Editorial

Another budget mired in dead habit

EVEN AFTER CONCEDING that the Union Budget 2014-15 presented to Parliament and the nation on July 10 by new finance minister Arun Jaitley, is a truncated statement of accounts for the next seven months of the current financial year of the 60-days-old BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, it’s a great disappointment. There’s hardly any departure from predecessor budgets despite the people of India having “decisively voted for a change”, and the verdict of the electorate representing “the exasperation of the people with the status quo” as proclaimed by Jaitley in his 2.20-hour maiden budget speech. The exasperation of the people is that like his predecessors, Jaitley has failed to grasp that there’s more to the Union budget than mere presentation of a statement of government revenue and expenditure of the year past and a forecast of income and expenditure in the year to come. The Union budget is also an analytical and policy document which should take the people into confidence explaining why grandiose plans announced previously haven’t fructified, and identify the development priorities of the Central government. The finance minister’s speech fails on both these counts. According to the finance ministry’s website (www.indiabudget.nic.in), the Union government’s non-development expenditure (what it spends by establishment salaries, perks and maintenance costs) aggregated Rs.11.14 lakh crore in 2013-14. Against this, it mobilised Rs.9.77 lakh crore through taxation and Rs.2.12 lakh crore through non-tax revenue aggregating Rs.11.89 lakh crore as revenue receipts. To fund capital investments, it resorts to issuing high-yield interest bearing bonds purchased by the public. Last year, the Centre borrowed Rs.5.24 lakh crore, and for 2014-15 it has budgeted Rs.5.31 lakh crore. In effect, it prints paper money equivalent to these huge amounts (equal to the fiscal deficit) and injects it into the economy, fuelling inflation year after year. The result is that the cumulative interest payout of the Central government was a massive Rs.3.80 lakh crore last year (almost 40 percent of its annual tax revenue) and is budgeted at Rs.4.27 lakh crore in 2014-15. It’s patently obvious that a top priority of any government should be retirement of the Centre’s Rs.3.80 lakh crore (six times the Centre’s outlay for education in 2013-14) annual interest payout burden. An easy option on hand is to periodically stage global auctions to dispose of some or all of the Central government’s 251 bleeding public sector (business) enterprises (PSEs) and retire a substantial chunk of the public debt. There’s some awareness of this option and in his budget for 2014-15, Jaitley proposes to raise Rs.63,000 crore by selling equity shares of PSEs, a half-hearted measure given the assets of PSEs are estimated at over Rs.1000,000 crore. It’s a pity — indeed a national curse — that yet another government voted into office by the country’s desperate electorate is mired in the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Academy must resist saffronisation FEARS THAT THE landslide victory of the BJP in General Election 2014 would result in the influence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh…

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Editorial

Citizens need to vote proactively

BY THE TIME YOU READ this despairing editorial, polling in General Election 2014 will have commenced with the world’s largest electorate of 814 million citizens having begun the month-long process of voting away their future. For discerning observers of the political landscape despair is inevitable, because in mid-May a coalition government defined either by kleptocracy, communalism or anarchy will assume office in New Delhi. Whatever the election outcome, the citizenry is set to experience turbulent times. Although it’s normative and politically correct to praise the wisdom of the electorate, the plain truth is the citizenry and particularly the nation’s youth, have invited the forthcoming tsunami of troubles. Unfortunate but true, citizens insufficiently appreciate the right to vote and freedom to engage with the political process endowed upon them by the founding fathers of the Constitution. Casually they will vote in a Central government led either by Congress, BJP or AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) which will be steeped in the sins of reflexive kleptocracy, divisive communalism and irresponsible anarchy. Strangely, despite half the population of India being made up of children and youth, none of the major political parties have promised to implement the report of the Kothari Commission, which recommended an annual outlay (Centre plus states) of 6 percent of GDP for education way back in 1966. Neither is there a credible commitment from any party to increase public health expenditure from the pathetic 1.4 percent of GDP outlay (cf. 9-10 percent in OECD countries). Nor have issues such as shockingly adverse police and judges to people ratios, pervasive child malnutrition, public housing and sanitation which are debilitating the nation, received any emphasis in the declarations or manifestos of mainstream political parties. In this connection, the involvement of India’s estimated 400 million youth in the age group 18-34 with nation-building is especially disappointing. They seem unconcerned about making considered political choices despite the patent reality that politics — as it is being practiced currently by the mainstream and regional parties — is likely to impact them the most. It is submitted that it’s the citizen’s responsibility to proactively seek out and vote in political parties and formations with genuine and credible national development programmes, rather than passively choose the best of a proven bad lot. If citizens were to discharge their electoral obligation proactively, the newly registered Children First Party of India which promises to transform the nation into a child-centric society, would have received greater support. However, this new political party promoted with the most credible and comprehensive national revival agenda hasn’t attracted any support or encouragement from the media or the public. The fault is not of its committed promoters or programme, but of an indifferent electorate steeped in oriental inertia and despair. A second chance for india inc The imposition of a mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) expenditure obligation upon Indian industry by the new Companies Act, 2013 offers India Inc an opportunity to redeem itself for its inexplicable half-hearted engagement with Indian education over the past…

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Editorial

AAP has misinterpreted mandate

The spectacular electoral debut of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi state assembly elections two months ago, culminating in AAP forming the state government, had aroused great expectations of a new political sunrise covering the entire country. But since then, its oleaginous populism and maladroit initiatives in governance has raised ghosts of the post-Emergency general election of 1977 when the Congress was routed by the Janata Party which was swept into office at the Centre on a tidal wave of popular support. Within three years, the Congress led by Indira Gandhi, who had imposed the nation’s infamous first and thus far only internal Emergency, was back in power in New Delhi. The bold resolution of AAP, which 16 months ago emerged as a political party out of the Jana Lok Pal (national ombudsman) movement spearheaded by anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, struck a responsive chord in the capital and beyond and catapulted AAP into power in the Delhi state legislative assembly. Since assuming charge, its initiatives to provide 700 litres of water and 400 units of electricity to every household in Delhi have sparked fears that AAP has route mapped the same old socialist path which ruined the economy and consigned free India to the bottom rungs of every international league table assessing national development. With each passing day, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the AAP leadership has completely misinterpreted the mandate for firm and rational governance by immersing the new political party into the well-worn groove of subsidies and giveaway politics. This suspicion is heightened by its leader Arvind Kejriwal’s unwarranted Uriah Heep-like statements paying obeisance to the presumed innate wisdom of the general populace. But the plain — perhaps unpalatable – truth is that ignorant and enfeebled by post-independence India’s dysfunctional education system, apart from a survival instinct, the vast majority of people don’t have the wisdom to see through the cheap here-and-now socialism of Indian politics which is the antithesis of a genuine nation-building programme. The best that can be said of the wisdom of the people is that they know whom they don’t want in seats of government and are ready to give a chance to new political parties and alliances as they did in 1977, 1989, 1991, 1999 and 2004, in the hope of firm and fair governance and leadership. Yet on each occasion they were betrayed by politicians practicing conventional politics of self-aggrandissement and ruinous freebies and subsidies. Properly interpreted, the vote every time has been for fair, firm and incorruptible leadership — for leaders with knowledge, capability and courage to lead the people in the endeavour of nation-building. It is certainly not a vote for leaders who follow the people. AAP hasn’t understood this and that’s why the new party is likely to join the flotilla of failed political parties which promised much but flounder in shallows and misery. Uttar Pradesh’s unending nightmare Bad days are ahead for the unfortunate people of Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous (200 million) state. The dreadful…

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Editorial

Support new political alternatives

A Drowsy Numbness perhaps rooted in Oriental Fatalism seems to have afflicted youth of the nation. According to news reports based on census data and the electoral rolls of Delhi state (national capital region) which will have elected a new government by the time this issue of EducationWorld reaches newsstands, a mere 56 percent of youth in Delhi NCR have taken the trouble to register as eligible voters in the imminent assembly election. This disinterest in participating in the democratic process to elect suitable MLAs (members of the legislative assembly) who would voice their concerns and address issues of importance to their well-being — education, health, employment, law, order and justice, civic governance, water and sanitation, and women’s safety, among others — is very confusing because while making politically correct noises, youth miss no opportunity to plead for the devolution of leadership of society and the nation upon themselves and their representatives. Yet their lack of interest in participating in the most fundamental processes of democratic practice suggests that like young spoilt brats and princelings of the Congress and BJP, they expect the electoral process to be shaped to their convenience and for leadership to be thrust upon them. That’s vainglorious wishful thinking. The blame for injecting this curious malaise, cynicism and sentiments of helplessness within the nation’s young who — it should be noted — constitute the majority of the population, has to be laid at the doors of leaders of the major political parties. Instead of practicing inner party democracy, they perpetuate their rule and the status quo by cynically manipulating the entry of their progeny — who have never suffered material deprivation, employment anxiety, the law’s delay, insolence of office, the country’s dysfunctional public education and healthcare systems etc — into state assemblies and Parliament. Gandhi, Scindia, Singh, Dikshit, Hooda, Gowda and Karunanidhi succeed Gandhi, Scindia, Singh, Dikshit, Hooda, Gowda, and Karunanidhi in monotonous succession. Little wonder the more youth leaders come and go, the more things remain the same. Admittedly this is a depressing scenario and the first impulse is to withdraw from the rude scene wishing a plague on all their houses. But my young countrymen, that’s precisely the trap set by wily political patriarchs hell-bent upon perpetuating nihilistic dynasty rule. Don’t fall into it. The impact of the inevitable misrule of untested dynastic spoilt brats will be suffered by your generation rather than mine. Instead, take the trouble to register as voters and exercise the full power of the ballot to comprehensively reject India’s ideologically and intellectually bankrupt mainstream political parties. Several new political alternatives including the Children First Party of India — led by people with proven track records and purposive development agendas — have emerged from the crucible of post-independence India’s failed socio-economic development effort (see www.childrenfirst.in). Muster the resolve to sign up with them bearing in mind that the worst we can do will be better than the best Congress/BJP have done. A great opportunity has become available to India’s short-changed…

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Editorial

Children First Party of India launched On October 7, the first shot of what promises to be a protracted war for the hearts and minds of the Indian people was fired at a sparingly attended media conference at the Press Club, Bangalore. The Children First Party of India (CFPI), registered by the Election Commission of India — promoted by your editors after a long and arduous process spread over a year — on August 7, was publicly proclaimed. We have begun a national campaign to enroll 100 million primary members to mobilise a mighty army to lead the betrayed people of free India out of the wilderness of neta-babu socialism, which has reduced the vast majority of citizens to humiliating poverty, ignorance and beggary. The body of evidence testifying to the beggared status of this high-potential nation is overwhelming. By every yardstick — food intake, clothing, shelter, public education and healthcare, corruption, ease of doing business — India, which less than 400 years ago generated 20 percent of global GDP, is bottom ranked among the world’s 20 worst performing economies. And perhaps the most shameful statistics of all are that 46 percent of India’s 158 million hapless children under five years age suffer severe malnutrition, and 53 percent of children drop out of dysfunctional government schools before completing elementary (class VIII) education. While the public is numbed into acceptance, the Congress party led by three generations of under-qualified leaders which has inflicted untold misery upon the population, claims credit for partially curing the sins of its own making. Meanwhile, unmindful of the bloody history of the partition of India in 1947, the opposition BJP is hell-bent upon releasing the virus of communalism into the country’s charged environment. Implicit in the nomenclature of CFPI and its tagline ‘Let’s Save Generation Next’ is an admission that it’s too late to save the first generation of independent India’s children, but through urgent implementation of the plans and policies outlined in the party’s manifesto, it may be possible to save the next. Although this is the core objective of the party which gives top priority to executing a detailed lib-lab-lav project to equip all 1.40 million schools countrywide with a library, laboratory and lavatories within 12 months, CFPI is not a single issue party. The party’s comprehensive manifesto (see www.childrenfirst.in) details a strategy to reduce gender crimes by 75 percent within a year; legislate Anna Hazare’s Jana Lok Pal Bill in toto; urgently legislate comprehensive police and justice system reforms; freeze defence expenditure; resolve the long-festering Kashmir dispute while negotiating Indo-China border issues; drasti-cally reform agriculture by integrating it with industry; and release the entrepreneurial drive of Indian business. All these initiatives are not only possible, but imperative to save Generation Next. Our appeal is to all right-thinking people, and especially the nation’s 120 million youth voting for the first time next year, to register as CFPI members. Together it is possible to build a new Second Republic and realise the noble aspirations of…

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Editorial

Intelligentsia must support new political formations

The anointment of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as prime minister-designate should the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party win the looming general election of May 2014, is a denouement filled with dreadful implications which neither the reckless middle class which has rallied to his banner, nor the nation’s under-educated majority have adequately grasped. The belated misgivings of L.K. Advani, the eclipsed octogenarian leader of the BJP who seems to have some idea of the inevitable descent of the country into civil strife, fascism and dictatorship should the Modi-led BJP win, have been ignored by a narrowly-educated middle class and an intelligentsia which can’t see the wood for trees. For all its faults and mutation into a grand coalition of political dynasties — according to writer Patrick French (India: A Portrait, 2011), 90 percent of Congress members in the incumbent Lok Sabha are scions of post-independence political families — its saving grace is that it has a secular tradition stretching back over a century. On the other hand, it’s incontrovertible that the prime intent and purpose of the BJP — the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu revivalist organisation committed to reversing the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan — is to end “appeasement” of the country’s Muslim minority and abolish community scriptural laws under which minorities are governed in matters of marriage, inheritance and worship. Unapologetically majoritarian in its political philosophy, the RSS/BJP is committed to a uniform civil law and is opposed to affirmative action quotas for Muslims and other caste and religious minorities. It is also committed to the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution which accords special status to the Muslim-majority state of Jammu & Kashmir whose accession to India in 1947 has been continuously disputed by nuclear-armed Pakistan. The dangerous majoritarian political philosophy of the RSS/BJP is compounded by the abrasive personality and style of Modi, the three-term incumbent chief minister of the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop.60 million) since 2001. During this period, which began with a callous anti-Muslim pogrom in which over 3,000 citizens were murdered by riotous mobs as the government stood idly by, Gujarat has become a crucible of fascist majoritarian politics — essentially an alliance of government and big business hostile to labour, civil rights groups, the media and minorities. Clearly, as general election 2014 draws near, having to choose between the spoilt brats of the Congress kleptocracy and the plainly fascist BJP which will surely plunge the nation into a Kashmir-style low intensity civil war, slowing down all socio-economic development, is a cruel dilemma. Therefore it’s a matter of utmost importance that the country’s intelligentsia, which has had the benefit of real education, supports and proclaims several new political formations — Lok Satta, Aam Aadmi Party and Children First Party of India — struggling to save the country from the evil Congress, fascist BJP, and marauding family firms masquerading as political parties in the states. This is not the time to discharge the…

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Editorial

Heavy price of linguistic majoritarianism

Too many of contemporary Indias politicians seem to believe the practice of democracy is about enforcing majority opinion when actually its about protecting minority rights and sensibilities. Such erroneous thinking is behind the rise of right-wing Hindu fundamentalism propagated by the powerful cultural organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). During the two decades past, BJP has emerged as the principal opposition party in Parliament and may well sweep to power in the General Election scheduled for next summer. Neither majoritarian politicians, nor their growing army of lemmings-like followers seem to be aware that in a multi-religious and multi-cultural society, crude majoritarianism is a prescription for civil war or low-intensity civil insurrection of the type post-independence India has experienced in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-east.Regrettably, ill-informed and myopic politicians practice crude majoritarianism not only in politics but in education as well, inflicting huge damage on individuals and the economy. A case in point is the linguistic chauvinism being practiced by successive governments in the state of Karnataka since 1994. Under a state government notification of April 29, 1994, all primary schools — government and private — promoted after that date are obliged to teach all subjects in the states majority language Kannada or in vernacular languages. Although its common knowledge that all segments of society aspire for English education for their children, until 2009 teaching of English even as a second language was banned in government primaries (classes I-V). The fig leaf rationale of this legislation prompted by regressive sub-nationalists and supported by small-time vernacular textbook publishers and printers, is the not entirely proven theory that in early childhood, children learn best in their mother tongue. But given the pressing public demand for English-medium schools and steady flight of pupils from government primaries, this law has been practiced more in the breach than observance with government-appointed inspectors easily persuaded to look the other way. Eighteen years after this plainly anti-national law was enacted in Karnataka, the state governments appeal finally came up for hearing on July 5. But stating that the issue involved in this case concerns the fundamental rights of not only the present generation but also the generations yet to be born, a two-judge bench of the apex court referred it to a five-judge constitutional bench. Among the issues framed by the two-judge bench for the constitutional court is whether parents have the right to choose their childrens medium of instruction; whether government can impose the medium of instruction on private unaided schools; and whether the state government can insist upon linguistic minorities being taught only in their mother tongue. To these posers, it should have added one more: Will the state government pay compensation for the blighted lives of an entire generation condemned to low-end jobs within state boundaries because they were denied the chance to learn the language of national and international business and trade? Thats the price of linguistic majoritarianism and sub-optimal democratic practice. Man-made disaster in…

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Editorial

Hardwired corruption blocking jobs creation

The grim spectre of mass unemployment is beginning to haunt the Indian economy. Belatedly, mainstream media and the political establishment have woken up to the reality that the prime purpose of encouraging investment — foreign and domestic — in the Indian economy, is to create jobs for the huge army of youth entering the jobs market every year. With the country’s institutions of tertiary education churning out an estimated 5 million good, bad and indifferent quality graduates, including 1.5 million certified engineers, with illiterates and school dropouts contributing another 10 million, the Indian economy needs to create at least 20 million new jobs annually. And globally, even if not in India, it’s well known that well-paid, meaningful jobs can only be created in the manufacturing sector or industry. Currently the manufacturing sector/industry contributes only 15 percent of India’s GDP against 20 percent in the developed OECD countries and over 30 percent in China. And with the annual GDP growth rate plunging from 9 percent in 2007-08 to below 5 percent in 2012-13, the prospect of the economy having generated anywhere near 20 million new jobs in the recently concluded fiscal year is fanciful. According to the authoritative London-based weekly The Economist (May 11), between 2004-05 and 2009-10, no net new jobs were created in the Indian economy against 60 million in the previous five years. On the other hand, communist China generated 130 million new jobs in services and industry in the decade 2002-12. If the number of unemployed citizens including 40 million registered unemployed is set to cross 100 million, the fault for this sorry situation is primarily of the Congress party which has ruled at the Centre for over 52 of independent India’s 65 years. First under prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, it imposed the capital — rather than labour-intensive — heavy industry development model upon Indian society. Secondly, during the Emergency of 1975-77 it comprehensively sabotaged the country’s birth control programme. Since then, the national population has grown by over 400 million. Furthermore by imposing a regime of licence-permit-quota raj and tolerating official corruption as an “international phenomenon”, it slowed down investment in labour-intensive medium and small-scale industry, which would have been able to generate mass employment. And even though the then Congress government liberalised and deregulated Indian industry in 1991, corruption has become so firmly implanted in Central, state and municipal government, that India is ranked #132 on the World Bank’s transnational Ease of Doing Business Index. With the country’s 15-64 age group population set to rise by 125 million within the next decade, and annual GDP and industry growth at decadal lows, the solution is to stimulate manufacturing and industrial growth sufficiently to create 30 million living wage — rather than subsistence level — jobs in manufacturing and agro-industry. But the prerequisite of economic development is to flush out the corruption which is hardwired into mainstream political parties — particularly Congress — and government at all levels, and is blocking industrial growth and employment. Time to…

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Editorial

Opportunities for ushering in a new era

The election of a new government in Pakistan and the recent visit of newly elected Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang to India — the first country he has visited since his appointment — offers the scams-tainted Congress-led UPA-II government an opportunity to redeem itself in its last year in office, by resolving India’s long-pending territorial disputes with Pakistan and China. Although it’s painful to admit, our geographical neighbours have arguable cases. It’s undeniable that following the first Indo-Pak war of 1948 in Kashmir, perhaps rashly, promises were made to the people of the valley and the international community guaranteeing maximum autonomy and special status to Kashmir, and a plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of the people about the state’s political future. But over the past six decades, this promise has been substantially diluted with the state of Jammu and Kashmir becoming “an integral part of India”. True, the precondition of the plebiscite is restoration of the status quo ante at the time of accession of Kashmir to the Indian Union and vacation of PoK (Pakistan occupied Kashmir) by Pak troops. But this is a legal quibble. A plebiscite can be conducted in Kashmir by the United Nations with Indo-Pak cooperation. An independent Kashmir — the likely outcome — jointly guaranteed by India, Pakistan and the United Nations, will become acceptable to the people of the two countries. Likewise, it’s foolish and self-injurious to deny that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has an arguable case in the Sino-India border dispute. It’s common knowledge that during the 18th and 19th centuries right up to the end of the Second World War, the British imposed arbitrary national boundaries upon the under-developed nations of Asia and Africa. There is some truth in the Chinese assertion that in 1914 when China was in “an enfeebled condition” the British India administration signed an “unequal treaty” with representatives of Tibet over which China enjoyed suzerainty during the entire Qing dynasty (1644-1912), demarcating the India-Tibet boundary. Even so China’s representatives of the time refused to accept the locus standi of the Tibet representatives and declined to sign the treaty (though they initialed it) and agree to the McMahon line as the boundary between India and Tibet, whose status as a province of China was conceded by India in 1950. In the circumstances, to dismiss PRC’s claims in the north-east as being baseless is less than honest. In true imperial fashion, the McMahon line was drawn right across the foothills of the Himalayas to Aksai Chin in the north-west where it’s also disputed by China. After the Sino-Indian armed conflict of 1962, suggestions were reportedly made by China that it might settle for territorial concessions in Aksai Chin in return for respecting the McMahon line in the north-east. This suggestion offers a platform for new negotiations to settle the border dispute once and for all time. True there are strategic defence concerns in the north-west, but even if the price is steep it needs to be paid in…

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Editorial

People need to seek out Political Alternatives

Although in the excitement generated by the mminent assembly elections in several states and the general election scheduled for next summer, it has gone off the headlines, government corruption is — or should be — a live issue at the hustings in the states and at the Centre. Two recent incidents in Maharashtra — India’s most industrialised and second most populous (112 million) state — underline the grave dangers posed by pervasive, unchallenged corruption. On April 4, an eight-storey residential building collapsed like a pack of cards in the township of Mumbra, a suburb of Mumbai, killing 74 people including 28 children and injuring 62. A post-mortem has revealed that the construction was wholly unauthorised, with public safety officials including municipal corporators bribed by the unqualified builders to turn a blind eye, even as every public safety norm — shallow foundation, substandard materials etc — was breached. Subsequent media investigations have revealed that 90 percent of residential buildings in Mumbra (pop. 9 lakh) are unauthorised and/or unsafe for human habitation. Preliminary data relating to Mumbai itself indicates that a large number of residential and commercial buildings in the nation’s commercial capital are also unauthorised and/or unsafe. The second incident which has caused untold misery within India’s most industrial state, is a manmade drought — the worst in 40 years in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra. The callous reaction of deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar to this tragedy which has prompted mass migration and over 228 farmer suicides (in the past 10 months), and to a 55-day fast undertaken by an aggrieved farmer protesting the state’s refusal to release water from the Mula dam, was to contemptuously dismiss the protest fast, and sarcastically enquire whether people should urinate into the dam to originate water. This coarse remark was made even as accusations are intensifying against the state government for diverting water for sugarcane crops and factories run by the powerful sugar cooperatives lobby dominated by mysteriously wealthy politicians. In this context it is pertinent to note that last year the office of the comptroller general and auditor had excoriated the state’s ministry of irrigation for spending over Rs.70,000 crore to build dams and create a network of water distribution canals with little to show for it by way of completed projects. It should be noted that Pawar has held the irrigation portfolio in the state government for over a decade. In the circumstances, the paramount national interest demands that the public — especially the media and intelli-gentsia — doesn’t take its eyes off the corruption issue during the heat and noise of the run-up to the 2014 general election. In particular Anna Hazare’s Lok Pal Bill should not be allowed to fade quietly into the night, due to official neglect and public apathy. By all indications, the mainstream Congress and BJP parties are too steeped in corruption to reform and redeem. There are other political parties in the fray. It is the duty of citizens to seek them out and vote…

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Editorial

Demand accountability from government schools

In mid-March, several dailies in Bangalore headlined the poignant story of little Lakshmi Naikode (9), who fled her home and Kannada-medium government primary school last November to realise her dream of studying in an English-medium ‘convent’ school. Three days after she had unsuccessfully knocked on the doors of several private schools for admission, Lakhsmi was rescued from the mean streets of the city and returned to her dirt-poor parents who live in a makeshift home, from where she goes to a Kannada-medium government primary. But English-medium education had captured her imagination and she stubbornly declined to attend the free-of-charge government school. Fortunately for this determined girl child, her story caught the interest of the Times of India which front-paged it, eliciting widespread empathy for her in the garden-turned-garbage city. Almost six months later, Lakshmi’s dream has come true with the city’s Indus International School — ranked the country’s # 1 international school in the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2012 — agreeing to admit her into class III of its parallel, high-quality English-medium community primary-secondary sited within its campus. According to a more recent front-page report in ToI (March 16) “little Lakshmi’s life has taken a swift and happy leap”. Although ex facie this is a human interest story with a happy ending for which the ToI claims credit, it raises several critical issues about the liberal middle class and official (state government) mindset in 21st century India. First, the entire story has been written from the perspective of the obligation imposed by s. 12 (1) (c) of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 upon all private schools to reserve a 25 percent quota for poor neighbourhood children in class I and retain them until class VIII. Under the Act, the government is obliged to reimburse private schools the quantum of expense incurred per child in its own primary schools. However, the impact of this historic provision of the RTE Act has been diluted by a Supreme Court judgement delivered last April, which exempts linguistic and/or religious minority schools from this obligation. With almost all of Bangalore’s top-ranked private schools claiming minority status, entry into them has become problematic for children from poor households. But the true villains of Indian education are not private school promoters exercising their constitutional right to establish and administer schools of their choice, but inept education ministry officials who have failed and neglected to reform and upgrade deficient government primaries which have transformed into child-hostile hell-holes where universally-prized English language learning is unavailable, teachers — if they bother to show up at all — who don’t teach, and infrastructure and learning are in lamentably short supply. Liberals in academia and the media seem to have written off the country’s 1.28 million publicly-funded government schools as beyond reform and redemption. This is an irresponsible and dangerous assumption because for every little Lakshmi admitted into a private school haven, there are millions who can’t be similarly accommodated and are condemned to languish in state-funded…

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Editorial

Children First Party of India debut

The republic is in deep crisis. on every norm of good governance and practice, the Congress-led UPA-II government which was returned to power in New Delhi in the summer of 2009 with high hopes and great expectations, has failed. The economy is in serious trouble with the current account deficit ballooning to a record 5.4 percent (cf. the normative 2.5 percent); the fiscal deficit (Centre plus states) to over 10 percent (5 percent); inflation — especially food inflation — in double digits, with the national savings rate set to fall from a high of 36.8 percent in 2007-08 to below 30 percent this year because of persistent inflation. With the country running dangerously high current account, balance of payments and trade deficits, there is real danger of a meltdown of the rupee which will drive up domestic prices of all imports, sparking a forest fire of hyper-inflation. On other fronts of governance too, the outlook is grim. Scams and scandals involving mind-boggling sums and politicians and bureaucrats in the highest echelons of government, is deadly proof that the slow poison of corruption has seeped deep into all vital institutions of the republic. Simultaneously, repeated bomb blasts in public places countrywide and the continuously rising wave of crimes against women and children which the corrupt police force and ossified judiciary are unable to prevent or contain, reflects not only severe erosion of the law and order and justice machinery, but also an acute socio-economic crisis within the crumbling social order. This is the outcome of four decades of aimless and self-serving political leadership. Tragically the rot is not only within the incumbent Congress party which has (mis)ruled the nation for over 40 of the republic’s 65 years (interrupted by ineffective periods in the opposition), but in all major political parties who have reduced this high-potential nation to this sorry condition. Even as the Congress has mutated into a coalition of dynasties, the BJP is afflicted with the majoritarian hindutva virus which threatens to alienate minority communities and plunge the republic into a situation of permanent low-intensity civil conflict which will stall all socio-economic development. Against this backdrop, beyond writing futile editorials, the sole remaining option available to socio-economic reformers such as the editors of this publication who have been waging a long cold war for an equitable deal for children — the most neglected and vulnerable section of the nation’s population — is to venture into full-fledged political activism. It’s perhaps too late to save the adult population from the consequences of foolishly electing governments on caste, communal and dynastic considerations for over four decades. But it’s possible to save the next generation by transforming 21st century India into a child-centric society. Therefore on March 8 — International Women’s Day — the Children First Party of India will become formally operational. Make no mistake, CFPI is a full-blooded political party with a complete agenda. For further details visit our website www.childrenfirst.in. Admittedly, we have set sail in frail bark venturing into…

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Editorial

Implement overdue police reforms

A thin silver lining to the dark cloud of shame that hangs over the republic following the gangrape incident in Delhi on December 16, is that it has brought the full weight of public opinion to bear upon the long-pending issue of police reforms. It’s shocking but true that reports of several high-powered commissions and detailed guidelines of the Supreme Court on this vital issue, have been ignored by successive governments at the Centre and in the states. Over three decades ago in 1979, after the Janata government was swept to power in Delhi following the massive rejection of the Emergency imposed upon the nation by the Congress party in 1975-77, a National Police Commission (NPC) produced eight reports, dozens of topic-specific recommendations and also a Model Police Act to replace the Police Act, 1861 whose purpose and intent was to serve the interests of the British Raj by keeping the natives in their place through brute force. Shockingly, despite sustained pressure by citizens and the judiciary for over 35 years, there’s been no progress in implementing the NPC recommendations to curb the criminal excesses and persistent dereliction of duty by the police in Delhi and the state capitals. In 1996, two public-spirited former directors-general of police filed a PIL (public interest litigation) in the Supreme Court praying for a directive to the Central and state governments to implement the NPC report. In 2006, the apex court delivered a judgement requiring the respondents to implement seven directives — establishment of State Security Commissions (SSCs) to ensure that governments don’t exercise unwarranted influence or pressure on the police; appoint DGPs (directors-general) in the states through merit-based, transparent processes for minimum terms of two years; ensure that other police officers on operational duties (including superintendents of police in charge of districts and police stations) are also provided a minimum tenure of two years; separate the investigation and law and order maintenance functions of the police; establish Police Establishment Boards (PEBs) in every state to decide transfers, postings, promotions and other service-related matters of police officers; establish Police Complaints Authorities in each state and Union territory; establish a National Security Commission (NSC) in Delhi to prepare a panel for selection and placement of chiefs of the Central Police Organisations (CPO) — by January 3, 2007. Since then despite repeated extensions being granted by the apex court and several contempt petitions, politicians cutting across all parties and ideologies, have refused to comply with the seven directives of the Supreme Court. Clearly, this stalemate is unacceptable. An immediate step should be prompt action on the NPC recommendations and the seven directives of the Supreme Court. There is plenty the apex court can do including issuing show-cause contempt notices to chief ministers, and/or threatening to close down the courts if its writ is not enforced. In the tragic rape case of the Delhi braveheart as in most cases of gender rights violation, the police has been proven uncaring and villainous. This is the time for the…

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Editorial

Gender crime wave requires cold analysis

The brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in the heart of Delhi on December 16, has not only triggered unprecedented student and middle class angst against the incident per se, it has also focussed a powerful searchlight on an important civilisational issue ignored for too long in post-independence India: the rising incidence of sexual harassment and molestation of women citizens. A recent Thomson Reuters Foundation global poll numbered India among the five most dangerous places for women — in the ignoble company of Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan and Somalia. Curiously, similarly shameful data on child malnutrition, rule of law, unenforcibility of contracts, access to sanitation etc which places India in rock-bottom position worldwide, seems to make no impact upon our self-serving establishment, which on the contrary brazenly demands superpower and United Nations security council status for India. But while the unprecedented fury and revolt has served the useful purpose of revealing the ugly face of the establishment, there is clear and present danger that in the heat of anger and emotionalism a real opportunity to deter, abate and severely punish crimes against women and children will be missed. This is reflected in pervasive misdiagnosis of the causes of the rising wave of gender crimes in Indian society which has its epicentre in the Union and state government budgets and education systems. Shockingly, neither indignant citizens nor media pundits seem to be aware that the number of police personnel per 100,000 people in India is a mere 130 against the world average of 222, and 976 in Russia, 552 in Italy, 369 in France and 233 in the US. Moreover the number of judges per 100,000 people in India is a measly 10.5 against 105 in the US and 55 in the UK. To these dismal statistics, factor in the reality that almost 30 percent of police personnel are assigned for VIP security, and that criminal and civil procedure codes which govern the country’s courtrooms haven’t changed for a century, and the causes of the collapsed police and justice systems become plainly apparent. Therefore to seize the opportunity and effectively take arms against the tide of gender crimes destabilising Indian society, the educated middle class and intelligentsia in particular need to rise to the challenge and press for budgetary allocations to double the number of police personnel and judges. In addition, substantial sums have to spent on training police-persons in forensics, gender sensitisation and other life skills. But it’s foolish to expect gains without pain. Therefore expenditure under other budgetary heads and unmerited subsidies (on higher education for instance) have to be reduced and higher taxes have to be tolerated. While demanding the death penalty and severe punishment for rape and gender crimes may result in emotional catharsis, there’s no substitute for a cold, hard analysis of the ecosystem — covering school curriculums and Bollywood films — to abate the gender crimes wave which is shaming and destroying India. Meanwhile more boots on the ground and…

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Editorial

Garden city’s garbage mountain shadow

The rising garbage mountains of the once green and pleasant city that is Bangalore aka Bengaluru (pop. 8 million), which are all set to collapse in a deluge of plague and pestilence upon this city — paradoxically the country’s premier science and technology hub — is a grim precursor of things to come for 21st century India’s 7,900 cities, of whom over 70 will be burdened with endangered populations of 1 million plus by the year 2030. Widely acclaimed as the garden city of India until recently, this metropolis is being slowly asphyxiated by automobile pollution — over 2 million cars and motorcycles are choking its inadequate streets — and 4,000 tonnes of garbage which it generates daily is piling up on street corners, pavements and in its famous parks. Ironically, Bangalore’s estimated 100,000 scientists and technologists are unable to devise tech solutions to address these grave urban blight challenges. Clearly the civic problems which threaten to overwhelm the city — and most of the country’s urban habitats — are not intractable. The worldover, more populous cities are successfully coping with the challenges of traffic gridlock and garbage disposal, and providing their citizens healthy and productive work and residential environments. Effective civic governance is not rocket science. It requires empowered local government, application of modern technology and maintenance of law and order. Unfortunately, municipal and rural local governments are the weakest link in the national governance hierarchy comprising the Central, state and local governments. Under the current dispensation, very limited powers of revenue mobilisation are conferred upon municipal and panchayat (rural) governments. This has stymied civic infrastructure development and maintenance in all urban habitats countrywide heavily dependent upon the largesse of state governments dominated by quasi-literate rustic politicians. Consequently, municipal governments tend to be shockingly technology agnostic. Bangalore’s garbage crisis is the consequence of the failure of Bangalore Municipal Corporation’s ill-qualified engineers — as also of the city’s over-hyped IT industry tech wizards — to adapt technology solutions available off the shelf, to resolve the city’s waste disposal problem. And at bottom is the root problem of the steady ruralisation of Bangalore and the nation’s cities. Sustained neglect of agriculture and rural development by the Central and state governments, has accelerated rural migration into urban habitats transforming the nation’s wealth-generating cities into replicas of the country’s backward villages. Yet all is not lost for India’s sinking cities. The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution which expand the jurisdiction of local including municipal administrations — but have been neutered by state governments — need to be given teeth by devolution of powers of taxation to enable effective local governance. This will empower municipal governments to invest in technology and maintenance of law and order. It’s pertinent to note that the nation’s cities as hubs of commerce and industry generate an overwhelming proportion of India’s GDP. If allowed to degenerate into cesspools of squalor, the Indian economy will collapse. Reluctance to invoke defamation laws In a properly functioning democracy, victims of…

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Editorial

Root cause of gender crime wave

The recent rash of sexual assaults and atrocities against women and teenage girl children in the state of Haryana (pop. 25.3 million) which has shocked the nation, is a severe indictment of the education system in this north Indian state. The outcome of decades of neglect of civic, gender and liberal arts education in K-12 curriculums is rampant lawlessness and domination of society by primeval and patriarchal khaps (village councils), comprising illiterate and quasi-literate elders. It’s patently obvious that progressive values such as respect for the autonomy of women and gender egalitarianism are conspicuously absent in school curriculums of this benighted state which ironically borders Delhi, the national capital. And if further proof of the deep illiteracy malaise afflicting Haryana — and the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states of the Hindi belt which host an aggregate population of 443 million — is needed, it is provided by khap leaders who propose lowering the legal age for marriage of women to 16 as the antidote to the rising incidence of sexual assaults and rape of women in Haryana, already bedeviled by the country’s lowest gender ratio (833 women per thousand males). Complex issues such as the impact of lowering the marriage age upon the education and personal freedoms of women, population control etc, are too difficult for their under-developed minds to grasp. The easy option is to sentence women to purdah, because according to a Congress party leader, women who step out of their homes are inviting sexual misconduct. It’s a bitter truth that Haryana and arguably the BIMARU states, are illiterate societies ruled by leaders with little or limited learning. Although radical reform of school education countrywide is a necessary condition of abating the tide of crimes against women, it’s insufficient. Modernisation of school syllabuses and curriculums needs to be complemented with rigorous implementation of law and order and gender justice in particular. Therefore reform of the nation’s over-hyped justice system which curiously seems unwilling to mete out speedy exemplary punishment for gender crimes as a deterrent to potential offenders, as also to policemen who aid and abet these life-scarring crimes by their sloth and ineptitude, is also an urgent national priority. Yet the plain truth which needs to be highlighted is that ill-designed K-12 education compounded by early streaming and archaic higher education study programmes have ensured that the establishment is dominated by narrowly-educated technocrats with not more than cursory acquaintance with the liberal arts and humanities which teach human rights, gender equality, their historical evolution and philosophic foundations. In sum, while the indignation of television anchors and editorial writers over under-reported atrocities visited upon women citizens on a daily basis provides the country’s middle class some catharsis, the rising incidence of gender crimes is unlikely to abate unless the nation’s outdated education system is radically reformed and overhauled. Resurgent fundamentalism spectre The murderous but abortive attack on Lt. General (Retd.) Kuldip Singh Brar in London by four suspected Sikh terrorists, viewed in the context…

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Editorial

Indefensible contempt of Parliament

The recently concluded 19-day monsoon session of Parliament which ended on September 7 without any orderly debate or passage of legislation, is a blot on India’s experiment in democracy. Although media pundits excoriated all political parties for the daily disruption of both houses of Parliament during the entire monsoon session of the country’s apex legislative forums, the blame for this shameful chapter in the history of post-independence India must be squarely laid on the leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the major opposition party and leader of the National Democratic Alliance. Admittedly, the BJP leadership in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha had some cause for disrupting the legislative business of Parliament. They were outraged by a report of the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) of India indicting the Congress-led, ten-party UPA government for allegedly allocating 90 coal mining blocks to private sector crony capitalists including front companies and relatives of Union ministers at throwaway prices, thus inflicting a revenue loss conservatively estimated at a mind-boggling Rs.1860,000 crore, the insinuation being that government ministers and the Congress party had received kickbacks for exercising selective discretion. The CAG report on the allocations of coal blocks owned by the public sector Coal India Ltd based upon debatable assumptions and calculus, was seized upon by the opposition and BJP in particular, to demand the resignation of prime minister Manmohan Singh. During the period between 2007 until early this year, when the coal blocks were discretionally allotted to steel and cement among other companies, he was also the Union minister for coal and in 2004 had circulated a note to state governments inviting their comments on switching to an auction system. Ill-advisedly, the BJP made the resignation of the prime minister the precondition of permitting Parliament to function without organised disruption. The Congress rejoinder is that during its term in office (1999-2004), the BJP-led NDA government had also allocated coal blocks discretionally, and that even after 2004, several BJP state governments had objected in writing to the prime minister’s proposal to switch to the auction system. Against this murky backdrop, the BJP’s dogged insistence on the prime minister’s resignation as a precondition of parliamentary debate, is a shocking breach of constitutional propriety, tantamount to plain political blackmail. The raison d’etre of Parliament is to debate such issues in an orderly and transparent manner so the relative merits of the contentions and arguments of both parties can be adjudicated at the bar of public opinion. By continuously shouting down the speakers of the Lok and Rajya Sabha, the BJP leadership has committed grave contempt of Parliament and the Constitution, shooting itself in the foot during the run-up to the general election scheduled for 2014. Moreover its myopic party leadership has confirmed the worst fears of liberal and right-thinking citizens that despite its repeated assertions of commitment to democracy, the BJP is driven by fascist and authoritarian ideology, which bodes ill for the country. Cavalier invocation of sedition law The leaders of India’s independence movement,…

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Editorial

Indian establishment’s Stockholm syndrome

Despite being proven beyond all reasonable doubt that India’s 18-million strong neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) kleptocracy is engaged in open, continuous and uninterrupted loot of the public exchequer and actual and potential revenue of governments at the Centre and in the states, there’s a curious reluctance among media pundits and the nation’s intelligentsia to encourage the entry of anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare and Team Anna into the political arena. The most common refrain is that Team Anna is a single issue movement which lacks the capability to manage the complexities of Indian politics. Such advice is indicative of the extent to which the intelligentsia is cut off from the public, groaning under the heavy burden of institutionalised corruption. Since unchecked graft in government cuts across every sector and segment of Indian society, by definition it is a multi-sector issue. The rotting grain mountains of the Food Corporation of India are the fallout of widespread theft and defalcations within the organisation, which has prevented construction of adequate storage facilities; the country’s ubiquitous urban and rural slums are the outcome of pernicious corruption in the real estate sector; mass illiteracy and unemployability of millions of youth is the result of chronic corruption in education, and poor health and nutrition of the general populace is also the natural consequence of rampant corruption in the public healthcare system. Thus far from being a single issue, corruption is an all encompassing phenomenon which has created roadblocks in every sector of the Indian economy. Therefore if the powerful Lok Ayukta with its own police and investigation machinery and control over the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) — proposed by Team Anna — succeeds in putting the fear of God into every politician and bureaucrat, the nation’s GDP will automatically hit 9 percent plus per year. There is undoubtedly an element of the Stockholm syndrome in the negativism with which the intelligentsia and establishment greet any new initiative to break the stranglehold of established political parties over the polity and political process. This is because despite the political and administrative systems having been thoroughly compromised to the point of degeneration into open banditry, leading lights of the establishment have carved out comfortable niches and perches for themselves. Indeed, there is ample evidence to support the proposition that post-independence India’s national development effort has been restricted to advancement of the establishment and middle class, to the utter neglect and exclusion of the subaltern population in the lower reaches of the country’s socio-economic pyramid. The prospect of a politicised Team Anna’s single issue anti-corruption drive whose natural outcome will be root and branch reform of politics and administration to the benefit of the subaltern classes, upon whom the weight of institutionalised corruption bears most heavily, is subliminally unwelcome within the intelligentsia which prefers to bear the ills we have than fly to others they know not. Lessons from the London Olympics disaster Just one sportsperson, US swimmer Michael Phelps, has won almost as many Olympic medals — 22, including 18 gold…

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Editorial

Little fear of law & order system

A common factor connects the several separate incidents of mob molestation of a teenage girl in Guwahati graphically captured by video footage, the brazen diktat issued by a khap panchayat (village council) forbidding women to venture out of their homes without a male escort or use mobile phones, and incidents involving celebratory gunfire in Uttar Pradesh, which recently killed and maimed several children. This common factor is growing disrespect, bordering on contempt for the law. It’s quite clear the perpetrators of these heinous acts which have shocked the conscience of right-thinking members of society, entertained no fear of law enforcement authorities or the justice dispensation system. Pervasive disrespect of law which characterises contemporary Indian society is a natural outcome of the low priority accorded by the Union and state governments to the important issue of maintaining law and order, the primary duty of government. Currently, the country employs a mere 143 police personnel per 100,000 people against the UN norm of 222 and 200-250 per 100,000 police personnel employed in developed OECD countries. And with a substantial percentage of police squads deployed for VIP security duty, it’s unsurprising that even in state capitals such as Guwahati, beat policemen are a rare sight and gangs and mobs have almost total freedom to run riot. Moreover it’s hardly a national secret that the majority of the country’s police force is under-trained and demoralised because of poor pay, lack of housing facilities and the omnipresent threat of transfer because of rigid government control of the police. Several National Police Commission reports, notably of the Rustomjee Committee (1975) and the Justice Malimath Committee (2003), which suggested major police reforms have been cold-storaged by the Central and state governments. The low priority given to law enforcement by government and society is compounded by neglect of the justice dispensation system. Curiously, despite being one of the few nations worldwide to levy a justice tax (ad valorem court fees on civil litigation), contemporary India offers its citizenry a mere 12-13 judges per million people compared to 107 in the United States, 75 in Canada and 51 in the United Kingdom. As a result, over 30 million cases are pending in the country’s chaotic courtrooms labouring under archaic procedural laws causing routine delays of a decade between filing and disposal of civil and criminal suits (appeals excluded). Consequently within the criminal and anti-socials’ communities, there is little fear of speedy trial, and intimidation of plaintiffs and witnesses is the rule rather than exception. Police and judicial reforms coupled with strict accountability have become an urgent necessity for orderly governance of the nation. But for these reforms to be implemented, the pressure will have to be exerted by the country’s influential middle class and intelligentsia — which have the most to lose from spreading anarchy — upon the compromised political class which is patently comfortable with the status quo. India’s Arab spring opportunity During the bloody french revolution of 1789, writer and philosopher Pierre Vergniaud warned it could “devour…

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Editorial

Ridiculous strong fundamentals mantra

An early June report of Standard & Poor’s — the well-known sovereign bonds and country risks rating agency which speculates that India may be the first country among Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) nations to lose its S&P investment grade BBB- status labelling it a high-risk country for foreign investment — has shaken the stock exchanges and money markets. However, this damning report doesn’t seem to have unduly perturbed the mandarins of India’s economic ministries in North Block, Delhi although India’s BBB- rating is the lowest investment grade (top grade: AAA) awarded by S&P. A further down-grade will signal investors worldwide — including domestic investors — that the bonds issued by the Union government have been reduced to junk status, meaning there’s risk of government default. In short, it’s a red light to all investors. The Union government’s response to the detailed S&P report, which cited a consistently falling GDP growth rate for the past seven quarters and policy formulation paralysis as causes of a possible rating downgrade, has been a confused medley of flat denials, blaming the European Union debt crisis and other external developments. And the common mantra that emerges from North Block and government agencies is that the “fundamentals of the Indian economy” are sound. This standard government response to all criticism of mismanagement of the economy needs examination. In an economy in which 60 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture production but which contributes a mere 20 percent of the GDP, it takes either grand delusion or outright brazenness to proclaim that fundamentals are sound. The fallout of persistent under-investment in rural infrastructure is that every year, an estimated 20 million tonnes of foodgrains production and 40 percent of rural India’s horticulture produce valued at Rs.50,000 crore, is wasted because of inadequate storage and farmers’ inability to speedily access urban markets. In industry the clock seems to have been turned back on the historic industry liberalisation and deregulation policy initiative of July 1991. Despite a severe nationwide shortage of electricity, constructing a power plant reportedly requires 118 separate permissions and clearances. And according to affordable housing entrepreneur Jerry Rao, a low-cost housing project requires 17 pre-construction and 10 post-construction government clearances which typically take 24 months. Even as agricultural and industrial growth have hit rock bottom, the country’s education system continues to produce millions of school dropouts and sub-standard graduates, while the public healthcare system is allocated a mere 1.5 percent of GDP annually. Moreover the Indian economy with reputedly sound fundamentals is underpinned by perhaps the world’s most corrupt police force and slowest judiciary. The end result: an under-provided, under-educated and unhealthy population under-served by a dysfunctional justice system with little protection from anti-socials. Against this socio-economic backdrop to proclaim that the fundamentals of the Indian economy are strong, is not only absurd, but downright ridiculous. Good opportunity to break Kashmir impasse The 179-page report of three kashmir “interlocutors” — a senior journalist (Dileep Padgaonkar), an academic (Radha Kumar) and a former…

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Editorial

Coming of age of the amoral socialist man

The commemoration of the 60th year of independent India’s Parliament by all members of both houses of the legislature cutting across party lines on May 13, should have been a gala occasion nationwide. Instead, the festivities were muted and confined to Parliament while the rest of the country introspected upon the reality that contemporary India is a deeply flawed democracy characterised by pervasive corruption and a dysfunctional legal system. Unfortunately, during the past six decades after the then newly independent nation adopted the “socialistic pattern of society”, the socialist man defined by his resentment of private enterprise and property and committed to administration by arbitrary government diktat with scant respect for institutions of governance, has come of age. The precedent for transformation of the people of India — once reputed for their honesty and respect for contract — was set by the newly independent country’s socialist governments. Way back in the early 1950s, a pledge made to the Untied Nations to hold a plebiscite in the Kashmir valley was obfuscated; in 1967, a solemn compact made with the princely families of pre-independence India to pay an annual privy purse in exchange for their accession to the Indian Union was reversed; in 1969 private banks were nationalised without compensation to their shareholders, and the fundamental right to own property was abolished. Simultaneously the Supreme Court was packed with a “committed judiciary” which dutifully endorsed the imposition of the infamous 19-month Emergency of 1975-76. The example set by the Central government of routinely breaking solemn agreements contracted with foreign and domestic investors and businessmen has been dutifully followed by state governments. Multinationals such as Cogentrix in Karnataka, Pohang Steel and Vedanta in Odisha, among others, have been seduced into making large investments only to witness their projects bogged down in procedural red tape which can be cut only by massive bribes and pay-offs. Similarly, government rolls out the red carpet for indigenous entrepreneurs only for it to be quickly substituted with red tape and fine print provisions of mala fide legislation designed to extort bribes from businessmen. This is true even of the education sector. This contempt for the sanctity of contract exhibited by the Central and state governments has rubbed off on the people. These days it is routine for lay citizens and businessmen to renege on payments and contracts, secure in the knowledge that it’s not worthwhile to file money recovery suits in the clogged lower courts. Unsurprisingly, India is ranked No.182 (from among 183 countries) on the parameter of ‘enforceability of contracts’ on the World Bank Group’s Ease of Doing Business Index 2011. Even as Parliament, if not the people, celebrates its diamond jubilee, state-sponsored socialism and the coming of age of the amoral socialist man have imposed a heavy burden upon Indian industry and the economy. And this burden weighs most heavily upon the poorest citizens struggling to survive in a nation of dysfunctional institutions. Urgent need for new land acquisition act In most democracies ownership…

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Editorial

End over-subsidisation of higher education

The enactment of the Right to Free and Compulsory (RTE) Education Act, 2009 and the Supreme Court’s substantial validation of its provisions by its judgement delivered on April 12, has belatedly focused national attention upon vitally important primary and upper primary education — the foundation block of national development worldwide. Despite newly independent India having adopted Soviet-style detailed central planning to ensure balanced growth in all sectors of the economy and inter-sectoral linkages, early childhood and elementary education for the masses proved to be a blindspot of India’s central planners. The price of this neglect of primary education the country has had to pay in terms of rapid population growth, poor agricultural and industrial productivity and mass illiteracy, has been very heavy. Therefore the belated acknowledgement of the fundamental importance of qualitative elementary (classes I-VIII) and vocational education, as prerequisites of national socio-economic development is as welcome as it is overdue. But at a press conference in Bangalore on April 26, officials and members of the Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI) — an association of private colleges and universities in tertiary education — expressed alarm that the outcome of huge outlays required of the Central and state governments to implement RTE (which EPSI estimates at Rs.70,000 crore per year) will be that “higher education will end up having lesser resources”. The fears of EPSI and other academics in higher education highlight the imperative to radically reform India’s obsolete tertiary education system driven by massive subsidisation of higher education. Tuition fees in Central and state government higher education institutions — which constitute the great majority of the country’s 31,000 arts, science and commerce colleges and 611 universities — are among the lowest worldwide, being frozen since 1950 at Rs.15-50 per month, even in the country’s top-ranked colleges and universities. According to one survey, tuition and development fees etc contribute less than 5 percent of the annual expenditure of Central and state government colleges and universities. And shockingly, subsidisation of higher education is indiscriminate and universal, which means students from the country’s richest households pay the same tuition fees as from the poorest. Quite clearly, universal over-subsidisation of tertiary education is iniquitous and contrary to the national interest. It’s high time therefore, that tuition fees in higher education are raised to at least 25 percent of the actual cost of education provision, indiscriminate subsidisation of higher education is abolished in favour of targeted subsidisation of needy merit students, and a system of long-term, low-interest loans for students introduced. The national interest demands that government allocations for higher education are steadily reduced to release resources for primary foundational education. In the final analysis, elementary education is a public good while higher education is a personal benefit. Urgent clean-up needed in defence services Two disparate events — although not linked directly — within India’s defence services have a common thread running through them. On April 20, India successfully launched Agni V, a 20-tonne missile with a range of 5,000 km which…

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Editorial

Change budget presentation style and format

The citizenry of India is too patient and undemanding of its leaders. True, when they commit egregious crimes and brazen acts of impropriety, the public is not averse to voting them out of office. Yet everyday acts of omission and commission and particularly dereliction of the duty of accountability for revenue mobilised through taxation, and expended from the public exchequer, is easily forgotten and forgiven. The validity of this observation was confirmed when Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the third budget of the Congress-led UPA-II government to Parliament and the people on March 16. Although perhaps in no country is the annual budget exercise of the Central government marked by as much hype, and media coverage as in India, paradoxically none of the economic pundits who dominate television news channels and the print media on B-day understands the Union budget sufficiently to provide a coherent account of the taxation strategy and expenditure priorities of the Union government. At best the post-budget analyses of ace economists are akin to those of the seven blind men of Hindustan describing parts of an elephant by touch and surmising the full form and shape of the beast. This confusion is the outcome of the archaic presentation style and format of the budget which leaves the public (including your editor who edited India’s first two business magazines) at best minimally wiser about the tax-and-spend priorities of the Union government. The fault is not in us but in the deliberate opacity and lack of accountability of the Union finance minister and bureaucrats of North Block, New Delhi. For instance, it’s well known that one of the biggest expenditure heads of the Central government is the annual wages, salaries and pensions of the estimated 4 million ministers, bureaucrats and staff on its payroll. Yet this massive annual expenditure estimated at Rs.150,000 crore is not disclosed separately in the Union budget. Curiously, the opacity of the Union budget is in sharp contrast to the high degree of transparency demanded from business enterprises by the Companies Act, 1956 and the department of company law and affairs. In their annual reports, corporates are obliged by law to declare the company’s wage bill (including the names, educational qualifications, experience and designations of all employees earning more than Rs.24 lakh per year), details of physical output and value thereof, together with a plethora of other information. Likewise, the citizenry which is expected to contribute a massive Rs.1077,612 crore to the Central treasury by way of direct and indirect taxes in 2012-13, is entitled to an itemised account under all major heads detailing how the money was spent last year and to what effect in terms of outcomes and assets creation, and how it is proposed to be spent in the current year with predicted outcomes. Meanwhile academic and media pundits would do well to admit that there’s a strong element of the emperor’s clothes hysteria about the annual Union budget presentation rite. It needs to be exposed as a massively fraudulent…

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Editorial

Corruption a live issue for electorate

The utter rout of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) in the recently concluded legislative assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu respectively, is clear proof that contrary to popular punditry, abatement, if not elimination, of corruption in government is a live and important issue in Indian politics. Regrettably, during the past 60 years since independence, under a succession of greedy cabals disguised as political parties at the Centre and in the states, the Republic of India conceived with noblest impulses, is rapidly morphing into a hollow democracy in which the rule of law — the gold standard of a true democracy — is being incrementally suborned with institutions of public governance being emasculated and/or transformed into private fiefdoms and treasuries. Yet fortuitously, universal adult franchise has survived the best efforts of free India’s reckless and déclassé politicians enabling the largely illiterate, neglected and poverty-stricken people of India to fully exercise this quinquennial right, often with a vengeance. That the cabals which have dominated the political discourse of independent India have not suborned the Election Commission of India is perhaps their only saving grace. Against this backdrop it’s astonishing that despite a mountain of evidence indicating that hundreds of millions of ordinary, lay citizens of the republic have cruelly been denied basic food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare by the country’s 18 million politicians and bureaucrats at the Centre and states openly practicing collusive extortion and graft, the great majority of political pundits still seem to believe that corruption is not a major issue in national politics. Hopefully the crushing defeat of the CPM — which during the 34 years of uninterrupted rule it enjoyed in West Bengal (pop. 91 million) had outsourced governance of this once-prosperous state to its corrupt and autocratic party cadres who arbitrarily auctioned all government services — and the DMK in Tamil Nadu which practiced family rule with an effrontery that would have embarrassed a mafia clan, will persuade them to appreciate the reality that corruption in governance weighs heaviest upon the poorest and most deprived sections of the population, as confirmed by several Transparency International India studies. However it’s important to note that the electoral defeat of these heavyweight political parties is unlikely to serve as a sufficiently strong incentive to the nation’s political class and dynasties to clean up their augean stables. The rot has permeated too deep to permit voluntary action. Therefore the best available option to the citizenry is to support individuals (including Anna Hazare) and NGOs working to strengthen institutions of governance including Parliament, the judiciary, Central Bureau of Investigation, the police and proposed Jana Lok Pal. Foolishly over the past 60 years the Indian electorate has reposed its faith in charismatic individuals rather than institutions of governance. It’s high time the citizenry and particularly the nation’s intelligentsia, acknowledged this erroneous priority and reversed it. Addressing corruption analysis paralysis Against the backdrop of pervasive and accelerating official corruption which prompted Anna Hazare, the…

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Editorial

Leave deemed universities well alone

Media reports emanating from New Delhi, suggesting that a committee of the University Grants Commission (UGC) is finalising the provisions of a Bill to regulate the admissions and fees of privately promoted deemed universities, indicate that the licence-permit-quota culture is alive and well in the Union human resource development ministry and UGC. A UGC (Admission and Fees Structure in Professional Study Programmes of Study in Self-Financing Deemed to be Universities) Bill is reportedly in the final stages of drafting. As indicated by its clumsy nomenclature, the Bill will empower UGC to regulate and supervise the admission processes and tuition fees levied by the country’s 125 deemed universities, which have been accorded university status for the high quality education they provide to students. This populist proposal based on faulty premises and logic, is ill-conceived and should be aborted forthwith. For one, privately promoted colleges and institutions bestowed the honorific of deemed university — the list includes highly respected institutions such as BITS, Pilani, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Manipal and Symbiosis universities — are by definition well-managed and administered institutions of higher education, providing quality professional study programmes. That being the case, there’s no need for interfering with their admission processes and fee structures. Quite obviously, the country’s deemed universities have provoked the inherent command-and-control impulses of education czars of the Union HRD ministry and UGC, because of their popularity with the students community. Because of the high quality professional (medical, engineering, business management etc) education they provide, the demand for admission into deemed universities far exceeds capacity available. Therefore in the suspicious collective mind of the education bureaucracy, there’s the perception that tuition fees levied by the deemed universities are exorbitant. Yet even a cursory comparison of the fee structures of India’s privately-promoted professional colleges and deemed universities with fees charged by higher education institutions in other democratic countries, will show up that private collegiate tuition costs a fraction of what it does abroad. To compare the fees of deemed universities with those of heavily subsidised government-run colleges as is the fashion, is intellectual dishonesty of the worst order. Indeed, as has been often argued in these columns, there’s no case for indiscriminate subsidisation of professional education even in government institutions. More significantly, the proposed Bill to regulate admissions and fees in deemed universities is tantamount to brazen contempt of the spirit of the Supreme Court’s judgements in the T.M.A Pai Foundation (2002) and P.A Inamdar (2005) cases. In both cases full benches of the apex court ruled that private, unaided colleges of professional education have a fundamental right to determine their own admission processes and fee structures, subject to their being merit-based and reasonable in relation to actual costs of education provision. Typically, bureaucrats in the HRD ministry and UGC are unaware that India’s moribund higher education system needs more autonomy, rather than greater regulation.

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Editorial

Democracy lessons from America

The landmark election of senator Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America on November 4, highlights the stark differences in the practice and precepts of democratic governance between the US and India, the most vibrant and most populous democracies respectively of the contemporary world. The overwhelming popular mandate in favour of Senator Obama — born into America’s minority (12 percent) Afro-American community which was enslaved for over 300 years and effectively won the right to vote less than 50 years ago — at a time when the US faces its gravest socio-economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1929-33, and is simultaneously fighting two wars abroad (Iraq and Afghanistan), is an indicator of the extraordinary risk-taking capability, idealism and willingness to practice real democracy of the people of America. Little wonder the US is the most preferred emigration destination of people all over the world. Nevertheless it’s pertinent to note that prior to being elected president of the United States, and although already a member of the US Senate, Obama was thoroughly vetted and tested over a period of two years. First he was elected the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party following a gruelling nationwide, transparent election. Then he had to endure the close scrutiny of the electorate in the final run-off against Republican Party nominee John McCain, a Vietnam War hero and member of the Senate for over three decades. Apart from arguing in favour of the presidential system of governance, this process contrasts sharply with the manner in which a prime minister is elected in the world’s most populous democracy. For one, dynastic politics, which ensures that under-qualified progeny and protégés succeed their usually incompetent sires and mentors with monotonous regularity, is the rule rather than exception in Indian politics. True the system requires all aspiring leaders to win one parliamentary election. But once this hurdle is crossed — and the first-past-the-post parliamentary system inherited from the last days of the British raj makes it possible for a Lok Sabha candidate to be elected to Parliament with a mere 25 percent of a constituency’s vote — it’s smooth sailing for favoured sons and daughters of the country’s politicians steeped in caste and identity politics. There is one (among many) vitally important lesson that leaders and the electorate of Indian democracy can learn from the historic election of Senator Obama to the presidency of the most powerful democracy in global history. They need to note that although born into the minority Afro-American community which has suffered centuries of extreme deprivation and injustice, the president-elect practiced and preached inclusive, rather than identity, politics. Obama didn’t win by promising affirmative action in favour of minority communities, but by pledging to place the growth engines of the nation back on the rails to ensure that the new prosperity of America will be equitably shared by all. That’s the lesson which India’s sawdust caesars practising divide and rule caste and class driven politics in the world’s most…

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Editorial

Mr. Micawber’s common sense observation

The great fall of Wall Street, usa and the meltdown of stock markets the world over including India’s bellwether Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange, which has fallen from the high of 21,000 points it attained in January this year to 8,701 currently, imparts some valuable lessons that need to be debated and discussed within the academic and student communities. Yet prior to discussing the causes and effects of the great global markets meltdown, it’s important for the academic-student and wider publics to appreciate the value of stock markets and stock exchanges. Because of the predominance of confused Marxist ideology and economics on the campuses of third world countries and Indian academia in particular, too many people tend to equate stock markets with wicked gambling dens and casinos rather than industry and nation building institutions, which need to be strengthened rather than abolished. In their pristine form, stock markets/exchanges are forums where entrepreneurs and businessmen with great ideas and ambition can raise the capital and finance to translate their vision into projects with public participation. Likewise it’s also important for academia and the student community to appreciate the roles of commercial and investment banks within national economies. The role of commercial banks is to accept people’s savings for safekeeping and lend them forward to companies and small businesses as working capital, i.e. to provide short-term loans and bridge-finance to businesses. The role of investment banks is to propose mergers and acquisitions and invest the savings of high net worth individuals or corporations to earn high returns on capital. The root cause of the great Wall Street crash of 2008 is that the distinction between commercial and investment banks blurred during the past two decades. To justify their six digit salaries and huge bonuses, manage-ments of commercial banks in the US disbursed housing loans estimated at $ 1.4 trillion (Rs.7,000,000 crore — a sum greater than the GDP of India) to millions of people with inadequate capacity to keep paying their monthly installments. Moreover investment banks purchased such dicey loans of commercial banks on a huge scale and transformed them into CDOs (collateralised debt obligations) or high-yield mortgage-backed securities and sold them to banks and institutions around the world which in turn sold them to investors and mutual funds. But with supply of new homes catching up with demand, the prices of real estate and mortgage backed securities plunged in the US, lumbering high street (commercial) banks with huge inventories of rock-bottom price real estate. Hence a collapse in investor confidence and the global markets meltdown. This is good time for teachers to reiterate the virtues of fiscal prudence and household saving. Mr. Micawber (of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield) was right: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” The great global markets meltdown of 2008 proves the enduring validity of this common sense observation.

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