The politics of the Miramar assault case

Last Saturdays newspaper had an unusual piece of news. It described a fight between a group of people on the Miramar – Dona Paula road – the Marine Drive of Goa – where an innocent passerby – a girl – got stabbed, along with one of the group.
This was unusual because, public brawls are not very common in Goa, and if such incidences do takes place, it has to do with tourists. And public brawls with swords and weapons indeed are so rare, they definitely makes one to sit up and wonder if it is a typing error, of a news from another part of the world.
And then there is the surprising revelation that the assault victim is from Taleigao and the assaulters are from St. Cruz, and all are Goans. That this incidence has taken in broad day light on one of the busier areas close to a Minister’s bungalow and where police presence is found round the clock.
Next day, newspapers inform us that all five St. Cruz persons who assaulted the Taleigao person have been arrested at Ambolim and brought to Panaji. And we wonder how have our policemen become so efficient?
It doesn’t need rocket science to relate this incident to the political developments in the capital, irrespective of the newspaper version that it was a simple quarrel between one man who used to beat up five men so often that the five retaliated in frustration!
Ever since Monserrate revealed his intentions of dropping ideas of contesting elections from Panaji and instead prefer St. Cruz constituency while his wife contested from his home ground of Taleigao, there has been some tension in the air.
The present MLA of St. Cruz definitely must have felt threatened, as was seen at the show of solidarity by congressmen who gathered last month to celebrate her birthday. And the present stabbing must have been something to do with the ground work friction between the two opposing groups, now that the elections are due in less than a year hence.
The victim’s Godfather apparently has enough clout with the police to galvanize action and get the offenders within a day. It also makes one wonder why Goa’s policemen are capable of arresting offenders who have fled the state, but are unable to catch offenders who rob people’s houses even in day light.

The tragedy of the Indian cricket team

When Sachin Tendulkar had led the Indian cricket team to England in 1999, Kapil Dev, the coach had advised the team to “enjoy” as they were trashed by the Englishmen in the test series. We are not sure whether Sachin was amused by the idea, or whether he looked for help from elsewhere, but Dhoni, the captain of the present Indian cricket team which has been trashed 0-4 by the English cricket team, seems to have the same advise to offer his team mates.

So Sreesanth, who was inducted into the side when Zaheer got injured in the first test, after getting a trashing from the English batsman, said: "I enjoyed it." When quizzed further, he added: "I kept running in hard. It's not frustrating; it's not hard on the body. I enjoy it."

What else can he say, when the Indian captain Dhoni, himself kept reiterating that the key was not to worry too much about the result, but to try and enjoy the game. So it was not amusing to hear Sreesanth say the same thing after one of India’s worst day on the field.

The Indian cricket team apparently play to enjoy the game while the whole nation believes it’s a national shame to lose all four test matches to a team that was a year ago considered one of the worst teams in the international circuit. And that too at a stage when the Indian team is considered the number one team in test cricket!

If it were not for the nation’s attention being held by the more important agenda at hand on the Lokpal Bill issue, Dhoni’s remark would have had more disastrous consequences. We don’t know whether it was by design that the Indian team should lose so terribly in England.

The match fixing ghost which had faded away once again makes a appearance in the background. Was it too much cricket and strain on the cricketers which led to injuries or is it a different reason?

Does India really not have a bench strength to replace the injured players? Yet wasn’t it a few months in the past when the team comprising the bench players that won India matches?

Are the cricketers killing the goose that has laid them golden eggs till now?

A fight that we need to win – desperately!

The Manmohan Singh government continues to send postmen to negotiate with the Anna Hazare team as the latters fast crosses the two hundred hour mark. And postmen being merely postmen continue to spout the line handed over to them – parliamentary procedures cannot be short-circuited.

There are no decision takers in the team of postmen appointed by the government to discuss the demands set by Anna Hazare and hence the talks fail to reach any conclusion. The Prime Minister continues to be a dummy who prefers not to talk, and in the absence of Sonia Gandhi, maintains a stoic silence.

The acting chief Rahul Gandhi who is known more for inserting his foot in mouth every time he opens his mouth to talk, has probably been advised to keep it shut. His advisors prefer to send him to distant villages on Quixotic missions to keep him away from the television cameras and their awkward questions.

Meanwhile congress party spokesmen prefer to attempt to divide the civic society by roping in prominent personalities and writers to create an anti-Hazare wave, and still fail. The leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley hit the hammer on the head, when he said that the enormity of protests is proportionate to the public anger and the enormity of the anger is proportionate to the corruption.

The government is not willing to draft a strong bill on the argument that a Lokpal bill alone cannot tackle corruption. Manmohan Singh said that he does not have a magic wand to rid the country of corruption. But he doesn’t realize that no country tackles corruption with magic wands.

It needs only a committed government which does not tolerate corruption to end corruption. And the Manmohan Singh government clearly doesn’t want corruption to end. It is obviously more concerned about maintaining status quo.

Anna Hazare has rightly said that this is the second fight for freedom. The fight is more important because politics has become a family business and corruption has become the tool for increasing the fiscal status of the family business.

The government has with their inability to draft an appropriate Lokpal Bill have let down the people who have elected them. And Anna Hazare needs all the support he can get to fight a battle which he is doing for you and me.

We desperately need to win this fight!

The law of the land

It is often said that the three pillars of democracy- the Judiciary, the Executive and the legislature are expected to work independent of each other. Yet the political class is often accused of interfering and influencing the working of the executive while the Judiciary has been labeled pure and working independently. And it is an accepted norm without asking any questions.

Yet the Anna Hazare drama that unfolded in the last two weeks has exposed many a indications where rules and regulations have been overridden setting new precedents. It raises just one question – is this how the Judiciary works behind the scenes away from the public glare?

The first glaring role of the Judicial Magistrate was when the Commissioner of Police arrests Anna Hazare who threatened to go on a fast; he had been arrested even before the fast began. The Judicial Magistrate not only accepted the arrest as being under the rule of law, but went on to order a remand of seven days under Judicial custody.

There is no law of the land that any person can be arrested for going on a fast. Yet this arrest has taken place and reported widely not only in India, but the world over, and yet the vigilant Supreme Court or even the High Court does not take any suo moto cognizance of the illegality committed by a lower Court.

Comical does it seem that the same court which thought it necessary to keep Anna Hazare under Judicial lock up for seven days, reverses its own order in the evening and orders his release from custody. The entire exercise makes one notice how the police and the judiciary have acted on commands of the politicians.

Have our judiciary and police – the two pillars of democracy become used to so unconstitutional governance that they have become a willing tool in the hands of the political masters. Doesn’t this speak volumes of our country’s democracy?

 It is inevitable that the Anna Hazare movement has taken shape into a people’s movement. The Congress government does not realize even now that the Jan Lokpal Bill has been set aside and it is the resentment against the government that is being vented through this movement.

The government may argue that the Lokpal Bill initiated in Parliament has scope for improvement. But the public is far ahead in its thinking and may ultimately ask for new representatives in the Lok Sabha.

Disaster management in Goa is better

The pipeline carrying naphta from the Marmagoa harbour to Zuari Industries in Zuarinagar sprung a leakage reportedly when the work of digging by earth moving machinery for the expansion of highways was underway. Some locals allege that it occurred when miscreants tried to drill a hole into the pipeline mistaking it for the petroleum pipeline leading to Zuari Indian Oil Tanking premises.

The result was that large quantity of naphta flowed into the stream leading into a lake at Mangor in Vasco, and it caught fire accidentally. The inferno caused huge damage to the vegetation as well as a number of houses. Five persons were seriously injured because of the fire.

The naphta flowed into wells which were used by the locals polluting the water. On the positive side, the fire tenders of the State as well as the Indian Navy responded immediately and brought the fire under control and averted what could have been a much larger catastrophe.

Though local newspapers tried to point fingers and find fault with the Disaster Management Group of the government, the overall management at the site was to be appreciated. The affected people were immediately evacuated from the site and provided with prompt assistance both the government agencies as well as by the Zuari Industries group.

Around two hundred houses around the site of disaster were affected and these have reportedly been evacuated and have been provided food and shelter by locals as well as by the industry sources. This prompt action both by the government and industry needs to be appreciated.

The chemical found in the water of two wells on the hills western slopes have been extracted and the extracted water with the chemical has been taken to the Zuari Indian Oil Tanking premises. The other wells in the locality have not been contaminated.

The work by the agencies including the Disaster Management Cell of the government needs to be appreciated because similar disaster around the world has had much more fatalities and cause much more destruction. In this fire, there were two domestic gas cylinder explosions, but there were no casualties when it had spread to the houses.

We need to accept the fact that such accidents are pure accidents. The police had in the past caught offenders who had tapped into the petrol pipeline of Zuari Indian Oil Tanking and it is obvious that in the present case some miscreants had tried to attempt the same.

Why don’t sportsperson have anything to say on corruption?

The Indian cricket team has been reduced to a bunch of floundering amateurs against an inexorable English side in the current Test series. Victory has come so ridiculously easy for the Englishmen that the Indian team seems to be trying to improvise on the worst margin to lose in each following match.

The hottest topic of discussion on prime time on our television news channel after the defeat in the third test was the reasons of such alarming margins of defeat. Cricket experts and everybody’s uncle fell over each other trying to jostle for space in television court rooms, and each had a opinion to shout.

That was until 15^th August came and Anna Hazare took over. And suddenly the national game of India has been sidelined into a byline at the bottom of the television screen to be shown intermittently during advertisement breaks.

Yet sports has featured in the national shame list, the latest being the doping scandal in athletics; who can forget Kalmadi and his hall of shame in the Common Wealth Games. Till now, nobody has associated the present set of our cricketers to the corruption scene; I am sure, if the discussion interrupted by Anna Hazare had continued, this could have been attributed as one of the reasons.

For a world number one team to fall from glory without even a whimper or a fight, with the inclusion of a batsman who is considered God in cricket, if it doesn’t raise eyebrows, what else will?

After the Azharuddin match fixing scandal, the Indian cricket team has not been accused of any match fixing charges. They may have been accused of being more devoted to their commercial schedules, but other wise no serious charge has been made. Occasionally they have been shown interested in social causes, but they have used black ribbons to signify their protest for causes in the past.

Surprising that when Indians the world over are reacting to Anna’s anti-corruption drive, when Indians of every walk of life expressing some opinion on corruption, not a single sportsperson has anything to say.

No sportsperson wants to join Anna in his crusade against corruption; no tennis player, no athlete, no cricketer, nobody. We even have lawyers striking work in support of Anna, even children of policemen working in Tihar jail passing out free food and water to protestors, but not even a peep from our sportspersons.

That shouldn’t raise eyebrows, that should raise your whole forehead!

Opportunity of Goans to go to Tihar Jail missed?

The High Court of Bombay at Goa objected to the government decision of accepting a bid for the running of the Mapusa District Hospital on a Public-Private-Partnership basis from Radiant Life Care Pvt Ltd. This company had asked for an amount of Rs.1.97 crores per year from the government to run the hospital.

The government had rejected the offer from Shalby Ltd which had offered to run the hospital without any cost from the government on the grounds that the bid was not in proper format. This has brought onto focus the approach of the administration in matters of public revenue.

And this was highlighted by the high court of Bombay at Goa, which observed: "There is no doubt that since the matter involves public revenue the government was duty-bound by law to accept the lowest or the most beneficial tender."

The court also held that in the present case, the state, like any prudent businessman, ought to have sought the necessary clarification if it entertained any doubts, since the tender which it left out of consideration appeared to be financially the best offer.
The court observed: "It seems plain that (Shalby) does not want any payment from the government nor do they intend to make any payment. It is understandable that a question could have arisen in the mind of the (government) as to the exact meaning of the quotation, but then the simple answer to that was to ask the petitioner what they meant."
The court directed the government to consider the existing offers afresh and to set aside the letter of intent issued to Radiant.

The government of the State of Goa is following the lines of the government at the Centre in matters of decisions that reek of corruption. It does not seem to draw lessons from the inmates of Tihar Jail – A. Raja and Suresh Kalmadi who have been lodged there precisely for similar decisions.

So in the days to come, if the Courts had not stopped the government from accepting the bid of Radiant Life Care Pvt Ltd, we would probably have had a Goan in company with the cabinet ministers in Tihar Jail.

Opportunity missed?