Home Page of Dr. Saumitra Mohan

Reaping Demographic Dividends Saumitra Mohan Even though all of us everywhere in the country seem very busy discussing and debating the various dimensions and implications of the impending financial crisis, there is something to cheer about which is going unnoticed in all this. This relates to the demographic dividends which India shall soon be reaping notwithstanding all that talk of various kinds of complex problems stemming from an every growing population in the country. But before we actually start doing so, there are certain issues which would require sorting out otherwise benefits of demographic dividends shall prove to be a mere wishful thinking, a will-o-the-wisp. We definitely have over a billion people and are told to be adding over 10 million more every year. The demographic dividends is said to accrue on account of the fact that very soon, we shall have less dependent population and mo...

Politics and Politicking: Need for a Change *Saumitra Mohan Just when you thought that our state building and nation building processes are proceeding well and we are moving fast up the pecking order in the Comity of Nations, you have a slew of negative developments which shake your confidence. A look around the country presents the picture of a country under siege. Be it floods in Bihar, terrorism and secessionism in Jammu and Kashmir, North-East or elsewhere in the country, communal riots in Orissa, Dera Saccha Sauda bickering in Punjab, land acquisition agitations in West Bengal and elsewhere, simmering Naxal extremism in a good expanse of the country, problem of price rise, frequent resort to ‘bandh’ and ‘strikes’, or the recent terrorist strikes around the country, we seem beset with problems from all around. In all this, it is the common man who is the actual loser. It is this Homo Ordinarius who is really at loss, but still managing to survive notwithstanding the mess he/she f...

100 per cent FIR: Jalpaiguri shows the way *Saumitra Mohan We have long debated the problems ailing criminal justice system in our country with various committees and commissions recommending sundry measures to tone up the system. But of all the measures discussed, it is the police reforms which constitute the core of any such effort without which nothing substantial can be achieved. Notwithstanding the recent police reforms executed at the instance of the Supreme Court of India, there is still a lot which need to be done to enable the police organisation to carry out its duties and responsibilities with much more effectiveness and efficiency. And the starting point for any police reform remains the way our police station functions as they still remain the cutting edge of the law and order machinery in our country. If our police stations continue to function the way they have always been, all other reforms would come to nought. It is against this background that an experiment made in a...

Reforming the Prison Administration in India *Saumitra Mohan Of all the reforms required for the effective functioning of our law and justice system, prison reforms form an important part. Unless and until we initiate and take measures to bring our prison management in sync with the times, our law and justice system shall never be able to work to the optimum level required. The various issues requiring our urgent attention include physical condition of the prisons, condition and treatment of prisoners, training and re-orientation of prison personnel, modernisation of prisons, better correctional administration and management. The Government of India constituted a Committee in December 2005 under the Chairmanship of the Director General, Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPRD) to prepare a draft policy paper on the strategy relating to prison reforms and correctional administration. The said Committee is said to have made many recommendations relating to Prison Reform...

Resolving Development Dilemmas Saumitra Mohan The concatenation of incidents at Singur, Nandigram or the recent Amarnath row in Jammu and Kashmir relating to matters pertaining land has amply underscored the dilemma that faces our polity today. However, the fact remains that land is the principal factor for any developmental initiative. This is also a fact that for any developed country, the percentage contribution of agriculture to the national economy seldom exceeds more than 4-5 per cent with the rest coming from secondary and tertiary sectors including industries and services. In other words, a more than predominant chunk of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has to come from industry and services which could also provide support and sustenance for the primary sector including agriculture and mining, if we really wish to be a developed country. These sectors could never develop if a sizable amount of land is not made available to them for development. But we know very well by now as ...

Do We Need Cultural Policing? *Saumitra Mohan There has been a spurt of protests and red-faced expressions against the deemed moral and ethical degeneration in the Indian society in recent times. Be it the uproar over the so-called bawdy on-field shakes of the imported cheer leaders in the just concluded Indian Premier League cricket matches or the ban on bar girls in Maharashtra, the moral policemen, with their holier-than-thou approach, have always been up in the arms to register their protests. What happened to be occasional outpourings seem to have become quite routine and regular, with the Culture Vultures finding more and more causes to take cudgels for as if we have got devoid of the real and basic issues affecting the common man. Be it Nelson Mandela’s paternal peck on Shabana Azmi, Richard Gere’s Knightly smackers to Shilpa Shetty, sartorial choices of our tennis sensation Sania Mirza, the romantic liberties taken by lovers in Meerut or elsewhere to meet openly in pu...

Growing Naxalism: Need for a Unified Command Saumitra Mohan With the recent arrest of a few Maoists in India’s financial capital by the Maharashtra police, it is more than obvious that this menace is no longer confined to the jungles. The Maoists are increasingly penetrating bigger cities, trying to indoctrinate people and collecting funds for the organisation. If intelligence reports are to be believed, then the Maoists are already ensconced and entrenched in major cities. It is suspected that that the Maoists may strike bigger cities before long as the same provides good publicity for their intended ‘New Democratic Revolution’. A good cache of sophisticated arms, explosives and detonators have often been recovered following the arrests of many of the suspected Maoists from many of the cities. According to their new strategy, Maoists plan to target important urban centres in India. They se...

Debating the idea of Federal Police Agency *Saumitra Mohan The perceived failure of our police machinery to deal with various cases of law and order satisfactorily has often led to demands for CBI inquiry in those cases. This, inter alia, points to the lack of popular confidence in our police and frequent calls to CBI for causing inquiries in matters as may strictly relate to matters in the state domain. This has not only dented the morale of the provincial police, but has also resulted in the central agency being overly burdened to do justice to its original briefs. It is in this light that there has been mooted a proposal for a Federal Police Agency (FPA) to deal with such issues in state domain which go beyond the normal law and order or which require more specialised attention and investigation. The same shall also have positive pay-offs for our internal security. The blame game between the Cent...

Strengthening Indo-Bangla Relations *Saumitra Mohan Notwithstanding India’s attempts to further improve and consolidate bilateral relations with Bangladesh, the latter continues to indulge in hostile acts which actually compromise India’s territorial security and integrity. The unprovoked firing by Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) from time to time resulting in loss of human and animal lives only confirms this. Notwithstanding the assertions of India’s Border Security Force (BSF), backed by concrete evidence, Bangladesh is not willing to accept the fact that it is playing host to the militants having inimical designs on India. Bangladesh just does not see any such militant camps being run on its territory. But the fact remains that as many as 172 training camps of different insurgent groups including those from Tripura have been operational in Bangladesh for a very long time. The BSF has been submitting lists of such ...

A New Gorkhaland State: How Justified is the Demand? Saumitra Mohan The famed and famous honeymoon haunt of Darjeeling is again in the news, this time for a wrong reason. The Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) almost barred the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police from entering Darjeeling recently thereby forcing both the DM and SP to cool their heels in Siliguri for almost five days before they were finally allowed in. GJMM’s decision followed skirmishes between the police and its supporters in Siliguri where the latter were demonstrating to press their demand for a new Gorkhaland state. During the said skirmish, many policemen and GJMM supporters including ex-servicemen were badly injured. The government wisely decided against advising DM and SP to force their way into the district so as not to precipitate things further. The wisdom somewhere also emanated from the way things turned out in recent past in such far flung places as Singur, Nandigram, Cochbehar and Dinhata in...

Caste-based Reservation: Reflection of Systemic Maladies *Saumitra Mohan The Frankenstein’s monster of caste-based reservation in government and non-government jobs and academic institutions keeps rising from the ashes like the proverbial Phoenix. The issue which needs discussion and reflection is that as to whether we really need such a thing called reservation. Caste-based reservation should have been discontinued within ten years of the proclamation of the Indian Constitution. But if we still have to contend with the reservation demon, the reason lies in our failure to ensure an equitable and egalitarian process of value allocations thereby necessitating the continued existence of the caste-based system. The truth is that something as obnoxious as caste-based reservation should not have been there at all in the first instance, but as they say a la Aristotle and many others that ‘equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally’. And in a society wracked by myriad societal div...

The Great Indian Growth Story: Recession in the US might not affect us *Saumitra Mohan The recent sub-prime crisis in the United States stemming from the problem of failing home loans and municipal bonds has cast a grim shadow on the economic growth around the world. Stock markets all over the world have taken a beating, following foreign institutional investors’ (FIIs) selling spree due to fear of slowing growth rates. With stock markets nose-diving, hydro-carbon prices sky rocketing and prices of basic commodities including that of food going northward, the fear of an economic recession in the global economy is looming large. Even though it is threatening only the United States for the moment, it is really a moot point today as to what does a country like India need to do if the crisis really deepens further as the same has serious implications for the domestic economy, which so far seems to be doing reasonably well. As we know very well by now, the global econom...

Strengthening the Right to Information Saumitra Mohan It has been more than two years since the Right to Information Act (RTI) came into force in October 2005. Immediately after its enforcement, a concern was expressed in certain quarters about adequate efforts not being made by all those concerned to implement the Act in its true spirit. It was felt that vested interests were making an all out effort to sabotage the Act. Lot of hue and cry was heard when there was an attempt from within the government to water down certain portions of the Act by excluding the details of information contained in an official note sheet on the pretext of administrative necessity and for securing the officials against victimisation. But in this all, people failed to realise that the Act was in its infancy and would take its time before it starts working to its potential. And it was not very late before people actually started realising the import and power of the right emanating from this partic...