Cracks appear in Anna’s team, Govt plans to reach out

Cracks appear in Anna’s team, Govt plans to reach out

110407 Anna Hazare's fight against corruption

As Anna Hazare’s fast entered its second day today, the first cracks in his coalition surfaced with criticism over provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill and the method being used by activists to try and push it through.

Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde (retd), part of the group that finalised the activists’ version of the Bill, acknowledged he had “objections” to certain clauses.

“I would not like to say much else. While I say that the government’s Lokpal Bill is of no use, I am not completely with the Jan Lokpal Bill, too, although it’s much better. I would certainly say that the government should talk to civil society and incorporate their views while the civil society should also participate in any such discussion with an open mind. It has to be a two-way street,” Justice Hegde told The Indian Express.

Some of the clauses that Hegde is said to have objected to include: the Bill’s blatant directives to the judiciary, including to the Supreme Court on how to handle petitions related to the Lokpal; provision of life imprisonment as punishment under the Prevention of Corruption Act; barring the Supreme Court from dismissing any petition for removal of the Lokpal in liminae (at the threshold).

“Left to myself, I would like to have judges under the purview of the Lokpal. But I am not the final word on this matter. We will have to go by what the Constitution provides for. We will need to repeal or amend many Constitutional provisions, including the matter of impeachment (for the Bill),” he said.

Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, also one of the members involved in drafting the Bill, said he had no objection to the National Advisory Council (NAC) re-drafting the Lokpal Bill.

And NAC member Aruna Roy signed a statement today, along with Nikhil De and Shekhar Singh of The National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information, praising Hazare for helping create a groundswell of public support for the Jan Lokpal Bill but clearly opposing the demand for 50% of the drafting committee being from civil society.

The statement said: “Bypassing democratic processes for political expediency however desirable the outcome, may be detrimental to democracy itself. Thus our focus is not on ensuring that there is 50% representation for civil society with members of the GoM who are entrusted with drafting the Bill, but to demand that the Government immediately announce its intention to pass a strong Lok Pal legislation based on wide public consultations.”

Another bizarre clause that has attracted criticism is the one that seeks to establish a separate fund by the name of Lokpal Fund. According to the draft, this Fund will include penalties/fines imposed by the Lokpal and “10 per cent of the loss of public money detected/prevented on account of investigations by Lokpal.”

Meanwhile, Hazare, in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today, underlined the demand for a joint committee — of activists and government officials — to draft the Bill. “It is being said that the government wants to talk to us and we are not talking to them. This is utterly false. Tell me a single meeting when you called us and we did not come. We strongly believe in dialogue and engagement. Kindly do not mislead the country by saying that we are shunning dialogue.”

“The NAC sub-committee has discussed Jan Lokpal Bill. But what does that actually mean? Will the government accept the recommendations of NAC sub-committee? So far, UPA II has shown complete contempt for even the most innocuous issues raised by NAC,” said Hazare.

He also rebutted suggestions by Congress spokespersons that he had been instigated to go on fast. “This is an insult to my sense of wisdom and intelligence. I am not a kid that I could be instigated into going on an indefinite fast. I am a fiercely independent person.”

He said he had no faith in the government’s process of drafting an anti-corruption law because many of the members of the Group of Ministers “have such a shady past that if effective anti-corruption systems had been in place, some of them would have been behind bars”.

CIC members reveal asset details online - The Times of India

CIC members reveal asset details online - The Times of India

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NEW DELHI: In a complete turnaround of its earlier stand, members of Central Information Commission (CIC) have made the details of their assets public on Wednesday.

The CIC unanimously decided to not just upload details of their assets on the CIC website, but also update the information annually. The move gains significance as the CIC has been dragging its feet on the issue over several years. Chief information commissioner Satyananda Mishra said, "We have taken a decision in March to voluntarily declare our assets on the website. We thought when there is nothing to hide, why not to place them in public domain. We hope state commissions will follow."

Information commissioner M L Sharma said he owned a Maruti 800, which he bought for Rs 2 lakh in 1993. Sharma has also declared other assets which include agricultural land and house in Jaipur that he had built in 1989-90 with a loan from the HDFC.

Information commissioner Annapurna Dixit declared two houses she owns, in Delhi and Nainital, which have a combined value of about Rs 50 lakh. While her colleague Sushma Singh has declared one house in Ranchi — purchased in 2004 — another was bought in 2008 in Indirapuram, Ghaziabad.

Mishra has given exhaustive details of property owned by him, which include an ancestral property inherited by him in his native place in Orissa, a house in Bhubaneswar and one in Bhopal which is co-owned by his wife. IC Deepak Sandhu gave details of her five properties, which include agriculture land worth Rs 1,000, two plots in Kilokari in Delhi — worth Rs 40,000 — houses in Barog (Himachal Pradesh) and Chandigarh that are valued at Rs 50 lakh and Rs 5 crore, respectively.

IC Shailesh Gandhi declared property details of his family. The former entrepreneur showed a house worth Rs 80,000, a car worth Rs five lakh, jewellery (self estimate value) of around Rs 31 lakh, bank deposits and instruments of about Rs 71 lakh and around Rs 11 lakh in cash.

Sibal wants IIM boards to select chairman, director, IIM News - By Indiaedunews.net

Sibal wants IIM boards to select chairman, director, IIM News - By Indiaedunews.net

The government is in favor of granting full autonomy to the boards of the state-run Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to select their respective chairman and director, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said on Thursday.

"We want the IIM boards to select their respective chairman and director so that we (the government) distance ourselves from the (selection) process.

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The board can set up a search committee and give us the names to be appointed," Sibal told reporters here.

Reiterating that the boards of B-schools should function cohesively and effectively, Sibal said the managements would given the kind of autonomy they need to function in an environment in which they can provide solutions to the government.

"The governance structures of the B-schools must also change. Their boards must be effective, cohesive and efficient. We want all stakeholders to be represented on the board," Sibal said on the margins of the IIM-Bangalore 36th annual convocation.

Noting that the board must have a leadership of its choice to lead the institution, Sibal said the IIM-B was blessed with a leader (Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd) as its chairman, who has shown the global community how in the most difficult of circumstances, Indian companies could be global players.

"For him (Ambani) to chair for a second term and take the kind of interest is something I feel grateful for. It shows how our business community has realized that without excellence in education and investment in education, not in terms of just money but time, the country cannot move forward," Sibal said. IANS

Report on IIMC governance irks faculty - Times Of India

Report on IIMC governance irks faculty - Times Of India

KOLKATA: The faculty of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta is up in arms against reports on IIM Governance' and Faculty and Research at the IIMs' submitted to the ministry of human resource development in October 2010.

At a meeting that ended on Wednesday, the faculty resolved to respond to minutes of the MHRD meeting that included IIM chairmen and directors in which the two reports were presented last year. "Some proposals of the two committees have already been accepted by MHRD and others are under consideration. The recommendations and proposals in the two reports will have a far-reaching effect on governance practices in IIMs. Some of the proposed changes are detrimental to academic work and will harm our reputation," said a senior IIMC faculty member.

"This division of responsibilities and freedom to faculty have helped make IIMC one of the best academic institutions. With minimal control and interference from administrative or government authorities, the faculty has created and sustained high levels of pedagogical and research excellence," professors said.

"We are concerned that MHRD, Bhargava and Balakrishnan committees made no attempt to include the IIM faculty in their deliberations. In the Bhargava Committee report, recommendations are unclear, contradictory and unsubstantiated. In a reference to management or executive development programmes (MDPs), the report claims that 50% of the faculty spend up to 50% of their time on these programmes... We find the claims to be exaggerated. Moreover, the committee observes that the director cannot evaluate the performance of the faculty nor have any disciplinary control over them.

Again, the faculty and the board of IIM Calcutta approved a system of work norms in 1997 and empowered its administrators to implement them," added a senior faculty member.

The faculty claimed that in the backdrop of the recommendations, the Bhargava Committee shows a clear bias for a unicameral system of governance that empowers the board and the director to control the institute.

"It has also made a recommendation to allow the board to appoint the chairman from an existing set of board members. This proposal deprives the institute of an opportunity to have a wider choice of suitable candidates," the faculty member added.

Mathrubhumi English - Government against privatising education, says Sibal

Mathrubhumi English - Government against privatising education, says Sibal

Bangalore: The government will not allow education to be privatised as institutions have to serve a societal purpose, but it was not against 'private participation' in the education sector, union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said Thursday.

'I think privatisation is a very dirty word. We do not believe in privatising education. Educational institutions have to serve a societal purpose,' Sibal told reporters here.

Clarifying that the government was not against private participation in the education sector, Sibal said private participation was different from privatisation, which serves private goal.

'I do not mean there should be no private participation in education. It is different from privatization. Private participation must serve public goal,' Sibal said on the margins of the 36th annual convocation of the state-run Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM-B) here.

In this context, Sibal referred to the government's efforts to set right the education system to make sure stakeholders served a societal purpose.

'The ownership of educational institutions should vest in stakeholders, which includes government, private sector, faculty, youth, civil society, leaders who have achieved excellence in their fields and the student community. That is how we view education,' Sibal said.

To facilitate a greater participation of the private sector in higher education, especially in professional courses, the minister said the government was changing the regulations of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE).

'We have made the whole system far more transparent and accountable. We want the institutions to go through a self-disclosure process instead of an inspector raj,' Sibal asserted.

Referring to the latest national census, which has shown the population at 1.21 billion, an increase of 181 million people in the last decade, Sibal said the government was looking forward to management institutions such as IIM-B and IIM-A (Ahmedabad) to provide solutions to achieve full literacy in this decade.

'I firmly believe we are at the cusp in the next 10 years to achieve full literacy in the country. There will be lot of pressure on educational institutions, more so as transformation of society is taking place. We will need management solutions to very complex problems,' Sibal said in the presence of IIM-B chairman Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries Ltd.

According to the latest census, literacy in the country has gone up to 74 percent from 64.8 percent during the past decade, with female literacy to 65 percent from 53 percent and male literacy to 82 percent from 75 percent.

Noting that education was becoming multi-disciplinary and therefore management institutions could not function as standalone, Sibal said they have to interact with the government and diverse sectors such as health, education, agriculture and small and medium enterprise (SME).

'You need management solutions at every level. I don't think society has recognised the importance of management and in creating those solutions. We cannot move forward unless you manage things in a holistic and progressive way,' Sibal pointed out.