The mid-day meal management madness

 For the second time in a little over a month, there has been another case of food poisoning in a school. The mid-day meal scheme has been launched by the government in Goa for school children from standard fifth to eighth. The government provides an amount of Rs.120 per child per month to a self help group whose job it is to provide fresh cooked food every day for each child.

The self help groups are voluntary NGOs which provide the catering service to the schools. In the first case, 54 students from Murgao School of Vasco had to be admitted to the hospital after consuming the mid-day meal on June 16.

In the latest case, 12 students from Our Lady of Carmel High School of Curtorim had to be hospitalized on Thursday.

Incidentally, when the scheme was started, a couple of years ago, 18 students had to be admitted in hospital over food poisoning.

The mid-day meal scheme was reportedly launched to provide nutritious meals to children, especially for the children of the poor people. It also provides some revenue for self help groups consisting of women of economically weaker sections of the society.

But as in any other government schemes, it has attracted people sensing business opportunity, with the result that there are reports of many children avoiding eating the meals as they are not tasty enough.

While the government has fixed the menu for the week, there are no standards to check the quality of food served to the children. And the organizations, to make a quick buck, compromise on the quality of the food, with the result that fewer children eat the food and thereby defeating the very purpose that the mid day meal scheme was launched.

There are suggestions in some newspapers that the amount of money must instead be given to the parents of the child; but this suggestion is not appropriate, as cooking the food in bulk is economical. Poorer parents would not be afford to provide tiffin daily for the paltry sum of Rs.120 per child per month.

The pathetic state of affairs is that why the self help group are not be able to give decent meals to the children. And the fact that the schools are not able to exercise quality control on the food supplied by the self help group.

The law in the eyes of the beholder

We are happy when the Supreme Court pulls up the government for going slow on their investigations into crimes. We are happy when they speak eloquently on the morals of injustice heaped by the government on the people.

Occasionally we smirk at the long delay in dispensation of justice, and shrug our shoulders when informed that our Courts are over burdened with work and with shortage of Judges.

But have we ever heard of any case where any Judge has been asked to explain his delay in justice? Have we ever heard of anybody questioning any Judge for miscarriage of justice? Have heard of any suo moto cognizance of such cases as PILs?

On August 5, 2010, the Delhi police arrested a 18 year old boy on charges of theft of Rs.200. The boy denied the charge; the police refused to believe him and registered a FIR against him charging him under section 379 for theft and 411 for dishonestly keeping stolen property.

If convicted, the maximum punishment for this offence was three months imprisonment. He was lodged in Tihar jail after denying him bail because of the “seriousness” of his crime.

Six months later, lawyers of a Human Rights organization came to know of his case and pleaded the case on his behalf. The Court granted him bail on the condition that he could show a collateral against the Rs.10,000 bail bond.

As he couldn’t, he was forced to remain in judicial custody. Finally, almost one year later, his lawyers advised him to plead guilty, which he did, inspite of having not committed the crime.

As he had spent almost 12 months in jail, he had completed more time than the maximum punishment of three months, and he was let free.

The tragedy of the whole exercise, that a person who was not guilty has been punished for a crime he did not commit. Also he has undergone imprisonment for a duration that is equivalent to a punishment for a more heinous crime.

By not allowing him to go free after three months imprisonment, the Courts have committed a grave crime of curbing the freedom granted by the Constitution of India for a period of almost nine months.

So are our Honourable Courts going to take suo moto cognizance of this crime and punish the errant Judge?

The politics of a resignation drama

In the elections held to elect booth-level committees of the Goa Pradesh Youth Congress on Wednesday, chief minister Digambar Kamat-backed candidate Baburao Bandodkar emerged victorious by a wafer-thin margin of one vote over Pritesh Kavlekar from the rival camp.

Two other members, Hassan Mulla and Miraj Khan-both from Moti Dongor and learnt to have been backed by Kamat-could not poll the bare minimum of five votes and were thus left out of the block committee.

Analysts said this indicated that the chief minister's hold over the Youth Congress in his home constituency has largely weakened. Thus with the GPYC elections concluding on Wednesday, a straight fight is now on the cards between Pratima Coutinho and Xavier Fialho for the post of president.

Newspaper reports say senior politicians, including a couple of ministers, have now tacitly backed Fialho, in a bid to keep Pratima at bay. Fialho also enjoys the support of the Alemao-camp, it is learnt. Some of the Gen Next members of the Alemao family were also spotted outside one of the polling booths, newspaper reports said. Nevertheless, the Coutinho-camp sounded optimistic of an easy win for Pratima.

The Alemao brothers who had resigned from the State Cabinet, and after a meeting with the Congress High Command on Sunday, reportedly got a pat on the back and nothing else. With no other assurance being given, the two brothers returned back to withdraw their resignations and vouch loyalty to the party.

What news papers termed a damp squib of a resignation drama, is surely turning up to be something else. The resignation drama was a smoke screen; the real drama is now unfolding.

Mr. Churchill Alemao said the party leaders have asked them not to quit. “They (party leaders) have assured that Ms. Valanka would be given due importance for a party ticket during the forthcoming Goa legislative assembly elections,” he told reporters.

The question now in everybody’s mind is, if the Alemao brothers resigned because Valanka was disqualified from contesting the GPYCC elections, what did the Delhi trip achieve?

They have returned empty handed, with the high command not even assuring them to reverse the disqualification issue, nor has Valanka been promised anything. So what did the Alemao brothers gain, is what everybody is wondering.

The state of affairs in our educational institutes

Newspaper reports reveal that the much hyped National Institute of Technology in Goa had shortlisted 52 candidates at the end of the third round of admissions, of which 5 students including 4 Goans did not show interest in taking admission.

There exist 90 seats for admission of which fifty percent are reserved for Goans and for candidates from Daman, Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli; of these only 29 seats have been admitted from Goa.

Only 47 students have been admitted and they include 29 Goan students, 6 from Dadra and Nagar Haveli, one each from Daman and Lakshadweep islands, and 10 from rest of India. Furthermore, the 29 Goan students comprise of 16 students from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Classes, while 13 are from the general category.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development had allocated an annual intake of 90 students to NIT-Goa from last year, comprising of 30 students each in the B Tech programs namely Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engineering, and Electrical and Electronics Engineering. In addition, 6 seats have been allocated under the Direct Admission for Students Abroad (DASA) scheme.

This does not auger well for the State. The National Institute of Technology in the country are held at par with the Indian Institutes of Technology and it was expected that establishment of a world class education institute in the State would raise the standards of education.

But, as the adage goes, sheep in tigers skin does not a tiger make. The education system in the state is controlled by matriculates and a bunch of these decide what is good for the state. The debate on the medium of instruction to be followed by our schools is carried out by non-academicians.

We don’t get to read the opinions of our academicians and researchers; newspapers are full of opinions of our politicians and budding politicians who have very poor academic record. Editorials and newspaper write ups are by columnists who talk of medium of instruction in the same breath as they do of the 2G scam and Kalmadi.

When are the right people going to talk? When are the right people going to decide on education issues?

Only then can we really be proud of our institutions.

The damp squib in a resignation drama

 We have to give due credit to Shri Digambar Kamat, the Chief Minister of Goa for handling yet another dramatic crises that his government has faced with the resignation drama enacted by the Alemao brothers. The Congress high command managed to persuade the sulking Alemao brothers to not only withdraw their resignations from the cabinet and the party but also to work for its success in future!

We have seen such threats in the past, and the media has time and again labeled them empty threats once the crises had blown over. Nobody has given credit where it is due. It is the magical handling of such crises situation that has kept Shri Kamat on his high chair.

The Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Shri Rajiv Shukla reportedly told the Alemao brothers that they were assets for the party and that they should continue to be so. It is also reported that the party leadership told them that their family had contributed immensely for the party and that it should continue its alliance with the party for the benefit of the people of the state.

The bottom line of the whole drama is that the Alemao brothers returned back gaining nothing but their bloated egos. The disqualification has not been withdrawn and Valanka cannot contest the Youth Congress elections. And yet everybody seems to be happy.

 So what had been the objective of the whole resignation drama? Are the Alemao brothers so insecure that once in a while they need a few comforting words of assurance from the congress high command? If they do, then perhaps they need to see a psychiatrist!

What we can read from this is the very shrewd mind hiding behind those glasses of the man occupying the high chair in the State of Goa. We must give credit to Shri Digambar Kamat because it is his due. He has done this in the past and he has done it now.

How can we forget the shrewd tackling of the Parrikars and the Monserrattes and the Madkaikars and the Dhavlikars and the Narvekars in the past? Unfortunately for the state, the only job the Chief Minister of Goa seems to be doing is maintaining the government boat afloat and progressing nowhere.

The state is floating in the ocean with no direction going nowhere and in a form of suspended animation. When will all this end?

The anatomy of a resignation

Goa ministers and brothers Churchill Alemao and Joaquim Alemao Saturday submitted their resignations from the cabinet as also the Congress party, after Churchill's daughter was disqualified for one year from internal Youth Congress elections scheduled next week.

Churchill, the public works department (PWD) minister, and Joaquim, the urban development minister, submitted their resignations to the chief minister's secretariat.

"I, along with my brother, have resigned because my daughter (Valanka) was disqualified from the Youth Congress elections without any necessary reason," Churchill Alemao told reporters.

Valanka, 30, an aspiring politician, had been publicly endorsed by Chief Minister Digambar Kamat and the Alemaos and was one of the front runners in the Youth Congress polls. The elections were being conducted by Foundation for Advance Management of Elections (FAME), an NGO pursuing electoral reforms and floated by former chief election commissioner J.M. Lyngdoh. Youth Congress returning officer Sumit Khanna said that the disqualification followed after instructions from FAME.

Now the disqualification, we understand is as per rules. But why the drama? The Chief Minister himself has endorsed Valanka’s candidature during a public function at Margao, yet at the cost of plump port folios, why do two heavy weights resign over what seems as a trivial matter?

After some introspection the following appears to be the case:

For the last fourteen years or so, the post of the Youth Congress President is held by Pratima Coutinho. And Pratima herself has been supported by Churchill in the past. But now, if Pratima were to be reelected for yet another term, her husband’s chances of contesting for the Margao Assembly seat are increased.

And the Margao Assembly seat aspirant is the present Chief Minister Digambar Kamat. And if Digambar Kamat is to be reelected from Margao, he needs the support of the Alemao brothers desperately.

Moreover, with Narvekar as a possible threat for the Chief Minister’s post after the next elections, the support of the Alemao brothers is worth its weight in gold!

So is the present resignation drama enacted under the advise and blessings of Digambar Kamat?

In the past Kamat has been successful in working out miracles when there was threat to his chair and his government. And so it seems that he is willing to chance it again.

The AICC general secretary in charge of Goa, talking tough during his latest visit to Goa, had firmly conveyed that the MLAs and ministers need to deliver and that key portfolios should have fresh ministers.

But if the party leadership is considering accepting the resignations and cleaning up the stables, rather than finding itself under the constant threat of resignations in the run-up to the ensuing assembly elections, then these calculations might boomerang.

Only time will tell.

Better railway facilities in India

After the success of the golden quadrilateral road transport system, it is now the turn of the railways – the golden rail corridor. The Indian Railways has planned to develop a supe fast track between Mumbai and Delhi with trains going at speeds of 160 to 200 kmph to reduce the time of travel to just seven hours down from the existing sixteen hours taken by the Rajdhani Express.

The railways plan to achieve this on the existing tracks after making minor changes in the loop design but with new trains. They claim that the cost of this will not be very high as there is no land acquisition involved.

All this is good news and very believable. The Indian Railways claims are believable as they have achieved feats which in Indian work conditions appeared impossible.

A decade ago, it was accepted fact that the Indian Railways (like present day Indian Airlines) always runs in losses, and in every budget, efforts were made to minimize these by escalating the passenger fare rates. It was beyond our imagination that one day the railways could run in profit.

Yet, in a decade of inflation in every sphere of life, the railways have shown profits. These were achieved through simple management changes which proved radical. Similarly, the development of the Konkan Railway within a time schedule suddenly brought a new face to government working, and with it changed the way people looked at government work.

Recent changes in the railways has been the improvement in booking of tickets on the internet and near complete eradication of the middle man in ticket booking. There has been remarkable change in the quality of catering and house keeping that has made traveling by train more comfortable hence preferred.

Thus, once the railways claims it will get the golden rail corridor, it is to be believed and once this corridor is set in motion, we can expect more changes in the railway system in the rest of the country.

We can only hope that this is one public infrastructure in the country that can make us proud of. Also hopefully, this can be achieved if, and only if, our politicians don’t poke their dirty noses into the affairs of the railways.

Till then, we can only keep our fingers crossed, and hope for the best.

Saga of the bridge across Zuari

One of the few nightmares that Goan newspapers like to revel in, is the collapse of the road bridge across Zuari river at Cortalim. The leading newspaper in Goa has observed that we need to start work on construction of a new bridge across Zuari river immediately, as the life span of the existing bridge gets over in two years.

In the same story they predict that the construction of the new bridge will take at least five years. Hence, in other words, (not in story), even if we were to start the work of constructing a new bridge now, we would have no bridge for three years!

It blames the government for sleeping on the problem and pats itself on the back for being far-sighted. Of course, it conveniently does not mention that they didn’t think of this story three years ago!

For, if the construction of a new bridge does take five years, the best time to start the work is five years before the life span of the existing bridge ends, isn’t it?

Rather, it’s Wednesday headlines read “Construction of new Zuari bridge must begin now” and continues in the same vein for the rest of the week publishing letters from readers commending it on taking up on the issue.

Everybody knows we need a new bridge across Zuari and everybody knew this several years ago. Every year, the present bridge is closed for a couple of days for inspection and occasionally minor repairs are taken up.

Heavy vehicles are not permitted on this bridge except for buses. The day the authorities stopped allowing heavy vehicles on the bridge, it became apparent that we needed a new bridge across Zuari.

The government hemmed and hawed pointing to the difficulties in constructing a bridge across the Zuari basin until somebody pointed to the Konkan Railway bridge standing solidly. The government then wondered aloud of a sea link from Vasco to Dona Paula until somebody pointed at the huge cost factor and asked who is going to pay for it.

Nobody pointed out that the Mandovi river has two bridges parallel to each other, and that it is quiet okay to have two parallel bridges to ease the traffic. Nobody mentioned that it is not necessary to start building a new bridge only when the first one collapses.

Nobody told them that we don’t need to look at Worli and anywhere else to decide whether to have two bridges across a river. We have two on the Mandovi and we know we need those two bridges,so it is all right to have two across Zuari for we need two bridges across Zuari.

Everybody knows that.

The checkered life of a policeman

The body of a youth of Arossim, Mr. Melwyn Gomes was found near a water tank at the construction site of a hotel. The villagers of Arossim allege that the Police Inspector Mr. Jivba Dalvi who was investigating the case has deliberately tried to destroy evidence and made the case weak when it was an alleged murder, to cover up for the culprits.

The villagers, along with the priests of the local church took up the issue with the government and through a series of agitations have succeeded in getting the police to re-investigate into the death of Melwyn.

The villagers are still demanding the dismissal of the police inspector from service and are not satisfied with his suspension order. On Wednesday, the villagers blocked the road leading to prominent hotels like Park Hyatt and Heritage Village Club by barricading the road with felled coconut trees and rocks and thus affecting the flow of vehicles entering and exiting the hotels.

A few villagers along with the parish priests met the Director General of Police at Panaji and submitted a memorandum demanding dismissal of the police inspector. The moral of this story is that in Goa, even routine affairs of investigation into murder cases by police officers need public intervention and agitations and morchas.

Otherwise, the police will take the easier and less cumbersome route of declaring murder cases as suicides after accepting a sizeable “consideration” from the accused. It was evident to the villagers that Melwyn was murdered in connection with affairs related to the hotel management.

And the police inspector Jivba Dalvi is known to favour all five star hotels in the region. In fact, a major part of his career as a police sub-inspector included posting only in this region. His wedding reception was held in Hotel Hyatt.

Ha has a huge bungalow at Margao. When the vigilance department had raided his house and added up his assets, they were found disproportionate to his known sources of income and was duly placed under suspension.

Within days, he managed to get himself reinstated with all honours, and thereafter got promoted. The script of the present story may also carry on along the same lines. He will soon be reinstated and posted back in Colva until his next promotion.

This unfortunately is the state of affairs in our paradise state of Goa.

Tackling the stray dog menace

Recent newspaper reports describe the predicament faced by residents of Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir over the increasing stray dog population. The stray dog population of the city has been rising alarmingly to cross the one lakh mark within a period of four years.

A public interest litigation was moved in the Jammu & Kashmir High Court seeking directions for the State Government to handle the growing population of stray dogs in the city. The government reportedly pleaded before the Court that the dog population of the city would be sterilized within a stipulated time period.

A lawyer who was keenly following the case had asked the government counsel whether the dogs would stop biting after it was sterilized! This problem of stray dogs appears to be new for Srinagar and if they need to learn a lesson or two on stray dog mismanagement, they must refer to Goa!

They will learn exactly what must not be done for controlling the stray dog menace, because in Goa, in spite of having a very vast government funded sterilization programme, we have failed miserably.

The Government of India provides funds to NGOs and animal welfare organizations a sizable amount of money for sterilization of stray dogs. Under this programme, the NGOs have flourished and so has the dog population!

The Ministry of Social Welfare provides money for each dog sterilized; a higher rate for female dogs than male dogs. Animal welfare organizations sterilize an average of ten dogs per day and they have been at this job for the last ten years and more.

In spite of this, the stray dog menace in our towns has not reduced. Earlier, each municipal council had a designated dog shooter whose job it was to kill rabid and diseased stray dogs.

But with animal rights activists raising a hue and cry, killing of stray dogs are now termed illegal. With the government now clueless on how to handle the menace of stray dog population in our streets, people now expect the animal rights activists to provide th solution.

Apparently their suggestion of sterilization has been beneficial only for their own financial stability, for the people of Goa continue to suffer from a menace that never existed in the first place.

Need for truck terminus in Goa

While parking of cars has been a major problem in our towns and city, another problem related to vehicles in the offing is the parking and unloading of goods from trucks. Goa is dependent on its neighbouring states for most of its consumable goods including vegetables and grains while at the same time is host to a number of industrial units.

As such a lot of raw materials arrive into the state for the industries via the sea route, rail route as well as by road. All inland transport is then by road and thus we see a large number of trucks parked at every available place outside the outskirts of our towns and near industrial estates.

Other states overcome this problem of haphazard parking by allotting areas earmarked as truck depots for trucks and trolleys. But unfortunately, Goa does not have even one single truck terminus. Even when our managers do find a solution by identifying a place in Curti, Ponda as a truck depot, our politicians stepped in and made it a political issue.

And as with any of our problems being taken over by politicians, this issue also has been taken over and is hanging in the air with no solution in sight. There is something very wrong in the way our politicians handle any matter.

The way they go about it, it is as if they don’t want any solution to any of our problems. They are under the wrong impression that if any problem were solved – be it the garbage issue, or medium of instruction issue, or traffic congestion in our cities, then the importance of our politicians will be lost.

They want people to come to them with problems but will provide only temporary solutions. If they had solved all problems, they fear people will no longer come to them. Though it appears that the politicians fear is baseless, and that people will reelect politicians who are efficient and provide excellent and permanent solutions, then the people themselves have proved it wrong.

When Shri Manohar Parrikar was the Chief Minister, he had provided solutions to a number of problems – be it by making Panaji the most attractive city in India, providing the bypass road to Old Goa to ease traffic congestion at Ribandar, or formation of GIDC to bring quality construction work, or zero tolerance of corruption in government offices by arming vigilance department with additional staff. Now there is fear that he might even lose in his own constituency, let alone be the Chief Minister.

So we can expect no solution to this problem as well.

Solutions to the parking problem

The parking space in the four city towns of Goa – Panaji, Mapusa, Margao and Ponda has reached the saturation point. The city municipalities as well as the traffic police don’t seem to have any solution to ease parking in their respective city or towns.

Each civic authority has been found to be fiddling with solutions under a trial and error system – first planning or introducing a system and then dumping or withdrawing the system when it becomes difficult to manage.

Newspaper reports say that the main roads of the city of Panaji – 18^th June Road and M G Road have already exceeded its capacity and to traverse down these roads is exceedingly difficult during the day time on week days.

The only solution the traffic police engage in is clamping of the occasional four wheeler parked wrongly in a no parking area or parked parallel to a parked vehicle on the road. This is no solution to the problem as the vehicle continues to occupy the place until the owner pays a fine and the traffic police arrives to unlock the clamp and release the vehicle.

And often another vehicle comes and parks in the same place and the whole cycle is repeated. The solution to this problem ultimately is not clamping of vehicles and increasing the fine as the vehicle had to be parked somewhere until its owner has finished his business, which often does not take more than a few minutes.

The solution lies with the policy of the government. A casual survey of the city traffic reveals that more than 50 percent of the cars parked in the city belong to shop owners. The shop owner drives down into the city early in the morning and parks the car in a legitimate parking slot.

He then opens his shop and stays in the shop conducting his business until nightfall. So his car occupies the parking space for the whole day and occupies precious space resulting in very little space for the casual visitor who drives down into the city for a few hours on work.

This transit visitor drives into the city on business and needs parking space for less than an hour of so and thus finds no place to park. This transit visitor constitutes in almost 80 percent of the city traffic, and if he had found legitimate parking space would not have spent less than an hour in the city.

But now because he has no parking space, he spends more than that hour just hunting for parking, adding to fuel costs, adding to the traffic and wasting his own precious time. The  problem has thus been created by the vehicles parked in the city the whole day.

The solution to the problem thus lies in providing alternate efficient and proper local transport. The autorickshaw and motorcycle pilots are known to charge exorbitant rates, that the mere realization that you are being fleeced makes people averse to using this system and would prefer to use his own car even though it may cost more.

If there was an efficient shuttle service passing through the major roads in our towns and city, the traffic would definitely ease to a phenomenal extent. People are willing to use public transport as with increasing fuel prices, driving down to work is a necessary evil. If an alternate is in place, people would not only accept it, but would prefer to use it.

But then our planners seem to have other priorities.

Unique Identification Number project will remain a dream

Goa is expected to be the first state in the country to be entirely covered by the Unique Identification Project, as per the Chief Minister of Goa Shri Digambar Kamat. He claims that 21 post offices in the State will function as enrolment stations under the scheme and these post offices are expected to cover each and every citizen of the State within the next four months.

Shri Kamat’s claim sounds good but the target of four months appears unrealistic. The process of covering each and every person in the State is difficult through only 21 centres. The process itself sounds cumbersome and needs a lot of effort in fulfilling the whole procedure.

Every citizen is required to fill a form for enrolling and submit it to the registrar along with the proof of address. Every enrolment station will have one postal clerical staff for verification of documents. After checking the enrolment form entries and address proof, the postal officer will impress a stamp stating “original seen and verified”.

Thereafter, the enrolment agency will record the finger print with the help of a finger print scanner and also the eyes with the help of the iris reader. The data is then sent to the ADHAR server and a unique number generated. A receipt is the given to the citizen.

The entire exercise reportedly will require 20 minutes per citizen and everyday each centre will service 50 citizens. The calculations are based on these figures. This is in an ideal situation where each and every citizen fills up a form correctly and gets copies of the right documents.

In this calculation, it is not taken into account if any citizen does not commit any mistake and has to return back without completing any work. In practice, at least fifty percent of the applicants are susceptible for mistakes in entry of forms or in getting the right forms. This is evident in every case where forms are to be filled.

Even educated people make mistakes while filling forms, what about illiterate people? Instead of projecting unrealistic time schedules, the Chief Minister must actually have made a statement of assuring the Central Government of steps the State will take to complete the task faster. Would he be able to spare more people, open more centres for the collection of the data?

People need help to fill the forms and appointing just one clerical staff for each centre is plain stupidity, if not anything else. Though four months target is not unrealistic, the way the State plans to go about the exercise sounds very unrealistic.

Terror makes its ugly appearance

Within a span of 15 minutes, three blasts ripped through the crowded areas in Mumbai on Wednesday evening killing at least 21 people and injuring over 140 others. The maximum casualties have been have been reported in Zaveri Bazaar which is a famous jewellery market in Mumbai.

This area appears to be the target of almost every terror attack that has taken place in Mumbai. In the first case in 1993, the police had successfully defused a bomb kept in a scooter when 13 blasts had rocked the city in other places.

In the second case in 2003, a blast at Zaveri Bazaar claimed 54 lives. Wednesday’s blast took place outside a popular eatery which is crowded on most evenings. This blast was of higher intensity than the one at Dadar but the Opera House blast was evidently the most powerful.

All these blasts occurred between 6.50 pm and 7.05 pm on Wednesday. The blast at Zaveri Bazaar was triggered through explosives planted in an umbrella. The one at Opera House was caused by an explosive device concealed in a meter box while the one at Dadar was concealed in a Maruti Esteem car.

Police suspect the hand of a home-grown Islamic terrorist group, the Indian Mujahideen behind the three blasts. Police said the bombings at crowded places bear the signature of what the Indian Mujahideen had used in carrying out earlier blasts in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi in 2008 and in Varanasi and Pune in 2010.

This terror attack is a wake-up call to all authorities the world over that even though the United States government had eliminated Osama bin Ladn, it has not eliminated terrorism along with him.

The threat of terrorism still looms high in the world and can strike at any moment at the most unsuspected areas. Lightening may not strike twice at the same place, but terror attack can as is seen in the three-in-a-row attack on Zaveri Bazaar in Mumbai.

Hence the world must take notice of the Mumbai attack as a grim reminder to recoup ourselves and be ready to fight terrorism.

Its time to stop gloating on the fact that Laden is dead but America has not killed terrorism and its cause.

Bail is not a verdict of innocence

In most police and CBI cases, acquittals have become routine because of delayed and casual approach by the investigating officers – sometimes deliberate, sometimes because of incompetence, and sometimes because of too many persons involved in charge of the investigations.

Because of this trend of acquittals in most cases of economic offences, especially where high profile persons are accused, the new trend of denial of bail by the Supreme Court of India at the inquiry stage itself has been welcome.

Some may call this denial as a window dressing measure so that the credibility of the Court is maintained. Refusal of bail and confinement to custody before charges are filed were normally reserved for heinous crimes like murder or dacoity or here there was probability of the accused tampering with the evidence.

This trend seems to have changed with the 2G scam case. The Supreme Court seems to have noted that the CBI took an inordinately long time to arrest the accused probably because of the influence the accused wielded in their public offices.

It probably indicated possibility of the accused tampering with the records or with the witnesses. In a similar case, the Court had observed that offences against body and property affect one person or at the most a few others, whereas in case of economic offences where public offices were used to defraud over large sums of money, it affected the society at large.

It meant that the impact of the offence in the society could be the next yard stick to measure the gravity of any offence and thus become the deciding factor on the decision whether to grant an accused bail or to keep in custody.

The society welcomes this decision even though it is a temporary feeling of having punished the rich and powerful. It however does not augment well for the rich and famous, as the chances of bail seem to diminish on the accused’s financial status.

The Court may observe that the CBI seems to take inordinate time to arrest the accused and may appoint committees in other cases, but at the same time, shouldn’t Courts look within their own functioning?

How many cases are there where Judges have been pulled up for delaying cases? None. Is there a system in place to pull up a Judge for delay in hearing of civil cases which we know have been dragging on for years, or for the accumulated rates of interest in land acquisition cases in the form of arrears? None.

Who will bell this cat?

Judicial activism in India - a new awakening

A series of judgments from the Supreme Court of India in the last few months has suddenly jolted the Government from deep slumber. In the 2G spectrum case, in which Telecom Minister A. Raja was the main accused in a mega-crore scam, the Court wondered “how is he continuing in the Cabinet when the CBI is probing serious charges against him?” Following this observation, A. Raja quit office and in February this year landed in Tihar Jail along with the other high profile accused.

In March 2011, the Supreme Court quashed as illegal the appointment of P. J. Thomas as Central Vigilance Commissioner because of a charge sheet pending against him in Kerala. The Court also laid down guidelines for future appointments to this post. P.J. Thomas had been cleared for appointment by the Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh but had not taken any action when it was brought to his notice the pending case.

Three more judgments were pronounced this month. The judge hearing the multi-crore black money laundering case pulled up the government for the laggardly pace of investigations. The judge wondered aloud “What the hell is happening with this country?” and made headlines all over the country. The Court appointed a special investigation team to probe and monitor steps being taken to bring the black money back to the country.

In another case, the Supreme Court ordered disbanding and disarming of the special police officers called “Salwa Judum” formed in the anti-naxal operations in many states. It called the arming of tribals by the state as unconstitutional.

In yet another case, the Supreme Court quashed the Mayawati government 2007 notification to acquire land in Greater Noida accusing the state of a sinister campaign to grab land of poor farmers.

All these judgments have come against a background of administrative inaction, in efficiency, graft or worse. The public has suddenly become happy that judges have come down heavily on our elected representatives.

The writing is there on the wall. It is up to our elected representatives to wake up and read the writing on the wall.

Or face the consequences.