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Looking for friends Iran is shaken |
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Beacons
of excellence Science centres can transform India THE proposal of the University Grants Commission (UGC) to set up four National Institutes of Science across the country is welcome. The interest of students in science has slackened with the most brilliant minds going towards business and commerce fields instead.
Misplaced
analysis of intentions
Couplet
Express
A
spokesman of the rural downtrodden Consumer
rights
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Looking for friends THE Congress decision on Friday to forge alliances with like-minded parties in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections is in tune with its outline for such arrangements drawn at its Shimla conclave and the recommendation of the Pranab Mukherjee report. Actually, under the present circumstances, the party cannot do otherwise. The decision comes in the wake of the party’s defeat in three states and the prospects of an early general election. The Congress is convinced that it will have to firm up alliances so that it can provide a credible alternative to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. The five-member committee constituted to look into the reasons for the recent Assembly poll debacle and suggest steps for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections has emphasised that the Congress could give a stiff fight to the BJP only by forging alliances with other parties. The Congress has been lately working on a plan to rope in allies, especially in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra. In Uttar Pradesh, it is organisationally in a poor state. Having lost its traditional hold on the Dalits and minorities, the party is in disarray in UP, the state that sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha. No doubt, bringing its traditional vote bank back to its fold would be a daunting task for the Congress. In Tamil Nadu, the party has sent an olive branch to the DMK which recently walked out of the NDA government. Equally significant is Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar’s call for the two parties to join hands by virtually setting aside contentious issues like Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin. There are indications that early Assembly elections may be advanced in Maharashtra and the Congress seems ready to patch up with the NCP, an ally in the Sushil Kumar Shinde government. The Congress’ efforts to forge strong alliances with regional parties are understandable, but doubts persist about its capacity to take on a rejuvenated NDA at the hustings. The party is certainly not in good shape considering the fact that infighting has broken out in several state units, and the leadership’s time and energy are getting spent in firefighting. |
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Iran is shaken IRAN’S major tourist attraction on the ancient Silk Road, Bam, has lost over 20,000 of its 200,000 residents in an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale. The final figure may be much higher as 90 per cent of the thousands injured are in a critical condition. An earthquake of a similar intensity hit California two days before
Christmas but only three casualties were reported. The Californians were lucky because of the high level of earthquake-related awareness among them. They had constructed safer houses, whereas the Iranians did not bother about having earthquake-resistant buildings. The world is rushing to their rescue in this hour of crisis, but they themselves could have done more to save their lives had they not been indifferent to safety norms. The Iranian authorities had issued safety regulations for Bam, but they never cared to implement them. This is so despite the fact that 35,000 people were killed in 1990 in Gilan and Zanjan towns in perhaps the worst earthquake in Iran’s history. Iran has many earthquake-prone regions and yet people are least bothered about this seismic occurrence. Within a few months they forget what they describe as “God’s will”. This may happen in the case of Bam also. There is a lesson to be learnt by all those living in earthquake-prone areas anywhere in the world. Natural disasters cannot be prevented, but the loss that people suffer can be minimised. It is people’s own carelessness which compounds a tragedy caused by nature. In Bam, industrial development had led to single-storeyed houses with weak foundations getting converted into multi-storeyed ones to meet the fast growing demand for accommodation. People used substandard construction material and violated building bylaws with impunity while the authorities looked the other way, giving unconvincing reasons like an acute shortage of houses in the area. The authorities did not wake up even when incidents of buildings collapsing without facing any tremors took place. It is, therefore, the government and the people who are to blame for the magnitude of the tragedy. |
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Beacons of excellence THE proposal of the University Grants Commission (UGC) to set up four National Institutes of Science across the country is welcome. The interest of students in science has slackened with the most brilliant minds going towards business and commerce fields instead. Those who opt for the science stream do that merely to get qualified for certain jobs - mostly unoriginal. The long-term effects of this policy have started showing. There is very little original scientific research in the country. Not only that, there will be an acute shortage of scientists in various organisations, including ISRO and the DRDO, during the next decade when most of the senior scientists will retire. The proposed centres can address both these problems, provided they are allowed to function professionally and independently as is now envisaged. It is not as if there is an absence of such institutions in the country. Unfortunately, they have fallen on bad times due to political interference and general apathy towards education. Organisations of excellence have not only to be built with single-minded devotion but also have to be nurtured with loving attention to detail. Only then can they attract the best minds which can carry out research on basic science exclusively. Now that a fresh beginning is sought to be made, the government must ensure two things. One, the science centres should not suffer owing to the lack of funds because that will harm the government also, considering that its nursery from which scientific minds can be tapped will shrink. The huge investment that the centres will require can also come in from private sources, if need be. Two, the government should resist the temptation of treating the centres as handmaidens of politicians and bureaucrats. The centres will be able to fulfil the promise that they hold only if their autonomy is scrupulously respected. |
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Man must be invented each day.
— Jean-Paul Sartre |
Misplaced analysis of intentions EVERY
time somebody mentioned the need for third-party mediation between India and Pakistan, the then Indian External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, used to say that the two countries did not need a mediator because people on both sides speak the same language and understand each other perfectly. However, if one studies the euphoric reaction of the Indian political establishment and the media to Pakistani ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s interview with Reuters in which he said that Pakistan was willing to give up its demand for a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir and solve the issue directly with India, one gets the feeling that while India and Pakistan might speak the same language they certainly don’t understand the nuances of what the other is saying. Perhaps, 56 years after Partition the idiom used by the people and the establishments of the two countries has changed so much that neither side either understands nor is able to comprehend what the other side is saying. The other problem is that both sides have completely lost their objectivity while analysing the developments in the other country. As a result, policy options are based on an entirely self-serving and misplaced analysis of the intentions and compulsions of the other side. When General Musharraf was invited for a summit at Agra in July 2001, he made a speech at a banquet that was hosted in his honour at Rashtrapati Bhavan. In this speech he said that there was no military solution to the Kashmir dispute and that both countries needed to sit down and solve this issue. This comment was interpreted by the Indian media as a major policy shift on the part of General Musharraf, who was renouncing jihadi terrorism as an instrument of Pakistani state policy to wrest control of Kashmir. But the Indian media and commentators could not have read the General more wrong. What these people did not understand was that General Musharraf was not renouncing or even condemning jihadi terrorism. In fact, he was telling his Indian hosts that it was India that was trying to seek a military solution to the Kashmir dispute by stationing its armed forces in Kashmir to snuff out “the Kashmiri struggle” for their “right to self-determination”. Similarly, this time when General Musharraf floated the trial balloon of not insisting on the UN resolution calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir, he was doing two things. First, he was measuring the political reaction in his own country to such a shift in policy. Second, and more important, he was sending a message to the Indians about his bottom line on Kashmir and his bottom line is the Kashmir valley. He was in effect sending a signal of a possible compromise formula. In other words, General Musharraf was telling the Indians that he was willing to let Jammu and Ladakh stay in India and wanted India to settle the issue of the Kashmir valley. In the event of a plebiscite, the exercise will be held in the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, which includes the three regions in India — the Kashmir valley, Jammu and Ladakh — and the two regions currently under Pakistani occupation, — “Azad Kashmir” and the Northern Areas. Given the religious demography of the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, only Jammu and Ladakh have a non-Muslim majority while the other regions are overwhelmingly Muslim. This means that if and when a plebiscite is held, the Muslims will heavily outnumber the non-Muslims and therefore India will also have to lose control over Jammu and Ladakh. But if General Musharraf was to drop the demand for a plebiscite, then Jammu and Ladakh would remain in India and the areas under Pakistani occupation would remain with Pakistan and this would then limit the entire dispute to only the Kashmir valley, which really is the place where anti-India feeling is the highest and where a section of the people want to either join Pakistan or become an independent state. This time too the Indians read General Musharraf wrong. The Indians believed that the General was realising the futility of the traditional Pakistani policy on Kashmir. No doubt, he knows that Pakistan’s traditional policy has reached a dead-end of sorts, but the solution he is suggesting is not one that can be acceptable to India. But, then, the solution that some Indians are advocating — converting the Line of Control into an international border — is not one that is acceptable to Pakistan. In any case, General Musharraf was not really saying anything new. During Agra too he had not mentioned the UN resolution, and this was a signal that he was flexible on this issue as the only solution to the Kashmir dispute. After Agra, on a number of occasions General Musharraf has said that there are not one, two but nearly 11 possible solutions to Kashmir, though he did not specify these solutions. Therefore, his Reuters interview did not warrant the kind of euphoria that the Indian media exhibited. The problem really lies in not only the failure of the two sides to understand the nuances of a comment or a statement. The problem is that each side reads such comments and statements in a way that serves their purpose and fulfils their fondest, even if misplaced, hopes. Every time India agrees to a dialogue with Pakistan and to hold talk on Kashmir, the Pakistanis think that India is ready to discuss the modalities of abandoning Kashmir in favour of Pakistan. The Pakistanis also work themselves up into a psychosis and start imagining that India has finally been brought to its knees by jihadi terrorism and is desperate to sue for peace. When these assessments are proved wrong the Pakistanis go into a sulk and start accusing India of not being sincere about a negotiated solution to Kashmir. Similarly, any sign of Pakistani flexibility is seen in India as a Pakistani retreat from its unsustainable and expensive (in diplomatic, economic and political terms) jihadi policy in Kashmir. The Indians too start imagining that finally Pakistan has been forced to admit the defeat of its policy and is desperate for some sort of a face-saving solution so that it can dismount the Kashmir tiger. It must, however, be conceded that this “dumbness” on the part of the two countries to understand what the other is saying or what the other’s motivation is, is not entirely without its uses. For one, the misreading of the signals helps the establishments of the two countries to sidestep the basic message that the other side is trying to send. The self-serving spin that is put on the signal that the other side sends in turn helps to frustrate the other side so completely that it invariably responds by issuing all sorts of clarifications, which in turn kills the initial signal. So we are all back to square one. Whether this is a deliberate ploy or simply the result of a natural progression of things emanating out of genuine ignorance of the other side is difficult to say. But if India and Pakistan have to ever sit down and settle their affairs, they will both have to start getting to know each other better and speak the same language, using the same idiom and understanding the nuances of the language. Otherwise, both countries will continue to take one step forward followed by one step backward and not moving beyond square
one. |
Couplet Express THE romance of a train journey is hard to get over and it is an experience that I just cannot resist and the longer the distance the better it is. So I was not intimidated by the 48 hours the train would take from Nizamuddin to Madurai. I had to make this north-to- south journey to fetch my daughter home from her school near Kodaikanal in the Palni hills. The ticket counter man looks up the computer and books me into a train that leaves Nizamuddin every Saturday. The train is called Thirukkural Express and I get into it early morning. The plan is to get off at Madurai, see the Meenakshi Temple, spend a night there and head the next day by bus to Kodaikanal. In the train I get talking to a professor of English from Chennai. He advises me that instead of Madurai, I should get the ticket extended to Kanniyakumari. “If you have not been there then take the journey. The last halt of the train is Kanniyakumari,” he says. While I am still wondering if I should do so or not, it suddenly occurs to me that If Kanniyakumari is the last halt, then why is it called Thirukkural? The professor satiates my curiosity and tells me that “Thirukkural” is a two-line verse or couplet. The journey suddenly takes a poetic turn and it feels very good to be a traveller of the Couplet Express. And then I learn that Thirukkural maxims were the work of the great Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar who is believed to have lived some time between 300 and 600 A.D. And it was his statue that was installed at Kanniyakumari in January 2000 by Dr. Mu. Karunanithi, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Well, the same statue that caused some ripples for it had been done with parochial sentiments to have something southern juxtaposed against Vivekanand Memorial at the confluence of the three seas. But at that moment I was not thinking of the east-south divide or coming together. The magic of verse had been cast. Poetry has its own ways of getting round one. Once it lays its snare, there is no getting away. So the ticket was extended to Kanniyakumari and six hours more from Madurai so it was to be 58 hours in the Couplet Express. As the train moves on to reach the land’s end, it starts emptying out. There are a few passengers left and pantry car staff that had served delicious chilli bhaji, spicy chicken curry and masala vada during the long journey. One of the more friendly waiters tells me that they will spend the night at Nagercoil which is one stop before Kanniyakumari and Tuesday afternoon they will start their journey back to Delhi’s Nizamuddin. And I find myself humming my favourite train song, vintage Kanan Devi: Yeh duniya, yeh duniya Toofan Mail… But once at Kanniyakumari, the mad race of life comes to a halt as does the rough and tumble of the journey. Just a handful of passengers, railway staff and the vendors who had got in at Tirunelveli to vend neatly-packed halwa by the kilogram are greeted at the beautiful railway station by the fresh sea breeze. Into an autorickshaw and then in a spic and span room of an inexpensive seaside lodge. I remain indoors only for a quick bath and a cup of coffee, and then I am out to experience the beautiful coming together of the three seas. Waiting for the boat jetty, I see the horizontal and aesthetic contours of the Vivekanand Memorial and by its side the monumental statue, all of 95 feet, of poet Thiruvalluvar. Well, the detractors of this installation were right in that it alters the skyline and intrudes somewhat with what must have been the secluded serenity of the historical memorial. But a statue has been put at a pride of place. And then I suddenly get parochial too. What about our great poets back home? Punjab has a tradition of poets. The greatest of them all is perhaps Guru Nanak but now we know him more as the first sage of a religion well institutionalised. But the two Punjabs, on either side of the barbed wire, are linked by many other minstrels. The great Sufi poets: Waris Shah, Sultan Bahu, Bulle Shah and others who wrote verses that we call kaafi. And I wonder if one day I will travel to Lahore in a train called the Kaafi
Express! |
A spokesman of the rural downtrodden
A
sincere human being, a true intellectual and a great playwright having written 33 plays in Punjabi with an abundant use of the Doabi dialect of the Hoshiarpur region, Charan Dass Sidhu, who has been given the Sahitya Akademi Award, symbolises a saga of creativity in Punjabi. I read his plays from the seventies onward, but my face to face encounter with Sidhu as a playwright and a person took place in 1992 when I went to see his play “Eklavya Boleya” in the basement of Sri Ram Centre, Delhi. It was my uninformed meeting with a playwright living in the metropolis and still, after the show, the Sidhus warmly welcomed me and took me to their apartment on the Hans Raj College campus where Mrs. Sidhu, who had moments before acted in the play, cooked and served a homely dinner of fresh makki di roti with gobhi and dal. Till date it remains the most delicious meal ever enjoyed by me away from home. When I expressed my desire to go to my daughter in the Delhi University hostel, Sidhu picked up his walking stick and escorted me to the hostel at 10.30 in the night on foot. Born on March 14, 1938, Sidhu started his career as a playwright with his play “Indumati Satdev”. Sidhu did his Ph.D. on Bernard Shaw from Wisconsin University in America. He has been teaching English and American literature, writing plays in Punjabi and running his theatre group named “Collegiate Drama Society”. All his plays written and published so far have been staged repeatedly by his and other groups and institutions. His latest play “Wattanan Wal Fera” was staged and published in 2002. His plays cover a wide range of human and social aspects. The variety of the subject mater reflects through the multifarious titles of Sidhu’s oeuvre. Some of these titles are: Bhajno, Soami Ji, Ambian Nu Tarsaingi, Baat Phattoo Jheer Di, Sri Pad Rekha Granth, Ikkiewin Manzil, Qissa Pandit Kalu Ghumar, Poonam De Bichhooye, Shastri Di Diwali, Panj Pandaan Ik Putt Sir, Babal Mera Dola Arhia, et al. One of his plays “Lekhoo Kare Kawalliyan” was successfully serialised in Hindi by Doordarshan in which the late Mohan Gokhle, a brilliant actor, played the lead role. The range of the subject matter of Sidhu’s plays covers the predicament of the downtrodden among the rural folk; the contradictions prevailing in family and social relationships of the middle class; and the hypocrisy, rot and corruption of those at the helm in institutions of higher learning. Current topics like communal harmony (in “Panj Khuh Wale” and “Bhaayia Hakam Sinhu”) and woman power (in “Shakespeare di Dhi” and Channo Baazigarni”) have also not escaped his notice. Writing full length plays is his hallmark as a Punjabi playwright. That is why Sidhu’s works are not popular with youth festival activity of this region where playlets of 30 minutes duration or so are allowed. Among Punjabi playwrights, Sidhu’s contribution is in a class of his own. The constancy and the consistency of his work speaks volumes about his contribution as a playwright. A profuse use of vocabulary of the mother tongue places him in the category of writers like Rasool Hamzatov and the span of the subject matter of his dramatic satire compares him to Dario Fo, the Italian Nobel Prize winner dramatist. He has penned a trilogy on Shaheed Bhagat Singh. The first play “Bhagan Wala Potra” shows Bhagat Singh’s growth as a
teenager. On April 14, 1919, after hearing of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Bhagat Singh brings a handful of the “mitti” of the Bagh. Toward the end of this first part, student Bhagat Singh leaves for Kanpur in pursuit of his political mission. The second play “Inqalaabi Puttar” revolves round the bomb case trail of Batukeshwar Dutt and Bhagat Singh. The third part “Nastik Shaheed” centres on episodes in Lahore jail where a confrontation between Bhagat Singh’s conviction and the ideology preached by Bhai Sahib Bhai Randhir Singh takes place. The play ends with an account of his hanging, through dialogues of the two jail workers. The plays of this trilogy on Bhagat Singh’s biography are based on documentary facts and aim at clearing up the mist of the aura of excessive adoration created around national heroes and martyrs. An academician in absolute sense, Sidhu is not a highbrow or bookish personality but a real iconoclast who would not conform to a cliched convention or practice. A father of five daughters, he did not impose a customary matrimonial alliance on any of them. Running his “Collegiate Drama Society”, he had no dearth of young men in his contact. Stage-struck youth would keep in joining his group and matrimonial problems were solved as if the Almighty were taking care of the spousal as well as stage matters simultaneously. When I took up his play “Kal College Band Rawega” for production in the University Department in 1996, he forewarned me that it was a difficult play because as many as eight or more characters interacted and conversed at the same time on stage. I assured him that as I was a hard task master, I expected the results to be satisfactory. He came all the way from Delhi to witness the production and candidly declared it to be a better production than his own. But then abruptly he remarked, “Kamlesh, you did not edit any of my dialogues in the play, not even the ‘ganda’ (obscene) ones” an
it sent the whole house in laughter. Sidhu has always valued his academic and intellectual freedom. Once he narrated how as a lecturer he was offered the principalship of a college by the then Vice-Chancellor, Dr Saroop Singh, but he rejected the offer because he did not want to lose his freedom for creativity for any amount of pelf or power. The writer is a Professor in
the Department of Theatre and TV, |
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Consumer rights TWO thousand and three was quite a significant year for the Indian consumer, with several developments providing an impetus to the growth of the consumer movement in the country. Throughout the year, issues concerning consumer safety came to the fore and what was most unusual was that for once, Indian consumers shed their apathy and reacted to an issue concerning their safety. The year began with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) throwing a bombshell -the CSE’s test results on bottled water had not only shown the presence of pesticide residues but had also highlighted the lacuna in the mandatory quality standards that permitted such residues. Eventually, it was not consumer pressure, but media pressure that forced the government to upgrade the standards to meet the EU norms for bottled drinking water. But six months later., the CSE report on pesticide residues in soft drinks got the consumers reacting differently. Even as cola companies questioned the results and the government promised to check the veracity of the CSE tests , Indian consumers boycotted the colas. They stopped serving it to guests, schools and canteens banned them and even restaurants in several cities stopped serving them. This was the first time that Indian consumers were using the weapon of boycott to send home the message that they cannot be taken for granted and it was certainly a welcome development. But unfortunately, in all this, the focal point - the high pesticide levels in our ground water and the government’s failure to tackle this — got lost. Another issue that generated a lot of heat and debate during the year was the Conditional Access
System (CAS). And here too consumer voice could be heard loud and clear, protesting against the introduction of CAS in its present form without a regulator and without a mechanism to redress consumer complaints. In fact, CAS brought together several consumer organisations in the country to work on a common platform for the welfare of the consumers. Otherwise, there were two issues that dominated the year 2003 — while one was the subject of safety, the other was the working of the consumer courts in the country. In fact the subject of safety came up repeatedly during the year. While innumerable train accidents put a big question mark on the safety of rail travel , the menace of spurious medicines forced the government to come up with a proposal to amend the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and provide for the death penalty to those found guilty of manufacturing and selling fake medicines. Several tragic accidents involving school children also highlighted the callous indifference exhibited by educational institutions to pupil safety. All these issues will continue to dominate the year 2004. The apex consumer court also sought to bring about an attitudinal change in the members of the consumer forums. In several orders passed during the year, the National Commission chastised the consumer courts for their miserly computation of compensation and said they had failed to exercise the jurisdiction vested in them by law. The year also saw a change of guard at the apex consumer court. Justice
D. P. Wadhwa, who had taken active interest in improving the working of the consumer courts around the country and was responsible for many a path-breaking order during his short tenure of two and a half years as the President of the National Commission, moved out in October and Justice
M. B. Shah took over the reins from him. All in all, it was a highly eventful year.
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However much the preistlings of science may prate against the Bible, the high priests of science are in accord with Christianity. — Prof Simpson I salute Him the immaculate, auspicious, tranquil, without beginning and end, life of the universe, not bound by time, space or objectivity, and who is known through the Vedas. — Shri Adi Shankaracharya Hope and desire are the chains of the mind. — Guru Nanak Bhakti is single-minded devotion to God, like the devotion a wife feels for her husband. It is very difficult to have unalloyed devotion to God. Through such devotion one’s mind and soul merge in Him. — Sri Ramakrishna Language is the dress of thought. — Johnson |
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