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Date:10-02-17

Chennai Humdinger

Tamil Nadu Governor should follow the Constitution and ensure a free and fair floor test

What was supposed to be one of the smoothest transitions of power in Indian politics has now culminated in a full-scale battle for the top job in Tamil Nadu. On Sunday, O Panneerselvam resigned his chief ministership citing personal reasons after Sasikala was chosen unopposed as the leader of the AIADMK legislature party. By Tuesday night, however, he did a remarkable volte-face when Sasikala looked set to replace him. With both sides claiming support of the majority of the 134 AIADMK MLAs in the 234-member assembly, the focus shifted to Governor Vidyasagar Rao to end the uncertainty.

For now at least Sasikala appears on a stronger wicket than Panneerselvam, as far as MLA numbers are concerned. She would need the support of 117 MLAs to prove her majority in a floor test. Conversely, the odds may appear stacked against Panneerselvam but he needs only 18 MLAs to break ranks and ruin Sasikala’s dreams.

The rift within AIADMK is widening by the hour. Sasikala has herded the majority of party MLAs to undisclosed locations in the city. In retaliation, Panneerselvam has announced a judicial probe into the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa. Though he has been removed as AIADMK treasurer by Sasikala, Panneerselvam asserted his authority asking two banks to freeze AIADMK accounts. As per party bye-laws, the treasurer continues to exercise authority till he is replaced. In this case, Sasikala is yet to appoint a new treasurer.

This is a full-scale constitutional crisis where Tamil Nadu’s governor needs to step in. It his duty to ensure that a constitutionally elected government is installed. While he has additional charge of Maharashtra and was away from Chennai for the last few days, surely the crisis merited that he stay in Chennai. Now that he is back in Chennai, and both Panneerselvam and Sasikala have met him with their respective claims, it is incumbent on him to play the role of a fair referee and ask for a majority to be proved on the floor of the House. It is true that the Supreme Court will be pronouncing its verdict on the Rs 66.5 crore disproportionate assets case against her next week, but that can move on its own track. It does not negate the duty of the governor to discharge his constitutional function.

Date:10-02-17

The ‘Strong Leader’ Disease

When India is federal, why are its political parties still run by high commands?

If BJP – which earlier seemed well ahead of the pack in UP – finally loses out to the SP-Congress alliance in the state, it will be one more pointer to the failure of our political leadership to grasp the reality of federal India. Our parties are organised in unitary structures, with power being centralised in “high commands”, when our polity is federated. This is true as much of the national parties (BJP, Congress, CPM, BSP, etc) as the regional parties, which too are one-leader or one-family run parties.

Over the long term national parties are bound to decline, never mind their periodic rise to glory, as happened with BJP in 2014. The simple reason for this is that in a federated polity, political parties must be equally federated to be regionally strong. Top-down parties, whether at the national or regional levels, will ultimately shrink, for India is too big to be driven from above, whether this centre happens to be in Delhi (for India as a whole), or in Mumbai (for Maharashtra) or Chennai (for Tamil Nadu).

The reason why national parties face their toughest opposition from regional parties is also this over-centralisation. But regional parties are also fraying at the edges for want of strong sub-regional leaders. Consider this reality: barring a handful, most states have seen, or are even now seeing, coalitions.The mere existence of a coalition in a state suggests that the voter is seeking more direct empowerment of local leaders. Regional parties in some of the larger states may thus need a federated leadership structure to succeed in all regions of the state. An occasional strong leader (a Modi at the Centre, a Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, or a Mamata Banerjee in Bengal), may buck the federal trend, but they are likely to be exceptions.

While one is not predicting that BJP will lose UP, the reason why it is huffing and puffing to win what seemed like a sure bet just two months ago is the party’s inability to create and project a local leadership in a large and diverse state. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi is no doubt an asset to the party, he is not going to be running UP even if the party wins.The easy gains in 2014 (Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and J&K) made the BJP leadership believe that Modi’s popularity was enough to win most states. In 2014, the Modi wave was still strong and the opposition in disarray. But post-2014, the party hasn’t won a single state without projecting a leader (it lost Delhi and Bihar badly, and won Assam handsomely only with a CM candidate).

If it loses UP, it will be this factor that killed its hopes. The electorate knows it will get Akhilesh Yadav as chief minister if the SP-Congress coalition wins, but it is not sure what will emerge from the black box if BJP wins.

BJP’s pre-2014 wins were all the result of strong local leadership – Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan, Shivraj Singh Chauhan in MP, Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh, and Manohar Parrikar in Goa apart from Modi himself in Gujarat. The party’s emergence as the single-largest group in Delhi’s 2013 elections was also due to local leadership, with Harsh Vardhan leading the pack. Despite lacking in charisma, Vardhan did well for the party.

Congress lost its premier status in Indian politics primarily because it wanted to decide state-level leadership from Delhi. BJP too will meet the same fate in many states if it believes that state leaders are created from above. Far from being the primary pole of national politics, BJP will reduce itself to a bunch of regional satrapies after the rise of aggressive challengers like AAP, which is expected to make a strong showing in Goa and Punjab, and possibly next in Gujarat itself towards the end of 2017.

But the disease isn’t restricted to Congress and BJP alone. Despite ruling only one state, AAP is becoming as centralised as BJP and Congress right now, with Arvind Kejriwal being its all-powerful boss. It is not a happy augury for its future, even if it wins a few more states.Our Constitution says India is a “Union of States” but our national and regional political parties do not seem to have read this, or grasped its import for how parties themselves should be organised. They have allowed the reality of the last 70 years – where one party ruled at the Centre most of the time, and the same reality was replicated in states – to cloud their visions.

The emergence of a strong BJP under Modi has furthered the same idea, that strong leaders make for strong national parties. The truth is different: parties need strong leaders in the states, and also at sub-state levels. In Maharashtra, for example, the national parties need strong leaders at the metro-level, as much as at sub-regional levels, in Vidarbha, Marathwada, etc.The only logical way to ensure this is by holding real internal elections for deciding leaders, but right now most regional leaders are anointed from the top. In Gujarat, for example, Vijay Rupani, the BJP chief minister, was decided by the party leadership and not elected through a real contest in the state legislature party. This automatically reduces his authority within the party, and militates against the emergence of a true local leadership in a federated party.

R. Jagannath

Date:10-02-17

आगे निकलने की होड़

पश्चिमी आधुनिकता के अंधानुकरण के साथ विकास का जो एक सपना पिछले एक-डेढ़ दशक से हमारे देश में जोरशोर से देखा जा रहा है,

वह यह है कि हम जल्द ही कुछ ऐसा करें कि न्यूयॉर्क, शंघाई और टोक्यो जैसे महानगरों को मात दे सकें और दुनिया को दिखाएं कि आधुनिकता में हमारा कोई सानी नहीं है. विकास की इस होड़ का नतीजा है शहरों का गर्मी के ऐसे द्वीपों में बदल जाना जहां मौसम के अतिरेक लोगों के रहन-सहन को प्रभावित करने की स्थिति में आ गए हैं. पुणो स्थित भारतीय मौसम विभाग की इकाई और इंडियन इंस्टीट्यूट ऑफ ट्रॉपिकल मेटरोलॉजी ने हीट इंडेस्क के रूप में एक आकलन किया है, जिसमें इंसानों पर तापमान में होने वाली घट-बढ़ के कारण पड़ने वाले असर दर्शाए गए हैं. आकलन कहता है कि देश के ज्यादातर शहरों में मॉनसूनी वष्रा से लेकर गर्मी और नमी की अतिरंजनाएं दिखने लगी हैं, जो पूरे पारिस्थितिकी तंत्र को प्रभावित कर रही हैं.

देश के 23 शहरों की करीब साढ़े 11 करोड़ आबादी की जरूरतों के मद्देनजर शहरीकरण और उसकी जरूरतों ने शहरों को हीट-ट्रैपिंग ग्रीनहाउस, आसान शब्दों में कहें तो ऐसे गैस चैंबरों में बदल डाला है जो मौसम की अतियों का कारण बन रहे हैं. ये शहर क्यों ऐसे बन गए हैं, इसकी कुछ स्पष्ट वजहें हैं. जैसे, कम जगह में ऊंची इमारतों का अधिक संख्या में बनना और उन्हें ठंडा, जगमगाता व साफ-सुथरा रखने के लिए बिजली का अंधाधुंध इस्तेमाल करना.

मौसमी बदलाव के कारण प्राकृतिक गर्मी से मुकाबले के लिए जो साधन और उपाय आजमाए जा रहे हैं, उनमें कोई कमी लाना कोई नीतिगत बदलाव लाए बगैर संभव नहीं हो सकता है. अभी हमारे योजनाकार देश की आबादी की बढ़ती जरूरतों और गांवों से पलायन कर शहरों की ओर आती आबादी के मद्देनजर आवास समस्या का ही जो उपाय सुझा रहे हैं, उनमें शहरों की आबोहवा को बिगाड़ने वाली नीति ही ज्यादा नजर आती है. जैसे, एक उपाय यह है कि अब शहरों में ऊंची इमारतों को बनाने को प्राथमिकता दी जानी चाहिए. पर क्या यह सही नजरिया है? कंक्रीट की ऊंची इमारतें सिर्फ  आबोहवा पर ही नहीं बल्कि  हमारी सामाजिक संरचना पर भी गहरा असर डालती है, और एक ऐसे समाज का निर्माण करती है, जो अपने आचार-व्यवहार में भी आक्रामक होता है.

वर्ष 2007 में, दिल्ली में इंटरनेशनल नेटवर्क फॉर ट्रेडिश्नल बिल्डिंग, आर्किटेक्ट एंड अर्बेनिज्म (आईएनटीबीएयू) ने एक कॉन्फ्रेंस का आयोजन किया था, जिसमें भाग लेने आए आर्किटेक्टों और योजनाकारों ने ऊंची इमारतों के रूप में ग्लास टॉवरों और स्काईस्क्रैपरों के विव्यापी चलन को ‘राक्षसी और अमानवीय’ तक कह डाला था. इन विशेषज्ञों ने कहा था कि अगर ख्वाहिश भविष्य के शहरों के निर्माण की है, तो हमें और पीछे जाना चाहिए, जब लोग जमीन पर बने एक ही तल वाले मकानों में रहते थे. मकानों की बनावट भी सादा होती थी.
शहरी-नियोजन से जुड़े मशहूर विचारक लियॉन क्रेअर ने कहा था कि एक दिन दुनिया में ऐसा आना है,

जब न तो बिजली पैदा करने के लिए हमारे पास यूरेनियम और कोयला होगा और न वाहनों के लिए तेल, तो ऐसे में ऊंची इमारतों की लिफ्टें बंद हो जाएंगी. इमारतों की ऊंचाई बढ़ने के साथ ही शहरों के सीवरेज सिस्टम, कचरा निष्पादन व्यवस्था, बिजली और पानी का इंतजाम-इन सब पर भी भारी दबाव पड़ने लगेगा. इमारतों की ऊंचाई बढ़ते ही कचरे की मात्रा भी बढ़ेगी. इन इमारतों में रहने वाले लोग जब अपनी कारों से और सार्वजनिक परिवहन के साधनों से सड़कों पर आएंगे तो ट्रैफिक जाम की समस्या के अलावा ईधन जलने और गैसें निकलने से वातावरण में गर्मी और प्रदूषण में और भी इजाफा होगा. सिर्फ  यही नहीं,

बहुमंजिली इमारतों में रहने के कारण सामाजिकता और सामुदायिकता की अवधारणा को गहरा आघात लगने की आशंका भी रहती है. लियॉन क्रेअर तो यहां तक कहते हैं कि तीन मंजिल से ज्यादा ऊंची इमारतें बनाना भावी यानी भविष्योन्मुखी सोच का परिचायक नहीं है. कुछ भारतीय योजनाकारों के मत में भी ऊंची इमारतें भारत के गांधीवादी नजरिये को भी आघात लगाती हैं. आर्किटेक्ट ए.जी.के. मेनन ने इस बारे में एक दफा कहा था कि अच्छा होगा यदि हम भावी शहरों के निर्माण के मामले में विकसित कहे जाने वाले पश्चिमी मुल्कों की नकल न करें. इस प्रवृत्ति से बचते हुए अपनी परंपराओं को ध्यान में रखते हुए योजनाएं बनाएं.

Date:10-02-17

हमारी विरासत ब्रिटिश राज या स्वतंत्रता संघर्ष?

कोलकाता स्थित मकराना मार्बल से 1906 और 1921 के बीच बने भव्य और सुंदर विक्टोरिया मेमोरियल के मैदान पर हाल ही में एक साहित्य उत्सव में बोलते हुए मुझे अचानक अपनी स्थिति के विरोधाभास का अहसास हुआ। मैं अपनी नई किताब ‘एन एरा ऑफ डार्कनेस : द ब्रिटिश अम्पायर इन इंडिया’ (अंधकार का युग : भारत में ब्रिटिश साम्राज्य) पर ऐसी भव्य इमारत के साये में बोल रहा था, जो उसी साम्राज्य की याद को समर्पित किया गया था, जिसकी मैं आलोचना कर रहा था। यह इमारत भारत की पहली ब्रिटिश महारानी (और बाद में साम्राज्ञी) विक्टोरिया (1819-1901) की याद में बनाई गई थी।

Date:09-02-17

Why We Fail Our Children

 In ‘And children pay the price’ (IE, February 6), Krishna Kumar rightly argues that making the class X exam compulsory will serve no useful purpose and will increase stress in children. He also points out the problems in reintroducing annual examinations in elementary classes and rescinding the RTE decision that introduces Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE). But the article’s analysis needs to be taken further.

Kumar rightly points out that examinations can never be an effective motivation for learning. But motivation through examinations is not the most important argument of those wanting to rescind CCE and reinstate a compulsory board. Their argument is that children will reach the next level of school grossly under-prepared, if one removes annual exams in the present Indian system. Annual examinations, according to them, make some dent in this unpreparedness, even if they cannot remedy the situation completely. This is an argument that cannot be dismissed summarily.

Kumar’s most forceful argument is that examinations cause stress in children. Education should be sensitive to the child and not cause strain. If proper teacher training could lead to the implementation of CCE, as Kumar argues, it could also make annual examinations stress-free. One could argue that the stress is caused by family pressure and competition in society, and not by examinations per se. Kumar argues that if examinations are reintroduced in elementary education, the path to child-centrism will be closed. But exactly what do we mean by child-centrism in India? Does it mean that children should decide the curriculum? Or children should be taught only the things that interest them? Or that they should be left free to discover knowledge? Or is this simply teaching through activities? All these positions have been taken up by different people at different times. Each position has serious problems.

One form of child-centrism is articulated by the American philosopher, John Dewey, who argued that the school curriculum has to be “psychologised”. One has to start from the child, her experiences and her understanding, but then, this has to constantly look at accepted human knowledge and understanding. One is the starting point, the other the end. Without the end in view, the starting point is of no value. In fact, there can be no justification for taking this or that starting point without reference to an end point.

We, in India, do not realise what it takes to “psychologise” the curriculum in Dewey’s sense. That would mean that the subject matter of what is today accepted as human knowledge becomes part of the child’s experience. It also relates to how the teacher’s knowledge of the subject assists in recognising what is valuable in the child’s experience, what the child’s needs of growth are and how her growth, in turn, can be directed towards acquiring knowledge. This demands freedom, flexibility and contextual decision-making by the teacher, keeping in mind every individual child.

Our school system does not give that space. We have a year-wise curriculum and a child’s progress is graded and monitored annually. This militates against using the child’s experience — one cannot time and plan sequences of learning that are applicable to all children. One can, of course, plan a rough overall time and sequence of knowledge acquisition but daily activities and their results have to be left to the teacher and child. The graded school and curriculum logically demand the pass-fail kind of examination. CCE and automatic promotion, then, are a logical anathema to the present schooling system.

No training can prepare teachers to implement CCE in the current rigid and authoritarian system. Teachers cannot be expected to solve this systemic problem through sensitivity, skill and understanding. It is matter of fitting the school structure and curriculum to the desired vision of education and CCE; not fitting a form of the so-called CCE to the existing structure. We are looking at the problem upside-down. If we are serious about doing away with stressful examinations, even at the class X level, we have to dismantle the rigid structure of school and curriculum.

Rohit Dhankar,The writer is director, School of Education and Academic Development, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru and academic advisor, Digantar, Jaipur

Date:09-02-17

Black money, red herring

 With demonetisation apparently the “new normal”, breaking the nexus between corruption, “black money” and political funding is said to be the next big challenge. It is argued that unless this nexus is broken, corruption will corrode our body politic, leaving our democracy hollow.Everyone seems to have a solution — from state funding of elections to making financial contributions to political parties transparent and their expenditures auditable. Typically, no one seems interested in subjecting one’s conclusions to critical questioning.

This “common sense” understanding of the problem, however, shows an astonishing degree of naivete. The logic runs thus — elections are an expensive affair, requiring huge financial investments; the honest are deterred from participating in electoral politics because of the costs involved; the huge investments made require to be recouped and that compels elected politicians to be corrupt, allowing the donor/investor to secure a handsome return on investments. Political parties serve the twin purposes of being generous receivers of black money and providing the donor legitimacy and exclusive access to influence for generating more black money. Thus, a vicious cycle gets established.

There are three fallacies here. The first is the notion that there exists a causal chain of linkages between political funding and corruption, as though corruption takes place because it is funded by unaccounted money — quite the reverse. Politics is funded because political power provides an abundance of opportunity for rapacious aggrandisement of wealth, in a way no regular business does. The cost for gaining this access is insignificant in relation to the potential spoils. As long as rent-seeking behaviour remains the dominant characteristic of the Indian state, the pursuit of political power will continue to attract large investments, dirty or clean.

The second fallacy is that the colour of the money determines the behaviour of those who come into power, those elected on black money being more likely to be corrupt than those who are not. The fact is, there is no guarantee that a person or party which comes into power on the strength of more transparent funding will not indulge in corruption. It is power that corrupts, not corruption that gives one power. Corruption is directly related to opportunity — and these are available to everyone who gets elected, using black money or white.

The third fallacy is to think of “honest” and “dishonest” as different breeds: Some people are more tolerant of corruption, but opportunity universalises corruption. If the gains are sufficiently high, even those initially disinclined can be susceptible.

 It is not one’s case that election funding makes no difference to cleaning up public life; it does, but it does not really attack the problem of black money generation through corruption. That has to be done where the problem is located: Within the state system in India. Opportunity breeds corruption. Opportunities arise because of the asymmetry of power between the state and its citizens. The bigger and more powerful the state, the larger the sphere of its activities, the greater the opportunities.

What makes the Indian state more corrupt than most others? This has to do with the state apparatus being “overdeveloped” in relation to the development of classes in society, making the state virtually a “class” by and for itself. When sociologist Hamza Alavi outlined his “overdevelopment” thesis, it was with reference to the state apparatus having developed in response to the needs of the imperial British state, rather than “classes” in Indian society which were underdeveloped at Independence. The state has since grown into a hormonally imbalanced Leviathan, which dominates almost every aspect of the social and economic life of its citizens, expanding corruption opportunities massively.

Which are the corruption opportunities within the state system that are the biggest draw for those pursuing political power? One, opportunities from monopoly of natural resources, (land, mines, forests, rivers, spectrum); two, from the use of the state’s coercive power (policing, taxation and anti-corruption); three, related to monopoly over energy sources, especially coal and hydrocarbons; four, related to infrastructure creation, railways, roads, ports, airports; five, the gigantic anti-poverty businesses — food procurement and distribution, employment guarantee schemes, rural development programmes, etc.

Each of these sectors offers limitless opportunities for rent-seeking by obtaining or granting discretionary allocations, concessions and contracts. These opportunities are embedded in the structure of the state: They have little to do with which regime is in power and how it came to be elected.

Much like demonetisation attacked the wrong end of the problem, trying to tackle election funding is similarly foolhardy. For black money generation to be checked, the big state has to retreat: We need to federalise and devolve more and more, sincerely and deeply. We need the distance between people and state power to reduce, so that democratic accountability operates at every level of decision-making. We need to make Parliament and parliamentary oversight of the executive stronger. We need communities to control the “commons” — and we need to rethink ways in which decisions are taken “by” us, not “for” us.

Yet, instead of rethinking governance, all we do is to mindlessly add more schemes, plans, programmes and subsidies in the name of security, poverty alleviation, job creation. Each poorly-designed intervention simply expands the opportunities for corruption. Election funding has nothing to do with this. If the problem of corruption is to be seriously addressed, the answer lies in the now-forgotten promise our prime minister once made: “Minimum government, maximum governance”.

Amitabha Pande  The writer is a retired IAS officer. Views are personal