|
|
|
|
|
A national disaster Zero medical error |
|
|
Meeting
al-Qaida challenge
Mesmerising
ecstasy!
Preserving heritage of language diversity
|
A national disaster A land known for its natural beauty is faced with the fury of nature as floodwaters rise high, submerging homes and taking lives. The rising waters of the Jhelum, Chenab and Tawi rivers and their tributaries have spared none as they overflow the banks and spill on to the roads and buildings along the banks, and then into cities, damaging infrastructure and claiming lives. Many survivors are marooned, and an estimated 20,000 have been rescued by the armed forces. Yet many still need to be evacuated, and then cared for. The administrative machinery, the Army, the Air Force, the Navy and various other security forces have all come together to provide relief to the affected, with varying degrees of success. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done well by visiting the state and reaching out to the flood affected. He has promptly announced Rs 1,000 crore in aid for the state, and equally important, told them that the nation is behind them in dealing with the worst floods the state has seen in 50 years. He also reached out to the people of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) by offering all possible help to Pakistan, a gesture which received a reciprocal response from Islamabad. The damage has been extensive in Jammu and large sections of the state's capital, Srinagar, are now under water. Communication links have been snapped. Air Force helicopters are being extensively used to rescue marooned people as are boats manned by security forces personnel. Rain is not expected in the next few days and this will certainly facilitate rescue efforts. After the rescue will come the main task of providing relief to the families that have been devastated by the flooding, and of rebuilding areas where a lot of infrastructure has been swept away. The nation must rise as one to support the residents of the state in their hour of need, much as it has done when natural disasters have struck other parts of the country. The task before Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and his administration is an arduous one, but it can be achieved by the government and the people uniting to rebuild what has been destroyed by nature's fury.
|
|
Zero medical error Healthcare, whether in the metros with 5-star
multi-speciality hospitals or in the remote rural areas, is a nightmare. There is only one doctor per 1,700 citizens in India, much below the World Health Organisation (WHO) stipulated ratio of 1:1,000. Even when healthcare is accessible, quality is not ensured. Fewer than 1 per cent Indian hospitals are accredited for maintaining standards. Thousands of primary health
centres, nursing homes and clinics have not yet come under the scanner. Unfortunately, in the government sector healthcare is treated as welfare, which undermines the need for quality. This explains fewer applicants for accreditation to the NABH (National Accreditation Board for Hospitals) from among the government hospitals. The fact is any doctor registered with the IMC (Indian Medical Council) with a piece of land and a clearance from the local body is free to build a hospital. It is a different matter that about 14 other clearances are required to provide facilities like x-ray or a pharmacy. Several states still do not have legislation in place for the registration of hospitals; regulating quality can be a far-fetched dream. And there is no legislation in place for the need for accreditation of the diagnostic labs, a crucial link for ensuring quality in the health sector. Most hospitals work out their own set of standards. It goes without saying that quality is often compromised for the sake of profit. Making accreditation mandatory is not the only solution for ensuring quality; chances are it would end up the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) way. Several studies have suggested that the bureaucratic way of imposing laws from above without creating support from below for improving quality and efficiency of the health services does not help. Health system reforms need to take into consideration the strong lobby of doctors, which as such likes to control the accreditation process. Reforms should minimise direct government regulation by encouraging self-regulation through the association of private and government medical colleges, doctors and hospitals.
|
||
|
Thought for the Day
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
—Wernher von Braun, a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect
|
||
Paper and match factories THE Punjab affords great facilities for the establishment of both paper and match factories and attempts should be made to start these at convenient centres at the present time. The Punjab jails manufacture paper mainly for Government offices and though the quality of the paper made is inferior, its serves a very useful purpose. Moreover a better quality can be made and the same can probably be used for printing cheap books and newspapers for which paper was hitherto imported from Germany and Austria. Rai Bahadur Lala Baij Nath writing in the "Leader" of Allahabad invites attention to the scope there is for establishing paper factories at Agra, Delhi and Dehra Dun. There is not much need of large capital, he writes. "If a number of capitalists come forward and invested, say Rs. 10,000 each, the work can be started either at Delhi or Agra with a capital of 1 lakh." Punjab zamindars and the war THE Director of Agriculture and Industries, Punjab, has issued instructions to zamindars on what they should and on what they should not grow this year. He writes: "All cultivators would do well to restrict their sowings of toria and rape (sarson) this year. Owing to the war the exports of rape to Europe are likely to be small. On the other hand the prices of wheat, barley and gram are sure to be high. The Russian and Canadian crops are short and Argentine sowings are a million acres down, so the English and European demand for wheat will be large. In 1911 when the Russian barley crop was short large exports of barley from the Punjab went to England for brewing; the same thing is likely to happen next spring. Gram is sure to be wanted to Europe for horses and cattle."
|
Meeting al-Qaida challenge Al-Qaida's
call for jihad in India coupled with reports of yet small but increasing numbers of Muslim Indian youth joining the ISIS for jihad to restore the caliphate sends out a signal that cannot be ignored. The Home Minister has properly called for heightened vigilance and tightened security. This, however, is the lesser part of the threat. The greater danger comes from the openly divisive politics of the BJP and the Parivar which is polarising the nation through vicious Muslim baiting and inciting hatred and violence on thoroughly concocted grounds of so-called love jihad. None can blame some young Muslims turning fundamentalist and wanting to join the Islamic jihad if they are suspect, told that they have no future in a Hindu Rashtra unless they conform to Hindutva diktats as second class citizens. The cover pages of the Organiser and Panchajanya, the BJP and RSS organs, have this as their crusading theme. Karnataka police investigations have found most allegations to be unfounded and motivated. A CID survey showed that of 21,890 Hindu girls reported "missing" between 2005 and 2009, 229 had married men of other faiths but only 63 had converted. In that same period, many Muslim girls had married Hindu and Christian boys. These were marriages based on mutual love, a term that the loveless, hate-filled Hindutva crowd does not understand and cannot tolerate. The vicious "ghar vapasi" reconversion campaign, however, smacks of abduction and coercion with a warped ideology driving such puerile politics. The assaults on Christians, especially Dalit converts, have also increased with renewed efforts at "ghar vapasi". Madhya Pradesh has long been a worst-case state and its law on conversion, requiring permission by the District Magistrate, represents the acme of authoritarian communalism. Most Dalits convert because of intolerable caste oppression for ending which scourge the Hindutva brigade has no programme, educational, social or political, that has been pursued with any seriousness. Alas, sections of Christians and Muslims do practise caste but, everything said, conversion to these faiths remains an act of liberation for outcaste Hindus. This is the challenge, not political hatred clothed as alleged love jihad. This was not a theme Mr Narendra Modi addressed on Teachers' Day, which he hijacked to make it something of a command performance, aping Children's Day without its spontaneity and substance. The occasion was reduced to political theatre with official directives to the school authorities to ensure attendance and make all broadcast facilities, or else. The threat was there despite subsequent explanations and back-tracking. Children who could understand Hindi perhaps enjoyed the "tamasha". But what of the others who did not understand but had to sit through two hours of boredom? What did it cost schools and parents to make the necessary arrangements for transport, canopies where necessary, TV sets and electricity connections? It would be useful to calculate the expenditure entailed nationwide, state-wise or even by individual cities and schools and see how many blackboards, toilets, leaking roofs, computers, and other basic wherewithal could have been provided with these same funds. Nothing was said about the demands and condition of teachers, school infrastructure, teachers' training and better textbooks (than Dina Nath Batra's nonsense that Mr Modi has endorsed). It was a wasted and misused opportunity. The government has not covered itself in glory with the appointment of the last Chief Justice of India as Governor of Kerala. This is not to insinuate anything against Justice Sathasivam or unkindly allege that he passed a judgment favouring Amit Shah without an iota of evidence for saying so. It sets a bad precedent of disregarding any cooling off period, but more than that of undermining the prestige of the highest judicial office in the land. Nor will the government gain any kudos if it disregards the repeated defiance of V.K. Singh against the court and tribunal orders that go against him, this time in the complete exoneration of Lt Gen Rath who Singh accused of engineering the Sukna Army land scam. Singh disgraced his office and uniform for petty personal gain by thrice going back on his word to bury his campaign to prove that he was younger than he had claimed to be when entering the Army. He has since spent his time hounding other officers. The man should have been sacked earlier and has no place in the government now when, unable to stomach the verdict of the Armed Forces Tribunal on the Sukhna land case that is a slap on his face, he now advocates an appeal in pursuit of his own ego. Even as one commiserates with the people of J&K (and Pakistan) who have been stricken by devastating floods, there is reason to worry about the BJP's continuing campaign to win a majority in the forthcoming elections in J&K in November, once again through polarising tactics. Apart from the misplaced and somewhat illiterate campaign against Article 370, the party is now trying to mobilise Pandit votes by peremptorily asking the state government to provide land in the Valley for the rehabilitation of 60,000 families or about 300,000 souls who migrated under jihadi/separatist pressure. Rehabilitation is one thing. Building ghettoes is another -- and that would be the result of the Central Government's demarche. The Congress is again being unwise in shielding Rahul Gandhi from accountability and responsibility as demanded by the old guard that has at last found its tongue. The "youth brigade" and the elders have been told not to indulge in mounting public criticism of inner rot in the party. The country needs a centrist or left-of-centre party, a role that the Congress could still play. But it is unlikely to go anywhere by defending dynastic politics and refusing, ostrich-like, to see failure or fix accountability. He who takes the credit must also take the blame. The results of the 19th Livestock Census of India, 2012, now available, are revealing. The population of cattle has declined while the number of exotic breeds within that number has gone up. Bulls are being replaced by tractors and other mechanised means of haulage while crossbred cows yield more milk and are hence preferred. There is a campaign to upgrade indigenous cattle whose quality has been allowed to decline over two centuries by a foolish policy of cow protection on mistaken religious grounds. Refusal to cull surplus animals has resulted in the overbreeding of scrub animals. Our holy cows are underfed, abominably treated, a public nuisance and a threat to the forests and environment. 'Go-shalas' represent misplaced piety. When will we learn better? Sadly, the population of donkeys too has come down though those following the daily news might challenge this astonishing finding! www.bgverghese.com
|
||||
Mesmerising
ecstasy! Drop! Tiny drop comes calling to embrace the earth. Refreshing and cool. It is come after a prolonged gazing of the screwed eyes for days together at the scorching and blazing skies. Great longing and yearning for even a patch of cloud that could console the anxious hearts which come forth in intensely poignant prayers, "Baba megh de……" comes to a fruitful end. Soaking in cool showers is an experience in itself that lasts for times to come. Virtually it unites one with the Supreme. An experience felt, not said; words perhaps are too weak to express such a sublime or lofty feeling. A union of the body and the soul, the physical with the metaphysical. The rarest of the rare. This little drop spells a rare charm that echoes an orchestra. Hundreds of strings play together a unique symphony, bringing together the mind, body and soul. Surely, surely it is The Power, The Faith and The Belief that merge to display the mesmerising charm of the tiny drop. The greatest wonder of the powers-to-be. The divine moment, indeed, revolutionises the whole panorama. Rain-bathed trees present a scene worth admiring. The long wait of the farmers for rain ends enlivening their faces. Watching children enjoy doing 'charap, charap' in the puddles and running hilariously along the rivulets following their paper boats rekindles one's own memories of childhood. Splash, still more splash leads them to sheer ecstasy forgetting the schoolbag being drenched nearby. Multi-colored lehngas, bangles and romance of the rains woven on their hands with henna displays déjà vu of the fair sex. Hearts become alive with typical delicacies like 'sweet pooras' and 'kheer' with a rich feast of dry fruit. Wow, the taste of sizzling hot pakoras made by mother still lingers in my mouth. Not only the rhythmic pouring down of the waters makes us spellbound, nature itself gets heady. Its joie de vivre shows itself in the majestic dance of the peacock. Glow-worms, nature's night lamps emitting light, show the romance of the tiny drops. Colourful rainbows too join to display their inherent beauty. Certainly gods too would envy human beings living under such felicity. None can resist tasting the temptation of the delectable king of fruits……more so the 'tapka aam' followed by cold milk. Supreme bliss of the heavenly showers! Boy, I would forgo all the wealth of the world for relishing the tiny juicy mango and plying paper boats. It urges me to soak in Jagjit Singh's lines, "Voh kagaz ki kashti, voh barish ka pani…….."
|
||||
Preserving heritage of language diversity THE world over there is an anxiety about languages dying or, perhaps, language itself dying. There are several estimates for the number of dying languages, for no one really knows how many natural languages there exist in the world. But against Unesco’s assumed figure of 6,000 natural languages, it is estimated that two-thirds will perish by the end of this century, and only a few hundred will function with all their domains intact. The spectre is terrifying for whoever speaks and is human. Our century will alas be remembered by the memory chip of the future as the ‘Aphasia Century’ during which natural languages were silenced.
In India, the language scenario is somewhat perplexing. While India tops the Unesco list of “languages in danger,” with a good 197 languages having gone past the danger signal, there are about 850 living languages in sight. The People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) has identified and described 780. The PLSI admits that it may have overlooked about 60 to 80 languages that are still in existence. The survival rate of Indian languages is certainly much higher than one for the indigenous languages in all other countries that have experienced colonial domination. Alarming rate of decline The rate of decline of languages in the country over the last 50 years too is alarming, for about a quarter of the language stock has been wiped out. If we do not appreciate the complexities involved in the situation, and do not go for a well calibrated micro-planning for each of the remaining languages, the loss can easily be twice as much or worse in the coming half century. Language loss is experienced in India not just by the “minor” languages and “unclassified mother tongues”, but also by “major” languages that have long literary traditions and a rich heritage of imaginative and philosophical writings. Even in the languages such as Bangla, Tamil, Marathi and Punjabi, the younger generations have little or no contact with the written heritage of these languages though they are still able to speak these languages. This indicates the condition of a “rapid linguistic shift” in which a fully literate person is able to read, write and speak a language other than her/his mother tongue, but is able to speak only and not be able to write the mother tongue. It may not be inappropriate to assume that people all over the world are paying a heavy cost for a globalised development in terms of their language heritage. Pro-mother tongue sentiment In order to counter the rapid language shift, several scheduled languages have responded by mobilising a popular pro-mother tongue sentiment. In some cases, political parties have raised clarion calls in defence of the state language/s, particularly if the state were created as a linguistic state. The reorganisation of Indian states after Independence was carried out along linguistic lines. The languages that had scripts were counted. The ones that had not acquired scripts, and therefore did not have printed literature, did not get their own states. Schools and colleges were established only for the official languages. The ones without scripts, even if they had a great stock of wisdom carried forward orally, were not fortunate enough to get educational institutions for them.Yet, having a linguistic state or educational institutions operating through the language is not enough to ensure the upkeep of a given language. Globalised world There appears to be another and more overwhelming factors at work, and that is the development discourse in a rapidly globalising world. One notices now in India, and in other Asian and African countries, an overpowering desire among parents to educate their children through the medium of English or French or Spanish in the hope that these languages will provide a certain visibility to the children when they grow up in the international market of productive labour. This desire has affected the schooling pattern in favour of an education through an international language not witnessed in any previous era. One notices in practically every Indian village that parents are keen on sending their children to unaffordable English medium schools, foresaking far less-expensive bhasha schools. World language heritage When a speech community comes to believe that education in some other language alone is the way ahead for it for its very survival, the given community decides to adopt to the new language situation. It would be pertinent therefore to consider if there is something inherent in the dominant development discourse in the contemporary world that requires diminishing of world’s language heritage, that demands a kind of a phonocide. And, if that is the case, the future for the human languages is frightening. The communities that are already marginalised within their local or national context, the ones that are already in minority within their cultural contexts, the ones that have already been dispossessed of their ability to voice their concerns, are obviously placed at the frontline of the phonocide. Naïve argument I have heard quite well-meaning friends argue that if there were only one or a very few languages spoken by people in the world, communication would be far easier and international peace would be less threatened. This argument is not just naïve but is based on a complete lack of history. The human history is full of violent conflicts between communities or nations speaking the same language. Besides, the argument shows no sensitivity to the enormous loss of ecological knowledge that diverse languages hold within them. It would be no exaggeration to say that every word is a whole book in itself, so much does a word hold within itself if one were to unravel its history. Therefore, a complacent trashing of the world’s language stock would amount to wasting all the valuable “knowledge by memory” inherited by over the millennia of human existence. But, how at all, can we avert and arrest the massive language erosion afoot in our time? Preservation of languages Conservation or preservation of languages needs to be seen as being significantly different from the preservation of monuments. Languages are, as every student of linguistics knows, social systems. They get impacted by all other contextual social developments. Language as a social system has an objective existence in the sense that dictionaries and grammars of languages can be prepared, and languages can be transcribed, orthographed, mimeographed, recorded on a tape by way of documents and objects; but, essentially language does not have an existence entirely free of the human consciousness. Therefore, a given language cannot be as completely dissociated from the community that uses it. Quite logically, therefore, preservation of a language entails the preservation of the community that puts that language in circulation. Community’s world view Between the collective consciousness of a given community, and the language it uses to articulate the consciousness, is situated what is described as the “world view” of that community. Preservation of a language involves, therefore, respecting the world-view of the given speech-community. If such a community believes that the human destiny is to belong to the earth and not to offend the earth by claiming that it belongs to us, the language of that community cannot be preserved if we invite the community to share a political imagination that believes in vandalising the earth’s resources in the name of development. In such a situation, the community will have only two options: it can either reject the Utopia that asserts the human right to exploit the natural resources and turn them into exclusively commercial commodities, or it can reject its own world view and step out of the language system that binds it with the world view. Avoiding phonocide I have often been asked the questions “How many languages has India lost?” and “How many languages does India really have?” To me, they look somewhat simplistic. Far more meaningful would be the question: “While colonialism managed to wipe out most indigenous languages elsewhere, why is it that so many of the Indian languages survived it?” A more crucial question for us to ask and answer is, “In times when most leading technologies are language based, will not our numerous languages be a kind of a capital for us?” Indeed, if the multiple ways of looking at the relation between ‘zero’ and ‘one’, symbolising absence and presence, that our languages have developed were to be brought to the computation theory, the entire gamut of computer sciences can be radically recast. This will, however, require long years of focused research. The importance of language diversity that can more easily be understood is in the area of ecological security, as every language contains within it ecological wisdom gathered over centuries. Despite the unfortunate historical factors that have stratified our languages, we need to view the diversity not as a liability but of very essence to India becoming a prosperous nation, a great and rare asset. Do we want to squander it? It takes centuries for a community to create a language. All languages created by human communities are our collective cultural heritage. Therefore, it is our collective responsibility to ensure that they do not face the global ‘phonocide’ let loose in our time. The author is Chairperson People’s Linguistic Survey of India, Bhasha Research Centre, Baroda Minding our languages *
Every language contains within it ecological wisdom gathered over centuries. *
We need to view the diversity not as a liability but of very essence to India becoming a prosperous nation, a great and rare asset. *
The People’s Linguistic Survey of India has identified and described 780 languages. The PLSI admits that it may have overlooked about 60 to 80 languages that are still in existence. *
The survival rate of Indian languages is certainly much higher than one for the indigenous languages in all other countries that have experienced colonial domination.
|
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
Fortunately, most Muslim Indians disdain this kind of gross slander despite continuous provocation. The heads of the Darul Uloom seminary in Deoband and the All-India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat have once again denounced the al-Qaida call, asserting that Muslim Indians will not and must not be swayed by false, unIslamic teachings. UNESCO tells us that wars begin in the minds of men. So does communal hatred, which is being both insidiously and openly preached by Hindutva zealots. 
Another drop, then countless drops come down, caressing the parched lips of the earth, providing a new life to the listless life. Wow, rejuvenating drops! The mesmerising moment gives the feeling of the sky and the earth embracing each other out of sheer ecstasy. The soil exudes such rich fragrance as makes all and sundry sing like the possessed, "Umar ghumar kar aei re ghata…..", and "rim jhim, rim jhim, aei phuar."
