>What Assam needs are very strong leaders who are interested
in Assam as opposed >to filling their pockets.
*** Where will we find any?
Any examples to cite here? Leaders who have changed things around
in the other states or in the Center?
*** Corruption is NOT the only problem, albeit a pervasive
one.
>One suggestion, I would have is for newspapers and other
media to give a >monthly list of all these corrupt officials and
term them as DNB has rightly >said 'anti national'.
*** So should the people designate newspaper editors the
investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner; so that they
can then list the names of the CORRUPT on a monthly basis? What kind
of democracy are we proposing here ?
Yet another desi-variant :-)?
Or should the people , having given up on the depend on the GOs
now place their faith on NGo's? If soi, why have the GO's? Why not get
rid of them and replace them with NGO's? Would that not bee the
logical thing to do :-)?
>So, unless people's attitude towards corruption is changed,
yes nothing is >going to happen.
*** Fair enough. How is the people's attitude going to be changed
by DNB and other righteous people, such as Assam Netters, to fall in
line with their desires? Mass re-education camps a-la- Mao or
moral-reorientation rallies :-)?
*** Does it sound to Netters like solutions at all?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 4:08 PM +0000 4/24/05, Ram Sarangapani wrote:
>Question is how? What kind of rising will do the job? Hartals, >gheraos, >bandhs, physical uttom-modhyom to the perceived guilty,
What Assam needs are very strong leaders who are interested in Assam as opposed to filling their pockets. It may not seem much, but people (NGOs) are doing what they can. It was because of the huge public outcry that there was a speedy trial and conviction of the culprits who raped & murdered a 12 year old girl in Guwahati. Bottomline is, if people so desire and are adamant that corruption be stemmed, they have the ability to affect changes.
One suggestion, I would have is for newspapers and other media to give a monthly list of all these corrupt officials and term them as DNB has rightly said 'anti national'. The newspapers can make sure such errant officials are thrown off their jobs and summarily run of town.
Unfortunately, the situation seems to be such that corruption by GMC/PWD or the ASEB is considered 'normal'. The people it seems have come to accept these probably as 'Generally Accepted Corrupt Practices' (GACP) - our own home-grown version of GAAP :-)
It come to such a pass, that parents of eligible brides often seek officials from GMC or ASEB or other places for grooms who have 'bhira poisa ase nohoi'.
So, unless people's attitude towards corruption is changed, yes nothing is going to happen. Its not enough for people to be complacent and keep saying they are helpless.
--Ram
>From: Chan Mahanta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: [Assam] The meek shall be homeless -II
>Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:42:26 -0500
>
>I looked for the author's promised recommendations on how to fix the
>'problem/s'.
>
>I did not find any. Of course I am disappointed.
>
>DNB has merely repeated the litany of complaints of the people of
>Assam that has been going on for decades now. His recommendation to
>the people to rise against what ails Assam is a day late and a
>dollar short. Others saw the handwriting on the wall much earlier.
>And some realized that nothing would change unless Assam wrested the
>powers to take care of itself from a remote Center and took to arms.
>
>DNB is right about only one thing: That nothing would change unless
>the people RISE. Question is how? What kind of rising will do the
>job? Hartals, gheraos, bandhs, physical uttom-modhyom to the
>perceived guilty, marching on the lax judges that fail to convict
>anyone, writing news-paper editorials excoriating the nations top
>law-enforcement agency, the CBI, for failing to get convictions more
>than the pathetic 8%, or abolish Assam police whose conviction rate
>is probably even less? What?
>
>Or maybe he should have been more explicit and told the people of
>Assam to get more moral?
>
>In a functional constitutional democracy, there are built in
>mechanisms with which the people can correct the course of its
>governance.Fix what is broken, amend what needs improving, so on and
>so forth. DNB realizes, like many before him already did, that such
>constitutional, peaceful means do not work in Indian democracy. For
>if they did, if they could be counted upon for the people to rely
>on, he would have cited them, would have pointed the uninformed to
>the tools available which they ought to use.
>
>Did he? Could he?
>
>Can Assam Netters fill in and supply what DNB missed?
>
>Too bad it was yet another exercise in running in circles, leading
>to nowhere.
>What I wonder about is whether it is a self inflicted condition or a
>genuine
>unawareness born out of never having seen any better.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>The meek shall be homeless -II
>WITH EYES WIDE OPEN
>
>D. N. Bezboruah
>Last week I had ended by saying that if we let the anti-social and
>criminal elements in our society have their way for ten more years
>they will dispossess all law-abiding citizens of their hearths and
>homes and banish the law for good. I was perhaps wrong about the
>ten years. Having started the process of selling Assam to
>Bangladesh already, they are in a tearing hurry to quit the scene
>of their treachery and disappear before anyone can get to them. So
>the process may take much less than we imagine.
>
>The first thing to bear in mind is that Assam is too full of people
>who cannot make a decent living out of their education, their
>skills or their wits. They certainly cannot make a living out of
>their manual labour. This is not to say that everyone here falls in
>that category. What I wish to convey is that a majority of the
>people who are in politics or in any kind of political management
>belong to this class who must make a living out of crooked practices
>alone. The only problem is they think that this is what politics is
>all about. So they sincerely believe that hoodwinking the people
>and living off them like overgrown parasites is perfectly
>legitimate activity in a democratic society. And therein lies the
>danger to the law-abiding citizen. So if we do not have our eyes
>wide open to look into our tomorrows, we are going to be outwitted
>by people who are less educated, less honest and less industrious
>than we are. And they are going to win against good people because
>they are more determined, more united in crime and far more
>desperate. They have nothing else to depend on except their
>crookedness.
>
>There are umpteen organizations that we can take up as examples to
>show how the crooked have always managed to defraud the honest and
>the law-abiding citizens. For the time being, we shall look at just
>two of them (or what were two organizations but have become six
>now). One is the Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) and the other
>the former Assam State Electricity Board (ASEB) that has now been
>broken up into five organizations, the names of which I cannot
>remember. I do not have to tell anyone that the GMC is not exactly
>an organization full of saintly souls. Had it been so, the
>commercial wards of Fancy Bazar, Pan Bazar and Athgaon would not
>have managed to get away with paying a fraction of the municipal
>taxes that they owe to the GMC, they would not have managed to get
>by on the old absurd rates even after increasing the size of their
>holdings several times, they would not have managed to flout all
>the building bye-laws and they would not have escaped punishment
>for regularly pumping water from the water mains. We know all these
>activities that cause severe losses to the GMC are possible because
>there are more people within the GMC who think of their own pockets
>before they think of the GMC that has employed them. I salute the
>minority in the GMC who can claim, hand on heart, that they are not
>guilty, but I maintain that they have been undone by too many
>errant brothers. The GMC also has hundreds of conservancy staff who
>have drawn their salaries for years without doing any work at all.
>They have even managed to increase their salaries and allowances.
>And because they do not work and because the garbage of the city
>must be cleaned, the GMC has had to entrust the task of garbage
>clearance to contractors who must be paid separately even though
>the GMC is already paying its conservancy staff. This is an
>anti-national crime on the part of both the conservancy staff who
>draw their salaries without working as well on the part of the
>officers who allow this to happen. And in a democracy, an
>anti-national crime is an anti-people crime. In other words, those
>guilty of this crime are enemies of the people. And what are these
>enemies of the people up to now? They are very anxious to get all
>the Asian Development Bank and World Bank development loans that
>are being extended to the GMC. But they have no intentions of
>treating these loans as loans. They would rather treat them as
>grants and siphon out whatever is possible into their own coffers.
>But the ADB and the WB are not as lenient customers as the Central
>Government. They know how to arm-twist beneficiaries into returning
>loans. And when this happens, the GMC will start hiking taxes
>eight, nine or even ten times for no development work whatsoever.
>Middle-class taxpayers will be in no position to pay such taxes
>(and should not pay such taxes to subsidize pay without work) and
>will soon find that they will have to sell their property to pay
>municipal taxes! And those who have always got away with paying a
>fraction of their legitimate taxes will be the ones to buy up such
>property. This is the scenario that stares us in the face unless we
>wake up now to prevent what is on the agenda of the crooked ones.
>We must insist on the dismissal of those who draw salaries without
>work and the proper calculation and collection of taxes in the
>commercial wards of the city before there can be any talk of hiking
>taxes. We must collectively challenge unfair tax hikes in court and
>carry out a crusade against such tax hikes to subsidize payment of
>salaries without work. Incidentally, all political parties of the
>State will call such a crusade the handiwork of the Left, but that
>should not worry anyone because this is really just a complaint
>about the opportunities for easy money at the cost of the Assamese
>that would seem to have eluded them.
>
>Then there is the Assam State Electricity Board (ASEB) or rather
>its five new avatars. The installed capacity of the ASEB was 514
>MW, and at one time the ASEB had about 24,000 employees. Over 46
>employees per MW of electricity generated and distributed must be a
>sort of record fit for the Guinness Book of World Records. But
>today the new avatars of the ASEB generate less than 120 MW. True,
>the number of employees has come down to about 17,000. But the
>number of employees per MW generated has gone up to a more adverse
>141.66 or so. And what is the Assam Electricity Regulatory
>Commission (AERC) planning to do now? Why, it now envisages a 16
>per cent return on equity for the new transmission companies of the
>ASEB. And yet, it was the same AERC that had turned down an appeal
>made by the ASEB for a three per cent return on equity made in the
>year 2002-03! What happens to the consumer? He ends up paying an
>increase of almost 50 per cent on power tariff. And he is being
>expected to do this when he knows that ministers in a democracy are
>getting free power, bureaucrats and officers getting away with
>paying a ridiculous pittance for the current they consume and a
>whole lot of power thieves are just stealing power. Some years ago,
>I did a report on power theft by two companies of Amingaon to the
>tune of Rs 2 crore. The senior officer of the ASEB who helped with
>this power theft was rewarded with a promotion just before he
>retired! And who is meekly subsidizing all this theft of power and
>the totally redundant number of employees? The meek, unquestioning
>bill-payers of course. It is the honest, regular bill-payers who
>end up paying for all the aberrations of the system and for everyone
>who gets electricity free or steals it. Should the law-abiding
>citizens not rise in protest to end such injustice and loot of
>power? They may choose to be as unheeding as they have been in the
>past. But in that case they are all working actively for their own
>funerals, and have no one else to blame.
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