EDITORIAL
Mandate
and Machiavellis!
‘The moving
finger writes; and having writ, moves on’
said Omar Khayyam of the Fates. The mandates that
the people in democracies give are something like
that: ‘the moving finger’ having cast
its writ, moves on to mundane life leaving the
mandated people to play Machiavellian tricks with
the trust they have been bestowed. The people
believe that they are in safe hands while the
hands they have entrusted with their fates and
fortunes have other games up their sleeves. Those
games have been seen unfolding over this luckless
State for the last several days. Little by little
the bonhomie that promised all the goodies in the
heaven, hardened into bone-hard stances that
carry the impression that all this haggling is
for the nasty-old selfish ends of power and
positions, which in due course translate into
pelf and other petty concerns. Within days the
‘potential coalition’ which had much
‘ideological affinity’ - mind, it still
has it but the private concerns are obviously too
much for it to be asserted - has been inventing
reasons for differing and taking separate
courses, if need be for, the attainment of those
ends.
A greater travesty
of the mandate was seen as the defeated power
began to cajole the deficient numbers inventing
the easy excuse of ‘return to home’. Of
course, they are not the sole party to have done
that. The whole of Indian polity today is
polluted by the same practice of clubbing
together alliances, how so unholy they may be.
And that is the bane of the politics of this
nation. But, for once, the 'writing finger’
moved back to prevent its writing being effaced
by the rough duster of selfish interests. The
people came back in huge numbers to remind their
elected representative that their trust was not
for bargaining, and forced the wavering member
back to the position, where he claimed he stood
when he solicited the vote. For long have the
elected representatives thought that they can
take their electors for a ride and play with the
mandate. Mandate of polls is a sacred trust that
is not to be bargained, not to be peddled and
sold to the highest bidder, but to be respected
for the word on which it was solicited, to be
employed in only the way, for only that purpose
for which it was given. That is an initiative the
Indian voter must take more often, at more
places. And, as fiercely.
It is good that
this action has come in the place, which is
usually associated with greater political
consciousness. Somehow that conscience has not
been exercised more frequently, being often
allowed to be hijacked by quirky agendas, which
have only brought misfortune and misery to the
people of this State. Yet it is one of the most
positive developments that have happened after
the polls. That shows that this here was no fluke
of a polling but an urgent wish of the people.
More importantly the people have demonstrated
that they would see to it that their will is also
enacted. Another indication of it is the
initiative mounted by the independent members.
Often this is a group of people, who are too
loose and ready targets for the hawks preying for
numbers. Here the independents are not only
united but they also are clear in that they have
to fulfill the mandate they have been granted. It
maybe these people who’d finally make the
Machiavellian parties to remain true to their
mandate. Tatha asto!
Dangerous
defiance
Over the past two
weeks we have seen two most influential groups in
the nation defying the highest legal authority in
the land. After Karnataka ruled by the main
Opposition Party of the country defying the
Supreme Court order on the Cauvery waters, the
whole Opposition has ganged up against the
Supreme Court decision, which cleared the NCERT
texts of the insinuations of agenda. Both the
acts are in defiance of the established law and
the convention in the country. Both are motivated
by the personal calculations of the parties
rather than the interest of the nation, or people
at heart. If Supreme Court orders a certain
allocation, the proper way is to seek a revision
in the court itself and not outside it on the
basis of sheer demagoguery as the Karnataka
Government has been doing. This sort of
irresponsible behaviour used to be associated
with the stray regional parties who finally had
to bow to the highest court. But when the main
opposition party, which hopes to return to rule
the nation in the next elections, does it, it
becomes a most inappropriate behaviour that
carries dangerous implications both for the
respect of the laws of this land as well as the
future adjudication.
Likewise, the
people who resolved not to accept the Supreme
Court clearance of the NCERT texts is the whole
of national Opposition. Till yesterday they were
castigating sundry organizations with
insinuations that they would not obey the court
orders’ on Ram-Mandir issue. There is much
to be desired about the NCERT books. They are not
perfect. Nor have they been perfect. They, in
fact, have been heavily loaded with the
ideologies and agendas of leftist thinking. It is
said that it is the loss of this easy
propagation, which they had maneuvered for
themselves that makes them queasy. That was why
they had got the issue taken to the highest court
for adjudication. But now that the court has
rejected their plea, they are using the unholy
means to get through to their purpose. And in the
process they are demeaning one of the most
sacrosanct traditions of the national polity. Is
it only their boards, their courts, their bodies
and their intellectuals who decide and act
honorably, truly and justly, while the other
boards, courts, intellectuals are, in principle,
undependable and biased? That is the thinking of
intolerance and fracture. It is sectarian
thinking, not secular approach. It is also
prejudicial to the scheme of rule of law, how so
helpful it may be to some persons and parties.
|
 |
Some
apples short of a picnic
By M J
Akbar
The
declared result of an election is not
always the real result. You have to peel
off a layer from fact in order to reach
the meaning. Two elections have produced
two outcomes in the second week of
October, one in Jammu and Kashmir and the
other in Pakistan. They had one thing in
common. There was little immediate
clarity about who won these elections.
But there was great clarity about who had
lost them.
There were
two principal losers in Jammu and
Kashmir. One was Dr Farooq Abdullah. The
other was President - General Parvez
Musharraf.
In
Pakistan also there were two clear
losers. The first was America. The second
was the doubly unfortunate Pervez
Musharraf.
Farooq
Abdullah's defeat is as understandable as
is his unwillingness to accept it. No one
in power ever believes that he is going
to lose. No one who has lost ever thinks
it is anything but a conspiracy that has
defeated him. Farooq Abdullah's defeat
came fifteen years too late, in fact. He
should have lost in 1987, when the
popular mood in the Valley had turned
completely against the National
Conference Congress alliance. He has
saved that year by rigging, just as he
had been helped before by electoral
manipulation. Arun Nehru, who was a
critical player in Kashmir affairs from
the years of Mrs Indira Gandhi, through
most of the Rajiv Gandhi prime
ministership and then into V P Singh's
tenure, confirms this.
It was
Arun Nehru's influence that played a
substantial part in the first of the
series of political mistakes that created
this tragedy: the arbitrary dismissal of
Farooq Abdullah's Government in that
catastrophic year of 1984 when Mrs Gandhi
accelerated both the crises that
bedevilled India for more than a decade,
in Punjab and in Kashmir. Rajiv Gandhi
tried to repair the damage of 1984 by an
alliance with Farooq Abdullah for the
1987 elections. It failed even before it
had started. When Rajiv Gandhi and Farooq
Abdullah discovered that they were losing
the elections, out came the familiar
solution. Ballot boxes from selected
constituencies were stuffed with votes
that had never been cast, and Farooq
Abdullah was declared a winner. He can
hardly be blamed if he is a little rusty
now about fair elections. His son Omar
may have a few questions hidden inside
his legacy, but that is only one of the
problems that he will have to deal with.
President
Musharraf need not have ended up with so
much raw egg on his face. He has the
reputation of being a risk-taker. This is
one occasion on which he may have felt he
was not taking a risk, hen he chose his
speech on Pakistan's independence day to
dismiss the autumn elections in Jammu and
Kashmir as a farce. This was probably the
assessment he was given by the ISI and
the Pakistan embassy in Delhi.
Dictatorship has this problem: you are
told what you want to hear. Moreover,
obsequiousness can be a courtier's
revenge. But advice is not a decision. It
was President Musharraf's call to make
this a centrepiece of his message to
Pakistan and then, rather unnecessarily,
overdo the theme in his United Nations
speech in New York in September. I
suppose it is obligatory on the part of a
Pakistan leader to raise Kashmir at the
United Nations, but it is not obligatory
to be nasty. President Musharraf placed
his Government's credibility on his
assessment of the Jammu and Kashmir
election. That credibility lies in
tatters before an international community
that has endorsed the legitimacy of these
polls. President Musharraf may have
driven Pakistan into a corner at a
sensitive juncture.
Life in a
corner has its dangers, mostly to others.
There will be some temptation to blast
apart the obvious satisfaction of Delhi
in having lived up to its commitment and
conducted free and fair elections, with
credible participation by the people. The
voter turnout matters less than the fact
that the Government was turned out. There
was a visible rise in violence after the
first round of polls disproved fears of
virtual boycott. The democratic process
held its nerve, with the candidates
showing particular fortitude as
conviction grew that this election would
mean regime change. Now that the
"farce" has proved to be a
serious exercise in democracy, what might
be the response from some elements across
the line of control? A dramatic terrorist
attack that will shatter the optimism in
Srinagar, tauten nerves in Delhi and
drive India and Pakistan back to the
brink of war?
The only
hope against adventurism in Srinagar is
confusion in Islamabad. The Pakistan
election began on a strange note and kept
getting weirder. This was not an election
about change of power. The army was in
power, and ensured, by amending the
constitution 23 times, that it would
remain in power. It was a royal election,
for the post of general manager rather
than chief executive. The turnout was
low, and the counting slow. There is
little need to explain what that adds up
to under a military regime.
It would
have been what it was meant to be, a
cosmetic exercise, but for a startling
message from the provinces bordering
Afghanistan. A coalition of six religious
parties, the Muttahida Majlis-I-Amal,
campaigning with Osama bin Laden's face
on their posters, won 51 seats from the
Frontier and Balochistan. The first
implication is obvious. There is strong
resentment against the American presence
in Afghanistan. The second is oblique. If
this is an indication of the mood in the
Pashtun area of Afghanistan then America
has already created a pool of anger
within the country it hoped to liberate
from the supporters of Osama bin Laden.
The consequences of this anger will
become apparent in the coming year. It is
a fact that Washington will have to deal
with as it continues its war on terrorism
and seeks to expand this rationale to
take on Iraq.
In a royal
election there has to be a King's Party.
The Pakistan Muslim League (Q) duly
emerged as the largest single party in
the House, with 76 of the 269 seats
declared at the time of writing. But this
was more than one apple short of a
picnic.
The fact
is that nearly two thirds of those
elected to the Pakistan National Assembly
even in a controlled election where there
was no hope of any change, are opposed to
President Musharraf either because of his
domestic policy or his foreign policy. In
fact, he could find the clergy from the
Frontier and Balochistan more of a worry
than either or both of the exiles,
Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif.
Fundamentalists have always tried to hit
above their weight in Pakistan's
politics, but they have never quite
travelled beyond the fringe. Musharraf's
support for America's war against Osama
(to be fair, he had no real option) has
brought the clergy onto centrestage. This
will impact not only Pakistan but the
whole region, because they are the
keepers of a cause that believes in jihad
against America, India and, piquantly,
the apostate in the middle, Pervez
Musharraf. (This is the real reason for
the second defeat of Musharraf.) Common
sense suggests the need for a common
response. Experience suggests that it
will not be forthcoming.
For
reasons that may or may not have anything
to do with one another, these have been
hinge elections. What happens after them
will be more crucial than the elections
themselves. A great deal will depend on
how Islamabad deals with the rise of the
clergy, whether it chooses to buy them,
appease them or confront them. Policy,
and events, will emerge out of this
decision.
Delhi is
more focused. Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee pursued his commitment to free
and fair elections even at the cost of
his own party. The BJP would certainly
have done better in a rigged poll.
Vajpayee knew the outcome, which might
explain why he did not to the State to
campaign for his party. Deputy Prime
Minister Lal Krishna Advani took a
significant step forward when, on the eve
of the results, he announced that Delhi
was prepared for talks with both of the
elected representatives of the Kashmiri
people as well as those who had not
participated in the elections. One hopes
that similar sensitivity to ground
reality, rather than an arid commitment
to arithmetic will determine who will be
the Chief Minister of the State after the
formation of the alliance between the
Congress and the party of the
ex-Congressman, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed,
the PDP. The Congress may have won 20
seats against the PDP's 16. The more
important fact is that the Congress
defeated the BJP in Jammu, while it was
the PDP that stopped the National
Conference in Kashmir. The State has to
be lead by the person who represents the
Valley rather than the plains. The
problems is in Kashmir, not in Jammu.
It is rare
when an election becomes a basis for
hope. Such an election has taken place in
Jammu and Kashmir. If that hope were to
be belied, we would lose another
generation to the gun.
|
NCERT
Books -Defects none worries about!
By Dr. R
L Bhat
Political
conscience is not an unmitigated
blessing. More often, it is hijacked by
the interests and lobbies. And the groups
that can mount pressures and are overly
vocal end up taking the cake and eating
it too. It is very evident in the case of
the NCERT books that have generated only
controversies over the years. And, very
little knowledge among its target class
i.e. the school students who are to read
them. While the whole country is and has
been perturbed over the agendas in these
books, very few have bothered to look at
the books from the point of view of the
students, their understandability and
approach, the treatment of the subject
and the workload they entail for the
student. Somehow the teacher
community-has been too shy of pointing
out these glaring defects in the books.
Others have been too obsessed with the
‘value’ of having uniform books
for the whole country to pay attention to
the point whether the books serve the
purpose they are meant to serve. That
purpose is to provide easy to understand,
concise reading material to the student
with enough practice work to drill the
topics. And there the NCERT books fail
miserably.
Take the
language first. So far as the teaching of
language is concerned the books have
effectively dismissed grammar, the key to
any and every language. Probably, the
exercises provided at the end of each
chapter are supposed to satisfy the needs
of grammar. They don’t. It is only
the students -rather the parents and
teachers who have rigorously studied
grammar as can, get through these
grammatical exercises. The students
simply cram up the words and sometimes
whole sentences as to what the correct
forms are. This is most evident in case
of English, but can be seen in other
languages too. The better schools insist
that the students study grammar
separately. But there problems arise,
because grammar is not included in the
scheme and format. The result is that the
teacher is hard put and the student
bewildered. Some books leave it to the
teacher to fashion more exercises and
drill in the principles that the books
just hint at. But the system we have does
not ensure that because teachers are not
ready-or, able-to frame exercises on
their own. Here, where most the teachers
copy even questions from the Q-papers of
the pervious years or the guess-papers to
avoid the extra-labor that is a ill
founded premise.
The NCERT
scheme in that scenario becomes an easy
escape route for the teacher. They just
let the extra labor go. Like the honest
employee who becomes the butt of
ridicule, the conscientious teacher only
invites scorn. And, like the honest
employee, gives up the thing the next
year. As to where that leaves the poor
student is nobody’s problem. Another
aspect of language is the linguistic
style. All writers know that writing is
one thing and writing for the
children’ is an entirely different
thing. The experts who author the NCERT
books cannot and do not come down to the
language-level of the school-students.
There is hardly any language gradation
between books meant for a fourth standard
text and the one for the middle even
matriculation. So it is with way the
books introduce complex concepts. They,
do it without definitions, without
examples, without exercises. Probably,
that too is left to the teacher. And
there too the premise fails. At other
times the books rely on induction and
deduction, leaving the students to deduce
the ideas themselves, as incompletely as
they may! They seem to forget what that
great philosopher, Bertrand Russell said
about the logical thinking in his Outline
of Philosophy that he had not seen many
people doing it. Yet the NCERT books
expect every primary and middle standard
student to be a master logician, who
should easily be able to deduce the
concepts indicated.
This
becomes all the more problematic because
the texts introduce concepts at the drop
of a hat. It may have been easy to
understand what is Swedeshi and Videshi
in Gandhi’s time, but today it is a
complex thing; not even the experts are
settled on what constitutes Swedeshi and
what Videshi in our day. And, the
question is not of Swedeshi/Videshi
alone. The ninth class text of science
expects the student to know all-at least
a lot-about the genes, gene action and
constitution and all. There indeed is no
limit to the expectation, there. They go
into the complexities of mitosis and
meiosis-the cell division, that is-even
before they have treated fully of the
cell structure. The chemistry takes a
detour of all the models of atomic
structure, the theories and their
complexities in a five-page chapter,
leaving the student dazed. And at the
mercy of the guidebooks which are getting
fatter at the same rate that the texts
(deceptively) are getting thinner.
Actually the devil in the NCERT lies
there. They just skim around a topic in a
few pages talking of all the major
concepts there in a sort of bird’s
eye view. But that is just not enough.
The student has to get into the details,
to understand what the NCERT-mystic has
alluded to in a few words and lines.
The result
is that to grasp the slim maths-book of,
say, the class IX-the student has to
study three sturdy guidebooks. And,
another three for the slimmer one on
science. They are not the old-time guides
but compendiums, almost encyclopedias on
the subjects, each costing three to four
times as much as the sketch-like NCERT
Texts. That, in fact, is the basic
problem with the NCERT: the texts
although meant for the student are not
written for the student. They are written
by the experts for the other experts.
Thus NCERT books are highly recommended
for the candidates preparing for the
Civil Service Examinations. They are
suited to them, both language-wise and
matter-wise. The students would certainly
go through these books again if and when
they sit for the IAS, but for the present
they have to study the guidebooks
referring to the texts only to know the
syllabus! Indeed, the books, especially
the ones meant for classes IX and X
appear little more than a slightly
expanded version of syllabus. Thus the
maths-book for class IX introduces and
finishes off 'irrational numbers’
including Surds in three exercises in 18
pages. The standard guidebook (Shanna)
carries 8 exercises on surds alone spread
over 65 pages. it devotes another 28
pages and 3 exercise to ‘irrational
numbers’. The two together add up to
nearly half of the bulk of the NCERT
text.
The same
is true of other books. The science text,
for example, deals with motion, straight
and angular, gravity and laws of motion
all in a single chapter with a dressing
on use of graph for the motion equations
including parabolic solutions. While the
agendaists have taken inclusion or
deletion of a reference to a sect to the
Supreme Court nobody takes note of these
glaring defects. In fact, so much of
attention and time is spent on refuting
or propagating these agendas that none is
left for a proper evaluation of the texts
as to whether they are suitable for the
students for whom they are meant, whether
they carry sufficient number of
illustrations and examples, exercises and
rule-drills to let the concepts seep into
the minds of the students. Yet that is
the prime check. The books must first of
all pass the test of suitability for
their readers. The texts as they are at
present simply do not.
|
Women
producers: winning laurels
By
Santosh Mehta
Women
never have had a dominant voice in
cinematic discourse in India, at least in
several decades, but there is no doubt
their perceptions have left a distinctive
imprint on the big screen.
There was
a time when only male film directors
carved their niche in the cinematic
profession. And women worked behind the
camera. They were into production,
anchoring, designing or other related
areas but never in the limelight because
they were always behind the curtains.
But now
they are not only making waves but
winning awards at international film
festivals too. Shalini Shah, Arunaraje
Patil, Haimanti Banerjee, Sabeena
Gadihoke and Susan Sharma, Sehjo Singh
and Madhushree Dutta are among such
galaxy of women directors/producers.
Thirty-nine-year-old
Sehjo Singh took her Master’s degree
in Political Science and Mass
Communication and has been producing and
directing films of social concern since
1987. She is actively involved in the
civil rights movement. ‘Sona Maati'
is her second independent documentary
film. This film is based on women’s
issues. It is a story of poor village
women. The director’s story-telling
and projection of the film is so strong
that it got the Gold Conch for the Best
Film in non-fictional Miff in 1996.
Arunaraje
Patil graduated with diploma in cinema
with a Gold Medal from the Film and
Television Institute of India (FTII),
Pune, in 1969. She has even made feature
films — ‘Shaque',
‘Gehrayee' Situm, ‘Rihaee'
‘Patita Pavana, and 'Bhairavi' among
others.
Shaque got
the Filmworld Award for best direction,
the Bengal Film Journalists Award and the
Uttar Pradesh Film Journalists Award.
‘Rihaeel' was shown at The Creteil
Film Festival in France in 1990,
Women’s Film Festival in Madrid,
Spain and International Film Festival of
India in Mumbai in 1990. And again in
1996, Bhairavii too was shown at the
Women’s Film Festival in Madrid and
Spain.
Sai
Paranjpaye, the eminent film-maker is
also a writer and a Marathi playwright.
Her films, Sparsh, Chudia, Chashmey
Badoor and Papiha won wide popularity for
production and story presentation. She
has also made three films for children:
‘Jadu ka Shankh, ‘Sikander, and
latest is ‘Bhago Bhoot'.
Her film
'Sparsh’ won top awards in India,
thus establishing her as a creative
film-maker with a good sense of humour.
Since then she has directed over
half-a-dozen films and each has broken
new grounds. Sai's Marathi play Jaswani
has been translated into several Indian
languages.
Janaki
Viswanathan is also a film-maker. She got
the special jury award of 2001 for Tamil
Film ‘Kutty’ for its realistic
portrayal of the transition of a girl
child from rural Tamil Nadu to Chennai,
in search of a livelihood. The film
sensitises its viewers to the
exploitation of child domestic labour,
commonly prevalent within middle
families.
‘Kutty’
is the story of little girl — a sad,
true-to-life narration of the plight of
millions of young girls trapped in the
vicious circle of poverty and
exploitation, who end up as mere
statistics on child labour of the
country.
Thirty-two-year
Janaki, a former print and television
journalist who has worked for Television
Eighteen, Asian News International and
the India Today group. She has made two
documentaries supported by the Ford
Foundation — one on the women silk
weavers of Bhagalpur, the other on the
Dikshitars of Chidambaram, a priestly
community belonging to an ancient temple
in South India.
Sabeena
Godihoke's recent film on "Three
Women And A Camera" was much
appreciated during the first documentary
film festival in Delhi.
Homai
Vyarawalla, is the first professional
Women photographer whose career spanned
nearly three decades from 1930s.
Vyarawallals work underscores the
optimism and euphoria of a nation, while
Sheba Chhachi and Dayanita Singh attempt
to grapple with the various complexities
and undelivered promises of the
post-independence era.
Pune-based
Haimanti Banerjee (57), a post-graduate
in English literature and diploma-holder
in French from Santiniketan, has produced
a silent film ‘Balgandharval, which
was appreciated during the 2000 film
festival and got selected for National
Award for 2001.
The film
focuses on the legendary actor-singer,
who had a seminal influence on Marathi
theatre. Born Narayanrao Rajhans, Bal
Gandharva attained fame as a female
impersonator. His plays, mainly
mythologicals, earned him a following in
Maharashtra as well as several other
States.
Haimanti's
other films include 'Towards Joy and
Freedom' (1992), a film on Rabindarnath
Tagore's schools, Santiniketan,
'Yellama', the mother of All (1991), a
film on the Devdasis of Pune, and
Gangutai, a film on a Pune-based
educationist.
On
documentary film-making aspect she says,
"The future of documentary
film-making, is tinged with a hazy
hue...How does one dare a 35mm work
unless someone espouses the cause of our
heritage, and is ready to shell out lakhs
of rupees? But how long can this possible
go on without much scope for
rejuvenation? Twin options: do not think
celluloid and just tap the tapes....
Indian
women film-makers have gained
international recognition. The number of
awards won by Indian women film directors
at international film festivals across
the globe in the past decades is more
than 100. PTI Features
|
|
|
| |
|
|
