According to Joshi's agenda the conference was also to have been addressed by a Calcutta-based businessman, P D Chitlangia, whose other claim to fame, apart from his being a dyed in the wool saffronite, is that he runs a chain of schools among tribals, perhaps to thwart the Christian missionaries who have been running such institutions in tribal and other areas for more than a century! If the State Education Ministers saw the conference as no more than a covert attempt by the parivar to hijack the educational system you can't blame them. And if they staged a walk-out or two as a consequence you have no one else other than Murali Manohar Joshi to blame for it. He even seemed to forget that education, for the most part, remains a State subject. Vajpayee sensed the mood at the conference and successfully ended the developing confrontation. Very Prime Ministerial, one thought. But the next day, obviously after protests from the parivar, he attacked the Ministers for having insulted the Goddess of learning by walking out of the hall when the Saraswati Vandana was recited. Vajpayee thus confirmed the belief that even he is not immune to pressure from the parivar. Not that anyone really believed that he was a free agent when it came to matters close to the parivar's heart.

At the end of the unseemly and unnecessary controversy one wonders, though, which way our polity is headed. The Punjab Education Minister who was the loudest in criticising the imposition of ''Hindu thought control'' on the people forgot that the day of swearing in ceremony of the Akali Ministers of the Vajpayee government, the Akalis present in the Ashoka Hall of Rashtrapati Bhavan stunned everyone by unexpectedly raising the slogan ''Wah Guru Ka Khalsa, Wah Guru Ki Fateh'' or that other one ''Jo Bole So Nihal Sat Sri Akal''. The West Bengal Education Minister had a lapse of memory and chose to forget that Saraswati Puja is a major event for the people in his State; his secular zeal blinded him even to the fact that his State comes to a virtual halt for the seven days of Durga Puja.

It is indeed an insult to the silent majority of us Indians that we should be subjected to an obscene crossfire between the saffronites and the secularists. There is nothing wrong with teaching Sanskrit in schools, colleges and universities- those who wish to study the language. But it does not lie in Murali Manohar Joshi's domain to make Sanskrit compulsory for all school going kids. Similarly, teaching the Upanishads or the Vedas is best left to individual choice. As someone pointed out the BJP, before it tries to reform the education system, should Indianise itself in terms of ethos and culture, nationalise itself in terms of political appeal and ideology and spiritualise itself in terms of scriptural wisdom and knowledge.

And as it continues to chase its spiritual objective the parivar and the BJP would serve the country better by not exacerbating the casteist divisions which have become the bane of Indian society. The parivar is indeed as guilty as, say the Laloos, the Mulayams, the Kanshis and 'the Congress wallahs of deepening the multilayed caste divisions.

If Hindutva be a way of life as it is sought to be made out by the parivar and its various front organisations it is time all of them come together to undo the grave crisis which casteism is posing to the country. The BJP doesn't sound credible on this score when one finds in its tiny Delhi unit Sahab Singh, the former chief minister, being projected as the Jat leader, Khurana, another former chief minister, as the Punjabi bania leader and the Rajinder Gupta, the ousted Transport Minister, as the big white Vaish hope. Forget the Muslims. The Sangh parivar has convinced itself that the majority of Muslims have extra-territorial loyalties and are, therefore, to be treated differently. Not lagging behind are the secularists who by separating the Muslims from the rest of the non-Hindu communities in the socio-political discurse, seem to have given the community the impression that it deserves special recognition and treatment which hardly makes for an integrated society.

Unfortunately for this, our beloved country, there is not a single voice to be heard to rally all Indians together. There are a hundred others, determined to divide and sub-divide the Indian community. Atal Behari Vajpayee could have filled the void. But sadly for him and for the country he is too decent to discard his saffron robes; he is a victim of his past as a front rank BJP leader, one, who, the experience of the past eight months tells us, is unwilling to take charge of the nation. And with him caught in this web it's no wonder that men like Murali Manohar Joshi should try to smuggle in some of the pet parivar projects. He has so far unobtrusively effected substantial changes in the management of the educational institutions replacing leftists and Congress loyalists with hardcore saffron men and women. The Indian Council for Historical Research, thanks to Joshi, has become a part of the national divide between the communalists and the secularists. Jawaharlal Nehru University's proposal to build a super speciality hospital is shot down because, as the argument goes, the JNU is a socio cultural university. The truth is that the parivar sees the JNU as a leftist stronghold.

The Vidya Bharati, meanwhile, continues to propagate its brand of Hindutva ideology. Its ''Sanskriti Gyan'' series of booklets, distributed in the 6,000 Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati run schools is giving new meaning to events of great historical import to the nation. The Parivar continues to live in the past and obviously hopes to resurrect that past, the corner stone of which is ''Punnyabhoomi Bharat'', encompassing not just modern India but also Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Tibet and even Burma. If it stetches its memory a little further it might as well include Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia et al. Or if the Buddha is seen as an Indian, the Vidya Bharati could well stretch its net to places as far away as Korea, Japan and a large chunk of China as well.

For the present it seems, though, that Murali Manohar Joshi will have to tread a little more cautiously, that's if the Education Ministers conference has taught him anything.


Dearness allowance inflationary and anti-poor
By : M N Minocha

The higher the inflation rate, the merrier it is for the organised working class. It gets more to spend- courtesy the dearness allowance measured in terms of the cost of living. This is one reason why the trade unions say nothing about price rise. They know that they have both the cake and eat it too. Those who are really hurt by the rising rate of inflation are the jobless and the workers in the unorganised sector not protected by the neutralisation formula.

The big trade unions do not bother about their lot, not for that matter the government, which only recently raised the dearness allowance (DA) rates for central staff.

Real incomes do get eroded with rising inflation. The poor gets poorer and the workers who are not compensated for the higher cost of living take home reduced pay packets.

But, the organised labour which the politician is ever anxious to please, is happier because the dearness allowance that is rising in sympathy with the upward movement in consumer price index, helps boost the nominal income of beneficiaries. Did not the reputed economist, Fisher, pronounce that money mattered more in nominal than real terms? Just as the depositor wants banks to give a high rate of nominal return and is not concerned about the real rate of interest, the wage earner knows that the DA system enriches him in monetary terms when prices are moving upward.

No wonder, some years ago, when the incremental rise in the consumer price index ws slowing down, a thoughtful government enhanced the DA points to central and public sector staff. When populism dictates the logic of a falling DA is unacceptable!

Not funny at all and no one is prepared even to consider price falling so sharply and consistently as to cut the compensation paid out for cost of living. Yet, both at the macro level and for purposes of effective poverty alleviation, it is important to bring down prices, not only of consumer goods reflected in the neutralisation formula, but also of inputs and capital goods. The K N Raj committee on savings and capital formation in its report way back in 1982, had rightly noted that in the seventies, the prices of capital goods were rising faster than other goods covered by the wholesale index.

Falling prices of industrial inputs and capital and basic goods are critical to the lost competitiveness of the Indian economy. Reform is rendered irrelevant by a lack of control over the cost of capital and intermediate goods. Clearly, this part of inflation must be effectively reduced. When this happens, investment becomes cheaper and the government and the corporate sector alike can spend less on capital formation. The pressure on fund management will be eased.

The implications for government's fiscal policy are considerable. Economies in capital creation will not just trickle down but will be significantly reflected in the several sectors of the economy. Costs generally will be lower. The economy, thereby will gain for competitiveness. This indeed is the prime goal of liberalisation.

Coming back to poverty alleviation, it demands economically priced availability of essential consumer goods. Considering that agricultural workers are the poorest in the country, the movement in the consumer price index for agricultural workers must be consistently decelerating more than the point-to-point wholesale price index. This is what matters for a successful poverty alleviation. No doubt, jobs must be generated on a substantial scale, side by side, to help the millions below the poverty line. Obviously, when incomes are meagre, the price situation is not very relevant, although where essential goods are economically priced even limited incomes should do to meet the minimum need. Still, a definite thrust on employment and income generation should go hand in hand with a policy of inflation containment.

There has been little academic or policy-debate on the inflationary impact of neutralisation of the cost of living for organised working class. But, this impact is reality and cannot be wished away since a large pay packet adds to demand pressures. All the more, this widens the gap between the segment of the working population and the rest of the workers in the country.

There is a substantial element of unfairness in the DA system since the beneficiaries effectively pass on the burden of dearness allowance inspired inflationary pressures in the economy to those lacking not only the means but also any form of protection form the strains of price rise.

In terms of the need for reducing economic disparities in the economy, there is a strong case for doing away with the system of selective monetary compensation for any rise in the cost of living.

Instead of a favoured treatment to organised labour, government should focus more on the economically vulnerable sections of the community through a mix of initiative for poverty alleviation, price containment and public distribution of essential commodities.

The community at large must be protected through sustained growth of the economy leading to employment and income generation incrementally as well as easy and competitive- both cost and quality-wise-availability of goods and services. When production is free of bottlenecks, prices will automatically fall.

Liberalisation should bring about price stability via a competitive environment, but manufacturers themselves cannot avert bottlenecks in infrastructure. Government has a definite role in this.

In closing, a national consensus has to be forged on putting a stop to monetary relief for rise in the cost of living. The national labour conference must be convened so that trade unions can be confronted with the socio-economic magnitude of the issues involved.

Much earlier, the DA was merged with the basic pay of central government staff, but subsequently, the payment of additional DA was resumed. Whoever thought of that was being quite insensitive to the economic irrationality of the measures as much as the gross unfairness that it involved to the large sections of inorganised workers and the millions of unemployed and under-employed. Now, it is time to initiate a process of phased withdrawal of DA for the government as well as the other staff. (INAV)