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Monday,
September 29, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Region’s varsities are sick Avoidable confrontation Power begets power |
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The verdict from Rae Bareli
The lady on wheels
Edward Said: voice of the voiceless
Consumer rights
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Region’s varsities are sick THE 12-part series on the state of universities in the region that The Tribune carried recently painted a grim picture of decay and neglect. The maladies were too numerous to be recounted even in such a comprehensive exercise. But the overarching problems had an alarming uniformity about them. What was unmistakable was that all the ills of society at large had seeped into these temples of learning with a vengeance. Focussing on any one of them — be it political interference, lack of funds or mediocrity of teachers — will be tantamount to blind men feeling an elephant at different places and coming to contradictory conclusions. The bottom line is that the universities are a pale shadow of themselves and require a radical surgery at once. In fact, any reform drive that the country requires has to start at the universities because they happen to be the nurseries where the future citizens of the country spend their formative years. The problem is that since so much needs to be done, nothing is done at all. But let us look at the positive side as well. There is so much wrong that even if minor correctives are applied the improvement will be noticeable. For instance, let’s take just one of the problems. Political interference has indeed played havoc with the universities. Bad Vice-Chancellors or bad teachers mean below-par studies and research. If only all political parties come to an agreement that they will keep their hands off the universities the situation can be remedied greatly. But the question is: who will take up the task when passing the buck is the favourite pastime with everyone laying the entire blame at others’ doors. Teachers say the reforms have to start with the administration while the administration suggests exactly the opposite. Students too have their own list of woes, which makes no mention of their own mistakes. The reality is that all of them have contributed to the overall rot to their heart’s content. Universities in the region are not throwing up any creative idea. It is meaningless to indulge in blame game. The need of the hour is to stop preaching to others and do something oneself. Let every section do something about its own mistakes and the universities will turn around automatically. This miracle cannot be wrought in a day. The decline has taken place over many decades. Nursing the sick universities back to health will take long. A beginning has to be made not at any one end but in every direction, simultaneously if possible. Can students, teachers, administrators and politicians show this much of maturity? |
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Avoidable confrontation TRADE unions and political parties have expectedly found unacceptable the court’s hypothesis that government employees have no fundamental right to go on strike. They see it as an attempt to deprive the employees of, perhaps, the only effective weapon they have in their arsenal. Small wonder that all unions of government employees and trade unions, barring the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, have come on a common platform to protest against the court’s verdict. The unions have hinted at a general strike to give expression to their anger. They are particularly angry as they feel that the court has not reviewed its decision when in the past it had done so in even simpler cases involving lesser number of people. The prospect of employees and workers all over the country protesting against the Supreme Court is not a welcome proposition. This will amount to virtual denigration of the court. Seldom has public anger been aroused by a judicial order. It is true that the court was genuinely concerned about the trouble the people underwent every time the employees went on strike. It is the general public which suffers when offices are closed down or banks are not opened. What necessitated the judicial comment was the strike by the employees of the Tamil Nadu Government. In the past, some High Courts had banned calls for bandhs by political parties but the practice did not end with such bans. Instead of calling bandhs, they began giving calls for hartals with the same effect on the common citizen, thereby defeating the very purpose of the ban. This shows the limits of the courts in a democracy. The Supreme Court could have taken a pragmatic view of the question. That the apex court’s view is flawed can be gauged from the fact that even Attorney-General Soli J. Sorabjee was compelled to speak out against it for the simple reason that a court of law which is concerned with legal and constitutional issues has no right to say that the employees do not have the “moral and equitable right” to go on strike. The concepts of collective bargaining, the right to form unions and the right to strike were not gifted to the employees as they were won through a series of struggles spread over a long period of time. All these rights flow from the citizen’s fundamental right to equity and justice. To deny these rights by the stroke of a pen is an act of injustice. Given the enormity of the issues involved, the apex court would do well to have a review of its own decision, if necessary, by constituting a larger Bench. |
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Power begets power PREMCHAND, father of Hindi fiction, was born Dhanpat Rai but remained poor all his life. Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav’s son is not going to let this happen to his name. Was he named Tejasvi and is living up to it or was he born displaying traits that earned him the name? Some day Mr Laloo Yadav may agree to tell the people of Bihar the first word that Tejasvi uttered. Was it power? It is something that children of most Indian politicians are taught to wield before they learn to say amma. Of course, it can be argued that amma itself spells power in some parts of India. Tejasvi is not just another schoolboy. He belongs to a family with a proven record of success in any field. Bihar has not seen a politician like his father nor a Chief Minister like his mom Rabri Devi. Nor a sister like Misa who walked away with all the distinctions and prizes when she entered the portals of a medical college to give the Laloo family a medical doctor. Tejasvi is carrying a heavy burden of responsibility on his young shoulders. But he is carrying it manfully. A trifle selfishly too, going by the response of the kids of lesser mortals. He is the future “Sports Shree” of Bihar. His cricketing “talent” has earned him the captaincy of his school in Delhi and an uncountable number of cups and trophies in other disciplines. He was denied official transport on reaching Ajmer with his school team for an inter-school tournament. Would Saurav Ganguly have been treated equally shabbily? Laloo’s lad had to throw his father’s weight behind his demand for the babus to do his bidding. He has the makings of another Sanjay Gandhi, the first political son that rose from all directions. By the time he arrives he may find himself in the company of equally privileged children of political families from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and other States where leaders seek inspiration from the Indira Gandhi’s children. Politics is the among the few “success guaranteed” family professions. Look at the sons of Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and Sunil Gavaskar. Saif is a film actor and Rohan is struggling to follow in his father’s footsteps. But Laloo’s children are a class apart. Whereas then a rattle is a suitable occupation for infant children, education serves as a rattle for young people when older. — Aristotle |
The verdict from Rae Bareli IT is a measure of the grave crisis of India’s justice delivery system that it has failed even to charge, leave alone punish, all the perpetrators of an event which shook us all — the cataclysmic demolition of the Babri Mosque 11 years ago. The very recording of offences against the accused started on a wrong footing, with the first information report being wantonly split into two. The Central Bureau of Investigation then became complicit in illegitimately dropping the important charge of conspiracy. The Uttar Pradesh Government named a subordinate “special court” under magistrate V.K. Singh in small-town Rae Bareli to try the now-weakened case. This court made a mockery of justice on September 19 when it framed charges against seven persons, including Mr Murli Manohar Joshi, Ms Uma Bharati, etc, but discharged Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. Mr Advani spearheaded, planned and ideologically inspired the anti-mosque agitation. As this is written, a week after the verdict, Mr Singh’s order is still not publicly available. Until October 10 he won’t disclose precisely what charges are framed against Mr Advani’s seven co-accused. But they certainly won’t contain the all-important charge of criminal conspiracy, nor offences under Sections 295 and 295A of the IPC (defiling places of worship and indulging in acts intended to outrage religious feelings). It is even more outrageous that Mr Advani — the most important leader of the anti-Babri movement in the late 1980s, who conducted the infamous Somnath-to-Ayodhya rath yatra in 1990, and played a pivotal role in the events and strategies leading to December 6 — has been let off. Even he says he can’t comprehend this! Apparently, magistrate Singh followed the argument that the CBI cited two conflicting testimonies, one of which claimed that Mr Advani tried to calm down the restive crowd (while the other said he did nothing to restrain firebrand leaders like Ms Uma Bharati and Sadhvi Ritambhara, with whom he shared the dais). In giving Mr Advani the “benefit of the doubt”, Mr Singh, strangely, cited by Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1979 Praful Kumar Samal case: if the scales of evidence against the accused during a trail are “even”, then that is a ground for acquittal. But this rationale can come into play only at the end of a trial, not before it, while framing charges. It makes no sense that a person against whom there is prima facie evidence should be simply let off without trial. Magistrate Singh’s major error of judgment compounds the weakening and manipulation of the whole litigation by the CBI. The CBI is not an independent agency. It reports directly to Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee (earlier, it came under the Home Ministry). The CBI, it seems, was “persuaded” into suppressing and distorting the evidence in its possession. One’s worst suspicions about such manipulation are confirmed by the fact that the CBI was represented by senior lawyer S.S. Gandhi, known to be extremely close to Law Minister Arun Jaitley. It would be rewarding to trace Mr Gandhi’s movements and actions in the crucial weeks prior to the September 19 verdict. The CBI’s coloured version of Mr Advani’s innocence contrasts sharply with countless independent accounts which carry overwhelming evidence of Mr Advani’s pivotal role in the processes and events that led to the demolition, including the December 6 happenings. Perhaps the most authoritative of these are the two 1993 reports of The Citizens’ Tribunal on Ayodhya, which comprised Mr Justice O. Chinappa Reddy, Mr Justice D.A. Desai and Mr Justice D.S. Tewatia. These show that Mr Advani was central to the build-up to the events of December 1992, including numerous kar sevaks, his rath yatra and various strategy meetings. The intention to raze the mosque was repeatedly, unambiguously stressed during these. The Citizens’ Tribunal enquiry commission recorded eyewitnesses who say the mobilisation for December 6 was launched by the BJP-VHP Bajrang Dal in Ayodhya on November 29. By December 3, nearly 1,50,000 kar sevaks had gathered there. On December 5, Mr Advani addressed a public meeting in Lucknow and was to go to Varanasi, reaching Ayodhya/Faizabad the next day. But he altered his plans so as to reach Faizabad to join an all-important closed-door meeting at Mr Vinay Katiyar’s house, where detailed nuts-and-bolts plans for December 6 were finalised. Among those present were Mr H.V. Seshadri and Mr K.S. Sudarshan of the RSS, the VHP’s Mr Ashok Singhal, Mr Vinay Katiyar and Acharya Dharmendra, the Shiv Sena’s Moreshwar Save, and the BJP’s Pramod Mahajan. Meanwhile, a rehearsal of the demolition took place the same day near the mosque. On December 6, Mr Advani and Mr Joshi arrived at the site at 10.30 a.m. Mr Advani, among others, addressed the kar sevaks. His speech was inflammatory. Meanwhile, some kar sevaks had breached the security cordon and were in a highly excited state. At 11.30 a.m., Ms Uma Bharati made a particularly fiery speech. At 11.45 a.m., Mr Advani announced, “We don’t need bulldozers to pull down the mosque” — in other words, do it manually. The assault began. Mr Advani ensured that the destruction would be completed without Central intervention. At 3.15 p.m., he urged kar sevaks “to block all entry points to Ayodhya to prevent Central forces from entering...” These events were videographed and photographed by numerous journalists, by Indian and foreign TV channels and, above all, by the Intelligence Bureau, which reportedly has nine hours of video-audio tapes. (Curiously, the CBI told the special court that the official tapes contained no speeches a lie contradicted by numerous eyewitnesses). However, the Sangh Parivar’s disinformation campaign claims that Mr Advani did his best to restrain the kar sevaks. According to it, none of the eight accused should have been charged. The demolition, we are told, was an act caused by some mysterious, unknown and unknowable force — and not a clearly identifiable human agency, including BJP-VHP-RSS-Bajrang Dal-Shiv Sena top leaders. Mr Advani and others revelled in the destruction of the mosque, and hugged one another in exultation. (Ms Uma Bharati even rode on Mr Joshi’s back in joy. Ms Bharati, Ms Ritambhra and certain well-known pro-BJP Bengali journalists formed a circle, holding arms in sheer rapture). The BJP rode to political power at the Centre on the anti-Babri movement. The very least its leaders can do is face trial, and declare either that they stand by their role, or that they regret it and apologise. The Rae Bareli order has highlighted and widened the rifts in the parivar, including the Joshi-Advani rivalry. The Advani group tried to “fix” and isolate Mr Joshi. He was kept away from its strategy meetings. He in turn has tried to outwit Mr Advani and embarrass BJP leaders by presenting himself as both more courageous and more loyal to the Sangh and the temple agenda. Should a legal appeal against the Rae Bareli order go against Mr Advani, he too will be compelled to resign. This would put the Parivar in a dilemma. Its position is that no minister need resign when charged with “political” offences, as distinct from “corruption”. This position is misbegotten. The mosque demolition was a far greater offence against the Indian public and Constitution than monetary corruption. The secular forces must get active on this. (Strangely, UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav has decided not to appeal against the order on the ground that “I am a firm believer in the judiciary and of the view that the court verdict on Ayodhya should be acceptable to all...” This raises uncomfortable questions about his intentions). We can’t shirk the task of bringing the guilty of the Ayodhya demolition to book or of deterring hate-crimes. At stake, above all, is the citizen’s faith in the possibility of justice in this society. n |
The lady on wheels A spinster, now in her early forties, has been, as far as I can remember, delivering daily household needs — tea, soap, oil, teeth, paste etc. — at our door for nearly 20 years. Her periodic visits on a seasoned, serviceable cycle loaded with such merchandise are now a familiar experience. And in this period and process, she has come so close to us as to make my wife a willing confidante. They often remain closeted with each other, at times, for long spells, sipping tea, and their small talk has yielded, over the years, a story of labour, adversity, fortitude, rich in pathos, and rich in deep humanity. And this lady on the wheels from Panchkula to Chandigarh, almost seven days of the week, has many such clients in far-flung sectors, and has thus, created a small circle of her own. This story, then, of an obscure, self-effacing, over-smiling lady grown grey in service, and affluent in what Aldous Huxley called “goods of the spirit”, has often touched my imagination, and drawn it towards pondering the fate of all those persons whose chronicles remain buried in the hearts of their listeners. Yes, there’s no poetry in such quotidian proceedings, but I trust, there’s always a story within a story, and that inner note can only be heard when you’re able to touch the right button. And I have gathered her hints and haltings and falterings poured into my wife’s ear to reach the heart of her quiet heroism. In fact, she has never talked to me as such, and her face, fair and noble, is suffused with shyness even if I happen to be passing through the lobby where they are engaged in a brief colloquy. What kind of thoughts does she have when back home after a day’s sad routine? She sits down to ruminate over the kind of deal served to her by the Maker of Fortunes. To be sure, she is not an isoloto by nature, nor a person to whom nothing is fated to happen, a theme in one of Henry James’ stories of women trapped in “ the ordeals of consciousness ”, and meeting “the assaults of reality” with a quiet dignity. Retiring into the fortress of the heart, they think out the strategies of survival in a harsh, hard-nosed world. That such lonely women often have a deep Freudian side to their stories may not be disputed. We may only make wild guesses from the “dots” and “coms” that her fractured, half-bitten, laconic hints furnish. At least, that’s how my wife transmits this muted, strangled narrative to me. And this narrative pieced up suggests that she is living at two levels — one that concerns her family and the sacrifices she has made to keep it in food and raiment, and the other where her own personal miseries have remained unsung. An ailing old mother and a disabled sister are her only thought during her daylight existence, but her own inner life, it appears, remains costumed, and the twilight hours offer little consolation. It’s highly probable that in her younger days, she too had her dreams, her time of maidenly hopes and bridal fantasies. Is it possible that she was, in all likelihood, jilted by a lover, or disowned by a drunken husband, or a woman who walked out on a wretch to give some meaning to her empty life? There’s a touch of disarming sweetness in her disposition. This piece, then, is a small salute to the human spirit of endurance, a little “ode” to those mute souls who work out the puzzle of life in their own obscure homes.
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Edward Said: voice of the voiceless While my colleague fell into the trap, journalist Alexander Cockburn observed: "To show that Said somehow is not Palestinian is as weirdly audacious as Golda Meir's notorious claim many years ago that there was no such entity as the Palestinian people, only Arab transplants with no rights." How important it was to denigrate Said could be gauged from the fact that while the Israeli terrorist-war machine was well-oiled and well-equipped to deal with the Molotov cocktails that Palestinian children routinely threw at Israeli forces, it did not have anyone of Said's stature who could argue with as much scholarship, passion and vigour as he could. Small wonder that Said was attacked, reviled, called names, cold-shouldered and kept away from the corridors of power in his land of exile. But he retained his indefatigable spirit and fought like a brave soldier till leukaemia snatched him away from the Palestinian cause on Thursday night at age 67. It was that editorial my colleague wrote that turned me to Said and made me his instant fan. His Covering Islam showed how clueless the super power was about the goings-on on the Arab street. The US was taken aback when on November 4, 1979, a group of Iranian students occupied the American Embassy in Teheran. What Said found more astonishing was the rampant generalisation the Western media resorted to when it commented on things Islamic. The venerable New York Times, for instance, had no compunction in editorialising on the "Persian psyche" as if everyone who lived in the Persian Gulf region thought and acted in the same manner. This was, Said argued, like V.S. Naipaul commenting that "Muslim fundamentalism has no intellectual substance to it, therefore, it must collapse" without specifying what Muslim fundamentalism he was referring to and what sort of intellectual substance he had in mind. Said merely held a mirror to the Western media in Covering Islam to show how routinely they indulged in stereotype without any clue about the actual situation. The syndrome is still at work in Iraq where the occupying forces cannot distinguish between a beat constable and a Saddam loyalist and a housewife and a suicide bomber. Immediately after 9/11, bookshops in the West, particularly the US, experienced a sudden demand for books on Islam, terror and fundamentalism, which they were unable to meet. If anything, it proved how oblivious the Americans were about the situation in West Asia. In numerous interviews, articles, television appearances and speeches, Said gave cogent explanations for 9/11 without in any way condoning the suicide missions. Said saw writing essentially as "participating in the struggle" and celebrating "the tradition of resistance". It is, therefore, no surprise that his writings during the latter part of his career were almost exclusively on the Palestinian cause. He might have appeared uncompromising when he took Yasser Arafat to task for signing the Oslo accord and politely declined an invitation to the White House but he always believed that the Jews and the Palestinians could live under a common roof. Whether his dream will ever come true or not, Said will always be remembered for his singularly brilliant work, Orientalism, which came out in 1978. Of course, he did not invent the term orientalism. Nor was his the first attack on the once respectable fascination with things Eastern. But no one had ever built a thesis that such systems as orientalism are "discourses of power, ideological fictions — mind-forged manacles". He did not make allowance for the fact that the philologists, archaeologists, travellers and sand-smitten Westerners in West Asian garb were desperately in love with the Arab world. He saw them merely as pretentious, racist imperialists. What about their sincerity? There would be a counter question: Is not sincerity the cheapest of virtues? Taken to its logical conclusion, only an Adi tribal can write a book on the Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh and not a British-born Verrier Elwin because the latter would "distort the subject of inquiry by turning persons into objects". Or, only a Sikh scholar, born and brought up in the land of the five rivers, can write a book on Sikhism and not Joseph Davey Cunningham who did a pioneering one in 1849. Or, only an M.S. Swaminathan can think of ushering in the Green Revolution and not a Higginbottom, who set up the first agricultural institute in Allahabad in the first decade of the twentieth century. This way lies separateness and a dialogue of the deaf. Let me also add, such criticism does not detract from the merit of the book that it changed our worldview and even the terms of our public discourse. The range of Said's interests and subjects was simply phenomenal. An Episcopalian, who lived almost all his adult life in the US, he had a long interest in polyphonic, Western classical music. His 1989 lecture on Performance as an Extreme Occasion showed the depth of his knowledge and his interpretive skills to bring out a scholarly musical point. Passion was one common strand in all that he wrote and did. That is precisely why the world will miss this intellectual giant, who gave voice to the voiceless and fought for the dispossessed. |
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Consumer rights DIWALI time is celebration time. And if you are planning to celebrate with a new home appliance this year, spend some time comparing brands, models, their quality, performance, price, warranty and after sales service, before making up your mind. And while looking at quality, be sure to check the electricity consumption of the product too or else you may well end up paying huge power bills. Yes, if you thought that all brands consumed more or less the same amount of power, you will be surprised. In recent years, consumer groups that are into comparative testing of different brands have been looking at the power consumption of the brands too and what they have found is a wide variation in the energy efficiency of different brands. Take refrigerators, for example, which are on 24 hours. A Delhi-based consumer group, VOICE, which tested about two years ago, eight brands of 165-175- litre ‘direct cool’ category of refrigerators, calculated the energy consumption of each brand per day and found it varying from 0.60 kilo watts (Videocon) to 1.44 kws (Kelvinator). In terms of hard cash, this is what it means: at the rate of Rs 4 per unit cost of power, the refrigerator that consumes 0.60 kw of power will cost you Rs 2.40 a day, while the one that consumes 1.44 kw, Rs 5.76 per day and in a year, Rs 876 and Rs 2102 respectively. In other words, you overspend Rs 1,226 per year on your electricity bill if you buy the brand that consumes the highest amount of power. Not a small amount! Similarly, VOICE looked at the energy efficiency of 12 brands of 21 inch colour television sets bought during the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002. Keeping ten hours per day as the average viewing time, it calculated the power consumption of CTVs and found the lowest consumption was 69.20 watts (BPL) while the highest, 122.16 watts (Panasonic). At the rate of Rs 4 per unit of power, it works out to Rs 2.77 and Rs 4.80 per day respectively and in a year, Rs 1010 to Rs 1,784. For details, contact Voice at 441, Jangpura, Mathura Road, New Delhi-110014. e-mail: cvoice@vsnl.net) Now that we are moving closer to winter, let’s look at geysers. Among the 10 brands of 25-litre geysers tested and published by VOICE last year, the cost of running a geyser for a day (at Rs 4 per unit of energy) ranged from Rs 3.15 (Remson) to Rs 5.78 (Hotflo) and in a year, Rs 1153.40 to Rs 2112.62. In other words, you overspend Rs 959 and paise 22 with a brand that consumes more power, says VOICE. So whether you are buying a washing machine or a microwave, music system or a television set, refrigerator or an air-conditioner, do look at the power consumption of the brands and the models before purchase. It’s quite possible that different models of the same brand may have different energy consumption levels. In other words, one model of a brand may be energy efficient, while another of the same brand may be a power guzzler. So do check this out. If it’s not indicated on the label, ask the dealer for the information. And demand from manufacturers more energy efficient products. Consumer preference for energy efficient appliances will force manufacturers to pay attention to this aspect of their product. |
I have made the world’s faith in God my own, and as my faith is ineffaceable, I regard that faith as amounting to experience. — Mahatma Gandhi This world is a pot of sorrow Which’s full of hunger to the brim, Devoid of Ram’s mercy, humans Lie smug in spider’s web they spin. — Kabir Educate so that you may be free. Here ‘educate’ does not mean mere addition of several academic degrees to one’s name. Instead, it means that the knowledge one acquires from education should be utilised for the betterment of society at large. — Sree Narayana Guru |
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A few years ago when a colleague, who is still mesmerised by the clout the Jewish state wields, went ecstatic over a news agency flash that Edward Said had not been truthful about his Palestinian origin in his memoir Out of Place and dipped his pen in vitriol to write a devastating editorial, I developed a seminal interest in his writing. It did not take long for the world to realise that the diatribe in Commentary magazine that sought to project Said as a charlatan was penned by a former employee of the Israeli Ministry of Justice "to deny the validity of Israeli human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories."