Chronicles of Our Time by Andre Beteille. Penguin Books, New Delhi. Pages xx+361. Rs 295.

SOCIAL scientists in contemporary India have generally claimed relevance for their enterprise on the ground that the "scientific" knowledge of society that they generate is useful for formulating effective state policies of social transformation. Pursuing social scientific research for its own sake, according to this view, is a luxury that a Third World country like India could hardly afford.

This view was particularly dominant during the first three or four decades of the post-independence period when development planning was being pursued with much enthusiasm by the Indian state. While economists were directly involved in the framing of development plans and policies, sociologists, social anthropologists and political scientists too were expected to help economists in understanding the "non-economic" dimensions of the process of transformation being instrumented from above through the state initiative.

Prof Andre Beteille, who has been a teacher of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics for more than three decades and is one of India’s most distinguished social scientists, has never been swayed by such an "interventionist" role for the social scientist, particularly sociologists. Expert advice given by sociologists to the government, Prof Beteille feels, is "either disregarded or put to uses other than the one intended". However, he does not suggest that the social scientist should have nothing to do with the immediate concerns of society.

As an alternative to the role of social engineering, Prof Beteille suggests that the social scientists should engage themselves in "social criticism". In other words, instead of working for the state and helping the government in its agenda of social change, the social scientists should try to communicate with the common people and "help them gain a deeper insight into the true nature of the constraint under which they live". Social criticism should not only be directed against the arbitrary actions of the government and other forms of established authority, but should be "directed equally against the prejudices of the people". He is critical of the Indian intellectuals who have found it easy to attack the establishment, but "have on the whole dealt lightly with the evils rooted in the age-old customs by which ordinary people willingly regulate their everyday lives".

The 62 essays presented in the book provide a very good example of what Prof Beteille means by social criticism. These essays were written by the author over a period of three decades (between 1968 and 1999) and were first published on the editorial page of The Times of India. Apart from the conventional concerns of sociologists such as tribe, caste, religion, tradition and modernisation, he has also written extensively on subjects like social equality and justice, Indian intellectuals, ideologies, the state of Indian universities and, most importantly, on social institutions. All essays comment on different dimensions of contemporary Indian society.

It is rather interesting to note that though written over a long period of time, there is a remarkable continuity of style and perspective in the essays presented in the book. His underlying concern, repeatedly argued in different ways throughout the book, is a preoccupation with building a modern society and a healthy liberal democracy in India. Though he recognises the need to give due recognition to specificities of the local context and what India has inherited from the past, the professor is very critical of those who try to eulogise the traditional way of living against the modern one. Those who talk about going back to the past have no idea about the realities of life in a village community marked by hierarchy and scarcity.

He has also been a bitter critique of the official policies and programmes that, in the name of social justice, tend to strengthen traditional institution such as caste. He is one of those Indian intellectuals who have been critical of the Mandal Commission report that recommended reservation of jobs for the OBC (the other backward classes) on the basis of caste. However, he makes a distinction between reservation for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes which are "directed basically towards the goal of greater equality overall" and reservation for the other backward classes and religious minorities that "are directed towards a balance of power". While the former is in tune with the spirit of the Constitution, the latter is not.

Reservations, according to the professor, can thus serve only a limited purpose in a modern democratic society. On the whole "quotas based on caste, community and gender directly threaten the conception of citizenship on which our Constitution rests". He is against even the counting of heads on the basis of caste. If caste were included in the census enumeration, it would lead to casteism and "substantialisation of caste", he argues.

Prof Beteille has been an ardent advocate of cultivating and protecting modern institutions and modern values. Sociologists define institutions as social arrangements that have a distinctive identity and certain continuity over time. While individuals come and go, the institutions remain. All societies function through some institutional structures. The building of a modern society in a country like India requires of its people to respect modern institutions and their logic of functioning.

Unlike traditional institutions like caste and kinship that operate in small communities, modern institutions and organisations operate at a much bigger scale and ought to be governed by impersonal rules. "Moral problems (as also problems of efficiency) arise when values which are appropriate to one kind of society are carried over into organisations which are meant to work according to norms of a different kind". This inability to understand and respect the logic of modern institution, according to Prof Beteille, is one of the basic impediments of the contemporary Indian society. Social ailments like corruption and nepotism, in a sense, a direct result of this.

He also advocates in a number of essays what, for want of a better expression, could be called a "balanced approach". For example, in his essays on trade unionism though he recognises the positive role played by the unions in achieving some degree of equality in industrial societies, he sees no reasonable justification for unionisation of "white-collar" workers. He is particularly critical of unionisation by members of his own tribe — university teachers. In the university system there was no clear distinction between the employers and employees. The professors, for example, are not only employed by the universities, but they are also members of selection committees and governing bodies of these universities.

Similarly he is critical of "judicial activism", as it cannot be a substitute for good governance. While courts must exercise vigilance in public interest, they should not be over-active as that could "choke off all initiative in its major institutions by maintaining a habitually intimidating attitude". He advocates a similar type of professionalism among social scientists and intellectuals in his several essays on intellectuals and ideologies.

One of the most immediate things that one is struck with while reading the book is the lucidity of his writings. Beteille’s arguments not only sound reasonable, but are at times also quite provocative. Some of his positions have understandably been criticised by fellow social scientists. For example, he often appears to over-emphasise the significance of the well-being of modern institutions over the political processes of our times. His position on caste-based reservation has also been quite controversial. Caste today is not merely a traditional institution. The participation of dalits in the political process on a collective basis, for example, is perhaps more an evidence of their growing democratic aspirations rather than a traditionalist urge amongst them.

However, despite all these criticisms, reading Prof Beteille is always a rewarding experience.

The Magic of Malgudi — R.K. Narayan edited by S. Krishnan. Viking, New Delhi. Pages 408. Rs 395.

IN the last decade of the 20th century Viking/Penguin Books India has lionised, in particular, two writers — Shobha De and Ruskin Bond. R.K. Narayan is the latest on their list of important Indo-English writers. The editor, S. Krishnan, is helping them in bringing out his fiction in hard-bound format. To date he has edited four books — "A Town call Malgudi", "The World of Malgudi" (already reviewed in The Tribune). "The Magic of Malgudi", the book under review is the third one and the fourth in the offing is "The Memory of Malgudi".

The "Magic" contains the famous first novel of Narayan "Swami and Friends", the very next ‘‘The Bachelor of Arts" published in 1935 and 1937. The third novel is "Vendor of Sweets" published in 1967. By that time he had become a name in the Indian writing in English and the novel which gave him name and fame was "The Guide". He got the Sahitya Akademi Award and thereafter the novel was made into a movie in English and Hindi.

Human relationships, more particularly familial relationships, constitute a major theme in Narayan’s novels. Narayan typically portrays the peculiarities of human relationships and ironies of Indian daily life, in which modern urban existence clashes with traditions. The family is the immediate context in which his sensibility operates and his novels are remarkable for the subtlety and conviction with which this relationship is treated — that of son and parents, brother and brother in "The Bachelor of Arts".

Parental love is one of the more significant refrains in Narayan’s fiction. Another facet of his writing shows that Narayan’s heroes are constantly struggling to achieve maturity and each one of his novels is a depiction of this struggle. This theme is present in a lighter, less formed character of Chandran in "The Bachelor of Arts". But Narayan’s heroes ultimately accept life as it is, and this is a measure of their spiritual maturity. And this maturity is achieved within the accepted religious and social framework.

In "Swami and Friends", the normal life of Swami and his friends, the peace, harmony and friendship is momentarily disturbed due to some misunderstanding between friends. But in the end normalcy is restored because the crisis has been resolved. Likewise, in "The Bachelor of Arts", when the hero fails to marry the girl of his choice, he renounces the world for a time and becomes a sadhu. Ultimately he returns home and marries the girl of his parents’ choice and lives happily everafter.

In "The Vendor of Sweets", when Jagan, the father, is unable to inject some sense in the mind of his profligate son Mali, he decides to retire from his business to lead a life in an "ashram" across the river.

Malgudi forms the backdrop of almost all his works. It is a symbol for India and it is a typically South Indian town. It has been presented vividly and realistically and we see it changing and growing and becoming different in successive novels. The Malgudi of "Swami and Friends" is different from the Malgudi of "The Vendor of Sweets" written after a gap of 30 years. In fact, Malgudi is the real hero in Narayan’s fiction. All things pass and change, but Malgudi asserts itself and continues to live, change and grow. In short, he gives kaleidoscopic images of life’s little ironies happening in Malgudi, vis-a-vis in India on a larger scale.

"Swami and Friends" (1935) was at once hailed by critics as a great work of art. The novel describes the rainbow world of childhood and early boyhood of boys of the likes of Swami growing up in the interior of South India. It seems that Narayan’s personal experience at school has gone into the making of the novel. We get a vivid portrayal of the thoughts, emotions and activities of school boys. It is as though everyday reality has taken over Narayan’s pen and written this universal epic of all our boyhood days.

The novel is remarkable for the author’s understanding of child psychology, for depiction of the carefree, buoyant world of a school boy. Swami is one of the immortal creations of Narayan. Chandran, Raju, Jagan and others came much after in his fiction. Some writers have the tendency to covert their childhood into shrines and further on they mythify their own boyhood. Narayan has consciously avoided that because he never wrote any more tales of boyhood after "Swami and Friends".

"The Bachelor of Arts" is a more mature work than the earlier novel and it deals with a later stage in a youngman’s career, when he is about to leave college and enter life and settle in some job. It is divided into four parts. Part one gives us a slice of college life of the hero Chandran — a sensitive youth caught in the whirlpool of western ideas of love and marriage instilled in him by his education and the traditional social set-up in which he lives.

Part two deals with the youngman’s search for a job and his frustrations at not getting a decent job. The only ray of hope is the love interest in the beautiful girl Malathi, whom he encounters during one of his walks on the banks of the Sarayu river. The parents of the girl have no objection to this "love alliance" but the tangle of fate obstruct as their horoscopes do not match.

The autobiographical element intrudes. A couple of years earlier Narayan had married against astrological warnings. Happy in his marriage, he must have thought the idea of Chandran’s possible marriage being wrecked by horoscopes, a dramatic one but his own wife died about two years after the publication of this novel. There is an irony here. Frustration in love makes him take recourse to wandering like swami/sadhu but for a time only. He finds the life of a sadhu difficult at so young an age and he returns to the fold of his house, to get married to the girl of his parent’s choice.

At last, our "Bachelor of Arts" takes a job as a newspaper correspondent. The novel, however, leaves us with a feeling that the writer has made no attempt to probe the real implications of the conflict in the mind of the hero Chandran and has made the hero return to the safety of the home life.

After the publication of "The English Teacher" in 1945 Narayan’s novels altered and matured. Without losing their humour or sentimentality, they started focusing on small men with big mouths — a venal vendor of sweets, a penny-wise money lender, a staid painter, a fake swami — who all face disruption in their ordered world. How they restore their equilibrium is the comedy, the plot and the philosophy. The novels are too Indian in their themes and that delights the academics all over the world and they go on doing doctorate theses on themes like "Malgudisation of reality or Brahminness in the novels of Narayan’’ without forgetting the role of women in his fiction.

"The Vendor of Sweets" continues the Gandhian motif of his earlier novel "Waiting for the Mahatma". Jagan, the sweet vendor, who is out and out a Gandhian, finds his only son, Mali lured away by the West. By the time he came to write this novel Narayan has himself been exposed to American living and also its thought processes. So he makes Mali, the son of the sweet vendor, go to America only to return with a half-American and half-Korean girl (to whom he is not married) and with an out-of-the-world idea for devising a novel-writing machine (the computer revolution was about to commence in the 1960s). All this makes Jagan think of renouncing the world and he takes Mali as the spoilt thread of his life.

The reader is unable to decide whether Narayan is talking of the generation gap or he is dealing with East-West encounter or he is examining the efficacy of Gandhism in modern world. The novel raises all these issues and fails to add up to a coherent fictional statement.

That the idea that stories and novels can be manufactured by electronic devices is a fine piece of satire on the modern craze for machines, might find some takers, who wish to manufacture novels.

Though in last two decades Indian English fiction has come a long way from the Malgudi landscape, yet Narayan aficionados read him to lend an old world charm to their reading.

Quest for World-Class Excellence through Total Quality Management: Principles, Implementation and Cases by D.D. Sharma. Sultan Chand and Sons, New Delhi. Pages 842. Rs 750.

TOTAL quality means all areas and function, all activities, all employees are always one hundred per cent correct. But in India, 1,60,000 wrong prescriptions are given by the doctors every year, more than 1,20,000 new-born babies are accidentally dropped every year and two or three rail accidents occur every month. Hence, total quality control is still a long way to go.

Quality perception leads to well defined products with functional perception; timely delivery, high reliability, ready to use, error-free performance; first time right, totally delighted customer, and absolute level of empathy with the customers. Management implies that quality does not come by its own; it is to be planned and managed; and it is everybody’s responsibility. Total quality management (TQM) is an integrated organisational approach in delighting customers (both external and internal) by meeting their expectation on a continuous basis through everyone involved with the organisation working on continuous improvement in all products/ processes along with problem-solving methodology. TQM needs to be implemented not only in the corporate sector, but also in every occupation in right earnestness. The author has attempted to bring forth various principles and applications involved in the overall improvement of quality of goods and services to the utmost satisfaction of customers.

The author has in 26 chapters covered TQM from the basics of total quality to the implementing of TQM and quality audit. From the day the government opened the economy and encouraged foreign direct investment in the country, and following the policies of liberalisation, modernisation, privatisation and globalisation, it is facing challenges from the MNCs. Indian companies have to acquire competitive advantage to compete in the world market. This can be acquired through TQM. In fact, a large number of organisations has started realising the importance of TQM and new quality system improvement standards. A large number of Indian corporations are striving to obtain ISO 9000 accreditation and several have already got it.

In the changing industrial and economic scenario in India, there is need for managers and engineers to both understand TQM and apply it in their respective organisations. Because customer and employee satisfaction committed leadership, quality policy, lean processes, optimal use of resources, belief in quality and unleashing energy are some of the well-accepted features of TQM. TQM introduces discipline in business organisations and its tools help in measuring their performance of the processes.

The author has explained very vividly TQM. In the first chapter, the author has elaborated pursuit in world-class excellence. It deals with creativity, invention, innovation and achievement of excellence through change. The second chapter focuses on basics of total quality with particular reference to historical development, quality challenges to industry and the need for quality improvement. The third chapter highlights the TQM framework.

In this chapter, the author has gone into details to make readers understand the TQM philosophy, Indian scriptures, myths, conceptions and major process components of TQM.

In the fourth chapter, quality gurus and their contributions have been discussed in detail. The fifth chapter establishes linkages with management theories. The sixth chapter is devoted to cost of quality and the seventh to problem solving and QC tools. Kaizan and quality circles find slots in the eighth and ninth chapters. Statistical process controls and just in time tools have been discussed in the tenth and eleventh chapters. Teamwork, total employees involvement and customer satisfaction have been dealt with and deliberated upon in the next three chapters. The other chapters have been devoted to discussing benchmarking, leadership and cultural change respectively.

Total preventive maintenance has been discussed in the 18th chapter. Quality system standards ISO 9000 and quality planning process are the subjects of focus in the two following chapters. Daily process management, quality improvement and organisational engineering have been taken for deliberations in the next three chapters. Finally, quality awards and implementation of TQM have been deliberated upon in the last two chapters.

The most distinguished feature of the book is the inclusion of case studies in three parts. Part I comprises the cases of prominent Indian companies. Part II puts forward the quality snaps of some Indian companies. Case studies and profiles of some excellent international companies from the USA, Europe and Japan have been brought together in Part III. These case studies are aimed at providing the readers with an insight into the practices of TQM in India and abroad.

The book has been written in simple language so that the difficult subject of TQM is well understood by students, scholars and business organisations who are to use TQM in their work culture. Indian examples have been used to make the text more practice-based and industry oriented. A summary is given at the end of each chapter for better assimilation of the text. Review questions have also been included at the end of each chapter. The Indian cases are provided at the end of this book which make its unique contribution to the TQM literature. These cases are highly useful for students for discussion in the classrooms.

It would have been better if the cases were given at the end of each chapter for better understanding of the study. At the end of the book, an index is missing, which would have helped readers to pick up a topic in the fastest possible time as it is not easily found from the contents. Bibliography is also not adequate. There is a requirement to give more references. It is a useful book for both management as well as engineering students. The business organisations can also benefit from this book.

Kasturba by Arun Gandhi. Penguin India, New Delhi. Pages 215. Rs 295.

I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you are important and nice, but you take second place all the same (Iris Murdoch)

WHEN I once read a statement by Eva Figes, "Women are generally man-made," I marvelled at the ability of the writer to be so true and so succinct at the same time. Yet, there have been women who have refused to conform. Even while living within the rigid structures imposed upon them by men, they have been silently eloquent in voicing dissent. One such woman was Kasturba. Mahatma Gandhi would one day admit that he had learnt the rudiments of nonviolence from her.

Kasturba and Mohandas Gandhi never held hands in public. Their shadows probably always did. Which is why their relationship had the strength to undergo long periods of trial and still emerge strong. Most people would assume that Kasturba was the perfect foil for Gandhi’s whims, foibles and "idealistic experiments". But she was very much her own person.

Instead of using language which created the subject-position "I’’ and to be forever engaged in a struggle for power, knowledge and identity with her spouse, she constructed her language out of the "other", the silenced, the repressed — as this biography seeks to simply justify. She sometimes chose to ignore paternalistic control over herself by ignoring the meanings explicit in her husband’s words, thereby unsetting authority.However, she understood his ideology and stood by him, subject to the condition that he totally convince her of the validity of his actions.

Born in the white limestone city of Porbandar to a leading citizen and one-time mayor of the city, Gokaldas Kapadia, her house shared the Gandhi family’s neighbourhood. Kasturba, growing up under the loving care of her family as the only daughter, was betrothed at the age of seven to the son of a sometime dewan of Porbandar, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The fact that the actual marriage took place in 1882, when both of them were 13, late for a girl by the standards of the day, indicates the concern of Kasturba’s parents for their cherished daughter. Kasturba had inherited their open-mindedness, intelligence and independent nature. The marriage took place with the traditionally lengthy festivities along with the marriage of Karsandas, Mohandas’s 16-year-old brother and another older cousin at the same time.

As the youngest daughter-in-law of the Gandhi household, her life was now no longer one of ease and comfort. But she was lucky not to have a tyrant mother-in-law in Putliba, one who religiously and cheerfully ran the house by example. Her husband, however, was a greater taskmaster. Once, exercising his conjugal rights, or rather curtailing hers, he asked her to keep his informed of her every move. Conservative by instinct but proud and free by spirit, she chose to accompany her mother-in-law to the temple on subsequent days. Her plea: "She could not obey her husband and disobey elders."

"The young husband was learning a hard truth about his wife: she obeyed as she chose."

Mohandas was a product of his time. And then, as now, he wanted "a wife to help his ends". In his autobiography, he explains his ambition "to make my wife an ideal wife...(To) make her live a pure life, learn what I learned, and identify her life and thought with mine". Mohandas’s experiment on tutoring his wife wobbled and then flumped. All his life, he never managed to "teach" her. Albeit there was much that he would learn from her later in life.

Mohandas’s experiments continued. A schoolmate, Sheikh Mehtab, introduced him to meat-eating and prostitution.Both of these failed miserably. Confessions to a 15-year-old wife were met with love and understanding. Mohandas merely experimented with truths. His wife lived them.

Their first child was born prematurely, four days after the death of Mohandas’s father. The child died a few days later. Mohandas reverted to studying for his matriculation exam. Kasturba’s grief was never recorded. Their second child, Harilal, arrived as Mohandas was being sent to England to study law. After an excommunication sentence of Mohandas for travelling overseas and some financial hassles later, he boarded the S.S. Clyde for England on September 4, 1888.

While Mohandas was in England, learning social graces, playing violin, ballroom dancing and learning French and Latin and travelling a lot, Kasturba kept a three-year-long vigil. She sought solace in her son, bits of his letters and photos and in her mother-in-law, Putliba. As Mohandas’s time of returning drew near, Putliba passed away after a brief illness.

Mohandas returned a changed man.His appearance and habits were western and he tried moulding the whole family to his ways too. His ideas of teaching Kasturba to read and write persisted. She once again resisted. He had changed merely outwardly. His efforts to start a practice in Bombay were also frustrated because his old fear of public-speaking overcame him.

Mohandas’s experiences with British officialdom were also proving to be highly demotivating. Then came the modest offer from Africa by a group of Gujarati merchants. Mohandas took it up. Once there, however, he perceived that he had not yet seen the limits of racial subjugation. Through incidents like the one when he was thrown out of a train, the social worker inside him was fast emerging. He was now on a consuming mission. Highlighting the conditions of brown and black masses, suppressed on their own land by a white "master". Travelling next time with him to Africa, Kasturba discovered the price that Mohandas had to pay for his single-minded devotion to a cause and his subsequent prominence. He was mobbed and nearly lynched more than once.

His introspection had wrought other changes in him besides, and she learnt to slowly share her house with destitutes or complete strangers and most abhorrently, to clean night soil. Kasturba was defiant "a woman who did not always have the patience of a saint, or for a saint in the making." Later in life, Kasturba would be the one to translate Mohandas’s teachings simply and straightforwardly. Through her, women in the remotest of villages of India would learn to identify with the struggle for independence.

The birth of their third son Ramdas set Mohandas thinking about the dominance of the husbands who after making their wives pregnant left them to give birth to children and bring them up, although they later went on to have another son, Devdas. Meanwhile, his sanitation and paramedical campaigns inAfrica were not getting him anywhere. His list of reforms were now concentrated on his family. They took a vow of poverty. But Ba knew he was going overboard with his zeal. She warned him, "You are trying to make saints out of my boys before they are even men". A statement that would ring true many years later when their eldest and most promising son would be sacrificed at the altar of Bapu’s principles.

His experiments with food, fasting and medicine, nevertheless, went on. Kasturba, on the other hand, fully acknowledged the fact that she had not been the centre of her husband’s universe and neither would she ever be one. Faithfully she took up her husband’s cause as her own once she was convinced of its rightness. Be it helping those stricken by plague or giving up servants and her jewellery, to his vow of celibacy, she complied. Her sacrifice quietened the turmoil in her husband’s mind and set him free to answer the call for public action.

But Kasturba was more than a meek yes-woman.She ate unflavoured cornmeal mush when her husband was in jail. Nearly starved herself when he fasted. Vigilantly looked after the string of settlements from Phoenix to Sabarmati which her husband established and kept lengthy mental accounts of expenses incurred. Organised followers, both men and women, for satyagraha when Gandhi was in jail. And found time to dote upon her eldest daughter-in-law, Gulab, and after her death to look after her children at the age of 50. She bore pangs of anxiety when her husband and later her sons joined the freedom struggle and went to jail.

She organised groups of women from one village, one afternoon at a time and taught them the virtues of cleanliness. When Gandhi’s followers, including one of his own sons, were to march unarmed at the now famous Dandi march, she put an end to all snifflings by young wives, declaring, "Our men are warriors. We are warriors’ wives. If we are brave, they will be brave." Her advocacy of the harijan cause came in for bitter criticism. At one time she was more feared by the British than the Mahatma himself. Her special affection for Sushila Nayyar, a young satyagrahi’s sister whom she encouraged to study to become a doctor, is well-known.

It was her passive activism which kept the spirit of this frail woman alive, despite her ailing body. She fought not only for independence but for moral principles too. As in the case when she challenged a licentious ruler who dishonoured young girls and after a long drawn out fight, she emerged victorious. She passed away at the Aga Khan Palace Jail in 1944 after ailing for a long time and yearning for her first born son, Harilal, who had now gone astray without hope of recovery.

At least the Mahatma died a satisfied man, playing a significant role in India’s struggle against oppression and emerging victorious. Kasturba died a grieving mother, an ever suspect wife and an unrecognised martyr. Always carrying her husband’s instructions in her heart. "Keep absolutely firm to the end. Suffering is our only remedy. Victory is certain," was what he had once written. And always believing.

Fed on the stories of Sita, Savitri and Rani Lakshmibai, she drew strength from all three and combined their qualities. Arun Gandhi has done a wonderful job by writing this biography — repaying his debt to his lesser known grandparent. How long before we can give her her due?

Ram Mandir revisited, with closed eyes
Review by Harbans Singh

Profiles in Deception: Ayodhya and Dead Sea Scrolls by N.S. Rajaram. Voice of India, New Delhi. Pages 294. Rs 300.

THE author of the book, N.S. Rajaram, is an engineer and a mathematician by training, and has lived and continues to live in the United States of America. But he is much more than that as the reader of this book finds out. Recently, he has claimed, along with another versatile person, Mr N. Jha, to have unravelled the mystery of the Harappan script. The result of that claimed achievement has broader ramifications as it "proves" that horses and chariots along with the Rigveda preceded the Harappan civilisation. This would debunk the widely accepted theory of the Aryan invasion, and that the Aryans were responsible for the destruction of the Harappan civilisation.

There are other fields, too, where Rajaram stakes his claims as a "specialist": the 2,000-years old Jewish Qumran scrolls, Christianity, European history, cosmological science and, of course, Indian history and culture, past and present. However, one must add that these subjects interest him only inasmuch as they help him to lash out at the Muslims, Christians, secularists and secular historians and western Indological studies, though not necessarily in that order.

Whenever one reads a book written by a Rajaram or a Kak, one wonders about the motives that drive these expatriate writers. Why is it that they are gifted with such a fertile imagination and why do they need to interpret facts which only promote communal hatred? Especially when it is noticed that they have lived much of their adult life in the USA where people have come from various racial and ethnic groups, often having been involved in destructive and vindictive wars in the lands of their origin, and yet they amalgamate in their adopted home to create a prosperous society. Why is it that these people continue to enjoy the advantages and priviligeses of that country and sow seeds of dissension and mutual antagonism in their motherland?

Though the book makes labourious reading, it is worthwhile as its critical study provides an opportunity to go into the minds of these people.

The stated object of "Profiles in Deception" is to study the two "deceptions" — the Ayodhya and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The first, according to the author, the handiwork of leftist historians and the second by the Catholic Church. By doing so Rajaram is constantly able to keep in firing range not only the historians and the Christianity, but the real object of his ire — Islam.

The charge against the secularists is that they represent imperialism and its ideologies and have been instrumental in destroying the glorious history of the land. The proof — they refuse to accept that horses and the Vedas preceded Harappan civilisation! He accuses them of harbouring "visceral hatred of the culture into which they were born, and of which they formed a privileged group". He argues that since historians or, for that matter all students of humanities in India, unlike the scientists and technologists who command favourable market in the West, have nowhere to go, therefore, they must see India as the mother of all cultures having a glorious and idyllic past. Failing which, they are all brought under the general category of "negationists".

These historians also stand accused of watering down some of the unpleasant events of the past, and this draws considerable ire of a puritan like Rajaram, making him also warn that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. In doing so, he forgets that setting too much store by history is often counter-productive, for often it keeps the wounds festering. At one point he alleges that these historians do not know European history, but it is amazing that he is ignorant of the fact that Europe has carried the burden of history with disastrous results, as seen in the end results of World War II. Incidentally, World War II was not just the holocaust, tragic as it was, but the smaller nations of Europe and Hiroshima and Nagasaki too.

Now by coming to terms with history, Western Europe is moving towards unification, and by refusing to do so in the Balkans, it is continuing with the murder, arson and rape of the Middle Ages. Rajaram would have the Balkan model in India and see the historians keeping alive the embers of revenge and mutual destruction.

The philosophical approach to history apart, the facts on Ayodhya, as presented by Rajaram, are inaccurate and inconclusive. Though he boasts of a scientific temper and approach, it is remarkable that he does not offer a single primary source to prove the destruction of the "Janamsthan temple" by Babur. The nearest that he comes is Babur’s "Baburnamah", which for some reason does not contain any reference to the period when the Babri Masjid was "built". The building of the mosque in 1528 by Mir Baqi and naming it after Babur is being offered as a conclusive proof that it was destroyed by Babur!

Other sources quoted by Rajaram are from the 19th century and one from the granddaughter of Emperor Aurangzeb, a good two centuries after the deed was done. Two "primary" sources of the historian are (page 118) from A. Fuhrer’s "The Monumental Antiquities and Inscriptions in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, an Archaeological Survey of India Report, 1891" and what H.R. Neville has to say in 1905 in the "Barabanki District Gazetteer" and again in his "Fyzabad District Gazetteer", the same year where he writes that, "In 1528 AD Babur came to Ayodhya and halted here for a week. He destroyed the ancient temple and on its site built a mosque". On the same page, he again refers to his source of information, Harsh Narain who has written that Guru Nanak Dev, a contemporary of Babur, according to Bhai Man Singh’s "Pothi Janam Sakhi", which was said to have been composed in 1730 AD, visited Ayodhya. According to that source, Guru Nanak said to his Muslim disciple Mardana: "Mardania! eh Ajudhia nagari Sri Ramchandraji Ji ki hai. So, chal, iska darsan karie". One can understand that this means, even in 1730, that Guru Nanak visited Ayodhya, but offering it as a proof of the destruction by Babur is illogical by any scholarly standards.

Ironically, on page 116 he invokes the weighty authority of Encyclopaedia Britannica to prove his point, though once again without the support of any primary evidence.

Incredibly, Rajaram does not consider linguistic evidence of any consequence, though in reconstructing history linguistics as well as literary evidence play a significant role. His reluctance becomes understandable when we find that there is absolutely no literary evidence suggesting demolition of the temple by Babur, though there is evidence that temples were being destroyed and new Islamic structures built with the same material since the invasions of Ghori and Ghazni. These events were traumatic for the Hindus, but by the time Babur arrived the Hindus had already overcome the shock and trauma of finding their idols fail them and themselves. That explains the "nirguna upasana" of saints like Nanak, Kabir and other Sufis. However, by the 16th century the tide had turned once again and there were a number of "saguna" bhakti poets like Surdas, Tulsidas and Mira.

Said to be born around the time when the temple was said to be destroyed, it is amazing that the prima bhakta of Ram, Tulsidas remained unaffected by the destruction of the temple built at a place where Ram was born! There are allusions to the misrule of the contemporary kings in times of the two famines during Akbar’s reign, but none of whatsoever about this humiliating experience. The fact that the crowning work of Tulsidas, Ramcharit Manas, which gave him everlasting glory and took the life and times of Ram to the common masses, was written in Ayodhya makes this omission all the more meaningful. One would think that the presence of a mosque at the site of the birthplace of Ram would rankle a bhakta like Tulsidas who is said to have refused to bow before the idol of Krishna in Vrindavan, saying, "Ka barnaun chavi aaj ki bhale bane ho nath, Tulsi mastak tab nave dhanush ban layo haath."

It is also important to remember that the era preceding Tulsidas was marked by a bitter struggle between the Shaivites and Vaishnavites, and it was the untiring effort of Tulsidas that brought peace between the two. In that age he emerged as the poet of harmony, and this could only be attributed to the benign environment of the times, so benign that it was enough to apply balm to the battered ego of the Hindus! These evidences are, however, conveniently ignored by Rajaram.

The other target of Rajaram is Christianity, and he alludes to the Dead Sea Scrolls a number of times, perhaps trying to build up the curiosity, before actually unfolding what he wants to say about them. He uses them to prove that Jesus did not exist, at least not in the form as he is widely accepted. In doing so he forgets that if Hindus do not doubt the historicity of Ram or Krishna, then how do you expect Christians to doubt the historicity of Christ.

The value of Qumran Scrolls can only be for scholarly discussion among the peer groups, they cannot and should not be taken by outsiders to discredit the faith of others unless, of course, the exercise includes all religions without prejudice.

It would be pertinent here to point out that among the Hindus there is an Oriya Mahabharata known as "Sarala’s Tales from Mahabharata". Many scholars find the narration of the same tales very profound and scholarly. In one of the chapters devoted to the second generation of the Pandavas there is an intriguing depiction of Abhimanyu’s character. When requested to enter the "Chakravyuha", he agreed to do so knowing well the risk involved on the condition that if he returned back alive, he would kill Arjuna, his father. Then he pours out his heart against both his father and maternal uncle Krishna, blaming them for the destructive war.

Moreover, he says, that his father has been an inhibiting factor in his growth. He himself married the woman of his choice, indulging in every kind of permissible marriage, but when it came to his son he married him off to a woman who was, in the first place, offered to him in marriage! More blasphemy follows as he accuses his father of mindlessly following Krishna!

However, even though these stories are popular in Orissa they in no way diminish the faith of the people in Krishna, or even displace Vyasa’s Mahabharata from the high pedestal it is placed in. With such example so close at home, how does Rajaram hope that the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls would sound the death knell of Christianity, though he announces that a number of times in the book.

The problem is that men like Rajaram are not willing to grant that others too can have resilence and strength, though Christianity has repeatedly proved that it can resolve contradictions and come to grip with discoveries of science. It not only took Galilio in its stride but also the more traumatic Darwin’s theory of evolution. He makes a number of snide remarks at Christ forgetting that Christians themselves have subjected him to the most ruthless examination. The episodes of the Last Temptation and the Resurrection and the debate that follows are proof of the ability to put itself under the microscope. But then prejudice is known to do strange things to the senses of even better people.

Another amazing strand throughout the book is that even though the author happens to be scanning a history spanning more than 5000 years, he finds the overpowering image of Sonia Gandhi threatening the continued existence of this ancient land and culture! If only her followers also held the same view about her, they would be galvanised into performing Hanumanian deeds to bring the party back to power!

Much of the book has been used to denigrate some of the historians who hold views contrary to Rajaram’s. The language used borders on being abusive reducing it to the level of a pamphlet. The opportunity to make it a subject for academic studies has therefore been lost. Historians can play the role of propagandists, if they so choose; but it is not possible for a propagandist to become a historian. This is so because the intent of Rajaram and those who back him is not to create Ramrajya, but to grab power. It is worthwhile remembering that in the sixties these very people tried to capture power by leading the "anti cow slaughter" agitation. Had the Ayodhya issue been on the horizon then, the save cow campaign would not have gained priority over the Ram temple. Like many people before, politicians have used religious frenzy to capture power, and it is only right that where the "holy cow" failed Rama succeeded!

Normally such a book should have been appropriately dismissed in a few sentences; but, we live in extraordinary times, when as Humpty Dumpty said in "Through the Looking Glass", "When I use a word it means whatever I want it to mean", and when there is a method in the madness. The method needs to be exposed; the madness contained.

Worlds in Harmony by Dalai Lama. Full Circle, Delhi. Pages 139. Rs 195

"WORLDS in Harmony" highlights the problems faced by people, including psychotherapists, due to the "worlds" being out of harmony. The book reproduces an interaction that took place between the Dalai Lama and certain highly accomplished panelists in southern California in 1989. Dr David Goleman, a psychologist and award-winning journalist, Joanna Macy, a Buddhist scholar, Joel Edelman, lawyer and marriage counsellor, Jack Engler, a therapist, Daniel Brown, director of a Boston-area clinic, Jean Shinoda Bolen, a psychiatrist, Margaret Brenman-Gibson, a clinical professor of psychiatry, and Stephen Levine, meditation teacher, were the panelists. These experts posed questions to the Dalai Lama on various sensitive subjects to which the spiritual leader responded with insight in words full of wisdom and grace.

The experts on the panel revealed many hard facts about life lived in the West, which might shock sensitive and delicate souls. Even therapists, who belong to the profession of psychology, psychiatry, nursing and social work, are not free from social stigma and some of them are charged with abuse of their clients. Jack Engler said that in Boston, where he practised as a therapist, almost every month there were media reports of therapists of misusing his or her power, usually men abusing women. Even teachers in the Buddhist sanghas are abusing positions of power and trust. Daniel Brown drew the Dalai Lama’s attention to the people who have suffered extreme sexual or physical abuse, as children. Drug addiction and violence are the other problems which western youth, mostly Americans, face.

Margaret Brenman-Gibson quotes Erikson’s telling words, "We treat other nations and peoples as if they were members of other species, and then we feel that it is all right to kill them for our so-called betterment," to underscore the significance of empathy.

Citing the example of Daniel Ellsberg, author of "Pentagon Papers", who brought out the truth about the Vietnam war and the US role in perpetrating atrocities on the Vietnamese in the role of a "saviour", she highlighted the role of empathy in transforming consciousness. "When you see and feel that ‘you are me, and I am you’, you can no longer turn away from the suffering, and you must resist the wrongful action."

The Dalai Lama, in complete agreement with her, is emphatic in his statement: "The globe is becoming much smaller and more interdependent. Empathy and altruism are the keys for true happiness." In the field of economics, we cannot do without interdependence even with hostile nations, he adds.

About altruism, he says, it is more than just a feeling of sympathy. A sense of responsibility, taking care of one another is always there. "When we consider the other as someone precious and respected, it is natural that we will help them (sic) and share with them expressions of our love. According to many a scientist, we need affection for our brains to develop properly. This shows that our very nature is involved with affection, love and compassion."

The Dalai Lama advocates vegetarianism and is pained to learn about the slaughter of billions of animals in factory farming. But, he says, if people still insist on animal food, it may be better to eat bigger animals.

Addressing Daniel Goleman, who sought guidance on how to face sufferings with greater courage, the spiritual leader responded: "First, you must examine whether it is possible to overcome the problem. If there is a way out, then there is no need to worry. If there is no way out, then there is no point to be depressed... If the suffering has already occurred, it is best simply to leave it... Don’t compound what has happened in the past by pondering over it and accentuating it. Simply leave the past buried in its own devices and carry on in the present, taking steps to avoid such suffering in the present and future."

To a question how to get over anger, the Dalai Lama suggests that one should look at the person who has annoyed you and try to contain one’s own anger and cultivate compassion. Reflect again and again on the disadvantages of the hostility and destructive nature of anger and gradually the tension will subside.

He suggests that education can solve the problem of religious fanaticism. In a simple sentence he provides mankind with the panacea for world peace: "To bring forth world peace, we must have mental peace."

There are several other insightful statements by the Dalai Lama. "There are two basic responses to suffering: one is to ignore it and the other is to look right at it and penetrate it. There are two kinds of love and compassion. There is true compassion, also called love with reason, and there is the usual kind of love, which is very much involved in desire and attachment. Love or compassion based on attachment is limited and unstable. It is mainly projection."

"Happiness is one of the best methods to have a healthy body. If we analyse the situation without anger, slowly and carefully, and then take action, we are much more likely to hit the target direct."

"By taking a wider perspective, you see that the other individual (enemy or opponent) is also a living creature, and you have the awareness that all living creatures are the same in wanting to be happy and avoid suffering, that realisation can help you develop compassion".

"...We have such a beautiful human brain and a beautiful human heart. By combining these two things,... we can solve every problem... we need only a little more patience and determination".

To a question posed by the audience, "What can we do to help reduce the suffering on the earth?" the Dalai Lama responded: "This planet is our own home. Taking care of our world, our planet is just like taking care of our house. Our very lives depend on this earth, our environment. The earth is, to a certain extent, our mother. She is so kind, because whatever we like to do, she tolerates it. But now the time has come when our power to destroy is so extreme that mother earth is compelled to tell us to be careful."

Citing the example of goddess Tara who wished to be reborn as a female and have "bodha" (enlightenment), he said that in the Tibetan way of life there was no male domination but equality of sexes.

He lays stress on awareness, mindfulness, education and a sense of responsibility. For changing the world it is imperative to have a change within oneself. He counsels people not to shirk responsibility. Everyone is responsible for world peace. None should feel himself insignificant. His role as a peacemaker is not less than that of the Dalai Lama.

The last chapter "Genuine compassion" by the Dalai Lama and the foreword by Daniel Goleman are useful additions to this authentic work. The latter has stressed the need for integrating science and philosophy: "Science and technology have brought immense control over nature but power without wisdom is dangerous... It is we who bear the responsibility, who face the challenge, who must take care of the planet, not just for ourselves, but for the future, for our children."

The Dalai Lama has fully analysed the philosophy of compassionate behaviour in this last chapter. For ability to practise compassion toward all living beings, he says, it is imperative to have a genuine sense of patience and tolerance even towards our enemies. If we are hit by an enemy bullet, we do not blame the bullet but the person who hit us. But if we analyse, we will logically come to the conclusion that the man concerned is not to blame because he is only a medium. It is the anger within him that has impelled him to injure us. So we should feel angry with the anger generated within him. It is this destructive anger which we very well know destroys the peace of mind and mental balance."

"Therefore, when someone dominated by anger harms you, instead of feeling angry toward him, you should feel a sense of compassion and pity because that person is suffering himself.’’ Love and compassion, he affirms, are basic human qualities. Love is an attitude wanting to help all sentient beings to enjoy happiness and compassion is the wish in our heart that all sentient beings, including our rivals, should be free from suffering. Real compassion is different from the usual feeling of love and compassion which is only an attachment.

In answering a question from the audience, the Dalai Lama had earlier said that the first lesson in compassion started the moment the child began sucking the mother’s milk. It is also the first lesson in human relations.

BOOK EXTRACT
Imported ideas, technologies and education

This is an edited version of a chapter from the book "Higher Education Through Television", edited by Binod C. Agrawal.

THERE are several layers of reality which emerge when we talk of Indian society and culture. India has a cultural reality that has evolved over several millennia while its political boundaries are waxing and waning. This cultural reality has provided a mosaic that has resulted in a composite picture at the macro level, depicting it to be an unified whole. But at another level, the linguistic and independent evolution of several cultural traditions emerge equally to provide another level of cultural reality that seems equally distinct and autonomous. Over a period of time, it became increasingly difficult to call each of these traditions a part of the larger whole which is what India is today as a political reality. In this perspective, it would be erroneous to call India a whole today.

At another level, Indian society from the very beginning of its history has remained extremely stratified and heirarchical in nature. This characterisation of Indian society in its contemporary form has assumed an enormous complexity as a result of industrialisation, westernisation and urbanisation. Democratic processes, which are supposed to reduce such centrifugal tendencies, were on many occasions found to be strengthening the ever-increasing horizontal and vertical cleavages within the overarching cultural and political boundaries.

However, the religious ethos which has provided a powerful unifying force within this framework has weakened due to invasions or other religious beliefs. The net outcome is what contemporary India looks like, having a large unidentified, incomprehensible, seemingly static and unknown mass of humanity, ruled and governed by a very small elite, continuously going through metamorphoses to adapt to the changing world scene. History bears testimony to several rulers and invaders who came to India and went without seriously scratching the broad fabric of Indian society and culture.

Education, per se, whether in the classical sense or in the contemporary context was and remains a victim of the very structure in which it flourished. From the ancient days and even today it remains the preserve of a few. It would not be wrong to say that Indian society is divided between the rulers having the powers of education and the ruled without education. This division seemed to have been tempered for the first time by the British education that allowed seemingly an open admission policy for brilliant students without any discrimination, a legacy that we continue to follow without any appreciable effect on the cultural ethos or psyche of Indian society.

Out of over 1000 million people there is a small number, less than 2 to 5 per cent of visible rich and a maddeningly large number (95 to 98 per cent) of poor. The visibly rich, mostly living in urban areas, have television sets at home and are in the process of acquiring many more modern communication technologies. A large number of them (both men and women) have the benefit of higher education, including professional education within India and abroad. It is this class which can be characterised as being influenced by the "communication revolution", and are getting drawn into the growing international information society. If the term communication revolution is used for them, it would not be wrong to say that the future education system, at all levels, including higher education, would be under great pressure to accept the new communication technologies to gain information and knowledge.

On the contrary, half of the India’s population below poverty line do not earn enough to get two meals a day. For them formal education of any kind is a luxury and they belong to the world’s largest uneducated humanity of any country. Leaving exceptions, none in this class has had occasion to benefit from higher education and are being exploited and repressed by the educated. The other 40 per cent who are above poverty line, but falling in the category of the poor, barely manage to scrape through and whose children, also a large majority, have not crossed the portals of higher learning.

Serious efforts on the part of the Government of India to elevate the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes to the mainstream through higher education have helped only a small minority. Another group — women — also falls within the deprived sections which has been largely out of the higher education system. The net result is that the total students enrolled in 1983-84 were 3.5 million spread over 124 universities and 15 deemed universities and 5246 colleges — less than 0.5 per cent of India’s population where more than 40 per cent of persons are youth. This analysis further supports the view that higher education remains a luxury for a large section of India’s population and so when we are talking of communication technologies for higher education, are we going to use communication technologies to improve the quality of education for the rich? Or will we use new communication technologies to spread higher education to large masses? We tend to take the view that the communication technologies ought to be responding to the needs of the spread of education while also improving the quality of education.

It is important at this juncture to discuss the meaning of cultural ethos vis-a-vis higher education. The contemporary cultural ethos is such that because of a glaring inequality between the minority educated and majority uneducated, it has only led to the exploitation of the silent majority without any confrontation or retaliation from the victims. Historically the code of ethics, the rights and privileges had differed between the educated and the uneducated. Both have tried to maintain separate methods of socialisation, communication and codes of behaviour. In order to safeguard the increasing exploitation and repression, the uneducated remain unobstrusive whereas the educated have both consciously and unconsciously evolved methods to improve the educational standards to become powerful both economically and politically.

Further, historical growth of higher education in India centred around state capitals and industrial and trade cities. In this sense, higher education tended to get associated with urban living and has acted as a deterrent to the rural men and women to return to their soil after higher education. This process essentially uprooted the rural elite from their mooring and resulted in a higher concentration of educated persons in urban areas. The spread of higher education in rural and far-flung areas, in spite of high unemployment, suffers due to lack of good teachers as even the rural elites do not want to teach in these institutions. In this way we have a few urban-based high quality institutions of excellence and a large number of low quality institutions of higher learning. It is starkly described in a recent report by the University Grants Commission while highlighting the major weakness of the higher education system in India.

"The system maintains a set of double standards. A small minority of educational institutions at all levels is of good quality and compares favourably with those in developed countries. But access to them is selective and is mostly availed of by the top social groups, either because they can afford the costs involved or because they show merit which, on the basis of the existing methods of selection, show a higher correlation with social status. But the core of good institutions where although there is open-door access, the standards are poor. Consequently it is in these institutions that the large majority of the people, including the weaker sections, receive their education. This dualism leads to undesirable social segregation and to a perpetuation and strengthening of inegalitarian trends in our society.

As soon as one departs from conventional face-to-face teaching, one is faced with many technologies — satellite, television, radio, computers and telephones. It is by choosing judiciously the technologies available and by organising the receiving end and keeping the cultural context in mind that one can optimise the benefits to higher education.

India is the world’s largest film producing country today. It can boast of one of the world’s largest radio and TV networks. Technically, both radio and television cover the entire country by their signals. An inexpensive medium wave transistor helps connect the owner with the rest of the world. The exact number of radios is not known, but it is estimated to be around 40-50 million, keeping in view the life of a radio, about 10 per cent would be non-functional at any given time. With all these reductions in the total availability of the radio, there would be one radio for every five households in the country. The same cannot be said of television and cinema halls which are clustered around urban centres. Right now, there is not even one television per 30 households. The cinema seat occupancy per thousand is also very low. The computer and related technologies have just begun to appear in elite institutions of higher education for largescale use by the students.

At present the University Grants Commission is telecasting "enrichment" programmes to all transmitters which rebroadcast these programmes in their area of coverage. In fact, more homes than colleges receive these programmes. This is one example of educational telecasting being highly dependent on time on local transmitters. As the need for educational telecasting grows, particularly in the evening hours, time on the local transmitters will not be available. This would entail a separate transmitter network for higher education telecasting. However desirable this may be, resource constraints simply will not permit such a huge investment in educational telecasting. The only alternative to this is direct broadcasting via satellite.

Institutions of higher education and open university study centres located in these institutions are likely to be dispersed and few in number. It would be very expensive to cover these with a separate transmitter network. Direct reception of programmes from satellites will obviate the need for a transmitter network. Also a dedicated channel for higher education broadcasting will afford flexibility in programme scheduling. In this way, it is possible to provide experiences that cannot be obtained from textbooks, such as live coverage of a one-shot surgical operation or a guided tour of a fast breeder reactor. This can be accomplished through transportable uplinks. We should be aware of these possibilities and the opportunities afforded by one of the four S-Band direct broadcasting transponders to be made available on INSAT spacecraft series.

Radio is suitable for lectures, and the receivers being inexpensive, access for most students is possible. But countrywide reach, using a centrally located high-power transmitter, is ruled out. The All India Radio is planning to set up a high-power national transmitter in Nagpur. But time on this transmitter is unlikely to be available for any educational broadcasting leave alone higher education. Therefore, for national coverage, quasi-direct sound broadcasting via satellite seems an obvious solution. This system, which is relatively new, is being studied and will be ready for implementation soon. It would use inexpensive receivers with one meter antennae.

The use of video cassette recorders (VCRs) is another example of useful technology for higher education. The VCRs located in an open university centre, or other institutions of higher learning can be used for time-shifting the broadcast programme. They can also be used to view and distribute taped programmes in the non-broadcast mode. Thus, VCRs can play a useful role in providing flexibility in learning through television.

The telephone system in India has a very narrow base. Confined mostly to the rich and government officials, it is mainly used for personal, business and administrative communication. An attempt should now be made to integrate the telephone into the educational system. Telephones should be made available at study centres where tutors are available so that students can call up and clear their doubts about the materials they are studying. With electronic exchanges, even conference calls can be made where four or five persons can simultaneously contact a tutor.

The foregoing analysis clearly indicates that extensive use of communication technologies at the individual level would be possible by radio, but if other audio-visual media are to be used for higher education, it should be considered under a institutional framework, given the cost and other logistic and infrastructural requirements. Otherwise, the use of audio-visual media will not achieve the intended goals. For example, INSAT television hour for college students today is viewed mostly at homes by non-college students as not even 3 per cent of colleges have more than one TV receiver to view these programmes. Can this kind of situation in any way reduce the increasing disparity between the educated and the uneducated and between elite institutions and other institutions?

An evaluation study conducted to measure the educational effects of distance learning in higher education through APPLE satellite indicated that television, if used appropriately, can help bridge the knowledge gap between the students of elite and non-elite institutions. This is a significant finding as it shows how an appropriate use of technology can be effective in improving the quality of education in an institutional framework.

Quite often in the past, along with the import of technology, the inherent value system was also imported. This situation is well-known to educationists who have witnessed the wholesale adoption of British education in terms of management, growth and development of academic disciplines. Even today, after five decades of independence, no major dent has been made in the functioning of colleges and universities. One is worried whether the same would happen with the communication technologies. Recent efforts made to provide higher education outside the classroom once again fell prey to the British model of open education. The use of TV, though intended to provide culturally compatible images due to lack of software, has fallen into the same trap of larger-scale import of educational programmes. Unless a conscious effort is made to use these technologies within the cultural framework, it will continue to perpetuate the age- old intellectual slavishness and produce professionals who will look outside India for their intellectual fulfilment. What has been argued and has been well established by other studies, is that until and unless planning for academic input and other software areas precede the introduction of hardware, the existing situation cannot be altered.

An equally important issue relates to the question of sender’s approach versus receiver’s approach in the use of technologies for higher education. As it stands today, government-owned media organisations, though very well-meaning, have followed a path in which they are through with the responsibility once a programme is transmitted, a plan is executed, and an experiment is successfully completed. This approach has created a situation in which the viewer, the listener and the user remains in isolation. This approach needs to be drastically altered so that the receiver could have some way to ensure access to the information and could help determine the needs to be catered to. This calls for access at college and university levels for optimal use of even existing communication technologies.

There are some questions that ought to be raised: should we use communication technologies for higher education? Is there a political will to enhance educational access in order to democratise it to achieve the nationally defined goals? In order to answer these questions, it is equally important to ask whether the 5000-year-old hegemony of the rich and the educated elite over the poor can be destroyed by such technological intervention. It is argued that without structural changes in society and in the method of imparting and testing of knowledge, we would achieve very little. These questions must be squarely tackled if the new communication technologies are to be meaningfully integrated in order to improve the quality of higher education.