According to the national crime Records Bureau (NCRB) Report 2024, the number of reported crimes in India last year was 445.9 for every 100,000 people, slightly lower (487.8) than in 2022. The most frequent crime is theft, followed by robbery and assault. States with greatest lawlessness are Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Delhi, and Bihar, and crime rates are higher in urban areas compared to rural India. “The overall crime rate has decreased due to more police presence, better law enforcement, and increased public awareness about crime,” says the report. This claim that crime and criminality nationwide has decreased even marginally, is difficult to digest. Quite the contrary, if the tidal wave of breaking stories on television, banner headlines in newspapers and viral postings on social media are indicative. Crime has increased exponentially with several states of the Indian Union hurtling towards anarchy. In this connection, it’s important to note that NCRB provides data of reported crimes. And as is highlighted every second day in the media, police personnel countrywide are very reluctant to record criminal complaints because if the number of unsolved crimes in their jurisdiction increases, it will adversely impact their career progression. Rising lawlessness and collapse of public confidence in the police, judiciary, bureaucracy and politicians are symptomatic of a gradual breakdown of the social contract in society. This is evidenced by prolonged street-level agitations as in the aftermath of the brutal murder-rape of a woman doctor in Kolkata, spate of exams cheating cases in academia and mob-lynchings of people suspected of a variety of offences ranging from child kidnap to cattle smuggling. Frustrated with the law’s delay and contumely of elected leaders, angry citizens are increasingly applauding vigilante justice and ‘encounter’ executions. And not only lay citizens. Even duly elected governments are resorting to ‘bulldozer justice’ by razing painstakingly built homes of mere suspects of wrong-doing. That the Supreme Court of India took its own time to condemn bulldozer justice freely dispensed in several north Indian states is painful evidence of the imminent collapse of the social contract. Although it seems self-evident, there is little awareness within Indian society that high quality early childhood and primary-secondary education with revised syllabuses/curriculums that teach morality and civic obligations to children from youngest age, is the best prescription for restoring rule of law, social order and harmony. Eminent academics, economists and sociologists confabulating in high councils, seminars and think tanks are paying too little attention to the country’s collapsed public education system. The development strategy of restricting quality education to the middle class while denying it to the over one billion underclass citizens, is deepening social inequality and schisms. Unless the education deficit is made good, the social contract will suffer continuous erosion.
Although government leaders and spokespersons proclaim from every housetop and public platform that the Indian economy is clocking “highest worldwide” GDP growth and is in a sweet-spot smoothly navigating towards the objectives of Viksit Bharat and a $30 trillion (from the current $3 trillion) GDP by 2047, the reality is that it is sailing in deceptively treacherous waters that could sink it very quickly. Rising youth unemployment, inflation and pernicious administrative corruption against the backdrop of continuous stoking of communal, caste and religious tensions could quick-start a whirlpool that could rapidly overwhelm the ship of state. To prevent such an eventuality it is important to make a proper diagnosis of the Indian polity and economy. The major and most enduring infirmity of the Indian state is that despite the relatively high GDP growth rates of the new millennium, annual GDP growth of over seven decades in post-independence India has averaged a mere 4 percent, even as the country’s population has quadrupled. The socialist heavy industry, capital intensive development model has failed abysmally to provide adequate employment for the world’s largest youth population. Currently, youth (15-29 age group) unemployment is at an all-time high of 10.2 percent even as 60 percent of the population is under-employed in the agriculture sector. Clearly, the inorganic socialist development model has failed and needs to be jettisoned bag and baggage. The root cause of pervasive unemployment/under-employment that is destabilising law and order countrywide, is continuous neglect of public education, especially primary-secondary learning. Continuous under-investment averaging a mere 3-3.5 percent of GDP per year (cf. global average of 5 percent) in human resource development has wrecked the country’s 1.20 million government schools defined by crumbling buildings, multigrade classrooms, chronic teacher absenteeism and rock-bottom learning outcomes. Weak foundational education is carried forward into higher education institutions where misalignment of syllabuses/curriculums with expectations of India Inc has exacerbated the unemployment problem. The third national infirmity that needs urgent redressal is over-liberal affirmative action, aka reservation, in higher education and government jobs. While there is an arguable case for persistence with reservations at entry level for scheduled castes and tribes, extension of reservation to OBCs (other backward castes/classes) has enabled mass entry of an under-educated, amoral lumpen bourgeoisie into higher education institutions and public administration, driving down academic standards and government productivity. Grasping these nettles is the precondition of realizing the ambitious goals set for Viksit Bharat 2047.
There is much that’s admirable about India’s free and independent judiciary. Although it’s commonly accepted that the lower judiciary comprising the district, city, civil, family and magistrates courts is in disarray, learned judgements delivered by the country’s metropolitan high and Supreme Courts are usually praiseworthy for their fierce independence, reasoning and academic excellence. The descriptive that the judiciary is democratic India’s third estate (after the legislature and executive) is well deserved. Unfortunately despite its good reputation, the country’s legal system administered by the upper judiciary is in a shambles. A total number of 50.88 million cases are pending in the country’s 23,790 courts of law. Of this humungous number, 6.1 million are pending in the 25 high courts, and 44.6 million in the district and subordinate courts. Little wonder that it’s quite common for cases to remain pending for generations. The plain unvarnished truth is that far from admiring them for providing adjudication services and justice, most people hate and dread the legal system. Everyone knows what’s the solution. “The judge-to-population ratio in India is amongst the lowest in the world. We need simply more judges to adjudicate upon cases and we are engaging with the government to increase the strength of the Judiciary at all levels,” said Dr. D.Y. Chandrachud, Chief Justice of India, speaking at the Oxford Union (UK) on June 27. The ratio of judges to population in India is 21 per million as against 150 per million in the US and 210 in Europe. The consequences of this judges shortage are dire. Under-trial prisoners awaiting adjudication comprise 75 percent of the country’s jail population. On the issue of enforceability of contracts — vital for ease of doing business — India is listed #63 on a league table of 190 countries. Moreover court fees are payable on all civil suits despite which plaintiffs have to wait endlessly for justice. Almost half a century ago as editor of Business India while writing a cover feature on the law’s delay, your editor interviewed Chief Justice Y.V. Chandrachud (incumbent’s father) who expressed the same intent because he feared “breakdown” of the judicial system. In the Union Budget 2024-25, the total allocation of the Union ministry of law & justice is Rs.5,940.95 crore (from a total budget of Rs.48 lakh crore). Instead of continuing to bleat about “engaging with government” to expand the judiciary, perhaps it’s time for the Supreme Court to issue an order to government to multiply the judiciary’s budgetary allocation five-fold to appoint more judges and build judicial infrastructure by way of many more court-rooms and accommodation for new judges. Under the Constitution, the judiciary has parity with Parliament and the executive. The time has come for the judiciary to practice constitutional egalitarianism and assert its power to clean up and rejuvenate the judicial system which is a heavy burden on national development.
The swift fall of the seemingly impregnable Sheikh Hasina government in neighbouring Bangladesh, and her dramatic flight to New Delhi to escape rampaging mobs in Dhaka, offers several important lessons for India. Perhaps for all developing countries where constitutional checks and balances are not as well developed as in older democracies. First it’s important to note that by all metrics Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government serving its fifth consecutive term in office was stable, having engineered unprecedented annual rates of GDP growth. On Sheikh Hasina’s watch, Bangladesh transformed into a fast-track economy and one of the world’s premier textiles and garments manufacturing nations. The first lesson of the lightning-fast fall of Sheikh Hasina is that there’s temptation for popular and successful governments to slip into autocratic rule. Convinced that her own steady hands were needed at the helm to record high rates of economic growth, Hasina weaponized national security laws and jailed Begum Khaleda, a former prime minister and leader of the major opposition party, and also interfered with the electoral process to ensure the victory of the Awami League in the General Election of 2023, in effect attempting to impose one-party rule over the country. Moreover scant attention was paid to upgrading the public education system — a blindspot of all South Asian governments. As a result the Bangladesh economy was flooded with millions of youth unable to find employment commensurate with recklessly issued academic certification. Moreover instead of liberalising the economy and inviting foreign investment to establish factories and businesses to generate employment, the Hasina government passed a law reserving 30 percent of jobs in government to children of freedom fighters who had fought in the anti-Pakistan liberation war of 1971 which (with assistance from the Indian Army) resulted in the emergence of a free and independent Bangladesh. Curiously Sheikh Hasina had no awareness that youth desperately seeking employment in the country and sweeping out overseas, have no memory of Bangladesh’s freedom struggle led by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. Unfortunately leaders of political parties in South Asian countries tend to be history agnostic and often interpret ephemeral political popularity as licence to practice autocracy. Soon after she swept General Election 1971, Mrs. Indira Gandhi imposed free India’s first internal Emergency in 1975 and jailed opposition party leaders leading to her humiliating defeat in General Election 1977. Now after sweeping three General Elections since 2014, the BJP/NDA government and three-term prime minister Narendra Modi who have also neglected public education reform, are confronted with a massive youth unemployment/unemployability problem. Simultaneously they are weaponising provisions of the law to target opposition leaders and the Muslim minority. The auguries are not good.
The Olympic games being staged in Paris have evidently fascinated middle class India, if not the remainder of the population. Daily television viewership in India of the games staged between July 26-August 11 has reportedly ranged between 100 and 120 million, with the nation cheering the modest performance of our 117 track and field athletes. Even if India doesn’t perform well in international sports and games arenas, there’s little doubt that this country provides perhaps the largest number of sports spectators worldwide. For India’s establishment and educators in particular, the Paris Olympics offers several takeaways. For one, the aesthetic beauty and efficient administration of the host city which enabled the clinical efficiency with which the games were organised. It’s impossible to believe that any of India’s ill-administered metropolitan cities can host Olympic games in the foreseeable future. Yet this is a good time to start working towards that objective. The seeds of orderly civic governance have already been planted in the Constitution by the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution (1992) which mandate de-centralisation of governance and administration to the ward level. As often argued on this page, if civic wards managed by elected property owners are empowered to levy and collect property taxes and administer themselves, reporting to empowered municipal corporations headed by directly elected mayors, urban India would experience a dramatic transformation for the better. The second takeaway is that we have to devise ways and means for India with its population of 1.4 billion to emerge as a respectable sports and games nation. It’s embarrassing that small countries with populations of 1 million and thereabouts bagged gold medals which at time of writing, India hasn’t won even one. According to a recent Unesco report titled Global State of Play, two-thirds of secondary and over half of primary students worldwide don’t receive required minimum weekly physical education, and two-third of countries spend less than 2 percent of their education budgets on physical education. In contemporary India, the condition is worse with most children denied even unstructured play opportunity. From youngest age, they are burdened with academic load and tuition. The plain truth is that the prevalent model of selecting and training middle class children for international sporting excellence is flawed. The US, Australia and China examples are proof that world champions emerge when the pool of children playing sports and games is of oceanic size and every public primary and secondary school offers sports grounds and facilities and integrates play into the curriculum. This requires several multiples of the annual outlays that the Central and state governments allocate for education. That’s not impossible as our Special Report in this issue illustrates.
Addressing a post-budget meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry, arguably the largest representative body of private organised sector big business, on July 30, even if somewhat belatedly Prime Minister Narendra Modi clarified the BJP/NDA government’s economic development ideology. He described India Inc leaders as “wealth creators” and “driving force of India’s growth story”. Decoded, this means that socialism — the dominant ideology which posited government-promoted public sector enterprises (PSEs) as the driving force of the economy with the mission to dominate its “commanding heights” — has been given a quiet and overdue burial. This public endorsement of private enterprise and entrepreneurship is necessary and commendable because Rahul Gandhi, the de facto chief of the Congress party and officially recognised leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson from post-independence India’s disastrous romance with socialism officially adopted as the national ideology at the behest of his great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, against the advice of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Inorganic Nehruvian socialism was continued by Rahul’s grandmother Indira Gandhi, who unmindful of the subcontinent’s sophisticated banking traditions dating back several centuries, nationalised the country’s major banks. In addition, she nationalised insurance, copper, and coal industries. Simultaneously she tightened the licence-permit-quota regime to prevent expansion of private industry. Unfortunately, PSEs charged with the task of sparking a new industrial revolution in newly independent India, proved unequal to the task. National savings poured into PSEs for over four decades provided an average ROI (return on investment) of 1-2 percent cf. 12-15 in private industry. As a result, the expected PSE surpluses for investment in the social sector (education and health) never materialised transforming high-potential post-independence India, with an average annual GDP growth of 3.5 percent cf. 8-10 percent in China (post-1978) and the tiger economies of South-east Asia, into one of the poorest countries worldwide. On the other hand in 1978 under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping who proclaimed that “to be rich is glorious”, communist China “took the capitalist road”. After that landmark year, China’s annual GDP growth rate leapt forward to 10-12 percent. Now some 40 years later, it has risen to $18 trillion, second only to the US while India’s GDP is an embarrassing $3.5 trillion. In his tirades against the BJP and PM Modi, Rahul Gandhi also routinely abuses Ambani & Adani — India’s most successful businessmen and largest taxpayers. This is reminiscent of continuous disparagement of private industry and business during his grandmother’s regime. Contrary to Rahul’s belief, it is the duty of the Prime Minister — regardless of his political party affiliation — to encourage the country’s successful businessmen and entrepreneurs and proclaim them abroad. Informed public opinion should discourage reversion to anti-private enterprise socialism which has beggared the nation. Also read: “I believe Nehru’s greatest failure was to ignore primary education…”
According to Paris-based economist Thomas Piketty, income inequality in India is so great that it warrants introduction of wealth and inheritance taxes on the top 10 percent of the country’s rich. Evidently, Piketty is not sufficiently informed about the profusion of taxes already imposed upon every citizen of India, starting with the middle class which is only relatively wealthy. The threshold for payment of income tax is perhaps the lowest worldwide with every citizen earning an annual income exceeding Rs.3 lakh ($3,507) per year obliged to pay tax to the Central government under this head. Yet because of hare-brained Soviet-inspired socialism adopted as national ideology in the immediate aftermath of independence, the annual incomes of the general populace are so low that a mere 3 percent of the population pays income tax. Most of the revenue resources of the Central and state governments accrue by way of indirect taxes which are payable by all citizens. Of them, the major taxes are excise and sales tax recently codified into GST (Goods and Services Tax) payable in various ‘slabs’ ranging from 5-28 percent on all goods and services bought and sold countrywide. In the latest Union Budget 2024-25, the excise tax revenue of the Union government was Rs.3.18 lakh crore and Rs.10.67 lakh crore by way of GST. These two indirect taxes contribute 46 percent of the total revenue (Rs.30 lakh crore) of the Government of India, more than progressive direct taxes (36 percent). Moreover, there is a plethora of other indirect taxes payable by the citizenry on highways, airports, bridges, state government levies on property, petroleum, tobacco, and liquor. To all this, add the ‘tax’ that government officials levy on every citizen-officialdom interaction. Therefore, the solution isn’t to raise tax rates for wealth and jobs creators because over-taxation is disincentivizing, prompts tax evasion and capital flight. In the circumstances, it might be in the greater national interest to leave a larger share of income in the hands of businessmen and citizens for saving and investment. It’s also pertinent to bear in mind that what governments don’t spend on themselves and on official pomp and grandeur, they invest in white elephant public sector enterprises that seldom yield returns, or in development projects in which high salaries and perks of officials leaves precious little for project implementation. That’s why huge cost over-runs are normative in government development projects. Therefore, it makes much better sense to leave more money in the hands of businessmen and entrepreneurs to save, invest, prosper and pay greater taxes even as marginal tax rates remain stable. While Piketty & Co’s intent to reduce income and wealth inequality is laudable, they have not factored government inefficiency, inertia and corruption into their tax-and-spend model.
The surprise result of general Election 2024 in which the ruling BJP which had set itself a target of 400 seats of the total 543 in the 18th Lok Sabha won a mere 240 and for the first time since 2014 has to rely on its NDA (National Democratic Alliance) allies to form a government at the Centre, has attracted widespread comment and analyses. Yet most political pundits who have presented learned analyses have focused on parts of the whole without quite being able to see the big picture. In his seminal book Thinking Fast and Slow (2002), Nobel Prize winner behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman stresses the importance of System 1 and System 2 decision making. S1 decisions need to be made quickly, perhaps instinctively, as in anticipation of a car driving accident. S2 decisions that may have widespread consequences have to be made deliberatively, after careful reflection, explains Dr. Kahneman. Evidently, neither the prime minister nor any of his inner circle of advisors are aware of this vital distinction. Therefore, several important initiatives of the Modi administration — sudden demonetisation of 80 percent of the currency in circulation (2016); the Covid-19 lockdown of the economy, with four hours public notice (2020); speedy implementation of GST (2017); enactment of the three farm reform Bills (2020) and fast-track construction of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple in Ayodhya (2024) — all S2 decisions that required deliberation, debate and consultation, were made with the speed and urgency of S1 decisions. Not a few media pundits tend to approve of bold, speedy decision making as a virtue contrasting it with ‘analysis paralysis.’ But it’s now clear that peremptory demonetisation was a big mistake which severely damaged MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) that employ 80 percent of the country’s industrial workforce. MSMEs were further damaged by hasty introduction of the complicated national GST (goods and services) tax which has also become a huge source of illegal gratification for venal bureaucrats. The consequential slowdown of MSMEs is a major cause of rising youth unemployment and inflation, which badly hurt the BJP in General Election 2024. Likewise, the farm reforms legislation which was well-conceived and in the national interest, was enacted with unwarranted haste without debate and inflicted big damage in rural India, fuelling food inflation. Similarly, construction of the Ram Temple was completed without consideration of the property rights of farmers and shopkeepers in Ayodhya. The prime minister also overplayed his hand by reverting to demonise the country’s 230 million-strong Muslim minority. It’s time he became aware that in 21st century India, defined by large-scale internal migration, the electorate has become accustomed to — and increasingly dependent upon — ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities. The citizenry needs peace and stability to get on with their lives and businesses. If the BJP has been voted back in New Delhi, it’s because of the obsolescence of the Congress party, whose leadership still believes in destroying wealth creators and reinstating moribund Nehruvian socialism. Also read: Elections must reflect will…
Last month, Shrinivas R. Kulkarni, an Indian-origin professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), was awarded the prestigious 2024 Shaw Prize in astronomy. Kulkarni is the latest from a long list of emigrant scientists, economists, authors and academics who have made notable and significant contribution to the creation, advancement and dissemination of new knowledge and perspectives for improvement of the condition of humankind. The contribution of our own scientists, economists and intellectuals has clearly been inadequate because 75 years after the country attained independence, India continues to be ranked among the poorest countries worldwide in per capita income, UNDP’s Human Development Index, Oxford University’s World Happiness Report and Ease of Doing Business Index. The only indices in which it is high ranked are corruption and the law’s delay. In particular, a striking non-achievement is that none of India’s 45,473 colleges and 1,167 universities — some of them of over 150 years vintage — have produced a unique sock-it-to-em invention in over seven decades since independence. All the world’s wonder products and inventions which have transformed human lives, livelihoods, cultures and mores — motor car, telephone, jet plane, the internet, cell phones, farm tractors, and chemical fertilisers etc — have been invented and commercialised abroad. The country’s estimated 1.5 million engineering graduates per year have not been able to invent a light-weight metal plough which would leapfrog farm productivity. Curiously, India’s millions of scientists and engineers have failed and/or neglected to invent even noteworthy kitchen appliances to lessen the back-breaking work of hundreds of millions of housewives and women. On the other hand in America, an automatic dishwasher was patented in 1850, Stephen Poplawski invented the mixer-blender in 1922 and William Cullen, the refrigerator in 1748. The prime cause of intellectual inertia and lack of originality in Indian society is rooted in rote learning which persists across the spectrum from pre-primary to higher education. A copy-paste and plagiaristic education system can never innovate products and services that will compel the world to beat a path to our doors. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 exhorts educators to develop dormant critical thinking, innovation and problem-solving skills of our children from early years. This necessitates a concerted, national drive to promote the learning of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects not merely to excel in examinations, but to apply learning to resolve common challenges and problems confronting society. This requires a societal mindset revolution that’s not visible as yet. Also read: Famous Indian scientists and their inventions
With all campaigning for General Election 2024 by order of the Election Commission obliged to end today (May 30) and a new government set to be sworn in at the Centre by the time this issue of EducationWorld is accessible to readers, this is a good time to draw up an agenda for the new government after prolonged and acrimonious electioneering. The first priority of the new government should be to reach out to the opposition to let bygones be bygones and set about observing the written and unwritten rules of democratic governance. This requires government and opposition parties to agree to respect the rules of parliamentary decorum and permit orderly debate and engagement in both houses of Parliament. In recent years because of frequent ‘disruptions’ of Parliament, a large number of hastily drafted and inadequately debated laws, rules and regulations have been hurriedly enacted resulting in confusing and often contradictory legislation which slows down national business and has resulted in unnecessary litigation which has choked the legal system. Rising inflation and unemployment have emerged as the most hot-button issues of the recently concluded General Election 2024 campaign. Alarming data has emerged that the heaviest burden of pervasive and spreading unemployment is being borne by the country’s youth who, according to ILO data, constitute 80 percent of unemployed adults. The urgent solution to this phenomenon that is assuming dangerous proportions, is to sharply reduce barriers and impediments to the growth of the country’s estimated 63 million MSMEs (micro, small and medium sector enterprises) which employ 80 percent of the country’s industrial workforce. According to Teamlease, a Bengaluru-based employees assessment and placements firm, MSMEs are required to negotiate 1,536 Central and state government Acts and rules, 69,233 compliances and make 6,618 annual filings which drive up cost of doing business, impeding growth, expansion and recruitment. Preventive control and regulation of industry needs to be replaced with a system in which the onus is on businessmen to comply in which rules and regulations on pain of punitive action. The third urgent priority of the new government at the Centre should be to mend the country’s education system across the spectrum to ignite the minds of 1.4 billion citizens. This requires development of thinking and innovation skills to resolve long-standing socio-economic development issues that have slowed the nation development effort. The plain truth is contemporary India doesn’t have an unemployment as much as an unemployables problem with the education system annually churning out over 10 million nominally educated youth who add to the widening pool of unemployed. The root cause of this phenomenon is deep misalignment between the academy and industry operating in iron-walled silos. There’s an urgent need for industry leaders to serve on the curriculum-setting boards of schools, colleges and universities to ensure that school-leavers and graduates are equipped with sufficient academic learning and skill-sets required by India Inc. This is a necessary pre-condition of reducing unemployment and providing Indian industry the productivity leap it urgently needs. Also read: Modi Government…
Although obfuscated by more populist issues such as the drift into electoral autocracy, diminution of minority rights and threat to pluralism and secularism from assertive Hindutva majoritarianism, rising youth unemployment is likely to prove a key issue in General Election 2024, the outcome of which will be declared on June 4. Unemployment data available in the public domain is dismaying because the major share of the anguish of joblessness is being borne by ‘educated’ youth. The official NSSO and private think-tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) are agreed that in January this year, the percentage of unemployed youth-adults in the above 15 years age group is 6.8 percent, down from 8.3 percent a year ago. Yet it’s alarming that within the age group 20-24, unemployment increased to 44.49 percent in October-December 2023 from 43.65 percent in the July-September quarter. Likewise unemployment among adults aged 25-29 increased to 14.33 percent in the Oct-Dec quarter of 2023 from 13.35 percent in the previous quarter. In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that the percentage of ‘registered unemployed’ has remained constant at over 40 percent since your editor co-promoted Business India, the country’s pioneer business news magazine, in 1978. The fact that almost one-third of post-independence India’s working-age population — assuming that 10-15 percent of registered unemployed obtained gainful employment after registration — has remained without jobs for over 75 years, indicates severe fault-lines in the national development model. This is not because there is a jobs shortage within the economy which is growing at 6-7 percent per year. The plain truth is that India’s unemployment and under-employment blight is the outcome of a sub-standard education system. Despite the Kothari Commission having recommended an annual outlay of 6 percent of GDP for public education way back in 1967, education expenditure (Centre plus states) has averaged 3.5 percent per year for the past 75 years. As a result learning outcomes of children in government schools which teach 52 percent of India’s 260 million in-school children, are rock-bottom with over half of class VII students unable to read class III textbooks or solve simple sums. Moreover in the brahmanical education system, skills education has been almost totally neglected while the public higher education system has been ruined by political interference and over-regulation. Yet the country’s establishment and indeed the post-independence generation, is reluctant to make the connection between sub-standard education, neglect of skilling and unemployment. A weak-minded electorate is easily distracted by caste, community and creed issues. Therefore, the auguries are that the incumbent BJP government at the Centre is unlikely to pay a price for its continuous neglect of education and under-development of India’s huge and high-potential human resource. Also read: Modi Government Education Report Card (2014-24)
This editorial is being penned on the day voting for General Election 2024 has commenced in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, which will be represented by 42 and 39 representatives in the next 543-member-strong Lok Sabha that will convene in June after a new government is sworn in by President Murmu. Spread over seven weeks in which 969 million citizens are eligible to cast their votes, this election is the world’s largest exercise in universal adult franchise. And it’s noteworthy that since India attained independence in 1947 following a unique non-violent freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, the country has experienced 17 free and transparent general elections. Although in the run-up to the current election, several charges have been made about unfair conduct and tampering with the electoral system — the Election Commission has been packed; electronic voting machines are rigged; the process has been jeopardised through weaponisation of the Enforcement Directorate, CBI and income tax authorities — there’s sufficient evidence and general acceptance that the election process is clean and electoral outcomes thus far have been fair, substantially transparent and reflective of the will of the people. This was most dramatically proved by General Election 1977. Earlier in mid-1975, prime minister Indira Gandhi had imposed free India’s first and thus far sole internal Emergency countrywide under Article 352 of the Constitution. However in early 1977, Mrs. Gandhi unexpectedly called a general election to sanctify the Emergency and her dictatorial rule. Despite having absolute control of government, the establishment and law and order machinery, her Congress party was roundly defeated at the hustings with Mrs. Gandhi also suffering defeat in her own constituency in Uttar Pradesh. That she gracefully accepted the verdict of the electorate is testament to the unusual respect that politicians across all party lines accord to the electoral process and democracy. Exemplary regard for the norms of democracy and the electoral process — demonstrated again when the BJP unexpectedly lost General Election 2004 and the Congress party lost in 2014, should be a matter of pride for all Indians. Such taking and leaving of office is highly unusual, especially in developing countries of the third world where heads of government often have to be forcibly removed from power. One of the great achievements of free India is that the conduct of largely free and fair elections and graceful acceptance of electoral verdicts has struck deep roots. Yet full practice and reverence for the democratic system requires all eligible citizens to exercise their franchise in conducive and adverse conditions. Experience of elections past indicates that one-third of the eligible don’t vote. One hopes this time around when turning-point issues are on the agendas of contending political parties, all eligible citizens — especially first time young voters who have most to win or lose — will exercise their franchise. Election outcomes should reflect the will of the people, not only of those who vote. Also read: Why BJP Swept Assembly Elections
Full disclosure of details of the Electoral Bonds Scheme (EBS) by the State Bank of India and Election Commission following stern admonition by the Supreme Court of India, is proof that despite dismantling of the licence-permit-quota regime in 1991, government still exercises substantial control over industry and commerce. That’s why a large number of companies and individuals, including some of the biggest names in India Inc, purchased electoral bonds — essentially bearer bonds which granted complete anonymity to the purchaser and recipient political party. Introduced in 2017 by the BJP government at the Centre, the objective of EBS was to clean up donations to registered political parties and eliminate the necessity of donors generating unaccounted ‘black’ money to fund electoral expenses — a necessity that can’t be wished away — of political parties and politicians. However in a landmark judgement delivered on February 15, a full bench of the Supreme Court struck down EBS, ruling that the fundamental right of citizens to information about who purchased and donated electoral bonds to which political party to ascertain quid pro quo, over-rode the right to privacy of donor-citizens. Although legally correct, this judgement is not in the public interest inasmuch as it is likely to restore the status quo ante and force citizens and corporates to generate black money to fund political parties. Recent developments such as weaponisation of government controlled economic offences investigation agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate, CBI, Income and GST authorities to target opposition parties and their actual and perceived supporters, are proof enough that the Central and state governments have sufficient powers to intimidate opposition parties and their supporters in business and industry. Therefore new pathways have to be found to legitimise contributions of individuals to political parties. A readily available option is to revert to the previous system of permitting corporates and businesses to transparently donate up to 7.5 percent of net profit to political parties of their choice. But this is a route fraught with danger because open and transparent donation to a political party is likely to make donors vulnerable to vendetta when an opposition party comes to power. In the circumstances, the better option is to enact legislation which permits individuals and corporates to contribute to an Election Fund which could be distributed by the Election Commission to every registered party in proportion to the percentage of popular vote it received in the last General Election. Of course the best option is for political parties to fund themselves by registering members for a modest fee — say Rs.100. Given India’s huge population, that can add up to a massive amount. Moreover party membership is a vote almost assured. This was the logic behind the registration (2013) of the Children First Party of India whose aims and objectives were self-evident. But lack of big budget promotion and an apathetic middle class buried this much needed initiative. Also read: Why BJP Swept Assembly Elections
Amid all the hype and hoopla about India having become the world’s fifth largest economy with a $4 trillion GDP and fastest annual rate of 6.2 percent GDP growth, it’s an unpleasant, but necessary duty to strike a discordant note. GDP should be measured according to the per capita metric and not by way of absolute number. There’s a certain inevitability about the GDP of India with its population of 1.4 billion surpassing Britain which has 63 million people, equivalent to that of Karnataka, one of India’s 29 states. Moreover, India’s $4 trillion (Rs.333 lakh crore) divided by its population translates into per capita GDP of $6,500 per annum. Even this statistic that every adult and child in the country directly or indirectly receives a monthly income of $500 (Rs.42,000) is misleading. The reality is that 60 percent of annual GDP is hogged by the upper 10 percent of the citizenry comprising the 430 million-strong middle class. Against this backdrop, a recent report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealing that India was the world’s largest importer of arms, armaments and defence equipment in 2023, makes — or should make — disturbing reading. According to SIPRI, in the period 2018-22 India imported 11 percent of global defence equipment ahead of Saudi Arabia (9.6 percent), Qatar (6.4), Australia (4.7) and China (4.6). In the interim Union budget 2024-25, the allocation for defence is Rs.6.2 lakh crore cf. Rs.1.20 lakh crore for education; Rs.90,171 crore for healthcare and Rs.3.5 lakh crore for rural development. Admittedly education, healthcare and rural development are ‘concurrent’ subjects under the Constitution with the states also obliged to incur expenditure under these heads. But with the Centre setting the bar so low, total expenditure on education adds to less than 3 percent of GDP against the global average of 5 percent. Hence the poor learning outcomes documented by ASER surveys. Therefore, the question which nobody seems to be asking is: should a country in which over a billion citizens live desperate lives in conditions of bleak deprivation, incur such vast expenditure on defence every year? Isn’t making peace with China the easier option in the broader national interest? It’s well-documented that during almost 200 years of British Raj over the subcontinent, arbitrary boundary lines were drawn and imposed upon Chinese-Tibet including the Aksai Chin region. Instead of re-negotiating these lines in a bona fide spirit of give-take, successive governments in New Delhi have adamantly insisted upon preserving border lines inherited from the British notwithstanding several millennia of Sino-India peace, harmony and cultural linkages in the pre-Raj era. This foolishness has upended post-independence India’s national development effort and heaped misery on over one billion citizens. A bona fide reset of Sino-India relations is overdue. Also read: China: CCP takes charge
The midnight demolition of miner Wakeel Hassan’s home in Delhi by bulldozers of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has again highlighted the contempt and cruelty with which government and its agencies interact with bottom-of–pyramid citizens. Hassan attained national fame last November when he led a team of 12 self-trained ‘rat-hole’ miners (who venture down narrow underground passages to extract coal from open cast mines) to rescue 41 engineers trapped in a collapsed road construction tunnel in Silkyara, Uttarkashi, after all efforts including import of sophisticated earth-boring machines from the US, failed. Yet on February 28, without any notice, Hassan’s home in Delhi’s Khajoori Khas area was demolished by DDA officials on the ground that it had been illegally constructed on DDA land. A day after this Silkyara hero’s home was razed, a Delhi high court bench expressed indignation about the spread of illegal constructions in the national capital stating that tomorrow “someone might buy India Gate and construct a home there”. The justices refused to issue a stay against official demolition — in the style of Hassan’s home — of unauthorised constructions in Dwarka and several other areas of Delhi. Curiously, the learned judges overlooked the fact that in many, if not most, of these cases, the homes were constructed on government/DDA land years, and often decades ago. For instance, Hassan’s home was constructed 13 years ago, according to his wife Shabana. In the circumstances, the question arises: What was DDA doing all these years? More pertinently, didn’t the authority have a duty of care to nip the encroachment of its land in the bud? Their lordships seem unaware. It’s common practice nationwide for ubiquitous touts and middlemen hand-in-glove with corrupt municipal government/ DDA officials to encourage under-educated citizens like Hassan to erect homes on government land in consideration for bribes and issuance of false documents. Years later after conniving officials are transferred, new sets of officials continue to extract rents and fees to look the other way until it is no longer possible to do so. That’s when bulldozers get to work. In the circumstances, it’s high time the courts took judicial notice of corruption and bribery that is rife in the DDA and municipal corporations. In this particular case, the courts should enquire why the DDA did not object to Hassan’s prolonged adverse possession of DDA land and whimsically decided to demolish his painstakingly financed home this year. Laws of natural justice mandate that land owners should protest adverse possession as soon as it occurs. In particular, government authorities that don’t dispute adverse possession within reasonable time, should be forbidden to interfere with the peaceful possession of ‘illegal’ occupiers under the well-established law of estoppel. There’s a lot that’s rotten within civic and municipal governments countrywide. The judiciary should condemn rather than condone it.
There was always a bad smell about the electoral bonds scheme (EBS) introduced by the ruling BJP government in the Union Budget 2017-18 as a Money Bill (exempt from approval by the Rajya Sabha). The unanimous judgement of a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court delivered on February 15, striking it down as unconstitutional is reassuring because it contradicts widespread belief that the country’s autonomous institutions including the media and judiciary, are buckling under government pressure. It’s unsurprising that the Supreme Court has struck down the EBS because it was patently in favour of the ruling party at the Centre and states and heavily weighted against opposition parties. Under EBS provisions, corporations and individuals were permitted to purchase electoral bonds with a face value of Rs.1,000 to Rs.1 crore by cheque or through digital channels — during short time windows — from the public sector State Bank of India. Designed as bearer bond promissory notes with assurance of complete confidentiality to purchasers, they could be gifted to registered political parties of choice. An earlier provision in Representation of People Act, 1951, which restricted corporate donations to 7.5 percent of net profit, was abolished enabling even loss-making corporates to purchase electoral bonds. Self-evidently, this unrestricted freedom given to corporate managements would be detrimental to the interest of their shareholders and would not be exercised without a compelling quid pro quo. Similarly, a ceiling of Rs.20,000 imposed on anonymous individual donations was dispensed with under the new legislation, opening the possibility of corporates and wealthy individuals, assured of confidentiality, heavily influencing the ruling party to formulate donor-friendly legislation or policies. And so it has proved. According to data published by the Election Commission of India, in the seven-year period since the Electoral Bonds Act became law, the BJP ruling at the Centre and in several states has received more than half of the value of bonds issued by SBI. BJP received Rs.6,565 crore via bonds between 2017 and 2023 while the Congress — the country’s major opposition party — Rs.1,123 crore. In the circumstances, the Supreme Court held the electoral bonds scheme was violative of citizens’ fundamental rights under Article 19 (1) (a) which includes the right to information denied by the confidentiality/anonymity provision of EBS. “Information about funding of political parties is essential for the effective exercise of the choice of voting,” said Chief Justice DY Chandrachud in his ruling. The judges held that citizens’ right to information was of greater import than of the right to privacy of political parties’ donors. However, it’s doubtful if this judgement will serve the purpose of informing the public about the funding of political parties. At best, it will restore the status quo ante and funding of political parties will be driven underground, necessitating generation of vast amounts of unaccounted ‘black’ money. Its major takeaway is that it has reaffirmed independence of the judiciary.
The latest supreme court verdict in the Bilkis Bano gang-rape and multiple murder case which dates back to the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, has somewhat redeemed the image of the apex court which has failed to mandate the root and branch judicial reforms which independent India patiently awaits. An estimated 4,000 citizens of India’s 200 million Muslim minority community were murdered, plundered and violated over a period of three days, without meaningful intervention by the police. In the final verdict which has re-incarcerated the 11 convicts who had been released after serving 14-year jail sentences — under law, life sentences are normatively commuted after convicts have served this time — the full-bench judgement delivered in 2019 and the latest (January 8) two-judge bench review judgement, the apex court has rightly held that the nature of the crimes committed against Bilkis Bano were so heinous — apart from Bilkis, her mother and cousin were gang-raped and murdered as also her three-year-old daughter, two minor brothers, two minor sisters and the cousin’s two-days-old child — that the normative commutation of life sentence for good behaviour after 14 years, cannot be applied in this case. Yet it’s a measure of the majestic indolence of the criminal justice system that although these unspeakable atrocities were suffered by Bilkis Bano and her kin in 2002, a special CBI court convicted the accused in 2008. After that, Bombay high court upheld the conviction in 2017 but not before ordering the transfer of the convicts to prison in Gujarat (“their state”) where they reportedly enjoyed long periods of parole. In 2021, a Gujarat Jail Advisory Committee recommended release of the convicts on completion of 14 years incarceration on grounds of “good behaviour” while serving their sentences. Accordingly on August 15, 2022 (Independence Day), these convicts were released from prison and greeted with garlands by ministers of Gujarat’s ruling BJP government. However while there is celebration that Bilkis has been granted justice, there’s little media and public comment that 22 years have elapsed since the commission of these atrocious offences before final closure. It’s also curious that the death sentence which the courts are obliged to impose in the rarest of rare cases, has been a blind-spot of several high apex courts, in this surely rarest of rare cases. Several Law Commissions have recommended radical reform of the clearly dysfunctional legal system which has a backlog of 55 million pending cases. But for mysterious reasons, these reforms have not been implemented. Meanwhile the seemingly helpless justices of the Supreme Court could set the ball rolling by mandating modest procedural reforms such as greater reliance on written submissions; limiting the time of loquacious lawyers to address courts to 60 minutes; permitting digital depositions; restricting the number of witnesses, and barring more than two adjournments. Curiously their lordships of the apex court seem to have forgotten the most basic maxim of law: justice delayed is justice denied.
Contrary to the assertions of die-hard Left influenced secularists and regressive Muslim leaders, the smooth establishment and consecration of the resplendent Ram Mandir in Ayodhya on January 22 will strengthen Hindu-Muslim harmony rather than damage it. As such, it bodes well for snuffing out the embers of communal fires lit by Muslim warlords from Central Asia who invaded the subcontinent and colonised it from the 16th century onwards, and subsequently the British who devised a successful divide and rule strategy that enabled it to colonise and plunder the Indian subcontinent for almost two centuries after the end of Mughal rule. For one, it’s important to note that unlike the sacred sites of Christianity and Islam — the Vatican and Mecca — which were established by fire and sword, the new Ram Temple in Ayodhya is the outcome of prolonged judicial deliberation and courtroom battles stretched over half a century and finally adjudicated in 2019 by a full bench of erudite judges steeped in the knowledge of constitutional law and the rules of natural justice. While describing the vandalisation and destruction of Babri Masjid three decades ago as a condemnable “gross violation of law” but accepting it as a fait accompli, in their lengthy reasoned judgements, the full bench of the apex court (which included a Muslim judge) permitted the petitioner Hindu religious trusts to re-erect a new Ram Temple at the disputed site, which many devout Hindu citizens revere as the birthplace of Lord Ram. Simultaneously in a commendably Solomon-like judgement, the apex court judges decreed the award of a 5-acre site nearby for the construction of a new mosque for citizens of the aggrieved Muslim minority community to offer prayers and devotion. To its credit and in the interest of communal peace and harmony, the Sunni Waqf Board of UP representing the Muslim community has accepted the verdict and intends to construct a mosque in Ayodhya to be named after Prophet Mohammed’s father. Now the onus is on the BJP government at the Centre and in several states that unreservedly backed the Ram Mandir proposal to ensure that the judicial verdict is not transformed into vengeful Hindu triumphalism, and instead culminates in Hindu-Muslim harmony, which was Mahatma Gandhi’s most cherished dream. For educators and teachers in particular, obliged to narrate the history of the successful construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, it is important to present the facts and circumstances as set out above in the cause of communal peace and harmony going forward. The truth that this new centre of worship of India’s Hindu majority population has been established by the rule of law rather than fire, sword and bloodshed, represents a triumph of Indian civilisation. They should teach that resolution of religious disputes through secular, unbiased judicial verdicts provide opportunity for the next generation to unite to develop a peaceful and prosperous India.
The sweeping victory of the BJP in three out of four legislative assembly elections — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — whose results were declared on December 3, has some important lessons for INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) and the Congress party which is likely to lead this 28-party alliance in General Election 2024 scheduled for next summer. BJP ousted incumbent Congress governments in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and bucked anti-incumbency tradition to retain Madhya Pradesh. The consolation prize for Congress was Telangana in which this grand old party secured an unlikely victory ousting the incumbent Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi which had successfully led a prolonged struggle for separate statehood for Telangana granted in 2014. This scorecard suggests that Congress — the sole pan-India party in the country apart from BJP — is down but not quite out. If it can ensure that the prime strategy of the INDIA alliance — ensuring a common opposition (INDIA) candidate in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies to prevent splitting of anti-BJP votes — is implemented. However, this is contingent upon understanding how and why the BJP swept these latest assembly elections, a highlight of which was that all parties promised a range of revadis or freebies. The difference between the BJP and other parties was the credibility of freebies promised and careful targeting. It’s no surprise that in all states, BJP overwhelmingly won the women’s vote because it has a record of providing subsidies which lighten the daily burden of women — subsidised cooking gas, reaching tap water to village homes and deposit of cash subsidies directly into targeted beneficiaries bank accounts through latest digital technology usage. The advantage of the BJP is that its leaders have experienced food, housing and shelter deprivation. The Congress leadership — especially the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty — has not. It’s the BJP leadership’s — and in particular prime minister Modi’s — awareness of the importance of these quotidian necessities and the daily living experience of the subaltern classes that swung their vote in BJP’s favour. A second factor is that unlike the Congress and other opposition parties, the BJP has its students wing and RSS karyakartas as a strong and dedicated grassroots cadre. They ensure that the freebies and subsidies reach the government’s target groups. In the decades under Congress rule, much of the welfare allocations for the poor and marginalized were siphoned away by India’s notorious bureaucracy. BJP’s dedicated constituency and booth level cadres ensure that welfare allocations and subsidies proclaimed by the Central and state governments reach targeted beneficiaries. In the new digital age of the internet and ubiquitous social media, the rules of electoral democracy have changed. The pathetic living conditions of bottom-of-pyramid households can no longer be fudged and ameliorative freebies have to be seen to be delivered.
In the latest mercer index 2023 of the world’s most livable cities, Hyderabad is top-ranked in India. But in the global index, it is ranked a lowly #153. Urban blight defined by air pollution, road traffic jams, frequent electricity and water supply cuts, poor law and order maintenance, is spreading across big and small cities, making the lives of citizens nasty, brutal and short. In Bangalore, commuting by road to any suburb takes as much time as flying to Mumbai. In EducationWorld’s 24th Anniversary issue, we examined why unprecedented numbers of HNWI (high net worth individuals), highly educated professionals and skilled labour are migrating to developed OECD countries (see https://www.educationworld.in/why-are-indians-succeeding-everywhere-except-in-india/). In that cover story, poor quality of civic life was insufficiently identified as a major cause. On second thought, it is a major driver of emigration. An inevitable consequence of foolish adoption of inorganic Soviet inspired socialism as the official ideology of the State after independence, was that the annual rate of economic growth was stuck in the 3.5 percent per year groove for almost half a century. As a result, population growth, low productivity and fragmentation of landholdings prompted steady migration of ill-educated and illiterate rural citizens into India’s relatively prosperous cities and towns. For kith and kin considerations, a large number of rural migrants were absorbed into the lowermost tier of government, i.e, municipal corporations and local government. Equipped at best with pro forma qualifications and accustomed to the routine retail corruption of village India, they permitted the reckless, unplanned growth of urban India bringing it to the edge of disaster. It’s not as though no attention has been paid to this problem. In 1992, two important amendments to the Constitution resulted in the Rural Panchayats and Mahanagarpalika Acts being passed by Parliament to enable local government in village and urban India. All rural districts and cities were delimited into village panchayats and municipal wards. This model of local self-governance inspired by the highly successful cantons and borough local governments of Western Europe, necessitates devolution of considerable tax and spend powers on local governments. Unsurprisingly, selfish state governments have not devolved any significant tax collection and expenditure powers on local government institutions. Industry, academia and the intelligentsia need to press for enabling the 74th and 93rd Amendment Acts to save India’s collapsing cities. Powers to collect property taxes in particular need to be devolved upon ward committees comprising elected property owners in every ward. Restricted franchise is important because only property owners will have a vested interest in ensuring orderly ward-level governance because it will enhance property values. The solution to saving India’s collapsing cities is buried in the Constitution. It is for the intelligentsia to build the pressure of public opinion for its implementation.
After years of dithering, on November 8 the University Grants Commission (UGC) published a draft of rules and regulations which detail the terms and conditions under which foreign universities will be permitted to establish campuses in India. The primary driver behind this initiative is the large and ever increasing number of Indian school leavers and college graduates proceeding abroad for higher education year after year, despite foreign universities having raised their fees to sky-high levels. As a result the annual expenditure of Indian students abroad at $47 billion (Rs.3.9 lakh crore) is several multiples of the total Union budget allocation for education. It is this consideration and reality that a large number of students who venture abroad never come back that’s prompted this initiative of government which for decades neglected upgradation of India’s 42,000 colleges and 1,100 universities. The UGC draft makes the entry of FHEIs (foreign higher education institutions) into India subject to so many discretionary rules and regulations, that it’s doubtful whether any self-respecting top-ranked foreign university will risk establishing a capital-intensive campus in this country. For a start every applicant foreign university should be ranked among the global Top 500 by agencies approved by UGC “from time to time”. Next, the applicant foreign university must give an undertaking that the degrees/qualifications it awards are “at par with that of the main campus in the country of origin” and that “the qualifications awarded to the students in the Indian campus shall be recognised and treated as equivalent to the corresponding qualifications awarded by the FHEI in the main campus located in the country of origin for all purposes, including higher education and employment”. Who decides? There are other off-putting conditions imposed upon aspirant FHEIs. The fees structure should be “transparent and reasonable”. Who decides what’s reasonable? Moreover “the qualifications of the faculty appointed shall be at par with the main campus of the country of origin” and the FHEI “shall ensure that the foreign faculty appointed to teach at the Indian campus shall stay at the campus in India for a reasonable period”. Again who adjudicates faculty qualifications equivalence, and reasonable period? But more discouraging are provisions stipulating that licensed FHEIs “shall not offer any such programme of study which jeopardises the national interest of India or standards of higher education in India” or are “contrary to the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency, or morality”. Certainly these provisions rule out the spirit of free enquiry and debate which are the main attraction of foreign universities. One can’t help feeling that the UGC (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations have been written to keep FHEIs out rather than to let them in.
The death on November 14 of Subroto Roy (75), former Managing Worker of the Lucknow-based Sahara Group of finance and real estate companies, received considerable coverage in the media. By any yardstick Roy’s rags-to-riches rise was impressive. At the peak of his career, this enterprising entrepreneur who began as a chit fund manager, owned a civil aviation airline, five star hotels in London and New York and the Indian test cricket team wore the Sahara logo. Yet in the end when in the early years of the new millennium the Sahara empire was belatedly exposed as a giant ponzi scam in which newly mobilised funds are paid to redeem the old, Roy was obliged to serve a two-year term in prison and ordered by the Supreme Court to return a sum estimated at Rs.25,000 crore to millions of depositors/investors — most of them barely literate — under the supervision of SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India). Although much has been written on Roy’s rise to wealth and power at the expense of the poor and illiterate in hinterland India, few have made its connection with nationalistion of India’s biggest banks in 1969. Although the stated objective of bank nationalisation was to make saving facilities and credit available to the poor masses, nationalised banks were soon ‘captured’ by their powerful unionised employees who devised complex paper work to deposit small amounts. Even to this day completing a deposit form remains a complex operation. Simultaneously risk-averse clerks who rose to head nationalised bank branches were reluctant to advance credit to small scale enterprises and rural citizens in particular. This created fertile ground for lakhs of unemployed youth recruited as Sahara agents to collect high interest bearing deposits from millions of citizens in smalltown and rural India. With depositors initially paid high interest rates on savings, Sahara schemes attracted huge interest in subaltern India. Inevitably as is common to all ponzi schemes, the ones who invested later couldn’t redeem their deposits. Especially since large amounts were invested in long-term gestation projects. The country’s notoriously slow police and legal systems, also buried in unnecessary paperwork, didn’t help either, as friendly deposit collectors transformed into threatening strongmen. When the Sahara ponzi scheme was finally blown and the Supreme Court took cognizance of it, Roy had to submit documents loaded on to 200 trucks to the court. These documents are currently being examined by SEBI to return small sums to millions of depositors across the country. Little will come of it. The structural change that’s required is urgent privatisation of India’s public sector banks (PSBs) and licensing of thousands of profit-driven small high street banks which will chase saving and lending opportunities. That’s the prescription for converting dicey chit funds and NBFCs (non-banking financial companies) into citizen friendly small banks which will attract the custom of millions of savers put off by bureaucratic, unfriendly PSBs.
There is a dangerous sickness of selfishness and indifference, if not hostility, towards children spreading far and wide within Indian society. Two glaring examples of callous cruelty towards youngest citizens highlight this malaise which is becoming endemic in this benighted republic, whose leaders are given to making loud proclamations about India’s inevitable emergence as a global super-power. In August, the promoter-principal of a budget private school in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, annoyed that a child of the minority Muslim community had not completed his homework, directed all classmates to slap him, even as she openly threw communal slurs at the seven-year-old child. More recently, not one citizen came to the aid of a 15-year-old girl child who was found half naked, bleeding in the streets of the holy city of Ujjain after she had been brutally raped by a pervert, until she fell down unconscious. The first incident is indicative of the degree to which anti-minorities hate, fanned by vote-bank politicians, has permeated the teachers’ community, once the noblest and most honourable profession. The second atrocity which prompted a lead edit in the Times of India (September 29) which seldom editorializes on such quotidian matters, is a measure of the erosion of values of compassion and empathy within the self-centred, materialistic middle class, for the multiplying poor and disadvantaged. The daily atrocities visited upon youngest children at the micro-level countrywide — employment of child labour, widespread under-reported child trafficking and child porn, substance abuse and the burden of competitive exams — apart, our voiceless children suffer pervasive institutional and policy neglect. The majority of the country’s 1.10 million state government primary schools avoided like the plague by middle class households, are notorious for crumbling buildings, lack of drinking water and toilets, multi-grade classrooms (because 1.25 million government school teachers are absent every day) and rock-bottom learning outcomes. Despite this, the annual outlay for education (Centre plus states) has averaged 3 percent of GDP since independence against the global average of 5 percent, and 7-10 percent in advanced OECD countries. Even of this meagre outlay, 40 percent is expended on heavy subsidisation of higher (mainly middle class) education. Moreover since the child-friendly EducationWorld was launched 23 years ago, none of the education ministers at the Centre or in the states has consented to grant interviews for intelligent questions about education policy and related matters. Ditto representative organisations of Indian industry (FICCI, CII, Assocham). From public platforms, ignorant and ill-educated leaders proclaim their intent to harvest the country’s demographic dividend. But the grassroots reality is that India’s human resource is being shamefully neglected and under-developed. The consequences will be severe.
Industry leader and corporate tycoon N.R. Narayana Murthy’s exhortation to youth to work 70 hours per week to enable the country to grow into a $30 trillion (from the current $3.7 trillion) economy by 2047, has stirred a hornet’s nest among the woke brigades. Suddenly, trendy television news anchors and grave editorial writers are discussing the pros and cons of this proposal and the effect it’s likely to have on the work-life balance and mental health of youth and the working age population. In support of his contention, Murthy cites the examples of China and Japan and several South-east Asian countries after World War II, whose citizens worked 70-hour weeks to repair their economies ravaged by foreign invaders and relentless bombardment by the West-led allies. As a result these economies advanced in terms of per capita incomes and human development indices and are currently far ahead of India. To a nation globally notorious for sloth and time agnosticism, there is undoubtedly some substance in this exhortation because together with some engineers, Narayana Murthy himself burned the midnight oil to transform Infosys Technologies Ltd (estb.1981) into a globally respected IT and ITES (IT enabled services) multinational (sales revenue: Rs.1.5 lakh crore in 2022-23) in record time. Therefore, his advice is worthy of careful consideration. However for Mr. Murthy’s information, the vast majority of India’s population is already working 70 hour weeks. They are employed in the MSME (micro, small and medium sector enterprises) sector, which although it provides livelihood to 85 percent of the population employed in the non-agriculture economy, and produces 40 percent of manufacturing output and services, is cruelly treated by banks which starve them of credit, and large companies to whom they supply components and materials routinely delay payments due. In the MSME sector, slogging out the 70- hour week for entrepreneurs and employees is a matter of survival. It’s only in the organised sector of the economy and government which employ 10 percent of India’s 450 million working population that work-life balance and mental and emotional health have become big issues. Yet despite the 45-hour week being normative and work conditions on a par with the best worldwide, Mr. Murthy is right to lament poor productivity in this privileged sector. It’s well-known that productivity — average output per employee — in India Inc is one-tenth of American industry and 20 percent of China’s. But the root cause of this disparity is that industrial productivity in OECD countries is higher because of better tools and education. Working 70 hours per week won’t help if children are not encouraged to acquire good communication and hand skills and innovate from young age. The basic cause of poor productivity of Indian industry (and agriculture) is not a propensity to shirk work, but a faulty rote-learning education system that pays little attention to innovation, modern tools usage and problem-solving skills. Also read: Compete with yourself, advises author Sudha Murthy to students
The israel-hamas war now into its third week has taken a terrible toll in the Gaza strip, a narrow (41×9 km) land parcel sited between Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan to the east. Although the latest casus belli is the surprise attack on Israeli civilians in a border town on October 7, and taking of an estimated 200 hostages being held as a bargaining chip for the release of Hamas militants in Israeli jails, the origin of the Israel-Palestine conflict goes way back to 1948. That’s when Israel, constituted by purchase and land grab from native Palestinians, was recognised as a legitimate nation state by a majority vote in the United Nations General Assembly. In the early 20th century, the Jewish demand for a country of their own in Palestine was conceded by Great Britain (administering the region) in the Balfour Declaration (1917) which permitted Jews worldwide to settle in Palestine without any diminution of the rights of Palestinians already settled there. The purpose of recounting this history is to make the point that the Arab/Palestine charge that Jewish people have no roots in the region is incorrect. However, instead of accepting the right of the Jewish diaspora to carve out a state from Palestine as decreed by the United Nations, an Arab coalition declared war on Israel in 1948, which it lost, prompting Israel to expand its frontiers. Again in 1967, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Palestine waged a six-day war with Israel and lost, prompting Israel to occupy the Sinai, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 1978, following yet another unsuccessful (Yom Kippur) war, in the Camp David Accords, Israel returned Sinai, and agreed to self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by an elected Palestine Authority. However under the Nehtanyu government in Israel, the Camp David Accords and the subsequent Oslo Accord, have been breached by permitting Israeli settlements/enclaves to be established in the West Bank. While there is misjudgement and wrong perpetrated on both sides, clearly the massive aerial bombardment of Gaza by Israel amounts to use of disproportionate force and collective punishment of the hapless people of Gaza for the atrocities of an unelected (since 2006) Hamas government. The correct response would have been for Israel which claims that its Mossad is the world’s best cross-border counter-intelligence service, to oust the terrorist Hamas leadership than indiscriminately bomb civilians. From a broader perspective, it’s high time that the Palestine Authority and the Arab world in general switched to a Gandhian strategy — as suggested by eminent editor Swaminathan Aiyar (ToI October 29) — to establish a peaceful two-state (Israel and Palestine) solution to this prolonged dispute. As has become painfully apparent in the latest Hamas-Israel armed conflict, the prime victims are women, the elderly and utterly innocent children. Also read: FIR filed against 4 AMU students for supporting Palestine
The constitution (one hundred and Twenty Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023, introduced in Lok Sabha in the new Parliament building on September 19, and almost unanimously legislated into an Act of Parliament on September 20, reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha, state legislative assembles and the assembly of Delhi NCR state, for women. However this historic legislation approved by all major political parties is an elaborate exercise in prevarication. Under s. 5 of the Amendment Act, the Union government has to first decree a Census of India pending since 2011. After that there has to be delimitation, i.e, redrawing of Lok Sabha constituency lines on the basis of population data disclosed by the new census. These are elaborate, time-consuming exercises stretching into years, if not decades. Under the Census Act, 1948, a nationwide census is obliged to be conducted after interregnums of ten years because it not only records population growth (or decline) in several constituencies, but it’s also “an attractive source of data for scholars and researchers in demography, economics, anthropology, sociology, statistics and many other disciplines. The rich diversity of India’s people is indeed revealed by the decadal census, which has become a tool for understanding and studying India,” says the website of the Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner under the Union ministry of home affairs. But for mysterious reasons, it has not been conducted for the past two years. Moreover delimitation, i.e, redrawing electoral constituency lines scheduled to be completed after the next census, is likely to prove even more time consuming. A Delimitation Commission needs to be constituted under a special Act of Parliament to redraw boundary lines based upon the population data provided by the census. And since the number of representatives in the Lok Sabha is based on the principle of one-man-one-vote, states whose population has increased since Census 2011 will be awarded greater representation in this apex legislative body. Conversely, representation of states with better governance and education which results in falling birth rates will be reduced. This is certain to lead to long discussion and arguments which will delay the delimitation process. The southern states which have directly or indirectly practiced family planning will suffer reduced representation in the Lok Sabha. This is unlikely to be acceptable to them. Instead of these prolonged processes, surely it makes more sense for political parties to issue tickets to a larger proportion of women? That’s the route taken by most European countries to eliminate gender disparities in their parliaments. Since all parties except one voted in favour of the Women’s Reservation Act, they could pass resolutions to mandate that one-third of their Lok Sabha and state assembly party candidates should be women. That they prefer the long route indicates prevarication intent. Also read: President Murmu empowers women, CM Stalin focuses on state education policy
Great injustice is being meted out to a large number of citizens by several state governments countrywide by demolition of homes and shops — especially of the Muslim minority community — by bulldozers called in at short notice. The flimsy excuse proffered for the heart-rending razing of painfully accumulated property of bottom-of-pyramid citizens is that they have been unauthorizedly constructed on government and/or corporate land. On August 7, the Punjab & Haryana high court restrained the Haryana government from damaging or destroying the property of any citizens in Nuh village which recently witnessed communal clashes, without a high court order. This court judgement was issued after communal clashes erupted on July 31 in Nuh. Immediately thereafter, 250 shops and shanty homes in Muslim majority areas of Nuh were demolished by bulldozers deployed by Haryana’s BJP government because they had allegedly been constructed on railway land. Similarly on earlier occasions, Uttar Pradesh’s BJP government had bulldozed homes and shops of minority citizens in Prayagraj because they allegedly fomented rioting and attacks on Hindu religious processions. Court orders staying these demolitions are invariably too weak and too late. Inexplicably, the legal doctrine of ‘estoppel’, commonly applied in the UK and perhaps all Common Law governed countries of the Commonwealth, is not invoked to stay the demolition of residential and business properties of slum dwellers, the prime targets of bulldozer justice. Simply stated, the doctrine posits that when government or private property is encroached upon, it is the legal duty of the owner thereof to protest and obtain early stage stay orders against further construction. If property owners fail to protest adverse possession of their land and property within reasonable time, their title is forfeit or retainable on below-market value sums which the court may decree. Curiously, this well-established common-sense principle of law seems alien to bench and bar in India. The judiciary and legal profession need to bring themselves up to speed to apply this well-established principle of the law of equity. Moreover, the courts also need to take judicial notice of the common practice of the neta-babu brotherhood issuing fake title papers to ill-educated rural migrants, encouraging them to build homes and business premises on public land in exchange for substantial bribes from meagre savings. Thus bottom-of-pyramid citizens are hit by a double whammy when their homes and shops are bulldozed by unmindful and/or communally prejudiced governments many years — often decades — later. This situation is untenable. The victims of bulldozer injustice are entitled to compensation for destroyed and/or damaged property. Simultaneously, bar and bench in this benighted republic need to wake from their inertia and innovate citizen-friendly legal and procedural laws to protect the property and lives of citizens at the bottom of the country’s iniquitous pyramid.
The conclusion of the 19th meeting of top-level commanders of the Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to discuss confidence building measures after the bloody River Galwan clash of May 2020, concluded in Chushul on August 14 without any apparent progress. On September 9-10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet with premier Li Qiang at the G20 Summit in Delhi. This is a good opportunity to initiate de novo negotiations on resolving the Sino-India border dispute that has bedevilled the relationship between the world’s two most populous and high-potential nations since the early 1950s. It’s also pertinent to note that even as troops of the two nations are squaring off along the 3,488 km undetermined border Sino-India merchandise trade is at an all-time high with India’s trade deficit with China exceeding $100 billion (Rs.84,000 crore). The origins of the Sino-India border dispute can be traced to the early 20th century during the heyday of the British Raj over India. At that time to prevent Russian expansion beyond Afghanistan, the British arbitrarily drew border lines well north of the Aksai Chin plateau which was a territory governed by Imperial China for centuries. Likewise to establish Tibet also governed by Imperial China for centuries, as an independent buffer state between China and India, in 1914 they extended the boundary of British India (Assam) to the north of the river and town of Tawang by concluding a treaty with the Tibet administration, to impose the McMahon line. The proclivity of the British to decree arbitrary border lines all over the world including Africa and the Middle East and indeed between India and Pakistan in 1947, is well-known recorded history. Therefore, it’s inexplicable that the Congress government of newly independent India — and Prime Minister Nehru in particular — insisted on adhering to Sino-India border lines inherited from the British Raj. Especially since Nehruvian socialist India was vehemently anti-imperialist. Nehru’s ‘talk but don’t negotiate’ policy led to the Sino-India border war of 1962 in which the poorly-equipped Indian Army suffered a humiliating defeat. But even as the PLA was poised to sweep across Assam, it declared a unilateral cease-fire and retreated north of Tawang to leave a door open for peaceful negotiations. But fearful of public opinion, successive governments at the Centre have continued with Nehru’s ‘talk but don’t negotiate’ border policy. Although the BJP has always advocated a muscular approach to the boundary question, it would be an act of great statesmanship for prime minister Modi to re-start bona fide negotiations — which means give a little, take a little — towards resolving the highly volatile Sino-Indian border dispute. Our two nations lived in peace and harmony for several millennia until the machinations of the British Raj. That status quo ante needs to be restored between the world’s most populous and high-potential neighbour nations. Also read: Settle Sino-India border through compromise
In a season of climate change induced by excessive rains and floods whose death and destruction fury has been exacerbated by man-made disasters, news from the UNDP and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative study saying that 415 million citizens of this benighted republic have escaped multi-dimensional poverty in the years between 2006-2019, has not received sufficient attention from economists and media pundits. Its multi-volume report presents a multi-dimensional poverty index (MDPI) covering 110 countries. According to the India MDPI report (prepared with the assistance of government think tank NITI Aayog), a substantial proportion of the population of every state and Union territory is deprived of nutrition, child and adolescent and maternal health services, six years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, modern assets (fridge, television) and bank accounts. Although some 50 million citizens are estimated to have slipped down the income scale into extreme poverty during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020-21), this unprecedented great leap forward of Chinese scale and proportions, merits some explanation. Firstly, it is quite patently the outcome of the landmark liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991 when the rigid industrial licensing system and monopolies legislation which had cabined, cribbed and confined private industry for four decades, was substantially abolished. The huge number of citizens lifted out of multi-dimensional poverty during the past three decades is the direct consequence of freeing the shackled spirit of entrepreneurship and introduction of free market reforms of 1991. Since then, annual rates of GDP grew to 8-9 percent in the early years of the new millennium and have continued to average 5-6 percent despite the disruption of the pandemic years. However, it’s notable that during the past decade, even in the pre-pandemic years, India’s GDP growth rates have not matched those of neighbouring People’s Republic of China (PRC), which averaged 10 percent per year for 20 years after party secretary Deng Xiaoping firmly placed PRC on the capitalist road. On the other hand, even under the professedly free markets ideology of the BJP which has been in power at the Centre for almost a decade, liberalisation of the economy has not been carried to its logical conclusion. This is perhaps because despite the success of the tiger economies of China and South-east Asia, a consensus has not evolved in favour of free market reforms in the academy and political class. Academics and media pundits still discern merit in licence-permit-quota raj, which devastated the Indian economy for over four decades. Quite clearly a national consensus in favour of liberalisation and deregulation being carried to its natural conclusion is necessary if the country’s remaining half billion citizens are to be lifted out of poverty and misery.
It’s undeniable that the rain, floods and landslides that swept North India — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and inundated Delhi, the national admin capital — last month are the outcome of global warming and climate change that are Nature’s revenge against unchecked exploitation and carbonization of Planet Earth. However floods fury that routinely sweeps away the modest standing crops and thatch dwellings of millions in rural India and painfully accumulated material goods of the urban poor in the country’s ramshackle, poorly planned cities and towns, is also the consequence of two deep rooted systemic flaws: rock-bottom public primary education and pernicious official corruption. The pathetic condition of the country’s public early childhood and primary education system defined by abysmal infrastructure, chronic teacher absenteeism, multi-grade classrooms and rock-bottom learning outcomes have been routinely highlighted by EducationWorld since it was launched in 1999. Yet due to the indifference of a myopic middle class, public, i.e, government school, education remains in the doldrums. The result is that the great majority of citizens, especially in rural India are ignorant about elementary environment preservation practices — water conservation, optimal NPK fertilizer usage, stubble burning, power-tools skilling etc. The outcome is poor per-acre yields and mass migration of ill-educated and unskilled youth to urban India, and desperation for government employment in particular. Simultaneously pressure on the political class to provide employment to kith, kin and constituents has generated massive nepotism and corruption — it’s hardly a national secret that relatively well-paid government jobs are auctioned. This flood of under-qualified kith and kin entering government and public sector employment has had the unintended consequence of poor education and low rural productivity becoming pervasive in the official bureaucracy, and especially in local government. Moreover because of poor education, they are highly susceptible to the blandishments and bribes of urban real estate shysters and millionaires promoting high-end luxury apartment blocks over storm-water drains, culverts and reclaimed marshlands, all of which prompt flooding in seasons of excessive downpour. Almost a century ago, when the first government of India was formed, Dr. Ambedkar warned against the government sector being established as a high wage island, and advised that government salaries should have some linkage with per capita national income. This advice was ignored and currently the remuneration of ‘D’ class government employees is 10x of national per capita income. Thus the mad scramble for government jobs, and corruption and inefficiency permeating public administration top-to-bottom countrywide. These two factors — poor schooling and widespread corruption — are man-made disasters behind the ‘natural disasters’ that are dragging back the economy.
The prolonged stand-off between India’s international medal winning wrestlers and Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, chairman of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), over allegations of the latter having taken advantage of his position to sexually harass seven women wrestlers, highlights much that is wrong with Indian sports and the justice system which seems beyond redemption. On April 21, seven young women wrestlers, including a minor, training under the auspices of WFI mustered up courage to complain against Sharan Singh’s repeated abuse of young sportswomen training for international tournaments and championships. Claims of misconduct included inappropriate touching, soliciting sexual favours with inducements and stalking. The cause of these young sportswomen — many of them village girls who braved rural patriarchy to train for this contact sport to bring honours and medals to the country — was taken up by several Olympics and Commonwealth Games wrestling medal winners, notably Bajrang Punia and the Phogat sisters who have also been conferred national awards. However despite repeated attempts, the Delhi police which is under the administrative control of the Union home ministry, declined to file an FIR (first information report) which is the mandatory first step towards initiating prosecution. This is because Sharan Singh is a five-term BJP Member of Parliament from the Kaiserganj constituency in Uttar Pradesh, the heart of the Hindi belt from which the BJP receives its major support. Singh reportedly commands considerable obedience, even if not respect in his pocket borough and neighbouring environs. The latest news on this shameful imbroglio which has provoked nationwide outrage is that an FIR has been filed and the Delhi police is preparing a case against him. The Union government has promised to lodge formal prosecution proceedings against Sharan Singh by end-June. Singh meanwhile, has denied all charges and says he is “ready to be hanged” if any of the charges are proved in a court of law. Three important lessons arise from this scandal which given the infamous law’s delay in 21st century India, is unlikely to be resolved in the near future. The first is to make the Attorney General and under him the Director of Public Prosecution’s offices independent of the Central and state governments. This has been recommended by several of post-independence India’s 22 Law Commissions (whose reports are promptly shelved) and is the reality in several common law countries, including the UK and United States. If also mandated in India, delay in filing the FIR and initiating prosecution proceedings as witnessed in the case under reference would not have arisen. Secondly, even if legislation is not possible, a national consensus needs to be evolved that only people who have excelled in a particular sport should chair its governance councils. And third, girl children should be taught from early age that it’s legitimate self-defence to clobber sexual offenders on the spot of the offence.
The warm bipartisan welcome accorded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by President Joe Biden and the American establishment on his latest visit to the United States is indicative of belated awareness in India and the US that the two countries are natural allies with common interests and objectives. That this awareness dawned on both countries so late is a tragedy rooted in the anti-Americanism of British-educated Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi who shared the disdain of upper class Britons for class-agnostic Americans. Therefore, despite the plainly obvious commonalities shared by the US and India — democracy, free and fair elections, independent judiciary and the seven freedoms (Article 19 of the Constitution) — although professing neutrality in the American-Soviet Cold War of 1945-89, successive Nehru-Indira administrations tilted towards the Soviet Union on big global issues. Yet perhaps the greatest signal of their Soviet bias was junking of the subcontinent’s historic ideology of private enterprise and free markets in favour of Soviet-inspired central planning, promotion of capital-intensive public sector enterprises (PSEs) and suppression of private business and industry. Instead of learning from America and adopting a free markets economy (which communist China did in 1978), national savings were canalised into government-run PSEs managed by business illiterate bureaucrats and clerks who quickly ran them into the ground. The promised profits from PSEs which according to India’s Soviet Gosplan-style five-year plans would generate surpluses to fund public education and health, never materialised, plunging high-potential post-independence India into the nether ranks of the world’s poorest and most illiterate nations. Against this backdrop, the reset in US-India relations evidenced by the unprecedented red carpet rolled out for Prime Minister Modi and tall promises of technology transfers, US investment in trade and education are most welcome. Quite obviously, India needs to thoroughly cleanse the Augean stables of licence-permit-quota raj and get back on to the capitalist road as communist China did 40 years ago, to record extraordinary annual rates of double-digit GDP growth. And there can be no better partner in this national re-engineering than the US which since the Second World War has retained its position as the world’s wealthiest, most secure and freest democratic country. As a result of foolish economic development policies, contemporary India with annual GDP of $3.75 trillion is at a severe disadvantage compared with hostile neighbour China ($19 trillion). To catch up and realise the high potential of the world’s youngest nation, there cannot be a better partner than our fellow democratic country, the United States of America. When the US extended its hand in friendship seven decades ago, the opportunity was missed. We should not miss it again.
The recently concluded legislative assembly election in Karnataka won by the Congress party with an absolute majority, offers several important lessons for politicians and citizens of all hues and ideological persuasions. Driven by transformational new digital technologies and instant communication provided by social media, electorates across the country are not what they were ten — even five — years ago. Although the neta-babu brotherhood is doing its best to keep the mass of the citizenry steeped in ignorance and poverty by continuing to neglect education — the national outlay for public education (Centre plus states) remains static at 3-4 percent of GDP and Karnataka’s public education system is riven with teacher recruitment rackets, highly adverse teacher-pupil ratios, language chauvinism and particularly English teaching-learning aversion — young citizens have shown amazing capacity and capability to self-learn. Therefore, the incrementally young electorate has seen through the BJP’s old hat Hindu vote consolidation and anti-minorities election strategy. If the party leadership had its ear close to the ground, it would have discerned pervasive fear of unemployment and an upskilling panic among the state’s — indeed the country’s — youth who now form the majority of voters. The second cause of the BJP’s rout is its failure to check — forget about rooting out — corruption which has become deeply entrenched within the administrative system. Every government service provided to the citizen comes at a price. It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for citizens to emerge from a property sub-registrar’s office without paying a bribe. Government — including police and teachers jobs — carry a price tag. Every service from provision of water, electricity, and license to issuance of a death certificate, requires palm greasing of relatively well-remunerated government servants who have transformed into a callous lumpen bourgeoisie. And although the prime minister addressed 19 rallies and six roadshows in the state, he totally side-stepped these grave allegations, giving substance to the ‘folklore of corruption’ that the money collected goes all the way to the top. This deep-rooted ‘double taxation’ system in the state has exasperated even the middle class. Hence the BJP rout. Yet the auguries are not good. The Congress victory was largely facilitated by an expanded public welfare promise which will have to be funded by increased taxation of the middle class, already fed up with the state’s ‘double taxation’ system (official and unofficial taxes). This could discourage private investment, if not capital flight. There’s a leadership fight in the Karnataka Congress, and rehabilitated Congress dynasty leader Rahul Gandhi is vilifying India’s few world-class private industry leaders — Ambani-Adani — and seems hell-bent on reimposing neta-babu socialism which devastated post-independence India. More like Tweedledum replacing Tweedledee.
A report released early last month (April) by the transnational accounting and corporate consultancy firm Ernst & Young and iMocha — billed as the world’s leading skills intelligence and skills assessment platform — titled Tech Skills Transformation — Navigating the Future of Work in 2025 and Beyond reveals a huge deficit of adequately technology skilled personnel beyond “traditional IT” in Indian industry. The report says a significant majority, or 81 percent of surveyed organisations acknowledged encountering shortages in “power user or developer” tech skills. Merely 19 percent of organisations reported having established a skill taxonomy. Presumably, the companies surveyed covered a cross section of Indian companies including MSMEs (medium and small scale enterprises) which contribute 30 percent of GDP and employ over 40 percent of the 420 million personnel employed in Indian industry. This report should send alarm bells ringing in the grandly titled Union ministry of education, skills and entrepreneurship presided over with glacial calm by Dharmendra Pradhan, impervious to all calls for interview by this specialist publication for education and human resource development. Yet as the overtly manifest shabby construction and maintenance of the country’s expensive infrastructure — roads, bridges, railways, power plants and civic infrastructure — testifies, skilling generation next and upskilling the generation currently in employment — especially labour employed in MSMEs — needs to become an urgent national priority. In his seminal book India’s China Challenge (2020), Ananth Krishnan, a China expert, recounts that because of sustained investment in primary and vocational education, China’s Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs) have played a major role in transforming our neighbour nation into the manufactures factory of the world. He recalls visiting a TVE sales exhibition “the size of ten football fields” thronged by traders from India purchasing everything from incense sticks and ganesha images to cast iron forgings and motor car accessories, and cramming them into giant steel containers for import into India. Small wonder that India’s bilateral trade deficit with China has crossed over $100 billion. Indeed without imports from China, Indian industry would be devastated. Expectedly, the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 makes right noises about vocational education for children from young age. It recommends that children start learning a vocational skill from class VI. But it muddies this recommendation by making a populist, politically correct suggestion that they apprentice with rural artisans to acquire hands-on VET. This is inadvisable because of poor education and continuous deprivation of modern tools and technology, rural artisans aren’t equipped to shape students and youth into technically competent, high productivity shopfloor and other workers that Indian industry — and agriculture —urgently needs. Twenty-first century India’s most pressing problem is not unemployment, it’s unemployability.
The omission of the epochal Mughal era (1526-1857) and references to the importance Mahatma Gandhi attached to Hindu-Muslim unity as also his assassination by a Hindu/RSS fanatic in 1948, in the model class XII history textbook written and commissioned by the National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT) — an autonomous subsidiary of the Union education ministry — has sparked nationwide outrage. Over 250 respected historians have written to the Union education ministry protesting acts of omission and commission in this model NCERT approved history textbook which is likely to be approved by a large number of state governments and prescribed for CBSE-affiliated and state schools countrywide. NCERT spokespersons have justified the deletions on grounds that because of learning loss during the 82-week pandemic shutdown of schools countrywide, it had become necessary to lighten the curriculum load of students. However, the protestors including academics highlight that the deletions from history texts are conveniently customised to suit the electoral campaign messaging and anti-Muslim prejudice of the BJP which is ruling at the Centre and in several states. In support of their contention, they point out that the new class XII textbook fails to mention that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathu Ram Godse, who was a member of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the ideological mentor organisation of the BJP. Nor does it mention that Gandhiji died in the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity. The incumbent chairman of NCERT is Dr. Dinesh Prasad Sakhlani, hitherto professor of ancient history at HNB Garhwal University, Uttarakhand. He and other board members of NCERT underscore the BJP government’s proclivity to appoint relatively obscure academics with greater interest in the pre-Delhi Sultanate and Mughal periods to high positions in academia. Be that as it may, protest of the 250 academics about omission of 300 years of Mughal rule over India from the history texts of school-leaving class XII students can hardly be brushed aside. It’s pertinent to note that the 28,560 schools affiliated with the Central Board of School Education (CBSE) — the country’s largest national exams board which includes schools top-ranked by EducationWorld — are obliged to teach these fractured, distorted histories to their school-leaving students. With no knowledge of Mughal rule, how will they explain the Taj Mahal, Qutb Minar, Red Fort and other grand monuments of Mughal India to their children? Or the presence of 215 million Muslims in India? Or indeed the music, cuisine and sartorial fashions of the country? Crass American tycoon Henry Ford famously opined that “history is bunk”. On the contrary, it is perhaps the most important subject of all. It tells us who we were, how we got here and why we are who we are. That’s vitally important knowledge.
The 17-day strike called by private medical practitioners in Rajasthan in response to the Rajasthan Medical Care (RMC) Act, 2022, which ended on April 4 after unaided private hospitals which have not received aid or facilitation by the government were exempted, was a national disgrace and exposed the ugly face of the medical profession. The pay-first practice of the healers’ profession in other states of the country is no different. The Hippocrates Oath is taken by all medical practitioners when they graduate. The latest version approved by the World Medical Association in 2022 inter alia enjoins duly qualified medical practitioners to swear to “not allow his/her judgement to be influenced by personal profit or unfair discrimination; be dedicated to providing competent medical service, in full professional and moral independence, with compassion and respect for human dignity…” Against this backdrop, the RMC Act which reminds the medical fraternity that under Article 21 of the Constitution, all citizens have a fundamental right to life and liberty which other citizens are obliged to respect, quite rightly made it obligatory for all hospitals, clinics and facilities to admit and attend to patients in any medical emergency without insisting on “pre-payment”, a widespread practice countrywide. This was an overdue provision, given that government hospitals and facilities are too few and spread out in the state (pop.82 million). However, the Act aroused great resentment within the medical fraternity of the state who called a general strike of almost two weeks during which private doctors also shut their clinics, causing great harm to the public. Finally, the strike was called off when the (Congress) government agreed to exempt private hospitals with capacity of less than 50 beds which had not been allotted any government concessions such as land at concessional price and hospitals running in public-private partnership mode, defeating the major purpose of the RMC Act. Indeed the Act should have gone further and punished individual doctors who refuse to treat patients during life threatening emergencies without pre-payment. In this connection, it’s curious that while government and the courts are adamantly against “commercialisation of education,” they have turned a blind eye to rampant commercialisation of healthcare. It’s an irony that a large number of practising doctors who heartlessly demand pre-payment or else, have received highly subsidised education in the country’s 273 government medical colleges. Even in private medical colleges, a substantial percentage of students pay government-controlled tuition fees subsidised by taxpayers. Under s.12 (1) (c) of the Right to Education Act, 2009, private schools are obliged to admit poor children in their neighbourhood free-of-charge into class I and retain them until class VIII. The cost of educating them is to be recovered from the State according to a prescribed formula. A similar obligation should be imposed upon all medical practitioners. The right to life itself should be placed on a higher pedestal than the right to education.
Frequent disruption of the business of Parliament is giving India a bad image abroad and perhaps worse, domestically. For instance at the time of writing this editorial, in the Budget session of Parliament during which the Union Budget 2023-24 was presented the expenditure priorities of the Rs.45 lakh crore budget of the Central government in the forthcoming fiscal year have not been discussed and debated. For several years this publication has questioned as to why the Centre’s allocation for public education as a percentage of GDP has continuously declined. This issue should be debated in Parliament and the government is obliged to justify its expenditure priorities. Instead, Lok Sabha proceedings have come to a standstill because the treasury benches want Rahul Gandhi (since a disqualified former MP) to apologise for opining on “foreign soil”, that Indian democracy is being steadily eroded by acts of omission and commission of the ruling BJP. On the other hand, Congress members are also guilty of the impasse in Parliament by demanding a JPC (joint parliamentary commission) enquiry into the alleged “closeness” of business tycoon Gautam Adani, accused of influencing government policy, stock price manipulation and fraud by Hindenburg Research, a self-confessed US-based short-seller firm which has benefited mightily by driving down the market prices of several Adani Group companies. Not to mince words, the contentions of both parties verge on the ridiculous. In this new age of the internet and real-time global communications, whether an individual makes a statement on foreign or domestic soil has become irrelevant. Likewise the Congress party’s insistence on a parliamentary JPC to investigate the charges made by Hindenburg against Adani have been rendered redundant, because on March 2 the Supreme Court appointed an expert six-member committee chaired by a retired apex court judge to investigate the charges made against Adani, a probe the latter has welcomed. In the circumstances, the conduct of the BJP and Congress members to repeatedly stall parliamentary business and raise ruckus in both houses by storming the well of the house is highly reprehensible and condemnable. It sends out a “broken windows” message through society. First researched and developed by American academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982, and highlighted by best-selling writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can make a Big Difference (2002), Broken Windows theory posits that visible manifestations of crime, anti-social behaviour and civil disorder at the top create an environment that encourages widespread anti-social behaviour because it sends out a message that nobody’s in charge. A constantly unruly Parliament sends out this anarchic message countrywide.
The resignation of bhushan Patwardhan, executive committee chairperson of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC, estb.1994), on March 5 has opened up a can of worms and aroused fears relating to smooth implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. In his resignation letter to University Grants Commission chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar, Patwardhan alleged that “vested interests and malpractices” had enabled some higher education institutions (HEIs) to obtain “questionable grades”. Monitors of India’s HEIs are surprised that it has taken so long for NAAC’s shoddy “malpractices” to come to light. The reality that high grades and rating can be purchased for money and inducements from NAAC and AICTE (which regulates engineering and technical colleges) has been well-known for years if not decades. This explains why despite NAAC being of 27 years vintage, only 9,062 colleges (out of 43,796 countrywide) and a mere 418 universities (out of 1,113) have signed up for NAAC accreditation. It lacks credibility. Patwardhan’s exposure of deep-rooted corruption within NAAC comes at a fortuitous time, when the country is in the process of implementing the new NEP 2020. Enlightened and contemporary, NEP 2020 which inter alia mandates integration of early childhood and skills education into formal schooling, and internationalisation of higher education has — as repeatedly highlighted by your editors — a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, it recommends gradual progress towards full autonomy for all HEIs, but on the other it mandates establishment of numerous supervisory bodies — Higher Education Council of India supported by four verticals, viz, National Higher Education Regulation Council, National Accreditation Council (successor of NAAC), Higher Education Grants Council and General Education Council to regulate, accredit, fund and set learning outcome standards. And although the Kasturirangan Committee Report which recommended this elaborate regulatory superstructure also recommends selection of individuals of “unimpeachable integrity” to regulate education in a “light but tight manner”, as the NAAC scandal indicates, these individuals don’t exist and/or are likely to misuse their power in office. Quite clearly, implementation of NEP 2020 has arrived at a fork in the road. The supervisory superstructure recommended by the KR Committee and incorporated into NEP 2020 has to be jettisoned in favour of institutional autonomy also mandated by the policy. A major reason why India’s HEIs have not attained world-class standards is over-regulation by government bureaucracy and infantalisation of highly qualified and experienced educators in the majority of the country’s colleges and universities. With media and other independent organisations and market reputation determining the progress and advancement of HEIs, institutional autonomy seems the best bet for the future of Indian higher education. Especially with the emergence of a large and growing number of private universities which are setting globally accepted standards in higher education.
