Frontline Magazine (The Hindu Newspaper) July 06, 2019 - July 19,

2019 (Volume 36, No. 14)

Volume 36 - Issue 14
Jul 06, 2019 - Jul 19, 2019
https://frontline.thehindu.com/magazine/2019/

COVER STORY
NEP 2019NEP 2019: The devil in the detail
HIGHER EDUCATIONCorporate route in higher education
JHARKHAND PRIMARY SCHOOLS MERGERPrimary schools: Merger muddle
The rot runs deep
SCHOOLSTowards education shops
HEALTH CARESkewed vision
LANGUAGEResistance to formula
INTERVIEW: S. JANAKARAJAN‘Floods and droughts are opportunities, not disasters’

THE NATION
WATER RESOURCESChennai’s thirst
ESSAYIndia's fascist challenge
CONTROVERSYWarning bells
COMMEMORATIONLegacy of a polymath
DROUGHTParched earth
PUBLIC HEALTH
Bihar's child victims of poverty

POLITICS
WEST BENGALMamata Banerjee's loosening grip
INTERVIEW: JOYPRAKASH MAJUMDAR‘Law and order has collapsed’

COLUMNS
C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR
Dangers of ‘Libra’

SOCIAL ISSUES
SOCIAL JUSTICE
CRIMEMurder of a DYFI activist in Tamil Nadu

ARTS & CULTURE

TRIBUTEGirish Karnad: Staging our times
HERITAGE
SUN TEMPLERestoration of the Sun Temple
SUN TEMPLEA gigantic restoration effort in Konark
LITERATURE
SHORT STORYOdia short story: And the tide turned

ECONOMY
FINANCE Shadow banking

WORLD AFFAIRS
EGYPTThe killing of Morsi
DIARY FROM TRUMPLANDA new bonhomie
U.S-IRAN Drones of war

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

BIOLOGYAll meats equally bad for cholesterol
HEALTH & FITNESSIn conflict settings, mental disorders higher
HEALTH & FITNESS Protein music!
SPACEChandrayaan 2: Giant leap for ISRO

BOOKS
Celebrating an auteur
Identity and belonging

OTHER
DATA CARD
DATACARD Slack spending

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28259123.ece
COVER STORY
NEP 2019
NEP 2019: The devil in the detail
MADHU PRASAD
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Queueing up for admission at Government Sarojini Naidu Girls College in Bhopal on June 29.
Photo: A.M.Faruqui

Victims of an unjust system: Rohith Vemula. Photo: By Special Arrangement

Victims of an unjust system: S. Anitha. Photo: By Special Arrangement

Victims of an unjust system: Dr Payal Tadvi. Photo: Vivek Bendre

The draft National Education Policy 2019 systematically evades the Constitution’s focus on
social justice in educational institutions. It seeks to have power concentrated in an overpowering
authority in order to keep the deception of having generated a level playing field within a
fundamentally unequal, unjust and discriminatory social system.
Can one hope that “the Draft National Education Policy 2019” will be the foundation on which
the education policy of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government would
be conceived, articulated and comprehended? Will it provide justification for some of the
sweeping strides already taken by the Government of India (GOI)—the massive cuts in
budgetary allocations for both school and higher education with corresponding schemes for
“rationalisation” of government schools through merger/closure of well over one lakh schools
across the country, and the slashing of seats in public-funded higher education institutions while
declaring at the same time that a non-existent “initiative” by a private corporate be recognised
as an “institution of eminence”? Or will it be yet another smokescreen behind which different
agendas are being furthered?

Dr K. Kasturirangan, chairperson of the “Committee for Drafting the National Education Policy”,
is hardly reassuring in his Preamble to the Draft. Assuming that he would only have to build on
the report submitted by T.S.R. Subramanian, who had chaired the “Committee for Evolution of
the New Education Policy”, and the Ministry’s subsequent “Some Inputs for the Draft National
Education Policy 2016” from the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, he had agreed
to submit it within six months (emphasis added, throughout). However, as he began to get “a
sense of the members… with their rich and unique insights into our society and its implications
for education”, he realised that “this Committee was going to be ‘out-of-the-box’ in its thinking”.
Hence the two-year delay in preparing the draft.

The “completely new and far-sighted policy” to change the “educational landscape” and prepare
the youth to meet “present and future challenges” is said to be guided by the goals of “access,
equity, quality, affordability, and accountability” and will look at education as a “single organic
continuum from pre-school to higher education”. Ensuring universal access to education of “high
quality” is stated to be the draft’s topmost priority, as quality and equity are “considered central
to sustainable development, achieving success in the emerging knowledge economy and
society…and for building an equitable, just and humane society”.

The following recommendations are welcome: renaming the HRD Ministry as the Ministry of
Education; the emphasis on teacher education; extension of coverage of the Right to Education
(RTE) Act, 2009, and the mid-day meal scheme to include pre-primary on the one hand, and up
to Class XII on the other; review of the amendment to the RTE Act’s no-detention policy up to
Class VIII and the conception of the education system as an organic continuum from pre-
primary to higher education. Regrettably, providing an “exit” point from Class VIII itself without
demanding a complete ban on child labour is problematic as the current child labour laws allow
children to work in “family” enterprises from 10 years onwards, reinforcing both caste-based
occupations and economic exploitation. However, two fundamental contentions require to be
probed as they apparently undermine the laudable objectives of the draft.

The first springs from a cavalier attitude to the Constitution using a selective quotation from Dr
B.R. Ambedkar that the “working of a Constitution does not depend wholly on the nature of the
Constitution….”

The second claims that what we have “so far not recognised is that there are a multiplicity of
agencies and individuals in this country who will come forward willingly with their support if they
are convinced that there is sincerity and honesty and an ethical approach to building a
knowledge society”.

The republican Constitution of India is the outcome of a protracted and wide-ranging struggle
against British imperialism. It was committed to the creation of a modern, independent nation
and society in which the rights of all persons would be recognised and upheld. The nation-state
is constitutionally obligated to defend and further people’s rights irrespective of caste, creed,
region, language, gender and disability.

In particular, the state is obliged to ensure and safeguard the rights of those sections who, for
centuries, have been traditionally relegated, often with strict religious sanctions, to a
“depressed” status in the interest of dominant castes and communities. Consequently, in the
education sector, special provision for “reservation” in post-secondary education and
subsequent employment were made for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (S.C.
and S.T.) and extended to cover Other Backward Classes (OBC) following the implementation
of the Mandal Commission recommendations. Despite these measures, the educational status
of these sections and that of the Muslim minority remains distressingly low. Between 6 and 10
per cent are able to complete Class XII and hence over 90 per cent do not even become eligible
for reservation.

Silent on reservation
Yet, the draft, which also refers to relevant Unified District Information System for Education (U-
DISE) data for 2016-17, is shockingly silent on the issue and systematically evades the
Constitution’s focus on social justice in educational institutions. The issue of making provisions
for challenging and countering caste-based discrimination and oppression is absent from the
document. In fact, the word “caste” itself has been used perhaps only twice in the draft and that
too in a perfunctory listing of categories. The “reservation” policy is not referred to even once
and the draft consistently emphasises the so-called “merit-based” criteria for admissions at all
levels of post-secondary education, including the mandatory BEd for teacher training; for
scholarships, for financial and other forms of aid on the basis of “socio-economic
backwardness”; for the selection and appointment of faculty and for promotions during their
career. How such a “meritorious knowledge society” can be created without addressing the
issues of centuries of exclusion and oppression of the lower castes, of gender discrimination, of
communal hostilities and tribal marginalisation appears to be a matter of little concern.

Unfortunately, the draft neglects to quote Dr Ambedkar on this question. Speaking in the
Bombay Legislative Council, he unambiguously stated that “if all these communities are to be
brought to the level of equality, then the only remedy is to adopt the principle of inequality and to
give favoured treatment to those who are below level”.

Although it is recognised that “under-represented groups”—a euphemism for the “excluded”

categories of persons—constitute a major deprived section of Indian society and require
attention, no specific provisions by the Central and State governments are envisaged for them
in the draft. It merely states that giving complete autonomy to private institutions of higher
education may “encourage” them to voluntarily make some provision “either within or outside of
CSR [corporate social responsibility]”.

The draft’s approach is particularly provocative as it comes in the wake of the institutionalised
“murder” of research scholar Rohith Vemula (University of Hyderabad) which led to widespread
and angry protests from all democratic sections. The GOI brazened it out as two of its Union
Ministers were directly implicated in goading university authorities to ignore the legitimate
grievances of the Dalit scholars. This was followed by the suicide of a 17-year-old Dalit student,
S. Anitha, from Tamil Nadu after her petition against imposing the National Eligibility cum
Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to Tamil Nadu State government medical colleges was
rejected by the Supreme Court. In her moving statement, Anitha had questioned the justice of
expecting those who had been consistently denied equal opportunities to “compete” with the
privileged for admission. Just recently, Dr Payal Tadvi, a second-year tribal student pursuing her
postgraduate medical education, was driven to suicide because of constant harassment and
persecution by upper-caste seniors at her Mumbai hospital.

These prominent cases are only the tip of the iceberg behind which lie the barely registered
suicide deaths of several thousands of students from marginalised communities in higher
education institutions as the combined result of socially discriminatory practices and insensitive
responses from peers, faculty and administrators. One would have expected the draft to do a
sustained analysis of this clearly problematic situation and offer recommendations appropriate
to its urgency and gravity.

Instead, we have a sanitised assertion that students from “socio-economically disadvantaged

backgrounds require particular encouragement and support to make the transition to higher
education successfully. …Universities and colleges must be required to set up high quality
academic support to educationally disadvantaged groups and must be given adequate funds
and academic resources to carry this out effectively” (page 241). This appears both
exasperating and even offensive as there is a constant and self-conscious endorsement in the
draft of “ancient” educational forms such as the caste-based gurukula, which is prominently
eulogised among a list of “religious schools”.

Further, the term “Indian” as it is used to describe culture, civilisation, educational institutions
and principles and the “India centred” vision of the draft make it difficult to escape the
conclusion that the “Hindutva”/“Manuvadi” identification is being propagated as fundamental to
Indian identity and nationhood. For example, in order to give legal studies the “necessary social
relevance and acceptability”, framers of the law curriculum are advised to “fall back upon the
culture and traditions of people, the history of legal institutions and the victory of ‘dharma’ over
‘adharma’ writ large in Indian literature and mythology” (para 16.7.1).

Promotion of Hindi & Sanskrit

Although references are made to the universities of Nalanda and Takshashila, and the draft’s
goal is proclaimed to be “inspired” by both Nalanda and the Ivy League Schools, the plurality of
India’s diverse sociocultural forms, languages, practices and beliefs are consistently
downgraded by being referred to as “local”, “regional” and “State-level” to distinguish them from
what is asserted as the dominant “Indian” identity. Thus, the draft recommends that promotion
of Hindi and Sanskrit will be the Central government’s responsibility because these languages
are not “restricted” to one State or community. The other Indian languages of the Eighth
Schedule will remain only within the jurisdiction of their respective State governments. Perhaps
this explains why the voluminous draft has been made available only in Hindi and English.
Given the limited time to respond to the draft, it would be difficult even to arrange for translations
in any other Indian language.

The treatment reserved for Sanskrit makes the neglect even clearer. Stated to be an “important
modern” and functioning Indian language so that it can be propagated under the three-language
formula along with Hindi and English, it is further privileged by claiming it as the classical basis
for most other Indian languages. Its pre-eminence is thereby asserted over other “regional” or
“community”-specific classical languages whereas, in fact, it is Brahmin dominance and the
“standardisation” of other Prakrit languages that have contributed to their “sanskritisation” over
centuries.

Multiple Agencies
Consider next the proposed role of multiple agencies, including religious, private corporate
and/or philanthropic ones, in making provision for education. The need to find funding and “to
find it quickly” seems to be a primary motive, but the experience so far with high fee-charging
private schools and private universities has been less than inspiring as an important means for
furthering access to education. The public-private partnership (PPP) model has become
associated with the commercialisation of education. The draft’s solution is to substitute “Public
Philanthropic Partnership” for the earlier PPP, but no attempt at regulation is proposed as it is
suggested that “autonomy” will allow space for private “partners” to voluntarily rationalise costs
and fee structures imposed on students.
Even low-budget private schools that are depleting public funds through reimbursement for
enrolling students from the economically weaker sections under the RTE Act have proved to be
inadequate as the majority of them have failed to meet the standards laid down in the Act and
are now engaged in demanding that conformity to these norms be dropped so that students are
not denied education. Significantly, the draft proposes that there should be no rigidity in
observing the “input” norms prescribed by the RTE Act. The emphasis in government schools, it
is argued, should be more on “outcomes” in order to improve learning skills.

Other agendas can also be well-served. Multiple agencies can run seamlessly with total
autonomy within the structure of the public-funded system, but in what is truly novel for India
today, they can also run parallel to it. In a little-noticed move, in February 2019 the Central
government gave sanction to a private “Bharatiya Shiksha Board” (BSB), which had earlier been
cleared by the Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Vedavidya Pratishthan (MSRVP), a fully funded
autonomous body under the HRD Ministry working on promotion of “ved vidya”. The BSB will be
funded, designed and managed by Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth. Like any other school board it
will draft the syllabus, conduct examinations and issue certificates. Once established, it is likely
to benefit educational institutions such as Acharyakulam, Vidya Bharati schools (run by the
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh) and gurukulas run by the Arya Samaj, allowing them to
sustain their model of education up to Class XII, something which school boards like the Central
Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) did not permit so far.

Alongside these institutional channels, the draft also recommends inducting “volunteers”, non-
governmental organisations and “social workers” through a National Tutors Programme (NTP)
for retaining a close tutoring relationship with government school students on the one hand and
adults in the literacy/continuing education programme of the Adult Education Centres (AEC) on
the other.

It is clear that such an open-ended system will be almost impossible to monitor both for its
adherence to the goals set by the draft for the education system or for the public funds and
assets that it will become possible to assign to these diverse private players.

Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog

The draft’s crucial recommendation for setting up a supreme policymaking and oversight body
for the entire education system, the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (RSA), is a singularly
unimaginative and centralising solution to the problem of holding together a nationwide system
of public/private school complexes—the “smallest unit of management”, and colleges and
universities that are autonomous and empowered to combine curricular, administrative and
financial elements within a single entity. This demands credible accountability procedures, and
once again the draft resorts to the unimaginative but market-friendly one-size-fits-all remedy. All
provision of education, regulation, standard setting, accreditation and funding will be undertaken
by separate entities.

The deception of having so generated a level playing field within a fundamentally unequal,
unjust and discriminatory social system is clearly in need of the “authority” rather than the
“vision” of the Prime Minister as Chairperson of the RSA, and within the Prime Minister’s Office,
that is, within the leadership of whichever regime is currently occupying the highest level of
political office, to keep it all in place. All the bodies determining “accountability” are, of course, to
be appointed by the RSA.
However, constitutional provisions are violated by this concentration of power. Education comes
under the Concurrent List, and the Centre cannot override the powers of the States either in
determining or in regulating education which are the prerogative of State governments and
legislatures both of which are finally answerable to the people of the State concerned.

The impact on the education system itself is also extremely negative. The necessary autonomy
and independence of the education system from direct political or bureaucratic control is
seriously undermined by the proposed RSA. The report of India’s first Education Commission,
the Kothari Commission, emphasised that teachers and students constituted a “learning society”
with “shared” (but not uniform) “goals” which they must be left to pursue with as much academic
freedom as possible, retaining their independence from interference by political and market
forces, from pressures of governmental, administrative and financial intervention, and the
prejudices of socio-religious ideologies.

Unfortunately, the draft fails to defend the learning society on every one of these counts.
Madhu Prasad is Member Presidium, All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE).

https://frontline.thehindu.com/economy/article28261967.ece
ECONOMY
FINANCE
Shadow banking
ANUPAMA KATAKAM
Print edition : July 19, 2019

The DHFL office in Mumbai. Photo: REUTERS

As the crisis affecting India’s NBFC sector simmers, self-serving calls for a bailout rend the air
ahead of the Budget.
After the notoriously opaque financial conglomerate Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services
(IL&FS) collapsed last year, there was fear all around of a wider conflagration in Indian financial
markets, the country’s own mini Lehman Brothers moment. It did not happen, but a firestorm is
waiting to explode.

Engulfed in it will be not only non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) but all entities in the
financial sector in one way or another—mutual funds, rating agencies and the usual suspects,
accounting firms that have been accused of looking the other way when it mattered most.
Connecting all these are, of course, borrowing companies, many of which have borrowed
recklessly and sowed the seeds of the grief that has enveloped the sector.

And, as is characteristic of every major financial crisis, there is a growing chorus now
audaciously demanding a bailout. As the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman prepares her
maiden Budget, she faces not only the pressures of a powerful lobby but also competing
demands on a fisc that is stretched taut.
The problem of NBFCs defaulting on payments running into thousands of crores became grave
ever since IL&FS Financial Services announced last September that it could not meet its
massive loan obligations.

In 2019, four more large NBFCs have defaulted on payments. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
realises that the ramifications of this liquidity crunch could lead to a massive financial crisis.
However, financial analysts and economists ask whether a bailout is a solution and whether it is
even justified. After all, are NBFCs, acting in collusion with other players, responsible for the
mess they are now in?

NBFCs play a vital role, lending mainly to the infrastructure, real estate and auto industries.
Known as shadow banks, NBFCs fill a space in the lending arena which is not always serviced
by commercial banks. In fact, the tightening credit situation, triggered by the massive and
mounting non-performing asset (NPA) burden of banks, left a vacuum that these NBFCs filled,
often acting recklessly. Mutual funds, in turn, lent to the NBFCs, encouraged by the happy-go-
lucky ways of rating agencies and accounting firms. Investors in mutual funds now fear for their
investments.

NBFCs are far from being the Good Samaritan lending when the banks do not. The IL&FS
Financial Services situation exposed a seamy arrangement which involves credit rating
agencies, mutual funds, moneylenders, auditors and, of course, borrowers. “When you look at
how they operated, you will realise why they do not deserve a bailout. They should be allowed
to go under and be charged with a crime,” says an investment banker. “Until a company goes
belly-up, we do not know what is going on. There are fundamental flaws in our system that need
immediate addressing, and this does not include bailouts.”

When the chain of lending and borrowing is examined, it is obvious that this crisis is the result of
complicity between several players. An NBFC insider explains: Auditors of an NBFC give the
company a clean chit so that it can earn a good credit rating.

The rating procures the NBFC crores worth of investments, mostly via mutual funds. Typically,
fund managers look at credit rating before investing. The NBFC borrows on a short-term basis
but lends for long-term projects, returns from which may be some time in coming. Most of the
time the NBFC does not recover its loans from the projects, but it needs to pay back its lenders.
So it uses the funds coming in from mutual funds and other lenders to roll over its loans.

Because NBFCs keep getting a good credit rating as they are complicit with the auditors (who
want to keep their clients and get more contracts), they keep getting the money. As much as
NBFCs are culpable, so are the others.

After the IL&FS debacle, the government asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to
bar the company’s auditors—Deloitte; and BSR, an affiliate of KPMG—for five years on charges
of lapses in auditing the company. The matter is under review. Meanwhile, both auditors are
under investigation by several agencies, including the Serious Fraud Investigation Office.

The culprits
The rating agencies downgraded IL&FS’s credit rating only after it became clear to everyone
that it was on the verge of a collapse. What was the point of having a rating agency that could
not foresee a collapse? For instance, in the IL&FS case, trouble started brewing in June 2018
when one of its companies defaulted on payments. It was in August 2018 when a few more
IL&FS companies defaulted, that the rating came down. IL&FS’ outstanding loans reportedly
amount to Rs.91,000 crore (“Road to Ruin”, Frontline, October 26, 2018).

It was well known that NBFCs were in trouble, but it was in June 2019 that the situation became
dire. Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL), another NBFC, reported debts of approximately
Rs.1 lakh crore.

When this came to light, the rating agencies CRISIL and CARE downgraded the A4+ graded
NBFC to default status. DSP Mutual Funds, an investment house, sold DHFL’s commercial
paper at a discount a few weeks after the IL&FS crisis broke; soon problems at DHFL began to
compound. In seven months, the company slid to the verge of bankruptcy.

In January 2019, the Essel group, another big player, said it was suffering from payment issues
to the tune of Rs.1,029 crore. A month later, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Capital and Reliance Infra
confessed to Rs.35,000 crore worth of outstanding debt. Ambani has appealed to the RBI to
help the “gasping NBFCs”. He has also gone out of his way to say he is servicing the debt
against “insurmountable odds”.

Bankers estimate that close to three trillion rupees are locked in real estate, construction and
infrastructure projects. While it is difficult to estimate the exact default amounts, they believe the
collapse of big names has led to a liquidity freeze, and the fear of the contagion spreading has
hit markets.

To understand why these particular companies are critical in the NBFC space—Credit Suisse
says up to 15 per cent of debt mutual funds’ assets under management are accounted for by
four stressed companies—DHFL, Essel group, IL&FS and Anil Ambani’s ADAG. These four
companies together owed Rs.3.6 lakh crore to lenders at the end of March 2018. To put this in
perspective, one only needs to recall that the entire NPAs of public sector banks are a little over
Rs.10 lakh crore.

A Mumbai-based mutual fund analyst told Frontline that unless the problems of liquidity and
solvency were settled quickly the uncertainty in the market would remain. “It does not appear
that the government is in a hurry to bail out or provide a safety net as it sees it as a moral
hazard,” said the analyst.

Currently, the loans outstanding at NBFCs stand at Rs.17.2 lakh crore, according to the RBI. To
keep afloat, meet payment commitments and bolster investor confidence, defaulters are trying
to sell company assets. The Essel group, for instance, is looking for a buyer for 50 per cent of
the promoter holdings in Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, one of its flagship companies.

“These are private corporations and it isn’t fair that due to their bad judgements and shady
arrangements the government has to pay. On the other hand we cannot neglect those who will
be affected by the negativity towards NBFCs,” said the Mumbai-based analyst.

Genesis of the crisis

The genesis of the crisis was demonetisation, said an economist with a multinational investment
bank. At that time a flood of cash got deposited in the banking sector. This found its way to the
debt mutual fund market. Unfortunately, lending happened without much collateral. In fact,
during this crisis one needs to question the actions of mutual funds and their systems on risk
assessment capabilities and processes, he argued.
Speaking of mutual funds, Chetan Pandey, a consultant who was earlier with ICICI Prudential,
says, “Portfolio managers have gone way ahead of their mandate, maybe because they were
super confident that money will keep coming. In fact, many of them should be pulled up for their
lack of better judgement.”

Pandey reckons that the exposure of mutual funds to NBFCs is about Rs.76,000 crore. Mutual
funds with exposure to debt were particularly negligent in investing in NBFCs. Two marquee
players, HDFC Bank and Kotak Bank, have delayed redemptions recently. “This is
unacceptable. An investor should get back his money as and when he wants it. These are not
good signs,” says Pandey.

The way forward

The bailout clamour rests on the assumption that the new government cannot afford a major
financial crisis so soon after assuming office. There are some who believe that the RBI’s Rs.3
lakh crore reserve, which belongs to the Government of India, ought to be transferred to public
sector banks to stem the downward spiral. But for this to happen, the RBI needs a credible
external signal mechanism, which can best be provided through an asset quality review of the
NBFC sector, said the economist.

NBFCs claim they can sell assets and recover some of their outstanding. But analysts and
economists believe these are not long-term solutions. A fundamental problem with NBFCs is
that unlike commercial banks they are not subjected to the same stringent regulations. Analysts
say the RBI and Securities Exchange Board of India’s light-touch approach towards NBFCs is
also responsible for the current situation.

For now, the RBI appears to be telling NBFCs: “You have made your bed, now lie in it.” RBI
Governor Shaktikanta Das has said the central bank will step in only if required, suggesting that
it does not view the crisis as a systemic one, just yet. At its policy meeting in June, the RBI
indicated that it viewed liquidity conditions as broadly sufficient and would improve transparency
around how it assesses this.

Currently, there are about 11,400 shadow banking companies in India with a combined balance
sheet worth Rs.30,400 crore and with loan portfolios growing at nearly twice the pace of banks.
All eyes will be on the government and the central bank as they struggle to fend off a crisis that
looms large over the Indian financial sector on the eve of the Budget.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28259190.ece
COVER STORY
HIGHER EDUCATION
Corporate route in higher education
SANJAYA KUMAR BOHIDAR
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

A protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhion June 2. Photo: Ravi Choudhary/PTI

A protest outside the HRD Ministry against the government’s decision to grant “Institution of
Eminence” tag to the yet-to-be-established Jio Institute of the Reliance Foundation, in New
Delhi on July 11, 2018. Photo: Sandeep Saxena
The government’s obsession with getting a few higher educational institutions in some kind of
world ranking should be replaced by attention to quality of education available to the mass of
our students.
On a cursory reading, the lengthy and tedious draft National Education Policy (NEP) seems to
have some “feel good” effect owing to its passionate advocacy of increased public funding,
condemnation of the currently acquired meaning of the word “autonomy” as freeing institutions
from public funding, and its equally passionate advocacy of liberal arts education. It turns out,
however, that the magnitude of increase in public funding it seeks is too modest for the
restructuring and expansion in higher education it advocates. Anyway, it admits that the
proposed policy does not involve any binding commitment towards funding on the part of
governments. Its definition of autonomy does not envisage freedom from the market or the
government and includes optimisation of resources. University autonomy and academic
freedom popularly understood would become casualties to the changes in the regulatory regime
and governance structure it lays down. The shallow instrumentalism of its advocacy for liberal
arts education goes together with its uncritical assumptions about the role of educated workers
in a “knowledge economy” and what it calls the “fourth industrial revolution”.

What is most jarring in the draft NEP is the absence of adequate stocktaking of the current state
of higher education in India save the mention of an all-round quality deficit and suboptimal size
of many institutions as well as a critical evaluation of the recent policy measures of the Central
government. This is especially so since the draft essentially expands on and extends the
various actions already under way.

Since the adoption of the National Policy on Education 1986-1992, a significant expansion of
higher education has occurred more rapidly in the private sector, which accounts for the majority
of students enrolled and does not provide reservation for deprived sections of society. In the
face of systematic underfunding many public-funded institutions have been commercialised
through increased reliance on self-financing courses. The increase in the number of teachers
and the magnitude of infrastructure have not kept pace with student enrolments. In fact, many
institutions of repute stand ruined since the number of sanctioned teaching posts got reduced
even as student intake increased. In a significant number of institutions, there are either no
teachers for various subjects or so few of them that teaching-learning is not feasible. Enrolment
is reduced to mere appearance in examinations and acquisition of degrees.

The decline in standards in school as well as higher education has led to the emergence of a
profitable industry involved in coaching students for examinations and for gaining entry into
coveted academic programmes and institutions. This, too, has exacerbated the inequities.
Remedying the declining standards will require a huge surge in public funding. Any belief that
some magic formulae will improve quality without adequate input provisions is questionable.

Academic freedom and institutional autonomy have been eroded by a culture of bestowing
favour on the compliant and punishing those among the academia who express critical opinion.
Unless this is remedied, the expertise of the academia to critically evaluate and formulate
academic programmes is bound to be wasted, and knowledge production and dissemination will
get affected adversely.

In 2008, the University Grants Commission (UGC) responded to the decline in standards by
advocating a uniform calendar and academic structure across the country. That structure is a
semesterised choice-based credit system (CBCS) using the rhetoric of learner-centric
education, which, according to it, allows wider choices across disciplines, discourages rote
learning and makes students adaptable to newer challenges since they are to become proficient
in how to learn. The policy, however, did not take into account the feasibility of CBCS or
semester system in resource-depleted and dissimilarly placed institutions and offered no
additional funding for the required increase in the number of teachers and infrastructural
support.

In 2015, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) forced it on all institutions by
centralising course-framing by the UGC, which lacks the academic expertise required for the
purpose. The government set up SWAYAM, a Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs)
platform, empowered to examine and evaluate, partly as a substitute for teachers and
classroom requirements, in the adoption of the CBCS framework. The lack of concern for
provision of inputs so as to maintain standards combined with the specific emphasis on inter-
institution credit transfer suggests that the idea is to create a unified education market in the
country to facilitate private players, domestic and foreign.

Market as regulator
In 2016, the NITI Aayog’s draft Three Year Action Agenda 2017-18 to 2019-20 provided the
theoretical justification for the government to withdraw from its funding commitment to
institutions for inputs (adequate number of teachers with attractive salary and service
conditions, infrastructure, and so on). It argued for market/consumers as the regulator, using a
market-fundamentalist version of a questionable Outcome-Based Education framework initiated
in the United States during the Ronald Reagan era and advocated by agencies funded by big
corporates. The argument consisted of three claims: (a) that adequate inputs do not necessarily
guarantee outcomes, (b) outcome measurement and outcome-based rewards and punishment
for institutions and individuals are the surest recipe for quality outcomes, and (c) the
government, therefore, should not concern itself with providing inputs and instead focus mainly
on putting in place a system of outcome measurement and outcome-based incentives.

The NITI Aayog argued that its prescription held for school and higher education in equal
measure. It proposed census/sample testing of school students for evaluating schools, and
punishments such as closure/merger/PPP (public-private partnership) takeover. For higher
education it proposed a graded autonomy based on ranking whereby the autonomy awarded is
gradual freedom from government funding and the power to carry out self-financing
programmes and research. It also argued for a variable pay for teachers.

A Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) was brought in to allow a switch from grant-
based funding to loan-based funding for all infrastructural needs. Although public outcry has
forced the government not to seek full principal repayment of such loans, the principle of
repayment from internal resources generated through market engagement has been instituted.
Further, the government attempted to link pay revision of teachers to part-financing through
revenue generation by the institutions where they are employed; this has also been rescinded
for the time being in view of public outcry. The intent is to make teachers stakeholders in the
project of commercialisation of education.

Under the General Financial Rules 2017, Central universities have been forced to sign a
tripartite memorandum of understanding that requires them to simultaneously increase student
intake and the ratio of internal financial resources generated to public-funded resources on a
continuous basis, both by raising fees and reorienting themselves towards marketable activities.

Various policy measures that entail dependence on the market threaten knowledge creation by
undermining core areas of knowledge that may not be immediately marketable and equity in
access.
In order to meet the objective of 50 per cent gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher education,
the policy seeks largely capacity creation in existing institutions and through MOOCs.
Expansion of public-funded institutions following reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBC)
and now Economically Weaker Sections have already negatively impacted many institutions,
and relying on the cheaper route can only have further adverse effects on quality. The MOOCs
option suggests an unwillingness to invest in formal education. Instead of using the immense
opportunity to broaden and enrich education, the draft NEP seeks to rely on this cheaper route
with questionable quality implication in order to meet GER targets.

End of affiliations
The draft NEP proposes that all higher education institutions , private or public, are to be
multidisciplinary and be given the power to award degrees, and large in size. It mandates an
end to the system of affiliating universities and affiliated colleges. They are to be classified into
three types depending on their functions: those primarily engaged in research and also
imparting teaching, those primarily engaged in teaching and involved in significant research
activities, and those which are primarily teaching institutions. All higher education institutions are
to have liberal arts education providing for exposure to many disciplines and enhanced choices
to students. The infrastructure and teacher requirement for expansion per se and the ability to
offer multidisciplinary choices, including vocational and professional education, are huge, given
the existing input deficit. In the absence of binding government funding to meet those
requirements, quality is bound to suffer both on account of the increased input deficit and
enforced commercialisation through the self-financing route. Integrating teachers’ education into
multidisciplinary higher education institutions is an excellent idea but for the unsettled issue of
public funding.

The discredited four-year undergraduate programme with multiple exit options after each year of
study is the desired undergraduate structure in the draft NEP. Though multiple exit and entry
options appear attractive, the infrastructure and teacher requirement are immense unless low-
paid contractual teachers are to be relied upon, which the draft disapproves of. Meeting the
requirements of satisfactorily educated students exiting at four different points would more likely
than not be a nightmare in designing curricula. Research component/group collaborative
projects/working and problem-solving in local communities are all desirable in themselves.
Assessment of the accomplishment of each individual student in terms of a multitude of
outcomes will require further increase in the number of teachers for it to be feasible. The pupil to
teacher ratio cannot be ridiculously high as the suggested 30:1 but much lower than the 12:1
that is used for the Delhi University’s honours courses.

While allowing for choice of vocational courses and courses for other competencies could be a
good idea, whether or not the requirement of fitting components of each of those in
undergraduate programmes will impede professional competency or academic rigour ought to
be debated more thoroughly.

Faculty as passive service providers

Each institution is to be governed by a Board of Governors (BoG) through a Chief Executive
appointed by it. Internal component, including the proposed institutional leaders, will be just a
third of the membership of the BoG, and the rest will be government nominees and persons
supposedly representing “public interest”. The BoG, once formed, will nominate members.
Elected representation is forbidden. The faculty is excluded from all decision-making and offices
save some of them who will be identified on the basis of their commitment and expertise in
governance and will be nurtured to rise up the ladder in institutional leadership. The principle of
seniority or rotation for discharging leadership positions being replaced by identification of an
education bureaucracy will be disastrous for administrative and academic functioning. The
disproportionate power exercised by such a bureaucracy and other members of the BoG will
negatively affect free and fearless exchange of ideas and reduce the academia to an agency
that implements plans designed by the governors and leaders. The BoG, among other things, is
to draw up an Institutional Development Plan (IDP), which is to become the basis for permission
to operate, to be assessed and to be entitled for funding for the institution.

Designed for market and political interference

The tasks of funding, regulation, standard setting and assessment/accreditation of all higher
education institutions (private and public) will be entrusted to separate bodies. The regulating
agency is to stipulate minimal conditions relating to outcomes and none with regard to inputs
and processes. The standard-setting agency is required to lay down standards and quality
framework. The accrediting agency is central to this regulatory regime insofar as it approves or
disapproves the performance of institutions in delivering on outcomes and also is empowered to
recommend steps it deems necessary for corrective measures. The funding agency is to
provide adequate funds to public higher education institutions on the basis of their IDPs and
accreditation success. The specification of outcomes and corrective measures is amenable to
the influence of money and political powers. They can shape and alter the character and
content of higher education. For a marketisation model to work, it would have sufficed to stop at
the separation of the above-mentioned four tasks through autonomous agencies. However, the
draft NEP goes further by bringing in an apex body called the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (RSA)
to be headed by the Prime Minister, with the Minister for Education as the Vice Chairperson.
Similar apex bodies are to be constituted at State levels. The RSA will have decisive powers
over the bodies funding, regulating, stipulating standards and accrediting institutions.

Further, the RSA will periodically conduct sample assessment of students. It has been observed
by many that testing students as a mode of outcome measurement has resulted in schools in
the U.S. compromising on pedagogy and focussing more on preparing students for tests. There
is no reason why a similar phenomenon in school and higher education may not arise here.

Following the Outcome-Based Education framework, a concerted campaign supported by

leading corporates in the U.S. called into question the accreditation procedure for taking into
consideration more inputs and processes. It advocated that scholarship and other funding be
based on outcome measurement. It led to the emergence of what is referred to as testing
industrial complex, with a select few engaged in the business of test design, carrying out tests
and selling preparatory materials for students appearing for the tests. Both census testing of
students in schools and sample testing in higher education will involve huge expenses that
would be met either out of the meagre government budget or by pushing the cost on to
students. The proposal made in the draft NEP for entrance tests for undergraduate admissions
to be conducted by the national testing agency will be a huge burden on the public and a huge
gain for private companies that conduct such tests and coach students.

Absolute control over research

Instead of allocating research funds to institutions, the government is already diverting them to
public and private sector institutions and individual researchers, for targeted research
projects/areas identified by it as relevant, through a process of competition. The proposal for
government funding as well as private funding, including funding through this centralised
agency, undermines university autonomy. Provision for additional research funds for areas that
the government considered to be of national importance have always existed. So is the case
with private funding. But cessation of or reduction in research funding to institutions whose
faculty and researchers determine which questions to investigate is an assault on the very idea
of university where the most unorthodox and most uncomfortable issues are supposed to be
open to question. Absolute control over research topics and who or what is to be funded by the
government or the corporate is antithetical to independent thinking and democracy. The
experience of Gujarat, where universities were given research topics by the government and its
consequences, is something that has not yet faded from public memory. The Uttar Pradesh
Private Universities Ordinance, currently under criticism for the government assuming powers to
shut down universities if it considers the activities using their name to be anti-national, points to
a much larger danger emanating from the proposal to have the RSA as the overarching apex
body on education in the country.

It is only prudent to restore the health of existing institutions that have hardly any teachers and
lack the necessary infrastructure. The implantation of a borrowed framework, notwithstanding
our ability to trace its origin to ancient Indian practice, on a setting that is unsuitable for its
fruition, may not only fail but also harm the surviving institutions of some quality. The
governmental obsession with getting a few higher education institutions in some kind of world
ranking should be replaced by attention to quality of education available to the mass of our
students. A conception of “knowledge society” that ignores the rights and potentials of the mass
of the youth can only be a corporate one.

Sanjaya Kumar Bohidar teaches economics at Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of
Delhi, and has been a member of the Academic Council of the University and an office-bearer of
the Delhi University Teachers’ Association.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28259500.ece
COVER STORY
JHARKHAND PRIMARY SCHOOLS MERGER
Primary schools: Merger muddle
ABINASH DASH CHOUDHURY
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Phoolmati from Tengrapathar village in Latehar district. She stopped going to school when her
school was “merged”. Photo: ABINASH DASH CHOUDHURY

Bigni Kumari, Phoolmati’s grandmother. They belong to the Parhaiya community, recognised as
a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group. Photo: ABINASH DASH CHOUDHURY

This photograph of what used to be a school in the recent past carries the untold tales of
children of vulnerable communities who have been thrown out of the school education system
by the merger move. Photo: ABINASH DASH CHOUDHURY

Sumit (right) from Nimitanr village with his siblings. After his old school closed down, he often
skips school because the trek to his new school at Sangadhwa proves too arduous. Photo:
ABINASH DASH CHOUDHURY

The mergers of small primary schools with low enrolment rates with bigger ones may have
saved money for the Jharkhand government, but it has wreaked havoc on the lives of children in
remote areas who find it difficult to commute to their new schools.
It is a little past seven in the morning, time for children to get ready for school. But for nine-year-
old Phoolmati Kumari, in Tengrapathar village of Jharkhand’s Latehar district, there is no hurry.
She has only just woken up and for the rest of the day will loiter around and, maybe , help her
ailing grandmother to cook. Or, as the summer approaches, she will scrounge for mahua, which
fetches the only cash earning for her family.

It was not always like this for Phoolmati. Two years ago, she had joined the government primary
school in her village, where she spent most of her time during the day. “I used to go to school
regularly. The master never came more than once or twice a week, but we had food in the
afternoon,” she said. “About seven or eight children would go to school every day.” Now the
school, its dilapidated building overgrown with weeds, is closed. “The school closed down and
there is nothing to do,” she said, pointing to her old school, disappointment in her voice.

The school in her village, in Matlong circle, opened in 2006. It was one of the few thousand
primary schools with low enrolment that were merged with a bigger school “nearby” in the last
couple of years. The closure of her school came as a shock for Phoolmati. “The master said we
had fewer than the required number of students, and the school would be closed down,” she
said. She was asked to join a school in Khirakhar, an hour’s walk from her home and not an
easy trek in the hilly terrain of Latehar. In any case, Phoolmati, who has only her ailing
grandmother as family, was not able to complete the arduous procedure of admission in the
other school. No one stepped up to help, and she has ended up as an early dropout.

Phoolmati belongs to the Parhaiya community, recognised as one of the Particularly Vulnerable
Tribal Groups in Jharkhand. These tribes live deep inside the forest area, without any viable
means of earning, suffering from acute food insecurity. Phoolmati’s generation, arguably, was
the first to go to school, despite all the odds. She chose the school she went to not because of
any exceptional facilities on offer. Indeed, the school had barely two rooms, one teacher for five
classes, no functioning toilets or dining area, and no electricity. For most students, it was one
guaranteed meal a day and the promise of a few hours of engagement that took them there.
Phoolmati’s grandmother, Bigni Kumari, said: “I never saw a school building; even her parents
never went to one. We sent her to school as it was close by, she could get to eat, and she could
learn to read and write.”

Jharkhand’s Department of Education, supported and advised by a private consultancy group

appointed by the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog, had proposed to
merge over 6,000 schools in the State. About 4,600 new primary schools, which were opened
under a universal education scheme in the early 2000s, have been merged with bigger schools
nearby. This “reorganisation” of schools, undertaken by the Raghubar Das-led Bharatiya Janata
Party government, was similar to an enterprise in Rajasthan that started in 2014. Teachers and
education activists in that State, however, had expressed scepticism about the move.

In July 2017, the Ministry of Human Resource Development issued a set of guidelines on
“rationalisation of small schools across the States for better efficiency”. A letter to the States
sent along with it said that the guidelines were born of a “Prime Minister’s review” in March 2016
and “NITI Aayog’s follow-up points”. The next month, the Ministry drew up an “education
roadmap” for Uttar Pradesh and recommended school mergers. By November, the NITI Aayog
was independently signing memoranda of understanding with States that wanted its assistance
in restructuring their education systems—a programme called “Sustainable Action for
Transforming Human Capital” or SATH-E. “SATH-E aspires to be a ‘saathi’ to the educational
system with the student and the teacher at its centre,” said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog,
underscoring the significance of the project. The project is run through a cost-sharing
mechanism between the participating State and the NITI Aayog.
Jharkhand was one of the three States picked for the 30-month programme under which the
NITI Aayog enlisted Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to implement reforms. The Jharkhand
government then merged schools in two phases. In the first phase, schools with fewer than 10
students and in the second phase, schools with fewer than 30 students were merged with
primary or upper-primary schools nearby. The third round of mergers was stalled when BJP
MPs from the State objected and said that the closure of schools was affecting thousands of
lives in the hinterlands. The entire exercise is meant to save Rs.400 crore for the government
through the pooling of resources. According to BCG, 151 schools in Latehar were scheduled to
be merged by 2018; 43 per cent of these were merged by the end of 2017.

The “mergers” come barely after a decade of the enactment of the Right to Education Act in
2009, which guaranteed primary education for all. The RTE showed some political commitment
towards equitable access to education for many in this country. The closing down of schools
now, however, raises doubts about how serious the state is about the legislation. The
government’s claim has been singularly repetitive: schools are being “merged” and not closed.
The “reorganisation” is aimed at “ensuring access of all children to fully functional
neighbourhood schools and to consolidate the resources for the best interest of the child”. Yet,
for people affected by the mergers, the schools are as good as closed.

Rajmati Oraon, who stays in Nimitanr village, about 20 kilometres away from the Manika block
headquarters of Latehar district, finds it difficult to send her daughter Pratima to school after the
local school closed down two years ago. Ten-year-old Pratima, the first to go to school in her
family, is now in Class III. “The new school that we have enrolled her in is in Semarhat, about 3
km from here,” Rajmati says. The road to the new school is full of fast-moving vehicles and has
dense forests on either side. For a primary schoolchild, it is hardly a safe commute. The change
has affected Pratima’s performance in school, too. Rajmati claims that whereas her daughter
enjoyed school earlier, her attendance is now highly irregular. “The road is dangerous. Only last
month there was an accident and a young boy lost his life; he was trying to cross the road,” she
said. “Children often skip school, saying, ‘mar jayenge toh?’ [what if I die].” There are others like
Pratima, children who are formally enrolled in another school after the merger of their old school
but who in reality hardly ever make it to school.

Merged In a Hurry
The mergers, which have caused such upheavals in the lives of children, have consistently
violated the agreed guidelines. These had emphasised “consent” and mandated that a proper
student-faculty dialogue mediated through the school management committee should lead to
“effective and useful” rationalisation. This requirement was ignored for most schools that faced
“merger” in Latehar. In Tengrapathar, for instance, Phoolmati was not consulted before her
school was closed and she never got a chance to give her opinion on the move. Her
grandmother said that they were just told that the school would be “merged”.

The guidelines also stipulated that the move should not violate the fundamental right to
education of all children and directed the States to take precautions against the possibility of
such violation. Yet, one of the most visible ways in which the move has failed children is that the
State has not come forward to help the children of the “merged” schools to secure admission in
new schools. Aniket, an employee in the Block Education Office of Manika, said: “The students
have to get themselves enrolled in the school closest to them.” This process is often
cumbersome, especially with mandatory Aadhaar and other prerequisites. Many children slip
through the cracks.
The guidelines, however limited, recognise that access to education is contingent on particular
conditions. They assert that in “areas such as remote islands, hills, desert areas, densely
forested areas and other remote and far-flung areas” the “stand-alone schools despite low
enrolment will have to continue”. BCG has also suggested that travel facilities, according to the
norms prescribed by the Supreme Court and the National Commission for Protection of Child
Rights, could act as a bridge to aid students. It has proposed a three-tier model of
transportation: public transport, cycles, and residential system. In reality, however, none of this
has been acted upon. For many children like Pratima, walking to school is the only option.

Section 6 of the Right to Education Act envisages neighbourhood schools: a primary school
within a distance of one kilometre from a village. Many schools were opened in the country,
including in Jharkhand, in keeping with this vision. The guidelines clearly say that no “mergers”
should flout this basic structure of the legislation and should in no way create hindrances for
students in reaching school. Yet, most of the mergers have given short shrift to these concerns.
The NITI Aayog and the Jharkhand government, along with BCG, bulldozed the lives of many
young children as they rammed into the most intricate arrangement of lives through a top-down
system that aims to “save” the State’s money, without putting an ear down to hear the people
who would be most affected. A senior employee in the District Education Office, on being asked
about the procedural lapses, said: “The mergers have been the primary focus of our work, we
conducted surveys and got them merged at the earliest, and it was tedious as it had to be
finished rapidly.”

The promise of quality education in the newly merged schools has not been kept. In Nimitanr,
Sunita Devi’s youngest son, Sumit, enrolled himself at a school in Sangadhwa. On the days that
he reaches his school after battling the stream that blocks the road during the monsoon, he
finds himself in a school barely different from the one that was adjacent to his house. “There is
no electricity, and more than two classes are held in the same room, just like in the old days,” he
said. The student-teacher ratio, which should ideally be 30:1 for primary school and 35:1 for
upper primary schools, remains one of the worst in Jharkhand. Only 28.3 per cent of the schools
comply with the norm, and the mergers have not helped. The issues of electricity, water, toilets
and other core infrastructure remain unaddressed.

Mithilesh, a young para-teacher, admits that the closures have made it difficult for children to
make it to school on a daily basis. “They depend on someone to drop them at school. Most of
the parents are migrant workers and daily wage labourers who cannot afford to leave work, and
hence many children miss school,” he explained. “It is difficult to retain children in school under
ideal conditions, as parents need to supplement their income and children are pushed to work.
With schools going far away, it has become all the more tough,” he said.

The mergers have thus wiped out the hope of education for many. Some parents hope that the
closed schools will reopen. Bigni Kumari, for instance, would like to see her granddaughter get
back to school, but she has no idea how to make this happen. People like Bigni Kumari have no
channel of communication to put forward their demands, not least because the block offices are
as far as 30 km away from the villages. The guidelines state that the process of rationalisation
will “not necessarily lead to closing.... but also opening of new schools”. However, as the Block
Education Officer, Jaishankar Ram, confirmed, there is no possibility of new schools being
opened or closed schools being reopened in the near future. Jharkhand has one of the highest
school dropout rates in the country, a staggering 10 per cent against the national average of 6
per cent. Literacy rates are also low in the State, especially among the vulnerable tribal groups
such as the Parhaiyas (25.6 per cent for seven years and above). Activists claim that the high
dropout rates and the low literacy rate are a result of policy failures that have kept tribal
languages from being adopted as the medium of instruction in schools. While Jharkhand needs
to prioritise education and its qualitative aspects, the government seems to be moving on with a
plan that has been decided without consulting the people.

For Phoolmati, and many like her, the fundamental guarantee of education seems to have
slipped away. The callousness of the state has snatched their entitlement and blown a hole in
the Constitution of the country that promises every citizen an equal share of opportunities and
rights. The state has made a “dropout” of her, and it is difficult to tell if she will ever go back to
school.

Abinash Dash Choudhury is an independent scholar.

(The author is grateful to Jean Dreze and Varsha Poddar for their comments and suggestions.)

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28259726.ece
COVER STORY
The rot runs deep
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

A child with symptoms of acute encephalopathy being treated at the Kurhani community health
centre on June 25 Photo: Ranjeet Kumar

While travelling in Muzaffarpur, this correspondent witnessed the lack of basic health care
services in the villages. The shortfall in primary health care centres (PHCs), doctors and
paramedics, however, is not new. One PHC is supposed to serve a population of 30,000. In
Muzaffarpur, 103 PHCs serve a population of five million people, whereas the requirement is
170. Local people complain that doctors are available for hardly one hour a day. Even the Shri
Krishna Medical College Hospital (SKMCH) is short-staffed and lacks equipment. The condition
of the other district hospital, Sadar Hospital, is no better.

At the Sadar Hospital, the chief paediatrician’s post is vacant. So are three posts of pharmacists
and all seven posts of “dressers”. The hospital does not have a “sick newborn care unit” (SNCU)
or a nutrition rehabilitation centre set up. A senior doctor at the hospital said: “Doctors can only
treat and counsel. They cannot address malnutrition.”

The Medical Superintendent, Dr Mehdi Hasan, said most of the sick children arrived in a critical
condition: “The poor sometimes cannot afford to feed the child in the night. Children go hungry.
In the morning, if the parents are litchi pickers, the entire family goes along, and the children are
likely to eat litchis. That is how the children get into a hypoglycaemic state.”

While Dr Hasan was talking to Frontline, a patient with a urinary problem came in and
complained that his bladder would burst as he had consumed water on the advice of the
ultrasonologist who was nowhere to be seen. “The bathroom is so filthy that I prefer passing
urine in my clothes. Please tell me what to do. This is the fifth day that I have come, travelling
80 kilometres each day,” he complained. The doctor advised him to relieve himself and wait for
the ultrasonologist.

Although the PHCs are understaffed, the new-fangled health and wellness centres, a brainchild
of the NITI (National Institution for Transforming India) Aayog, have been set up. At one such
centre, there is an “Ayush” doctor and an ANM (auxiliary nurse midwife).
NITI Aayog’s latest Health Index report that ranks States in terms of health outcomes listed
Bihar among six least performing States which showed a decline in performance. Bihar
registered the most negative incremental change, reflected in the deterioration of most health
indicators such as total fertility rate, low birth weight, sex ratio at birth, institutional delivery,
tuberculosis (TB) notification rate, TB treatment success rate, ANM and staff nurse vacancies,
functional 24/7 PHCs, birth registration accreditation of facilities, CHC (community health
centre) grading and fund transfer. Almost 60 per cent of ANM positions were vacant; over 50
per cent of posts at the staff nurse level were vacant at PHCs and CHCs. There was a 34.8 per
cent shortfall of medical officers, and of the specialist positions 59.7 per cent were vacant. Only
53.79 per cent of PHCs were fully functional.

The PHCs tell a tale of apathy and neglect. The Kurhani PHC was recently upgraded to a CHC.
It caters to a population of 5,36,000 people, roughly the population of two blocks. There was no
ICU at the CHC, though a new AES ward had been set up in the wake of the outbreak. Against
a total of seven sanctioned posts, there were only two medical officers on duty. The medical
officer in charge, Dharmendra Kumar, said there were instructions to “refer” the cases to either
the SKMCH or Sadar Hospital.

Dharmendra Kumar said: “How much pressure can a single doctor take? The doctor must join a
video conference with the district magistrate, then come back to work, and come back at night
again. A doctor works non-stop for 36 to 48 hours.”

The CHC lacked a paediatrician, a dresser and an OT operator. There was no X-ray or
ultrasound machine. The additional PHCs did not have essential instruments such as
glucometers. The CHC had been given an extra ambulance which, the MO said, would have to
be “returned”. “The time factor is the biggest issue. If children are treated in time, they can be
saved,” Dharmendra Kumar said.

A revised SOP (standard operating procedure) issued in 2018 for AES patients listed out the
“Practical Aspect of Initial Management at PHC level”. The suggestions included putting the
patient on an IV line, proper positioning of patient and suction, administration of Diazepam (0.3
mg/kg and not more than 1 mg/kg/min if there are convulsions), application of glucometer; and,
for hypoglycaemia, the administration of 5 ml/kg of 10 per cent Dextrose IV bolus. There were
instructions for the monitoring of danger signs and plans for referral.

Public health experts contacted by Frontline said that if a child is taken to a PHC and
administered 10 per cent dextrose within four hours of the onset of the symptoms of
hypoglycaemic encephalopathy, the disease can be controlled easily.

When the AES deaths came up in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described them as
a matter of “sorrow and shame” and suggested solutions such as immunisation, vaccination,
safe motherhood and strengthening the Ayushman Bharat scheme. In the short poem “A
worker’s speech to a doctor” by German Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, a worker tells his
doctor: “Too much work and too little food make us weak and scrawny; your prescription says,
put on more weight; you might as well tell a fish, go climb a tree…”

The solutions offered by Modi are not the kind of intervention required to address the sort of
avoidable deaths of children that were witnessed in Muzaffarpur. A government that views
disease from a purely medicine-based curative approach and not as a function of structural
issues like livelihood and income levels is unlikely to succeed.
https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28259336.ece
COVER STORY
SCHOOLS
Towards education shops
SACHIDANAND SINHA
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

At a primary school in Vellore, Tamil Nadu. Photo: C. VENKATACHALAPATHY

At a corporation higher secondary school in Vyasarpadi, Chennai. When the elite classes exit
from any public facility, the poor have to fall back on poorly served government schools. Photo:
B. JOTHI RAMALINGAM

The proposed new education policy signifies the return of elitist control of the school system and
the reinforcement of the traditional social segmentation.
THERE HAVE BEEN A SLEW OF REACTIONS and comments on the draft National
Educational Policy, 2019, ever since the document was made public. Some termed it “too good
to be true” while others felt it only amounted to “rearranging the deck” and “a bad thesis”. The
draft NEP is perhaps a mixed bag and needs an objective and comprehensive reading of the
intent and deliverables proposed in it. A healthy debate among the stakeholders and the
government is necessary. The draft report was submitted by the K. Kasturirangan Committee in
December 2018. The government waited for about five months to make it public. So it might as
well wait for a few months more and begin a round of consultations.

Here, I will concentrate only on school education. However, the intent of the draft NEP is
embedded in the policy document that runs through school, higher, vocational/professional
segments of education and the distance learning mode. The policy envisions “…an India
centred education system that contributes directly to transforming our nation sustainably into an
equitable and vibrant knowledge society….” This is possible only by providing high quality
education to everyone. We will deconstruct the above vision as we read through the first 200
pages of the 477-page draft NEP. Let me enumerate some of the highlights of the school sector
reforms suggested in the report.

Some of the highlights

1. The draft NEP claims that its main concern is to ensure delivery of quality education to all—a
major concern that was ignored in the decades after Independence because of the
preoccupation of governments with issues of access and equity.

2. In order to achieve the goal of high quality education for the creation of a knowledge society,
it proposes the “…revamping of all aspects of the education structure, its regulation and
governance, to create a new system that is aligned with the aspirational goals of 21st century
education, while remaining consistent with India’s traditions and value systems”.

3. It further proposes to build an integrated yet flexible approach to school education. To begin
with, the model of 10+2, which was effectively divided into five grades of primary schooling,
three of middle schooling, two of secondary schooling and the terminal two grades of higher
secondary, will now be broken into 5+3+3+4. Here, the first five grades constitute the
foundational stage, which includes the first three years of pre-primary classes and the first two
years of not-so-formal schooling with 1st and 2nd grades included. The next three years of
remaining primary grades will form the preparatory phase of formal classroom learning. The
next three years remain untouched as middle schooling and the last four years will be
secondary and higher secondary school education with board examinations at the 10th and 12th
grades as is the case currently in the 10+2 mode.

4. There will be no separation of streams as in science, arts and commerce right through school
and under-graduation classes. Instead, vocational subjects and training in various kinds of skills
would be imparted right from the upper primary grades.

5. The educational structure will allow for multiple exit and entry options in the post-secondary
phase.

The emphasis on early childhood care and education (ECCE) is the most outstanding and
perhaps the only positive aspect in the draft policy that I would take home with some
expectation. The concern for ECCE is not new and has been there since 1992. Pre-primary
education took a back seat, particularly in public institutions, because of the Integrated Child
Development Services (ICDS) launched by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. I
fully agree that pre-schooling has significant positive association with school retention and
better educational outcomes and I find it difficult to understand why pre-school has been
separated from main primary classes/schools. It may actually turn out to be counterproductive
as a disintegrated schooling system invariably leads to a large number of dropouts and
discontinuation.

The policy takes a high moral stand on integration but in the same breath, speaks of flexibility,
and that is where I see the real problem. The gains of high enrolment, declining dropout rates
and higher retention rate in schools across socio-economic groups needed reinforcement
through correcting the major deficiency in pre-primary education and later, by taking tangible
measures to improve quality. The ECCE may fall flat as its structural design ranges from being
part of anganwadi, co-located with the primary schools, or as stand-alone pre-schools. It is not
clear whether grades 1 and 2 of the foundational stage would be part of the anganwadi system
or whether anganwadi would be integrated structurally with the primary schools. The latter is a
better option as there is enough evidences to suggest such integrated pre-primary-primary
schools. It is apparent that the policymakers did not have any clarity on this fundamental issue
and, therefore, failed to present a road map. We will return to quality education again.

Integrating/closing schools?
The policy envisages expanding and strengthening the school education system and investing
larger public resources as in the past. However, even this commitment seems to give way later.
The draft NEP proposes to correct structural extravagance by closing down small schools as
they are economically non-viable. Schools with fewer than 30 students, of any grade, would be
closed down gradually and integrated with a larger school in the neighbourhood. This sounds
good on paper and better on the purse, but on the ground this sounds pretty hollow.

According to the Unified District Information on School Education (U-DISE), over 40 per cent of
primary schools in the country have fewer than 30 children enrolled. Separate primary schools
for boys and girls in the same village/habitation may be integrated into one, thus enhancing the
teacher-pupil ratio, which, among other things, has positive learning outcomes. There can be
duplication by school managements also, all within the government sector. For example, a
primary school run by the village panchayat or the tribal council can be merged with the one run
by the Department of Education. But closing down schools purely on the basis of enrolment is a
bad idea.

Let me elucidate this point further. Fact 1: According to Census 2011, over 70 per cent of
villages in India have a population of less than 2,000. If one adds the population of these
villages, it accounts for about 42 per cent of the rural population. Fact 2: Very small-sized
villages, having a population of less than 500, constitute 37.5 per cent and those up to 1,000
another 22 per cent. Remember, the percentage of small-sized schools is 41 per cent. Close
them and you will take away even that wretched primary school from at least 60 per cent of
villages. The child population in the ages 3 to 8 and 9 to 14 will be an average of 12.5 and 13
per cent respectively of the village population. So, with a quarter of a village population of 1,000,
one will get 250 children in the ages mentioned above.

But in smaller villages , this will result in a much smaller child population in the relevant school-
going age. Where is that study which says that smaller schools are academically non-viable?
Where are these small schools located? And the obvious answer would be: in hilly, forested,
arid and low-density localities that are poorly linked by transport and have been suffering from
all kinds of constraints for ages. Are children living in such places outside the ambit of the Right
to Education (RTE) Act? Creation of school complexes only for administrative convenience is
not a good idea.

The question of Quality

The draft NEP seems to be overwhelmed with the issue of quality education. Quality education
has always been a high priority of various policies in the past. The Kothari Commission talked
about pace-setting and model schools. NEP 1986 came up with Navodaya Vidyalayas as quality
inputs in the education system. I can go on enumerating several steps taken by governments at
the Centre and in the States over the last few decades. But my concern is not to set history right
but to reflect upon those measures envisaged by the draft policy.

However, before I enumerate those, let me ask a simple question.Why is the quality of teaching
poor, particularly in government schools? The policy document makes no attempt to even refer
to the plethora of published material on this issue. The document abhors small-sized schools
but makes only a casual reference to the fact that over two-thirds of our primary schools have
fewer than three teachers. My analysis of private and government schools in Punjab during
2010 clearly establishes that a multi-teacher government school with at least five teachers and
one head teacher performed better than a private school with comparatively better infrastructure
and more than six teachers.

An average primary school in the private sector has eight teachers and an integrated primary
and upper primary school has 12 teachers, far higher than the figures for government schools.
Teacher absenteeism is an issue in rural areas, but several District Primary Education
Programme (DPEP) studies have shown that it is a much more serious problem in single- and
two-teacher schools, but when there are at least three teachers and a head teacher,
absenteeism drops. So what is the lesson? Increase the supply of quality teachers.

Quality education and grade progress among students has been reported to be better for
schools that are not stand-alone primary or upper primary schools. We also have stand-alone
secondary and higher secondary schools. These structural problems should be corrected. But in
the name of quality and behind the smokescreen of school complexes and special education
zones for backward areas and underrepresented groups, the draft NEP seeks to turn the gains
made so far upside down. Why do I say this? Let us go back to the ECCE and primary school
segment of the report.

The report proposes that in order to monitor a student’s academic progress, he/she be tested at
grades 3, 5 and 8 through census examination, besides the board examinations at grades 10
and 12. It also suggests a plethora of initiatives, especially in the context of the teachers’
capacity and development. It reverses the “no detention” policy under the RTE Act. Remember
that the “no detention” policy was supplemented by a rigorous methodology of continuous and
comprehensive evaluation of the student’s all-around development. Since the ECCE did not
work, the no-detention policy will also become counterproductive. But replacing “no detention”
with a census examination is the worst thing that can happen to children at the early and
formative stages of their learning process, particularly those from the poor, socially
marginalised, first-generation or second-generation learners. The stress and fear of examination
will force them out of the system. The system will essentially push them out, they will not drop
out.

The policy attracts attention by going beyond the framework of universal elementary education
in order to perhaps make higher secondary education universal in India. This is the simple
marketing strategy. An imaginary conversation with the people behind the draft policy may go
like this:

“Hey, look we are giving you something you did not ask for! Take it!”

“Wait a while. Did you say universal higher secondary education without specialisation? May be
it has more vocational content?”

“Yes!”

“But why are you silent about correcting the structural anomaly?”

“What is that?”

“For every 100 primary schools you currently have 50 upper primary, 20 secondary and 8 higher
secondary schools. If you want every child who enters the system to complete some kind of
higher secondary education, then the structural ratio of primary schools to senior secondary
schools should be 1.”

“But, did you not read that we are closing down the primary schools and many such non-viable
schools? The structural ratio will be taken care of by market forces.”

What is the narrative here?

The policy makes the commitment repeatedly to create a knowledge society. It also talks about
accessible, flexible and sustainable quality education. But quality education for a large
percentage of the population, coming from highly differentiated socio-economic backgrounds, is
not sustainable. The classic tangle of quality versus quantity has surfaced again, as it had done
several times in the past when it led to a significant fragmentation of the schooling system and
gradually transformed it from a government-led, society-centric philanthropic public education to
an elite-led public education system on the top of the pyramid.

Social segmentation
I am motivated to point out that one of the main objectives of the Nehru-Azad educational
paradigm was not technological transformation of society alone but the socio-economic
transformation of Indian society, where education was seen to play the critical role in ending the
traditional stratification and its occupation-social rank manifestations. Reservation in educational
institutions at the time of entry was a good tool for creating a just and fair opportunity for
everyone. It is important that reservation was not valid at the exit stage. The outcome did result
in shaking the foundations of the traditional caste-based society and freeing bonded and family-
attached labour. Agricultural wages began to rise. Children from traditionally deprived social
backgrounds began sharing the same classrooms with the children of their traditional patrons.
The established social order began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Soon, in the name of quality, the traditional educated classes, the propertied classes and the
regular Central and State government employees began asking for separate schools for their
children. Therefore, there are various shades and kinds of schools run by the government, at far
varied costs and outcomes. The Model Schools, the Central Schools, the Army and Air Force
Schools, the Sainik Schools and the Railway Schools, the Navodaya Vidyalayas—the list goes
on and on. The elite control of public education meant that the poor mass of tenant agriculturists
and landless classes had to fall back on under-provided and poorly served government schools
run by the Department of Education. When the elite classes exit from any public facility, the
inarticulate have to suffer and this is where the social segmentation began in school education.

The proposed policy wants to reinforce this segmentation. Everyone should get education and
training as per their capability and capacity. What can the son of a poor landless wage-earner
aspire for? With multiple exit points and checks through notional or formal examination systems,
the hiatus will be created in the education field so that it can realign itself to the classical
stratification, though we will know it by a different name. Only a few will produce robots and
“man” the Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), while scores of others will form the cheap trained labour in
a globalised world economy. Think globally and act locally!

The draft policy also proposes that the scope of the RTE Act will be extended to include pre-
primary classes as well, but soon it backtracks and says it will be obligatory. Similarly, it
proposed that the RTE Act will cover secondary and higher secondary classes as well. A review
of the RTE Act has also been mooted. The intention is very clear as one reads that the
provisions of the RTE Act will be significantly mellowed down to suit the requirements of diverse
socio-economic and geographical settings. The outcome of this measure will help the private
education shops. Many of them have not been recognised by the State Boards because of the
stringent infrastructural requirements in the Act.

There is nothing in the draft NEP that is new or “out of the box”. It’s all stale, served in a new
packaged and decorated Japanese tray. After reading the draft NEP several times in the last
two weeks, there is a lot that one could reflect upon. I chose to select only a few of the
substantial issues of school education. I will take up teachers and other issues separately
elsewhere.

At the end, I am reminded of a magic show I witnessed when I was 10 years old. It was a show
by the magician P.C. Sorcar Jr. He had a jug placed in one corner of the stage and whenever
he started a new item he would lift the water jug and pour all its contents into a bucket. One
wondered how he could refill his water jug? After the show, he showed us that the jug had no
base and that it never had any water in it! Is draft NEP 2019 yet another magic show?
Sachidanand Sinha is professor at the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU,
New Delhi.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28259419.ece
COVER STORY
HEALTH CARE
Skewed vision
PROF. T. SUNDARARAMAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Students of PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in Coimbatore, in February 2017.
There is an almost exclusive reliance on NEET at every stage of education as the single most
important strategy of all educational governance. Photo: M. Periasamy

At the Military Nursing School in Delhi, a file photograph. There is a proposal to phase out all
diploma education in nursing and make BSc the only nursing entry. Photo: THE HINDU
ARCHIVES

The policy fails to address concerns of equity in access to health care or access to health care
education and will pave the way for an unhealthy commercialisation of education in this domain.
Health care education finds place in the draft National Education Policy (NEP) as one of the
subtopics in the chapter on Professional Education in Part II, which deals with Higher Education.
Health care education is also addressed in the National Health Policy, but clearly the concerns
that this policy has are different.

Any policy on health care education will have to address three important challenges.

The first and most important of these is the serious maldistribution of health care professionals
across the nation. The national commitments to achieving universal access to health care can
be achieved only if there is a minimum density of doctors, nurses and allied health care
professionals in every block and district. Such distribution of health care professionals is closely
linked to policies concerning entry into educational institutions, the context and content of the
curriculum, and the subsequent policies of public financing and organisation of public health
services.

The second important challenge is ensuring quality education so that the young men and
women who pass out of these institutions have the knowledge and skills to make the right
decisions and provide the right care. Health care is a service sector where, owing to information
asymmetry and uncertainties in outcome, the service user’s ability to make the choice of
provider, or even to judge whether the care received was appropriate and adequate, is limited.
Further, in most contexts of private practice, the provider’s own monetary incentives may not be
aligned with the best interests of the patient. All this calls for a high degree of trust, and the state
must ensure that health care professionals have the skills to deserve such trust.

The third challenge is also a dimension of the quality of education; it is not just technical
competence in terms of knowledge and skills that is required but an attitude of caring. These are
caring positions where the majority of practitioners will have to feel fulfilled and creative through
acts of preventing illness, of taking care of the sick and even in supporting the dying. No doubt,
at all levels of care some technical skills are essential, but what is equally important is the
empathy that care providers have for those they care for and the close bonding that is required
between providers and the communities that are served and the ethical values care providers
have imbibed during professional education and practice.

The draft NEP not only fails to address these challenges but can actively worsen them.

Table 1 shows the highly skewed distribution of undergraduate and postgraduate seats per one
lakh population across States. Those States that have the largest shortfall of doctors are also
the States where the number of seats per one lakh population is lower than the national
average. The distribution within States is also similarly skewed. A similar skew in availability of
seats and professionals can be demonstrated for nurses and for many of the allied health
professionals too.

Given the fact that upwardly mobile urban youths from more privileged sections of society are
the most successful in gaining entry into health care educational institutions, the increase in the
number of seats in States with relative surplus is only going to lead to unhealthy competition
and lowered remuneration for doctors within a few of the larger urban areas. It does not lead to
surplus doctors and nurses shifting to under-serviced areas. Bonds or other forms of
compulsion for working in rural areas seldom work, and even to the extent they do, such
professionals will not have the same level of empathy and bonding with communities as a
doctor who would actively choose to work in such areas. In many nations across the world,
preferential admissions for students from under-serviced communities and regions along with
commitments and incentives to go back to these areas after graduation are what has helped
most in closing such service gaps.

The draft NEP is silent on how these huge human resource gaps by region, by State, by gender,
or by more marginalised castes and communities would be addressed. The silence is not
surprising since equity in access to health care education and access to health care can be
achieved only through public educational institutions based on public financing and affirmative
actions such as free or highly subsidised education to bring in suitable candidates from these
regions and communities. The silence would, however, be consistent with an approach that
prioritises opportunities for private profit in health care education and the demand of the more
privileged sections to send their children to medical schools over the public needs for health
care . Over the last two decades, commercialisation of health care education has been
increasing rapidly, and now the majority of the institutions are in the private sector. Further, the
majority of medical and nursing seats need such high payments that much of the population is
actively excluded from such education. The draft NEP exacerbates this problem. It gives
permission to educational institutions to charge any level of fees and commits them only to
providing scholarships for a proportion of the students—a commitment that in practice would be
almost impossible to enforce.The terms of such market-driven expansion of health care
education have led to great loss of quality in the output—a fact that is almost universally noted
and lamented. The policy quite correctly states that regulatory regimes under professional
councils were inadequate to the task and had serious conflicts of interest. But the solutions
proposed are worse than the problem. The draft NEP calls for dispensing with the role of
councils as regulator and instead proposes one huge centralised structure that will command all
of higher education across the nation. It is unclear whether any single Central institution can
ever command such a capacity or needs to. (Constitutional provisions put educational standard
setting in the Union List but explicitly leave regulation of higher education to the States.)

Reliance on NEET
The bigger problem is an almost exclusive reliance on the common National Eligibility-cum-
Entrance Tests (NEET) at every stage as the single most important strategy of all educational
governance. The proposal assumes that common examinations for entry at the undergraduate
level and the postgraduate level are effective and seeks to transform the latter to also serve as
a common exit examination for licensing purposes. Presumably, the two NEETs would be
utmost fair and transparent and purely merit-based measurements of quality that would cut
across the divides of public and private, community and region. If the proposal to allow all
professional students to do a common first-year foundational course followed by a merit-based
sorting into medicine, nursing or dentistry streams is taken seriously, that would probably add a
third NEET to the pool. But the challenges of implementing such streaming are so ridiculously
high that we need not get distracted into discussing them.

The NEET itself has been a basis of considerable criticism and it is now clear that it is a tool that
exacerbates inequities and undermines the federal nature of educational governance. Protest is
maximal in precisely those States, such as Tamil Nadu, where after a long process of
discussion with different sections a working balance had been struck between the needs of
different regions to access health care and the needs of different sections of the population to
access the opportunities of health care education. Then, as now, 15 per cent of the
undergraduate seats and 50 per cent of the postgraduate seats were under the all-India quota.
But for filling up 85 per cent of the seats, another merit-based, fair and transparent system was
devised by States, which was perceived as giving students from government schools and the
more marginalised communities following the State language as a medium of instruction and
those who are unable to afford costly coaching sessions a reasonable chance of getting
selected. Even this had problems. But post-NEET, students who are from schools following
Central, all-India examination boards and those going to costly coaching schools which have
cracked the subtext of these examinations have an advantage over others.

Similarly, at the postgraduation level, Tamil Nadu had a system in place where graduates would
work in rural areas, confident of the extent of advantage it would give them for accessing
postgraduation courses, and the government worked out how to fill specialist posts in all its
district hospitals. The State had also chosen to invest in expanding postgraduate and super-
specialisation courses using its own budget and made public service after qualification
mandatory to those getting government education. But with a nation-level centralisation of the
examination process and surrender of 50 per cent of the postgraduate seats and 100 per cent of
the super-specialisation seats to the central pool, the ability of the State government to find the
necessary candidates has been seriously compromised.

Further, private educational institutions are allowed to keep fairly high levels of seats in the
management quota. Thus any student seeking admission in a private medical institution who is
able to pay high fees and with enough influence to get selected would qualify with a lower NEET
cut-off score. This system not only continues but is also encouraged within the language of the
policy.

All of this emphasis on nationwide common examinations is presumably in pursuit of measuring

merit in a manner that is blind to social and educational backgrounds—a sort of huge
educational level playing field that encourages competition among students where the only
currency is objectively measured merit. But then in a bizarre Freudian slip, the text of the draft
policy has this gem: “This exit examination will be administered at the end of the fourth year of
the MBBS so that students are relieved of the burden of studying for a separate, competitive
entrance examination at the end of their residency period. With the entrance examination out of
the way, they can spend their residency period acquiring valuable skills and competence”
(paragraph 16.8.3, page 305). The true import of this is that the proposed measure of testing will
not measure valuable skills or competence, even those that are learnt in the most crucial part of
the medical curriculum, that is in the final year of clinical training. De jure, NEETs are the only
basis for measuring learning. But de facto, the national common examination is accepted as a
barrier to learning. The only use that NEET then has is as a device for ranking and sorting
students into an apparent hierarchy of merit with all its attendant privileges and to exclude the
rest and justify the exclusion.

Close to 1.47 lakh medical graduates appeared for the PG-NEET examination last year, of
whom only about half are considered to have passed and only about 27,000 would get seats
anywhere; of this, a much smaller proportion would be affordable seats. The majority of those
who “fail” NEET would face frustration and guilt—all the more so because to get so far they
might have had excellent academic careers and would be much better by temperament,
attitude, experience and skill and even knowledge than those who made it. There are other
unfortunate collaterals of this NEET-defined hierarchy of merit. One, for example, is that
students who qualify with lower thresholds because of reservation quotas face discrimination
which could get justified on this basis, although their work performance may be no less than that
of the others. The recent tragic suicide of Dr Payal Tadvi was an example of this. The rich
student in the management quota is, however, unlikely to face such a disadvantage.This
hierarchy of merit takes other forms. There is, for example, the proposal to phase out all
diploma education in nursing and make BSc the only nursing entry. Persons working in field
situations would testify that not only is it impossible to close gaps in nursing cadre with only BSc
nurses, but there are many field situations that diploma nursing students are better suited for.
Similarly, a community health worker or a mid-level care provider is not an apology for not
having a doctor. Rather, they are the most appropriate care providers in that given context.

One curious inconsistency in the draft is a proposal for periodic renewal of licences for nurses
through some testing procedures, while there is no such clause for any other category of service
providers—specialists, doctors or other allied health care professionals who may need such
periodic skill upgradation and re-certification even more.

Empathy and values

On the challenge of creating health care professionals with empathy—scientifically competent,
but also ethical, humane, caring, communicative, sensitive to concerns of equity, and socially
accountable—the section on health care policy is a non-starter. This is surprising considering
the almost poetic eloquence with which the importance of liberal education is set out in the
introductory chapters of the higher education section. The introductory chapters posits liberal,
broad-based multidisciplinary education as essential for developing “critical 21st century
capacities” and defines this as including not only exposure to humanities and social sciences
but also an ethic of social engagement (para 11.3.1, pages 234-235). It calls for professional
education to be “cognizant of larger social concerns, and develop a mindset of public service
and cultural awareness” and promises that professional and technical education will not remain
narrowly focussed on technical expertise alone (Chapter 9, page 202). On the specific strategy
to achieve this, it is proposed that “the practice of setting up stand-alone universities for
professional education will be discontinued” as “the practice of setting up separate technical
universities, health sciences universities, legal and agriculture universities in each State to
affiliate colleges offering professional education in their respective disciplines has resulted in
deepening the isolation further. All institutions offering either professional or general education
must organically evolve into institutions offering both seamlessly by 2030” (page 301). It
particularly condemns how in health care , education is offered largely in silos of individual
subjects and separate from general higher education. Although the effort in professional
education has been focussed mainly on making students ready for “jobs”, the outcomes, in
terms of employability, leave a lot to be desired (Chapter 16, page 293).

None of these laudable values seem to inform or animate the authors of the health care
education section. Nowhere in the text of this section is any attention given to how we produce
health care professionals who care, who feel for the individual and society. And whatever space
emerges for such character-building locally or spontaneously would be swallowed up by the
waves of MCQ (multiple choice questions)-based national examinations that the student would
have to face. The proposals in this section are all examples of what is declared as wrong with
professional education in the earlier section.

Allied health care providers

The paragraph on allied health care providers states that a “syllabus will be standardised pan-
India, drawn up in conjunction with Health Universities and State Allied Health Sciences
Boards…. These training programmes will be hospital-based, at those hospitals that have
adequate facilities, including state-of-the-art simulation facilities, and adequate student-patient
ratio”. In this policy statement, the health university is retained, and the vision of the educational
institution has given way to a description of a corporate hospital. Further, some of the jobs
mentioned as priorities are very narrowly based on current corporate health care industry
requirements (for example, general duty assistant), and more broad-based skills such as
pharmacists and counsellors find no mention. Almost none of the essential public health skills
merit mention.

As a concession to the imperative of regional equity in the creation of new health education
institutions, the policy puts forth a proposal “to upgrade the nation’s 600 district hospitals to
become teaching hospitals, to train doctors, nurses and allied health care professionals”. But is
it so easy to transform district hospitals into educational institutions? Whatever happened to all
those brave words about liberal education and multidisciplinary university? It is one thing to ask
for district hospitals to be upgraded to tertiary care hospitals and linked to university-based
medical colleges. It is quite another to talk of upgrading district hospitals into teaching hospitals
“by investing in infrastructure” and “stationing adequately qualified teaching faculty”. A proposal
to identify districts with major human resource shortages and link these with medical colleges
and health care institutions that are part of public universities providing subsidised or free
education with affirmative policies to bring in more candidates who relate to local communities
would have been welcome. What is stated now (all district hospitals are to be so upgraded),
read in conjunction with repeated announcements and efforts to outsource district hospitals to
corporate agencies, gives rise to fears that even this proposal may be a justification for
providing private medical colleges an access to the clinical exposure that public hospitals
provide.

The answers to any of the three challenges that a health care education policy faces are not
easy, but they are available, and across the world many nations have learnt to address them.
Even for the most difficult challenge of the three, providing health care professionals with
empathy and ethics, there are many innovative efforts to learn from. Even within India, there are
many good examples. Institutions such as the Christian Medical College, Vellore, have for over
a century been identifying and training students from very remote and underprivileged
communities and returning them successfully as sensitised, caring individuals to serve these
communities for a number of years, while maintaining standards of excellence far above the
average. (Far from learning from them, NEET has so comprehensively undermined these
policies so much so that CMC Vellore has had to petition the Supreme Court to try and
safeguard its mission—as yet unsuccessfully.) If select universities and regions did have the
powers and flexibility and there was a suitable policy framework that ensured that such flexibility
was only exercised in favour of the health care needs of the population and not for private
profits, much could be improved.

But as it stands, the policy has not seriously engaged with these questions. It is contradictory to
its own stated objectives of liberal education, fails to address concerns of equity in access to
health care or access to health care education, and paves the way for an unhealthy
commercialisation of education in this domain. There is a need for a rethink with more broad-
based consultations, taking care to exclude conflicts of interest in the process of decision-
making.

Prof. T. Sundararaman was Professor of Medicine, JIPMER, Puducherry, and later Professor in
Health Systems Studies and Health Policy at TISS, Mumbai, and former executive director,
National Health Systems Resource Centre, New Delhi.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28259443.ece
COVER STORY
LANGUAGE
Resistance to formula
ASHA SARANGI
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

The draft states that all students from preschool and grade 1 onwards will be exposed to three
or more languages. Photo: M.A. Sriram

Education is in the Concurrent List, and any issues relating to it is determined by both the
Centre and the State government concerned. Therefore, the Central government cannot impose
any language on any State in the sphere of education particularly.
The draft National Education Policy (NEP), 2019, was submitted to the government on May 31,
2019. This sizeable report of about 480 pages has been in the making since January 2015
when consultations on the NEP first began. The Ministry of Human Resource Development
(HRD) had earlier constituted a Committee for Evolution of the New Education Policy, under the
chairmanship of T.S.R. Subramanian, the former Cabinet Secretary, which submitted its report
in May 2016. Based on this report, the Ministry prepared “Some inputs for the Draft National
Education Policy, 2016”. Subsequently, in June 2017, a committee was formed under the
chairmanship of K. Kasturirangan, the eminent scientist and former Chairperson, Indian Space
Research Organisation (ISRO), to examine all suggestions and submit a draft policy by
December 2018. The draft NEP was put in the public domain, seeking comments, suggestions
and inputs from various stakeholders, until June 30, 2019. (This has since been extended by a
month.) The policy is comprehensive and aims at covering several aspects and stages of
school, college and university education. For school education, it has included children of the 3-
18 age group instead of the existing 6-14 age group under the Right to Education Act (RTE).

A number of education commissions and committees have been set up since Independence to
help formulate and implement various governmental policies and programmes. The first
University Education Commission (1948-49), also known as the Radhakrishnan Commission,
under the chairmanship of Dr S. Radhakrishnan, the second President of India, spelt out the
objectives and functions of university education in detail. It was followed by the B.G. Kher
Committee on Primary Education in 1951 whose recommendations were made part of the
Secondary Education Commission (1952-53), which was also known as the Mudaliyar
Commission. Subsequently, the Official Language Commission, 1956, and the Education
Commission (1964-66), the latter known as the Kothari Commission, were set up to achieve the
ideals of democratic citizenship, economic and social mobility and cultural integration through a
comprehensive education policy in India. What emerged from these commissions was the
National Education Policy, 1968, which emphasised the domains of science and technology in
the education system of the country. Thereafter, the National Policy on Education was
presented in 1986 to integrate new domains and spheres in the realm of education; finally, the
National Curriculum Framework (NCF 2005) outlined the broader framework for school
education.

SCOPE OF NEP 2019

The draft NEP is a vision document of education and its accessibility for the next two decades. It
proposes that the education policy must have as its objectives access, equity, quality,
affordability and accountability. It sets out that students must develop not merely cognitive skills
relating to numeracy and literacy but also soft skills consisting of social and emotional skills with
cultural competence, team work, perseverance and leadership, and so on (page 25). In other
words, education must impart social and emotional competence, going beyond the
recommendations and policy implementations of the earlier two education policies—the National
Policy on Education, 1986, and its modification in 1992. The universalisation of school
education provided through the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2002, under Article 21-A of
the Constitution, ensures free and compulsory education as a fundamental right as part of the
RTE Act that came into force in April 2010.

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is a novel concept in the draft with particular
respect to the idea of cognitive growth and the questions relating to “learning crisis”. The
questions of curricula design, pedagogical framework, creative activity-based education and
innovative teaching tools have got significant attention in the draft. The idea of establishing
National Tutors Programmes across the country is to enable high quality peer tutoring among
students. Similarly, to increase communicative skills among children, the draft policy
recommends the expansion of school and public libraries and encouraging the culture of
reading. In order to minimise rote learning, it emphasises the transformation of both curriculum
and pedagogy by the use of multilingualism and diverse communicative order in classroom
teaching.

In its vision for universal access to education for the 3-18 age group by 2030, the draft draws
attention to the need for providing transport and hostel facilities and safety measures,
monitoring of attendance and school status, and the role of social workers and counsellors. With
regard to the administrative governance of schools, the draft indicates measures such as the
organisation of schools into school complexes for institutional resources, and a comprehensive
teacher development plan for regulation and accreditation of school education by setting up a
State School Regulatory Authority (SSRA) in every State as part of the extension of the RTE,
2009. Similarly, for higher education, the draft committee has suggested the setting up of a
National Research Foundation (NRF) as a resource centre to provide a funding framework for
higher education. A move has been proposed to regulate, control, and monitor education at the
Central and State levels by setting up the Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog (National Education
Commission) to be headed by the Prime Minister and the Rajya Shiksha Aayog (State
Education Commission) to be headed by the Chief Minister.

The draft policy emphasises language teaching as part of the school curricula. It recognises the
power of languages in learning and in the dissemination of knowledge throughout the school
years. However, in pursuit of acquiring learning and not necessarily interrogating critically or
introspecting what and how to learn in schools through textbooks or set curricula, the draft gives
languages more of an instrumental role to perform. The deeper relationship between language
and education has not been worked out substantively.

Language as a medium of instruction and language as a subject of learning are two distinctive
domains. Where a particular language becomes a medium of instruction and not just a subject
of acquiring knowledge about that particular language, it acquires more of an instrumental value
and becomes a formal tool of learning. It may not result in gaining substantive knowledge of that
language. The committee members of the draft policy seem to be concerned about integrating
the multilingual social ethos into school and university pedagogical domains. Therefore, it
suggests that children between two and eight years of age have the capacity to learn multiple
languages, giving them much-needed cognitive benefits.

The three-language formula (TLF) that the draft lays emphasis on is to be initiated from the
foundational stages so that multilingual skills are internalised and retained as well. The draft
stresses the fact that early childhood schooling should be in the students’ own language, that
textbooks should be written in the local languages, and that teachers should be taught the local
languages too. In its recommendation to make the home language/mother tongue/local
language as the medium of instruction at least until grade 5 or preferably until grade 8, the draft
reiterates the significance of mother tongue education throughout school life. The draft NEP
2019 has identified the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Survey to know the standard of language
education in different schools of India.

A large number of Indian languages, which are not yet used in schools as medium of instruction,
would need to have teachers, interpreters and translators who can provide the much-needed
assistance for schoolchildren during the years of transition from local to regional language.
Keeping this in mind, the draft also suggests setting up an Indian Translation and Interpretation
Mission to introduce a “bilingual approach for those whose language is different from the
primary medium of instruction to ensure the smooth transition from the home language to the
medium of instruction”. While accepting that “multilingualism is a necessity of India” (page 81)
and that Indian languages are no less than English, the draft emphasises that “importance and
prominence must be returned to Indian languages” and that “language teaching jobs must be
created in schools and colleges across the country”.

THREE-LANGUAGE FORMULA
The draft NEP 2019 states that all students from preschool and grade 1 onwards will be
exposed to three or more languages to be able to recognise and read basic text by grade 3.
This reconfirms the continuity of the TLF which was first introduced in 1968 and has remained a
subject of controversy since then. It clearly states that the TLF will be continued as
recommended in 1968, 1986/1992 and 2005 and implemented in its spirit throughout the
country but it must be better implemented in some States, particularly in Hindi-speaking States,
for purposes of national integration as schools in Hindi-speaking States should also offer and
teach Indian languages from other States.

The draft NEP 2019 has expanded the reach and access of the TLF by recommending that
“States may enter [into] bilateral agreements to hire teachers in large numbers from each other,
in order to satisfy the three-language formula in their respective States”. There seems to be a
call for some sort of linguistic federalism in this regard. For example, the call for nationwide
recruitment of teachers to teach local languages, including retired teachers, is an innovative
idea. Another important suggestion is that students whose medium of instruction is the local
language will start learning science bilingually from grade 8 onwards so that by grade 10 they
can understand a subject like science both in English and in their local language.

In order to make children multilingual, the draft recommends that every student take a “fun
course” on “languages of India” during grades 6-8 and that excerpts from literature of other
languages be included in the curriculum. The recommendations about the TLF further suggest
that “students, who wish to change one of the three languages they are studying, may do so in
grade 6 but there can’t be any change in the teaching of three languages—Hindi-speaking
States will have Hindi, English and one modern Indian language; non-Hindi speaking States will
have Hindi, English and one of the regional languages”.

The draft clearly states that the TLF must be implemented, although the foreign language
(French, German, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese) will be an elective at the secondary level. It
is also suggested that Sanskrit be offered as an optional subject at all levels; that courses of all
classical languages be made available at all levels and classical languages be taught for two
years in grades 6-8. The draft, in chapter 22, on the promotion of Indian languages, suggests
the setting up of a National Institute for Pali, Persian and Prakrit in order to encourage learning
and teaching in these languages. Furthermore, the proposal to set up a National Research
Foundation is aimed at ensuring the survival and stability of Indian languages through research
about their historical genealogies, their literature and their capabilities to become the languages
of education. In order to be able to navigate between different languages, there is a proposal to
set up a Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology and one that says “all higher
education institutions must recruit high faculty for at least three languages”.

Over the last 70 years, numerous commissions and committees have addressed the question of
language in terms of the teaching of English, Hindi, mother tongues and other languages. For
example, the first University Education Commission in 1948 recommended the replacement of
English by Indian languages as the medium of instruction at the university level after five years.
It also recommended that one’s mother tongue should be adopted as the medium of instruction
at primary and secondary levels and that students should know at least three languages—the
regional language, Hindi and English, the latter two serving as link languages.

The Mudaliyar Commission (Secondary Education Commission, 1952) recommended the study
of Hindi and English at the higher primary level too. Subsequently, the Central Board of
Secondary Education (CBSE) in 1957 suggested the TLF, which was adopted in 1961 at the
Chief Ministers Conference, leading to the teaching of a regional language, Hindi in non-Hindi-
speaking areas and any other language in Hindi-speaking areas, and English or any modern
European language. In December 2016, the CBSE put forth to the HRD Ministry a proposal
concerning the TLF for secondary education, and it seems to have suggested that foreign
languages be provided as a fourth or fifth option in the TLF given the fact that 18,000 schools
affiliated to the CBSE allow students the option of studying three languages (mother tongue or
Hindi, English and any other foreign language) until class 8. However, it is to be noted that
languages under the TLF have to be chosen only from those listed in the Eighth Schedule of the
Constitution.

For minorities and minority language communities, the draft suggested the following measures.
For the Scheduled Caste and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities facing
discrimination and disadvantages on account of social and linguistic inequalities, it suggested
that teachers be recruited from these communities to provide translated learning material for the
education of children from tribal communities while contextualising curriculum and incorporating
tribal knowledge tradition. Furthermore, the draft says, curriculum and pedagogy should be
connected to tribal language and culture with measures such as bilingual education to make the
transition easy from home language to the language of instruction; modernisation of madrasas
and other religious educational institutions; education for children from urban poor families;
physical access to schools for children with special needs and their inclusion in school and
provision for home-based education.

SURGE AND SPREAD OF HINDI

Two days after the draft policy was released, on June 2, an outburst of anger and anxiety from
Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra erupted against the imposition of Hindi as part of the
TLF in non-Hindi-speaking States. On June 3, the Union government backtracked and assured
people that the TLF would not be implemented in primary schools. This was done to avert the
protests and agitations that had spread far and wide in the country. Subsequently, the clause
“mandatory Hindi Lessons” was removed from the draft. Although this reassurance from the
government quelled the tide of anger and protests, it nevertheless brought forth a number of
questions relating to the role of the TLF in a linguistically diverse country such as India. For
example, the old claim of Hindi being spoken or used by the largest number of people in the
country is based more on assumption than on any serious and consistent census or any other
enumerative methods. Languages such as Braj, Bhojpuri, Awadhi and Rajasthani are counted
as variants of Hindi, increasing the numerical strength of Hindi in order to justify its claims of
being the language spoken by the largest number of people.

What is perhaps needed is a new language census or proper language survey records as part
of the decennial census exercise of 2021 to see the numerical status of various languages and
dialects in the country. It is necessary that the Language Atlas published in 2004 is revised and
counted with additions or deletions in the list of languages of the last 15 years. What is
interesting is the sixfold increase in just about 10 years in the number of students learning Hindi
through various courses offered by the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha (DBHPS), a Hindi
promotion society established by Mahatma Gandhi in 1918 “with the sole aim of propagating
Hindi in Southern States”. It is also noteworthy that despite several constitutional provisions
favouring the promotion and propagation of Hindi in Central government offices and their
associated organisations, Hindi is an official language in only about half of the States in the
country. The DBHPS conducts eight levels of proficiency examinations, and 80 per cent of them
are for schoolchildren.

There have been a number of official means and strategies followed since Independence by the
Central government to accord official/national recognition to Hindi. With so many measures of
state protection and promotion of Hindi by the government, it is obvious that the language has
spread far and wide in the country. For example, in compliance with the Official Language
Resolution, 1968, the Department of Official Language has prepared an annual programme
which sets targets for Central government offices with regard to originating correspondence,
telegrams, telex, and so on, in Hindi. A Quarterly Progress Report is called for from these
offices regarding achievements vis-a-vis the targets. Eight Regional Implementation Offices
have been established at Bengaluru, Kochi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Bhopal, Delhi and
Ghaziabad to monitor the implementation of the Official Language Policy of the Union.

A Committee of Parliament on Official Language was constituted in 1976 under Section 4 of the
Official Languages Act, 1963, to periodically review the progress in the use of Hindi as the
official language of the Union and to submit a report to the President. The committee consists of
20 members of the Lok Sabha and 10 of the Rajya Sabha. The Kendriya Hindi Samiti,
constituted in 1967 and chaired by the Prime Minister, is the apex policymaking body which lays
down guidelines for the propagation and progressive use of Hindi as official language of the
Union. Under the directions of the Kendriya Hindi Samiti, Hindi Salahakar Samitis have been
constituted in all Ministries/Departments under the chairmanship of the Ministers concerned.
These Samitis periodically review the progress in the use of Hindi in their respective
Ministries/Departments and offices/undertakings and suggest measures to promote its use.

Besides, the Central Official Language Implementation Committee (headed by the Secretary,
Department of Official Language, and consisting of Joint Secretaries (in-charge Official
Language) of all the Ministries/Departments as ex-officio members) reviews the status of use of
Hindi for official purposes of the Union, training of its employees in Hindi and implementation of
instructions issued from time to time by the Department of Official Language and suggests
measures to remove the shortcomings and difficulties in implementing these instructions. Town
Official Language Implementation Committees have been constituted in different towns having
10 or more Central government offices to review the progress made in the use of Hindi in their
member offices and to exchange experiences. So far, 255 Town Official Language
Implementation Committees have been constituted all over the country.

The draft should have taken into account a more detailed view on migrants’ languages and the
need to include them in the curricula of school education and in the list of dominant regional
languages of the country. The anti-Hindi protests are indicative of linguistic identity as a
significant form of recognition of people and communities whose language is older and enjoys
the status of classical language in the country. The language of citizenship and its democratic
enunciation should be the one having pedagogical effects in the realms of education.

The law and administration, too, should be made sense of in the language of the people. The
language-education question is a deeply political one with implications for language planning in
the multilingual social fabric of the country. Education is in the Concurrent List, any issues
relating to it is determined by both the Centre and the State governments concerned. Therefore,
the Central government cannot impose any language on any State in the sphere of education
particularly, and the idea of the TLF would always be contested by the States concerned. Given
the global network of trade, commerce, education, employment and migration, teaching of
foreign languages must be made part of the school curriculum throughout the country. There is
a need to make learning and teaching of languages integral to the educational and pedagogical
ethos across the country.

Asha Sarangi teaches at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/cover-story/article28282529.ece
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India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission ends in a crash-landing
COVER STORY
INTERVIEW: S. JANAKARAJAN
‘Floods and droughts are opportunities, not disasters’
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Dr S. Janakarajan, former Professor of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS),

Chennai, specialises in the areas of water, environment and climate change. He is the convener
of the Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue for the Palar river basin and an initiator of the “Cauvery
Family”, a group of like-minded farmers and academics from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. He
spoke to Frontline on the present water crisis in Chennai. Excerpts:

The present drought situation in Tamil Nadu, especially Chennai, paints a serious picture. How
would you characterise it?

The current drought situation in Tamil Nadu has risen because of a lack of preparedness. This
could have been easily mitigated had there been a robust action programme. Our approach to
droughts is one of ad hoc crisis and risk management. What we encounter in Chennai, and
Tamil Nadu in general, is accumulated stress. If the present response of the government
continues, the crisis will deepen further in the years to come.

Can you explain the statement that the reason for the current drought in Tamil Nadu is a lack of
preparedness?

Drought and flood are regular monsoon features. There were many droughts and floods in the
past. The key question is whether the State is prepared to handle the good and bad rainfall
years. We have no control over the monsoons and weather conditions. But we should be
prepared to face both these situations. One needs to have an integrated view of droughts and
floods. Saving water during floods will save us from droughts. In 2015, Tamil Nadu received 50
per cent more rainfall compared to the average of 945 mm. Chennai city’s neighbouring districts
such as Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram [these districts are going to be a part of the new Chennai
Metropolitan Area (CMA) soon] received very high rainfall.

The Cooum and the Adayar rivers carried over 100,000 cusecs of water during the peak flood
period. Reportedly, something like 300 tmc ft of water was let into the sea during this period
through Chennai’s waterways. We could have saved at least half of this water in the 4,100
irrigation tanks located in Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts and in Arakkonam taluk of
Vellore district.

Another example is the loss of over 180 tmc ft of water in the Cauvery in the year 2018,
immediately after the delta faced the “severest” drought. This kind of sequence of extreme
events speaks very poorly of the State’s lethargic attitude towards water conservation.

Is the present drought in Chennai the severest in 100 years?

I don’t think so. Even in this “severest drought year” Chennai and its neighbourhood received
around 810 mm of rainfall. What happened to that rainfall? Just compare this with the rainfall in
other States such as Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Telangana, and so on.
A rainfall of 810 mm is almost their average rainfall or even less.
You must remember that droughts are defined on the basis of rainfall figures. If an area receives
25 per cent less than its historical average, it is considered a drought. If it receives 25-50 per
cent less rainfall, it is considered a moderate drought. If the shortfall is more than 50 per cent
then it is considered a severe drought. Therefore, even by this standard, Chennai’s drought
(including its neighbouring districts) is not severe but moderate given its historical average
figure of over 1,350 mm.

What do you think the government should do in future?

The urban world, metro cities such as Chennai in particular, need to understand the following
three issues: the rainfall pattern and characteristics of the monsoon; upstream and downstream
watersheds; and ecology and drainage systems.

We should learn to understand and respect the changing characteristics of the monsoons and
adapt accordingly. Therefore, we should conserve water whenever there is rainfall. In 2019,
when all the reservoirs are literally dry, we should have desilted them so that even with a couple
of spells of rainfall water can be stored. But, unfortunately, we are not ready. For me, floods and
droughts are opportunities, not disasters.

Could you suggest any specific strategies?

It is important for us to acknowledge that there is a lack of comprehensive database on

disasters and extreme events. It is important to record human and animal losses, livelihood
losses the value of property lost, analyse each disaster and prepare a report of disaster
preparedness and the lessons learnt. But, unfortunately, one has to depend on newspaper
reports and analyses and no state agency seems to be willing to take responsibility for this.

We need to have a comprehensive report on post-disaster analysis and the people’s struggle for
recovery. In 2004-05, three disasters struck: the tsunami and the floods. These were preceded
by continuous drought.

Have we learnt any lessons from these continuous/cyclical occurrences of droughts and floods?

In the absence of these, it is a real challenge to make the city and the State climate- and
disaster-resilient.

The State should immediately work on formulating comprehensive and actionable policy
documents on: (a) climate emergency; (b) water conservation (both surface and groundwater);
and (c) disaster management and disaster risk reduction strategies.

Most importantly, these policies should be backed by legislation and implemented straightaway.
Otherwise, it is going to be very difficult to save the State, its economy, and the people from the
accumulated stress that is already being witnessed.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article28261580.ece
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THE NATION
CONTROVERSY
Warning bells
DIVYA TRIVEDI
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Indira Jaising, founding trustee of Lawyers Collective. The Central Bureau of Investigation has
registered an FIR against its functionaries. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

Anand Grover. He said the FIR had no basis in fact or law. Photo: Manish Swarup/AP

The criminal charges filed against the leading human rights organisation Lawyers Collective
smack of political intimidation of those who speak truth to power.
During the first term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, individuals and organisations that called
out the Sangh Parivar’s divisive agenda of communal polarisation or opposed the government’s
high-handedness on policy matters were targeted for action. The first few weeks of the
government after Modi’s re-election in May this year indicate that his second term is likely to be
more of the same. In what is seen as a step to intimidate and harass them for their work relating
to the protection of human rights, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has framed criminal
charges against the leading public interest group Lawyers Collective.

Lawyers Voice, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) purported to have political affiliations

with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), filed a public interest litigation (PIL) petition with
the Supreme Court on May 8 seeking a court-monitored probe by a Special Investigation Team
(SIT) into the Centre’s “apparent illegality and non-action” against Lawyers Collective and its
founding trustees Indira Jaising and Anand Grover for alleged violations under the Foreign
Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA). The NGO demanded criminal prosecution and registration
of cases against them for offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Prevention of Money
Laundering Act, the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) and the Income Tax Act.

Lawyers Collective is known for its human rights advocacy and legal aid and intervention in
areas of domestic violence, sexual harassment at workplace, rights of the LGBTQ community,
and access to health care. It has taken up cases that directly oppose powerful individuals in the
ruling dispensation, specifically Home Minister Amit Shah in the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter
case. Other sensitive cases on its plate include the defence of those detained in the Bhima
Koregaon case and the Police Commissioner of West Bengal, Rajiv Kumar. It has represented
the human rights activist Teesta Setalvad, who campaigned to hold Modi criminally responsible
for the 2002 Gujarat riots. Grover had appeared for Yakub Memon, who was convicted in the
Bombay blasts case, and argued for the commutation of his death sentence.

On May 15, Anil Kumar Dhasmana, an Under Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA),
filed a complaint alleging that Lawyers Collective had diverted foreign contributions received by
it under the FCRA for activities not mentioned in the Objects of Association of the organisation
and that the funds were used for personal expenses. On June 13, in uncharacteristic haste, the
CBI registered a first information report (FIR) against Lawyers Collective, senior advocate
Anand Grover and its other unnamed functionaries under various sections of the IPC, the FCRA
and the PCA, 1988.

By contrast, in the controversial Rafale deal case, the CBI dragged its feet over filing an FIR for
months despite being under immense public pressure to do so. Now, the government has told
the Supreme Court that there is no need for an FIR in the deal, let alone an investigation.

Indira Jaising and Grover expressed shock and outrage at the CBI’s move. They said the FIR
had no basis in fact or law and that they would defend themselves in accordance with law in
every forum.

The PIL filed by Lawyers Voice was heard by a Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice
of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi, who immediately issued notice to the respondents. He passed an
order that the pendency of the petition would not come in the way of government agencies
proceeding in the matter, even though the petitioner’s advocate had not orally sought any
interim orders. Lawyers Collective saw this as it being victimised for Indira Jaising’s involvement
in a case pertaining to accusations of sexual harassment against CJI Gogoi.

“It is obvious to us that this is victimisation on account of Ms Jaising taking up the issue of the
procedure adopted in relation to the allegations against the Chief Justice of India by a former
employee of the Supreme Court, which Ms Jaising has done in her capacity as a concerned
citizen, a senior member of the Bar and a women’s rights advocate, without commenting on the
merits of the allegations. Considering that Ms Jaising has been publicly vocal on the issue of
due process of law in relation to the conduct of the in-house inquiry, the Chief Justice ought to
have recused himself from hearing the matter,” a statement by Lawyers Collective said.

‘Arbitrary manner’
Lawyers Collective further pointed out the arbitrary manner in which the PIL was listed for
hearing. The petition was filed on May 6, a number of objections were removed on May 7 and,
according to Lawyers Collective, though the matter was not orally mentioned on that day, it
came to be listed in Court No.1 on May 8 “contrary to the circulars and notifications of the
Supreme Court in respect of listing”.

With regard to the accusation of misutilisation of funds under the FCRA, Lawyers Collective said
it had had no foreign funding since 2016 when the MHA cancelled its FCRA registration. It
subsequently challenged the cancellation of Lawyers Collective’s registration; the matter is
pending before the Bombay High Court.

FCRA
The FCRA was introduced to alleviate concerns around the “national interest” and it regulates
the acceptance of foreign funds by individuals and organisations. The law requires licences to
be renewed every five years and provides for suspension of licences and freezing of bank
accounts during investigation. In practice, it has been used to target organisations that criticise
the government and demand accountability.

The Modi government cancelled the FCRA licences of more than 20,000 NGOs in its first term.
At that time, civil society organisations spoke up against the selective targeting of NGOs that
either belonged to non-Hindu faiths or were involved in seeking justice for victims of caste and
religious persecution or those that criticised mining and infrastructure-related projects. These
included Sabrang India, Navsarjan Trust, Hazards Centre, Anhad, and People’s Watch.

These and other organisations continue to face the wrath of the state through threats of
investigation, choking of funds and vilification by a pliant media.

In a report released recently,“Laws Designed to Silence: The Global Crackdown on Civil Society
Organisations”, Amnesty International listed 50 countries where anti-NGO laws were
implemented. Speaking about India’s FCRA regime, Aakar Patel, head of Amnesty India, said:
“India has the dubious honour of being among those countries which suppress human rights
work under the pretext of outlawing foreign influence. The oppressive FCRA, which restricts
how civil society organisations can access foreign funding, has often been used to curb dissent
and immobilise human rights organisations that expose violations and speak truth to power.”

The Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition called upon the government to
“stop the political crackdown on civil society organisations and ensure an enabling environment
for civil society to freely promote and protect human rights”. It said it was “deeply concerned
with the current use of FCRA regulations to curb the activities of civil society organisations in
India who are engaged in crucial work to ensure democratic processes and ongoing protection
of human rights”.

In June 2016, the government suspended the licence of Lawyers Collective for six months. The
violations listed included the use of funds to organise rallies and dharnas with a political colour,
diversion or misuse of foreign contributions and their use on air travel, draft legislation meetings,
media advocacy with Members of Parliament in March and April 2010 for the draft legislation on
HIV/AIDS Bill, and the receipt of foreign funds meant for Grover as the then United Nations
Special Rapporteur on Right to Health. In November that year, the MHA permanently cancelled
the FCRA registration of Lawyers Collective, alleging discrepancies in foreign contributions cited
in its returns filed with the Ministry.

The order stated that Indira Jaising violated FCRA norms by receiving foreign funds between
2006-07 and 2013-14 when she was a government servant, that is, when she served as the
Additional Solicitor General of India under the United Progressive Alliance government.
Reportedly, the FIR against Lawyers Collective mentions that after it appeared prima facie that
there were violations, the Ministry got on-site inspection of the accounts done in January 2016
and sought explanations.

Not satisfied with the replies, the Ministry cancelled Lawyers Collective’s registration.

In its defence, Lawyers Collective said that there was no basis for the allegations. It said Indira
Jaising’s remuneration was permissible under the FCRA and that it was paid by Lawyers
Collective before she became the Additional Solicitor General and this continued during and
after her tenure in that capacity. She had taken the Law Minister’s permission to continue to
receive the remuneration under the Law Officers (Terms and Conditions) Rules, which was
admitted by the MHA. The MHA’s allegation was on the basis that as Additional Solicitor
General Indira Jaising was a government servant, which she was not. This could not be the
basis of alleged offences under the PCA, stated Lawyers Collective.

It went on to say that expenses reimbursed to Grover were permissible under the FCRA and the
regulations under it. But the MHA apparently ignored these suggestions. Following this an
appeal was filed in the Bombay High Court, which passed interim orders noting that the
submissions made by the MHA were vague and bereft of reasoning. In January 2017, in a major
relief to Lawyers Collective, the Bombay High Court de-freezed its domestic accounts, allowing
it to resume its legal work. The order also put on hold the government’s direction to the Charity
Commissioner to dispose of all assets of Lawyers Collective under Section 22 of the FCRA.

Questioning the timing of the filing of an FIR against it, Lawyers Collective said: “For nearly two
and half years, the CBI, functioning under an NDA [National Democratic Alliance] regime, did
not think it fit to register any criminal cases against the Lawyers Collective and/or its office
bearers, since there was no criminality involved. There has been no change in circumstances or
material on record since 2016 and hence the question arises what has changed between 2016
and 2019. There is no material to show that any of the provisions invoked under the IPC, [the]
PC Act have any basis.”

It said the main protagonist of the NGO that filed the PIL against it was Neeraj, head of the legal
cell of the BJP in Delhi.

“The organisation claims it has no income and no PAN card, a mandatory requirement for filing
a PIL. The petition did not have the basic averments of a writ petition under Article 32 of the
Constitution, and therefore was not maintainable,” said Lawyers Collective, expressing surprise
that notice was issued on the petition.

‘Pattern of intimidation’
Henri Tiphagne of the Human Rights Defenders Alert (HRDA) and Maja Daruwala, senior
adviser of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, wrote to the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC) expressing concern on the arbitrariness of the CBI action against Lawyers
Collective. They brought to the Commission’s notice that filing of criminal charges against
Lawyers Collective had no material basis. Daruwala stated that a pattern of intimidation was
going on against anyone who challenged government policies. The HRDA requested the NHRC
to act on its long-standing request for urgently reviewing the FCRA.

The NHRC, currently headed by former CJI H.L. Dattu, said the matter of the FCRA was outside
its purview but it was empowered under the “Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, to examine
the issue to make it non-discriminatory and to avoid arbitrariness”. It has forwarded the
complaints to the Director, CBI, and sought a progress report from it on the status of the
investigation within four weeks.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article28261803.ece
THE NATION
WATER RESOURCES
Chennai’s thirst
ILANGOVAN RAJASEKARAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Residents draw water from a community well in Chennai after the reservoirs for the city ran dry,
on June 20. Photo: ARUN SANKAR/AFP

Women drawing water from an opening made by residents in a dried-up lake in Chennai on
June 11. Photo: P. RAVIKUMAR/REUTERS
Chembarambakkam reservoir, one of the main sources of drinking water for Chennai, in March.
Photo: B. VELANKANNI RAJ

People stand in queues to collect drinking water from a water tanker, on June 19. Photo: R.
Parthibhan/AP

The city is facing unprecedented water shortage. Failure of the monsoons for two consecutive
years and total mismanagement of water resources by the State government are responsible for
the crisis.
Chennai today is facing the predicament of “simply not enough”. In fact, this coastal metropolis’
seven million people have never enjoyed the standard water supply of 150-200 litres per capita
per day (lpcd) the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) prescribed in 1998.

Living in a state of perpetual deficiency is not new to Chennai. The city has no perennial water
source and when the rains fail it can be traumatic for a large section of the citizenry that is used
to piped water supply from the city corporation. For purposes other than drinking, the people
survive solely on groundwater. Piped water supply, however, is between 50 and 70 lpcd even at
the best of times.

The rains have failed for two years consecutively, and the city now gets a supply of around 525
million litres per day (mld) against the normal supply of 830 mld. (The prescribed supply should
be 1,584 mld.) Incidentally, that is the quantum Cape Town in South Africa distributed to its four
million people during the “Day Zero” alert not long ago. Even a 13.5 per cent dip in the storage
in its water sources made Cape Town declare an emergency.

In Chennai, the grim reality is that storage in the four major freshwater reservoirs that supply
water to the city has plummeted to an all-time low of 27 million cubic feet (mcft) (on June 18)
against the combined total capacity of 11,257 mcft, or about 0.24 per cent. The city, the sixth
largest in India and 30th on the list of most populous urban agglomerations in the world (U.N.
Mega Cities Report, 2016), is fast running dry. A report by the NITI Aayog released last year
says that 21 cities, including Chennai, will run out of groundwater by 2020. A staggering 600
million people will face high to extreme water stress, it warns.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami called the crisis “an exaggerated” one and
promptly drew all-round criticism. He announced a contingency amount of Rs.200 crore to
mitigate the problem on a war footing. After rejecting the Kerala government’s offer of 2 million
litres by rail as “too little for the crisis”, he asked his officials to source water from Jolarpet town
in Vellore district, some 140 kilometres from Chennai, by train.

The north-east monsoon, which supplies most of the city’s water requirements, failed for two
consecutive years. The Director of Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, P. Balachandran,
told Frontline that the rainfall deficit in Chennai in 2018 was steep. The total annual rainfall was
754.1 mm against the normal level of 1,324.2 mm, a deficit of 570.1 mm and a departure
percentage of minus 43. Both the monsoons, south-west and north-east, were in deficit in 2018.

The uncertainty over water from the Cauvery river reaching the Veeranam tank, which supplies
25 per cent of Chennai’s water needs, and the poor realisation of Krishna river water from
Andhra Pradesh at the Poondi reservoir, another major water source for the city, are not
unexpected. Karnataka has stubbornly refused to give Tamil Nadu’s June share of 9.19
thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft), and Andhra Pradesh cites drought as a reason for its
inability to share Krishna water.

Operational inefficiency
Experts say that two major factors—groundwater depletion because of water sources drying up
and a tardy distribution system by an apathetic state—have escalated the ever-prevalent
shortage into a full-blown water crisis. Although there are many reasons—climate change,
monsoon failure, population explosion and rampant urbanisation—for groundwater depletion,
the primary cause is the failure of the State government to manage and maintain irrigation
systems and waterbodies. Hydrological experts call it “operational inefficiency”.

Ironically, the government has spent crores of rupees over the last decade to supply water and
assist agriculture. “It is the lack of vision and the absence of a holistic approach to overhaul the
water management system in the State that have led to the crisis,” says the water expert Prof.
S. Janakarajan (see box). But even rainwater harvesting (RWH), a pet project of former Chief
Minister Jayalalithaa introduced in 2003 after a similar spell of water stress, is no longer
mandatory. RWH structures were constructed in 8.28 lakh houses, 2,700 government buildings,
and 27,600 commercial complexes, educational buildings and places of worship then. “The
government has plans to bring it back in a big way. We are reviving the defunct structures and
creating fresh ones wherever water can be harnessed,” says an official.

The Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB), which takes care of the
water supply in the city’s 34,173 streets in 200 wards, could distribute only 830 mld of water
even during “non-crisis” periods, as against the mandated requirement of 1,584 mld. The Indian
standard water requirement, finalised and adopted by the BIS, says that the lower income group
(LIG) and economically weaker sections (EWS) require 135 lpcd, and for a population above
100,000, it is 150 to 200 lpcd. For citizens of Chennai, it still remains a dream.

Long dry spell

For the first time in three decades, the city went without a drop of rain for nearly 200 days at a
stretch (as on June 23), leading to a shrinking of storage and triggering panic. It, however,
rained heavily on June 25/26, breaking the dry spell. Many companies, particularly in the IT
sector, have asked their employees to work from home. Educational institutions function for
fewer hours than usual. Even commercial establishments and eateries struggle to stay open.
Vital establishments such as hospitals are allowed to have normal water supply.

The increasing cost of water has become a huge drain on the purses of those who live in gated
communities and high-rises and depend on private suppliers. Street taps remain crowded even
at odd hours, with women, men and children struggling to fill a pot of water, which costs Rs.10
in many areas. A major chunk of the suburban population, including about 13 lakh IT employees
and their families, depends on private tankers, which supply about 20,000 loads of 12,000 to
24,000 litres of water every day. The water, sourced from irrigation wells in the villages
surrounding the city, fetches fancy prices. Around 20 million litres of packaged drinking water is
sold in the city daily. The blame for this state of affairs falls squarely on the State government.
The political instability in the State has seen priorities shifting and becoming more party-centric
than people-specific.

“It is both a political and an administrative failure. The inability of the present political leadership
and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy have accentuated the crisis. They, it seems, have made
mistakes, believing that the no-rain spell would be a short-term one,” said a city-based
environmentalist who requested anonymity. He and other volunteers are engaged in desilting
tanks in the city.

S.P. Velumani, Municipal Administration and Water Supply Minister, while participating in a
review meeting on water supply on June 17, called the cries for water as mere “scare” created
by political adversaries. He said that the State government had allotted Rs.625 crore to
augment water sources and for the supply of water through tanker lorries. Chennai Metro Water,
he said, would maintain the present supply of 525 mld until November.

He detailed the various water augmentation and irrigation projects that were being taken up in
Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu at a huge cost, which was reported in detail in the media.
Projects to the tune of Rs.15,838 crore were being implemented across the State in the past
three years to upgrade the infrastructure. Works costing Rs.2,638 crore, he said, were being
undertaken in Chennai city alone, while projects worth Rs.5,346 crore were being undertaken in
the rest of Tamil Nadu. He claimed that 18 major water supply projects had been undertaken at
a cost of Rs.6,496 crore.

If he is to be believed, the State should no longer have a water shortage problem. The
overhauling of various irrigation structures and water sources at such a great cost should have
ensured this. “When you take up projects below the soil and for water, no one would realise the
outcome until a crisis of current magnitude strikes. These works have not mitigated the critical
depletion of groundwater,” said the environmentalist.

The State government has failed to monitor and standardise hundreds of waterbodies, many of
which once held copious surface water round the year, which the city depended on. In fact,
Chennai and its two suburban districts of Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur are known as the
“cluster of lake districts”. Unfortunately, haphazard urbanisation, population explosion and
administrative indifference have destroyed most ofl the lakes.

A recent report in The Hindu quoting L. Elango, vice president of the Indian Association of
Hydrologists (Indian Chapter), says that waterbodies in the city and its suburbs have shrunk
from 12.6 sq km in 1893 to about 3.2 sq km in 2017 because of urbanisation. A study done by
the Department of Geology, Anna University, says the volume of surface water has also dipped
from 1,335 mcft in 1893 to 339 mcft in 2017.

The systematic destruction of these tanks and lakes has a crucial bearing on the groundwater
level. Between 80 and 85 per cent of the current requirement of water is being drawn from
borewells. Metro Water supplies potable water for an hour or so through pipes every alternate
day, which is grossly inadequate. As of now, it employs 900 water tankers of 9,000- and 12,000-
litre capacities. They criss-cross the city round the clock, doing 9,100 trips a day to cater to a
significant chunk of the city’s population.

But supply through tankers is not without its problems. “Though we are asked to book water
online in advance, we have to wait for at least a fortnight to get a tanker of 9,000 litres while
VVIPs and other influential persons are ensured regular supply,” says Rathnam, a resident in
Kilpauk. Many consumers across the city accuse Metro Water of irregular water supply. “Some
key areas, such as Greenways Road where Ministers live, have been prioritised. At the
moment, we can distribute 30 to 40 litres a person a day. We should learn to live with that
amount of water for another three months, or till the monsoon arrives,” says a senior officer.
A rough estimate says that the three districts of Chennai, Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram had
once commanded a combined total of 6,000-odd reservoirs, tanks, lakes and ponds to keep
recharging the groundwater on a sustainable basis. Today, hardly half of them survive. Chennai
city alone has lost a hundred such waterbodies and its water carrying channels. Water
harnessed from these lakes and tanks was estimated to be 80,000 mcft.

In Tamil Nadu, 95 per cent of the surface water has been utilised. “The State now has 37 lakh
borewells,” said an Executive Engineer of the Public Works Department (PWD). Chennai’s
acute groundwater depletion has left a debilitating scar on its hydrology system. The seawater
ingress deep inland escalates the problems. A recent groundwater resource assessment report
of the Ground Water Division, State PWD, which maintains and manages major and medium
irrigation and hydrological systems, paints a grim picture of the groundwater profile and points
out that 175 out of the 385 blocks have been over-exploited. The critical blocks constitute 45.45
per cent. The safe blocks number 145.

Another report of the Ground Water Division says that the groundwater level in 22 districts in
Tamil Nadu, including Chennai’s neighbouring districts (data for Chennai city are not available),
have been recording a significant fall. The average groundwater level status report for May 2019
says that Tiruvallur has recorded a fall of 0.68 metres below ground level, from 5.79 m in 2018
to 6.47 m in 2019. Kancheepuram recorded a fall of 1.88 m, from 4.01 m in 2018 to 5.89 m in
2019. It has been a steady decline in the water table after May 2011, during which Tiruvallur
recorded a rise of 1.68 m and Kancheepuram 0.27 m.

Augmenting groundwater
Realising the urgent need to augment groundwater sources, the PWD had chalked up a master
plan to recharge groundwater and to construct check dams, percolation ponds and recharge
tube wells; to build RWH structures for aquifer activation; and to desilt tanks and lakes over a
period of time. The estimated cost of the plan, to be rolled out in three phases in 2008-09, 2009-
10 and 2010-2011, was Rs.550 crore. It got the plan sanctioned in 2008 itself.

As for the projects that are said to have been executed so far, the Agricultural Engineering
Department has constructed 4,753 check dams, 10,996 percolation ponds and 12,564 farm
ponds since 1984 and the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD), which is in
charge of drinking water supply, has constructed 3,666 check dams since 2001. The Forest
Department has chipped in with 25,600 check dams and 2,540 percolation ponds, helping
groundwater register a substantial increase in local areas. Such a master plan was essential to
augment the water level in critical blocks and prevent the semi-critical blocks becoming critical,
says a senior official in the Water Resource Organisation (WRO) of the PWD.

The WRO took up a special scheme to augment the water supply in Chennai in 2011-12. The
formation of a new reservoir near Kannankottai and Thiruvaikandigai villages for storage of one
tmc ft was done at a cost of Rs.330 crore. An additional Rs.130 crore was sanctioned for
creating extra water storage capacity in the four tanks of Cholavaram, Porur, Nemam and
Aynambakkam. The works included desilting, strengthening of bunds, and building of regulators
and weirs. A proposal to restore and rejuvenate the waterbodies in Ambattur, Korattur and
Madhavaram around Chennai for groundwater replenishment is to be taken up at a cost of
Rs.106.49 crore. However, three rivers and a canal in the city—the Cooum, the Adayar, the
Kosasthalaiyar and the Buckingham canal—remain cesspools even after spending crores of
rupees.
The stakeholders are happy that the government is spending a huge sum on projects relating to
water. But they say that the benefits from the projects should have been realised by now. “We
have to suffer perpetual water stress, whether it rains or not. Agriculture is suffering. The entire
irrigation system is leaking. After the floods in 2015, the city is reeling under one calamity or the
other,” says a trader in T. Nagar, one of the worst-hit pockets. “Where will you store the excess
rainwater that drains into the sea?” asked Janakarajan.

The State government, however, chooses to maintain a stony silence on these questions and
blames monsoon failure whenever a crisis strikes. Metro Water, in its affidavit before the
Madras High Court on June 17, which came down heavily on the State government on the water
scarcity, maintained that deficit rainfall from 2017 and the consequent depletion in the storage
capacity of reservoirs was the reason for the short supply in the city.

Existing water sources

The four fresh water reservoirs in the city—Red Hills, Cholavaram, Poondi and
Chembarambakkam—have a combined storage of 11,257 mcft. The Red Hills reservoir (3,300
mcft) and Cholavaram (1,081 mcft) had zero storage as on June 16. The Chembarambakkam
reservoir, which has a capacity of 3,645 mcft, had a mere one mcft while the Poondi reservoir
(3,231 mcft) had 26 mcft.

A PWD officer says that if the four reservoirs were desilted, an additional combined storage of
500 mcft of water could be obtained. An additional supply of 95 mld is ensured from irrigation
wells located in the suburban Tamaraipakkam, Minjur and Poondi villages and borewells supply
another 35 mld. The Retteri lake near Ambattur augments the supply with 10 mld. Stone
quarries yield an additional 30 mld.

Veeranam project
The New Veeranam project supplies 180 mld from the Veeranam lake, some 235 km away and
near the Neyveli Lignite Corporation aquifer. As on June 16, Veeranam had a storge of 569 mcft
against a capacity of 1,465 mcft. It was Jayalalithaa who commissioned the project as an
additional source for the city in 2004. The lake water is treated at the Vadakuthu water
treatment plant before getting pumped to the Chennai Porur water distribution station. In fact,
water can be pumped to Chennai only when the reservoir retains a minimum water level of 39 ft.

Krishna water
Andhra Pradesh has not released the stipulated quantum of Krishna water from the Kandaleru
reservoir for this year. The agreement between the two governments guarantees 12 tmc ft of
water in two spells every year. Andhra Pradesh should have released 4 tmc ft between January
and April out of which only 1.8 tmc ft has been released so far. The rest should be given
between July and October. In fact, Tamil Nadu has been receiving less than its share from
Andhra Pradesh for a decade or so barring the receipt of 8.2 tmc ft in 2011-12.

Desalination Plant
The first seawater desalination plant was commissioned in July 2010 at Minjur with a capacity of
100 mld. The second plant of 100 mld was commissioned at Nemmeli in February 2013. The
foundation stone for the third plant, near the Nemmeli plant, with a capacity of 150 mld was laid
recently. A fourth plant will be constructed in Perur with a capacity of 400 mld. The latter two
projects will cost the exchequer Rs.5,446 crore since these plants are expensive and energy-
intensive.
A drought-like situation prevails elsewhere in the State. The TWAD Board operates 556
comprehensive water supply schemes in eight municipal corporations, 67 municipalities, 347
town panchayats and 48,948 village panchayats other than Chennai, covering 4.23 crore
consumers and 2,146 mld of water. This drought situation in the districts, according to C.
Vaiyapuri, founder-president of the United Farmers Association, is the result of a combination of
free electricity connections and unchecked proliferation of borewells, leading to heavy drawal of
groundwater. “Farmers have started raising water-intensive crops in rain-fed lands too,” he
says.

Chennai has been surviving on a fragile line that separates shortage from crisis. Now, the
shortage is real. It is so bad that a few mosques in the city used sand instead of water for
“wudu”, the cleaning ritual during prayers, during the holy month of Ramzan.

People have realised that they are living in hard times. The State government has been failing
them repeatedly. And everyone in Chennai today is praying for rains.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article28259898.ece
THE NATION
ESSAY
India's fascist challenge
A.G. NOORANI
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaking in the Lok Sabha on June 25. Photo: PTI

The secular vision of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was largely forsaken by his
successors, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi. In this photograph, the three of them are
seen together. Photo: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

January 31, 1948:(From right) Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Lady
Mountbatten and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur watch the flames of Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral pyre on
the bank of the Yamuna. Photo: The Hindu Archives

A farmers’ march in Mumbai on March 12, 2018. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

If the masses are aroused, they will be better prepared to face Modi’s onslaughts on
democracy, fundamental rights and the rights, specifically, of the downtrodden.
On the morrow of his election victory in 2014 Narendra Modi declared that the country had been
liberated from a thousand years of slavery. The claim was widely criticised. It was an assertion
of M.S. Golwalkar’s thesis that the Mughal rule was Muslim rule. Implicit in it was a promise that
Hindu rule would be established. If this was the high point of the 2014 speech, the speech on
May 31, 2019, after the results of the general election were out, had an even more menacing
remark. None, he said, had spoken of secularism in the last five years. Implicit in it was a note
of triumph, a threat and an ominous pledge. He is happy that secularism has been sidelined.
Even Congress leaders at the top, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, did not fight for it during the
election campaign. This is coupled with an implicit threat. Its “remnants” can expect no quarter
from him in the days ahead.
The Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and its political department, the Bharatiya Janata
Party (BJP), have always been restive about secularism. On October 2, 1990, L.K. Advani
complained that “secular policy is putting unreasonable restrictions on Hindu aspirations”. Three
days earlier, he had boasted: “Henceforth only those who fight for Hindu interests would rule
India.” The people of India proved him wrong. In 1991 the Congress was returned to power as it
was again in 2004 and 2009. Modi is not invincible.

But, let alone secularism, the Constitution itself is not absent from the RSS-BJP’s wild plans. In
January 1993, the then de facto RSS supremo, Rajendra Singh, wrote: “The present conflict can
be partially attributed to the inadequacies of our system in responding to the needs of the
essential India, its tradition, values and ethos.... Certain specialities of this country should be
reflected in the Constitution. In place of ‘India that is Bharat’, we should have said ‘Bharat that is
Hindustan’. Official documents refer to the ‘composite culture’, but ours is certainly not a
composite culture. Culture is not wearing of clothes or speaking languages. In a very
fundamental sense, this country has a unique cultural oneness. No country, if it has to survive,
can have compartments. All this shows that changes are needed in the Constitution. A
Constitution more suited to the ethos and genius of this country should be adopted in the future”
(Indian Express, January 14, 1994).

On January 24, 1993, at Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, M.M. Joshi, the then BJP president,
“reiterated the demand for a fresh look at the Constitution”.

On June 5, 1947, B.M. Birla wrote to Vallabhbhai Patel: “I am so glad to see from the Viceroy’s
announcement [of the Partition of India] that things have turned out according to your desire. It
is no doubt a very good thing for the Hindus and we will now be free from the communal canker.

“The partitioned area, of course, would be a Muslim state. Is it not time that we should consider
Hindustan as a Hindu state with Hinduism as the state religion? We have also to strengthen the
country so that it may be able to face any future aggression.” Pate’s retort was swift. He replied
on June 10, 1947: “I also feel happy that the announcement of June 3 at least settles things one
way or the other. There is no further uncertainty.… I do not think it will be possible to consider
Hindustan as a Hindu state with Hinduism as the state religion. We must not forget that there
are other minorities whose protection is our primary responsibility. The state must exist for all,
irrespective of caste or creed” (Durga Das, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, volume 4, page 56).
If a Hindu state was excluded, what other state had Patel in mind but a secular one?

The Constituent Assembly Debates shows that the members of the Assembly simply took
secularism for granted and saw no need for its explicit mention. The Supreme Court has also
held that secularism is part of the unamendable “basic structure” of the Constitution. What is
more, the judges explicitly referred to the 42nd Amendment of 1976 and said that it only made
explicit what was implied in the Constitution. Consult the Debates and the Supreme Court’s
ruling, and the BJP’s sophistry becomes all too clear. Member after member said, months
before the Constitution was adopted, that India had “declared” secularism as its credo.

On December 3, 1948, Professor K.T. Shah moved this amendment. “The state in India being
secular shall have no concern with any religion, creed or profession of faith; and shall observe
an attitude of absolute neutrality in all matters relating to the religion of any class of its citizens
or other persons in the Union.” He acknowledged: “We have proclaimed it time and again that
the State in India is secular.” Members agreed with that. There was no need to state the
obvious. The amendment got nowhere. (Constituent Assembly Debates, volume 7, page 815.)
On the same day, Lokanath Misra also said: “We have declared the state to be a secular state”
(ibid). On December 6, H.V. Kamath said: “We have certainly declared that India would be a
secular state” (ibid, page 825). He was followed by Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra, who said: “By
secular state, as I understand it, is meant that the state is not going to make any discrimination
whatsoever on the ground of religion or community against any person professing any particular
form of religious faith. This means in essence that no particular religion in the state will receive
any State patronage whatsoever. The state is not going to establish, patronise or endow any
particular religion to the exclusion of or in preference to others and that no citizen in the state
will have any preferential treatment or will be discriminated against simply on the ground that he
professed a particular form of religion. In other words in the affairs of the state the processing of
any particular religion will not be taken into consideration at all” (ibid, page 831). On December
7, 1948, M. Ananthasayanam Ayyangar, later Speaker of the Lok Sabha, acknowledged: “We
are pledged to make the state a secular one” (ibid, page 881).

Nuances of secularism
Jawaharlal Nehru’s exposition of the provisions brings out the nuances of secularism. He said
on August 12, 1949: “One word has been thrown about a lot. I should like to register my strong
protest against that word. I want the House to examine the word carefully and it is that this
government goes in for a policy of appeasement, appeasement of Pakistan, appeasement of
Muslims, and appeasement of this and that. I want to know clearly what that word means. Do
the honourable Members who talk of appeasement think that some kind of rule should be
applied when dealing with these people which has nothing to do with justice or equity? I want a
clear answer to that. If so, I would only plead for appeasement. This government will not go by a
hair’s breadth to the right or to the left from what they consider to be the right way of dealing
with the situation, justice to the individual or the group.

“Another word is thrown up a good deal, this secular state business. May I beg with all humility
these gentlemen who use this word often to consult some dictionary before they use it. It is
brought in at every conceivable step and at every conceivable stage. I just do not understand it.
It has a great deal of importance, no doubt. But, it is brought in all contexts, as if by saying that
we are a secular state we have done something amazingly generous, given something out of
our pocket to the rest of the world, something which we ought not to have done, so on, and so
forth. We have only done something which every country does, except a very few misguided
and backward countries in the world. Let us not refer to that word in the sense that we have
done something very mighty” (CAD, volume 10, pages 398-401).

The Congress was pledged to secularism since its birth. The Sangh Parivar, in its various
avatars, opposed it and opposed the freedom movement itself. The Supreme Court put the
imprimatur of its approval on “secularism” as part of the unamendable “basic structure” of the
Constitution.

Indira Gandhi’s insertion of the word “secularism” in the preamble to the Constitution through
the 42nd Amendment to the Constitution in 1976 was an injustice to the ideal. It was worse than
unnecessary.

The letter of the Constitution is one thing. Far more relevant is the outlook of the people and
their representatives, especially the Members of the State Legislatures and Parliament. The
political clime saw a sea change in favour of secularism in the years from 1947 to 1964. S.
Gopal wrote in his biography of Nehru: “As the leader of a free people, Nehru could not rely on
the unqualified support of his Cabinet. Some of the members, such as [Maulana Abul Kalam]
Azad, John Mathai, [Rafi Ahmed] Kidwai and Amrit Kaur, were with him; but they carried little
influence with the masses. The old stalwarts of the Congress, however, such as Patel and
Rajendra Prasad, with the backing of the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, Syama Prasad
Mookerjee, believed not so much in a theocratic state as in a state which symbolised the
interests of the Hindu majority. Patel assumed that Muslim officials, even if they had opted for
India, were bound to be disloyal and should be dismissed; and to him the Muslims in India were
hostages to be held as security for the fair treatment of Hindus in Pakistan” (Jawaharlal Nehru,
Oxford University Press, volume II, pages 15-16).

Did things change much thereafter? Morarji Desai said, as late as on November 29, 1964, in
New Delhi: “The Hindu majority is clean-hearted and fair-minded. I cannot say the same about
the majority of the Indian Muslims” (The Hindustan Times, November 30, 1964). This explains
why, as Home Minister, he refused permission to Jamshid Nagarwala, Deputy Commissioner of
Police, Bombay, in-charge of the Bombay CID’s Special Branch, to arrest V.D. Savarkar after
Madanlal, who had exploded a bomb, was caught and was interrogated. Had Morarji not
refused permission, Gandhi might have been spared the assassination. Worse, on a crucial
point, he gave evidence in Savarkar’s favour at the trial.

The fact that A.C.S. Hameed was a Muslim did not bother J.R. Jayawardene at all, but it
apparently did bother Morarji Desai, who as the Indian Prime Minister on an official visit to Sri
Lanka in 1979, pointedly asked J.R. why he did not appoint a Sinhalese for the important
position of Foreign Minister. J.R. related this incident to K.M. De Silva in early February 1979
shortly after Desai’s visit (K.M. De Silva, J.R. Jayawardene of Sri Lanka, authorised biography,
London, 1998, pages 398-399).

The country was full of such people. Ravi Shankar Shukla as Premier of Central Provinces (now
Madhya Pradesh), B.C. Roy in West Bengal and worst of all, Govind Ballabh Pant of Uttar
Pradesh, the architect of the Babri Masjid problem. He refused to arrest Golwalkar though the
Chief Secretary, Rajeshwar Dayal, and Jaitley, a senior police officer, produced a truckload of
evidence of Golwalkar’s plans to stage a pogrom against Muslims. Again, had Golwalkar been
arrested, Gandhi’s life would have been spared.

Nehru’s ideological campaign

Nehru is hated by the Sangh Parivar because he changed the political clime which his
communal-minded colleagues in the Congress fostered. He did so by waging a sustained
ideological campaign for years in the entire country. In speech after speech, Nehru praised
secular values; in villages, cities and towns, to the common people as to the elite, to teachers
and students; to all, all indeed. The credo won national acceptance. Textbooks for school
students spread it all over the nation. It formed the national ethos.

The RSS went on an offensive after his death. But it could not go as far as it has but for the
acquiescence and betrayal by Nehru’s successors as Congress Prime Ministers and party
presidents—Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, Sonia
Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Manmohan Singh gave battle for the secular credo. He received in
this, as in other fields, little help from Sonia Gandhi, then the Congress president, and from the
party organisation.

In 2019, few care to recall the labour behind the magnificent edifice which Nehru built. One
should read Alex Traub’s scintillating article “India’s Dangerous New Curriculum” (The New York
Review of Books, December 6, 2018). It is based on field research in Rajasthan where he
visited a school and read the textbooks. These exposures deserve to be quoted in extenso:
“Since last year, students at the Saifee School have been using new textbooks published by the
Rajasthan government, which is run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that
dominates India’s Parliament and State Legislatures. The new textbooks promote the BJP’s
political programme and ideology. They argue for the veracity of Vedic myths, glorify ancient
and medieval Hindu rulers, recast the independence movement as a violent battle led largely by
Hindu chauvinists, demand loyalty to the state, and praise the policies of the BJP Prime
Minister, Narendra Modi. One book reduces over five centuries of rule by a diverse array of
Muslim emperors to a single ‘Period of Struggle’ and demonises many of its leading figures.

“These textbooks are part of the BJP’s ongoing campaign to change how Indian history is taught
in middle and high schools. Textbooks issued last year by two other States under BJP rule,
Gujarat and Maharashtra, resemble the Rajasthan books in their Hindu triumphalism and
Islamophobia. So, in a subtler fashion, do updates made in May to federal textbooks.

“Since the BJP came in power in 2014, it has stacked institutions with Hindu nationalist
ideologues, presided over an increase in Hindu extremist vigilantism, and replaced Islamic place
names with the names of Hindu nationalist heroes. The textbook’s promotion of an essentially
Hindu history provides a foundation for slowly remaking India into an essentially Hindu country.”

Secularism had lost a lot of ground before Modi began his sustained attacks. Nehru rejected
Mills’ poison on division of India’s history into Muslim and Hindu periods. He knew better.
Today, none accept Mills’ thesis except the Sangh Parivar.

Textbooks rejected Mills’ thesis. To the Mughal ruler Akbar (1542-1605), one book attributed
“the great dream” that “people should forget their differences about religion and think of
themselves only as the people of India”. This was actually the dream of Jawaharlal Nehru, a
leader of the independence movement and India’s Prime Minister for its first 17 years of
statehood. In his book The Discovery of India, Nehru described his homeland as “an ancient
palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no
succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously”. Such a
polyglot history could form the factual basis, Nehru hoped, for each of India’s ethnic and
religious groups to feel they shared a claim to a common national identity.

The great poet Raghupati Sahay alias Firaq Gorakhpuri summed up our ethos beautifully in a
single couplet: “Sar zamin-e-Hind par aqwame-e-alam ke Firaq/ kafile aate rahe aur Hindustan
banta gaya” (On the soil of Hindustan, O Firaq/Caravans from all over the world kept coming,/
And so was Hindustan built.)

Maulana Azad’s address

Is it not very significant that another great man should have used the same metaphor of
caravans from outside which settled in India and made it their home. He was none other than
Maulana Azad, and the significance of his magisterial speech lies in the fact that it was his
presidential address to the 53rd session of the Indian National Congress at Rampur in March
1940. Around this time, the Muslim League adopted the Pakistan Resolution in Lahore in March
1940.

This is what Azad said: “It was India’s historic destiny that many human races and cultures and
religions should flow to her, finding a home in her hospitable soil, and that many a caravan
should find rest here. Even before the dawn of history, these caravans trekked into India and
wave after wave of new-comers followed. This vast and fertile land gave welcome to all and
took them to her bosom. One of last three caravans, following the footsteps of its predecessors,
was that of the followers of Islam. This came here and settled here for good. This led to a
meeting of the culture-currents of two different races. Like the Ganga and the Yamuna, they
flowed for a while through separate courses, but nature’s immutable law brought them together
and joined them in a sangam. This fusion was a notable event in history. Since then, destiny, in
her own hidden way, began to fashion a new India in place of the old. We brought our treasures
with us, and India too was full of the riches of her own precious heritage. We gave our wealth to
her and she unlocked the doors of her own treasures to us. We gave her, what she needed
most, the most precious of gifts from Islam’s treasury, the message of democracy and human
equality.

“Full eleven centuries have passed by since then. Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of
India as Hinduism. If Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousands of
years, Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with
pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism, so also we can say with equal pride that we are
Indians and follow Islam. I shall enlarge this orbit still further. The Indian Christian is equally
entitled to say with pride that he is an Indian and is following a religion of India, namely
Christianity. Eleven hundred years of common history have enriched India with our common
achievements.” This national consensus inspired the Congress since its birth. Savarkar’s
Hindutva (1925) was ignored, as was his thesis about Muslims, Parsis and Christians being
“outsiders” who happened to settle down in India. The Red Indians in North America can well
ask the Whites to get out.

Nehru’s death in 1964 robbed secularism of its bravest stalwart. The ideal was part of the
Congress’ credo since its birth. He gave it form and content and fought for it in the clime of 1947
with resounding success.

Lal Bahadur Shastri was not much enamoured of the ideal. But it was left to Nehru’s daughter,
Indira Gandhi, to betray her father and the ideal to which he dedicated his life. Twenty years
after Nehru’s death, the BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee told James M. Markham of The New
York Times (June 14, 1984) shortly after Operation Blue S tar: “Mrs Gandhi is playing a very
dangerous game. The long-term interests of the country are being sacrificed to short-term gains.
But encouraging Hindu chauvinism is not going to pay. As the majority community, Hindus must
be above parochial politics.... She wanted to take advantage of the Hindu backlash.” These
sage words could justly be applied to Advani’s rath yatra later. But between then and
Vajpayee’s last-ditch stand in 1984 lay a period which saw a series of compromises by this
pathetically tragic figure in Indian politics.

Unknown to him, perhaps, Indira Gandhi had concluded with the RSS chief, M.D. Deoras, a
sordid pact that was thoroughly exposed by Neerja Chowdhury in The Statesman (May 1,
1986). The RSS founded the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Bombay in August 1964. A
Congressman, K.M. Munshi, was one of its founders. Its aim was to “liberate” three temples: set
up a Ram temple at Ayodhya by razing the Babri mosque to the ground; likewise “liberate” the
Krishna “Janamasthan” temple at Mathura and Kashi Vishwanath temple at Varanasi. A myth
was fostered sedulously and with considerable success that nullification of the Supreme Court’s
ruling by the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, prompted Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi to secure the opening of the lock of the masjid and thus revive an issue
that was to blight relations between the communities and undermine secular values in the
country.

Neerja Chowdhury’s reports in The Statesman on April 20 and May 1, 1986, revealed, on the
basis of authoritative sources, that, in fact the sequence was the very opposite of the one in
political mythology. There was a prior understanding between Indira Gandhi, and later Rajiv
Gandhi, and the VHP on the opening of the lock at the Babri mosque. A decision to open the
lock was taken by Indira Gandhi. It was carried out by Rajiv Gandhi and Arun Nehru after her
death. Muslims were given the sop of the Bill. It was moved in the Lok Sabha on February 19,
1986. The lock was opened on February 1.

On April 8, 1984, the VHP gave a clarion call for the removal of the Babri Masjid. A rath yatra
began on September 25. Indira Gandhi’s assassination led to its suspension. It was revived
from 25 places on October 23, 1985. A deadline was fixed for Shivaratri on March 8, 1986. The
entire episode was reported in detail by Neerja Chowdhury, on the basis of an authoritative
disclosure by a senior VHP leader, in two articles in The Stateman on April 20 and May 1, 1986.

Rajiv Gandhi took over Indira Gandhi’s policy, Neerja Chowdhury reported: “Mr Rajiv Gandhi
had indicated in no uncertain terms that the gates of the Ram Janmabhoomi must open to
devotees before Shivaratri on 8 March 1986. The Ram Janmabhoomi Mukti Samiti was planning
to break open the temple lock that day and a sadhu had vowed to immolate himself if the temple
doors were not flung open. A senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader revealed this information
confidentially.

“The local administration had been prepared in advance. The court verdict was announced at
4:40 p.m. on 1 February and the rusty lock was actually being broken at 5.19 p.m. A
Doordarshan team was posted on the spot to capture for posterity surging crowds entering the
shrine.”

Neerja Chowdhury added: “There is evidence of a connection between the opening of the doors
of the disputed Ram Janmabhoomi in Ayodhya and the introduction of the Muslim [Bill] in
Parliament, both of which have heightened communal tension in the country. This is evident
from the way the Bill came to be framed according to information contained in the report of the
general secretary of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board which was presented to the Board
at its meeting on 23 February 1986.”

This explains Rajiv Gandhi’s recourse to a sadhu for his blessings on the eve of his election
campaign in 1989. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi followed in his footsteps to defeat the
Hindutva side. P.V. Narasimha Rao had established his pro-RSS credentials as Chief Minister
of Andhra Pradesh.

Is it at all surprising that Modi had an open field to conquer in Gujarat and in India (2014 and
2019) when Nehru’s own daughter and political heir sold the pass for the reasons she did?
From 1969 to 1975, she presented herself as a champion of the minorities, especially Muslims.
This alienated them from others. They fell into the trap. She resented their opposition to her
government during the Emergency, especially after the Turkman Gate outrages. On her return
to power in her own right in 1980, she had no use for the minorities. But sensing a Hindu wave,
she began visits to temples and talked of Kurukshetra. The pact with the VHP was part of this
strategy; she was determined to steal the BJP’s clothes while its leaders were immersed in the
pool of self-admiration. The Congress has had no agenda, no ideals. Defeat has made it a
headless chicken.

It would be a folly to write off the Congress completely but as foolish to rely on it to fight the
battle for secularism. Rahul Gandhi’s election speeches reflected the Congress’ virtual
abandonment of secularism. A structure of sorts survives and can survive the discredited trio.
This validates the view of Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul
Muslimeen, that Muslims are perfectly justified to voice their grievances. Note that none of the
other Muslim politicians dare to support him. However, as Dr B.R. Ambedkar often said,
isolation is the worst thing that can happen to a minority. Muslims must not build a dedh-eent-ki-
masjid (a mosque built on a brick and a half). They cannot defeat Modi’s challenge alone. But,
which of the other political parties is willing to lend Muslims a hand that they can grasp? There
is a wide array of fields which Muslims must enter—students, women’s labour, farmers, the
cooperative movement, and so on. They have few friends. They must not neglect them. It must
be remembered that no political party will risk losing the Hindu vote and thereby risk its own
existence by espousing Muslims’ rights too loudly. Owaisi did right to forge a pact with the Dalit
leader Prakash Ambedkar. He must widen this and reach out to others as well.

Ram Manohar Lohia’s is a case which demonstrates Indians’ proneness to idol worship,
overlooking grave blemishes in the hero, and opportunism of the most sordid variety. This was
exposed recently by a person of impeccable honesty, Madhu Limaye’s younger sister,
Aniruddha, in the weekly Janata of May 19, 2019. She records in detail Limaye’s long talk with
Lohia on his policy of “non-Congressism”, a deceptive label to prepare for an alliance with the
Jan Sangh. Limaye opposed it but in the good Indian style. He eventually went along with that
utterly unscrupulous character. She writes: “To my mind, the other immense damage that the
strategy or policy of non-Congressism unwittingly did was to give Jan Sangh/Sangh Parivar
legitimacy, votes and seats in 1967 (as a part of the SVD alliance), and thereafter in 1977, as a
part of the combined fight that led to Indira Gandhi’s/Congress’ ouster from the Centre and the
formation of the Janata Party government. The Sangh Parivar used its few years in power to
influence and pack the bureaucracy, media and whatnot with its supporters and adherents to
the extent possible.

“In the first three general elections (that is up to 1962), the vote share and the number of seats
that the Jan Sangh got, compared either with Socialists or Communists, was a fraction. Under
the banner of non-Congressism, in 1967 they emerged as a force. They suffered, like most
others, in 1984. But after Mandal and Ram Mandir/rath yatra, they have continued to gain
strength using their corrosive and divisive rhetoric.”

Surendra Mohan, a Socialist leader, told this writer that in prison Asoka Mehta revealed a
communal outlook. H.V. Kamath was worse.

Liberals’ compromise
Keep aside fickle politicians, where else can you find men prepared for the good fight?
Business, big and medium, was sold out long before Modi became Prime Minister. That
excellent monthly, Caravan, has done a service in its issue of June 2019 by exposing “the
liberals who loved Modi” in an article by Praveen Donthi titled “Political Affairs: The liberals who
loved Modi”. These “liberals” are Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Ashutosh Varshney, Sadanand Dhume
and Gurcharan Das.

To repeat, it is a wave. Neither demonetisation nor the Goods and Services Tax could stop it.
The Sangh Parivar created it by exploiting the Congress’ failures and supineness. Some TV
anchors lent their services readily. Sample this: on June 21, 2019, a serving senior officer in the
Army publicly said that the Bhagavad Gita provides guidance for all situations, civil and military.
Piyush Rai’s report in The Times of India (from Meerut) read: “Bhagavad Gita is military manual
and should be read by all the youngsters, said Major General Subhash Sharan. The Additional
Director General of Army recruitment in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) and Uttarakhand added that ‘the
Gita prepares us for all eventualities of life’.
“Major General Sharan was in Meerut after the first round of recruitment rally in western U.P.
which was held in Baghpat’s Baraut from 25 May to 15 June, this year. The Major General
further said that Bhagavad Gita contains instructions which are usually imparted on the
battlefield. ‘Bhagavad Gita is not a religious book. Youngsters must read it for the simple reason
that it will prepare us for all eventualities of life. Bhagavad Gita is a military manual which
contains instructions which are given in the battlefield. In the battlefield, we only talk about war.
Therefore, I call the Bhagavad Gita a military manual,’ he explained.”

Ask yourself a simple question. Would he have dared to speak, as he did publicly, were it not for
the government in power and the wave on which it sails?

Stray incidents should make us sit up and reflect: Where are we heading to? Read this from
Sreenivas Janyala from Hyderabad in the Indian Express of September 22, 2018: “Retired
Metropolitan Sessions Judge Ravinder Reddy, who delivered the verdict in the Mecca Masjid
case acquitting all the accused, wants to join the BJP, a party leader said.

“‘When [BJP president] Amit Shah visited Hyderabad on 14 September, the retired Judge took
an appointment and met him. He wants to join the party. He said he can contribute to the party
as an intellectual or join electoral politics,’ Telangana BJP chief Dr K Laxman said on Friday. ‘It
is not yet decided whether Reddy would be admitted into the party and, if admitted, what his role
would be,’ he added.

“‘When he met Amit Shah, he expressed his desire to work for a nationalist and patriotic party
like the BJP. He said the party can utilise his services as it pleases,’ a BJP leader said.”

Both the Army and the judiciary—two institutions whose freedom from political influence was the
nation’s pride—are threatened with politicisation. Others fare no better. The University Grants
Commission issued a directive to educational institutions to mark September 29, 2018, as
Surgical Strike Day (Indian Express, September 22, 2018). The Defence Ministry asked
Prasoon Joshi to write a special poem. He is chairman of a quasi-judicial body, the Central
Board of Film Certification. Need I provide a list of the attacks on Muslims in the last tenure of
Modi as Prime Minister?

Regime in a hurry
Have no illusions, this is a regime in a hurry. No sooner was it sworn in than it took three
controversial decisions—change labour laws to enable companies to fire their employees with
ease; acquire large land banks which could be passed on to companies without facing the kind
of agitation which the Left Front government faced in Singur; and make the teaching of Hindi
compulsory in all schools. The last was dropped. The wonder is that it was mooted at all
knowing the strong feelings on this in Tamil Nadu and other States in the South.

There is, however, no reason to lose heart. Autocrats are their own worst enemies. Narendra
Modi is not invincible. The RSS does not like individuals who become larger than institutions.
Modi has ruined the BJP just the way Indira Gandhi ruined the Congress. Modi follows her style.

Do not expect the three Gandhis to restore the Congress. The real test is restoration of inner-
party democracy within the Congress, which was the norm set by Jawaharlal Nehru. Will
Congressmen have the guts to demand that free and fair elections be held for all the elective
posts and bodies from the bottom to the very top as the party’s constitution mandates? That will
not only restore the hopes and spirit of the cadres but send a message all over the country and
set an example for others to follow.

Mass action
We must not forget one factor which is of crucial, indeed, decisive importance. It is mass action.
Take the battle to the masses; educate them about the dangers; listen—yes, listen—to their
problems and seek to resolve them. Educate them about the varieties of today’s politics and
how the creed of secularism encapsulates the concepts of equality and democracy. Non-
governmental organisations also have a role to play. So do pamphleteers. India has a rich
tradition of pamphleteering—Gandhi, Nehru, Azad, M.N. Roy and P.C. Joshi, to name some.

This brings me to the most effective weapon in mass action—mass rallies held periodically. If
the masses are aroused, they will be better prepared to face Modi’s onslaughts on democracy,
fundamental rights and the rights, specifically, of the downtrodden, so long ignored by our
drawing-room politicians. If the time comes, the aroused masses will fight the regime’s
onslaught.

The task is not easy. But the stakes are too precious to demand less. Future generations will
despise the present one if it fails to rise to the challenge, boldly and consistently. To quote the
Bible: If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle?

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article28261886.ece
THE NATION
DROUGHT
Parched earth
LYLA BAVADAM
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

The dry riverbed at Jaypur dam, around 30 km from Aurangabad. The dam supplied drinking
and irrigation water to Phulambri taluk in the district. Photo: Yogesh Londhe

A farmer with his sugar cane crop, ravaged by the drought, in Marathwada. A 2016 photograph.
Photo: AP

Residents of drought-affected Mukundwadi village rush to collect water from coaches when a
train halts at the local railway station on June 18. Photo: Yogesh Londhe

Maharashtra is in the grip of a prolonged drought, yet sugar cane, a water-intensive crop,
continues to be grown over a large area in the State.
It is the end of May. The heat in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad and Ahmednagar districts is
intense, peaking at 43°C (the historical average for this time of year has been 37°). The classic
signs of drought are everywhere. Parched, cracked earth. Burning heat. A stillness in the air and
the sort of retina-burning glare that presages delayed rains. But even at times like this, there
would be, in other years, signs of agricultural activity like ploughing and preparing the land for
sowing. However, this year, the State Agriculture Department has warned farmers to be ready
for a delayed monsoon and has asked them to delay sowing.
Gopal Jagtap, a small farmer in Jamkhed in Ahmednagar district, explained that the soil would
be ready for sowing only after the first light showers. If sowing was done before this,
germination would be poor and would result in stunted or scanty plants. “We expected this
situation. The water situation is very bad and the rains are going to be late,” he said, pointing to
the erratic blooming of certain plants. If visual signs are not enough to show this up for the crisis
it is, then there are data from the government that firmly establish that the State is indeed at the
deep end of a water crisis.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis’ much vaunted Jalyukt Shivar Abhiyan, launched in 2016,
promised to make Maharashtra drought-free by 2019. Fadnavis’ own government, however, has
declared 2019 a drought year; 40 per cent of the State is under the grip of a drought. The
scheme, clearly, did not succeed.

The drought did not exactly creep up on the State. It has been in the making for years. The loss
of green cover to gigantic infrastructure projects, destructive cropping patterns, injudicious water
use, and indiscriminate and unmonitored use of groundwater have all led up to the current
situation. The Jalyukt scheme’s plan was to deepen and widen stream beds, build small dams,
including earthworks, and dig ditches and farm ponds. While all these measures are effective for
water management, more aggressive interventions were required to halt and reverse the extent
of the man-made drought that has been inflicted on Maharashtra. The scheme was not an
effectively designed weapon for what it was meant to tackle.

From 2017 to 2019, Rs.5,200 crore was allotted for it in the Budget. Activists who have
personally experienced the water shortage in villages say that the scheme deteriorated into a
contractor-driven one in much the same way that the employment guarantee scheme had. This
meant that the budgetary outlays ended up going to contractors instead of targeted
beneficiaries. The government defends itself saying contractors were used only for large
projects. It blames the shortfall in the last monsoon for the current situation.

In further proof of how ineffective the scheme was, the State government declared a drought in
February in 151 of 358 taluks comprising 28,524 villages. These villages were provided drinking
water in tankers. Some 216 government tankers and close to 5,700 private ones are providing
water in the affected taluks. Even so, water is not available daily. The tanker water is supposed
to be free, but a “tanker mafia” is operational everywhere and as much as Rs.3,000 can be
extracted from families for a week’s needs.

The urgency of the situation is further emphasised by the critically low water levels in the State’s
reservoirs. As on June 10, the State Water Resources Department said that only in one district
live storage capacity of the local reservoirs was between 30 and 75 per cent of the total storage
capacity. In the 35 districts, all reservoirs were at less than 30 per cent of the total storage
capacity.

The 3,267 dams in the State have a designed live capacity of 40,897.95 million cubic metres but
as of June 10 the total live capacity was a mere 2,816.68 million cubic metres. The fall in water
levels is even better illustrated when a percentage-wise comparison is made between last
year’s live storage and this year’s on the same date. Last year, the live storage was 17.66 per
cent and this year it is 6.89 per cent. The grim picture is illustrated by a look at the revenue
region-wise reservoir storage (see graphic).
Maharashtra has 131 major dams, 258 medium dams and 2,868 minor dams. Their storage,
along with local waterbodies such as lakes and rivers, is meant to provide for the entire State’s
domestic, agricultural, power and industrial needs. Prior to the monsoon, reservoirs are
traditionally at their lowest; this year they are at a three-year low.

While the delayed rains are definitely a matter of concern, the crux of the problem lies in
something deeper and more pervasive: the pattern of water use that has been perpetuated over
the decades in the State. Whether it is the obsession with large dams, the diverting of water for
urban use or the politically linked distribution of water for agriculture, it all boils down to poor
water distribution and usage.

Sugar cane factor

The cultivation of sugar cane has contributed greatly to the imbalance in water distribution and
to the water crisis. It is a crop that yields high profit with minimal inputs, but its intensive water
use has been wreaking havoc on agricultural water distribution patterns. A quick glance at a
map of the placement of most of the dams in the State shows a thick cluster of them in a long
line that extends down western Maharashtra. In comparison with the rash of dams in this region,
in the rest of the State the dams are scattered.

Western Maharashtra is the heart of sugar cane cultivation; 75.61 per cent of the State’s sugar
comes from there. But it is not an ideal crop for the region. The agro-ecological subregion,
according to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research, is classified as semi-arid. Western
Maharashtra is also in the rain shadow area. The Western Ghats separate it from the coast, and
when the south-west monsoon clouds come up against the almost 2,700-metre high Ghats, their
rain falls on the westerly side, leaving the Deccan plateau and beyond in a semi-parched
condition. Traditional agriculture here has consisted of hardy, drought-resistant crops such as
jowar and bajra, groundnut, oilseeds, pomegranate and lime.

Jagtap, who comes from a farming family in Akole in Ahmednagar district, continues the
tradition. Like most in the region, he was initially drawn to the money and the safety that cane
cultivation offered. “We planted the crop, harvested it after 18 months and sent it to the sugar
factory and got our money,” he said. The convenience was undeniable, but after five or six
seasons he found it unmanageable. Cane is a labour-intensive crop. The harvest and the
preparing of the field for the next crop are non-mechanised activities. It is also the time when
migrant labourers earn their maximum wages. This demand-and-supply chain takes its toll on
small cane farmers. Jagtap, his wife, their three sons and two daughters-in-law used to work on
their three acres along with three dailywage workers. A road accident in which he lost two sons
and their wives while they were returning from a pilgrimage forced him to rethink many things in
his life. Among them was sugar cane cultivation, which he no longer found viable. He returned
to growing jowar, bajra and vegetables for domestic consumption. For irrigation he used water
from a well he shares with two neighbouring farmers.

As a child, when the farm was in his grandfather’s care, he remembers the well as always
holding water. “In summer the water would be far below, but it was never empty like it happens
now,” he said. His neighbours continue to grow cane, using water from borewells and local
minor irrigation projects. He attributes the low water level in the well to the borewells but
concedes that the percolation tanks built by the government are helping to replenish
groundwater levels.

Apprehensions that 2019 might be a water-scarce year were voiced last year. The 2018
monsoon was satisfactory from an agricultural point of view, but metereologically speaking, it
had been inadequate. Yet, last year saw a spike in the kharif planting of sugar cane.
Department of Agriculture records show that the 2018 sugar cane planting was the highest in 18
years. In 2018, 11.63 lakh hectares (1 hectare is 0.4 acre) were under cane cultivation, while in
2017 it was 9.02 lakh ha. What was astounding was that the cane planting could not be
regulated despite the prediction that this year would be a water-scarce year.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Department of Agriculture official said the department

was not empowered to prevent farmers from planting cane. Instead, attempts are made to
educate them about water risks, especially in low rainfall areas, but “the response from them
was not positive”. The official said sugar yields far higher profits than traditional crops such as
jowar and bajra and “the organised nature of the sugar industry is a huge comfort factor for
farmers who know that the crop will be taken off them”.

But there is a sting in the tail of this prosperity. The uncontrolled planting of cane leads to a glut
in the sugar market, and the next season’s crop is not so profitable. The crop planted in 2018 is
feeling the pinch of the drought. The Vasantdada Sugar Institute, a single focus R&D
organisation in Pune, predicts that the area under cane will decline in the next season by about
six lakh hectares. The reason is that this year’s crop is wilting because of the drought, and
farmers are keen to sell it fast before the sugar content in the cane drops.

Though sugar cane is planted on about 5 per cent of the State’s farm lands, it consumes more
than 70 per cent of its water resources. It is this topsy turvy approach to agriculture that prompts
people like Professor H.M. Desarda to reiterate that crops should be planted according to the
region’s rainfall pattern. Desarda, who used to be on the state Planning Commission and is now
a committed activist for poor farmers and sustainable agriculture, believes that imposing a
water-intensive crop on an arid area is criminal. He blames sugar cane cultivation in the arid
zone of Marathwada for the region’s water woes.

Marathwada is a drought-prone region and received scanty rainfall from 2012 to 2016. The
monsoon was better in 2017 and 2018, and farmers tried to cash in on this by planting sugar
cane. This year the rainfall is delayed, so they have tried to recover the crop by diverting all
available water to it and have even dug borewells in riverbeds. Desarda said about two lakh
hectares in Marathwada are under sugar cane and 50 of the State’s 200 factories are in this
region. The region also accounts for 17.91 per cent of the State’s sugar production.

In conclusion, one fact places everything in perspective. According to statistics from the
Department of Agriculture and the Indian Sugar Mills Association, the average requirement of
water to produce 100 tonnes of millable cane is 150 to 200 lakh litres a hectare in a year for the
full season. Compare this to jowar. In the five to six months from sowing to harvest, jowar needs
irrigating only between one and seven times depending on whether it is sown as a rabi or a
kharif crop.

The choice should be clear.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article28260092.ece
THE NATION
COMMEMORATION
Legacy of a polymath
AMITABHA BHATTACHARYA
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-
Sir Shah Muhammad Sulaiman. Photo: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

Albert Einstein.

Sir Shah Muhammad Sulaiman (1886-1941) was not only an eminent jurist, educationist and
litterateur but also a keen scholar of physics who questioned Einstein’s theory of relativity.
How little we know of our own distinguished men and women. How frequently we eulogise false
gods, especially in the fields of politics and entertainment. How indifferent we are to the real
makers of our nation.

Of the many eminent persons associated with the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Sir Shah
Muhammad Sulaiman (1886-1941) is hardly remembered these days. Whatever little is known
about him relates to his reputation as an eminent jurist and educationist; his foray into science in
the 1930s has virtually been forgotten.

On this centenary year of the proof of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the noted historian
of science Dr Rajinder Singh brings to light this lesser known but remarkable aspect of Sir Shah
Sulaiman’s life. In his book Einstein Rediscovered: Interactions with Indian Academics (Shaker
Verlag, 2019) with a foreword by Professor Suprakash C. Roy, Sulaiman’s contribution has
been detailed with all the seriousness it deserves. While all the other Indians—the triumvirate of
C.V. Raman-Meghnad Saha-Satyendra Nath Bose, Ganesh Prasad, Nikhil Ranjan Sen, V.V.
Narlikar, Jyotirmay Ghosh and Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri—have been distinguished academics
engaged in teaching and research, Sulaiman is the only exception. He was from the profession
of law and a strong critic of Einstein’s theory.

In “Sir Shah Sulaiman, brilliant judge, educationist and scientist” (Business Recorder, March 13,
2006), Justice M.B. Ahmad portrays his life and substantial accomplishments. Born into an
educated family of scientists and lawyers, Sulaiman stood first in the B.A. examination of
Allahabad University in 1906 and won a scholarship to study in Cambridge, where he “obtained
the Mathematical Tripos in 1909, the Law Tripos in 1910 and was awarded LLD by the
University of Dublin...”. He was not successful at the ICS examination in 1909 and thereafter
decided to study law. His outstanding performance as a barrister ensured him a judgeship at
Allahabad High Court at the age of 34. In 1932, he became the first Indian Chief Justice and
was elevated to the Federal Court a few years later (1937-41). Some of his judgments, such as
the one in the Meerut conspiracy case, made their mark in the evolution of jurisprudence in
India.

He served as honorary Vice Chancellor of AMU in two spells, in an officiating capacity during
1929-30, and later between 1938-41, and his contribution was significant. Urdu was made an
independent subject at the B.A. level, the technological institute was conceived and the scope of
education for women was expanded. Sulaiman’s progressive ideas as an educationist found
their expression in making AMU an important centre in India, especially for scientific and
historical research. Besides, he was also known as a litterateur.

What ignited his sudden passion for physics amidst his preoccupations as a jurist, educationist
and administrator? Was his scientific interest inspired by Meghnad Saha, who won global
renown because of his theory of “thermal ionisation” and moved to Allahabad University as the
professor and head of the Department of Physics in 1923? During his 15 years at the helm,
Saha made the department a leading centre of research while teaching and inspiring several
students to pursue science. According to the Biographical Memoirs of INSA Fellows by D.S.
Kothari, Sulaiman had approached Saha to put him in touch with some young man with whom
he could discuss at length fundamentals of the theory of relativity and atomic theory. That is
how Dr Kothari, returning from Cambridge, met Sulaiman in mid 1933.

Saha consistently encouraged Sulaiman, provided the platform of Science and Culture (the
journal he had founded in 1935 and edited) for the publication of Sulaiman’s works from 1936-
40. Saha was also instrumental in establishing the National Academy of Sciences, India, and
nominated Sulaiman for its fellowship. Sulaiman was later elected its president.

As Rajinder Singh remarks: “Some of the Indian authors in Current Science attacked Sulaiman
for his ‘too simple’ theory, which did not contain mathematical tensor. He tried to refute his
opponents.” C.V. Raman, in an obituary note on Sulaiman for Nature (September 20, 1941),
records his eminent public service in different spheres but adds that his published papers
“largely consist of attempts to explain the facts of the newer physics on the basis of classical or
semi-classical ideas aided by special hypotheses. It could scarcely be hoped that work on such
lines would find general acceptance.” Saha, however, appreciated Sulaiman’s theory. Even
allowing for the Raman-Saha differences on many issues, Sulaiman’s questioning of Einstein’s
theory (special and general) evidently elicited considerable interest at that time.

This was no mean feat. Einstein’s theory was so revolutionary and counter-intuitive that its
acceptance even amongst renowned physicists had taken considerable time. Deflection of light
from a distant star by the sun, as measured by physicists and astronomers (May 1919), was
considered as proof for Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Sulaiman had suggested some
corrections to Newton’s classical mechanics in order to explain the results of certain
observations, and noted: “Similarly, in view of the great uncertainty as to the values for the
perihelion [of Mercury] and the spectral shift and in view of the proved excess in the value of the
deflection of light, it can no longer be asserted that the general relativity has been verified. And
therefore, there is no necessity to accept its extraordinary postulates.”

Criticism of Einstein
According to Rajinder Singh, Sulaiman criticised Einstein for “(1) denying the absoluteness of
space, time and motion, (2) making the velocity of light absolute, independent of the motion of
observers, (3) giving to space curvature and other properties, (4) making space finite and yet
making its finite limit incapable of being attained, (5) denying reality to force and making it a
property of space, (6) for introducing a cosmological force of repulsion with the consequent
expansion of the universe.”

Saha supported the view that Sulaiman “has formulated an intensely original theory of relativity”
that attracted international attention. The renowned journal Science, November 30, 1934,
termed this as one “which may overthrow the world famous theories of Professor Albert
Einstein”. According to Saha, “Sir Sulaiman’s theory predicted that the shift for the light from the
edge should really be about double of Einstein’s value...” and that Dr Thomas Royd’s
observation at Kodaikanal observatory in 1936 remarkably confirmed Sulaiman’s prediction.

Many issues can be raised in this connection, especially about the climate of scientific inquiry in
colonial times and what may be learnt from it. Even in the great days of Indian science of the
1920s and 1930s, groupism and parochialism even among noted scientists were not unknown.
While Rajinder Singh praises Saha’s broad-minded approach in having allowed Sulaiman’s
disputed ideas in his journal, he also compares it with the attitude exhibited by Current Science
from Bangalore. Revisiting Sulaiman’s work today may provide interesting insights into his line
of inquiry as also into the state of scientific culture in India of that time.

Over the last century, Einstein’s theories have been confirmed many times and are globally
acclaimed as having revolutionised physics, greatly altering our perception of nature and the
universe. What Sulaiman had proposed may not be of much scientific value now and may
appear to be of historical importance only, but his spirit of inquiry and the courage to question
the dominant scientific thinking of his time should not be lost sight of.

Raman was saved by Sir Asutosh Mookerjee from the clutches of the Financial Civil Service.
Saha was not permitted by the government to appear for that competitive examination either. In
the process, science gained enormously. Sulaiman had a piercing intellect and an inquisitive
mind, but Providence did not allow his steadfast devotion to science. He is commemorated
today by a hall of residence in AMU and a road in Karachi. Does his legacy not deserve to be
rescued from oblivion?

Amitabha Bhattacharya is a retired IAS officer who has also worked in the private sector and
with the UNDP.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/public-health/article28259686.ece
THE NATION PUBLIC HEALTH
Bihar's child victims of poverty
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
IN MUZAFFARPUR, BIHAR
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

At the paediatric ward of the Shri Krishna Medical College Hospital, Muzaffarpur, on June 19.
The SKMCH handled the bulk of the acute encaphalopathy cases. Photo: AFP

The parents and siblings of Dinanath Mahto, who died of the disease on June 13, at their house
in Rautaniya village of Muzaffarpur district on June 25. Photo: Ranjeet Kumar

Dr Arun Shah, a paediatrician based in Muzaffarpur. He co-authored a study linking AES deaths
to toxins present in litchi. Photo: Ranjeet Kumar

Dr S.K. Shahi, Director of Sri Krishna Medical College Hospital, Muzaffarpur. Photo: Ranjeet
Kumar

A litchi orchard in Manikpur village of Muzaffarpur district. Photo: Ranjeet Kumar

Acute encephalopathy strikes the poorest families in Muzaffarpur and some other districts in
Bihar. For a disease that has shown a predictable pattern, the government’s health care
machinery appears unprepared to handle an outbreak.
Over 150 children died in Bihar of acute encephalopathy in May and June, and about 130 of
those deaths were in Muzaffarpur district alone. The other places that reported such deaths
were Sitamarhi, Siwan, Motihari, Bettiah, Vaishali and Samastipur. There was a pattern in the
deaths. The children were all malnourished and poor, an overwhelming majority from the
Scheduled Castes, Backward Castes or Extremely Backward Castes—Mallah, Sahni, Majhi,
Chamaar and Paswan communities—and some from Muslim families. All the children had fever
and convulsions early in the morning, and most of them had gone to bed hungry the previous
night. The outbreak coincided with the harvest season for litchi, the sweet fruit for which
Muzaffarpur is well known. Some blocks in the district were more affected than the others—
Kanti, Minapur and Musehari, according to Dr Sunil Kumar Shahi, Medical Superintendent and
Director of the Shri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), the government hospital
that handled most of the cases in the district.

Such deaths in the litchi season, however, have happened in other years in the recent past. In
2012, 235 children were admitted in hospital with the disease, and 89 of them died. In 2013, 90
children were hospitalised; 35 died. In 2014, 334 children were hospitalised; 117 died. Things
improved after that: in 2015, there were 37 admissions and 15 deaths; in 2016, 31 cases and
six mortalities. In 2017 and 2018, the mortalities were 18 and 12 respectively.

Dr Shahi said the pattern had held good since 1993-94: “This happens every year around this
time. This year it has been particularly bad.” He added that the outbreak eased once the rains
started. But this year the monsoon is delayed, and the crisis continues.

Some studies have linked the outbreaks to the consumption of litchis by undernourished
children, though nothing is incontrovertibly proved. The Bihar government, loath to admit that
malnutrition might be the most important factor fuelling the outbreak, seemed to clutch at the
link when, in the second week of June, it issued an advisory not to feed children litchis on an
empty stomach and to avoid consuming unripe litchis.

There was a backlash, however, as orchard owners, most of them from the land-owning
Bhumihar caste, were upset that the outbreak was being linked to the fruit. Indeed, there were
complaints that linking the fruit with the disease had brought down litchi sales. Finally, the
government came round to acknowledging that poverty was the chief cause.

A quick government survey of the affected families produced an equally quick conclusion that
they were all poor. That, however, did not require a government survey to establish. Almost all
the affected children in Muzaffarpur were taken for treatment to the two district hospitals,
SKMCH and Sadar Hospital, because their families could not afford treatment at the 50 or more
private medical establishments in the town. A few children were taken to the privately owned
Kejriwal Maternity Hospital. The SKMCH Director said that the hospital’s resources were
stretched to their limits.

Dr Shahi said: “In 2014, the Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Harsh Vardhan,
announced a 100-bed hospital. Nothing happened. That same year, samples were sent for
testing to CDC Atlanta. But the cause of the disease was not ascertained. There is a standard
line of treatment when seizures take place. We are implementing that. They [the affected
children] are all nutrition-compromised.”

Indeed, for a disease that keeps causing deaths almost every year, the State government
seemed curiously unprepared and unequipped to prevent and combat an outbreak. The
government did issue instructions for wide distribution of packets of oral rehydrating solution
(ORS) in villages, but that is hardly enough. As one ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist)
worker, who did not want to be named, said: “How will a packet of ORS help? No one seems to
be taking responsibility for what is happening.” Other ASHA workers complained about the
paucity of ambulances to take the sick children to hospital. Indeed, the affected families seem to
have little access to even basic health-care services close to where they live (see box).

Central intervention
All the deaths in 2019 were divided by the (SKMCH) administration into two categories, “AES
Known” and “AES Unknown”. (AES is the generic term for acute encephalitis syndrome
indicating an infective agent as the immediate cause.) Of the 429 admissions at the SKMCH
registered until June 22, 108 were “AES Known” cases. On June 27, the total number of fatal
cases in the district, including the cases reported from Kejriwal Maternity Hospital, was close to
130, while the total toll in the State stood at 154. As things seemed to be getting out of control, a
15-member Central team was deputed by the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan to oversee,
monitor and treat the patients arriving at the SKMCH. The team arrived in the second week of
June.

The Central team, headed by Dr Arun Kumar Singh, senior paediatrician and national adviser of
the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram, a component of the National Health Mission, has been
entrusted with looking at the aetiology of the disease, which now has been broadly classified
under the umbrella title of acute encephalopathy, distinct from encephalitis, which may be viral,
bacterial or fungal. (Aetiology is defined as the cause, set of causes or manner of causation of a
disease or condition.)

Dr Arun Singh told Frontline that there was a need for clinical and epidemiological studies to
identify the specific reasons for the affliction in Muzaffarpur.

There was also a belief that this year’s severe heat wave was partly responsible for the
outbreak. Most of the affected children lived in cramped, poorly ventilated and thatched
dwellings and did not have access to clean drinking water. They were also all malnourished with
BMIs (body mass index) much below desired levels.

The other thing they had in common was the abundance of litchi trees in the areas where they
lived. The trees are owned by landed people. Litchi pickers, who invariably belong to the lowest
castes, begin their work at 4 a.m. in the morning and continue picking until 10 a.m. Their
average daily wage is not more than Rs.60. Women are the main “pickers” and “sorters”, and
they take their children along. The possibility of the children eating the fruits—the ones that
have fallen to the ground and the ones that are discarded—cannot be ruled out.

The litchi connection

The litchi, undeniably, has emerged as a major talking point in discussions on the outbreak. The
theory that the killer disease is caused by an infection is being re-examined in view of certain
studies, notably one by the retired virologist T. Jacob John, who was commissioned by the State
government to investigate child deaths during particular months of the year. In 2016, he and Dr
Arun Shah, a paediatrician based in Muzaffarpur, jointly authored a study, which was published
in the journal Current Science. Their theory is that Methylene cyclopropyl glycine, or MCPG, a
toxin present in litchi, is a triggering factor for the mortalities.

Predominant symptoms of AES are hypoglycaemia, a dangerous decline in the body’s sugar
levels, and dyselectrolytemia, or acute muscle weakness caused by the depletion of certain
essential minerals. Chemicals found in the fruit, MCPG and hypoglycin, are known to have
serious effects on the metabolic system, Dr Shah pointed out in a conversation with Frontline.
He said that eating the fruit in the morning after having gone to bed on an empty stomach the
previous night releases a toxin that reduces glucose levels drastically, leading to convulsions
and even death if left untreated. Children from poor families in any case have depleted glycogen
storage. The unripe litchi fruit also has toxins.

Dr Shah said this finding was confirmed by a team of experts from CDC Atlanta in 2017, though
it did not acknowledge the earlier study done by him and Prof. Jacob John. Talking of why
eating litchi has such deadly consequences in a certain section, he pointed out that no one from
the cities had died of AES or the heat wave. He said that he had interacted extensively with the
families stricken by the disease and had found that they had hardly anything to eat and lived in
unsanitary conditions with their livestock.

He had observed from 1995 that children from similar backgrounds fell ill every year in
Muzaffarpur in the months of the litchi harvest. Heat, humidity and poverty were not unique to
the district and were part of life elsewhere in rural India, but children were not dying of the
disease anywhere else. Why then was this happening in Muzaffarpur? “Why was it happening in
the vicinity of the orchards? Litchi may not be the culprit, and the fruit has been consumed for
the last hundred years. Are there genetic reasons? And why should one child in a family of four
suffer? Girls were dying more than boys as girls were found to be more malnourished than male
children,” Dr Shah said. “Heat and humidity are not the only reasons. Poverty, yes, but there are
other parts of Bihar with acute poverty and high heat and humidity levels. We sent four samples
of litchis to Lucknow for toxicology studies and it confirmed a high proportion of the two
chemicals MCPG and Hypoglycin A. There were similar outbreaks in Vietnam and Bangladesh
under similar epidemiological conditions including heat and humidity.”

Dr Shah had also observed that the cases dwindled away once the monsoon set in. It may not
be a coincidence that the litchi crop is over once the monsoon arrives, and in any case the
inundation of the orchards prevents children from foraging for the fruit.

A few years ago, the Bihar government issued a protocol regarding consumption of the fruit.
There is a perception that this had something to do with the decline of fatalities after the last
major outbreak of 2014. This year, there was no noticeable government activity on this front.
That this happens to be an election year has been noted and there is a feeling that the
government machinery was too busy with the election process to spare much effort on this.

Dr Shah said: “We prepared the SOP which had recommended an evening meal. If the midday
meal could be extended to giving an evening meal to children of that age, it would make a huge
difference. ORS is not going to help the child. It is given in diarrhoea and vomiting cases, not
encephalopathy. Until May 23, no one was bothered about anything but the election. The litchi
crop had started coming in. It was too late to intervene.

“There was a revised SOP in 2018 where we suggested that the movement of children should
be restricted in litchi-growing areas. The government did not acknowledge our contribution to
the SoP. Kerala is not a resource-rich State. Yet it has managed to reduce its infant mortality to
levels that are comparable to those of Scandinavian countries.”

Misery near the orchards

Two-and-a-half-year-old Dinanath Kumar Mahto from Rautaniya village was admitted at the
SKMCH on June 10 with fever and convulsions. He died on June 13. In local parlance, fever
accompanying convulsions is referred to as “chamki bukhaar”.
Better-off neighbours from the same caste who work as auto-rickshaw drivers in Delhi pointed
out that the Mahto hut was at one end of the village, an indicator of how poor the family was.
“Look at their clothes. You will see how poor they are. There is no work here,” said Guddu
Mahto, a neighbour who earns his living in Delhi.

The child’s parents, Chhattu Mahto and Nisha Devi, took the death stoically. Nisha is a litchi
picker and sorter while Chhattu sells toddy. They could not recall whether the child had eaten
litchis before he took ill. “He may have picked up something from the ground. He was mostly
breast-fed. We give them something if there is food at home. We cannot sustain a family on
Rs.60 a day. And then there is work only in the season,” said Nisha Devi.

Six AES cases were admitted from different villages in Karja Panchayat Samiti. Five were
discharged after treatment; one did not make it.

Kanti Panchayat Samiti was among the badly affected areas. Of the 35 children admitted from
there, 10 died. The oldest was 13-year-old Sunny Thakur from Narayan Beriyahi village and the
youngest three-year-old Vikash Kumar.

Sunny’s mother, a widowed midday meal worker, is paid an honorarium of Rs.1,250 once in two
months. Her children dropped out of school after her husband’s death. Although belonging to
the Bhumihar caste, she is poor and is the sole breadwinner for her children. “I was away. My
son was on his own. My brother-in-law took him to the hospital. I don’t know what he ate or
whether he ate anything at all,” she said.

Anita Kumari, an auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM) in Kudhani block, Kharauna Panchayat Samiti,
told Frontline that “such cases” always came up in the summer months. Paroo block in the
Paroo Assembly constituency, which has only three doctors on regular duty, has also lost
children to the disease. An ANM said: “Ram Babu Mahato’s eight-year-old daughter died in
Mohabbatpur village after eating litchis. She developed convulsions.” In Karja block, another
ANM, Neelam Devi, said she had distributed ORS packets and told parents to “feed their
children well”. An upper-caste Hindu herself, she felt the poor were generally careless about
their children: “These people leave their children lying around in the heat. They should also look
after their children.”

‘Aetiology as important as treatment’

Dr Arun Singh of the Central team, who was not convinced by the argument linking litchi to the
disease, felt that locating the causes of the disease was as important as treating it.

“At present, instead of focussing on the aetiology, we are trying to look at treatment and care.
When we arrived, the ICU care was below standards in terms of equipment, management and
understanding. Our first priority has been to strengthen the health management system. There
has been research not backed by clinical understanding, and maybe it was not ethically correct
to arrive at the conclusion about the toxicity in the litchi fruit,” he said.

He added: “Our collective hypothesis is that it is acute encephalopathy, and that hypoglycaemia
is a manifestation and not the cause. One doesn’t know why the trauma has happened, but we
have clinical leads which indicate a mitochondrial dysfunction. This affects the liver and other
organs. We have to go to the community to see whether they are genetically lacking in
mitochondria or whether diet or nutrition issues are affecting mitochondrial functions. In extreme
heat, the demand of the body for energy increases. The child falls asleep owing to lack of
energy. Our line of treatment looks at improving the metabolism of the affected children and
giving them vitamins which are essential in the energy producing mechanisms. “Deranged”
metabolism can lead to mitochondrial disorders. All this needs to be probed scientifically.”

In the majority of cases, the liver was found enlarged and with high ammonia levels. In the
absence of a clear diagnosis, the children were being treated symptomatically for the fever and
convulsions. As glucose levels were below the danger mark in almost all AES cases, glucose
infusions were an integral part of the treatment. But then there were sporadic meningitis cases
too.

A physician from the National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai, who was part of the Central
team, confirmed, however, that the pattern was more or less consistent in that the manifestation
was confined to the months when the litchi was in season and that malnourished and poor
children were affected.

Lancet article
In 2017, Peter S. Spencer and Valerie S. Palmer argued in a piece in The Lancet, titled “The
Enigma of Litchi Toxicity: An emerging health concern in South Asia”, that this sweet tropical
fruit (Lychee sinesis) and other members of the soapberry family contained amino acids that
disrupted gluconeogenesis and fatty acid oxidation, a theory that Dr Arun Shah also supports.
They also said that this had been established in the case of both the litchi and the ackee plant
(origins in West Africa and transplanted later in the Caribbean). The ingestion of the ackee fruit,
they wrote, had been known for decades in Jamaica to cause toxic hypoglycaemic
encephalopathy in children. They said that recent litchi encephalopathy in India, Bangladesh
and Vietnam could be caused by the rapid expansion of commercial litchi production across
Asia. India is the second largest producer of litchi after China, and parts of Vietnam also grow
the fruit. Bihar is the largest producer of the fruit in India, followed by West Bengal and
Jharkhand.

Muzaffarpur, around 70 km from Patna, is famous for its litchi crop. Litchis grown in the district
are exported and also sold in parts of northern India. Frontline interacted with families who work
in the orchards. They said that the work fetched Rs.60 for six hours of work. While litchi
production had stepped up in the last two decades, the cost of labour has gone down.

Even if there is a connection between the deaths and eating litchis on an empty stomach,
advisories to send children to bed after a proper meal make no sense in a context when there is
no way of providing food. Curiously, the families contacted by Frontline were not certain whether
their children had eaten the fruit on an empty stomach. The deprivation is so stark and the
absence of food so routine that memory does not retain the details.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/politics/article28259770.ece
POLITICS
WEST BENGAL
Mamata Banerjee's loosening grip
SUHRID SANKAR CHATTOPADHYAY
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee addressing a meeting of Trinamool Congress councillors of

municipalities across the State in Kolkata on June 18. Photo: PTI
Arson at Kankinara in the Bhatpara Assembly constituency on May 19, while a byelection was
under way, following clashes between BJP and Trinamool members. Photo: PTI

At a protest by the West Bengal Primary Teachers Association on June 24. The teachers seek
pay parity with Kendriya Vidyalaya and other CBSE schools. Photo: Rajeev Bhatt

Mamata Banerjee with junior doctors at the State Secretariat in Howrah, on June 17. The crisis
that their strike caused was resolved at this meeting. Photo: AFP

In the month after the election results were declared, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata
Banerjee appears to be losing control of both the State administration and her party.
The 2019 Lok Sabha election not only brought in a change in West Bengal’s political dynamics
but also ushered in a period of prolonged political unrest and violence, which continued even a
month after the election results were declared on May 23. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and
her Trinamool Congress are facing their most trying time since coming to power in 2011. With
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) securing a massive 40 per cent of the votes, and literally
breathing down the ruling party’s neck, Mamata Banerjee appears to be unable to either prevent
Trinamool leaders and workers from joining the BJP in droves or bring under control the
declining law and order situation.

Although the BJP was expected to improve on its tally of two seats in the 2014 general election,
its final tally of 18 out of the State’s 42 parliamentary seats took many by surprise. In an election
that was projected as a precursor to the 2021 Assembly election, the result clearly pointed to a
strong anti-incumbency factor working against the ruling party and an acute communal
polarisation working to the BJP’s advantage.

What particularly worries the Chief Minister is that the mandate was more a vote against her
party than an endorsement of the BJP. Indeed, the BJP benefited from the popular perception
that it was a viable opposition to the Trinamool. In the month following the declaration of the
results, Mamata Banerjee’s situation has worsened considerably. There has been massive
defection from the Trinamool camp to the BJP and violent resistance against the ruling party’s
dominance at the ground level. As the BJP spreads its influence all over the State, she faces a
desperate battle for survival.

Between May 23 and June 24, Mamata Banerjee lost six of her MLAs to the BJP, which also
seized control of five municipalities and around 50 gram panchayats. The latest round of
defections, on June 24, claimed one of the most senior and respected Trinamool members,
Biplab Mitra from South Dinajpur, who was with the Trinamool from its inception. With Mitra’s
defection, the BJP secured its first zilla parishad board. Mitra said: “There are many people like
me who have strived for decades to bring the Trinamool to power. But these days, certain
decisions have left us disappointed. People with no mass connect are given priority while the
old ones are sidelined.”

There are allegations that the Trinamool is putting its own people behind bars on trumped-up
charges in a desperate bid to stop defections. “It is common knowledge that for a long time now
the police have been highly politicised in West Bengal. There are reports that they are now also
being used against opposition forces, including dissident Trinamool leaders who are trying to
defect,” said psephologist and social scientist Biswanath Chakraborty.
VIOLENCE SPIRALLING OUT OF CONTROL
In the course of just one month, the political violence and defections seem to have spiralled out
of control. As of June 24, the violence had claimed around 30 lives. Several people are missing
and presumed dead. Innocent people who had little to do with active politics have been caught
in the crossfire between the warring parties and lost their lives. A number of innocent
bystanders, including a 17-year-old boy, have been killed in the violence. On June 22, a student
of Class 8 was shot at and seriously wounded in Bankura. While the BJP blamed the Trinamool
and the police for it, the ruling party blamed the BJP. Bitter faction feuds in the Trinamool have
also reportedly claimed five lives.

Bhatpara in North 24 Parganas has been the epicentre of the political violence. Once a
Trinamool stronghold, Bhatpara was wrested by the BJP under the leadership of Arjun Singh,
the Trinamool heavyweight who joined the BJP days before the Lok Sabha election. The BJP
ended up winning not only the Lok Sabha seat but also the Assembly seat in the byelection. The
violence that erupted in Bhatpara during the election has shown no signs of abating and has
already claimed five lives. The Chief Minister’s ultimatum to restore peace went unheeded as
two people were killed and six seriously injured in fresh violence that broke out on June 20.
Rambabu Shaw, a 17-year-old vendor of “phuchka” (Bengali equivalent of the north Indian
golgappa or pani puri) was killed by a stray bullet. Bhatpara continued to remain on the edge
days after the killings as clashes broke out sporadically. On June 22, two BJP workers were
killed in Barrackpore and Purba Bardhaman. The following day, a Communist Party of India
(Marxist) activist was shot dead in Baruipur.

In the middle of all this, the health sector in the State teetered on the verge of collapse as
doctors in government hospitals went on a strike for a week following a vicious attack on two
junior doctors on June 11. After the death of a 75-year-old patient, Mohammad Sayeed, at NRS
Hospital in Kolkata, a mob of over 150 people reportedly turned up at the hospital in bikes and
other vehicles and unleashed violence. There is a perception that the doctors’ agitation might
have ended sooner had the Chief Minister taken a more sympathetic attitude instead of issuing
threats and ultimatums. Close on the heels of the doctors’ strike came a powerful agitation by
schoolteachers.

The Union Home Ministry sent two advisories—the first on the doctors’ strike and the second on
the continuing violence. “The continued trend of political violence from 2016 through 2019.... is
indicative of the failure on the part of the law enforcement machinery of the State to maintain the
rule of law and to inspire a sense of security among the people. Government of India is
seriously concerned over the prevalent situation in West Bengal,” read the second advisory.

‘Bengali nationalism’
A sudden change in Mamata Banerjee’s politics has further damaged her credibility. Before the
general election, when the Bengal Chief Minister harboured ambitions of playing a key role in
Central politics, she projected herself as a champion of “inclusive politics”. West Bengal was
mini-India where people from all parts of the country were welcome, she said. However, after
the BJP’s success in the election, she and some of her party leaders have been singing a
different tune.

The emphasis is now on “Bengali nationalism” and Bengali language. “To live in Bengal, one
has to speak in Bengali,” she announced at a recent public meeting. Her repeated references to
non-Bengali residents of the State as “outsiders” are being seen as a dangerous political tactic
that can further divide society in West Bengal, which already appears to be polarised on
communal lines. Politically, the strategy is being seen as a move to divide the BJP’s Hindu
votes on linguistic lines.

Rampant corruption in the ruling party at the grass-roots level and the arrogance of its leaders
fuelled the anti-Trinamool wave in the general election, notwithstanding the considerable
development work that this government has undertaken. Widespread extortions and demands
for “cut money” for implementing government projects and providing basic services have
alienated the people from the ruling party. “The cut money system is something that the
Trinamool itself is guilty of putting in place. It is learnt from the field that one of the main routes
of raising funds for the party usually was by granting the party ticket to those who can afford to
pay for it. In many cases it has been seen that when a person has spent lakhs in getting
nominated, he naturally spends his days in office getting back the money he had to spend and
more,” Biswanath Chakraborty observed.

Mamata Banerjee appears to have woken up to the problem only now, at a time when the BJP
is ascendant all over the State. “Those of you who have taken money, return it. I will not tolerate
thieves in my party,” she announced at a party meeting.

However, this has led to more chaos and in effect delivered a crippling blow to the ruling party at
the grass-roots level. Local Trinamool leaders in different parts of the State are feeling the heat
as people have started demanding that money taken from them should be returned. From
panchayat leaders to councillors, influential members of the ruling party are being heckled by
angry people asking for their money back. “A person who used to travel on a bicycle before the
Trinamool came to power is today a panchayat leader with a two-storey house and a swanky
car. Our money has funded all this,” said an irate resident of Mangalkot in Bardhaman district. In
several districts, mobs ransacked homes of Trinamool leaders.

This has further demoralised grass-roots party workers. A Trinamool worker from Birbhum said:
“I wonder if the issue of cut money would have come up if we had swept the elections. The
leaders are trying to create a good image for themselves while we are left to face the
consequences.”

Trinamool Lok Sabha MP Shatabdi Roy caused further embarrassment to the party when she
said: “This should have been stopped earlier.... returning the ‘cut money’ will cause problems. It
is a chain, and so the money has to be returned accordingly.”

Even the popular Bengali singer Nachiketa, known to be close to the Chief Minister and an
ardent supporter of the Trinamool, composed a scathingly satirical song on “cut money”. It went
viral on social media, much to the discomfort of the ruling party. In a desperate bid to downplay
the situation, the party issued a press release stating 99.99 per cent of their leaders were
honest.

State BJP leaders admit that Mamata Banerjee is making things easy for them. “We are really
not having to do much to topple this government. Mamata Banerjee is doing it for us by going on
a self-destructive mode,” one of them said.

But the focus of the public, Biswanath Chakraborty pointed out, will now be on the BJP.

“There is a perception among the people that the end of Trinamool is near. With the defections
taking place, it is already being viewed as a force that has declined. It is now time to assess the
BJP and look into the alternatives that the BJP is presenting,” he said.
https://frontline.thehindu.com/politics/article28259785.ece
POLITICS
INTERVIEW: JOYPRAKASH MAJUMDAR
‘Law and order has collapsed’
SUHRID SANKAR CHATTOPADHYAY
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Joyprakash Majumdar. Photo: Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

Interview with senior BJP leader Joyprakash Majumdar.

Joyprakash Majumdar, vice president of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) West Bengal unit, is
one of the most respected politicians in the State. A former Congress leader who joined the BJP
in 2014, Majumdar has been in active politics for the last 35 years. He is in charge of the BJP’s
political analysis department and is the chief coordinator of the BJP Legislative Party. In an
exclusive interview with Frontline, he talked about the decline of the Trinamool and the BJP’s
programme in the days to come. “Every day Mamata Banerjee is getting deeper and deeper into
the quicksand. The more she tries to come out of it, the more she gets sucked in,” he said.
Excerpts:

Already there is a perception that the Trinamool Congress’ days in power are numbered. But the
question is, what kind of an alternative will the BJP offer?

I will answer that question in two parts—first the diagnosis, and then the prescription. Right now
the Trinamool is suffering from multi-organ failure. For almost one and a half months during the
election, lawyers were on strike—from magisterial courts to the High Court, all remained shut.
Crores of people were denied legal representation. Such a thing has not happened anywhere in
the country, except in Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal. Soon after the election came the
doctors’ strike, which could easily have been resolved in two days, but her aggressive way of
handling matters made the situation worse. After that, the teachers’ agitation. Against the
backdrop of all this, law and order in Bengal has collapsed. Added to that is a major economic
crisis that the State is going through. West Bengal is in a debt trap. It owes around Rs.5,00,000
crore. There is no industry, no employment, only violence and sale of alcohol.

Bengali culture itself has suffered over the years. Under the Communists, Bengali nationalism
gave way to internationalism. The 34 years of CPI(M) [Communist Party of India (Marxist)] rule
destroyed Bengali culture, and when Mamata Banerjee came to power, she hammered the last
nails into its coffin with her use of language and her poetry, which is now being taught in schools
in the State. She made the entire educational system a slave to her party. But history has
shown that such things can take place only up to a point, after that there is a turnaround. In
Bengal, that turnaround period has finally come. Bengal, in its untenable present, is now digging
deep into its forgotten past to progress to a future that has so far eluded it.

Now the BJP has come to the fore. It has secured two crore 30 lakh votes; it has a lead in at
least 121 Assembly segments, and in around 30 seats the difference between the winning
Trinamool candidate and the BJP is very small. To use a football analogy, the BJP has been
granted a penalty against the Trinamool that will decide the fate of the match. Unless we make
a suicidal mistake, nothing can stop us from coming to power.
Now the second part of my answer—the prescription. The biggest problem in Bengal today is
law and order. One of the main requirements of democracy is peace, and in that ambience of
peace, people should be allowed to exercise their democratic rights unhindered. Our first priority
is bringing safety, security and peace to Bengal. Once that happens, all other problems will be
very easy to deal with. With peace there will be industrialisation, and automatically the economy
will be back in shape, and progress is bound to take place. Our primary target will be to enforce
proper law and order, ensure that the administration is neutral and effective. People in Bengal
are always willing to give a political power time to bring about change.

Moreover, West Bengal has not had the opportunity in decades to have a State government [run
by a party] which is also in power at the Centre. This clash of interests between the Centre and
the State that has been going on for so long has cost the people of Bengal dearly. It is now time
for harmony. Mamata Banerjee has been refusing to attend the meetings called at the Centre;
we ask, who is she to deny the people of the State their right to progress and prosperity and
disassociate 9.5 crore people of the State from the vision shared by the rest of the country?

Will this period of unrest and violence that we have been seeing for the past one month
continue until the BJP comes to power?

The violence has not been there only for the past one month. It has been there from before the
panchayat election of 2018. From the nomination stage of the rural election until after the results
were declared, more than 100 people lost their lives. An 18-year-old boy, Trilochan Mahato, was
killed and left hanging from a tree in Purulia for being a BJP supporter. The reason for his
murder was scrawled on his vest. None of the intellectuals uttered a word condemning the
crime. Can you imagine something like this happening in any civilised society? Do you recall
what the Chief Minister said in an election rally when she realised that she was losing her
ground? She said “inchi tey inchi tey badla nebo” [I will extract vengeance inch by inch]. Can a
Chief Minister under the oath of the Constitution say something like that? Who will she take
revenge on? But that is her way. It is as if she is still a firebrand opposition leader.

But the question is, will this violent situation continue?

Who other than the Chief Minister can bring it under control? There is a reason why Babasaheb
Ambedkar put Article 356 in the Constitution. It is not just a decorative piece.

He felt that a lawfully elected government may become tyrannical and fail to provide safety and
security to its own people. But owing to the Congress’ repeated abuse of Article 356, the
Supreme Court had to issue certain strictures, and as a result, Article 356 has become an
ornamental provision. Otherwise, West Bengal is the fittest case for the implementation of
Article 356 today because common people have no safety and security for their life and
property.

Are you going to press for President’s rule?

Mamata Banerjee may be trying to force President’s rule in the hope of getting some sympathy.
But I do not think either the State BJP or the Central leadership will be willing to give her that
benefit. We have absolutely no interest in coming to power through such back-door means. We
are already in a winning situation. If an election is held tomorrow, the BJP will win. But,
unfortunately, until that happens, the innocent people of Bengal will continue to suffer for
another two years.
Mamata Banerjee is making things worse for herself. Every day she is getting deeper and
deeper into the quicksand. The more she tries to come out of it, the more she gets sucked in.

Meanwhile, we will leave no stone unturned to expose her anti-democratic ways of functioning
and her anti-people actions. On each and every issue, the BJP will be hitting the streets in West
Bengal. Even though her fall is imminent, we will continue to pile on the pressure.

How prudent is it for the BJP to accept Trinamool members into its fold, considering that these
are people from a party that the voters are against?

There will be opportunists, but there will also be good people with good track records who will
be willing to join us for the betterment of Bengal. I think the BJP will have to be extremely
careful while expanding its base. Mamata Banerjee also expanded her base by accepting
people from all political parties, but the only cementing factor in the Trinamool is power, since
there is no ideology. The moment it is out of power, the whole thing will collapse like a house of
cards. But the BJP stands on a very strong foundation, and whether it remains in power or not,
its basic structure will remain because of its ideology. The first task of the BJP is to make sure
that those joining are indoctrinated into the ideology.

It will be very difficult to come to power in West Bengal on the strength of Hindu votes alone.
Has the BJP taken cognisance of the importance of Muslim votes in Bengal?

We won in Uttar Malda, which has a Muslim majority. Without Muslim votes, we would not have
been able to win. We came very close to winning in Dakshin Malda as well, which has an even
greater Muslim population. In Bengal, there are two kinds of Muslims—Bengali Muslims and
Urdu-speaking Muslims. Bengali Muslims were originally Hindus before they were converted.
They are peace-loving, and everything about them—their way of living, etc.—is like a Bengali
Hindu.

Bengali Muslims constitute 70 per cent of the total Muslim population in the State [roughly 30
per cent of the population]. They will not shy away from voting for the BJP when they realise
that it will be to their ultimate benefit. A sizeable portion of Muslim votes has already come to
the BJP, and in the coming elections this will only increase.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/columns/C_P_Chandrasekhar/article28227211.ece
COLUMNS C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR
Dangers of ‘Libra’
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-
Facebook’s plan to launch a cryptocurrency in 2020 raises questions about the company’s
motives and the lack of regulatory control.
FACEBOOK has launched a process that will lead to the creation of a new cryptocurrency,
“Libra”, in the first half of 2020. It is named after a unit of weight used in ancient Rome, and
Facebook hopes it will become the dominant measure of value for transactions, at least on the
Internet. As is characteristic of the world of digital business that, outside of finance, has
delivered the largest number of billionaires in recent decades, the creation of Libra is presented
as an altruistic mission that will mainstream individuals, businesses and agents who have
hitherto been excluded by the financial sector.
In Facebook’s newsroom spin: “For many people around the world, even basic financial
services are still out of reach: almost half of the adults in the world don’t have an active bank
account and those numbers are worse in developing countries and even worse for women. The
cost of that exclusion is high—approximately 70 per cent of small businesses in developing
countries lack access to credit and $25 billion is lost by migrants every year through remittance
fees.” This is the challenge that Libra and the associated Calibra—a new Facebook-managed
digital wallet that will allow users to save, remit and spend Libra—ostensibly seek to address.

The real mission is, of course, for Facebook to leverage its network of two billion users of its
portfolio of social media applications and seek domination of what it sees as the future “Internet
of money”. To that end, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to be not just one of the
players in the world of digital payments companies but the centre of a parallel currency that
Facebook hopes to make into an alternative to fiat currency in a world that will increasingly
transact financially on the Internet.

The first obstacle that Facebook faces in this journey is that most cryptocurrencies, which use
cryptography of a kind and blockchain transactions to securely hold units of money and verify
transactions, have served more as stores of value rather than as a means of exchange. Even
Bitcoin, the most well known of such currencies, is still not a ubiquitous means of payment in
day-to-day exchange.

Facebook is not just betting on ease of use through its network to popularise Libra, sums of
which it promises can be sent to anyone with a cheap smartphone as instantly as a text
message “at low to no cost”. Rather, it expects to add to ease of use the confidence that comes
from transactions being safe and the value of the Libra being relatively stable (compared with
say, Bitcoin). Relative stability is to be ensured by tying the value of the Libra to the value of a
reserve consisting of a set of underlying “low-volatility assets, including bank deposits and
government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks”. So the Libra will
be a token that takes its value from a set of underlying assets that have the sovereign backing
of powerful states. The value of the Libra can fluctuate relative to individual currencies as it will
be linked to a basket of fiat currencies. But those fluctuations are likely to be small given the use
of a basket to value the Libra, and this will generate confidence in the currency.

Moreover, Facebook has decided to bring major players into the Libra Association, who as
“validator nodes” will facilitate the operations of the Libra Blockchain and as investors in
investment tokens will have a role in decision-making proportional to their investments of $10
million each. The structure and responsibilities of the Libra Association seem to be geared to
dispelling suspicions that this would be a Facebook-controlled Internet of money. The relatively
small investment required for membership makes it easy to find founding members.

They already include entities varying from Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and PayU, in the payments
space, to Internet firms such as Uber Technologies Inc., eBay Inc. and Spotify Technology S.A.,
to venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, academic institutions and non-profit
organisations such as Women’s World Banking. By launch, the Libra Association is expected to
have 100 such members. While initially Facebook would have control over the creation and
operations of the currency (and the association), in time all members of the association would
have an equal say in decisions relating to these. Facebook, it is argued, will be one partner
among equals.

But this depends on the way in which the currency is planned to be put into use and
popularised. According to current plans, from the supply side, some amount of the currency
would be created by using as reserve the sums paid against the investment tokens purchased
by investors. The cryptocurrency so created would be paid out as “incentives in Libra coin to
Founding Members to encourage adoption by users, merchants, and developers”. As use
begins and users demand more Libra, they would have to pay to obtain the coins, with the
payments being added to the reserve.

The reserve would, in turn, be invested in safe assets. The interest earned would cover the
operating costs of the association, including those required to strengthen the Libra architecture;
the financing of social-impact projects that the association would take up as part of its non-profit
mission; and the payment of returns to investors in the investment tokens. Clearly, unless the
size of the network transacting in Libra increases substantially, the net interest earned by
investors from investment of the reserve in safe assets will not be adequate. So the expectation
must be that the Libra network will grow substantially in size.

Presumably, founding members would be able to trade their Libra coins in crypto-exchanges to
benefit from fluctuations in their value relative to individual fiat currencies. But, if Facebook’s
claims are to be believed, the price of the currency will not fluctuate very much, making capital
gains (or losses) from trading less likely than in the case of Bitcoin. That leaves the returns to be
made from settling transactions by serving as validator nodes in the blockchain. But the amount
of money to be garnered from that activity also depends on the success of Libra as Internet
money.

Tied to ‘Facebook family’

It appears that since the use of Libra would somehow be tied to the use of the Facebook family
of apps, with the Libra wallet Calibra as some kind of intermediary, these apps would be the
principal vehicles through which Libra would be transacted. So, the presumption must be that as
the popularity of Libra grows, so will the Facebook network, which would also be the leading
means of buying and selling, making payments, remitting funds, and lending and borrowing.
People’s love for and presence on the “Facebook family” network will make them use it to do
things they may have done at the corner store, on Google, on Amazon or at a bank, but using
Libra.

Thus, the bet that Facebook and its partners appear to be making is that the Facebook
community will easily segue into the Libra community as well, transforming the social media site
into the leading e-commerce marketplace, financial supermarket and the medium for the world’s
Internet of money. Facebook promises that it will keep separate and not cross-use information
garnered from its social media and e-money activities to multiply its own returns. But there are
no guarantees here. There is no doubting that being the creator of Libra, and its structure,
Facebook would far and away be the leading beneficiary of its success.

However, while the value of the Libra is tethered to fiat money with sovereign backing, its use
and operation are not subject to regulation by those sovereigns. How and for what purposes
Libra can be used would be regulated, if at all, by the members of the Libra Association as rule-
makers and validator nodes. While their mission is being packaged as being driven by non-profit
objectives, the essential character of many of them—Facebook, credit card providers, fintech
firms and venture capitalists, for example—is that they are profit seekers. So, that rather than
national or social objectives would determine the nature of regulation.

This could mean, for example, that little or no attention would be paid to the uses to which Libra
is put, including on whether it is used to finance criminal activities. That matters because if Libra
proves a success then Libra coin wealth can be more easily converted into holdings of fiat-
money wealth than, say, Bitcoin wealth. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has been
quoted as saying that while Facebook is free to issue a transaction tool it cannot replace
sovereign currencies and it could be misused, even to finance terrorism. “Sovereignty must
remain in the hands of states, not private companies that respond to private interests,” he
reportedly said and called on central bank Governors of the G7 countries to prepare a report on
what guarantees to demand from Facebook to avoid risks.

There are larger questions of whether a successful Libra will erode the regulatory powers of
governments and central banks. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has noted that the
“Libra, if it achieves its ambitions, would be systemically important” and, therefore, needs to be
scrutinised by central banks and financial regulators. Independent observers have also
expressed concern. Chris Hughes, one of Facebook’s original co-founders, has called on global
regulators to intervene to slow the progress of the cryptocurrency since it could allow
corporations involved in the scheme to wield power over nation states.

A tussle over Libra seems unavoidable. But given the power corporations wield, who will win is
not clear at all.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/social-issues/social-justice/article28261678.ece
SOCIAL ISSUES SOCIAL JUSTICE
CRIME
Murder of a DYFI activist in Tamil Nadu
ILANGOVAN RAJASEKARAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

The victim, M. Ashok. Photo: By Special Arrangement

Activists and villagers at the site where Ashok was murdered. Photo: By Spccial Arrangement

A young Dalit functionary of the DYFI is slain for his work against caste-based atrocities in his
village.
M. Ashok, a young functionary of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) was brutally
murdered by members of a caste Hindu group in Karaiyiruppu village near Tirunelveli in
southern Tamil Nadu on June 12. The 26-year-old Dalit was the treasurer of the Tirunelveli
district unit of the DYFI.

Ashok was working as a labourer in a tyre manufacturing unit located in the industrial estate of
the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) at Gangaikondan village,
some 15 kilometres from Karaiyiruppu. On the night of June 12, when he was leaving for the
night shift, a gang of Maravas, a backward-caste group, hacked him to death. His body was
found on the railway track near the village.

The caste animosity between Dalits, the majority of them agricultural labourers, and the
landholding Maravas, who are socially and economically privileged in the region, was the major
factor behind the murder. The two caste groups remain polarised on caste lines, leading to
frequent flare-ups in the village. Ashok was in the forefront of the fight against caste atrocities,
which irked the caste Hindus. Residents also allege that members of the Marava community
have been harassing and abusing Dalits, especially women, whenever they use the path that
goes through the Marava colony.

A group of young Dalits, led by Ashok, had started confronting them on various caste-based
issues. After the day of the murder, a huge gathering of relatives, activists, villagers and cadres
of the DYFI and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) launched a series of protests in
Tirunelveli town and Karaiyiruppu village, condemning the murder. They laid siege to the
Tirunelveli Government Medical College and Hospital where Ashok’s body was kept for post-
mortem for more than five hours. They also refused to accept the body.

The same evening, the villagers, led by the CPI(M)’s Tamil Nadu State secretary, K.
Balakrishnan, blocked the Tirunelveli-Madurai highway near the place where Ashok was
murdered. After more than five hours of talks with officials on their charter of demands, the
blockade was lifted.

The district administration conceded the protesters’ demands, which included the arrest of the
accused under the Goondas Act and the provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled
Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. They also wanted the State government to pay
Rs.50 lakh compensation to Ashok’s family, a government job for a member of the family and a
pucca road from the village Dalit settlement to the highway. They insisted that Karaiyiruppu
should be declared atrocities-prone. The State government handed over the first instalment of
compensation, Rs.4.12 lakh, to the victim’s family.

The murder, according to activists, could have been the fallout of a scuffle between Ashok and
one of the accused a month back. Ashok and his mother Aavudaiyammal (50) were transporting
a bundle of grass in a two-wheeler when it accidentally brushed against a group of Marava
youths in the village. This led to a quarrel in which a youth assaulted Ashok’s mother. Police
Commissioner N. Baskaran told the media that cases were registered against both since Ashok
had assaulted the person in retaliation. Both were arrested and released on conditional bail,
said a senior police officer.

Murugan Kanna of Nava Bodhu Cultural Centre, a rights activist in Tirunelveli and Ashok’s
mentor since his early days of social activism, told Frontline that Ashok had never been caste-
centric. “In fact, he worked for social amity in the village and was a socially responsible person.
Following the scuffle with the youth, Ashok asked the police to register the case under the
S.C./S.T. Act. But the Thatchanallur Police registered the cases under the Indian Penal Code
(IPC). Had the police registered the cases under the S.C./S.T. Act, Ashok’s murder could have
been averted,” he said. He pointed out that the situation had become “dangerous and volatile”
for field activists working against caste-based atrocities.

S. Murugan (55), Ashok’s father who is an agricultural labourer, in his complaint preferred at the
Thatchanallur police station, recorded that Ashok was subjected to constant harassment by
Marava youths of Karaiyiruppu for his proactive role against social inequalities. In a statement
he said: “In fact, we told him to be careful. At 10:15 p.m. on June 12, a few of his friends and I
escorted him to the main road, from where he was to take the company bus. He was a few
steps ahead of us when a gang led by Ramachandra Thevar, his son Subramaniyan, his
grandson Petchi Raja, and three sons of Pool Thevar started attacking him. When we tried to
save him, the gang attempted to attack us. He was killed before my eyes.” Meanwhile, the
police arrested the prime suspects S. Petchi Raja (19), S. Muthupandi (27), Murugan (55), Balu
(48), Mookkan (45) and Ganesan (43) in connection with the murder. The accused were booked
under Sections 147 (rioting), 148 (with deadly weapons), 294 (b) (obscene language), 120 (b)
(criminal conspiracy), 341, 506 (2) (criminal intimidation) and 302 (murder) of the IPC. Besides,
they were charged under Sections 3(1)(r), 3(1)(s), 3(2) (va), 5 (a) of the S.C./S.T. Act, 2015.

The body of Ashok was laid to rest on June 14. Many, including the DYFI’s national president,
Mohamed Riyas, paid homage. A State-wide protest was organised on June 15. The DYFI’s
central executive in a statement on his murder claimed that Ashok was murdered for organising
Dalits in the village and urging them to resist caste-based atrocities.

Expressing shock and dismay over the murder, A. Kadir of the Madurai-based human rights
organisation Evidence told Frontline that Ashok was murdered for his anti-caste activities. “He
was actively engaged in the fight against caste-based atrocities. Besides, he worked for the
welfare of all poor and downtrodden people in his village,” he said. Kadir pointed out that, on an
average, 20 activists and others who work among the common people were killed every year in
Tamil Nadu. He said 12 activists were killed in 2016, nine in 2017 and seven in 2018. Five
persons have been killed so far in 2019. “They were murdered over issues such as inter-caste
marriage, fight against untouchability, illicit liquor, eve-teasing, land rights, usury lending, sand
mining and temple entry,” he said.

Not an isolated incident

Ashok’s murder is not an isolated incident for the DYFI and for its parent body the CPI(M) and
other progressive forces that are fighting for social justice. The Tamil Nadu State unit of the
CPI(M) has suffered many such casualties. K. Rathinasamy (38) CPI(M) village president of
Iduvai in Tiruppur district, was murdered in 2002 near his house for “helping Dalits, opposing
Hindus and removing encroachments”. A note left by the murderers claimed that they belonged
to the “Anti-Communist Front”.

A powerful syndicate of moneylenders brutally murdered Velusamy, a CPI(M) branch secretary

of Pallipalayam unit in Namakkal district, on March 10, 2010. Others killed at various times
include Eechampalayam Panneerselvam, Seeranpalayam Palanichamy and Asher Mill
Palanichamy. In April 1997, the Madurai City Corporation councillor Leelavathi of the CPI(M)
was murdered in the city when she exposed a racket involving water distribution. In Cuddalore,
two party members, Anand and Kumar, were murdered because they were against the sale of
illicit arrack.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/article28260289.ece
ARTS & CULTURE
TRIBUTE
Girish Karnad: Staging our times
RAJENDRA CHENNI
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Girish Karnad's play “Nagamandala”, directed by Neelam Mansingh, staged in Bengaluru on

August 16, 2008. Photo: K. Bhagya Prakash

Girish Karnad. Photo: K. BHAGYA PRAKASH

Members of Rangayana repertory of Mysuru staging “Taledanda” in Mangaluru on November

16, 2016. Photo: H.S. Manjunath
A scene from Karnad’s classic play “Tughlaq”, when it was staged in Hyderabad. Photo: A. Roy
Chowdhury

Amrish Puri and Satyadev Dubey in “Yayati”. Photo: From Girish Karnad's Autobiography

The actors Amol Palekar, Bapu Karmarkar, Sunila Pradhan and Amrish Puri in “Hayavadana”.
Photo: By Special Arrangement

Throughout his life Girish Karnad questioned existing social norms and refused to be a
conformist. And this is what he incorporated into his craft as a playwright extraordinaire and
indeed into every craft he touched.
“You are a learned man…. That’s where you belong, your majesty, in the company of learned
men. Not in this market place of corpses.”

I have sometimes wondered if these lines spoken by Barani the historian to Tughlaq in Girish
Karnad’s play came back to Karnad with an unexpected nuance when he was hounded, trolled
and threatened for paying a tribute to Tipu Sultan as a great figure in Karnataka’s history after
whom he thought the international airport in Bengaluru could have been named.

He had faced waves of irrational hatred earlier for his comments on the sharing of the waters of
the Cauvery and for being an outspoken critic of the right wing’s attempt at “othering”
communities that have been the warp and weft of the Indian cultural fabric. However, in the
case of Karnad it was never an opportunistic foray by an international celebrity into media-
driven populist politics. Although he remained somewhat of an outsider to the popular
movements in Karnataka in the 1970s and 1980s, his plays, supported by his patient
scholarship, had always registered a powerful refusal to accept uncritically received opinion,
distortions of history and uneducated or wicked prejudices. He was very sensitive to the social
processes both during the colonial and post-Independence periods in which the Brahmanical,
partly Westernised middle-class cultural elite had appropriated the artistic, musical and
performative traditions that truly belonged to the artisan class, the devadasis and the rural
artists, who had transformed them into “national” cultural traditions. He had written and spoken
about how the “Sadir” dance of the devadasis became Bharatanatyam and how the puritanical
middle class had passed laws to put an end to “nautch” and other performative arts which
forced thousands of erstwhile devadasis into prostitution. He had realised how colonialism and
the colluding middle-class elite had driven a wedge between the urban and the rural, and the
professional artist and the unlettered artisan.

This was not a mere tour in history for Karnad. He realised that as an Indian playwright
beginning his career in the 1960s he had inherited a dubious legacy. The Sanskrit theatre of the
past, now labelled Indian, had no living connections with the present. The subaltern
performative traditions had been marginalised, and the educated middle-class audience (which
he would be writing for) had very thin memories of them. As he said often, he was repelled by
the urban proscenium theatre which used to perform religiously George Bernard Shaw’s wordy,
cerebral and lifeless plays.

Between two worlds

His own personal experiences were of a generation coming of age in post-Independence India,
lost between two worlds, confused by an ambiguous modernity, rebelling against the puritanical
hypocrisy of the middle class and awakened to the anxieties and enchantment of sexuality. But
neither in tradition nor in contemporary theatre could the young dramatist find a form which
would be the “objective correlative” of those experiences. From his very first play, Yayati,
Karnad struggled with this paradox. This was also the driving force behind his unending
experimentation with theatrical forms, dramatic structures and artistic traditions. What made him
a truly great Indian playwright was the fact that he consciously eschewed the easy options
available to a playwright of his times.

Inevitably, he was drawn into the Sangeet Natak Akademi-sponsored movement to decolonise
Indian theatre by returning to the “roots”, to its “folk” traditions. The movement was led by Dr
Suresh Awasthi and has been brilliantly analysed by Erin B. Mee in her Theatre of Roots. Yes,
Karnad wrote Hayavadana, an immensely popular play that brought Kannada theatre nearest to
Brechtian Total Theatre, with the Sutradhara, talking dolls, Lord Ganesha, goddess Kali and
songs. Many thought that this was the Masterpiece of the Theatre of Roots. In reality,
Hayavadana carnivalised and mocked at not only the idea of roots but at all foundational notions
of a single self, integration of body and mind and of perfection. It was a postmodernist play
deliberately making a pastiche of serious philosophical probing, ironical deconstruction, and so
on. Even a great reader such as U.R. Ananthamurthy wondered why we should take the play
seriously when the dramatist himself was not serious about the issues he took up! I too believe
that Karnad was not a part of the Theatre of Roots, though he went on to write Nagamandala,
almost a companion piece to Hayavadana.

In his historical plays Tughlaq and Taledanda, instead of carnivalising contradictions of men and
history, Karnad presents to us very powerfully what could have been the “real” contradictions of
history. The contradictions of Tughlaq are not solely his own. He was the ruler of a vast territory,
with Hindus in majority, and his own ruling elite and bureaucracy (I mean the Muslim side of it)
was a minority. Daulatabad may have been a bad choice, but for many it was the case that “Dilli
door ast” (Delhi is too far). Karnad says that he was attracted by Tughlaq when he learnt that he
had banned prayer for five years. However, he discovered that Tughlaq was not an atheist but
one who struggled with God.

In Taledanda it is Bijjala who explains why Basava’s community of Sharanas (devotees) made
Kalyana a favourite with the merchant class. As most of them were from artisan communities
and the working class, and as Basava’s philosophy considered Kayaka (honest work, labour or
profession) sacred, Kalyana becomes a trustworthy place for businessmen and merchants.
When the proposed inter-caste marriage seems to threaten peace, Bijjala is still hopeful that the
merchant class will not allow Kalyana to destroy itself.

Basava’s own reaction to the proposed wedding is ambivalent. His eyes well with tears of
contentment but he holds back his benediction to the couple. He warns the Sharanas that such
a wedding is happening for the first time in 2,500 years and that he wished they had prepared
themselves better for it. But his followers who already see him as a miracle-maker are angry
and rebellious at his hesitation. Was Basava aware that a politically correct action, but taken up
too soon, could destroy the movement itself? But then how should he answer the impatient
questions of his followers, “For how many more generations should we wait?”

These are the real contradictions of history, unlike some of Tughlaq’s personal contradictions. In
the original Kannada, Basava speaks the earthy north Karnataka dialect of Kannada which
brings alive on the stage the portrayal of Basava as a man of the people. One tends to agree
with Ananthamurthy’s comment that he and his contemporaries like Karnad could understand
Bhakti as an egalitarian anti-caste protest but could not “experience” giving themselves unto
God. Karnad’s Basava is neither an otherworldly mystic nor a leader alienated from his own
people by his power. The limits of translatability prevent Karnad’s own translation of Taledanda
from communicating this wholly. In Bijjala we have a mighty ruler who speaks a sociolect of
Kannada, one rung below that spoken by Basava.

The meaning and impact of Karnad’s last play on the fall of Vijayanagara is yet to sink in. In one
stroke it demolishes the myth of Muslim invaders destroying a Hindu empire. Instead, it is the
megalomania and the delusions of Aliya Ramaraya, the de facto ruler of the empire, that are
mainly responsible for its collapse. The play also has a strong ethical perspective, though it
remains submerged most of the time. The senseless beheading of Jehangir Khan and the
humiliation of Nizamshah of Bidar set off a chain of events leading to the horrendous beheading
of Ramaraya himself.

There are instances in Karnad’s plays wherein his aesthetics merge with his political
understanding as a public intellectual in Kannada society. His struggle against the communal
polarisation of history itself (Hindu kingdom and Muslim invaders) by the right wing finds
aesthetic expression in his last play, which has no place for a communal rendering of history.
(See Interview with Girish Karnad, “Challenging the popular narrative”, Frontline, January 18,
2019.) On the other hand, most discerning critics in Kannada felt that The Dreams of Tipu
Sultan was a weak play because Karnad made Tipu a flawless, forward-looking anti-imperialist.
Unfortunately, this portrayal also appeared to be monochromatic. Karnad’s Tipu is probably the
only protagonist who he tried to cast as unambiguously heroic. This must have been a lesson
for Karnad the playwright. The hero-villain Tughlaq and his contradictions did not prevent every
major performance of the play from making the audience discover a contemporary political
meaning in the play. The play seemed to resonate with the politics of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira
Gandhi and, as some would say, even Rajiv Gandhi.

I am waiting with bated breath for the next major performance of Tughlaq (if it is permitted) to
see if it would resonate with our current experience of fascist politics and of authoritarian
leadership. However, Karnad’s play on Tipu Sultan fails in being open-ended enough for such
multiple interpretations. The aesthetics of theatre in our times has to be supple enough to
respond to the theatre of power which is complex and ambiguous.

There is another kind of politics that Karnad probed in all his plays. This is about power
pervading the most intimate of human relationships. Karnad sees the institution of marriage,
love and sexuality as systems with complex power structures. The theme song of Hayavadana,
“Why should love stick to the sap of a single body?”, announces the play’s intention to explore
feminine sexuality within the matrix of patriarchy. Padmini’s desire for Devadatta’s intellect and
Kapila’s body is subversive and cannot be fulfilled in a society ridden with sadistic puritanism.

As critics have suggested, the two talking dolls represent what a patriarchal society would have
tried to do to Padmini. The most caustic remarks on the faithless male world come from the
goddess Kali, who admires Padmini’s act of transposing the heads as “the limit of honesty”. But
in the real hierarchical world the head is superior to the body and the male to the female. This is
true of Nagamandala too. Rani, left frustrated and unrequited by her husband Appanna, finds
sexual fulfilment with the serpent. The play subverts the chastity test in order to protect Rani
from a horrible punishment. But ironically, the play also tries in its denouement to provide justice
to her husband. The lesser-known play Anju Mallige (Driven Snow in English translation) is a
dark study on the entangled web of incest, obsession, possessiveness and self-destruction.
Bali (The Sacrifice), a short play that Karnad wrote and rewrote over a span of several years, is
also, among other things, about woman’s sexuality. Though the play’s central concern is the
nature of violence, it also explores the violence in sexual relationships within the institution of
marriage. As in the original poem by the Kannada Jaina poet Janna, the non-violent Jaina
religion has to negotiate with the inherent violence of sexual and other human relationships. In
Karnad’s play it is difficult to differentiate between violence and non-violence. Is not the queen
mother’s authoritarian personality a means of violence too? The king who is overly scrupulous
about the violence of animal sacrifice perpetrates a different kind of violence on his wife
Amritamati.

Contemporary relevance
A question often raised about these plays of Karnad which delve into the dark nooks and
corners of the human psyche is about the contemporary relevance of these universal aspects.
One is reminded of the comment P. Lankesh made to Suresh Awasthi on Hayavadana, “What is
its relevance?”

I believe the question of relevance comes up when a writer consciously turns away from
contemporary issues to dwell on metaphysical problems not directly related to the social
experience of the times. Karnad’s career exemplifies the opposite. As discussed earlier, his
historical plays in the latter part of his career take a definite stand on power, caste system and
violence.

This was the phase when he gradually transformed himself into a public individual and
participated in the struggles against communalism and perverted nationalism. He earned the
wrath of right-wing organisations to such an extent that when he passed away some of them
celebrated his death and posted messages on the social media saying that the second coming
of Modi had taken another wicket. (The first wicket was U.R. Ananthamurthy, which happened
with the first coming!) Such is the unethical morass into which Karnataka has sunk now. Karnad
would certainly be an outsider, if not an alien, in this scenario.

Karnad’s relationship with the Kannada dramatic/theatrical and cultural traditions was complex
and went through several transformations. In several interviews and autobiographical writings,
Karnad has said that he wrote Tughlaq provoked by the critic Keerthinath Kurtakoti’s statement
that there was not a single Kannada historical play which explored historical material in depth.
Kurtakoti’s statement should be understood in the context of the pseudo-historical romances
and revivalist narratives that were immensely popular from the early modern period of Kannada
fiction (1898-1930).

There were also plays written for the professional theatre which introduced a stylised and highly
rhetorical dialogue, accompanied by melodramatic posturing and an odd mixture of sentimental
nationalism/subnationalism and a vacuous glorification of the past. Interestingly, in writing
Tughlaq, Karnad used the stage techniques and dramatic structures of the same professional
theatre which had taken Parsi theatre as its model. As Aparna Dharwadker says, some of the
major directors of the play used the settings, scenery and the stage of professional theatre.
Karnad’s explanation was that his childhood experience of theatre had ingrained in him the
notion that professional theatre is real theatre.

Against communalised interpretations

Karnad’s struggle was not with the professional theatrical tradition which had many obvious
flaws; instead, it was with populist historiography itself. This historiography had created
communalised interpretations of Indian history and stereotypes of despotic and immoral Muslim
rulers. Though he relied on the historian Barani’s writings on Tughlaq, he steers clear of the
religious ideology that coloured Barani’s portrayal of Tughlaq. In The Dreams of Tipu Sultan, he
brings on stage two historians, Mackenzie and Kirmani, to represent the imperialist and native
constructions of Tipu Sultan. In Taledanda, Basava has no resemblance to the figure of
Basavanna wearing a crown and riding a horse, a part of the popular iconography accepted by
the dominant Lingayat community today.

Karnad’s writings are consistent in deconstructing popular discourses of history. Karnad’s

historical plays made a powerful impact on Kannada theatre and probably inspired a
dispassionate exploration of history that was free of communal and revivalist interpretations.
Indeed, he remains the only major dramatist who pursued the subject of history even in his last
published play, Rakshasa Tangadi.

Sriranga, who was the major Kannada playwright before Karnad, experimented with puranas
and myths with a modernist perspective. His numerous plays constructed around myths have
not been as popular as his social plays. One of his plays employs the Yayati myth which Karnad
used in his eponymous play. Interestingly, Navya (modernist) writing in Kannada inaugurated by
Gopalakrishna Adiga in the late 1950s was deeply involved in the exploration of myth. The post-
Navya (from the 1980s onwards) writing continued to use myths although to critique and
deconstruct them from feminist and subaltern perspectives.

Karnad’s long preoccupation with myths also brought upon him the charge that he was not
passionately involved in the contemporary social world as Lankesh, Ananthamurthy and Tejaswi
were. Interestingly, this criticism is silent about Karnad’s plays such as Anju Mallige, Wedding
Album and Broken Images. These plays are somehow not yet seen as part of the Karnad
canon.

That a multifaceted genius such as Karnad should have maintained a nearly “monogamous”
relationship with drama and theatre for six decades and enlivened them with his immense talent
is a remarkable phenomenon of our times.

Ideological debates
Karnad’s entry into the ideological debates in Kannada civil society took many by surprise.
Though his modern, secular credentials were well known, he had not been a visible, active
participant in debates and movements throughout the 1980s and 1990s in Karnataka.
Interestingly, it was Kuvempu, who never took to the streets to protest, who became the most
powerful public intellectual from whom several movements of the period took inspiration. Early
in his career (from 1920-30), he consistently spoke and wrote powerfully against the
Brahmanical priesthood, the caste system and blind beliefs. In his later phase, he also spoke
against the domination of English.

Although many other writers of his times such as Masti, Devanahalli Venkataramanaiah
Gundappa (popularly known as D.V.G—1887-1975) and Shamba Joshi had frequently
intervened in public debates, it was Kuvempu whose universal humanism illuminated a radical
dimension. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ananthamurthy, Lankesh and Tejaswi were influential as
public intellectuals for decades. There were sceptical voices about Karnad’s remaining an
outsider to contemporary Kannada culture.

The rise of the right wing, the communalisation of Karnataka society, and the assault on history
made it inevitable for Kannada writers to join movements to resist these tendencies. Karnad,
too, did so. He began to speak out, make statements and participate in rallies. He had realised
that in the age of unreason the duty of the writer was to represent sanity and defend democratic
values. He began to do all this when civil society had already been polarised, especially by the
Kannada media. The newly emergent constituencies were now the most articulate sections of
civil society. These sections had imbibed the fascist techniques of verbal assaults, issuing
physical threats and denigrating writers and intellectuals. For the first time in Karnataka’s
history, the words “intellectual” and “rationalist” were demonised and desecrated. There was no
longer a public sphere based on a belief in the rational exchange of ideas.

Karnad had to bear the brunt of demeaning public debates in which caste, emotional
subnationalism and linguistic fanaticism held sway. Karnad was vilified and abused again and
again. In the last days of his life, even after doctors had given him only six months, he was
always there at protest meets, conferences and sit-ins, carrying a little oxygen cylinder and
speaking out his mind, loud and clear. The international celebrity had transformed himself as the
icon of cultural resistance. And then he made a quiet and dignified exit.

Rajendra Chenni, formerly professor of English at Kuvempu University, is a bilingual writer who
writes on literature, culture and politics in Kannada and English. He is currently Director,
Manasa Centre for Cultural Studies, Shivamogga.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/heritage/article28259828.ece
ARTS & CULTURE HERITAGE
SUN TEMPLE
Restoration of the Sun Temple
T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY D. KRISHNAN
0

One of the three extant sculptures of the Sun God on the northern side of the sanctum
sanctorum. Here he is riding a horse wearing gumboots, with devotees worshipping him and
angels bringing garlands for him. Both the Sun God and his steed are highly ornamented.
1/21

A panoramic view of the Sun Temple complex with the remains of the natamantapa and the
jagamohana and its gopura. Scaffolding has been erected around the jagamohana for
restoration work.
2/21

The plinth on which are the remains of the sanctum. High on the wall is one of the two standing
sculptures of the Sun God.
3/21

The highly sculpted sinhasana in the sanctum on which the deity of the Sun God stood. It has a
series of superb carvings on the three sides depicting devotees and the king, kneeling down in
worship.
4/21

The sinhasana in the sanctum on which the deity of the Sun God stood.
5/21
A scale model of the Konark temple as it existed originally.
Photo: T.S.S. Subramanian
6/21

7/21

This massive sculpture of Gaja Simha, made of khondolite stone, was originally on the vimana
of the sanctum, facing east. When the vimana collapsed it fell on the adjacent gopura of the
jagamohana. It is displayed on the temple's lawns now.
8/21

This is a landmark sculpture showing a king holding a bow and arrow and seated on an
elephant. Three traders, dressed in long tunics, are gifting the king with a giraffe. This shows
that Odisha had trade ties with Africa.
9/21

The plinth of the natamantapa with its finely carved figures of women playing musical
instruments.
10/21

This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The sanctum
sanctorum abutting the jagamohana is covered completely with sand and vegetation.
Photo: Courtesy: The ASI
11/21

This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The deep
dilapidation of the jagamohana.
Photo: Courtesy: The ASI
12/21

This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The main eastern
entrance with the flight of steps and the platform reduced to rubble and the wheels of chariot
broken into pieces.
Photo: Courtesy: The ASI
13/21

This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The wheels of
chariot broken into pieces.
Photo: Courtesy: The ASI
14/21

Workers cleaning the lever portion of the jagamohana with soft brushes.
15/21

Cleaning portions of the jagamohana structure with water and soap before the paper pulp
sheets are applied.
16/21

Applying the paper pulp treatment to the lower portions of the jagamohana structure to absorb
the salt deposited by sea breeze on them over the ages.
17/21
Arun Malik, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI, Bhubaneswar Circle.
18/21

Shilpa Raturi, Superintending Archaeological Chemist of the ASI, Bhubaneswar Circle.

19/21

The Sun Temple at Konark has been built in the form of a huge chariot with 12 pairs of big
wheels and drawn by seven horses.
20/21

The sculpture of Aruna, the thighless charioteer of the Sun God, in one of the standing
sculptures. It is missing in the other standing sculpture of the Sun God.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/heritage/article28259106.ece
ARTS & CULTURE HERITAGE
SUN TEMPLE
A gigantic restoration effort in Konark
T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY D. KRISHNAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

One of the three extant sculptures of the Sun God on the northern side of the sanctum
sanctorum. Here he is riding a horse wearing gumboots, with devotees worshipping him and
angels bringing garlands for him. Both the Sun God and his steed are highly ornamented.

A panoramic view of the Sun Temple complex with the remains of the natamantapa and the
jagamohana and its gopura. Scaffolding has been erected around the jagamohana for
restoration work.

The plinth on which are the remains of the sanctum. High on the wall is one of the two standing
sculptures of the Sun God.

The highly sculpted sinhasana in the sanctum on which the deity of the Sun God stood. It has a
series of superb carvings on the three sides depicting devotees and the king, kneeling down in
worship.

The sinhasana in the sanctum on which the deity of the Sun God stood.
A scale model of the Konark temple as it existed originally. Photo: T.S.S. Subramanian

This massive sculpture of Gaja Simha, made of khondolite stone, was originally on the vimana
of the sanctum, facing east. When the vimana collapsed it fell on the adjacent gopura of the
jagamohana. It is displayed on the temple's lawns now.

This is a landmark sculpture showing a king holding a bow and arrow and seated on an
elephant. Three traders, dressed in long tunics, are gifting the king with a giraffe. This shows
that Odisha had trade ties with Africa.

The plinth of the natamantapa with its finely carved figures of women playing musical
instruments.
This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The sanctum
sanctorum abutting the jagamohana is covered completely with sand and vegetation. Photo:
Courtesy: The ASI

This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The deep
dilapidation of the jagamohana. Photo: Courtesy: The ASI

This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The main eastern
entrance with the flight of steps and the platform reduced to rubble and the wheels of chariot
broken into pieces. Photo: Courtesy: The ASI

This picture, taken in 1868, show the ruin in which the Sun Temple lay then: The wheels of
chariot broken into pieces. Photo: Courtesy: The ASI

Workers cleaning the lever portion of the jagamohana with soft brushes.

Cleaning portions of the jagamohana structure with water and soap before the paper pulp
sheets are applied.

Applying the paper pulp treatment to the lower portions of the jagamohana structure to absorb
the salt deposited by sea breeze on them over the ages.

Arun Malik, Superintending Archaeologist.

Shilpa Raturi, Superintending Archaeological Chemist of the ASI, Bhubaneswar Circle.

The Sun Temple at Konark has been built in the form of a huge chariot with 12 pairs of big
wheels and drawn by seven horses.

The sculpture of Aruna, the thighless charioteer of the Sun God, in one of the standing
sculptures. It is missing in the other standing sculpture of the Sun God.

The ASI has taken up work at the Sun Temple to conserve those portions that are still standing
and restore to the extent possible the colossal temple complex, in whose sanctum sanctorum
the deity and the vimana over it are no longer extant.

WHY did the eastern Ganga king Narasimha Deva (regnal years 1238 C.E. to 1264 C.E.) build
the Sun Temple in Konark, Odisha, on the coast? Did his architects not know about the
damaging impact that the winds from the sea, laden with salt, sand and moisture, would have
on the incredibly beautiful sculptures of this colossal temple? Did they not want the temple to
survive for centuries, especially when they built it with so much of architectural planning and
precision? Why did the builders choose the porous khondolite stone for the temple and its
sculptures? Were they not aware that khondolite would deteriorate fast and become powdery
when exposed to sea breeze? Why did the builders not choose the hardy chlorite schist stone
for the temple, especially when they had sculpted three beautiful sculptures of Surya Deva and
the embellished door jamb of the temple’s main entrance with it?

These are questions that baffle the archaeologists and conservators of the Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) even as they battle nature to conserve the Sun Temple. The massive
restoration and preservation work under way at the temple includes carefully cleaning
sculptures and friezes with water and applying paper pulp on them to absorb salt deposits and
then removing the paper pulp. Biocidal and fungicidal treatment of the monument will follow.
Stone strengtheners will be applied to weak stones and grouting will be done to fill gaps in the
stones.

Even as the massive restoration work, which began in 2012, is pressing ahead, Arun Malik,
Superintending Archaeologist, ASI, Bhubaneswar Circle, inaugurated a project in February 2019
to unearth the hundreds of carved architectural pieces and sculptures lying buried in the sand
along the prakara wall of the temple. Called “scientific clearance”, the project involves
numbering, photographing and documenting every loose sculpture and architectural part
excavated. They will be exhibited in a new museum. “It is a huge project. We will take four years
to complete it,” Arun Malik said.

The Sun Temple is the grandest achievement of the Odishan style of art and architecture, with
incredibly beautiful sculptures and ornamentation. The size of the sculptures varies from life-
size to a few inches. They depict a variety of themes, some audaciously erotic and some
secular; dancing apsaras; women playing a variety of musical instruments; taming of elephants;
palanquin-bearers; naga kanyas; events from everyday life; battle scenes, and so on.
Narasimha Deva built the temple with epic proportions and dedicated it to the Sun God, Surya
Deva. The temple has been fashioned in the form of a colossal chariot with 24 giant wheels, 12
on each side, drawn by seven horses.

However, it is not a living temple; no worship is offered. What survives of the main temple now
are two parts, both interconnected. One is the sanctum sanctorum, or the garba griha. The other
part is the stupendous jagamohana structure, in front of the sanctum. Both the sanctum and the
jagamohana have been built on a 3-metre-tall platform that is a few hundred metres long.
Today, the sanctum is an empty shell open to the sky, with the towering vimana above it having
collapsed a few centuries ago. There is no sculpture of the presiding deity inside the sanctum.
The exquisitely carved stone pedestal, called sinhasana on which the deity once stood, is now
empty. Archaeologists have estimated that the sanctum, with its extant vimana, measured 61
metres in height from ground level. As the historian Debala Mitra says, although its sanctum has
collapsed, the temple “is still a monument of colossal magnificence”.

In front of the sanctum is the gigantic jagamohana, with its pyramidal tower, or gopura, soaring
above it. Jagamohana means “that which pleases the whole world, that which is most pleasing”.
The cantilever-tiered tower is largely intact and has hundreds of beautiful sculptures, carvings
and friezes of lions, life-size erotic sculptures and dancing women. The grand structure stands
about 39 metres in height, or 15 storeys tall, from ground level to the gopura’s crown.

About eight metres from the jagamohana, on a separate platform, is the natamantapa with four
massive pillars that have sculptures of women dancing or playing on a variety of musical
instruments. The natamantapa’s gopura does not exist now.

Today, there is hectic activity all around the jagamohana. Tall scaffoldings have been erected
around it and workers perched on them at considerable heights are busy cleaning the
sculptures or plain stone blocks with water from hose pipes. Some others are removing dirt from
the sculptures with soft brushes. A team is engaged in carefully applying thick wads of paper
pulp over the cleaned portions.

Arun Malik said: “First of all, the Sun Temple at Konark is a World Heritage monument and we
have to observe international norms in conserving it. The temple has a grandeur all its own. The
structure is stable. However, periodic conservation and preservation of the temple is a big
challenge because the structure is about 800 years old. Besides, it is situated close to the sea.
Salt, sand and moisture carried by the wind accumulate on the surface and harm the sculptures.
Khondolite is a very porous stone and deteriorates fast. We do this periodic scientific cleaning to
remove the salt by applying paper pulp on the monument.”

The ASI erected the scaffolding in 2012 to study the temple’s structural stability, which was
done by the Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) of the Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research (CSIR), Roorkee, Uttarakhand. Arun Malik said: “The CBRI has submitted its report to
the Government of India. The challenge now is to implement its recommendations.” They
include filling the massive interior room of the jagamohana with sand, strengthening its tiered
cantilevers and providing them support. “The ASI will implement the CBRI’s recommendations,”
he said. “We will shortly take up filling the interior of the jagamohana. We have already done an
endoscopy of the structure to see the condition inside.”

This is not the first time that the interior of the jagamohana is being filled with sand. The British
did it in 1903 and sealed the three entrances to the structure on the east, south and north with
massive buttressing walls to ensure its structural stability. No one has been able to enter both
the jagamohana and the sanctum for the past 114 years and so the ASI had to resort to an
endoscopy now. At the main, eastern, entrance to the jagamohana is a tablet erected by the
British conservators, which reads: “To preserve this superb specimen of old Indian architecture,
the interior has been filled in [with sand] by order of the Hon’ble J.A. Bourdillon C.S. Lieutenant
Governor Bengal, A.D. 1903.”

Fresh sand has to be poured into the jagamohana now because the sand poured in by the
British has settled down considerably. The ASI’s engineers will soon design a special
scaffolding to pour the sand from the top through a window called sukhanasi. This is the same
opening that the British used.

Shilpa Raturi, Superintending Archaeological Chemist, ASI, Bhubaneswar, said the temple was
such a huge structure that the entire cycle of completing the “scientific cleaning” and
preservation will take about 12 years. Besides a saline environment, Konark suffered from
temperature variations throughout the year. Humidity was high. “All these cumulatively impact
the monument,” she said. What posed a big problem in the conservation efforts was that the
khondolite stone was of varying quality. The sculptures were made of two, three or four pieces
of stones, they were of different compositions. She explained: “The compositional stability of
each block, therefore, varies…. So the variation in deterioration is basically because of the
compositional stability of the stone.” To preserve these sculptures from further deterioration, the
ASI did scientific cleaning, which involved the removal of accretion on them, whether it was dust
or any other biological deposit. Often, the roots of vegetation went into the substrata of the
stone. So, biocidal treatment was given as a preventive measure.

On the paper pulp treatment, she said: “This is a useful method because it is non-corrosive and
non-abrasive. It is a simple interaction between two substrata in hydraulic contact.” After the
paper pulp treatment is completed, the monument is cleaned again. Wherever necessary,
stones in a fragile condition are strengthened using a solvent. Later, a preservative is applied.

Debala Mitra, in her book Konark, first published by the ASI in 2003, said: “….Among all of
Odisha’s hundreds of temples, the one that stands unparalleled in terms of both architectural
conception and sculptural brilliance is the great Sun Temple of Konark.” She calls the temple “a
monument of epic imagination”, which “is the realisation of the creative upsurge that fired the
architects of Odisha for over 500 years, beginning in the seventh century A.D.”.

The Konark temple is a sprawling complex. On the southern, western and northern sides of the
tall plinth of the main temple are hundreds of sculptures of varying themes. They include erotic
sculptures, naga kanyas, elephants in procession, warriors riding horses, women drying their
tresses after a bath, a pandit teaching pupils, a man holding a dog by its tail and beating it with
a stick, and women languorously seated on couches with attendants standing around. What
draws attention is a sculptural panel that shows a king, armed with a bow and riding on an
elephant. A mahout is also seated on the elephant. In front of the elephant are three foreigners,
dressed in long-flowing tunics. They have brought a giraffe, and it is obvious that they are gifting
the giraffe to the king. The episode takes place under a tree with birds seated on it. There is
another panel that shows a giraffe. The panels obviously indicate the trade that Odisha had with
Africa. Nearby is another superbly carved panel that depicts a couple standing under a tree and
the pallu of the woman’s sari is draped over her head.

The three superlatively beautiful sculptures of the Sun God that have survived are located in
three different places. While one shows Surya Deva riding a horse, the other two are identical.
They show a tall Sun God standing on a chariot drawn by seven horses. The charioteer is the
thighless Aruna. Around the Sun God are flying angels with garlands in their hands, devotees,
and so on. The Sun Gods are shown wearing tall gumboots, perhaps a fallout of Persian
influence. Interestingly, the statues of Surya Deva at the Sun Temple in Modhera, Gujarat, are
also shown wearing tall gumboots. To the south of the temple complex are the remains of a big
kitchen, where prasad, or the offering for the presiding deity, was cooked. Of importance are the
remains of a temple dedicated to Mayadevi, one of the wives of Surya. It is datable to the 12th
century C.E. and was excavated more than 100 years ago to the west of the temple complex. It
has beautiful sculptures of Surya riding a horse, Agni and Nataraja with six arms, and carvings
of elephants, danseuses, women musicians, and so on.

The remains of a brick temple, datable to 10th-11th century C.E., were excavated nearby in
1956.

The depiction of the 12 pairs of gigantic wheels of the chariot is astounding. They represent
sundials. The wheels are so realistically carved that they even have an axle held in position by a
pin. The 12 pairs represent the 12 months of the year. Each wheel has 16 spokes, eight thick
and eight thin. The wheels, with their spokes, rim and hub, are richly ornamented. They have
carvings of warriors riding horses, processions of elephants, erotic couples, women seductively
seated on couches, palanquin bearers, and so on. The historian K.S. Behera calls the wheels
“the crowning glory of the temple…which imparts a monumental grandeur unique in the realm of
art”.

Civil engineers and archaeologists have advanced several reasons for the temple falling into
ruin. They attribute it to the subsidence of its foundation, since it was built in a sandy area; a
top-heavy vimana; earthquakes; lightning strikes, and so on. However, they are agreed that
“Muslim invaders” attacking the main temple and vandalising it in the 16th century C.E. was
what triggered the collapse of its vimana. “The general consensus… is that the structure
crumbled gradually, the beginning of the decay initiated by the desecration of the temple by the
invaders,” Debala Mitra said.

In his book Konarka: The Black Pagoda of Orissa, Bishan Swarup quotes the Puri temple
records as saying that “in the time of Raja Mukunda Deva [circa 1565 C.E.], the Mohamedans
under the iconoclast Kalapahar attacked Orissa and tried to break the temple of Konarka. Not
being able to do so, they carried away the copper kalasa and the dwaja [on top of the vimana].”
Bishan Swarup was a civil engineer in the Public Works Department of the Bengal government
and took part in the conservation of the Sun Temple, Konark, from 1892 to 1904. His book was
published in 1910.

Later, the colossal sculpture of the Gaja Simha on the eastern face of the vimana fell heavily on
the jagamohana and punched a hole in its pyramidal roof, said Bishan Swarup. What remains of
the sanctum today is the sinhasana, carved with images of a series of women and men
devotees, a procession of elephants, and, at the centre, a king, kneeling and worshipping the
Sun God, with his sword lying by his side. It was on this sinhasana that the sculpture of the
presiding deity stood.

The British, keen to conserve what remained of the temple, started the conservation work in
1901. They cleared the sand and vegetation around the temple, which revealed broken wheels,
sundered horses, vandalised sculptures, the collapsed platform, the roofless natamantapa, and
so on. When the debris in the sanctum was removed, the sinhasana without the presiding deity
came to light.

According to Bishan Swarup, attention then turned to conserving the jagamohana, which was in
bad shape, especially on the southern side. Stones kept falling from it, and it was in danger of
collapsing. So, the British built massive retaining walls on the eastern, southern and northern
doorways as load-bearing members. The passage that led from the jagamohana to the sanctum
was sealed. Sand was poured through a funnel into the interior vault through a hole made by a
diamond drill on the tower of the jagamohana. Through two other holes originally made for
ventilation, the sand was “stirred by means of bamboos as far as possible so as to spread it
evenly…. The urgent work of preserving the jagamohana was completed early in 1905”, said
Bishan Swarup.

The temple came under the control of the ASI in 1932, which started conservation work on it
from 1939. However, major conservation work began only in 1985 and went on up to 1997. It
was a massive effort that involved restoring and conserving the tall plinth with its horses, giant
wheels, sculptures, carvings, and so on. Arun Malik said: “The big platform [which ran around
the sanctum and the jagamohana] was consolidated. The missing stones and gaps were filled
with new plain stones as per the conservation policy of the ASI and international standards.
These plain stones [slabs] were used to fill the gaps, for strengthening the platform and to
facilitate the movement of tourists. Normally, we use plain stones to differentiate the old work
from the new.”

When the renewed cycle of conservation and restoration work was under way last year, there
were allegations in the media that the ASI was removing the original sculptures from the plinth
and replacing them with new ones. It was alleged that the landmark sculptural panel portraying
a king on an elephant being presented with a giraffe had been removed. The local police filed a
first information report (FIR) on the strength of complaints from reporters based in Konark.
With the issue threatening to blow out of proportion, the ASI used a stratagem to convince
sceptics that it had not removed a single sculptural panel from its place and that its conservation
work was guided by international norms. It organised an exhibition titled “The Untold Story of
Konark” during the World Heritage Week in November 2018 at Konark. It featured photographs
of how the Sun Temple was in utter ruins in the 1880s, a drawing made in 1839 that showed a
small portion of the vimana standing like a pillar above the garba griha, pictures of the
conservation done from 1901 to 1910 and from 1985 to 1997, and latest photographs showing
how the sculptural panel depicting the gift of the giraffe was very much in its place. The
exhibition silenced the ASI’s critics.

“In the last 10 years, we have not removed a single stone because this is a World Heritage
Monument and you have to get permission from UNESCO for any restoration project,” said Arun
Malik. “The details have to be cleared by UNESCO.”

Besides saline winds, cyclones and torrential rain that hit the Odisha coast every year also
impacted the temple. “In recent times, we have seen a waterlogging problem in the compound
of the temple. It is being addressed by improving the drainage system and providing an
appropriate pumping system,” Arun Malik said.

An eyesore in the complex is the encroachments and shops that have mushroomed in the
protected area (within the first 100 metres of the temple compound no new construction is
allowed), on the road leading to the temple. The Odisha High Court directed the removal of the
shops but suggested that they be given an alternative location. The shopkeepers went away but
came back, an ASI official said. The ASI has approached the State government for a new place
for the shopkeepers.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/arts-and-culture/literature/article28260184.ece
ARTS & CULTURE LITERATURE
SHORT STORY
Odia short story: And the tide turned
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

“And the Tide Turned” from Hidden Ganga & Other Stories is printed courtesy, Dhauli Books (
2019)

Gopinath Mohanty (1914-91) is a winner of the Sahitya Akademi and Jnanpith awards and is
widely recognised as one of the makers of modern Indian literature. The selected story is from
his book “Hidden Ganga & Other Stories” (Dhauli Books, 2019).

Sudeshna Mohanty, the translator, is an alumnus of SCS College, Puri and Miranda House,
Delhi University, and has taught English at BSV College, Bengaluru.

The rivers were in spate. The water level in the Kathajodi had risen to twenty four feet. The
waters of the Kuakhai river licked the highway. Deluge in Dharmashala, Aali, Bhadrak,
Bhandaripokhari. No news from those places. Their household help, Bhagiya, reported to Ma
what he had overheard in the marketplace. “We are from near Aali, Ma, if you go to the right you
will reach the big bungalow, don’t take that road, go left. Do you think our village still stands?
Varaha only knows!” He had gone to the market to fetch mutton.
“You checked for the red seal, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Ma. Apparently cattle and people have been carried away.”

“Where’s the sauce? You forgot the sauce! Go back to fetch it.”

From within the house a gruff voice asked, “Has he got butter?”

In low, hushed tones, Bhagiya said, “I forgot, Ma. Stories of the flood distracted me. I will go
again—”

With a toss of her head, her chubby face darkening, Medini Debi said, “You stupid fellow, you
will never change! If you remember to get five things, you forget two. You forgot the butter, how
am I going to serve Babu his toast-and-butter breakfast? Go! Run, fetch it!”

Bidyabhushan alias Chungi Babu rested on the sofa, reading the newspaper. Soft music came
from the radio. From his lips hung a half-smoked cigarette. Next to him on a round cane table
was an ashtray. The morning, a muted yellow; a clammy, wet drizzle.

Yes, the flood was mentioned in the papers. The current status was yet to come in, all aid would
be given, a hue and cry would be raised. Yet floods are indispensable to Odisha. Was it not in
the midst of floods that this land had been born and had grown? The ugly face of the flood
should not make one forget how beneficial it was. So much loam was deposited on the land, so
much fertilisation of arid soil. Many learned men expressed this view.

The clammy wetness outside made the warmth of the house all the more desirable. “Are you
giving me some tea?” His drawling voice reached Medini Debi.

A sweet voice replied from inside, “Yes! Yes! I’m bringing it.”

The dark clouds swelled overhead. Two huge white moustaches curled upwards from the dark
clouds, then curled downwards. Two huge moustaches on a black face. What a beauty!

Chungi Babu craved some exotic food. If only a whole roasted chicken stuffed with a smaller
chicken would arrive for him. And the small chicken would be stuffed with boiled eggs, raisins
and nuts. Yum! Delicious! And on another plate beside the chicken would be a plate full of
fruits—a bunch of grapes, luscious red apples, plums; on another plate, a pudding. In this
godforsaken place, even if you had the means you could not find exotic food. He would have to
wait. Culinary skills would grow. The cities would expand. But the tea was so long in arriving. He
could hear the clinking of crockery and the jingling of gold bangles.

“What’s this? Just tea? Warm water?”

Medini laughed. Sharp, sparkling white teeth. And those lips! On her earlobes her jewellery
glittered. Her fragrance cast a spell over him—it was not just a fragrance but a culmination of
the efforts of so many people in so many factories—the fragrance of her bath soap, hair oil and
her creams. Chungi Babu experienced a quiet arousal. With a half-smile on his lips, he put
down his cigarette and softly humming a song from a Hindi film, rose to bolt the door from
inside. Laughing coquettishly, Medini sprinted towards the door: “Stop! I have so many chores
to attend to.”
“Uff! Chores! Chores!”

“Will the chores get done on their own?”

“Isn’t Kiya at home?” Kiya was their five-year-old daughter.

“She has gone to her friend’s house. Chowdhury Babu’s house.”

“You let her go in this rain?”

“Can anyone stop her when she wants something? Since early morning she’d been insisting on
going. She’s taken an umbrella. Danei has gone with her. Let the child go and play there for a
little while.”

“And Nata?” Their ten-year-old son who studied in an exclusive English-medium school. “He
has morning school. The driver took him to school half an hour ago.”

The dark clouds rumbled overhead as the rain intensified. What intensity! Chungi Babu turned
on the radio. In living memory they had not experienced such a flood. The dykes had burst.
Floods everywhere. Many cattle lost. People, too, had lost their lives. Entire villages swept
away. The crops rotting. Thousands starving, homeless. The Calcutta-Madras railway line
disrupted in places—roads closed.

Bhagiya arrived on his cycle, soaked to the skin, bringing the butter.

“You took so long!” Medini complained.

Bhagiya explained. The driving rain slapped him across the face. The road was not visible. His
wet clothes clung to his body. Medini frowned, and wrinkling her nose, said, “Ok, go and
change.”

Bhagiya changed, and coming out on the verandah, said, “Those whose houses have been
washed away, would be sitting somewhere in the rain, drenched to the core. No food, no
drinking water, water all around and the torrential rain pelting down on them. Poor things!”

Slicing bread, Medini said, “Fate! Who can control one’s destiny!”

Bhagiya said, “Who knows what havoc there is in our village! Who survived and who didn’t. The
advancing waters spared no one. They say the stench of rotting carcasses makes the stomach
churn. The wells and ponds are full of water, dark and muddy. No drinking water. The houses
gone, you have nowhere to sit and nothing to sit on so you squat on the mud under a tree. No
food. Stay alive by munching on leaves. For miles around, no building, water everywhere. A
dread fills the mind. Stay still where you are—don’t move. And the crops, Ma, we were
expecting such a good harvest—all washed away!”

“Why are you ranting like that? If you want to go, leave, but give me a substitute before you go.
And don’t ask for a salary advance, it’s the middle of the month.”

“As if you have to wait for the end of the month, Ma. You are the veritable mistress of the
storehouse of Goddess Lakshmi. She is there for you whenever you want. And yes, there are
still more rumours that I gathered from the marketplace. Those who have lost their all in the
floods will get aid—a collection drive has been initiated for them.”

Interrupting him, Medini said, “The government will take care of the afflicted. Why this call for
donations? Don’t we pay income tax?”

“Let the government give,” Bhagiya said. “But when fellow human beings are suffering, others
donate to put their conscience at ease. Thousands of volunteers braving all discomfort are
working tirelessly in the flood-afflicted areas. When children are wailing in hunger, how can a
sentient human being feast in peace? If the government gives five rupees, let others give three,
five and three make eight. Everyone should contribute, however small. Everything will go
towards alleviating the distress of the flood afflicted. The time to give is now. You too contribute
something, Ma. Ask Babu.”

The rain beat down mercilessly. Pitch dark outside. Medini said, “Go about your chores
Bhagiya, don’t preach! Oh, the benevolent one!”

The breakfast spread was laid on the table. Some toast, biscuits, boiled eggs, omelettes, pared
apples. Some tea. Chungi Babu was eating. Medini chatted with him as she stood in
attendance. The lights were switched on even though it was daytime. Medini laughed and said,
“Listen to what our Bhagiya has to say. He says everybody should contribute towards the flood
relief. Give food, give money. Contribute generously. The flood has afflicted the entire state,
why should we be held to ransom!”

Chungi Babu said seriously, “Yes, the flood has been very intense. We haven’t had anything like
this in a hundred years.”

Feigning anger, Medini pouted, “I’ve been asking you for so long, take me to see the floods, so
many people are enjoying the sight, but not me.”

At that moment there was a loud clap of thunder and the power supply was disrupted. The light
went off, the fan stopped whirring. At nine o’clock in the morning, the dull light of dusk streamed
into the house. Chungi Babu said, “What is there to see in a flood? Only swirling muddy waters,
what else? Imagine miles of muddy waters stretching out to the horizon, that’s all.”

Both of them speechlessly watched the pounding rain. Outside the window, the garden
stretched for a few yards—it was in disarray, battered by the rain.

“This rain is good for the plants. They haven’t got this kind of rain in years.” Chungi Babu said.

Medini shouted, “Look out of the gate! The gushing waters! God! What waters!”

“We will be blessed with a loamy deposit. This sandy soil could do with some loam.”

“The sand may get washed away.”

“No, fertile soil from other places will be deposited in our garden.”

Suddenly Chungi Babu said, “Look, I forgot Kiya is in Chowdhury Babu’s house in this rain. Call
her. Find out what she is doing.”
Medini called. With the receiver to her ear, and her body bending slightly forwards, she breezily
chirped into the phone, “Hello!”

Chungi Babu continued looking at her as she spoke. Suddenly, her face fell. Putting down the
phone, she said, “Where is Kiya? Where is Danei? Apparently, they left an hour ago.”

Chungi Babu’s heart pounded. “Danei is quite foolish.” He said: “He would have set out carrying
the child. And then when challenged with the fury of the rain, perhaps he is sheltering on
somebody’s verandah—Bhagiya! Bhagiya!”

Bhagiya set out with an umbrella. Another half an hour. The anxious parents waited at home.
Gouranga Babu had been called twice. Friends in the neighbourhood had also been contacted.
The rain appeared to abate. The newspaper boy delivered the newspaper. Chungi Babu yelled
in irritation, “So late! If this continues, I’m not going to subscribe to this paper.”

“Sorry sir! But it is raining so heavily!” The newspaper boy left. Chungi Babu’s irritation
increased. He shouted, “This is what the world has come to. Whoever goes out, stays out. Take
the driver. He would have dropped Nata in school, why hasn’t he come back? Must have taken
off to meet his friends. We don’t need such a driver. I’ll terminate his services, wait and see! And
Bhagiya? He behaves like a veritable lord!”

The newspaper lay in front of him. Medini couldn’t stop looking at it. Suddenly she exclaimed,
“Oh my God!” The front page was full of pictures of the devastation caused by the floods. The
glistening eyes of an old woman standing under the eaves of her house as if in a cage, staring
at the vast expanse of water in front of her—the pathetic story of Odisha’s flood began with her.
There on top of a mountain a crowd of people, jostling each other, surrounded by a sea of
water. The still waters stretched far and beyond, in places, the tops of trees jutted out, tiny
isolated grasslands. My God! Is this a railway track? Or the skeleton of some dead animal? And
this something that looked like a boat? The huge utensils used for making jaggery. And this?
What’s this?

Medini Debi stared nonplussed at the picture of that solitary man. It wasn’t a man, it was a
corpse. One hand raised skywards. Surrounded by water, a two-pronged tree. And where the
tree forked, this corpse had nestled itself. As if the two-pronged tree were designed to cradle
him in this deluge. Who was this man? Where was his house? And who were his family
members? From where has he come to rest eternally in the fork of this tree? No sign of life
anywhere around. The solitary corpse epitomised the agony of the human race.

Together, Medini Debi and Chungi Babu looked at the photograph. Medini Debi broke the
silence by letting out a deep sigh. Exactly at that moment, a white something floated across the
gate. Two feet long. It looked like a corpse. Bhagiya shouted from outside, “Babu! Ma!” Like a
man possessed, he ran out into the driving rain, and rushed to the left. Medini Debi felt as if a
thousand hammers were pounding her chest. Her body trembled as she cried out weakly, “Kiya!
Kiya!” and crumpled to the floor unconscious. Chungi Babu did not wait, myriad lights flashed
across his eyes like fireworks. Tugging at his hair with his left hand, he howled like a wild animal
and rushed into the pelting rain to join Bhagiya outside.

Medini Debi regained consciousness after some time. She opened her eyes. For a while, she
could not recollect anything. And then the scattered threads of what had been happening came
together. Kiya carried away by the flood. Danei would have gone to relieve himself. Kiya,
fascinated by the water, would have walked to the edge of the road, and then—
“Kiya! Kiya! My Kiya! Oh….” A primal cry rose from her lips, tears streamed from her eyes. She
felt helpless, a pauper, as she restlessly beat her head against the floor. Then she composed
herself and sat still, but she could not stop sobbing. The house was quiet, there was no one
around. Outside, the rain pelted down mercilessly. No one could hear her sobs, no one would
see her in this state.

The light was glowing in the house. In front of her lay the newspaper—with that picture—in the
midst of the deluge a two-pronged tree on which rested a corpse.

She looked around the room with eyes that did not recognise anything—for a while the house
became a stranger’s. And what was familiar was this picture, as if she was somehow a part of it.
Millions would have floated away like this corpse—so many Kiyas—drowned in the waters;
houses gone, fields gone, strength gone, life gone.

“Oh! My Kiya!” Her heart-wrenching cries shattered the walls of the house. “What happened?
What happened? Why are you screaming like that?” Chungi Babu was shouting into her ears.
“Ma, Ma, Ma!” Bhagiya and Danei were calling out. Kiya stood in front of her, howling. “Listen!
Stop crying! Look! Kiya is here, right in front of you.” It slowly pervaded her consciousness. Kiya
was not dead—she stood in front of her. In spite of the deluge, humanity was not dead.
Whatever the ravages, man shook himself free. These two ideas twined themselves into Medini
Debi’s consciousness. When the rain became fierce, Danei had taken shelter in Chemi Babu’s
house with Kiya. Chemi Babu was Chungi Babu’s friend. And what floated past the house had
been an old female goat, Chungi Babu and Bhagiya explained.

Bhagiya’s eyes, too, strayed to the picture in the newspaper. He was turning over the pages and
looking at it. He said, “Oh! Mahapuru, this is so scary! Such a demonic flood—never have we
seen anything like this—all is gone, gone!”

Chungi Babu sighed deeply and said, “What a tragedy!”

While caressing Kiya, Medini Debi continued to look at the picture. Her bosom heaved as her
breath rose and fell. It was as if the core of her being had been shaken. Her head drooped as if
she alone had managed to escape the fury of the floods with her child while everyone else was
stranded—her own people, some alive, some dead.

Looking up at Chungi Babu, in a soft, compassionate voice she said, “You are safe and dry.
Only lip sympathy won’t do. Aren’t you going to do anything else?”

The accusation in her burning eyes was stark. Startled, Chungi Babu mumbled, “Eh?”
As Bhagiya looked at them with wonder and joy, his jaw dropped.
Story selected by Mini Krishnan
Reprinted courtesy Dhauli Books

https://frontline.thehindu.com/economy/article28261967.ece
ECONOMY
FINANCE
Shadow banking
ANUPAMA KATAKAM
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-
The DHFL office in Mumbai. Photo: REUTERS

As the crisis affecting India’s NBFC sector simmers, self-serving calls for a bailout rend the air
ahead of the Budget.
After the notoriously opaque financial conglomerate Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services
(IL&FS) collapsed last year, there was fear all around of a wider conflagration in Indian financial
markets, the country’s own mini Lehman Brothers moment. It did not happen, but a firestorm is
waiting to explode.

Engulfed in it will be not only non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) but all entities in the
financial sector in one way or another—mutual funds, rating agencies and the usual suspects,
accounting firms that have been accused of looking the other way when it mattered most.
Connecting all these are, of course, borrowing companies, many of which have borrowed
recklessly and sowed the seeds of the grief that has enveloped the sector.

And, as is characteristic of every major financial crisis, there is a growing chorus now
audaciously demanding a bailout. As the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman prepares her
maiden Budget, she faces not only the pressures of a powerful lobby but also competing
demands on a fisc that is stretched taut.

The problem of NBFCs defaulting on payments running into thousands of crores became grave
ever since IL&FS Financial Services announced last September that it could not meet its
massive loan obligations.

In 2019, four more large NBFCs have defaulted on payments. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
realises that the ramifications of this liquidity crunch could lead to a massive financial crisis.
However, financial analysts and economists ask whether a bailout is a solution and whether it is
even justified. After all, are NBFCs, acting in collusion with other players, responsible for the
mess they are now in?

NBFCs play a vital role, lending mainly to the infrastructure, real estate and auto industries.
Known as shadow banks, NBFCs fill a space in the lending arena which is not always serviced
by commercial banks. In fact, the tightening credit situation, triggered by the massive and
mounting non-performing asset (NPA) burden of banks, left a vacuum that these NBFCs filled,
often acting recklessly. Mutual funds, in turn, lent to the NBFCs, encouraged by the happy-go-
lucky ways of rating agencies and accounting firms. Investors in mutual funds now fear for their
investments.

NBFCs are far from being the Good Samaritan lending when the banks do not. The IL&FS
Financial Services situation exposed a seamy arrangement which involves credit rating
agencies, mutual funds, moneylenders, auditors and, of course, borrowers. “When you look at
how they operated, you will realise why they do not deserve a bailout. They should be allowed
to go under and be charged with a crime,” says an investment banker. “Until a company goes
belly-up, we do not know what is going on. There are fundamental flaws in our system that need
immediate addressing, and this does not include bailouts.”

When the chain of lending and borrowing is examined, it is obvious that this crisis is the result of
complicity between several players. An NBFC insider explains: Auditors of an NBFC give the
company a clean chit so that it can earn a good credit rating.
The rating procures the NBFC crores worth of investments, mostly via mutual funds. Typically,
fund managers look at credit rating before investing. The NBFC borrows on a short-term basis
but lends for long-term projects, returns from which may be some time in coming. Most of the
time the NBFC does not recover its loans from the projects, but it needs to pay back its lenders.
So it uses the funds coming in from mutual funds and other lenders to roll over its loans.

Because NBFCs keep getting a good credit rating as they are complicit with the auditors (who
want to keep their clients and get more contracts), they keep getting the money. As much as
NBFCs are culpable, so are the others.

After the IL&FS debacle, the government asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to
bar the company’s auditors—Deloitte; and BSR, an affiliate of KPMG—for five years on charges
of lapses in auditing the company. The matter is under review. Meanwhile, both auditors are
under investigation by several agencies, including the Serious Fraud Investigation Office.

The culprits
The rating agencies downgraded IL&FS’s credit rating only after it became clear to everyone
that it was on the verge of a collapse. What was the point of having a rating agency that could
not foresee a collapse? For instance, in the IL&FS case, trouble started brewing in June 2018
when one of its companies defaulted on payments. It was in August 2018 when a few more
IL&FS companies defaulted, that the rating came down. IL&FS’ outstanding loans reportedly
amount to Rs.91,000 crore (“Road to Ruin”, Frontline, October 26, 2018).

It was well known that NBFCs were in trouble, but it was in June 2019 that the situation became
dire. Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL), another NBFC, reported debts of approximately
Rs.1 lakh crore.

When this came to light, the rating agencies CRISIL and CARE downgraded the A4+ graded
NBFC to default status. DSP Mutual Funds, an investment house, sold DHFL’s commercial
paper at a discount a few weeks after the IL&FS crisis broke; soon problems at DHFL began to
compound. In seven months, the company slid to the verge of bankruptcy.

In January 2019, the Essel group, another big player, said it was suffering from payment issues
to the tune of Rs.1,029 crore. A month later, Anil Ambani’s Reliance Capital and Reliance Infra
confessed to Rs.35,000 crore worth of outstanding debt. Ambani has appealed to the RBI to
help the “gasping NBFCs”. He has also gone out of his way to say he is servicing the debt
against “insurmountable odds”.

Bankers estimate that close to three trillion rupees are locked in real estate, construction and
infrastructure projects. While it is difficult to estimate the exact default amounts, they believe the
collapse of big names has led to a liquidity freeze, and the fear of the contagion spreading has
hit markets.

To understand why these particular companies are critical in the NBFC space—Credit Suisse
says up to 15 per cent of debt mutual funds’ assets under management are accounted for by
four stressed companies—DHFL, Essel group, IL&FS and Anil Ambani’s ADAG. These four
companies together owed Rs.3.6 lakh crore to lenders at the end of March 2018. To put this in
perspective, one only needs to recall that the entire NPAs of public sector banks are a little over
Rs.10 lakh crore.
A Mumbai-based mutual fund analyst told Frontline that unless the problems of liquidity and
solvency were settled quickly the uncertainty in the market would remain. “It does not appear
that the government is in a hurry to bail out or provide a safety net as it sees it as a moral
hazard,” said the analyst.

Currently, the loans outstanding at NBFCs stand at Rs.17.2 lakh crore, according to the RBI. To
keep afloat, meet payment commitments and bolster investor confidence, defaulters are trying
to sell company assets. The Essel group, for instance, is looking for a buyer for 50 per cent of
the promoter holdings in Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd, one of its flagship companies.

“These are private corporations and it isn’t fair that due to their bad judgements and shady
arrangements the government has to pay. On the other hand we cannot neglect those who will
be affected by the negativity towards NBFCs,” said the Mumbai-based analyst.

Genesis of the crisis

The genesis of the crisis was demonetisation, said an economist with a multinational investment
bank. At that time a flood of cash got deposited in the banking sector. This found its way to the
debt mutual fund market. Unfortunately, lending happened without much collateral. In fact,
during this crisis one needs to question the actions of mutual funds and their systems on risk
assessment capabilities and processes, he argued.

Speaking of mutual funds, Chetan Pandey, a consultant who was earlier with ICICI Prudential,
says, “Portfolio managers have gone way ahead of their mandate, maybe because they were
super confident that money will keep coming. In fact, many of them should be pulled up for their
lack of better judgement.”

Pandey reckons that the exposure of mutual funds to NBFCs is about Rs.76,000 crore. Mutual
funds with exposure to debt were particularly negligent in investing in NBFCs. Two marquee
players, HDFC Bank and Kotak Bank, have delayed redemptions recently. “This is
unacceptable. An investor should get back his money as and when he wants it. These are not
good signs,” says Pandey.

The way forward

The bailout clamour rests on the assumption that the new government cannot afford a major
financial crisis so soon after assuming office. There are some who believe that the RBI’s Rs.3
lakh crore reserve, which belongs to the Government of India, ought to be transferred to public
sector banks to stem the downward spiral. But for this to happen, the RBI needs a credible
external signal mechanism, which can best be provided through an asset quality review of the
NBFC sector, said the economist.

NBFCs claim they can sell assets and recover some of their outstanding. But analysts and
economists believe these are not long-term solutions. A fundamental problem with NBFCs is
that unlike commercial banks they are not subjected to the same stringent regulations. Analysts
say the RBI and Securities Exchange Board of India’s light-touch approach towards NBFCs is
also responsible for the current situation.

For now, the RBI appears to be telling NBFCs: “You have made your bed, now lie in it.” RBI
Governor Shaktikanta Das has said the central bank will step in only if required, suggesting that
it does not view the crisis as a systemic one, just yet. At its policy meeting in June, the RBI
indicated that it viewed liquidity conditions as broadly sufficient and would improve transparency
around how it assesses this.
Currently, there are about 11,400 shadow banking companies in India with a combined balance
sheet worth Rs.30,400 crore and with loan portfolios growing at nearly twice the pace of banks.
All eyes will be on the government and the central bank as they struggle to fend off a crisis that
looms large over the Indian financial sector on the eve of the Budget.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/world-affairs/article28260339.ece
WORLD AFFAIRS
DIARY FROM TRUMPLAND
A new bonhomie
VIJAY PRASHAD
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin attend a gala concert
dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia
and China, in Moscow on June 5. Photo: Sergei Ilnitsky/AP

Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani meet on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on June 14. Photo: Alexei Druzhinin/AP

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reviews an honor guard with Iranian President Hassan
Rouhani in Tehran on June 12. The Japanese leader was in Tehran on a mission to ease
tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

At a rally marking the 40th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, on February 11 in
Tehran, Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

China and Russia make it clear that they are ready to use their growing economic and
diplomatic strength to prevent the U.S. escalating the situation in the Persian Gulf.
In early June, the United States attempted to tighten the United Nations’ embargo on North
Korea. The U.S. said that North Korea had violated a cap on fuel imports placed by the U.N.
Security Council. From one end of the planet, the Korean peninsula, to the other, Venezuela,
the U.S. is on the warpath. Angry noises against Venezuela and North Korea come alongside
direct threats of war against Iran. The accusation against North Korea was a part of this global
assault. These are the inevitable noises made by U.S. hawks, but they are also the sound of
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. There is no easier way to return to the White House than
on the wings of an F-16 fighter jet.

North Korea, Iran and Venezuela have been the main targets of the current U.S. war on the
planet. Trump’s arrogance about his ability to overthrow governments or to coerce them fell flat.
The attempt at regime change in Venezuela failed catastrophically, with the full weight of the
hybrid war—the war of information and of isolation, the war of sabotage and sanctions—
shielded by mass mobilisations of the poor and the committed across Venezuela. Fictions of
diplomacy between the U.S. government and North Korea came to nothing as well, with the
threats alive even as the South Korean government is deeply eager for a path to normal
relations on the peninsula.
With Iran, the U.S. believed that it could define the terms of Tehran’s surrender of its civilian
nuclear programme, but even that failed. Few countries in the world believe the U.S. storyline,
keenly aware that the accusations against Iran are deeply motivated by an eagerness to
undermine Iran’s sovereignty. If it comes to anything, it will come to a U.S.-driven war. A hybrid
war seems unable to fulfil its promises. The keys in the fighter jets will need to be turned.

The making of Eurasia

But this is where the complexity lies.

After the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the U.S. found that it could
do anything without challenge—bomb Iraq and Yugoslavia, push for a trade and investment
system that favoured its allies, and so on. The entire decade of the 1990s seemed like a victory
lap for the U.S., its Presidents (Bush and Clinton) preening at international meetings, beaming
into the camera, making sure that everyone saw the world through their eyes, with the “rogue
states” (North Korea and Iran) in their gunsights.

But in the two decades since the 1990s, much has changed. China’s economic growth has been
spectacular, and its massive reserves have been used to build infrastructure across Asia and in
Europe. While the U.S. was bogged down in its Afghan and Iraq wars, and its wars around the
planet, the Chinese built up a system of trade that linked large parts of the world to its economic
locomotive.

The key to the new period is not merely the Chinese economy but also its tightened links to
Russia. China’s expansion of its Belt and Road Initiative took place along the southern flank of
Asia and into Europe through Turkey. Russia takes up all of northern Asia and had not been a
part of the Chinese project over these past 30 years, largely because Moscow saw its future in
Europe and not in Asia. It was towards Germany and France that Russia looked, with great
hopes for Russia’s closer links to the Group of Seven (Russia joined the G7 to make it the
Group of Eight, or G8, in 1997). Tensions between Russia and China, inherited from the Cold
War, lingered during those decades, with fears in China that Russia, which had capitulated to
the West with the collapse of the USSR, would further become an instrument of Western power.
Indeed, U.S. policymakers had long wanted to use Russia as part of a project to encircle China
and prevent its rise (Henry Kissinger, on the other hand, counselled that the U.S. should ally
with China against Russia).

The West overplayed its hand. The attempt to bring Russia to its knees through the expansion
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation into Eastern Europe set off an alternative trajectory.
Ukraine was the focus of this conflict, where the U.S. and Russia clashed over its political
future. In 2014, Russia was expelled from the G8 (now again the G7), and the U.S. and Europe
imposed stiff sanctions against the country. It was this move that made Russia, which saw its
future in Europe, make a future not in Asia but in Eurasia. Russia’s deepening alliance with
China began in the aftermath of its expulsion from the G8. With China and Russia building close
ties, the concept of “Eurasia” went from mere theory to practice.

In these past five years, China and Russia have built very close ties (“Close Encounters”,
Frontline, June 19). It is these ties that enabled China and Russia to block the West’s attempt to
further squeeze North Korea over the fuel cap. North Korea breathed a sigh of relief and now it
has, essentially, two major powers willing to use their diplomatic strength to prevent an
escalation on the peninsula.
It was China and Russia that provided Venezuela with a sufficient shield to prevent a bombing
run by the U.S. Russian air defences played a key role here, but so did the decision of the
Russian military to send in mechanics and advisers to repair their air defence system after the
attack on the Venezuelan electrical system. Images of Russian troops arriving at Caracas
airport sent a message, as did the military exercises conducted by the Venezuelan military
alongside a detachment of Chinese troops. These played an important role in informing the U.S.
that China and Russia stand together to defend their interests in South America.

It is clear that if the Russians had not intervened in Syria in 2015, the U.S. would have bombed
Damascus and altered the direction of that terrible war. As it is, the U.S. used massive airpower
to destroy several towns and cities in northern Syria. But the move to bomb Damascus was not
permitted by the Russian military presence and by Chinese diplomatic moves. That is why the
Syrian government openly thanked China and Russia, and Iran, for their efforts and then asked
Turkey and the U.S. to withdraw their forces. Significantly, this statement was made when
Syria’s Foreign Minister, Walid al-Muallem, met with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi.

China sees Syria and Iran as important parts in its Belt and Road Initiative that has brought the
concept of Eurasia to life. It has committed to help rebuild Syria as part of this project. If there is
fear in the West of Iran’s influence outward to the Mediterranean Sea, the West is even more
concerned about China’s ability to flank the totality of Eurasia, from the Korean Peninsula to the
Mediterranean and then through Italy and Turkey into all of Europe.

By the time this issue of Frontline hits the newsstands, the U.S. might have already bombed
Iran. Iranian officials hope that this will not come to pass. Part of their hope vests in the agility of
Chinese and Russian diplomats to block the U.S. trigger finger.

The head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, is in talks with the
Chinese and the Russians to seek new mechanisms to continue the nuclear deal and to find
new methods to allow Iran to resume trade and ensure that there is no attack on Iran. The only
bargaining chip in Iran’s hand is the threat to enrich uranium at a higher level than it is currently
doing. This threat has already worried many, who say that it will only provoke the U.S. to strike
Iran.

Russian and Chinese diplomats have been saying that the U.S. is pushing Iran to war, and that
this “crisis” is entirely the doing of the U.S. Both countries have told the U.S. not to send
additional troops to the Persian Gulf. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang
said that “a war in the Gulf region in the Middle East is the last thing we want to see”. Thus far,
neither China nor Russia has given any indication of intervention to prevent a war.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/world-affairs/article28227095.ece
WORLD AFFAIRS
EGYPT
The killing of Morsi
JOHN CHERIAN
Print edition : June 19, 2019T+ T-

Mohamed Morsi in the defendant’s cage in the Police Academy courthouse in Cairo in May
2014. Photo: Tarek el-Gabbas/AP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) at the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul where funeral
prayers were held for Morsi on June 18, the day after his death in Cairo. Prayers were held in
mosques across Turkey for Morsi, who had close ties to Erdogan. Photo: Emrah Gurel/AP

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi receiving U.S. Marine Corps General Kenneth F.
McKenzie Jr (left), commander of the U.S. Central Command, in Cairo on June 11. Photo:
AFP/HO/Egyptian Presidency

The death of former President Mohamed Morsi while in the custody of the state is reflective of
the state of affairs in the country. The government deals harshly with all who are critical of it and
it has the media totally under its control.
The death of Egypt’s first freely elected head of state, Mohamed Morsi, on June 17 at the age of
67 under tragic circumstances has brought the spotlight back on the authoritarian military
regime that is currently in power. Morsi, who was removed in a military coup in 2013 after barely
completing a year in office, had been languishing in jail along with thousands of other political
activists. Morsi’s family had been complaining to the authorities about the fragile state of his
health and seeking urgent medical care since he was incarcerated six years ago. According to a
fact-finding British parliamentary delegation that visited Egypt in 2018, Morsi was kept in solitary
confinement for 11 hours every day in the notorious Tora Prison and was allowed only one hour
of exercise. The prison, according to one of its former wardens, “was designed so that those
who go in don’t come out again, unless dead”.

Morsi was a diabetic and had various other serious health issues. According to his family and
supporters, he was deprived of essential medicines for diabetes, high blood pressure and liver
disease. The authorities did not pay heed to repeated public warnings that lack of medicines
and treatment would prove fatal to the former President. Human Rights Watch said that Morsi
“was obviously singled out for mistreatment” and not even provided with “basic prisoner rights”.

On the day of his death, Morsi collapsed in a Cairo court where he had been summoned for a
hearing along with other leaders of the banned Muslim Brotherhood (M.B.). The prisoners were
all confined to a cage as is the practice in Egyptian courtrooms. The accused have to either
keep standing or sit on the floor during the long hours the judge hears the arguments. Morsi and
his colleagues had requested that they be spared the ordeal of frequently being present in court
under demeaning conditions. Before falling unconscious, Morsi defiantly told the presiding judge
that he continued to be the “legitimate President” of Egypt.

The M.B. accused the Egyptian government of “assassinating” Morsi by subjecting him to years
of mistreatment in prison. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey was the first head of state
to hold the Egyptian government responsible for Morsi’s demise. “History will never forgive
those tyrants who were responsible for his death by putting him in jail and threatening him with
execution,” he said in a televised speech. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in
Turkey has close links with the M.B. Qatar and Malaysia were other notable countries that
expressed their condolences. Muslim Brotherhood parties in Jordan and other Arab nations
blamed the military government for Morsi’s death.

The current military government under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had charged the former
President with committing multiple crimes, including acts of espionage. The Egyptian state
demanded the death penalty for Morsi and other senior M.B. leaders for spying on behalf of
Qatar and Hamas. Hamas, which administers the blockaded Gaza Strip, is an offshoot of the
M.B. During the brief interregnum of civilian rule in Egypt, the embattled people of Gaza had
reason to hope that the stifling blockade would be lifted and their miseries alleviated. But that
was not to be. The Kingdom of Qatar is viewed as being close to the M.B. This is a reason for
the current political impasse between the Saudis and the Qataris. Egypt and the United Arab
Emirates are among the strongest backers of Saudi Arabia in its confrontation with Qatar.

The Egyptian authorities were unrelenting in their persecution of the M.B. Morsi, like other top
M.B. leaders, had already been given multiple jail sentences. But he was brought for retrial after
the prosecution piled more charges against him. The party’s “supreme guide”, Mohamed Badie,
was sentenced to seven terms of life imprisonment and was also given a death sentence. It was
Morsi who selected El-Sisi as the country’s Defence Minister after taking over as President.
Gen. El-Sisi had sworn fealty to the civilian government, but from day one had conspired to
overthrow the popularly elected government.

The “deep state” in Egypt led by the men in khaki since the first Army intervention in 1953 had
never reconciled itself to the idea of civilian rule. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic first
President of Egypt, viewed the M.B. as a significant threat. For that matter, Nasser also
imprisoned communist leaders despite embracing socialist goals for the country.

The M.B. has always had a strong organisational network in the country despite being banned
for long periods of time in the past 70 years. The Egyptian ideologue Hassan al-Banna launched
the M.B. in 1928 as an Islamist political and social organisation. It played a big role in the anti-
colonial struggle and in the later struggle against the monarchy. The M.B. supported the Army’s
overthrow of the monarchy in 1952. However, the two sides fell apart almost immediately.

The socialist and secular policies that were implemented under Nasser did not fit with the
Islamist worldview. In fact, the Brotherhood grew closer to the Saudi monarchy after Nasser
took over. Many of the Egyptian leaders of the Brotherhood found refuge and hospitality in the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the time. Things are different now. After the Arab Spring revolution
of 2011, the Gulf monarchies started viewing the Muslim Brotherhood as their most dangerous
enemy. In elections held in Tunisia and Egypt after the Arab Spring, it was the M.B. that won the
popular vote.

After the Egyptian Arab Spring, the ban on the M.B. was lifted. It fought Egypt’s first multiparty
elections, in 2012, under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party. Under the leadership of
Morsi, a United States-educated engineer, it narrowly won the elections with 51 per cent of the
votes. Morsi was an accidental President. He was nominated as the M.B.’s candidate at the
eleventh hour after the judiciary disqualified the party’s first choice for the post.

The Brotherhood had mostly stayed on the sidelines when the protests started in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square. But as the protests gained strength, the Brotherhood joined in, though its top leadership
kept a low profile. The Brotherhood constituted the main opposition grouping in parliament after
the 2005 election held under President Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood was allowed to put up
candidates in a limited number of seats, which it won easily. It had 20 per cent of the seats in
parliament then and could have won many more if the election had been free and fair. The
charitable work that the Brotherhood was permitted to do won it support among the poorer
sections of Egyptian society and helped it during the parliamentary and presidential elections of
2012.

Once in power in 2012, Morsi tried to clip the wings of the military with his proposal for a new
constitution. He temporarily granted himself unlimited powers to deal with the threat coming
from the Army and its entrenched supporters in the bureaucracy and the judiciary. But in reality
his hands were tied. Before he assumed the presidency, the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces (SCAF), the ruling military council, had abrogated all legislative powers, and the
Supreme Court, filled by judges appointed during the Mubarak era, dissolved the Lower House
of parliament, in which the Brothers had a majority.

The government led by the Brothers did not tinker with the country’s foreign policy. The United
States continued to be Egypt’s closest military and strategic ally. Relations with Israel remained
unchanged. In August 2012, Morsi annulled the SCAF declaration and announced that he was
assuming decree-making powers and selecting a new constitution-making committee. The
military successfully stoked the suspicions of secular Egyptians and religious minorities about
the intentions of the Brothers. The M.B. had publicly stated that it would never endorse the
candidature of a woman or a Coptic Christian for the post of President. The Copts constitute
around 10 per cent of the Egyptian population. The Army used the huge protests against the
Morsi government in Tahrir Square organised by parties opposed to the M.B. and tacitly
supported by the “deep state” as a pretext to depose the newly elected government.

Ironically, during his brief stint in power, Morsi’s popularity had hovered around the 60 per cent
mark. The media and the state institutions were, however, still firmly in the hands of the military
establishment.

Massacre of civilians
After the military coup launched by El-Sisi, supporters of the Brotherhood gathered at locations
across Cairo to protest against the move, and more than 1,150 were killed on August 14, 2013,
at four different locations when security forces opened fire on them. It is one of the worst
massacres of civilians in recent history. Nobody has been held accountable so far.

El-Sisi has been unrelenting towards the Brotherhood. For that matter, even moderate
opposition parties have been thoroughly muzzled. All critics of the government, irrespective of
ideology, are dealt with harshly. The media is now totally under government control. During the
rule of previous military dictators such as Anwar Sadat and Mubarak, a limited amount of
freedom was given to political parties and the media. All that is now a thing of the past.

Although there is muted international criticism of the government, El-Sisi remains in full control.
The economy is in dire straits, but he has been given a mandate by the military to be in office
until 2030. A stage-managed referendum this year, in which the opposition had no role,
overwhelmingly approved of this constitutional change. Under El-Sisi’s prodding, many
countries have declared the Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist” grouping. U.S. President Donald
Trump, too, wanted to do so under pressure from the Egyptian government. However, the
Pentagon and the U.S. State Department objected to the categorisation. In Syria and Libya, the
U.S. and its allies were supporting rebels with close links with the M.B. In Iraq and Yemen,
Brotherhood-linked parties are allies of the U.S.

The Egyptian authorities refused permission for the burial of Morsi’s body in his home province
of Sharqiya in the Nile delta. Instead, he was interred in a semi-clandestine manner the day
after his demise in a cemetery in eastern Cairo. The bodies of some other Brotherhood leaders
are also buried there. The United Nations has called for an independent inquiry into the
circumstances leading to Morsi’s death. The U.N. Human Rights Council demanded a “prompt,
impartial, thorough and transparent investigation”.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/world-affairs/article28260269.ece
WORLD AFFAIRS
U.S-IRAN
Drones of war
JOHN CHERIAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Iran’s Head of the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division,
showing mediapersons debris from a downed US drone recovered within Iran’s territorial waters
and put on display in Tehran on June 21. Photo: MEGHDAD MADADI/AFP

The RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, a file photograph.
Photo: AFP/HANDOUT

U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior advisers, led by National Security Adviser John Bolton
(right) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have urged a tough military response. Photo: ERIN
SCHAFF/NYT

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister, said the drone was shot down over Iran’s
territorial waters. Photo: AP/Ebrahim Noroozi

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran is being forced to use unorthodox means to
counter the tremendous pressure the unilateral U.S. sanctions and military threats have put on
the country. Photo: AP

Yet another crisis looms over the Persian Gulf, with Iran shooting down a U.S. surveillance
drone over its territorial waters and the U.S. trying to force the Iranians to the negotiating table.
The shooting down of an unarmed United States surveillance drone over Iranian territorial
waters in the third week of June briefly threatened to embroil the region once again in open
warfare. Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards shot down the “spy drone” near the southern province
of Hormozgan. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) had taken off from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in stealth mode to spy on Iran
and was shot down over Iran’s territorial waters. Iran claims 12 nautical miles from its shores as
its territory under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. This claim was first
made during the time of the Shah of Iran and was backed by the U.S. at the time. Iran was the
U.S.’ staunchest ally in the region until 1979.

Zarif said sections of the drone were recovered from Iran’s territorial waters, and the debris from
the UAV was displayed to the media. Iran presented GPS coordinates to show that the U.S.
drone was eight miles from the Iranian coast. But despite this evidence, Washington continued
to claim that its plane was shot while flying over international waters.

“The US wages #Economic Terrorism on Iran, has conducted covert action against us & now
encroaches on our territory. We don’t seek war but will zealously guard our skies, land and
water. We’ll take this new aggression to #UN and show that the US is lying about international
waters,” Zarif tweeted. Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s Ambassador to the U.N., told the Security
Council that the drone had ignored repeated radio warnings before it was shot down.
Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned that
trespassing the country’s border was a “red line” for the Iranian government. “The only solution
for the enemies is to respect the territorial integrity and national interests of Iran,” Salami said in
a nationally televised speech after the downing of the drone.

Trump’s reactions
U.S. President Donald Trump reacted to the shooting by saying that Iran had committed a “big
mistake” and strongly suggested that the country was going to pay a price for the shooting down
of one of its most advanced drones—the RQ-4 Global Hawk. The UAV costs $130 million and is
used for spying over coastal waters. The Global Hawk has a wingspan of a Boeing 737. Iran
said the drone was flying over its territorial waters in total secrecy with the identification
transponder switched off. The Global Hawk-type drone was secretly deployed in the Gulf as part
of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure on Iran” policy.

The U.S. military was apparently taken by surprise with the ability of the Iranians to shoot down
the drone, which is capable of flying at a height of 65,000 feet. The RQ4 was designed to evade
the surface-to-air missiles that Iran is known to possess. Iran said a locally manufactured
missile battery system was responsible for downing the drone. Russia recently supplied the
sophisticated S-400 surface-to-air missile battery system to Iran.

According to reports, the RQ4 drone arrived in the Gulf region only in the second week of June.
Trump had earlier accused Iran of being involved in small-scale attacks on a few oil tankers in
the Gulf region. Iran strongly denied these accusations, and the U.S. did not provide any proof
to back up its accusations.

In the third week of June, Iran announced that it would no longer adhere to a key provision in
the 2015 U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that limited its uranium enrichment. Tehran said that it would
enrich its uranium up to 20 per cent capacity. The nuclear agreement limits the enrichment to
3.67 per cent. The Trump administration also curtailed Iran’s ability to dispose of its excess
energy grade uranium. Under the provision of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was allowed to sell
the uranium abroad.

Iran’s recent moves were also aimed at pressuring the European powers to be more proactive
in easing the draconian sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on the country. The
U.S. blockade on Iran has caused tremendous hardship for ordinary Iranians. Among the
essentials in acute short supply are life-saving medicines.

Trump’s hawkish senior advisers, led by National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo, have urged a tough military response. After Tehran’s announcement that it
would stop adhering to some aspects of the nuclear deal, Trump despatched an additional
thousand troops to the region. Russia and China have strongly criticised the move to send
troops. Washington had dispatched 1,500 troops in May. The tensions were already peaking
when the Iranians brought down the spy drone.

The shooting down of the Global Hawk seemed to strengthen the hands of the professional
hawks in Trump’s inner circle of advisers. They initially appeared to sway Trump into taking
military action against Iran. According to credible reports in the mainstream U.S. media, Trump
had given the go-ahead to the Pentagon to bomb Iranian missile and radar sites in retaliation for
the shooting down of its UAV. Trump tweeted that the U.S. military was “cocked and loaded” to
launch pre-dawn missile strikes on three Iranian targets.
The U.S. House of Congress, which is now controlled by the Democrats, is overwhelmingly
against a war with Iran. Trump, after all, had torn up a sacrosanct international agreement the
previous President, Barack Obama, had signed with Iran. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is
seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential race, blamed Trump for
pulling out of the Iran deal and instigating another conflict in the region. “There is no justification
for escalating this crisis—we need to step back from the brink of war,” she tweeted.

Under the U.N. Charter, it would have been an illegal act if the U.S. had attacked Iran. The
Charter only allows the use of military force in self-defence after an armed attack or after the
approval of the U.N. Security Council.

Trump said that he called off the strikes 10 minutes before the launch. He claimed that he did so
after one of his generals told him that the strikes would result in many civilian deaths and that it
would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone”.

A military strike would not have gone unanswered as in the case of Syria and other countries
which the U.S. struck with impunity in the past. In all probability, it would have led to another
Gulf war and more devastation in the region. The Pentagon, according to U.S. media reports,
had warned Trump that an attack on Iran could rapidly escalate into a larger military
confrontation that would put the U.S. forces that are spread out in the region at great risk.

Speaking to the media, Trump initially chose to blame only “some individuals” for making the
“big mistake” of shooting down the drone despite the Iranian government taking responsibility
for the incident. He probably realises by now that he has made a blunder by deciding to tear up
the historic nuclear deal of 2015. He had calculated that the Iranians would capitulate after the
reimposition of the U.S. blockade on the country.

Trump and his advisers have not bothered to learn from history. Iran has never fought a war
unless it was forced to. The U.S. had earlier tried its hand at regime change in Iran by using
Saddam Hussein as a proxy. The Iran-Iraq War lasted eight years. Despite the backing of the
U.S. and the rich Gulf monarchies, the Iraqi army could not vanquish the Iranians on the
battlefield. More than half a million Iranians lost their lives in that war, which lasted from 1980 to
1988.

For that matter, Trump, despite his total disregard for international law and morality, would not
want a war at this juncture. He had come to power promising to pull out U.S. troops from the
region and end the “foolish” wars started by his predecessors. In a recent speech that marked
the kick-off of his re-election bid, Trump said his government was charting “a path to stability
and peace” in West Asia “because great nations do not want to fight endless wars”. He claimed
that his administration had already started removing troops from the region, but facts say
otherwise.

Arm-twisting tactics
Trump would not like to face the electorate in the midst of a war two years from now. He is
making foolhardy attempts to get the Iranians to the negotiating table again while tightening the
economic blockade on the country. Trump recently reiterated that he was not planning a regime
change in Iran through force and wanted to talk to Iran. He is currently engaged in alternately
cajoling Iran to engage in talks or threatening it with “total destruction”.

Tehran finds no rationale for engaging in talks with Washington to renegotiate a done deal.
Even as Trump is trying to coax the Iranian leadership into a renewed dialogue, his
administration is going all out to starve the Iranian people into submission. After the shooting
down of the UAV, the U.S. has imposed more punitive sanctions on Iran.

Iran is being forced to use unorthodox means to counter the tremendous pressure the unilateral
U.S. sanctions and military threats have put on the country. Although the consensus in the
international community is that the U.S. is to blame, only very few countries have offered
tangible help to Iran in its face-off against the global hegemon. European countries have so far
done nothing worthwhile to help Iran other than offer verbal support for the 2015 nuclear deal.

At the same time, the European countries and the rest of the international community have not
supported the U.S.’ aggressive moves against Iran. Only Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with
Israel, have openly supported the Trump administration all the way. In fact, these countries have
been wanting the U.S. to launch a war on Iran for a long time. But they want U.S. soldiers to do
the fighting for them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned the U.S. against unleashing another war. “A war
against Iran would be a catastrophe for the region as a minimum,” he said. He reminded the
U.S. that Iran continued to fully comply with the nuclear agreement. This has been verified by
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The United Kingdom, France and Germany are
signatories to the deal, along with Russia and China.

Except China, all the major importers of Iranian oil, including India, have adhered to the U.S.
sanctions. Senior Iranian officials had warned that if their country was not allowed to export oil
then their competitors in the region would also not be allowed a free pass. Iran’s oil exports
have since come down to 4,00,000 barrels a day from 2.5 million barrels.

Much of the oil and gas produced by Iran’s arch-rivals, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, pass through
the Strait of Hormuz. As much as 30 per cent of the global supply of energy passes through the
narrow straits. Most of the recent events, such as the attack on the tankers and the U.S. drone,
have happened in or around the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran has ample means and capabilities to disrupt the traffic in the Persian Gulf region and
damage the energy infrastructure there. Major General Mohammad Baqeri, head of Iran’s Joint
Chiefs of Staff, bluntly stated that the Iranian military was fully capable of enforcing its writ on
the Strait of Hormuz. “If the Islamic Republic of Iran was determined to prevent export of oil from
the Persian Gulf, that determination will be realised in full and announced in public, in view of
the power of the country and its armed forces,” he said.

A war with Iran will send oil prices soaring and disrupt the world economy. And it will not be
confined to one country only. Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said that if Iran is
attacked, his forces will retaliate against Israel.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article28260794.ece
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
BIOLOGY
All meats equally bad for cholesterol
R. RAMACHANDRAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-
According to a study, consuming high levels of meat, whether red or white, resulted in
higher blood cholesterol levels than consuming a comparable amount of plant proteins.
Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

According to a study, consuming high levels of meat, whether red or white, resulted in higher
blood cholesterol levels than consuming a comparable amount of plant proteins. Photo: Getty
Images

According to a study led by scientists at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute

(CHORI), California, and published in early June in “The American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition”, consuming high levels of meat, whether red or white poultry, results in higher blood
cholesterol levels than consuming a comparable amount of plant proteins. Moreover, this effect
was observed whether or not the diet contained high levels of saturated fat, which increased
blood cholesterol to the same extent with all three protein sources.

“When we planned this study, we expected red meat to have a more adverse effect on blood
cholesterol levels than white meat, but we were surprised that this was not the case; their
effects on cholesterol are identical when saturated fat levels are equivalent,” said the study’s
senior author, Ronald Krauss, senior scientist and director of atherosclerosis research at
CHORI. Krauss noted that grass-fed beef, processed products (such as bacon and sausage)
and fish were not included in the study.

The study, dubbed the APPROACH (Animal and Plant Protein and Cardiovascular Health) trial,
also found that consuming high amounts of saturated fat increased concentrations of large
cholesterol-enriched low-density lipoprotein (LDL) particles, which have a weaker connection to
cardiovascular disease than smaller LDL particles. Similarly, red and white meat increased
amounts of large LDL in comparison to non-meat diets. Therefore, using standard LDL
cholesterol levels as the measure of cardiovascular risk may lead to overestimating that risk for
both higher meat and saturated fat intakes, as standard LDL cholesterol tests may primarily
reflect levels of larger LDL particles.

Consumption of red meat has become unpopular in the last few decades over concerns about
its association with increased heart disease, and there is a general medical advisory that
encourages the consumption of poultry as a healthier alternative. But there had been no
comprehensive comparison of the effects of red meat, white meat and non-meat proteins on
blood cholesterol until now, Krauss pointed out. Non-meat proteins such as vegetables, dairy
and legumes, such as beans, show the best cholesterol benefit, he said.

“Our results indicate that current advice to restrict red meat and not white meat should not be
based only on their effects on blood cholesterol,” Krauss said. “Indeed, other effects of red meat
consumption could contribute to heart disease, and these effects should be explored in more
detail in an effort to improve health.”

https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article28261182.ece
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
HEALTH & FITNESS
In conflict settings, mental disorders higher
R. RAMACHANDRAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019
See Plate 1 for interpretation of this article

According to new prevalence estimates of mental disorders in conflict settings by the World
Health Organisation, one in five people living in an area affected by conflict has depression,
anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, and about 9 per cent
of conflict-affected populations have a moderate to severe mental health condition. The analysis
was published in a recent issue of “The Lancet”.

The figures for these mental health conditions in the general population stands at one in 14
people. Depression and anxiety appeared to increase with age in conflict settings, and
depression was more common among women than men. The findings suggest that past studies
underestimated the burden of mental health conditions in conflict-affected areas: 5 per cent at
any one time in the new study compared with 3-4 per cent over a 12-month period in the 2005
estimates for severe mental health conditions, and 17 per cent at any one time in the new
estimates compared with 15-20 per cent over a 12-month period in previous estimates for mild
to moderate mental health conditions. Overall, the mean prevalence for mild, moderate and
severe mental health conditions was 13 per cent, 4 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.

The revised estimates used research from 129 studies and data from 39 countries published
between 1980 and August 2017. Settings that had experienced conflict in the last 10 years were
included. According to the paper, since there was limited data for bipolar disorder and
schizophrenia, estimates for these conditions were based on global estimates and did not take
into account any increased risk of these conditions in conflict settings.

“In this study we used more stringent inclusion and exclusion criteria for the literature search,
and advanced search strategies and statistical methods,” said the lead author of the study,
Fiona Charlson of the University of Queensland, Australia.

In 2016, the study pointed out, the number of armed conflicts reached an all-time high, with 53
ongoing conflicts in 37 countries and 12 per cent of the world’s population living in an active
conflict zone. Nearly 69 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced by violence and
conflict, the highest number since the Second World War.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article28261263.ece
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
HEALTH & FITNESS
Protein music!
R. RAMACHANDRAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Researchers at MIT have developed a system to convert the molecular structures of proteins
into audible sounds that resemble musical passages. Then, reversing the process, they can
introduce some variations into the music and convert it back into new proteins never before
seen in nature. Photo: Zhao Qin and Francisco Martin-Martinez/MIT

Markus Buehler and others at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a
system to convert the molecular structures of proteins, the basic building blocks of all living
beings, into audible sound that resembles musical passages. The work was published in “ACS
Nano”.
The system translates the 20 types of amino acids, the building blocks that join together in
chains to form all proteins, into a 20-tone scale. Any protein’s long sequence of amino acids
then becomes a sequence of notes. The tones and their relationships are based on the actual
vibrational frequencies of each amino acid molecule itself, which are then transposed to bring
them within the audible range for humans. Buehler said that after listening to the resulting
melodies, he was able to distinguish certain amino acid sequences that corresponded to
proteins with specific structural functions. Proteins make up the structural material of skin, bone,
and muscle but are also enzymes, signalling chemicals, molecular switches, and a host of other
functional materials that make up the machinery of all living things. But their structures,
including the way they fold themselves into the shapes that often determine their functions, are
exceedingly complicated. “We don’t know what makes a silk protein a silk protein or what
patterns reflect the functions found in an enzyme. We don’t know the code,” said Buehler.

By translating that language into a form that humans are particularly well-attuned to and that
allows different aspects of the information to be encoded in different dimensions—pitch, volume,
and duration—Buehler and his team hope to glean new insights into the relationships and
differences between different families of proteins and their variations and use this as a way of
exploring the many possible tweaks and modifications of their structure and function.

The team then used an artificial intelligence system to study the catalogue of melodies
produced by a wide variety of different proteins. They had the AI system introduce slight
changes in the musical sequence or create completely new sequences, and then translated the
sounds back into proteins that correspond to the modified or newly designed versions. With this
process they were able to create variations of existing proteins, thus making new proteins unlike
any produced by evolution.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article28261474.ece
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
SPACE
Chandrayaan 2: Giant leap for ISRO
T.S. SUBRAMANIAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Scientists work on the orbiter and lander of Chandrayaan-2 at the ISRO Satellite Integration and
Test Establishment (ISITE) in Bengaluru on June 12. Photo: K. MURALI KUMAR

K. Sivan, Chairman, ISRO. Photo: K. MURALI KUMAR

S. Ramakrishnan, former Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO. Photo: M. Vedhan

The rover that will conduct different experiments on the lunar surface. Photo: K. MURALI
KUMAR

In what will be the most technologically complex mission ISRO has undertaken so far,
Chandrayaan-2 will attempt to land a rover near the South Pole of the moon.
EXCITED photographers and reporters scrimmaged to take pictures or have a glimpse of the
two vehicles in the cavernous clean room of the big facility. They were the Chandrayaan-2
spacecraft/orbiter and the lander. The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) engineers
were milling around the lander, named Vikram after the founder of India’s space programme,
Vikram Sarabhai. Inside the lander was a rover called Pragyaan, a one-metre-long robotic car
with six wheels. The orbiter, the lander and the rover were undergoing a battery of tests in the
massive clean room of the ISRO Satellite Integration and Testing Establishment (ISITE) in
Bengaluru. Weighing 3.8 tonnes, the orbiter, the lander and the rover are together called the
composite module.

At 2:51 a.m. on July 15, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV-Mk III)
with the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, lander and rover aboard will soar into the sky from the second
launch pad at Sriharikota in the most ambitious mission undertaken by ISRO, its second shot at
the moon. The first took place in October 2008 when it put the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft into a
circular orbit above the moon at an altitude of 100 kilometres.

Challenging mission
The comparison ends there. For, in ISRO’s history, the Chandrayaan-2 mission will be the most
challenging and technologically complex because ISRO will not only be putting the orbiter
around the moon but also soft-landing the lander on lunar soil and deploying the rover, which
will be driven around the moon’s surface. The lander, with the rover inside, after separating from
the orbiter circling above the moon, will slowly descend and gently land on the South Pole of the
moon, on September 6 or 7. So, Chandrayaan-2 will take 53 to 54 days to travel the 3.84 lakh
km from the earth to the moon’s surface.

What is audacious is that India will be the first country to soft-land a lander on the South Pole of
the moon. Even the United States, Russia and China have not attempted it.

From separation from the orbiter to touchdown on the moon, the lander will take about 15
minutes. It has throttleable engines to control its descent. Besides, it has sensors that will
decide where the lander should touch down avoiding boulders and craters. Four and a half
hours after touchdown, the rover will emerge from the lander and slide down a ramp on to the
lunar soil. It will be driven about on the moon’s surface, conducting experiments. The orbiter, the
lander and the rover together have 14 instruments to take pictures of the moon, prospect for
minerals, look for helium, search for buried water-ice, investigate the lunar exosphere, and so
on.

K. Sivan, ISRO Chairman, said the 15 minutes from the separation from the orbiter to the soft-
landing “will be the most terrifying moments”. During a press conference in Bengaluru on June
12, he said: “These 15 minutes will form the most complex mission that ISRO has ever
undertaken. The throttleable engines are a new [technology] development for us.”

The moon’s South Pole “is a place to which nobody has gone earlier. So, a lot of new science is
expected from this mission,” he added. Sivan emphasised that Chandrayaan-2 was “a 100 per
cent indigenous mission” because the launch vehicle, the orbiter, the lander and the rover were
all built at ISRO facilities.

“This is the first time we are attempting to soft-land on the moon. This is the crucial part of the
Chandrayaan-2 mission,” said S. Ramakrishnan, former Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space
Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram. The VSSC designed and built the GSLV-Mk III, which is
the most powerful vehicle that India has built so far. The three-stage rocket weighs 640 tonnes.
Ramakrishnan played an important part in designing and building it. He said: “The new
technology we are attempting in the Chandrayaan-2 mission is the soft-landing. From the lunar
orbit, we should descend in a programmed manner and land precisely. The velocity of the
descent of Vikram and the velocity at which it should soft-land should take place as per plans.
The lander should stand on its four legs. Otherwise, it will topple. We have to calculate
everything…. About 30 to 40 events should take place precisely during the descent phase. Only
then the mission will be successful.”

According to ISRO literature, the challenges in landing on the moon include navigating large
distances accurately, conducting trans-lunar injection of the composite module, preventing
damage from lunar dust and accomplishing the first landing on the moon’s South Polar region.

On June 24, hectic activity was under way at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in
Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, the spaceport from where the GSLV-Mk III will lift off. The three
stages of the rocket had already been stacked up in the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) of the
second launch pad. The orbiter arrived at Sriharikota from ISITE, Bengaluru, on June 15. Then
came the lander with the rover. They are now undergoing a variety of tests at Sriharikota. After
the lander with the rover inside is stapled to the top of the orbiter, the entire module will be
mated with the GSLV-Mk III in the first week of July. The composite module will be encased in
the heat shield of the launcher. The launcher will move from the VAB to the launch pad three
days before the launch date. “Preparations for the launch are progressing fast,” said an SDSC
official on June 24.

July is the most favourable period for launching Chandrayaan-2, with the launch originally set
for any day from July 9 to 16. The launch window spanned 10 minutes on each of these dates.
During the remaining days of July, the launch window available was just one minute.

About 17 minutes after lift-off, the third, upper cryogenic stage of the rocket will inject the
composite module into an initial earth-parking orbit with a perigee of 170 km and an apogee of
38,000 km. In the next 16 days, the propulsion system on board the orbiter will fire five times.
They are called earth-bound burns. This will enable the composite module to perform five
manoeuvres and go into an orbit of 150 km by 1,41,000 km.

“After the five earth-bound manoeuvres, an important manoeuvre called trans-lunar burn will
take place, with the propulsion system on the orbiter firing,” said Sivan. “It will put the composite
module’s trajectory towards the moon.” For the next five days, the composite module will travel
towards the moon. Once it reaches the moon, the propulsion system will once again fire and a
retro-burn will happen. This burn/firing will put the composite module into an orbit with a perilune
of 150 km and an apolune of 18,000 km. Said Sivan: “Subsequently, there will be four lunar-
burn manoeuvres. Then the lunar orbit insertion will happen. Thus, the composite module will be
captured in a circular orbit of 100 km around the moon.” The composite module will go around
the moon in this orbit for 27 days.

The real action

After the 27th day, the real action will begin, which makes the Chandrayaan-2 mission more
complex by an order of magnitude than the Chandrayaan-1 mission. For, it will be time for the
lander to hive off from the orbiter. After separating itself from the orbiter, the lander will use its
propulsion system to reduce its circular orbit of 100 km by 100 km around the moon to 100 km
by 30 km. The lander will stay in this orbit for four days. Sivan explained: “During these four
days, we will do many checks to see whether the lander system is working perfectly. On D-Day,
that is, on the fourth day, when the lander is 30 km above the moon, the real event will take
place. At the D-instant, the lander’s propulsion system will function in a throttleable manner. It
will break the velocity of the lander in a controlled fashion that will bring down the lander slowly
and make it land at a place near the South Pole. This will take about 15 minutes.”

Four and a half hours after the lander touches down, its door will open and the ramp will be
deployed. The rover will emerge from the lander, slowly roll down the ramp on to the lunar soil.
While all this is happening, the orbiter will be circling the moon at an altitude of 100 km. Both the
static lander and the roving Pragyaan will have a life of one lunar day, that is, 14 earth days.
Pragyaan, powered by solar batteries, will travel a maximum distance of 500 metres during
those 14 days. Its velocity will be one centimetre a second, or 36 metres an hour.

Out of a total of 14 instruments in the composite module, 13 are Indian payloads and one
payload is from the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The
orbiter, which weighs 2.4 tonnes, has eight instruments. From its 100-km orbit around the moon,
its terrain-mapping camera and high-resolution camera can take pictures of the moon’s surface.
Its imaging infrared spectrometer will look for minerals. The orbiter’s instruments will especially
look for rock-forming elements such as magnesium, calcium, iron, and so on. Its synthetic
aperture radar will hunt for buried water-ice on the moon. Another instrument will study the
moon’s exosphere. Indeed, in a huge breakthrough, Chandrayaan-1 had discovered water-ice
on the moon. Sivan described it as “the greatest achievement of the Chandrayaan-1 mission”.

The lander, which weighs 1.4 tonnes, has four payloads, including the one from NASA. The
three Indian instruments will conduct experiments on lunar quakes and study the landing sites’
thermo-physical properties. The payload for studying the moon’s seismic activity is called
Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity. The NASA payload, a last-minute addition, is called Laser
Retroreflector Array. It will try to understand the dynamics of the earth-moon system and
measure the distance from the lander on the moon to the earth.

The rover, which weighs about 27 kg, has two payloads including an Alpha Particle X-ray
Spectrometer. They will compute the mineral and chemical composition of the moon’s surface.

Sivan explained why ISRO preferred to go to the moon’s South Pole. ISRO selected it for its
convenience, communication and science, he said. The rover depended on solar energy to
charge its battery. Good visibility and plenty of sunlight are available to it in the South Pole. The
landing site should not have a slope of more than 12 degrees. The lander would topple
otherwise. The South Pole had good landing characteristics, visibility and sunlight. It was more
under the shadow regime than the North Pole. So, there was a better chance of the presence of
water-ice than in the North Pole. “So, new science is expected,” he said.

About 500 industries across the country have contributed to the making of the GSLV-Mk III.
Another 120 took part in providing the hardware and the software in the building of the
composite module.

Sivan said: “It is not only ISRO’s mission but the entire country’s programme. The entire country
[including the academia and research institutions] has contributed to it and is looking for science
from this mission. The whole nation will benefit from the Chandrayaan-2 programme.”

The cost of the entire mission is about Rs.1,000 crore. This includes Rs.603 crore for building
the composite module and the payment to agencies abroad for providing tracking and
navigation support to ISRO. The cost of building the GSLV-Mk III is around Rs.375 crore.
The Project Directors for the Chandrayaan-2 composite module and the Mission Director are
two women, M. Vanitha and Ritu Karidhal respectively.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/books/article28259916.ece
BOOKS
Celebrating an auteur
C.S. VENKITESWARAN
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

A still from “Dweepa”. Photo: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

A still from “Tabarana Kathe”. Photo: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
A still from “Ghatashraddha”. Photo: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
An early photograph of Girish Kasaravalli. Photo: THE HINDU ARCHIVES

The book vividly portrays Girish Kasaravalli as a consummate artist and deals with his body of
work in all its thematic diversity and aesthetic vigour.

Very rarely are film-makers from the parallel stream remembered, let alone revered and studied.
With film studies being taken over by cultural studies that focus entirely on popular cinema and,
in the process, idolise and canonise it, the immense contributions of serious film-makers,
especially in languages other than Hindi, are never recognised. This book, in that sense, is not
only a celebration of the works of a living auteur but also a poignant reminder of a whole
generation of forgotten heroes.

As the author himself testifies in the preface, this compilation is a personal dedication to the
film-maker who is “his inspiration, a mentor and an outstanding film-maker”. It contains 24
portraits of the film-maker by his friends, family members, colleagues, associates, fellow film-
makers and film critics. What you have are sketches of different kinds, such as personal
memories, experiences, anecdotes and observations about Girish Kasaravalli as an artist and
human being, along with some thematic overviews, narrative analyses and critical readings of
his films.

It is not an easy task to speak about an auteur who has been active for the last four decades
and has created a significant body of work in the form of 14 acclaimed feature films during the
period. In a collection like this, where everyone reflects upon the same person and interprets the
same body of work, repetitions and generalisations are unavoidable. But despite such
limitations, the book succeeds in vividly portraying the film-maker as a consummate artist and
fine human being, while dealing with his body of work in all its thematic diversity and aesthetic
vigour.

These essays are by different people who were associated (and are still associating) with the
film-maker in different capacities: as actors, cinematographers, editors, producers, critics,
associates, and so on. Although written from diverse perspectives and capacities, there emerge
certain persisting commonalities as well as striking themes relating to the aesthetics and
challenges of art cinema practice in India, especially in a “regional” language like Kannada.

The book ends with a long and touching portrait on the life and work of B.V. Karanth by Girish
Kasaravalli, where he movingly sketches the turbulent and tragic life of an artist and friend he
admired and worked with. Apart from working stills, posters and personal photographs, the book
also provides the reader with sample pages from the pre-production notes prepared by Girish
Kasaravalli for the film Dweepa, which contains detailed notes about the type of shot, camera
movement, lensing, lighting, blocking, cut points, and so on, for each and every shot, showing
the meticulous planning and detailing that goes into the work of the master.

The volume starts with a note on the book by O.P. Srivastava and a personal memoir of Girish
Kasaravalli by his contemporary, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, followed by two essays by Girish
Kasaravalli’s children, Ananya and Apurva, who are both film-makers, who dwell upon the life
and work of their father peppered with tender and loving anecdotes about his likes and dislikes,
foibles and strengths. Starting from the intimately personal, these recollections go into the vital
links between the man and his work, between the personal, familial life and the professional,
cinematic oeuvre. Apurva describes him as “a smorgasbord of cinematic idioms, or of cinema
itself”. This is how Ananya recounts her father: “At every step, every little thing that he does,
there is deep introspection, deep questioning of self, questioning of things around him, of the
state and everything else.”

The rest of the essays dwell upon Girish Kasaravalli’s life and work through personal
encounters and professional engagements with him. For many of the authors, he was not
merely a great auteur but also a crusader for the new wave cinema movement in Karnataka. For
many he is a living legend, and for many others, a dear friend, guide or philosopher.

As many young film-makers and technicians testify, he remains an inspiration for them to
dedicate their lives to what they passionately believe in. As for his associates, Girish Kasaravalli
has been a source of inspiration and the very embodiment of the yearning for perfection.

In the words of G.S. Bhaskar, a cinematographer who has worked with him: “Girish is probably
one of the very few in the country who dwells on the cinematic form to tell his stories. He utilises
all the visual elements and thereby comes across as more of a visual storyteller than most other
film-makers. He chooses to implant the subtext subtly into his camera movement and graphic
design, thereby bringing in a great deal of symbolism that lends a cryptic writing style to his
narrative. I think that is the take-away for most technicians who work with him as well.”

What directorial assistant Srinivas Bhashyam admires in Girish Kasaravalli is his thoroughness
“with the minutest of details, scheduling charts, properties, locations, the supporting cast, colour
schemes and a whole lot of essentials”.

Universal themes
Film-makers like Shyam Benegal, curators like Rada Sesic and critics like Vidyarthi Chatterjee,
Manu Chakravarthy and John Hood emphasise Girish Kasaravalli’s commitment to his own
cultural milieu and his deep concern for humanity as distinguishing features of his work. They
also point to the ways in which he has grappled with the changes in the sociopolitical
atmosphere of post-Independence India in each of his films.

A major theme that emerges from the musings on Girish Kasaravalli’s narratives and aesthetics
is the way in which he is deeply rooted in the local while at the same time being universal. As
U.R. Ananthamurthy, on whose story Girish Kasaravalli’s debut film Ghatashraddha (The Ritual)
was based, puts it: “The amazing thing about Girish is that, like Satyajit Ray, he chooses a
village, he chooses his own environment. He is here. He is profoundly rooted in the local. He is
global in his message, but in his choice of subject and the details, he is very local.”

And this is how Arun Khopkar, film-maker and fellow student at the Film & Television Institute of
India, Pune, ruminates on his friend’s work: “I think that if you want to understand a film-maker,
it is essential to understand how he loves and elevates the position of his surroundings and
people as human and as an artiste. Here is somebody who is intensely rooted, though that root
is not limited to the surface, but draws from the sap of life that is universal. So he is intensely
native, but at the same time very universal. That is the strength of Girish Kasaravalli.”

Parallel cinema in India

Another theme that writers in the book return to frequently is the state of parallel cinema in
India, for Girish Kasaravalli embodies the spirit of the new wave in Indian cinema in many ways.

The film critic Vidyarthi Chatterjee puts it succinctly: “Right from his institute diploma film
Avashesh to his most recent film Kurmavatara (Tortoise, an Incarnation, 2011), what we witness
is an artist at work who has religiously refused to compromise with the original manifesto of New
Indian Cinema.”

For the auteur’s cinematographer H.M. Ramachandra, the “Kasaravalli kind of cinema” stays
with the viewer for ages and call for viewing again and again. “If you watch Ghatashraddha now,
you will interpret it differently. If you view Dweepa now, after so many years, you will get a
different reading. The film evolves as your perspectives evolve,” he says.

Avinash Yelandur, who acted in Dweepa, describes the heyday of parallel cinema thus: “In
those days, parallel cinema was quite popular. Then unfortunately, everyone except Girish
moved away. So the movement slowly tapered off. I think they walked away from it when it was
about to hit a peak, and the whole movement died. To once again bring the audience back to
this kind of cinema is very difficult. The only person who pursued these kinds of movies was
Girish Kasaravalli.”

While reminiscing about Girish Kasaravalli, the veteran film-maker Shyam Benegal emphasises
the role the state: “I feel that cinema needs to be taken more seriously as an art form by the
state. When I use the word ‘state’ I mean both the State governments and the Central
government.”

The actor Deepti Naval stresses the same point: “NFDC [National Film Development
Corporation of India] initially started to provide small funds, but somehow it stopped after the
initial dose. I guess if the number of people who were doing such experimental work within that
limited amount of money had expanded and grown, this kind of cinema would have survived.
However, there should be funds for making interesting, meaningful films, provided to an extent
by the state.”

Girish Kasaravalli belongs to a generation of artists who critically engaged with and interrogated
both tradition and modernity.

The critical insider

The film critic Maithili Rao says: “Ananthamurthy once called himself ‘the critical insider’. He is a
Brahmin himself, so he knows the culture’s hollowness as well as its traditions, the decay that
has set into it, and the rigidity that has calcified into a system where there is no place for people
who question and rebel. I think Ananthamurthy has been a kind of mentor for creative people in
Karnataka—Girish is certainly one of them.”

Deepti Naval, who acted in Girish Kasaravalli’s Mane (The House), describes the master auteur
thus:
“You could see the intense passion that he felt for his work, his film, the characters and the
social message that he communicates through this medium…. All his movies have socially
relevant themes. This is what makes him such a serious and significant Indian film-maker, and
that’s why we really look up to his work.”

Coming as it does during a time when there is a dire need for critical insiders, this book on
Girish Kasaravalli will hopefully prompt young cineastes and scholars to engage with his films
so as to ponder and elaborate upon the aesthetic, political and ethical questions they grapple
with.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/books/article28259961.ece
BOOKS
Identity and belonging
SANDHYA RAO
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

A rally on the sixth anniversary of the Gezi Park protests near Taksim Square in Istanbul on
May 31. Photo: YASIN AKGUL/AFP

For Indian readers, particularly, the novel hits bang in the solar plexus: everything said and
implied is relevant in our context.
Anine-year-old once told me the books she liked best were the ones that were about people like
herself. Although set in Turkey, Without a Country is such a book. But first, it must be said that
this is far from being a great novel. Although the author, Ayse Kulin, is described as “one of
Turkey’s most beloved”, known for her “captivating stories about human endurance”, and
although Without a Country is unerringly about the human condition, the lack of balance in the
plot and an underlying prescriptive tone deflate a palpably powerful and relevant theme: cultural
and religious integration or the absence of it.

Frankly, it needed to be a much fatter novel in order to do justice to the lives of the four
generations it chronicles, beginning with the flight of Gerhard Schliemann and his wife, Elsa,
from Nazi Germany to Istanbul in Turkey. While their story gets the detailed treatment it
deserves, the stories of their child, grandchild and great grandchild get shorter and shorter
shrift, sufficient only to serve as pieces of information, not a story-telling. The transformation of
their daughter, Susy, from a sturdy German child to a Turkish Suzy Siliman (oddly spelled
“iliman” in a chapter heading; surely a typo?) is reasonably filled out, although not satisfyingly
so. Her daughter Sude’s story is brief, and her daughter Esra’s story is just a fullstop.

Despite this, it is a compelling read, thanks to the power of the theme. Cultural differences,
dislocation from one’s country, religious tensions, ideas of democracy, dictatorial regimes, riots,
inter-faith and intercultural marriages, discrimination against certain communities (Jews,
Armenians)…. All these are themes that persist as distressing realities to this day, and Ayse
Kulin tackles them head on. The novel begins with Suzy, who has always thought of herself as
Turkish, advising her granddaughter, Esra, to leave Turkey. She writes to Esra, recalling a time
when foreigners were treated well and people did not dwell on religious differences. Then she
goes on to say that “Turkey is your country, but the hatred and violence are too much… bombs
can explode and injustices are committed everywhere, but here, in a place where hate crimes
go unpunished, you are no longer safe. These anti-Semites are filled with hate. At the very
least, they will break your heart. And a broken heart aches forever.”
In spite of all the flaws in the book, Ayse Kulin manages to seamlessly situate human emotions
in the context of Turkey’s recent history in a smart and impactful fashion. She also intends the
novel to be a sort of tribute to all those scientists who came and settled in Turkey for one reason
or the other and who helped modernise the country.

In this instance, it is doctors and scientists from Germany who come together in a spirit of
community and have to face the many challenges of living in a completely different cultural
space.

In the course of their lives, the Schliemann family find themselves dealing with both assimilation
and discrimination at the personal and professional levels. Gerhard encounters resentment from
native-born Turks who feel their jobs are being snatched from them; Elsa misses the company
of fellow Germans; Peter (Suzy’s older brother) remains distant from the locals; while Suzy
quickly takes to all things Turkish. She grows up to marry a Turk. The journey of their lives in a
new country, dealing with a different culture, unfamiliar language and social mores is told with
felicity and detail. In the process, we come to learn something about Turkish history and ways of
life.

A confounding translation of an article in Turkish about her seems to suggest that Ayse Kulin is
of Ottoman ancestry. Her views are unambiguous and shine through the telling. But it soon
becomes clear that the reason for writing this novel is to showcase the plurality of Turkey’s
history and show how that has changed in recent times.

When Sude’s boyfriend Enver breaks up with her, she is distraught: “She’d been rejected, and it
was because of what she was, not who she was.… Enver hadn’t minded that she was German.
He’d dumped her because she was Jewish. His father admired Hitler! Was that possible? How
could anyone admire Hitler? Was it because he hated Jews?” Ayse Kulin’s political position
could not be clearer and she misses no opportunity to spell it out.

This is a conversation she has with her Turkish grandfather Nazmi (whose son Demir marries
Suzy):

“‘Would you have let your son marry a Jewish girl you didn’t know?’ she asks. ‘Yes. As long as
our grandchildren would be brought up as Muslims.’ ‘Grandpa, am I a Muslim?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘But
I never pray or fast. And for that matter, neither do you or Grandma.’ Nazmi Bey didn’t say
anything for a moment. Then he looked his granddaughter in the eye and said, ‘Look inside your
heart, Sude. You’re whatever it is you see there.’”

This is the level at which the novel resonates. Certainly for readers in India, it offers many
insights and offers many moments of reflection, not just in terms of religious
tolerance/intolerance, cultural assimilation and the strengths of tradition, but also about how to
look at history and understand who we really are. The novel comes right down to the Gezi Park
uprising of a couple of years ago and references the current thinking of the Turkish government
in putting behind bars anyone who opposes it, including the record number of journalists jailed
in that country.

Most importantly, though, it emphasises the ridiculousness of differences and discrimination and
shines a light on the fact that essentially, everyone is a mix of many things. When Esra is a
schoolgirl, she finds a piece of paper on her desk with the letter “Y” written large on it. She is
puzzled. Boys’ names? Yakut? Yusuf? It is only later she discovers it stands for “Yahudi”, Jew.
She goes home and asks her grandparents: “But my great-grandparents are German. Aren’t
Germans Christians? And aren’t we Muslims?”

Grandma explains that a person can be German and Jewish, Turkish and Jewish. “Here in
Turkey, most people are Muslim. You’re Muslim too.”

“But they called me a Jew in school today!” says Esra. “That must be because of me,” her
grandmother explains. “My family is Jewish.… It’s important to know your family history and
your background, even if you were brought up Muslim.”

Without a Country has been much reviewed and not entirely favourably, which is a fair
assessment. However, its impact is what is more important, and it is for this reason that it
deserves to be read. With the kind of intolerance, parochialism, extremism, violence and hatred
prevailing all over the world, Ayse Kulin reminds us that we can create a better environment for
our children. For Indian readers, particularly, the novel hits bang in the solar plexus: everything
said and implied is relevant in our context. And that is a big one to score.

https://frontline.thehindu.com/other/data-card/article28269501.ece
OTHER DATA CARD
DATACARD
Slack spending
RAMESH CHAKRAPANI
Print edition : July 19, 2019T+ T-

Consumer expenditure at constant prices has not grown significantly in the recent past,
although spending in current prices has grown considerably.
Private final consumption expenditure (PFCE) at constant prices (with 2011-12 as the base
year) on essentials such as food and housing, apart from spending in key areas such as
education and services, grew slowly in the five years since 2011-12, although the growth was
significant when measured in current prices, according to data from the National Accounts
Statistics 2018 document published by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme
Implementation.

Private final consumption expenditure clubs the expenditure of households and non-profit
institutions serving households, such as places of worship.

During the period, per capita PFCE in current prices rose 72 per cent from Rs.40,250 in 2011-
12 to Rs.69,322 in 2016-17, but in terms of constant prices it grew only 31 per cent to
Rs.52,443. Similarly, per capita gross national income in current prices rose 63 per cent from
Rs.70,980 in 2011-12 to Rs.1,16,069 in 2016-17, but in terms of constant prices it grew only 31
per cent to Rs.92,775.

Data reported in current prices for each year are in the value of the currency for that particular
year. Data in constant terms show the data for each year in the value of a particular base year.
Constant series are used to measure the true growth because they adjust for the effects of price
inflation.

For instance, the amount of money spent on food and non-alcoholic beverages rose from Rs.
14.99 lakh crore in 2011-12 to Rs 27.18 lakh crore in 2016-17 at current prices, but at constant
prices it reached only Rs.19.12 lakh crore in 2016-17.
Similarly, expenditure on health at current prices rose from Rs.1,81,334 crore in 2011-12 to
Rs.4,08,338 crore in 2016-17, but at constant prices it rose to only Rs.3,06,560 crore in 2016-
17.