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On Record Senior citizens deserve
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Comments Unkempt
Diversities — Delhi Letter
Profile
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On Record
Prof Krishna Kumar, the new Director of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), is an expert in his own right. He worked with Delhi University’s Central Institute of Education and was also a member of the Yashpal Committee (1991) to recommend strategies for reducing curriculum load. A short story writer, he has been appointed a member of UNESCO’s advisory group for preparing a report on Global Monitoring of Quality in Education by 2005. Looking at the challenges and opportunities before the NCERT, he hopes to witness significant reforms in the educational system. In an exclusive interview to The Sunday Tribune, he asserts that the NCERT will have to bring quality education to the masses and ensure a change in the status of the school teachers. Excerpts: Q: What are your immediate concerns? A: My concerns are the same with which the NCERT was set up almost 40 years ago — educational research and training. The original idea was to create a scientific basis for the transformation of the Indian education system. The NCERT was created to provide a rational basis for future policy making in key areas of curriculum development, teacher training and the general reform of the school education system. We hope that we will be able to create a basis for gaining academic excellence and academic autonomy at the council and for developing education as a discipline. Q: Do you have academic autonomy and, if so, to what extent? A: We always had autonomy. The problem is that it comes with the responsibility to use it. Academic autonomy means that we are collectively responsible for what we do. Ultimately, the NCERT is accountable to 75 per cent children in the villages. The ultimate test of our academic autonomy and excellence will be how best we utilise our resources for reforming the rural education system. Q: Any plans to rebuild confidence in the NCERT? A: Yes, we can rebuild people’s confidence in the council if we are positive in our outlook. Education is now beginning to reach the downtrodden who have greater confidence in education than the middle class or the upwardly mobile who are opting out of the Indian system by going for internationally accredited schools. This is both an educational and cultural phenomenon. Q: What are your plans on educational research? Has the council made significant achievements in this direction? A: Forty years ago, the NCERT carried out field studies in the sociology of education under the leadership of eminent scholars like Prof M.S. Gore and Prof S. Chitnis. Now the entire educational scheme and its relation with society has changed. We should undertake those field studies once again on a national scale to find out how social relations have influenced our education system, the opportunity structure and the linkage between education and employment. We also need to find out the changes in the status and the role of the school teacher as this will help us identify those changes and evaluate the present policy. The other area is on the impact of globalisation on education in India. A proposal is being drafted to study the implications of globalisation in all sectors of education. This will help us analyse how during the recent decade and a half education has come under the influence of forces broadly associated with globalisation. Particularly the effects of privatisation and commercialisation on education and the dynamics of the state policy to realise the goals of education as an instrument of social justice and quality. Q: What is the council’s role in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)? A: The SSA is an ambitious programme to universalise elementary education. The NCERT’s role is to provide research inputs as well as play an advisory role in SSA. I am very keen on making these roles substantial in the coming years. The impediments to universalisation of education at the elementary level are of different kinds, some related to poverty, lack of employment in rural areas, conditions of schooling, specially relevance and interest value of the curriculum, quality of teacher training and involvement of parents in the functioning of the school. Economic and social forces are important in making universalisation possible. One hopes that the educational policy will be part of a larger economic policy, which the Prime Minister has already announced by saying that rural employment is one of his top most priorities. Q: What about programmes for children with special needs? A: To succeed in this very crucial area of social and policy intervention, the NCERT will have to receive enthusiastic collaboration from all the State Councils for Educational Research and Training (SCERTs) in the country. Conditions should be created in which the educational system becomes an inclusive system. Right now education looks like an instrument of exclusion, either for a physically challenged child, children of the rural poor or the slum dwellers. Education is a harsh experience for many children today for various reasons. To make it inclusive, a national strategy involving all the states is needed. Q: What did the Yashpal Committee recommend? A: The committee said that the burden on children was not so much as physical as it is the burden of incomprehensibility. Our curriculum is designed irrationally without keeping in mind the psychological capacity and needs of children. A close interaction between experts and teachers is needed to make the curriculum more children-friendly. We have also asked for a ban on advertisements and programmes which make a child precocious or quiz programmes that simply focus on the child’s memory power. Most programmes are not imaginative, but entirely based on mugging and regurgitation of short answers. This creates legitimacy for schools to put increasing burden on the child to memorise knowledge. Curriculum designers have also responded to this by piling up content at each grade level. Q: What have you suggested to the UNESCO? A:
As teachers are the cutting edge of quality, we should improve their
status. In the last few years, their role and status worldwide has
been trivialised. In India, half a million teachers have no job
security or career prospects. The National Commission on Teachers has
said that we have to look upon teaching as a profession and get out of
the tendency that anybody can teach. The notion of training should
also change. A few days of training won’t do. It is an everyday job
and for years. Consequently, their training should take the same kind
of trajectory as that of a doctor or an engineer. A teacher’s status
and salary must reflect the nation’s commitment to the person who
looks after children. This holds the key to quality education. |
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Senior citizens deserve
a safety net The world is going white. A demographic restructuring of the world populace is underway. United Nations estimates put the number of those aged 60 plus at 600 million, i.e. 10 per cent of the world population. The number is expected to approximate two billion by 2050. But a large proportion of senior citizens would now live in the developing economies. Care of an ageing population is no longer a G-7 issue; it is a critical problem for the developing countries. The Economic Survey 2004-04, states that the elderly population (65 plus) is expected to “rise sharply by 2.6 per cent per annum from 45 million in 2000 to 76 million in 2020. In this scenario, are we ready to handle the special problems of care, medicine and social security of our rapidly ageing population? In India, the absence of a safety net for the aged has exacerbated the problem. Traditionally, the joint family took care of the aged. Rapid urbanisation and the exodus of persons from rural to urban areas have created a vicious situation. Slums are areas without housing or healthcare. In the absence of the ability to earn, and without community support, in the form of kinsmen or the extended family, the aged are rendered destitute. The World Health Organisation’s document, Active Ageing: A Policy Framework (2002) emphasises that equal access of older persons to health care and services are the cornerstone of healthy ageing. The Government of India’s policy (May 1999) postulated that the states take affirmative action to improve the quality of life of senior citizens and ensure that the existing public services are user-friendly and sensitive to them. The states, however, have responded with piecemeal plans. The Vajpayee government envisaged exclusive fast track courts for senior citizens. Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has introduced a new savings scheme, through post offices, and senior citizens with gross income below Rs 50,000, are allowed an income-tax rebate of 10 per cent. The private sector and NGOs have, however, taken a head start in catering to this growing market. The Singapore-based Corporate Physicians International has launched a senior citizens’ package, including house calls and door delivery of medicines. Palms Life Care, has projects for senior citizens in Mumbai, Gurgaon and Bangalore. Dignity Homes of the Dignity Foundation, Mumbai, are planned to be self-financing, and have income generating programmes. Reliance Senior Citizen’s Home has psychological workshops, and geriatric nurses. There are special holiday packages and camps designed for 50 plus senior citizens like www.campsingoa.com. Most banks have introduced special loan schemes with low interest rates for ‘pensioners’, free collective and remittance of retirement dues etc. Welcome though these initiatives are, their reach remains limited. What do our senior citizens need? Their target population is diverse and needs vary considerably. Policies need to be fine-tuned to ensure targeted delivery. Senior citizens need to be classified or categorised correctly - rural or urban, and then within the rural and urban categories further sub-categories for destitute and old, solvent and old and infirm. For destitute and old, food, shelter, and medicines are essential. For the solvent and old, the need to feel useful, productive, more and significant. For the old and infirm, professional care for personal tasks such as bathing, eating etc and assistance to perform even daily chores could be required. The problems of old women, single, widowed, or divorced are quite different from those of old men. There is need for a compulsory community-based insurance policy for all to help the poor. It can fund an old age pension on the lines of the Universal Health Insurance Scheme launched in July, 2003. The present scheme of old age pensions needs to be strengthened and its coverage enhanced. Incentives for private developers investing in housing for the aged should receive precedence. Re-employment of ex-servicemen (most retire at 52) and other active elders needs priority. Special vocational courses should be formulated to provide professional care for elders with debilitating diseases such as epilepsy, cancer and diabetes. Above all, the administration and police machinery needs to be sensitised to senior citizen issues. There is need for a directory of senior citizens on the basis of area of residence. The data from voter identity cards can be used to identify the target audience of 60 plus citizens in every district. Also needed are senior citizens help groups, liaison with the police for their security based on the Delhi Government Model, compilation of yellow pages for elders listing home delivery facilities for groceries and ration, doctors and chemists, dentists and labs, services for bill payment, cheque collection, banks etc. A 12-hour Helpline (9 am to 9 pm) for senior citizens coordinated and manned by Red Cross, Rotary, Lions etc for assistance and mobile medical vans (government and private) to visit each residential area by rotation each fortnight are also needed. More important, schools and colleges should organise adult education programmes and evening classes for elders on computer awareness and volunteer work in offering help to senior citizens. Senior citizens’ groups should be involved in managing stationary shops and canteens on cooperative basis in schools and colleges, organising day-care centres and crèches for working women, in monitoring of schemes such as PDS and mid-day meal, providing emotional support and care to patients in hospitals suffering from cancer, AIDS and TB, forming support groups for disabled elders and access to fair price shops for them through priority issuance of ration cards and organising community and environment action groups. — The writer is presently Director, Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission, Chandigarh |
Comments Unkempt 1984” wasn’t just George Orwell’s novel’s famous title, it was also the year of Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia Rock Concert. What was almost unmanageable in that pop concert was not the millions in currencies that rolled in, often flooding the 200 lines set up for contributions while the concert was on, but the fallout. People from many scores of countries were shaken to the bottom of their beings and reached for their credit cards, ‘ran’ for Africa and used diverse other ways of raising money. But did those millions do much? Geldof has been back recently to Ethiopia after 20 years and he says bitterly that all he was able to do was to leave behind a nation of half-starved beggars. There have been many famines since in starved foodless Sub-Saharan Africa. We have seen many clips on television of ‘camps’ of twigs and plastic, set up in bone-dry lands with little children dying every day, their mothers desperate, their fathers overcome. In Darfur in the south of Sudan (which is a country as big as France) we hear that over 70,000 people are dead and that over a million have been forced to leave their homes and trek for many days to ‘camps’. Pictures as rending as those from 20 years ago have come to us from Darfur, of course, but also from Liberia, and Congo and elsewhere. From Uganda have come stories of the Lord’s Resistance Army which has raided hundreds of villages, lifted all the children and forcibly made them fight, and die, for the Army. I wonder if reactions in India to those pictures from Geldof’s time and in the 20 years since have not been kind of sophisticated fashionable and put on. Since there were ‘runs’ in Budapest, London, Chicago and elsewhere so why not Delhi? The young in Europe were moved to shouting and screaming during the Geldof concerts so why not also the Indian young today in jeans and t-shirts? But was there any, real surviving and disturbing sympathy? Then why not concerts for those dying from starvation in Amlushope (in Midnapore) in Purulia and many, many other places like Kharsawan, of which we see flashes, clips in the TV news and then forget them? TV has failed the greatly lauded plays of the Bohurupee and IPTA have become stunted to casual communication and young people are not flocking to the ‘hungry’ districts any more. Some did slide off their backsides and rush to Gujarat and Latur after the earthquakes there as others had done to a lesser, but no less dynamic, degree during the Bihar famine which JP grappled with almost single handed. Why this passivity, this drying up of the soul? Why does indifference sit so heavy on the children of the English-educated with their dreams focused on the West and not on those who have been persuaded to emerge from the forests in Andhra, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa for a ‘dialogue’ with the Central Government?’ Television for us is a riffle through utterly predictable pictures of consumer goods — clothes, bathroom-fittings, toothpaste, cars, mo’bikes, pelvis-wrenching goods — dance contortions, interviews, films and tourist puff. Sounds like a lot but adds up to a zerosum game. There’s much of the same abroad, too, but when they want to redeem they redeem. The American election is a TV blanket the covers everything, in the USA and also in Britain. In university lecture halls, town meetings, presidential debates, restaurants and pubs its the same themes and questions over and over again. But there are exceptions. A debate in George Washington University with four senators, two on each side, along with a couple of party spokespeople or advisers ruled by very good moderators make American issues come to life. Likewise the ‘impact of American foreign policy’ set in Berlin with the European view of the election being picked over. These have brought information and awareness but at its best, Television can bring comparisons. This came home to me in a BBC programme on the Sudan which focused on a little baby daughter too weak to live carried by her father to the graveyard wrapped in farewell clothes. We saw in her eyes the helpless stare of death and our senses constricted. But she didn’t die. She was still warm and her father pulled her out of the grave. An aid-worker nurse gave her an injection, some food and something to drink and she came to life again before our eyes. The rest of the film is set around the girl, glorious by alive and, after a series of tribulations, back in her village with her father smiling at the same photographer who had recorded her near-death, now full, goldenly full of her second life and her ever-grateful father. Such films bring tears to the eyes, soon to be forgotten. But at their back they bring a slow-burning anger and negative self-pity at our own uselessness. Ever new restaurants are sprouting in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata with ever bold decor and food (and, often drink) from all the continents. But a few yards away there would be families living on the footpath, children, taught to beg, bemused mothers in rags with worry in their eyes about where the next meal will come from. We laugh our goodbyes and the car rolls away to our comfortable homes. So the seat of starvation is not only in Darfur or Northern Uganda it’s not more than few yards from our door. The high-noise fire works, fabulously expensive, have already begun to burst, the new “world class” malls in Gurgaon are all lit up for Divali. I wonder what Vivekananda would have done in today’s feast of colour, bangs and razzmataz? What might he not have done with the modern means of communication and transport? Would he have endured whole families committing suicide for debt and want of food, and skeletal old women repeatedly and uselessly visiting the District Magistrate’s office with an application for a tiny pension for food? In the mean- time, so many lakhs are spent on innovative pandals, Ganesh Chaturthis and fiestas planned for Christmas just around the
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Diversities — Delhi Letter Twentyfive years ago one single sentence from Mulk Raj Anand “O P you ‘ll die a shopkeeper! “ — changed erstwhile paper tycoon OP Jain’s entire outlook and focus. Weaning himself from business, he moved towards arts and their preservation. One step leading to another , he set up the Sanskriti Pratishthan. Besides working for the cause of art and art forms, every year this forum honours young talent in the fields of literature, journalism, art, performing arts, social and cultural achievement. And on October 28 Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit gave away this year’s awards to Oriya writer Bharat Majhi, journalist Muzamil Jaleel, artist Shilpa Gupta, Manipuri dancer Bimbavati Devi, and for the North East Network. The NEN is a 22-member team — a women’s organisation based in Assam with offices in Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and in New Delhi, it works for the empowerment of women. All these young achievers who bagged this year’s Sanskriti awards are under 35 and have proved their mettle. I know of Muzamil Jaleel’s prowess. A Kashmiri journalist, he has been covering the valley and doing remarkably bold stories, highlighting the daily plight of the people and ongoing human rights violations. He is one of those who are undeterred by the odds. Of musical evenings and
‘iftar’ parties
Alliance France, along with the Embassy of France, hosted musical evenings at the Teen Murti with especially transported artist Genevieve Chanut. And this week-end they had another internationally known artist, Lokua Kanza, performing at The Ashok’s amphitheatre. This week-end the Embassy of Kuwait was all set to celebrate a special Arab evening at Ashok’s Mashrabiya restaurant (which serves exclusive Lebanese fare), where the highlight was on the lesser known Arab festival “Guirgiyan” which falls in the middle of the month of Ramadan. And, then, UN days are “celebrated”. Shall we say in keeping with certain formalities. And they’d come in a full row — World Food day (October 16), Day for Eradication of Poverty (October 17), the UN Day (October 24). And as the month of Ramadan is mid way , “iftars” are getting hosted — last week one was hosted by the director of the Kuwait Embassy’s Information Office at the Foreign Correspondents Club. And this week another was hosted by the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, Saleh Mohammad Al Ghamdi. No, his guest list didn’t have VS Naipaul’s name in it! Off with it! In fact, I must mention here that this time when Naipaul came calling on New Delhi (with his new book in hand) there weren’t many takers. Either spouse Nadira advised him to lie low (with or without her) or the political changes here were not in tune with his requirements. Remember the last time he was here was just prior to the elections , around spring and he almost sprang a surprise by visiting the BJP headquarters and the bigwigs there gave him adequate importance. With that particular political atmosphere gone he looked forlorn. So forlorn that he even muttered words to the effect that no further novel plotting from his end.
Sahitya Akademi
to celebrate Golden Jubilee And November 1 will see the formal take off for the golden jubilee celebrations of the Sahitya Akademi. The main programme will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Vigyan Bhavan and President of the Sahitya Akademi, Gopi Chand Narang will preside. Besides awards and fellowships getting conferred, the two highlights will be the screening of a Gulzar film on the Sahitya Akademi and the singing of Kabir verse by Jagjit Singh. More on the Sahitya Akademi celebrations in my next week’s
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Profile He is preceded by Prof Mary King, a well known civil rights leader of America, noted for promoting Gandhian values outside India. Prof King has espoused Gandhian brand of non-violence to deal with conflicts in the present-day strife-torn world. The sweep of non-violent movement, she says, has potential to become alternative to military intervention and approaches based on violence. It can also be evolved as an effective political strategy. Age has not dampened the spirit of Radhakrishna Bajaj. He is as wedded to Gandhian values of non-violence as he was during the non-cooperation movement and later in the Quit India struggle of 1942. He was young then. There was a time when the British rulers charged him with indulging in sabotage of government installations and even faced the death sentence. He could escape the gallows by taking recourse to Gandhian ways and with the help of friends. Bajaj had also a long association with Vinoba Bhave and chose the course set by him. Later in life, Bajaj devoted his energy and time to the promotion of Khadi, emancipation of women and rural development. Devotion to cow and its progeny has been his yet another mission, but it was less in the religious sense. He worked for the improvement of the cow’s breed, providing proper nourishment to the cattle and ensuring scientific upbringing of its offspring. Though Bajaj did not hog the headlines or his photographs were rarely seen in newspapers, he silently and devotedly did lot of social work. The Bajaj Foundation has done a commendable job by locating him and honouring him so that the nation may know what a noble man he is. Paradoxically, the mission of both Bajaj and Mary King has been identical even though they worked in different spheres. Promotion of philosophy of Gandhi and creed of non-violence has been the motto of both . While one worked in India, the other around the globe. As a student, Prof Mary King had the opportunity of working along side Martin Luther King, Jr, in the crusade for racial justice. She was among a few whites who had such a long association with Luther King. By the turn of the 20th century, Prof Mary penned world-wide acclaimed book — “Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr The power of non-violent Action”. Published by UNESCO in 1999, the book was later republished in Delhi in 2002 by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. The internationally recognised volume covers nine contemporary non-violent struggles of the 20th century that were shaped and informed by Gandhian theories and methods, and which often brought about significant social and political reforms for justice and human rights in different regions of the world. The sweep of non-violent movements, which Mary King records, testifies to the potential for non-violent direct action as an effective political strategy, and one with a growing relevance as an alternative to military interventions and approaches based on violence. As she points out, a non-violent struggle places ethics and practicality in balance, and, as a result of its contemporary use, military manuals, political lexicons and world maps have had to be revised. Throughout her adult life, Prof. King has also been an advocate for empowerment of women as agents for social change. Nothing can be more apt for the Foundation than to honour the two great Gandhians-one Indian and another a foreign scholar — with the Jamnalal Bajaj award. Himself a devout Gandhian, Jamnalalji was so closely associated with Gandhiji that the Mahtama used to call him his fifth son. A committed member of the Congress party, Jamnalal became a treasurer of the party in 1920 and continued to hold the post for over two decades till his untimely death in February,
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The science of devotional service is just like a great ocean, and it is not possible to show you all the length and breadth of the great ocean. But you can know about the nature of the ocean by just taking a drop of it; and you can thus taste it and understand what that ocean of devotional service is. — Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Since both Paramatman and Jivatman are one and the same, it is not possible to differentiate them. It is also impossible to attribute separate qualities to them. — Lord Sri Rama To persist in doing wrong extenuates not the wrong, but makes it much more heavy. — Shakespeare
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Come November and the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation picks up outstanding personalities for conferring its prestigious awards. The Foundation chose this year an hitherto little known but a veteran Gandhian, 99-year-old Radhakrishna Bajaj for bestowing the honour.