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On Record Hate-crimes: Need for speedy disposal of cases |
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Profile Challenges of global governance Diversities — Delhi Letter
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On Record by Smriti Kak Ramachandran
Noted space scientist and educationist, Professor Yashpal believes in learning from children and wants to give them an education that is child-inspired. As the Chairman of the National Curriculum Framework Review Committee (NCFRC), he wants education that allows children to ask questions that transcend the limits prescribed by school examinations. Having expressed concern over the load of a school bag, Prof Yash Pal, who as also Chairman of the University Grants Commission, laments rote learning and pushing children to memorise trivia like cricket scores to prove their mettle. Known for his ability to explain effortlessly the mysteries of science, he envisages education, which can be enjoyed and which affords a teacher to teach, the topics he enjoys most. Excerpts: Q: As the head of the NCFRC, what are your concerns? A: It is a large steering committee of eminent people. This effort is not just to draw up a syllabus; it is a framework of what education might be. It can talk about the kinds of pressures on children, the need to reduce it, the need to have conversations between various disciplines so that children are not caught between disciplines. It could talk about an important aspect that learning doesn’t occur only in schools, but comes from all walks of life. We have to refrain from education that alienates and discriminates against children who do not come from a certain class. It could set the pace for a common school system. NCERT books can be different. The 30-odd people involved in the task are good. But the difficulty is that sometimes marvelous people think what they do is important. There might be some competition, but we will have choices. I hope it doesn’t become a normal bureaucratic report. Q: Did you brief the Ministry or the Council on your plan of action? A: There is no interference from anyone. There are many clever people in the Ministry, ministers or bureaucrats. We listen to everyone but one is conscious of the general framework of the Constitution. We don’t want to copy any. It will be based on the conditions of the country. There is no need to make everything uniform. We emphasise a lot in certification and degrees and, in the process, destroy a lot of people. Q: Your report "Learning without burden" has raised concern over the load of school bags and rote learning. Why most recommendations are yet to be implemented? A: Maybe, the report has influenced some people’s thinking. I hope it is not just being spoken about. As for the recommendations, when the framework is ready, it will lead to the framing of a syllabus which need not be uniform everywhere. Preparation of teaching material and so on would hopefully be consistent with the framework. Q: We have IITs, IIMs and the best medical schools, yet elementary education is abysmally low. Why? A: I have worries about the way the free and compulsory education Bill stands, because it takes care of only children between six and 14. And most new schools, so-called transitional schools offer minimal facilities. They may not even have trained teachers. We may soon have second-rate schools for the poor. If any school is to be set up under this free and compulsory education Bill, it should be of the same standard as some of our Central Schools. That is the minimal that you can do, even if it requires more money. Q: What are your views on education through the Internet? Will it deprive students of personal interaction with the educators? A: Distance education is a fantastic input in human history. It enables people to connect. It does create problems, because some people get that connection more easily than the others. I think it is a medium for interaction and communication, but can easily be dominated by a few entities. It can be used for marketing and for distributing a lot of filth not just in the moral sense but also in terms of what is supposed to be knowledge. It is just an enormous amount of noise. I would never ever want to go back to a world where all this doesn’t exist. You can distribute cassettes and CD-ROMs and lectures, but then you have to see how it can be fantastic. Libraries have been distributing beautiful things, but have never been able to replace schools and colleges. Students working together and learning together, the interactive and sociological part education is very important. Internet should be used the way we use libraries with discretion and constructively subvert what is bad in today’s education. Q: The UGC’s now shelved Model Act for Universities had proposed self- sufficiency for universities. As the former UGC Chairman, what are your views on higher education? A: Universities generating funds for themselves is not a bad idea. Very often the defect of our teaching and learning system is that it has been decoupled from society. It may be the fault of the industry that it does not go to the university or the IIT to seek solutions to the problems. Sometimes we have to couple with sociologists the same way they have to couple with local situations as to what is happening. No good science, no good sociology or technology can sustain itself in isolation. Q: You have often said, "Specialists are dangerous people". Comment. A: Only specialists are dangerous, because they begin to construct the whole world in terms of their speciality and in terms of the advances their speciality is supposed to have made irrespective of the relation it has with other aspects of society. If you are a specialist in rocket science, you are interested in making more and more rockets, not caring how many people are being killed. The concerns over things, which are not captured within the single speciality, get very rudimentary attention.
Goals get very poor attention whether it is from
uneducated politicians or bureaucrats. We need a lot of people in
society who have the wisdom to range over many things. Wisdom does not
come from a single discipline, this tendency of the world to break up
into a large number of super-specialities is very dangerous. Mere
experts, mere specialists are dangerous, but non-experts are
useless. |
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Hate-crimes: Need for speedy disposal of cases Taking into account the communal frenzy, whipped up by whatever cause, India of today and as in 1670, looks to be the same. "John Best was going for a hunt with seventeen gora soldiers at Onore in Karwar district," recalls Theon Wilkinson, "when the bulldog accompanying the hunters' party seized a cow devoted to the temple and killed her. The religious sensibilities of the Hindus having been aroused claimed the lives of all the eighteen Englishmen." More diverse and multifaceted a society be and there are greater chances of sensibilities coming into play and igniting passions on things which otherwise may appear to be trivial until and unless triggered off by vested interests with attributable motives. Thus, Godhras and Bhagalpurs may not be different from Karwars but a fresh look at the legal instrumentalities to deal with such like situations is definitely the need of the hour. It is a fact that the best law is only as good as the institutions that deploy them. Yet the need to look at other related things on hate-crimes deserves attention. While agreeing largely that with the already existing plethora of legal instrumentalities to contain violence and offences emanating out of hatred based on religion, national origin or colour, etc, there are more and more dimensions added to the problem. For example, the hate-crimes as acts of terrorism and persecution; driving the suffering and targeted minorities to their (sometimes self-secured) ghettos; isolating and well orchestrated ostracising of the identifiable victims; and, above all, the manifestation of intent into desired political 'make-believe-fallout' of situations that are created than obtaining; need to be addressed immediately. The last mentioned category may still be difficult to find a legal tool to fight with in the existing criminal justice delivery system. The proposed Bill to find ways and means to tackle the problem of communal violence is being debated in the country today. One view point is that no law can replace the complex process of building a civil society that is humane and sensitive to human rights. But many of the other nuances can very well be taken care of given the will to implement the rule of law. The Indian Penal Code, for instance, has sufficient provisions to take care of hate-crimes including those engineered and perpetuated out of communal fanaticism or fundamentalism. It has enough provisions on containing abetment and criminal conspiracy. Ensuring public order and guaranteeing public tranquillity have been dealt with desired precision in the Code. The provisions on arresting sedition, and the ones to interdicting agencies indulging in waging war against the Government of India and inciting public passions detrimental to peace, are all available. It should not be an exaggeration to say that the Code has provided enough teeth to the law enforcing agencies to tackle situations arising out of hate-crime scenarios. No doubt, there have to be different problems in different parts of the world depending on the cultural background and history of a particular place, society or a nation. But even for international treaties, conventions etc, the Indian Constitution, in Article 253, provides for suitable enactments for implementation to be carried out even by the state governments. Thankfully, this instrumentality is being used at least in environment-related issues. More and more articulation is being experienced these days even on sexual preferences and society at large is reacting to the same. Back in Birmingham in 2002, a police officer informed me about the Gays' corner which he needed to take extra care of in his beat since people did not tolerate the undesirable ways of certain "abhorable section of society". So, newer dimensions are added to hate-crimes day in and day out and laws cannot and should not be made on day-to-day basis. Vigilante killings as reported from places like Nagpur, Bhopal etc, add another dimension to the problem of Ku Klux Klan symptoms almost on the lines of 'Regulators' and "Guide Angels" in the post civil war American scenarios particularly from Pennsylvania and California. The criminal justice delivery system should not be seen as divorced from the existing legal instrumentalities. The will, means, cause and strength to use these methods is the key to the solution of the problem. At home, what we need to do is to ensure a speedy and time-bound investigative and judicial disposal of hate-crimes. Special courts may be one solution. Certain state governments which become perceivably notorious in handling hate-crimes for their covert and overt acts of omission and commission are time and again attracting gubernatorial attention as provided in Article 356 of the Constitution. Multiplicity of laws is only going to add to the problem and confuse the matters no
end. The writer, a Haryana cadre IPS officer, is presently serving at the Police Academy, Madhuban, Karnal |
Profile by Harihar Swarup Muivah, along with the NSCN (I-M) Chairman, Isak Chishi Swu, flew to New Delhi, met the then Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and asserted “ we shall try to achieve the solution (of Naga problem) through peaceful means”. Muivah and Swu again landed at Indira Gandhi International Airport on last Sunday to the tune of popular song — “By the blue streams of Nagaland” — by their supporters. Once a fiery rebel, living and fighting in dense forests, Muivah was a much mellowed man when he and Swu met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and told him: “We have come to believe that a solution cannot be found in violence and blood”. Pat came the reply from the Prime Minister: “We are prepared to walk the extra mile for a peaceful solution”. The Naga rebel leaders have already submitted their “secret” proposals which, they say, would be discussed threadbare to arrive at a peaceful and mutually acceptable solution. Having spent a life-time in the longest underground movement in Asia, spanning over half a century, surviving attacks on his life and living through detention, Muviah is indeed a disillusioned man now. A close look at him and exchange of a few words bear testimony to this change. There was time when he would slip to foreign countries, even hostile to India , to seek their support for the Naga underground rebels’ struggle. He even opened channels with China and Pakistan in his efforts to get arms and ammunition and also training for rebel cadres. Muviah, in fact, led the first 100 Naga fighters to the Yunan province in China for training. Naga rebels likened this to China’s legendary “Long March”. Muviah had been for long years an assertive spokesman of the Naga rebels and impressed the late Chinese Premier, Zhou En Lai, by his tenacity to the cause. Those were the days when India-China relations were at the lowest ebb and Zhou used the Naga insurgents for fanning trouble in the North- East. When New Delhi signed in November, 1975, the Shillong Accord with moderate Naga leaders, both Isak and Muivah were in China. They summarily rejected the accord and declared that their aim was to establish a Peoples Republic on Mao’s ideology. Muivah and another leader of equal seniority, S.S. Khaplang, formed in January 1980 their own outfit — National Socialist Council of Nagaland-with the objective of carrying on the armed struggle against India and establishment of the Republic of Nagaland. Swu became the NSCN’s Chairman and Muivah General Secretary. Soon the organisation plunged into bitter infighting and culminated in an abortive attempt to assassinated Muivah. He escaped rather miraculously but several of the NSCA’s cadres were killed. That was the month of April, 1988. Muivah suspected the hand of Khaplang in the “dastardly” attack and this led to a split of the organisation and two rival bodies — NSCA (Isak-Muivah) and NSCA (Khaplang) — came into being. Being the dominant group the NSCA (I-M) took to violence and in 1994 massacred 16 persons in a church and its guerrillas in December, 1996, boarded a bus in Guwahati and killed 30 . A ceasefire was agreed between the NSCA (I-M) and New Delhi in 1997, but did not make much headway as the guerrillas killed eight soldiers. The worst came in November, 1999 when an assassination attempt was made on the life of Nagaland Chief Minister S.C. Jamir, who it was believed, was sympathetic to the Khaplang faction. Difficult times were ahead for the NSCA (I-M) as Muivah was arrested in January 2000 in Thailand while travelling on a forged South Korean passport. That was the time when peace talks had again started between the Naga rebels and New Delhi. Even after the peace talks had begun, Muivah kept travelling to the countries hostile to India. He had visited Karachi amidst suspicious circumstances on a forged South Korean passport and false identity. When he landed in Bangkok, he was caught by Thai custom authorities and immediately sent to prison. Later, he was granted bail by a local court but told not to leave the country. He was lodged in a hotel near the Bangkok international airport and two security guards were detailed to watch his movements. Muivah, in a clever move, pretended to be ill and went to a hospital from where he managed to flee. He travelled to Hatyai, an airport in South Thailand, and carried another forged passport but he was nabbed again and sentenced to one-year prison term. A deeply religious man and a staunch Christian, Muivah presently lives in Amsterdam but his living style is spartan; cooks his own food and washes his own clothes. He is also known to be a frugal eater. A bowl of soup and some rice in the morning and he can go on for the whole day on endless cups of tea. It was, therefore, paradoxical when a team of chefs specialising in tribal cuisines were flown to Delhi from Nagaland for him and Isak’s. Muivah has now realised the futility of armed struggle and his dream of an independent, sovereign republic of Nagaland and come to the negotiating table. The outcome of the talks is anxiously
awaited. |
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Challenges of global governance Global governance is no longer a myth. It is emerging but it is real. It has, unfortunately, come to be identified with international capitalist forces whose main aim is regarded as pushing of their own agenda. However, just as international institutions and the United Nations do exist in spite of conflict of interests, so does the concept of global governance. There is not yet in existence a fully developed or coherent system of global governance. In many respects, the system lacks not only accountability but is also deficient, inadequate and ineffectual. There are several non-state actors which influence the course of globalisation as well as global governance like NGOs, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Parameters for global governance should be such that the players pursuing it are neutral and are not able to raise doubts about them nor strike at the very roots of the concept of global governance. All players-state, non-state or otherwise- can put their might together and unite to provide a better global governance. The areas where global governance could be made more effective include health, human rights, environment, labour standards, human security, education, development and democracy in some parts of the world, which impact the common man. In this connection, it may be desirable to identify the United Nations and its specialised agencies or organs which are responsible for providing such services and geared to play a greater role in this regard. Even though the United Nations and its agencies have been active in almost every possible area, some services have reached common people only marginally, may be due to limitations subject to which they can play their role. Thus, though it is argued that greater institutionalisation tends to limit sovereignty of the nations, it is equally true that the organisations concerned are not totally free agents. Mutual respect and understanding among nations and institutions can foster the right atmosphere and lead to proper global governance. A better understanding of the phenomena and pattern of global governance is likely to be more creative. At the same time, institutions which at the threshold are aimed at a hegemonic world order can hardly be conducive to global governance as the latter envisages cooperation and harmony among various actors. Political dimensions of global governance have to be diluted as far as possible in the interest of common good of people of the world. To the extent politics and economics converge, it would be inevitable to carry out reforms in the international financial architecture so as to remove asymmetries and to make global governance acceptable to those who are opposed to it. Global governance does not necessarily mean uniformity at all levels. Nor does it imply world government. Hence, diversity is inevitable at different levels of governance keeping in view the capacity of the countries and communities concerned, although the ultimate aim may be uniform standards of governance. Hurdles in global governance, to be fair, are in no small measure due to the attitude of existing institutions such as the World Bank which are understood to be attributing the problem of development to "the failure of developing countries to embody the social and structural dimensions of neoliberalism". Thus, the World Bank expects accountability of the countries concerned to it. According to some observers, the World Bank aspires to be the "mother of all governments". Global economic governance, though important should as far as possible, yield ground to other sectors of global governance if the developing countries are not to be ignored as significant players. However, the World Bank has spread its activities wide and is involved in various other sectors as well, including the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), a facility which is established jointly by the UNDP, the UN Environment Programme and the World Bank. It is alleged by some that the World Bank seeks to be the principal source of global power. The task of global governance can be facilitated fast if some existing organisations such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) do not negate other concerns in the process of pushing their own agenda. In some cases, the WTO has ruled that national measures aimed at protecting the environment contravene its rules and are discriminatory. Therefore, either the rules should be framed more carefully or they should be construed harmoniously. Global governance can be a reality in spite of cultural differences since there are always certain common features which can be found among all cultures. Promotions of democratic norms, elected governments, prevalence of human rights, rule of law, secularism etc are values which are cherished in all cultures. By the same token, the concern for assertion of sovereignty should not be allowed to dilute human rights or development of global governance in a true spirit. Global inequalities in respect of food, poverty, health and several other areas with which mankind is confronted in everyday life speaks insufficiency of global governance. The need to evolve appropriate strategies to tackle all these human problems is obvious. Apart from these, human security and disarmament are eminently suitable to be brought within the ambit of global governance. The United Nations has the trappings of global governance and is best suited to carry forward the task since that organisation has the necessary infrastructure for this purpose. However, it has to guard against the ideological pursuit of goals by some nations at the cost of global governance, which is the need of present-day society. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) continues to be relevant today in spite of growing market liberalism. Many observers feel that this organisation provides a model of good governance and that ensures its institutional longevity. Regional blocs or organisations such as the European Union, the Commonwealth and the like should be strengthened but should never consider themselves in competition with global governance and, in fact, should complement the effort in that direction. Enlightened self-interest could serve their own cause as well as that of global governance. Pragmatism without the touch of idealism cannot survive in the long
run. The writer is a former Secretary in the Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India. |
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Diversities — Delhi Letter
ON this Human Rights Day there was the much needed focus on the continuing violence against the woman and the child. Four leading NGOs of the Capital — Jagori, Sangat , Insaf and Anhad — kicked off the campaign against this continued and patterned violence. No. , not via speeches, but through the power of poetry by Javed Akhtar , Gauhar Raza and Vimal
Thorat And through the strains of music. A fusion band from Bangladesh — The Bangla — had been especially invited to play on the evening of December 11 at the Pragati Maidan ;to be matched by one of the best fusion bands from our end — The Indian Ocean . And not to overlook the band from the Springdales School. Correct me if I’m wrong but this is one school of New Delhi which stands out — in the sense that students speak out — be it for the Palestinians or for any people going through a crisis .
Students in the thick of it Delhi University’s Ramjas College (Hostel and History Society) screened “films for freedom” to highlight the dignity of the human being. Needless for me to quip that in the times we are living’s it, absolutely essential for students to realise the fundamentals of freedom and to fight for them. There’s no boundary for freedom as these films highlight. “In The Flesh” (directed by Bishaka
Dutta) the focus is on an insider’s account of what it is really like to be in prostitution and it has been done by following the lives of three real life characters. Yet another film “Naga Story”. Directed by Gopal Menon’s it, focus is on the three-million-strong indigenous people who occupy the North-East frontier and also on their political struggle together with” the human rights abuses suffered by the people in more than 50 years of the existence of “Independent India.” Yet another film — “Gulabi
Aaina” , directed by Sridhar Rnagayan , it rotates around the Indian homosexual closet. Another film on Argentina’s economic collapse of 2001. Titled “The Take,” it takes you to the situation when “Latin America’s most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment.
It’s about the same all over I didn’t see these films, so wouldn’t be able to comment on their reach. But just about two days back met and interacted with a group of young Iranian women who work for the Tehran-based NGO “Yaas”
(‘Yaas’ in Persian means Jasmine flower) They were in New Delhi to interact with NGOs that work for women and girls in distress. And I couldn’t help asking them whether they see any similarity between problems women face here and there. They explained that the problems and challenges before women are the same all over and that’s why they decided to come to India to study the way NGOs are tackling the situation here.
Focus on
Mulk Raj Anand Well, three days — December 11, 12 and 13 — will see one programme after another on Mulk Raj Anand. The Prime Minister will release at his residence “The Mulk Raj Anand Omnibus” (edited by Saros Cowasjee and published by Penguin Books India) and this will be followed by two memorial lectures by Prof. AS Dasan of Mysore University and the screening of a documentary film on him. If alive on this day, Mulk would have turned 99. He was born at Peshawar on December 12, 1905.
The Debate goes on Mani Shankar Aiyar’s book “Confessions of A Secular Fundamentalist” (Penguin Books India) was released this week at the Kamani auditorium with a debate along the strain — secularism vis-a-vis communalism. And as one heard the arguments between two set of panelists Teesta
Setalvad, Yogendra Yadav and Syed Shahabuddin on one side and — Balbir
Punj, Swapan Dasgupta and Sudheendra Kulkarni on the other — one realised how pathetic is the situation. How narrow political thinking and communal vote-bank politics is wrecking the very concept of Indian-ness. How many of us actually quip — “Hum Hindustani
hain! ‘Pander on this, this week.
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January 23, 2003, was an important day in the life of self-exiled Naga rebel leader, Thuigaleng Muivah. For the first time in 37 years the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) had decided to give up violence and talk of peace on the Indian soil.