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Friday, March 19, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Malaysian Leader Targets Affirmative Action

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703494404575082301819403096.html

MARCH 18, 2010

Malaysian Leader Targets Affirmative Action

By JAMES HOOKWAY
KUALA LUMPUR—Malaysia's dilemma over whether to end some of the
world's most entrenched systems of racial-preference laws is coming to
a head.

Prime Minister Najib Razak is expected to outline this month plans to
revitalize how the country's export-driven economy is run, with
details to follow in June. The program might mean a push to change a
decades-old system of preferential treatment for the country's
majority Muslim-Malay population, which has often economically lagged
behind its ethnic compatriots.

People familiar with his plans say he might move to liberalize some
sectors of the economy, giving nonethnic Malays a larger role. He also
is expected to give more non-Malay students access to scholarships. He
already has made it easier for foreign business to invest in areas
such as Islamic finance, and last week warned Malaysians to prepare
for an end to state subsidies on various commodities, including sugar.

Malaysia's race-based quota system, in place since the early 1970s,
gives ethnic Malays special treatment—from cheaper housing and loans,
to advantages in securing university places and government jobs and
contracts. The aim is to boost the economic power of the Malay
population, which represents 54% of the country's 28 million people,
but which typically doesn't do as well in business or high-earning
jobs as Malaysians who are ethnic-Chinese or, to a lesser extent,
ethnic-Indians. Those ethnic groups make up about 35% of the
population.

Many think the affirmative-action system is too rigid for global
competition for markets and investment. Business leaders such as Nazir
Razak, Mr. Najib's brother and chief executive of banking concern CIMB
Group Bhd., have called for the so-called bumiputera, or indigenous,
rules to be revised. An opinion poll conducted by the independent
Merdeka Center in 2008 found that 71% of Malaysians surveyed—and 65%
of Malays—agreed the laws needed to be overhauled. Trading partners
such as the U.S. and European Union have singled out government
procurement policies that ensure contracts go to Malay-owned business
as stalling free-trade pacts.

"I don't think there's any question that we need to commit to reform,
although we'll still have to help Malaysians according to their need,"
says Khairy Jamaluddin, a top Malay politician with Mr. Najib's
National Front coalition and leader of the United Malays National
Organization's youth wing.

Still, some analysts doubt Mr. Najib will be able to take his
overhauls far. Voluble opponents have emerged recently, led by a
charismatic activist named Ibrahim Ali, who holds rallies and lobbies
government officials. Last year, he founded the group Perkasa—the
Malay word for warrior. He counts former Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad and royal rulers such as the sultan of Selangor among his
30,000 or so supporters.

Mr. Ibrahim argues that the social stability ensured by giving a leg
up to the Malay population far outweighs the benefits of opening more
of what was once one of Southeast Asia's most dynamic economies to the
nimble and capital-rich ethnics in Malaysian—particularly the Chinese,
but also the ethnic-Indians.

"The playing field can be leveled sometime in the future, but it's
only 2010," says the 59-year-old Mr. Ibrahim, in his Kuala Lumpur
office amid pictures of Fidel Castro, Che Guevera and Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini. "But we've got to be honest and say we can't
compete."

Mr. Ibrahim is focusing on what political analysts say is Malaysia's
defining quandary: How and when to dismantle one of the world's most
comprehensive systems of preferential treatment, in an ethnically and
religiously diverse nation.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib, right, expresses his good wishes to
local Chinese people prior to the Chinese Spring Festival in Kuala
Lumpur's China Town on Feb. 11, 2010.
The analysts say Mr. Najib is trying to win back ethnic-Chinese and
ethnic-Indian voters to the ruling National Front by adopting some of
Mr. Anwar's policies. The risk is that Mr. Najib might lose the
support of some Malay voters, especially with Mr. Ibrahim leading the
charge in support of Malay supremacy. The premier didn't respond to
requests for an interview for this article.

The roots of the issue go back to the 19th and early 20th centuries,
when British colonists encouraged workers from China and India to go
to Malaysia to toil in the rubber and tin industries. In 1969, deadly
race riots killed more than 100 in Kuala Lumpur and other cities.
Malaysia's rulers then adopted the quota system in the early 1970s to
help ethnic-Malays.

The goal: Build up the economic clout of the Malay community to
control at least 30% of Malaysia's economic output. Malays now control
about 19% of the economy—up from 2.4% since the program began,
according to government figures. Some independent analysts say the
actual figure is higher.

Mr. Najib may be well-positioned to demand change. He is a son of
Malaysia's second prime minister after independence from Britain in
1957 and is perceived as a strong defender of Malay rights.

Mr. Ibrahim reckons Mr. Najib is misreading the depth of anger many
Malays feel toward any change in a policy that has given many a leg up
and helped to build a large middle class.

"People like Perkasa, they can derail the prime minister's plans. They
do resonate with a segment of the Malay community," says Mr. Khairy,
the UMNO activist. "But this is a time for leadership, not a time to
pander to Malay insecurities."

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

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[ZESTCaste] Foreign universities ready for affirmative programmes: Kapil Sibal

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_foreign-universities-ready-for-affirmative-programmes-kapil-sibal_1361044

Foreign universities ready for affirmative programmes: Kapil Sibal
PTI
Friday, March 19, 2010 22:17 IST

New Delhi: Reservation laws may not be applicable for the foreign
universities aspiring to set up campuses here, but they are ready to
carry out affirmative programmes for children of the weaker section,
HRD minister Kapil Sibal said today.

"Whichever foreign educational institution has spoken to me, has said
'we in our country carry out affirmative programmes. When we are in
India, we will certainly carry out those affirmative programmes',"
Sibal told Karan Thapar in India Tonight programme.

The cabinet this week passed the Foreign Educational Institution
(Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010, which seeks to allow
the foreign educational providers to set up campuses in India and
regulate their operations.

Sibal said the aspiring institutions are sensitive to the issue of
affirmative action even though reservation laws may not be applicable
to them as they will be considered as private education providers.

There is no reservation law for the private education providers in the
country currently.

Sibal hoped the new law could be put in place by the end of this year.
He said the bill would be introduced in Parliament in April.

The bill would go to a Standing Committee after it is introduced in Parliament.

"By December 2010, this could be a law. I believe so. You should be
prepared by the next academic session to implement it," Sibal said.

According to him, there are a number of foreign institutions aspiring
to be associated with the education sector here. But not necessarily
all of them will set up campuses. Some of them are interested for
collaboration, while a few are interested for joint research with
Indian institutes. Some are interested for skill development and
vocational training, he said.

Sibal said a number of Ivy League universities are also interested to
come. Yale is interested for collaboration, he said, adding Boston
University is extremely keen to come in some form.

The foreign education providers can operate in India as FDI is allowed
in education. But the new law will regulate their operations. At
present, 69 foreign education providers are functioning in India.

These universities will decide their own fee as they will be
considered as private universities. However, their fee could be much
less than the fee they charge in their respective countries, Sibal
said.

"It is because the cost of infrastructure and other things is less in
India," he said.

In a way it will help students to get education and degree at a much
cheaper price from a foreign university which would have cost them
hugely if they had travelled to those countries for the same courses,
Sibal said.

"Lot of Indian students are unable to pay USD 60,000 or 70,000. If you
pay USD 60,000 in the US, you can get the same education at USD 20,000
or USD 15,000 or even at USD 10,000. People may not go abroad but
study here," he said.

Sibal ruled out concerns raised over poaching of teachers by the
foreign institutions.

He said the attrition rate in IITs is nearly nil despite a lot of
private institutes functioning in the country. He said job security
and perks given to IIT teachers may not be matched by the foreign
universities.

He said the foreign institutes will not be allowed to repatriate
surplus generated from education activities in India. "If we feel that
services are paid or being paid in an indirect fashion for the purpose
of repatriating money, we will certainly look at that issue."

But the all foreign education providers will have get accredited by
the proposed National Accreditation Authority for quality control.
Their entry will bring revolution in terms of quality, he said. It
will have enormous impact on research and creation of Intellectual
Property.

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[ZESTCaste] Kill Bill Vol 2010 (Opinion)

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main44.asp?filename=Op270310opinion.asp

OPINION

Kill Bill Vol 2010

The Women's Reservation Bill suddenly seems to have become a weapon to
put all the Mandal parties in their place

ASHOK MALIK
Columnist

THERE HAVE been two layers of opposition to the proposal to reserve
33.3 percent of Lok Sabha and Assembly seats for women. The first is
more visible and audible. It represents the fear of Hindi heartland
chieftains — specifically Mulayam and Lalu Yadav — that they could
lose ground in their pocket boroughs. Bringing up a series of red
herrings — quotas within quotas, subquotas for OBC women, for Dalit
women, for Muslim women; quotas for Muslims per se — coining such
crude slogans as "jung aur jihad", they have become the disagreeable
opposition to the Women's Reservation Bill.

When the Bill was moved in the Rajya Sabha, the broader middle class
mood was shaped not by the intrinsic value or goodness of the proposed
legislation but by the quality of the opposition to it. In a sense, it
was a replay of the Shah Rukh Khan-Shiv Sena battle. Hostility to the
Sena forced even Shah Rukh agnostics to stand up for him. This is
precisely what the Yadavs did to the Women's Reservation Bill.

The fundamental argument is this. Parliament represents the supreme
consciousness and collective wisdom of a democratic society.
Reservation in a national legislature, and restricting competition in
the contest to win a place in that legislature, is decidedly different
from quotas for traditionally deprived sections in the job market or
from affirmative action during college admissions. In a sense, it
seeks to carve up that magical and indivisible attribute: popular
sovereignty.

There is a line of separation between Parliament and even other
representative bodies. Indeed, reservations and quotas for women — and
OBC, MBCs, and of course SCs and STs — at the panchayat level can be
lived with. A panchayat member, a municipal corporator and even an MLA
are, at the end of the day, service providers. They attend to their
constituents, sort out healthcare and water problems and monitor the
delivery of public goods.

In India, this is often what MPs too are called upon to do. Yet, this
is not how it should be and, hopefully, not how it always will be.
Someday, when Indian democracy matures, the Lok Sabha will shrug off
the extras and restore itself to its core mandate: deliberative
legislation and providing crucial inputs to policy making. That is
what distinguishes parliament from any other institution in a
democracy.

Historically, there have been several instances in several countries
of exclusion of particular groups from the process of entering the
national legislature. In its earliest days, the chance to vote and to
win votes in the US was limited to propertied white males. Yet, the
chipping away at this restriction, the expansion of human freedom to
ensure equal access to every corner of the supreme law-making body of
the land was the ideal that drove democratic endeavour.

This is where the women's reservation amendment comes into conflict
with the philosophy, though not quite the letter and legality, of the
Constitution. Far from aspiring to a society that would be so
egalitarian that even SC and ST seats in the Lok Sabha would be free
to all, it constricts further, and institutionalises segregation —
strong word, but appropriate — for all times to come.

Yet, let's face it, other than a handful of pernickety folk, nobody's
really exercised on these lines. Why? To some degree this is because
nobody wants to appear politically incorrect. Even so, there are two
other reasons, more solid ones.

First, even those who acknowledge the 33.3 percent quota is a bad idea
concede the suggested alternatives would probably not have been
feasible in the Indian context.

Talk of two-member constituencies or increasing the strength of the
House was unworkable. Indians didn't really want a 700-strong Lok
Sabha and an incremental VIP population down the line in the states.

Leaving the quota to parties would seem fair in a neat two-party
democracy — such as, say, Australia — where both parties contest about
all seats. In India it would have meant the Samajwadi Party nominating
men for all of Uttar Pradesh's 80 seats and women for all of West
Bengal's 42 seats (where the party counts for nothing) and pretending
it had fulfilled its one-third commitment.

Suggestions that parties be forced to nominate women candidates for a
third of the seats where they won the most votes — above a defined
benchmark of perhaps 20 percent — or that individual states be allowed
to put in place an OBC sub-quota as per the OBC population in the
state were deemed too complicated and open to political misuse.

MULAYAM AND LALU YADAV DID TO THE WOMEN'S QUOTA BILL WHAT THE SHIV
SENA DID TO SHAH RUKH KHAN
Second, perhaps erroneously, middle class opinion is confusing support
for the Women's Reservation Bill with a craving for the strengthening
of national parties. Consider the context. Twice previously the Bill
was thwarted by OBC strongmen. On the first occasion they were running
the United Front government (1996); the next time was when they held
the veto on the NDA government (1999). This was in the 1990s, when
both the Congress and the BJP were defensive on the OBC-isation of the
polity and in awe of the energies of Mandalisation.

TODAY, THE situation is markedly different. In 2009, the Yadavs were
trounced in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Their intermediate caste comrades
in the south — HD Deve Gowda in Karnataka and N Chandrababu Naidu in
Andhra Pradesh — were also marginalised. The sun is setting on Mandal
and on a certain type of muscleflexing, blackmail-centric regional
politics. The Women's Reservation Bill suddenly seems to have become a
weapon to put the Mandal parties in their place.

Yet, it would be foolhardy to believe that rough-andready OBC men are
going to be replaced by "sensitive" and "good-natured" upper caste
women. It is more likely that the first lot of seats that are reserved
will see a deluge of family candidates: wives, daughters and sisters.
In some cases — Sonia and Rahul Gandhi; Maneka and Varun Gandhi —
neighbouring seats may be exchanged every 10 years.

Having said that, it is also likely that of the 181 women who enter
the Lok Sabha, there will a 30-40 strong bunch who will be worthy
women in their own right and constitute good parliamentarians.
However, will a few good women justify the 33.3 percent quota? For
some people, the answer must always be "No".

WRITER'S EMAIL
malikashok@gmail.com

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 7, Issue 11, Dated March 20, 2010

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[ZESTCaste] Women village leaders want quota within quota

http://sify.com/news/women-village-leaders-want-quota-within-quota-news-national-kdttacheajf.html

Women village leaders want quota within quota

2010-03-19 19:00:00

Around 60 women village leaders Friday hailed the passing of the
women's reservation bill in the Rajya Sabha but demanded a quota for
Dalits and other backward classes (OBCs) for their proper
representation.

At a conclave organised here by international NGO ActionAid, the
women, representing village councils in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa,
West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, urged political parties to
take note of the discrimination against women within the backward
classes.

They held that the 50 percent reservation of seats in panchayati raj
institutions for women and the quotas for Dalit women from lower
castes had proved beneficial.

Speaking about her experience as the head of the Jamlapur village in
Uttar Pradesh, Sarvati Devi said: 'Being a woman from a Dalit
community proved a great challenge for me. Finding support in the
panchayat was very tough. But I did not give up and now they respect
me and my community.'

Sunita Devi, who was elected the Phulwari Sharif village head in Bihar
in 2006 on an OBC reserved seat agreed.

'I got elected from an OBC reserved seat for women. Now, women in my
village don't look at the caste barrier before discussing their
problems, all thanks to the reservation that will also help on the
national platform,' she said.

The women's reservation bill, in the form of an amendment to the
constitution, would secure 33 percent reservation for women in the Lok
Sabha as well as the state legislatures. It was passed in the Rajya
Sabha last week amid angry protests from a few political parties that
also want a sub-quota for Dalits and OBCs.

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[ZESTCaste] Mayawati gets bad press for cash garland, sacks her media manager

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Miffed-Maya-sacks-her-media-manager-for-getting-bad-press/H1-Article1-520609.aspx

Mayawati gets bad press for cash garland, sacks her media manager

Indo-Asian News Service
Lucknow, March 18, 2010
First Published: 20:48 IST(18/3/2010)
Last Updated: 21:30 IST(18/3/2010)

Apparently upset at the bad press she received over the controversial
currency note garland, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on
Thursday gave marching orders to her close confidante and principal
secretary (information and public relations) Vijay Shankar Pande.

Besides the key position as head of her media management team, Pande
has also been stripped of the prime posts of additional cabinet
secretary and principal secretary to the chief minister.

Pande has been made principal secretary (health), so far held by
Pradeep Shukla, who has been appointed principal food secretary. Pande
is known to be close to Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)'s Brahmin mascot and
general secretary Satish Chandra Misra.

Pande has been replaced by Shailesh Krishna, a one-time Mayawati
blue-eyed boy, who was shunted out of the chief minister's secretariat
not very long ago.

Krishna, who has played a long innings in the information and PR wing
of the Uttar Pradesh government - both under the Mulayam Singh Yadav
as well as Mayawati government - enjoys tremendous goodwill with the
media.

Pande shot to fame for spearheading a campaign launched by the state
IAS Association 13 years ago to identify the "three most corrupt IAS
officers".

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Friday, March 19, 2010

[ZESTCaste] Malaysian Leader Targets Affirmative Action

[ZESTCaste] Foreign universities ready for affirmative programmes: Kapil Sibal

[ZESTCaste] Kill Bill Vol 2010 (Opinion)

[ZESTCaste] Women village leaders want quota within quota

[ZESTCaste] Mayawati gets bad press for cash garland, sacks her media manager

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