Grapevine

Confused comrade commissarsThough India‚s communist parties unexpectedly notched up unprecedented gains in the May 2004 general election (68 Lok Sabha seats) and as a consequence have acquired a stranglehold over the Congress-led UPA government in New Delhi, it‚s hardly surprising that despite overwhelmingly illiterate, poverty-stricken India being fertile soil for sentimental Marxist mumbo-jumbo, India‚s Left parties have never been ‚ and are unlikely to ever become ‚ a force to reckon with in their own right at the Centre. This is because it is painfully obvious even to the meanest intelligence that their leaders lack the common-sense required to provide workable governance to the nation.Two recent top-level decisions of the communist parties are testimony to the intellectual bankruptcy of their leadership and garrulous intelligentsia. First, despite it being plain as a pikestaff that foreign investment inflow into the Indian economy generates employment and additional incomes, the comrade commissars of the CPM and CPI are strenuously opposed to larger foreign investment inflows into insurance and even the capital-intensive telecom and civil aviation industries. Secondly the comrades are frothing at the mouth over the issue of World Bank and Asian Development Bank personnel being called by the Planning Commission to provide advice on plan implementation.Despite it being painfully obvious that central planning in India has been a disaster for over half-a-century and has transformed high-potential post-independence India into one of the poorest nations of the contemporary world, Left intellectuals are indignant that the UPA government has resorted to inviting foreign experts to advise the Planning Commission. All this blather against the backdrop of the Soviet Union having gone capitalist with a vengeance and communist China attracting more than $40 billion by way of foreign investment annually and the Marxist government of West Bengal rolling out thick red carpets for foreign investors.Quite evidently the communist and Left parties are unlikely to ever win the electoral race to form a government in New Delhi. How can they when they shoot themselves in the foot so regularly?Futile firmanPerhaps in anticipation of India‚s Athens 2004 Olympic Games debacle, the government of Uttar Pradesh (pop.166 million) issued an order in July decreeing sports compulsory in classes VII-XII in the 8,456 secondary schools (with 5.32 million students) affiliated to the state examination board. The state government led by former wrestler-turned-neta Mulayam Singh Yadav plans to print and publish books on several sports and henceforth the school syllabus includes a compulsory ‚Ëœsports paper‚ with 50 marks for theory and 50 for practicals. But already Yadav is discovering that it takes more than a chief ministerial firman to create a sports culture in the routinely neglected education sector. The teachers‚ community is up in arms and complaints about shortages of playgrounds, equipment and trained sports teachers are pouring in. Responding, the state government‚s sports directorate is training teachers with interest in games to double as sports instructors.With the cash strapped government not willing to open its purse strings, government schools are unlikely to raise any money for sports infrastructure and equipment. Tuition fees won‚t be of any help either given that the annual fee for students of classes VI-VII is Rs.2.40, for classes IX-X Rs.3.60 and Rs.4.80 for Plus Two students. Yes, annual tuition fees.You can safely bet your boots that olympians are unlikely to emerge from UP‚s government-run schools in the near future.Extraordinary reactionThe pressure of competition is beginning to tell on the top brass of India‚s new genre of five-star international schools mushrooming all over the country. With their promoters having invested massive sums varying between Rs.30-100 crore in constructing leisure-resort style, landscaped, fully-wired campuses bristling with hi-tech equipment and teaching aids, their well-remunerated headmasters and faculty are under intensifying pressure to quickly establish institutional reputations and fill up installed capacity. Or else. This is perhaps the explanation behind the extraordinary reaction of Hector MacDonald principal of the high-end The International School, Bangalore (TISB ‚ estb. 2001) to a slide presentation made to a mixed assembly of parents, teachers and students by a marketing team of Future Bound, a Bangalore-based outdoor experiential learning services firm. One of the slides of the presentation featured an endorsement of Future Bound‚s outdoor programmes by the equally ambitious, if not quite as well furbished, Indus International School, Bangalore (IIS ‚ estb. 2003). This innocuous slide made MacDonald ‚ reportedly the most well remunerated head of school in India ‚ see red. According to him the Future Bound marketing team was in effect “direct marketing” IIS to the assembly comprising parents and faculty of TISB. Since then abject apologies and explanations from the Future Bound management have been brushed off and TISB has broken off all business dealing and relations with the firm.It‚s the pressure.Lesser evils?The substantive tuition fees that Delhi‚s independent or ‚Ëœpublic‚ schools charge their students quite evidently don‚t make ends meet. Therefore to augment their incomes the managements of several elite schools have resorted to ‚Ëœcommercialisation of education‚ by renting their grounds and premises for private marriage receptions. Recently a posse of furious parents and social workers stormed the office of the Delhi state government‚s education department to demand action against school managements renting out school grounds and premises for weddings, art exhibitions, book launches, and even fashion shows. According to irate parents who complain of “disturbance and disruption” of students‚ study routines, such activities are a flagrant violation of the Delhi Education Act and contractual agreement with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) which allots land to school managements at concessional prices. These strident protests have prompted the state government‚s education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely to issue a general circular to all schools in the national capital region stating that as per Rule 50 (1X) of the Delhi State Education Act, 1973, non-school related and commercial activities are prohibited in recognised schools in the national capital region. All schools says the circular, shall “desist from such activities as they interfere with the normal functioning of schools, affect academic result (sic) and hence cannot be tolerated”. But with a lucrative income source of several top-grade schools in the national capital likely to dry up, not a few parents are bracing themselves for school development and maintenance donation pleas. Festivities and fashion shows could well prove to be lesser evils.