E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

“NaPak” and revolting
Pakistan must be the most difficult posting for Indian diplomats. To say that life for them and their family members in Islamabad has become more difficult because of General Pervez Musharraf would not be a correct assessment of the situation. They were subjected to unprovoked humiliation and abuse even when Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif were in power. But the latest incident is, perhaps, both revolting and horrifying and is evidently the result of the anti-India rhetoric of the establishment. 

Playing with human lives
NOTHING can be taken as reliable in today India, not even the report of a medical test. If your doctor says that you are suffering from a serious ailment and his diagnosis is based on a medical test, you must not hesitate to question his decision though he may feel offended. 

NEWS ANALYSIS

Depressing performance on literacy front
by Arvind Bhandari
INTERNATIONAL Literacy Day, which falls on September 8, should be an occasion for deep introspection for India, and not mindless self-congratulation. After 53 years of Independence almost half of the Indians cannot read the writing on the wall, literally.

MIDDLE

God’s little creature
by Raj Chatterjee
EVEN the Bard, by all accounts a kindly soul, was unfavourably inclined towards that hapless rodent, the rat. “How now! rat?” says Hamlet as he thrusts the point of his sword into a curtain behind which Polonius is eavesdropping, thus inflicting a mortal injury upon him.

OF LIFE SUBLIME

Happiness, fair and foul
by Mrinal Miri
Imagine a world where there are three classes of human beings: (1) ones who have virtuous qualities such as honesty, courage, kindness, caring understanding of others, fairness, humility and so on; (2) people who have vicious qualities such as dishonesty, cowardice, cruelty, callousness, injustice, conceit and so on; and (3) those who do not possess either set of qualities in a stable form, who cannot be described as either wholly virtuous or wholly vicious.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

“NaPak” and revolting

Pakistan must be the most difficult posting for Indian diplomats. To say that life for them and their family members in Islamabad has become more difficult because of General Pervez Musharraf would not be a correct assessment of the situation. They were subjected to unprovoked humiliation and abuse even when Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif were in power. But the latest incident is, perhaps, both revolting and horrifying and is evidently the result of the anti-India rhetoric of the establishment. The military rulers would not be lying if they deny official patronage to the attempt to molest the minor daughters of the members of the Indian High Commission. However, the disgusting episode has established beyond an iota of doubt that the anti-India hysteria whipped up by the establishment has begun to affect the thinking of the average Pakistani. The External Affairs Ministry merely followed the prescribed diplomatic procedure by summoning a senior diplomat from the Pakistan High Commission for conveying the country’s concern and the Government of India’s displeasure over the attempt to molest the daughters of the Indian High Commission staff in Islamabad. The intruder who tried to misbehave with the six-and-seven-year-old girls must have been a very sick man. The military rulers should take more than routine interest in the case and direct the police to smoke out the culprit and put him behind bars not because of the Indian angle, but because such a sick man as attempted to molest minor girls is a threat to civilised society. Official denial of the incident having taken place or delay in arresting the sex maniac would lend credence to the Indian suspicion that the attack on the girls was part of the official anti-India policy of the military dictatorship.

As far as India is concerned, the reaction to the reprehensible act should not be limited to the issuance of an official statement. It should raise the decibel level of the protest for attracting the attention of the international community to the despicable goings-on in Pakistan. There is evidently more to the incident than meets the eye. The Pakistan intelligence agents who keep a close watch on the movements of every member of the Indian High Commission must have seen the intruder walk in to the driveway of the diplomat’s residence where three girls aged between six and eight years were playing unaware of the presence of the sex maniac. Yet they made no attempt to apprehend him. It is clear that the anti-India games which the average Pakistani is encouraged to play are becoming dangerous, and the routine expression of official displeasure by Indian officials does not reflect the gravity of the threat to the life and security of the staff in Islamabad. The MEA should prepare a file of all the recent cases of unprovoked assault and harassment of Indian diplomats and members of their families by plainclothes sleuths in Pakistan and seek global condemnation of the incidents which violate the provisions of the Vienna Convention. Only last week houses of the staff members of the Indian mission in Islamabad were ransacked by “intruders” who have not been identified thus far. In January Mr P. Moses, an officer of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, was assaulted and accused of carrying explosive devices and some money “for an anti-Pakistan group”. He was made to appear before the state-run television with the specific objective of whipping up hysteria against “the enemies of Islam and Pakistan”. The continued ill-treatment of Indian diplomats and their family members in Pakistan deserves the attention of the global community. There would be little disagreement among objective observers that Pakistan is both a failed state as also one which trains and exports terrorists to India. Under the jackboot of General Musharraf it has shown disturbing signs of becoming a sick state also.

Dithering on petrol prices

POSTPONING the evil day has become the trade mark of the alliance government at the Centre. Particularly in cases where decisions are likely to upset the urban middle class. No wonder then that it has opted to wait for the Prime Minister’s return from the USA on September 19 to raise or retain the prices of petroleum products. As Petroleum Minister Ram Naik has said so many times, he expects the OPEC meeting on Sunday to announce a sharp increase in crude production to nudge the prices down from their high level. Saudi Arabia wants it and famously promised to go it alone if necessary to pump out 500,000 additional barrels of crude a day. Market sources were certain that a mere Saudi indication would bring down the price. Nothing of the sort happened; actually after a minor adjustment, the price returned to the over-30-dollars a barrel level. Now the Saudis may agree to a production hike by OPEC of 700,000 barrels a day, if a report in a newspaper with excellent contacts is true. That will not cool the market because the volume is too small to create an impression of a glut which alone will see the prices settle around $ 25 a barrel. Thus the optimism of the government can turn out to be misplaced. The preferred waiting will only add to the subsidy burden and when the price rises, it may be too late to balance the deficit in the oil account. Even here, the government just cannot push up the kerosene price; that will look decidedly anti-poor and it is very sensitive to this charge. Cooking gas is already very costly, although the government claims to be underwriting every cylinder by Rs 120. Petrol prices are high and generate funds to sell kerosene cheap. That narrows down the choice for jacking up the diesel prices which will increase transportation charges and impart an inflationary impulse to the economy. But these are problems a government sure of itself has to tackle and convince the people that a problem unsolved is a crisis in the making.

Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, a former Saudi oil Minister who engineered the tripling of crude prices in 1973, feels that in a few months it will take $ 40 to buy a barrel of crude. He bases his analysis on three factors. One, the Saudis want it as do other members of OPEC. The only difference is that the kingdom favours a gradual increase and others want it here and now. If the Saudis want to, it will happen; such is their clout. Two, stocks of heating oil is very low in western countries. And winter is just two months away. Even if the crude output goes up, it is too late to build up a sizeable inventory. Hence a psychology of shortage will take over and it always propels a price increase. Three oil producing countries are in deep debt, accumulated when post-oil boom construction and development projects had to be completed with borrowed money since prices had crashed to a single digit two years ago. Repayment dictates a higher price. This scenario horrifies him, the man who is identified with the sharp increase in the first place. Mr Yamani sounds not merely a pessimist but also an alarmist. He believes that dearer crude will spark search for other fuels and also newer technologies and that will dampen demand. Saudi Arabia, which sits on 100 years of supply at the present level of production will have to leave it there when the oil era ends, Then comes the punch line: “The Stone Age ended not for a lack of stones.”

Playing with human lives

NOTHING can be taken as reliable in today India, not even the report of a medical test. If your doctor says that you are suffering from a serious ailment and his diagnosis is based on a medical test, you must not hesitate to question his decision though he may feel offended. After all, it is your life that is going to be affected because of the treatment based on wrong tests. Remember, we are not living in times when our doctor had the reputation of being “bhagwan-swaroop”. If you can, go in for a second medical opinion about your state of health. Of course, this is a very agonising process for a patient, but appears unavoidable under the circumstances. The situation is getting more and more dreadful in small towns and rural areas. We have quacks who function as doctors, claiming to cure even incurable diseases. We have school dropouts who constitute “trained paramedical staff” even in upmarket private health care centres, testing samples of blood, operating X-ray machines, determining the state of eyesight of a patient, etc. Going by a report in The Tribune of Monday, these “pathologists” or “chhota doctor sahibs”, numbering over 25,000 in Haryana alone and sustaining nearly 2,000 privately run nursing homes and other health centres, have been able to command blind faith of the doctors looking after these “institutions” because of two main reasons. One, school dropouts with a little training at their workplace have become a preferred substitute for trained paramedical personnel because they are available at a much lower salary. Two, there is an acute shortage of properly trained hands to undertake the crucial tasks on which depends the chances of a patient getting cured. If a patient’s medical test is wrong, even a highly competent doctor may fail to restore him or her to health. The situation is quite unsettling and no law can alter it altogether as those running these medical “shops” know how to turn it into an ass. How can one punish a health care centre when its records show that it has no paramedical personnel on its staff and when there is no proof of the questionable medical tests having been done at that place? Or how can one prevent a poor and illiterate person from visiting a nursing home having an unqualified paramedical staff when there is no better medical facility available in his area?

Scarcity of trained personnel is the primary factor which must be eliminated to ensure that unqualified people do not function as clinical laboratory technicians. In fact, this is one area where adequate attention has not been paid so far. Among the northern states, Haryana and Punjab have been doing an excellent job in the area of technical education by establishing a number of engineering colleges of a reasonably acceptable standard. Now they are concentrating their energies on promoting the study of information technology. This is all very well and welcome. But they must devote equal, if not more, attention to producing trained medical and paramedical personnel. One can understand that opening a medical college requires huge financial resources. There are certain other problems also in this regard. But it should be relatively easier to set up as many centres as possible for the training of clinical technicians as without their help, proper and satisfactory medical treatment is just not possible. This does not mean that the nursing homes playing with human lives should not be brought to book. They deserve exemplary punishment, which should be awarded quickly to deter them from indulging in what amounts to killing patients in the name of medical treatment.

Latest move of congress
Will it lead to political realignment?
by A. N. Dar

THE state assembly elections in West Bengal are now less than a year away. All parties are gearing up for the fight. Ms Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress senses a new opportunity to conquer the Writers’ Building. The Left Front, almost on the eve of the retirement of the long-enduring veteran Jyoti Basu, has to vindicate that it has not wasted the two decades of unchallenged power in the state. The BJP by itself is not much in the picture. The Congress, once the main party in the state now fallen on bad days, has to make a new start.

Things have already started moving. The ruling Left Front, which has been in power for nearly two decades, is not in good shape. The municipal elections showed Ms Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress moving ahead. With her is aligned the BJP, which is not a great force in West Bengal but wants to ride to a comfortable position as Ms Banerjee’s ally. Its main aim in West Bengal is to see the end of the leftist power. This leaves the Congress almost fighting alone. It made a poor appearance in the recent municipal elections, which provided the index of the popularity of the various parties.

Will the Congress be able to put up a good show and at least become a balancing factor between the Left Front and the Trinamool Congress if the results produce a hung assembly? Many believe that if this is to happen, the Congress must win a respectable number of seats in the assembly so as to be asked for support when there are moves to form the new government. That is why the change in the leadership of the Pradesh Congress from Mr A.B. Ghani Khan Chowdhury to Mr Pranab Mukherjee is being watched with much interest.

Why did Mrs Sonia Gandhi choose Mr Mukherjee? Many commentators have called it his demotion from the Central sphere to a provincial post. One view is that this was the result of a high-class intrigue fostered by Mr Arjun Singh to make a position available for himself next year to become the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. According to this speculation, Mr Arjun Singh, who is said to be part of the ill-famed coterie around Mrs Sonia Gandhi, sold to her the idea to send Mr Mukherjee as the chief of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee. If Dr Manmohan Singh is to retire from the Rajya Sabha and not to be elected back to the House, this would provide an ideal opportunity to the Congress to elect a new Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. Ordinarily in that case the office should have belonged to Mr Mukherjee, who is next to Dr Manmohan Singh in the Rajya Sabha. With Mr Mukherjee heading the Pradesh Congress in West Bengal, Mr Arjun Singh could thus get the job.

If this were to be so, it would mean a trick being played on Mr Mukherjee. Most people who know Mrs Sonia Gandhi do not believe that she would lend her ear to this kind of a move which would mean sending Mr Mukherjee away to West Bengal as a reluctant Pradesh Congress chief. If she knew this and went along with it, this would not have been very gallant of Mrs Sonia Gandhi as a leader. It would do no good to anyone. She is to fight a hard battle in West Bengal. This move could be compared to the way the then Prime Minister, Mr Narasimha Rao, sent the then Defence Minister, Mr Sharad Pawar, as Chief Minister of Maharashtra. This did no good to anyone, neither to Mr Pawar nor to Mr Narasimha Rao, and led the way for the ascendancy of the Shiv Sena.

But things might have happened differently in West Bengal. Mrs Sonia Gandhi may have taken a deliberate decision to play a positive role in West Bengal and she has chosen Mr Mukherjee to spearhead it. She had a good equation with Ms Mamata Banerjee and would any day have liked to share political power with her in West Bengal. But politics did not allow her a chance. Ms Banerjee’s main aim has been to send out the Left Front from West Bengal. She got aligned with the BJP both at the Centre and in the state. She is reluctant to give up this link. Ideally for her, she would have liked to join the Congress but also keep alive her link with the BJP. There was no question of Mrs Sonia Gandhi making up with Ms Banerjee in such circumstances. The Congress had, therefore, to plough a lonely furrow.

Would Mrs Sonia Gandhi in consequence team up with the Leftists? This possibility can still come up. But it cannot be as smooth as it looks. The leftists are in a poor state and the Congress may only gather their negative anti-incumbency points. Apart from the drawback of having been too long in power, which is giving it diminishing returns, most leaders who constitute the Left Front have opposed Mrs Sonia Gandhi on the foreigner and dynastic issues. Yet the leftists are so badly placed in West Bengal that they may be tempted to send overtures to her to make common cause against Ms Banerjee and the BJP. Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the leftists need an alliance because of the poor shape in which both of them are at present in West Bengal. The two sides have done it, for instance, in the current power rates agitation in Andhra Pradesh and formulated a front against Mr Chandrababu Naidu.

Would this become a blueprint in West Bengal too? Badly off, the Congress and the Leftists could become reluctant bed-fellows.

How does the placement of Mr Pranab Mukherjee as the West Bengal Congress chief fit into this situation? The earlier president of the Pradesh Congress, Mr A.B. Ghani Khan Chowdhury, was much aligned with Ms Banerjee. He, in fact, wanted to join her in her mahajot against the leftists. She would have liked this to happen but she was at the same time keen to keep alive her relations with the BJP. This could not have suited the Congress. Policy-wise, this would have been disastrous for the Congress as a secular party. Mr Ghani Khan Chowdhury, therefore, could not lead the Congress party in the state. There is little love lost between Ms Banerjee and Mr Mukherjee. It was, therefore, natural for him to take on the task of leading the state Congress to fight on its own. He can get on better with the leftists.

Despite the rumours, perhaps unfounded, of his having been demoted because of an intrigue, Mr Mukherjee has dealt with the situation with a measure of maturity unlike what he did when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and Rajiv Gandhi was installed and he made it out that he should instead have been picked up as Prime Minister. Time has taught him the virtues of patience. He has gone on to acknowledge that some of the Congress MLAs might leave the party and join Ms Banerjee. This is being realistic. He has held no promises of achieving great gains in the assembly elections.

He is no great mass leader. So all that he can do would be to set out a steady course for the Congress in West Bengal.

May be, Mrs Sonia Gandhi has chosen the best course. The point to be looked forward to is whether the new arrangement would lead to a realignment of forces between the Congress and the leftists. Would it mean that in the coming elections the Congress and the leftists would together fight the elections, forgetting their differences over the economic policy and the foreign origin issue, in a common front against the Trinamool Congress and the BJP.

If this happens, would it pave the way for a future alignment between the Congress and the leftists on the national scale?

Depressing performance on literacy front
by Arvind Bhandari

INTERNATIONAL Literacy Day, which falls on September 8, should be an occasion for deep introspection for India, and not mindless self-congratulation. After 53 years of Independence almost half of the Indians cannot read the writing on the wall, literally.

With a literacy rate of only 52 per cent, India harbours the largest illiterate population in the 15-plus age group (291 million) in the world. About 35 per cent of the males and 62 per cent of the females in the country are illiterate. The global literacy figure is 77 per cent.

The world’s most populous nation, China, has much fewer illiterates than India (166 million). It has a literacy rate of 82 per cent. The literacy rates of the other populous countries are: Mexico 90 per cent, Indonesia 84 per cent, Brazil 83 per cent, Nigeria 57 per cent, Egypt 51 per cent, Bangladesh 38 per cent and Pakistan 37 per cent.

India’s lugubrious performance on the literacy front is ascribable to two obvious factors: burgeoning population and neglect of the educational sector. The first factor has been operating like a vicious circle. Runaway population growth has been resulting in rapid accretions to the mass of illiterates. And growth in the mass of illiterates has been causing an exponential increase in population.

The World Bank’s reports on India as well as the latest Human Development Report brought out by the UNDP contain detailed data which shows how this country has neglected its educational sector. In fact, the major reason why the countries of East Asia and South-East Asia have outstripped India economically is that they have paid more attention to human resource development by according a high priority to education.

The problem of illiteracy has to be tackled both at the level of school education and adult education. School education provides, perhaps, the most glaring example of socio-economic disparities in India. Children of the rich and the well-to-do go to what are euphemistically called public schools, imbibing expensive, superior education and acquiring a high competitive ability which gives them a head-start in life. But as regards the mass of Indian children, the state has largely failed in its duty to provide them with even nominal education, leave alone superior education.

The Directive Principles of the Constitution contain Article 45, which enjoins: “The state shall endeavour to provide within 10 years free and compulsory education to all children until they reach the age of 14 years.” It is not that nothing has been done. Since Independence the number of schools in the country has gone up from 2.30 lakh to 7.44 lakh; the number of teachers from 6.24 lakh to 28.36 lakh and of school children from 1.92 crore to 14.94 crore. But what has been achieved is inadequate not only in terms of quantity but also quality, showing a regrettable lack of seriousness and political will on the part of the country’s leadership.

Here are two examples. In order to reduce the drop-out rate as well as nutritional deficiency in government schools, the Centre, taking a cue from the experiment launched by the MGR government in Tamil Nadu in 1982, announced on August 15, 1995, that a sum of Rs 612 crore would be allotted for a mid-day meal scheme to be run by the state governments, which were supposed to undertake a matching expenditure. At the end of 1995-96 an amount of only Rs 422 crore was utilised. And now the offtake of the Central grant by the states has more or less dried up because of a lackadaisical attitude towards the scheme.

Again, nearly one lakh schools have no building. Operation Blackboard, launched with much fanfare in 1987, has as yet achieved only 50 per cent of the target of providing a two-room all-weather building for each primary school. Further, in many states there is a huge backlog of unspent funds for teaching and learning materials.

It needs to be pointed out that upgrading the salary scales of teachers is essential if the quality of education is to be improved. That the Haryana Government regards a cash award of Rs 2500 as sufficient honour for the 15 best teachers selected by it every year is indicative of the dismissive approach towards the community of teachers.

The introduction by the erstwhile United Front government of a Bill in Parliament to make education a fundamental right was nothing but gimmickry. Considering that it would be obligatory for parents to send children to school, the proposed legislation would become yet another farcical addition to the plethora of laws followed more in breach than in observance. It is more important for the State to perform its fundamental duty to provide education than to play to the gallery by making education a fundamental right.

The problem of adult illiteracy is sought to be met through the National Literacy Mission (NCM) of the HRD Ministry. A perusal of the NCM’s annual reports suggests that the programme needs to be energised. In this context, it is interesting to recall former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral’s slogan of “Each One, Teach One”. If this could be implemented, it would make a sea-change in the situation.

The HRD Ministry has prepared a Rs 50,000 crore plan to achieve universal education in the country by 2002. Envisaging investment on such a gigantic scale presumes that national priorities would be re-ordered in favour of education.

God’s little creature
by Raj Chatterjee

EVEN the Bard, by all accounts a kindly soul, was unfavourably inclined towards that hapless rodent, the rat. “How now! rat?” says Hamlet as he thrusts the point of his sword into a curtain behind which Polonius is eavesdropping, thus inflicting a mortal injury upon him.

Indeed, of all God’s little creations who were saved from being drowned in the Great Flood mentioned in the Book of Genesis, none seems to have led a more miserable existence ever since than the rat. It would have been a kindness to the poor little fellow had Noah refused him and his mate admission to his ark even at the risk of being named the first active exponent of apartheid.

The English language is replete with barbed innuendoes and derogatory references to the rat. If a married man suspects that he is being cuckolded, he smells a rat. If a politician, knowing what’s good for him, crosses the floor of the House, he is said to have ratted on his party. If a fellow is slow in gaining promotion in his business firm or government department, he complains of the rat-race that goes on in it instead of acknowledging his own shortcomings or his unsuitability for high office.

Scientists carry the crusade against rats much farther. Only, they call it “research”, undertaken with the sole object of prolonging man’s presence on a planet where, thanks largely to the notable contribution by our own country, there will soon be less than standing space.

It hardly matters if the “research” concerns itself with finding a cure for baldness or naming yet another cause of lung cancer. The most popular subject for experimentation is the rat. A few years ago much valuable space was wasted in the media over a report that birth control pills for men would soon be available. Apparently, successful trials had been conducted at a London hospital to prove the efficacy of a new drug that would prevent men from causing women to bear children while still retaining their own virility. The male contraceptive pill would not have the “irreversibility” of a vasectomy which would make it popular with men.

Can human insensitivity to the suffering of a dumb creature be more appalling? We know that mistakes and miscalculations can creep into the most carefully prepared formulae. Thousands of rats must have lost their lives in the course of these trials.

Thousands more must have suffered a fate worse than death by losing their virility. And, to what purpose? So that the pampered male, the lord of the universe, may both eat his cake and have it? So that he can swallow his daily pill, escape the consequences of his actions, and think of ridding his house of that loathsome creature, the rat?

OF LIFE SUBLIME

Happiness, fair and foul
by Mrinal Miri

Imagine a world where there are three classes of human beings: (1) ones who have virtuous qualities such as honesty, courage, kindness, caring understanding of others, fairness, humility and so on; (2) people who have vicious qualities such as dishonesty, cowardice, cruelty, callousness, injustice, conceit and so on; and (3) those who do not possess either set of qualities in a stable form, who cannot be described as either wholly virtuous or wholly vicious.

Our world does not seem all that different from this world. It has all these three classes of people. But the imaginary world has one feature that makes it different from ours. In it, people in the first category are subject go such physical degeneration that if they remain in that form of life, they never live beyond the age of 25 while all the others enjoy a longer life. In such a world, the belief would be widespread that there really is no point in being moral or virtuous.

In our own world too, there are people who think that it is foolish to be virtuous. The best that can be said for a virtuous life is that it is of advantage always to appear to be virtuous while adopting vicious means to achieve success. The reason why this is so and the reason why in our imaginary world people should think that to lead a virtuous life is self-destructive and, therefore, foolish are of course similar.

This obviously is not the place to debate the question why one should be moral or virtuous. But, perhaps it can be said that morality must be connected with happiness. It is difficult to imagine a virtuous person settled in a life of nagging and endemic unhappiness. Moral well-being must go with mental well-being which we associate with happiness. But happiness surely is not the sole preserve of the virtuous.

Many people of a vicious character are happy because they are "successful". They have power, wealth and fame, and perhaps because of these they enjoy the admiration and love of others. On the other hand, it is not difficult to imagine a man of virtue leading a life of suffering, penury, incarceration, torture etc.

Here, we are dealing with two different kinds of happiness which is associated with the well-being of the virtuous man or woman and the happiness which only the vicious can enjoy. A man of virtue will never be unhappy even under most humiliating physical suffering as long as he remains firm on his virtues, while the vicious man's happiness is tenuous because it depends on his power, wealth and fame which he can lose any time. If we probe deep into the vicious man's life we shall find a core of discontent or fear or uneasiness.

Now, if there are two kinds of happiness — one for the virtuous and one for the vicious, then why should one not seek the second kind of happiness as the goal of goal of one's life, one may ask. Should we expect the truly virtuous man to keep a genuinely smiling face even in conditions of severe suffering? It would be unrealistic to do so. Moral life requires an infrastructure of at least the minimal satisfaction of the needs of a comfortable, recognisably human form of life. The case of the total ascetic and the renouncer is different. He is seeking spiritual rather than moral well-being.

And we can think of a vicious man who continues to be happy because of his power, fame and wealth, ensuring that he remains in the position that he has acquired, or even strengthens it.

The only hope of a person who preaches morality, lies in showing that the "successfully" vicious man, however happy he might seem, has deep inside him a seed of rottenness which sprouts as he begins to flourish in his life of viciousness and that it gradually spreads, unknown to him, through his entire being.

Imagine a man who has just begun a double life — a life of dishonesty, hypocrisy and false concern at home and another life of adulterous love outside. Perhaps the thing began with one lie, but this one lie has to be supported by scores of lies everyday so that his whole life becomes one big oppressive lie. This overpowering oppression clouds whatever happiness he derives from his adulterous love. If, on the other hand, he had shown the courage to make a clean breast of it, it might have created problems in his life, but he would be free from the tension of keeping up with a life of falsehood and the fear of being found out. But a difficult task for the moral educator is to convince the listener that our social and political arrangements are such that the virtuous is not subjected to unjust physical suffering and that a man of virtue has a place of dignity and respect in society. Given our socio-political arrangement and our economic disparities, it is not possible to make a convincing case for this. All that the moral educator can do is to lend his voice as powerfully as possible to the demand for the right kind of change in our socio-political and economic arrangement. But the contemporary forces which motivate the pursuit of wealth and power and which are devoid of concern for virtues, such as honesty, justice etc. seem more than capable of dealing with such demands.

If it is impossible for the moral educator to show with a degree of conviction that the virtuous will not be subjected to physical and mental suffering, his preaching will remain ineffective. In this connection one only has to think how cruelty, violence, deceit and a life of lazy, thoughtless luxury, that seems to be their reward, are shown in our films and the electronic media.

The moral preacher should be able to inject in his audience a sense of scepticism about such portrayals. To make this possible, he requires to have endless faith and determination which is blind to failures. Must he then give up? As a matter of fact, it seems to me that we have actually given up in spite of all the big noises that we make from time to time.

I would like to end by saying that moral education must be an integral part not only of political and economic education, but also of political and economic practice.

The writer is the Vice-Chancellor of North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

Chaitanya: What is the goal of life?

Ramananda: A man must follow the rules and injunctions prescribed in the scriptures.

C: This is the external part of religion, only a means, not the goal. Try again.

R: Surrendering the fruits of action to Krishna.

C: This, too, is external. Try again.

R: Realising the devotion that arises from self surrender

C: This, too, is external. Try again.

R: Realising devotion with knowledge.

C: This too is external. Try again.

R: Realising pure devotion which knows no reason.

C: This is good. Go further.

R: Acquiring the spirit of service to Krishna.

C: That is good. Go further.

R: To love Krishna as a friend.

C: That is very good. Go further.

R: To love Krishna as a child.

C: That is also good. Go further.

R: To love Krishna as one's beloved (madhurya bhava)

C: This is, no doubt, the ultimate goal. But tell me if there is any attainment further than this.

R: The mystic union, wherein there is no longer a distinction between the lover and the beloved.

— A dialogue between Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Ramananda, his chief disciple

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God whispers the truth to us at every moment; why is it that we seldom learn?

Because God never repeats.

— Trying My Shoes; Ordinary Living and Everyday Discipline by Rami Mark Shapira, Dialogue and Alliance, Vol 3, No 4

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Coal is a creation of light; charcoal of fire. What a fellowship has light with darkness.

— Swami Ramatirtha, Notebook VI, In Woods of God Realisation, Vol III

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God is the junction of presence and present. Whenever every cell, every atom of the mind and body gets totally immersed in the presence and present, you experience something ecstatic, something beyond this world .... God is the totality. Everything is in God. There is nothing that can be outside God. Whether good or evil, both exist in God.

— Sri Ravi Shankar, God Loves Fun and Other Talks: The nature of God

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The person who feels deep down inferior is always loud.

— Osho, Guida Spirituale