E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

EDITORIALS

Another zig on Ayodhya
THE BJP, which leads the NDA alliance, should make up its mind what to do about the explosive Ayodhya controversy. The latest is that talks have failed to yield any result. Talks with whom?

State of technical education
INDIA has earned a name in the world in the field of computer software not because of its vast army of technical personnel but owing to the quality of its products. It also has institutions like the IITs and the IIMs which are the envy of even most of the developed countries.

OPINION

Hoping for basic poll reforms
Are elections compatible with good governance?
T.V. Rajeswar
UP, Uttaranchal, Punjab and Manipur are going to have new Assemblies. What has actually happened in these states in the process of electioneering does not present a healthy picture. In UP, taking up the largest state first, it is the caste factor ruling the roost.

MIDDLE

Posts and telegraph service, now and then!
R.S. Dutta
SOMETIME ago local print media carried the news that the Posts department had decided not to deliver mail twice a day. Why instead of two deliveries, it was decided to deliver only once, the public knows not even though there had been no reduction in the staff.

POINT OF LAW

SYL: does Supreme Court do justice to Punjab?
Anupam Gupta
“(S)o long as you have a loyal and contented Punjab peasantry,” said Sir Malcolm Hailey, Governor of the Punjab in the 1920s, in an insight that remains to be bettered, “you can rely on your Indian army and can face with confidence any situation that may arise in other provinces.”

TRENDS & POINTERS

Chivalry: women love it, men less sure
“I’ll get that” — Those three little words may be music to many women’s ears, but preliminary research suggests men may be a bit more cynical about picking up the tab. After viewing a video in which a man pays for his date’s dinner, most college-age women took it to be a sign that he was more “respectful” and “romantically attracted” to the woman in question, researchers report.

A CENTURY OF NOBELS

1999 Peace: DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

EDITORIALS

Another zig on Ayodhya

THE BJP, which leads the NDA alliance, should make up its mind what to do about the explosive Ayodhya controversy. The latest is that talks have failed to yield any result. Talks with whom? Muslim organisations, including the baseless Babri Masjid Coordination Committee, have denied any contact with the Prime Minister who claimed to be in contact with it to arrive at a peaceful solution. The militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad has threatened to start the construction of a grand temple on March 15, a few weeks after the final voting in UP. The latest is the Prime Minister’s admission that his efforts to resolve the dispute have failed and it is left to the courts to direct all parties to do the judicial thing. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee is obviously under strong pressure to do the right political thing rather than make the statesman-like admission. Western UP, known for its sharp casteist divisions, has already voted and the attention of the BJP has shifted to the central and eastern parts, which have a good majority of Muslim voters. A semi-secular statement should wean away a part, even a minuscule part, of the electorate, in support of the party. So, dissociation with the VHP is politically correct and profitable. And this is the basic rule during election time.

All this creates confusion at the national level. The central government should not conduct itself on the interests of its leading partner but on the long-term interests of the nation. And playing politics with the contentious Ayodhya issue is not good for the national health. What is more, it may not secure votes. The perceived wisdom is that this issue has ceased to be a hot electoral issue as it was a decade ago. And to resurrect a dead issue in support of a lost cause is both meaningless and reckless. The BJP is not all that hopeless in UP; it still has a strong chance to emerge as the second largest party and with Mr Kalyan Singh’s tactics can rig up a majority and come to power. Chief Minister Rajnath Singh is capable of this. For all one knows, keeping the Ayodhya issue aside may help instead of raising it at this moment.

State of technical education

INDIA has earned a name in the world in the field of computer software not because of its vast army of technical personnel but owing to the quality of its products. It also has institutions like the IITs and the IIMs which are the envy of even most of the developed countries. This is again because of the superior quality of education they provide. The country must guard this reputation, rather improve it. But what is happening is exactly the opposite of it. In the name of popularising and spreading technical knowledge, substandard institutions are being allowed to come up on a large scale. The situation has worsened with the system of payment seats being encouraged. As a result, business interests and others not serious about educational standards are about to highjack academic interests. This is obvious as their primary objective is profit. Well-known educationist and thinker Prof Amrik Singh has rightly said that all this shows "that nobody is thinking or planning about what needs to be done". Though he expressed his views on Saturday in the context of Tamil Nadu at a conference on "Management of higher education: 21st century challenges", what he said was relevant to the entire country. The situation calls for a nation-wide debate on the subject before there is a serious decline in the quality of technically "qualified" personnel and an alarming level of unemployment among them. Under no circumstances should quality be allowed to be sacrificed for quantity.

The veteran educationist perhaps gave the example of Tamil Nadu because technical education in the southern states has got linked to politics and hence the stress mainly on increasing the number of seats or opening new colleges. Tamil Nadu tops the list of availability of engineering seats — 60,000 — followed by Andhra Pradesh with 47,627 seats and 174 engineering colleges. Andhra Pradesh has approached the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) with a plan to create 10,000 more seats by sanctioning new colleges and enhancing the intake of the existing institutions. As against this, most of the northern states like Punjab and Haryana do not have even as much seats as Andhra has decided to add. The most pitiable situation is in the area of computer-related studies. Almost every town even in the North has a number of centres engaged in producing computer personnel by obtaining franchise from some university. Quality is not their concern so long as they get students ready to pay for their wares---substandard technical education. Some time ago many European countries had relaxed their rules for issuing visas to India's software experts which helped thousands to find lucrative jobs there. However, within a few months many recruits in countries like Germany were asked to pack up and go because of not being up to the mark. The nation must become conscious of quality before its reputation is damaged beyond repair.

OPINION

Hoping for basic poll reforms
Are elections compatible with good governance?
T.V. Rajeswar

UP, Uttaranchal, Punjab and Manipur are going to have new Assemblies. What has actually happened in these states in the process of electioneering does not present a healthy picture. In UP, taking up the largest state first, it is the caste factor ruling the roost. The virus of Mandalism has afflicted the entire society and no community or caste is free from it. Candidates are chosen and tickets given for the specific purpose of appeasing their respective communities or castes, hoping to get as many of them elected as possible. Whether the candidates are educated or worthy of getting elected, and whether they have a criminal background do not count. What is important is their winnability and the amount of money and muscle power they can muster. Every party — whether it is the BJP, the SP, the BSP or the Congress — has openly spoken about the number of candidates chosen from the Muslim community and from the various castes and subcastes like Jats, Yadavs, Ahirs, Lodhs, Kurmis, Rajputs, Baniyas, Brahmins, etc. The communal and caste compositions in various constituencies largely decide the outcome.

The most significant development affecting social transformation among the dalits and the Backward Classes is the rise of the BSP of Mr Kanshi Ram and Ms Mayawati since 1990. Ms Mayawati, who has now emerged as the BSP supremo, does not mince words while talking about her fight against the so-called Manuwadi forces, which seem to denote all high caste people. She is quite frank about projecting the cause of the dalits and the Backward Classes at the expense of the rest.

In pursuit of her cause, she does not bother about administrative rules and regulations or judicial verdicts.

Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav of the SP, who has emerged as the champion of the Muslim community, the Yadavs, and the other Backward Classes in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition, is clear in his mind about his objective — how to capture power in UP and, in the next phase, at the Centre. Rules and regulations and administrative procedures are no impediments for him either. When he was the Chief Minister of UP, he did what he wanted when he was the Defence Minister at the Centre he functioned in the same manner whether it was a matter of caste-based promotions in the Army or his regular trips to his constituency in Air Force helicopters.

The indications are that the BJP may not emerge as the largest single party, whether it can manage a working majority to retain power remains to be seen. Chief Minister Rajnath Singh, who has been successful considerably in improving his party’s following in UP during past one year, finds his task difficult because of the overwhelming factor of Mandalism. The support of large sections of Brahmins, Thakurs and Baniyas alone is not enough, and this paradigm shift in the Hindi heartland is there to stay forever, perhaps. The BJP has used the Ram temple issue in a blatant manner expecting the support of the Hindu electorate as a whole. BJP President Jana Krishnamurthy, while proclaiming that the mandir issue is not on the NDA agenda and hence law would take its course if the VHP tried to force the matter, nevertheless appealed to the VHP to work for the success of the BJP. Whether it is the BJP or the VHP, they all belong to the RSS family but the efforts of the VHP in trying to arouse the sentiments of the Hindus as a whole in favour of Ram Mandir are unlikely to succeed. The peak figure of 221 seats which the BJP secured in 1991, in the thick of Ramjanmabhoomi propaganda, may never be reached in the foreseeable future.

The Congress party has become the worst victim of Mandalism. Its vote banks among the Muslims, dalits and Backward Classes as well as in sections of high castes have been lost with the emergence of caste-based parties. After a lapse of 55 years the generation of today’s voters has little idea about the role played by the Congress in winning independence for the country or the voters do not bother to remember that period. The names of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, et al, no longer influence the voting pattern. They do not mean much to the electorate today.

In Punjab, the Badal government started off showering undue benefits such as free power and water for farmers and a rebate in municipal taxes for urban people. What is, however, leading to the expected defeat of the Shiromani Akali Dal is its record of blatant and widespread corruption. Money has again played a big role in Punjab with liquor etc, being distributed liberally by all parties. In Uttaranchal as well, there were reports of the distribution of liquor among voters for influencing the electorate. In Manipur, one could notice a heady combination of liquor and drugs to bribe the voters.

The electoral process in the four states shows what a colossal farce we are enacting. How do we get out of this mess? Well-known jurist Nani Palkhivala stated in an interview in 1997 that “India had paid the highest price ever paid by any country for adult franchise.... If this is democracy, let it perish.” He added that “what India needs is not more of democracy but a strong man who could keep the country together and teach us discipline. What we need is discipline more than freedom.”

In an earlier interview given in April, 1995, he was asked how he foresaw the future of India, and the reply was that he was worried about casteism. He referred to a Supreme Court judgement saying that under the Constitution casteism was completely abolished but in practice it was just the opposite everywhere. The eminent jurist’s voice is lost in the post-Mandal chaos.

Is this democracy? Will this bring prosperity, stability and progress? It will not as is shown by the example of the functioning of the coalition government at the Centre. The NDA government, in a way, symbolises the composition of the Indian society. The live-and-let-live philosophy of the NDA government, with the Prime Minister allowing the ministers to do whatever they want to, unless someone does something terribly wrong, is known. Significant tasks like labour reforms, the abolition of subsidies, the privatisation of Air-India and Indian Airlines, the recovery of non-performing assets, the recovery of loans running into thousands of crores of rupees lent by nationalised banks over the years, to mention a few, remain on the back-burner.

The government’s efforts are mostly confined to security issues which, understandably, seem to be gobbling up much of India’s financial resources. Some of the young Cabinet ministers occasionally refer to China and the need for India to catch up with the communist neighbour if it has to become economically viable. But they are not the ones who count very much except for some selective purposes. Nothing seems to be moving because India is a huge plodding democracy, very much resembling a sick and old elephant.

A few luminaries have spoken of an alternative system for India such as the presidential form of government, both in the states and at the Centre, with direct elections, for improving the functioning of the administration and making it effective. Even Mr Palkhivala had said that dictatorship was acceptable provided India got a man like Mr Lee Kuan Yew. But imagine the fate of the country if a politician like Mr Bal Thackrey or Mr Mulayam Singh became the directly elected Chief Minister or, much worse, the President, for a fixed period of five years!

The writer is a former Governor of West Bengal and Sikkim.

MIDDLE

Posts and telegraph service, now and then!
R.S. Dutta

SOMETIME ago local print media carried the news that the Posts department had decided not to deliver mail twice a day. Why instead of two deliveries, it was decided to deliver only once, the public knows not even though there had been no reduction in the staff. Few know whether in actual practice there were two deliveries or just one. The introduction of courier service, which is becoming very popular even though it costs more, has reduced the work of Posts department to be sure. In the past usually the postmen; delivered the mail of the second delivery together with the mail of the first delivery the next day. This in spite of the fact that rates of postage are being raised every few years and these have gone up many times over time.

Then again the men whose duty it is to take out dak from the pillar/letterboxes do not clear mail twice a day from every letterbox. Mostly they clear mail once and sometime do not clear mail for days together. This also accounts for late delivery of mail. By and large the postmark on postcards and letters is just a smudge which just defaces postal stamp. The name of the place of posting or the name of the place to which it is destined or time and date of posting and delivery are totally absent. It is from the date on the letter written by the sender that one can judge how long it has taken to reach you. This is the state of affairs when besides Sundays the department enjoys as many as 16 off days, Independence Day, Republic Day, Gandhi Jayanti and 13 holidays for different festivals.

Compare that to the state of affairs during the Raj days. There was not a single day off so far as usual deliveries and clearances were concerned. Even Sundays were not off days. Only the post offices were closed on Sundays which means there used to be no acceptance or delivery of moneyorders, parcels, registered letters, savings bank transactions, etc. I remember in Delhi and perhaps in other metropolitan cities also, there used to be three deliveries and clearances of mail every day. I still possess letters on which the place of posting, name of the station to which a letter was posted, time and date of posting and clearance are clearly legible.

The Britishers had introduced a foolpoof system and it was observed very strictly. The peons concerned took the keys of the letterboxes from the postmaster together with tickets of the next clearance and while delivering mail bag deposited the tickets taken out from the letterboxes. Then the Postal Inspectors had duplicate keys of all letterboxes and they would open any letterbox at random to check whether it had been cleared in time.

Yet another significant change is that during British rule, a postman had to wear the prescribed khaki livery while on duty, the last layer of his khaki turban was red, his number engraved in black figures on his polished brass badge pinned on his tunic. The postmen were provided leather bags to carry the mail, unlike the present-day postmen in their civilian clothes carrying the mail on the carriers of their bicycles. It is not that the department does not supply them liveries now. What they do is to take cash from the contractor who has to supply liveries by allowing him some commission and thus pocket the money. Strangely enough you would not find a single postman wearing the livery and there is nobody to check them.

Even the delivery of mail in far-off villages was well regulated in the days of the Raj. The village school master was paid a petty sum for the extra work. While a letterbox was placed outside the school for posting letters, dak was brought from the post office by what were called dak runners — they had actually to run all the way. A bell was tied to the lathi they carried. The bell was a signal that the dak runner was coming. The villagers mostly collected their mail from the school master, whose duty it was to sell postal stationery. If any letter were left uncollected, the master sent them to the addressee through a school boy. The dak runner also carried away the dak collected in the letterbox.

In those days except in places like New Delhi and other metropolitan cities and newly established model towns, there were no house numbers. Still dak was never misdelivered. Postmen were not changed for years on end and they not only knew each house and its householder but also their offspring. If you met the postman in the bazar and asked him if there was any letter for you he would gladly search for it and give it you.

Telegraph service too has deteriorated over the years. Whereas during British rule telegraph messengers were always on the move, day and night, riding red coloured bicycles to deliver telegrams written on pink telegram forms properly closed in envelopes, now even telegrams which carry confidential matter are delivered without being closed in an envelope. Even telegrams which have the message of someone’s serious illness or death are not delivered promptly and are delivered many hours late, sometimes after a day or two.

POINT OF LAW

SYL: does Supreme Court do justice to Punjab?
Anupam Gupta

“(S)o long as you have a loyal and contented Punjab peasantry,” said Sir Malcolm Hailey, Governor of the Punjab in the 1920s, in an insight that remains to be bettered, “you can rely on your Indian army and can face with confidence any situation that may arise in other provinces.”

Along with other important motives still being researched by economic historians, this vital political and military objective of British policy accounts for the unprecendented entrepreneurial role played by the colonial regime in creating in the Punjab what has been described, without any exaggeration, by scholars as the “largest irrigation system in the world” even and much before India became independent.

“In no other province”, observed the Indian Irrigation Commission (1901-03), whose report gave a strong fillip to the process, “are there greater facilities for extensive irrigation; in none is it more urgently necessary or more keenly appreciated.”

Artificial water supply had always played an important role in the agrarian life of the Punjab during the ancient and medieval times, writes M. Mufakharul Islam of Dhaka University in his book “Irrigation, Agriculture and the Raj: Punjab, 1887-1947” published recently in 1997. “But under the British colonial rule the province was transformed into an Hydraulic Society par excellence.”

Overall, he says, public investment in irrigation works proved rewarding for the British colonial government: for many years it ensured the loyalty of the dominant sections of the rural population, facilitated recruitment in the army, vastly added to the financial resources of the state and strengthened the colonial relationship between England and India. At the same time, it brought about significant changes in the agrarian economy and society of the province.

Assured water supply increased agricultural production directly through a vast expansion of cultivated area and indirectly by facilitating or promoting certain changes in crop pattern and spread of new varieties of seeds. Increased crop output together with its commercialisation in a situation of rising prices, favourable land/man ratio and water pricing policy of the government led to the rise of a large class of rich peasants and strengthened the position of landlords. There was yet another significant development in the sense that the hold of the merchant-money lenders was relatively weak.

“Thus, in several important respects (writes Mufakharul Islam) the experience in Punjab agriculture was different from many or most other provinces. In other words, during British rule Punjab agriculture (especially agriculture in the irrigated tract) experienced some kind of transformation and thereby reached a stage when, under more favourable conditions, a Green Revolution could be possible.”

Sorely missing in the Supreme Court’s SYL verdict of January 15, a verdict that has already shaken Punjab and threatens to be the new Chief Minister’s first major challenge after the battle of the ballot is completed and the victor crowned, is this much-needed grasp of history and of the overarching importance of irrigation for the Punjab farmer, an importance that has obtained since the time of the British.

It is both relevant and necessary to say this in view of the court’s expressly articulated concern for “good governance” and the direct bearing such concern has on the extraordinary direction issued by the court to the Government of India to complete the construction of the SYL canal if Punjab fails to do so, a direction wholly outside the Constitution.

Strongly admonishing the Centre for “candidly” disavowing any role in the dispute between Punjab and Haryana, the January 15 verdict holds:

“(I)t appears to us that in the controversy between the two states, the Union Government is feeling embarrassed to take any positive decision, which in our view is not in the interest of the nation. The founding fathers of the Constitution advocated for a strong Central government, so that there would not be any disintegration of the States and the Central power would be able to keep the States within its limits and will be able to force the States, in the matter of good governance of the States, which would benefit the inhabitants of the States (concerned), the inhabitants of the neighbouring States and the country as a whole.”

Assuming that judicial review can extend to the enforcement of “good governance”, and to the issuance of mandatory injunctions for the purpose, the least that is required for an enlightened exercise of such self-acquired jurisdiction is intimate knowledge of the subject under review, if not complete mastery over it.

While the possession of such expertise by the chairman and members of the Eradi Tribunal — Justice V. Balakrishna Eradi, Justice A.M. Ahmadi and Justice P.C. Balakrishna Menon — is debatable, there being evidence both for and against in its 300-page report (with an additional 39 pages of appendices), the January 15 verdict of the Supreme Court does not even attempt an expert analysis of the subject apart from surveying the history of the dispute between Punjab and Haryana, which is a different thing altogether.

To be fair to the Tribunal and to the Supreme Court, even outside the courts, the “whole subject of irrigation”, as Mufakharul Islam points out in the introduction to his book, just five years old, “has remained under-researched”.

Till recently, he observes, referring to Elizabeth Whitcombe’s “Agrarian Conditions in Northern India” (Berkeley, 1972), the only study of this topic constituted a single chapter on Uttar Pradesh agriculture in the closing decades of the 19th century.

Even in Whitcombe’s essay on “Irrigation” in the Cambridge Economic History of India (1982), he adds, there is virtually no reference to irrigation practised from sources other than public canals, especially wells. “This is so even though after nearly one century of canal building activities by the government in the Punjab province, one in every six acres received water supplies from private sources.”

If this be the state of academic research on irrigation in the Punjab — described by a scholar (K.S. Ahmed) way back in 1939 as having the same value for “our great agricultural province as the coal and iron mines to Britain and gold mines to the Transvaal” — it would be vain to expect more from the Supreme Court, the perceived necessities of good governance notwithstanding.

In any case, the burden — and a very heavy burden at that — lies on those who would support the judgement to show that judicial review under the Constitution extends to the enforcement of good governance.

TRENDS & POINTERS

Chivalry: women love it, men less sure

“I’ll get that” — Those three little words may be music to many women’s ears, but preliminary research suggests men may be a bit more cynical about picking up the tab.

“While some parts might be bad like undermining women’s independence, some parts might be fine. Holding the chair might be fine. We don’t know yet. Maybe we can preserve the romantic script without undermining a woman’s independence.” — Reuters

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

O God give me devotion,

cleanse my mind of faults;

May it be without sin.

— A Sanskrit Prayer

Do you feel as sure of God as you do of the lamp in front of you? To this Vinoba replied: I am sure, quite sure of God, but as for the lamp, I am not nearly so sure whether it really exists or not!

I think of God as an ocean of consciousness in which the waves rise and fall, the billow mount up and are broken, and merge once more into the whole. New waves arise, new waves fall back to be absorbed again. Each individual soul, one wave in the ocean of God, emerges from it to play on the surface for one, two three lifetimes and then is absorbed, and so set free. Among individual souls there is no high or low; all are different manifestations of His will.

— From Moved by Love: The Memories of Vinoba Bhave O you who seek union with Him, Why do you not pass beyond all desire

In desire for Him?

No one can reach His path

By talking and preaching.

Break the oyster-shell

If you wish to see the pearl.

Break the wine-jar

In love of the wine.

The life-giving treasure

Lies hidden within your own heart.

Do not seek it from street to street

And from door to door.

— Swami Ramatirtha (translation A.N. Alston)

O Lord

Grant me the vision

Which the ancient sages were endowed with,

And which made them divine.

— Atharva Veda, 6.108.4

We meditate on that adorable glory of the Lord, Which is ever existent, ever-conscious and ever blissful.

May He stimulate our vision and mental powers!

— Sama Veda, 1462