P A G E
Thursday, April 8, 1999
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E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Thursday, April 8, 1999 |
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A depressing conference
FLAW
IN EDUCATION SYSTEM |
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INS:
protecting the interests of newspapers
Housing
for poor, women’s parity is her goal
Meet
the champ
Save your cotton |
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A depressing conference DEFENCE Minister George Fernandes is a twice-born maverick. Even so his Press conference on Tuesday was scripted for disaster. It was on a subject from which he should have kept himself severely away; it was at a time when he should have tried to lessen the impact of the controversy and not heighten it. Finally, he tied himself up in knots and for good measure came out with a damning confession. The Minister obviously wanted to rebut the several charges the sacked Navy chief has made against him. He has suitably calibrated his voice to be shrill, his tone angry and his gestures demonstrating his outrage. He was also surrounded by his two trusted ministerial guards, Mr Pramod Mahajan and Mr Kumaramangalam. But his facts were as usual weak and that led him to contradict himself. At one place he casually said that the former Navy chief was never a security risk! This remark contradicts not what Mr Vishnu Bhagwat has said, but what the Prime Minister has claimed soon after the dismissal and what he himself said in an interview to a weekly. So much for effect. Mr Fernandes coyly refused to name the most sensitive project which the villain in Mr Vishnu Bhagwat jeopardised, but every reporter freely referred to the Sagarika submarine project which is the brainchild of the former Navy chief and on which there are more than 700 articles on the Internet. What the former Admiral did was to correct wrong press reports on the differences of opinion between the Naval Headquarters and the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry wanted to continue with a retired naval officer as head of the project and he wanted a serving officer. His reason? There had been no progress and he wanted the Naval Headquarters to have tighter control over the project. The charge about his tampering with the service records of a senior officer (Vice Admiral Contractor) has already been held baseless in a 14-page report by the Naval Headquarters. One sentence of Mr
George Fernandes will haunt him for a long time. He has
said that 20 boys and girls have been living in his house
in Delhi for the past seven years and their upkeep is the
responsibility of the United Nations. Obviously, he means
the UN Commission for Refugees. Unarguably, they are
Myanmarese insurgents and have sought shelter in his
official residence. His love for “insurgency”
in that country is well known. So is his opposition to
Operation Leach, the combined Services drive against gun-
running in the Bay of Bengal. The three Service chiefs
had politely rejected his orders to lay off the ships
ferrying arms to whatever country it was. It is known,
and there are official records to support it, that the
arms were for the Karen insurgents in Myanmar and again
it is known that since Independence this neighbouring
country has been a regular conduit for arms to all kinds
of rebels in north-eastern India. Even now insurgents
cross the border, collect weapons and walk back to take
on the Indian Army. Constructed thus, the trail from the
Defence Minister’s residence may end at the
Indo-Myanmar border. All this may be untrue and a product
of fevered imagination. Given the present ugly mood,
somebody will read too much into it and drag the
perpetually angry Minister deeper into the Vishnu Bhagwat
morass. |
A social revolution SHARING one’s joys as well as sorrows with everyone around has been a tradition all over the northern region, particularly in rural areas. It is not uncommon to see people inviting each and everyone in a village to a wedding or other such festivities. While this custom, which is called “chulha nyoond” in local parlance, was in keeping with the conventional wisdom that “joy shared is joy doubled and sorrow shared is sorrow halved”, it played havoc with the host’s financial condition. After all, inviting the entire village can mean spending a substantial amount on feasts and festivities. The custom soon degenerated into mindless ostentation, where very few who could really afford it practised it willingly, while the rest suffered it only because they wanted to keep up with the Joneses. All attempts to stop such practices failed because when the government tried to do so, it was taken by the people as interference in their personal matters, and when militants tried to do so, they used brutal force which resulted in a reaction. But what could not be accomplished by outsiders is now being implemented by the villagers themselves in the Malwa region of Punjab through panchayats. The catalyst is the extreme poverty of some of the people following repeated crop failures. It is these people who were the worst victims of the malpractices that had earned acceptability and respectability over the years. Imagine a poor farmer inviting the entire village at the time of the wedding of his daughter or distributing sweets when she came back from her in-laws’ house for the first time! This had become a point of honour for almost everyone. Those who could not afford to do so even pawned the family jewellery or the land to complete the ritual. It is common knowledge that farmers used to take loans for buying tractors or buffaloes but spend the money to marry off their sons or daughters “in keeping with their status and standing”. Everyone used to grumble about the backbreaking burden but none did anything about it, because nobody wanted to bell the cat, as it were. It goes to the credit of the panchayats that these have initiated steps to slash down unnecessary expenditure. As a Tribune report mentioned on Tuesday, panchayats of certain villages have passed resolutions that no resident shall eat food, sweets and snacks and even take tea at the girl’s house during marriage. Those living in cities
may not fully realise the sanctity that is attached to
the writ of the panchayats. More than the fear of the
fine that can be imposed, there is the risk of the social
boycott that a panchayat can order. One is reassured
about the success of this laudatory move because it
reflects the collective will of the people. Seen as a
whole, Punjab seems to be a prosperous State but in
recent years, indebtedness and poverty have increased to
such an extent that many people have been forced to
commit suicide. Driven to the wall, Malwa has taken the
lead in bringing about this social reform. Now it is for
the entire State — nay the entire region — to
emulate it. And the role of panchayats need not remain
confined to this particular reform. Many other evils like
drinking can also be tackled at the panchayat level.
Since the panches and sarpanches are from the same milieu
as the residents of the village, they know the problems
and the requirements of the people like no outsider can.
The government on its part should keep itself in the
background, only to the extent of strengthening the
panchayats. That will be real democracy and real
panchayati raj. |
Kiran Bedi’s agenda IN a manner of speaking Tuesday was Mrs Kiran Bedi’s first full day in office as the top cop of the Union Territory of Chandigarh. More importantly, it must have been the first full day in office in a long time for some of the law-keepers who are expected to assist her in implementing the agenda she unfolded at her first interaction with the media. She does set a cracking pace leaving others panting for breath. For Chandigarh, her posting is not just another top-level change concerning only the high and mighty of the land. Ever since Mrs Kiran Bedi walked out of the Indian Police Academy as the first woman officer of the country she has built for herself the reputation of a hyperactive doer and a do-gooder. All the “old jungle sayings” about the Phantom can be applied to her to make the universally popular fictional character come alive in flesh and blood. Why the people of Chandigarh expect so much from her is because of her amazing ability to reach out to even those who normally get lost in the crowd. Mrs Kiran Bedi has said that crime prevention and enforcing respect for traffic rules would be on the top of her list of priorities. However, she should not make the mistake of brushing under the carpet the rather heavy baggage of unsolved cases — including instances of heinous crimes normally not associated with Chandigarh. Of course, she has vast experience in traffic management and it should not take her long to identify the factors which have turned Chandigarh into a driver’s nightmare. On the page on which Chandigarh Tribune has reported her first day in office is another news item about a 12-year-old boy crushed to death by a truck in Sectors 45-46. This should prompt her
to go through the recent record of fatal road accidents
in what still wants to be known as the City Beautiful.
She should then compare the situation say with Lucknow
where an average road-user usually meets with several
accidents in a single day, but the volume and the
preponderance of slow-moving vehicles make only a few
cases worth reporting to the police — that too for
filing insurance claims for the nick or dent in the
vehicles. In Chandigarh most road accidents are serious
because of the wide open roads. It should not take her
long to notice the absurdity of having three separate
speed limits — between 65 and 45kms — for
different categories of roads. This is an invitation to
disaster. Chandigarh is a small city and driving at the
top speed of only 45 km takes not more than 15 minutes to
cover the distance between two ends. In Western countries
streetlights indicate the beginning of the built-up area
where the top speed limit is 45 km and the blowing of
horn is prohibited. Mrs Kiran Bedi would be doing the
parents of spoiled children a good turn if she were to
launch a special drive for smoking out the under-aged
“baba log” with valid driving licences. All she
has to do is to walk into any school and confiscate the
scooters and motorcycles of students. In fact, she should
suggest an amendment in the Motor Vehicles Act making
plus two an essential qualification for obtaining a
driving licence. It would serve the twin purpose of
pushing up the literacy level and bringing down the
incidence of under-age driving — which is as
dangerous as drunken driving. |
FLAW IN EDUCATION SYSTEM EVER since Independence, we have been demanding radical changes in the system of education, but things have been going from bad to worse despite some efforts made to improve matters. Our term of reference is that university education promotes excellence in teaching and research. The avenging force of the fact is that the standard of research maintained at the M.Phil and Ph.D levels in the universities, particularly in humanities, is totally unsatisfactory! However, there are notable exceptions! In Jawaharlal Nehru University the standard of research in history is equal to that of any good university in the West. In higher education our measure of quality is international standard. The Jawaharlal Nehru University experiment has succeeded by evolving a system of conducting regular seminars in which the interaction between teachers and students is quite intimate, and the students’ assignment is subjected to close analysis. This system is akin to the mode of continuous supervision conducted at Cambridge and Oxford which have followed tenaciously the tutorial practice for over a century. In these two universities the ratio between the teachers and the students is 1:1, and the teacher is well-paid for his supervision by the university. The success of the system lies in cultivating in the student a continuous practice of writing on specific themes connected with his research. Francis Bacon had wisely said that writing makes the exact man. It is the lack of writing practice that has done immense harm to the promotion of excellence in research. In the early sixties Dr V.K.R.V. Rao, Vice-Chancellor, Delhi University, had set up a separate tutorial building on the campus for postgraduate tutorial work. Initially, things went on well as they do in the country, but gradually enthusiasm waned, and the whole experiment failed and was abandoned. The lynchpin of any excellence in research is a rigorous tutorial work which is the crying need of the hour. As a people we are blessed with possessing such infinite patience that we continue to tolerate things as they go by without realising the need for drastic charges in the system that harms us. However much we may blame the Union or the state governments for lack of providing adequate funds and the University Grants Commission for its apathy, we cannot by any means exonerate the responsibility of the teacher in the maintenance and promotion of academic standards in higher education. Teaching is perhaps the most moving of professions. It is not a career, but a mission, and taken to not by necessity but voluntary choice. What is important for the teacher is not only what he does to others, but what he does to himself — how he wrestles to learn, enquire, search and research, and makes earnest efforts to reach the higher sophisticated level of originality in research. Some of the educational philosophers had set the highest standards of teaching. Socrates (469 BC- 399 BC) continues to be regarded perhaps as the greatest teacher of mankind. Indifferent to worldly success, dressed in old shabby clothes, and bare-footed, Socrates exemplified the finest Athemanian social culture. He regarded clear thinking as the most important requisite for knowledge and right living. He met his pupils at any place of public resort whom he questioned and suggested the right path to real knowledge by cross-examination. He cultivated in his pupils the habit of ratiocinative analysis, and it was his moral and intellectual influence that worked on Plato to make him a great philosopher for all time to come. In India too we have had a long well-established tradition of close teacher and pupil interaction, most intense in the Bhagavada-Gita in which Arjuna asked some difficult questions which possess even now universal validity, and Krishna expelled his doubts in order to fight for a righteous cause. Indifference to worldly success and disinterested pursuit of knowledge marked the distinctive features of the world-view of Archimedes, the great physicist and geometrician (287 BC-212 BC) who devoted himself entirely to science and enriched mathematics with discoveries of the highest importance. Tradition has it that Archimedes was slain by Romans while sitting in the market place contemplating some mathematical figures which he had drawn in the sand. Of course, due to our infirmities we cannot adopt by any means the high austere intellectual standards of men like Archimedes. But we have to accept the reality that material considerations and disinterested pursuit of knowledge go ill together. Questions and answers are correlative. I have often felt disturbed that our students have developed a marked tendency of echoing the views of others rather than cultivate the habit of independent thinking. In my student days I saw invariably my teachers possessing their independent libraries neatly arranged in their study. But, alas, private libraries are a thing of the past! There was then an irresistible urge to buy books, but now it is extinct. There was no question of studying in an easy chair. A sitting chair, table and the table-lamp were put to use, but now this practice too is almost gone! Whatever we may say of
the difficulties that face us, I think the biggest flaw
in the system of education is the lack of proper
textbooks in English, Hindi and regional languages. Some
of the teachers have made valuable contributions to
research, but they have been indifferent to the need for
producing proper textbooks for the use of students. In
some universities novel courses have been introduced, but
the students face immense difficulty in finding books for
them, and just manage to get some “guides” or
“notes” for their examination. In the West,
textbook writing is considered a serious undertaking, and
only senior teachers endowed with vast learning and long
experience do this job. It would be a real service to the
cause of higher education if teachers take up the mission
of writing proper textbooks. This is the need of the
hour. |
Meet
the champ THE principal justification for hosting the Afro-Asian Games in Delhi at considerable expense of public money is that it would make the Indian people more sports-minded and inspire them to vie for top honours in the competitive international sports arena. Well, speaking for myself, that specious pitch has hit just the right spot for, I have become sports-minded, thanks to watching the games on the TV. India winning a brace of gold medals in equestrian in the teeth of strong opposition from Japan so inspired me that when I spied a spavined tonga pony (possibly a bey gelding out of the Aga Khan stables) standing plumb in the middle of the road, wearing a woebegone look, I gracefully mounted it and put it thru’ its paces in dressage, slow trot and canter and effortlessly cleared the obstacle course of overflowing municipal corporation garbage bins to the heartwarming cheer of a scraggly crowd of urchins and winning 10 penalty points. I have become a world class gymnast, too, thanks to the inspiration provided by the Chinese and DPR Koreans. China’s Wu-Jiani is my exemplar. When the bus speeds past its assigned halt, I take after it in long graceful strides and nearing the running board, I execute a flawless triple half cartwheel and once inside the crowded bus I do the Roman Rings, the Head Stand and the Crucifixion with the frayed leather straps with a perfect back somersault when the driver suddenly applies the brakes to avoid hitting a stray cow. Where do I stand in swimming? Well, in my cement bath-tub, with the soap stand serving as the diving board, I have closed 9.52 seconds in the 100-metres freestyle breast-stroke which, I know, is outside the games record, but I am trying to improve upon my timings in the heats. I use the bath-tub for yachting, too and gracefully sail paper boats in the windglider class, sailing close to the wind and winning a silver. I have been watching on the TV the shooting events at the Tughlaqabad Range and I have been impressed by the brilliant performance of South Korean sharp-shooters and I know now what to do the next time my wife nags me and berates me for coming home late — open stance, legs apart, shoulders crouched, take aim and shoot and bagging a silver. What do you mean, I have
to take a dope test? |
India perched on AIDS volcano IT is just as well that the National AIDS Control Organisation has decided to launch a family health awareness week from April 26 with a view to checking the spread of HIV/AIDS. India is precariously perched on top of an AIDS volcano. In what is an astonishing abdication of responsibility the Central government is showing no realisation whatsoever of its bounden duty to lead the fight against the dreaded disease, which is not just a health problem but also threatens to tear asunder the very socio-economic fabric of the country. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee recently addressed a communication to all Chief Ministers and Lieut-Governors which was full of platitudes and inanities on the need to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and social ostracism of the victims, but there was not a word about any Central initiative to control the scourge. The Centre’s lackadaisical attitude is evident. A country harbouring the largest HIV- infected population in the world, and having a central budget exceeding Rs. 100,000 crore, did not consider it necessary to allocate more than Rs 176 crore to the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) for the four-year period of 1992-96. Even this paltry sum remained underutilised. Here is a quotable quote from NACO: “Expenditure was less than expected, partly because programme implementation was delayed, partly because many states did not carry out the AIDS-related activities for which these sums were earmarked.” Enhancement in NACO’s budgetary allocation to Rs 115 crore and Rs 125 crore for 1997-98 and 1998-99 is now being flaunted as a major advance! Until the recent past NACO, despite being fully aware that there is massive under-detection and under-reporting, kept up the pretence that the number of HIV-infected people in India was about 65000. Now, however, unable to duck any longer in the face of reality, it has accepted the UNAIDS’ figure of 4 to 5 million. NACO’S figure for full-blown AIDS cases of 6693 upto December, 1998, is also a case of under-reporting. Dr Patrick Dixon, founder of the international agency AIDS Care, Education and Training (ACET) and author of “ The Truth about AIDS”, predicts that by 2005 the HIV-infected population in India is likely to touch 40 million. This is equal to the total number of HIV- infected cases in the history of the human race until now. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in India has now reached the third phase, which means that it has attacked the general population. Thousands of innocent housewives and vulnerable children (mother-to child transmission) are caught in the grip of the deadly virus. This has resulted from passivity and subservience of the average Indian female and her consequent inability to negotiate safe sex. The first phase was when HIV attacked high-risk groups like sex workers and professional blood donors. In the second phase, clients of sex workers and blood recipients were caught in the dragnet. Another perceptible feature of the advance of HIV is that it is now spreading its tentacles increasingly to the rural areas and tribal pockets from urban epicentres. During the period 1986-93 the urban-rural ratio for HIV infections was 4:1. Since a cure for HIV/AIDS remains elusive, emphasis will have to remain on prevention through raising the level of awareness. India should take a cue from countries like Thailand and Uganda and do this on a war-footing. To begin with, the budgetary allocation for NACO should be increased ten-fold. Apart from special intervention among high-risk groups, there are several general measures which recommend themselves. Billboards should be put up and condom vending machines installed at public places. For the past several months the Delhi government has been talking about installing 20 condom vending machines but till now there is no sign of them. Slides should be compulsorily shown in cinema houses. Television programmes should be interspersed by frequent warnings about AIDS. The number of helplines being run by NACO and the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences should be increased. The discovery by an
international group of researchers that HIV originated in
chimpanzees in West Central Africa should help the search
for a cure. Six Indian groups — drawn from All-India
Institute of Medical Sciences, National AIDS Research
Institute, Pune, the Indian Institute of Sciences,
Bangalore, the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric
Diseases, Calcutta, and Delhi University — are
working on an AIDS vaccine, but success is still a long
way off. |
INS:
protecting the interests of newspapers THE Indian and Eastern Newspaper Society was founded in March, 1939. Within six months of its inception it was overtaken by World War-II. Lord Linlithgo declared that India had joined the war. The IENS was drawn into the vortex of wartime measures taken by the government. A state of emergency was declared and censorship of news was introduced. The Government of India assumed the control of all newsprint supplies and distributed it on the basis of quotas fixed for newspapers. Ten per cent of the total stock of paper in the country was assigned for newspapers. The fledging IENS fought for increasing the quota and succeeded in persuading the government to raise it to 30 per cent. The central objective of the IENS was subjects like that. In its memorandum of formation it was spelt out clearly that the new body would look after the business and financial interests of the newspapers. Individual newspapers existed on their own and were susceptible to pressures from outside. The IENS gave them strength as a collective body. Newspapers realised the value of collective strength, and the membership of the society began to grow. The name of the society then contained the word “eastern” as the founders expected the newspapers of Burma and Ceylon to join the organisation. A newspaper of Burma, The Rangoon Gazette, was one of the founder-members. It was not to remain a member for long. After the partition of India the IENS became an Indian institution. The world “ eastern” was dropped at the time of its golden jubilee, and it was renamed the Indian Newspaper Society, or the INS for short. The memorandum of formation of the society was signed by five publishers/editors. It started with 14 members of which only one was from outside India. Newspapers in this part of the world were still very small, the more successful ones were owned by British interests. The British publishers joined the new organisation in strength along with the Indian newspapers. In fact, the first President of the INS was an Englishman, Mr Arthur Moore, the Editor of The Statesman, Calcutta. The circulation of the newspapers was small then and their coverage was narrow. The Hindu sold over 31,000 copies daily and the cover price was one anna for 16 pages. The Statesman of Calcutta sold 12 to 14 pages for one anna and had a circulation of over 33000. Ananda Bazar Patrika of 16 pages sold 65,000 copies a day for 2 paise or half an anna. The annual consumption of newsprint in India was estimated to be around 20,000 tonnes. Though conceived primarily as a collective body of newspapers to look after the interests of the members, and to promote cooperation in all matters affecting their common interest, the founders of the society gave due importance to the editorial aspect of newspapers. It was the senior members of the INS who promoted the All-India Editors’ Conference within a year of formation of the INS. Several editors were in the executive committee of the INS. Press freedom was not spelt out in so many words in the INS objectives. The founding members realised its value, as was evident, when the war was over and Independence came. Reuters, the purveyor of news in this country, was soon to leave. The INS drew up an agreement with Reuters for organising a successful news outfit, and the Press Trust of India (PTI) was born in 1948. Its shareholding was with the newspapers. As the INS felt that monopoly in every form was bad and would affect the quality of performance, it thought of a competing Indian news agency and the United News of India (UNI) was formed. The INS has always acted for Press freedom. In 1978 Press freedom was formally included in its objectives by forming a sub-committee within the INS. Today all aspects of the Press come within the sphere of activity of the INS. Its membership now stands at 733. The INS as a body played a role in protecting newspapers from the government’s likes and dislikes. The belief of the INS has been reinforced that economic strength is necessary to fight the battle in support of Press freedom. And this has not changed in independent India. The INS remains the apex body of the newspapers of India. In 1958 when the first wage board recommendations were accepted by the government, ignoring the protests of the newspapers, there was much unhappiness. In fact, the report was one-sided and the wage board had ignored several vital aspects of wage determination. One of the INS’s prominent members, The Indian Express, went to court and its argument that the wage board had failed to take into account the newspapers’ capacity to pay was accepted. The members of the INS had a temporary relief and the government appointed a wage committee to examine, among other things, the capacity to pay. The appointment of wage boards for the determination of wages and service conditions of working journalists stemmed from the recommendations of the Press Commission in 1956. The price-page schedule for ensuring “a level playing ground” was the Press Commission’s idea. They had proposed a price-page schedule for newspapers. This meant that the selling price of a newspaper will be related to the number of pages issued. This the INS considered would encroach upon the freedom of the Press and cause harm to the industry. By compelling the large newspapers to sell at a higher price or reduce the number of pages with attendant reduction in advertisement space and revenue would certainly harm the large successful newspapers and bring no benefit to the small and medium publications. A prominent member of the INS, Sakal of Pune, went to court challenging this provision on grounds of restricting the freedom of the Press. It is significant that the petition was moved by a paper which was not in the large newspaper league; Sakal was a defender of the freedom of the Press and challenged the government’s encroachment upon it successfully. Members of the society, with encouragement from the INS, fought many a similar battles for the cause of the freedom of the Press. The Times of India challenged a restriction to 10 pages as the limit for a newspaper. Justice AN Ray, delivering the judgement in the newspaper’s favour, observed that this was no newsprint control, it was newspaper control, and so ultra vires. A few years ago a hefty customs duty, hitherto unknown, was imposed on the import of newsprint. Again The Indian Express attacked the duty imposition in court. It was held that the government could not “tax knowledge” in such a manner and it had to reduce the duty. The Statesman also fought the Director of Advertising & Visual Publicity, who used to fix the advertising rates of newspapers, ignoring their real commercial rates which applied to other advertisers. The DAVP had to climb down and agree that it would not compel any newspaper to accept any rate forced on it. Any organisation is, after all, a reflection of the character of its constituents. Members of the INS have demonstrated time and again their indomitable spirit for upholding a cause. As the INS gives strength to the body of newspapers in India, in its turn it gets encouragement and support from the members. The then President of the INS, while protesting against the high-handed attitude of the government, gave a strike call to its members for the suspension of the publication for a day on July 1, 1986; the strike was an astounding success. All democratic governments profess the freedom of the Press. By tradition, however, they are not friends of the Press. Tom Stoppard once said that they had no quarrel with the Press. It is the newspapers they do not like. It is in this environment that the INS has performed for 60 years. As the INS celebrates its diamond jubilee today, it must not be oblivious of the challenges from the electronic media. It cannot rest on its laurels. The electronic media is growing fast. Its novelty has overwhelmed the advertisers. The print media has been defeated in speed and spectacular presentation. All the world over the growth of the electronic media has been phenomenal, and advertisements are now shared between the print media and TV. The Press is no longer the only medium. Now the Internet, the always available source of information, is also there. In the USA and elsewhere the Internet is being used by newspapers for augmenting their area of coverage. The INS will have to prepare its members to face the new challenge. The INS will have to guide its large membership in the task of improving and modernising their product, in establishing closer contacts with readers, determining their likes and dislikes, their preferences through research and surveys. It should be the INS’s job to educate its members and strengthen their efforts in facing the challenges. Some time ago INS members established a research body, RIND (Research Institute for Newspaper Development ). Not alone in technological adoption, the small and medium newspapers in particular will need help in innovation in every activity that goes with running a newspaper. The Press Foundation of India, an institution promoted by INS members and run in close collaboration with the INS, provides opportunities for training and retraining of journalists. They are the purveyors of change and progress. The supremacy of the Press can be ensured by maintaining the vibrancy of the Press. A free , a healthy and better Press remains the INS’s prime responsibility. (The author is a
former President of the Indian Newspaper Society.) |
Housing for poor, women’s
parity
MADHU SAREEN is likely to appear outdated to the class belonging to the new phenomenon of “time is money”. Or to the latest trend-setters who proudly announce that their child has entered the portals of the corporate world with an amazingly “fat salary”. As compared to them this seemingly strange woman is investing all her time still expecting no money. She has no desire for a “fat salary” either. Wait a minute, before you conclude that she must be too ordinary a woman to be offered any money at all, in exchange for her precious ‘time’. Madhu Sareen topped the examination in all five years of the architecture course at the Chandigarh’s College of Architecture from 1962 to 1967. She pursued her first love through the Architectural Association, London, and acquired a post-graduate diploma in tropical studies. Between 1967 and 1972 she worked as an architect in Chandigarh, Rome and London. And during those years with her highly rated ‘tags’, her ‘time’, of course, was money and ‘fat salaries’ at her command. Catering to the whims and fancies of the rich and designing their houses or big contracts to build corporate office complexes did not interest her. Chandigarh’s Master Plan changed her own plan for life. She began research on the Master Plan between 1973 and 1975 on behalf of the development planning unit at University College, London, analysing the planning concepts and their impact on access to housing and employment for the poor. And that totally changed her own course of life and forever. A woman who could have made big money with the kind of professional degrees she acquired, chose to use her skill to help the masses and women. The poor would never know her nor do they have to pay her fee. But when you work for the poor and women, can it ever be just doing one turn and be done with it? There are so many needs in the lives of the poor and women and Madhu has never shirked from challenges. So plugging these holes is now her never-ending profession. Madhu Sareen’s concerns began primarily with Chandigarh’s Master Plan which had no place or space for the poorest of the poor. But over the years her concerns grew from housing for the poor to women’ welfare and conservation of forests demanding her travel all over the country, Nepal, Pakistan, findes countries in Africa and Latin America. A similar task came her way during a course on gender and organisational development for sustainable mountain land use. She was also one of the four members in the BODA (British Overseas Development Administration) team to do an independent review of Western Ghats forestry projects in Karnataka. In the early eighties Madhu was involved with the deterioration of forests around Sukhomajri village near Sukhna lake in Chandigarh. Her meetings with Gujjar women of the village brought her face to face with their smoky chulha which made their lives miserable. Madhu’s architectural training helped them design a smokeless chulha based on the chimney concept. The joy of the village women was palpable. Later she conducted a training programme for women stove-builders and supervisors in Pakistan on behalf of the FAO. No wonder then that the first international symposium on fuel-efficient stoves at Beijing in 1987 was based on her experiments. Thirty years of her life in serving the under-privileged have also resulted in the publication of two books by her. The first one, published in 1982, was the outcome of her painstaking research on Chandigarh entitled, “Urban Planning in the Third World”. Her second book is, “Joint Forest Movement, The Haryana Experience”. Besides, she worked on over 60 papers relating to conservation of forestry, gender and equality concerns, wasteland development and empowerment of women, smokeless stoves,women and environment, urban slums and, of course, Chandigarh. Asked whether the change from forest conservation to smokeless chulhas was a pretty long jump... A: She breaks into laughter saying Sukhomajri is a village where gujjars had opted out of nomadic life to settle there. Their animals began grazing around Sukhomajri. Their women had to use firewood from the surrounding forests. The gradual erosion of hills brought tonnes of silt to Sukhna Lake. Thus the source of problem has been deforestation. Q: How did you get across to the Gujjars? A: The entire credit for the Sukhomajri experiment goes to P.R. Mishra. He had to fight the bosses to implement his ideas. You see, grazing of animals was not sustainable. So trees had to be planted. A small check-dam was built to store rain water and for greening the area. Villagers formed a water-users’ association of their own. This eventually stopped deforestation. The engineering proposals for desilting Sukhna lake with the help of dredgers would now cost the UT administration nearly Rs 10 crore. What they don’t realise is that these exercises would not save Sukhna lake permanently. It is afforestation that would stop the draining of silt into the lake. Today they would spend Rs 10 crore out of public money. Ten years later a similar exercise would cost them Rs 30 crore and so on. We worked with women of Nadha Harijan village and encouraged them to make jute ropes. This brought some income for them and they began planting jute in their area. Q: Why did you stop practising regular architecture? A: I was not happy practising architecture and strongly felt that there must be something meaningful in what. I do. My profession has to help me reach out to the poorest of the poor. I think I have got involved with the masses and their plight. I have always been drawn towards issues which affected the majority. When the labourers who built Chandigarh were constantly being pushed away from exclusive localities, it used to leave a deep mark on me. I felt I could not work for the rich alone. The best way out was to work for low-income housing in urban settlements. Q: What are your views about encroachers in Chandigarh and the increasing number of slums cropping up? A: You see all cities are engines of growth for they offer a far higher rate of productivity. Hence migration to cities is inevitable. We call them ‘encroachers’ because Chandigarh’s Master Plan did not perceive and cover them in planning. I personally witnessed the first agitation by labourers who built the city’s first phase. They were simply lifted and thrown away. Rehabilitation is the only answer. I am glad we are now designing houses for the Sector 25 colony. Why should Chandigarh belong to the rich only? We have to formulate policies for slums and squatter settlements. Q: What is your major thrust in the kind of work you have spread out over the years? A: My major focus these
days is equal participation of women in the growth
structure. Because of the mindset all around us, women
often become irrelevant within their own homes. While
planning forests, a women’s concern is only firewood
for her cooking while men think of timber. In Mumbai
women pavement dwellers were successfully rehabilitated.
They promptly agreed and even identified a location which
assured water supply, kids’ safety, proximity of a
school and availability of ration in the areas was there.
So housing for the poor and equal participation of women
in growth is certainly my heartfelt concern. |
Save
your cotton IT is not economical or practical for the Indian National Congress to attempt to stock cotton, purchasing it from cotton merchants to distribute it among the same farmers from whom it came, so that their women may spin. Why should the cotton go all the way from the farmers to our store only to do the journey back to the cottages from where it originally came? Even if it were not so, the efforts involved in stocking and distributing cotton would be wasteful. It would not even be practicable in any adequate measure if we remember the area we seek to cover. In those places where there are a considerable number of spinners who have no cotton fields of their own, steps may be taken to keep sufficient quantities of cotton and make it available to the spinners. Even these should, as far as possible, be induced to buy their own cotton. Decentralisation should be our aim in every particular. While stocking of cotton may be done by us in some places, our general policy should be to get the farmers to stock their own cotton. We should remember the limitations of men and money under which we work, and use our resources to the best advantage.
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