People's Democracy

PLANNING Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has been part of the larger effort by the US consultancy company McKinsey to enter Indian policymaking for at least four years now. He has finally succeeded in placing representatives of this organisation on Planning Commission consultative committees in the crucial areas of agriculture, health and family welfare, power and energy, as well as higher and technical education, in a move unprecedented in the history of the body that Mr Ahluwalia now heads…..

The 13-point McKinsey plan includes complete elimination of reservation of products for small-scale industry; reduction of import duties on all goods to 10 per cent; removing the ban on foreign direct investment in the retail sector and allow unrestricted FDI in all sectors; raise property taxes and user charges for municipal services; reform tenancy laws to allow rents to move to market levels; privatise the electricity sector; reform labour laws by introducing standard retrenchment-compensation norms and allowing full flexibility in the use of contract labour and strengthen extension services to help farmers improve their yield.

— The Asian Age, September 11

THE standing committee on railways has detected a large scale irregularities in the purchase of railway sleepers during the regime of Nitish Kumar as railway minister and has recommended an inquiry into the whole affair by an independent agency.

"I have asked the CBI to conduct the probe swiftly and at the earliest," declared the railway minister before a select band of media persons…… "The probe has been set up on the recommendations of the standing committee of parliament and I cannot interfere in the probe," added Lalu.

While denying any political vendetta in the probe, the railway minister also informed that the CBI has already laid its hand on vital documents and have some clues. "Even the Comptroller and Auditor General had also raised objections on the purchase of railways sleepers during the regime of Nitish Kumer," he said…….

The strong lobby of the PSC manufacturers had formed a caucus in the department to get the supply order in 2000 and 2003 by converting the open-tender system into a limited-tender system through fraudulent means and during the period, the railways estimated loss was around Rs 200 crore, said a report published in a local daily.

—- The Pioneer, September 11

EDUCATION for All’ could well be a distant dream with many segments of the society still having very little access to it. This was revealed in the survey conducted by the National Centre for Promotion of Education for Disabled People (NCPEDP), which says that only 1.2 per cent of the disabled in India has had any form of education.

The survey used many universities and colleges as a sample. Despite rigorous follow-ups, authorities said only 119 of the 322 universities replied to the questionnaire.

In these 119 universities there were a total of 1,635 disabled students. This figure becomes alarmingly low when compared to the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) standard of 3.6 lakh disabled students for 119 varsities. And which is only 6 per cent of the entire disabled population.

— The Indian Express, September 15

NEERJA Gotru, Ahmedabad’s SP (Prohibition) who on the Supreme Court’s direction was assigned investigation of three post-Godhra riot cases in the Panchmahals, has been asked to wind up her probe….

In the Ambika Society massacre case, she ordered the arrest of sub-inspector R J Patil for tampering with evidence by burning bodies of 13 victims without in forming their relatives. She also got another massacre case re-opened after it had been closed for lack of evidence.

 — The Indian Express, September 13

IN a further embarrassment to British prime minister Tony Blair, the Iraq Survey Group has concluded that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the US-UK invasion.

According to the Guardian daily, the team of weapons inspectors sent in by Washington and London at the end of the war to comb Iraq, has admitted in its final report that though the threat of Saddam Hussein was real, there were no stockpiles.

—- The Statesman, September 11