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Saturday,
December 8, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Chandrika voted out Well-deserved victory
Education as fundamental right |
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Criminal neglect of primary schools
Private universities: why not?
1937, Physiology or Medicine: ALBERT SZENT-GYORGYI
Parents of NRI children lead lonely lives
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Chandrika voted out A grim constitutional crisis has arisen in Sri Lanka. The electorate in the island republic has voted out the President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s Peoples Alliance in the parliamentary election on Thursday and forced her to pull on with the rival United National Party-led (UNP) coalition. Sri Lanka has a system of executive President directly elected by the people and a Parliament also directly elected by the people in the hope that there will be harmonious relation between the two. It has worked until now. But for the first time the country has opted for a different alliance for a majority in Parliament than it had chosen for the Presidency. UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe was the party’s candidate for President’s post last year and he lost by a narrow margin. This time around he has won handsomely but the old rancour is sure to resurface. With the majority in Parliament he is certain to resist the power and policies of President Kumaratunga creating a friction in the running of the government. Mr Wickremesinghe is a cool-headed leader but the President is not. Mrs Kumaratunga is haughty, arrogant and impulsive and will find it difficult to pull on with the major opposition party. Mrs Kumaratunga has to thank her confused policies for the electoral snub. She whimsically sacked a Sri Lanka Muslim Congress Minister to reduce her party to a minority in Parliament. She then flirted with the JVM (Jathiya Vimukthi Mochana) which believes in a mish-mash of extreme Marxism and ethnic purity, and tried to keep afloat the coalition. But the JVM demanded a very high price and the arrangement collapsed. She contested the latest election in alliance with the JVM but has failed to win a clear majority. Mrs Kumaratunga has earned the set-back because of her erratic behaviour and trashing democratic principles. Some of her close confidantes in the outgoing Cabinet, who have won in the latest election, have promised support to the UNP. The Tamil National Alliance, which is expected to win about 15 seats, is backing the UNP. The Tamils normally are with the Kumaratunga’s party. The electoral outcome has once again highlighted the LTTE issue. The UNP wants an early resumption of negotiations with the Tamil Tigers with the cooperation of Norwegian facilitator but the President is opposed to it. It is a rerun of what happened in India in 1977 when Indira Gandhi and her party were comprehensively defeated; but in the case of Sri Lanka the system of executive presidency shields Mrs Kumaratunga but just barely. |
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Well-deserved victory The good news is that the game of cricket is alive and kicking. Only a fortnight ago Mike Denness, through his inexplicable action against six Indian players as match referee for the South Africa-India series, had put a big question mark on the future of international cricket. The storm has abated. The just concluded first Test between India and England played at Mohali provided a glimpse of what loud protest against unjust action can do. The noise that the Board of Control for Cricket in India created over the penalties slapped on six Indian players has had a positive effect on the game. Players from both the teams were at their exemplary best at Mohali. There was a minor exchange between Saurav Ganguly and Andrew Flintoff. But the wise response of Dennis Lindsay, the international match referee for the India-England series, ensured that a minor incident remained just that and not a source of tension among cricket-playing nations. If Mike Denness was watching the match — as a former England captain he should — he would have realised where he had gone wrong as match referee in South Africa. There was the touching scene of Sachin Tendulkar using his nails for removing grass from the seam and umpire S. Venkataraghavan telling him how to do it. Credit should go to the match referee, the two umpires and of course the Indian and English players for restoring to the game of cricket some of its lost sheen. The Punjab Cricket Association office bearers too deserve a pat. The pitch and the outfield were excellent and contributed in substantial measure in raising the level of the contest. The crowd-control measures too were satisfactory. Mohali can indeed now be counted among the best cricket grounds in the world. Of course, the Indian fans could not have asked for a better game than they got to see at Mohali. The broad grin on Ganguly’s face told the story of what England captain Nasser Hussain should expect in the remaining two Test matches at Ahmedabad and Bangalore. Mohali was supposed to help the seamers, while the other two centres have the reputation of being spinner-friendly. If Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh could run through the brittle English batting line-up at Mohali with impressive ease, they should logically make life difficult for the visitors in the remaining games. The Mohali performance should effectively silence those who demand that India should also produce fast wickets for it to be able to improve its performance abroad. It boils down to saying that India should abandon its traditional strength and imitate Australia, England and South Africa. It is a ridiculous suggestion. India has produced some of the greatest spinners the game has seen. Last year Harbhajan’s splendid bowling saw world champions, in both the forms of the game, Australia taste defeat in the Test series in India. Most teams are tigers in their own dens. Why should India be any different? Yes, the board should create the necessary infrastructure for preparing conditions that would help India raise the level of its performance when it steps out of its familiar and impregnable web of spin and subtle guile. |
Education as fundamental right I
am sure that the daily wage workers, the coolies and the rickshaw-pullers have not sent a thank you note to the Prime Minister for making education a fundamental right for children in the 6-14 age group. How rude! They should be beholden to the political class for amending the Constitution for the 93rd time for giving to their children the right to free and compulsory education. However, the fault lies not with the working class. Pity the large army of illiterate people trapped in this category for no apparent reason except that they are poor and ignorant about the value of education. What they and their forefathers could not receive has been promised to their children by the political leadership that itself is largely made up of semi-literates. They would have sent a thank you note had they been informed enough of what the leaders they vote to power have done for them. But had they been informed enough, they would have first asked questions before expressing gratitude to the leadership for giving to them the right they thought they were born with. Yes, education is nothing but the activation of the process of learning. This process itself is linked to the process of living. The process of learning begins the moment the process of living gets activated. Of course, among human beings, geography, social values and religion combine to influence the process of education. In India the ability to converse in English is taken as a sign of good education. However, an illiterate person in England would end up speaking English without the advantage of going to school. For long the British treated knowledge of Latin as an essential requirement for being counted among the educated. To cut a long discourse short, by putting education in the category of the long list of usually violated fundamental rights the political leadership cannot hope to solve the problem of banishing illiteracy from the country. The exceptionally gifted somehow manage to read the book of life better than most people. Kabir was one of them. He was unlettered and yet the study of his poetry and philosophy has produced great scholars. But Indians complete their journey of life without realising their full potential because they did not have access to the tools of literacy. The latest attempt to give to the people what they should have been given in the normal course should be seen in the context of earlier attempts for making education an essential element of the process of nation-building. The founding fathers of the Constitution lived in a make-believe world. That is why they recommended job reservation for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes for a period of 10 years after the birth of the Constitution. Now spreading the reach of reservation to new and uncharted areas has become a favourite vote-catching ploy. No one is interested in putting a time limit for the educational and economic uplift of the under-privileged section of people. The founding fathers were equally innocent about the political leadership’s commitment to promoting universal literacy in the country. They put, again for a period of 10 years, free, compulsory and universal primary education for children up to the age of 14 in the chapter on Directive Principles of State Policy. No state, except Kerala, took the directive seriously. And that is why education as a subject was subsequently placed in the concurrent list. But the Central leaders proved as incompetent and indifferent as the state level leaders in realising the importance of free, compulsory and universal primary education. The political class would have enhanced the sanctity of the Indian Constitution had it plucked the collective courage to remove the entire chapter on fundamental rights rather than add to its burden through the 93rd amendment. It is better not to have a chapter than to have one that is grossly violated by those who are expected to protect its sanctity. Who is responsible for the violations of the rights mentioned in the Constitution? The State. And the government of the day represents the State. Right? If this position is accepted as correct, it would be fair to conclude that the agents of the State are to be held accountable for the violation of any provision of the Constitution. I do not know of a single agent of the State having ever been punished for failing to protect the Constitution. I would like to be educated on the subject. Do we take it that the Constitution has never been violated? The right to life is among the most basic rights — a right that cannot be taken away from any citizen, except through the due process of law, even if it was not mentioned in the Constitution. Yet, this right is denied to countless citizens every day, in fact every second, without the agents of the State bothering to prevent its violation. It should be presumed that when the State talks about the right to life as fundamental it includes the right to nourishment and adequate medical care. As also the right to livelihood. The tales of starvation deaths, that the Supreme Court has been forced to take note of, from various parts of the country point to a criminal neglect by the agents of State in protecting the sanctity of the Constitution. Add to it the figures of the poor and the ailing who die for want of adequate medical and health care facilities to complete the sordid picture of the indifference of the leadership to protecting the Constitution it is oath-bound to protect. While you are at it don’t forget to take into account the denial of the right to livelihood to an ever increasing number of Indians. Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi was quoted as having said that the effort of the government would be to create awareness among the parents to send their children to school. The Constitution needed to be amended for creating this awareness among the parents! Mr Joshi was honest enough to admit that parents would not be punished for not sending their children to school. How then will the 93rd amendment help change the literacy profile of the country is a question that only the political leadership can answer. The reason why the working class people do not send their children to school is known to all. Children, old enough to work (that means even a five-year-old child) bring additional income for the family. The poor families cannot afford to lose this source of income even if the State promises to provide free education to all. However, if the leadership really means business it should look for realistic options for spreading literacy among both the adult and child population of the country. Many half-hearted attempts have been made in the past. And several ill conceived projects too were launched. For instance the adult literacy programme and Operation Blackboard. Why did they fail to raise the literacy level of the country? The obvious reason is the lack of political will and corruption in the appointment of teachers and disbursement of funds for various literacy programmes. Government schools are run in the open or in ramshackle buildings. Some schools exist on paper only and there are schools without teachers. There are also schools that have teachers who turn up only to draw their salaries. There are also schools where girls are abused and children are made to run errands for masterji. So what should be done? Try new and innovative methods for raising the level of literacy in the country. For instance Sanjay Gandhi's "each one, teach one" programme. Unhappily, he died in a plane crash before his programme for literacy could take off. Making education a fundamental right will not work. The answer to the problem may lie in privatising the school education system. Private enterprise should be suitably rewarded for introducing programmes for attracting the children of the poor to school. Some of the recent success stories have been scripted by members of the younger generation. The ball should be thrown in their court. They will tell us how to serve an ace. Do not talk down to them. Let them do the talking. They have amazing clarity of thought and are extremely focused. We cannot ignore the bull. They see only the eye. Trust them and they will deliver. Encourage them and they will even perform miracles. |
Criminal neglect of primary schools Article 45 (Directive Principles of State Policy) lays down that within a period of 10 years commencing from the date of promulgation of the Constitution of India (January 26, 1950) the State shall endeavour to provide free, compulsory and universal primary education of eight years' duration to all children between the ages of 6 and 14 years. The key words in this promise were "the government shall endeavour". In other words the constitutional provision was permissive and not mandatory in motive. It was advisedly done that way because the Constitution had included the subject of Education in the State List. In fact, the Central Government was only trying to help the state governments in promoting education in the states especially at the foundation level. State interests in education varied between serious and non-serious and the result was lopsided development in education in the country. To obviate state imbalances in the field of education and with a view to ensuring some sort of uniformity in approach and achievement through 42nd amendment in the Constitution the subject of Education was shifted from State List to Concurrent List. Unfortunately, however, this change failed to shake off the states' inertia and primary education remained an ignored area. A suggestion was mooted in different quarters (and also approved by Nobel Laureate Amritya Sen) to make basic education a fundamental right of children although in the Unikrishanan v/s State of Andhra Pradesh case the Supreme Court had already declared in 1993 that under Article 21 education is the fundamental right of children. A Bill to this effect was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in 1997 but it could not be taken up for discussion because the Expert Committee headed by T. Majumdar had informed the government that implementation of the Bill would require a sum of Rs 40000 crore. Some quarters suggested that if the present figure of 3.4 per cent of the GNP being given to education be enhanced to 6.5 per cent as recommended by the Jacquous International Commission on Education for the 21st century and as promised by the Rao government and if additional tax realisation on account of enhanced produce is exclusively allocated to education and if states also agree to share the financial burden partly, the government of India would be able to implement the Bill in letter and spirit. Consequently on November 28, after a superficial (at least not very serious) discussion of four hours and a half in Parliament put India in the list of 162 nations which have education as fundamental right of children. The Bill now goes to the Rajya Sabha for approval which is a foregone expectation. Will the nation benefit from the Bill, is a million dollar question. The Bill is not on sure financial commitments. There are four major IFs. The budget allocation of the existing 3.4 per cent of the GNP must go to 6.5 per cent of the GNP. It is not an easy task in view of the external debt of $104 billion and internal debt of almost equal amount. The states are already financially very tight. They have not even a penny to spare. And it would be impracticable to allot the entire tax collections made from enhanced produce in the country to education. The task is stupendous. Twenty per cent of the population of the country falls in the age group of 6 and 14 years. So we have to provide for compulsory education for 20 crore children. As per the annual report of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, 1999-2000, we have 11.36 crore children in 6-11 age group and 4.20 crore in 11-14 age group in our schools. The dropout rate in Class I to VIII is as high as 54.33 per cent. If retention of children in schools is to be ensured we have to create facilities for nearly 13 crore children. In addition, the existing infrastructure also needs augmentation. This will require nearly Rs 10,000 crore every year. One wonders how the government would manage. With the proverbial "indifference" of the government towards education financial support will not be forthcoming. Another serious weakness of the Bill is blind dependence on poor and illiterate parents and hoping that they would send their children to schools. Instead of owning the responsibility of bringing children to schools and retaining them for eight years by providing needed infrastructure in the form of buildings, equipment and teachers and by making education vocation-oriented, the Bill makes poor and illiterate parents exclusively responsible for sending their children to schools. Had poor parents been in a position to spare their children for school education they would have done so even before the passage of the Bill. The government should have made some provisions in the Bill to compensate the parents for the loss of income accruing as a result of children going to school instead of petty vocations. It is very pertinent to ask what children and parents would get after receiving merely bookish education unconnected with life, their need and their inspirations. The Bill should have spelled out the ways and means of making education life oriented, meaningful and vocational in nature. The Bill is blissfully silent about the nature of education it seeks to impart. The present spectacle in government primary schools is horrible. More than 80 per cent schools are two-teacher, two-room schools sans drinking water facilities, toilets, playgrounds, teaching aids, even boundary walls. Apart from the indifference on the part of the parents because rich and well-to-do parents have nothing to do with government primary schools, they have shifted their children to the so-called public schools. The Bill in question should have addressed itself to the genuine problems of poor and illiterate people. John Galbraith, the famous American economist says: "There is no illiterate other than the poor and there is no poor other than the illiterate". Illiteracy and poverty reside in the same man. A unified war is needed to defeat both of them. Separate attacks are bound to fail. It is hoped that the Rajya Sabha when it takes up the Bill for discussion will take care of the points raised above so that the interests of the poor and the illiterate section of society are not lost sight of and the Bill really achieves what it intends to do. The writer a retired Professor of Education. |
Private universities: why not? Before commenting on the latest utterances of the man in charge of India’s education system, Mr Murli Manohar Joshi, let me set for you the backdrop. We have the largest number of illiterate people in the world. In rural India there is a desperate need for schools and those that do exist are so makeshift that they would not be called schools anywhere else in the world. In our cities and towns the need for schools is nearly as acute and even the richest Indians need to pull strings, pay bribes and do all manner of kowtowing just to find places for their children. The only world class schools we have teach not in Indian languages but in English although it is more than 50 years since the British packed up and left. Higher education standards have plummeted so even middle class Indians try to send their children abroad. There is, in short, a long, long list of things that a halfway competent Minister of Education should be thinking about. And, what is it that Mr Joshi spends his time on? History. Since the controversy over his attempts to change history textbooks became public he has been generous with his time where the Press is concerned and in interview after interview he makes the point that Indians will only be proud of being Indian if they are taught history correctly. Mr Joshi plans to seek the help of religious leaders to help him purge textbooks of anything that is offensive to any religious group. Even the truth will be purged if it gives offence so all references to the eating of beef in ancient India will be removed. What is the relevance, the minister says, of such references now when most Hindus do not eat beef. Because, dear minister, history needs to be as truthful as possible and if you can object to Marxist and secular slanting of it then why are you trying to do your own slanting? More importantly, though, should Mr Joshi be wasting time on history textbooks when he has not been able to come up with an education policy that would deal with far more serious problems? What difference will the content of history textbooks make to a country that has the largest number of illiterate people in the world? Dr Joshi, when I last met him, explained that he did not think literacy was the problem. The problem, in his view, is nutrition so as Minister of Human Resource Development he has been urging the adoption of a national mid-day meal scheme. This is an idea that has worked well in Tamil Nadu because not only did it bring children into the school system but it also increased awareness of such things as population control. In terms of controlling growth Tamil Nadu now comes second only to Kerela. There can be no possible objections to a nationwide attempt to provide lunch to school children. The problem really is that Dr Joshi seems to have no new ideas to offer. So because some earlier government thought up the ludicrous idea of making primary education a fundamental right he has gone along with it without trying to understand if it will work. It cannot. For the simple reason that poorer communities who cannot afford private schools for their children are hardly likely to consider going to court to establish the fundamental right to education. A more effective alternative would be making primary education compulsory. Countries that have achieved mass literacy have nearly all taken this route but India resists on the specious ground that as a democracy we cannot force parents to send their children to school. The truth more likely is that the government does not want to spend the money needed to build the schools but again, if you talk to Dr Joshi, he points out that primary education is a state subject. True. But, as the man in overall charge can he not come up with a policy that could be used as a model? Not only is the government reluctant to take primary education with the seriousness it deserves but it also goes out of its way to prevent private schools from coming up. You can open a shop without government permission but try opening a school and you will be asked to first get an essentiality certificate. Why? Dr Joshi may not have started this practice but he is certainly in a position to rid us of it and has so far done nothing at all. This when he should know that the only good schools in India are private. I was, recently, invited to be chief guest at the Rajmata Krishna Kumari Girls Public School in Jodhpur and came away deeply impressed. This was the heart of conservative Rajasthan where girls education is still frowned upon and here is a school that is attempting to provide modern education and encourage ideas like feminism and careers. If it became easier to start new schools many more would come up and they would, without doubt, have higher standards than the government can offer. Again, Dr Joshi disputes this and says the government’s Navodaya Vidyalayas are as good as the best. This was an idea that Rajiv Gandhi came up with as Prime Minister and if they are working well then this is to be commended but where are Dr Joshi’s own ideas? Higher education is something that comes directly under the Central Government and if Dr Joshi took the trouble to compare our colleges with those in other countries he might realise how much change is required. Fees, for a start, have remained unchanged for nearly fifty years so most of our institutions of higher education are too poor to improve their standards. Some colleges I have visited in different parts of the country are in such an appalling state of maintenance that their buildings resemble slums. Fees have not been raised ostensibly to make it possible for poorer students to be able to afford higher education. But can Dr Joshi not come up with a better way to do this? In the USA, where many Indian students now flock, more than 60 per cent of college students receive subsidised and even free education because the universities are well enough endowed to pay for this. Why can we not consider this here? Why is it so hard for private universities to come up? |
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Parents of NRI children lead lonely lives Parents of numerous NRI sons and daughters are living lonely lives in spite of having all modern comforts. Though well-off in terms of material wealth without their children and grandchildren, a distinct emptiness is all that fills their lives. Nirmal Singh, a father of three sons, with several grandchildren, lives alone, the solitary occupant of a three-storeyed 16-room mansion. With memories of the past to give him company, Singh begins his wait every day afresh for a letter or a phone call from the sons settled in the USA and the UK. Nirmal Singh is not the only victim of migration of ambitious offspring. The story with a little bit of difference is repeated in numerous homes in the Doaba belt of north Punjab, a home to an amazing 80 per cent of the NRI population. Pyara Singh, also a resident of the Doaba region, has spent some 15 years with his wife and their children in the USA before deciding to return home to Punjab, where he feels at home. Pyara Singh says there is a distinct difference in culture, in ways of life between the West and here. They can’t adapt to our way of life and we cannot forego our country altogether. He said: “They say they can’t come back home, the place is dirty, traffic is bad and congested. But we find it better
here. We have our own people and friends here.” It is time for Punjab NRIs to think of their elders they have left behind, who are lonely and want some sort of support and love from the children settled abroad. Spare a moment, spare a thought for the elders.
ANI Curry can fight Alzheimer’s disease Eating curry can help prevent Alzheimer’s disease, scientists claim. Indian spice turmeric stops people from developing a faltering memory, researchers say. US scientists found the spice built up a defence system against the onset of the debilitating brain disease. Turmeric is found in everything from mild kormas to the hottest vindaloos. And curries also have other health benefits. They aid digestion, fight infection and guard against heart attacks. Sally Frautschy, of the University of California, found that the build-up of “plaques” on the brain, which cause Alzheimer’s, was halved by turmeric. She said: “It has potential as a treatment for the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.” Richard Harvey, research chief at the Alzheimer’s Society, said “These are interesting results.”
Reuters |
“Oh man do not kill animals. Protect those animals who give happiness or are useful to people, for thereby you will also be protected. O Rule, you have received education, do not kill two-footed beings like men; nor birds, nor four-footed beings like cows and other animals, nor sheep etc. Let no one kill animals that are useful to all but protect them and make use of them to make all happy... — Yajur Veda, I.1; 13:50; 13;47 *** No animal food of whatever kind, nothing that has life in it, should be taken by the disciple. No wine, no spirits or opium should be used; for these are like the Lhamaym (evil spirits), who fasten upon the unwary; they devour the understanding. — H.P. Blavatsky, Practical Occultism and Occultism versus The Occult Arts, 10. *** If you give up meat you instantly reduce cholesterol and excess iron, lower your blood pressure and reduce your risks for over 160 life-threatening diseases like cancer and heart disease.... A substance that has no carbohydrate and no fibre cannot be good for you. But where do you get your protein from? From the same source that the animal gets it from for its “protein-rich meat” — plants. In any case the egg, meat, milk industry has spent crores to tell you that you need huge amounts of protein. The actual truth is, according to World Health Organisation, you need only 4 per cent — an amount you get even if you eat only potato and chapati! One bowl of saag or any other vegetable gives more than an entire kilo of meat — and costs much less. And remember for every gram of protein for meat you are getting double the amount in fat and cholesterol. — Maneka Gandhi,
Heads and Tails, part I:20 |
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