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That’s not cricket An unwarranted transfer |
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Guns and peace AP’s talking terms with Naxals IN inviting the underground Naxalites for talks on October 2, the Andhra Pradesh Government has broken new ground. The first such initiative between state authorities and Naxalite leaders, with the explicit sanction of the Union Government would be watched with interest for a number of reasons.
India in US eyes
Nihang and the ticket collector
A day in Manmohan Singh’s village First professional manager of India
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That’s not cricket IF somehow politicians start showing the same devotion and dedication in promoting sports which they display while trying to grab various sports organisations, the medal drought will become a thing of the past. But their never-say-die spirit comes into play only when contesting the elections. There is an Olympian urge to become the head of associations that supposedly runs various games but actually destroy them. Their domineering presence makes sure that the organisations are not run professionally. Players become second-rung actors in this farce. All decisions are taken to suit the leaders’ whims and fancy, possibly politics. Sports administrators allow politicians to ride roughshod over them because only the netas can get them funds and certain clearances. The malaise is not confined to cricket alone. The posts of office-bearers of even games like kabaddi are contested as closely. These provide politicians an excuse to not only undertake numerous foreign jaunts at the cost of the poor taxpayer but also to peddle influence patronage. Once in, the netas ensure that the players become their errand boys. Whenever an international competition takes place abroad, there are more such non-playing passengers at the airport with tickets in hand than the participants. The consequences are there for everybody to see. India figures nowhere on the world sports map. It cannot be when sports organisations have been converted into coaches of a long gravy train meant for the personal use of politicians and their cronies. It makes a pathetic sight when these office-bearers vie with each other to get themselves photographed if India wins a medal or two at the Asian Games or Commonwealth Games. Politicians should resolve to play their politics gamely and leave sports to those who know at least the A,B,C of the discipline that they seek to oversee. At the same time, they must ensure that a similar mad scramble among bureaucrats to grab lucrative sports organisations also comes to an end. They too tend to be engrossed in a no-holds-barred contest for jumping onto the sports bandwagon. |
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An unwarranted transfer THE Haryana Government has abruptly, though not unexpectedly, transferred the Director of Secondary Education, Mr Ashok Khemka, who withheld teachers’ transfers effected frequently, arbitrarily and mid-way by the Chief Minister’s office. Instead of utilising a straightforward, competent officer capable of taking bold decisions for revitalising the decaying school education, the government has chosen to sideline him, thus sending a “fall-in-line-or-else...” message to an already ready-to-please bureaucracy. In the past too three inconvenient Directors were similarly dumped. Among them was Mr Sanjeev Kumar, who has moved the Supreme Court for a CBI inquiry into the recruitment of teachers. It is the government’s privilege, no doubt, to post an officer where it deems fit, but shifting out an officer for reasons other than administrative is bound to stink. Educationally and socially, Haryana is far from being an ideal state. The government spends only 2.1 per cent of the state GDP on education against the Planning Commission’s recommendation of 6 per cent. The literacy rate is a dismal 55.85 per cent. Among women it is worse: only 40.47 per cent. The urban-rural, rich-poor divide in education is glaring. Government schools have students mostly from rural poor families as better-off parents send their children to private schools. Political manipulation of teachers’ appointments and transfers cripples an already debilitated school system. Besides, the policy of mass transfers through the Chief Minister’s office encourages absenteeism among teachers. Instead of focussing on teaching, they chase politicians for favourable postings. That money may be exchanging hands cannot be ruled out. Most teachers prefer to work in towns and cities with good institutions to ensure good education for their children. This has led to surplus teachers in urban or semi-urban schools and shortages in villages. Mr Khemka has reportedly tried to remove this imbalance by empowering the District Education Officers and the school heads to redeploy or recruit teachers when necessary. This is how it should be. The whole school system needs an overhaul. Education should best be left to educationists. Politicians only pollute it. |
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Guns and peace IN inviting the underground Naxalites for talks on October 2, the Andhra Pradesh Government has broken new ground. The first such initiative between state authorities and Naxalite leaders, with the explicit sanction of the Union Government would be watched with interest for a number of reasons. Although as many as nine states are affected by Naxalite violence, the problem is more severe in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Bihar. Each of the states is grappling with the situation in their own way in the absence of a coordinated approach. All attempts to eliminate Naxalism by exterminating Naxalites has proved to be counterproductive. Therefore, in a triumph of pragmatism over hope, the authorities have realised that negotiations — that take into account the socio-economic and political conditions that have caused the spread of this extremism — may be the only way to end the cycle of violence. The state government’s lifting of the ban on the People’s War Group and six other frontal organisations in July attested to its earnestness for talks. Intermediaries have been at work behind the scenes and, now, the government has sent a formal letter to the PWG and other Maoist groups inviting them for talks. For their part, the Naxalites have adhered to the ceasefire and agreed not to target those who are on their hit list. Now comes the tricky patch of defining the terms for proceeding to negotiations. There is, for instance, a debate over whether the Naxalites should surrender arms before talks or whether this issue itself should form part of the agenda for discussions. It would be instructive to see how the parties to the talks move ahead especially in the context of Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil asking all affected states to work for a dialogue with the Maoists. The other states would be looking at Andhra Pradesh’s initiative for cues on how they can follow suit. |
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A woman seldom writes her mind but in her postscript.
— Richard Syteele
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India in US eyes THE leitmotif of India’s troubled relations with the United States since the dawn of Independence has been Washington’s unwillingness to grant New Delhi strategic and policy-making autonomy in the region, if not further afield. Yet the leaders of independent India would have been untrue to the philosophy that had guided them in the freedom struggle had they become camp followers of a powerful country. There were then the compulsions of the Cold War and an American obsession with fighting the scourge of communism, as they saw it. Indeed, it is characteristic of American policy that they are given to periodic enthusiasms to vanquishing one kind of devil or another, be it the bad communist or the terrorist - after vanquishing demons at home: the American Indians, slavery and racial discrimination. Obviously, India did not fit into the category of an ally in America’s anti-communist crusade. India ploughed its own furrow and inevitably drifted closer to the Soviet Union because Moscow, for its own reasons, was willing to grant it the policy-making autonomy it sought and was the only other credible source of the armaments it wanted to build its armed forces. Besides, the fact that Pakistan was co-opted into the American alliances in the fight against communists meant that New Delhi needed the support of the other superpower. There was one period of Indian expectations at the time of the Indian debacle in the border war with China, but the then US administration kept its distance and Jawaharlal Nehru re-found his balance. After the end of the Cold War, there was hope in many hearts that India and the United States, which had so much in common on the intellectual plane despite their other great and striking contrasts, would claim each other as “natural allies”. The Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union had disintegrated and the geopolitical map of the world had altered dramatically. In many respects, Indian expectations remain unfulfilled. As the wonderfully lucid and fluent account of the Number 2 man in President Bill Clinton’s State Department, Mr Strobe Talbott, on his interactions with India, largely in the person of Mr Jaswant Singh*, makes clear, the bone of contention has not changed. It is America’s inability and unwillingness to accord India autonomy in policy-making. In the Clinton administration’s case, it was symbolised by the nuclear issue and came in the form of four benchmarks proposed in 1998: join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (despite the US Senate’s later refusal to ratify it), make progress on a fissile material treaty, exercise strategic restraint and impose the highest standards of export controls. Mr Talbott’s marathon series of conversations with Mr Jaswant Singh was remarkable in many respects. It was the first such exercise between the two countries on a strategic theme, The performance of the Indian side was largely creditable, despite the minister’s promise to sign the CTBT, a promise he could not keep, and the amount of time devoted to India by a senior US functionary was evidence of a desire to take the country seriously. But it is difficult to agree with the author’s thesis that the benchmarks “…took account of India’s accomplishments and aspirations, its rights and anxieties, its opportunities and obligations, and the dangers that its nuclear test was meant to deter as well as those that the test created or exacerbated”. Clearly, the Clinton administration was in no mood to give India “a free pass into the nuclear club” and the carrot of permanent membership of the UN Security Council was dangled before India if it would only heed the US on the nuclear issue. Nor is Mr Talbott very encouraging about the future of transfer of cutting-edge technology to India. The first halting steps under the Bush-Vajpayee agreement have been taken recently. As the author has subsequently hinted during his Indian visit, New Delhi should not set much store by these transfers in judging the state of relations between the two countries. The Bush administration came to office promising to treat its relations with India and Pakistan separately on merit. But it has taken a surprisingly short time for Washington to revert to past practice. After promising to treat India as an important regional power, Pakistan was showered with favours because, thanks to America’s “war on terror”, it became a frontline state. Can one imagine what US reprisals would have been had the chief nuclear scientist of a country other than Israel confessed to having set up a nuclear arms bazaar to sell designs of centrifuges? Yet the US readily accepted the fiction that the military rulers of Pakistan knew nothing about a flourishing trade? It was a familiar story. America had turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme because it was fighting America’s proxy war in Afghanistan. In other words, expediency always trumps America’s own long-term interests, much less India’s. One of the joys of reading Mr Talbott’s account is the vignettes he gives of Indian and Pakistani leaders. Mr George Fernandes’ belated umbrage over being strip-searched twice at American airports is now part of Indian political folklore. Mr Talbott believes that President Pervez Musharraf has “his own deep-seat antipathy” towards India. Mr Nawaz Sharif he presents as a pathetic figure easily swayed by his “minders” in the Pakistani establishment and fearful of the Pakistani Army. Mr Vajpayee Mr Talbott found unsettling, suggesting that warned though he was about the then Prime Minister’s long silences, he “had never met a person so laconic”. There is the gem of a quotation about President Clinton’s interactions with Ms Sonia Gandhi and his efforts to get her to make the BJP-led government’s task of approving the CTBT easier. “For someone who smiles a lot and has the gentlest of manners”, he (Clinton) remarked after saying goodbye to his visitor, “that’s one tough lady. She never said ‘no’ but she made mighty clear she wasn’t saying ‘yes’ to anything that will get in the way of playing hardball with Vajpayee”. Mr Talbott credits the Clinton era - particularly his visit to India, the first presidential visit after 22 years - with transforming the Indo-US relationship. This is true about the empathy President Clinton and his wife Hillary have with India’s pluralist traditions and his desire extensively to engage with India. But the US remains unprepared to give India what it wants: a place in the
sun. «“Engaging India — Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb” by Strobe Talbott; Penguin/Viking; pp 268; price Rs 395. |
Nihang and the ticket collector THE Nihangs are not often seen in cities, and we know, they are a very special tribe, with a hoary history in Sikh chronicles. It’s on some special occasions — festivals, village sports, gurpurb celebrations — that we watch them in action, attired in their full regalia. Their very clothes proclaim them, for they wear heavy blues and saffrons and always carry their weapons, particularly a long and sharp spear. Their turbans are worn like a pagoda adorned with Khanda, small steel swords etc. Now, one thing that’s not generally known to the people is their own home-grown rhetoric or idiom, and that language is often is amusing as it is confusing. They generally live in their own deras, away from towns, and are known to have their own
diet and drinks. Bhang, for instance, is their speciality, and after their repast, they practise gatka, a kind of martial game — sword-display, horse-riding etc. But the encounter between a Nihang Singh a ticket-collector in a running train really forms the heart of our little story. This incident I’m going to recall here took place some 50 years ago. Accompanied by some members of our family, we boarded a train from And then, when we had been in a special compartment with reserved seats for sitting for six or seven hours, a Nihang Singh boarded our compartment, carrying his usual weapons and fully dressed in their tribe’s prescribed robes. His entry was so dramatic that most of the passengers looked awe-struck, and the children retreated into the laps of their mothers. His loud greetings, “Boley so Nihal” woke up all those dozing or dreaming, He cast a roving eye around, but finding no empty seat, stood like a sentinal right in the middle of the train. He kept reciting sotto-voce some hymns or Nihang mantras, but, otherwise he remained calm, cool and collected. This produced a salutary effect, and the passengers began to feel somewhat at ease. And then came that memorable encounter, the Nihang’s brush with a ticket collector in uniform and a punching machine in hand. He went on checking all the seated passengers, one by one, leaving Nihang Singh in peace. And, finally, before he was going to leave the compartment he suddenly turned round on his heels to confront the Nihang Singh. The conversation that followed is put down here somewhat in the manner in which it took place, “May I see your ticket, Nihang Singh Ji,” he said with due respect and salutation. The Singh Ji stood gazing at his face, registering no emotion, a statue rooted in the middle of the floor. The ticket collector repeated his request. But he drew a blank again, Non-plussed, the ticket-collector bawled out: “Singh Ji, have you a ticket with you?” “Ticket, eh, what ticket?” he responded in a mocking tone. But the ticket collector was not to be intimated that way. He again repeated his demand, a little more stringently. And the Nihang Singh uttered those memorable words which sent the whole compartment into peels and peels of laughter. “No, I carry no ticket. But who are you to demand one?” “That’s my duty”, the ticket collector added. “Why, is this your train?” “No Nihang ji, it belongs to the Government”. “And the Government belongs to the people”, retorted Nihang Singh. “The people, the earth on which the train is running belongs to God. who’re you to claim it? Take you train off the lines, of the earth”, he quipped with an amused eye. The poor ticket-collector beat a hasty retreat, leaving the passengers laughing and laughing and laughing, the Nihang Singh’s circular, loony logic having done the
trick. |
A day in Manmohan Singh’s village
IN the last two years or so I have visited Pakistan four times but my recent visit was the most memorable. Normally one gets to see cities like Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad or hill resorts like Bourban and Murree. Seldom does one get an opportunity to visit far-flung areas or rural Pakistan. While in Islamabad, I enquired from my host, Sarwar Bari, about Gah, the village where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was born and had his early schooling. “Not too far, may be a two hours’ drive. You like to go there?” “Yes indeed,” I said. Sarwar, a social science graduate from Sussex, who now heads a development organisation, “Pattan”, was ready by 7:30 a.m. the next day to take me and my wife, Sheela, to Gah, the forlone village which shot into prominence after Dr Manmohan Singh became Prime Minister. The Islamabad-Lahore highway is the very best that our subcontinent has. The highway was completed in December 1998, with a cost of Rs 67 billion by South Korean company Daewoo. Today Daewoo operates luxury express services on this road. One could notice that the highway is hardly used, it is meant for big buses, trucks and luxury cars. A thought crossed my mind. With half the cost, if a railway line had been built, how much it would have helped the ordinary people. While on the highway, looking around one gets a feeling of an overall neglect of the rural areas. A few brick - kilns here and there could be seen, but hardly any farming worth the name. After about an hour’s drive you leave the highway and enter Chakwal district. The road journey to Gah reminds one of a north Indian rural set-up except that all boards, advertisements and names are in Urdu. Of course, Coca Cola and PCOs are visible, thanks to the hoardings in English even in interior villages. While entering Chakwal district my friend told me that the Pothohar area consisting of Rawalpindi, Chakwal and Jhelum supplies 60 per cent of the personnel for the Pakistan army. Agriculture is the main occupation — wheat, corn and fodder are the main produce. Chakwal district in which Gah is situated is famous for poultry farming. While approaching Gah, one could see tractors plying; goats and cattle mingling with Suzuki vans. The interior villages looked greener. Peanut cultivation is popular. The sleepy village of Gah or Gai (this is derived from ‘Gohar’ who was the chief of the Rajputs in the area. Gohar became “Garaha” and later shortened as “Gah”) wears a desolated look. At the entrance of the village is a pond with two old Banyan trees where Manmohan Singh as a lad might have played around. There is hardly any movement of people except a farmer on a mule with his little luggage. You cannot enter the village in your car; you have to park it outside. Our visit did not create much excitement as already several television reporters, newspapers and photographers had visited the village. However, the word spread and within minutes a sizeable number of people gathered in a room adjacent to the primary school where Manmohan Singh had learnt the three Rs. I met Shah Wali, who studied with Manmohan Singh. Now in his mid-seventies, Wali has a lot to tell about his friend and his own early days in the village. Manmohan Singh joined the first standard when he was six and left the school for higher studies after Class 4. Manmohan Singh’s father was a trader who dealt in clothes. There were about 100 students in the school and the school had only two mudrooms. The present school building came up several years later. Their teacher was Daulat Ram and Abdul Karim was the Headmaster. It was a co-ed school. The village proudly keeps the school register. Manmohan Singh’s register number was 187. It mentions the following: Father’s name: Gurmukh Singh; Caste: Kohli; Profession: shopkeeper; date of entry : April 17, 1937. Manmohan Singh’s family left the village a few years before Partition. After Partition, no Hindu or Sikh was left in the village. Today there is no trace of the houses where Hindus and Sikhs lived. There is only one house of that time. What about the gurdwara? It decayed over the period; said Wali. The villagers could not show us the house of Manmohan Singh’s family except the area where the Sikhs’ houses existed. Gah village was part of Jhelum district in those days. Jhelum has given us two Prime Ministers — the first being I.K. Gujral. In 1986 Gah came under Chakwal district and it gives the picture of an extremely backward area. There is no doctor here. Villagers travel 12 km to get basic health services. Hepatitis is spreading but people are not aware of the disease. Recently there were two deaths in the village. There are two schools — both primary, one for girls and another for boys. One middle school is under construction with the help of an international aid agency. Because of the work of this NGO (Plan International) today there is 100 per cent enrolment. In the village 20 per cent employment opportunity is in the military and about 5 per cent go to West Asia. Only 2 to 3 per cent women have any gainful employment. The village had no electricity till 1998 — the villagers remember the date they got it — the day Pakistan tested the nuclear bomb - May 28. There is no landline telephone. They cultivate peanuts, gram, corn, jowar, seasame. Income from agriculture is meagre. Drinking water is not a problem. The tap water came in 1984 but social backwardness has not gone. I wanted to take pictures of women collecting water from the taps of the tank at the centre of the village; but no woman wanted to be photographed. When they saw my camera, they hid behind the tank leaving their water buckets. There is no co-education today. Unemployment is the worst social problem. We met several young men who had passed matriculation. “ Why don’t you join the army?” I asked. “It is very difficult. Now there is a ban on recruitment”, said one of them. I saw a few of them renovating the single house of the pre-Partition days as masons or helpers. The local government system (Union Council) has made a good impact. The vice-president (Naib Nazim) of the Union belongs to Gah and the village elects three councillors. One of them is a woman. The people are thankful to Musharraf for introducing the local government system for, they say “now we have access to our elected representatives”, which otherwise they never had. When I mentioned about the proposed visit of a delegation of Nazims and Naib Nazims to India being organised by our Institute, Raja Ashiq Hussain, Naib Nazim, was keen to join the delegation. Finally, he made it and the gifts he brought from his village for the Prime Minister and the media attention he got are fresh in our memory. Bidding goodbye, the villagers made one request. “Please tell Manmohan Singh saheb to visit our village.” The Pakistan Government has now decided to make Gah a model village. It is a wonderful gesture. It is a great tribute to a man who rose from the ranks, having faced several odds in his early
days. The writer is Director, Institute of Social Sciences. Email:
issnd@vsnl.com |
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First professional manager of India
PRAKASH Tandon passed away in Pune last week at the age of 93, missing the century. Without doubt the most celebrated Indian professional manager of the 20th century and arguably the most renowned Chairman of Hindustan Lever so far, he is an icon of modern management in this part of the world. He led the first professional management movement in our country, helped lay the foundation of management education (IIM-Ahmedabad) and set parameters of accountability, performance and social concerns that have now become management standards. If Lever today figures prominently among business organisations in India, it is because of the towering stature Prakash Tandon achieved as an outstanding professional manager. Many managers of 1960s vintage have often been heard saying that they had not known much about Lever but accounts of Prakash Tandon were legend; so they joined Lever. Prakash Tandon chose management. He went to England to become a chartered accountant. On his return was peeved that no company employed him as an accountant, even though there were just a few CAs in those days. Reason: No firm, foreign or Indian, appreciated his professional qualifications. Finally, he took up a job with Lever as a market research executive. And there was no looking back. He rose in the company's hierarchy by sheer hard work, innovations and a highly professional attitude. Virtually, he was the first Indian professional manager; first Indian director, vice chairman and then the chairman of a multinational corporation. His intense professional interactions with the social, political & government, and economic environment was key to his success as a manager. He understood the finer nuances of this interface because he was a social scientist with a very perceptive eye. His books --- Punjabi Century (1857 -- 1947), Beyond Punjab (1937 - 1960), and Return to Punjab (1961-- 1987) are nothing but social history of a high order. He also wrote a corporate history of Punjab National Bank, the Banking Century, (1988). It is one of the best treatise on the history of banking in India Prakash Tandon always operated on a wide canvas. Though he sharpened and perfected his management skills in a MNC, yet played a significant role in public enterprises on whose boards he was invited as member— Reserve Bank of India, Food Corporation, Hindustan Steel, Hindustan Aeronautics, besides a number of committees of Central and state governments. His life after Lever was equally exciting. Chairman, State Trading Corporation for four years; then Chairman, Punjab National Bank, for three years, and Director-General of National Council of Applied Economic Research for five years. He was an exceptional man who laid the foundation of professional management in India. He wanted to take India forward into a globalised world with confidence and head high, like any proud Punjabi. |
It is the shadow of the Paramatman that you see reflected in all the living beings as Jivatman. Don’t you see the great sky reflected in each and every lake or river? — Lord Sri Rama Bhakti-Yoga is a real, genuine search after the Lord, a search beginning, continuing and ending in Love. One single moment of the madness of extreme love to God brings us eternal freedom. — Swami Vivekananda Blessing! Neither fire, nor moisture, nor wind can destroy the blessing of a good deed, and blessings reform the whole world. — The Buddha Utter, O men, the True Name of the Creator so that you are not cast in the world of flux again. — Guru Nanak If the Sun were to revolve round the Earth, instead of the Earth revolving round the Sun, then our days and nights would be equal to several years. — Swami Dayanand Saraswati |
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