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Pilots
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Climate
change talks
Turning
out babus
Cattle
class twitters
Maritime
engagement Lessons on green
economy G-20 spouses still
bound by tradition
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Murder that never was
The
Punjab and Haryana High Court has rightly ordered the release of five persons who were sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court after the Punjab Police falsely implicated them in the murder of a man who was actually alive. It has directed the state government to pay them a compensation of Rs 1 crore (Rs 20 lakh each) within a month. The quantum of compensation announced by the court is unprecedented and a reflection of the gravity of the crime committed by the men in khaki. A Division Bench consisting of Justice Mehtab Singh Gill and Justice Jitendra Chauhan has rightly taken serious exception to the conduct of the Punjab Police and ordered registration of a criminal case against the erring investigating officers and witnesses who fabricated evidence to prove Jagseer Singh dead. The trial court in Barnala has been directed to start proceedings against them for perjury. At a time when the Punjab Police does not enjoy a kind of reputation it can cherish, the High Court verdict is bound to affect its standing with the people. The duty of the police is to protect people and not to harm them. But the Punjab Police have not learnt any lesson over the years and there has been no improvement in their style of functioning. The Bench observed that because of the thoughtless action of the police functionaries, the five persons in question had undergone a lot of mental torture and hardship. In fact, one of the appellants committed suicide after spending five years in jail. The Bench did not blame the trial court for the miscarriage of justice. It ruled that the trial court believed the “evidence” brought before it and had no alternative but to convict the five persons. But the Bench did not spare the police for violating the law and subverting the criminal justice system through “meticulous falsehood”. Clearly, no leniency should be shown towards the guilty policemen and witnesses. They deserve exemplary punishment for the crime they have committed. It is only through stringent punishment that the image of the police will improve.
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Climate change talks
India’s assurance on the eve of the UN climate summit of world leaders that it would be a “deal maker” and not a “deal breaker” reflects a realization that while the US and Europe are getting away despite having brought the world close to a catastrophe by their reckless levels of carbon emissions, it is India and China that are being put in the dock for the deadlock in talks on controlling such emissions. As Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh put it aptly, “we are not part of the problem but we want to be part of the solution.” It would indeed be suicidal to continue to do little to cut carbon emissions on the premise that our per capita emissions are far lower than those of the West. It is time we did something to save ourselves from the consequences of reckless western development which involved high levels of carbon emissions that have ruined the ecological balance and led to global warming. If India assumes a more pro-active role in the climate change negotiations, it could well play a part in cajoling the West to compensate the developing countries for disaster mitigation. The fact is that for India climate change is an issue because we are on the fast development track and we can benefit from the western experience in terms of what we should not do. As things stand, as a legacy of western recklessness, the Himalayan glaciers are receding, agricultural yields in India are stagnating, dry spells have increased and patterns of the monsoon have become more unpredictable. The least that we need to do now is to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels which are carbon-emitting and to increasingly go in for clean technologies. In that context, the ambitious targets set for solar energy must be relentlessly pursued, other forms of non-conventional energy like geothermal power, wind and nuclear power must be enhanced and forest cover must be increased. There is indeed little point in crying “wolf”. Instead, we should set out on a growth path that becomes a model for the world and is true to our needs.
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There is properly no history; only biography. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Turning out babus
A
recently
appointed Vice-Chancellor of a prestigious university stated in an interview that one of his important goals was that the civil services coaching centre of his institution should enable at least 10 students to join the bureaucracy each year. According to the story, he is enamoured of the idea because he along with 19 others made it to the bureaucracy in 1972, thanks to the Rau’s study Circle, a creditable achievement for a coaching centre. However, can this be one of the important goals of a prestigious university? Alternatively, what does it convey about the leadership of a premier Indian university? Should a university at all have a coaching centre for examinations of any kind, civil or uncivil? What does this indicate about both university teaching and our centralised testing for various jobs/careers? Why is it that the training at even the good universities does not prepare students for passing entrance examinations? Equivalently, why is it that the competitive examinations do not test the students on the skills that they acquire during their routine studies in a good institution of higher learning? The problem pervades the entire education system from the schools to the universities. For entrance to the IITs or medical colleges, etc, school students go to coaching centres during their 11th and 12th classes. Regular studies, whether in private or government schools, seem inadequate for preparing the child for the competitive examinations and thereby unduly burden them. This has led to the phenomenon of Kota schools that prepare students for the competitions. Soon schools would come up in “Otak” to prepare the children for entry into Kota schools. Where will the process end? Bright young children lose much of their childhood in this mad race and for what? Anything but learning. Coaching institutions prepare their students to cram material to answer questions in competitive examinations — learning and understanding are incidental. When IIT and medical students make it to the IAS and go to the training academy in Mussoorie they feel lost because they have little exposure to the social sciences — a key ingredient into training good bureaucrats. These highly talented students with their enormous capacity to mug up pass the civil services examinations, but this hardly implies an understanding of what they had mugged up. Skills needed to be a good doctor or a bureaucrat are at variance with each other. The training at the stand alone professional schools is narrow and it remains so because of lack of interaction with students of other disciplines. Our universities are unable to promote much learning among their students partly because the training in schools is indifferent and out of the pool of talent available, the best are siphoned away by the stand alone professional courses. Further, students who enroll in colleges and universities, instead of attending classes, spend most of the time preparing for something else. Why do students who work hard at coaching schools do not do so for the degree they enroll for? Degrees hardly represent skills but are passports to getting jobs where the needed training is imparted on the job. Most teaching is insipid so that many students lose interest and exams are soul-destroying. Many teachers are demoralised and go through the motions of teaching but have little interest in knowledge generation or the students. The competitive examinations largely test the skill to mug up and reproduce. Mug books try to anticipate the likely questions and the successful candidates are those that can sort of predict the pattern of questions and provide standardised answers to them. Why do these examinations not test the logical abilities of the students and their capacity to grapple with difficult problems that have no ready solutions? That would be the real test of capabilities. This is tough and our students do not get this training in the institutions of higher learning. Our faculty-members who set the question papers have themselves never acquired such skills. They can neither teach this way nor set questions to test such skills. The real task the institutions of higher learning like the universities or the IITs ought to be knowledge generation. While doing so, they would also build capabilities among those who plan to go into other jobs like the bureaucracy or industry. Talent has to be filtered up so that the best go into knowledge creation. Unfortunately, at each stage there has been a reverse filteration of talent. The best minds (produced in spite of the system) are systematically siphoned off into the jobs that require lesser capabilities since they either pay more or have associated power. This is a throw-back to the days of the Raj which needed to produce clerks and not thinkers among the natives. Even after 62 years of Independence, we have not thrown away this yoke and restored the pre-eminence of thinkers in society. Civil servants have dominated over everyone else. So, society thinks nothing wrong in fixing salaries of university teachers in relation to the bureaucrat’s salary. The top dog has to be the secretary to the Government of India (the top of the pack of glorified clerks) and the salary of a teacher has to be several scales below that. In fact, the chairmen and members of pay commissions for university and college teachers have been professors but none of them has protested against this preposterous idea and fixed the salaries of teachers in the lower scales. Indoctrination has been such that they have accepted the superior status of the glorified clerks. Many academics, having failed to get into the bureaucracy or the corporate sector, have come for teaching so that in their hearts they believe they are doing a lesser job and often lack motivation. Good teaching requires commitment. One inspired lecture is worth more than hundreds of insipid or often incompetent lectures that kill the interest of the students. That is why one cannot measure the productivity of a teacher as of a factory worker whose job is to perform routine and repeated tasks. One cannot measure output by how many students pass indifferent exams where little learning is required. Very few academics and even fewer bureaucrats and policy makers understand this overall picture, and at times identify the problem as one of indiscipline — say, lectures and examinations not being held — but what of the content? Dissent is the basis of knowledge generation and ought to be cultivated systematically in the institutions of higher learning. However, this would be anathema to a bureaucrat and unthinkable to an army general — their training militates against the spirit of a university. Yet, our ruling elite readily appoints either these worthies as V-Cs or those academics who have these tendencies either because of political convenience or as a reward for their subservience. Search committee members are compliant worthies willing to do the bidding of the political masters in the hope of getting plum postings — a patronage system all the way. Clearly, the role of institutions of higher learning is incidental for the elite class. No wonder, the priorities of the V-Cs are, typically, things that are incidental (like producing civil servants) to the main task of a university. If the future of the nation was not at stake one could laugh it off, and today that is all we are able to do because the rot is
deep. The writer is a professor at JNU, New Delhi.
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Cattle class twitters The
other day a query from a nosey journalist popped up on my Twitter. “Sir, which class did you travel on your recent trip to the US?” “As a patriotic Indian, born into an ancient civilisation that reveres renunciation and austerity, I travelled ‘cattle class’ as solidarity with the holy cows as well as my middle class bank balance.” “And how was the experience Sir?” “Lofty ... uplifting” “How?” “As the plane didn’t get a regular slot for departure, we were taken in a bus to the cargo section… a distance that seemed like halfway to Chicago, and many foreign tourists started clapping, as they thought that it was part of the Incredible India road experience! Then climbing up the stairs, many senior citizens with their arthritic knees found the boarding lofty and uplifting! “Inside the plane, while waiting three hours for take off, the Captain made reassuring jokes about making up for the delay with the helpful tail wind. On this, many of the pan-masala chewing, desi passengers broke their own tail wind, to contribute towards a speedier take off.” “And what about in-flight service?” tweaked my ‘Twitter.’ “Oh! Top points on the ‘austerity scale’— the matronly hawai-auntijis quickly switched off the cabin lights as we boarded; and vanished to their resting corner to eat sandwiches and doze off. When I asked about our refreshments, came the sweet reply, ‘Sir, we are now into midnight Chicago time, so breakfast will be surely served’. By then sleepless with hunger and with babies bawling on top of their lung powers, I turned to in-flight entertainment for succour. It turned out to be so entertaining and innovative; that because of the malfunctioning audio, one could write one’s own dialogues to the scripts of Jodha Akbar and Ben Hur or even lyrics for Lucky Oye Lucky.” “But I thought, sir, that the best of wines and cuisine are served ?” “But as conscious-keepers of the nation, the carrier is morally bound to improve your karma count and austerity points. So, when the drinks trolley appears there are only cokes and juices visible on the top, with some red wines tucked inside, lest you ever forget that the carrier is in the red.” “And finally when you reach the US, you look so starved, emaciated and ‘austerity-ised’ that the chewing gum-munching guy at the immigration counter gives you one look and says, “From the Himalayas, Swami?” and quickly stamps you in. On the other hand, the pampered, fell-fed “Shah Rukh Khans” from first class have to cool their heels for a couple of hours”. Ever since this Twitter, my phone has been ringing constantly — with many ministers, netas, ticket seekers, babus on CVC list etc. asking for my austerity mantra. Who knows one day, I might just become a minister or a holy
cow.
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Maritime engagement
All
of a sudden the air is full of hostile media reporting on China, more imaginative than reflecting actual ground realities. Chinese incursions across the land border have increased dramatically in the last few months. China succeeds in getting references to Arunachal Pradesh suppressed in the Asian Development Bank aid to India. The NSA convenes (then postpones) a high-level meeting (later termed routine) to discuss security issues relating to China. These are only some of the issues splashed across newspapers and seen repeatedly on some television channels. A former Defence Minister adds to this by calling for a special session of Parliament to debate the emerging serious scenario. And if all this is not enough, a former Adviser in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) suddenly comes out of hibernation to declare that the Pokhran Tests of 1998, in which he had played a key role dressed in Army uniform no less, were quite simply a fraud as the desired thermonuclear results were not achieved. Since the very basis of the Pokhran nuclear tests was China centric, this has created another dimension in our litany of inadequacies. To these should be added Chinese machinations around us at sea, more poetically termed “String of Pearls”. Yet, the facts are somewhat less disconcerting. If the Chinese have come across at some places and painted graffiti on some rocks, someone should ask our own soldiers of the number of times they have done something similarly ‘offensive’. On Arunachal, China’s position has been well known, even if entirely contrary to our own perceptions and of ground realities to which their own Prime Minister had, albeit indirectly, lent acceptance during his visit in 2006 through his own principles of settling the border dispute on the basis of “settled populations”. And whether our weapons come out of fission or fusion and their yield is 25 kilo tons or ten times that, the fact remains that one of the former can take out close to half a million people in any medium sized city in China. If this is not a sufficient deterrent, then nothing will be. Our conventional deterrence is also not something that can be easily ignored, some shortcomings notwithstanding. The scenario at sea is interesting. On the one hand, there can be no denying the fact that the Chinese Navy is going through rapid modernisation, both in numbers and in quality. Seven classes of ocean going destroyers and five of submarines have been put on line in the last 10 to 15 years; some of the latter are nuclear powered, a few with nuclear missiles of long range. Every major Indian city comes within the range of Chinese strategic capability. Chinese maritime doctrine has shifted focus from Taiwan, first to credible operations in the East and South China seas and now to safeguarding the nation’s economic interests which provides the largest canvas for maritime operations since it includes safety of sea-borne commerce and energy supplies. In short, a much larger profile for maritime power is now prescribed which can see the Chinese Navy operating in the Indian Ocean much more often and for longer periods than hitherto. To this, can be added the so called pearls, which are the port facilities being built with Chinese assistance in Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The assumption is that, when developed, these will be made available as support bases for the Chinese warships. Frankly, any of these projects could, quite easily, have been executed through any other foreign collaboration (Sri Lanka had initially sought our help). There is no connect between the building of facilities and their usage but the Chinese involvement is seen as sinister. Yet, countries, even weak ones, do not make their ports available as base facilities for other countries quite so easily; certainly, India never did so despite many requests by the Soviets for use of Visakhapatnam, built with their help. So, the feeling that one or more of these port developments will, automatically, lead to permanent base facilities for the Chinese Navy in this part of the world is somewhat simplistic. Without access to them, permanent presence is not feasible. Even a force with as comprehensive a logistic chain as the US Navy had to find and create its Diego Garcia. The complexities in creating capabilities for blue water operations at sea are not sufficiently understood. These require reach, sustainability and capacity to operate credibly. The first two are a function of numbers, type and size of warships and of logistics vessels. The last requires a broad spectrum of technologies and platforms, for example, networked forces in all three dimensions in the air, on surface and below the surface, sophisticated command and control through exchange of real time information, maritime domain awareness through several input sources, including satellites and surveillance aircraft and, finally, ability to control the tactical air space, something which only aircraft carriers can provide. On all these counts, it can be argued that the Chinese Navy will be hard put to match Indian Navy capabilities. With water on three sides and outlying island territories serving as de facto aircraft carriers, our ability to reach where we wish to, remain there for reasonable periods and to operate credibly is unmatched by any other maritime force save that of the Americans. All our efforts should be on ensuring that this equation is not allowed to alter. The need of the hour is to calmly assess the military balance and respond to the capabilities coming up around us without getting diverted by short-term irritants. Creation of capabilities is a time consuming business and requires focussed attention. As China matures into a major power, growth of its Navy is inevitable. Its interests for safe movement of trade and energy are no less legitimate than that of any other country. Its presence in the Horn of Africa is not less justifiable than that of ships from Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and elsewhere. We must enter into positive interfaces with China at sea consistent with shared interests and there are a host of them, with threats from non-state actors being at the forefront. Maritime engagement is desirable even as we remain prepared for any unforeseens. Running around like headless chickens, to quote a former Ambassador, is not the way to
go. The writer is a former Director General, Defence Planning Staff
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Lessons on green economy As
world leaders converge in Pittsburgh for a major economic summit, one of the biggest questions they face is this: How do you begin to replace the millions of jobs destroyed by the Great Recession, now that the worst of the crisis has potentially passed? Spain thinks it has an answer: create new jobs and save the Earth at the same time. Green jobs have become a mantra for many governments, but few nations are better positioned — or motivated — to fuse the fight against recession and global warming than Spain. The country, already a leader in renewable fuels through $30 billion in public support, has been cited by the Obama administration as a model for the creation of a green economy. Spain generates about 24.5 percent of its electricity through renewable sources, compared with about 7 percent in the United States. But with unemployment at 18.5 percent, the government is preparing to take a dramatic next step. Through a combination of new laws and public and private investment, officials estimate that they can generate a million new green jobs over the next decade. The plan would increase domestic demand for alternative energy by having the government help pay the bill — but also by compelling millions of Spaniards to go green, whether they like it or not. In the long term, the government envisions a new army of engineers and technicians nurturing windmills and solar farms amid the orange orchards and carnation fields of Andalusia and Galicia. In the short term, officials say, the new renewable energy projects and refurbishing of buildings and homes for energy efficiency could redeploy up to 80 percent of the million construction workers here who lost their jobs, as they did around the world, in 2008. Spain’s ambitious effort is being closely watched by other governments forming their own green-job plans. But the bid for governments to take an ever deeper roll in creating jobs in the private sector — which many leaders gathering in Pittsburgh see as their mission — is also fraught with risks. Though the Spanish government estimates that the alternative energy sector generates about 200,000 jobs here, about double the number in 2000, critics contend they have cost taxpayers too much money. In some instances, the government’s good intentions have distorted the energy market. Take, for example, the recent Spanish solar bubble. Though wind power remains the dominant alternative energy here, the government introduced even more generous inducements in recent years to help develop photovoltaic solar power — a technology that uses sun-heated cells to generate energy. Lured by the promise of vast new premiums over existing market rates, energy companies erected the silvery silicone-panels in record numbers. As a result, government subsides to the sector jumped from $321 million in 2007 to $1.6 billion in 2008. When the government moved to curb excess production and scale back subsidies late last year, the solar bubble burst, sending panel prices dropping and sparking the loss of thousands of jobs, at least temporarily. “What they’re talking about now — creating a new sustainable economic model through alternative energy — is going to be exactly the opposite of sustainable,” said Gabriel Calzada, a Spanish economist and critic of the government’s alternative energy policy. “You’re only going to create more distortion, more bubbles. It isn’t going to work.” In 2007, only one in 20 working-age residents of advanced economies was without a job. By next year, when the IMF expects global unemployment to peak, that number will have jumped to one in 10. The job market is often the last to recover after a recession. But some economists predict a years-long stagnation in job creation and wages in developed countries, including the United States, Britain, Ireland and Spain. At the same time, governments are trying to hash out a deal by December that would establish new cuts in emissions by 2020 in an effort to stem global warming. One of the most obvious ways for nations to meet their goals, experts say, is through alternative energy projects. “This is going to be like the building of the Internet,” said Carlos Mulas-Granados, director general of the Ideas Foundation, a Spanish think tank . “We’re going to use this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild the economy with clean, green growth.” The multibillion-dollar investment is a gamble Spain is willing to take because it is, more than any other nations hit by the crisis, desperate for jobs. Its unemployment rate is one of the highest in the developed world. Already, the streets of Madrid and other cities are being dug up and repaved in a short-term government effort to offer temporary work to the unemployed. “And what do we do when the road work runs out?” said Jose Luis Salazar Garcia, 32, installing terra cotta tiles on a Madrid sidewalk in a government-funded job. “There are no other jobs in Spain.” The country’s answer is to go
greener. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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G-20 spouses still bound by tradition For
the past 60 years, political spouses have been trying to get off — and stay off — the belittling housewife track. Circumstances have changed dramatically with political spouses’ distinguished degrees and six-figure salaries. The wives of presidents have tackled everything from dysfunction in the health-care system to human rights in Myanmar to, now, the unhealthy eating habits of an entire nation. But even the most independent-minded spouses can’t shake some traditions. On the long list of such traditions upheld by the East Wing, one of the most curious might be the “spouses program.” That is not so much an official title as it is a kind of bureaucratic shorthand for the luncheons, tours and performances that the partners of world leaders attend during the G-8, the G-20 and other occasions when heads of state gather. In Pittsburgh Michelle Obama hosts the spouses of the G-20 leaders with an attempt to highlight the administration’s commitment to international diplomacy, show off American art and culture, and avoid those awkward photo-ops that leave the spouses looking like silent props in a mid-20th-century parlor play. Over the years, spouses have visited a high-tech incinerator in Japan, inspected an earthquake site in Italy and attended a “Harry Potter” party in London. Yet for all the group photos, friendly chatter and serious conversations about women’s rights, the spouses program still has the ring of a tradition that might as well date from the era of Jane Austen when, after dinner, men retired to the library for cigars and cognac and a discussion of world events — and the ladies went into the parlor to talk about needlepoint. Tradition generally has meant that anything vaguely controversial, anything that might make another spouse uncomfortable, anything bursting with nightly news appeal, has been left off the table. Visiting spouses don’t generally make requests — too presumptuous. And the host spouse avoids pushing the envelope with any event that might distract from her husband. A visit to a Pittsburgh homeless shelter or a soup kitchen, for instance, would be considered ripping the proverbial envelope into teeny-tiny bits. The fundamental rule for the host spouse is simple. “Do no harm,” says Lattimore, who recalls that when Clinton hosted the G-8 spouses in Denver in 1997, she lunched with the wives at a Rocky Mountain resort. Obama’s goal is to celebrate the city of Pittsburgh over the course of the two-day meeting. The events announced so far reflect the topics she has focused on as first lady: healthy eating, the arts and the education, and support of young people. She will host a private dinner Thursday at Teresa Heinz’s Rosemont Farm in Fox Chapel, Pa., near Pittsburgh. The dinner at the farm, where workers grow fruits and vegetables and raise cows and chickens, is intended to underscore Obama’s interest in sustainable farming and locally grown foods. Not all the G-20 spouses are women. Joachim Sauer, the husband of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is a quantum chemist who avoids the limelight. And Nestor Kirchner’s wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, holds his former title of president of Argentina. Sauer is not attending; Kirchner will, but he isn’t touring or posing with the
spouses. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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Corrections and clarifications n
In the Op-ed Page article “Inter-linking of rivers” (Page 9, Sept 22) there is a reference to K. L. Rao having been Indira Gandhi’s Irrigation Minister from 1962 to 1971. In fact, Mr Jawaharlal Nehru was Prime Minister until his death in May, 1964 and the interlinking of rivers was envisaged by Dr Rao during his time. n
The headline “Delayed fund stalls court complex work” (Page 1, Sept 22, Chandigarh Tribune) should instead have been “Delayed funds stall court complex work”. n
The headline “Brumby puts a dampener to India visit” (Page 13, Sept 23) should instead have been “Brumby puts a dampener on India visit”. n
The headline “NRI woman gets 33-year in jail for kidnapping daughters” (Page 13, Sept 23) should have been “NRI woman gets 33 years jail….” 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 appears twice a week — every Tuesday 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
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