A tryst with Destiny....

The day before yesterday marked the 43^rd anniversary of the passing away of a man whose tryst with destiny altered for all ages the fortunes of his nation and his people. This man’s vision of the future would decide how his nation would stand in the forum of the world on almost all issues for nearly four decades after he first held the helm of power.

His foresight would lay the foundation of modern India, of its industrial prowess. His belief that education would liberate even the most down-trodden of men from the manacles of poverty and deprivation would form the base of world-class didactic institutes, whose very name would come to represent the sheer brilliance of the Indian people. His insistence on the principle of secularism and egalitarianism would give a recently tortured nation the calm that it needed to start on its journey towards greater prospects.

And yet, 43 years after his death, he is a forgotten man. Children, his most beloved of all creatures on earth, get a holiday and a treat on his birthday, and yet not many know why they are getting the holiday in the first place. The great institutes that he took the initiative to set up scarcely remember his creed and his advice to them that they must use their talents first for their nation and then for themselves. The systems that he built to harness the growth of his people have in turn become the very fetters which served to diminish their potential for nearly four long decades, and continue to do so to this day.

His party, the outfit which he nurtured to supreme power, from 1930 to 1947, which was scheduled for dissolution after independence, but which was saved by this man’s firm insistence that it was necessary to build the fledgling nation, has forsaken not just his legacy, but also his memory. His family, his progeny, those who came to power standing on his shoulders have pushed him into so deep an abyss that even if he were to try, he could not come out of it. The Family now disowns his name and seeks to establish a relationship with the Father, a cruel irony, considering that he had forsaken the Father in order to ensure that the Party would survive.

His mistakes continue to define him, irrespective of bigger mistakes made by his successors. His successes are credited to those who scarcely deserve the accolades. And today, 43 years after his demise, only one advertisement, that too hidden in the depths of a newspaper, remember his contribution to this nation and its history. He died a broken man, his dreams shattered by those whom he trusted, his vision of his nation in pieces. He would die a thousand deaths to have been ignored so by those for whom he lived his life. Kaifi Azmi very poignantly described the spirit of the man, the legend,

Zindagi bhar mujhe nafarat si rahi ashkon se 

Mere khwaabon ko tum ashkon mein dubote kyon ho 

Jo meri tarah jiyaa karate hain kab marate hain 

Thak gayaa hoon mujhe so lene do rote kyon ho 

So ke bhi jaagate hi rahate hain jaanbaaz suno

Meri aawaaz suno..

In memoriam of the man who made India the nation it is today, the one and the only,
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

Life...

What is life? Grains of sand, slowly but steadily, slipping from our grasp until such time that our hands would be left empty to show us that our time on this earth is over? Or the tranquil flow of the waters of a river, coursing towards some faraway ocean, never bothering to turn back and look at what she leaves behind? Is it the soft light of the moon, resplendent and glorious in all her beauty?

Perhaps we are living in an illusion, from which we do not wish to wake up. We wish to deny ourselves the realization that we are really dreaming, and all that we believe to be true will just vanish when our eyes open. There are so many things that we believe ourselves to have lost, scarcely realizing that it is hardly possible to lose something that one never had in the first place. Love, affection, and time are not things that one can ever hold back. And yet, we say that we lost them, due to either our negligence or our apathy, as the case may be. Maybe we lose the opportunity to do things our way, but regrets are all that remain.

Those few who read this blog on a somewhat regular basis would be puzzled as to why I have chosen this topic. I know not. Call me possessed, or disturbed, but when the heart commands, the mind must bow to its diktats.

Musings on Montessori....

100 years have passed since Maria Montessori, perhaps the most well-known educator of our times, set up the first of her famous ‘Montessori’ schools. And the appeal of the Montessori Method of education continues to persist even in these competitive times, suggesting that the method is working well.

Conventional educational methods place a lot of emphasis on instruction and ignore, to some degree, the ability of the student to grasp whatever is being imparted. The grade-system as also the marks system further places a lot of stress on performance in periodic tests rather than on overall development. These tests, while evaluative of performance to some degree, cannot be seen as the be-all, end-all of educational quantitative analysis. This may seem as a biased statement coming from me, considering that I rarely if ever secured ‘superlative’ grades in school or college.

The Montessori Method on the other hand states that children are its focus, its centre and all that it is bothered about. This focus is exemplified in its taking as the basis of ongoing curriculum development the child’s behavioural patterns and response to the current environment. Children are not viewed as inept creatures, incompetent of taking decisions for themselves; rather the Method encourages them to make maximal decisions. The very fact that the Method recognizes that children learn through discovery is a major indicator of this approach.

Basically the Method is, and I quote, built upon the idea that children develop and think differently to adults; that they are not merely “adults in small bodies”. While measurement of achievement is a must if one is evaluate the benefits of any educational process, the Montessori method has persistently refused to use grades or tests to measure the same stating them as ‘negative’ competition that could potentially damage the ‘inner’ growth of the children.

Education as such cannot be a one-size fits all method. Every individual has different potential, different capabilities and different talents. While the conventional method suggests that the needs of the larger group have primacy over a particular individual’s needs, the Montessori Method accentuates the individuality of each child. This ensures that each child feels involved and continues to enjoy learning as is natural to his/her age.

Literacy levels may be rising, but functional illiteracy levels also are rising. People may be becoming graduates, but their ability to deal with practical life skills such as domestic tasks and manners are sadly deplorable. Montessori is a highly hands-on approach to learning. It encourages children to develop their observation skills by doing many types of activities. These activities include use of the five senses, kinetic movement, spatial refinement, small and large motor skill coordination, and concrete knowledge that lead to later abstraction.

Having said all this, I am of the opinion that while our conventional systems may have worked so far well enough, this method merits a look-over. Who is to say, this may the key to our dawn, to our future?

Reference:

• Maria Montessori
• Montessori Method
• What exactly is Montessori education?

Deafening grumbles....

It is becoming fashionable again to seek State intervention in everything, right from the economy to morality to even getting people to respect each others’ beliefs. And to my mind, this is a dangerous tendency. To start considering the State as some sort of final adjudicator in our disputes, our dilemmas is to abdicate one’s own reason and repose blindly in the ‘wisdom’ of the State. The quotes are necessary because what may be wise at one juncture of time may not be justifiable in the future.

Turkey and Egypt are often touted as examples of secular states. Their devotion to secularism and their zealousness in their resolve to preserve it has been called exemplary. And yet, I have no more respect for their zeal than I have for Saudi Arabia’s theological state structure. For in their enthusiasm, they are seeking to enforce the unenforceable on their populace.

Human nature rebels against authority. It may accept it for some time, a few decades, maybe even a few centuries, and if the authority is really accomplished, even a few millennia. But after its self-determined threshold has been breached, no amount of coercion can stop the grumbling masses from destroying the edifice of power.

Even if Turkey, Egypt and their likes may state their noble intentions behind their coercive approaches, they in the end deny the basic maturity of their populaces. They take an inherently paternalistic approach to a problem the debate over which can at best be delayed by a few decades, but which is bound to resurface with double force thereafter. Paternalism, one may bear sometimes, some may bear it all the time, but not all can bear it all the time (forgive my rephrasing of Lincoln’s quote here).

Supporters of a coercive approach may state the divisive properties of religion, and how a nation can never be truly called united while its people put religion before their national identities. One hears this argument much too often in India. One presumes too much into the unitary effect of religion. And aren’t there more divisive identities that men may presume? There is regionalism, casteism (in the particular case of India) et al.

Coercion never works, especially when it comes to getting people to agree to something, and it is a miserable failure when you want it to get people to respect each others’ beliefs. Trust me, I don’t want you telling me to respect someone else; I’d rather do that on my own. Coercion makes the majority resentful of having to suppress their emotions, their beliefs in the State’s desire for uniformity. The minority stands the risk of becoming arrogant and aggrandize the resentment of their fellow compatriots. A point to note. By majority and minority, I don’t just mean religious majorities or minorities; it could be ethnic, casteist, gender etc.

Turkey and Egypt may have had it easy so far, but now their masses are beginning to demand the right to be overt about their beliefs. They are demanding the right to be seen to belong to a faith, to a system of beliefs. The struggle that these populaces find them in could lead them in either direction. Either they could become fanatics and reject modernity and all that their nations have achieved so far, or become apathetic and lose all their momentum to change their future for the better.

Secularism by coercion is a form of display of authority. The masses are grumbling. It behooves us to hear their grumbles while they are just so. Trust me, their screams and shouts could become too deafening to bear.

Offensive to whom...?

The arrest of a celebrated postgraduate graphics student, Chandramohan Srilamantula, for allegedly obscene artwork involving representations of Hindu deities et al, and the suspension of the faculty, Acting Dean Shivaji Pannikar, who ‘dared’ support him in Gujarat is a sad state of affairs.

The arrest has motivated by a complaint by a local BJP leader, who then proceeded to remonstrate his ‘anguish’ at the artist’s work by barging into the Institute concerned and lambasting the student and his supporters for their insensitivity to ‘Hindu’ sentiments. The local Government being of the same party, the Vice-Chancellor turned a blind eye to what was essentially a case of unwarranted and illegal trespassing in a private area. The ‘notable’ also chose to sit twiddling his thumbs as the police carted of the ‘offending’ student to gaol.

While public sentiments and morality may have been offended, and I stress on the ‘may’, this was not the manner in which the matter should have been pursued. No one has empowered the BJP or any singular political party to behave as the moral code enforcement brigade for anyone. For one thing, I was unaware India ever had a singular moral code which could be enforced in this manner. Morality is a matter of personal beliefs, and should be ideally left to the individual to deal with in his/her personal domain, rather than be mandated by the State or by anyone aspiring to such a status.

The BJP leader, in his zeal et al, conveniently forgets the temple complexes at Khajuraho, which depict the same Hindu deities in perhaps the same poses which he finds objectionable today. Maybe he will tomorrow have them demolished as well?

Hinduism per se doesn’t have a code of acceptable virtues and unacceptable behavior, at least not of the likes of Islam and Christianity, who have their hadiths and their Commandments to guide them. So to say that something is offending to the Hindus would mean implying such a code exists, a fallacy of the greatest order if there was any.

The State cannot bring upon itself to adjudicate whether a certain object can be deemed offensive to a certain section of society, without that society rising up to say so. But it is obliged to protect the freedom of expression of an individual, especially when the expression is done with an aim to enlighten, to spread knowledge.

True, the freedom of expression is limited by the predilection of those who hide behind its protective arms to foment trouble by mischief. When it is so, I say pull the offenders out and punish them in a manner befitting their tomfoolery.

If it can be proved that the student concerned created the ‘offensive’ work with the intention to titillate the sentiments of a specific commune or of the people in general, I say the arrest is valid. But due process should have been followed, that is my plea and entreaty. Morality must be preserved, but then follow the dictum of 'each according to the dictates of his own conscience'.

Reference: Student in jail, Chancellor is upset but the V-C rules.

Justice for all...?

The rule of law is expected to be equal for all, granting the shade of its protection to all and sundry. And though some would opine that law by itself is not justice, and is best an imperfect mechanism, I submit that it is the best that we have at present.

But it is at times like these when one’s confidence in the strength of the law, in the impartiality of the scales, is shaken to the core. When the guards turn on us and ravage us and our trust. The case of the false encounters in Gujarat and Chhattisgarh, as also the inhuman manner in which the State dealt with the anti-SEZ protests in West Bengal brings to fore this quandary that the nation finds itself in.

On one hand, the State is expected to safeguard the rights and privileges of its citizens from all harm. The fundamental rights that are enshrined in its Constitution are not its grant to the people; the people have given themselves the Constitution and with its included provisos, and only they have the right to abrogate the same. The State is asked to protect these rights of all its citizens, irrespective of their caste, creed or sex. It may not exercise its prerogative, implied or imagined, to discriminate in this protection.

On the other hand, the State is seen to infringe upon the very rights it is established to uphold, to undermine the basis of the Constitution that it is obliged to guard. The lack of due process in dealing with the above-mentioned cases, and the absolute lack of respect and sensitivity towards the emotions and feelings as also a wanton disregard for the sanctity of the fundamental rights of the citizens is glaring in itself, and that the State is no more apologetic for its acts is a sad and most distressing matter.

While the acts are in themselves deplorable, those who would attempt to defend them by stating the seriousness of the ‘threat’ that the victims posed to the stability of the nation are living in a fool’s paradise. No threat can ever justify such an act of wanton perfidy. To exist within the garb of justice and order and to perform such a horrendous treachery is the height of hypocrisy. And the guilty have the gall to say that they did the right thing and, given the opportunity, would do it again, if required to. If there could ever be a cause for accusing someone of treason against the people, this would be it.

The states in question are being touted as models of development, as the engines of India’s growth. If this is the cost for India’s growth, I say, let India languish, for India has not sunk to such depravity as of yet to depend on the shedding of innocent blood to wash away the poverty of the ages, nor to stand on the shoulders of assassins to rise to the skies.

The law enforcement agencies are entrusted with the task of ensuring law and order, of guarding the nation from subversive elements, and the law from those who would want to break it. But I ask, in the words of Juvenal, who will guard the guards themselves?

Green thumbs,,,

A favourite diatribe of everyone against the news media is that the newspapers and news channels rarely if ever focus on positive events, on happenings which possibly bear the potential of making us feel glad and happy. I am not counting celebrity marriages in my definition of positive events, because more often than not these events tend to divert us hopelessly from the real issues. I mean, devoting uninterrupted airtime to covering a marriage is so very stupid, it just makes me wonder whether the news media has completely lost it.

But then I guess all is not lost yet. Once in a while, one solitary news item emerges from the gaggle of inanities which simply makes my heart happy. And that is what makes reading the newspaper and watching news channels all the more worthwhile at times, if just to catch every one of these rare occurrences.

Reports have it that a team of Delhi University environment management students, in collaboration with Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL), has managed to convert an area of over 2,500 acres of land, previously covered by mining waste, into a lush-green garden with bamboo plantations and orchards, and all this in a span of 1.5 years. Admittedly, the time span may seem large, but considering the magnitude of the task concerned, it is simply OUTSTANDING. I mean, it takes us barely 2-3 months to destroy the face of a beautiful mountain or hill, and here in a span of less than 2 years, this team has shown it possible to rejuvenate land that we would have otherwise forsaken as barren.

The Nandigram and the Silchar agitations have primarily arisen because industrial development was proposed on land which was fertile. People state that if fertile land is not used for agriculture, then which land is to be used. I think the solution would be to evaluate the feasibility of extending this project to all similar areas in other part of the country, which are affected by mining, quarrying etc activities. Rejuvenating barren land would effectively reduce the pressure and essentially make people more amenable to projects, as there would be always a viable alternative available. Happy days could be here again...

Reference: DU students transform mining land into green belt.

Money matters...

I read in the newspapers and watched on the television about how everyone wants to make Mumbai a global financial hub, about how they envisage Mumbai could rival New York and London as a destination for investment banking. Of course, this would require tremendous infrastructure upgradation and development, which would require equally tremendous amounts of capital investment.

While the investment and the necessary infrastructure could be created using grants from the Union Government, it is apt time that we start to evaluate as to whether we can make the city self-financing. Every March 30^th, we hear of how the Mumbai region alone contributes around 33 percent of the total tax revenues of the country. Nice. So, we pay so much tax. Now why isn’t all that tax money being seen to do any good for the people who pay it?

Tax, in my view, is akin to a service charge. The State provides services like roads, electricity, water supply, education infrastructure, healthcare facilities et al, and in return asks people to pay for having used them. A fair deal, if you ask me. The only flaw in the whole affair is that the State is not really seen to be doing a good job at providing these services. So what do we do? Privatise them? Hardly so. Privatisation of all and sundry services is hardly the panacea to our problems. It may be easy in the short term, but in the long run, matters could turn out to be quite different.

One argument put forward for the poor state of affairs is that there is too much centralization of responsibility. Ok, so make the local self-governments responsible for these services. But then, the local SGs would complain about the paucity of money. That’s where the tax revenues could come in.

Say, a particular region, as per the IT department’s classification, generates an optimistic figure of Rs. 1000 crores as central tax revenues. Rather than diverting 100 percent of these monies to the Union Government and then redirecting a part of it back to the said region, why can’t we at the very onset demarcate a rough 10 percent of the monies for the region, an additional 10 percent for the state in which the region lies, and send the rest to the Union Government? That way, the Union Government gets 800 crores in its kitty, and the region gets around 100 crores for its own use.

Now, the point I am trying to make here is that a performing region would have a higher quantity of demarcated funds as opposed to a non-performing region. Consequently, the system is to be seen to reward performance. You perform well, you get rewarded accordingly. The non-performer would feel the pinch and would try to use the funds demarcated for the current financial to improve its chances at a higher demarcation next year. Of course, one cannot be permitted to increase one's tax revenues by increasing the tax rates, so that is one objection nullified.

This system should ideally cause a competition for higher demarcation akin to the one seen now, only unlike the current system wherein politics often has a lot to play; this system would look at performance and certain other factors when considering demarcation.

What do I mean by “certain other factors”? A region like Orissa cannot be expected to be able to match the performance of Mumbai in a span of five years. Keeping factors such as the median income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, literacy levels (both academic and functional) etc. in mind, a higher rate of demarcation could be envisaged, as in Orissa could merit a demarcation of 40 pc instead of 10 pc as in the case of Mumbai. The point of course is that Mumbai, being such a high performer, would find even the 10 percent allocation to be worthwhile.

Of course, this system reads too much into the tax revenues generated from a particular region, which may not be truly indicative of real performance. But, it must be comprehended that other than this, there exists no clear-cut source of indication as to how exactly a certain section is growing. I am poor at statistics, but then I am sure that statisticians can come up with some formulation that would be able to define how much should be demarcated for a region on the basis of its tax revenues for the previous financial year and any other factor that may be deemed valid.

I may be too small a fish for my idea to matter, but to my simpleton mind, this seems like a winner. Mr. PC, would you approve?

Presidential Games....

The post of the President of the Republic of India is, by and large, a ceremonial post. The powers and authorities that are invested in the office of the President are rarely if ever exercised at the President’s discretion. He is perforce to consult the Prime Minister, and implicitly the Union Council of Ministers, when employing his prerogatives, and may not presume to employ the same at his own pleasure. The President is basically expected to reign but not rule.

Although this would seem to make him an inherently political animal, a vassal of the Prime Minister, till date, very few Presidents have ever behaved in a manner unbecoming of the stature expected of their office. Even the 5^th President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, blackballed because of his decision to accede to the recommendation of the then incumbent Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, to impose a National Emergency, did so because of the proof and evidence that Mrs. Gandhi gave him, the veracity of which he ought to have checked but failed to do so. He did not enforce the Emergency because he felt like it or simply because Mrs. Gandhi told him so.

The precedents set by Dr. Radhakrishnan, R. Venkataraman, K.R. Narayanan and A.P.J. Abdul Kalam suggest that whilst a political creature may do well in the post of the President, a non-political one does equally well, if not better. On the contrary, political Presidents have often been susceptible to introducing their own policies into the spectrum and watching the Union Council squirm with discomfort. The discomfort arises from the fact that while the Union Council’s decisions, in no way, reflect on the President, the President’s remarks and opinions seem to be directly emanating from the depths of the Council itself.

Incidents exemplifying the proclivity of political Presidents to use their stature to further their own agendas, which may be benign, include the tussle between Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Pt. Nehru over the Hindu Code Bill, and the cold war between Giani Zail Singh and Rajiv Gandhi. Each incident further served to illustrate that whilst a President may be the titular head of the State, he is never to be deemed the head of the Government. That honour and privilege is that of the Prime Minister alone.

While I may have caused you to drop down dead with boredom, there is a method to my insanity, or so I would like to believe. The Left Front, the gaggle of Communist parties in the Indian political spectrum, has sounded their opposition to granting the incumbent, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a second term. Admittedly, there is one and only one precedent wherein a President has been elected to a second term and that too in 1955 (Dr. Rajendra Prasad). Since then, no President has ever been elected to a second term. So, those talking of a second term for Dr. Kalam are clearly against history here.

One member of the Forward Bloc opines that “the nation needs a political person to handle the problems confronting it.” I wonder how much a member of the political class could do to resolve these ‘problems’ considering it is the political class which is responsible to a large extent for these problems existing in the first place. Besides, a political person would have to be from a particular political party, and even if he/she should be acceptable enough to be elected, tomorrow when conflicts do arise, the risk persists that the office of the President could be sullied by allegations of partisan behaviour, which would do neither the nation nor its problems any good.

Still, if the candidate put forward is a decent person, and would maintain the still high standards of the Presidency, I don’t think that anyone should grudge the aspirant concerned his/her chance. Dr. Kalam has been an exemplary President, a unifying figure, and someone whose persona has transcended creed and age, in short everything that the Constitution expected from the person of the President. Should he be given another go at the post, it would be nice. If not, I pray and hope that his successor will be able to bear his legacy with ease and the same dignity that he showed.