The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Unfit for humans
That is the food we feed our Army!

Life is hard in the Army. It is even harder when serving in the Siachen Glacier-Saltoro Ridge region – the world’s highest battle ground. The least the soldiers serving there deserve is wholesome, nutritious food. Instead, they have been fed rations unfit for human consumption, according to the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) of India. There cannot be a more damning indictment of the Army. Rattled by the report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the army has ordered an inquiry. That may identify the real culprits – although even that is doubtful, given the experience in such incidents in the past — but the facts of the case are indisputable. The soldiers, part of the Northern and Western Commands, were supplied atta, rice, dal and edible oil 28 months past their expiry date.

A food item remains fit only during its estimated storage life (ESL). According to the instructions of the Director-General of Supplies and Transport, the ESL may be extended to a maximum of three months subject to clearance from the Central Food laboratory (CFL). While the CFLs in Mumbai and Delhi adhered to the DGST instructions, the CFL, Jammu, granted extensions in some cases up to 28 months.

Apparently, there is widespread corruption and existence of cartels. According to the CAG, the main villains of the piece are the Army Service Corps and the Army Purchase Organisation. Corrupt officers are making a quick buck at the cost of the health of the soldiers. After all, the Army procures dry rations worth more than Rs 1,440 crore a year. Many ASC generals have faced court martial for irregularities in the purchase of rations such as meat, eggs and cereals. Such is the lure of the lucre that the large-scale pilferage continues regardless. What a crying shame! General V. K. Singh had publicly acknowledged corruption in the Army the very day he assumed charge as Army Chief and had promised “operation cleanup”. Now is the time to use the broom ruthlessly.

Wanted: PM for Nepal
Uncertainty must end for peace to prevail

Nepal’s parliamentarians are working overtime to find a leader suitable to become the country’s Prime Minister. The 601-member Constituent Assembly has undertaken the exercise of electing a leader to run the government thrice but without success. The fourth round of polls for the coveted position is scheduled for today (Friday), but the situation remains as hazy as it has been so far. Though the Maoists have the maximum number of MPs (259) with them, they need support from other groups to get their candidate, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, elected for the Prime Minister’s post. They have not been able to get allies to hold the reins of government mainly because no one is sure of their real intentions, though they are believed to be more interested in power than anything else.

Efforts are on by the Maoists to rope in the Madhesi parties, which together have 82 MPs. The problem, however, is that the constituents of the United Democratic Madhesi Front are divided over the question of extending support to the Maoists. The Maoists have reached a clear understanding with one of the Madhesi groups, the Madhesi Janadhar Forum-Nepal, which is busy convincing the leaders of the other parties in the Madhesi Front about the advantages of siding with the Maoists. If the Madhesi parties finally agree to share power with the Maoists, Nepal’s search for a Prime Minister may end today. The situation is such that no government can last longer without the Maoists being part of it.

If things happen on these lines, the Constituent Assembly, which has got its tenure extended by 10 months, can easily go ahead with the most important task of Constitution drafting. But there are dangerous turns ahead. The Maoists have their own specific agenda, which they may like to implement through the new Constitution. This is besides the induction of their armed cadres in the Nepal Army. This factor may scare the Madhesi parties away from the Maoists. The cause of peace and progress demands that the Nepalese parties must find a way to come out of the political morass in which the Himalayan country is stuck today.

Thought for the Day

His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar. — Lord Macaulay

ARTICLE

A case of dwindling fortunes
Congress graph over 14 months
by Inder Malhotra

HOW things change! Only 14 months ago the Congress had routed the Telangana Rashtra Samiti in its stronghold within Andhra in the parliamentary election. Now the TRS and its chief, K. Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR), have turned the tables decisively by making a clean sweep of all the 12 seats in Telangana for which byelections were held. The defeat of Andhra Congress chief D. Srinivasan at the hands of the BJP, an ally of the TRS, is particularly humiliating. One of KCR’s acolytes has won with the largest ever margin in assembly polls in Andhra.

What has caused this jolt to the Congress in a state that was its bastion for three decades in the past and has been so again in recent years? The high sentiment for Telangana is, of course, a factor. But that, too, is a consequence of the Congress’ bigger drawback: its inability to take a firm and coherent decision in good time. It bumbles instead into acting in haste and then regretting at leisure. Nothing underscores this more vividly than the ruling party’s twists and turns over the Telangana issue itself. Since 2004 when it included a commitment to carve out a separate state of Telangana in its manifesto, the Congress has been repeating this promise loudly without actually doing anything about it. In its euphoric and super-confident mood after the 2009 parliamentary poll, it blandly assumed that KCR was now a spent force and, therefore, the Telangana demand could go back into the deep freeze.

The rude awakening came in the winter of last year when the TRS chief went on an indefinite hunger strike and tension in Andhra became alarmingly high. On December 9 — after a meeting of the Congress Core Committee when both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh were present — Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram announced the “initiation” of the process of the formation of Telangana, adding that the state assembly would pass the necessary resolution. What followed demonstrated that the Congress leadership in New Delhi was out of touch with ground reality. MLAs from the non-Telangana regions, most of them Congressmen, vehemently opposed the bifurcation of Andhra. Forced to retrace its steps, the government resorted to the familiar device of appointing a committee to report on the statehood issue in “all its aspects”. Headed by eminent Justice Srikrishna, the committee has to submit its report by December 31. But is there a guarantee that before then the streets of Hyderabad and other Andhra towns would not again morph into a political battleground?

Its dilemma over Telangana, however, is not the only problem the Congress faces in Andhra. In this state that has sent the largest Congress contingent to the Lok Sabha, the party is in double whammy. It has to deal also with the challenge that Jaganmohan Reddy, the young son of the late Chief Minister, YSR Reddy, has so brazenly posed to the party’s top leadership. In clear defiance of the Congress president’s directive he embarked on his yatra, and used it to demonstrate his strength all the way. The 28 Congress MLAs accompanying him repeatedly stated that Jaganmohan be given “greater responsibility” in Andhra, whatever that might mean. Chief Minister Rosiah’s refrain all the while has been that the ambitious young man wants his job. It might be added that like his father, Jaganmohan is a staunch champion of “united Andhra”.

Nor do the Congress’ woes end with Andhra. The only other large and populous state that the Congress rules, albeit in uneasy partnership with Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party, is Maharashtra. Here the two coalition partners are constantly at loggerheads. NCP members are proclaiming loudly that they made a “big mistake” in conceding the office of Chief Minister to the Congress. For his part, the Chief Minister, Ashok Chavan, has not covered himself or his party with glory. At first, to appease Marathi chauvinism, symbolised by Raj Thackeray, he issued the directive that no one would be given a licence to drive a taxi unless he spoke Marathi. Only when New Delhi conveyed its displeasure did he make the necessary amends.

Thereafter, without inviting any censure from the Central leadership, he announced that he did not accept the Supreme Court’s judgment lifting the ban on American scholar James Laine’s book on Shivaji. He added that he would enact a law sustaining the ban within Maharashtra. Almost immediately, he beseeched the apex court to decide the petition on the future of Belgaum in Karnataka in favour of his state. That Karnataka could take a leaf from his book evidently did not occur to him. His confrontation with the Telugu Desam Party leader, Chandrababu Naidu, over the Babhali Dam was both unseemly and avoidable. The pusillanimity that the Congress-led Central government has shown towards the most dishonorable demands of the khap panchayats of Haryana, Punjab and western UP is shocking beyond words. The gravest crisis with horrendous ramifications is, of course, in Kashmir but its tardy and inadequate handling must be discussed separately. Not a pretty picture this, compared with the shining visions of May 2009.

One more point needs to be made. The Congress general secretary and putative Prime Minister, Rahul Gandhi, has done the party service by trying to win back the states of UP and Bihar, once upon a time Congress bastions. But this is not enough. The moribund Congress needs to be rebuilt and reinvigorated across the country. Neither the young man nor his mother has hitherto shown any signs of doing this.

This said, one must hasten to add that however unflattering the Congress-led government’s record, there is no threat to its existence. It can draw comfort from the fact that the plight of the Opposition parties, especially the BJP and the Left, is much worse. Doubtless, for its survival the Congress may have to enter into dubious deals such as the one it struck with Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati during the voting on the BJP-Left cut motion in the Budget session.

But the government would not fall and would complete its five-year term. In fact, no one wants to bring it down for the simple reason that, given the present configuration of political forces, no alternative government can be rigged up in the 15th Lok Sabha. An accidental collapse would be a lot worse for all concerned, for that would mean a fresh election that is a nightmare of every single MP.

MIDDLE

Sciences in the art of judging
by S S Bhatti

LONG ago great professionals in the fine arts were considered patently dumb in maths and science. High-tech advancement has had its toll, and those regarded higher than the artists are made judges of reality shows to prove this age-old dictum wrong.

I notice gleefully that these judges have forayed into maths—they can even write the digits correctly on the judges’ slates, even though their range is limited to a few numbers no higher than 10. They display their scientific temper when they append to the adjective “mind-blowing” the phrase “perfect chemistry” in adjudicating dance performances in which there is a pairing of boys and girls. I have for long contemplated this queer expression and come to figure out the full spectrum of sciences which these judges know but never reveal.

‘Chemistry’ is a metaphor for absolute ‘compromising’ compatibility. It means that the pair has entered into a chemical reaction from where they must enter the field of physics. Here everything physical is put to a gruelling, but pleasant, test entailing weird moves, spins, twists, shoves, climbs, et al. And before you realise what you have done, a new sadasya enters your lives as the triumph of biology.

This little one, with its incredible lung and bladder power, soon upsets the acoustics of your master-bedroom and makes it water-logged until you realise you are in sociology and must restrain your household from disturbing the neighbours’ peace. Sociology pushes you into economics where you have to struggle to earn an honest livelihood.

Soon honesty is discovered to be the ‘worst’ policy and you resort to anything to keep up with the Joneses anyhow. While all this may seem quite natural, the growth of the sadasya, which is directly proportional to the growth of your tensions, puts you in touch with psychology in the form of self-help books and the holy, or is it hollow, harangues of TV gurus.

You take to “positive thinking” and pop it up voraciously like sleeping pills and tonic capsules. The effectiveness of such treatment is illusory because deep within your condition is moving from bad to worse. Soon the time is ripe for the appearance of the psychiatrist: the fellow who has never had any ‘tryst’ with his own ‘psyche’ but professes to cure you of your mind’s diseases. So long as he doesn’t send you to the mental asylum you are a healthy person provided you pay his heavy bills promptly.

Whatever may be the outcome of this adventurous journey from chemistry to psychiatry it is not without its own unique thrills such as you never can get from watching Fashion TV, not even the reality show that got you started in the first place!

OPED EDUCATION

Children of a lesser god
Edited excerpts from the petition to Delhi High court

Around 150 students from various government schools and MCD Primary Schools in Jehangirpuri Resettlement Colony gathered and wrote postcards addressed to the Chief Justice and sought your lordship's intervention for realisation of their rights.

The campaign was organised by Social Jurist, a civil rights group in collaboration with an NGO 'Chetnalaya'.

Although the historic Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 which came into force on April 1, 2010 ensures that all children between 6-14 years have access to free and quality elementary education, legislating laws is only half the work done.

The government has made a promise to millions of children and it is necessary to ensure that concerned authorities constantly assess the factors that go into preventing children from attending school. The government and local authorities are obligated to provide schools, set benchmarks, rules of implementation etc regarding various provisions of the Act.

It is understood that the Act aims at those who are not privileged enough to exercise their 'right' to quality education. It has become crucial to inculcate equality in our society where large scale disparity prevails. Therefore, every child is equal before law and all of them should have access to the same quality of education.

The responsibility of the concerned authorities does not end at bringing such children to school, the essence of the Act is that they actually attend school and complete their elementary education.

It is submitted that many children had problems with lack of infrastructure. Most of the government schools still do not have the most fundamental requirements like fans, furniture, doors, clean bathrooms etc.

The cases of the students surveyed are telling testimony to this lack of essential facilities.

nMustaq appreciates that his school has continuous water supply; but he complains that his school environment is unhygienic since garbage is rarely cleared.

nNeha complains that their bathrooms are very dirty. It is extremely crucial to maintain hygiene in a study environment; children should not be ill and falling behind their attendance. It is relevant to submit that one of the major causes of large scale drop-out of the girl students is lack of hygienic toilet facility in the schools.

nShaheen attends classes which are carried out on the ground.

nJehangir complains that there are as many as 115 students in his class.

Another aspect that requires attention is the quality of the teachers being recruited by these schools.

The concerned authorities should have certain standards and norms for recruitment. Although a large number of teachers will be required to cater to the growing demand, it certainly does not mean that anyone who is qualified will or can become a teacher.

Teachers should be an ideal role model for their students. Teachers should be punctual and encourage curiosity. It is unfortunate that the teacher of Surraiya, Class VII, beats and hits her students.

Pravesh Kumar speaks of the indifference of teachers to gambling and bullying other students. One of the teachers of Shehnaz is always on the mobile phone while a teacher of Poonam makes them clear the garbage in school.

Every child should be encouraged to indulge in co-curricular and extra curricular activities regularly. This gives them the opportunity to develop their interest and take their mind off academics.

But it is unfortunate that the school of Kamal Hassan does not have a playground and Aslam cannot play because his playground is too dirty to use.

Another problem that requires immediate attention is provision of food at these schools. Priyanka and Firoza complain of the lack of food in their schools; they further say that those who distribute the food end up consuming more.

Many schools still do not have access to water and electricity.

Grave violations of the Act are taking place everyday. Shahnawaz was asked to take an admission test, which according to Section 13 of the Act cannot take place. He was deprived of admission in spite of having cleared the test. School authorities asked the parents of Sanjana to pay for her admission to class VI. There are many children like Rabri, Musharraf and Shahana who have constantly attempted to get admission in government schools but failed in their endeavour.

Access to education has been a constant struggle for the unprivileged and the disempowered. The State, it is worth recalling, was expected to bring all the children into school within ten years of the commencement of the Constitution but failed.

What ails government schools

n Many of the postcards were illegible and some were returned without anything written on them-proof that students are not being groomed properly and are not acquiring the required skills.

n Infrastructure remains a major bottleneck. Students ought to have access to clean water, toilet and regular electricity.

n A proper student-pupil ratio is neither determined nor maintained.

n Benchmarks need to be fixed, monitored and reviewed for evaluation of students and performance of teachers.

n Some teachers discourage students from raising questions.

n Some teachers physically abuse and mentally harass students.

n Some teachers insult the students.

n Teachers must stop using mobile phones in classrooms.

n Some teachers force children to clean the garbage.

n Some schools arbitrarily deny admission to the children.

Schooling is fine, but what about education ?
India remains at the 105th position among 128 countries in UNESCO’s Education Development Index.
Aditi Tandon

In Nilgiri district of Andhra Pradesh stands a school that can barely be called a school under the provisions of the ‘Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009’.

It doesn’t have most of the infrastructure the RTE Act prescribes as a “must” for elementary schools – a specified area, classrooms and playgrounds; it does not have qualified teachers as young tribals teach students in the local Gondi dialect ; it doesn’t follow standard texts which RTE Act mandates to ensure uniformity in education across India.

Yet, located in a dense forest, Vidyodaya School attracts 100 adivasi students who daily walk around 16 kms to get here. Most of them have dropped out of government schools where they received free food, clothes, books and everything else they needed to get schooled. But what they missed was “education”.

But now, under the Act, these children must get back to the system which has so long failed to deliver. Never mind consistently poor learning outcomes of government school children, the RTE Act depends heavily on these schools to achieve the entire goal of universal elementary education.

In the new system, Vidyodaya and thousands of other alternative schools working for marginalised communities across India, have no space despite the fact that they have thrived on innovation and produced the finest school education models for the never-served students. These schools have truly protected the child’s right to not just get “schooled” but “educated”.

The RTE Act, however, ignores the latter right. It is severely limiting in that it doesn’t recognise home-based education, alternative education or any other form of education at a place other than neighbourhood schools defined in the Act.

The law, therefore, is more like a “Right to Free and Compulsory Schooling’ rather than the right to education. This limitation of RTE was recently acknowledged by Vinod Raina, member of the Central Advisory Board of Education (the highest decision making body for education in India) who was among the drafters of the Act, which now bars all education through open schooling system.

Until now, alternative schools like the ones being run by the Krishnamurthy Foundation in South India, were flourishing under the open schooling norm that provided external certification to educating 6 to 14 year olds, whether they are in school or not.

Since RTE Act replaces board examinations by Comprehensive and Continuous Evaluation (CCE) in this age group and makes education in neighbourhood schools of minimum standards compulsory, open school certification will no longer be admissible. The National Institute of Open Schooling has already withdrawn its certification process for the 6 to 14 years group though the Government has decided to extend the certification period for some time.

Eventually, the RTE Act would sound a death knell for alternative schools including the much-respected Rishi Valley of Andhra Pradesh, whose activity-based learning kit for students is in use in 7,500 schools across India. Under the law, schools need to hire teachers with D Ed, B Ed. or whatever certification is prescribed by the Government.

Most alternative schools have teachers from the community who don’t possess certificates but know the local language and produce children with better learning outcomes than those from government schools where only 54 per cent of 11 to 14 year olds were enrolled until last year.

Half of the primary students in rural government schools are three grades behind where they should be. Percentage of children in Class V in government schools who can read Standard class II text has been stagnant at 50 for the last four years. This is evidence enough that school buildings alone can’t guarantee education.

That’s why India remains at the 105th position among 128 nations in the UNESCO’s Education Development Index 2010 – the position it held nine years ago! Clearly, 10 years of World Bank funded District Primary Education Programme and SSA involving Rs 20,000 crore of expenditure has failed.

Last fortnight when HRD Minister Kapil Sibal during his Tamil Nadu visit was appreciating the Rishi Valley-crafted activity based learning kits for schools, one of the Valley’s schools was facing closure notice from National Institute of Open Schooling’s Open Basic Education Department which said RTE mandated that students be admitted only to the formal system. No longer can these schools function despite their contribution in terms of evolving new teaching methods, developing new curricula inspired by local cultures and employing local communities as educators

With its over-emphasis on uniform teacher qualification through teacher training institutes whose quality remains suspect and on curriculum standardisation, the RTE Act, despite appearing child-friendly is actually promoting standard text book teaching. Such rigid interpretation of curriculum can cut at the root of genuine efforts at innovation in curriculum – the kind Gandhi stressed through “nai taleem”.