News Wrap
AGD

Being neither a verdict, nor an order, nor a judge ment, the Supreme Court has observed that auction is not the only permissible method for disposal of natural resources. It was maintained that common good is the touchstone of any policy. If that is fulfilled then any means adopted is in accordance with the constitutional principles. An opinion on the reference from the President of India, arising out of its 2G verdict, the Supreme Court made it clear that its verdict of Feb 2012 on the 2G issue was confined to allocation of mobile telephony spectrum, and not to other resources.

Dismissing a plea challenging the Comptroller and Auditor General’s power to conduct performance audit of coal block allocation and other issues, the Supreme Court has recently observed that scrutinizing the effective use of resources is his primary duty. It was for Parliament to accept or reject the CAG’s reports.

Road to hell
Unsafe buses, three wheeler autos and cycle rickshaws often result in children routinely killed in road accidents in India. Roads to schools are a perilous trip. India leads the world in total traffic fatalities, and a large number of the victims are school children. In 1997, the Supreme Court delivered a judgement, whose guidelines required that buses have doors that can open and close, a mechanical devide to limit the vehicle’s speed, a qualified conductor, and an experienced, law abiding driver, while laws are there, awareness is lacking. Lack of enforcement is accentuated by lack of sufficient punishment, after an accident occurs. Accidents are high due to a combination of bad roads, chaotic traffic, poorly enforced safeguards, badly trained bus drivers and a lack of political will to address the problem. The Indian public has also failed to demand safer services.

With the development in India’s economy, the elementary schools have added about 34 million children in the past eight years. The vehicles in the same period have sharply doubled to 74 million, planning and maintenance of roads is poor. A large number of drivers lack formal training and are prone to reckless driving through chocked urban streets. Most schools buses are overcrowded, which stuff to one and a half times their capacity. Several schools ignore safety. After collection of transportation fees from students, many schools contract with a private bus operator to provide the services. Nearly 134,000 Indians were killed in traffic accidents in 2010.

Georgia elections
In the third week of September 2012, a senior official in charge of prisons in Georgia resigned after a television channel displayed graphic video of prison inmates being brutally beaten and sodomized by guards. There were initial indications that politics played a role in the exposure of the prison abuse. Hundreds of people demonstrated in the streets, protesting against organized crime in prisons, as at Gidani prison near Tbilisi. With elections near, the president Mikheil Saakashvili pledged to overhaul the prison system. There is ‘‘zero tolerance’’ policy in Georgia, which has led to a guadrupling of the prison population to more than 24,000 from 6,000 in less than ten years. Anti-corruption reforms earlier included disbanding the traffic police and virtually stamping out petty bribery.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 22, Dec 9-15, 2012

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