CLEAR TITLES FOR VILLAGE HOMES NOT SO CLEAR CUT
➘ WHAT IS SWAMITVA? Swamitva is a new central scheme to grant legal recognition to residential properties in rural areas. After they are mapped and cleared, houses in surveyed areas will be allotted numbers and issued property cards
➘ WHO WILL EXECUTE IT
The Union panchayati raj ministry in coordination with the state panchayati raj and revenue departments and the Survey of India
➘ THE BENEFITS Legal recognition will enable owners to monetise their property, access bank loans using it as collateral. For the government, the updated maps will help in preparing accurate development plans. The gram panchayats will be able to collect house tax now
➘ POSSIBLE ISSUES
l Absence of property records in villages
l Property disputes within families, especially in old settlements
l Ownership being granted to houses on illegally occupied land
l Village politics, truant gram pradhans
Given the sheer significance of the India-Pakistan relationship, the paucity of careful and informed scholarship about its origins and evolution is quite striking. Diplomatic historians, political scientists and former policymakers have all written about the subject. However, with marked exceptions, the bulk of these works have been partial, polemical and idiosyncratic. Worse still, because of the unavailability of suitable archival material from either side of the border, till recently, almost all writing on the subject was based on elite interviews, newspaper accounts and other documents in the public domain.
Apart from these limitations, the bulk of the available work has focused on the underlying sources of discord as well as the crises and wars that have marred this relationship. In this context, Pallavi Raghavan’s book, Animosity at Bay, makes two important contributions to the extant literature. At the outset, the book is based upon careful, painstaking and extensive archival research involving multi-country sources.
Its other contribution is substantive: Raghavan seeks to demonstrate that in the years following the partition of British India and the creation of the two states, the relationship, though ridden with the Kashmir conflict, was not wholly hostile. Instead, statesmen and bureaucrats in both countries cooperated on a range of bilateral issues. These ran the gamut from questions of the disposal of evacuee property, the sharing of the Indus river waters and attempts at reaching a no-war pact. Even though all these subjects have been addressed in previous works, Raghavan, through the deft use of newly-available archival material, has managed to bring greater nuance and clarity to many of these important and fraught subjects.
She argues that the two sides managed to accommodate each other on a host of issues shortly after Partition. Nevertheless, it is evident from much of her discussion and analysis that reaching such understandings was neither easy nor free of contention. For example, she contends that the members of the Partition Council, the body that was responsible for the division of a host of assets, tackled the tasks at hand calmly despite the horrors that the partition had wrought. She also shows that the key players tenaciously argued for the interests of their respective, nascent states.
Raghavan also shows that despite the backdrop of the war over Kashmir, the two sides cooperated in other areas. To that end, they passed legislation to deal with the extremely delicate question of women who had been abducted in the upheaval of Partition. Well-connected women from prominent families on both sides of the border played vital roles in working with other administrators to bring some relief to those women who had met this most unfortunate fate.
Raghavan also provides an extensive discussion of the attempt to forge a ‘no-war pact’, which ultimately resulted in failure. These discussions were carried out against a backdrop of steady population transfers, growing acrimony in the mass media in both countries and a flurry of diplomatic activity in other capitals, including pleas from Pakistan to the United Kingdom to intervene in the troubled bilateral relationship. In the end, the accord failed to materialise because neither side could muster the requisite domestic support to realise it. That said, she emphasises that even after the prime ministerial correspondence had reached an impasse, Nehru continued to profess his goodwill towards Pakistan.
Raghavan also provides a detailed account of the process that led to the successful realisation of the Indus Waters Treaty. Among the more quirky revelations is the role of an East German refugee and noted legal theorist, Frederich Berber, who was appointed advisor to Nehru on the Indus waters dispute. It is also worth noting that at the time neither side deemed the treaty to be a success but the best solution that was possible.
Raghavan’s careful examination of this period of IndiaPakistan relations suggests that despite far-reaching differences, the two countries reached some important settlements even as they were engaged in the demanding process of statebuilding. Perhaps the understandings reached during this historical period offers some small hope in tackling the myriad problems that currently plague the bilateral relationship. ■
Sumit Ganguly is a distinguished professor of political science and holds the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington
IN THE END, THE ‘NO-WAR PACT’ FAILED TO MATERIALISE BECAUSE NEITHER SIDE COULD MUSTER THE REQUISITE DOMESTIC SUPPORT TO REALISE IT
One Congress leader who hasn’t found favour with either Team Rahul or the old guard is Shashi Tharoor. The Thiruvananthapuram MP is one of the five in the party to have won three consecutive Lok Sabha elections. Last year, Tharoor was ignored for the post of leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha; he was not even made party whip. The party did not include him in the rapid response committee on CAA-NPR formed in January, or the COVID-19 task force set up on March 28. Tharoor was also ignored for the 11-member consultative group formed to formulate the party’s views on the COVID crisis. Given Tharoor’s experience in the UN, it’s shocking that he is not being consulted on the pandemic. That, Tharoor might have said, amounts to floccinaucinihilipilification.