Daily Excelsior... Editorial

EDITORIAL

The Derecognition
Dilemma of the Left

By Sondip Bhattacharya
Early this month the Election Commission announced the derecognition of the CPI(M) as a national party because it fails to meet some technical .....more

Managing
Government schools

By Daya Sagar
As on date, of all the Public Enterprises, the most socially abused one is that of school education, particularly when we look at the needs of poor and .....more

Information Technology
of Indian States

By Dr. Vishiesh Verma
Last month Dr. Mustafa Kamal (Minister of Industries & Commerce) was critisised by the media and educationists for his statement that 'Information ......more

EDITORIAL

INNER PARTY DEMOCRACY

As on now, there is going to be contest for the coveted slot of Congress President during the ensuing election. Till recently, Sonia Gandhi was in the fray. Senior Congress leader Jitendra Prasad has also filed the papers. He thus becomes the first Congressman to offer challenge to Gandhi-Nehru clan for the presidential slot. Efforts were made to pursuade him to make it unanimous election for Sonia but he put up many conditions that were probably difficult for the incumbent President to accept. First, he wants the coterie around Sonia Gandhi to be given short shrift. But he fails to mention who are in the coterie nor he produces any evidence to substantiate his tirades against the coterie. Of course, everyone knows whom he is aiming at and on whom Sonia largely depends. It may be equally true that she is incomplete without the coterie for various reasons and that such inner advisors are indispensable for discharging her duties as the Party President. Coterie remains synonymous with sycophants. In fact, this is an old trait in the Congress Party, almost a habit. All predecessors also had such coterie. The second condition put forth by Prasad was to follow Panchmarhi declaration in letter and spirit. It may be recalled that brain storming session at Panchmarhi had asked the party to go alone and project itself as the only viable alternative that can rule the country on its own in preference to the coalition culture. The result in the elections however belied expectations in as much as the party got attentuated from 141 seats to paltry 112 under Sonia's leadership. It is proof enough that party did not gain anything by removing late Sitaram Kesri from party Presidentship quite unceremoniously. In fact it was the worst ever performance of Congress Party in its chequered political history.

The third condition put forth by him was to sever its links with Jayalalitha's AIADMK Party as also withdraw support from Rashtriya Janata Dal of Laloo Prasad. Needless to say that Congress is partner in power in Rabri Devi Government with all its MLAs made ministers. But in the process it is good-bye to the Panchmarhi session. This alliance with RJD may have given temporary gain to Congress Party in Bihar in terms of sharing power but politically it is death warrant of the party in as much as Bihar is concerned. But for Congress support Laloo-Rabri jungle Raj would have come to an end in the State.

It is pertinent to mention that when Congress intermediaries refused to oblige Jitendra Prasad on these four counts, he decided to challenge Sonia by filing his papers. He now lambasts Congress Party leadership openly which is responsible for insulating the workers from the party top brass and goes to the extent of branding 'coterie' as the cancer that has eaten up the vitals of the 114 year old organisation. It is alright for him to have a dig at the party of which he himself is a senior leader. To be precise he has been privy to whatever the Congress happens to be today, including that 'coterie' culture. He is visibly annoyed with the party top brass on two counts. First, he was removed as President of the UP Congress unit and ever since not found any moorings in the party. Since he is quite a senior leader, he feels personally hurt which explains his tirade against the party top brass and many ills discovered by him in the party. Second reason is closeness of Jitendra Prasad to Narasimha Rao. It is worth pointing out that after the Court awarded three years imprisonment to Narasimha Rao in the JMM bribery case, party virtually dumped him. Not even crocodile tears were shed. Needless to say that whatever Narasimha Rao did was to subserve the Congress Party interests so that Congress Government formed in 1991 could run for full five year term. And he did succeed. During that period of five year he acquitted himself remarkably well as Prime Minister and as Congress President. The party thus did owe him a word of gratitude and he should not have been abandoned so abruptly. Prasad also feels annoyed when Congress Party paid full amount to Government on account of using IAF planes for private use by late Rajiv Gandhi but failed to do same thing for Narasimha Rao who also owes around five crore. Needless to say that these air jaunts were mostly for party purposes. It is in this context that Jiten- dra Prasad feels quite upset about the goings-on in the party and likes to challenge the same.

Party infighting and acute dissidence has told upon the health of Congress Party. It is so because rank and file is in total isolation and to that extent in wilderness. No State unit displays unity of purpose and unabated dissidence continues to undermine Congress fortunes at the husting. The posers of Jitendra Prasad are okay although reasons for contesting are more personal than national. But the fact that he has dared enter the fray does break the monopoly of the Nehru-Gandhi clan as the sole arbiters of the Congress Party and the nation. Inner party democracy has indeed been absent in the Congress ever since 1969 Congress split engineered by late Indira Gandhi. It is solely this aspect that has distanced the leadership from the grass root workers and the latter in turn unable to convince the people of the bonafides of the party. That explains its successive debacles at the husting in State after State. In the largest State of UP which sends 85 MPs to Lok Sabha Congress Party could get the support of only 7 percent of those who exercised their franchise. Incidentally, Jitendra Prasad was also the UP Congress Chief. It is not only the coterie but lack of inner party democracy that has cost the party dearly. If Jitendra Prasad's entry into the fray for presidential election is indeed meant to restore such democratic tenets, it is welcome.

NEW STATES

Out of the three new States that are being created, Chattisgarh becomes a reality today. Governor is appointed. Chief Justice for the Chattisgarh High Court is also sent. The other two States of Uttranchal and Jharkhand will be in place on November 9 and November 15 respectively. The capital of Chattisgarh will be Raipur while the High Court will be in Bilaspur. Likewise, capital of Uttranchal is Dehradun and that of Jharkhand Ranchi. Chattisgarh is not that small a State in as much as 90 MLAs from the region form the first Government. The 26th State will have a population of 20 million mostly tribals and backwards. Out of these 90, 48 belong to the Congress Party. So balkanisation of Madhya Pradesh earns it another State ruled by Congress. In a way, it is nothing new in as much as the old State of Chattisgarh was merged with Madhya Pradesh 44 years back during the time of Ravi Chander Shukla. That merger is now undone and the erstwhile region gets its original status restored. But all these 44 years of joint functioning with Madhya Pradesh has not helped the people who remain backward in every sense of the same. Be it education, health, share in employment opportunities, the new State shall have to start from zero. Its only asset is vast reserve of natural resources and given the right thrust and good governance, the State has the potential of becoming another Haryana. Congress Government will not have easy going in as much as acute drought conditions prevail in major parts of Chattisgarh Dry spell continues resulting in large flight of people in search of food and employment. It is to be seen how the Government comes up to peoples expectations in terms of drought relief and rehabilitation. Smaller States have proved to be faster on delivery. At least to that extent new State offers hope for better future for 20 million deprived and backward people.

The Derecognition Dilemma of the Left

By Sondip Bhattacharya

Early this month the Election Commission announced the derecognition of the CPI(M) as a national party because it fails to meet some technical requirements. The CPI(M) loses this status despite being the third largest party in Parliament both in terms of percentage of votes polled and the number of seats held. This prompted Mr Venkaiah Naidu to comment on the disproportionate role that the Left plays in the Indian polity compared to its numerical strength.

Mr Naidu's observation is correct-the Left has played a significant role in defining political agendas, there are good historical reasons why this should be so. The ideological preponderance of the Left is rooted in the colonial-nationalist confrontation. There were two broad ideological streams from which the nationalism critique of colonialism drew its inspiration. One came from the Left, the other from Gandhi. In structural and economic terms the nationalist critique had to draw on theories that derived from a broadly Marxist understanding of colonialism and imperialism. The Lenin-Hobson thesis was central to the critique of imperialism as the basis of an exploitative global order.

The Gandhian critique was couched in moral and spiritual terms, focussing more on what colonial rule did psychologically to its subjects. The Gandhian solutions to the problem of colonial rule thus stressed, in ideological terms, the moral regeneration of the colonial subject through constructive work and so on. The Gandhian path to liberation was individualistic-a personal quest for salvation as the basis for constructing the nation.

The mainstream nationalist movement against colonial rule could hardly build on such an individualistic reading of colonialism. The mass movement against colonial rule had to have a more concrete analysis to legitimise itself - which had, as I have said, a Leftist provenance. To be sure, there was a vast difference in the specific political understanding of nationalism and colonialism as between mainstream nationalism and the Left, broadly defined to embrace communist and socialist political positions. Nationalists were ideologically bound to valorising the politics of class collaboration and the bourgeois-capitalist path to nation-statehood. The communists favoured the politics of class conflict and a revolutionary path-the socialist transformation of the incipient nation. In terms of actual political alignments, too, the relationships between the Congress, on the one hand and the CPI and other Left parties, on the other, had their vicissitudes.

By the 1930s, however, it was clear that the Congress could not disown the logical ideological consequences that were enjoined upon it by the broadly Marxist critique of colonial rule it used and by its claim that it was the organised expression of the Indian people. Throughout the 1930s and 40s the Congress was driven, at least rhetorically, too more and more radical postures on fundamental social questions like land reform, ownership of industries and, more generally, the sanctity of private property. The ideological transformation of the Congress was powered by the development of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) within it. The CSP became a powerful force in the North Indian heartland, in fact coming to dominate the United Provinces Provincial Congress Committee from the late-1930s to 1946, when the socialists left the Congress to form the Socialist Party. The radicalisation of the party was also furthered by its informal association on the ground with the kisan sabhas which were forces to reckon with in the heartland-Bihar and UP. The CPI's united front strategy which dominated the official party line in the 1930s under the leadership of P.C. Joshi also helped shape the radical bits of the of the mainstream nationalist, agenda.

Although the more radical, and less opportunistic, socialists left the Congress before the transfer of power, there was no wholesale dilution in the rhetorical commitment of the Congress to radical agendas, which resulted largely because of Nehru's patronage of "socialist" ideas. In effect, the capitalist path of the transformation was chosen under the garb of "Nehruvian Socialism". But there remained a populist, and mostly rhetorical, commitment to the goals of land reform and nationalisation.

In practice, the mixed economy and centralised planning were very much elements of a capitalist strategy of growth. The Indian bourgeoisie in its infancy did not have the resources to construct the infrastructure for capitalist development. The state stepped in to do so. The critics of the state sector, in this brave new world of globalisation and economic liberalisation, conveniently forget that the Nehruvian model did in fact play a historically essential role, which had nothing to do with the socialist transformation of society. This does come in handy, since it helps give the word "socialism" a bad smell.

The ambitious rhetoric of land reform remained in place. But except in the United Provinces, land reform legislation was tame and its implementation lax. As a result, most landowners retained most of their land throughout the country. Even in UP, where the first round of land reform was most comprehensive, the rhetoric of land nationalisation and cooperative farming was consigned to A. P. Jain's forlorn minute of dissent in the report of the zamindari abolition committee. Even land ceilings and redistribution were put on hold till hesitant legislation began in the mid-fifties, to be implemented more in its breach than observance.

Though radical Left agenda were quickly dumped, in rhetorical terms the national agenda continued to be set within broad parameters of Left-inspired notions of social justice and the responsibility of the state in creating an equitable social order. In the late 1960s, Mrs Gandhi, faced with the challenge of the old guard, responded with populist slogans and measures-bank nationalisation and "garibi hatao" which though populist in intent and content, did genuflect rhetorically to Leftist ideologies. Mrs Gandhi's "leftward" drift was symbolised, thought not actualised, by her ministry. At the same time socialist groupings kept popping up within the Congress with the avowed objective of purging deadwood in reinstating vaguely-defined Left, egalitarian objectives.

The CPI was the most powerful parliamentary opposition in the 1950s. And though it lost ground later on, both Nehru and later Indira Gandhi were wary of the moral force of its advocacy of socialist, egalitarian ideas.

The 1990s onwards the situation has changed-the agenda has been moved right both in actual and rhetorical terms. The market, with its chimerical promises of trickle-down problems and the slogans of social equity and justice do not have tempting ring. The BJP has had some success in destabilising the secular state commitments, pushing the national agenda in atavistic, particularist directions.

Behind the "disproportionate" ideological contributions of the Left to the shaping of Indian politics is a certain intellectual predominance. The Indian intelligentsia has by and large been dominated by Left or Left-liberal ideologies while liberalism has, unfortunately, made no significant contribution.

The Left has struggled to cope with the changing ideological environment, even as it has failed to contain the Rightist drift in Indian politics. This is largely because politically it has been complacent, content to dig in rather than conduct widespread, aggressive ideological coming social equity and secularism on India's ideological map. It is hoped that derecognition is the jolt that will enliven it. (INAV)

Managing Government schools

By Daya Sagar

As on date, of all the Public Enterprises, the most socially abused one is that of school education, particularly when we look at the needs of poor and backward Indian people.

Strangely enough the Government School Managements have over last three decades failed to give social acceptability to Government Schools and presently it is so even in cities like Jammu. On the other hand the private schools are getting pupils from socially, educationally and financially much better parents.

The poor, rural and the backward is the main sufferer of the day and no one appears to be bothered for the poor & backward who are dependent only on Government schools.

Neglected School Teacher

And to add to this there is total neglect of rural school teachers who are always entangled in their local problems and whatever Zeal they may be having for the profession also gets burried deep under the garbage of mismanagement from the higher levels. No one cares for the problems of school teachers.

As on to-day the Government school buildings, Government School students and Government school teachers are badly neglected.

We have been only building up statistics and in the rural areas schools have been even running under "mango trees" and hot sunny or rainy days have been natural holidays. One of the Higher Secondary Schools even in Jammu city had that day no chair for some teachers (Many chairs were broken and there was no money for repairs as claimed) who used to take classes in open sitting on "stone Chair" (It is a hard fact); and one of the Girls Higher Secondary Schools in Jammu city has no usable toilets complains the teachers and the criminals as well as ruffians were seen on occasions using the premises to drink and dine after the school hours.

The Poor Manager

The salaries paid to Government School teachers are much better than the private schools, the funds kept for laboratories and libraries are much above private schools (atleast in cities like Jammu & Srinagar), the teachers and their families are more secure and the like. But a manager of private schools takes better work from his teacher than those who manage the Government schools. This mean problems also lies with the top "Managers". But since the top "Managers" do not send their own children to Government schools, they do not feel the burnt and are just passing time at the cost of public money. Had the children of senior officers and legislators been studying in Government school; the shortfalls, misuse of money and inefficiency would have been fed back by their children. This would have done some good to these schools since the proberb "only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches" surely holds good even in to-days times.

Government Must Introspect

Under these circumstances the factual need is to question even the Secretaries and Directors of Education, more particularly so since the condition of schools even in the cities is so bad. There is no fun in simply stopping the increments of school teachers. Government must introspect and find out that have we ever questioned any Director education or Commissioner Education for poor performance or inefficiency over last three decades. Simple answer will be no. And the time now calls for action also against the seniors. Government employees do send their wards Kendriya Vidyalaya but it happens mostly since Central Government employees cannot so easily get and afford admissions in private schools when they go on transfers.

Review from the top

a) There is utmost need for a serious review of the structure as well as for solving the genuine problems of many innocent school teachers.

b) What is the economic level of parents who are sending children to Government schools, even in the cities of Jammu & Srinagar as well as towns of Udhampur, Samba, Kathua, Anantnag, Reasi etc. Particularly up to middle school level. We could engage on outside non-Governmental agency for this work.

c) How many officers of the level of Executive Engineers or Deputy Directors or "Poor" low paid school teachers are not sending their children to Government schools in Jammu city. In case the Government school really perform and "poor Government" servants still afford luxury or paid schools, are we still required to pay dearness allowance to such "Poor Government employee". And if otherwise is the position, why not to close down the Government schools.

d) How many IAS Officers have sent their children to Government schools over last two decades.

e) Govt Officers have been found sending their children to highly paid private schools, even to boarding schools costing Rs. 3,000/- to Rs. 4,000/- per month. Can a Government Officer who is always looking for dearness allowances, send his children to private paid schools? Bad response from Government school is also breeding Corruption in the Government service. We may have to question for the source to bear the costs as high as Rs. 3,000/- to Rs. 4,000/- p.m. by a Government Servant even at school level.

f) As an eye opener a list of Directors of School Education, District Development Commissioners, Additional Secretaries to Govt. Education Departments, Secretaries Education Departments, Commissioner Education and Ministers of education be drawn over last 20 years to list how many of them have been sending their children to Govt. Schools and has any one been punished for the performance of school during his or her tenure.

g) The tour diaries of secretaries to Government, particularly education Departments be studied over last 10 years to find out how many days in a year the Commissioner has spent in touring the Schools in rural and backward areas like Gool, Mohore, Basantgarh and even suburbs" of Reasi Town. This would show that we were and we are just maintaining establishment to give employment at social cost.

h) How many inspections of their own Offices have been conducted by Director, Commissioner, Minister of Education over last ten to twenty year and have they placed any of their own office staff under suspension for derilection of duty or absence from duty in comparison to shcool teachers in rural areas. It is not for simple criticism that this suggestion is being made but this would show us how the wages paid by Government are non yielding at all levels.

i) Performance & promotions of Directors & Commissioners must be linked with overall performance of Government schools.

Under the circumstances how would be stand to directive principles as laid down in section 20 (a) of Constitution of Jammu & Kashmir to secure to every permanent resident the right to the free education upto the University standard and as laid down in section 21 (b) to all children and youth equal opportunities in education and employment, protection against exploitation and against moral or material abandonment, would always remain a big question since the majority of Indian children depend upon Government Schools and without even basic, secondary education of competitive class they cannot even dream of college education what to talk of University Education.