The Godhra Verdict And Selective Amnesia

By Farzana Versey

22 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org

The man who was all along considered the mastermind behind the burning train has been acquitted. This should tell us just how justice is being dished out in this case.

Today, February 22, the Special Investigative Team that was inquiring into the coach that was burned in the Sabarmati Express at Godhra and killed 59 people, mainly kar sevaks, convicted 31 people; 63 have been acquitted. The SIT was not the first investigative agency appointed. It should not be the last. We look forward to an explanation of what the 63 did not do that the 31 did.

The special court has accepted the conspiracy theory regarding the burning of the coach and reports mention that as per the charge-sheet some Muslims living in an adjoining colony had conspired to kill kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya on that train.

The Congress spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan should have kept quiet if she is not aware of the contents of the judgement. Instead, she chose to state, “In political sense, whatever the judgement with regard to Godhra incident, the communal violence that erupted in Gujarat (post the train carnage) remained a blot on democracy...It is a blot on the record of Narendra Modi for which he will always have to answer the people of the nation.”

A politician commenting by sidetracking is dangerous. Not only is this politicking but it will be seen as appeasement of Muslims, even though it is a valid point, except for the ‘blot on democracy’ bit because no political party is innocent. In this incident, the SIT has done a commendable cover-up job for Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Let us rewind to September 2008. The Justice Nanavati commission had given Modi, his council of ministers and police officers a clean chit, calling the Godhra case a “conspiracy’’.

When a judge sitting on a case for over six years who has got contrary evidence from another commission of enquiry – refer to my piece in Countercurrents Keeping Alive The Ghost Of Godhra on the U.C.Banerji findings – calls it a conspiracy, he should explain the nature of that conspiracy. He cannot dish out some one-liner like, “It was a part of a larger conspiracy to create terror and destabilise the administration.''

If indeed it was true, and Modi was let off because he was innocent, then does one not assume it was his business to ensure that no terror was created later? Lumpen elements cannot destabilise the administration. So, who did it?

Did he or did he not talk about the action-reaction theory? Did Justice Nanavati tell us how that could prove his innocence? How could he be absolved of any lapse in providing “protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of the communal riots’’ when statistics, refugee camps, raped women, people burned alive tell a different story? More than 1200 people died to pay for the sin of the Godhra train fire. Modi did visit the bogey almost immediately. Did he go to the Best Bakery that was burnt down by the goons in the state of which he was chief minister?

The Godhra carnage also led to Gujarat’s first POTA case in which there were 131 accused and 106 booked; it was later whittled down to 94. Please note the initial position and let us ask a few queries: Does it take 131 people to pull the chain of the train from outside so that it would give time for enough people to collect and throw petrol? Wouldn’t people who conspire be prepared in advance? Was Justice Nanavati saying that some fellow called Maulvi Hussain Umarji (yes, I repeat, the “mastermind” who has been acquitted!) suddenly discovered that a train would be travelling with kar sevaks? He twiddled this thumb and then, since the Gujarat Forensic Science Laboratory and statements by SIT accuse him, he pulled the chain, whispered in the ears of some Muslim boys to get a few people because the train should not go away. This group lands up there, throws petrol and the tragedy takes place?

When the train was stopped did no one raise an alarm or jump down? Did no one notice the maulvi? What about the station authorities? Did the engine driver just sit there and wait for someone to indulge in “conspiracy”?

Why were police officers transferred after the riots if they were not culpable?

This case cannot be closed under any circumstances until we get the truth. What happened to the kar sevaks and to their families is tragic. They should have sued the government of Gujarat. But then Modi bhai silenced them with a fat compensation almost immediately.

This is what justice does. The Nanavati Commission was a farce, given extensions 12 times. Besides, the latest judgement lets off those it accused. That should tell us something.

Now the head of the SIT, R. K. Raghavan, says, “I have a mixed opinion on the judgement. I am satisfied with the Godhra train burning verdict, but I am pained as so many lives were lost due to the incident.” How can a person in his position have a mixed opinion on a ‘judgement’? A judgement is declared after cases of people who have died are brought to court. It still has eight cases of post-Godhra rioting pending before it, including Naroda Patia and Gulberg Society. Hope he is ready for more pain.

Meanwhile, Narendra Modi is sitting on his throne with even greater adhesive stuck to his seat busy planning beach resorts for fun tourism.

Farzana Versey can be reached at http://farzana-versey.blogspot.com/

“We’re Witnessing The Violent Lashings Of A Dying Beast”

Libyan Novelist Hisham Matar on Gaddafi’s Brutal Crackdown in Libya

Libyan dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, vows not to leave the country as opposition protesters take control of key cities. After a week of demonstrations, thousands of protesters have been killed or injured by pro-Gaddafi police and hired mercenaries, and more than a thousand people are missing. For more on Libya, we are joined from London by Hisham Matar, a renowned Libyan novelist. He is the son of a prominent Libyan dissident, and he is currently helping to run an ad hoc news desk informing the Western media of events occurring in Libya. “The world now is watching a massacre, and history will hold the international community responsible,” Matar says, "not only because we are watching a dictatorship, an unelected dictatorship, massacring its own people, but we are watching a dictatorship that the world has profited from close relations with.” [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: In Libya, the government continues its brutal clampdown on the growing uprising against the four-decade rule of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. In a rambling speech aired on state television Tuesday, Gaddafi vowed to fight to his "last drop of blood" rather than leave the country.

MUAMMAR GADDAFI: [translated] I will not leave the country. And I will die as a martyr at the end.

AMY GOODMAN: During his speech, Gaddafi called protesters "rats" and "mercenaries" who wanted to turn Libya into an "Islamic state," and said enemies of the country "should be put to death." He also called on his supporters to take back the streets from anti-government protesters.

Gunfire was reported this morning in the capital of Tripoli, and Human Rights Watch says witnesses there describe Libyan forces firing "randomly" at protesters in the past couple of days.

Gruesome photos from Libya have surfaced of burnt corpses and protesters hacked apart. The death toll in the country is unknown, but witnesses reported scores dead. The International Coalition Against War Criminals estimates more than 500 people have been killed, 4,000 wounded, and at least 1,500 missing in Libya since demonstrations began last week.

Several high-ranking Libyan diplomats around the world have resigned. The man considered the Colonel’s number two, Interior Minister Abdul Fattah Younis al Abidi, is among senior figures who have joined the opposition. There are also reports that many top military brass and low-ranking soldiers have defected. Major cities across Libya, including Benghazi and Tobruk, are now reportedly under the control of the opposition.

For more on Libya, we’re joined from London by Hisham Matar, a renowned Libyan novelist. He’s the son of a prominent Libyan dissident, and he’s currently running his own ad hoc news desk informing the Western media of events occurring in Libya.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Hisham Matar. What is the latest you understand is happening in your country, in Libya?

HISHAM MATAR: Well, the latest is that I think what we’re witnessing is the violent lashings of a dying beast, who is willing to go to extreme measures in order to try to cling on to power. It’s definitely unraveling, but the question that remains is that how many more people will this man kill before he either leaves or meets his end, one way or the other. That seems to be the question. And although, yes, most of the East now is under the control of the people, who were demonstrating peacefully in the beginning, before they were attacked, he controls Tripoli, of course. And Tripoli is the central—it’s the capital of the country. And he is hiring mercenaries to fly planes and bomb demonstrators, fire from the air on demonstrators.

There’s a palpable sense of fear. I think the country is actually going through—I think we’re going to live with this trauma for a long time. You know, there’s terrible eyewitness accounts of people huddled in their flats, watching these mercenaries walking up and down the streets with yellow hard caps. I mean, Orwell couldn’t have made it up. And they’re hitting people with sticks and machetes and hammers. And there’s this kind of sort of—I think it’s the recklessness of it and the kind of madness of it that has disturbed most of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Gaddafi’s speech yesterday, and where he gave it in Tripoli?

HISHAM MATAR: Well, he gave it in the part of his big camp in Tripoli where it’s basically a military base, but he lives in the middle of it, which I think says quite a lot about his rule and the nature of his rule and how people view it, that he feels only safe living in the middle of a military camp in the heart of the capital. Part of it was bombed in the air raids that Reagan ordered in the late ’80s, in which several people died, of course. And it was a great gift for Gaddafi, because what it did is it gave him this kind of heroic, kind of man in the third world fighting the great empire kind of image, which is far from the truth about his real [inaudible]—

AMY GOODMAN: And his daughter was killed in that bombing, right?

HISHAM MATAR: Adopted daughter was killed, absolutely, yes, and many people injured. It was a terrible event. And so, what he did was he memorialized the event by keeping the bombed-out building. And so, it’s very symbolic that he was in it yesterday, because he’s basically saying, you know, "I am fighting not my people here. I’m fighting foreign powers that have hired these people to come and depose me."

What’s interesting is that everything—you know, there’s kind of—there’s, of course, specific different peculiarities about all the speeches that were given by the three dictators that we saw—you know, Ben Ali, then Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and Mubarak—and Gaddafi, I mean. But there are some similarities. And the similarities are that they all confuse the word "Libya" or "Egypt" or "Tunisia" for themselves. And so, when they’re speaking about the country, they’re really speaking about themselves. And Gaddafi was doing that all the time yesterday. And he was sort of—I mean, it struck me that he was actually being—at that moment during the speech, he is being the victim of his own contradictions and the victim of his own reality, a reality in which, for a long time, this man is surrounded by people who agree with him, who are, for one reason or the other, either because they’re benefiting or they’re frightened, tell him that he is always right. And that’s kind of a—it’s a terrible fate, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the U.N. and what it has done and its significance, the U.N. Security Council issuing a statement urging the Libyan government to end the attack on demonstrators, and then the Libyan diplomats around the world who are resigning?

HISHAM MATAR: I think, yeah, you know, I believe that most of the Libyan diplomats resigning are resigning because they’re genuinely shocked by the reality of how bad this regime is. But I think a lot of them are resigning also because they want to be on the right side of history, and they can see that the ship is sinking. In fact, the ship has been sinking for a few years. You know, there’s been—lots of Libyan diplomats and very senior people in the government have been behaving in a way that suggests that they did sense this coming. So they’ve been sending abroad a lot of money. They’ve been stealing in a way that is just far more nakedly and just on a very large scale.

But as far as Europe is concerned, I think there’s kind of—you know, all of these announcements that we heard that have been very high on sentiment, saying all the right things, but very low on action, I think all that says much more about the corrupt nature of the relationship between Europe, America and the Gaddafi regime than it does about Europe and America, actually. It says much more about that very strange relationship that they’ve had, a kind of a parasitic relationship, in which they were prepared to do business and therefore strengthen the legitimacy, but also the power, of this regime that was oppressing its people and killing its people and funding, you know, various different terrible projects abroad.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Hisham Matar, a novelist, Libyan novelist, based in London, now, with a few others, has set up an ad hoc news group to get people’s accounts from Libya out into the media. What is your understanding of the numbers of casualties, Hisham?

HISHAM MATAR: That’s difficult to verify, Amy. And I spoke to one doctor in a Benghazi hospital three days ago. So, three days ago, when the death counts were officially—when the conservative accounts were saying that the death toll was somewhere around 200. Well, when I spoke to this doctor, he said to me that he had seen 200 bodies in his hospital alone. So it’s very difficult to know.

What is very clear is that this is actually part—although the scale is incredibly horrific, and we’ve never seen anything on this scale before in Libya, these kind of tactics are familiar to us. You know, Gaddafi bombed Darnah in the '90s when there was an uprising there. Of course, then there weren't mobile phone pictures going out on Twitter and Facebook; it was sort of a silent event that was hardly reported on, even in the Arabic media. Nobody could verify it. And then, of course, in 1996, he bombed—sorry, he issued orders to assassinate—to execute, summary executions of 1,200 political prisoners in Abu Salim prison, so—again, because they had had a demonstration in the prison. So, this is kind of a familiar tactic; it’s just the scale is much larger. And I suspect, when all is said and done, I would be very surprised if the death count is not much higher than what we’re being told today, which is, as you reported, somewhere around 500.

The Libyan revolution is—I think it’s unique, because Libya is far smaller than Tunisia and Egypt. Tunisia—Libya is only six-and-a-half million people. Yet, in fewer days, today is just—the revolution is only a week old, yet we’ve seen the number of deaths is just much higher than Egypt and Tunisia. And what that says is that it says actually exactly what Seif al-Islam, in his equally bad speech that he gave, Gaddafi’s son, that he gave before his father’s speech, in which he said, you know, Libya is not Tunisia, Libya is not Egypt. And his idea was that Libya is somehow unique and therefore can be ruled in this way forever by his family. But actually, I agree with him that Libya is not Tunisia and not Egypt, in the sense that the Libyan dictator has shown himself to be prepared to kill as many people as he needs to in order to cling on to power, which worries me, because this is—it’s become an emergency now. That’s why these kind of, you know, polite, didactical conversations that are going on in Europe about, "Oh, was it correct for us to have become friends with him in 2003? Should we perhaps, you know, not get so close to dictators like him in the future?"—all that is completely inappropriate and self-indulgent, as far as I’m concerned, because it is an emergency. You know, more people will continue to die if nothing is done.

AMY GOODMAN: Hisham, your father, a political dissident in Libya?

HISHAM MATAR: Yes, my father was a political dissident, and he was kidnapped from his home in Cairo, where he lived in exile, by Egyptian secret service police, who then handed him over to the Libyans. There was a deal done. The Libyans also handed over other Egyptian dissidents hiding in Libya. And money was exchanged. My father was taken to Libya immediately. He was imprisoned in Abu Salim prison, which is an infamous kind of terrible political prison in Tripoli.

AMY GOODMAN: What year was this?

HISHAM MATAR: This was in 1990, March 1990. And he was tortured and imprisoned. And we didn’t know of this. We didn’t know where he was, because the Egyptians lied to us, said that he was actually—they were keeping him in Egypt, and it’s for his own good—the other option would be sending him to Libya—and threatened us to remain quiet. You know, "If you speak, we can’t guarantee his safety," things like that. So, we were in limbo as a family and, you can imagine, incredibly worried, concerned, not really sure what is the correct thing to do. You know, if we speak, are we really risking his safety? And if we don’t speak, are we somehow becoming complicit with what is happening to him? And about three years into this terrible time, we received a letter that my father smuggled out of Abu Salim prison, in which he detailed everything that happened—when he was taken, the people that took him, and so on. And that’s when we started campaigning very actively.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think countries should do right now, Hisham?

HISHAM MATAR: What do I think what? I’m sorry?

AMY GOODMAN: Countries should do right now about what’s happening? And what did you learn was the fate of your father?

HISHAM MATAR: Well, I don’t know. My father has been subjected to what the U.N. call "enforced disappearance," political prisoners that are imprisoned and then just vanish into the prison system. I don’t know if my father was killed in 1996 in the massacre that I mentioned, and I don’t know if he was moved somewhere else. So I don’t know whether my father is alive or dead. And it’s this kind of level of contempt that the regime has for anybody that disagrees with them.

You know, there was something actually that—about the speech yesterday, with Gaddafi’s speech. He went on about, you know, "This is a problem, that people didn’t understand what the revolution was about. People didn’t understand what I was talking about." You know, so it’s like disagreement is always about you not listening. And this reminded me of a terrible detail that my father included in his letter, where, in the middle of the ceiling in the cell where he was imprisoned, they had placed a loudspeaker. And this loudspeaker would play from 6:00 in the morning 'til the end of the night. So, from 6:00 ’til midnight they would play Gaddafi's speeches and revolutionary songs and slogans. So it’s sort of—the idea is that you didn’t disagree with us because you actually disagreed with us legitimately; you know, you disagreed with us because you’re stupid, you didn’t understand. And that kind of attitude that the regime has towards its people now, it’s just taken a completely different, grotesque scale.

And I think the world now is watching a massacre, and history will hold it responsible, will hold the international community responsible, because—not only because we are watching a dictatorship, an unelected dictatorship, massacring its own people, but we are watching a dictatorship that is—that the world has profited from close relations with. When America and Britain were keen on getting their oil contracts, they moved much faster. They did much more. They were involved in a very active, you know, enthusiastic way. When Gaddafi starts killing his people, nobody knows what to do. I am kind of slightly sort of sympathetic, actually, with Mr. Obama, because he knows that if he comes out and speaks in very clear terms about Gaddafi, it will probably make things worse for the Libyan people. But what that says, actually, what that says, is that the whole enterprise of engaging with somebody like him in the way that they did, and giving him international legitimacy, not only makes life difficult—or, no, it makes life slightly inconvenient for America, but it has made life hell for Libya. You know, it’s given the regime eight more years into power than it needed.

AMY GOODMAN: Hisham Matar, I want to thank you very much for being with us, and of course we’ll continue to follow events taking place in Libya. Again, we don’t know how many are dead. It could be over a thousand, could be 500, could be well of a thousand missing now and thousands injured. Thank you so much for being with us, Hisham Matar, a novelist based in London, putting out news to Western news agencies, spent the last several days running his own ad hoc news desk about events occurring in Libya.

Hisham Matar, Renowned Libyan novelist based in London. He is the son of a prominent Libyan dissident. He has spent the last several days helping run an ad hoc news desk informing the Western media of events occurring in Libya. His debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.

24 February, 2011
Democracy Now!

Hard questions about soft questions

There was in fact a successful auction of spectrum — only it was not conducted by the government but by its corporate sector cronies who made a fortune on the deal.

On one pronouncement of his, you have to agree with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. His is not a ‘lame-duck government.' Cooked goose seems the more appropriate soubriquet. However, not a single new scam worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore has surfaced for 10 days now. So maybe things are getting better. Yet, even a doting corporate media find that the Professor did not come out looking good from his interaction with a few favoured students. That is, electronic media chiefs and editors who have mostly adored Dr. Singh for nearly two decades. If even the largely free ride they gave him left him unnerved and defensive, it's a measure of how much things have changed. Not that the editors emerged looking better. If asking the right questions is at the heart of journalism, then somebody had a bypass. At no point did it occur to them that the corruption they questioned him on with some passion, flowed entirely out of policies and from a policy altar at which they have worshipped for years.

Some of the questions in fact indicated a need by worried editors to be reassured that those very policies would continue. For instance, a fear that there is “no big reformist wave coming from UPA II. Have we lost the will to take hard reformist decisions?” “No way,” responded the Prime Minister. “We have not lost the will. We will persist.” In asserting that what he (and the editors) view as “reforms” are on track, Dr. Singh speaks the truth. The chaos and corruption troubling the editors was the outcome of those very ‘reforms', if they cared to see it.

Even on corruption, the questions ranged from those revolving around some Ministers' actions to a couple implying wrongdoing by people within the PMO or Cabinet. Nothing that suggested the country's basic direction under the Professor's guidance is destructive and dangerous. But once you've accepted the neo-liberal economic framework scripted since 1991 as wonderful and beyond reproach, then your questions get limited to asking who fluffed his lines. And as for corporate criminality, editors step on to that terrain only when left without a choice and at their own risk.

The first question, fair enough, was about the 2G scam and the lack of an auction in the sale of spectrum. There's something missing here, though. There was in fact an auction of spectrum — a successful one. Only it was not conducted by the government but by its corporate sector cronies who gave it away for a pittance. Having been gifted that scarce public-owned resource by the government, the cronies then auctioned it privately for astronomical sums of money. The argument that consumers today enjoy low prices because the privateers got it cheap is a fraud. Customers are getting those cheap prices even after this double sale. After the crony cabal milked huge profits in its own private auction. Had that process been cut out, consumer benefits would have been far greater. Also auctioned alongside were the government's individual Ministers, posts and integrity. Two auctions for the price of none.

Abstract query

The press conference saw one abstract query and a no less abstract reply on ‘black money.' Not a single question on Indian illegal funds parked overseas in Swiss and other banks. None on why the government does not reveal the names it has in this connection. The illegal flow of such funds, according to the startling report from Global Financial Integrity, costs the nation Rs.240 crore every single day, on average. As much as Rs. 4.3 lakh crore (twice the highest estimate of the 2G scam losses) has been lost in just five years, between 2004 and 2008. And who are the main culprits? “High net-worth individuals and private companies were found to be the primary drivers of illicit flows out of India's private sector.” Seems a good subject to ask the Prime Minister some questions about. But it didn't happen.

Nor was there a single question about the Amnesty/Immunity schemes his government seems to be planning for such criminals. This, even as it plans tougher and tougher laws for ordinary citizens, abridgement of rights for displaced persons, gutting of the public distribution system and arrests of those protesting the incredible price rise.

Nor, while on morality and corruption, was there a single question from the editors about the Prime Minister making Vilasrao Deshmukh Union Minister of Rural Development. A man castigated by the Supreme Court for protecting moneylenders in Maharashtra now controls rural development across the country. The Maharashtra government has even paid up the Rs.10-lakh fine imposed by the court in that case, signalling acceptance that wrong had been done while he was Chief Minister. Dr. Singh cannot plead ‘coalition compulsions' here. Mr. Deshmukh is from his own party. If he remains in the Union Cabinet after the Supreme Court trashes him, it is only because Dr. Singh wants him there. There were no ‘coalition compulsions' in brewing the CWG scam either, but that too wasn't touched upon in the questions.

It would, of course, be insane to expect the editors to raise a question on the nearly quarter of a million farmers who have committed suicide in this country since 1995, going by the data of the National Crime Records Bureau. Or on migrations out of villages going berserk. Or on worsening levels of unemployment. But there was not a single one on hunger either.

The only serious question on food inflation, linking that to its impact on the poor in a country with 8.5 per cent growth came from a foreigner. Now our editors present knew this to be a burning issue, even for their middle class audiences. Yet Sara Sidner of CNN was the only one to raise it. The other question on inflation related to the need for “the second [round of] structural reforms to be done in agriculture.” Another query on price rise — not linked to hunger or poor people — was not answered at all. The Prime Minister was not challenged when he virtually equated losses in the 2G scam with subsidies to the poor. “If auctions are not taking place then what is the basis for you to calculate a loss? ... It is very much a function of what is your starting point. And also depends upon your opinion. We have a budget which gives subsidy for food, Rs.80,000 crores per annum, some people may say these foodgrains should be sold at marketplace. Will we say then because they are not sold at market prices, because you are giving them a subsidy, it is a loss of Rs. Rs.80,000 crores?”

Plunder and subsidy

Firstly, he equates plunder with the pathetic subsidies tossed at the world's largest hungry population. We rank 67th out of 84 nations in the Global Hunger Index. Secondly, subsidies for the super-rich soar each year. While food subsidies for hundreds of millions were cut by Rs. 450 crore in the last budget.

All those carping critics attacking direct cash transfers miss the point that the government has become really good at this. It routinely transfers billions of rupees, directly or indirectly, at each opportunity to the corporate world. And it is equally good at corporate karza maafi — Rs.5,000 billion under just three heads (direct corporate income tax, customs and excise duties) in the last budget. That's two-and-a-half times the 2G scam estimate. It also gets bigger with each new budget. The dominant media have never once raised a peep of protest against the corporate plunder of public money, thanks to the government Dr. Singh presides over. Nor did they in this conference with the Prime Minister. So Dr. Singh is understandably peeved when asked about the petty cash transfers of the 2G scam to a handful of hucksters. The Prime Minister wanted to know if the editors would view the Rs.80,000 crore his government commits to food subsidies as ‘losses.' Actually, most of them do. Quite a few of them would like to see all subsidies directed at the poor to be wound up. The politically correct way of going about this is to call for the “streamlining of systems,” or “proper targeting,” or “efficiency.” A demand never once made of the tsunami of subsidies given to a handful of super-rich (media owners amongst them).

One positive point: Dr. Singh announced no new Group of Ministers at his conference with the editors. Though one's probably required to conduct a GoM Census. That might help Pranab Mukherjee figure out how many of these he chairs. And spare him the embarrassment of having to ask “so which GoM is this?” at his next meeting. A ‘lame duck' government? Not really. More like an integrity-challenged Cuckoo.

P. Sainath The Hindu Feb. 21 2011

Strangers in their homeland

Israel's masterplan for Jerusalem aims at a Jewish majority of around 70 per cent. Palestinian families continue to be evicted from their homes so that this can become a reality…

O n a visit to Jerusalem in December, we met with residents of Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood north of the Old City, where 28 extended Palestinian families are waging a struggle against eviction and displacement by Jewish settlers.

The families came here in 1948 as refugees from Israel. With the sponsorship of the Jordanian government and the United Nations they built their homes and established their community. In 1967, East Jerusalem, including Sheikh Jarrah, was occupied and annexed by Israel. Soon after, Jewish settler groups began laying claim to the land, on the basis of an alleged Ottoman era purchase. But it's only since 2007, as Israel has intensified its efforts to create facts on the ground, especially in Jerusalem, that these claims have secured enough political backing to result in actual evictions. So far, three Sheikh Jarrah families have been removed from their homes, to be instantly replaced by Jewish settlers, who have swathed the occupied building in Israeli flags, barbed wire and surveillance equipment. Eviction orders are pending against the remaining families, with more settlers poised to move in.

The residents of Sheikh Jarrah know their history. They are defending homes built by their families on land that their families have occupied for 60 years, land and homes which they had every reason to believe they were legally entitled to. They have kept vigil under trees. They have camped out in their own gardens. They and their children have been assaulted — by settlers and police. They have tried every conceivable legal recourse, though the Israeli courts rebuff them time and again. They have organised non-violent demonstrations. They have appealed to Obama, the EU and the UN. But the Israelis have plans for Jerusalem and at the moment they see no reason to allow the residents of Sheikh Jarrah — or Silwan or Al-Bustan or any of the other Palestinian neighbourhoods under similar pressure — to stand in their way.

Clear violation

Within weeks of the 1967 war, Israel announced the annexation of 70 sq km of land captured from Jordan and the creation on that land of an enlarged Jerusalem municipality. It declared the “unified” Jerusalem its capitol and shifted its national institutions there. This annexation is in clear violation of international law and has never been formally recognised by other countries, which retain their embassies in Tel Aviv. Yet, at the same time, these governments have been willing to tolerate and, in the case of the US, subsidise the Israeli policy of “Judaisation” of Jerusalem, the policy that ousts the people of Sheikh Jarrah from their homes.

The “master plan” for Jerusalem, endorsed by the Israeli Government and the Jerusalem Municipality, aims explicitly at preserving a Jewish majority of 60 or 70 per cent (the exact ratio is in dispute). It's hard to think of another example, since the fall of South African apartheid, of an ethnic planning quota being adopted as state policy.

In pursuit of ethnic dominance, Israel has created a complex regime of discrimination — in planning, residency rights, restrictions on movement, and provision for education, healthcare and infrastructure. Palestinian private land is confiscated (as at Sheikh Jarrah), settlement building and road construction fragment and limit Palestinian development, and the wall, in its tortured progress through, across, into and out of Jerusalem, sets in concrete the whole policy. This has nothing to do with the security of Israel and everything to do with Israeli control over Palestinians and Palestine as a whole.

Though they were born in the city, have spent their lives there and have no other home, Palestinians resident in Jerusalem are treated like foreign citizens. Unlike Israelis, they must prove that Jerusalem is their “centre of life” if they are to retain the Jerusalem ID card without which they cannot gain access to the city, its markets and services. In order to safeguard their residency status, families crowd into inadequate housing. When they seek permission to expand their homes, they are refused. When, left with no option, they build unapproved extensions, they face demolition.

In the Old City, the Jewish Quarter feels sanitised. The restoration has a heavy touch. The area is colonised by tour groups and the souvenir industry, whose wares include tee shirts bearing the slogans: “Super Jew”, “Don't Worry America Israel's Behind You” (illustrated with a tank), and “Guns n Moses”. In this city of multiple, entwined histories, only one history, one thread, is permitted. The Muslim Quarter, though physically more decaying, lives more in the present. It's a marketplace similar to marketplaces in other Arabic cities, with Palestinians mainly buying from and selling to each other.

Here and there in the Muslim Quarter Jewish settlers have occupied buildings, easily identified by the Israeli flags and bulging security apparatus. I watched Jewish kids playing football on barbed wire enclosed rooftops — a strange form of self-imprisonment. If nothing else, it testifies to an ideological will power strong enough to compel parents to subject their own children to a life of fear and stress.

A metaphor

It's a platitude that Jerusalem means different things to different people. Even in the Bible itself, and certainly in the Talmudic literature that followed, Jerusalem is more a symbol than a geographical space. The city is a metaphor, an object of longing, a place from which we are all exiled, a better world to which we all aspire. In some parts of the tradition Jerusalem is an ideal of social justice. The literalism of Zionism, and of many pro-Zionist Christians, is very much a modern, reductive twist. At Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and elsewhere, it is thin cover for a naked land grab.

Shortly after our visit, the Jerusalem Municipality demolished part of the Palestinian owned Shepherds Hotel, perched on a ridge above the Sheikh Jarrah homes. It is to be replaced by a new apartment block for Jewish settlers. Another blow followed soon after: the revelation in the Palestine Papers — leaked documents published by Al Jazeera and the Guardian — that Palestinian Authority negotiators were prepared to barter away Sheikh Jarrah. The families we met expected little from the PA, but not outright betrayal.

Nonetheless, they feel they have no choice but to continue their struggle. It is a duty to themselves and to the future. They embody the critical Palestinian virtue of “sumoud” — steadfastness. Events in Egypt will have given them new hope. But until world opinion rouses itself against the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the odds are stacked against them.

by MIKE MARQUSEE
The Hindu 20th Feb. 2011

UPA’s Upcoming Bills on Education: Blueprint for Commercialisation and Privatisation

The Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010:

This Bill claims to regulate the functioning of foreign universities who provide education in India. However, as per the provisions of the Bill, the FEIs will be free to charge any fee. Will be free to select any student. With no provision for SC/ST/OBC reservations in the Bill; will be free to have their own norms regarding pay of teachers and employees(leading to appointments without necessary qualifications on exploitative terms as is in existence in most private institutions today) ; will have complete autonomy over course structure and syllabi leading to offering of courses which the market needs and will not be required to submit reports to the UGC or to the central government( implying that neither the UGC, nor any other regulatory authority in India will have control over the functioning of these foreign universities making it almost impossible to withdraw the recognition given to a foreign university, even if there are serious problems). International experience indicates that such legislation can neither attract truly ‘world-class’ institutions, but can only allow unreliable educations shops to sell sub-standard wares (relatively free of regulation) to Indian students.

The Universities for Innovation Bill 2010:

This Bill proposes to set up 14 “Universities for Innovation” in India, which will enjoy Government funding but be totally free from any kind of regulation of standards or fees! These Universities, in the name of being ‘free to innovate”, will be free to have foreign VCs; ‘merit-based’ admission process free from any obligations to reserve seats for SC/STs and OBCs; fix their own free structures; pay differential fees to faculty; and admit up to 50% foreign students (in contrast to ordinary universities which have a 15% cap on foreign students). These Universities, while enjoying Government funding in the shape of grants of land, fellowships etc, will be free from supervision by regulatory authorities like the UGC. There are no norms for curriculum, teaching quality, students’ assessment etc spelled out for the promoters of these universities, and no penalty for making false claims or failing to provide quality education.

The Educational Tribunals Bill 2010:

In the name of setting up educational tribunals at national and state level to resolve disputes among stakeholders in the education sector and penalise unfair practices, the aim of this Bill seems to be to restrict the recourse of teachers, employees and students to courts. This would facilitate foreign and private players in the education sector who would like to be free from the prospect of being taken to court.

The National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill 2010:

This Bill proposes to make accreditation compulsory. It may be that fund cuts can follow in case an institution fails to achieve sufficient credits. However, the central government will have the power to offer exemptions. Private or otherwise influential players can therefore secure such exemption, which is an open invitation to graft and corruption.

National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) Bill 2010:

Under provisions of this Bill, all existing regulatory like UGC, AICTE, NCTE and the MCI will be replaced by the establishment of a single-window National Council for Higher Education and Research (NCHER). The NCHER will draw its resources directly from Ministry of Finance and thus not be accountable to the MHRD mandated for this purpose. This body has been designed on the lines of World Bank-recommended regulatory bodies for every service sector in every country. It is designed to bypass the political process and to facilitate global corporate trade.

Higher education is thus being thrown open for the private players in the name of ridding it of problems like corruption and capitation fees and ensuring higher standards. However, the telecom scam is a reminder that privatisation and greed for profit go hand-in-hand with corruption. The UPA’s agenda for India’s higher education dictated by the WTO, FEIs and corporates will not only further exclude the poor and underprivileged, it will increase the scale of chaos and corruption in education manifold.

Reject UPA’s Blueprint for Commercialization of Education!

Reclaim the Right to Affordable, Quality Education!!

Reject UPA’s Blueprint for Commercialization of Education: Join People’s Parliament on Education’ On Feb 21st 2011

Why Fund Cuts for Education, When Crores Looted in Scams and Black Money?

Resist Corporate-Run, Corrupt Government and Corporate Dictated Education Policies!

Reject UPA-II’s Education Bills that are a Blueprint for Fee Hike and Privatization!

The UPA Government is hell bent on privatizing and corporatising education on the pretext of a ‘fund crunch.’ However, it is the same government whose every arm is immersed in scams – each fresh scam dwarfing the other. The Government is willing to allow thousands of crores of rupees to be plundered in mega scams and black money stashed in Swiss banks – at the cost of the rights of India’s young generation. The 2G Spectrum scam (which resulted in a loss of a whopping Rs 1,76,379 crores of public funds) and other such scams expose the falsity of excuses used by the powers-that-be: the amount lost due to the 2G Spectrum scam alone equals an astonishing 3% of our GDP. With this money, the government could have ensured education FOR ALL for next five years (as per the estimates of National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, NIEPA). The amount of black money estimated to be stashed away in Swiss banks is nearly Rs. 1.5 trillion, nearly one-and-a-half times India’s GDP.

The spate of mega scams have been a direct result of the Government’s willing surrender of various sectors such as telecom and mining to the whims and diktats of corporates. Now the UPA Government is preparing to offer up the education sector to the same corporate loot, with a slew of legislations which are nothing but a blueprint for massive fee hikes and privatization (see overleaf for details of the proposed Bills). These proposed legislations (which include the Universities for Innovation Bill and the Foreign Educational Institutions Bill) come close on the heels of the farcical ‘Right to Education’ (RTE) Act which in its final form is a diluted version of a genuine ‘right’ to education.

No matter how the UPA tries to couch its agenda, the fact remains that all the proposed legislations will lead to institutions of higher education becoming exclusive enclaves of the rich. Their main agenda is to increase privatization and commercialization, expand the grip of foreign educational institutions (FEIs), and nullify the potential of social justice in higher education. Moreover, even the limited public funds made available for education are being siphoned off to corporate capital (including foreign) through Public Private Partnership (PPP).

These legislations are neither the need nor the demand of the people of the country. Rather, they are being forced on us by the diktats of the World Bank-WTO-IMF and corporate lobbies like ASSOCHAM, according to whose estimates education market in India stands at $25 billion and is projected to reach $50 billion by 2015. These Bills are evidently pre-requisites for bringing higher education under the WTO-GATS regime and are aimed at by-passing the legislative, judicial and executive processes that constitute the foundation of democracy as per the Constitution. It is to be noted that these “offers” made by the UPA to bring higher education under the WTO-GATS regime are entirely voluntary; there is no need for India to liberalize the education sector. Educational institutions in the US and the UK are currently facing an acute crisis due to the global economic meltdown, and are desperately in need for newer markets. It is a shame that the UPA is making India a willing partner in this attempt to bail out neo-liberal policies.

At a time when the UPA is planning to push through several anti-student policies, it is necessary that all those who aspire to see a democratic, inclusive education system in India – including students, teachers and parents – come together to express their demands and protest against the agenda of the government to further commercialize education. It is in this context that a ‘People’s Parliament on Education’ is being organized in New Delhi on 21st Feb 2011, which is the first day of the upcoming budget session of the Parliament. People’s Assemblies will also be organized in various state capitals.

The Agenda

At this ‘people’s parliament’, students, teachers, parents and democratic voices from across the country will debate and discuss policies related to education and put forward their agenda. There are several issues at hand, which urgently need to be discussed and addressed:

School-level Education: Primary and secondary education has to be universalized and made truly accessible to the poor. For instance, for years, concerned educationists have been highlighting the need for a common school system as well as increased state funding for primary education.

Higher Education: The existing regulatory structure in higher education is being demolished altogether in order to allow unregulated fee hikes, as is already becoming evident in school education as a result of the farcical Right to Education Act. Moreover, current budgetary allocation on higher education remains abysmally low.

Scuttling of Inclusion and Social Justice: Though SC/ST/OBC reservations are now legally mandatory (at least in government aided colleges and universities), we are nevertheless witnessing systematic attempts to keep students from deprived backgrounds away from the ambit of the higher education through blatant scuttling of the law of the land by university administrations. In the latest set of Bills, the Govt proposes to bid an official good bye to all kinds of affirmative action and reservation in higher education.

Students at the Mercy of Profiteering Swindlers: The deemed universities in India or sham institutions like the ‘Tri-Valley University’ of California are only a small foretaste of what is to come if higher education is opened up to profiteers both Indian and foreign. The various fake medical colleges approved even by regulatory bodies like Medical Council of India showed that ‘regulation’ is quite ineffectual in a system structured around profit-seeking. Remember, such sham educational institutions like Tri-Valley are not cell-phones that one can discard if one if dissatisfied with their quality! Even if they are exposed and thrown out, it will not be before irreversibly devastating the lives of thousands of hapless students.

Scuttling of Campus Democracy: Democratic participation of students in decision-making processes is also shockingly poor. Campuses across the country are witnessing a virtual emergency: administrations routinely crackdown on protests, student union elections have not been held in most colleges and universities, and the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations are being used to scuttle organised student movements.

The common people of the country therefore have to demand an answer from the elected representatives: When will the loot of public resources end? When will all the illegally siphoned off money be retrieved and used for funding education and health? When will students’ right to education be a priority in public spending?

At the ‘People’s Parliament on Education’, we intend to set off a debate and discussion on the Policies, Bills and Acts in education, that people in the country truly wish to see, and would expect the elected representatives in the Parliament to take up, instead of merely endorsing the corporate-market led Bills that the government has been pushing. ADF appeals to you to participate in this nation wide campaign and in the People’s Parliament at Jantar Mantar on 21 Feb. 2011.

Accused without any evidence

Thanks to a Sessions Court judgment and a searing Minorities Commission report, we now know how young, innocent Muslim boys became accused in the Mecca Masjid terror case.

A lot has changed in the nearly four years since the peace of Hyderabad was shattered — first by the May 2007 Mecca Masjid blasts and, three months later, by the twin blasts at the Gokul Chat Bhandar and Lumbini Park.

Some 20 Muslim boys who were picked up randomly in the aftermath of the blasts and charged with waging war on the nation, have won their freedom. A new term, Hindutva terror, has gained official recognition. The Andhra Pradesh police who, by instinct, habit and training, chased after Muslim “masterminds” and connected the dots between Muslim terror groups, have learnt the hard way that terror does not always have to have the “jihadi” prefix. Indeed, fresh trails have opened up, suggesting that the Muslim boys were deliberately framed.

And yet, these are at best cosmetic changes that have brought no tangible relief to those falsely implicated in the blast cases. For many of them, the feeling of living on the edge continues; the court may have acquitted them but the label of “terrorist” remains as does the lurking fear that the reprieve is temporary, that the cycle of police visits, interrogation, torture and incarceration can re-commence anytime — if there is a fresh terror attack or even if there isn't.

For Mohammad Rayeezuddin, who smartly chatted up customers at Hyderabad's grandest jewellery showroom before being picked up and tossed into jail, the experience was a life-altering one. Two facts went against him: he was witness to a shoot-out outside the office of the Director-General of Police in 2004 and he lived in the same locality as Shahid Bilal, a key terror suspect.

The dragnet began to close in on Mr. Rayeezuddin, now 28, after the Mecca Masjid blasts. First came the summons from the Special Investigation Cell, which put him through the wringer on Bilal's whereabouts, network and his specific role in the Mecca Masjid blasts. With the Gokul-Lumbini twin blasts, Mr. Rayeezuddin made the transition from “terror suspect” to “terror accused,” going through the inescapable drill of being blindfolded, shunted between shadowy farmhouses and tortured, before being formally arrested and fleetingly produced before a magistrate. Mr. Rayeezuddin was picked up on August 31, 2007 but typically in the police records, the arrest date is shown as September 6, 2007. He was released on conditional bail on February 14, 2008. And on December 31, 2009, the Court of the VII Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge cleared him and 20 others of all charges. But the freedom has been only in a manner of speaking, because, as Mr. Rayeezuddin says, “ hum utthe baitthe dar me rahte hain” (I live in constant fear of the police). The men in uniform turn up often to give him company, when it is the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, when a terror alert has been sounded, or when there is trouble anywhere in the city.

Scarred for life

Mr. Rayeezuddin lost his job the day he visited the special cell. Today, scarred for life and stigmatised for having once been charged with terror, he sells watermelons on the pavement. Others acquitted along with him feel similarly wrecked: the torture marks have faded but the memories have not. To compound the injury, there has been much promise but no action on compensating and rehabilitating the young men. Chief Minister Kiran Reddy and others in the Congress have offered to apologise for the injustice, which seems so much a mockery when the perpetrators of the injustice have not been prosecuted and punished. Says Mr. Rayeezuddin: “Please tell the Chief Minister that we have forgiven him. Now will he please punish those policemen who so brutally and calculatedly turned us into terrorists?”

The plight of the boys was formally recorded in an interim report as early as September 2007 by L. Ravi Chander, Advocate Commissioner for the Andhra Pradesh Minorities Commission. Mr. Ravi Chander, who visited the blast suspects in the Cherlapally jail, was left so shattered by the experience that he began his final report, submitted in September 2008, with a poignant quote from Vikas Swarup's debut novel, Q&A, made later into Slumdog Millionaire. In the story, the teenage protagonist is picked up from the Dharavi slums for winning a quiz show. But arrests are an everyday affair in Dharavi, and so the boy concludes that even if he had “kicked and screamed, protested his innocence, and raised a stink,” the neighbourhood would not have lifted a finger to defend him.

“Unfortunately, sometimes life imitates fiction,” Mr. Ravi Chander noted in his report, going on to detail the shocking lack of procedure in the detention of Mr. Rayeezuddin and others: “[The boys] reiterate with telling consistency the now familiar story of arrest without warrant, arrest without informing the kith and kin, being taken away to unknown places, torture, etc … Typically a pigment on skin reflecting minor electric shocks are visible. While time heals the physical wounds, [they have] left an indelible impression on the psyche of the persons.” It was like a macabre replay as each boy spoke — of being detained without knowing the charge, of extended periods of torture, of indifferent magistrates who somehow always missed the distress signals from the prisoners, of being forced to confess to terror plots and of having to sign on blank papers.

Mr. Ravi Chander's report reiterated the procedure laid down by the Supreme Court for arrest and detention, including maintaining records of the time and date of arrests along with the names of officers executing the warrants; preparing a memo of arrest, signed by a witness preferably from the detainee's family and countersigned by the detainee; ensuring a tri-weekly medical examination of every detainee and keeping a memo of major and minor injuries, again countersigned by the detainee. The Supreme Court held failure to comply with the requirements to be punishable with departmental action and contempt of court proceedings. Mr. Ravi Chander concluded his report with this chilling passage: “To counter terrorism and “counter terrorism” [by the State] are not one and the same … It is clear that all the victims belong to a single community and mostly to a single economic class. This may be insufficient to place the burden surely at a single door-step, namely the police. This however surely tells a pattern. A seriously dangerous pattern.”

Mr. Ravi Chander's findings came as a surprise to civil rights activists. Because, as he himself laughingly told The Hindu, “I am not viewed as a Muslim-friendly person, as I had fought on the opposite side on the issue of Minorities reservation.” But this fact has only enhanced the credibility of the report.

Stunning exposé

If Mr. Ravi Chander underscored the arbitrariness of police detentions, the court proceedings turned out to be a stunning exposé on the state of Indian policing and the investigation-prosecution apparatus. The burden of the two charge sheets filed by the police was that Shahid Bilal (listed as Area Commander of Jaish-e-Mohammed/HuJI, and believed to have been killed since) and his associates conspired to wage war on the nation by organising bomb blasts in Hyderabad. In this they were helped by many others, including Mr. Rayeezuddin. And yet, astonishingly, neither charge sheet linked the accused specifically to any of the three bomb blasts. While the first was filed against Bilal and his associates, the second named two other key actors, Abdul Sattar and Abdul Khadri. Having learnt bomb-making in Bangladesh, Sattar and Khadri helped Bilal with the logistics. Mr. Rayeezuddin and others pitched in by promising “their solidarity and support for the jihadi movement and the protection of Muslims all over the world.”

With Bilal presumed killed, the second charge sheet came up in the court, which threw it out, quashing the charges against all the accused. Against each of the 21 accused, the charge sheet had shown invariably the same recoveries: “Two VCDs containing seditious clips, rebellious Islamic activities, Urdu seditious matter and Muslim fundamentalism.” But not one of the panch witnesses produced by the prosecution accepted that he was present when the recoveries were made. Panch witness Mohammad Saleem testified that the police wrote up the seizure mahazer (memo) after seizing the papers and CDs from a fellow police inspector. In one instance “Urdu seditious literature” turned out to be in English. The inspector who framed the charge sheet confessed to not being able to read Urdu. “Except the alleged confessional statement rendered to a police officer, there is no other evidence available connecting the accused with the theory of conspiracy to wage war,” the judge noted.

Earlier, in December 2008, another Hyderabad court cleared some among the same group of Muslim boys of the charge that they had conspired to kill a local Bharatiya Janata Party leader, Sampath. In that case the police inspector had translated “Arabic literature” into English without knowing any Arabic. The prosecution witness could not even confirm the existence of Sampath!

The BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh are furious that Aseemanand and some other Hindutva names have emerged in recent terror investigations. The parivar has every right to demand that due process be followed in their cases. However, one wishes they had been similarly concerned about young Muslim boys jailed and charge sheeted without evidence.

Vidya Subrahmaniam
17.02.2011
The Hindu

UPA’s Educational ‘Reforms’ : Myths and Reality

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. – Albert Einstein, 1930.

Announcing the 100-day agenda for the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Kapil Sibal promised ‘radical’ reforms in the country’s education system. These ‘reforms’ are being touted as an important step in deciding the destiny of the students and youth of the country. Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta, all praise for the neoliberal agenda, expressed his wish-list for the Manmohan Government: “In his first innings as a politician, Dr Manmohan Singh liberated our economy. In his second, as prime minister, he brought about a paradigm shift in … our foreign policy… Our guess, and wish, is that he now does to our higher education what he did to our economy and foreign policy in 1991 and 2008, respectively.”

We can clearly see what this ‘liberation’ means for the Indian people: if the 1991 ‘reforms’ in economy are still causing an unending spate of unemployment, hunger and farmers’ suicides; if the 2008 ‘revolution’ (about-turn) in foreign policy shackled India to the imperialist US through the Indo-US Nuke Deal; then the Government in its new term is all set this time, through ‘educational reforms’ to complete its coveted agenda of privatizing and commercializing education.

The first 100 days of the UPA Government were marked by various ‘expert’ reports setting out an agenda of educational ‘reform,’ the ‘revolutionary’ measure of making Std. X exams optional and by the passing of the Right to Education Act with much fanfare. Within the first 150 days, however, the real agenda behind the hype has begun to trickle in. In a memo dated 12 September 2009, the HRD Ministry has, in the wake of ‘austerity’ measures necessitated by the drought, announced drastic cuts in higher education funding and instructed Universities to resort to fee hikes, levy user charges, withdraw hostel subsidies and so on in order to meet the expenses of buying chemicals for labs and books for libraries.

Are these fund cuts or ‘austerity measures’ really an emergency move necessitated by the drought? Or are these measures, along with the “feel good” reform package announced earlier by Sibal, two sides of the same old liberalisation agenda (introduced way back in 1991) of the government washing its hands off its responsibility towards education and delivering it entirely into private hands? In the pages ahead, we will try to closely read the fine print of the RTE Act, the Reports of the Yashpal Committee and the National Knowledge Commission, and try to see the linkages between those policy documents and the latest fund-cut and fee-hike offensive announced by the MHRD. Our close reading will establish how the fee hikes and fund cuts are not sudden belt-tightening measures called for by the drought. After all the Government is practising no ‘austerity’ when it comes to doling out thousands of crores to the corporate sector through tax breaks, gifts and giveaways!

The fact is that more than a decade of anti-privatisation struggles by students have forced Governments to change their vocabulary; to ‘dress up’ the naked privatization-commercialisation agenda in a grand cloak of ‘reform’. In the first 100 days of the Government, the HRD Ministry did not openly unveil its privatisation agenda. Subsequently, however, the Government has decided that the drought is a good excuse to announce fund cuts and fee hikes – a good chance to push through its pet privatisation schemes on the pious pretext of ‘austerity.’

The manner in which capitalism has packaged itself in the past two decades has turned many fundamental notions on their heads: the most brutal and pitiless of economies are called ‘liberal’, autocratic regimes now represent ‘democracy’, and brutal wars of occupation herald ‘liberation’ from oppression. Our governments too have also followed these prescriptions. In their vocabulary, development is the displacement of lakhs of people, and ‘employment guarantee’ means starvation. When they set out to ostensibly ‘reform’ anything, it really means that they are hell-bent to destroy it. It is but natural for any person, therefore, to worry about this enthusiasm for educational ‘reforms’.

The truth is that education is never neutral terrain. Governments and power lobbies may try to look innocent, but they always have agendas when it comes to educational reform. Education makes knowledge a weapon of power. It uses it to reproduce the existing order, to manufacture consent, to keep those on the margins perpetually excluded. This is why Macaulay’s famous minute is so central to the way we study colonial rule in India. This is why, not so long ago, the Sangh Parivar was bulldozing its way through an entire range of educational and cultural institutions. And now here is the UPA in its new avatar, promising us educational ‘reform’ as neoliberal economists declaim that Manmohan Singh should “set our campuses free”. Clearly, the regime needs not only participants but also defenders. The UPA needs to hand over education in the hands of private capital, so that young and energetic minds are pressed to the service of market forces. Education is being turned into a commodity, so that a large section of society is kept out of the ambit of the educational system. Not just this, the educational system ensures that those who do manage to get ‘educated’ become loyal defenders of the present unjust and exploitative system – the very pillars on which the system rests.

MHRD’s Latest Assault:

An Open Call for Commercialising Government Universities

Universities without seminars… libraries without books… labs minus chemicals… and campuses with only students who can pay…

That is what Kapil Sibal wants to do to Government Universities.

The MHRD Circular to all Universities dated 12 September 2009:

• Imposes ‘Mandatory cuts’ to the tune of 15% on central government funding to Universities.
• Orders Universities to generate its own funds for chemicals, library books, etc through “gradual revision of tuition fees, levy of user fees (for electricity etc), withdrawal of hostel subsidies and through other measures.”
• Orders Universities to hold fewer seminars

This will mean that the life breath of a University – its libraries, its classrooms and labs, its seminars, will be strangled out.

Hikes in tuition and hostel fees, user charges for electricity, water etc, will mean that Universities will become unaffordable for the mass of students from poorer or deprived backgrounds.

The UPA Government tells us that such huge cuts are required as ‘austerity’ measures: “In view of the current fiscal situation and that arising out of insufficient rain in large parts; of the country, and the consequent pressure on Government’s resources, there is need for further economy and rationalization of expenditure.” (Ministry of Finance circular, dated 7 September 2009)

Austerity: For Whom?

When the Congress dons the ‘austerity’ mask, (its leaders travelling economy class etc), it is clearly trying to garner legitimacy in order to prescribe ‘austerity’ to the public in the name of drought and recession.

But with the media revelations that UPA’s External Affairs Minister S M Krishna and his junior Shashi Tharoor both spent the Government’s first 100 days at luxury suites in five-star hotels, that other Ministers are busy spending public money to satisfy luxurious whims like Spanish and Italian tiles and vaastu-aligned toilets, and with Tharoor’s candid tweet branding economy class travellers as ‘cattle class’, Congress suffered a serious embarrassment. Recognising that the aam aadmi mask had slipped, the Congress hastened to position the mask in place once again: carefully crafted to display the correct expressions of sincerity and sacrifice.

Let’s take a look – when in the name of ‘austerity’

• Workers are being asked to put up with wage-cuts and job cuts in times of acute drought, price rise and hunger
• Students are asked to tighten their belts and forced to pay out of their own or their families’ pockets for essentials like library books, laboratory materials,

What kind of ‘austerity’ is the Congress government imposing on the richest in the country – the corporate houses?

700 crore a day gifted away to corporates (Excerpts from P Sainath’s ‘Drought of Justice, Flood of Funds,’ The Hindu, ??) There’s always money for the Big Guys. Take a look at the budget and the “Revenues foregone under the central tax system.” The estimate of revenues foregone from corporate revenues in 2008-09 is Rs. 68,914 crore. (http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2009-10/statrevfor/annex12.pdf) By contrast, the NREGS covering tens of millions of impoverished human beings gets Rs. 39,100 crore in the 2009-10 budget. Remember the great loan waiver of 2008, that historic write-off of the loans of indebted farmers? Recall the editorials whining about ‘fiscal imprudence?’ That was a one-time, one-off waiver covering countless millions of farmers and was claimed to touch Rs. 70,000 crore. But over Rs. 130,000 crore (in direct taxes) has been doled out in concessions in just two budgets to a tiny gaggle of merchants hogging at the public trough. Without a whimper of protest in the media. Imagine what budget giveaways to corporates since 1991 would total. We’d be talking trillions of rupees. Imagine if we were able to calculate what the corporate mob has gained in terms of revenue foregone in indirect taxes. Those would be much higher and would mostly swell the corporate kitty for the simple reason that producers rarely pass on these gains to consumers. Let’s take only what the budget tells us (Annexure 12, Table 12, p.58). Income foregone in 2007-08 due to direct tax concessions was Rs. 62,199 crore. That foregone on excise duty was Rs. 87,468 crore. And on customs duty Rs. 1,53,593 crore. That adds up to Rs. 3,03,260 crore. Even if we drop export credit from this, it comes to well over Rs. 200,000 crore. For 2008-09, that figure would be over Rs. 300,000 crore. That is a very conservative estimate. It does not include all manner of subsidies and rate cuts and other freebies to the corporate sector. But it’s big enough. Simply put, the corporate world has grabbed concessions in just two years that total more than seven times the ‘fiscally imprudent’ farm loan waiver. In fact, it means that on average we have been feeding the corporate world close to Rs. 700 crore every day in those two years. Imagine calculating what this figure would be, in total, since 1991. (Er.., what’s the word for the bracket above ‘trillion?’) Ask for an expansion of the NREGS, seek universal access to the PDS, plead for more spending on public health and education — and there’s no money. Yet, there’s enough to give away nearly Rs. 30 crore an hour to the corporate world in concessions.

Rs 20,000-cr gift to Mukesh (Excerpt from a story in The Statesman News Service, 20 September 09) NEW DELHI, 19 SEPT: Did an unusual provision in the Budget this year help a single individual to the extent of nearly Rs 20,000 crore? The Finance Minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, inserted Section 35AD in the Finance Act, 2009 to allow 100 per cent tax exemption on the entire capital expenditure incurred on setting up and operating a natural gas or crude oil pipeline. In other words, he permitted capital expenditure to be allowed as revenue expenditure. The concession was allowed to three industries ~ cold chains, agricultural warehouses and operators of gas pipelines. But the Minister’s benevolence has helped one company ~ Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Limited (RGTIL) ~ more than anyone else. According to one estimate, the benefit is of Rs 20,000 crore.

A Government that budgets a mere Rs 15,429 crores on a country’s higher education, claiming to be strapped for funds, at the same time has enough to give away 30 crore an hour on some of the richest men – not just in the country, but in the world!

Clearly, the privatisation of education has nothing to do with drought or recession – it is a priority dictated by political choice – a choice of appeasing the corporate super-rich and making the poor and common students shoulder the burden of recession.

The Farce And Deceit Of the Right To Education Act

One of the showpieces of MHRD is the ‘Right to Education’ Act, recently passed by bpth houses of Parliament. The grand-sounding name of this Act suggests that it aims to provide ‘education for all’. What does the RTE really aim to do?

Right to Education was declared a fundamental right in 1993 itself

In 1993, in its landmark Unnikrishnan judgement, the Supreme Court cited Article 45 of the Constitution and declared that from birth until the age of 14, children were entitled to free and compulsory education and this was accorded the status of a basic right. Children below the age of 6 were to be given adequate nutrition, healthcare, a safe childhood, and pre-primary education (KG, nursery). Children between the ages of 6 and 14 were granted the basic right to primary education for these eight years. This is the most widely accepted definition of the ‘Right to Education’: namely – the right of all children until the age of 14 to nutrition, healthcare, safety, and education of an equitable standard free of cost.

The Unnikrishnan judgement also stated that according to Article 41 of the constitution, the right to education extends beyond 14 years of age. In other words, it was also essential to see secondary education up to Standard 12, higher education, technical education as well as professional education in the light of an essential right. The only difference is that while the government cannot be allowed to get away with any excuse for not providing the basic right of education up to 14 years of age, the responsibility of providing education beyond 14 years can be limited by the government’s financial capacity and state of development. Well before this, in 1966 itself the Kothari Commission had recommended that all children should be given an equal standard of education from public funds; that a democratic, secular, egalitarian and awakened society had to be created through a curriculum oriented towards scientific thought, productive work and knowledge creation; until 1986, 6% of the GDP should be allocated to these tasks and this level of allocation had to be maintained. Forty years have since passed, yet successive governments have not implemented these recommendations.

Does the 86th Constitutional Amendment Act (2002), introduced by the BJP-led NDA Government, reflect the spirit of the Unnikrishnan verdict?

In order to escape from the responsibilities mandated by the Unnikrishnan judgement, the BJP-led NDA government resorted to amending the Indian Constitution. The 86th Constitutional Amendment Act (2002) inserted a new Article (21A) in the Constitution, making the Unnikrishnan judgement redundant on two counts. Firstly it limited the fundamental right to the 6-14 age group, thereby disentitling 17 crore children below six years of their right. And secondly, it stated that even free and compulsory education shall be provided “in such manner as the State may, by law, determine.” Accordingly, the Government is allowed to define, according to its own whims, what constitutes ‘free and compulsory education’ and is not bound by the terms of the Unnikrishnan verdict. No other fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution is left to the interpretation of Governments in this manner.

What about the UPA Government’s Right to Education Act in its present form? Surely this Act is sincere about ensuring Right to Education?

The UPA’s ‘Right to Education’ Act is based on the 86^th Amendment. It is, therefore, nothing but the next step in circumscribing the Unnikrishnan judgment’s mandate of genuine right to education as a fundamental right. This is not just our understanding – the UPA has not hidden its real intentions. In February 2008, the MHRD sent a letter to the Cabinet Secretariat along with the draft text of the Right to Education Act 2008 saying: (Letter no. F.N. 1-1/2008 E.E. 4 February 2008 (Confidential). One can well imagine what the Right to Education Act will really achieve, if this is the stated intention of the government. The following points in the RTE are worth noting:

a) This Act does not aim to bring about any change in the discriminatory, multi-layered education system that currently prevails. Rather than demolishing the wall of privatized, high cost schooling by bringing in government-funded quality schooling for all, it reinforces the wall! While leaving the rampant exploitative private schooling system untouched, and refusing to provide universally available government schools free from the profit impulse, it proposes ‘Private-Public Partnerships’ through which private profiteers are allowed entry into government-run schools. This essentially frees the government from the responsibility of providing for universal education, and keeps education at the mercy of private business.

b) Rather than providing free government schools for all, it proposes that 25% seats will be reserved for poor students for “free education” in private schools. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating: how does the Act propose to ensure that this quota will be filled? The 25% quota regulation is violated routinely in Delhi where it has been in force for some time now.

c) The RTE Act claims that “education vouchers” will be provided to poor students. These vouchers will however only amount to the average amount spent on a child in a government school! Do Mr. Kapil Sibal and the MHRD believe that there is any comparison whatsoever between the expenditure on a child in government schools and the enormous price demanded by private schools? The RTE Act does not spell out if vouchers will be given to all of the 19 crore children of schoolgoing age who are in need of education. Apart from the admission fees, will the voucher cover the costs of “picnic fees”, “exam fees” and several other such costs such as uniforms and shoes that private schools regularly demand? The fees charged by private schools is skyrocketing at such a rate that even the middle class is finding it increasingly difficult to afford. The ongoing movement against the high fees in private educational institutions in Delhi is proof enough.

d) Further, even if poor children manage to survive until Class 8, what will happen after this, when the government stops paying their fees? These children will be out on the streets once more, while those of their classmates who could pay the exorbitant fees, will pass Class 12 and go on to enter the hallowed portals of IITs, IIMs or prestigious foreign universities.

e) Most important of all – can this provision of 25% reserves seats solve the problem of the 19 crore children between the age of 6-14 in our country who need education? At present, around 4 crore children study in recognized private schools. If we allow for 25% reservation in these schools, then, assuming it is implemented faithfully, 1 crore children can avail of education – what is to become of the remaining 18 crore? They will remain condemned to the sub-standard education as usual. Further, second-rate private schools mushrooming which currently charge around Rs. 100-150 will take advantage of the 25% reservation clause to avail of Government funds by hiking their fees to match the Government grant. In the name of educating poor children, private schools will claim and enjoy all sorts of subsidies and grants. This will mean public money flowing into private profiteers’ coffers. What an illuminating example of PPP or ‘Public Private Partnership’!

f) What is stopping the Government from improving the quality and expanding number of government schools to ensure access for all students? Why, instead, is the Government hell-bent on sending poor kids to expensive private schools? Actually, the Government’s agenda is to discredit and dismantle the huge network of government schooling, so that the market for private schools can flourish unchallenged.

g) A fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution means that any citizen can approach the court for justice if such a right is violated. But according to the RTE Act just passed by Parliament, if any citizen wishes to go to court against any private school, then he or she must first take permission from the requisite government authority! The Act also states that if any authority violates any clause in the Act in “good faith”! What a crude and cruel joke in the name of ‘fundamental right to education’! Clearly, the state desires to lend itself to supporting and protecting the interests of the already powerful private schools than actually bringing in legislation to expand the domain of education.

For the more than 77% of our population which subsists on less than 20 rupees a day, what else is this Act except a document of deceit and lies – a ‘Right to Education’ turned upside down?

Haryana schoolgirl Schoolgirl paraded without top over fee row Manveer Saini, TNN 29 August 2009 CHANDIGARH: In a shocking incident, a Class III student was allegedly humiliated by her class teacher and stripped of her top for not paying the tuition fee. The victim, who is entitled to full fee concession, was made to move from one classroom to another to cries of “shame, shame”, it has been alleged. The incident happened at Faridabad Model School on Friday. The nine-year-old daughter of an autorickshaw driver who had been sanctioned full fee concession by the district education department under a scheme for underprivileged children told her teacher that she had not paid the school fee. “The teacher then took off her T-shirt and tried to pull the skirt too. When she failed in her attempt, she paraded my daughter from room to room and made the children say shame, shame,” the mother said. She claimed she came to know of the incident only when the distraught girl returned from school. Though school principal H S Malik denied the matter was related to fee, she said the teacher has been suspended. The police, too, took cognizance of the complaint made by the victim’s mother against the teacher, Neetu. “We came to know about this incident in the afternoon. I have instructed the police station to register a case,” police commissioner P K Aggarwal said. Faridabad’s district education officer K Bala claimed ignorance but assured immediate probe and appropriate action against the school management and the teacher. According to reports, the victim was made to pay the fee regularly. Her parents had approached the district administration regarding this and invited the school management’s ire. N L Jangid, president of Parent’s Association of Faridabad, said the government had failed to implement fee-related instructions of Punjab and Haryana High Court and Supreme Court.

Court raps Apollo, says treat poor for free Harish V Nair, Hindustan Times New Delhi, September 23, 2009 The Delhi High Court on Tuesday slammed the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital for denying free treatment to poor patients as per its lease agreement with the government while availing land at concessional rates 15 years ago. It asked the hospital to immediately earmark 33 per cent of in-patient beds and 40 per cent of out-patient beds for economically weaker patients. This comes to 200 beds. The hospital has been told that `free bed’ includes all expenses of the patient from the time of admission till discharge: tests, medicines, visits by doctor, surgery and even organ implants. Any person with an income below Rs 2,000 per month is entitled to be treated free. The bench headed by Chief Justice A.P. Shah also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on Apollo for forgetting its social obligation after getting land at Re 1 per 15 acre per year and, on the other hand, indulging in “frivolous litigations” challenging the norm. The ruling came on a publicinterest petition filed by lawyer Ashok Aggarwal. The court was particularly angry at the hospital’s repeated non-compliance of its orders to provide free treatment to the poor. The orders were first given in 1998 and repeated in 2007.

Making Std. X Board Exams Optional: Will it Relieve Students’ Stress?

Will the move to make the Std. X exams optional reduce stress and pressure on children? Educational and exam reform are no doubt called for: the spectre of students committing suicide due to bad marks haunts us. But removing the board exams is like touching the tip of an iceberg and going no further. Even making these exams ‘optional’ will lead to an increase in the divides in society: what will be the status of students from less fortunate backgrounds who by not doing this exam will be underrated by society? The stress caused by the board exams has a lot to do with the fact that opportunities for higher education and employment are so few and highly contested. So long as opportunities remain limited, and exams exist as a mode of elimination rather than evaluation, students will continue to feel stressed wondering whether they will make it to college or a good job.

Foreign universities: Shining Shops for Education

As the mess in the deemed universities becomes clear, the HRD ministry has an innovative solution: it is time to invite foreign players onto the scene. On the cards is the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations, Maintenance of Quality and Prevention of Commercialisation) Bill, first cleared by the cabinet in February 2007. It is said to be one of the first files Sibal requested upon assuming office. Sibal, shamefully, tried to exploit the assaults on Indian students in Australia to tout the entry of foreign universities in India.

Who will foreign and private players cater to?

As Sibal himself admits, only 160,000 students have the means or ability to go abroad and study each year. It follows that the large numbers of students who remain have to ‘make do’ with an Indian education. Pandering to the upper middle class and elite constituency as if they alone have the right to education. Sibal’s moves do nothing to improve the quality of education for the many, but cater only to the select, privileged few.

Will the best foreign universities come to India?

It is a simple fact that any foreign university that sets itself up here, at such a distance, will come with the intention of making profit and gaining control over the market for higher education. Philip Altbach, director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, USA, points out that foreign providers are usually not ‘top’ universities, “but are rather institutions at the middle or bottom of the hierarchy in their home countries. Some have financial or enrolment problems at home and want to solve them with offshore ventures. And some are “bottom-feeders” who will provide a substandard educational product in India… International experience shows that the “market” is slow to detect low quality — and there seems to be a clientele for poor quality in any case.”

PMO objects to Foreign Varsities Bill Anubhuti Vishnoi Indian Express Wednesday, Sep 23, 2009 New Delhi : The long-pending Foreign Education Providers’ Bill, that promises to usher in Ivy League institutes, has now run into objections from the Prime Minister’s Office, which feels the legislation is not in keeping with the new reform agenda it is working on for the education sector. Sources said this was likely to further delay the Bill, which was expected to be on the Cabinet agenda this week. Highly placed sources in the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry confirmed that the PMO had written to them on the issue. The PMO, it is learnt, feels the Bill does not go along with the reform-centric higher education sector envisaged keeping in mind the Prof Yashpal Committee’s recommendations. Moreover, the draft legislation, which has already undergone the inter-ministerial consultation process, does not factor in the National Council for Higher Education, the single independent higher education authority. The legislation, which had run into stiff opposition from the Left parties in the last UPA government, had been recently resurrected by the HRD Ministry with some changes like terming them ‘foreign education providers’ and not ‘deemed to be universities’ as proposed earlier. The Bill also fails to specify a time-bound and transparent process for getting the approval for setting up a centre in India. While a proposal by a foreign university/institute will stay pending with the University Grants Commission (UGC) for over six months, the Bill does not specify the period within which the ministry will grant its final approval. This absence of a time-bound mechanism, the PMO has said, will defeat the very aim of the legislation. The PMO has also objected to the fee regulation process saying it will reflect badly if the UGC regulates fee for foreign varsities when it does not do so for universities of India as of now. The PMO thinks the fee regulations may act as a deterrent for Ivy League institutes planning to set up to centres in India. “The PMO also wants clarity on exemptions from the bureaucratic approval process for certain highly prestigious institutes if they want to set up an institute in India. That apart, certain penal provisions in case of violations by foreign varsities have also been frowned upon by the PMO,” an HRD official said.

The Yashpal Committee Report:

Progressive Smokescreen for Privatisation

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has said that the recommendations of the ‘Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education in India’ headed by the much-respected educationist Prof. Yashpal, will be his Bible. The Yashpal Committee Report henceforth YCR) has been widely hailed all around – and indeed, it has much in it that deserves praise. Indeed, it begins with the poetic and powerful affirmation that “A university is a place where new ideas germinate, strike roots and grow tall and sturdy. It is a unique space, which covers the entire universe of knowledge. It is a place where creative minds converge, interact with each other and construct visions of new realities. Established notions of truth are challenged in the pursuit of knowledge.” It emphasises the inter-disciplinary character of University education, a holistic, humanist vision of the University, and the organic link between University and society. It speaks out against the rapidly expanding trend of private engineering and management colleges that have reduced education to a business. It criticizes rote learning and speaks of the need for curricular reform. The report also described how the “Indian system of higher education has kept itself aloof from the local knowledge base of the worker, the artisan and the peasant.” (p.13) In other words, the YCR expounds a holistic and humanistic vision of education where the university and society are not separated from each other.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. A closer reading reveals that cloaked in this humanist vision, the doors for privatisation, fee hikes, corporatisation have been strategically opened up. In other words, we have before us now the MHRD’s latest offensive recommending fund cuts and fee hikes.

Recommendations of Private Funding

The YCR states that one of its key concerns is upholding the autonomy of universities so as to ensure freedom in research and training. (p.9).This is indeed a laudable principle, especially insofar as it calls for academic freedom and self-evaluation and self-reform in Universities. It also recognises that funding to universities has become “inadequate, irregular and inflexible.” Yet it prescribes, not a quantum increase in Government funding but rather a regimen where the University must solicit private funds to ‘supplement’ public funding. For instance, it recommends that Universities must develop an “ability to attract partnership from the private sector.” (p 38) It states that the role of a VC must extend beyond the academic realm to financial prowess too. It recommends that the Universities hire ‘professional fund raisers’ who will highlight the University’s ‘USP’ to attract funding. All this is but a short step to tailoring the academic curriculum to suit the market and letting corporates take over campus spaces, thus fencing off many of the university’s resources from its own students and teachers. The dependence on professional fund raisers and the inevitable preoccupation with ‘selling’ itself is compatible neither with the social responsibilities nor with the academic autonomy of the university as outlined by the YCR itself.

The issue is not of blind opposition to any private investment in education. The report does not openly advocate the withdrawal of the State from its responsibility to fund education, rather it says the “State cannot walk away from” education (p 41). But in the same breath it talks of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in education (p 34). The real issue is: At whose doorstep lies the primary responsibility for funding higher education lie? This is the test where the YCR fails us. It speaks as though private and public responsibility for education are mutual and equal. It does not spell out how ‘Government responsibility’ is defined and it makes no recommendations of how much govt. spending should be allocated towards education.

How can a university be both a centre of free thought, uphold humanist values and pander to corporate interests? There is a certain ambiguity to this definition of autonomy. How is it possible to be both the “trustee of humanist traditions’ and a slave to the market? How is “the principle of moral and intellectual autonomy from political authority and economic power” to be upheld by a university if its resources are determined by how well it panders to these interests?

Public Private Partnership: the World’s Experience

‘PPP’ (recommended by the Yashpal Committee too) is being justified in the name of correcting the “undersupply” in higher education: but can the private sector really meet the needs of the mass of India’s students? The example of other countries suggests not. In most cases, the higher the share of private universities in higher education, the lower the share in enrolment. In China, for instance, private institutes constitute 39.1% of higher education institutions, but a mere 8.9% students study in them. In the US, private universities constitute 80% of higher educational institutions, but they account only for 42.8% of total enrolments in the country. By contrast, public sector institutions in the US constitute just 19.6% of total higher education institutions, but they account for 57.3% of enrolments.

No Effective Correctives for Capitation Fees

The report describes the rampant corruption and commercialisation in private institutions. But when it comes to a “credible corrective mechanism,” all it can suggest is that family members of investors should not hold administrative posts. It says private institutions ‘should’ not have a ‘sole motive of profit’ and ‘should’ not confine themselves only to ‘commercially viable’ sectors. The question is, if profit remains one of the motives, how can the institution avoid ills like steep fees, capitation fees etc.? As a solution for the problem of exorbitant fees in private institutions, the YCR recommends, not strict curbs on fee hikes, but merely a certain percentage of ‘freeships’ for poor students – a formula that has proved a dismal failure in the private sector schools in Delhi. The YCR seems to have no idea of the structural logic of private capital and private profit. Mistakenly locating the profiteering motive in ‘family’ greed, it fails to see that private capital inevitably has a profit motive that militates against the humanist vision of university.

The Reality of ‘Differential Fee Structure’ and ‘Education Loans’

The question of fees is a central one. Time and again, in the context of both private and government institutions, YCR repeats that “No student should be turned away …for want of funds for education.” And it says “primary focus” should be “on making education affordable.” (p 38-39) This can be achieved only through making public funding and low fees the norm: but the YCR does not recommend this. Rather it proposes a ‘differential fee structure’ – high fees for those who can afford it and scholarships, educational loans for those who can’t. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) too recommends a differential fee structure. Such a measure cannot cater to poor students; it is nothing but a pretext to make high fees the norm, while virtuously denying the agenda of commercialisation. The best way of making education accessible to the poor is to provide education at a very low cost. If we want to avoid subsidising the rich, the best way is not through increasing fees, but through taxes: through an educational cess on people in a certain salary bracket, and an even larger cess on industry. High fees, ‘for those who can pay’ means privatization by the back door: the government is sure to decree that all but the very poorest, ‘can pay’!

Red Carpet for Foreign Universities

The YCR points out that the best Universities are rooted in their social milieu and good foreign universities may not be transplantable. But he contradicts himself by recommending that the “top 200” foreign institutions be welcomed in India. The NKC also similarly recommends “incentive” for “good” foreign institutions and disincentive for sub-standard ones. Both YCR and the NKC evade the point that “incentives” for the “good” institutions are likely to mean that they poach on our public resources and existing institutions, rather their investing their own academic assets and resources here.

Single Regulatory Body:

Backdoor Entry for Corporate Share in Education Policy

In consonance with the YCR and NKC recommendations, the govt. is considering doing away with regulatory bodies like the UGC, the AICTE, the MCI and so on. In their place, it will establish a single, ‘independent’ regulator. The YCR states that its conception of a single regulator has a different rationale than that offered by the NKC. At first glance this is true: the YCR’s main argument for this recommendation is that University education should not be cubicalised or fragmented. But one fails to see how such an ‘independent’ regulator will be held accountable to the humanist vision of University as outlined by the YCR. The danger is that such a regulator will be free from checks and balances, accountable and answerable to none, with less need to respond to protest mobilisations from the students or teachers.

Interestingly, both YCR and NKC propose that the single regulator comprise of seven members. The NKC says all seven must be distinguished academics; the YCR says five of them must be academics, while one must have a background of social engagement while another must represent industry. The idea of corporates having a say in education policy has thus made an entry – not through the NKC which was widely perceived as having a neoliberal agenda, but through the YCR which commands greater acceptability.

How ‘Autonomous’ are the Proponents of ‘Autonomy’?

The Yashpal Committee lays great stress on autonomy of universities. The ‘autonomy prescribed by him is ambiguous and open to many interpretations. At one level, ‘autonomy’ means the laudable idea that universities should be able to decide their academic content – free from the ideological control or meddling by the State. But behind this idea lurks the idea that the State should be free from responsibility for Universities; and Universities should seek funding from non-State sources.

How ‘autonomous’ is the Yashpal Committee itself? Why is it that the YCR bears the imprint of the World Bank’s agenda for education in countries like India?

In 2000, the World Bank released its report on ‘Higher Education and Developing Countries: Peril and Promise,’ prepared by a Taskforce of which Manmohan Singh too was a member. This report recommended the reduction of government spending on higher education and transfer of administration and control of higher education institutions from government to private hands – all in the name of autonomy. Subsequently, the Birla-Ambani Committee report, the model Act, the National Knowledge Commission and even the Yashpal Committee report have in one way or another echoed these recommendations.

The World Bank Taskforce report is against elections to student and employee unions on campuses, because elected representatives are against ‘change’. It is true that any honest students’ union or employees union would be committed to resist the kind of ‘change’ (privatisation and commercialisation) being ushered in by Governments in this phase. Montek Singh Aluwalia, Planning Commission Vice Chairman and Manmohan Singh’s right-hand man, openly spelt out his objection to unions:

“Unionisation in higher education personnel is a major impediment. When you talk to students unions, I am not sure that they are arguing for the kinds of things that are oriented towards educational reform. They are certainly interested in keeping fees low.”

-(Planning Commission Vice Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Walk the Talk, Indian Express, December 4, 2006)

“Political activism means that students are spending a large proportion of their time on politics rather than education. There are situations… where levels of activism can rise to the point where high-quality education becomes impossible. In situations… where academic pursuits have been taken hostage, activism may need to be restricted.”

-From the Report of a World Bank Task Force on Higher Education in Developing Countries, February 2000, of which the present PM Manmohan Singh was a member)

Isn’t the Lyngdoh Committee merely echoing this neo-liberal agenda scripted long ago in the corridors of the World Bank?

Anticipating that a direct crackdown on student unions would lead to revolt, the crackdown has taken a devious route. The Supreme Court’s directives based on the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee Report – ostensibly to end money- and muscle-power in campus elections – have been used to gain greater legitimacy for restrictions on student unions.

The Yashpal Committee report speaks of comprehensive change and reform in the character of higher education but it is quite silent on the question of student unions. Why? It appears that it has been weighed down by the burden of the agenda spelt out by the World Bank Taskforce report!

Successive Governments, through successive reports – the Birla Ambani report, Model Act, NKC, YCR etc, have tried to give an Indian stamp of approval and legitimacy to the World Banks agenda for education.

The Unspoken Politics of ‘Educational Reform’

Why, after all, is education so crucial an agenda for the government? Why was education chosen as the key target for the neoliberal agenda dictated by imperialism, after the economy and foreign policy?

Re-ordering education is crucial in order to ensure a workforce tailored to the needs of global capital. Global capital requires that education be provided only to the degree and extent that it serves the market. The vast mass of students excluded from higher education by high fees can, then, be provided with just enough literacy to allow them to read ads and be better consumers. Of this mass, it is enough to provide 30-35% with schooling up to Std X or Std XII so that they can become technicians in computerised markets. The top 10-15% – trained in the better schools and universities – is enough to produce new research and knowledge as required by the capitalist market.

The question, for us, is – do we in India need education that will further knowledge and make us more self-reliant? Or do we need education that is a slave to global capital and the ‘free’ market? The needs of our people and the needs of global capital are at odds with each other. Higher education and research are not just means of eking a livelihood or getting a job – they equip people with the capacity for critical analysis. And the market does not need or want people with a faculty for critical analysis. In fact, the market views such critical analysis as a threat – because it can see through the seductive mask of the market to the cruel face beneath. The market needs research, certainly, – but not the kind of research that seeks to understand, change or benefit society. Rather it merely wants the kind of research that produces technologies like the ‘terminator gene’ – that kills the capacity of crops to produce fertile seeds, and therefore kills the self-reliance of farmers, forcing them to buy seeds from MNC seed companies every time.

To disguise the real politics of educational ‘reform,’ our Governments tell us that privatisation of education will create better knowledge by promoting ‘competition’. Can they tell us – did the Wright Brothers invent the aeroplane due to ‘competition’? Did the world’s greatest scientists, philosophers and writers establish themselves in ‘competition’ with others? The fact is that knowledge never needed competition to justify itself. Rather, competition came into being only as a means of dividing surplus and private profit.

When we question the quality of private universities, the Government reassures us that if private and foreign universities prove to be of poor quality, they will be eliminated in ‘competition’ in the open market. Even if this dubious assertion were true – the fact is that education is not a consumer good like a TV or a pair of shoes. If one buys a poor-quality TV, one can always discard it and buy a better one. But a poor-quality degree and education is a lifelong burden that no one can compensate or replace. Can one throw away a poor quality degree or exchange it for a better one? Can there be any insurance or warranty for education as there is for a TV or fridge? We have already pointed out that the market is slow to detect low quality. By the time the market assesses and eliminates the poor-quality educational institutions, the minds, careers and lives of at least one generation and maybe more.

We have shown that the credibility of government schools is deliberately and systematically being lowered. The quality of education offered in those schools is being lowered so much that people are being forced to opt for private schools. Now it is being subtly propagated that good-quality schooling is impossible in government schools. But one wonders – did Ravindranath Tagore, C V Raman or Amartya Sen study in private schools? The argument of ‘quality’ is a patently false one – a mare pretext to allow the Government to shed its responsibility for education and schooling.

Can such a process ever take us towards a more self-reliant India? Certainly not. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee tells us that proudly that the share of the service sector in our GDP is 60%. The question is – in whose service are 60% of our young workers deployed? The discomfiting answer is that our young generation is having to serve the consumers of the world’s MNCs – since BPOs are a large part of the service sector. The service sector can never be a firm foundation for a self-reliant economy – self-reliance requires a strong agricultural and manufacturing sector. But our ruling class is committed to the long-term agenda of indefinitely shackling our country’s autonomy and sovereignty to the interests of imperialism and global capital.

The question of saving education is integrally linked to the question of saving the country’s future, its sovereignty and its people’s survival and livelihood. Even the small section of poor and marginalised people who had some limited access to schooling and higher education will now be comprehensively evicted – and all this under the garb of sweet phrases like ‘affordable education’, ‘stress-free education’ and inclusive education. The revolutionary poet Gorakh Pandey had observed, quite rightly, – “Your enemies speak your own language more cunningly than even you.’