The Art of Mudslinging

                                                                The Art of Mudslinging

Sanjaya Baru, the ex media advisor to Dr ManMohan Singh  in his first term as Prime Minister(2004-08) has brought out two books claiming knowledge of an insider. The two books are about two former Prime Ministers –both not from the Nehru- Gandhi dynasty. The second and the latest is a welcome panegyric, though belated and much delayed on P.V. Narasimha Rao, the Prime Minister to succeed Rajiv Gandhi from the Congress party and the other a critical assessment of Dr.Man Mohan Singh to show him as a ‘great’man with his hands tied to the saree of Soniaji. These books will top the Best Sellers list for the next couple of weeks till another book hits the shelf that is more damaging to the Congress party which is  now almost in comatose. It is human nature to revile a dead horse but in modern times even the living horse in its dying moments is punched and ridiculed. Baru’s new book reinstating the once harshly and vilely reviled PV for what he did and what he did not,  as the 1991 Man of the Year is not a new revelation. It is exciting not because the present day reader has a historical perspective to see PV in a true light, but because his elevation comes alongside  the defanging of the dynasty. Similarly Man Mohan Singh, the good and honest man, the Economic Reforms man, the unassuming intellectual, the courteous gentleman who would not hurt a fly is presented as a spineless man who had willingly obliged to be pushed into the PM’s chair and keep it warm till the young scion of the Nehru dynasty gained political maturity. But since the waiting for the Prince to become politically suave and wise had to be stretched indefinitely and it resembled almost Godot-like waiting, the light weight ManMohanji found himself  edged out by Modi,a a 56”chested  muscular strongman. The Media, the book reviewers and the Lutyens zone intellectuals have gone gung ho about Baru’s  book as it shows the mother-son duo of the erstwhile first family as selfish, scheming, and sly and the Congressmen and women –in particular ManMohan Singh= as servile and spineless before the supercilious and disdainful dynasty.

I hold no brief for the Congress of today. It is bereft of the Nehruviani left-centric ideology that had given India a strong, stable democracy with a utopian vision to bring an egalitarian society by adopting democratic socialism.  The present Congress has no policy today except rightly or wrongly to cavil at everything the ruling party does. There is no slogan like’ corruption hatao’ as corruption scams were the prime cause of  downfall of the UPA government despite the impeccable credentials of a honest , PM  ManMohan Singh. But I feel uneasy at the number of ‘personal’ books by authors who have held high positions in government and by virtue of that, claim to be privy to the unseemly talks and misdeeds among their political masters.  These are the new “elites” who can do no wrong when they document their personal views and claim that these views are ‘objective’ and not ‘subjective’. The gullible reader recognizing the erstwhile proximity of the author to leaders at that point of time laps up the contents with a “I had sniffed it alright then, though I did not speak out” look and nods in agreement as though the oracle had spoken. I am scared at the rise of a scandal mongering society, encouraged by the media that spends all its time sniffing to discover in which hell hole has every Congressman buried his past.  They are looking for skeletons in the cupboard and no leader of the opposition is left out of investigative hounding.

As for the authors who have been insiders as they claim and therefore write truth and nothing but the truth, it begs the question as to how much they actually knew about their masters. To use a venerable adjective ‘the Accidental’ is a clever art of denying the man any claim to merit or worth and exposing him  as a sycophant willing to humble himself  with no self -respect. Today mudslinging is an intellectual pastime; gossiping about people in high places is a sign of one’s elitism; to criticize the former masters (who had treated them as their confidantes) is to display extraordinary guts to speak harsh truths; to document such views is the democratic prerogative   and duty of  the highbrows of the society.

I do not claim to judge the veracity of such books that keep popping up in bookstores. Like the proverbial Pontius Pilate, we have to ask the question: What is truth? Today such a  question generates answers based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise. All books are written with a wisdom of hindsight, but that wisdom is artfully managed by one’s personal opinions. Baru is full of praise for PV who was the architect of Economic liberalization along with Dr.ManmohanSingh. To praise is to voice approbation. But no praise is praise if it is at the expense of another. Baru’s praise of PV should have been wholesome and not adulterated by pejorative references to Rajiv Gandhi whose death engineered the elevation of PV. PV’s wisdom, maturity, silent leadership without any bluster, scholarship and diplomacy are more than adequate to earn him the highest esteem of the entire nation, but to show Rajiv’s inadequacies as a foil to PV’s greatness may sound sweet to those who are averse to the Nehru dynasty, but it fails in situating PV as an extraordinary PM in his own right.

This is the new age of writing autobiographies, memoirs, insiders’ narratives in the name of Creative Truth. The writers have made a fine art of mudslinging as they are no longer restricted by ethics of time bar whereby all references to living people should wait for a lapse of time before they are made public.  When the views expressed are caustic and full of character assailment, there has to be some degree of self restraint and self regulation. These books do not belong to the genre of history as history is “ the study of the human past as it is described in the written documents left by human beings” . These books are not literary classics that define the essence of humanizing culture. They are just period pieces for the moment. Good going for the authors like the collection in movie halls on the first day release of a film. Beyond that, do they have any permanent value except for gossip at the tea table? I may sound a classical puritan to expect books to elevate our minds and give us a direction to shape our existence into something beautiful, meaningful and noble. Maybe I am not in sync with the times when even the US presidential debate veers round Bill Clinton’s sexual past. These are times when discussions, debates, arguments and dialogues have descended to a low level only towards destroying someone’s reputation- that someone need not be even one’s acquaintance, friend or foe. Sai Baba once said the one who slanders others removes the dirt of others by his tongue.

I confess that I have not done a deep study of Sanjaya Baru’s books, but what I heard from his own exegesis  on TV channels made me sad that a good intellect aided by vast experience  and felicity of expression has gone waste by writings that suffer from penury of exalted thoughts and ideas.

Do we need Nationalism today

Nationalism is the new brand people love to wear on their sleeves to display their patriotism and pride in their country. The ruling party has pitch forked Nationalism onto the centre stage and has made it synonymous with patriotism. In an era dominated by globalization, multiculturalism and pluralism that accommodates different ethnic, religious and cultural groups as central to the survival of mankind, the sudden reversal to nationalism makes one wonder whether we are in the past forward mode. Nationalism is today like a hat stand on which any hat can be hung. So there are a number of adjectives tagged on to Nationalism such as ethnic nationalism, romantic nationalism, racial nationalism and in recent times we have   Cultural nationalism (propounded by the current  ‘margadarshak’ of the BJP, Shri Advani), and the last two , as advanced by a senior Professor of a leading university are Dharmic nationalism and Namo nationalism.

Nationalism does not stop with inculcating patriotic fervor in people, it promotes the doctrine of superiority of one’s culture and interests over all others and thereby it is antithetical to multiculturalism that accommodates and accepts all cultures on equal footing. While it is partially true that Nationalism has once again come to the centre of discourse in the country( and also globally),  the consequences have been far from agreeable. Nationalism is good to a certain extent like getting freedom for the majority of men and women who belong to a country. But once freedom is accomplished, the country becomes a part of the globe and a part of humanity. “Nationalism”, says Frantz Fanon “ is that magnificent song that made the people rise against their oppressors, stops short, falters and dies away on the day that independence is proclaimed”.

Beginning with the second half of the 20th C,- post World War II-, mankind came together to fight as one unit to stave off inhuman forces under the likes of Hitler who were cutting the very root of humanity in the name of Nationalism. Nationalism has the potential to change into mob hysteria and become authoritarian and isolationist refusing to tolerate values, culture and traditions of the rest of the world.  Nationalism in this respect becomes dictatorial and as Francis Fukuyama says, “ is often the enemy of democracy; nationalism has also been democracy's handmaiden, from the time of the French Revolution”. In India today we are also witnessing this catastrophic change  in myriad ways- the latest is the Cauvery violence(and before that and still festering is the Kashmir violence) where nationalism has descended to parochialism, jingoism and brutal destruction of lives and property. The term  Kashmiriyat, though it rhymes well with insaniyat and jamhooriyat, has made the Kashmiris(in particular the majority Muslims) pitch for Kashmiri nationalism. Kashmiriyat has now mutated in ways that its meaning is not clear. Who will it include and exclude, and on what terms? The Nationalism debate has fragmented the country and not united it.

The senior Professor who had added the two adjectives –‘dharmic’ and ‘namo’ to nationalism has quoted Aurobindo Ghose who had spoken about rise of dharma in India. But Ghose does not limit it to our selfish interests. Ghose like Tagore was not constrained by nationalism and looked for the restoration of values for humanity. Tagore denounced nationalism, deeming it among humanity's greatest problems. "A nation," he wrote, "... is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose", a purpose often associated with a "selfishness" that "can be a grandly magnified form" of personal selfishness”.

There is a lot of confusion in the professor’s attempt at spelling out dharmic nationalism to "include non-dualism in the realm of metaphysics, swaraj or non-aggressive autonomy in the realm of politics, and non-exclusionism in the realm of culture".  But  non exclusionism is inclusionism which negates the concept of  ‘I,me,my nation’; similarly non duality means  ‘one undivided without a second’ which in the context of humanity holds all together and not just one nation or one community.

Finally he heaps praise on the PM as the sole harbinger of Nationalism and thereby does disservice to the PM as Nationalism is not a concept for humanity. It is too narrow and chauvinistic and to make PM the centre of Nationalism damages his reputation,especially when he  wants to be acknowledged as  better than Pt.Nehru as the Statesman of the World.

Lastly, let us not forget the diabolical nature of IS that operates under the garb of one religion, one Caliphate.  It is time for the world and in particular for India to unite to put down such shrill cries of outdated monolithic concept of nationalism.

What we need is a fusion of being singular as a nation and being plural as one among humanity.

Re-christening NAAC

 

                                                               Re-christening NAAC

                                                                                                                                Hema V. Raghavan

The latest World university ranking has not added anyt    hing significant to Indian Universities. If there is anything that rivets our attention, it is a noticeable decline of our premier universities like the IITs and University of Delhi. All the remedial efforts of the UGC with guidance from the Ministry of Human Resources Development seem to have failed to arrest this steady deterioration in quality year after year.

 One of the well thought out projects to remedy the declining standards was the setting up of NAAC – National Accreditation and Assessment Council. An elaborate process has been put in place to assess and accredit colleges and universities on an eight Letter Grade based on seven criteria. For Colleges it is as follows:

1. Curricular Aspects

2. Teaching-Learning and Evaluation

3. Research, Consultancy and Extension

4. Infrastructure and Learning Resources

5. Student Support and Progression

6. Governance, Leadership and Management.

7. Innovations and Best Practices

For the universities,over and above there is a greater emphasis on

Promotion of Research

Resource Mobilization for Research

Research Facilities

Research Publications and Awards

Consultancy

Extension Activities and Institutional Social Responsibility and

Collaborations

 As on November 2015, more than 3600 colleges and around 200 universities have been assessed and given accreditation grades between A++ and D.  This is about 1/9^th of the 35,000colleges and 1/3^rd or less of the 700 universities established in the country.  Hence it may seem a tall proposition to expect a miraculous turnaround in the quality of higher education. But the more relevant question is has there been any momentous change in the standard of teaching-learning environment in the assessed and accredited institutions? Though there is a five year interregnum before the next assessment- cum- accreditation takes place, there is no sign of any incremental quality in these institutions to talk about.

This takes us to the two most relevant questions- what is accreditation and what is assessment? Accreditation, simply defined, is the act of granting credit or recognition especially with respect to educational institutions that maintains suitable standards. Assessment is evaluation or appraisal, the classification of something with respect to its worth. What are the suitable standards on which institutions have to be judged and who has set them? Research is often cited as the major criterion to judge an institution’s excellence and there can be no gainsaying this in respect of quality assessment. But research in colleges, unlike in universities, is just a fraction of the work it sets out to do. Colleges are the first rung of higher education where the students are exposed to new concepts and ideas-in science, philosophy, humanities and commerce-and trained to critically think and analyze them and integrate their learning with an awareness of the society and the world around. Colleges serve as a platform for dialogues and debates that are essential for mental training and development.  At school the students are taught to gather facts and figures; colleges help to interpret them and universities assist them to ideate, create and evaluate strategies around effective implementation of new solutions for various challenges confronting society and mankind. Universities build on education imparted in colleges and train students in research that would help in taking ideas to the real world. University research means discovering and making original contributions to knowledge.  Thus assessment of a college is different from assessment of a university.

 Assessment and accreditation, as it is done today is mainly in a monitoring mode. The colleges have to prepare a comprehensive report known as SSR (Self Study Report) as per the Manual given by NAAC. This report is so vast that it runs to at least 550 pages requiring documentation of everything. The college is expected to submit three copies and keep one to itself. This amounts to 4x550 i.e. 2200 pages on an average per college. Besides this, the faculties have to prepare separate department files, detailing meetings convened with documentary evidence, the CVs of the faculties with proof of all the papers published, papers presented at seminars, workshops and Conferences in addition to power point presentation of the activities of the department that includes its past achievements, present work and future plans. It is no exaggeration that the NAAC seeks at least 5000 pages of documented reports. Considering the vision of paperless offices, one wonders if NAAC is right in seeking such voluminous documentation for assessment. It begs the question as to whether the starting premise of this investigation is one of mistrust! The college faculty has to spend a minimum of 3-4 months –if not more in preparing the reports – lest there should be any wrong data that would be deemed as false exaggeration. This is not a criticism of NAAC but the word has gone around that the investigating team will be looking for incorrectness-advertent or inadvertent-to penalize the college and downgrade it. College after college has been frantic to provide accurate details and wait with anxiety the actual presence of the investigating team. It is a reality-though not necessarily and always true- that the investigating team often takes on the role of an admonishing monitor rather than that of an encouraging mentor. For fear of being downgraded, the colleges try to silently accept all the harsh criticism and ingratiate itself with the NAAC team, desperately pleading for a higher grade.

 The primary objective of NAAC is to provide suggestions for improvement-suggestions that are implementable, considering the constraints under which colleges function. Colleges have to look for grants from the UGC (in the case of Central Universities) and from the State administration (in the case of State universities). Unless approved by the University Academic Council and the Executive Council, no new degree course with an innovative curriculum can be started by the colleges. At best they can introduce add-on courses that are self funded. In most cases, for lack of sufficient funds, the add-on courses are more to show on paper than they add to the competence and learning of the students. Students do not like to pay and attend these courses that at best may get them a certificate which does not have any market, employable value. Similarly no college can initiate a curriculum change unless the degree awarding university chooses to do so. New practices with the use of educational technology are a far cry for lack of funds. Colleges with undergraduate teaching cannot provide consultancy services. The lack of all these criteria hampers recognition of the worth of the colleges unless they have a good library, a functioning placement cell, excellent extra- curricular activities including sports, music, dance, theatre etc, vibrant extension programmes like Women’s cell, Gender studies, Environment programmes and other outreach programmes such as community service and designing meaningful social activities. Overarching all these would be reasonably good academic results. Getting grade A is a possible reality, though not a certainty.

One of the problems of higher education in our country is the enormous stress on uniformity and a strong disapproval of diversity which permits institutions to pursue their respective vision and mission,  consistent with the university’s specified educational objectives.  It is this that denies colleges to draw up their own pedagogical strategies but  insists on straight-jacketing them within a system drawn by NAAC. It ignores the main thrust of college education-to give the students the freedom and right to access opportunities for learning and for the open exchange of ideas. Teaching can be done in many ways just as the top of a mountain can be reached from different directions. There are teachers who may need a whole semester to cover the given syllabus while some others may prefer to give a few comprehensive lectures and let the students  supplement them with self study. They do not need more than two or three lectures to complete a topic, but they are outstanding lectures and they promote the curiosity and interest of the students to go the library to find books to substantiate what they had learnt in the classroom. There is no need to prvilege one form of teaching over another. Suffice it to say, colleges and academic institutions have to devise their own methods of giving instruction taking into account the standard and quality of students enrolled  and in that plurality lies the process to attain the singularity or uniqueness of fulfilling higher educational goals. NAAC should not expect a set pattern of teaching but should give credit to all pioneering strategies that may not be in sync with the norms set by the UGC. I recall Coleridge comparing Shakespeare and Schiller’s tragedies: “Schiller burns a whole city to produce an effect of terror and Shakespeare drops a handkerchief and freezes our blood.”  The goal is the same-to make students learn to think, analyze, critique, and generate ideas and solutions to meet the present needs of the State and society. Truth is one; paths are many. NAAC should refrain from looking into the time tables, the number of classes taken by the teacher, the number of hours a teacher is made to stay in college etc. What NAAC should look at is the students’ learning quotient,  student graduation rate, and most importantly student success, which means  their meaningful and gainful employment after graduation.

 Accreditation is to be voluntary which inter alia necessitates colleges to draw up high standards and rigorous application of requirement to meet them. “The process provides an assessment of an institution’s effectiveness in the fulfillment of its mission, its compliance with the requirements of its accrediting association, and its continuing efforts to enhance the quality ofstudent learning and its programs and services. Based upon reasoned judgment,

the process stimulates evaluation and improvement, while providing a means of continuing accountability to constituents and the public(society)”(The Accreditation Principles : Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, Georgia ). Colleges who get accreditation will thus have a quality far superior to those who have not volunteered for the accreditation process.

The NAAC team should be familiar with the way different universities function. Colleges which are constituent colleges or affiliated colleges to a Central university function differently from colleges affiliated to State universities. NAAC team for Central University colleges should be drawn from Central Universities and similarly State universities should have a NAAC team drawn from State universities. It is also important that the NAAC team should have an open mind to appreciate whatever positive steps colleges are following and not fault them if these steps are different from what it considers as the best practices to be followed. Higher education in the last decade has moved its focus from the previous years towards inter-disciplinary studies , distinct from stand-alone discipline studies. It will be a short sighted approach if the NAAC negatively apprises faculty’s personal achievements in disciplines other than the one s/he had done at the Masters and Doctoral levels . These are the days when in the words of C.P.Snow, a person is to be regarded as illiterate if  s/he knows the second Law of Thermodynamics , but is ignorant of Shakespeare  and vice versa. NAAC should have a broad based catholic approach to appreciate the achievements of faculty in different academic spheres that would enrich students’ holistic learning. NAAC members should not straightjacket faculties into stand- alone disciplines but give credit to those whose work and achievement go beyond their specialized disciplines.

Today the NAAC assessment goes beyond the academic criteria to include administrative and accounts departments. But this should not be included as they are yearly audited and the audit report is given to the UGC or the state authority in charge of funding. The quality of education can be enhanced if the college is instructed to improve these two departments, but NAAC as a quality control council need not be burdened with them. 

NAAC is a good step towards rectifying the problems that ail higher education. Instead of assessment and accreditation that sound draconian in intention, can NAAC be re-christened as UCIC –Universities and Colleges Improvement Council where the true intention matches the vision that the name embodies? The quality of education should never be strained. It should encourage the teacher and the learner to meet the single objective of sustaining, supporting and maintaining high standards in higher education. True quality emerges not through paternalistic control and admonition, but through appreciation and acknowledgement of what has been achieved and with good guidance towards what can be still more achieved.

The motto of UCIC should be “bias towards none, liberality towards all.”

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