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Flights
to Bathinda
Learning without
values
Always
on the move
Hungry planet The “pillory
Hillary” gender campaign Delhi Durbar
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Just deserts SENDING out the message that there is no way that a physical assault of a player can be condoned, the Indian Premier League has handed Harbhajan Singh an 11-match ban that will effectively keep him out of the rest of the league matches. Harbhajan is playing for the Mumbai Indians, and was their stand-in captain on the night of the match with the Punjab Kings IX at Mohali. He was found to have hit S. Sreesanth of the Kings IX without any provocation, after the match was over. Match referee Farokh Engineer also fined Harbhajan 100 per cent of his match fee. There had been a lot of speculation about the nature of Sreesanth’s behavior during the match, but the fact that he has been let off with only a warning should indicate that the medium-pacer had not really crossed the line. In any case, nothing short of self-defence can really justify the act of physically hitting another player or official, an offence under the ICC code of conduct, which mandates a five-Test or 10-ODI ban. To its credit, the BCCI is taking a tough line on a player it defended against allegations of making racist comments against Andrew Symonds. When Harbhajan’s close friend Sachin Tendulkar backed him, the board followed suit, and so did the whole nation. The BCCI had copped a lot of criticism about the aggressive way in which it defended Harbhajan, and by his action at Mohali, the spinner has let down the entire cricketing fraternity. The BCCI will independently pursue the case and President Sharad Pawar will forward a report to a disciplinary committee for further action. All this is as it should be, and intra-team relations, and Indian cricket in general, will stand to benefit in the long run. It’s clear that many players need a few lessons in what makes for true sporting “aggression” on the field. Such aggression has been the hallmark of teams such as Australia, and they are not immune to carrying it too far either, with their notions of gamesmanship (read sledging). Since it is a new component of the Indian game, players do not know how to calibrate it well, ending up displaying crass, crude or farcical behaviour. Healthy aggression will come when great talent is nurtured with hardwork, and deployed on the field with intensity and unflagging commitment.
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Four-time lucky ESCAPING assassination attempts has become a way of life for Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. The attempt on his life in Kabul on Sunday was the fourth since he came to power. The most audacious of all, it happened near the presidential palace and that too when there was unprecedented security to ensure the celebrations of the 16th anniversary of the end of the Soviet-backed rule in Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack immediately after it occurred. They were the ones who had tried to eliminate him in June 2007, September 2004, and September 2002. It was only last week that the new commander of the international forces in Afghanistan, Maj-Gen Jeffrey Schloesser, had warned the government in Kabul and the rest of the world that the level of violence this year might go up considerably with major attacks by Taliban insurgents. What Major-General Schloesser said was contrary to the view expressed by US military commanders a few days earlier that there was a major decline in the Taliban’s activities owing to the concerted efforts of the multinational forces, mostly American. The new and alarming forecast is based on what is going on in Pakistan’s areas bordering Afghanistan. The new government in Islamabad is in the process of signing a peace deal with the Tehreek-e-Taliban in Pakistan. This means that the Taliban fighters on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line will be free to shift their operations to Afghanistan to intensify the Taliban drive against the West-backed Karzai regime. Thus, the Taliban insurgents, who had already been feeling emboldened with the US-led forces showing signs of fatigue, may be in a better position to continue their destructive activities in Afghanistan. The failure of the international (read US) military campaign against the Taliban shows that there is need for a fresh look at the strategy adopted for establishing peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban must not be allowed to humble the Karzai regime in the interest of stability in South Asia and the rest of the world. A return to Taliban rule is the worst that can happen to the landlocked nation.
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Flights to Bathinda WITH the Ministry of Defence clearing the operation of four civilian commercial flights daily from the Air Force station at Bhisaina, Bathinda will soon be better connected with at least the national capital. If the flights start soon enough and also get good clientele, the town may come up on the civil aviation map in the near future. That will fulfil a long-cherished dream of south Punjab, which has been in the back of beyond all this while. Reaching Bathinda from either Delhi or Chandigarh involves long back-breaking road journey which may be passable for ordinary hapless public but is not a very inviting proposition for businessmen and entrepreneurs for whom time is money. Many such people have been visiting Bathinda ever since investments started pouring into the area. Air travel is no longer a luxury but necessity for them. The regular flights will further boost the influx of money into the economy of the region. There are many monuments, historical and religious, in and around Bathinda which can attract tourists for whom faster communication is a must. Lack of air connectivity is not confined to Bathinda alone. Almost every town of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh cries out for such connectivity. Although there is not enough traffic at the moment to justify operation of full-fledged commercial flights, small aircraft can at least serve those who can afford to pay and need the speediest transport available. The hub-and-spokes network can link all of them better. The demand is bound to grow once the services are started. India can learn from Nepal which has opened up even far-flung areas to tourists thanks to the air taxis which operate to almost every corner. However, care must be taken that the infrastructure is dependable and the services are public-friendly. If short-haul flights are not popular, it is because the passengers are harassed a little too much in the name of security and they have to report far too early to catch a flight. If such irritants are systematically removed, the volume of air traffic can grow exponentially.
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I may be wrong, but I have never found deserting friends conciliates enemies. — Margot Asquith
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Learning without values
The
news of the IIM, Ahmedabad, raising its fees to Rs 11.5 lakh for a two-year MBA course stunned many. The ground had been prepared by the announcements from the other IIMs that they were raising their fees by substantial amounts. After these announcements, the IITs are also expected to hike their fees. These may be moderate compared to what the IIMs have announced but substantial compared to the existing fees. Of course, all this affects only a few thousand students out of the several millions who are in higher education. As such, one could dismiss these as of little consequence to the average student. The news may also be discounted given that the private colleges that are no patch on the IIMs have already been charging huge fees. However, pressure to raise fees is building up in other public elite institutions. Many arguments are proffered for raising the fees by the IIMs. First, those who go to these super-elite institutions earn enough; so why should they not pay for their education? It is being suggested that the deserving students from these institutions will be given loans or scholarships to finance their education and since they will earn high salaries, no difficulty may be expected in the repayment of the loan. Secondly, many of the students from these elite institutions leave India for greener pastures abroad and have little commitment to the country; so, at least they should finance their own education and not depend on the subsidy from the state. The resources so released could be then used to finance the education of poorer students. Thirdly, if these students were to study in similar institutions in the US or the UK, they would have to pay fees many times the enhanced fees; so they are still better off. Fourthly, the IIMs and IITs should be made autonomous, released from the control of the ministries that indulge in bureaucratic and political interference and for that their finances have to be improved. Fifthly, the faculty of these institutions needs to be better paid to draw talent while at present they are constrained by the UGC-determined scales and these are far lower than the salaries not only in the corporate sector but also in the private higher education institutions that are bleeding talent from them. Finally, the faculty of these elite institutions is hardly doing any research since it is busy in consultancies and projects to increase incomes. Higher salaries could then reduce the financial pressures and enable the faculties to do more research. All of the above are powerful arguments for raising fees in these institutions to full cost. To put all this in perspective, one needs to consider that only a few lakh individuals (less than 0.05 per cent of the population) declare incomes of above Rs 10 lakh. Many of these individuals after paying taxes would find it difficult to pay the fees of their children aspiring to study in these institutions. A fee of Rs 4 lakh per annum would be 11 times the per capita income. In contrast, in the US, an elite institution would charge tuition of about $35,000 and living expenses would be about $15,000 so that the total expense would be in the range of the per capita income (about $44,000). Crudely speaking, an average family in the US can think of sending its child to such an institution. This would be out of the question in India at the fees fixed now. Have these institutions (IITs and IIMs) built their reputation by charging high fees? The fees have risen sharply only in the last 10 years whereas their reputation was built over the earlier 30 years during which period they charged lower fees and imparted quality education. What matters most for quality education is the commitment of the students and the teachers. During the hey days of the national movement with a commitment to the national cause, there emerged Raman, Bose, Saha, Vishwesharaiya and many others who made great contributions to learning (world class) even with meager resources. Those days there was a low level of literacy and even less of higher education, so the pool of talent was tiny. Yet, due to the commitment, some great work was done. Higher education is not just about acquiring skills but also about inculcating a higher social value system in the citizens. Today, the latter is being sacrificed at the altar of money making with commitment to the self rather than the nation. In this milieu, presently even though far larger resources are poured into higher education compared to those available during the pre-Independence period, the results are hardly commensurate with the facilities available. While it is true that the facilities are not comparable to what may be available in advanced nations, but is that critical? In very advanced research, expensive equipment and a lot of infrastructure may be needed, but is that also the case with college education, like, in the IITs or in the IIMs? Does one need airconditioned class-rooms or fancy floors and furniture or foreign faculty or visits abroad for good education? It is in all this that resources are being wasted, and these could have been used to educate the others. Was our original vision of “cheap education” for all a flawed one? Does it occur to the policy makers and educationists that there may be something wrong in wasting such vast resources so that a few can study in comfort and generate huge profits for the owners while the majority of the citizens are deprived of even the basic needs? It is this value system (widespread during the national movement) that is being wiped off our consciousness. Knowledge Commission recommendations are a pointer to a substantial rise in fees and this would lead to segregation in higher education much like between private and government schools. While scholarships and loans are being promised, many middle class (much less the poor) families cannot take the risk involved in the case of some mishap to their child or if market conditions suddenly change. It requires courage to go in for a loan way beyond one’s means when uncertainties are great. Since the paying capacity of the family depends on the saving capacity, a vast majority of the middle class would also not be able to think of taking the huge loans that would be required. Cheap and quality education gives equal opportunity to all. Many of the poor families are disadvantaged because their children do not get the same environment for learning as the better off families are able to provide. While little can be done about this disparity, cheap and good education is essential in a democracy to at least formally provide all children an equal opportunity in life. That is why some argue for a common school system. Education is a case of market failure since a lot of talent is misdirected. Talent is wasted when the talented poor are unable to continue education because the market makes it expensive or when it directs it into less demanding management functions rather than into research and teaching jobs requiring the highest levels of skills. Consequently, state intervention through subsidisation of education is called for. Clearly, education is about the future; so the view the elite in society takes about it also reflects its vision. We are moving in the direction of giving up our liberal view of higher education and the notion that the poor also should be offered an equal opportunity in society. The first step in the slide of the vision of these institutions began with the appointment of many businessmen and managers (non-educationists) on their boards. In a poor country, should we produce at a high resource cost highly alienated youth who are not able to relate to the common man and see him as a millstone around their neck, holding back their progress? The basic tenets of our post-Independence society are under assault even if only (to begin with) a few thousand students annually will be affected by the changes being brought about by the IIMs and are likely to be followed by the
IITs. The writer teaches at JNU, New Delhi
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Always on the move
Ah! Those days of blissful youth! Nothing disturbed us. Not even those continuous rounds of transfers in the police department. Un-nerved, we moved in unison from pillar to post. Setting and settling in our new “Homes” with the ease of a duck to water. But over the years these frequent sputnik-like rotations began to upset our growing applecart. Especially since we outgrew the national slogan of “Hum do Hamarey do.” As parents of four growing girls each “Tabadla” meant new admission to new schools. All this made deep holes, in his pay-packet. These frequent displacements had everything to do with those ranking stars, he so proudly wore on his uniform. Always wanting to function his way and march to his own tune, he sent wrong signals to those power-filled political bosses. “It’s my force. I will run it”, was his declaration. Only their declaration echoed back with more force: “O.K., Mr Know-all, just move on…further”. Thus, we spent most of our service years, moving forward and backwards on the G.T. Road; with our truckload of belongings and his “self-esteem” firmly tucked in his six-foot frame. Wonders never cease to happen. In spite of his stubborn “zameer”, blocking his footsteps upwards, he did ascend to the post of a State D.G.P. And stayed put, for a respectable tenure: rotating and controlling his own steering on the troublesome, uneven, police-pathways. In retirement, putting aside his star-laden uniform (in the upper-most shelf of our cupboard), we settled at our farm land, far removed from the glittering sectors of the city. Pushing aside those heel-clicking saluting days, he donned the role of a farmer. Planting trees and putting life in his barren, neglected piece of earth, became the order of the day. Over the years, his hard work transformed this unapproachable dry desert into our enchanted glen. A “Home” amidst this perfumed greenery where God’s creatures, both great and small, came to dwell. Amidst colourful birds and fluttering butterflies, we both swooned and swayed to the tune of nature. This was our heaven! Pure, clarified Bliss! What better place then this, to end one’s life’s journey? And then the hammer struck. With the force of a double barrel gun. Our one time unwanted land suddenly acquired the stature of a prized destination. Heavy machinery rolled in to uproot men and trees to make four-lane roads for the crore-laden companies in the name of S.E.Z. Holding our acquisition orders, we watched helplessly, as the quiet stillness of the area was replaced by the ugly shrieking of rolling-in bulldozers. “They will destroy in hours what I have planted and nourished for years”, moans my crest fallen, one-time police hero. “We’ll build, yet another nest”, I try to console. But the words fall flat on the wounded soul. I derive comfort from the likes of Aachar Singh; our neighbouring farmer. He still comes at the crack of dawn to sow and plough his acquired land. Working on the pair of bullocks he merely says, “Bibi, jithey daney, uthey Kaney.” The mortal like the birds moves in the direction where his morsel lies. In his rustic wisdom, he accepts and resigns himself to his fate. For “Permanency” was never a part of a flowing
life.
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Hungry planet People
in the developing world are rioting over food prices, leaving dozens dead in some cities, because there’s simply little or no cushion in a poor family’s finances to afford even a minor increase in the cost of its food. The world is used to hearing about hunger in the context of Darfurian refugees or crop failures and famine in sub-Saharan Africa. But now we’re facing something different. Large swaths of humanity can no longer be assured that the foods they’re eating today will be available tomorrow at prices they can afford – or available at all. This is not, in fact, as silent a tsunami as a World Food Program official suggested last week. Sit down, as we do, with just about any family in the developing world, for whom eating traditional foods is still the norm, and get ready for a surprise: The family’s shopper (usually a woman) can tell you within an ounce or two exactly how much of each foodstuff she needs to buy to feed her family. And she could, at least until recently, tell you within a few cents what each item should cost and the expected total bill. We’ve experienced this in dozens of places – the third floor of a five-floor walkup in Cairo, a subdivided shack in the Philippines, rural China and Guatemala, a Papuan jungle, the Ecuadorian Andes and sub-Saharan Africa. Susana Mendoza, of Todos Santos de Cuchamaton in Guatemala, tallied up her large family’s week’s worth of food in a matter of minutes. While meeting 30 families in 24 countries for our 2005 book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, we saw these calculations happen daily. How much red rice does Nalim and Namgay’s family of 13 eat in the course of a week at their home in Shingkhey, Bhutan? The number is quick to come – 66 pounds, with very little waste. Now, as we travel, we expect a more urgent calculation as prices climb skyward: How much will it cost for my children not to starve? In Yemen, where food riots broke out in recent months, the answer to nearly every question we asked about food elicited emotions ranging from fear of malnutrition to anger over the exorbitant rise in prices. Elsewhere, because of government subsidies, the price of bread is stable, contributing to different kinds of headaches. In Iran, inflation is now up to an annual rate of 18 percent; earlier this month, that cost the economic minister his job. The bakers get government flour and are allowed to charge only a certain low rate for the bread they sell. Joao Cardoso is a fisherman in northern Brazil who lives in a floating house on the Amazon River. The world market does not drive his food security, at least in the short term. He and his wife eat fish that they catch, grow vegetables on their dock and spend only a relative pittance on other things they need, using a small government pension paid to rural retirees. They’re fairly self-sufficient. If he moved to Manaus, the capital of his state, Amazonas, or some other urban area, both his diet and his financial circumstances would change greatly, and he’d suffer along with other poor urban Brazilians. Solang da Silva Correia, a cattle rancher’s wife who lives two hours upriver from Cardoso, has very little expendable income, but because she and her husband raise cattle, fish and vegetables, their food security is pretty high. Do they consider themselves poor? Yes. Do they have enough to eat? Yes. Both of these people are rural dwellers, and these days, they seem to be the lucky ones. Hundreds of millions of people have moved into cities around the world in the past 20 years. It is they, the new urban dwellers, who are increasingly being held hostage to international market forces. The grocery lists of the two families we covered in China for “Hungry Planet” couldn’t be more different. The Cuis, who live in the countryside about two hours outside Beijing, eat largely unbranded traditional foods cooked at home, much as we had seen before in our years of covering China. The Dongs, who live in Beijing proper, eat food from the global marketplace – shopping at supersized international markets such as Ito-Yokado (Japanese) and Carrefour (French), which are quickly replacing the city’s traditional mom-and-pop market stalls. The Dongs’ one-stop shopping cart overflows with traditional basics – rice, eggs and fresh vegetables – but it also holds the new essentials: three flavors of H agen-Dazs ice cream, fresh whole milk, beef flank, prepared sushi, baguettes and Great Wall red wine. Though both families, urban and rural, have added a lot more meat to their diets in recent years, only the Dongs’ includes American fast food. Dong Yan, 13, eats with friends at McDonald’s or KFC two or three times a week, one hungry teen-ager in a country where appetites are shifting toward an increasingly complex – and energy intensive – palate. The menu that people hit by this immediate crisis are using is fairly simple: flour and rice, even as these staples double or quadruple in price; cakes in Haiti made largely of mud, choked down in a desperate attempt to fill one’s belly; bread baked by the military in Egypt. But from our travels, it seems that the menu items that helped create the current crisis are more complex, processed and partially hydrogenated than these modest items. Food corporations have learned how to enter the developing world. Few of the families we met could afford a week’s worth of a processed food item at one time, so the global food companies make their wares more affordable by offering them in single-serving packets. In Manila, individual portions of “foods” such as imitation-cheese spreads, chips and spiced rice dishes are much like the convenience packs sold in the United States. Highly processed foods are making inroads into the diets of the developing world, and with that comes dependence. We have visited hundreds of families in their kitchens and homes around the world over the last 15 years, and both here and abroad, we have seen a grand march toward unsustainability as some of us play catch up and the rest of us play keep up. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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The “pillory Hillary” gender campaign Hillary Clinton
is a witch who eats babies. She is a modern-day Medusa who turns men to stone. She is a DemocRAT, with a rodent’s body and long tail. She is a mad cow, spreading disease across the country. Hey guys, life’s a bitch, so why vote for one? No, I haven’t taken leave of my senses: I am simply repeating some of the most vitriolic attacks on a woman who has dared to run for the White House, prompting an outpouring of misogyny on a scale that brings to mind medieval witch-hunts. The amazing thing is not that Clinton is trailing Barack Obama, but the fact that she’s doing so well. Last weekend she won Pennsylvania, despite her campaign being outspent three-to-one. She has been written off countless times since January, when commentators gleefully – and wrongly – declared that Clinton had been defeated in the New Hampshire primary; one conservative pundit confidently said: “The witch is dead, and life is going to change.” Three months later, Clinton is still in the race, but I sometimes wonder how she manages to get up every morning. I’m not a natural supporter, but the degree of vilification she has been subjected to reminds me of the pathological misogyny of the notorious witch-finders’ manual, Malleus Maleficarum. Let’s start with the T-shirts, mugs and stickers at the online “Hillary vilification shop” where images of her as a rat, a mad cow and Medusa are on sale. “Hillary will eat our babies,” one message proclaims. “Pillory Hillary 2008,” says another, next to an image of Clinton in the stocks. Most sinister of all is “Wanna See Hillary Run? ... Throw Rocks At Her”, echoing the barbaric practice of stoning women to death. Take to the airwaves in America, and more bile pours out; the right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh, whose show has 14.5 million listeners, has identified something he called a “testicle lockbox” as an attribute of the New York senator. Is this related, I wonder, to a vagina dentata? Perhaps that’s what Clifford May, a former Republican National Committee spokesman, had in mind when he called on Clinton to define herself as “a Vaginal-American”. What are they so afraid of? “There’s just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing and scary,” declared MSNBC host Tucker Carlson. Scary but pathetic, says Limbaugh: “Will America want to watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?” Clinton is 60, 11 years younger than the Republican candidate John McCain, but ageing “makes men look more authoritative, accomplished and distinguished”, according to Limbaugh. McCain, to his shame, has not remained aloof from the pillorying of Clinton, failing to rebuke a female supporter in South Carolina who asked: “How do we beat the bitch?” Visibly taken aback, McCain laughed and thought for a few seconds. “That’s an excellent question,” he said. In the following week, the “How do we beat the bitch?” incident was viewed almost a million times on YouTube. “This is sociopathic woman-hating,” the feminist author Robin Morgan. “If it were about Jews, we would recognise it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison. Where is our sense of outrage – as citizens, voters, Americans?” In fact, Clinton does have people defending her, including Elton John. The singer recently opened a fundraising concert for Clinton in New York and said he was “amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some people in this country”. So are some ordinary voters, including an Obama supporter who expressed his frustration with a Facebook group entitled “Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich”. He wrote on his blog: “The last time I checked, it had over 44,000 members, and at least once a week since it was started I receive a request from a Christian asking me to join this group.” The title of the group is revealing because its equivalent – “Barack Obama: Stop Running for President and Clean My Pool” – doesn’t exist. It would cause outrage. So why, when racial abuse is rightly taboo, is it acceptable to abuse a woman on the grounds of her gender? Why is it all right to use words such as “witch” and “bitch” about a female politician? Of course, it may be that racism has gone underground, and that doubts about a black presidential candidate are emerging in voting patterns. But this year’s race for the White House has undeniably exposed the previously unimaginable degree of misogyny at the heart of American culture. By arrangement with
The Independent
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Delhi Durbar The rivalry between lawyers-turned-politicians Abhishek Singhvi and Anand Sharma, is an open secret. As spokespersons of the Congress party, the two were locked in a running battle and were constantly competing for media attention. Singhvi must have heaved a sigh of relief when Sharma was appointed minister nearly two years ago as that left the field open for him. However, Singhvi has reason to worry again as he has competition in the newly-appointed party spokesperson Manish Tewari. Like Singhvi, Tewari is also a lawyer but with a much better command over the Hindi language. Not to be outdone, Tewari took Singhvi’s example and penned a newspaper column receeently in which he defended Priyanka Vadra Gandhi’s decision to visit Vellore jail to meet one of the conspirators in her father’s
asassination.
Voluminous delay After eight long years, when Delhiites had almost given up on it, they will finally get the latest telephone directory, now that the Centre has permitted its printing. The last directory was printed and distributed by the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) eight years ago. However, a lot has changed since then in the country’s telephony system with several private players giving stiff competition to the state-owned service provider.The teledensity in Delhi has increased many fold in these last eight years. Last time the directory came in three volumes. How many are there going to be this time? It is anybody’s guess.
Athletic MPs Members of Parliament who won trophies in athletic events at the sports meet for MPs last year, will be pleasently surprised to find their names recorded for posterity in the 2007-'08 annual report of the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs. It is heartening to see that some of the women MPs who exercise their lungs inside the House, are physically fit. For instance, Ranjeet Ranjan, Lok Sabha MP and wife of Pappu Yadav, finds a mention in the report for winning the second prize in the 50 metres, 75 metres and 100 metres races for women. Likewise, Lok Sabha MP Jyotirmoyee Sikdar won the first prize in the 50 metres, 75 metres and 100 metres races for women. Rajya Sabha MP Anusuiya Uike came third in the 50 meters, 75 meters and 100 meters races for women. Ranjeet Ranjan and Jyotirmoyee Sikdar also got the first position in the three-legged race (mixed). Contributed by Anita Katyal, Girja Shankar Kaura and
Tripti Nath
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