Indian Politics - 'From Insurgency To Electoral Democracy'

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

EDITORIAL ANALYSIS  Accommodative politics, combined with political incentives, helped pave the way for the Mizo National Front to turn into a mainstream political party.

If grievance ever had legitimate reason to be translated into political rebellion, it was in Mizoram. The Mizo National Front (MNF) was an insurgent group that emerged from the Mizo National Famine Front in 1959 — a formation protesting the widespread famine caused by a regular failure of the bamboo crop due to mautam, and the failure of the Indian state to send adequate relief.

The Devil In The Backyard

By M H Ahssan

The Zardari Government is making peace with the Taliban which is hanging amputated bodies from electric poles. HNN analyses the dangers for Pakistan.

The one time tourist heaven of Swat looks like a ghost valley today. The people have still not recovered from the gory nightmare that was unleashed by the local Taliban. The last one-and-a-half year has seen a population of 1.5 million people being held hostage by a ragtag force of some 2,500 Taliban. They are under the leadership of Maulvi Fazalullah, popularly known as Mullah Radio for his jihad-inflected sermons, aired through his illegal FM radio. Fazalullah’s men have fought bloody battles with the army over the past two years. They virtually took control of most of Swat last year. Over 1,200 civilians have died so far and around 350,000 hapless locals forced to leave through rough mountain terrain.

The rich have left for Peshawar — 70 miles away, and the richer for more posh Islamabad — 100 miles in the south. The poor, with no place to go, suffered the trauma that makes Hollywood horrors look like a picnic. Intelligence sources dubbed as ‘spies’ and government officials — particularly from law-enforcing agencies — were specifically targeted by the Taliban. They were abducted and maimed and their killing turned into a gruesome spectacle in order to send a message to others.

The reign of terror is symbolised by what has come to be known as Khooni Chowk — the Crossing of Blood. A band of Taliban would, late at night, block the central crossing in the city centre of Mingora, the district headquarters the size of Srinagar and no less beautiful. They hung amputated bodies — some headless — on an electrical pole in the middle of the crossing, with notes giving their name and details of their ‘misdeeds’ against Islam. The bodies were not to be removed before a given date. Anybody violating this dictat could do so only at the risk of being himself put up headless.

THIS SCENE — perpetuated for days and weeks — is not from the Wild West of the cowboys. It happened in the Swat valley, which once took pride in having the most peaceful and bettereducated residents not just in the frontier province alone, but all over Pakistan. The princely state — annexed by Pakistan in 1969 — had better schools, hospitals and police stations than anybody else. It had an airport, and attractions like ski resorts and trout fishing on the meandering River Swat, which used to attract hordes of tourists every year. No more.

A majority of the police force has either run away, resigned or simply not turned up for work. Local newspapers are filled with advertisements from policemen declaring that they have left their jobs, and hence they be spared “in the name of their small children.” A new force of 600 locals was recruited for special commando training to combat what is actually an insurgency. The story goes that 450 of them disappeared during the training itself, and another 148 did not appear on the date of joining. The two men left in the force have not ventured outside their office in uniform since.

This left the entire populace at the mercy of the wolves that are masquerading as saviours of religion. People have seen throats being slit. Those who violate the Taliban code are either lashed or hanged in public jirgas (gatherings). Events where masked gunmen with the latest weaponry went on the rampage were skillfully orchestrated, and then their videos released in order to instill fear in the public. This took a severe toll on the psyche of the public, already hard pressed thanks to unemployment and hunger.

Life has come to a standstill for 80 percent of the people whose earnings came from tourism. Orchids have become rotten in the absence of labour and markets; and the fields lie barren. People go without fire, food, and electricity for days. The only cinema in Mingora was forced to down shutters, television and music has been banned, and CD shops have been closed. Even barbershops were shutdown as shaving, according to the interpretation of the Taliban, is un-Islamic.

It has been particularly hard for women, children and the handicapped because of the problems of age or sickness. Over 200 schools have been blown up as they were giving “western education.” Girls are barred from schooling. Over 100,000 Swati girls stand to lose their chance of education and, consequently, any career or professional life. This is happening in a place where the ratio of women in literacy and the job market was one of the highest in the province. The new edict may allow girls an education till the fourth grade, but with a revised curriculum. Also, they must always wear scarves on their heads. In any case, it will take awhile as most schools have been destroyed.

Women have been rendered prisoner in their own homes as they are now barred from going out in public, something that even Saudi Arabia has not tried. The central bazaar for women — with items like cosmetics and bangles, when partially open — today gives an image of a haunted place without shoppers. But then, cosmetics are a lesser priority when your children sleep hungry. Women are not allowed to work. Even women doctors are not permitted to carry on with their jobs. Stories abound where women lost babies because of the non-availability of doctors. Many others have died because of the lack of medicines and medical treatment.

The question is — how did over a million people accept the inhuman dictates of a bunch of jihadi thugs who do not fit into any Islamic school of thought? Well, they have not. They voted liberal parties to power in the last election. But these parties did not have either the political muscle, or the will, to protect them from the evil of the Taliban.

But how did the Taliban gain ascendancy? The system of justice under the princely state was more efficient than what followed. The people, therefore, wanted Sharia courts to be established as a way of achieving quick justice and dispensing with the long delays and corruption of the civil courts. But the Taliban, who had a different agenda, hijacked their demand. For ordinary people, in the absence of the writ of the state, it’s just a matter of choosing a lesser evil.

All hopes now hinge upon Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the father-in-law of Fazalullah. Sufi Mohammad is no angel himself. He is a radical cleric freed in 2008 after spending six years in jail for leading 10,000 Pashtun tribesmen to fight the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Nearly 7,000 died in the bombing and he ran back for his life. The people whose children he took with him after indoctrinating them, leading to their being killed, hate him. He has now been resurrected in order to persuade Fazalullah to accept the government’s offer of a ceasefire, which he has agreed to partially. How long this respite will last, only time will tell.

The ceasefire agreement with the Taliban has raised questions as to whether it is a victory for the Pakistan Government, capitulation before the Taliban who want to recreate a 1,500-year-old replica of Islamic rule, or a strategic retreat by the military.

IT IS ironic that Frontier Chief Minister Ameer Khan Hoti, the great grandson of the champion of nonviolence, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan — the Frontier Gandhi — has signed the agreement. He has justified it saying, “I have done this to stop violence and to fulfill my electoral promise of restoring peace.” His uncle and Awami National Party Chief Asfand Yar Wali — whose party runs the troubled province bordering Afghanistan — is under attack from the Taliban. He survived a suicide bomb attack three months ago while most of his party members are on the run because of constant threats to their life.

The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Government at the Centre is playing it safe. President Asif Zardari’s position is that he will decide when the agreement will come to him for his signature. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood has tried to pacify the Americans while on a tour of Washington, saying, “it’s a local remedy to a local problem.” The PPP has neither accepted the agreement nor rejected it. Obviously, the PPP Government would like to see what the outcome will be in a couple of months, if not earlier, before taking a stand. In the meantime, PPP spinmasters are arguing that the Sharia courts are not the same as strict Islamic law. The new laws, for instance, would not ban education of women or impose other strict tenets espoused by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

LIBERAL CIRCLES in Pakistan and abroad are fuming over what they call “the sellout.” Some, like human rights activist Iqbal Haider, have described it as a deal with the devil. “How can you sit with the very people who have maimed hundreds of people,” he protested. “It’s a matter of principle which should be supreme. These people should be tried for crimes against humanity.”

The liberals have a valid argument that the agreement will now be a model for the rest of the Taliban. They will demand similar Sharia in other parts of the province. “Now they know that militancy is the way to coerce the government into submission,” said senior analyst Saleem Khilji. They have a point, as the agreement extends the scope of their power. The government has conceded that the new Sharia will be extended beyond Swat to the other five districts of Malakand division also.

The Pakistan Army has taken refuge behind the government, saying that it is following orders to stay out till further notice. They should be the happiest lot if this agreement were to result in peace. They have taken the brunt of the fight. Media reports say army casualties number more than a hundred dead but the Taliban claims that it might be much higher.

The issue is that the Pakistan Army has been trained to fight with India, and it may not be comfortable with counterinsurgency operations. It does not have sufficient experience of that except for the Balochistan insurgency in the 1970s, unlike its Indian rival, which has consistently countered insurgencies in Kashmir, Nagaland and Mizoram.

The army will remain stationed in Swat to deal with the fallout. The underlying assumption is that either Sufi Mohammad will deliver peace or fight with his son-inlaw. This will be a tactical victory. Instead of the army fighting the Taliban, it would be the militants fighting each other.

But then there is a counter-theory — the two factions might use the time to regroup, consolidate their power and fight later with even more ferocity. There are already signs of this happening. An indicator is that the price of arms in the tribal belt has almost doubled because of the massive demand.

In any case, the agreement is simply not implementable. Each party has a different interpretation of it. The governments in the Frontier and Islamabad think that the Sharia court is old wine in a new bottle. Sufi Mohammad believes that his mandate is to provide Sharia courts where religious scholars will be independent judges and not advisers to the regular civil judges like in the earlier agreement of six years ago. “The choice of judges will be ours and they will be all-powerful,” said Maulana Izzat, spokes man of Sufi Mohammad, in a telephonic interview.

Fazalullah wants the complete domination of the Sharia, encompassing all sectors beyond the judiciary. “We shall run the entire area in accordance with the holy book, “countered Muslim Khan, another spokesman for Fazalullah. “We don’t accept any system but our own and will inshallah spread it to other parts of Pakistan very soon.”

The legal and administrative intricacies involved in merging the old system with the new are something beyond these clerics. The Taliban have simply ceased fire but not surrendered. Both sides are waiting for the next round to start with bated breath. It almost came to that when a newly-appointed senior district official was kidnapped by militants two days after the ceasefire. After a tense standoff lasting hours, the official, Kushal Khan, was freed.

Later, it was disclosed that his release had been the result of a swap: Pakistani authorities released two militants who had been picked up a day earlier in Peshawar. Next time around, it is possible that some freed militants like this might renew the fighting while both sides continue to sit in the trenches.

Swat is different from other trouble spots like Bahaur, Waziristan and Khyber. It is the only trouble spot that is not a federal (FATA) but a provincial tribal area (PATA). It is wrong to generalise about the Taliban and the Swat situation in particular.

FAZALULLAH, A barely-literate former lift operator, was an indigenous product. He does not come from the ranks of Taliban or Al-Qaeda, but was later accepted by them and adopted as the commander of the area looking after his hold in the area. It is only in Swat that schools have been closed in an organised manner, otherwise the Taliban have not done so in FATA, except for occasional episodes. The Taliban have generally refrained from killing hostages, except for spies or the recent Polish engineer in Waziristan. The Swat Talibans have slit throats of hostages and security forces with ruthless abandon.

Swat is the only place which has been completely taken over by the Taliban. This may be because of its geography — it is a bowl-shaped valley. The Swat terrain makes it strategically easier for Taliban to hold power against numerical odds. There is one major communication artery along the Swat River that could easily be blocked from anywhere. In Bajaur, Khyber and Waziristan, the Taliban are dominant, but they do not run those agencies. Swat is also the only hotspot that does not border Afghanistan. In fact, it remained aloof and generally peaceful during the war with Afghanistan.

Swat has a past of peace and culture where thousands thronged from all over Pakistan and abroad every summer. Its capital, Mingora, happens to be much bigger than any other town in any of the troubled agencies.

Also, it houses the elite of Pashtun tribes, and is the abode of the royal, sophisticated Yousafzais of Tana, whereas the other agencies have a history of warring tribes. The impact of Swat’s takeover, like in the classical Clausewitzian centre of gravity, has been immense on the psyche of Pashtuns.

If the impression goes out that it’s a victory for the Taliban, it will encourage militancy elsewhere, in the rest of Pakistan. It becomes more alarming when seen in the larger context where the Waziristan commanders, pro-Pakistan Mullah Nazir and anti-state Baitullah Mehsud, along with Haji Gul Bahadur, have patched up differences in Waziristan to become a formidable force; Bajaur Taliban now expect similar Sharia in their area, and Hamimullah is blocking NATO supplies in Khyber. The Taliban seem to be on the ascendant, which should be a source of worry for not just Pakistan, but also the entire region and the world.

If the social fabric continues to be torn apart as it has in Swat, this will lead to the rise of more non-state actors who are not under the control of anyone. Since all of these commanders are connected to each other, including the militants in Kashmir, the genie is threatening to become ever more dangerous. The question is not just about the outcome of the investigation into the Mumbai attack. A more serious question is: what will happen if there is another attack of a similar nature?

(With inputs from Syed Saleem Shehzad & Maria Zuber Khan in Pakistan)

STUDENT SUICIDES - Pushed over the edge

By M H Ahssan

A spate of suicides by students in Lucknow has parents and school administrators equally worried. HNN reports on the reasons behind this alarming trend.
Priya Bose (14), Pinki Lal (17), Abhishek Tiwari (18) and Karvesh Choudhary (19) today exist only as impersonal case numbers in police diaries. Not too long ago, all four were teenagers with dreams and hopes. But varying degrees of stress pushed them over the edge last month, adding to the alarming numbers of young Indians who are killing themselves.

Bose was the first to go. A student of Lucknow's City Montessori School (CMS), she was driven to anxiety over her performance in the class eight final examination. Three months earlier, she had performed poorly in the half-yearly exams. Though she had been absent from school when the final exam answer sheets were shown to students (the school has a policy of showing these to the students before report cards are made, so that any discrepancies can be pointed out), she must have guessed that she wouldn't make it. So on March 30th this year, after having a cup of tea with her mother, she went up to her room, bolted herself in and used a bed sheet to hang herself by the ceiling fan. The stunned mother, who discovered the body, found a suicide note that read: "I am doing this because I am fed up and irritated with my life. Nobody but I am to be held responsible. Sorry Ma."

A day later, Lal, who had just finished giving her board examinations at New Public School, was found hanging from a fan in her room. Her parents told the police that she feared the ridicule that would follow in case her board results were poor. Two days after that, Tiwari, a class 11 student of a different branch of CMS, killed himself because he had successively failed in his science practical exams. Choudhary, a first year BTech student of the Saroj Institute of Management and Technology, hanged himself on the eve of his second semester engineering exams on April 8. He had failed in four papers in the first semester and had been denied re-examination. Lonely and away from his family, he made one final phone call to his father in Faizabad before hanging himself from the fan of his rented one-room accommodation.

Since then, 18 other young adults have taken their lives in Lucknow, throwing into disquiet school administrators, teachers, parents, counsellors and the government. According to the city's police, only five of these are clearly attributable to academic stress, a neat categorisation that falters when considering a case such as that of Pushpendra Kumar.

A class 11 student of Dayanand Inter College, Kumar hanged himself over his parents' refusal to allow him to attend his elder sister's pre-wedding ceremony. By his parents' own admission, Kumar was an outstanding student who had topped his class in the last exams. On April 16, he had a science practical exam but tried to convince his parents that he was well-prepared and hence should be allowed to be part of the ceremonies. When they refused, he hanged himself from an iron railing around the stairs in his double-storeyed home. Was Kumar then a victim of a family argument or academic stress? According to RC Jiloha, professor and head of the psychiatry department at Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital, New Delhi, "While the main cause for suicide is frustration, a belief that this life is not worth living, there may be a number of reasons that contribute to that feeling. Any one incident can act as a trigger."

SUICIDE WARNING SIGNS

- Radical change in daily routine
- Withdrawal from family and friends
- Sleeping too much or too little
- Any mention of suicide
- Loss of interest in everyday activities
- No sense of humour
- Feelings of excessive guilt or fault finding
- Being preoccupied with death or dying
- Neglecting personal appearance
- Performing poorly at work or in school
- Becoming too philosophical
- Making statements such as these:

'I cannot go on any longer'
'I hate this life'
There is no point in living anymore'
'Everyone would be better off without me'
'Nothing matters anymore' and
'I do not care about anything'

The Lucknow cases are worrying for two reasons. One, because overall, the incidence of suicides in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is low compared to most other states. According to data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) (http://ncrb.nic.in/ADSI2006/home.htm), of the 1,18,112 people who committed suicide in 2006, only 3,070 came from the country's most populated state, making it 20th in the aforementioned list. Two, while the national average is 10.5 suicides per lakh of population, the state's average is still less, standing at just 1.7. Only Manipur, Nagaland and Bihar report lower suicide rates than UP.

Yet, between 2002 and 2007, the state saw high numbers of suicides due to academic stress. In this period, the figures were 91, 105, 143, 93, 121 and 95 for each year respectively, making "failure in exams" the sixth most common reason for suicides in a list of 22 offered by the state's police department, alongside other grounds such as illness and family problems. While only two percent of suicides all over India are because of poor performance in exams, in UP this figure is almost double (lower only than West Bengal, where the rate is 4.4 percent). This could stem from the fact that in this Hindi heartland state, low on industrialisation, success lies only with those who become doctors, engineers or bureaucrats.

Perhaps the starkest note on the fragile mental health of the country's young is made by the NCRB. Till 1998, the bureau did not have a separate category of "persons under the age of 14" committing suicide, owing to the negligible numbers. But the numbers in this new category have steadily grown as have entries under the "failure in exams" head. In 2006-07, the number of deaths attributable to failure in exams across all age groups stood at 2,378. Of the 2,464 youngsters under the age of 14 who gave up on life, 512 were driven by failure in exams.

Worrying as these figures are, they might just be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Suicide identification is a problem due to non-reporting, which in turn exists because of the social and legal consequences of such deaths, and is compounded by inefficient municipal registration systems. Conversely, suicides due to other reasons might also be tagged in the "failure in exam" category due to its comparative social acceptance over reasons such as failed loved affairs or teen pregnancies.

Understanding suicides is difficult as studies are based on assessments of survivors, not victims. While most teen suicides are impulsive acts, spurred on by feelings of absolute helplessness in the here and now, the reasons themselves could be deep standing. Thus the teen who kills himself or herself over a bad examination result will probably have a history of low self-worth, marginalisation by the peer group, lack of communication with parents and the like, all of which will be magnified by an upsetting event.

While growing up was always serious business, in today's India, an erosion of buffers and growing levels of competition have made it an even more complicated issue. The emphasis on success at all costs means that even five-year olds are being coached to clear entrance exams to prestigious schools. Parents who cough up the high fees for these schools in turn pressurise children to do well and get into colleges or professional courses of repute. Add to that the demise of the joint family, a lack of interest in sports and co-curricular activities, and the increasing isolation of the nuclear family, and what remains is a situation fraught with the possibility of mental and emotional breakdown. Moreover, while a galloping economy means a proliferation of opportunities, it also translates into a growing disconnect between abilities and aspirations. Being second best is no longer an option.

Instant gratification is another reason why children find it difficult to cope with life's disappointments. Pressed for time, parents try to compensate with pocket money and immediate fulfillment of children's demands, some of which are often unreasonable. A study conducted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India's (Assocham) Social Development Foundation, titled 'Plight of Working Parents Towards their Children' and released earlier this year, concluded from a sample of 3,000 working couples that parents who work full time spend only 30 minutes with their children.

Another Assocham study of 2,500 children between the ages of 10-17, titled 'Trends of Pocket Money in Urban India', also released earlier this year, fills in the other dots. According to it, with the rise in income levels of parents, pocket money has risen by about six times to Rs 1,800 per month from Rs 300 per month over the past 10 years. The majority of this money goes towards fast food, soft drinks, clothing, gift articles, mobile recharge coupons, chocolates, cosmetics, magazines, computer games and movies. A related statistic is provided by a June 2006 study of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), according to which 58 percent of the teenagers who own mobiles spent between Rs 3,000 to Rs 7,500 on a handset, putting them only behind the 35-49 year age group.

Reena Tiwari, a resident of Lucknow and the mother of a bright 18-year-old who has recently given his class 12 exams from St Paul's School, provides the illustration to this statistic. "My son, otherwise a good student, would spend hours on the Internet looking up high-end mobile handsets. He never said he wanted one, but often spoke of peers who had brought the latest models. For all our belief in the virtues of waiting, we finally got him a handset worth Rs 15,000 to steer him back to his books," she says. It is reasonable to conclude that when such children, used to having their way within the cocoon of the family, face life's hard knocks, they find it difficult to handle the situation. Overall, this suggests a systematic failure of the family, the education system and the society at large.

On April 16, JS Rajput, former director of National Council of Educational Research and Training, tried to explain the problems in an article in the widely circulated Hindi daily Dainik Jagran: "A failure in examination is not a failure of the child, it is a failure of the whole system," he wrote.

Prabhat Sitholey, professor and head, department of psychiatry, Chattrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University (CSMMU), Lucknow, avers that the black hole in parental pressure is the belief that education is a one size fit all. "Just like genes for height and complexion are distributed normally within a given population, so is intelligence. We are wrong in believing that each child must at least pass class 10. Even within this framework, we are promoting an education that does not encourage the asking of questions or creativity. It is sheer drudgery. Each child is gifted separately and the educational system must define capabilities and strengths. Parental love should not depend on examination marks," he says. He also blames the media for sensationalising suicides. However, Jiloha from Delhi's Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital cautions against whipping the media. "Media reports will adversely affect only those who are gullible, they will appear suggestive only to those in a particular frame of mind," he says.

Krishna Dutt, clinical psychologist at CSMMU, whittles down the reasons behind teen suicides to the I's of impatience and individualism. "There is no time to wait and watch as patience levels are falling across generations. While individualism leads to growth and development, it also causes us not to learn from the experiences of others," he says. On the day Dutt speaks to us, he is counselling a 19-year-old, who is so unnerved about her engineering exams that she cries when asked to speak.

Tears are just one sign that something is drastically wrong. Most cues tend to be more muted and easy to miss (also see box alongside). So easily missed in fact that even traditional psychology held that a child was essentially incapable of depression. Modern psychology, however, holds that signs of depression in a child are merely different from those in adults. Thus a child who is consistently irritable or aggressive, prone to behavioural problems such as constantly seeking attention, or addiction to something, is crying for help and is not simply a 'problem' child.

"Parents are too wrapped in their expectations to notice what a child really needs and often the child blurs the distinction between himself and the parents thinking of himself as merely an extension of his parents and a tool to further their ambitions," says Nalini Sharad, principal of CMS. She illustrates her contention with the example of a class 10 student who despite being severely sick ignored the advice of doctors and came to write her board exams with a drip attached to her. "She threatened to commit suicide if not allowed to write the exams and the parents did not try to reason with her even once. In such a situation, what does the school do?" wonders Sharad.

Schools are also handicapped by the lack of access to child and educational psychologists, an issue that has to be looked at in conjunction with the low numbers of trained psychologists available in the country as a whole. According to the World Health Organization (Atlas: Country Profiles on Mental Health Resources 2001), India, which lacks a national policy on mental health, has just 0.4 psychiatrists, 0.04 psychiatric nurses, 0.02 psychologists and 0.02 social workers per 100,000 population. Moreover, the availability of mental health professionals is restricted to mostly the larger urban centres. Given this situation, it's not surprising schools do not have access to mental health services. The few schools that offer the services of counsellors do so only for career guidance.

Alok Sinha, psychologist and motivational trainer, points to a lack of understanding on the nature of counselling. "Receptionists at computer training institutes who provide information on courses are termed counsellors as are clerks who allot colleges on the basis of marks. A counsellor is a listener, not a provider of information. But even highly educated parents who approach us for counselling their children merely want us to make the children comply with the parents' wishes. Even when it comes to extra-curricular activities, all they want is for the child to be the best, and say, win a reality contest," he says.

Within the state's secondary education department, there is little acknowledgement of the department's own role and failings in making education the nightmarish experience that it is today. Stock replies about lack of staff and resources are given to explain why the department has not overhauled the board examination system that catered to 40 lakh students this year.

SUICIDE PREVENTION

- Remain calm
- Ask the child directly if s/he is thinking of committing suicide
- Focus your concern on their well-being and avoid being accusatory
- Listen
- Reassure them that there is help and they will not feel like this forever
- Do not judge
- Provide constant supervision. Do not leave the youth alone.
- Remove means for self-harm.
- Peers should not agree to keep the suicidal thoughts a secret and instead should tell an adult. Parents/school staff should seek help as soon as possible.

Sarvesh Kumar, an additional director at the department, is a rare voice of despair. "The government spends Rs 2,700 crores as salary for the staff of this department. Yet there are no measures of performance. The lone figure of students appearing for the board examination cannot be a criterion to judge our performance. We are least bothered about the quality of education being imparted and will resort to strikes at the least provocation. We are not expected to deliver, merely to keep the machinery functioning in its present state," he says.

Kumar's contention is borne out by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), brought out by the non-government organisation Pratham. According to the 2007 ASER (Rural) report (http://www.pratham.org/aser07/aser2007.php), in UP, 3 out of 10 children in class 1 to 8 cannot read capital letters, while 7 of 10 cannot recognise numbers between 1 and 99.

At a seminar on the causes of suicide, organised in the second week of April, principal secretary of secondary education, AK Misra, elaborated on the educational system's failure. "Of the 16,000 inter-colleges in UP, only 160 can lay claim to offering quality education. Thus only five percent of those with aspirations have access to quality resources. Private schooling has become completely profit- and result-oriented. The child is filled with worry about whether he will be allowed to write the board exam or will be held back so that the school's results are not affected negatively. By raising fees, the stakes have been artificially upped, as parents who are called upon to pay exorbitant amounts will expect their children to do well at any cost. There is no getting away from the fact that we need swift policy changes or our children will be driven to meltdown," he warned.

There are no easy answers on what these changes should be. As a first step, we need to talk about the issue and improve the systems of reporting and recording suicides. As part of its Suicide Prevention Programme, the World Health Organization suggests a comprehensive approach that involves the departments of health, police and education besides religious leaders, families and the media. This would be in addition to school-based interventions involving crisis management, self-esteem enhancement and the development of coping skills and healthy decision-making. Better communication within the family, greater acceptance of a child's abilities and a more flexible examination system would also help. Ultimately each one of us shares the responsibility to help the young around us cope with the turbulence of coming of age.

The Telangana Prophecy: Will More States Mean Conflict?

With the government clearing Telangana as India's 29th state, long-standing demands for separate states in other parts of the country have gained fresh momentum. This could be a foretelling of many more states to come, but would that necessarily augur ill for the unity of India? Noted historian Ramachandra Guha shares his thoughts.

Earlier in August, the UPA government decided to give the nod to India's 29th state Telangana, predictably setting in motion a spate of debates across the country.

India Is Asia’s Dharamshala – Why Not Learn To Love It?

The benevolence of politicians and bureaucrats is sometimes no benevolence at all. For some time now, there has been a trickle of Hindus from Pakistan coming to India on short-term visas, but their real purpose has never been in doubt: to flee discrimination and violence against Hindus in Pakistan.

Earlier this week, the home ministry granted a one-month visa extension to 480 Pakistani Hindus who have been seeking permanent resident status here.  An Indian Express report quoted a ministry official thus: “They will not be deported. Since it takes time to take any decision on their appeals, we have extended their visas for a month.”

Sorry, sir, this is no longer about 480 people. For the last 65 years, India has been facing an influx of people fleeing either religious persecution or ethnic strife or economic conditions in all our neighbouring countries. But we have simply refused to evolve a policy to address all these issues. We want to do everything on a case-by-case basis, or, better still, ignore the problem till it gets resolved illegally: by people acquiring Indian residency by stealth.

Given the numbers of illegal migrants – perhaps running into millions now – we have probably become the world’s biggest dharamshala, but that is something to be proud of. It validates the idea of inclusive India. What we cannot be proud of is that we have allowed this to happen by accident and exception, rather than by a clear-sighted policy.

Our inward immigration policy is a mess. We have separate policies (or default approaches) for Tibetans, for Nepalese, for Sri Lankan Tamils, for Bangladeshis, for Pakistani Hindus and for the rest. Then there are Muslim Rohingyas from Myanmar and Afghans (a motley group comprising Sikhs, Hindus and even Muslims) and what not – and we don’t have a clue what to do with them.

For a country that was artificially partitioned in 1947, it should have been obvious that people will migrate here and there. As a secular alternative to all our less-than-secular neighbours, we have always known that immigration will be more inward and less outward. As a democratic oasis in a largely undemocratic or autocratic south Asian region, we should have had policies to accept refugees fleeing persecution.

As a rapidly globalising country, we have known since 1991 that Indian companies need to recruit foreign professionals to work here just as we expect foreign governments to allow Indians to work in their countries.

But what we have now is a patchwork and illogical system that has been adapted to exigencies of specific situations at specific times.

The Tibetans were allowed in in Nehru’s time. But do we have a policy in case it finally becomes clear that they will never get an autonomous state inside China and can’t return? What if they have to stay here permanently? Will they be given full Indian citizenship?

The Nepalese, under the 1950 India-Nepal Friendship Treaty, are allowed almost free access inside India – almost like Indian citizens. This is the most liberal policy we have with our neighbours, and has remained on the statute book even though our political relationship with Nepal has gone from good to uncertain after the Communists entered government and ended the Hindu monarchy.

When it comes to Bangladesh, we have three policies – or non-policies: one for Assam, another for some north-eastern states, and yet another for the rest.

Under the Assam Accord of 1985, anyone who came to Assam before 1 January 1966 will be allowed to stay and become Indian citizens. Those who came between this date and 24 March 1971 were to be detected but not deported. They would be deleted from electoral rolls, but could get back after 10 years. The rest were to be detected and deported.

The accord has more or less been a dead letter, since politicians in need of immigrant votes refused to implement it. As for the remaining north-eastern states, migration is either fully illegal and politically accepted, or we have restrictions that apply even to Indian citizens.

In Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, Indians need inner line permits to visit those states even as tourists. The Bangladeshis who enter India traipse around tribal Meghalaya, but have found an easy perch in Tripura. Together with pre-1947 migration, they have relegated the locals to minority status. As for Kashmir, Indians can tour the state but can’t buy property or settle there. Even if they marry Kashmiris, they can’t acquire property there.

As for potential workers and immigrants from the rest of the world, we have the most restrictive policy on board, where the intention is to debar foreigners from working here – unless they earn more than $25,000 per annum. This rules out any kind of work visa for foreigners in India beyond highly qualified technical personnel or short-term consultants – so forget about allowing for easy migration.

As a liberal, democratic country, India has an obligation to run a truly liberal and open immigration policy that does not discriminate. This is a country that took in persecuted people from ancient times to the modern era (Zoroastrians, Jews, Tibetans). We have even accepted invaders as our own.

This should be the broad backdrop against which we should frame a unified immigration and work permit policy. The policy should include the following:

First, we must have a clear policy for taking in refugees from persecution. It does not matter which religion or ethnic group the person belongs to. It is ironic that political parties are willing to plead the case of Bangladeshi Muslims, who can only be chasing economic opportunities here, but not Hindu refugees from Pakistan. At a later stage, we should be willing to take in even Muslim refugees from Pakistan – for who knows what will happen if the Taliban takes over Pakistan? Obviously, this policy needs safeguards, but if there is a will, we can put one in place.

Second, we must have a system of regularising long-term migrants who are settled here. The Assam accord specifically provided for that, but we didn’t implement it. We neither put in place an impenetrable fence to keep future immigrants out nor a system of formally recognising the Bangladeshis’ need to find work here – through a system of work permits or guest workers with no citizenship rights.

Third, India needs to work out a free-movement agreement (especially for tourism and work) with all its neighbours barring Pakistan. Setting a high salary limit of $25,000 for work permits may be all right for westerners, but not for our neighbours in South Asia. The threshold needs to be much lower.

Fourth, residency permits and citizenship norms need to be easier. Currently, it takes 12 years for a foreigner to get citizenship by naturalisation, and seven years if they are married to an Indian citizen. One wonders why this waiting period needs to be so long. Seven years is too long a wait for a marriage to be seen as legitimate enough to warrant grant of citizenship to the foreign spouse.

Isn’t it high time we opened our front doors to the world instead of winking at their entry through the back door?

In Manipur 'Migrants' Are Soft Targets Of Terror Groups

Manipur has been a state plagued by insurgency for decades. People here still live on razor's edge, sandwiched between the insurgent and the security forces and often become prey of violence and get hit in cross fire in counter insurgency operation.

Manipur’s capital Imphal is once again in news for violence. In the latest violence, three daily-wage labourers were killed, while four others were injured seriously when a very powerful Improvised Explosive Device (IED) went off in  a bus stand in the heart of Imphal city.

'Of the Voter, By the Voter, For the Voter': Indian Elections

By Aalia Nazneen | INNLIVE

SPECIAL REPORT After the date 16th May 2014 is arbitrated as the judgment day, the ballots from Five Hundred Forty Three (543) parliamentary constituencies will come together to decide the contender for the Prime Ministerial seat in Lok Sabha parliament.

To clamp down on illegal or wayward action, Election Council of India has ensured that the voting is carried out in nine long phases starting from 7th April 2014 to 12th May 2014. With such a schedule, this proves to be the longest election in Indian history till date.

This year Election Commission of India (ECI) has launched a few IT centered initiatives to appeal to voters of all groups alike to cast their ballot and exercise their franchise. Last year’s Ananda Babu has been altered to Ananya this year, which is an audio-visual campaign run by the Election Commission of India.

India 2009 Elections - Information

The 15th Lok Sabha Election of India is scheduled to be held by the month of May 2009. The maximum strength of Lok Sabha or the lower house of the Indian Parliament is 552, comprising 530 members who represent the States, up to 20 members who stand for the Union Territories and not more than 2 members from the Anglo-Indian Community who are nominated by the President.

The India Election 2009 will be contested on new constituency boundaries for the first time in over 30 years and the change was implemented on the findings of the Delimitation Commission.

Some of the major changes include merging of areas of various constituencies to eradicate population inconsistencies between different seats and reservation and de-reservation of seats. But, for the time being, the Government of India has postponed delimitation in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Manipur and Nagaland.

The National Democratic Alliance comprising the BJP and its allies officially elected L. K. Advani as their candidate for Prime Ministership for general election 2009 on January 23rd, 2008.

The Indian National Congress (INC) and its allies though haven�t officially announced their candidate for Prime Ministership for India Election 2009; one speculation is Rahul Gandhi, the son of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Apart from them, the other political parties haven't yet officially announced their Prime Ministerial candidates for the 2009 India election.

Genetic Isolation in Casteist India Could Could Render Some People More Vulnerable to Disease

There is reduced genetic variation among the people of some subpopulations because they have been genetically isolated due to various factors – such as caste.

The occurrence of genetic diseases in certain subpopulations in India and other countries in South Asia is well known. Indian scientists now suspect that this could be due to genetic isolation caused by endogamous marriages over generations.

Security Personnel: The Planning For A 'Safe' Elections

By Likha Veer | INNLIVE Bureau

Politicians are busy either lauding or criticising Mr. Narendra Modi. We, the junta, are busy clicking selfies at poll booths. And the media is busy deciding if NDA will win over 300 seats or will AAP spoil everyone’s party. Amidst the entire hullabaloo what all of us have overlooked is the contribution of the security personnel deployed across the country.

The voting for 16th Lok Sabha elections has been split into 9 phases for a reason. This is arguably the largest democratic exercise in the entire planet, and ensuring it is safe and secure is a gargantuan challenge.

Frank Opinion: When Did Civil Service Become Synonymous With Self-Service?

By NAMRATA GOSWAMI | INNLIVE

In 2008, I was in Chandel district of Manipur on field work. As I went about listening to local people's stories about their lives and aspirations, most of them kept praising this particular woman administrator, an IAS officer. She was from South India, they said, and yet she was able to blend in with local people and was very responsive to their needs. As I walked towards the office of the Block Development Officer (BDO), 

I understood what they meant. It was an office with an open door, and there were no "middle men" to stop people from meeting the officer. The people waiting outside did not have the look of being intimidated by power.

For A Post-Colonial Congress

Can the century-old party reinvent itself at Jaipur and meet the challenges at its door?

The Congress’s three-day brainstorming conclave – chintan shivir – in Jaipur from today couldn’t have been better timed. The political crisis in Jharkhand presents new possibilities. Meanwhile, nine other states go to the polls in 2013: Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland and Mizoram. The outcome in Congress-ruled Rajasthan and Delhi and BJP-governed Karnataka could provide early clues to the 2014 general elections. 
    
A bruising budget session meanwhile looms. Finance minister P Chidambaram will have to defer around Rs 50,000 crore of Plan expenditure to beyond April 1, 2013 in order to keep the fiscal deficit below 5.5% of GDP. Instructions to cut or defer expenses have already gone out to every Union ministry. But the Congress’s real problem is not economics; it is politics. The precise timing of the 16th Lok Sabha elections will be decided by Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati without whose support the UPA government would fall. 
    
At the Jaipur chintan shivir, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi confronts three problems but has solutions to only two. The first problem is the choice of the UPA’s prime ministerial candidate in 2014. If the Congress wins more than 170 seats, the answer is Rahul Gandhi. If it doesn’t, the answer becomes more complicated. The focus will turn to finding an interim CEO for the party to replace Manmohan Singh who will be 82 years old in September 2014. 
    
Singh was leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha between 1998 and 2004 before being elevated to the prime ministership. Sonia may have to pick one from among her senior ministers for a similar role if the Congress can’t form a government in 2014 and it is necessary to sequester Rahul from long-term electoral damage. The chintan shivir will give us a good idea who that CEO could be: the reliable if colourless defence minister A K Antony, the ambitious and controversial P Chidambaram, or a dark horse like the external affairs minister Salman Khurshid.
    
Sonia’s second problem is rebuilding the party organisation in the states from the grassroots. Of the key state assembly elections scheduled to be held in 2013, the Congress is likely to do badly in all except Karnataka where B S Yeddyurappa’s breakaway Karnataka Janata Party and the Janata Dal (S) could create a hung assembly. The BJP faces a rout and the Congress, though lacking a charismatic local leader, may be able to stitch together a coalition government. 
    
Sonia’s third problem is public perception. The UPA is widely regarded as corrupt. It is held responsible for inflation. It has presided over an economic slowdown. And it has encouraged the worst excesses of crony capitalism. The game-changer Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme will provide balm but is not the surgery the Congress needs to redeem public trust. 
    
In 1947 Mahatma Gandhi, freedom achieved, wanted to disband the Congress and form new political organisations to contest free elections. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel agreed. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did not. Nehru’s view prevailed. In 1969, Indira Gandhi split the Congress to sideline the syndicate of regional satraps led by K Kamaraj and S Nijalingappa. The organisational and state-level decline of the Congress began in 1969 though Indira’s 1971 election victory and the euphoria over the Bangladesh war disguised it for nearly a decade. 
    
Nehru inherited a colonial administration. After Independence, it continued to serve the government in power. Colonial laws had been written to often protect British injustice, not deliver justice to Indians. Many remain cast in stone 150 years later, delaying and denying justice to ordinary Indians. Yet, Nehru did not impose chief ministers on states. The party’s local organisation was given a relatively free hand to choose regional leaders. Indira reversed that policy. She imposed state chief ministers, suspended intra-Congress elections, dismissed opposition state governments under Article 356 and undermined the judiciary. 
    
The important lesson for Sonia to absorb at the chintan shivir in Jaipur is to not follow her mother-in-law’s autocratic policies and hew instead to Nehru’s liberal, transparent leadership. Nehru made many errors: Jammu & Kashmir, China and even sowing the seeds of dynasty by appointing members of his family to high office – from Indira to sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. The last thing the battered Congress needs is to emulate Nehru’s few missteps and ignore the many excellent examples of governance he set. 
    
In 1998, Sonia took charge of a party fraying at the edges. Fifteen years later, having become the longest-serving president in Congress history, the party’s edges have frayed further. In 1999, the Congress won 114 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lowest in its history. To avoid falling below that in 2014, Sonia has to solve the leadership problem, strengthen the organisation at the grassroots in the states and restore public confidence. 
    
With its vast army of workers and an overflowing party treasury, the Congress remains a formidable force. It has been underestimated before – in 1980 and again in 2004 – when it was supposed to lose the general elections but didn’t. It can resolve its first two problems – leadership and reorganising the states – with the right strategies. The third – public perception – may prove more intractable. On that could rest its fate in 2014. 

India 2009 Elections - Information

The 15th Lok Sabha Election of India is scheduled to be held by the month of May 2009. The maximum strength of Lok Sabha or the lower house of the Indian Parliament is 552, comprising 530 members who represent the States, up to 20 members who stand for the Union Territories and not more than 2 members from the Anglo-Indian Community who are nominated by the President.

The India Election 2009 will be contested on new constituency boundaries for the first time in over 30 years and the change was implemented on the findings of the Delimitation Commission.

Some of the major changes include merging of areas of various constituencies to eradicate population inconsistencies between different seats and reservation and de-reservation of seats. But, for the time being, the Government of India has postponed delimitation in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Manipur and Nagaland.

The National Democratic Alliance comprising the BJP and its allies officially elected L. K. Advani as their candidate for Prime Ministership for general election 2009 on January 23rd, 2008.

The Indian National Congress (INC) and its allies though haven�t officially announced their candidate for Prime Ministership for India Election 2009; one speculation is Rahul Gandhi, the son of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Apart from them, the other political parties haven't yet officially announced their Prime Ministerial candidates for the 2009 India election.

Defeat of an Idea - Head Hunting

By M H Ahssan

Hindutva is embarrassed by Hinduness. A new generation of confident Indians has started to move beyond its logic of fear and hate. Will the BJP be able to seize this moment for creative reinvention?

THE CASCADING crisis within the BJP since May 16 and their confused debate about the role Hindutva has played in their electoral defeat tells a fascinating story. It would be premature to read any of this as a signal of either the disintegration of the party or Hindutva, but one could safely say the idea of Hindutva has been defeated by India for the moment. Put on a backburner and challenged to reinvent itself.

The BJP’s dependence on Hindutva as its defining characteristic was bound to become problematic for it. Data shows that less than 10 percent of Indians have ever voted for the BJP on ideological grounds. The Hindutva project was constructed on tapping into and fostering fear and a siege mentality within Hindus: a sense of being a minority in a country in which they are clearly a numerical majority. In itself, this was not a bad thing. You need a political party to ‘summit’ these emotions so you can manage them. The Republican Party in America, for instance, also encourages and allies with Christian fundamentalists. They know a small marginal part of the vote comes from there — small, but a crucial vote percentage. So they woo them pre-election. Post election, though, there could be indirect rewards but no official rewards are handed out to them. The BJP did not understand this art of political management. They did not learn how to treat Hindutva groups as merely a sect within them; they believed their entire existence depended on the ideology.

This whole ideological stand — making Hindutva their central official line – was a myopic mistake. (The RSS of course has never been in politics so their understanding of politics is even worse.) The Indian genius is to manage contradictions. Most people forget, the Congress Party, the original party of the freedom movement, allowed many of its members to simultaneously belong to both the Congress and the Hindu Maha Sabha or other Hindu nationalist formations. This was very prevalent in Bengal because a huge proportion of Bengali freedom fighters came from a background of Hindu nationalism. Tagore himself was a member of both the Congress and the Muslim League. It is because these political impulses were accommodated within the Congress as factions that they were easier to negotiate in the early years. The BJP’s dilemma is that it thought its existence was predicated on Hindutva: now that they have lost drastically, they think Hindutva has become a liability and should be jettisoned. But the fact is, the relationship between the BJP and Hindutva will only become more clandestine. The debate they are trying to have within the party is actually nothing more than a power struggle wearing the garb of ideological challenge.

In itself, this power struggle is a healthy thing. Contrary to all the speculation around them, the BJP is not necessarily slated to disintegrate like the Janata Party. The Janata party was a coalition of factions; the BJP has merely become a party with factions. With Atal Behari Vajpayee and LK Advani past their time, all the top posts are vacant. If the BJP wants to survive and do reasonably well, they should “do a Congress”: they should find a Narasimha Rao or Manmohan Singh to lead them. All their current and prominent leaders are too high-pitched.

The BJP may be short-sighted in analysing its defeat dominantly through the Hindutva lens, but its electoral defeat does point to a kind of defeat of Hindutva itself. At the core of the Hindutva project is a war between Hindusim and Hindutva that is around 150 years old. It began in the middle of the 19th century, when ideas of Hindtuva began to take shape with the Hindu reform movements. In a sense, the defeat of Hindutva today is also a defeat of the West because the Hindutva project was one of the last remnants of the colonial West in Indian consciousness.

TODAY, BOTH detractors and defenders of Hindutva are confused about what it stands for. The truth may not be palatable to many, but Hindutva grew out of an admiration of the western European nation state and our attempt to have an indigenous form of it. When Veer Savarkar, the Hindutva fountainhead, insisted that Hindus must not read the Vedas and Upanishads but read science and technology and western political theory, this is what he had in mind. He was looking for a way to transform a chaotic, diverse, anarchic society into an organising principle for a masculine, western-style nation state, something akin to Bismarck’s Germany.

To achieve this, the Hindutva project required Indians to repudiate their Indianness, and Hindus to repudiate their Hinduness. That was part of the war. It required a chaotic, diverse society to homogenise itself into something that could be more globally acceptable and to live according to European norms. Again, public memory is short. Few people remember that Savarkar was very secular in his personal life – in the western sense. He refused to have his funeral rights according to Hindu custom; he wanted his body taken for cremation in a mechanised vehicle rather than the shoulders of relatives. He also refused to give his wife a Hindu funeral though women members of the Hindu Mahasabha sat in front of his house on a dharna.

Savarkar’s main criticism of Gandhi, in fact, was that he was unscientific, irrational and illiterate in modern political theory. He was wrong about that. Gandhi did understand political theory, but it had deeper roots, taken not only from Indian society but from the dissenting West. Gandhi did not believe in the modern nation state or in conventional ideas of nationality, nation and nationalism. He went on record to say that armed nationalism is no different from imperialism. At that point in our history, he seemed a romantic fuddy duddy. The fact is, he was way ahead of his time. He understood that India was particularly well-equipped to craft its own version of a modern nation state. It was under no obligation to follow European textbook definitions of the nation state. The irony is that today many western nations are moving away from the old model and becoming more flexible: 14 countries in Europe do not maintain any armies and have opened their borders to become the European Union. On the other hand, because of our colonial past, India and China are two of the purest forms of 19th century nation states you can find in the world today. Tagore’s friend, Brahmobandhab Upadhyay, a Catholic who called himself a ‘Hindu Christian’. Vivekananda himself said the ideal Indian would be one who had a Hindu mind and a Muslim body. But very early in his intellectual journey, Savarkar decided mere geography was too insipid a basis for nationality and began to advocate a more strident Hindu nationalism. The distasteful, clenched-teeth hatred of Muslims and other minorities associated with Hindutva took root then.

After its defeat this election, the BJP feels its middleclass base has moved away from it because it is disenchanted with Hindutva. This, perhaps, is not entirely true. The Indian middle-class has a natural affinity with the less strident aspects of Hindutva. Primarily, this is because the RSS and BJP had very strong links with the Hindu reform movements, particularly the Arya Samaj. Both Munje and Hedgewar, though, were also inspired by Ramakrishna. The project was very clear. There was a seamless continuity between these reform movements and European concepts of a nation state. This continuity began to transform Hinduism and partly led to a form of religion compatible with a modern nation state – in the same way that Protestant Christians in Europe had become more comfortable with the nation state, industrial capitalism and secularism. In many ways, all Indian religious reformers were trying to produce house-broken, tamed versions of religion which could sustain a pan- Indian consciousness and pan-Indian nationalism. All these reformers had internalised aspects of masculine Protestant Christianity. Angarik Dharmapal’s Maha Bodhi society in Calcutta, in fact, produced a kind of Protestant Buddhism which the Sri Lankans find very convenient for their majoritarian state. Hindu society was even more diverse and cruel. Anyone wedded to the conventional idea of a nation state naturally found it too chaotic, unmanageable and subversive. The idea of Hindutva was supposed to be something Hindus could hold on to and yet remain good citizens of a modern nation.

The middle-class — which is the most privileged and therefore naturally most invested in the conventional notion of the nation state — is therefore also a natural constituency for Hindutva and its version of Hindusim. In Savarkar’s fearsome novel Kala Pani, the only futuristic novel produced by a Hindutva ideologue, he paints a (for him utopian) vision of a future India that will be a totally homogenous society. People would marry across caste and sect and language and become good, pan-Indian citizens — almost like the over-insipid, boring, lowest common denominator Indians one sees nowadays in India’s metropolises. Indians with no difference in language or custom: everyone speaking in the same accents, everyone having the same choice in music, cinema, clothes. Absolutely homogenised — almost like uniform clones.

SAVARKAR WAS prescient because this, in fact, is almost a mirror image of contemporary urban middle class Indians. A class that has access to a globalised economy, speaks English as its primary language, and is shaped by a uniform media. What resonance does this new-generation Malayali or Bengali or Tamilian brought up in Delhi have with the vernacular Hindusim of his grandparents, or even parents? Do all those myriad gods and goddesses with strange names, family priests, ishta dev and ishta devis make any sense to them? What is emerging instead is a pan-Indian Hinduism that allows you to dip into a bit of Onam and a bit of Diwali and a bit of Durga puja, and not be too deeply invested in any of it. Contrary to the ‘milleniaold’ milleniaold’ tradition Hindutva ideologues claim they are a part of, this new kind of Hinduism is a very new faith. It is no more than 150 years old. It was born in the 19th century and is directly inspired by Protestant Christianity in the wake of the Arya Samaj. And this faith is also a kind of lack of faith. You can carry it with you wherever you go. It is a kind of laptop Hinduism.

The Hindutva project in India is destined not to ever occupy centre space though, because it is challenged by Hinduism. When one talks of this Hinduism which is 4,000 years old, we have in mind a religion or tradition – a sentiment — that might be shrinking everyday but still moves a majority in India. It is this concept of faith — diverse, local, intimate and highly ritual — that most Indians live with. Apart from economic reasons and the crunch on jobs and infrastructure, one of the reasons why the Shiv Sena could garner so much support for their opposition to the influx of Biharis in Mumbai was the proliferation of chhat puja. The Mumbai-wallahs felt threatened, there was a sense of ‘itni chhatt puja kahan se aa gayi’? The Biharis would have had less of a hostile backlash if they had participated in the Ganesh pujas instead. Interestingly, there are many more Durga pujas in Mumbai and Delhi than in Kolkata, but there is no hostility against this because it has graduated into an all- India phenomenon. Chhat hasn’t — yet.

It would be a mistake to conflate the occasional eruption of these hostilities with a belief that the idea of India’s plural traditions is a romantic myth. Religious groupings and sects — within Hinduism, and even between different religions — have always participated in each other’s local festivals, but they were not homogenised into an anodyne laptop religion. India was not an imitation of the Enlightenment model, in which you are deemed cosmopolitan only when you feel the other person to be completely equal. In traditional Indian societies, you are equal only in the sense that you have the right to think the other community is inferior to you, and the other person has a right to think you are inferior to them — even though neither of you might say so openly. In a homogenised, individualised society, the former is seen as cosmopolitanism. In a communitybased society, it is the latter cosmopolitanism that works.

In this continuing war between traditional, chaotic, diverse Hinduism and ordering, homogenising Hindutva, the BJP’s electoral defeat is a sign that Hindusim (which is by far the stronger force in electoral numbers) has defeated Hindutva. Hindutva expects Indians to live according to European norms of nationhood. But we are Indians: we are incorrigible, cussed, we have learnt to live with contradictions for centuries, we have learnt to live with chaos and ill-defined, half-baked ideas. We also want to keep options open for the next generation. These are the attributes that have ensured our survival when so many other major civilisations have failed. These are attributes that the BJP has to find ways to accommodate and respond to.

(I once interviewed Madanlal Pahwa — one of the Hindu militants who was among Gandhi’s assasins — in his old age. Ultimately, his most memorable years were of his childhood spent in a district in Pakistan’s West Punjab, which had Baba Farid’s mazar. There was a religious fair he would go to where qawwalis were sung. He called himself a kattar Hindu but that’s what his most nostalgic memories were about. This tells you something. We Indians are accustomed to living with multiple ledgers. He was a Hindutva wallah and all his language came from there, but his memories came from elsewhere.)

None of these arguments add up to an assertion that Hindutva will die out. What is true, though, is that, unless it metamorphoses, it will never enjoy the same vigour it did in past decades because it is inherently uncomfortable and embarrassed by Indianness and traditional Hinduism. For a generation newly emergent from colonial dominance, there was a fascination and sense of respectful subordination to things Western. But with this new post-independent, post-colonial generation, things are different. Indians have gone back to their own rhythms now, so even for the middle-classes, Manmohan Singh’s ‘West’ — with its idea that anyone can be a Tata or Ambani — is more attractive to many than Savarkar’s ‘West’. The aspiration for a global, material identity has overtaken cultural identity.

GIVEN BOTH the perceived and electoral defeat of Hindutva, it will be interesting to see what future route the BJP charts for itself. In many ways, Advani is a tragic figure. It is possible that no one has yet been able to read him correctly. Unlike Vajpayee, Advani had lived in a Hindu minority state and went to a Christian missionary convent. Having lived in a Muslimmajority state, Muslims were not unknown to him, and, perhaps, he did not feel the intrinsic discomfort expected of him. He was a part of the RSS – and probably believed in it — but there is a strong possibility that he also recognised in some ways that Hindutva was a political instrument rather than an all-encompassing ideology.

There is much Advani has to answer for. He is culpable for the Ram Janmabhoomi movement and cannot escape history’s judgement by saying he was talking of Ram as a cultural icon and not a religious figure. He knew he was creating an explosive communal situation. But his party’s reaction to his statement on Jinnah makes him tragic. There was nothing new he said about Jinnah – it is an indication of where our political culture has reached that no one seemed to understand this. Strangely enough, despite a tremendous difference in personality, like Savarkar, Jinnah was a person who thought entirely in Western liberal terms. Their ideological bouquet were almost exactly the same. Advani was only recognising that when he called Jinnah secular. Pakistan’s first law minister was a Hindu, its first national anthem was also written by a Hindu, upon Jinnah’s invitation. Both men shared the idea that nationality is crucial in a nation state and a certain amount of violence and bloodshed is normal in the jostling for dominance. In fact, Jinnah was less accepting of this notion of violence than Savarkar.

Advani tried to cast himself as a statesman in the Vajpayee mould, but could not repudiate his past. At the same time, he could not project himself as an ideologue that could be cast in a heroic mould as, say, Narendra Modi seems to have become for the Gujarati people. He did wear different masks at different times in his career to take political advantage, but it is possible he personally remained somewhat distanced from all of them.

But this only intensifies the riddles for the BJP because it is quite possible that Narendra Modi too has passed his zenith. This election has indicated a decline in his popularity. The problem is, he did not leave any escape routes for himself, not even a cosmetic apology or expression of regret for the events in Gujarat 2002. This is likely to haunt his entire career. So the search for the correct leader has become the BJP’s biggest challenge – a leader who can lower the divisiveness and high temperature the party has become associated with.

But other questions remain for the party. If the BJP abandons Hindutva, what shape can its right of centre politics take? Its economic program cannot stretch too right of center because a majority of Indians live outside the spoils of the neo-liberal economic system. If only for electoral gains, they have to be accommodated.

What this means is that the BJP could be headed for a different kind of ideology, in which Hindutva will play a part, but there will be other competing concepts. There is no reason why Hindutva itself cannot take on a more benign form. Tagore, for instance, makes extremely powerful arguments for Hindutva in his novel Gora. This was a response to both Kipling’s Kim and Savarkar, and almost anticipated Gandhi in some ways. But even if the BJP and RSS’ think tanks are unable to come up with such innovations, it is quite certain that the party will retain some links with the ideology, and even if it is not part of its functioning ideology, it will be a party more tolerant of Hindutva groups.

VAJPAYEE, FOR instance, held Hindutva as a kind of vague, emotional frame. There’s no problem with that; in fact, it’s probably necessary in the Indian context. As Nawaz Sharif told Vajpayee, as part of the Muslim League and BJP, they were best positioned to break fresh ground in Indo-Pak relations as neither of their constituencies could accuse them of being wishywashy liberals. Above everything else though, like the Maoists who were encouraged to come overground and become part of the democratic process, the Hindu right wing must be politically accommodated. They cannot be annihilated or wished away, just as the Naxals could not be wished away. (Charu Mazumdar’s group in Bengal was wiped out with police action, but in barely 30 years Naxalism has come back again with greater force. These are idealistic people. It is a pity they have opted for the gun, but the problems they represent are real. Sitting in urban citadels, one might imagine that one can solve these problems over a 100 years and wait for some “trickle down” effect, but if millions of people are condemned to die in the meantime, one cannot expect everyone to remain unmoved.) In the same way, there are rump groups who are rabid enough to believe they should break down the Babri Masjid. They cannot just be wished away. They have to be politically accommodated and tamed.

The Mughal empire has some lessons that could be of great significance to contemporary India. The empire was so successful that the British left the Mughal system intact for 100 years. Even the Delhi Durbar of 1911 followed all conventions of a Mughal court. It allowed different levels of allegiance to the centre. The Jaipur Maharaja, for instance, was closer to Mughal Delhi than a sultan in Bengal: this meant he had more power and influence, nothing more.

The BJP has been demanding Article 370 should be abolished and the Uniform Civil Code brought in to India. These are legitimate demands in a European-style modern nation state. But why must we follow that route? Instead of hedging on Article 370, one should use it more effectively – go the whole hog with it. Why didn’t we give Article 370 to Sikkim instead of gobbling it up? Why didn’t we give it to Nagaland, rather than go in for 30 years of bloodshed which has made a whole generation bitter? If there is a worry that it is a border state, why not innovate and come up with Article 370 (a) – which defines more and less rights, with a clause put in for renegotiation at a later date? This would have increased the maneuverability of the Indian state immensely.

As Gandhi intuited, we are uniquely well-equipped to design our own version of a nation state. By pure default, we have gone in for some innovations — Indian secularism is one example. Both secularists and communalists complain about its compromises. But we will last as a society only as long as we compromise. The moment we try to harden it into something too defined, things collapse.

The current upheaval could be a creative moment both for the BJP and the RSS. Unlike the RSS heads that have gone before him, Mohanrao Bhagwat is not a very conspicuous ideologue. Nobody expects anything out of him. Because of this, he has the opportunity to be truly creative. But westernised Brahmins and modernity can be a lethal combination. It cuts you off from your native Indian genius. So will they be able to spot the moment?

India's Education Sector: Moving Toward a Digital Future

The typical Indian classroom was once characterized by students sitting through hour-long teacher monologues. Now, technology is making life easier for both students and educators. Schools are increasingly adopting digital teaching solutions to engage with a generation of pupils well-versed with the likes of PlayStations and iPads, and trying to make the classroom environment more inclusive and participatory.

Take Smartclass from Educomp Solutions, one of the first Indian companies in this space. Smartclass is essentially a digital content library of curriculum-mapped, multimedia-rich, 3D content. It also enables teachers to quickly assess how much of a particular lesson students have been able to assimilate during the class. Once a topic is covered, the teacher gives the class a set of questions on a large screen. Each student then answers via a personal answering device or the smart assessment system. The teacher gets the scores right away and based on that, she repeats parts of the lesson that the students don't appear to have grasped.

"Technology makes the teaching-learning process very easy and interesting," says Harish Arora, a chemistry teacher at the Bal Bharti Public School in New Delhi who has been using Smartclass since 2004. "For instance, [earlier] it would easily take me one full lecture to just draw an electromagnetic cell on the blackboard. Though I could explain the cell structure, there was no way I could have managed to show them how it really functions. This is where technology comes to our aid -- now I can show the students a 3D model of the cell and how it functions. Instead of wasting precious time drawing the diagram on the blackboard, I can invest it in building the conceptual clarity of my students."

According to Abhinav Dhar, director for K-12 at Educomp Solutions, more than 12,000 schools across 560 districts in India have adopted Smartclass. More importantly, the number is growing at almost 20 schools a day. On average, in each of these schools eight classrooms are using Smartclass.

"When we launched Smartclass in 2004 as the first-ever digital classroom program, it was an uphill task convincing schools to adopt it," Dhar notes. "These schools had not witnessed any change in a century.... It is a completely different scenario now. Private schools across India today see [technology] as an imperative. A digital classroom is set to become the bare-minimum teaching accessory in schools, just like a blackboard is today."

Dhar recalls that one major roadblock for Educomp's proposition in the early days was on the price front. At US$4,000 (at the exchange rate of Rs. 50 to a U.S. dollar) per classroom, schools found the product very expensive. To get over this hurdle, Educomp quickly decided to make the initial investment and gave the schools an option to pay over a period of three to five years. The strategy worked. Enthused by the market response, in January Educomp launched an upgraded version -- the Smartclass Class
Transformation System -- with more features, including simulations, mind maps, worksheets, web links, a diagram maker, graphic organizers and assessment tools.

HUGE POTENTIAL
According to the "Indian Education Sector Outlook -- Insights on Schooling Segment," a report released by New Delhi--based research and consultancy firm Technopak Advisors in May, the total number of schools in India stands at 1.3 million. Of these, private schools account for 20%. Educomp's Dhar points out that only around 10% of the private schools have tapped the potential of multimedia classroom teaching whereas in government schools, it has barely made any inroads.

"The current market size for digitized school products in private schools is around US$500 million," says Enayet Kabir, associate director for education at Technopak. "This is expected to grow at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 20% to reach the over US$2 billion mark by 2020. However, the market potential then might get as big as S$4 billion [i.e. if the total population of private schools that could adopt multimedia actually adopt it.] Apart from this, the current market size for ICT [information and communications technology] in government schools is US$750 million. We expect this to grow five times by 2020 due to the current low level of penetration in government schools."

Kabir lists Educomp Solutions, Everonn Education, NIIT, Core Education & Technologies, IL&FS and Compucom as dominant players in this sector. New entrants include HCL Infosystems, Learn Next, Tata Interactive Systems, Mexus Education, S. Chand Harcourt (India) and iDiscoveri Education. Except for S. Chand Harcourt, which is a joint venture between S. Chand and US-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, all the others are Indian firms.

A recent trend is that schools in tier two and tier three cities are increasingly adopting the latest technology. Rajesh Shethia, head of sales and marketing at TataInteractive Systems, which launched Tata ClassEdge in early 2011 and has partnered up with more than 900 schools, says that "more than half of the demand for digital classrooms is from tier two and tier three cities." According to Shethia, schools in these smaller cities realize that it is difficult for their students to get as much exposure as students from tier one cities. "[So] they proactively subscribe to solutions such as ours, which richly benefit both teachers and students by simplifying the syllabus....

Even parents want the best for their wards and are not averse to paying a little extra. They see value in these initiatives by schools to modernize the way teaching is imparted today." Making some back-of-the-envelope calculations Shethia adds: "If we consider the top 100,000 private schools in India as the captive market, the potential is approximately two million classrooms of which currently just about 80,000 have been digitized."
Srikanth B. Iyer, COO of Pearson Education Services, also sees tremendous potential in the smaller cities. Pearson provides end-to-end education solutions in the K-12 segment. Its multimedia tool, DigitALly, has been adopted in more than 3,000 private schools across India since 2004. "DigitALly installations have been growing at three times the market for the past two years," Iyer says. "Currently, more than 60% of our customers are from tier two and tier three towns, such as Barpeta (in the state of Assam), Sohagpur (in Madhya Pradesh) and Balia (in Uttar Pradesh)."

In order to make its offering attractive to the schools, Pearson has devised a monthly payment model under which a school pays around US$2 per student per month. "As the price point is affordable, schools across all locations and fee structures find it viable to opt for our solution," Iyer notes. "We focus on tier two and tier three towns and cities where penetration is relatively low and desire for adoption of technology is high." HCL's Digischool program, which launched about 18 months ago, has also made a strong beginning, with a client base of more than 2,500 schools.

PARTNERING WITH STATE GOVERNMENTS
Meanwhile, state governments are also giving a boost to the adoption of technology in schools. Edureach, a divison of Educomp, has partnered with 16 state governments and more than 30 education departments and boards in the country, covering over 36,000 government schools and reaching out to more than 10.60 million students.

"Edureach leads the market with 27% of the total schools where ICT projects have been implemented," says Soumya Kanti, president of Edureach. "We are looking [to add] 3,000 more schools this fiscal year and 20,000 to 25,000 additional schools in the next five years." As of now, Edureach has created digital learning content in more than 14 regional languages for these projects.

In the northern state of Haryana, CORE Education and Technologies is implementing a US$59 million ICT project that aims to benefit 5 million students across 2,622 schools. Five of these schools will be developed as "Smart" schools. CORE is also implementing ICT projects in the states of Gujarat, Meghalaya, Punjab, Maharashtra and Nagaland. The scope of work in these projects ranges from implementation of computer-aided learning in schools, installing bio-metric devices to monitor attendance of teachers, and setting up computer hardware, software and other allied accessories and equipments.

"The task has not been an easy one," admits Anshul Sonak, president of CORE. "There are several logistical issues. Delivery of equipment to rural areas is a big challenge in itself.... There is lack of basic infrastructure -- either there are no classrooms or there are ones with no windows.... Some schools don't even have toilets. Moreover, the power availability in these areas is often poor and we have had to deploy generator sets in many schools."

But despite the challenges, educationists are optimistic. Rahul De, professor of quantitative methods and information systems area at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIM-B) believes that "ICT can have a huge impact on our education system." He points out that ICT can result in increasing the reach [of education] and in keeping the costs low. "With increasing penetration of mobile phones and Internet kiosks, the potential is indeed immense," he adds.

A study conducted by De in 2009 on the economic impact of free and open source software (FOSS) in India found that it resulted in significant cost savings. "FOSS can play a huge role in education," De notes. "In the state of Kerala, it has already had a huge impact in both saving costs and providing state-of-the-art access computing to students in government schools. FOSS has a huge number of packages for school students, many of which can be ported to local languages and used in schools. It is also helping disabled students in a big way, by enabling them to access digital resources using audio-visual aids."
Edureach's Kanti adds that a study by the Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Development Research in Dharwad in Karnataka in 2006 revealed significant improvement in student enrolment and attendance, as well as a reduction of student dropouts due to ICT interventions. "Yet another study conducted by the Xavier Institute of
Management in Bhubaneswar in 2007 revealed that computer-aided education has improved the performance of children in subjects such as English, mathematics and science, which are taught through computers using multimedia-based educational content."

ALL IN A TAB
In line with this increasing interest in technology for school education, there has been a rush of education-focused tablet computers in the market. The most high-profile of these has been Aakash, which was launched by Kapil Sibal, union minister for human resource development, in October 2011. The Aakash project is part of the ministry's National Mission on Education through Information & Communication Technology (NME-ICT). It aims to eliminate digital illiteracy by distributing the Aakash tablets to students across India at subsidized rates. While the project itself has become mired in delays and controversy, it has generated a lot of awareness and interest among students around the educational tablet.

Meanwhile, DataWind, the Canada-based firm that partnered with the union government for the Aakash project, has also launched UbiSlate7, the commercial version ofAakash. "The opportunity for low-cost tablets in India is huge. In the next two years, it will exceed the size of the computer market in India i.e. 10 million units per year," says Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO of DataWind.

In April, technology firm HCL Infosystems launched the MyEdu Tab, which is priced at around US$230 for the K-12 version. The device comes preloaded with educational applications and also books from the National Council of Educational Research and Training, a government organization. Anand Ekambaram, senior vice-president and head of learning at HCL Infosystems, is in the process of partnering with more than 30 educational institutes across India for MyEdu Tab. "MyEdu Tab has content offline and can be accessed over the cloud. It allows students to learn at their own pace," Ekambaram notes. "With a topic revision application and a self-assessment engine, students can evaluate their skills and knowledge on their own. Teachers can upload content, which can be accessed by students and parents for tasks such as homework and progress reports on their respective devices. The parent can monitor the progress of his or her child through the cloud-based ecosystem."

Earlier this year, Micromax, a leading Indian handset manufacturer, also launched an edutainment device called Funbook. Micromax has also partnered with Pearson and Everonn to make available relevant content for students. Susha John, director and CEO at Everonn, was upbeat at the launch. "Digital learning facilitated through tablets will revolutionize the educational space," John said. "Everonn has invested in developing content and services targeted toward tablet audiences. To start with, we will offer our school curriculum-learning modules ... and at home live tuition products on the Funbook. Students can now have access to good teachers, educational content and a great learning experience anytime, anywhere."

At Pearson, Max Gabriel, senior vice-president and chief technology officer, is "focusing on K-12 content in English to begin with. We are sitting on a huge repository of existing content. Adding the right level of interactivity and richer experience will be our priority." Meanwhile, Educomp is gearing up to launch content that is device agnostic and can be run on any tablet.

But even as schools in India are going through this transformation powered by technology, one key question is how big a role technology will play in the education sector.

In an earlier interview S. Sadagopan, founder-director at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, pointed out that there are four parts to learning -- lectures, library, laboratory and life -- noting that, "Technology plays a critical role in all these." Kabir of Technopak adds another perspective. "Despite numerous studies on the impact of ICT in education, the outcomes remain difficult to measure and open to much debate. It needs to be understood that technology is only an enabler and a force multiplier and cannot be treated as a panacea. We believe that impressive gains in teaching-learning outcomes are possible only through an integrated approach rather than a piecemeal intervention."

Don Huesman, managing director of Wharton's innovation group, recommends caution in considering potential investments in educational technologies. "These are very exciting times for online and distance education technologies, but there are risks facing parents, educators and policy makers in evaluating the opportunities these new technologies, and their proponents, represent."

Huesman points to the recent growth in high-quality, free, online educational courseware offered on websites like the Khan Academy and the Math Forum, as well as the work of the Open Learning Initiative in developing intelligent cognitive tutors and learning analytics. "But such technologies, available from a global network of resources, only provide value when understood, chosen and integrated into a local educational community," he says. As an illustration, Huesman offers the example of cyber kiosks, provided in recent years by foundations at no cost to rural communities in India, exacerbating the "gender divide" in many traditional communities in which young women congregating at public cyber cafes, also frequented by young men, would be considered taboo. "Interventions by governments and NGOs must be inclusive of local community concerns and aware of local political complications," Huesman notes.