Diplomatic niceties are important

By M L Kotru

I have this old friend who simply cannot stand the word red. It has been so almost for more than a half century. I used to, those younger years, think that this aversion call it hatred, of things red-may have had something to do with some childhood memories, may be of an abattoir or a visit to a butcher's shop or even it may have had something do with the savagery he had witnessed during the partition carnage. It took me sometime realise that his distress owed its origin to a book entitled ‘‘Red Star Over China’’.
The man was obviously a pathological Communist-baiter and those being the halcyon days of Soviet Communism the thought of China slipping into the ‘‘red-zone’‘ caused him distress. This fear of the ‘‘spreading red menace’’ never subsided in him, even after the ‘‘reds’’ had taken over China for good. The problem acquired epilyptic proportions when the Chinese forces crossed over borders in 1962 and the Indian Reds (the CPIM) did not see it as an act of aggression even as the entire country rose to a man to save ‘‘our honour’’.
He became angrier, blaming Jawaharlal Nehru ‘‘and his Defence Minister of the day, V K Krishna Menon’’ for having fostered the Hindi-Chini bhai bhai stuff. He was horrified that the two, Nehru and Menon had given a ‘‘Red’’ Chinese military delegation the run of our then nascent ordnance and DRDO establishments, allowing them to can reel-upon-reel of our very poor state of preparedness.
I would become a particular butt of his anger: ‘‘It's Kashmiris like you (and I was just a middle level reporter then), your Nehru and your Gen B N Kaul who have let us down’’. My response would always be an awkward smile. The red bug obviously never left him, even some 65 years after it had first bit him. Of this I came to know two weeks ago when the Beijing Olympic flame was due to pass through Delhi. He was upset - indeed most people were- that the Manmohan Singh Government was suffering a severe bout of nerves over the ‘‘Olympic torch’’ which had caused it to come down heavily on thousands of Tibetans who had fled their home to India along with the Dalai Lama in the 50s, many of them born in India in the intervening years, and many having chosen to become monks.
Sure enough my friend did call me on phone to pronounce ‘‘see, how supine this Government of ours is..... have we lost of our sense of balance. ’’ He went on and on for almost ten minutes before ’’ sharing a confidence with’’ me: ‘‘It is the CPIM which has yet again blackmailed the UPA Government into crushing the Tibetan protestors; they would withdraw their support to the Government.’’ This was a weird and far-fetched accusation, I interrupted him. This was hardly the kind of issue which even the most diehard pro-China CPM leader would raise. This angered my man. So much so that he mouthed a few obscenities, some directed at me, others at the Government and the CPM, before ending his telephone diatribe.
Two days later young Tibetans had massed outside the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi and a handful of them had jumped over the embassy boundary wall, only to be nabbed by the waiting policemen. The Chinese embassy huffed and puffed, a protest was lodged, and far away in Beijing, the Indian Ambassador, Mrs Nirupma Rao was summoned to the Chinese Foreign Office, well past midnight, when she had retired for the night. I would not like to go into the question whether it was right for the Chinese Government to have summoned the Indian Ambassador at an unearthly hour. The Chinese had probably seen the Tibetan protest as a ‘‘declaration of war’’ by the Dalai Lama's supporters and viewed India as colluding with the protestors.
The incident at the Chinese embassy may have involved a minor breach of security but did it really warrant a midnight summoning of the Indian Ambassador when she had earlier that day assured the Beijing authorities about the stringent measures taken by New Delhi to prevent any untoward incident during the Olympic torch's journey through Delhi (a two and half km distance, from Vijay Chowk to India Gate, with torch-bearers heavily escorted by Chinese and Indian commandos, carrying the torch a bare few steps forward before handing it over to the next dignitary).
The breach of security at the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi is an established fact but it involved no injury to person or damage to property. Why did the Chinese overdramatise the episode by choosing to summon Nirupama Rao at 2 a.m. to lodge a protest. The Chinese obviously were keen to make a political point and in the words of a senior former Indian diplomat the intention seems to have been to browbeat India on the issue of Tibetan political activity on Indian soil and ‘‘register a strong message that the Chinese could raise diplomatic temperature, should India fail to sufficiently curb Tibetan protests in New Delhi.’’
The former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal expressed the view that ordinarily, an Indian Ambassador should respond to the summons of the host Government. Diplomatic courtesy, however, requires that the Ambassador of a sovereign country not be inconvenienced by being summoned at an unreasonable hour. Between friendly countries such conduct would be unthinkable. In conflict-ridden relationships, and especially during a crisis, diplomatic niceties are at times deliberately discarded and envoys subjected to personal unpleasantness, to signal extreme displeasure or to reinforce a tough political message, Sibal has said.
There are others from his calling who ask if the Indian Ambassador should at all have responded to the 2 a.m. call and in this case why hadn't the envoy sought New Delhi's views on the matter before answering the demand made by the host country. If you ask me I am all for Ambassador Nirupama Rao. For, had she even made a call to New Delhi at that hour she would have been told that the bosses were unavailable then and would she please call later.
Forget my friend, who would rather be dead than be seen with anything even resembling red, or even Sibal. I, for one, wonder why did the supine UPA Government in Delhi choose to crack down so heavily not on just the unfortunate Tibetan refugees but also on this capital city, home to some 1.25 crore people. Why was life in the capital and its adjoining sub cities like Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad brought to virtual standstill for nearly eight hours, not to include the two-to three-hour traffic snarls that resulted once the Olympic torch had been safely restored to its Chinese escorts.
All the major roads in the capital were blocked to traffic. Mohammad Ashfaq, a senior technical scientist with the National Infomatics Centre, travelling from Chennai to Delhi, lost his life thanks to the cussedness of authorities; poor chap complained of chest pain as soon the plane landed at IGI airport, was given first-aid by the staff and sent off to a hospital; the ambulance was caught in the middle of a trffic jam on the Airport Road for two hours and by the time he reached the hospital he was dead. And it happened around 10.30 p.m. when the city had yet to come to grips with the consequences of the well-orchestrated traffic snarls created by the Olympic torch clampdown. I have a feeling that had it been a politician, a Minister etc instead of Ashfaq he would probably have been helicoptered to a neighbouring hospital but who cares for an ordinary scientist's life. Or, given our fatalistic streak someone might tell us that Ashfaq was destined to die like this.
No one will ask why was it necessary to paralyse the life of a teeming megapolis. In any case the torch rally was at the very best a fiasco, with no popular participation. Yes, there was a ‘‘positive’’ in it for our ‘mantris’ and the Babus, not to forget our commandos and the 21,000 police force deployed throughout the city; it also came in the shape of the mauling received by the large Tibetan crowds and their Indian sympathisers who had chosen to have a peaceful protest march from Rajghat to New Delhi's Jantar Mantar on the day of the torch rally.
No offence meant to my anti-Red friend, the Chinese hosts of the Beijing Olympics, and the counterfeit, sportsmen who head the Indian Olympic Association and its constituent federations who strutted across the tiny stage when the flame was returned to the Chinese. Our men, with no personal contact with the sport over whose destiny they preside, wore smug smiles of satisfaction. Why doesn't someone expose these exploiters, the climbers who manage to worm their way to the top of various sports organisations simply because no one in this land of over a billion people well ask any questions. I would not like to bring in the Government into the contention at this point: it has already won a gold medal from Beijing which has patted New Delhi on its back for its handling of the torch relay.The torch fiasco, if anything, should convince our Government and its VIPS (not to forget Kalmadi and the new Sports Minister M S Gill) that our lives should not be held to ransom because of the oversized egos of a thousand puny men. The British and French Governments didn't fall because protestors impeded the course of the torch relay. The flame was snuffed out by protestors there no less than half a dozen times. But ours, obviously is a special case. A foreign Government (China) objects to our Prime Minister visiting one of our states because the foreign Government distorts history and geography both to tell us the State really belongs to it. Or, when the same foreign country wouldn't allow visas to dignitaries from our State, which they claim is theirs, to visit that country as Indians. Do you see any red there ?

Challenge of teacher education

By Dr (Mrs) Vishiesh Verma

Teacher Education system in India is one of the biggest systems globally and is expanding. There are 57.10 lakh teachers working from primary schools to higher secondary level. According to Ministry of Education (HRD 2005-06 report) nearly 28 percent teachers across the country are untrained. In UP there 90 percent and in Karnataka 40 percent teachers are untrained.
An educational system can be as good as its teachers. The teachers training institutions are the key institutions which determine level and quality of teacher education. If these institutions function at a high level of efficacy the multiplier effect would reach every school in the county. One teacher reshapes the life of thousands of young persons during the career of 30 to 40 years. Any lacunae in preparation of these individuals in training institutions would cost the country dearly.
Since independence (1947), within education, teacher education has been most neglected. That is why, perhaps, it is said, "Teacher education is a slum in the city of higher education." Central Govt. spends too little for its qualitative improvement, for example the total outlay on teacher education in 10th Five Year Plan was 950 crores.
District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) prepare teachers for elementary education. In 2002 there were 599 districts, 500 DIETs were approved out of which 466 were operational.
At present B.Ed. (Bachelor of Education) is the most popular course to adopt teaching profession. Technically all B.Eds are at par irrespective of the institutions where they have studied. In fact B.Ed. degree has become a kind of driving licence and it matters a little how a person acquires it. The four regional colleges of education, established under the aegis of NCERT in 1960s, 31 Institutes of Advanced studies in Education IASE are at the top in providing quality teacher education. The Govt. colleges of education established by the states(leaving a few states) and some of the universities too prepare teachers for schools. But all these institutions produce only a few thousand teachers when the country needs more than a lakh of teachers annually. The largest number of teachers are prepared by self financing private colleges. Since the last decade of 20th century teacher education has become a roaring profit making business of many private entrepreneurs in most of the states including J&K State. No doubt every B.Ed. college is affiliated to one or the other University but these Universities give least attention to them, while the colleges have proved milch cows to these Universities.
As one looks at the state of teacher education in India today, one gets an impression that those responsible for running and supervising the show give two hoots for its health and well being. There is hardly any area or stage of teacher education, which happens to be guided either by vision or concern.
The curriculum of teacher education is under constant criticism. The present rate of explosion of scientific and technological knowledge demands a dynamic and continuously evolving curriculum of teacher education. The changes likely to occur in the twenty first century need to be incorporated in the curriculum. Unfortunately modifications in the curriculum are based more on the judgement of some experts regarding what a teacher should know and practice rather than on any empirical and systematic analysis of the tasks a teacher has to perform. The curriculum followed by Jammu University for teacher education is an example of this sort.
Another area of criticism is that the contemporary model of teacher education has failed to reflect the changes taking place in other sphere of our national life. The system has suffered due to its immobility and will to keep pace with the times and to ensure necessary modifications in conceptual basis of theory and practice.
It is said that knowledge doubles every three years in all fields. We have come a long way from the times of agricultural revolution through industrial revolution to the age of information technology. The changing world requires new kind of teachers and a new kind of education moving away from the current art of imparting and acquiring bits and pieces of information and knowledge. The meaning and concept of teaching has changed. Now the stress is on self learning, the teachers colleges have to elaborate the skill of self learning.
The international Commission for education in twenty first century(1996) predicted:
"Tomorrow's illiterate will not be the man who can't read, he will be the man who has not learnt how to learn." The idea of 'learning to learn', has implications for teacher educators and pupil teachers, who have to train their students in this skill. The introduction of information technology in teacher education is must.
One of the important characteristics of information technology is that; it saves times, efforts and increases the efficiency. The advent of internet has opened the facilities for web-based training and hence necessitates a fundamental change in the mode of education and training. The teacher educators may be brought 'live' from different locations through a network of computers in order to arrange effective interactions, which would be similar to the ones occurring in the face to face mode. The interaction of the trainees with the best available faculty may be arranged by creating virtual classrooms at the minimum cost. It is no use continuing with ritualistic practice teaching in its meaningless and anachronistic form, instead series of video films of successful teaching in various subjects followed by discussion can be arranged.
The basic problem with our system is the lack of skills among the faculty in accessing internet. A survey among the teaching community indicated that about 95 percent of the members surveyed had no knowledge of computers and had never used the internet. This deficiency is to be understood in the context that the possibility of superficial technological training poses the problem of rapid technological obsolesce.
Every pupil teacher is to be taught not only basic computer operation but also basic net browsing and to open e-mail id. Very few faculty members actually continue to use their email ids. This means that one of the primary tasks of teacher education is to instil and constantly upgrade these skills.
Compulsory introduction of information technology paper in 70 plus colleges of education working under the aegis of University of Jammu will provide opportunities to about 20 thousand pupil teachers to acquire knowledge in any area of their interest. A professionally well equipped teacher requires a prolonged period of preparation alongwith sizable body of specialized knowledge and observation of professionalized ethics by its members. The credibility of teacher education system like the legal and medical profession can't be established unless the rigour, skills and adequate duration become integral part of teacher preparation system.
The country wants to have quality education in every part of the country. The education commission (1964-66) suggested "Investment in teacher education can yield very rich dividends, because the financial resources required are small when measured against the resulting improvements in the education of millions. First rate teacher training institutions can thus play a crucial role in the development of education."

(The writer is a former Reader Co-ordinator of University of Jammu)