Lol!!

“ I have been warning Pakisthan not to play games with us. The last game should be Mumbai attacks. Stop it there.... If terrorists from Pakisthan try to carry out any attacks in India, they will not only be defeated, but be retaliated against”........ Our honourable home minister, P.Chidambaram spoke these words earlier this month.

Today’s Hindu (dated Nov 26) thought it was important enough to carry it in the editorial page. I must thank Hindu Group for providing me comic relief and a rush of nostalgia.
I was reminded of how, when we were kids, we would be told by teachers, “Stop playing the fool। Let this be the last time you come late to class। Next time you do this, you will be thrown out of school”। None of us ever got thrown out of schools-not that we never repeated our mistakes।

I frankly just don’t find any difference between these two threats।

Enough and more literature has been written about the 26/11 Mumbai attacks। I wouldn’t be writing anything new, or asking new questions if I were to use this space to wonder aloud some realities of the whole episode.

However, I do wish to gently remind the home Minister that, there’s a lot of cleaning that needs to be done in our own home, before we point fingers at the other। We’d rather have a home minister (and hence the media) flashing reports reflecting lessons we have learnt from the attacks.

We still read about poor training for policemen... we still hear about poor security checks.....we can still walk into any shop and buy any number of sim-cards with flimsy proof of identity....
What have we really done at our own home is a more pressing question than threatening our neighbour।

Till such a time...

Anything that is said is a sinister joke, and all we can do is- Lol!!*

(*Lol: Laugh out Loud)

“You can’t plug round holes with square plugs”

“Operation green hunt - the fancy name given to the offensive against Naxals” has become the brand new nutritive supplement for the insatiably hungry media. The words and phrases that are used with reference to Naxals makes one cringe-“We need to flush out people”…. “Cold blooded murderers”…. Since when are “people” “flushed” out?

… I am not saying Naxals are right, or the State is right – not taking any moral stand or branding of good and evil-. My issue is the lack of debate about this issue- It seems like most people are willing to buy what news channels and papers say! The ‘Great Indian Apathy’ works just fine for the State and the media. Bunches of people who haven’t stepped down from the (urban educated, English speaking) pedestals talk about the issue and (read justify the state’s great idea of the operation green hunt)I would be unfair if I don't make a special mention of Arnam Goswami of the Times Now

("…….On the night of September 22, discussing Kobad Ghandy, a top Naxal ideologue, Arnab Goswami said “Terrorist or ideologue?”.

“Six thousand innocent Indians have been killed on Mr Ghandy’s ‘watch,’” he said (as if Kobad Ghandy was some Idi Amin figure presiding over a banana republic), “and yet human rights organisations and NGOs are asking for his release.” (Mr Goswami always reserves special scorn for human rights activists, as if they are a uniform sub-species of anti-national humankind, rather than men and women with differing and individual views.) “What about the 12-year-old girl the Naxals killed in Jharkhand?” he thundered. “What about the 15 CPM cadres they killed in Bengal last night?” Every time one of his panelists tried to introduce the larger political context behind Naxalism or a more complex argument, Mr Goswami swatted them down… "
To read more : http://www.mail-archive.com/marxist-leninist-list@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg09205.html )

The insensitivity of the media in handling this issue (that is the “gravest threat to the country”) is obscene and reflects clear insensitivity and apathy… If anything, the media (with its moral stands of good and evil) and it’s handling of the whole Naxalite issue is a far greater threat to the country.In a democracy, shouldn't people engage a debate? Shouldn't media facilitate such a debate?

I need to admit at this point that I don’t know enough to comment about the issue, or have an opinion- I am no leftist, communist or a naxalite activist or any such “ist”!! It is the human being in me feels miserable to see beasts in action. If the issue of naxalism is about a neglected section screaming for attention, how can killing them be a solution? Shouldn’t addressing their needs be an issue? This is like saying, I will rob you off your belongings- the moment you raise an issue about it- I will make sure you are silenced!

I read somewhere that over 600 villages in Chattisgarh have been cleared under Salwa Judum and the areas are given to private firms for private mining activities. Labeling this as development and expecting tribals to feel a part of this “development” is ridiculous, illogical and irrational. Roads, powerhouses, mobile phone etc are investment-attractors and not development for the tribals.

A political issue can’t be solved by force.

A socio economic issue can’t be solved by “flushing” people out and spinning myths like inclusive growth, equal opportunities.

Operation green hunt can’t be a solution to a deep rooted problem such as neglect. The operation can kill people, but can do little to the anguish of being practically missing in the world’s largest democracy’s development curve. It is simply not possible to plug round holes with square plugs…..

Perils of Privatised Indian Higher Education

I was reading in the newspapers that our honourable Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his address at the Punjab University recently raised the issue of higher education in India. Talking about the need to enhance the quality of higher education, the Prime Minister spoke about the government encouraging private participation in higher education to make it available at an "affordable cost".No!!! That's not a typos!! You read it right..-P..r..i..v..a..t..i..z..e..d e..d..u...c...a..t..i..on at "a..f..f..o..r..d..a..b..l..e C..o...S..T" ?!! Only that Mr Prime minister forgot to mention who are the people who can afford it !!!

In India, deregulation and privatisation of higher education has been pursued by successive governments with zeal in the last two decades. “Direct” privatisation of higher education has led to thousands of private colleges mushrooming in the late 1990s that run the risk of disappearing as quickly as they arise. This situation reached its extreme in 2002 in Chattisgarh, where over 150 private universities and colleges came up within a couple of years, till the scam got exposed by a public interest litigation and the courts ordered the State government in 2004 to derecognise and close most of these universities or merge them with the remaining recognised ones.

Education is essentially a public good that has to be served by the government. Recently the Director of National Council of Education Research and Training in an extremely lucid article in the Economic and Political Weekly endorsed this view by saying that inviting private sector participation in education is not the correct solution to the poor quality education. The mistrust is deep rooted that the corporates would soon turn it into a for-profit activity and accentuate social inequality in India.

In 1999, Mukesh Ambani and Kumarmangalam Birla were commissioned by the government under the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry, to suggest needed reforms in the education sector( Mukesh Ambani?!! Education sector?!!) . The committee’s report, submitted in 2001, strongly suggested that government should leave higher education altogether to the private sector and confine itself to elementary and secondary education.( The report coudn't care to provide a rationale behind such a proposal!)

Further, the report urged the passage of the Private University Bill and also suggested that the user-pay principle be strictly enforced in higher education, supplemented by loans and grants to economically and socially backward sections of society.

The recommendations are essentially de-democratising by nature. The core of democracy lies in the elected representatives being accountable to its people. In a scenario of privatised education, who is accountable to whom? and India is still a democracy.. ain't it? (Oh! yes!! the exorbidantly prices election rituals keep happening....testifying that we are democratic!)

Absence of a long-term and coherent policy has made regulating the private sector in education an unmanageable task. Ad hoc policies and lack of a centralised control has led to the emergence of several actors of higher education. Internationalisation of education by allowing foreign universities to open franchisees in India has added to the confusion. There is a culture of “deemed universities” catching up now. A few universities, for example, the Guru Gobindsingh Indraprashta University in Delhi consists only of affiliating private self-financing colleges (Experience of Privatization of Education in India by Naraginti Reddy- http://ezinearticles.com/?Experience-of-Privatization-of--Education-in-India&id=1398246) .

In addition to this there are States where government-aided private institutions are converted to private self-financing institutions. Entry of private funds into higher education is not a case for the State to withdraw from the education sector. If anything, it is a call for the State to deepen its involvement and give it a different shape.

The State has lessons to learn from what it has done to school education in the past three decades. By encouraging privatisation of elementary schools and forgetting to expand and strengthen its own education infrastructure, the State has ensured that children who can afford only government school education have a defunct system thrown at them.

The Government of India has allocated Rs 850 billion for higher education in the 11th Five Year Plan. However, considering that the Planning Commission has identified a resource gap of Rs. 2.2 trillion, it is unlikely that the Government alone can address infrastructure needs in the higher education sector in the near future. This begs attention to private public partnerships (PPP). PPP’s are very different from “private” ventures, as the government does not lose control in a PPP. Relationship between the private corporate and academia must be developed in tandem with the government.

For Indians, higher education has been, in Stanley Wolpert’s (an American historian who specializes in the history of India and Pakistan) evocative words, “the swiftest elevators to the pinnacles of modern Indian power and opportunity”. These words make a case for the state to stop mindless privatisation and look at more desirable and feasible PPP models for the education sector- unless of course, the country is prepared to see the day when private educational institutions list themselves in the stock market-- all in the name of catering to the insatiable demand for “quality” education.