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Projects in PoK
Claims ring hollow |
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No more spats, please National prestige at stake in Commonwealth Games It is unfortunate that the Indian Olympic Association chief Suresh Kalmadi publicly called for the withdrawal of Mike Hooper, stationed at New Delhi for the past two years by the Commonwealth Games Federation to monitor preparations for the 19th Commonwealth Games in the city in 2010.
Whiff of fresh air
Chicago’s Nobel Obama
UP refuses to record deaths during childbirth
Official machinery has got used to violence
Feminism made women miserable?
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Projects in PoK
India’s
strong protest to China over President Hu Jintao’s statement that his country would continue to support projects in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir clearly enunciates this country’s position on what may emerge as an other prickly between the two nations. The Chinese have been making unwarranted statements, like the one criticising Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, which it claims is Chinese territory. The manner in which Beijing sought to block Asian Development Bank aid for a project in Arunachal earlier this year was clearly unhelpful.
The message therefore needed to go out to the Chinese government that India would not brook any attempts to browbeat her. The prompt Ministry of External Affairs statement in response to the Chinese president’s commitment of assistance to a project to upgrade the Karakoram highway and the Neelam-Jhelum hydroelectric project in PoK is unexceptionable considering that PoK is Indian territory that is under Pakistani occupation since 1947. India has reason to be wary of China and Pakistan joining forces in PoK. Significantly, Home Minister P Chidambaram said in Srinagar on Wednesday that India would issue only employment visas to the Chinese, no longer business visas, and this had been conveyed to the Chinese government. While asserting that employment visas would be issued only to highly skilled workers Mr Chidambaram softened the blow by saying that this would apply to other countries as well. Considering that Sino-Indian economic relations have been on the upswing, the implication is that the relationship in future would have to be on the basis of reciprocity in the overall context. Yet, the new rigidity in postures does not necessarily presage a worsening of relations between the two neighbours. A meeting of Foreign ministers of India, China and Russia is due in Bangalore in a fortnight. While that could bring back an element of bonhomie, the scheduled visit of Dalai Lama to Arunachal next month would need to be watched for the reaction it might evoke in Beijing. |
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Claims ring hollow When it comes to lauding their services through advertisements, most cellular companies offer you “world-class performance”. But when it is time to deliver, they prove to be as bad — if not worse — than some public sector behemoths. The consumer, who was expecting to be crowned the king following the entry of private operators, has not had too much of good luck. Rather, he has been taken for a ride all along. The consumer base has been expanding with new customers being added every day. But the expansion of infrastructure has just not kept pace.
The result is that the consumer has to cope with frequent call drops and congestion on the network. The problem has become more acute in the festival season but most cellular operators refuse to divert the calls through alternate routes, for the simple reason that they want to pocket money from the point of origin, carrying point and point of termination of a call. Many companies are miserly in setting up new radio base stations in spite of the fact that the number of consumers has swelled phenomenally. In their attempt to cut corners, they have left the consumer high and dry. There are allegations that they are not averse to dropped calls because every such call earns them extra revenue. All such complaints have to be looked into. It is nobody’s case that they should squander money but providing needed infrastructure is very much their responsibility. The companies are also not averse to levying hidden charges on consumers for reasons unknown to the user. State governments have not helped matters either by failing to come up with a policy with regard to erection of telecom towers. Indeed, they are an eyesore but cell phones have become such a basic necessity that towers cannot be wished away. One solution was that several companies should share a tower, but even that scheme has got bogged down in petty bickerings. What the bumbling babus refuse to acknowledge is that a mobile phone is no longer a luxury for the select few and has instead become a symbol of the Aam Admi’s march into the 21st century. Pity that the consumer is still being made to do with the pervious century’s tools! |
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No more spats, please It is unfortunate that the Indian Olympic Association chief Suresh Kalmadi publicly called for the withdrawal of Mike Hooper, stationed at New Delhi for the past two years by the Commonwealth Games Federation to monitor preparations for the 19th Commonwealth Games in the city in 2010.
This was a matter that should have been dealt with between the IOA and the CGF during the visit of Mike Fennell, the CGF president, to New Delhi last week. That Mr Kalmadi’s is an unwise move is apparent from the quick rebuff that he received from Fennell who has politely but firmly turned down the suggestion that Hooper be replaced. Even more serious than Kalmadi’s loss of face is IOA’s recommendation that the Organising Committee should reject the panel of foreign experts that CGF plans to deploy in New Delhi to monitor preparations. There is clearly a trust-deficit between the IOA and the CGF and it is safe to assume that the relationship deteriorated over a period of time. It is significant that the CGF’s decision on foreign experts was announced at a press conference last week. Kalmadi was not only present there but actually sat next to Fennell as the announcement was made. If the CGF failed to take him into confidence before making the announcement, Kalmadi is surely within his rights to complain. But it is a little too far-fetched to accuse the CGF of “imperialism” and invoke India’s sovereign status while refusing to accept monitoring of an international sports event by international experts. The public spat could not have come at a worse time, with the Commonwealth Games barely a year away. Hosting the Games for the first time in India is a matter of national pride. But tussles between different sports authorities associated with the Games have been a sorry spectacle. Multiple agencies saddled with the task of hosting the Games should be reminded that the nation’s prestige is at stake and, therefore, petty bickerings in public are not acceptable. It is necessary to make the Games a success and the country can do without yet another controversy. |
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At a dinner party, one should not eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely. —
W. Somerset Maugham |
Whiff of fresh air
Recent
developments in education call for notice. Over the past several weeks, there have been series of discussion between the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development and an organised group of IIT teachers. Both the Ministry and the teachers have given evidence of flexibility. This is gratifying. It is debatable whether the IIT teachers were right in going on a hunger strike. But the whole discussion was conducted in a give and take atmosphere. This is as it should be. So far, the Ministry used to take the position that on certain matters, theirs was the last word and there was no room for further discussion. That air of arrogance is gone and now there is a spirit of give and take. What to make of it? Wherever education is going well, the atmosphere is always one of give and take. Both parties take the position that this much is possible but more than that is not possible. There is no air of threat or intimidation. And that is how it has to be. Secondly, it is the IIT teachers who took the initiative. In terms of numbers, they are around 50,000 whereas the university and college teachers are around four lakh. Why the latter have not spoken so far is difficult to answer. But this much is clear that the leadership at the moment is with the IIT and IIM teachers. It cannot be said that all of them are outstanding. But a large number of them are above the average category. In this way, the leadership of the teaching profession was narrowed down to the IIT and IIM categories. It is a welcome development. It cannot be said that the university and college teachers are not with this or the other category. What they think and say is important. Two more points need to be noted. First, the IIT teachers, even though they belong to a certain category, are definitely more liberal in their thinking than those who belong to the ‘affiliated’ package. Secondly, most IIT and IIM teachers have generally gone abroad and a large number of them have studied there. Therefore, they know what they are talking about. If there is demand for flexibility of operations, they know what they are talking about. So far the officials took the position that it was for them to ensure that nothing went wrong. This worked to some extent at the lower levels of operations but not at the higher levels. If somehow one category of teachers learnt to understand the other and evolve a common line of approach, it would be the ‘near-ideal’ position where decisions are made by the teachers and the official difficulties are mentioned but not insisted upon beyond a point. But those difficulties would be real ones and not an attempt to shut out further discussion. In respect of every important development in higher education, the right things would be said by the teacher leaders. The job of the officials would be to see that all the difficult things are taken care of. Indeed, the teachers ran the show and what the government did was to fall in line with the teachers’ line of thinking. Till recently, this was treated as not the done thing. Now the atmosphere is beginning to change, implying a change for the better. What has been stated above is true to an extent but the real issue has to be seen a little more clearly than before. To look forward to the future, the decisions will have to be made by the teachers and the government will play a supportive role. Two other points may be made here. The Ministry’s basic job — both at the Centre and in the state level — is to ensure that the goals are formulated in consultation with the teachers. In plain word, the two main jobs of the government are, one, to provide the requisite funding and, two, to ensure that the task of assessment and accreditation is carried out regularly, professionally and without any hitch. This implies that once the standards are laid down, the government sits back to ensure that the job has been done by the teachers and not by the government. In other words, both the release of funds and the assessment of what has been done is a job which only the government can do and has to do. Secondly, there is lack of clarity about the levels of instruction and attainment. As recognised by most people, out of the existing number of teachers, between one quarter and one third are either not clear about it or can perform better if they were given the chance to do it. The rest of them do not function at the advanced level. That is because of confusion between the concepts of vocationalisation and advanced study and research. This lack of clarity needs to be recognised. For over six decades, college education has been what was inherited from the period before 1947. After we became independent, we just kept on expanding. There was no attempt to differentiate between what was being done and the level and range of vocationalisation which were required to be initiated. The examples of the UK and the US are there for everyone to see. In both countries, almost half the students opt for vocationalisation. Someone had to take the lead and change things. Marginal changes were made but no more. The rest of the job was done by the introduction of the computer and about two million jobs were created. This is not going to happen again so easily. If things go on as they are doing, there will be unemployment. And the system has to be recast. Even when that is done, a large number of ‘affiliated’ colleges will have to be shut down and remodelled. Once that happens, the question of parity of pay scales will become more and more urgent. Those in the professional category of teachers do understand the problem but more and more people should understand it. Changing the system is the real job of the new HRD Minister and others. While the Minister has been able to identify the better performing category of teachers, those who were not performing well have not been neglected either. We need to distinguish between the two categories. If the minister can work out an appropriate level of understanding by the professionals, teachers will recognise that in the new phase of instruction, a clear distinction between vocational and higher levels of education will have to be worked out, implying that the university and college teachers should reconsider their future. Will they do it? Such a possibility does exist and it needs to be explored. The Minister’s place in history will be determined by how efficiently and painlessly this will be
done. The writer is a former Vice-Chancellor, Punjabi University, Patiala |
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Chicago’s Nobel Obama
The
recent winning of the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize by Barack Obama may have further surprised and humbled him, but his hometown Chicago — known as the ‘windy city’ for its boastful people — may not be so sedate. It would have certainly celebrated the event with greater flamboyance, than Obama’s, “…this is not how I expected to wake up,” especially on a day when it was the family dog Bo’s birthday! In Chicago the iconic image of Obama as its favourite son, in the line of its historic senators like Abraham Lincoln —rests endearingly on him. The Obama memorabilia, legends and trinkets are hot items of the local tourism. Obama’s house in the city’s Kenwood area, close to the famous University of Chicago campus, is now as much a must-see, as is the city’s Sears Tower. I combined my darshan of the Obama house along with a visit to the famous Frank Lloyd project Robbie House adjacent to it. The Obama house turns out to be a modest, one of the numerous Georgian architecture town houses built in of the 30s Chicago. In contrast to the façade, the rear side takes the shape of a Tudor castle with turrets, sloping roofs and a small portico. There is no signboard indicating the house’s celebrity status nor is there any visible security paraphernalia — unlike the Indian VIP mansions! It sits quietly, much like its owner, as a contrast to the razzmatazz of Chicago’s flashy lifestyles. One of the most eye-catching ads of the ‘Obama tourism industry’ are its bicycle and Segway tours of locations flashed as “where Obama and Michelle first met,” where he proposed -and most audaciously, where they first kissed! If you are not getting seduced by any such baits; then better watch out for the Obama T-shirts and his life-size cut outs. There is usually queue at the souvenir shops to pose for a photograph along with a cardboard Obama. When I posed with the very tall, lanky President; my podgy frame came out a bit like the latter of the Laurel & Hardy duo. But one man who really gives ‘Obama tourism’ a run for its money is Al Capone. And the latter is surely the winner! Even I fell for the legendry Mafia gangster, immortalised by the Hollywood movies. If one thing I couldn’t afford to buy; was the package offer of a Al Capone hat, cigar with cuff links and the Mafiosi dark glasses. I ended up — as I usually do on travels; buying a book on the subject. Back home, the copies of the Obama’s Audacity of Hope rests peacefully with the Capone biography. Maybe, I should now change the order of Chicago’s noble and the
notorious. |
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UP refuses to record deaths during childbirth
Uttar
Pradesh has the highest Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) in the country. The state contributes one-fourth of the maternal deaths in the country. Still, on paper, all has been fine in the state since 2005. Like an ostrich, the state has refused to register maternal deaths for the last four years. Having the worst civil registration record in the country, the state has repeatedly been singled out for poor performance in the annual National Conference of Chief Registrars of Births and Deaths. The latest report of the Indian government on civil registration released in March, 2009, covering a backlog of nearly 10 years between 1996 and 2005, reveals that the Uttar Pradesh government has not submitted regular and reliable information on births and deaths to the Central government since 1996. Despite repeated directives issued to the Uttar Pradesh government at the annual conference and the host of commitments made by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Registrar to improve the situation, many districts of Uttar Pradesh continue to have ‘zero’ birth and death reporting and registration. An official from the Registrar General’s office stated that the Uttar Pradesh government had almost consistently defaulted on providing timely annual proposals for implementation of the civil registration system. Even when the Central government has released funds for implementing the proposals, “it is a perennial problem with UP that they say they cannot give us a consolidated statement of expenses (showing utilisation of funds for civil registration) – and then the Finance Department here cannot release funds on time. This has been happening almost consistently since 2001,” said the official. This glaring gap in the state, which clearly refuses to recognise the problem, leave alone address it, has been pointed out in a research report of the Human Rights Watch “No Tally of the Anguish: Accountability in Maternal Health Care in India”. The report is based on field investigations and consultations with key stakeholders between November 2008 and August 2009. Uttar Pradesh was chosen as a case study because being the most populous state, it accounts for the highest number of maternal deaths in India. It is also one of the several states that had issued a 2004 government order seeking investigations into maternal deaths. However, as the report notes this crucial UP government order has been notoriously violated. The state government’s executive order had made the medical cause of death certification mandatory in many hospitals. Quoting an official from the Registrar General’s office, the report says, “the situation in UP is very grim. Only 0.7 per cent of the total registered deaths were medically certified. Until 2004 the UP government had submitted data under the MCCD scheme only for four hospitals from the entire state even though their government notification covered more hospitals. From 2005 there has been no data at all”. Many activists and government officials feel that one of the key reasons for the non-implementation of the 2004 maternal death audit government order is misunderstanding about the purpose of such an exercise – the fear that the audit seeks to find fault for maternal deaths rather than investigate systemic causes. This perception of reporting and investigating maternal deaths as a performance indicator is perhaps responsible for no government official being able to give any detailed example of inquiries and their outcomes following the 2004 order to the researchers. Only one district medical officer cited an example of a maternal death in a primary healthcare centre in September or October 2008. In that case an inquiry was held, resulting in the suspension of the medical officer and nurses concerned. A fear of inquiries, disciplinary action and attacks by patients’ relatives also creates an environment that threatens free reporting. One staff nurse who was suspended without an inquiry said, “I’m naturally scared of reporting a death. I am only human. Over here if something goes wrong, they will first suspend and only then will they find out if we did anything wrong.” Even within the state significant disparities based on income, caste, place of residence and many such arbitrary factors exist. Caste-based discrimination not only adversely affects the access to health care but also affects the reporting mechanism. A 2007 UNICEF study in six northern states showed that 61 per cent of the women who died during pregnancy and childbirth belonged to Dalit or tribal communities. As an activist from Vanagana, an NGO working against caste-based discrimination in Chitrakoot, said that in her area there was one anganwadi worker, two Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) and an Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) – all belonging to upper castes. None of them visited the village because they considered the Kols inhabiting the region as untouchables. In a village visited by the Human Rights Watch research team women belonging to the Dalit community described how the ANM from the Mishra community (Brahmin) visited their village only during the polio immunization time. “Even when they come, they bring someone else who is a Dalit. He is the one who gives polio (drops). The nurse is a Mishra, so she would not touch our children. They only come in the morning to write numbers on our houses and then will record in their registers where polio (drops) were given”. The report “No Tally of the Anguish: Accountability in Maternal Health Care in India” amply demonstrates a complete lack of political will to address the issue of maternal deaths and a devious collusion between state-level and district health officials not only to deny these dying women their basic human right to survive but also the dignity of making their death part of the official
statistics. |
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Official machinery has got used to violence A
Dalit, a cow and a poor man are three symbols that have emerged on the Indian horizons in recent years as three different forces are struggling to expand the network of their influences. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi is seeking on a political platform to reach the grassroots through the Dalits while the Hindutva forces are seeking space on the cultural level by turning the cow once against as their symbol of appeal. The Maoists are fighting for a larger space on the socio-economic level through their guns for the cause of the rural poor. Rahul Gandhi has, through his numerous visits to Dalit homes in his chosen battlefield of Uttar Pradesh, so far not revealed what he has in his mind to do about the Dalits except sharing their moments and their meals in a token gesture of his concerns for them. He does not reveal whether he is programming to satisfy their needs or he would like to kindle desires in them. As Acharya Rajneesh explains in his treatise on Tao, needs can be satisfied easily as they are physical but desires are difficult to satisfy as they are mental and for future. Kanshi Ram had toiled for twenty years with his social mobilisation of the Dalits to arouse them to regain the ego to give them confidence to face the immediate. He talked of their needs but not of their ambitions. Mayawati kindled their desires by winning majority single handed in the Uttar Pradesh assembly and formed the government. The Dalits delivered a jolt to her during the last Lok Sabha elections by sending a message that she had not understood the secret of what her mentor Kanshi Ram was attempting to do. She could not use them for mobilising her needs for resources to perpetuate the self in power. That message was interpreted by advisers of Rahul Gandhi that his earlier visits to the Dalit home had earned rich dividends and the Dalits had returned to the Congress to give it unexpected 21 seats in the Lok Sabha. His visits and his promises do raise expectations but the question is whether he has political machinery at his command to ensure the delivery of his promises? Can he mobilise the administrations to respond positively and with commitment? Doubts have been raised about the efficacy of his methods by a young tribal woman Champa of Bastar district when she expressed her disappointment that no follow-up work was taken up on Rahul Gandhi’s promises during his visit to their village. He might blame the Mayawati administration for standing between his promises and its fulfilment but that would not help in expanding his network of influence on the political level. He also needs to understand that the Dalits in other states have not read the message he is conveying with his visits to the Dalits in his chosen region. The Sangh Parivar has concluded that the Ram temple card had its successful run and cannot be repeated any more. So they have gradually begun to return to their original symbol cow for expanding their network of influence on the cultural level though they must also realise that 2010 is not 1966 when cow was an appealing symbol because it helped in identifying the enemy as one that was interested in harming the sacred symbol for the immediate daily need of meat. So this route also has a limited appeal. The future of the Bharatiya Janata Party depends entirely on its performance in the assembly elections in three states currently on. Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat has already unsettled the leadership by his dictate that the old leaders in the party must pave the way for the young leaders to take over. Can the change of drivers make it run faster when the engine is already spluttering? It has already lost the dynamic force necessary to propel the engine smoothly. For three decades it ran merely by the presence of its two leaders — Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishan Advani. No third leader could reach their level of acceptance. Bhagwat has merely suggested change of the driver and not replacement of its engine that could be in tune with the fast-changing times and perceptions of the people. The young generation is now transformed with new aspirations due to education and a revolution in the means of communications. Their definition of enemy has undergone a metamorphosis and a religious symbol is no more valid. In any case, the bulk of milk production comes not from the cow but from the buffalo. Apparently the new Naxal groups that have penetrated their network in ten states have refused to learn from the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ideal of equitable distribution of resources cannot be achieved by destroying creative assets. It can be achieved only through empowering others who have no creative assets or means. Through violence based on socio-economic inequalities, they are merely sowing seeds of hatred that would take a long time to overcome. Violence always seeks enemies and has a habit of turning to others when one enemy falls. The Taliban turning against Pakistan, the main instrumental character in its creation is a classic example that needs to be understood by those who are engaged in seeking a solution of socio economic inequalities by training their guns at those who have amassed assets beyond their needs and refuse to share them with the weaker sections. The state retaining absolute power of intervention in every economic activity in the country had not only stifled creativity but also turned the administration corrupt which, in turn, made it totally inhuman and insensitive. The need is to sensitise the delivery system and humanise those who are assigned to operate the system. The killing of a few policemen cannot terrorise the law enforcement agency into a sensitive and responsive machinery. It can lead to its extracting a heavier price from citizens. It was seen in Punjab during the days of terrorism. The three forces are not new. They were always there with old methods. The tragedy is that politicians are not willing to change their methods. Their responses are also age old because they cannot think out of box as they depend heavily on the bureaucracy that believes in the use of force as the only means of
security. |
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Feminism made women miserable? A recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” shows that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Ariana Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant “I told you so!” On Slate’s Double X Web site, a columnist concluded from the study that “the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s gave us a steady stream of women’s complaints disguised as manifestos ... and a brand of female sexual power so promiscuous that it celebrates everything from prostitution to nipple piercing as a feminist act — in other words, whine, womyn, and thongs.” Or as Phyllis Schlafly put it: “The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy. ... Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.” But it’s a little too soon to blame Gloria Steinem for our dependence on antidepressants. Three things need to be pointed out about the Stevenson and Wolfers study: one, that there are some issues with happiness studies in general; two, that there are some reasons to doubt this study in particular; and three, that even if you take this study at face value, it has nothing at all to say about the impact of feminism on anyone’s mood. For starters, happiness is a slippery thing to measure or define. Philosophers have debated what it is for centuries, and even if we were to define it simply as a greater frequency of positive feelings than negative ones, when we ask people if they are happy, we are asking them to arrive at some sort of average over many moods and moments. Maybe I was upset earlier in the day after I opened the bills, but then was cheered up by a call from a friend — so what am I really? As for the particular happiness study under discussion, the red flags start popping up as soon as you look at the data. Not to be anti-intellectual about it, but the raw data on how men and women respond to the survey reveal no discernible trend to the naked eye. Only by performing an occult statistical manipulation called “ordered probit estimates” do the authors manage to tease out any trend at all, and it is a tiny one: “Women were one percentage point less likely than men to say they were not too happy at the beginning of the sample (1972); by 2006, women were one percentage more likely to report being in this category.” Happiness is, of course, a subjective state, but suicide is a cold, hard fact, and the suicide rate has been the gold standard of misery since sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote the book on it in 1897. — By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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