been forced to beg, borrow or steal to make both ends meet. Some of them are on the streets. However, most owners are either too affluent or, at least, are comfortably rich.
Economic crimes are on the rise in the name of business. While the large sharks cheat the world in the name of business dealings the smaller players amass wealth and disappear from the scene one fine morning. Both seem to get legal protection but neither of them would have moral and ethical protection. Even large corporates are destroyed by the greed of the large players in the field. The recent UTI scandal in India is one such and there are many others. The largest contributors to the non-performing assets of the nationalized banks are the large business houses in India. This disease is not a tropical disease of India, it is universal.
The only way this world could change for the better is by man changing himself and his near and dear ones. Unless man changes the world does not change. Man could change by change in our educational system that could bring forth a new generation of ethical individuals who could make a difference in all walks of life, politics included. Business is not an exception. Primacy of man in every field is the core of humanism. Humanism is the basis of human health.
“There can be no happiness if the things that we believe in are different from the things that we do.”
Freya Stark.

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