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EDITORIAL
Down
to Action
Insulating
the prime minister's schemes from the bureaucracy
 In
a Christmas bonanza, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced a series
of social development programmes. The most ambitious of them is the Rs
60,000-crore Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, a rural roads project that
aims to provide an all-weather link to every village with a population
above 1,000. The problem is the very scheme was outlined with matching
fanfare on August 15. It is fair to ask if any progress has been made
over four months. This neglect of the minor detail called implementation
raises doubts about the December 25 doctrine too. Using a portion of India's
45 million tonnes of foodgrain stocks to feed the 10 million households
that still live on a starvation diet makes economic and moral sense. Nobody
can argue with the Netaji Subhas Saksharta (literacy) Mission either,
except if one were to go by the original National Literacy Mission (NLM)
of 1988 the literacy department should have disbanded by now.
India has
never lacked blueprints or, in fact, money for social welfare measures.
The mission has always been there, the missionary zeal absent. Like in
the case of the NLM, a time-bound agenda is soon consumed by a parasitic
bureaucracy. What Vajpayee has not been able to do is set up a system
that insulates his dream projects from the lassitude of the Indian state.
His search for a watchdog has to move beyond the clerkdom of the Ministry
of Programme Implementation. One option is to borrow from Rajiv Gandhi
who, 15 years ago, institutionalised short cuts by setting up "technology
missions". Warts and all, history will remember these as successful
efforts, especially in fields like telecom and oilseeds. Perhaps there
is a case for creating similar trans-ministerial agencies and seconding
quality manpower to these. There is no point buying a Windows program-and
hope to run it on your manual typewriter.
Horror
Movie
Why is
Nepal so highly strung over Hrithik?
 It
would be facile to dismiss the violence in Kathmandu over Hrithik Roshan's
alleged anti-Nepalese remarks as merely a bad joke gone wrong. The death
of four people in street violence, the ban imposed on the Indian actor's
films by Nepal and the apprehension that it could lead to an agitation
against the Indian community, which controls a substantial chunk of Nepal's
economy, suggest a more sinister pattern. This is not the first time Nepalese
citizens have reacted with outrage over an apparent insult. In 1999, Madhuri
Dixit, as big a Hindi film icon as any, travelled to Nepal and in reply
to a question said the country was "just like" her homeland.
This completely innocuous remark was interpreted as an example of Indian
expansionism. That a tiny country may be occasionally highly strung when
encountering a gigantic neighbour is to be expected. Unfortunately, there
is reason to believe that the public demonstrations in Nepal are not just
innocent if misplaced anger.
Nepal is
today the setting for a strange axis of anti-India forces: the Nepalese
naxalites who look to China, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence operatives
and a section of the Mumbai underworld. With Roshan reportedly being threatened
by Karachi-based gangsters, to suggest that the recent rumour is part
of psychological warfare may not be too far off the mark. There is precious
little that Indians can do to prevent such acts. The agency that is busy
playing Nero is the Government of Nepal. It has allowed its territory
to become a playground for criminals and terrorists and Nepalese politicians
are now grappling with a Frankenstein's monster. Even if the Roshan furore
dies down quickly-as, it is hoped, it will-the king's ministers must consider
the futility of simply watching while the neighbour's house is set on
fire.
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METRO TODAY
Among
the major spin-offs of developing the LCA is the mountain of confidence
that India's aeronautical engineers have gained. But there's still plenty
to do, writes INDIA TODAY Deputy Editor Raj Chengappa in
