E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Real issues untouched
GENERALITIES, and not specific issues, figure in the President’s Address to the joint sitting of Parliament on Monday. Only on Pakistan’s well-documented role as an abettor in terrorism is there a clear-cut formulation. On other areas of policy, the government, which has drafted the speech, is content to repeat what has already been stated or be vague.

Kashmir: proof of maturity
THIS is how a mature nation behaves. The admission by Lieut-Gen J. R. Mukherjee, GOC of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps of the Army, that his men did open fire at protesters at Haigam and Maisuma last week and his expression of regrets at the unfortunate incidents are best gestures possible under the circumstances.

Murders in Chandigarh
LAST week a 55-year-old man, H.S. Brar, was done to death at his Sector 44 residence allegedly by two young representatives of a credit card company. On Sunday 67-year-old Pritha Singh, wife of a retired Army officer, was reportedly killed at her Sector 10 residence by labourers provided by a contractor for constructing a room. 

OPINION

Fiscal responsibility and the budget
Restoring the health of govt’s finances
Dharam Vir
THE winter session of Parliament will be remembered in the annals of the financial administration of the country for the introduction of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Bill, 2000. 

Reservations: an undiscovered aspect
Sagarpreet Hooda
Reservations have been a controversial issue in the Indian polity since their very inception. Much of the controversy is inherent in the subject due to its complexity. The intensity of the controversy has varied with differences in social locations and contexts. In the wake of the implementation of recommendations of the Mandal Commission and the Supreme Court’s decision in this regard, there was a fierce debate on this issue.

ANALYSES

What it means to be coloured in America
Amitava Kumar
In the late eighties, I was a new immigrant in this country. One evening, a man taking my pizza order asked me for my name and, when he didn’t get it the first time, said: “Okay, we’ll call you Andy. Come up and take your pizza when I call out your name.”

Few takers for educational websites
Sharvani Pandit
Educational sites targeting Indian students may have mushroomed on the Internet in recent years, but they do not fetch the kind of eyeballs that their creators had envisaged.

TRENDS AND POINTERS

Online therapy a virtual success
As Sigmund Freud once said, there is not one human relationship which is not tinged with ambivalence. The same might be said of modern man’s relationship with technology.

• Painting New Year

• Bungling burglars

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Real issues untouched

GENERALITIES, and not specific issues, figure in the President’s Address to the joint sitting of Parliament on Monday. Only on Pakistan’s well-documented role as an abettor in terrorism is there a clear-cut formulation. On other areas of policy, the government, which has drafted the speech, is content to repeat what has already been stated or be vague. For instance, the President has talked of reform in labour laws linking it to generating more jobs. Read together with the areas which he has identified as fit for encouragement, it is obvious that the idea is to rewrite the present Acts and remove all those provisions curbing the power of the employer to fire workers. That way, garment and handicraft sectors will be able to hire low-paid staff and become competitive in the export market. This is not a startlingly innovative proposal; the USA has shifted to a hire-and-fire policy, created millions of new jobs in the service sector with the result that wage levels in real terms (adjusted for inflation) have stagnated for the past three decades. There is a small snag though. In the USA inflation has been in low single digit and in this country it has climbed to 8 per cent threatening to touch the double digit in the next two months. Apart from this, there is no clue to the harsh economic or taxation proposals in the coming budget. Even the controversy over an increase in passenger fare is severely ignored in the speech. There is a reference to the report of the review panel but its recommendations and the government thinking are kept under wraps. Obviously the Address was written before the fiery lady from West Bengal agreed to a token increase in upper class fare and the government succumbed to the pressure of industrial houses not to sharply hike freight rates. All this is known to the public but slurred over in the President’s Address, the policy document of the government for the whole year.

A safe conclusion is that the government is still mulling over the taxation measures. The Prime Minister and the Finance Minister have hinted that the time has come for some harsh decisions. Considering the stature of the President, his speech was the ideal vehicle to drum up popular support. If he exhorts the people to accept a lower rate of interest on small savings, there will be two benefits. The proposal will move out of the political arena and the government can take shelter behind his considerable authority to escape the resultant criticism. It has chosen not to avail itself of this opportunity. Either the government is not ready with its proposals or is sharply divided over the scope of the “harsh decision”. Read again his address on public sector undertakings and disinvestment. The President says that only loss-making ones will be sold off but includes the profit-making ones like the VSNL, Air India, Indian Airlines, ICPL and ITDC in the list of the group of enterprises to be sold to the private sector. The ambivalence of the government is understandable but to insert it in the President’s Address is incongruous. 

Kashmir: proof of maturity

THIS is how a mature nation behaves. The admission by Lieut-Gen J. R. Mukherjee, GOC of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps of the Army, that his men did open fire at protesters at Haigam and Maisuma last week and his expression of regrets at the unfortunate incidents are best gestures possible under the circumstances. This should help assuage the feelings of our brethren agitating at the loss of the innocent lives in the valley. As the Corps Commander has said, the Army personnel too are human beings. They can also commit mistakes. And if this has happened, the most honourable course is to admit these human failings. Though the security forces' action at both places, as he has explained, was in self-defence, two enquiry committees, including the one by the Army, have been constituted to go into the circumstances that led to the gory happenings. The Army probe results will be known quickly and the guilty will get the deserving punishment. This is the maximum the Army could do honourably at this stage.

However, the damage done to the peace process is grievous. Those who resorted to fire thoughtlessly could not be more unfair to the nation. Whatever the provocation, their horrible action has come at a time when the whole world is watching the implementation of the Union Government's decision to halt the security forces' operations (popularly known as the ceasefire) against the insurgents in the valley. New Delhi's initiative, taken in the holy month of Ramzan, has brought it greatly valued moral victory, besides internationally isolating Pakistan for its dirty role. The noble cause of peace demands that a senior Minister of the Vajpayee government should immediately fly to Srinagar to make the amends. The virtual apology by the Corps Commander should not be treated as enough. Corrective measures at the political level are unavoidable to pacify the agitated people and prevent the enemies of peace to take advantage of the unfortunate situation. Already Hurriyat Conference leaders have started questioning the very meaning of the ceasefire idea. The Central government appears to have taken the best foot forward by deferring its decision on the suspension of the anti-insurgency drive, so far valid till February 26, despite the pressure from the BJP hawks and others to withdraw it. It is, however, a Catch 22 situation. Those who argue that militants have been using the opportunity to regroup themselves, besides continuing their programme of killing unarmed Kashmiris at will not be satisfied with anything less than revoking the ceasefire decision. Their case has been strengthened by Sunday night's blowing up of a power transmission tower in an IED blast at Chamalwas, about 90 km from Jammu. The Centre could not have been faced with a more difficult crisis. 

Murders in Chandigarh

LAST week a 55-year-old man, H.S. Brar, was done to death at his Sector 44 residence allegedly by two young representatives of a credit card company. On Sunday 67-year-old Pritha Singh, wife of a retired Army officer, was reportedly killed at her Sector 10 residence by labourers provided by a contractor for constructing a room. Following the murder of H. S. Brar, Union Territory Administrator Lieut-Gen J. F. R. Jacob directed the Deputy Commissioner to ensure the registration of door-to-door salespersons with the administration. It is a sensible decision. But in the light of a second murder in less than a week much more evidently needs to be done keeping in mind the peculiar character of Chandigarh. It is a city of "chitti dahrian" and "hari jharian". Even Panchkula and Mohali are not safe for senior citizens. It is clear that routine policing will not help raise the level of security of senior citizens. What the region needs is innovative policing. There are certain elementary precautions which most residents simply refuse to take in spite of repeated requests from the police. The response to the servant verification scheme has thus far been lukewarm.

A slight shift in the emphasis may work. Apart from requesting the households to provide the particulars of their domestic help, the authorities should make it mandatory for not just salesmen but also rickshaw-pullers and domestic workers to secure ID cards from the administration. Those without proper identification should be booked. By way of abundant precaution the administration should also direct house owners to install what is called the "magic eye" at the entrance. They should also be told to install safety chains so that a person or persons at the main door cannot barge in, as the killers did in Sector 10 by pushing and beating up the domestic servant when he tried to stop them from entering. There is another important lesson the two murders have offered. In both cases the killers had reasons to believe that the targets of their attack were rich. A poor family cannot afford to buy a credit card or make additions to the size of its house. Low-key living seldom attracts trouble.

Fiscal responsibility and the budget
Restoring the health of govt’s finances
Dharam Vir

THE winter session of Parliament will be remembered in the annals of the financial administration of the country for the introduction of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Bill, 2000. Having featured in the manifesto of the main opposition party, the Bill carries an in-principle bipartisan support and with its passage, hopefully, India will join the select band of countries like Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK, Germany and Japan which have statute-based institutionalised frameworks for the control of public debt and fiscal deficit.

The Bill aims at the progressive elimination of revenue deficit through annual reductions at the minimum rate of one half per cent of the GDP till its elimination by March 2006, and similar annual reductions in fiscal deficit to a level of 2 per cent of the GDP by that date. The total liabilities of the government, inclusive of external debt computed at the current exchange rate, shall be brought down to 50 per cent of the GDP by March, 2011. By seeking to impose a ceiling on the government guarantees at one half per cent of the GDP in a year the Bill at once attempts to limit the amount of contingent liabilities and also foreclose the sidewinding device of surrogate borrowing through special purpose vehicles against government guarantees which has been resorted to by some of the state governments faced with restrictions on public borrowing.

The Bill seeks to bring about greater transparency in fiscal management by making it obligatory for the government to present three statements with the budget: a medium-term fiscal policy statement, a fiscal policy strategy statement and a macro-economic framework statement that will explain the rationale of the underlying key budgetary assumptions and also spell out the government’s vision of the behaviour of the prescribed fiscal indicators during the subsequent three years on a rolling basis. The Bill provides for regular monitoring of trends by Parliament through the quarterly submission of trends in receipts and expenditure by the Finance Minister against the pre-specified levels and the mid-term course correction by mandatory corresponding cuts in expenditure in the event of shortfalls in revenue or overshooting of expenditure.

A welcome feature of the Bill is the prohibition imposed on the government from borrowing from the Reserve Bank of India (except through ways and means advances) and on the RBI from subscribing to the primary issues of the Central Government securities after March, 2004. During 1998-99, out of the total market borrowing of Rs 83,753 crore, an amount of Rs 38,205 crore had devolved on the RBI.

The achievement of total elimination of revenue deficit by March, 2006, as mandated in the Bill will at long last see the end of a pernicious feature that had characterised the government finances for more than 25 years since the period when the Central Government had a positive balance on current revenue for the last occasion with a revenue surplus of Rs 292 crore. Despite the sensible voices of the Seventh Finance Commission, the government’s own Economic Advisory Council and the long-term fiscal policy, revenue deficit had touched a high of Rs 18,561 crore by 1990-91, and further burgeoned to a budgeted level of Rs 77,425 crore for the current financial year. Thus even during the years of reforms, revenue deficit has increased by more than three times over the level of 1990-91. Relating revenue deficit to the GDP provides only cold comfort since my fiscal management that meets current consumption expenditure through borrowing can hardly be described as prudent or sound.

The concept of fiscal deficit featured for the first time in the budget documents for 1991-92. In tandem with the growth of revenue deficit, it had registered an increase of 147 per cent from Rs 45,887 crore for 1990-91 to Rs 1,13,298 crore for 1998-99. The large amounts on account of the issue of bonds for shoring up the capital adequacy of the public sector banks would be extra. Consequent upon the introduction of a new system of accounting of small savings from 1999-2000 the states’ share of such savings is not reflected in the Central Government finances. Despite the exclusion of an amount of Rs 32,000 crore in this manner, the fiscal deficit for 2000-2001 has been budgeted at a high of Rs 1,11,275 crore.

Central Government finances are trapped in a vicious circle of high interest outgo on past liabilities, causing increased deficits and borrowings and enhanced borrowings leading to still larger interest outgo and deficits. At Rs 21,498 crore in 1990-91, interest payment accounted for 46.85 per cent of the total fiscal for that year. This had increased to 68.74 per cent by 1998-99. Currently budgeted at Rs 1,01,266 crore, interest payments account for 91 per cent of the fiscal deficit of Rs 1,11,275 crore for 2000-2001. In other words 91 per cent of the additional liabilities currently incurred are used up for the payment of interest charges on the past liabilities alone.

It is in this context that the targeted reduction of and cap on fiscal deficit and aggregate liabilities envisaged in the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Bill assumes importance. It is a tribute to the wisdom and foresight of the founding fathers that a statutory ceiling on the public debt through a law to be enacted by Parliament had been envisaged in the Constitution of India and prominently featured in the Constituent Assembly debates. One only wishes that the sage voice of Dr Ambedkar who had gone to the extent of saying that Parliament would be remiss in its duties if it did not make such a law, had not gone unheeded. One also wishes that the pointed attention repeatedly drawn by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India to the relevant provisions in the Constitution and the recommendations made by the Public Accounts Committee since the late sixties had not been ignored.

The undoubtedly stiff targets prescribed in the Bill can be achieved only through a three-pronged strategy of rigorous control over expenditure, buoyancy in revenues and a high growth rate of the GDP. Any tendency towards expenditure compression at the cost of capital expenditure or expenditure on social and economic services has to be scrupulously avoided. It is noteworthy that the percentage of revenue expenditure to the total expenditure had increased from 65.38 in 1978-79 to 75.12 in 1990-91 and by 1998-99, it accounted for over 80 per cent of the total expenditure, leaving correspondingly reduced amounts for asset formation.

The high incidence of expenditure on account of interest payment can be brought down by premature liquidation of some of the past liabilities which had been incurred at the then prevailing high interest rates. For this, all proceeds of disinvestment, big ticket or small ticket, should be appropriated towards retirement of the outstanding liabilities. It stands to reason that the capital expenditure by way of liquidation of the past liabilities is the first charge on the proceeds from the sale of assets built in the past which are thereby not spent on meeting current consumption requirements.

It is also necessary that at least the fresh borrowings and liabilities are amortised on an ongoing basis each year. This will (a) show up the true extent of the deficit for the current year and (b) further the promotion of intergeneration equity, which is one of the stated objectives of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Bill. This need not wait for the introduction of a full blown accrual-based accounting system with regard to government accounts.

Behind the financial figures in the budget is the actual performance. The existing system of performance budgeting needs to be strengthened and revised. Wisely, the Bill requires the presentation of quarterly statements of actual receipts and expenditure against the pre-specified levels. There should be a similar disclosure of the physical achievements against the budgeted projections at least once a year. The present mindset whereby performance is judged by the extent of utilisation of the budgetary provisions needs to be replaced by a critical appraisal of the physical achievements with the money that has been spent.

And, finally, fiscal responsibility at the macro level will remain incomplete if it is not backed by public accountability at all levels for the effectiveness of spending. There is urgent need for strengthening and revamping the existing mechanism of public accountability that will ensure that the best value is obtained for each rupee of the tax payer’s money spent, and the consequences of financial wrong-doing are not avoided.

The writer is a former Deputy Comptroller and Auditor-General of India.

Reservations: an undiscovered aspect
Sagarpreet Hooda

Reservations have been a controversial issue in the Indian polity since their very inception. Much of the controversy is inherent in the subject due to its complexity. The intensity of the controversy has varied with differences in social locations and contexts. In the wake of the implementation of recommendations of the Mandal Commission and the Supreme Court’s decision in this regard, there was a fierce debate on this issue. Much of the debate was, however, unscientific and devoid of any empirical basis. The masses as well as the intelligentsia seemed to be divided along caste lines. This was visible again during the recent strike by a particular section of the employees of the Haryana Government on the issue of reservations and the government’s response to it. The issue needs to be re-examined from a new perspective.

Reservations, in simple sense, are an instrument for undoing historical and social inequality and achieving substantive, rather than formal, equality in our society. The reservation policy is essentially a humanitarian instrument. Unfortunately, however, its intent is highly misunderstood. Reservations, therefore, continue to be a subject of intense debate. The forward caste people do not legitimise the inequalities; rather they support the principle of equality with as much enthusiasm as the backward castes. Their concept of equality is, in the Aristotelian sense, both “numerical” and “proportional”. So far as the “numerical equality” is concerned there is not much controversy in the modern age. It is the issue of “Proportional equality” which has become the source of divergent opinions. Proportional equality in the Aristotelian sense means that one must be rewarded in proportion to the quality or talent that one possesses. This is known as meritarian principle of “proportional equality”. The forward caste people believe in this type of equality. This belief becomes instrumental in their analysis of the policy and content of reservations. It is this test which renders the reservation policy as discriminatory to them. Any act of denial of a job, or admission to an institution, seems to the forward caste to be discriminatory and sacrificial of talent and efficiency.

But the concept of “proportional equality” based on the meritarian principle commits the fallacy of taking talent or merit to be intrinsic to the individual rather than as a cultural product. As is well established by now, merit or IQ is highly correlated with cultural background or, to be more precise, with a person’s class position. Therefore, the acceptance of this kind of equality is bound to increase inequality rather than to reduce it. Reduction of inequality or achievement of substantive equality calls for a redefinition of merit on the basis of which differential or proportional resources are to be distributed. The question is whether scarce resources are to be used in rewarding talent or in compensating the needy.

The backward caste people believe in “proportional equality” based on the “compensatory principle”. It is this belief which makes them favour reservations. The backward castes argue that they have been subject to exploitation for three millennia and have suffered from many socio-psychological-economic disabilities. There is no denying the fact that some sections of Indian society have been subjected to accumulated disabilities for centuries. Thus they need some compensation or, so to say, protection as the grant of mere “formal equality” or discontinuation of social discrimination is not going to help them substantially. It follows, therefore, that the demand for compensation is legitimate for achieving full equality.

No society today can afford to ignore the relevance of the “compensatory principle” as the spirit of the modern age demands greater equality. However, there is always and everywhere a hiatus between the ideal and the reality. Although the supreme value of the modern world is equality, at the empirical level all over the globe inequalities persist. In India, too the inequality of status is an empirical reality. The “compensatory principle” of “proportional equality” has been accepted by many countries to achieve equality of status but no country has so far completely replaced “merit” and “need”. In fact, it is impractical also. The backward caste people, however, seem to ignore the “meritarian principle” of “proportional equality” completely in defence of “need” (compensation).

Another very important issue which can also explain the differential attitudes of the two categories toward reservations is that of “policy” vs “right”. The backward caste people take reservations or other compensatory benefits as their “right”. Similarly, when an open category student is denied either admission to some institution or a job in the government sector due to the reservations the forward castes view this as a denial of their natural right. They find it painful and discriminatory because they believe that mere possession of talent gives them the “right” to a mission or job. The pain becomes all the more acute when the policy seems to be unending. It is this phenomenon which results not only in creating prejudices among castes but also affects inter-caste relations.

The next set of problems arise owing to criterion and the basis for reservations. The forward castes argue that if any compensation has to be given it should be given on the basis of economic backwardness, and the unit should be the individual, as poverty is not tied to any caste. They argue that in the modern age individuals are units of regimes, and any attempt at making collectivity as the basis of a unit for compensation not only perpetuates casteism but also increases caste antagonism.

The backward castes reject this plea and argue that in the Indian situation it is the social backwardness which is more pronounced than anywhere else in the world, and the disabilities have been imposed on collectivities, not on individuals. They further assert that social disabilities are more agonizing than economic ones, and these are shared collectively. This view is also supported by the Supreme Court verdict on the Mandal Commission report. The argument of the backward caste people carries more weight than that of the forward castes. But no country can afford to continue for long a policy based on such an approach. Therefore, the direction of the policies of the State should be from collectivity-based to individual-based.

Like the theoretical aspect of reservations the practical aspect is also problematic. There are two trends visible in this regard. First, social inequality is on the decrease. The caste system per se is losing legitimacy rapidly. Untouchability has practically vanished and the SEBC socially and economically backward castes label is no more considered as stigmatising. Caste-consciousness has become weak in post-Independence India. Secondly, within the reserved categories like the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, a section of elites has emerged due to the benefits flowing from reservations. This section predominantly belongs to the service class. As is well known, the service class all over the world exhibits a tendency to reproduce itself. “Status retention” is its major aspirations. This is true in the Indian context also. The elites of the Scheduled Castes and other such categories try to reproduce and perpetuate their family status. Given the compensatory policies, it becomes easier for them to retain their privileged status over generations. Unfortunately, this results in the denial of benefits of compensatory measures to the real needy. The forward castes argue that in the name of compensatory principles meant for the needy, these privileged sections are cornering all the benefits.

The Scheduled Caste elites are achieving “sponsored mobility” in the name of their own caste-brethren. The needy and vulnerable sections of this category and other such categories are being pushed downward. Thus not only the purpose of reservations has been defeated but also an “inversion of reservations” has taken place.

This has to be stopped, and reservations as a whole are to be used for humanitarian and egalitarian purposes. Strong and strict steps must be taken for the purpose. In the first place, it must be ensured that no dominant caste gets the benefits of reservations. Secondly, the beneficiary groups are to be differentiated further on the basis of their need, and a differential approach is to be adopted. Thirdly, the “creamy-layer” needs to be siphoned off immediately from all the categories. These are some of the short-term measures which call for immediate action. Besides, there are some long-term measures.

One, the policy of reservations should continue forever as a measure of distributive justice. Two, collectivity should be gradually replaced with individual as the basis of reservations or compensation. Three, poverty or economic backwardness should gradually replace social backwardness as a criterion for reservations. Four, the reservation policy should be made more dynamic, and a regular siphoning off the “creamy-layer” must take place.

An open and dynamic long-term reservation policy based on the principle of distributive justice will not only make the people look at the issue sympathetically but also render the caste system infructuous.

The writer, an IPS officer, is a keen observer of social issues.

What it means to be coloured in America
Amitava Kumar

In the late eighties, I was a new immigrant in this country.

One evening, a man taking my pizza order asked me for my name and, when he didn’t get it the first time, said: “Okay, we’ll call you Andy. Come up and take your pizza when I call out your name.”

Incidents like this, however, small, made me think of myself in a new way. I believe I had begun to see myself as others would see me, an outsider. And in ways that I had not anticipated before my arrival here, I also started looking at myself as who I am, a man of colour.

I had come from India the previous year. At home, when I was growing up, America had meant JFK, rock music and big cars. When I came to America, Ronald Reagan was President. Ollie North appeared on the TV and told us about the covert war against Nicaragua. In the Gaza Strip, the “intifada” erupted.

And on the college campus where I was a student, there were active protests for divestment in apartheid-bound South Africa.

One day I read in the newspaper that James Baldwin was dead. Till then, I had only heard of Baldwin. I knew in some dim way that he was a writer, a black writer, and a writer of some importance. But I knew little else.

Some time after his death, I was in a second-hand bookstore and picked up a copy of Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son.” I started reading the title essay which appeared in the middle of the book.

The essay began with the words: “On the 29th of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the 3rd of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.”

These were the first words I had read by Baldwin.

I had been raised in a Hindu family. I had never had the opportunity to read the Bible. But I remember reading Baldwin’s words again and thinking that the Bible must have been written in a language akin to this. For me, it rooted the black experience in suffering and in anger, but also uncommon grace.

I read the whole book quickly, even urgently. In its opening pages, Baldwin had written of his struggle to be a writer. When he was 22, he was waiting tables in Greenwich Village and writing book reviews.

Most of his writing, it turned out, was about what was called the Negro problem. The colour of his skin, he said jokingly, made him automatically an expert.

I laughed when I read that. Mine was an uneasy laughter. I was in my twenties, I wanted to be a writer. I did not mind being an expert.

There would be many others that I would read in the years to come, those who would instruct me about race in America.

But in all this while there has been no one to teach me as Jimmy Baldwin did about not only the ambiguity but also the irony of sending smoke signals from that dark land called my skin.

In the process, Baldwin taught an immigrant what it meant to be black and, equally important, what it meant to be American.

India Abroad News Service

Amitava Kumar teaches English at Penn State University and is the author of “Passport Photos”.

Few takers for educational websites
Sharvani Pandit

Educational sites targeting Indian students may have mushroomed on the Internet in recent years, but they do not fetch the kind of eyeballs that their creators had envisaged.

According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), only 11.3 per cent of students who access the Internet use it as an educational tool. In fact, of the country’s five million personal computers base till August 2000, 70 per cent were in urban centres, an indication that millions of students in rural India are deprived of this facility.

The student community represented by school and college-goers comprises 38 per cent of Net users, but most use it to answer e-mail, look for information and download and upload software, Nasscom data reveals.

India’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has introduced an updated computer course based on application software packages, with special focus on the Internet as a tool for senior school students. But, “the Internet as a medium is just accessible to a few and that is why it has limited reach so far,” CBSE spokesperson Rama Sharma says.

She, however, added: “With the board’s increasing emphasis on information technology (IT), its popularity is not far behind.”

Internet is not popular among students as most either do not have the time for it or access to it. “There is only so much time a board student has and there really isn’t enough time to scour through websites in search of content while preparing for the examination,” Gaurav Behl, a student in New Delhi, said.

Students like Sayan Chakraborty in Kolkata find it simpler to stick to conventional forms of studying like tutorials instead of turning to the Internet. “All the websites have solutions to question papers. The idea is to solve them ourselves and understand how to do them, what’s the point of readymade solutions?” Behl asks.

It is a similar story for students in other parts of the country. In large parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Internet is not even available to students as there are very few Internet service providers (ISPs) in the state. The Kashmir valley, in fact, doesn’t even have a local ISP. Student surfers in Srinagar have to access Internet through Delhi or Jammu at exorbitant long-distance call charges.

In Andhra Pradesh, some schools do offer the facility making it a bit easier for students to log on and explore “edu-sites” (education-led websites). Sharbani Ghosh, a Class 12 student from Hyderabad, said: “I log on to egurucool.com once or twice a week as solved CBSE question papers are available on the site.”

But Piyush Tirpathi and Santosh Mishra, two other Class 12 students from Hyderabad, said: “We heard about egurucool.com from friends in other schools but have never used Internet.”

According to U.S.-based Alexa Research, an organisation that provides global statistics on Internet use in various countries, the most popular site in India for January this year was yahoo.com, followed by e-mail and search engine sites. There are no education-led websites in the top 25 list.

Not fazed by the lack of popularity, a host of education-led websites have cropped up on the Internet. Some popular sites are egurucool.com, classteacher.com (an ASP), padhaee.com, CoolAcads.com, padAyi.com, edurite.com, planetgyan.com.

But Internet as a medium of education has miles to go as even teachers are unsure of how to handle it. While hardware giants like Intel have launched initiatives like Project Vidya to integrate computers with school curriculum and conducts workshops in schools, most teachers resent the work involved.

A teacher from a Delhi school said, “With extra emphasis on co-curricular work, there is hardly time to complete the syllabus. Computer and web-based education is an unnecessary headache.”

On the other hand, for Harpal Bhalla, another schoolteacher from Delhi, the worry is which website he should recommend. “With so much information available at one’s fingertips, it is hard to choose. Besides, I don’t want to confuse students by overloading them. As it is the course is vast and the pressure to perform enormous,” he said. India Abroad News Service

Online therapy a virtual success

As Sigmund Freud once said, there is not one human relationship which is not tinged with ambivalence. The same might be said of modern man’s relationship with technology.

Take the worldwide web: some people love it for its instant access to knowledge, its ability to reach out through cyberspace and create a sense of community, its convenience and speed.

Some hate it for its unedited maelstrom of information, its inevitable American bias and its frustrated commercialism.

But most of us both love and hate it at the same time, so it’s hardly surprising if the idea of therapy via the internet is the subject of hot debate.

Certain psychological schools are inherently opposed to e-counselling. Ann Shearer, a Jungian analyst who can be contacted through a website (www.igap.co.uk) but only works face to face, explained: ‘We do in-depth work with the unconscious over a period of time of some intensity. The relationship is crucially important and cannot be replicated by tapping up a picture on screen or sending written messages. But counselling is for one specific problem, whereas analysis is much deeper.’

Since face-to-face therapy places great emphasis on body language, tone of voice and other non-verbal signals to diagnose state of mind, many of the fears uninitiated therapists have about online work relate to lack of such peripheral information. ‘How can you tell if a client is lying?’ is a popular question, according to Kate Anthony, an online counselling consultant and trainer (www.onlinecounsellors.co.uk). Her answer is always:

‘Why should they, since online counselling has to be paid for? In any case, Freudians would argue that any part of a person, real or invented, is still a part of them. “Acting out’’ in cyberspace may be immensely therapeutic.’

Anthony is in a better position than most commentators on the subject. As a member of the British Association for Counselling’s working party for drawing up ethics and guidelines for online counselling, she was commissioned last year to research the differences between e-counselling and face-to-face work.

She talks about the unique features of online therapeutic relationships. The way in which the client’s lack of concrete knowledge about his counsellor can allow him to picture him in whatever way suits his therapeutic growth best — there are no ‘first impressions’ to get over.

Then there’s electronic rapport or telepresence (being able to communicate so effectively online that the medium of communication between counsellor and client — the computer — seems to disappear), and net-iquette.

For examples of net-iquette, sign on to any chatroom — you’ll quickly pick up shorthand such as LOL (laugh out loud) and the facial glyphs :O) and :O (.Emotions expressed in brackets (such as <crying> or <sighing>) can be as poignant online as they are in ‘real’ life. Observer

Painting New Year

Commercialisation of art in China is leading to fewer people buying New Year’s paintings, an art from practised by generations of peasants who never received any formal training. With the Chinese New Year just gone by, attempts of practitioners and lovers of this form of art to revive it have come under the spotlight.

Like Christmas cards made just for the festival, New Year’s Paintings or “farmers’ art” is a way of celebrating the New Year. WFS

Bungling burglars

The police in Tallahassee, Florida, arrested two men when they returned to a house shortly after allegedly stealing two television sets.

Jaron Grosby and Wesley Jackson, both 20, were charged with burglary when found outside the house with the loot.

Why return to the scene of the crime after giving the police enough time to arrive?

They admitted to the officers that they forgot to grab the remote controls for the TVs, and had come back for them.

You have the right to press mute. Anything heard while you are unmuted can and will be used against you in a court of law. AP

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Women must be honoured and adorned by fathers, brothers, husbands and brothers-in-law, desiring welfare.

—The Holy Bible: The Gospel According to St. Matthew, chapter 5:27-28.