The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Banning terrorist outfits
They must never be allowed to re-emerge

By presenting to the National Assembly (parliament) a list of 25 banned terrorist outfits, the Pakistan government seems to convey the message that it has ultimately realised the need for taking on all kinds of extremist organisations to win the battle against terrorism.

However, only time will tell what Pakistan’s real intentions are. The organisations declared unlawful include the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi. These groups had been involved in destructive activities, including suicide bombings, for a long time, but action against them was avoided because these were considered as “strategic assets” by Pakistan. Interestingly, the Pakistan Supreme Court had recently put off for an indefinite period hearing on the petitions filed against the Lahore High Court judgement letting off JuD founder Hafiz Saeed from house arrest. This is so despite the conclusive proof provided by India that he was the main brain behind the Mumbai terrorist strike.

Pakistan has a record of declaring terrorist outfits as unlawful and then allowing them to reappear with a new name. When the LeT was banned under international pressure it soon started functioning as the JuD. Last December when the UN Security Council proscribed the JuD after the Mumbai terrorist massacre, the Pakistan government imposed a ban on it. Reports have it that the JuD has re-emerged as the Falah-e-Insaniyat with an account in the Bank of Punjab, Lahore.

Islamabad must have realised by now that Pakistan faces the most serious threat to its survival as a state from the terrorist outfits it once patronised. It is, therefore, necessary that the infrastructure of all types of terrorist groups must be destroyed with their funding sources blocked forever. They must never be allowed to re-emerge on any pretext in the interest of peace and stability in Pakistan and the rest of South Asia.

Reality can hurt
But the truth must prevail

Not just Manipur but the entire nation deserves to learn the truth about an allegedly fake police encounter in Manipur. Was 27-year-old Chongtham Sanjit actually killed in cold blood, as a series of photographs reproduced first by a website, Tehelka.com, would suggest?

Or was he gunned down while firing indiscriminately in a crowded bazaar in the heart of Imphal? The photographs raised doubts about the official version and a swift inquiry was needed to restore people’s faith in the government. The Chief Minister, Mr Okram Ibobi Singh, unfortunately, strengthened the people’s worst suspicion by dithering over the popular demand for a judicial probe.

The delay in suspending the policemen and in ordering the probe after the incriminating set of photographs surfaced, has already cast a cloud over the state government’s intentions. The judicial inquiry, therefore, needs to be both swift and transparent in order to restore people’s confidence. One can only hope that good sense will prevail and the inquiry will not drag on for months and years. The state government also needs to take other measures to discipline the infamous Rapid Action Force of the Manipur Police, which, by all accounts, is a law unto itself.

The border state has been witness to dramatic protests in the past. Irom Sharmila, who launched an indefinite fast in 2000 in protest against the killing of 10 civilians, continues to be fed forcibly. A group of protesting women had stripped themselves naked in 2004 after the alleged rape, torture and murder of a woman by security forces. The judicial inquiry will hopefully be able to contain the brewing discontent and help in disproving the popular sentiment that “life in Manipur is a lottery and you are alive because you are lucky”.

Thought for the Day

Any stigma, as the old saying is, will serve to beat a dogma. — Philip Guedalla

ARTICLE

Buta Singh and son ‘Sweety’
A case of protesting too much
by Inder Malhotra

WITH the arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation of Sarabjot Singh, with a lovely nickname “Sweety”, for allegedly demanding a bribe of a crore of rupees from a Nashik contractor, Ramarao Patil, lifts the veil, only slightly, from the hideous face of egregious corruption that has polluted almost all branches of public life and governance in this country.

Let me hasten to add that the case is still under investigation and the trial has yet to begin. Until the accused person is held guilty he must be presumed to be innocent. This, however, places no bar on discussing some features of the case that are intriguing, revealing and alarming, quite apart from the revelations by the CBI or by CBI sources in their briefing to the media.

In the first place, young “Sweety” holds no position of any authority and could not have done Patil any favour. But it so happens that he is a son of Mr Buta Singh, a former Union Home Minister, a former Governor and currently chairman of the Commission for Scheduled Castes. Also, by coincidence, the Nashik contractor is being arraigned before this commission for having allegedly exploited and cheated Dalits of his city. Obviously, if Patil is to be treated with kid-gloves, Sarabjot’s papa alone can do so.

The turn that the drama took at this stage was bereft of even an iota of surprise. Mr Buta Singh’s angry tirade against the CBI and others could have been scripted by anyone familiar with the Indian political scene with eyes widely shut. For as long as one can remember there is a standard drill whenever anyone faces serious charges or is even caught red-handed. “I am innocent,” goes the anguished cry, “it is a vile conspiracy.

My political opponents are trying to frame me”. Whenever requested to name the malign forces that are parties to the “conspiracy”, the injured innocent soul invariably answers: “This I will reveal at the appropriate time”. Such a time, alas, never comes. Another convenient ploy of those in the net is to scream: “I am being targeted because I belong to the minority community” or a “Dalit” or an “Adivasi”.

Mr Buta Singh has kept up the litany of his innocence, has rejected all calls for his resignation and has announced that he has already “briefed” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and that he would “cooperate” with the CBI if it follows “proper procedures”, which implies that the premier investigative agency is not doing so at present. Since this insinuation has come from a former Union Home Minister, shouldn’t the government hold an inquiry into the CBI’s working? For his part the chairman of the SC/ST commission might tell the nation whether, as Home Minister, he ever did anything to ensure that the CBI doesn’t act crassly.

There are several other questions that are crying out for answers. In the first place, three imported and unlicensed revolvers and 38 cartridges were recovered from Sarabjot’s residence? What kind of light does it shed on the young man who has always been close to his highly influential father? When Mr. Buta Singh was Bihar Governor, Sweety and his brother used to stay in Patna Raj Bhavan for long durations, giving rise to rumours of all kinds.

Secondly, the whole story of the alleged transaction between “Sweety” and Patil of Nashik, is appalling beyond words. Normally, it seems odd that the paths of a construction contractor and the SC/ST Commission should have crossed. But this happened because the contractor decided to secure a loan from cooperative banks under his own influence by making nearly a hundred Dalits working in the city’s conservancy department sign the loan applications. These poor people have now got “final notices” from the cooperative banks immediately to repay the loans they never took or else. Some of them are expected to cough up as much as Rs 11 lakh!

Remarkably, the contractor does not deny the allegation. His bland explanation, according to newspaper reports, is that he needed additional capital because he had got conservancy contracts in Navi Mumbai and Kolhapur. The 103 workers knew all about the loans totalling Rs 10 crore that he took with their help. In the first year, adds the contractor, he paid the workers Rs 20,000 as their share of the profit. But then the contracts were abruptly cancelled, and he was left high and dry.

The banks are threatening the workers who never borrowed a penny but were inveigled into signing the relevant papers. If this is not a flagrant fraud, what else is it? No wonder Sarbojit’s original demand was for Rs 3 crore. An allied question is: why hasn’t the Maharashtra government proceeded against him yet? Nashik police claims that he has gone missing and cannot be traced!

That apart, a wider question remains unanswered to this date. Any public servant who demands or accepts a bribe must be meted out exemplary punishment, of course. But why should the bribe-giver not be punished? Or is it the conviction of the Indian political class that bribery has the quality that Shakespeare had attributed to mercy - that it blesses him that gives and it blesses him who takes?

The third and painful question is also pertinent. Mr Buta Singh is a politician of a long standing. He started as an MP belonging to the Akali party but changed over to the Congress. Thereafter, he did not have to look back. During Rajiv Gandhi’s time he had risen to be Home Minister, and had a role to play in shilanayas (foundation stone laying) for the Ram temple in the undisputed part of the land at Ayodhya.

As Civil Supplies Minister in the P. V. Narasimha Rao government, he personally supervised the delivery of huge cash to Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leader Shibu Soren to save the government from falling in a vote of confidence. Only because of a strange judgment of the Supreme Court — which still stands — he escaped any action. However, when denied a Congress ticket, he joined the BJP and became a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.

Mr Vajpayee asked him to leave because of charges of corruption. On rejoining the Congress in 2004 he was made the Governor of Bihar. The Supreme Court has said enough about his dubious record in brining about the unconstitutional dissolution of the state legislature. Will someone please explain what compelled the Manmohan Singh government to appoint Mr Buta Singh chairman of a constitutional commission?

MIDDLE

Brewhaha
by T.P. Sreenivasan

It was the twitter culture that did Obama in. He decided to encapsulate the race issue and its solution in less than 140 characters. In the Gates case, the police behaved stupidly, he said, without realising he shared his skin colour with the victim and the police sergeant in question had another skin pigment. Hell broke loose in no time and expression of regret over wrong choice of words was not sufficient to put out the fire.

Obama is nothing, if not innovative. “We can!” he said again. Inviting Gates and Crowley for a lunch or dinner in the White House would have been overkill and so he hit upon a beer on the White House lawns, rain or shine Boston has a Beer Summit every April and Gates and Crowley should welcome a real summit with the chief himself and everything would be forgotten and forgiven, thought the strategist President.

But the cure turned out to be worse than the disease. The three could not agree even on the brand of the beer. Then came the question of racial balance at the summit and the President brought in his deputy more for his colour than for his wisdom. As the only one not a party to the dispute, Biden had to remain sober to keep the balance.

The setting was perfect, the brew was right and the racial balance was intact. Then came the hard job to establish as to who behaved stupidly. Was it Gates, who protested when he was accosted inside his house by a policeman, who proceeded to handcuff him? Was it Crowley, who thought he found a misfit in an aristocratic neighbourhood and proceeded to treat the good professor as a criminal?

Gates and Crowley were seen mumbling things to themselves as they left the White House lawns. Biden complimented his boss for his wisdom and foresight in organising the event. Obama shrugged it away. But he tried, didn’t he?

Obama has learnt his lesson. One swallow does not make a summer. One African American President cannot heal all wounds. His “stupidity” comment was honest, but honesty does not pay. Gates will, in future, take special care of his key and will not give reason for his suspicious neighbour to call 911 to report a break in.

Crowley will not change, because most criminals he comes across in his daily work is of a particular colour. His only choice is to leave the police force and sell beer to the White House for future summits, which should be a growing industry, considering that racial prejudice is still alive and well.

The beer summit brought a bonanza to journalists. “Brewhaha” was my favourite, but “Coalition of the Swilling” “Ale to the Chief” and “The cop, the Professor and the President: It All Comes to a Head” were also good. Someone said that Gates should have tried to climb over the White House wall to get to the lawn for the beer summit!

OPED

Education Policy — A Tribune Debate
Evolving new university models
by Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia

While on the one hand we are talking of higher education as dynamics of societal transformation and a tool for ushering in a knowledge society in our country, our thinking, our approach, our ethos remain steeped in the stereotypes of the past.

This is all the more conspicuous in the educational field where we see erosion of university autonomy day after day; increasing hegemonic role of certain central agencies; dilution of regional and cultural diversity in the domains of arts, humanities and social sciences in the guise of standardisation of the courses of study; homogenisation of our composite cultural heritage in the name of a particular kind of tendentious value-orientation of education; rigidisation of territorial and functional jurisdictions of the universities.

There is an urgent need to rethink the territorial jurisdiction of our universities. Territorial jurisdiction of the universities in a state has relevance in the case of the affiliating universities so as to ensure a coordinative relationship between the university and the affiliated colleges and institutions.

But beyond this point the universities should be free to have campuses and centres throughout the country with network relationships among themselves, made so easy by the information and communication technologies; procedures for setting up overseas campuses should also be simplified.

In evolving new university models to meet the imperatives and challenges of the 21st century, apart from the university-to-university network relationship and collaboration, mutually beneficial interaction with industry and business is also essential for continual awareness of the dynamics of the market forces, fast-developing technologies for updating of the syllabi, and reciprocally providing to the industry and business economy “inputs” arising out of university research.

But a word of caution is necessary here. The societal obligations of education should not be narrowed down to subserving exclusively the interests of industry and business which can lure the educational institutions into their nets by offers of funding university projects.

Already there exists an unresolved contradiction between the mass system of education and the elitist system; subservient role of the universities in relation to industry and business can and will compound this contradiction.

Both intensive and pervasive information technology impact is going to radically change our educational system, with a progressive use of the learner-based techniques: recourse to internet; web-based learning; on-line courses; multimedia modes; video-conferencing; etc.

The fusion of formal and informal streams has opened up new vistas of both self-learning and life-long learning. Distance education, passing through the traditional correspondence courses departments to the open university phase with the cyber, virtual university mode in the offing, would not only realise the national objective of raising the literacy level among the masses, but also ensure life-long self-learning which is one of the imperatives of the knowledge era.

Reorganisation of the existing compartmentalised faculties on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary lines is a ‘must’ despite likely resistance from within the universities.

Horizontal and vertical mobility of the learners, with lateral entry and exit and the adoption of a modular approach to the courses of study; bridge courses; credits transfer system, etc. already followed in some of our universities in one or the other form, also need to be institutionally incorporated in our higher education system.

The UGC may evolve some new viable models with different combinations and permutations of innovative measures for reorienting our university patterns towards the desired direction and goal.

It is also imperative for our education system to ensure that the knowledge era does not lead to a value-neutral society. But value-orientation of education is not something like putting a price-tag to a commodity. This, also, does not mean preaching morality to the students; a better way would be to give every student in any discipline, a short foundational course in speculative thought, cultures and civilisations of the world to broaden his mental horizon and deepen his insight in the main subject of his study.

Try to generate a child’s interest in education
by SK Mann

The most crucial reforms in education should begin from the school and the day the child enters the system. With the Bill for right to education having been passed, the first step required is to ensure that the schools admit children from the area these are located in and all schools must provide quality education. This should be the first rule for equity and accessibility of education.

Subsidised lands have been allotted to private schools in the urban areas and a government school network is available. But on all week days you witness on our city roads and village link roads vans and rickshaws ferrying school children up and down from one end to the other, jeopardising their safety as they are packed in unsafe vehicles.

Rural children cover long distances in search of quality education. In the urban areas it is the race for the name and prestige attached to the school.

The government schools in the rural and urban areas should rise to the occasion and provide quality education in the localities they are located in.

New private players should first assist in supplementing the government schools as part of their corporate social responsibility to help update the initial infrastructure for school education.

The further impetus required for accessibility may be given through private or government initiatives. The private players also need to introspect as to the limit of their profit from education.

The approach to education reflects in the society as a whole in which their children have also to breathe and an unequal society is a dangerous place for their progeny too.

Education has become stressful because the edifice of education is being built on the provisions of rote and is basically devoid of interest. It is being considered a necessary evil, the way education is imparted because it fails to generate interest and is not able to excite the mind.

In fact examination stress is a cumulative stress due to lack of interest in education which gets built up when the child is in 10th standard. Next to equity and accessibility, reforms in education should make a scientific appraisal for this lack of excitement in learning.

Now knowledge is at the click of the mouse, but the ability to understand, comprehend and use it requires a deeper understanding with reasoning abilities. These can be better focussed if the choice of education is based on individual aptitude and interest, which is going to vary with individuals as how much freedom and space one gets as a child or needs to express the aptitude.

The basic tools of education that help the child grow with the obsession of interest will have to be identified. To help achieve individual excellence, the national educational programmes must develop a milestone approach as to what is required to be done from pre-school onwards. Broadly we can:

1. Invest in good nursery or kindergarten infrastructure; provide enough space and freedom to the children to express themselves through as varied creative activities that the teacher can innovate.

2. The primary school stage should provide the tools of literacy in language communication and calculation along with more room for individual creativity.

3. High schools should help the child channel his aptitude and start investing in the basal education required for furthering the cause of the interest that was inherent or ignited through.

The most important reform that the Indian education system needs is to identify the strengths within. A student grows with an obsession to complete education abroad. Every year thousands of students are moving to the USA, the UK, Australia, Russia and Europe, why, so? It is surely not the spirit of adventure that makes them spend large amounts of their parents’ hard-earned money.

It is simply because we have not made efforts to benchmark Indian education and win faith of our own students. Effort is required to acknowledge education other than IITs in India. No doubt, they are the best ones and globally acceptable, but there are other systems too like the agricultural universities, providing multidisciplinary education since the sixties in India.

Graduates from these universities have very high placement rates and have not only been employed in agriculture but diverse fields due to their broad-based education. They fill also an important vaccum in institutes of higher learning in the developed countries.

However, these institutes have been relegated to a secondary status today with all the glamour in education hovering around new world class universities.

Another crucial reform that we need is to benchmark the level and quality of core education required at the undergraduate levels, where agricultural education must remain one of the subjects along with science, maths and social sciences, It has been clearly spelled out by UNESCO that for sustainable development and address the issues of environment and population, this form of education will serve future the cause of mankind.

Therefore, reforms in education cannot be effective unless all the steps are systematically addressed.

	Remember, each child is different by Birendra Kaur The education reform should be such that it attends to a maximum number of children, preferably all. As adults, we should be able to find a way. Society is a blend of mathematicians, scientists, doctors to care for our body and its comforts, and artists to enliven our minds and saints to enrich our souls. We also have care-takers at home and office to look after our needs. Each child is different, and unique and special. As such, he must be allowed, rather encouraged to grow to his full potential. The present education system is forcing Picassos, Shakespeares to become Einsteins, Plutos and vice-versa. And the proposed reform of grades is not going to help much. You may believe that you will save unbearable stress in a few (which could be personality-related), but you will kill the spirit to excel in studies in millions of students. Further, our Picassos and Shakespeares are still not being nurtured, as they should be. They can definitely do without trignometry, statistics, etc. So can the hard workers, who are getting complexes unnecessarily, whereas they may excel in some other field. The reform should attend to the needs of different abilities in children, and not bring these out as superior or inferior. This will take care of the stress factor. These children are the society of tomorrow. And the responsibility for its health, moral, physical, mental, spiritual, lies on us, the society of today. There could be class X (professional), class X (vocational), class X (fine arts). So students with different capabilities may be nurtured accordingly at an early stage in life, without having to bear the stresses of something they are not made for, and yet excel in their field of talent/ability. Sports facilities should be provided to all. We do not need to club students into grades; we need to club them into different capabilities.
	Let ’em teach, make ’em teach by Gurbaj Singh Primary teachers in Punjab can be divided into two categories. The first category is of teachers who are committed to their job i.e. teaching. They go on teaching honestly and to the best of their potential, come what may. The second category consists of those who are rarely seen in their schools. Recent surveys have established that there is about 35 to 45 per cent direct absenteeism and 50 to 60 per cent indirect absenteeism among the primary teachers of Punjab. The fact is well known and yet nothing has been done so far to mend the situation. Along with teaching the tasks a teacher has to perform are unnecessary clerical work (dak), providing mid-day meals to students and maintaining records thereof, construction, supervision and accounting activities under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Election duties and various kinds of surveys further add to his tension. This is again very well known. But the problem is that all such unnecessary tasks are mainly and necessarily to be done by the first category of teachers. They have to do all such fruitless activities along with teaching, which is bound to suffer. The second category of teachers, however, remain absent from the scene here also. Being out of school, they avoid all such activities too. How do they manage all this? The answer is they are the ‘yes men’ of the higher authorities. Obliging them even on non-educational pursuits is more important to them than teaching in schools. They are seen more in district and block education offices than in schools. Teaching little children is not considered by them as part of their job. They enjoy special status of “out of school teachers,” being close to their bosses, who are happy in availing their services for their mean ends. Teaching little ones, especially in the rural areas is really a demanding task where parents mostly are illiterate and poor who can’t pay any attention to the education of their wards. There, it is the primary teacher who has to look after everything as far as the educational needs of children are concerned. So it is a really challenging job which demands a great deal of commitment and devotion on the part of a primary teacher. The fact is that the teachers of the second category fail to face this challenge. That’s why they want to be out of schools on one pretext or the other. It’s not that the first category teachers have some compulsions of teaching. They can also stay away from school. But it is their ‘conscience’ which denies them any such possibility. They want to teach and so they teach even in the face of these adversities. Various schemes like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Padho Punjab have added to the number and confidence of the second category teachers as most of the resource persons and coordinators for these schemes belong to this category. They enjoy additional; perks as resource persons, besides their regular salary for ‘teaching’, which they do not do at all. So they are a very happy lot. Faulty governance and incompetent administration are not allowing the first category teachers to teach and at the same time are not making the second category teachers teach in the schools. Teaching has been reduced from a once noble profession to a joke in the primary schools of Punjab. Those who themselves have never taught are instructing the teachers how to teach. The purpose of this write-up is not to offend the personal feelings of anybody. It is only to lit the flame of truth and honesty amongst the teachers, particularly those belonging to the second category, and also to make an earnest appeal to those concerned at the political and administrative levels to kindly let the teachers of first category and also to make the teachers of second category really teach in the schools so that there is only one category i.e. teacher.
	Corrections and clarifications n The report, “ Power cuts plague Punjab residents again” ( Page 3, August 6) erroneously suggests a contradiction between the claim of the electricity board that power shortage is partly due to scanty rainfall and residents facing power cuts even in “areas having showers almost daily”. If power generation dips due to scanty rainfall or demand for power goes up, it would affect everybody. n It should have been “ …emerging safety and security considerations…” and not “ security consciousness…” in the report, “ Hotels to be friendlier to differently abled” ( Page 2, August 6) n The headline ( Page 18, August 5) should have read, “ Sessions judges” and not ‘session’. Sessions courts conduct trial of criminal cases. The headline should also have clarified that the judges were being elevated to the high court. n The headline, “ HC against leniency to convicted cops in bail matters” ( Page 3, August 5), is misleading. It should have been “ HC against leniency in cases of custodial death”. n The report “ Shinde assures CM to resolve power crisis” ( Page 5, August 5) mistakenly suggests that the Punjab CM called on the Union Power Minister at Chandigarh instead of New Delhi. Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them. This column will now appear thrice a week — every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com. H.K. Dua, Editor-in-Chief