Welcome the Future

                                                         Welcome the Future.

The tragic train derailment leaving 24 dead and more than one hundred and fifty injured was the fourth major accident this year and the third in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Even as I write this piece, I learn that there has been another derailment in UP leaving 74 injured and four of them critically. Last November, a crash in Uttar Pradesh had killed 150 people. The statistics reveal that more than 250 people were killed across the country in train accidents in 2015 and 2016. For the media and the politicians, ever in search of news that triggers blame game, such an accident cannot be a lost opportunity to indulge in “TU,TU, Mein, Mein” (arguments and bickering) in the midst of grief, distress and suffering that they must perforce refer to even if briefly in the most solemn voice.  The spokespersons of the ruling establishment point to the accidents that had happened during the Congress regime in the past while those in the opposition bay for the resignation of the Railways Minister even when they know that he is a dynamic, hardworking minister, spotlessly clean who had earned great praise from the time he was  power minister in the  Vajpayee government between 1999 and 2004.

This cacaphonic debate on the TV channels is a recurrent and quotidian soap opera in which the ruling party blames its opponent(s) and vice versa for something bad or unfortunate event rather than attempting to seek a solution. While the spokespersons of the ruling party mock at the opposition’s attack with the stock phrase ,“who is calling the kettle black”( though today,  it is not kosher to use such a racist phrase) the opposition relentlessly questions the ruling party’s credentials to find a solution for the ills  it claims  to have inherited from their predecessors. The anchor also joins  to pontificate on what ails the Railways till it is time to switch to yet another sensational breaking news to start a fresh debate.

We are certainly the argumentative lot who are celebrated for our words and not for action. We have meandered through seventy years; we have done well in several areas, failed miserably in many others and have chug-chugged at snail’s pace in a few key sectors. But to say that seventy years had been a dark period in our history when the country witnessed nothing but total eclipse and sunshine is only now in the last three years  is not only ignorance but an exaggerated notion about the potential, capability and self importance of the ruling government.  So is the attack on the new government’s three year record which has to its credit some major achievements but also  many questions to answer for.  No government is a total cipher, no government is a total success. The mismatched balance between success and failure tilts the voters to favour or discard the different parties during an election. It is sad that great men like our first prime Minister Pt. Nehru is  gradually waning  into oblivion without any gratitude and appreciation for his contribution to making Indian democracy survive and setting up the roadmap for the establishment of a scientific, industrialized modern India. It is sad that in the modern pantheon of great leaders, Shastriji and his clarion call of Jai jawan, Jai kisan do not find mention. The current ruling party spokespersons remember Mrs. Gandhi only on June 26 to observe emergency day and not for the victorious war fought under her brave and dynamic leadership to liberate Bangladesh and show India to President Nixon that we can fight our wars without American assistance. Even the noble Vajpayee is never mentioned today for his great efforts to promote peace between Pakistan and India. Rajiv Gandhi is remembered only for Bofors and not for ushering in the technological era while Dr. Man Mohan Singh is no longer seen as the architect of Modern Indian economy but that Singh is King of scams. On the other hand, day in and day out for all things happening-right from an innocuous opening ceremony of a road, PM is projected as a visionary, the architect and builder of new India. Where is that new India and when is it going to materialize are questions not to be aired. Is Swachh Bharat a utopian ideal as in the last three years have shown no signs of becoming a reality? I Does “Make in India”, however nationalistic it sounds,  enforce protectionism  as a counter measure to economic liberalism? No questions to be asked for fear of being labeled anti-national.

It is a pity that the PM who has scored a landslide victory in the 2014 elections o his single effort should now be buttressed by his loyal minions who constantly weave a halo round him saying that he is the leader as predicted by Nostrodamus to lead India to great heights,  and to fulfill that prophecy he is the man who works 24 hours( as though the previous Prime Ministers not only in India but leaders in other parts of the world were lesser mortals who could not and  did not  put in so much work), he is the man who works without taking a vacation( showcasing his foreign trips as a drain on his time and energy), and whose name works as magic to coin new terms such as  Modimonetisation, Modinomics, Moditva(what it means, one does not know),Modirashtra Modisarkar etc. His sycophants have taken three major steps in these last three years-  demolish political icons of the past, erase history and diversity and build a personality cult, all in the name of Narendra Modi. Those who are critical of some of the Modi  policies are instantaneously relegated as anti national and if unfortunately they manage to come into limelight or have their voices heard, there will be CBI raid of their homes and  cases filed against them – cases which do not last for more than 24 hours .  However the intention is to damage  the reputation of these ideological opponents and the news about their  complicity in corruption is forgotten till they dare to raise their heads again to come into spotlight.

The question is does Modi need these million minions to prop him up as the ‘avatar purush’ with a mission to destroy evil?  This, inter alia, implicates all Indians except Modi and his minions as forces of evil who have to be exorcized by Modi’s band of fawners and flatterers. Modi is a good communicator- not asilver tongued orator like PT.Nehru or Atal Behari Vajpayee,  but more like a demagogue who can make impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of people and his oratory gets him votes especially when he  is seen as a contrast to the frail, weak and intellectual talk of the earlier Prime Minister. He is dynamic, unpredictable, risk taker, and impatient of  opposition- qualities that the world applauds in a leader. He may not be like Trump in a China shop, but like him rides roughshod over those that come in his way. He can charm his way to greet Nawaz Shariff on his birthday,h e can bear hug Obama and Trump in quick succession without blinking, he can be stiff and unbending before his opponents. He has assiduously followed the maxim  that  “in times of crisis, extremist forces and populist forces have a better ground to oversimplify things and to manipulate feelings- feelings of fear.” “(Jose Manuel Barroso)

Does Modi need to pull down all the greats of the Congress party( with the sole exception of a fellow Gujarati, Sardar Patel)to hoist himself up? Does he need to lambast all that had been achieved in the last seventy years as of no consequence and claim that his last three years are all that matter? Does he need the services of his loyalists to claim that all that is done is by Modi and Modi only and by no one else? Does he need to project his picture (he may say it is the work of his admirers who want to share their picture with him) in all newspapers, in almost all pages to be in the eyes of his people so that he is not a victim of the proverb “Out of sight, out of mind”.

It is sad that when a PM of his stature should let his guard down and project his deep seated prejudice  as seen in his Congress mukht Bharat and vipakshi mukht Bharat. Does not he realize that for a democracy to be alive, vipaksh leaders have to be there( even if Congress has become irrelevant, thanks to his constant caviling and carping  about the Congress).  The sad part is neither he nor his IT cell nor his millions of minions remember what George Santayana had said; “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past and we must respect the past remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.” The BJP will do well to reflect on these words of Santayana and welcome the future that is to be built on the past.

Conflict and Peace

                                                              Conflict and Peace

It was interesting to read a prediction by a mystic who claims to have accurately foretold Donald Trump's presidency that the exact date for the start of World War III will be any time between May 13 and October 13, 2017. Whether this prediction will come true is a million dollar question! The way Trump has been tweeting and tooting his own trumpet makes it a close possibility. North Korea is challenging the military might of US and US is retaliating with threat that says  “better get  your act together or you are going to be in trouble like few nations ever have been in … trouble”. Whether North Korea’s  announcement of a detailed plan to launch missiles aimed at the waters off the coast of US Pacific territory of Guam is bluster and bombast, the truth is,  it is trying to get Trumpet’s goat and has succeeded as Trump’s incendiary remarks of fire and fury testify. We have in our own backyard the Chinese with their atavistic nationalism currently engaged in psychological war with India with frequent threat of military conflict  issued through its media if India does not withdraw its troops from Doklam. It almost commands obedience from India saying “there cannot be two Suns in the sky” and “one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers”. We have on our Western border a perpetual threat from Pakistan with the possible danger of a maniac pressing the nuclear button any time.. The ISIS has been running amok seeking total surrender of the world to the rule of its Caliphate. The only silver lining amidst this war cry is everyone is afraid of the weapons of mass destruction and no one really wants a war except for those few hawks who live by the sword and do not expect to perish by it. The majority of population all over the world wish to live in peace, but powerless to stop the sabre- rattlers whose aggression and intimidation, complemented by jingoistic nationalistic  fervor and religious fanaticism  pose the biggest threat for the survival of humanity.

No one wants war, but ironically human beings are forever wired up for fight. What we see, what we hear and what we read testify to the fact that fight is in our DNA and without fight, life seems an empty drag. We are perpetually in a conflict zone with fellow beings as our fighting gene is buttressed by our personal ego and self importance. Everyone wants his/her word as the last word and brooks no opposition to it. In recent times we do not stop with verbal duel or with coming to blows, but we take the next step towards manslaughter or homicide. The first two pages of any newspaper that deals with city news is full of  murder most foul, revenge killing, road rage and  obnoxious sexual assault and ravishment of the opposite sex . Conflict has moved farther towards brutal violence and heinous crimes.

Conflict engagement is a genetic trait of the human race. No workplace is without a conflict. No home is without a conflict. No debate in Parliament or on television and watched by millions, is without a conflict. But all these conflicts stop with verbal duels rarely descending to physical skirmishes and murders. We see partisan news anchors jumping onto the debates,  shouting and screaming at the participants who are not on the side of the establishment. In India, barring a couple of knowledgeable and balanced interviewers like  Karan Thapar and  Ravish Kumar, a majority of the anchors are arrogant, uncivil, with bloated ego as though they are omniscient and omnipotent to heckle and dismiss views that are in opposition to what they assert (or told to assert by the  owners of the TV channels) . They will be on the channel enrollment as long as they echo their political master’s voice. One is astounded to see the participants belonging to the opposition camp subjected to the insults heaped on them by the anchors who are barely in their late thirties but holding forth on all issues in a hectoring voice.  If these anchors are so seemingly knowledgeable and wise, they should have been in the Indian Administrative or Indian Judicial Service.  I suspect they must be paid humungous salaries to sit in air conditioned comfort with the sole task of heaping quotidian dosage of insults on their guests who come from the opposition benches. I am also sure the victims- who are ready to stick out their neck to be guillotined, must be paid equally large fees to receive daily these insults from young anchors. The conflict often reaches verbal crescendo that ends with a cacophony of sounds that deafen our ears.

We have arrived at a stage when we yearn for peace and quietness in our homes wanting the TV channels to observe a modicum of propriety and  engage people in  intelligent and healthy debates.  I distinctly recall my professors five decades back, who taught us by their gentle and polite responses how to differ and accommodate divergent views. One of the memorable phrases used by them was “yes, maybe, you are right. But this is how I see….” and thereby give the students the probability of being right. I have never heard any professor assert:  “No, what you say is wrong”. I experienced the same broad mindedness in foreign universities, when senior professors were open to views of students coming from a different background and different culture. They were not tolerant which premises a certain degree of superiority, but they were willing to see some truth in the student’s perception. This is what Goethe wrote : “Tolerance should really be only a temporary attitude; it must lead to recognition"

I thought about the change in our behaviour and speech, turning us from being an argumentative Indian to becoming an assertive Indian. Accommodation, adjustment and adaption – the cardinal three ‘A’s have been replaced by intolerance, inflexibility and  inexorablity- the three  ‘I’s  which stem from the egotistic  fourth  ‘I’. This is why the number of divorces is on the increase today as the three’A’s have been overshadowed  by the three  ‘I’s which,  in turn, are subsumed by the  egoistic ‘I’ .  It is ironical that today sons and daughters celebrate the golden jubilee or silver jubilee of their parents’ wedding anniversary but stay single with failed marriage. The tragic news of a young IAS officer committing suicide due to constant feud between his wife and mother is a devastating example of maladjustment and inflexibility between two persons.  In fact marriage is the best institution to educate young men and women to cultivate the three ‘A’s and accept responsibility for the success of their marriage and family togetherness.  But unfortunately, marriage is now more of an experiment as young people ,forever  in search of personal independence, enter wedlock with the idea that if it does not work there is the option of walking out. The sanctity of marriage has been reduced to getting a license for sexual union and therefore does not go beyond it.  Similarly in the political arena in India in particular and in general, true of the entire world, the conflict is intense between the right and the left and both unyielding to accommodate the positives on either side. In India, the bitter conflict is seen in rewriting history and taking license with facts, just because the left historians all these years had failed to give any leeway to the rightist’s point of view. The insistence on unilateral view – right or left deprives the young minds of an objective and analytical understanding of history or for that matter of any theory or ideology.

Conflict, thy name is Man( used in the generic sense to include woman). But let that conflict remain true to our Indian trait of being an argumentative Indian, an apt phrase coined  by Nobel Laureate  Amartya Sen.  Central to his notion of India, as the title suggests, is the long tradition of argument and public debate, of intellectual pluralism and generosity that informs India's history. Professor Sen illustrates his concept of the argumentative Indian with  examples from the teachings and lives of Indian emperors like Akbar and Ashoka and from the epics, The Ramayana and the Mahabharata. He speaks of as an inclusive philosophy rather than an exclusionist, divisive religion. This is the correct view of Hinduism, mature and magnanimous to accommodate dissenting views and 'even profound scepticism'. This is a “capacious view of a broad and generous Hinduism, which contrasts sharply with the narrow and bellicose versions that are currently on offer, led particularly by parts of the Hindutva movement”.

 We may not be able to stop Trump’s bellicose cry nor China’s war hysteria. We cannot stop ISIS in its destructive killings. We cannot find a permanent solution to Pakistan’s vengeful attacks on India  nor to Afghanistan’s continuous misery in its fight against Taliban. It is a pity we have more hawks as leaders today and very few peaceniks among them who prefer negotiations to armed conflict with other nations.

If our principles and faith in democracy are genuine, then it is the duty of all Indians to explore the possibility of people to people relationship that can restore sanity from hysterical war mongering. One Trump cannot and does not destroy the world with war hysteria, one Osama or one Hafeez Saeed cannot win a proxy war. The world does not depend on Trumps and Hafees Saeeds to survive.  We were fortunate to be inspired by  Mahatma Gandhi to look at our neighbours with malice towards none and love towards all. Though Gandhiji is no longer there and no new Gandhi has emerged, we are privileged  to have Gandhi’s lineage that can inspire millions of us  to establish mutual and friendly relationship in terms of trade, exchange of cultural artists, litterateurs, cinema, sports and academic scholars with Pakistan on the Western border, with Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sikkim ,extending to China on the eastern border, with Srilanka and other southeast Asian nations on the southern side and Nepal and Afghanistan on the northern sphere. The spirit of SAARC and the Nehruvian principles of Panchsheel have to be revived to ensure peace at least in the subcontinent. It is time to say ‘No’ to hawks and say ‘Yes’ to doves.

But what is more important is to set our home in order.  The present divisiveness and political acrimony between the ruling party and the opposition, the bitter polarization between the Leftists and the Rightists, the no holds barred personal attacks  on those who profess and practice a different ideology, the conflicts arising out of different groups trying to ride herd on  each other, the deep schism  between the haves and the have-nots ,besides the carry -over from  the past of social and religious divide- have made deep inroads into our psyche making us forget  the concept of a pluralist India that had shaped the freedom movement. It is essential to restore harmony among the different sections of people and bring an Indian homogeneity through the heterogeneity that has always  been the strength of India and which was evidenced duringthe Independence struggle.

India can show the way. The sankalp or the oath that Prime Minister Modi has asked Indians to take on the 70^th anniversary of independence should be to restore the three  ‘A’s in our scheme of things and seek peace with neighbours through a recognition of the basic human instincts of empathy and love, friendship and compassion embedded in the genes of every man and woman who belong to the Homo Sapiens race. Can we take a pledge to say ‘No’ to conflict and  ‘Yes’ to peace ?

Good Research Promotes Good Teaching

                                           Good Research Promotes Good Teaching

The Hon’ble HRD minister’s statement making research optional for college teachers puts paid to any semblance of quality improvement in Higher Education. The only silver lining is that it is a Minister’s statement and not one of  the Ministry’s policy decisions. Maybe his statement is merely to provoke a debate on this subject.His statement addresses two issues- one dealing with academic research by teachers in colleges and the other with grade promotion using the API(academic performance indicator) score  that gives weightage to research. The Minister has retained the API score for promotion but given a huge leeway for teachers to dispense with research in their disciplines. It is debatable whether college teachers will rejoice in receiving this largesse from the Minister or feel a sense of humiliation, loss of esteem  and unworthiness that the universities have no value for research undertaken by them and that they are inferior to their counterparts at the university.

It is difficult to understand the rationale behind this announcement especially at a time when higher education is in deep crisis today. The quality and standard of higher education is far below the standard of world top universities and the number of top class research papers from our universities is pathetically negligible. There have been incessant discussions about the strategies needed to raise the bar to make our universities come closer to world class universities. But no visible improvement has taken place despite the innumerable recommendations given by committee after committee, set up by the HRD Ministry and UGC to improve the quality of input and output in our universities. It is ironical why now no committee has been formed to analyze why all these strategies have not yielded the desired result  and why all the ministry’s men and women and all the UGC’s men and women could not put universities back on its rail. But it is not a rocket science to know why our universities are on a steady and at times alarmingly steep decline.

1.      The strategies that are being mooted are not by college and university teachers. The university and the colleges get instructions from the UGC which functions as His Masters Voice of the HRD Ministry. It is only the wearer who knows where the shoe pinches. The teachers know what impedes institutional progress and what remedies are needed to overcome them. To set our house in order, we need the family members to deliberate the problems. How can members sitting in their air-conditioned rooms far removed from the University and college campuses, appreciate  the problems both of the teacher and the taught?  

2.      The political correctness has made our politicians and leaders promise to open the university portals to all who desire to enter these hallowed gates. But who has the daring to limit the university admissions to those who have displayed their potential for pursuing higher studies? Instead of setting up institutions to provide university recognized degrees in skill training, the present policy of reservations in colleges to all those who wish to enter, have neither equipped the students with job competencies nor made them acquire knowledge to pursue high-end research, catering to society and present times. Higher education is not a welfare measure to be distributed universally. The goal of higher education is to discover new ideas, thoughts, concepts and theories that have a far reaching impact for mankind. It was one researcher Martin Cooper who invented the mobile phone that serves millions of people. While Edison invented the motion picture camera, the Lumiere brothers invented the single device to combine film recording and projection that provides maximum  entertainment to maximum number of people. Three  inventors ,Philo Farnsworth, John Logie Baird and Charles Francis Jenkins  created the television that is enjoyed by  viewers in every part of the world. All inventions in medicine, astronomy, science, satellite communication etc are by university researchers for the benefit of the entire humanity.  Higher Education requires committed, inventive and gifted intellectuals who have the potential to make a quantum leap into darkness and bring forth light. “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought" [Albert von Szent-Györgyi).  It is no longer missing the wood for the tree, but missing the tree for the wood.

3.      This links the issue to the question of autonomy for institutes of higher education. Since one shoe does not fit all, universities should have the autonomy to decide courses, curricula, fee structure, examinations, admissions, rules and regulations governing the different stakeholders in higher education. The same autonomy has to be ensured for colleges, subject to the approval of the degree granting university.

4.       Any academic, worth being called an academic will not rest content with what s/he had learnt as graduate students. With the rapid advances in knowledge and still more rapid advances in the use of technology in learning and imparting that knowledge, the academic is under constant pressure  to keep abreast with the developments in theories, concepts, ideas and scientific experiments   in his/her discipline. It is no exaggeration to say that a good teacher is always a learner.

5.      It is here we see the value of research. What our universities and colleges lack today is quality research by its faculties where they co-opt their students in their work. Javedkar’s announcement that teachers in colleges need not do research but concentrate on teaching is like ladling soup from a pot that has either no soup or has just remnants of old soup in it.  An Indian Professor at Carnegie Mellon University has pointed out how our industry is unaware of the fourth industrial revolution that is happening all over the world and that is disrupting all old industries on a global scale. This is sadly true of our academic institutions where quite a few teachers are content to peddle with old antediluvian knowledge that is of no use to the modern generation. The hard reality is there is a wide range of technologies specially in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, computing,  genomics, cyber security, sensors etc,  that are changing the lives of people and unless the students learn these developments, they will find it difficult to be absorbed by industries.  In Humanities and Social Sciences, we have courses in International Relations, Development Studies, Peace Building, Anthropology, Archaeology, International Jurisprudence,  Public  Health Entomology, Disaster Management, Wildlife Conservation, Habitat Conservation and Policy Making, Eco system, Special Education etc, that   have an enduring bearing not only in terms of career opportunities, but also gto ive students a glimpse into understanding social responsibilities. For this the teachers should possess adequate knowledge through intensive study and research. If teachers stop doing research and turn out to be just good teachers carrying old hackneyed studies to the young students, the whole system will generate mediocre graduates with no knowledge, no skill and no competency  to cope with modern age demands and be job worthy.

6.       Colleges are the transmission lines to universities and employment. Raising the quality of education is raising the intellectual calibre of the teachers, both of colleges and universities.  The last few decades have seen an erosion of new ideas which are essential for the growth and development of society. It is said that the last quarter of the previous century was a post- idea period where our universities had abdicated their primary responsibility to generate new ideas to meet the demands of a technology driven society with its extended reach through mobile phones, television and new modes of transport. Old values have become suspect and new values have not emerged to replace them. The new generation, gadget- oriented without sufficient knowledge of its advantages and disadvantages has fallen between the two schools of thought- the old and the new. Research and guidance in research are essential at all stages of higher education.

7.      Making research optional for college teachers is cutting at the very foundation of higher education. Research helps not only in gaining fresh knowledge, it enables one to articulate this new knowledge with clarity and lucidity.  Javedkar’s statement closes all options for teachers and their students to leap into the future and build their competitive advantage with the rest of the world. It would have been a new and salutary proposition if  the API(Academic Performance Indicator) had been revoked. Teachers have tried to garner needed points at the API appraisal  through spurious papers presented and published for the sake of promotion to the next grade. Making research optional is not a solution to end the worthless plagiarised papers by teachers solely for the sake of API. It is like throwing the baby out while retaining the bath water.

8.       If quality improvement is the goal, it can be accomplished by making research mandatory for all faculty members, by improving the infrastructure necessary for research, by reducing teaching hours that are currently stipulated at 16-18 hours per week to half the number so that the teacher functions mainly as a catalyst and gives a capsule of what is to be taught. This alone can encourage self study by the students on the basis of those lectures. The teacher’s role is a three-in-one role, that of a researcher, a learner and a teacher. There can be no distinction between a college teacher and a university teacher. The bias against college teachers in the university academia has to be removed. This new announcement of research to be non mandatory for the college teacher is perpetuation of this bias that makes them second citizens in the world of academics. It is also the surest way of killing all incentives for self development besides lowering their self esteem and making teachers divert their time to activities that are far removed from academics.

9.      Lastly, let me point out I had the privilege to preside over a college(Gargi College) that had a host of brilliant researchers in physics and chemistry, humanities and social sciences that gave  it the distinction of a College with Potential for Excellence . UGC bestowed a special grant to the college faculty to undertake research and community service projects. The Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India  awarded STAR College Grant. The college serves as an illustrious example of how research nourishes both intellectual development and self development.

I make the plea not to baulk college teachers of their potential to pursue research as research alone can  enhance the quality and standard both of teaching and learning.