Now or never in Bihar
CRUELTY acquires strange masks in Bihar. A large area of extreme backwardness in the country, the region has the mix of a sizeable number of disillusioned rich people and the multitudinous accursed who never get one meal a day.

Call to all liberals
THE President’s Address to the nation has per force to be an omnibus list of achievements and exhortations, with strong accent on the feel good factor. Not this year though.

Black day for Olympics
THE fact that at least six International Olympic Committee members had accepted bribes and other favours for awarding the 2002 Games to Salt Lake City in the USA may turn out to be the proverbial tip of an iceberg.

US BLOWS HOT AND COLD
by Inder Malhotra
FOR a brief but heady moment last week New Delhi was swept by euphoria. The US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Strobe Talbott, due here for the eighth round of the crucial dialogue with the External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, was quoted as having said that Washington could lift the sanctions on this country “even before it signed the CTBT or agreed to refrain from the development, test-firing and deployment of ballistic missiles”.

Missing spirit of democracy
by B.R. Sood
POLITICAL events in the country, both at the national level and in the states, over the last decade have made one point very clear. Politicians of all shades of the spectrum can go to any extent to turn a given situation to their advantage.

Tempest in the defence teapot
By K.F. Rustamji
ALL over the world there is restlessness in the armed forces. In almost every country there is a problem between the civilian and military components, the main cause of which is the feeling in the military that they are not required, or not required as much as they were in the past. Gorbachev has spiked their guns, and the nuclear bombs have made even a small bit of neighbourly war impossible.

India has long way to go
in kids’ education
THE talk of the town is the importance of education, basic education at that, for the future development of the country and its people. What has sparked the discussion are two reports. The first is the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund report on “The State of the World’s Children, 1999”.

“Headache in the stomach”
NARPINDER SINGH was our lecturer, who with short stature and straight hair used to walk into our classroom like an inebriated elephant and take our B.Sc zoology class. He had a big head and a short neck and he walked slowly as if he was pondering before taking a step.

75 Years Ago

Stopping child from crying
AT the Coroner’s enquiry, touching the death of a fourteen-month-old male child, it transpired that the child was branded with red-hot pincers by a woman servant in order to stop him from crying.

Now or never in Bihar

CRUELTY acquires strange masks in Bihar. A large area of extreme backwardness in the country, the region has the mix of a sizeable number of disillusioned rich people and the multitudinous accursed who never get one meal a day. Anyone showing a sign of shock at the carnage involving Scheduled Castes men, women and children in Shankar Bigha village of Jehanabad district in central Bihar would recall the massacre of 61 persons in the adjoining basti, known as Lakshamanapur Bathe, in 1997. It has to be remembered that the rich all over Bihar have formed little groups of goondas whom they use for their protection from the Naxalites and other belligerent groups. Jehanabad, Gaya and Bhojpur districts are seething with private "senas" and militant Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) activists. The battle lines are drawn and there is no way to hide or conceal the class or caste feuds. The Rabri Devi government is not to be wholly blamed for the gory incidents. Mass-scale killings had taken place during the rule of her husband. Even Dr Jagannath Mishra and other chief ministers had seen much bloodshed. The zamindari system was abolished in Bihar decades ago but the feudal mindset has not changed. The neo-rich business men and politicians from the so-called backward communities have also prospered and amassed wealth. There are open confrontations in which the real have-nots perish. When we first commented on Belchhi and Barbigha bloodbaths, we suggested to the government of the day that the privately organised "sainiks" or goons must be disbanded forthwith. Nothing was done. The MCC and the Ranbir Sena emerged as two powerful rivals. They have been indulging in marauding—and worse. No chief minister has gone beyond banning the Ranbir Sena on official papers. Every Bihari is living under the shadow of the gun. Governor Sundar Singh Bhandari stated the real position in his report to the President, Mr K.R. Narayanan, and the Union Home Minister some time ago.

Mr Laloo Yadav, the de facto Chief Minister, is fanning the fire of discontent among the underprivileged. Hungry men are angry men. Bihar has become a virtual volcano. It can erupt any moment. The President takes pride in the measures taken by his government to protect the life and limb of the Dalits. What is he waiting for now? He refused to dismiss the Rabri Devi government. Now will he recognise the fact that the present administration is unwilling and unable to safeguard even the fundamental right to life to Bihar's citizens? The Congress is the most opportunistic political group in the state. It sheds crocodile tears over the annihilation of the meek and the weak. But it supports the Laloo-Rabri outfit to the hilt. The Samata Party and the BJP indulge in the worst kind of opportunism and do not move beyond condemning the "failure" of the administration and mourning the death of the victims of the so-called senas, or Naxalites and MCC recruits. It is the bounden duty of the authorities concerned in Delhi to throw out the present government and impose President's rule there immediately. Tomorrow may be too late. Listen to the following words of the Dalits: "Dekh lengay maarnay walon ko...Yah ronay ka samaya nahin hai. Khoon ka badala khoon se lengay." They do not cremate their dead and let corpses decompose. When photographers approach the gory sites, they hear this comment: "Pahlay humko badala leynay do, phir photo kheenchana." The Hour of the Devil has struck and every Bihari is feeling insecure. The mere despatch of battalions of paramilitary forces will not bring back the lost feeling of security to the people. The vicious cycle of caste hatred, reprisals, blood-spilling and anarchy must end. President Narayanan must not ignore the sane and urgent call for the imposition of President's rule. It is a case of now or never in Bihar.

Call to all liberals

THE President’s Address to the nation has per force to be an omnibus list of achievements and exhortations, with strong accent on the feel good factor. Not this year though. President Narayanan used the occasion to enter into a spirited dialogue with the liberals, the traditional conscience-keepers of the country. Every sentence was carefully crafted to remind them of the goals which the founding fathers of the Constitution had set for the country, the monumental underachievement in precisely those areas and the incongruity of the nation entering the next millennium with half of its population stricken with the worst forms of denial and oppression. It is not a sledgehammer statement; that would not fit in with his personality. But it was a passionate monologue directed at the lingering idealism and sense of social obligation of the educated, urban middle class. It was the class that provided leadership to the freedom movement but has of late plunged headlong into individual pursuit of wealth, oblivious of and uninvolved in the larger social reality. He invoked the past icons of this class to rub in the point of the contradictions — political equality going hand in hand with unacceptable levels of economic and social inequality.

Gandhi, Radhakrishnan and Ambedkar lent their voice to burnish the basic truths. Gandhi wanted free India to be a fair India, with the system as a whole dedicating itself to wiping out every tear from every eye. The fact is India has invented new ways of making people weep. Radhakrishnan said India is not a religious monolith, and he was an authority on Indian philosophy and heritage. Today efforts are on to prove him wrong. Ambedkar was the one who brought out the inherent contradiction in the principle of one-man, one-vote and hence one-man, one-value; this would be strictly confined to the electoral arena. Elsewhere a dalit or a tribal will be one-man, no-value. True, India’s is a vibrant democracy, marked mostly by a free judiciary and a free press; frequently there is stress and strain, caused in large measure by the no-value citizen seeking or fighting for some value.

President Narayanan’s sustained focus on the plight of the bottom half of the population even while expressing pleasure at the emergence of a large and comfortable middle class establishes the organic link between the two. As sociologists have repeatedly warned, the widening disparity in an era of ballooning demands, both real and perceived, will damage peace, a vital input in economic development and welfare. Mindless urbanisation has multiplied the chances of a sharp conflict. Needless to say, the middle class will be the worst affected, as it will be disowned by the rich and made a target of by the deprived. No, President Narayanan did not say this; the occasion was too solemn to sound the alarm. But a close reading reveals this subtext, an implication lying just below the surface. But the point he makes is the moral obligation of the middle class, the ethical spearhead of constructive social action. If this class fails to regain the liberal space and instead sheds its proud record, society’s urge to fairplay will remain weak. The need actually is to strengthen it.

Black day for Olympics

THE fact that at least six International Olympic Committee members had accepted bribes and other favours for awarding the 2002 Games to Salt Lake City in the USA may turn out to be the proverbial tip of an iceberg. The IOC President has asked the members to resign or face expulsion at the meeting in March. In a related development the IOC Marketing Director, Mr Michael Payne, said that the organisation will not help Salt Lake City meet its $ 1,453 billion budget for the Winter Games. But the funding of the Games and the biggest corruption scandal to rock the IOC are separate issues. The organisers of the Game may yet be able to raise funds through sponsorships and other sources but it would take years for the “wounds of corruption” to heal. What is shameful is the attempt by a battery of legal advisers to play down the scam by saying that “Salt Lake City’s quest for the Olympics is being unfairly blamed for the scandal”, without denying that the bid committee kept files on the IOC members which included their sexual preferences. Women were offered to members in the Netherlands where prostitution is legal. Instead of accepting their role in the bribery scandal the unrepentant organisers of the Salt Lake City Games have had the audacity to state that “if you want to gain favour with people who are going to vote to bring world recognition to your city, you cannot take them to McDonald’s for lunch. That is the way it works in the corporate world, the same as it works in the international community. Why are people acting so shocked that simply because it is amateur athletics it doesn’t have a corporate spin to it?” The message is that the Games should not necessarily be awarded to the city meeting the IOC guidelines but to the one which can bribe members as well.

The IOC President, Mr Juan Antonio Samaranch has given his own twist to the controversy by saying that “the culture of presents was normal in the world of Olympics. I have received hundreds of presents”. It is evident that the IOC needs to redraft its code of ethics for members in the light of Mr Samaranch’s admission. He should ask himself the simple question whether he would continue to receive presents from bidders for the Games even after he retires to understand the reason for their generosity. Of course, pressure is mounting on the IOC members involved in the scandal to resign. Chile and Kenya have taken the lead by asking their representatives in the IOC to own responsibility for the “moral lapse” and quit. China, which has officially launched the bid to hold the 2008 summer Olympics, on the other hand has asked for sweeping reforms to make the bidding process transparent. In the current system members can sell their votes en bloc to bidder cities. In the current scandal an IOC investigation revealed that Salt Lake City spent nearly $ 800,000 on 14 members, including travel expenses, scholarships for their children, medical care and cash in the years leading up to the vote on the venue for the 2002 Winter Games. A question which remains unanswered is why Mr Samaranch himself has not stepped down for failing to spot the filth in the house he is supposed to keep in order.

US BLOWS HOT AND COLD
India’s response is worse
by Inder Malhotra

FOR a brief but heady moment last week New Delhi was swept by euphoria. The US Deputy Secretary of State, Mr Strobe Talbott, due here for the eighth round of the crucial dialogue with the External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, was quoted as having said that Washington could lift the sanctions on this country “even before it signed the CTBT or agreed to refrain from the development, test-firing and deployment of ballistic missiles”. Other senior American officials, including Mr Karl Inderfurth, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, were reported to have spoken in equally positive and promising terms.

But the self-congratulation over a “definite shift” in the American position and expectations of an early clinching of a “nuclear deal” with the mightiest of the five acknowledged nuclear weapon powers proved to be sadly shortlived. The rude awakening came in less than 24 hours when startled officials of the State Department categorically repudiated the remarks attributed to Mr Talbott. If a sharper statement was not issued by Washington it was entirely because of his scheduled arrival in Delhi on Friday.

Interestingly, even the throwing of icecold water on Indian hopes and expectations was accompanied by encouraging, if vague, noises. Mr Bruce Reidel, the key official in charge of South Asia in the National Security Council, dangled the prospects of a visit to India by President Clinton this fall but only if “sufficient progress” was made by them over the nuclear issue.

Quite clearly the USA, as part of a carefully calibrated policy, has decided to “bombard” India with a plethora of mixed signals, blowing hot one day and cold another, leaving it to this country to respond as best it can. This has, from Washington’s point of view, two useful advantages. First, it keeps the debate within the US policy establishment, for long dominated by nuclear fundamentalists who have raised the existing nonproliferation regime to the status of religious dogma, within check. Of late, the pragmatists, who want to make some, but not many, concessions to the realities in South Asia, seem to have gained a small edge. But they are not yet able to lay down the final policy. It is good therefore to keep several balls, even if mutually contradictory, in the air.

And that is where the second element in the American tactical flexibility, within a firm strategic framework, comes in. The Americans, who know better than most that New Delhi has not yet been able to get its act together, hope that by pushing the Indian government in different directions at different times, they might be able to persuade it to fall in line with the American nuclear agenda.

What needs to be emphasised first is that in both analysing the conflicting American signals and in producing a response around which the country and Parliament can be mobilised, the BJP-led ruling coalition has been tragically remiss, to say the least. The Prime Minister, who should have handled the delicate situation personally and firmly, is besieged by fractious and demanding allies on the one hand and dissensions within the Sangh Parivar on the other.

As over swadeshi so over issues like the signing of the CTBT and other security matters, there is a section of the saffron camp which opposes any understanding with anyone. Mr Vajpayee, a man of moderation and sound sense, is therefore at sea about what might go through. In any case, he has so many fires to fight each day that he hardly has time to come to grips with the requirements of the post-Pokhran diplomacy. Mr Jaswant Singh and the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, Mr Brajesh Mishra, are the two key players in the realm of foreign policy. But unfortunately they are working more often than not at cross-purposes.

Of the much-needed national consensus on the nuclear policy the less said the better. Time and again it has been claimed on behalf of the Prime Minister that he is engaged in close consultations with the Congress leaders and others. Of this there is no evidence in terms of any results produced. On the contrary, even those anxious to help the government resolve its dilemma over the CTBT and allied matters say they know not what the powers that be want to do.

The situation has turned so bizarre that Ms Jayalalitha, for once looking beyond Tamil Nadu, has felt the need to spell out a nuclear policy outline for the benefit of the Vajpayee government. She has taken exception to the repeated demand by the US Ambassador, Mr Richard Celeste, that India should declare what precisely the components of its minimum nuclear deterrent will be. She has asked South Block to call in the envoy and tell him that he is “not speaking to Britain but to India which is independent of the United States”. This country, she has added emphatically, must not sign the CTBT unless the American sanctions were lifted in full. If this did not happen before the anniversary of Pokhran-II (on May 11), India would be “morally free” to oppose the CTBT.

What kind of a negotiating position enjoying national backing be formulated in this context? And this is precisely what makes the clear-cut US objective so daunting.

America realises that there is no way Indian (and Pakistani) nuclear programmes can be rolled back. So what it wants to do is to “freeze” these programmes at their current levels. That suits Pakistan to the hilt. For, Pakistan is financially broke and cannot upgrade its programme even if it was hell-bent on doing so. This also suits China. For the existing levels the Indian deterrent is not effective enough in relation to China’s great and growing nuclear might.

As if this was not enough, the USA also insists that India must neither make, nor test nor deploy missiles. By first crowing about the flight-test by Republic Day of the “enhanced” version of Agni and then putting it “on hold” under American pressure, the government has given itself a certificate of ineptitude. Without a full-blown missile development and testing programme the Indian nuclear deterrent would be meaningless.

To turn around this situation and work towards the Indian objective of harmonising this country’s minimum and credible nuclear deterrent with the global concerns over nonproliferation would have been hard under the best of circumstances. Things have been complicated further by the Vajpayee government’s shocking inability to rein in the wild men of the Hindutva crowd who think nothing of attacking the Christian minority or digging up cricket pitches to thwart India-Pakistan tests.

Reporting by foreign correspondents on the reprehensible attacks on Christians and burning of their prayer halls may have been exaggerated. But there is no doubt that this problem has acquired a distinct foreign policy dimension. The German Ambassador in Delhi is not the only one to voice strong concern (which has led to the cancellation of the Prime Minister’s stopover in Bonn en route to Jamaica next month). Mr Talbott and Mr Inderfurth also have made no bones about how disturbed they are by the erosion of the secularist and pluralistic features of India’s vibrant democracy.

After the horrific burning to death of an Australian missionary and his two sons in Orissa, international protest, particularly in the West, is bound to escalate. It is no good complaining that foreigners have no right to comment on this country’s internal affairs. We have protested in similar cases elsewhere such as apartheid in South Africa or atrocities on Palestinians.

On the nuclear issue there may or may not be a meeting ground between this country and others. But to allow the diplomatic leverages of India to be pulverised by contemptible deeds of Hindutva elements would be an unpardonable folly.

Missing spirit of democracy
by B.R. Sood

POLITICAL events in the country, both at the national level and in the states, over the last decade have made one point very clear. Politicians of all shades of the spectrum can go to any extent to turn a given situation to their advantage. This includes the grotesque twisting of the basic rules and norms of the democratic process to such an extent that it leaves it barely within the letter of the Constitution. Here the term political advantage implies either getting a share in the political power structure or keeping some party out of power. All the major or minor parties have resorted to such tactics at one time or the other. Thus the blame for the present state of the political crisis has to be shared by one and all.

In the process of gaining political advantage, the combination of parties which attained power, and the party that was kept out of power have differed at different times. For example, after the 1989 Lok Sabha elections both the left parties and the BJP supported the Janata Dal from outside, and Mr V.P. Singh was made the Prime Minister. The whole exercise was carried out to keep the bete noir of all political parties at that moment of time, the Congress, out of power. The Congress had the largest number of MPs in the Lok Sabha. Later on when the BJP withdrew support from the Janata Dal government the Congress propped up the Chandra Shekhar government albeit the Prime Minister having only 44 MPs of his own party to back him up.

More recently, after the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, almost every political party joined hands to keep the BJP out of power despite the fact that it had emerged as the largest single party in the Lok Sabha. At this juncture the Congress and the CPM decided to provide support from outside. The Left Front (minus the CPM) and the National Front decided to form their government under the banner of the United Front (UF). How united the UF turned out to be is another story. Within a span of about a year and a half the Congress withdrew its support from one Prime Minister, supported another one and let him go the way the first one did. Changing the Prime Minister of the country had been treated as a pastime by the Congress in the recent past.

Then there is a bizarre drama that has been played in UP where, over the last three years, almost every political party worth its salt has formed government with every other party at one time and opposed the same party at another time. In the case of Bihar, political activity in 1997 was a class by itself. After the Chief Minister was forced to resign because of serious corruption charges and criminal cases against him, he practically enthroned his spouse as the next Chief Minister without even blinking the eyelashes. And he got away with it. Ironically, the Prime Minister whose party the Bihar Chief Minister belonged to accepted the farcical exchange of gaddi from the husband to the wife without any pangs or even a whimper.

The political developments mentioned above and many more similar ones have taken place within the letter of the Constitution and within the rules of the democratic process, viewed narrowly as a mere numbers game. The key point that democracy is much larger than simply a game of numbers has not been appreciated by the political class. But anybody with an iota of intelligence and analytical power knows that something is wrong somewhere. Whatsoever has happened on the political front during the past few years is not good for the health of the democratic system.

The way out of the quagmire is not easy, as it involves dealing with a specific mindset developed over a long period. However, all is not lost. A plus point in favour of democracy in India is that elections have been held without many hurdles, and the transfer of power has been a smooth affair except in the last decade. The existing problem can be tackled if the President of India and the Governors in the states are apolitical persons with vision and having a clear concept of the functioning of democracy. The President at the Centre and the Governors in the states, acting as elder statesmen, can ensure that haggling and political bargaining after a fractured mandate is restricted to a decent limit.

Another measure that should go a long way in ensuring a good management of democracy is to be extremely careful in choosing the members of the Election Commission. These two acts, which are not difficult to implement, should steer the country along the right path. It has to be born in mind that these measures are the minimum that can and have to be taken to stop the system from further deterioration.

“Headache in the stomach”

NARPINDER SINGH was our lecturer, who with short stature and straight hair used to walk into our classroom like an inebriated elephant and take our B.Sc zoology class. He had a big head and a short neck and he walked slowly as if he was pondering before taking a step. At the outset he challenged the mischief makers in the class to come out for a physical ‘dangal’ and he made it clear that he with the backing of his cronies would beat and defeat them all. However, the mischievous ones in our class would not be overawed by his threat and would continue with their interjections and stupid questions to trouble him. One day one of the back-benchers was whistling away in gay abandon in the classroom. Narpinder Singh heard the whistle and exclaimed that although he was also a mischievous student but he never created trouble in the classroom. He was always serious there and never heckled the teachers. At that the boy who was whistling stood up with a serious demeanour and asked: “Sir, app kya sarak per khare ho kar siti bajate the”. Narpinder Singh was not at all proficient in English language and some of boys would ask him questions deliberately in high-flown English to trouble him. One day he got fed up with the boy who was using high-flown jargon and asked him whether he was drunk. The whole class was aghast to hear this question from Narpinder Singh and the boy replied that he was not drunk. Narpinder Singh narrated an incident of his student days in the college hostel. Around 1 a.m. one night some students, including him, went to a rehriwalla outside the college hostel for some spicy “bun-omelette.” One of the boys was drunk. He asked the vendor in English. “Please give me a fine bun-omelette”. At this the vendor shot back with a smirk: “Jab vidyarthi ek ghoont pee leta hai to vo angrezi me baat karne lag jata hai”.

One day he happened to meet another lecturer from another college in the town. Seeing him he remarked: “Oh Chatter Singh, are you how?”

On the very first day he asked all the students to disclose the reason of their joining B.Sc. (Medical) group. At this one of the students got up and stated that he joined B.Sc. Zoology as none of the medical colleges in India admitted him for MBBS. At this the whole class burst out laughing and he stopped this exercise forthwith.

One day he came to our classroom with a morose face and started off in a slow tone. “I would not teach you today as I have got a strong headache in the stomach, which has not stopped though I have taken two crocin tablets.”

Tempest in the defence teapot
By K.F. Rustamji

ALL over the world there is restlessness in the armed forces. In almost every country there is a problem between the civilian and military components, the main cause of which is the feeling in the military that they are not required, or not required as much as they were in the past. Gorbachev has spiked their guns, and the nuclear bombs have made even a small bit of neighbourly war impossible.

Secondly, every politician wanting to pursue his pet dreams tries to reduce defence expenditure. Thirdly, there is uneasiness among young officers that all the hard training that they go through to toughen the spirit and the muscle will be wasted in just giving aid to civil power, and trucking round cities to instil confidence in riot-affected areas; or there may be a secondment to the U.N. in trouble-spots to do policing and the most that they can expect is a fight against infiltrators in J&K. The days of fame and glory are gone.

The main cause of conflict in our Defence Ministry arises from differences over what are loftily called “threat perceptions”. To the chiefs, who are up-to-date with the thinking of their peers all over the world, it is clear that the period of peace that we have had for more than 50 years may not be there any more. They want to be prepared for the unexpected, because in the last 50 years it is the unexpected that has caused the most damage. They feel that if we lower our guard there will be trouble. Besides how do we reduce the number of men in a poor country’s forces. Pensions cut out the economy part of reduction by half, and other jobs are not available as in affluent countries to do re-allocation.

To the politician whose big fear is the loss of his seat and his party position in government, a conflict does not seem imminent. His “threat perception” is grounded in the Opposition, in the no-confidence motion in the House, or the media hype over that Monica-type affair, or the scandal over foreign import. Publicly he likes to be termed a hawk. He transmits his thinking subtly in every meeting to civilians in his ministry, and wants them to face the generals with him, rather than do it himself and spoil his equation with them.

In turn, the IAS officers have their own perceptions of the threat to their authority and their position in the administration. Their patriotic impulse is roused to see the economy in shambles. Therefore, no expansion of manpower is possible, no expensive equipment can be imported, and the only way out is to sit indefinitely on files to the explosive anger of the chiefs. Many of the IAS officers have worked in poor districts, have seen the grim picture of poverty which people face from day to day and they believe that the real enemy is not an external one, it is the internal one of population, poverty and corruption.

Yet, keeping the military satisfied is their job, promotions and postings have to be according to their wishes, and in every military officer the first love of life is that “command and control” must be in his hands, and that has to be met. All accept that the skills of the military are required to keep the ship of state on an even keel, particularly their firmness, impartiality and commitment to the nation.

Trouble in the Defence Ministry does not arise from incompetence. It arises from the fact that all are too clever, too articulate, too ambitious and too sensitive. From this substratum of conflict emerges our defence, like life from the primaeval soup, and as long as there is a war, all work together as a team. But, in peace a subterranean conflict goes on for a long time, small matters erupt and become national problems.

A Naval Chief’s insistence on his need for an officer of his choice as his deputy becomes a harassing insistence, and an irritation which begins to be viewed as indiscipline. Whatever the background, however, serious the charges, not to give him a chance to give his side of the story is a violation of the fundamental right of every officer in government. George has not slayed the dragon, he has handed over a good brief for litigation; and a best-seller in retirement.

In a country like Pakistan which has been under military rule for a large part of its existence, the military budget has reached the stage when it is a major blow to the economy of the nation. But how to reduce the size of the forces, although all know that there is no threat from India. A threat has to be created to support the size of the military. Hence the firing across the border to tell the world that this is an unsettled area, and Kashmir is a flash-point, so “please intervene, the damned Indians are firing at us.”

In India the armed forces have been a strength to our democracy. In Pakistan, the mullahs have always wanted conflict with India, and with new Taliban-type thinking it has become a religious duty to retain the army in Siachen even though it is a burden to the nation. The two armies of India and Pakistan are hurting each other no end in the attempt to freeze each other out. Surely, they can work out a no-contest zone and save thousands of their men on both sides from the prospect of an icy death, irrespective of what the political stance is, and what the fanatics say. History will honour their strategy.

Restructuring the Defence Ministry will only transfer the fight to the Finance Ministry. The real cause of friction is not the ego of the generals and bureaucrats, nor the intrigues regarding promotions and postings, it is the scarcity of resources. The Service Chiefs see profligacy in everything — Pay Commission, Rs 1 crore for each MP, lifestyles of ministers, surrender to strikes, and then they find that what they consider a real need is turned down. Sooner or later we will have to devise a system to peg expenditure firmly of each service to GDP, and that includes the police and all other agencies. At the same time each Chief should have full authority to make changes within those financial limits. It is only in this way that we can think of dealing with poverty which will submerge us if we do not give attention to it in time. — INFA

India has long way to go in kids’ education

THE talk of the town is the importance of education, basic education at that, for the future development of the country and its people. What has sparked the discussion are two reports. The first is the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) report on “The State of the World’s Children, 1999”.

The other one is reports of the emphasis laid on the subject by Noveb laureate, Dr Amartya Sen, who was recently in India to visit his mother, and whose presence was taken advantage of by many institutions requesting him to address their members. As a result of these two events, our thinkers, parliamentarians, legislators and social workers have suddenly been reminded that our Constitution makers had the wisdom and foresight to recognise the importance of education for the future of this country and had enshrined in it a non-justiciable clause (i.e. that no one can challenge its validity) requiring the government to provide free education for all citizens up to the age of 14.

It is hoped that this new-found enthusiasm does not disappear like the fizz in a newly opened bottle of soda. The country must be thankful to God or Providence for getting one of its scholars world recognition by the award of a Nobel prize. It may be that most of his prize-winning research was done in universities outside the country but the seed for his study was from his own country. When economists the world over theorised and developed scale models on the role of development, gross domestic product growth, balance of payments, etc., and management experts bandied proposals about restructuring, Dr Amartya Sen and his Pakistani partner (late) Dr Mahbub-ul-Haque quietly and patiently were telling the world that the bedrock of economic development was human development and unless this was strengthened, all other efforts would fail after showing some temporary success.

What is “human development” is best explained in the UNICEF report which says: “Learning begins at birth. There is growing evidence that the quality of a child’s experiences in the first two years of life-including care and stimulation as well as health and nutrition — has a long-lasting effect on the development of the brain. By the age of six, when generally children start school, most of the neural connections are already made. Children’s ability to prosper in the education system has already been determined. Given this understanding of the importance of the early years, any meaningful conception of basic education has to include programmes for early childhood care for child growth and development.”

These words convey in a language the common man can understand the essence of one of the prerequisites for prosperity that Drs Sen and Haque have been postulating. The human development index theory has found acceptance by the United Nations, which publishes an annual report giving the ratings of the world’s nations as a product of their work.

The UNICEF report draws attention to the dismal progress in the implementation of “Education for all by the year 2000” — a resolution passed at an international conference in Thailand in 1990. In the UNICEF report India is listed as one of the countries that has denied its children the right to basic education “despite the constitutional promise of providing free and compulsory education to all children — by 1960.” In the listing of nations according to performance, India ranks below many sub-Saharan African countries and East Asian countries.

According to this report, the adult literacy rate in India is 52 p.c. compared to 57 p.c. in sub-Saharan Africa and 84 p.c. in East Asia. Adult literacy, though a desirable objective, is less important than primary education for a child age of five upwards. Our Constitution promises free education up to the upper primary stage (Standard VIII). Notwithstanding all statistics of locating schools within accessible distance, single-teacher classes, and other facilities, there is a very high percentage of dropouts at the primary level, the reason being poverty and the dire necessity of making the children earn. The report says that 62 per cent children in India reach standard V while the corresponding percentages are 98 for Sri Lanka, 94 for China and 90 for Indonesia.

According to the figures available, in 1993-94, out of the estimated 185 million in the school-going age of five to 14, roughly a third had dropped out. More than half those who continued in school were receiving instructions which had no bearing on their future, or haphazard education from poorly trained teachers. The awareness now gaining ground is that an enormous human potential lies untapped in India’s countryside and urgent attention must be given to improve the educational facilities made available to this sector.

The Madhya Pradesh Government invited Dr Sen to release “Madhya Pradesh: Human development report 1998” at an impressive ceremony in New Delhi. It is not known whether the same state government published human development reports for the earlier years or whether this is the first of its kind taking its cue from “human development” a word popularised by Drs Sen and Haque. It must be acknowledged that M.P. has taken schools to where the people wanted them, and it has to be tested whether its claims of improved attendance results in the desired objective.

Education by and large has been the privilege of the upper and middle classes and to some extent to the urban working class in this country. Leadership in providing meaningful education has been in the hands of Christian missions, which account for 15 per cent of all school education and 10 per cent of all college education. Muslim and Parsi trusts are other minority communities which have also made their facilities open to other denominations.

It is not that Hindu missions and charitable trusts have lagged behind. One of the most glittering examples of uplift of the backward classes by giving them education to meet competition from the forward communities is provided by the Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Sangam (SNDP) of Kerala. The spiritual leader, Sri Narayana Guru, foresaw almost a century back that it was only by getting educated would the large Ezhava population be able to get their rightful place in society. The fruits of his labour in this direction are visible in many fields today.

Rabindranath Tagore founded Santiniketan in Bengal to nurture an education suited to Indian culture and heritage. Dr Sen is a product of this institution. The Ramakrishna Mission, D.A.V. schools, the large number of Jain and Khalsa trusts, and any number of private trusts established by industrialists and wealthy people are all doing yeoman service and their aggregate percentage exceeds the Christian representation.

The achievement of the elected government in 50 years of Independence does not stand comparison with private efforts despite the large sums of money spent on education. The political powers-that-be have yielded too much to the elitist lobby in setting up schools of excellence like IITs and IIMs. While there is no doubt that it is the products from these excellent institutions that are bringing fame and glory to the country, the basic question is why this section of the community should be given subsidised education? It is said that the government contributes 70 per cent of the budgets of these institutes.

Yet the same government pleads lack of finances to make primary education compulsory. The 83rd Constitution Amendment Bill introduced by the UF Government in 1997 to make primary education compulsory has not yet been taken up, though some circles feel that as there is already a clause in the Constitution guaranteeing this right, there is no need for an amendment. The Supreme Court had in 1993 directed the central government to implement this provision.

Money is not really constraint as it is made out to be. In one of his addresses in New Delhi, Dr Amartya Sen took words from ancient Hindu scriptures (probably to please the likes of Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, Minister for Human Resources Development) to describe what needs to be done. He said to provide basic primary education to all eligible persons (simply the ability to read and write letters and numbers and apply them to day-to-day life) what was required were “jnana” (awareness), “bhakti” (devotion) and “karma” (endeavour). The illiterate masses should be made aware that it is not their fate to remain poor and deprived and that “vidya can overcome their vidhi”. — Newscribe

75 YEARS AGO

Stopping child from crying

AT the Coroner’s enquiry, touching the death of a fourteen-month-old male child, it transpired that the child was branded with red-hot pincers by a woman servant in order to stop him from crying.

The mother reported the matter to the police, and the child was treated at a hospital for a time and then developed sepsis and died.

The woman-servant absconded.