LIST OF NEWSPAPERS COVERED

BUSINESS LINE

DECCAN HERALD

ECONOMIC TIMES

HINDU

HINDUSTAN TIMES

INDIAN EXPRESS

PIONEER

STATESMAN

TELEGRAPH

TIMES OF INDIA

TRIBUNE

1

CONTENTS

AGRICULTURE 3-5

AVIATION 6

CIVIL SERVICE 7-19

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT 20-24

EDUCATION 25-31

EMINENT PERSONALITIES 32-34

HEALTH SERVICES 35-37

JUDICIARY 38-39

PRESIDENTS 40-44

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 45-50

PUBLISHERS AND PUBLISHING 51-52

RAILWAYS 53-54

2

AGRICULTURE

STATESMAN, JUN 23, 2017Crisis of agricultureDevendra Saksena

Agriculture is in crisis, and this is borne out by the widespread agitations by farmers. Hitherto, no one outside the villages was really aware of the hard times being faced by the peasantry.

People in the cities generally believed the government's line that everything was hunkydory, and like other sectors agriculture was also progressing.

In fact, even in the face of the farmers' movement, Government spokesmen were quoting figures to prove that farmers were indeed better off than before. And yet none from the Government side could explain as to why farmers were so agitated if their lot was actually improving.

The answer, obviously, lies in the selective and doubtful statistics trotted out by the administration. However, the blame does not lie entirely on the present dispensation which has merely carried forward the policies of the previous regimes. The condition of farmers has never been particularly comfortable; they have experienced famines and shortages almost chronically.

The myth that India was once a land of milk and honey remains a myth to this day. There were only 14 famines between the 11th and 17th centuries but the advent of the British with their skewed economic and administrative policies led to a series of famines in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Bengal famine of 1770 wiped out one-third of the population and the famine of 1866 killed one-third of the population of Odisha. Between 1871 and 1881, 10.3 million people died of starvation.

The Great Bengal famine of 1943 is of fairly recent memory. These famines were not the result of food shortage. At the core of the crisis was the dearth of purchasing power.

After independence, the Government had adopted a more humane approach and there has been no famine except for a brief spell in Bihar in 1966.

Rather, it redounds to our credit that we have successfully averted a number of famines. On the other hand, there has been no major initiative on the part of the Government in the sphere of agriculture after the Green Revolution of the 1960s. Successive Governments have left agriculture to its own devices; the “transformational issues” were never addressed suitably and agricultural policies were framed on the basis of doubtful statistics.

This neglect has resulted in a situation where around 45 per cent of our population is dependent on agriculture which accounts for roughly 15 per cent of the GDP.

3

At the time of Independence, roughly 60 per cent of the population was engaged in agricultural activities which accounted for around 60 per cent of the GDP.

No wonder, farmers feel that they have been left out of the Indian success story. According to an affidavit filed by the Government in the Supreme Court, more than 12,000 farmers commit suicide every year.

In the wake of the current farmers' agitation, state governments have announced various measures like partial waiver of farm loans but a comprehensive agricultural policy is nowhere in sight.

A number of models for agricultural reforms are in the public domain but the will to implement is lacking. One may note that the Swaminathan Committee report on agriculture is gathering dust since 2006.

An example may be instructive. Despite the similarities of size and composition between the EU and India, there are noticeable differences between the EU agricultural policy (Common Agricultural Policy or CAP) and our agricultural policies.

First, agriculture accounted for 71 per cent of the EU budget in 1984 (down to 39 per cent in 2013). In contrast, in India the budget allocation for agriculture hardly touches 10 per cent.

Secondy, under CAP, agricultural subsidies are calculated in advance and paid directly to the farmers according to their land holdings.

Third, the average farm size in India is 1.15 hectares, down from 2.28 hectares in 1971. About 40 per cent of the farms are less than 1 hectare in size. Faced with a similar problem, the EU introduced vocational training, welfare programmes and an early retirement scheme to motivate nearly five million peasants to give up farming on unviable holdings.

Farms were considered viable only if they could guarantee an average annual income comparable to that of other workers in the region. In India too, landless labourers and marginal farmers can be encouraged to take up occupations such as horticulture, dairy and poultry farming or rearing of animals ~ vigilantes and Government policies permitting.

Unfortunately, our top policy-making entity, Niti Aayog, holds a diametrically opposite view. It proposes to levy agricultural income-tax, which would discourage large land holdings. Also, it is completely against agricultural subsidies and meaningful increases in procurement prices of agricultural produce. There is a complete disconnect between farmers and the administration.

During the current agitation in Madhya Pradesh, the administration concluded that the agitators were not farmers simply because they were wearing shirts and shorts/trousers. . We desperately need some genuine farmers in Government bodies to suggest policies for agriculture.

Otherwise, faulty agricultural policies would continue to be framed in ivory towers. Our long-term objective should be to ensure that the farmer can also function as a farming

4

executive/manager. Instead of relegating agriculture to the background, it should be a compulsory subject in all School Boards with adequate weightage for practical work.

The study of agriculture makes greater sense than the study of the geography of some obscure country in Africa. All colleges should offer agriculture as an elective subject.

Farmers can boost production and profit from agriculture only when they understand the theoretical and commercial dimensions of their occupation.

Those who are not farmers can also benefit by studying agriculture; they will at least grasp the issues better.

The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner, Income Tax

5

AVIATION

HINDUSTAN TIMES, JUN 20, 2017Indians won’t need to fill departure cards when flying abroad from July 1

Indians flying abroad won’t have to fill in departure cards, but those travelling by road, rail or sea routes will still need to follow similar procedures.

Indians flying abroad won’t have to fill out departure cards come July 1 as the Union home

ministry has decided to discontinue the practice to save on time.

So far, Indians had to fill in details such as their name, date of birth, passport number, address in

India, flight number and date of boarding on the departure card.       

The order announcing the change noted that this information was available in the system from

other sources.

However, those leaving the country through rail, seaport and land immigration checkposts will

still have to fill embarkation cards.

The customs department had earlier also done away with the need for Indians to fill a form

declaring they were not carrying dutiable goods.

These measures are aimed at reducing time taken to clear immigration formalities.

6

CIVIL SERVICE

BUSINESS LINE, JUN 22, 2017Subhash C Garg appointed new DEA Secretary

Subhash C Garg, a 1983 batch Rajasthan cadre IAS officer, has been appointed as Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Finance Ministry. This was part of the major secretary level reshuffle and appointments announced by the Centre on Wednesday.

Prior to this appointment, Garg was Executive Director at World Bank.

The other major appointments, approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet, include Aruna Sundarajan, a Kerala cadre IAS officer, as Telecom Secretary and Ajay Kumar Bhalla, an Assam-Meghalaya cadre IAS officer, as Power Secretary. While Sundarajan was Secretary, Electronics and Information Technology, Bhalla is currently Director-General, Foreign Trade.

The committee also gave its nod for the appointment of Rajiv Gauba, a Jharkhand cadre IAS officer, as the next Home Secretary. He will take over from Rajiv Mehrishi on August 30. Until then Gauba will serve as Officer on Special Duty in the Home Ministry.

Meanwhile, Ajay Prakash Sawhney, an Andhra Pradesh cadre IAS officer, will be the new Electronics & IT Secretary. He was earlier Additional Secretary in the Petroleum Ministry. Yudhvir Singh Malik, a 1983 Haryana batch IAS officer, will be the new Road Transport and Highways Secretary. He was earlier NHAI’s Chairman.

PIONEER, JUN 22, 201716 NEW SECRETARIES: RAJIV GAUBA GETS HOME, SUBHASH GARG ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

45

The Centre on Wednesday night carried a major top-level bureaucratic reshuffle, appointing 16 new secretaries. While Urban Development Secretary Rajiv Gauba will replace Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi when he completes his term on August 30; World Bank Executive Director Subhash Garg will take over as Economic Affairs Secretary.

The reshuffle will see new Babus heading administrative set-up in NHAI, Information & Broadcasting Ministry, Telecom Ministry, Road Transport Ministry among others.

A 1982-batch IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre, Gauba will take over as the Officer on Special Duty in the Union Home Ministry with immediate effect. An order issued by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said he will take over as the Home Secretary from August 31.

Gauba has served in the Home Ministry as joint and additional secretary where he looked after the crucial Naxal division. Durga Shanker Mishra will replace Gauba as the Urban Development Secretary. He is now the Additional Secretary in the same ministry.

Culture Secretary NK Sinha will be the new Information & Broadcasting Secretary in place of Ajay Mittal, who has been moved as DoPT Secretary. DoPT Secretary BP Sharma retires this

7

month-end. Senior bureaucrat Subhash C Garg, Executive Director in the World Bank, will be the new Department of Economic Affairs Secretary, a post that had fallen vacant after the retirement of Shaktikanta Das.

Aruna Sundararajan will be the new Telecom Secretary. She is at present the Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. NHAI chief Yudhvir Singh Malik has been appointed the Road, Transport and Highways Secretary.

   DECCAN HERALD, JUN 21, 2017Former Chief Secretary of AP loses job for his anti-govt post on social mediaJBS Umanadh, ×

Former chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh, present chairman of AP Brahmin Welfare Corporation IYR Krishna Rao was sacked by Chandrababu Naidu government on Tuesday for posting and sharing anti-government comments on social media. Krishna Rao belongs to the 1979 batch of Indian Administrative Service and worked in various capacities in Government of Andhra Pradesh. He also worked as an Executive Officer of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD). 

Axe fell on Rao after several Telugu Desam leaders complained to Naidu that he is heaping insults on the government through social media. Rao who is very active on Facebook has earlier criticised entertainment tax exemption for Naidu’s brother-in-law and Hindupur MLA N Balakrishna’s Gautami Putra Satakarni. Rao is also very critical about the behaviour of TDP MP JC Diwakar Reddy who created a ruckus in Vizag airport and the open defiance of Vijayawada MP Kesineni Nani.

“I was not given Naidu’s appointment for the last six months. It hurt my ego but I still continued with my job which is helping poor Brahmins. It would have been better if the government sought my explanation,” Rao said addressing press here on Tuesday. He said that TDP cadre has been spreading canards that he has roped in YSR Congress members into the district level coordination committees. 

He said that chief minister was not happy with him for not getting any political mileage through the corporation. “I was not invited to take up the post of the first ever Brahmin corporation in the state. I myself volunteered as I am interested in the welfare of Brahmins. I am an officer and not a politician,” he said. 

However, TDP sources point out that Rao has taken up to social media after he was a denied MLC seat. The say that Rao has intentionally started maligning the government. The TDP sympathisers on the net have ensured that Rao was sacked within 24 hours of waging a war on social media against Rao’s posts on Facebook.

8

ECONOMIC TIMES, JUN 16, 2017Bureaucratic rejig: 21 Joint Secretaries appointed in different government departmentsA total of 21 officers have been appointed as joint secretaries in different government departments.

NEW DELHI: Senior bureaucrat Sandeep Sarkar has been appointed as Joint Secretary in Cabinet Secretariat as part of a major mid-level bureaucratic reshuffle effected today. 

Sarkar, a 1995-batch officer of Indian Defence Accounts Service, has been appointed to the post for five years, an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said. 

A total of 21 officers have been appointed as joint secretaries in different government departments. 

Of these, seven officers are from Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and rest from other services like Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Revenue Service (IRS). 

IFS officer Jayant N Khobragade has been appointed as Officer on Special Duty (JS-level) in the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Mumbai. Khobragade worked as India's envoy to Kyrgyzstan till February 9, this year. 

Senior IAS officer Bishwanath Sinha, Joint Secretary in Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, has been sent back to his Kerala cadre with immediate effect, before completion of his tenure. 

Jigmet Takpa, a forest service officer, will be new JS in place of Sinha. 

Gayatri Mishra, who was in the DoPT, has been appointed JS in Department of Health and Family Welfare. IAS officers Bipul Pathak and Shiv Das meena have been appointed joint secretaries in Mines and Urban Development ministries respectively. 

Dhananjay Kumar will be Additional Secretary (JS level) in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and Saroj Punhani has been appointed Secretary (JS level) in the National Commission for Minority Education Institutes. 

IAS officer Rajiv Verma, at present JS in Defence Ministry, has been appointed Principal Commissioner (Coordination) in the Delhi Development Authority. 

9

Prasanta Kumar Swain has been named JS in the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Sanjiv Narain Mathur, will be Joint Secretary in the Department of Pension and Pensioners' Welfare and Aarti Ahuja will be JS in the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie. 

IRS officer Vipin Chandra has been appointed as JS in the Ministry of Earth Sciences. Dharmendra Singh Gangwar will be Joint Secretary, Ministry of Food Processing Industries. 

Alka Nangia Arora has been named Joint Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. IAS officer Ravinder will be Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. 

Neelam Sanghi has been appointed Joint Secretary and Financial Adviser in the Department of Posts and IRS officer Prabodh Seth will be JS, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities. 

Anindita Sen Gupta has been appointed as Additional DGFT in Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Kolkata.

HINDUSTAN TIMES, JUN 19, 2017Govt reviews service records of 67,000 staff to weed out non-performers

10

As per norms, a government employee’s performance is reviewed twice during service – after 15 years of qualifying the service and then after 25 years.

An unanticipated response of over 75,000 applications for the 30 posts of peons in the Directorate of Economics and Statistics of the Chhattisgarh government forced officials to cancel the examination scheduled for August 30. (Photo/ Shutterstock)

The central government has undertaken an exercise to review the service records of about 67,000

employees, including IAS and IPS officers, to identify non-performers.

The review exercise is a part of the government’s efforts to further improve the service delivery

and governance system.

11

A senior official in the department of personnel and training said the exercise may result in

punishment to those who do not conform to the code of conduct framed for them.

“The service records of nearly 67,000 central government employees are under review to check

non-performance,” he said.

Nearly 25,000 of these are from all India and Group A services – including the Indian

Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Revenue Service (IRS),

among others, the official said.

When contacted by the PTI, minister of state for personnel Jitendra Singh said while on the one

hand the government approach is of high-level efficiency and “zero- tolerance” towards

corruption, on the other hand, it is also ensuring work-friendly environment for honest officers.

“The government time-to-time reviews performance of its workforce. It is to encourage the

honest employees,” he said.

Singh said the NDA government in its three years has introduced multiple relaxations in rules on

transfer policy, Leave Travel Concession etc.

“But at the same time, a more objective mechanism has been developed to assess the

performance of officers and also to determine their suitability for further promotion and

empanelment,” the minister said.

The Centre has given compulsory retirement to 129 non-performing employees, IAS and IPS

officers among them, in last one year.

As per norms, a government employee’s performance is reviewed twice during service – after 15

years of qualifying the service and then after 25 years.

12

There are about 48.85 lakh central government employees, according to latest data.

INDIAN EXPRESS, JUN 19, 2017Madhya Pradesh: Woman IAS officer cites threat to life, seeks security

A woman IAS officer in Madhya Pradesh has sought police protection in Chhatarpur and Umaria

districts, citing threat to her life from a sand miner who has been in jail for the past four months.Written by Milind Ghatwai 

A woman IAS officer in Madhya Pradesh has sought police protection in Chhatarpur and Umaria

districts, citing threat to her life from a sand miner who has been in jail for the past four months.

Sonia Meena was posted as a sub-divisional magistrate (Rajnagar) in Chhatarpur district when

she launched a crackdown on illegal mining. On February 8, she seized a tractor laden with sand

in Bamitha village. However, the driver, Arjun Singh Bundela, threatened a home guard who

was taking the tractor to police station, and took the vehicle away at gun point.

A case was filed against Bundela and a reward of Rs 10,000 was announced on his head. His gun

licence was cancelled and he was arrested on February 21. He has been in jail since then. He

faces two other cases of attempt to murder too.

Last week, Meena, now posted as Additional Collector and CEO of Umaria district panchayat,

wrote a letter to the Chief Secretary alleging threat to her life and sought protection when she

travels to Chhatarpur from Umaria for the trial against Bundela.

“I have learnt from reliable sources that the accused is conspiring to attack me again through his

henchmen,’’ she said in her letter, requesting security. Umaria Collector Abhishek Singh told

The Indian Express that security has been provided to her based on her letter. “It could be

removed depending on threat perception,’’ he said. Chhatarpur Collector Ramesh Bhandari said

she will be provided security when she appears for trial.

13

STATESMAN, JUN 18, 2017Bengalis in Civvy Street ~ IAtanu Purkayastha

The1st of June is a historical day in the annals of Civil Services in India. On this day, in 1842 was born Satyendranath Tagore, the first Indian to qualify in the Indian Civil Service examination. He entered the ICS in 1863 and was posted to Bombay Presidency. Satyendranath was the son of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, elder brother of Rabindranath and grandson of Prince Dwarkanath Tagore.

The Indian Civil Service, which was for a part of the 19th century officially known as the Imperial Civil Service, was responsible for the administration in British India from 1858 to 1947. India, since the ancient times had its own system of administration. The ruler recruited/nominated officials for administration but it was the British who, for the first time in the sub-continent introduced the cadre-based civil services, which eventually became the steel framework of their administrative machinery. The Macaulay Committee gave India its first modern civil service in 1854, which recommended that the patronage based civil service system of the East India Company should be replaced by a permanent civil service based on merit. The Macaulay Committee Report stated: “An appointment to the civil service of the Company will not be a matter of favour but a matter of right. He, who obtains such an appointment, will owe it solely to his own abilities and industry.”

After 1855, recruitment to the ICS was totally based on merit. In 1914, only 5 per cent of ICS officers were Indians. At the time of Partition in 1947, there were 980 ICS officers, of whom 468 were Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, two from the depressed classes/Scheduled Castes, five domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 25 Indian Christians, 13 Parsis, 10 Sikhs and four of other communities. Nirmal Kumar Mukherjee, who retired as Cabinet Secretary of the Government of India in April 1980, was the last ICS officer. He joined the service in 1944, which was also the last batch of ICS officers. The service was the bedrock of the British administrative system in India. Speaking in the House of Commons in 1935, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said: “The ICS is the steel frame, on which the whole structure of our government and of our administration in India rests”.

Sardar Patel appreciated the role of ICS in keeping India united after Partition, and once told Parliament: “Without them, the country would have collapsed’.

Post-Independence, Indian political leaders chose to retain the unified administrative system of British India and continued with the Civil Services system selected through annual common Civil Services Examination (CSE). The Civil Services were categorised into three groups:

1) The All India Services (AIS), whose members served both the Union and the State Governments. AIS consisted of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in place of erstwhile Indian Civil Service, Indian Police Service (IPS) in place of Indian Police and Indian Forest Service, which was created in the mid- 1960s. Officers who were selected for AIS through CSE were referred to as ‘Direct Recruits’ .

14

2) The Central Civil Services (CCS), whose members serve only the Union Government. As of now, there are 24 such Services, which include the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Revenue Services, the Indian Railway Services, the Indian Audit & Accounts Service and other Accounts & Finance Services, the Indian Postal Service etc.

3) The State Civil Services (SCS), whose members serve the State Governments and are appointed by the State Public Service Commission. After serving for some years with the State, these officers are ‘promoted/ nominated’ to the AIS and are normally referred to as the ‘Promoted/Nominated’ officers.

The first batch of IAS officers was recruited in 1948. The objective of recruitment to the Civil Services is to attract the brightest and the best young minds of the country to assist the Union and the State Governments in formulating and implementing the policies and programme to shape the future of the country and its citizens, to preserve the unity and integrity of the country and to maintain a uniform standard of administration. The civil servants are expected to be neutral and objective, non-political, secular and non-sectarian in their outlook; competent, efficient and professional in discharging their responsibilities; maintain highest level of integrity and imbibed with the idealism to serve the country and its people.

In the parliamentary democratic system of governance as in India, the responsibility for running the administration rests with the elected representatives of the people. But a handful of ministers cannot be expected to deal personally with the manifold problems of modern administration. Thus, the council of ministers lays down the policy and delegates the power to the civil servants to implement the same. The executive decisions are implemented by the civil servants, who serve at the pleasure of the President of India. Article 311 of the Constitution protects them from politically motivated vindictive action.

IAS is the most preferred service among the Civil Services, as is evident from the ‘meritcum-choice’ selection procedure adopted in the allocation of services. Approximately, 50 per cent of the total vacancies of all the services are reserved for SCs, STs and OBCs. IAS officers hold key and strategic positions in the Union and the State Governments, they represent the permanent bureaucracy, and form an inseparable part of the executive branch of the Government, thus providing continuity and neutrality to the administration.

Like the first Indian ICS officer, the last was also a Bengali. This underscores the great pride and value that was attached to the service by the Bengali community. ICS was the social barometer for measuring life’s achievements. Qualifying in the ICS exam was the first choice of the candidates travelling to England. Those who failed, would thereafter try to qualify for the Bar, as was of Monmohan Ghose who appeared unsuccessfully along with Satyendranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and many others. ICS officers were often appointed judges in the higher judiciary, but the reverse was not true.

For almost two centuries, Bengal was the seat of the British Empire in India. It was therefore natural that the pulse of power and glory was most acutely in the city of Calcutta than anywhere else in the country. The bhadralok’s desire to share the glory of power was encapsulated in the ICS and the surest way to taste the same was to become a member of the service. Qualifying for

15

the ICS was also an indicator of ‘....having arrived....’, as is evident from the fact that children of good families and with good education, aspired and competed for the ICS. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose stood fourth but did not join as he did not want to serve the colonial government, Sri Aurobindo passed the open competition in 1890, but having no interest, came late to the horse-riding practical exam purposefully to get himself disqualified for the service. He became a revolutionary and later a Rishi. Surendranath Bannerjee along with Romesh Chunder Dutt, who stood third, Behari Lal Gupta and Sripad Babaji Thakur from Bombay qualified for the ICS in 1869, when only four 4 Indians cleared the exam. Surendranath Bannerjee was dismissed from service due to racial discrimination. He went on to become a prominent leader of the independence movement. RC Dutt was president of the Indian National Congress in 1899, a member of the Bengal Legislative Council and an eminent economic historian. As per the Civil List, in 1948 the number of ICS officers in the country was 242, of which 42 were Bengalis, roughly constituting 17 per cent of the total. Among the first five Indians to qualify in the ICS exam, four were Bengalis.

The change of nomenclature of the service from ICS to IAS as well as the transfer of the capital to Delhi had no influence on the charm that the service held on the Bengali society and its youth; it continued to be a much sought after career among those, who wanted to be seen as successful, recognised and be counted upon. In the very first year of recruitment of IAS in 1948, seven out of 30 officers selected were Bengalis, approximately 22.5 per cent of the total intake. In 1949 and 1950, among 32 IAS officers selected each year, six and five respectively were Bengalis.

(To be concluded)

STATESMAN, JUN 19, 2017Bengalis in Civvy Street~IIAtanu Purkayastha

This sterling performance becomes still more significant in the context of the turmoil in West Bengal over Partition.

A large number of well-to-do families from East Bengal had become refugees, lived on the streets, let alone afford proper education for their children.

Yet, the Bengali youth’s aspiration to become a civil servant did not dwindle. The quality of education received has an impacts on a candidate’s confidence and ability to crack the Civil Services Exam.

The determination to qualify is greatly nurtured by the value, aspiration and appreciation that the parents, family and the community attach to the service. The social atmosphere of West Bengal since the mid-1960s has been plagued by political agitations, strikes and unrest.

This turbulent atmosphere vitiated the academic environment of the educational institutions. Few teachers, whether in schools, colleges or universities, cared to complete the syllabus. The state-

16

run schools were packed with inferior teachers, whose main duty was to attend to party work during the period when they were expected to teach.

As a result, the standard of education imparted at various levels in the State, declined. Often the academic calendar remained incomplete and exams were delayed, seriously denting the career and future of the students.

Quality, which was the hallmark of education in West Bengal, declined drastically and irreversibly. The decision of the Left Front government in 1982 to abolish the teaching of English in primary schools was another nail that severely dented the confidence and the ability of the students, especially in higher education and therefore, their ability to compete with students from other states.

This cardinal mistake damaged the future of the students of the state for 25 years. Of course it was reversed in 2007, but by then it was too late.

Altogether, it had a negative effect on the morale, calibre and performance of the students of West Bengal at national level competitive exams, including CSE. The aura of civil services also declined among the youth and Bengali society generally due to the attitude of the political masters. The party dominated over the administrative decisions of the government. Therefore, the initiatives or the ability to think ‘out of the box’ by the administrators to achieve excellence or set standards in governance of the state, was given a go-bye.

The gherao and at times heckling of the officers who did not go by the ruling party or diktats of their workers’ union, was an everyday affair.

This hugely demoralised the officers, and in turn, painted a very negative picture of the service among the family members, friends as well as in public, discouraging them to choose civil services as a career option.

The net impact was that the civil service lost its charm so far as the middle class Bengali society is concerned. Meritorious students opted to go abroad, choose a career in academics, medicine, engineering, management and in the private sector.

To be a District Magistrate, Secretary, Director General, Member/ Chairman of Commissions became meaningless for Bengali youth. Civil services no longer attracted the glamour and received the pride of place in Bengal society.

One hardly came across marriage proposals for civil servants in Bengali matrimonial columns. As a result, the representation of West Bengal in the civil services started declining. In 1991, only three out of 126 IAS officers qualified from West Bengal.

A decade later, in 2001, none qualified from this state and the same was true in 2011. The number of candidates qualifying from the neighbouring states of Bihar and Odisha is many times higher. In fact, representation of West Bengal in the IAS is so poor that there are many batches without a single candidate from the state.

17

In 2011, the total number of IAS officers from West Bengal in the country dropped to 83 out of 3229, compared to 248 out of 2949, thirty years before in 1981. This also indicates that the overall success rate from the State in all the Central Civil Services put together has come down considerably.

This is astonishing not least because Bengal boasts premier institutions, notably Presidency College, Scottish Church College, Bethune College, IIT, IIM, ISI, Jadavpur and Calcutta Universities, Shibpur Engineering College, etc. Some Bengalis are also loath to serve the corrupt political system of the country.

This partly explains the reluctance to take up a career in the Civil Services. This negative attitude among the Bengalis needs to be changed. The Constitution, Acts and Rules of the country give the civil servants the responsibility, opportunity and the immunity from disagreeing with anything that is illegal or wrong and provides adequate scope to maintain one’s neutrality, impartiality and objectivity in discharging official duties.

Therefore, not taking up civil services as a career on such a pretext is actually an escapist’s choice. Why is it important and essential for West Bengal to have its own, ‘insider’ candidates in AIS and CCS?

First, the brightest and the best from the state must get the opportunity in shaping the destiny of the country and their home state.

Second, while serving in one’s home state, the officer is in a position to integrate the culture, ethos and way of thinking of the people of the state with the national perspective in a more purposeful manner for the ultimate benefit of the home state.

Third, India is a country of diverse cultures and the perception and approaches to a problem and its solutions are also diverse. It is impossible to have a 100 per cent uniform administrative approach and a common yardstick for the country as a whole.

While ensuring overall uniformity in administration across the country, local understanding and nuances of the state also need to be taken into account, and this can be best achieved if there are representatives from the state in its administration.

Fourth, the home or ‘insider’ candidates would be able to set examples for other aspiring candidates from the state to follow them. Most importantly, it is a matter of pride and privilege to be an IAS or Civil Service officer and to serve the citizens of the country and the State.

This pathetic condition of West Bengal’s representation in AIS and CCS cannot be allowed to go on. It has to be realised by the people of West Bengal, particularly the youth that taking to the streets, agitating, calling dharnas and strikes, will not allow them any space or role in the development of their community and the state. Rather they need to participate in a constructive manner, which is ensured through the Civil Services.

18

The power, privilege and the opportunity that every rung/position in the Civil Services’ hierarchy provides is immense for doing good for the people and the community; this cannot be explained in words but needs to be felt by occupying the positions.

If the motive behind good education is to become a good and responsible citizen, be recognised in the society as a person of competence and seen as an example of success, to hold respectable posts and earn a good salary, enhance the prestige and status of the parents and family and last but not the least to do good for the people, then there is no service better than the civil services. Every state based on its size, population etc., has a sanctioned strength for each of the AIS categories.

One-third of this sanctioned strength is earmarked for the ‘insider’ or home state candidates. Further, the salary of AIS officers even while serving in the state, are reimbursed by the Union Government. As per the Civil List 2016, West Bengal is hugely lacking in filling up its ‘insider’ quota.

The number of ‘insider’ IAS officers on its role in West Bengal is only 29 as on 1 January 2016. Compare this with ‘insider’ officers in other states: Bihar (73), Odisha (36), Haryana (37), Kerala (45), Punjab (35). Even the smaller states have more ‘insider’ officers in their cadre than West Bengal.

There ares more IAS officers from Uttar Pradesh (38) working in West Bengal than from this state itself.

The writer is a retired IAS officer.

(Concluded)

19

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

TELEGRAPH, JUN 21, 2017Data in the post truth era- The economy under Narendra Modi

Prabhat Patnaik

The Narendra Modi government's record in tacitly supporting the actions of a bunch of vigilante thugs who have been terrorizing the country, especially the Muslims and the Dalits, in the guise of gau rakshaks, or opponents of love jihad, or 'nationalists', has been so outrageous that it has grabbed all the critical attention. In the process, the government's abysmal failures in other spheres have gone virtually unnoticed. One such sphere is the economy, the dismal state of which is sought to be camouflaged by hyped-up figures of growth of the gross domestic product.

In fact, GDP figures these days engage one like an Edmund Crispin detective novel: in Crispin's novels one is forever occupied trying to identify the murderer from the clues the author gives; likewise with GDP data these days one gets primarily occupied trying to discover how truth has been done away with by the estimates. It is their 'post-truth' character rather than the data themselves which absorbs one.

But even official data cannot hide certain things about the Modi years, and in what follows I rely exclusively on official data. The gross domestic product at factor cost originating in agriculture is the source of the incomes of all those engaged in this sector: agricultural labourers; peasants of different categories; capitalist farmers; and landlords, both feudal and capitalist. True, some of them, notably the landlords and capitalist farmers, may have incomes from other, non-agricultural sources, such as trade, cinema halls, or the transport business, but their numbers being relatively small, as long as their share in the GDP originating in agriculture does not fall, we can safely infer that an observed fall in per capita GDP originating in agriculture implies a fall in the per capita income of the agriculture-dependent population.

Income of course should mean net income, that is, gross income minus a deduction for the depreciation of fixed capital, but the ratio between gross and net incomes does not change much over short periods; so, taking per capita GDP at factor cost for examining trends in per capita income of the agriculture-dependent population seems legitimate.

Now, to see what has been happening during the three Modi years, let us make a point-to-point comparison of the pre-Modi base year 2013-14 with the last of these three years, 2016-17. This way we also avoid the two middle years, 2014-15 and 2015-16, which were poor harvest years because of successive droughts, and whose inclusion would have exposed us to the charge that we are unfairly blaming the Modi government for a natural phenomenon like drought.Since over such a short period as three years, there is unlikely to have been much shift in the sectoral composition of the workforce, and hence of the population dependent upon it, we can quite legitimately take the rate of growth of the agriculture-dependent population as being

20

equal to the rate of growth of the overall population of the country.

Let us now come to the calculations. From official data it can be seen on this basis that the per capita GDP at factor cost in current prices increased by 16 per cent between 2013-14 and 2016-17, which everybody acknowledges to have been a very good crop year (so that none can accuse us of unfairness). But exactly over the same period the consumer price index for rural India increased by 16.8 per cent. The per capita nominal income of the agriculture-dependent population in other words increased less than the price index, which means that there was a marginal decline in the per capita real income of the agriculture-dependent population over these three years.

Agriculture accounts for roughly half of the total workforce of the country. Assuming identical work-force to population ratio in agriculture as elsewhere, what this means is that roughly half of the country's population witnessed no increase whatsoever, indeed on the contrary a marginal decline, in its real per capita income over the three Modi years. This is a fact of great significance.

The agrarian crisis of course pre-dates Modi, and has to do with the withdrawal of State support from peasant agriculture, and the exposure of this sector to the operations of agribusiness and domestic and foreign monopolists, as part of neo-liberal economic policy. The point, however, is that the Modi government has been fully complicit in this squeeze on the agriculture-dependent population by neo-liberalism. Indeed, as I suggest below, it has been unthinkingly neo-liberal, and for that reason ultra-neo-liberal, to a degree far surpassing anything we have seen earlier.

In the non-agricultural sector in general, output and employment (employment here must exclude 'disguised unemployment'), are demand-determined. Now, a part of the demand, what one may call the 'endogenous' component of demand, comes from the output of this sector itself: larger output means more incomes generated in this sector and hence a larger demand out of these incomes for the sector's own products. To see why the output of this sector is what it is, we have to focus, therefore, on the 'exogenous' or the 'autonomous' element of the demand for this sector's product, the element not dependent upon its own income.

One important exogenous element of the demand for non-agricultural goods and services, comes obviously from agricultural incomes. But these, we have seen, have been stagnant in per capita terms over the three Modi years, which means that this source of demand has not grown over this period. Since investment tends to respond to the change in the size of the market and hence to the size of output, it cannot be taken as an exogenous element at all. This leaves us with only two other elements which can be taken as exogenous; one of these is net exports and the other is government expenditure. (Boost to autonomous consumption through asset-price bubbles, which leave asset-holders feeling wealthy, and hence consuming more, play a relatively small role in the Indian economy).

The demand arising from net exports (that is, exports minus imports) has been fairly sluggish over this period, because of the crisis in the world economy and also the protectionism increasingly adopted by the United States of America. Such protectionism, by discouraging US

21

firms from 'outsourcing' service sector activities, hurts the exports of services from countries like India. True, the lower oil prices in the world economy should have had the effect of boosting domestic demand, if these lower prices had been passed on to the consumers. But this did not happen; on the contrary, the government just took advantage of the lower world oil prices to garner larger revenues through excise duty.

With such larger revenues, or even without them, if government expenditure had increased significantly, then we could have had a genuine exogenous boost to demand, and hence an increase in the output and employment in the non-agricultural sector. But here we come to the real crux of the matter. The total nominal expenditure by the Central government increased by 6.7 per cent in 2014-15, by 7.6 per cent in 2015-16, and by 12.5 per cent in 2016-17 (RE), when the Pay Commission's recommendations had to be implemented. The increase in total expenditure proposed in the 2017-18 budget is again only about 6 per cent. Since in each one of these years, the nominal GDP growth has exceeded 11 per cent, what this suggests is that Central government expenditure as a proportion of nominal GDP has been falling; even the Pay Commission-driven increase in 2016-17 scarcely contributes to an increase in this proportion.

In a situation where per capita agricultural income has not been increasing and the stimulus from net exports has been waning, the need of the hour was an increase in the stimulus from government expenditure. But we find instead that government expenditure as a proportion of GDP has been declining over this period. The government in other words has been more keen to keep finance capital happy by restraining expenditure, than to sustain output and employment growth in the economy. And while this fact may not be manifest in the GDP estimates (because of the flawed methodology adopted of late for estimating GDP), it is certainly manifest in the employment figures. The number of new jobs created in the organized sector of the economy, which used to be about eight to nine lakh per year in 2010 and 2011 and which was nonetheless lower than the number of new persons seeking work, has now fallen to less than two lakh per year, which expresses the seriousness of the crisis.

The government's fiscal conservatism arises from an unthinking adherence to the neo-liberal prescription of 'fiscal responsibility'. The effects of such unthinking adherence have been compounded by its unthinking 'macho' measures like the demonetization of currency notes. All these measures reflect the government's generally unthinking character. The country's economy has scarcely been in the hands of more unthinking persons.

The author is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

TELEGRAPH, JUN 20, 2017

A substitute for planning- Learning to do better by looking at other states

Ashok V. Desai

22

As chief minister, Narendra Modi had to spend a few days every year in meetings with the Planning Commission. It was a begging trip; the Planning Commission decided the allocation of plan funds to states. He had to accept whatever he was given. Gujarat's fiscal and economic performance was good. He was not rewarded for it; instead, he was given less because he was raking in so much in taxes. He hated the supercilious looks and shrill sermons of Montek Singh Ahluwalia; he did not see why Ahluwalia should lord it over just because he had been to Oxford. He was determined to abolish the Planning Commission if he ever came to power in Delhi.

When he finally arrived in 2014, he kept his resolve. That, however, raised problems he had not anticipated. For one thing, loans and revenue transfers from the Centre to the states had to be determined on some rational criteria. That is what the meetings with the Planning Commission that he hated were doing; in its absence, who was to do it? He could have asked Vijay Kelkar, the fortune-teller who gives weekly and annual astrological predictions for each of the dozen astrological signs; for instance, if you are Leo, his current advice to you is to take care of your belongings when you travel. But he was never asked; instead, Vijay Kelkar, the familiar figure who has spent years in the Delhi government, was asked. He passed on the report of the Finance Commission which he had chaired. That was, however, five years old; and it only told how Central revenue should be shared with states. When he was asked to come back to Delhi and show how to do that from year to year, he refused; he was happy to be out of Delhi's dog-eat-dog world.

So the prime minister imported Arvind Panagariya from America, and made him head of the Planning Commission, now renamed nighty - national institution for transforming India. Panagariya walked into Ahluwalia's chamber, and opened the drawer; he found it empty. It was a shock: the prime minister had transferred planning to states, and his finance minister had passed on all the money for it to them. So Panagariya decided to find out what states had made out of planning. What he found was fascinating; while there were sleepy states, some had tried out various new tricks. He was so impressed that he brought out a study of the best ones. None of them is new; but they increase productivity and incomes, and so deserve wider use.

×As its population and incomes rose, India has been using increasing amounts of water. First, hundreds of dams were built on rivers. Then, tubewells were drilled to take deep water out of the soil. Now these methods of increasing water supply have been exhausted, and it is necessary to economize on water. The Food and Agriculture Organization, together with a local non-profit organization, tried out an information system in Andhra Pradesh. Farmers and other observers spread across the land would report water levels in ponds, wells, dams and so on to information centres. This information would be collated and analysed, and the results would be sent down to farmers through the same machinery that collected information on water. Local farmers' organizations would receive the information, and act on it by taking various steps to use or economize on water.Gujarat faces the same problem of water shortage. There, the government has taken a different approach. It gives farmers a subsidy of 50 per cent of the cost, up to a maximum of Rs 60,000 a hectare, of investment in micro-irrigation - either drip irrigation or sprinklers or both.

In Madhya Pradesh, the government trains men under 40 as agricultural engineers and makes

23

them familiar with agricultural equipment. Then they are helped to set up custom hiring centres in or near villages, which they stock with agricultural equipment; they hire and train local young men to service the equipment. The custom hiring centres hire out equipment to farmers, thus saving them the capital cost of buying it.

Maharashtra grows a lot of soybeans. In 2008, an army of caterpillars descended on the soybean crop and rapidly gobbled up the leaves. The crop was destroyed, farmers lost Rs 14 billion, and the government gave them compensation of Rs 4.5 billion - a fraction of their loss. Now, the government has appointed pest spies, who keep watching the fields; if they find any pests - not just caterpillars - they ring up data collection centres, which pass on the information to people in agricultural universities. The academics feed in the data and work out the probability and geography of pest attacks. The state's five million farmers get two SMSs a week warning them if there are any signs of a pest attack; they can then apply pesticides as indicated.

Pests are not vegetarian. One of the most virulent pests is peste des petits ruminants - pest of small wanderers. A ruminant is any animal that eats in a hurry, stores the leaves and grass in its rumen, and regurgitates and enjoys them at its leisure; it includes cattle, sheep, goats, deer, giraffes and so on. The peste des petits ruminants gives a combination of stomach upset, fever and conjunctivitis that strikes bovines. It is deadly; most sheep and goats it infects are dead within a week or two. The 2012 livestock census counted 3,225,000 goats and 166,000 sheep. They are the poor man's cattle and are particularly popular in the eastern and northeastern states. There is a vaccine for peste des petits ruminants, but it cannot be administered like a run-of-the-mill inoculation; if veterinarians sit in air-conditioned offices and wait for goats to walk in, it will not work. The best way would be to visit villages with a lot of goats and send drummers all over to summon goat-owners. That is what the government of Chhattisgarh has been doing since 2010; it has managed to inoculate millions of goats.

Some 10 or 12 years ago, the Meghalaya government decided to try out strawberries. It chose two villages, Sohilya and Mawpran, brought strawberry seeds from Maharashtra which ruled the market, and got the villagers to try them out. Now strawberry cultivation has spread to many villages, which send their strawberries to Delhi, Bangladesh and elsewhere. As the villagers have prospered, the Sunday collections of the Sohilya church have gone up from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000.

These are only a few of the stories told by Niti Aayog in State Forward: Best Practices from our States. I do not know how far the colourful brochure would lead to the dissemination of the practices. But in principle, the idea is good; I would even say it is better than the Nehruvian plan. This government makes terrible mistakes sometimes - demonetization is an example - but it also has a good idea once in a while. I hope it will carry forward this idea of learning to do better by looking at other states. And why just states? It should look at other countries as well. The prime minister frowns on officials going abroad; but what matters is what they bring back.

24

EDUCATION

STATESMAN, JUN 21, 2017A reformed campusParthasarathi Chakraborty

West Bengal seems poised for a dramatic change in the forthcoming college union elections. This could well turn out to be the major campus reform in several decades. Indeed the ban on rallies in College Square is a prudent decision that ought to have been place long ago.

The students now will be required to contest union elections as ‘individuals’ with mandatory 60 per cent attendance and without being affiliated to any political party.

This will hopefully check campus conflicts between rival groups. The students’ council will be presided over by a teacher and another teacher will be its treasurer.

The St Xavier’s College model will be followed. The recommendations of the State government, if implemented seriously, will perhaps ensure peace and order in the academic circuit. Student union elections in India, including West Bengal’s centres of higher learning, have often led to ugly violence.

Despite the assurance of conducting free and fair elections, advanced by the authorities of universities and the state governments, the results have not been tangible. On the contrary, clashes between rival student groups and allegations of intimidation are frequent.

Such allegations and counter-allegations have vitiated the campus atmosphere. The ABVP, SFI, Chhatra Parishad, and Trinamul Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) have accused opponents of blocking the distribution of nomination forms. However, such allegations during student union elections in universities and colleges in West Bengal are not a new phenomenon.

The “tradition” was nurtured by the CPI-M during its 34 years in power. Political activities were remote-controlled by Alimuddin Street.

This has affected both higher education and research. The academics dutifully carried out the instructions of the party. Students were exploited by the CPI-M to strengthen the party.

No university or higher educational institution is completely free from the contagion of political influence. The violent ambience persists even after the change of dispensation. Student politics has mortal proportions. The incident at Madhav College of Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, where Professor Sabharwal was killed during the union elections, is deeply shocking. The post mortem report mentioned rib fracture. While two other teachers of the college were admitted to hospital, the former Principal, Prof Sachin Upadhyay, died of trauma.

The National Students Union of India (NSU), the students’ wing of the Congress, called a strike in protest against the alleged involvement of ABVP for manhandling the faculty. In retrospect, both the ABVP and NSUI acted at the behest of their respective political leaders. A similar

25

incident occurred in West Bengal on September 6, 2008. At BESU (Bengal Engineering and Science University) Samik Basu, a thirdyear engineering student, died in a confrontation between Independent Consolidation (IC) and SFI.

The deaths of Professor Sabharwal and Samik Basu illustrate the sordid scenario. The existence of politicised student unions in institutions of higher learning calls for reflection. There is little doubt that a responsible union can work for the best interests of the students.

But in reality, how often does this happen? The universities and colleges are turned into battlefields during elections. The political leaders pull the strings and jeopardise academic activities. In addition, a section of teachers, with links to particular political parties, propagate political ideologies to students for self-interest.

These teachers invite students to come under the umbrella of their party, and even advise them to grab the union by any means, fair or foul. Different groups of student unions, with the blessings of their mentors both inside and outside the institutions, strain every nerve to capture power.

This often leads to violence. The Naxalite movement in the 1970s was marked by student unrest and chaos. Since then, violence during student elections has become fairly routine in many institutions of excellence, including Kolkata’s Presidency University.

Two years ago, a students’ agitation in Jadavpur University was mercilessly attacked by the police, and amidst darkness. In general, student leaders are not in favour of de-politicising their unions. They usually articulate the perceptions of the party, skirting the actual problems of the students, or larger social issues that are not of any interest to their party.

The Lyngdoh committee had advanced certain recommendations a decade ago. The committee was headed by the former Chief Election Commissioner and comprised several other dignitaries, notably Ved Prakash, now UGC chairman and former Director of the National Institute of Education Planning and Management , and Pratap Bhanu Mehta of the Centre of Policy Research. It was expected that the committee would furnish cogent recommendations.

The Council of Principals of some of the colleges affiliated to universities in Kerala filed writ petitions against four universities in the state with regard to a judgment given by the High Court of Kerala.

They sought an order or direction from the court to not insist on college union elections on the basis of the directive issued to them by their universities to conduct elections until the existing system was transformed in keeping with the parliamentary model. At the behest of the Supreme Court, the Lyngdoh Committee submitted its valuable reports some of which are truly commendable.

These include the de-politicisation of student union activities. The committee wanted the process of elections to be streamlined. However, the ‘declaration model’ as envisaged by the committee suggests that aspiring candidates of the students’ union should furnish a declaration, stating that they have no links to any political party for the purpose of the election.

26

This is absurd. The invisible hand of politicians cannot be ruled out. Another “declaration model” states that the age of the contestants should not be above 27. They should have a minimum of 75 per cent attendance in class and can spend up to Rs.10,000 for the purpose of election. The restriction on the age-limit is a particularly notable recommendation.

The comments of T.V. Rajeswar, former Governor of Uttar Pradesh and Chancellor of the universities in Uttar Pradesh, are indeed remarkable. According to him, student union elections should be made optional. Universities and colleges should have the right to decide whether or not they want to hold elections. Apart from the elected members, the students’ unions should also have some nominated students from the field of academics and co-curricular activities, as members.

Amidst the political unrest and corruption, it might be difficult to de-politicise students’ unions. The academic community, the best teachers in particular, will have to ensure that the students do not become guinea pigs of political parties.

The party in power in West Bengal as well as the administrative authorities should act impartially to tackle the situation promptly. Managing higher education is a forbidding challenge, beyond the grasp of most people. The effective and meaningful implementation of public policy particularly education policy, which involves the interest and direct involvement of the students, must be tackled with sensitivity.

It calls for effective management skills, professional acumen and vision. It must not be tackled by politicians for their narrow benefits, ignoring the state.

De-politicising students’ unions is difficult to achieve at the present juncture. Yet we must strive to achieve it by all means.

The writer, a former Reader in Chemistry, Presidency College, Kolkata, was associated with UGC and UNICEF.

TIMES OF INDIA, JUN 16, 2017UP govt will have ‘posterboys’ to check rent-a-teacher scamHarveer Dabas & Deepak Lavania| 

HIGHLIGHTS There have been frequent complaints about teachers sending “people on rent” instead of

coming to class themselves. The real teachers then stay away for long durations, escalating the other problem of

chronic absenteeism.

27

BIJNOR/AGRA: In order to check the widespread problem of fake teachers, primary schools

in Uttar Pradesh will soon have photographs of "real" ones pasted on the walls.

Officials said they have been forced to do this after frequent complaints about teachers sending

"people on rent" instead of coming to class themselves. The real teachers then stay away for long

durations, escalating the other problem of chronic absenteeism. Schools are currently closed for

the summer break, but when students resume their session on July 1 they will be greeted with

photos of their real teachers.

In Bijnor district, for instance, there are 2,556 primary and higher primary schools in which over

2 lakh children are enrolled. As per the rules, the student-teacher ratio in primary and upper

primary schools should be 30:1 and 35:1 respectively. Officials say that while there is no

shortage of teachers, the standard of primary education is poor, mainly due to teachers skipping

work or sending someone else on their behalf. "It will be a good move. It will help parents

identify real teachers on whom they can lay their trust. Through this we will also be able to

establish a parent-teacher connection as the name and mobile phone number of a teacher will be

mentioned along with his or her photograph. Most importantly, it will help in checking the

presence of fake teachers," additional director of basic education, Bhagwat Patel said.

Bijnor's basic shiksha adhikari (in-charge) Pramod Sharma said that he has been issued oral

instructions "from above" and the work of pasting teachers' pictures will start soon. "This step

will improve condition of basic education in the state. We will now be able to verify the

authenticity of school staff," he said.

"Earlier, villagers did not know how many teachers were appointed in a school. In several raids,

we found out that some teachers did not come to work at all and kept a signed leave application

in school. Later when they were confronted, they showed the application to prove their

innocence," added Sharma.

UP basic education minister (independent charge) Anupma Jaiswal told TOI, "We have

discussed the idea of putting up their pictures on display boards. In schools without display

boards, photographs can be put up on the front page of the attendance register. This is a step

taken to combat the problem of proxy teachers."

28

INDIAN EXPRESS, JUN 20, 2017Move to make Dyal Singh day college runs into opposition

Dyal Singh (Evening) College was established to cater to the needs of working students,

particularly displaced persons coming from Pakistan in the aftermath of Partition. The morning

college argued that the bifurcation will only add to the problem of resources, as the DMRC has

taken away a substantial part of the land.Written by Shradha Chettri

Currently the building runs both Dyal Singh evening and morning colleges.

Dyal Singh evening college could soon function in   mornings Textbook tells students to write emails as short as skirts, sparks row in Delhi   University

What is (differently) at stake in Delhi   University?

Even as the Delhi University academic council prepares to discuss the conversion of Dyal Singh

(Evening) College into a morning college on Tuesday, the staff council of the morning college

has opposed the move. The council has written to Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi, stating

infrastructure is not adequate.

The council passed a resolution stating that they have “no objection to the conversion… but it

should not be in the same campus space”. The college is located at Lodhi Road in south Delhi.

“This will not only have a negative impact on the present health of the institute, but will have

long-term consequences that will destroy the college. The recent evaluation of the NAAC

committees has also pointed out strong infrastructural deficiencies,” said the resolution.

Dyal Singh (Evening) College was established to cater to the needs of working students,

particularly displaced persons coming from Pakistan in the aftermath of Partition. The morning

college argued that the bifurcation will only add to the problem of resources, as the DMRC has

taken away a substantial part of the land.

“The shortage of land in the college was also accepted by the then Union minister, who had

issued orders to compensate land for land rather than doing so monetarily,” read the letter.

The council also said the building cannot accommodate more than 2,000 students. With the

conversion, the strength of the students will increase to 6,000. The resolution also mentions that

29

the college already has a space crunch for sports facilities, library and hostels. They also claim

this has hampered holding of tutorials.

Countering the arguments, Pawan Kumar Sharma, principal of the evening college, said the

conversion will be done in a phased manner. He added that construction of seven temporary

classrooms has begun and will be completed before the current academic session begins.

“As for infrastructure, we require around 15 classrooms for simultaneous engagement of classes

initially. Moreover, the MCD has approved an academic block with 15 classrooms, construction

of which has already started…,” Sharma said.

Meanwhile, the university inspection committee has said that the governing body should set up a

panel to oversee bifurcation, demarcation of boundaries and division of assets and financial

resources. In the past, three evening colleges — Khalsa College in Dev Nagar, Ram Lal Anand

Evening and Deshbhandu Evening — were converted to morning colleges.

DECCAN HERALD, JUN 20, 2017Varsities Bill against public interest×

It is shocking to notice the kind of harm that the Karnataka State Universities Bill, introduced in the state Assembly by Higher Education Minister Basavaraj Rayareddi last week, will inflict on the cause of higher education in the state. The bill seeks to replace seven separate universities acts, which are in force now, with a single law. The Siddaramaiah government wants to bring all the 17 universities in the state within the ambit of this one law, claiming that it will improve their functioning. But it will actually impose control in the name of consolidation, and rigidity and uncertainty in the name of uniformity and rule-based functioning. The first principle about higher education is that there should be minimum government interference, which means political control, over their affairs. But this bill is designed to make such control easier. 

Most key clauses make it very clear that the government aims to take total control of the university education through the bill. Its nominees will dominate the search and selection panel for vice-chancellors under the bill. The chairman will be a nominee of the government, not of the chancellor. That means the vice-chancellor, who holds the most important position in the university, will in effect, be a government nominee. This will also solve the problem, in the government’s view, of conflict with the chancellors who sometimes have different views on appointments and other issues. The chancellor’s powers will be curtailed as they can be exercised only in consultation with the government. All recruitments will also be centralised, again for total control of appointments. It does not make sense to have central control over

30

appointments in different kinds of universities in different places. The building of infrastructure, which involves spending of money, will be tightly controlled by a common board, with approval needed from the government. Control of cash often means corruption, and when politicians decide how and for what money is spent, the real needs of a university take a back seat. It is the university that should decide what infrastructure it should have, but the bill leaves it to the government. 

Universities need autonomy in their functioning and decision-making to achieve excellence and maintain the best standards. The best universities in the world are those that have the least interference from outside their walls. The bane of Indian universities is that they have been the playthings of politicians and officials. This bill seeks to tighten their grip on the state’s universities. It is not in public interest and is detrimental to higher education. It will hurt the cause of students, teachers and the people, who have a high stake in the state’s education. It should be withdrawn at once. 

HINDUSTAN TIMES, JUN 19, 2017IIT plans to de-stress its students

IIT Kharagpur is part of the country’s marquee Indian Institutes of Technology colleges that lakhs vie for each year. Only a few thousands make it, entering a college of intense competition with some of the best minds to grab top jobs at the end of the course.

“Students are meeting increasingly less. This naturally creates a lot of problems as they end up being alone. This step will help them connect when they take a ten minutes coffee or tea break,” said Manish Bhattacharya, dean of students affairs of IIT Kharagpur, while explaining another effort to draw students out by installing vending machines for free tea and coffee. The machines, for which a Japanese company has been roped in, will be in place from the academic year beginning this summer

The blackout hours are helping, students say. “It was like an outreach programme where the administration wanted to speak to us… tell us what had happened and how it was important to be connected with fellow students. Many came out of compulsion but realised that it helped. Students interacted with each other, even discussing the suicides that had been troubling for many of us,” said Anisha Sharma, a student.

31

EMINENT PERSONALITIES

STATESMAN, JUN 20, 2017Gandhi and EinsteinJaydev Jana

Satyagraha excludes the use of violence in any shape or form, whether in thought, speech, or deed. Given a just cause, capacity for endless suffering and avoidance of violence, victory is a certainty

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Time magazine named Albert Einstein as its Man of the 20th century and Mahatma Gandhi as joint runner-up with Franklin D Roosevelt. Curiously, there remains a striking parallel between the constraints faced by the two outstanding personalities.

Einstein confronted an ‘inviolable constraint’ ~ the experimentally proven fact that the velocity of light in vacuum remains unchanged in a moving frame of reference. He ultimately succeeded in reformulating the laws of Newtonian mechanics by invoking a previously unthinkable requirement of mass, length and time-change in a moving frame of reference.

Thus was born the Special Theory of Relativity and a new era emerged in physics. Einstein’s goals were achieved through the analytical power of mathematical relationships and his explanations and hypotheses have also been tested by the validating power of experiments.

As a parallel, Gandhi confronted the oppression of the British in India and wanted to bring it to an end with the ‘inviolable constraint’ of non-violence.

A scientist is a dreamer and so is a revolutionary. Gandhi was both a scientist and a revolutionary. He was indeed an ‘evolutionary scientist’.

Traditionally, people have relied on rational discussion and violence, appealing respectively to reason and the ‘body-force’. In Gandhi’s reckoning, both methods were unsatisfactory in varying degrees.

He pulled out Truth and Non-violence from the dreary pages of philosophical treatise and transformed them into a dynamic concept by devising ideas and methods that had not been thought of or practised earlier. He explored a force that relied on the hitherto untapped ‘soul-force’ or ‘truth-force’ and also coined the term satyagraha as the name for the unique force.

Indeed, satyagraha is the sumtotal of the Life Message of Gandhi, the revolutionary social scientist. As he forged ahead on the path of satyagraha, in another corner of the world, Albert Einstein was observing the experiments being carried out in the laboratory by another scientist ~ Mahatma Gandhi.

32

On 27 September 1931, Einstein wrote to Gandhi openly expressing his admiration for successfully leading the Salt Satyagraha ~ “You have shown that we can achieve the ideal even without resorting to violence.

We can conquer those votaries of violence by the non-violence method. Your example will inspire humanity to put an end to a conflict based on violence with international help and cooperation, guaranteeing peace of the world. With this expression of my devotion and admiration I hope to be able to meet you face to face.”

Satyagraha is Gandhi’s greatest gift to mankind. Etymologically, the term means passion for, or firmness in Truth satya in Sanskrit means Truth and agraha denotes passion or firmness.

In his own words, Satyagraha is literally holding on to Truth and it means, therefore, Truth-force. Truth is soul or spirit. It is, therefore, known as soul-force’. Through heroic and solitary experiments Gandhi arrived at his radiant discovery of the power of collective non-violence, which evolved in time into the weapon of satyagraha.

On 11 September 1906, Gandhi opened the path of emancipation for the suffering humanity with the weapon of satyagraha.

Indians gathered at the Empire Theatre of Johannesburg and swore not to obey the proposed anti-India Ordinance, if it became a law. It was the beginning of one of the most significant experiments which held out considerable hope for the world ~ the experiment based on Truth and nonviolence.

In South Africa, Gandhi realised that the English term ‘passive resistance’, which is largely derived from the Christian concept of non-resistance to evil, failed to express the nature of non-violent resistance in the form developed by him.

To distinguish satyagraha from passive resistance, Gandhi said, ‘While in passive resistance there is scope for the use of arms when a suitable occasion arrives, in satyagraha physical force is forbidden even in the most favourable circumstances. Passive resistance is often looked upon as a preparation for the use of force, while satyagraha can never be utilised as such.

It destroys ‘hatred with non-hatred, violence with nonviolence’, by inviting the opponent to inflict injury and suffering upon the satyagraha. It emphasises the continuous cleansing of the mind. “Mere non-violence does not make any campaign a satyagraha.

It should be nourished by truth and love. It is founded on a clinical attitude to life. Gandhi first learnt the lessons of satyagraha from his family life. In his Autobiography he admits: ‘I learnt the lesson of non-violence (Satyagraha) from my wife. I tried to bend her to my will.

Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her; and in the end she became my teacher in nonviolence.’

33

Moreover, there was a confluence of different influences which came together, as if by a hand of destiny, and guided Gandhi to mould the instrument of satyagraha.

Hence a Gujarati hymn from India, a New Testament from Palestine, a book from Russia, a pamphlet from America, the Suffragette influence from Britain, and then two men in South Africa ~ a coach attendant and a white occupant of a waiting room, one of his own brethren whose cause he was fighting for and, above all, a poor illiterate Indian peasant who stood waiting to take him to Champaran where he conducted his experiments in satyagraha in the political laboratory in India for the first time in 1917.

All these influences came together to lead Gandhi, as if by a hand of destiny, into the battlefield of the 20th century to wage one of the noblest battles for the liberation of mankind.

Beginning in South Africa, Gandhi launched satyagraha against the laws of the Transvaal government, which required every Indian to procure a certificate of registration or face deportation. Another set of South African laws declared Hindu, Muslim and Parsee marriages illegal.

Gandhi’s movement led to the abrogation of such repressive laws. On his return to India in 1915, after 21 years in South Africa, the Mahatma tested the technique in the district of Champaran in North Bihar in April 1917. He applied the weapon to fight for the indigo farmers.

Under British rule, farmers in Champaran were made to cultivate indigo on 2/20th of their holdings (known as the satyagraha system) and the crop was bought at throwaway prices for textile mills in Britain. It was one of the darkest chapters of colonial exploitation.

The method of satyagraha was also used to settle the dispute between textile mill owners and labourers in Ahmedabad. In the age of violence we hardly understand the import of satyagraha. It continues to be diversely interpreted leading to doubt and confusion.

When South Africa is cited, it is brushed aside as an event that was possible on a small-scale, not applicable to a continent-sized country like India. In a similar way, Champaran, Ahmedabad, Kheda and Borsad are also undermined. What we really need is to understand satyagraha within its limits of satya and its concomitant, Ahimsa.

As a major proponent of peace, Mahatma Gandhi warrants serious attention both for his ideas of satyagraha and for his experiments with the same.

As Martin Luther King Jr. aptly said, ‘The choice today is no longer between violence and non-violence. It is between either non-violence or non-existence’.

The writer is a retired IAS officer.

34

HEALTH SERVICES

HINDU, JUN 22, 2017Mental health and the universityHemachandran Karah

The education system must treat mental health as a valuable public good in its own right

The Mental Healthcare Act was approved recently by Parliament. From now on,

stigmatising a mentally ill person, and denying him or her the wherewithal for treatment will

be illegal. As a teacher, I am interested in a special provision in the Act where public

institutions such as universities are urged to treat mental health as a valuable public good in

its own right.

Parents send their sons and daughters to university. On graduation, they expect the latter to

chase the ‘Indian dream’. What goes unnoticed in this pursuit of dreams is the undue strain

on well-being or inner resourcefulness which experts call mental health. Because it seems

intangible and yet ever-yielding, we tend to treat mental health as a kind of black box,

tucking it away until it becomes absolutely essential to retrace anomalies that precipitate a

crash. Surely, universities cannot afford this.

Pressure to perform

In the higher education scenario, sidelining mental health may still happen amid a belief that

the latter is anathema to rigour. Mental health takes a back seat even within something as

significant as a doctoral programme. For one thing, PhDs demand long-standing cerebral

commitment on the part of the students and their beloved. Over five-plus years, students

learn to grapple with hypotheses, narrative frameworks, and research methods. Can a

protracted doctoral training in methodological prowess render graduate students feel

wanting from within? Yes, it can. In fact, it may potentially undermine their wherewithal to

weigh real-life challenges such as a shaky knowledge of English, attention deficit,

competing gender demands, knowledge accessibility, and ups and downs of an unforgiving

employment market. They may even be prompted to ignore at their peril a structural evil

such as caste discrimination. Conversely, graduate students may slowly become self-

serving, or be wrongly perceived as such. In like manner, a million instances of social

regression may affect doctoral candidates during a student tenure and beyond.

35

Doctorate is a specialist training. It aims to prepare someone as a full-fledged professional

researcher in a given field. An undergrad programme, on the other hand, aims to offer a

generalist training in one or a selected cluster of knowledge systems. Furthermore, an

undergrad course is designed with the premise that its clientele are straight from the school,

and are in formative stages of life. Naturally, tertiary classroom is an ideal place to test the

scope, depth, and the reception of any field of knowledge. A mental health-aware teaching

plan may potentially strengthen such disciplinary manoeuvrings from the foundations up.

Opening up young minds

Take a literature class, for example. College teachers may make use of a supreme role of

literature such as an advocacy function. During an advocacy adventure, teachers and

students gain a rare freedom to explore something as ghastly as disability discrimination

caused by an ill social organisation. Towards this end, they may examine a circulation of a

malicious stereotype, and much more, in favour of a disability-enabled literary criticism. All

the same, to introduce the three-dimensionality of a discriminatory environment, I will

prompt students to imagine situations where one is pushed against the wall, harassed, and,

for that matter, offered an unexpected healing touch. Such a narrative imagination, I

contend, may enable students to open up. Further, it may help them appreciate something as

fundamental as emotional fulfilment, and factors such as discrimination that can potentially

wreck it from inside. Likewise, teachers may encourage students to consider how their

respective disciplines add value to human well being. A teacher of computer science, for

example, may offer a module on the impact of robotics and the digital revolution on human

emotion. In a similar vein, a civil engineering teacher may introduce a module on the close

link between habitat, architectures, and human resourcefulness. The possibilities are

endless! It all depends on the will of the teachers who are in some sense unacknowledged

pillars of the much-talked-about knowledge revolution.

‘Guru Brahma, guru Vishnu, guru dhevo maheshvaraha’. I will not hesitate for a moment to

ignore the mythical import of this Sanskrit dictum. However, I cannot afford to discount the

special role of a teacher in the creation, preservation, and destruction of knowledge. Great

teacher and student bonding facilitates a creation of priceless ideas, the preservation of

human goodness, and a war against bigotry. It is for this reason we should reinstate mental

health as a binding principle and an everyday reminder of human dignity in a university

setting.

36

Hemachandran Karah is with the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT

Madras. The views expressed are personal

37

JUDICIARY

HINDU, JUN 22, 2017Jailing a judge

Justice Karnan’s imprisonment should have been avoided to keep the judiciary’s dignity

The imprisonment of Justice C.S. Karnan, who recently retired as a judge of the Calcutta

High Court, for contempt is the culmination of a series of unfortunate and unpleasant

developments. It was a step that was best avoided in the interest of maintaining the dignity

of the judiciary. It is indeed true that Justice Karnan’s offences in making wild and totally

unsubstantiated allegations against a number of fellow judges, and his tactics of intimidation

against Chief Justices who tried over the years to discipline him, were shocking and

completely unacceptable. However, a Supreme Court that allowed him to enter the hallowed

portals of the higher judiciary would have done better had it adopted a more pragmatic

approach. Mr. Karnan was due to retire and it would have been sufficient if he was allowed

to do so under a dark cloud of dishonour, after spending his last days in office stripped of

judicial work. It is an extraordinarily low moment for the institution that a man who the

Supreme Court felt needed his mental health evaluated should be sentenced for contempt of

court, arrested and sent to jail. As for alternatives to imprisonment, recommending his

impeachment to Parliament was a possibility the Supreme Court may have also done well to

consider. There is no defence of Justice Karnan’s disdainful refusal to answer the contempt

charge or going into hiding to avoid arrest for nearly seven weeks — actions that only

served to reinforce his waywardness and disregard for the law.

It is also time for some introspection within the judiciary on the manner in which judges are

chosen. That someone as ill-suited to judicial office as Justice Karnan entered the superior

judiciary exposes the inadequacies of the collegium system. The absence of a mechanism to

discipline recalcitrant judges is another glaring lacuna in the existing system. With the

Constitution prescribing impeachment by Parliament, a long-winded and cumbersome

process, as the sole means to remove a judge, Chief Justices of the High Courts are at their

wits’ end when it comes to dealing with refractory judges who are not amenable to any

discipline or capable of self-restraint. Non-allotment of judicial work and transfer to another

High Court are measures available for the purpose, but in Mr. Karnan’s case these hardly

had any chastening effect. Instead, he continued to make the self-serving claim that he was

38

being victimised because he was a Dalit. He now has the option of moving the court to seek

suspension of his sentence or appealing to the President for its remission. No one would

really grudge Mr. Karnan an opportunity to secure his liberty, but one can only hope that in

future he does not use his time in prison to play to the gallery and portray himself as a

martyr in the cause of fighting corruption in the judiciary.

39

PRESIDENTS

STATESMAN, JUN 16, 2017Cynical charade

The offices of the President of India, and to a lesser degree the Vice-President, are much too lofty to be dragged into the quagmire of contemporary politics.

That, alas, happened even before the formal action got underway. While initially the line was that the BJP/NDA was in favour of a “consensus” candidate, the sights have now been lowered to talk of a “mutual” candidate, whatever that might mean.

Given the huge divide in the political establishment, it is apparent that whoever emerges from the complicated process of electing the President will have a difficult task elevating himself/herself to the nationwide acceptability desired of the Head of State.

It would be a suicidal over-simplification to say that the appointment is one of only ceremonial or decorative value ~ in times as troubled as the present the President plays the role of a father-figure, ensuring that the nation does not cast off the moorings enshrined in the spirit of the Constitution.

The election to Rashtrapati Bhawan must never be allowed to get bogged down in the no-holds-barred slugfests relished by our present leaders. Hence it is to be hoped against hope that the “consultations” in hand will not wind up further exacerbating the political divide.

There are already enough divisions on religious, caste and regional lines. The process has got off to a skewed start. Speaking on behalf the high-level panel the BJP set up to negotiate “across the aisle”, Mr M Venkaiah Nadiu made a point about the wishes of the people being respected ~ the very point he kept making during his unsuccessful stint as minister for parliamentary affairs.

It is clear that the intoxication with the electoral success of 2014, enhanced by state elections earlier this year, has not dissipated and Mr Naidu, and possibly his colleagues on the panel too, believe they have the mandate to send a person of their choice to the “palace on the hill.

Then why this charade of consultations etc? The NDA proudly avers it commands 48.6 per cent of the electoral college, it would avoid injecting cynicism into the equation by announcing the person of its choice ~ änd let others lick their wounds.

That choice, in all probability, has already been made and the formalities are likely to be completed before the Prime Minister leaves for the United States, so why not get the agony over with? BJP “sources” insist that the next President will be someone with ideological and philosophical affinity endorsed by the party’s alma mater.

So it is better to end speculative hypocrisy. That the Opposition is so fragmented it can, at best, strive to present a “joint-candidate” completes the sorry picture.

40

For no “non-professional politician” is likely to be lured into a scrap from which he/she cannot emerge with “honour intact”.

The days of “gentlemanly-contests” ended long, long ago.

HINDUSTAN TIMES, JUN 21, 2017The office of the President must be above caste, religion and gender

The candidate should not be part of a larger political agenda on the part of either the government or the Opposition. No one doubts the credentials of Ram Nath Kovind or the fact that him being chosen is a victory for equal opportunity

The president ultimately presides over the government and armed forces and should not a partisan or divisive figure. If the government and Opposition were serious about giving the Dalits a level playing field, they must go much beyond this move.

It is par for the course that most appointments to high office are needlessly politicised these days

and it would seem that the presidential post is no exception. It is unfortunate that Union minister

and Lok Janshakti Party leader Ram Vilas Paswan should have chosen to drag the discourse

down by saying that anyone opposing the candidature of Ram Nath Kovind as president will be

seen as anti-Dalit. He went on to say this choice was a `tight slap’ for those who branded the

Modi government as anti-Dalit. The Opposition meanwhile is said to be trying to put up another

Dalit candidate to counter this, further reducing the level of the debate.

The office of the president should be above all caste, religious or gender considerations. The

candidate should not be part of a larger political agenda on the part of either the government or

the Opposition. No one doubts the credentials of Ram Nath Kovind or the fact that him being

chosen is a victory for equal opportunity. Similarly, when KR Narayanan became president

much was made of his Dalit credentials, quite overlooking his distinguished diplomatic career.

The media is adding to the politicisation by terming the choice as a masterstroke and one which

has taken the wind out of the Opposition’s sails. The president ultimately presides over the

government and armed forces and should not a partisan or divisive figure. If the government and

41

Opposition were serious about giving the Dalits a level playing field, they must go much beyond

this move. The Dalits need education, healthcare and jobs, something which politicians pay lip

service to come elections. They are also often subject to caste violence and ostracisation in a

hidebound casteist society. This should be addressed.

In recent times, we have seen attacks on Dalits in various parts of the country. This is what

should exercise political parties. As of now, it would seem that the NDA has the numbers to

carry the day. Even if the Opposition were to put up a candidate, and it seems likely that it will,

all parties should resolve to keep the discussion from degenerating into a political fight. As of

now, the NDA is being accused of playing the Dalit card. This is to do a disservice to Kovind

who has come up on his own merit and has not played any card. The office of the first citizen

should really float above the fray and if going forward, the debate can be kept as non-partisan as

possible, this would set the right benchmark for the future.

BUSINESS LINE, JUN 21, 2017Presidential politicsVENKY VEMBUExcessive emphasis on caste identity is disquieting

A cursory analysis of Google trends, that dipstick measure of the perturbations of people’s minds, points to a moderate spike, over the past 24 hours, in searches for Ram Nath Kovind, the NDA’s candidate for President. The fact that even Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien acknowledged that he had logged on to Wikipedia to get better acquainted with facts about Kovind – the Governor of Bihar, a State neighbouring West Bengal – speaks volumes about the area of darkness that envelops politicians beyond the top rungs of the hierarchy. In much the same way that a “superstar culture” permeates every field of endeavour from cricket (as historian Ramachandra Guha recently bemoaned) to filmdom, in politics too, the arc lights of history appear to be reserved only for the A-listers. Anyone outside of this inner circle is seen to be deserving of the spotlight only if s/he is catapulted to accidental greatness, as has happened with Kovind.

On another count, that none of the reams of media speculation in recent days about the ruling party’s candidate for the election of India’s First Citizen even got an inkling of Kovind’s name is a pointer to the limitations of journalism that revolves around access to power. The Chinese whispers about NDA’s Presidential candidate were centred largely around LK Advani and Sushma Swaraj, and it’s fair to say the media was entirely blind-sided by the eventual nominee.

42

Another aspect of Kovind’s candidature merits mention: the excessive emphasis, both in media commentary and in the political calculations that underlie his nomination, on his Dalit identity. Social stratification on caste lines, of course, remains an unvarnished reality, and much work remains if that benighted curse is to be lifted. But it is hard to see the elemental reduction of the man who is likely to be India’s next First Citizen to the lowest common denominator of his caste identity, overlooking the other attributes that qualify him for the post, as a step forward in the evolution of a society based on progressive values.

Venky VembuAssociate Editor

TRIBUNE, JUN 20, 2017To Rashtrapati BhavanNDA makes a move and invites a challenge

ON Monday the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party announced its preference for the next President of India: Governor Ram Nath Kovind of Bihar. Other than the fact that he belongs to the Dalit community, it is difficult to see how the Patna Raj Bhavan incumbent makes the presidential cut. Admittedly, he is not without experience of public life; he also has certain familiarity with the legislative landscape. The problem is that the selection is seen as a realpolitik pursuit of a ‘Dalit Agenda’. In this age of identity politics and caste vote banks the NDA managers have their calculations and compulsions. The choice has already been framed, by the NDA ministers, in terms of political endorsement or opposition to a Dalit. Clever but crude. Such arguments are hardly likely to produce any kind of consensus on the NDA nominee.

The onus is on the non-BJP political forces to come up with a  better and more formidable candidate than Mr Kovind. That Mr Kovind is a party man need not be a disqualification in itself; but that he has strong and old affiliation to the RSS invites — as it should — reservation and opposition. The Opposition will be entirely within its democratic rights to contest the ruling party’s choice — just as the BJP had insisted, five years ago, on putting up PA Sangma against Pranab Mukherjee, despite the fact that the numbers overwhelmingly favoured the UPA nominee. The NDA has an edge this time and seems to have done its homework in ensuring support from many smaller non-NDA outfits. Still, the Opposition is under no obligation to give a free passage to the ruling party’s man.

Given that the ruling establishment has political momentum and assumption of popular acceptance behind it, its presidential choice is rather disappointing. It could pick an outstanding public figure to head the republic. Tokenism has its uses, and we have already had a Dalit president (KR Narayanan). The person who gets to live in the sprawling Rashtrapati Bhavan has

43

to inspire confidence that he/she can be relied upon to be a robust custodian of the republic and its constitutional values and traditions. On that count, the Kovind choice falls considerably short.

44

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

STATESMAN, JUN 19, 2017People's governance

The Odisha Chief Minister’s presentation at a conference of District Collectors on Sunday might, on the face of it, sounded like the typical cache of homilies.

But Naveen Patnaik’s initiative is critical not least because it comes in the aftermath of the ruling Biju Janata Dal’s defeat in the panchayat elections, and when the Bharatiya Janata Party has a foot in the door ahead of the Assembly elections.

Additionally, it is an essay towards redefining the role of those who helm the district administration, which is integral to panchayati raj, the bedrock of rural governance.

Above all, Patnaik has upheld the certitudes of public administration, and has abjured a political presentation... so very unlike his counterparts. The praxis thus suggested is no less valid for the rest of the country, including the government at the Centre.

He has in the main underlined the importance of what he calls “public service delivery and citizen-centric governance”, urging Collectors to function as “agents of change” for the improvement of the government’s delivery mechanism.

If that mechanism is today direly in need of improvement, one must wonder if something is wrong somewhere after 19 years of BJD rule, exemplified in the party’s debacle in the February election to the quangos.

“Today you wear two hats. You are the person who has expectations from the Government and you are also the Government from whom the people have lot of expectations. What would you expect from a citizen-centric Government ? Give your suggestions in this light. Let us work together for an empowered Odisha”. It is pretty obvious that he has tried to bridge the gap between voters and the government... post-election.

A surfeit of slogans can only obfuscate governance. Hence the marked emphasis on the “people, who are at the centre of governance”. Hence also the proposed web portal system for a feedback. A striking feature of Patnaik’s presentation was the emphasis on the “3Ts ~ Technology, Teamwork and Transparency”.

The blending of the three concepts of contemporary public administration lends no scope for a political exercise. In terms of specifics, he was riveted to the segments of governance with a bearing on the functioning of panchayats ~ rural housing, water supply, paddy procurement, schemes and services relating to farmers, facilities for students, municipal services, youth and skill development, implementation of the Forest Rights Act and welfare schemes for construction workers, public service delivery under the Odisha Right to Public Services Act and improvement of Government hospitals and health services generally.

45

It is hard not to wonder whether the BJD’s performance ~ after a prolonged spell in power ~ has been below par in the sectors that are pivotal to governance in a predominantly rural state. A chic Bhubaneswar with its four-lane roads can be deceptively impressive.

TRIBUNE, JUN 19, 2017A governance agenda for our timesNN Vohra

If the country has to be liberated from corruption and misgovernance, the political executive needs to accept its responsibility, assume leadership and play a visibly proactive role in promoting productive governance. It would no longer do to attribute all our failures, on various fronts, merely to the deficiencies of the bureaucracy.

SOCIAL UNREST: Police officials staging a flag march after communal violence in Palwal. Our tolerance levels are witnessing erosion.

AMONG  the factors which have contributed to the failures of governance in the past years: the foremost is corruption which has spread unchecked and presently permeates all levels of functioning. The continuation of corrupt and unlawful practices has resulted in seriously damaging the capability and credibility of the institutions of governance. It is a matter for grave concern that in many States it has virtually become a practice for pliant officers of doubtful integrity being handpicked on considerations of caste, community or political affiliations and assigned to lucrative posts for gathering funds for their political masters. Resultantly, the best available public servants are perhaps not even considered for manning important posts in the administrative system. This phenomenon has bred frustration and demotivation among the competent and upright elements in the various cadres, all over the country.

Day-to-day political interference in the functioning of the governmental machinery has generated indiscipline and unaccountability. Resultantly, it has become growingly difficult for the common man to get any work done without paying bribes and this has led to the common man losing trust in the functioning of the administrative system. 

The incessant interference in the functioning of police organisations has led to serious damage being caused to the morale, discipline and professionalism of the constabularies. A grave consequence of this situation has been the progressive deterioration in the maintenance of public order, open defiance of the law, and increase in the incidence of varied serious crimes. 

Criminal systems

46

The past decades have witnessed the growing phenomenon of criminal elements enjoying the protection of politicians in power and a threatening nexus developing between unprincipled public servants, corrupt politicians and organised crime and mafia networks in the country. Side by side, while several major scams and scandals have continued to remain under investigation for decades none of the alleged offenders have so far been brought to book. This is perhaps because the CBI and CVC, the apex central agencies responsible for dealing with corruption among public servants, are no longer looked upon as professional agencies which are capable of resisting political pressures and extra-legal influences. This has rightly led to the general belief that the rich and those who hold high positions are not answerable to the laws of the land. 

It is indeed a sad failure that successive governments at the Centre have not as yet succeeded in establishing an effective law to curb corruption in the highest echelons, including at the level of the Prime Minister. After decades of discussion, the country is still awaiting the appointment of the first Lokpal.

Time has come for leaders of all political parties, particularly those who wield power at the Centre and in the States, to recognise that the continuance of corruption shall damage and weaken the administrative and legal framework to the extent of threatening the very foundations of our polity and society and thus endangering the unity and integrity of the country.

The rule of law cannot be enforced unless the criminal justice system functions with speed, efficiency and fairness. Unfortunately, we have failed on this front. It has been reported that well over 3 crore cases are pending trials, of which nearly 2 crore relate to criminal offences. Because of the virtual collapse of the justice system, the offenders get discharged for want of evidence, after awaiting trials for years and there has been a worrisome decline in the conviction rates of the criminal cases put to trial. It is a matter for even greater concern that, besides the failures arising from infrastructural deficiencies, the judicial apparatus has been also facing complaints which reflect on its competence and integrity and, in the past years, members of the superior judiciary, even up to the level of the Chief Justice of India, have been the subject of serious allegations. 

We also face serious challenges in regard to the management of national security. For the past several decades now, adversary external agencies and international terrorist groups have been continuing with their determined activities to subvert and destabilise India by spreading religious fundamentalism, inciting conflicts and perpetrating violence and killings. It is important that the highest attention is paid to ensure that there is no gap or deficiency whatsoever in the effective preservation of the country's territorial integrity. 

47

Safeguarding national securityEven after the terror attacks in Mumbai, on our Parliament and, more recently, on the Air Force Base in Pathankot, we are still in the process of establishing the required country wide apparatus which would have the capability of effectively safeguarding national security. Also, the required steps have still to be taken for securing firm and clear understandings between the Centre and the States for enacting a comprehensive federal law for establishing a fully empowered central agency which can take immediate cognisance and promptly investigate a terror attack which may take place at any time, anywhere in the country, without precious time having to be lost in securing multiple clearances.  

It is of crucial importance, particularly at the current juncture, for the Centre and the States to join hands for working most closely together and tackling all major pending tasks for building a strong and vibrant India. In working towards such a goal, the very first steps required would relate to speedily de-politicising the entire administrative apparatus, curbing corruption, fearlessly enforcing the rule of law, ensuring impregnable national security management and creating a country-wide environment for re-energising, enlarging and strengthening the vital institutions of governance.

While the poverty ratios in our country have been progressively declining, about one-fifth of our population is still living below the international poverty line and, considering the large size of our population, the current level of unemployment is cause for serious concern. Even when the per capita incomes have marked a near ten-fold increase we have still not achieved the requisite headway in securing meaningful reduction in inequality. As reported, 1 per cent of the richest in our country are reported to own nearly 60 per cent of the total national wealth of which only 2 per cent is owned by the entire bottom half of the population. 

It is, however, a matter for great pride that today we are amongst the leading exporters of food commodities while, in the earlier years, we were almost entirely dependent on imported food grains. The corpus of our scientific and technical manpower is the second largest in the world and India is among the top in the arena of nuclear power and space technology. As an industrial power we do not stand very high, but India has the distinction of achieving the fastest growth among the major world economies. Another of our notable achievements is that in the past seven decades democracy has got deeply rooted in our country and despite adverse geo-political factors and influences in our neighbourhood and beyond, our democratic institutions are firmly established. At our last General Elections in 2014, no less than 66 per cent of the country's 834 million voters turned out to participate in the polls.

48

Reducing inequalityIn looking towards the future we need to recognise that among the most daunting challenges facing us is to reduce inequality without losing any more time. The continuance of social and economic inequalities could unleash confrontations and conflicts which could trigger chaos and disorder across the country. For this reason alone it is of vital importance to ensure that the administrative system, all over the country, functions in a manner which ensures against any injustice being done to our people, particularly to those who belong to the disadvantaged segments of our society and are already suffering. 

Another cause for concern relates to the wanton manner in which rights and liberties are sought to be exercised in our country. This trend must not continue. It is also essential that our citizenry remains duly conscious of its obligations and duties to the nation. Side by side, it would be beneficial for the Central and State governments to take sustained initiatives for promoting an environment which imbues our people with values founded in equality and secularism and respect for the diversity of our numerous and far spread communities. For this purpose we shall need to make conscious efforts to learn, understand and appreciate the diversities of our various communities in regard to their views, beliefs, cultural practices, customs and habits. 

Already, in several parts of the country, community relations are being disturbed and disrupted by growing caste and religious divisiveness. This is resulting in time-honoured socio-cultural traditions and practices being questioned with unjustifiable aggressivity, leading to inter-community clashes and violence. While we may be rightly proud of our civilisational past and repeatedly keep reminding the world that the people of India are multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual, it is cause for considerable anxiety that our tolerance levels and traditional sensitivity to differing views and beliefs are witnessing erosion. 

It is also necessary to devote due and timely attention to the upcoming generation. If we are to benefit from the youthful demographic profile of our large population it is essential that gainful opportunities are provided to our youth and all required steps are taken to ensure against their energies being exploited for generating disharmony or causing disruption. For this reason alone, it is essential to ensure against there being any failure in providing clean, prompt and efficient governance which is aimed at achieving inclusive and equitable human, social and economic development to rapidly promote the welfare of all our people, in every part of the country.

Efficient delivery of servicesIt would be useful to keep in mind that meaningful governance can be provided if all the public services cadres, across the entire country, ensure efficient delivery of services and secure timely

49

implementation of the nation-wide schemes and programmes which are aimed at poverty alleviation and removal of illiteracy and provision of employment, safe water, food, shelter and health care to all our people. These crucial goals cannot be achieved unless the entire administrative machinery functions with total commitment, efficiency and visible accountability. 

If the country has to be liberated from corruption, maladministration and misgovernance, the political executive shall needs to accept its responsibility, assume leadership and play a visibly proactive role in promoting productive governance. It would no longer do to attribute all our failures, on various fronts, merely to the deficiencies of the bureaucracy.  

In conclusion, let it be said that we do not have the luxury of waiting endlessly for reforming the governance of the country. If we have to move forward and achieve the goal of eradicating inequality and discrimination and for all our people to become free from want and fear of any kind, then the entire administrative apparatus, effectively and honestly led by the political executive, shall need to perform with efficiency, speed and accountability, all over the country.

Excerpted from the first B K Nehru Memorial Lecture delivered by NN Vohra, Governor of J&K, at CRRID, Chandigarh, on June 10. 

50

PUBLISHERS AND PUBLISHING

INDIAN EXPRESS, JUN 20, 2017Publishers to get HRD nod on ISBN in 48 hrs

The HRD Ministry is learnt to have held a meeting on May 31 on issues flagged by the ISBN

International Agency and decided to, henceforth, process all ISBN applications within 48 hours.Written by Ritika Chopra

ISBN is a unique 13-digit code, usually found on the back cover of a book above the barcode and used by buyers to identify books.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has sought an explanation from the Ministry of Human

Resource Development after the ISBN International Agency threatened to strip the Indian

government of its role in distributing International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs) to

publishers amid complaints of red-tapism and fears of censorship.

The HRD Ministry is learnt to have held a meeting on May 31 on issues flagged by the ISBN

International Agency and decided to, henceforth, process all ISBN applications within 48 hours.

As first reported by The Indian Express on May 25, the ISBN International Agency, in a letter

sent to Minister of State for HRD Mahendra Nath Pandey on March 29, had warned that it is

“seriously considering” revoking the ministry’s appointment as the agency for issuing ISBNs in

India as the number of complaints has “reached unacceptable levels”.

Last year, the HRD Ministry, then under Smriti Irani, digitised the allotment of ISBNs, a move

that publishers complain has inexplicably slowed down publishing in India. The new online

application system has also raised fears of censorship, with the Ministry seeking details of each

book before issuing ISBNs.

ISBN is a unique 13-digit code, usually found on the back cover of a book above the barcode and

used by buyers to identify books. Although ISBN is not mandatory to publish a book, it has

become an indispensable sales tool as bookstores, wholesalers and distributors keep track of

books by these codes.

51

The ISBN International Agency’s missive flagged three primary problems. First, the lack of

response on email or phone from the Ministry once an application for ISBNs has been filed.

Second, the delay of three to four months for publishers to get ISBN numbers allotted, against

the expected service time of two weeks. Third, restrictions imposed on the number of ISBNs

assigned in one go — from a set of 100 to a set of 10.

According to sources, in its meeting on May 31, the HRD Ministry has decided to frame standard

guidelines to dispose of requests expeditiously. This includes a new dashboard on the Raja

Rammohun Roy National Agency (RRMRNA) website to track pendency of applications.

The Ministry, however, is still concerned over hoarding of ISBNs by publishers as only half of

the unique codes issued to publishers till May had actually been used for publishing books. To

address this, publishers, henceforth, will be asked to upload the ebook on the National Digital

Library portal to support the fact that they have actually published the book and are not hoarding

ISBN numbers.

Meanwhile, all application backlog has been cleared by the Ministry, and a status report with the

above decisions has been shared with the PMO.

52

RAILWAYS

HINDUSTAN TIMES, JUN20, 2017Rajdhani rides could be 30% faster, travel from Delhi to Mumbai in 12 hoursTrains from Delhi to Mumbai and Howrah will become the fastest in India.Srinand Jha 

Later this month, Indian Railways will propose reducing the minimum travel time of the Delhi-

Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah lines from 17 hours to 12.

The plan would make each line the fastest in India, running at top speeds of 200 kilometres per

hour. The Gatimaan, which runs from Delhi to Agra, is currently number one with a maximum

speed of 160 km/h.

The average speed of many Indian trains is slower by over 100 km/h. According to officials who

spoke on the condition of anonymity, the premier Rajdhani trains currently average around 75

km/h; the prevalent Express and Mail trains trundle along at 52 km/h; and freight trains are not

even half as fast as that, averaging only 22 km/h.

Significantly, the proposal of the new plan is taking the official form of a cabinet note. In the

past, hundreds of projects have been announced in railway budget speeches but have languished

without approval by the cabinet. An estimated 394 rail projects worth nearly five lakh crore are

pending.

According to Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu, implementation of the new plan will begin in

January 2018 and take two to three years. An official who was not authorized to speak to the

media reckoned that the project will cost Rs 18,163 crore. The Railways will focus on improving

the electrical systems that direct trains and on civil engineering projects such as the lifting of

tracks and the construction of new fences.

Ultimately, the government hopes to run faster trains throughout the ‘Golden Quadrilateral’,

which also includes the Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Kolkata lines.

53

Of the 9,100 kilometers on the Golden Quadrilateral, the tracks along 6,400 kilometers (70% of

the total) do not have the capacity to run trains at 130 km/h. Speed restrictions are in effect at

730 locations. These stretches have 2,736 level crossings. “We are working at eliminating these

obstacles,” said a ministry official .

Britain has had trains going 200 km/h since 1976, and France is expecting this summer to start

running trains that hit and go above 300 km/h. The fastest commercial train in the world, the

Shanghai Maglev, tops out at 430km/h. Despite the considerable size and importance of the

railways in India, they have been unable to keep up with the standards set by some other Asian

nations and by Europe.

54