The case of YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and of Manmohan Singh

Some of my friends have asked me why I have not been writing anything about the arrest of YSR Congress President, Mr. YS Jagan Mohan Reddy.  My answer is simple, enough is being written about him in newspapers and enough is being shown on news channels.  I am not privy to any information about him which will be different from what everyone is getting to see and it is too early to start generating any perspectives about it.  The same would be true for the allegations that are being made against the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by Babu Rao Hazare.  Here of course, I will admit to my exasperation with Hazare and his two buddies and their politics. Calling the PM of a nation Shikhandi is a shameful act and hopefully someone will shut the trio up and persuade them to stop playing the fool.  But then they are not playing the fool and are just being themselves.  All said and done a tedious and unnecessary side show.

This is my shortest post. This must have gladdened some hearts.

Some more about cartoons in text books

The controversy regarding the usage of cartoons in text books refuses to die down with yet another academician with impeccable credentials joining issue with Prof. Prabhat Patnaik for his criticism of the use of cartoons and his comment that academicians are not accountable while parliamentarians are.  Prof. Neeladri Bhattacharya from the Centre for Historical Studies in the Jawaharlal Nehru University and also Chief Adviser to the NCERT for History textbooks has taken objection to the piece written by Prof. Patnaik a week ago by saying that Prof. Patnaik has shifted the focus from "creative pedagogy" to "political accountability" and that in doing so he (Prof. Patnaik) has painted a picture of academicians as irresponsible people since they are deemed to be unaccountable.  He has also questioned defence of parliament based in a liberal (ideology) based system while he, Prof. Patnaik is an avowed critique of liberalism.  There is a great deal of circumlocution in Prof. Bhattacharya's piece but one tangible point is that he has rightly questioned Prof. Patnaik's assumption that textbook writing is an activity that falls under the ambit of the State and the parliament and therefore members of parliament can legitimately seek the removal of content that they find objectionable.  Prof. Bhattacharya's contention is that the NCERT is a semi-autonomous body, akin to a university and is well within its right to choose those that it deems fit as advisers and writers and accountability lies in this process itself.

First let me say that Prof. Bhattacharya's position is far more realistic and logical than the one taken by Prof. Patnaik.  Let me explain the reason for this stance.  What I am saying is limited to the fact that bodies such as NCERT or universities have to remain autonomous and cannot be asked to kowtow the whims and fancies of parliamentarians. Prof. Bhattacharya has rightly questioned Prof. Patnaik when he has said that it is not just academicians who can carry prejudices that arise out of their social position but also parliamentarians. What Prof. Bhattacharya stopped short of saying was that politicians can, if given the power, rewrite certain things in social sciences in a manner that is convenient to them.  This is where I accuse Prof. Bhattacharya or circumlocution.  It is well known that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar have been advocating the rewriting of history textbooks (something that concerns Prof. Bhattacharya since he is a historian). The BJP's avowed agenda is to debunk what it calls the myth of the Aryans as invaders and has been arguing to rewrite history textbooks which show the Aryans as the sons of the soil, a claim that is being consistently contested by the likes of Prof. Romilla Thapar. I am quite sure that Prof. Bhattacharya also would side with Prof. Thapar rather than with the BJP.  He could easily have posed this question to Prof. Patnaik.  If a BJP dominated parliament comes into being and if it can then claim its accountability to the people card and ask that history textbooks be written depicting the Aryans as the sons of the soil, would that position be acceptable to Prof. Patnaik?  Instead of asking a question directly Prof. Bhattacharya beat around various bushes including the now mandatory defence of Dalit writings (which to me is akin to the affirmative action in the USA where there is always a token black playing positive role in a Hollywood film - in fact I would contend that Hollywood if forced to show God in an anthropomorphic form, would choose a black actor like Morgan Freeman), the value of creative pedagogy, the right to self expression etc.

This is the circumlocution that I am referring to.  Is it because that a newspaper demands a certain number of words in an article that academicians take recourse to writing about things which are extraneous to the issue under discussion? Prof. Bhattacharya has said that the politicians are objecting to not one but 150 cartoons in various disciplines.  So the question is why did this particular cartoon become a national issue while the existence while objections to 149 others has not even come into the limelight.  The answer is simple.  This particular cartoon involves a Dalit Icon in the form of Dr. Ambedkar being shown in poor light through a question raised by an upper caste icon Jawaharlal Nehru. So if this is the problem why are so many professors (Prof. Palshikar, Prof. Patnaik and now Prof. Bhattacharya) not addressing the problem directly and talking about creative pedagogy and the right to expression. It does not require someone with tremendous intellectual ability to realize that the cartoon offends Dalit sensibilities and that given the nature of Indian society and politics today, it is right to remove the cartoon from way back in 1949 from a textbook in the 21st Century.  Now what is happening is that Prof. Patnaik is arguing for this above position (and rightly so in my opinion) while Prof. Bhattacharya seems to fight a proxy war on behalf of the cartoonist to establish the point that Ambedkar is not beyond reproach. I would concur with anyone who would say that Ambedkar has made his share of mistakes, for he is human and I am yet to find one human who has been perfect and if such a being is if at all found, then that being is God and certainly not human. As an aside I would like to say here that today a mythology has been created where Gandhi (Mohandas) has successfully been shown as anti-dalit and pro-casteist and not one single academician has ever written anything about this wrong portrayal.  In fact, half baked writers such as Arundhati Roy who cannot differentiate between various orifices in the human body and their functions feels at ease and is completely comfortable taking pot shots at the great man while attacking Babu Rao Hazare, who is as much a Gandhian as Hitler is one.

But to come back to the question of creative pedagogy.  I have always been very uncomfortable with the use of the term creative.  This discomfort of mine arises from the fact that most people including myself have trouble defining what constitutes the creative and how much of anything that is usually considered creative legitimate as in being non-controversial.  Do we set out with the idea that we will do things differently so that we can be called creative or does creativity become an intuitive reaction and a different way of doing things when certain established ways or processes do not produce desired results or when they start producing results that are the opposite of the desired results?  I will leave that as a question and end with another

two with the assurance that you are completely capable of judging things for yourself. Does creativity have to self conscious and does it have to involve drama?  Is the introduction of cartoons into textbooks an act of creativity?  Like I said, you know the answers.

P.S: Not proof read. Errors of syntax etc maybe excused.

Are cartoons from the past necessary in the text books of the present?

Anyone who has been following the news in India will be familiar with the row that has been raised by the incorporation of a cartoon in a newspaper by Shankar from the year 1949 into a class XII NCERT text book of today.  The row led to the vandalizing of the offices of one of the members of the NCERT committee and resignation of the two people involved in the creating of the guidelines for the said textbook.  Both the persons are fairly well known academicians with reasonable credentials.  The politicians have a raised a ruckus over the cartoon since it depicts the impatience of Jawaharlal Nehru with the slow progress of the draft committee headed by B R Ambedkar. Since then there have been many articles and interviews with eminent academicians who have contended against the perceptions of politicians that young adults are incapable of understanding the true meaning of things and therefore can be misled into believing the wrong things and therefore the offending cartoon must go.  In retaliation the academia has said that young adults are fully capable of judging things for themselves and that it is necessary to inculcate a sense of humour in all concerned. Some have even said that a picture speaks more than a thousand words and therefore there is nothing wrong with cartoons in text books and in fact they were much required.

Of the two people who resigned over this issue, Prof. Suhas Palshikar (it was his office that was vandalized) wrote a piece in the Hindu a few days ago defending the insertion of the said cartoon into the lesson.  I read the article a couple of times and I was completely disappointed with the content of the article.  There was nothing in the article that read as a viable defence of the cartoon in the textbook.  In fact, Prof. Palshikar, circumlocuted around how Ambedkar was also a critic of Buddhism and how he cannot be reduced to only one thing which is the defence of the rights of the dalits alone.  In my opinion this had very little to do with the hue and cry that were talking about the denigration of a leader (by some) and of both leaders involved (by a few others).  This circumlocution did not add to any clarity of any kind about the issue.  Dr. Yogendra Yadav the other person who resigned has maintained a stoic silence. 

Today's Hindu carried a piece on the subject by Prof. Prabhat Patnaik a well known economist of the country.  Well I do not share the ideological vantage point that Prof. Patnaik uses for his understanding of things, I have always had great respect for his scholarship and learning.  In fact while studying at the JNU I made it a point to attend his classes whenever I could even though I was not a student of Economics.  His perspectives have always been crystal clear and they are reflected in his writing as well.  And today's article was no different.  The ability of Prof. Patnaik to separate the wheat from the chaff has laid bare some of the issues that actually constitute the noise around the issue.  Prof. Patnaik is very right in saying that things such as creativity, necessity of cartoons in textbooks, freedom of the academia are all issues that skirt the main issue. In his true and mature style Prof. Patnaik has asked the question of how freedom of academia (consisting of people not directly accountable to the people) can be prioritised over that of the Members of Parliament who are elected by the people on the basis one person/one vote (I mention this for a reason which will become evident in the subsequent lines of this post) and are therefore accountable to those who have voted for them. He also questioned, and very rightly, the objectivity of academicians who more often than not carry all the prejudices that their positions in society carry.  He also pointed out rather starkly but in an extremely dignified manner the fact that circa 1949 dalit voices in the country were not yet in a position to be made themselves heard and that in 2012 all that has changed.  This is the actual point.  Those supporting the academicians and those opposing them are all actually talking about B R Ambedkar's position as a dalit leader and Nehru as an upper caste politician criticising him and Shankar drawing a cartoon around this.  So circumlocution has been happening because nobody seems to be willing to take the bull by the horns.  

At this point I would like to say that by making Ambedkar an icon of the dalits his status has also become that of a holy cow that is beyond and above all criticism.  But that is not and need not be contended against. What is more important is why should this controversy become a part of education? What purpose do cartoons serve in textbooks?  I went to school and there never were any cartoons in books and I do not believe that my education is deficient in anyway.  And as very correctly pointed out by Prof. Patnaik what purpose does sense humour serve in education?  Is that an integral part of the curriculum or more importantly should it be a part of the curriculum and if so why?

But I do have a small bone to pick with Prof. Patnaik. And that concerns the issue of accountability.  In theory, elected representatives are accountable to their constituents, but in reality in India as in most parts of the world they are not.  So Prof. Patnaik's observations about a "political class" are not entirely accurate.  Whether he likes it or not, politicians cutting across all lines watch out for each other, irrespective of their public proclamations.  I would say Prof. Patnaik's observations pitting the ideal scenario against the actual situation and that for me is unsustainable.  In his glorifying the idea of one person/one vote Prof. Patnaik has conveniently ignored the problems of the simple majority system that is followed in India and in most democracies of the world. I do not need to tell you this but I will put up a simple example here.  The size of the constituency (imaginary) is 100 people and there are two candidates A and B contesting an election from this constituency.  Let us say candidate A gets 51 votes while B gets 49 votes.  In a simple majority system A represents the whole constituency despite being opposed by a number of people who almost equal those who supported him.  A look at the data available in India about elections shows that parties have come into power rarely with the support of even 50% of voters and sometimes the figure is as low as 34%.  Prof. Patnaik has by drawing the analogy of Babu Rao Hazare's movement and the support it garnered from the middle classes has indicted the middle classes as the cause behind the controversy.  I myself am against the movement of Hazare and his cronies and I believe that they are methodically undermining institutions.  But this situation is not analogous to Hazare's movement and its agenda.  I personally think Prof. Patnaik could have made his points without getting dragged into bigger issues that only confuse people more than clarify.

I believe that the middle class and the rich class in India have been most irresponsible towards the society in which they live and therefore have successfully undermined a solidarity that should be the backbone of the society in which we all live.  And however much we criticize this deliberate and wanton abandoning of their social responsibilities by the rich and middle classes it is not enough.  But the question here is not about the perceptions of the middle class and therefore I believe that while doing the right thing Prof. Patnaik has undermined his own argument by trying to support it with issues of class.  In India the middle class is not a monolith nor is it homogeneous.  In a country where caste matters more than anything it is not possible to talk about a class.  The membership to the middle class as an economic entity has been rising and there are people from the not so upper castes and some lower castes who do belong to the middle class in terms of their incomes and their aspirations.  They would not support the vilification of Ambedkar so this is not a category to be brought out at all.  I request you to read the piece written by Prof. Patnaik (despite my criticism about a couple of aspects) since it is an excellent a lucid piece of writing and make your opinions on it and the issue it addresses.  For the record, I believe that there is no need for cartoons in textbooks, especially at a time when caste identities have become important (sometimes rightly and sometimes wrongly).

P.S: Not proof read, please excuse errors of syntax and spelling.

Education in India is not only illiberal but also completely meaningless

I hope to keep this post really short.  However, the key word there is hope and not promise.  My arguments about Indian society and its educational system becoming illiberal have been vindicated by some unbelievable developments concerning the publication in an NCERT text book of a cartoon from 1948 in which the cartoonist has depicted the movement towards creating a new constitution as the slow movement of a snail.  In that particular cartoon there are references to Ambedkar and Nehru. And now that Ambedkar has been elevated to the status of a God, there has been a furore about it and some of the members of the text book committee have resigned and have been attacked by various lumpen elements of Indian society.  Educational institutions and their functioning has been disrupted and academicians who normally lead non-descript lives have started making headlines of newspapers.  What kind of a society are we if we cannot poke a little fun at ourselves and have a good laugh?  The abhorrent caste system has now been inverted, with those at the bottom in the past now at the top and those at the top now at the bottom.  What kind of emancipation is this? Instead of doing away the terrible system that has stratified society and humiliated generations we have only succeeded in iterating a newer version of the same.  

Another development that I would like to comment on is that the topper of the Union Public Service Commission's recruitment is a woman, which is very good.  But she is a qualified MBBS doctor from no less an institution that AIIMS in New Delhi which is very bad.  For those of you still trying to understand what I am saying here is the explanation.  Education in India, especially higher education is very subsidized.  Every student who goes through the educational process for professional courses in higher education is subsidized to the tune of millions of rupees.  Now the top ranker of the said exam studied medicine in arguably the best medical education providing institution in India.  By quitting medicine and become a general administrator the lady in question apart from wasting the nation's money (which was used for subsidizing her education) has also made sure that there is one less qualified medical practitioner.  That means that someone who could have studied to become a doctor and may have become a good doctor probably was deprived of that medical education which would have been of use to the country. 

This yet again vindicates what I have been saying about the Indian education system.  It just trains students to crack entrance examinations without gaining any substantial knowledge.  So if you take the case of this AIIMS student who has spurned her medical education, you can see the story of a person who had no interest in medicine being forced to study it by her parents or whoever and when she gets an opportunity to dump it, she does so without too much of a problem (I assume).  If she was confident about her ability as a doctor and enjoyed being one, she would not have thought about the Civil Services examinations at all.  So now let us take this story one more step forward.  What if the said person is only good at cracking entrance exams?  She could very well have cracked the Civil Services exam but just as she did not have confidence or attitude towards practicing medicine she suddenly finds that she has no attitude for administration either.  Then what?  You take your own thoughts forward from there.

However, I would like all of you to ponder upon this question?  Do we need so many engineering graduates and people unfit for medicine becoming doctors?  Ultimately all of them are writing the civil services exams.  The third ranked person this year is an engineer.  And when some journalist asked him what his plan B was if he did not crack the civil services exams, he said he was focussed singularly on the civil services exams and therefore there was no plan B.  So what was this person doing studying engineering?  Professional courses attract greater subsidies from the government and at the end of them engineers, doctors, lawyers take the UPSC examination with Sociology, Public Administration, Anthropology as their subjects why did they study these professional courses at all?  Why could they not have done a BA which would have cost the tax payer less money to pay for subsidies and helped the government bring more deprived and needy children into the education system.  So I end by reiterating what I have always been saying.  The government should take over education from the Primary to the PhD level.  It should provide it free of cost to all citizens.  It should cut engineering seats by 90% and it should take undertakings from those who pursue professional courses that they will take up research and teaching in their professions.  Look at what happened to the IITs.  They have become graduate shops.  Where is research happening in engineering and medicine?  In the medical field sundry doctors are simply following the protocols laid down by the WHO which is controlled by medical research that is happening mainly in America and to an extent in Europe.  Most of the big contracts for engineering go to foreign companies because Indian companies do not have the knowledge base to take up challenging projects.  Our doctors and engineers are nothing but glorified technicians who are following protocols laid down in other countries and perpetrated across the world through world bodies.  Think about it, especially the young people among you who think the world would shut down without your services in call centres and BPOs. Those who think along those lines are suffering from a delusional and completely false sense of entitlement.

Time to reform the illiberal education system in India

Through the medium of this blog  I have been critiquing the education system that India follows many a time.  My main complaint has been that the system is primarily there now to serve commercial purposes and nothing more.  If some people are fortunate, they may get educated; but most are not and therefore all they get is a degree without the supporting knowledge.  I have been saying that India is producing a horde of graduates and post-graduates none of whom are ultimately employable.  And that is a sad thing since for all the claims that India is the second fastest growing economy in the world behind China and that India is one of the drivers of the global economy, one of the realities of India is that a vast majority of people are still untouched by any form of development and that even for the middle classes of the country, education is ultimately a tool for employment.  And today's education system by not providing any kind of education to the people who require it, is actually nothing more than a white elephant on the economy of the country.

It has been my consistent argument that education in India should have been the sole responsibility of the State right from the primary level to the highest level and that it should have been provided free of cost. I have argued that students should go to the same government run schools, wear uniform and grow up without elitism creeping in.  I have also been arguing that as long as private schools and colleges are allowed to run, they would concentrate on their primary motive which is to make profit and in order to do so they have been creating stupid agendas which do not pay any attention to the all round development of a child.  Schools and colleges that are run out of commercial complexes with no playgrounds and other spaces in which co-curricular activities can take place and widen the horizons of students, are creating students who are atrophied in their mental growth.  In the southern part of India and especially in the State of Andhra Pradesh, one sees that students are "oriented" into IIT or medicine and modus operandi of these schools that provide this orientation is to make a student a target of consistent and long hours of bombarding with questions and answers.  This process usually starts in the morning at 6 AM and goes on till 9 PM.  The student is not left with any time for any other activity so these students do not get to read any news and nor do they understand its importance, they do not play any games or participate in any sporting activity and are only used to robotic automaton conformity.  They are incapable of thinking on their own and have to be spoon fed information which they will re-produce in conditions that are pre-determined.  By pre-determined conditions I mean tests and the environment in which they are held.  You change the conditions and you will find the student is not really able cope up with the changed environment.

It is here that the illiberalism of Indian education comes into being and is perpetuated by three parties.  The disinterested State is the first, the private providers of education who tries to make their institutions look the most desirable for admission projecting to parents that they dedicate all their efforts for securing the future of the child (though in reality it is profitability of their own institution that is the only criterion) and the third is the parents themselves.  Most often parents thrust their ambitions onto their children without consideration for the children's aptitude, interest and inclination.  That there are hordes of engineers today who cannot find employment in anything other than information technology companies (if at all they can find employment that is) and medical doctors who if at all find employment, have to work as duty doctors in corporate hospitals for paltry salaries of Rs. 10,000 per month, is indication that all this brain washing of students does not work and therefore the aspirations of parents are not fulfilled.  Yet there is no change in the thinking of parents, all of whom operate on the assumption that failure of the child and the consequent dashing of the aspirations of the parents is a phenomenon that is reserved for others and not them. This idiotic belief is akin to the idea that death shall come only to others and not to me.  This lack of enlightenment among parents is what leads to this unfortunate illiberalism in education, one which is opportunistically used by the capitalist-educator who feeds of the parents' unenlightened system of beliefs.

One of the good points of the traditional Indian social system has been that it teaches the young to respect their elders.  This good point has now been converted by stupid parents to impose their views and aspirations on their offspring without considering the idea that they the offspring are also organic entities possessing certain qualities, which if allowed to come out would shine and if stifled would fail.  To see the child as an extension of the self is violation of the rights and entitlements of a person.  And that is illiberalism at its highest.  One of the most striking features of illiberalism can be found in the community of social science teachers.  In my own experience, with the exception of one or two social science teachers all others uniformly expect their children to become engineers or doctors just like every other parent.  In this part of the country there are certain teachers who are strong supporters of the idea that students should have a right to participate in democratic agitations and encourage students to participate in political movements.  But these very same teachers are keen to protect their students from such democracy, and look for colleges and universities outside of Andhra  Pradesh to educate their students so that they do not get disturbed by these democratic agitations.  This selective application of rules for us as against the others is to me the highest form of selfishness where people are selectively discriminated against.

Apart from this type of teacher there is also the other type; one who is so convinced about one's own enlightenment that he or she believes that he or she should decide what is good for the student.  This self-aggrandized teacher believes that the student will come up in life only if guidance is given to them.  So there are those who will decide what goes into curriculum and how it should be taught.  While I do not contest the right of the teachers to prepare curriculum, I certainly question things such as incorporation of mathematics and physical sciences into social sciences courses and drastic things such as a course should be taught only from one ideological point of view and not from any other since all other ideologies are wrong (according to the teacher).  This is nothing less than indoctrination and not giving the student to make an informed choice about the world view or the vantage from which they would choose to view the world.  There is nothing wrong in instructing students on the shortcomings of particular ideologies but to decide that they do not need to know anything about those ideologies is morally unsustainable.  The University Grants Commission of India, according to hearsay (and therefore this should not be taken as true) is considering the idea that there should be blurring of lines between social sciences, mathematics, physical sciences and biological sciences so that a student gets to learn all.  In my view, if this is indeed true, this will be stupidity of a monumental kind which will destroy education in India completely.

What I have in my own mind is something radically different from this.  I believe that schooling is the most important stage in the life of a person and if one finds education repugnant at this level then they will carry these memories with them for the rest of the life and therefore could become educationally challenged which in India means that a lack of fitness for employment.  My own experience with myself and with a lot of students has been that some kinds of minds are suited to some kinds of disciplines and these are obvious from the time that they get into their teens. I therefore believe that all early schooling should be devoid of specific curriculum and they should be allowed to experiment with various things pertaining to the various walks of life.  Specialized curriculum with syllabus made up of disciplinary content should come into being only at the junior college level.  This will spare the students the agony of learning things that they will never use in their life and forget that information the day after they take their examination.  I have in my life done simple equations, simultaneous equations, integral and differential calculus, I have studied the innards of frogs, earthworms and cockroaches and today none of that is useful to me in what I do.  So why make students agonize over something that they cannot do, if in the end, that is not going to impact on their lives in anyway?  To most people mathematics that includes additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions would be fine to live life.  Teach that maths to those who have no aptitude for engineering or the pursuit of mathematics at a higher level.  Similarly with the biological sciences and the social sciences.  An introduction to those aspects of social sciences and biological sciences that have some significance to daily lives would be adequate, for those students who do not have an aptitude for these courses.  Such education in my opinion would allow the student to concentrate upon things that they like and enjoy studying, and when people pursue what they enjoy, then they usually do well.  And here I rest my case.