Do you really care about the saffronisation of education?

Short answer: Most of you don't give two fucks unless it happens at an 'elite' institution. Bourgeois much?

Longer rant:
If you really want to know, this process of saffronisation has been going on for quite some time now. It's really shocking that people only start caring when it happens at places like FTII or IIT-Madras.

Gajendra Chauhan bothers you

As of 2014, the ABVP has control of the students' unions in 15 out of the 30 Central Universities and many of the appointments at the authority level in these universities are former RSS pracharaks. From what I've heard from friends in Silchar studying at Assam University, the ABVP regularly harasses students affiliated with the Students' Federation of India with threats to severely compromise their academic lives. What's more is that with RSS pracharaks in the authority, they can if they really want to. The situation is hardly going to be better in any of the other 14 Central Universities where the students' body is controlled by the ABVP. But of course, Assam University is not a 'premier' institute, so you hardly give a shit.

This doesn't...

People brushed off the presentation of 'Hindutva science' at the Indian Science Congress this year as a minor nuisance. While the entire scientific community was signing petitions regarding such a disturbing turn of events, where pseudoscience was being given a voice at the premier state sponsored scientific convention in the country, our merry band of pseudo-intellectuals decided not to give a fuck. No rallies there.

Neither does this...
(Hey! Isn't that College Street?)

Nobody gave even a minor fuck about the fact that the Union slashed the overall health budget, but increased funding for AYUSH. Yes, if you think American conservatives are bad for their evolution and global warming denialism, you should know that India actually spends a shitload of money on education and research in homeopathy of all things(Quite literally, 'টাকা জলে দেওয়া'). Amusingly, a section of our secular, progressive intellectuals actually supported the cause of homeopathy colleges.

And it doesn't stop there. All this is not even the tip of the iceberg as far as saffronisation is concerned. Here comes the whopper:

Our conscientous Left (including the statist Left, revolutionary Left, searchist Left, anarchist Left, Left but not quite Left, Rightist Left etc.) has somehow not gotten the memo regarding the saffronisation of the school curriculum which really is the biggest problem as far as saffronisation is concerned.

Nor that this guy, who had Wendy Doniger's book banned, decides what millions of kids study.

What do you think is a bigger problem? Injecting Hindutva faculty into a premier institute, or the brainwashing of millions of impressionable children into an ideology of irrationality and hatred? Because if you're going with the obvious answer here, I don't see anybody protesting on the streets about the latter. You can at least trust people in college with their own political beliefs, you cannot expect schoolkids to rise up in protest because they're being taught irrationality and hatred.

As a matter of fact, the fact that you do not attack the disease at its roots has a major contribution to the fact that the same kids grow up and then turn entire university campuses to the religious right.

But unless it's one of your elite cultural icons of education, you are hardly bothered with what happens where. Some of the posters being shared by students elsewhere read, 'Ritwik Ghatak was here' and unless everyone knows about Ritwik Ghatak and his cinema, this has no meaning for the vast majority of college students out there. This cancerous elitism is really a thing, it's a fact that students in elite colleges consider their counterparts elsewhere to be really beneath their level, despite quoting Marx, Sartre or Ritwik Ghatak at the drop of a hat (I now believe this ability is a reason for the elitism, the irony...)

If the Left(all included, once again) keeps practising its politics of self-interest and bourgeois elitism, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the cultural right is making massive gains all across campuses.This elitism is toxic and self-defeating, the vast majority go to institutions that are not meant for intellectual Mandarins and it is this mass that later forms the backbone of the nation state.

No, please don't pretend like you care about the saffronisation of education if all you care about are its manifestations in your intellectual space. If you really care, address the root of the problem, about how even the less elite Central Universities are being saffronised, about how pseudoscience gets the same attention as modern science and most importantly about how schoolchildren grow up believing all of this and then propagate the same once they grow up.

The Ideal of Scholasticism

So this article has been doing the rounds on facebook, and I understand that in the light of recent happenings across colleges in India, it offers up some thoughtful criticism of the state of education today. My point is not to counter everything said, but a particular ideal that I feel permeates the article and Liberal Arts colleges at large at every level of organisation.

The thing is, and although I'm certain the authoress understands education far better than I do, that in a way, it does justify a sort of ivory tower attitude towards what education should be and I disagree. It rests upon an assumption of free-thinking, that does not really exist, since the kind of culture being valorized is in itself, extremely normative despite its disregard for attendance criteria etc.

One of the things that keeps popping up in labellings of the university system as pandering to 'GDP growth' or driven 'market economic' logic is how certain things like MoUs with the industrial sector or a more job-oriented approach being somehow harmful to the intellectual climate of our Arts and Sciences colleges(hereafter, referred to as A&S colleges). This I believe, is somehow misguided and persistence of such an attitude may well be detrimental and counterproductive to the state of education today.

The first thing is that it is my personal belief that the purpose of the education system is to create socially responsible individuals who can potentially contribute to society either intellectually, economically or culturally by virtue of giving them scope to maximise the functioning of their capabilities. This is not to say that socially responsible individuals should pander to the status quo, but that to challenge such ideals requires a connection with greater society at large. The role of public intellectuals is not to sit within ivory towers and sermonise over cups of coffee and cigarettes(although I could very validly be accused of the same here), but to engage with this and such a role is profoundly political. That is one of the most important reasons for the existence of student politics, independent or otherwise. To that end, I find a normative discourse such as 'universities are supposed to produce scholars, not workers' unfortunate.

The trend has been to valorise scholasticism and ivory tower intellectualism while decrying engagement with industries or business as against a particular 'academic culture', or in a somewhat more paranoid manner, as an insidious attempt at privatising the public sector(the fear of which, while not baseless on a general scale, but is misplaced here). I quote this particular passage from the piece I mentioned at the beginning:

"This is what has always distinguished the public universities and colleges in the country from the IITs and IIMs and the professional law schools – that they have guarded and nurtured fiercely a certain romanticism about academics neither wisely nor too well. This bit of idealism is neither irrational nor lazy. Far from it: it is this spark that lays the foundation of thinking and doing big. It makes one argue, innovate and dream up fundamental changes in academia – not make hack-writers and technicians out of fine minds and generous souls."

This is not a singular instance of a person railing about how A&S colleges are intellectually superior to technical institutes, but a widespread chauvinism at every level in A&S colleges that indulges in chest-thumping regarding academic purity and the fact that such colleges are not 'nerd factories' and discourage people from becoming 'good little worker bees'.

I cannot speak for the humanities point of view(although I am certain a section of them might agree with me), but as a student of science and considering that science students form the majority of the student community in most A&S colleges while remaining a minority in the cultural discourse, let me say a few things:

1. The majority of academicians in any field aren't innovators or revolutionary paradigm-shifters, but the equivalent of what the writer of the article derides as 'hack-writers and technicians'. She misses out that such 'hacks' and 'technicians' are the backbone of the academic community, and it is due to the sum of their relatively smaller contributions to their fields that the innovators can often come up with 'big-bang' discoveries etc. There's nothing wrong with being a 'run-of-the-mill' nerd, although most of us still want to achieve greatness in some way or another.
2. With innovators and game-changers, there is no 'formula' to producing or laying the foundations for such people. Given the rarity of such individuals there's hardly any point in waiting for 'academic Messiahs'. Furthermore, it is often true, especially in the sciences, that such Messiahs displayed attitudes that are derided as being in common with 'hack writers and technicians'. 
3. At least in the present context of India, a lot of the truly 'world-class' scientists have backgrounds in more technical and 'job-oriented' universities. Ashoke Sen, Shiraz Minwalla, Rajesh Gopakumar in theoretical physics, K.H. Paranjape and Mahan Mj in geometry, Subhash Khot and Manindra Agarwal in theoretical computer science(I could add to that list and it would go on), have backgrounds in technical universities.
4. Some may raise a counterpoint regarding Satyen Bose and Meghnad Saha being students of Presidency, and they'd do well to remember that in those days, Presidency was indeed a machine, producing workers for the purpose of the British Raj. The environment was quite 'market-oriented', in a manner of speaking.
5. Economics departments across the country have produced leading academics on a regular basis, and in A&S colleges, they've been the least committed to intellectual purism, encouraging students to engage with industry etc. An ivory tower attitude never really helped in economics, but that's the nature of the subject.

But most importantly, engagement with industry and the public/private sector is not antithetical to scientific progress, but intrinsically linked to it, both directly and indirectly. The best departments of science have had strong links to the industrial sector, even in the USSR and there are very few exceptions to this. Even strong departments of Pure Mathematics(probably as Ivory Tower as you can get in any scientific discipline), are often found in universities with ties to industry.

The applied sciences cannot get by without cooperating with industry or exposing their students to such an environment anyway. How on Earth are you supposed to conduct advanced computational research in atmospheric sciences, the understanding of which is essential to understanding climate change, without supercomputers? And concentrating resources in certain thrust areas in applied science will automatically lead to complaints from people involved elsewhere regarding bias and being ignored as far as funding goes. How is such research supposed to take place without tying up with private agencies? Any institution seeking to fulfill its potential in the sciences should encourage cooperation with the industrial sector instead of shunning it. Else, there is a severe risk that they will be left behind in the dust.

To return to what I was saying earlier, universities should ideally encourage people to expand upon their capabilities and people should realise that academia may not be everyone's cup of tea. Surely, if someone is talented in that respect and does not recognize it, he/she should be shown that they can fulfill their potential in that regard, but that's not a general thing. There are people, across departmental barriers, whose talents lie elsewhere, in the corporate sector, in the Government, in industry and otherwise, and the dominant culture would do well to take note of that and encourage these too, instead of normatively passing judgement on them. This isn't really 'market-oriented rhetoric' or 'GDP growth fetishism'. Not everyone wants to study for the 'heck of it' and they shouldn't be culturally encouraged to do so, ignoring their personal and general social realities. The pursuit of an abstract idea of excellence that almost every university and college aspires to as a whole, depends on this.

It needs to be remembered that a vast majority of people coming to A&S colleges, come to such places in the hopes of getting a job eventually and I see no reason to 'correct' such a view because that is contingent on their social realities. One shouldn't forget that a large percentage of people in these colleges ultimately end up in the private sector anyway, and that a dominant culture of deriding such attitudes only contributes to some of them not being able to maximise the functioning of their capabilities and creates a confusion with regards to their own understanding of fulfilling their capabilities. And this does happen, with people who come to certain departments wanting to eventually get into a more 'professional' sector, but thanks to the idealism, start believing academia is right for them, before realising it isn't and missing out on valuable internships etc. that they could have pursued at the time.

Tie-ups with private sector industries are not a foreshadowing of eventual fees hikes and privatisation of a particular university. It's not encroaching on any place where the public sector is active, but filling a niche where the public sector is not active. This is plain alarmism and revoking such agreements will end up harming students whose inclinations lie in that direction and rob them of a chance at a well-paying job.

It should be realised that those who join industries with high-paying jobs do end up contributing to society economically and ensure a secure future for themselves and their families. It also needs to be remembered that while you and I do not want or need luxuries in life, there are some who do, and they shouldn't be discouraged from pursuing any course of action that would make them happy, unless it involves harm to anyone else.

Thinking of engineers and workers as machinistic and unimaginative or snarking at people desiring a cushy well-paying job at a private company, is matched by the attitude that perceives Professors of Literary criticism as people freeloading off the State. Neither attitude is particularly healthy and both are counterproductive to an academic culture.

Others may point out that such a culture is specific to the humanities disciplines such as Literature and History, and not the sciences and economics, and truly, I know nothing about the necessary 'cultures for success' in those areas. However, that raises questions regarding whether or not such normativity is necessary or beneficial in the larger context where there are departments of sciences too.

Neither has such an environment in the country's top colleges helped encourage major political movements beyond the scope of campuses. Very few academics in such universities are involved with framing political policy or actively involved in thinking about how to solve problems of society beyond the occaissional activism to ease one's conscience, and criticising market economics from one's armchair(usually without looking at a single book on economics). The ivory tower excesses coupled with college-centric idealism often causes myopia in the political visions of its adherents.

The fact is, one cannot divorce political activism from society. Disassociating academic spaces from society at large only serve a purpose of greater depoliticization that is not necessarily dependent on the existence of campus politics. A student from JU might find an IIT or a National Law College to be apolitical by her standards, but we're seeing a time when graduates from such institutes are becoming far more politically active(both on the left and the right) than an average graduate from an A&C college and this should not come as a surprise anymore.

The lesson that these colleges 'teach' apparently, regarding a culture that eschews 'cushiony job placements' is a recent phenomenon as I had mentioned earlier(perhaps post-Naxal era?), or at least, indications of where people end up demonstrate so. This is not a culture intrinsic to the fabric of A&S colleges and is something that needs to change with time. The neo-Brahmanical chauvinism needs to end and give way to a more pluralistic culture, one that encourages fulfilling capabilities and not an imposition or valorization of a certain scholarly ideal.

To Support Welfare or Businesses?

So yesterday, I uploaded a rather boring and long-winded post on the Modi government's rollbacks of welfare schemes and how that basically sucks for the generally poor Indian population. Like most blogs on economics and policy, the amount of fucks given were close to zero, with one person being more interested in my Google+ display picture than the content(Normally, I'd be pleased, but the issue I believed, deserved more attention).

But among the fuck-givers, the most common complaint from those of a rightist persuasion(bordering on Wingnuttery) was that none of these welfare schemes can happen now because we don't have the money to finance our welfare schemes given India's 50-60% debt to GDP ratio and that increasing welfare spending contributes to deficit and that's bad for the nation as a whole.

Let me start off with a salacious accusation that people who scare the masses with debt, deficit and their seemingly disastrous consequences on the economy are basically a bunch of selfish fucks who are more concerned with having money in their pockets than your or my general condition and this is a merely a ruse for the Government to cut down on welfare for the masses and cut down on their taxes.

Since I was unable to convince people of the need to expand spending on welfare for its own sake, because y'know, some people have a manic fetish for growth rates and 'free' markets which they believe are the panacea to every economic and social woe on the planet. Most of them advocate widely debunked theories of increasing austerity(which naturally compromise development and welfarist policies) to bolster growth and reduce deficit and debt, which they believe are the biggest fucking problem the economy and society at large faces.

Their thinking is simple, the biggest problem is debt and debt hampers economic growth which in turn makes the world a shittier place. Unless you run a surplus, you're not gonna get anywhere with development. Look at Greece! They've gone to shit because they're racking up debt! Seems commonsensical enough, but it isn't.

Because people in general are fuckwits who are unconcerned about what happens to 90% of Indians as long as they get that high-paying job and are relatively well-off, it's alright to believe in widely debunked economic policies. That's how some people are and unless one can demonstrate that short-sighted idiocy is a problem for the 'growth rate', big businesses and industrialisation, they don't give a shit.

But think about it from a different very commonsensical angle, what do you think drives growth? Your entrepreneurial enterprises need labour, and where will you get that from? The need for skilled labour is perpetually on the rise, as industries become more technologically oriented and where will you get that if you do not bother ensuring that the masses receive free education? Unless you can ensure social mobility, security and welfare, where will you get the labour which you require?

If you've already made it, there's nothing much to say, but most of you reading this haven't. You might think that this idea of entrepreneurial India gives you a better chance of 'making it', but it doesn't. Not all of you will be making it that far, and chances are, you won't be making it because the limited skilled labour force that you can tap into, has been drained by corporations much larger and more powerful than yours. If you want to set up a new business, in this day and age, you will need skilled labour and for that, the Government needs to ensure that people have access to education. If you do not have a social security net, why do you even suppose anyone would take the risk of trying to educate themselves when they don't have access to the bare essentials? 

This is something that I hope none of us disagree with, but assuming you're one of those who piggishly believe that narrowly focusing on GDP growth(by incentivising corporations at the cost of social security), name a few countries that have achieved overall development without having comprehensive social security programmes? I do not know of any. The much touted example of South Korea as a corporate capitalist haven of sorts, also incidentally, had massive government spending in the critical areas of education and healthcare during the '60s and '70s. Without these, mobilising a skilled labour force would be nigh impossible. Even America's apparent lack of social security is a rather recent phenomenon that gained momentum during the Reagan era, what people forget is that 'The Great American Dream' is something that rested on programmes of social security for the masses.

The notion that social development at the cost of incentivising corporations hampers GDP growth in the long run is a myth even outside Heterodox paradigms.

Now, let's turn to the more jargon-y matter of deficit, because even when most people agree with the argument concerning the need for welfare and development, the right comes up with the reasoning that we're in debt and that implies that spending money will lead to financial collapse.

The thing is, that is not really true. Deficit scaremongers often use analogies with households to convince you into equating any debt that a person may have, with that of the government. It's really not the same thing.

For one thing, India's external debt is 23.2% of its GDP meaning we do not owe much of the 60%-ish of the GDP debt to anyone else but ourselves. Moreover, the debt is not out of control yet. Since nobody bothers with reading Keynes anymore, I'm going to argue this from what seems to be a more accepted view, that the current account deficit does indeed need to be reduced.

Now, there are multiple ways of reducing deficit, one way, as the Government currently is practicing, is austerity, that is to reduce public spending. As I pointed out earlier, reducing public spending however, in a country as underdeveloped as India, is risky for sustained economic growth, unless you're okay with India turning into an oligarchy(which more radical critics may argue has already happened, and not unreasonably).

The other way, is to bring in both progressive tax reform and tax compliance. While service tax has been increased, which is a step in the right direction, corporate tax rates have fallen and wealth tax has been abolished in favour of a modest 2% surcharge in the taxation of the superrich bumping it up to 12%.

However, if we are to believe that the deficit is that big a problem, it surely stands to reason that larger tax increases should have been implemented instead of cutting back on essential spending. Furthermore, middle-class populism has resulted in a number of subsidies that only serve the middle-class.

Take a look at these two simplistic pie charts from the ToI

The thing is, there still is enough wiggle-room to increase returns from both corporate as well as income taxes. And once again, I reiteriate that the defence sector is bloated beyond belief. Furthermore, both the Customs and Excise duties on a variety of things could be increased to compensate for spending. The fabled black money also helps.

Coming back to my original salacious claim, the fact is, India Inc. would never agree to increasing taxation. They're more than happy keeping what they have in their pockets while the poor be damned.

The Modi Sarkar has a clear choice here, they can keep corporations happy by slashing their tax rates and implementing deregulations while cutting back on welfare and social spending, or they could increase social spending while increasing tax rates and regulating businesses. By recent trends, it is obvious what they've chosen. 

Your Welfare We be Cutting!

Amidst all the criticisms of the BJP government on the basis of their right wing cultural agenda(which is worrying enough), something that tends to get drowned out is the debate regarding their regressive economic policies. What hasn't been talked about enough, is that within the two budget sessions that the Modi Government has presided over, has been their assault upon welfare schemes in India.

Now, I am no economics major, so caveat emptor, and while I may try restricting myself to what little I know or understand, I would be extremely grateful if those who understand the subject better than I do would point out the mistakes in this essay(and I will do my best to rectify them).

A quick survey of opinions on social media demonstrate an optimism regarding the 'Modi budgets' in boosting economic growth(by which they mean the growth of the nominal GDP) and investor confidence, but what is galling is how some influential social media personalities, representing the 'young enterpreneurial India' have scored the Government well on social security, for instance this answer on Quora which scores them 9/10 on social welfare, completely ignoring the more in-your-face cuts in welfare spending by the Central Government.

Worryingly, a lot of people take such opinions as 'facts', rather than doing any background research or reading between the lines. Furthermore, even when accepting the reality of such cuts in social welfare spending, 'Young India' often accepts the rhetoric that such cuts in social security are 'necessary' to achieve 'economic growth'(again, nominal GDP).

One of the biggest concerns is Government spending on health. Even during the UPA regimes, the health budget peaked at a 4%(inclusive of private healthcare) of the GDP and in 2010, the WHO listed the total expenditure on health at purchasing power parity per capita at a paltry 126$ coming in at 151st place out of 191 nations. The spending on public healthcare is shockingly low at a mere 1.3% of the GDP. The over-reliance on private healthcare providers makes healthcare an expensive proposition for most Indians. The reliance on the private sector is at 70% and 63% of urban and rural households respectively.

While Modi ambitiously talked about introducing a 'Right to Health', he simultaneously slashed the Union's abysmal health expenditure by a further 1/5th. What the budget cuts do is that healthcare needs must be met by the private sector which can severely overcharge patients in the absence of competition from an affordable/free public health system. This comes in a nation where over 1.5 million hospital beds need to be added and the number of medical personnel need to be increased twofold to meet the minimum standards set by the WHO.

But it isn't just the healthcare sector which has faced budget cuts, there are two key sectors which the previous NDA and UPA governments had declared as 'rights' which are facing serious budget cuts- education and food.

Take the Vajpayee government's own pioneering scheme for instance, the Sarva Siksha Abhijan, the compulsory free primary education project, on which spending has decreased from nearly 278 billion rupees to 220 billion rupees(a cut of 22.14%). The funding for the Mid-Day meal project has been cut by 16.41%, the Madhyama Siksha Abhijan for secondary education by 28.7% and the Rashtriya Uchhattar Shiksha Abhiyan for supporting state colleges by a massive 48%. The overall spending has decreased from 828 billion rupees to 690 billion rupees(both figures approximate), a cut 24.68%.

This comes when the MHRD set an initial requirement of 550 billion for the expansion of the SSA. The UPA government fell short of the targeted 6% of the GDP being spent on education at a peak of 4%, and the Modi government has cut that back further.

What is counterintuitive is that if Modi even wishes to fulfill his 'dream' of 'Make in India' and other nationalistic ambitions with regards to a skilled workforce, spending on education is vital. Problems of a low literacy rate, especially in rural areas, and high rates of dropping out cannot be solved by merely wishing them away. The Mid-Day meal project for instance was proven to increase enrolment, decrease drop-out rates, increase attendance and has been secondarily linked to improving academic performance as well. Furthermore, the condition of the public education system with regards to infrastructure isn't very encouraging either. I fail to see how such problems can be dealt with by reducing expenditure.

Turn over to food security, at present, the food security bill offers highly subsidized foodgrain to nearly 70% of the Indian population. However, the Government appointed Shanta Kumar committee has recommended lowering coverage to just 40% of the population. Furthermore, among other recommendations is the proposal to translate this into the form of a cash transfer as opposed to directly providing claimants with food.

The first problem with this is that poverty estimates in India, to put it very mildly, are very conservative(to frame it correctly would be to say they are ridiculous). The Rangarajan committee puts it at 29.5% of the population being below the poverty line(with a daily income of Rs. 32 for rural areas and Rs. 47 for urban areas being the new criteria). These figures do not take into account local variations or inflation and even were these figures adjusted, they'd still be well below the upper-limit of what one normally thinks of as poor. Secondly, much like the previous points of health and education, food as an essential service should be(and is presently) looked at as a right on which there should really be no compromise.

The other problem with this is if you consider the system of cash transfers as a viable substitute for the food. There have been numerous instances of hoarding, looting etc. associated with directly providing the foodgrain, and these are very legitimate concerns. The thing is that cash transfers are often ineffictive in getting the desired results because of certain seemingly odd consumer choices, as reported by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, that cash transfers often result in the poor spending the welfare money on non-essential purchases such as meat/fish or even certain luxuries. When thinking of things like food security it is important to see that such programmes are reaching their targets, providing people with money guarantees that less than if anyone were to argue that the leakages through malpractice in the distribution are the reason to move towards cash trasfers. Furthermore, the estimates of leakages is grossly exaggerated at 47% by the Kumar committee, according to Dreze, who goes on to say that even in Bihar, the amount of leakages is actually decreasing.

Similar accusations of 'inefficiency' have been used to justify a vicious cutback of the National Rurual Employment Guarantee Act. It is a fact that the system has led to a lot of embezzlements and the bureaucratic mess that ensues is a fault of its implementation. Of course, that does not mean the act needs to be rolled back without any stable alternative proposal that guarantees universal minimum income. The Union Government has not taken this up, even while rolling back on the NREGA. Furthermore, the various benefits of the NREGA far outweigh its deficiencies. References here, here and here.

With the Modi government's gung ho promotion of 'e-governance' and cash transfers in virtually every other area(even where it could be detrimental, such as food security), one has cause to wonder why they haven't thought of implementing such a programme in the sphere of minimum income guarantee, while complaining about 'inefficiency' in almost every sector of welfare.

And although these are the most striking examples of the apathy of the government towards welfare and social justice, these are not the only examples of the same. Labour laws have been relaxed instead of strengthened and the government is actively pushing land acquisition through ordinances and in the parliament, but those are topics for an essay at some other time.

Much of the justification for cutting spending across the board has been that it is 'unaffordable' and 'necessary' to reduce deficit. However, at the same time, the already bloated defence budget has gone up when it could have been slashed radically to offer space for welfare schemes. Furthermore, the abolition of the wealth tax does nothing to stem the deficit either.

It also stands to question why the middle-class and income tax payers are still subsidized by the Government in view of the fiscal deficit. LPG and petroleum subsidies seem unreasonable, but remain more or less intact. There is also the question why the taxation rates on goods such as automobiles hasn't been raised radically enough.

Privatisation isn't a bad thing, and I believe that private enterprise is a right in liberal democracies. Neither am I opposed to the presence of private healthcare or education. There are in fact, sectors, where I think the private sector could offer very healthy competition to public sector initiatives and it stands to reason that such sectors should be opened up to private enterprise.

However, it is quite problematic when the Government shirks off its own responsibility in offering social security and entrusts it to private entities who are essentially, for-profit businesses. It is unfortunate that the present Government cares more for businesses than it does for the general population.

To be or not to be(Hindu)?

On Aamir Khan's latest movie PK being apparently offensive to Hindus, various lesser Hindu outfits have claimed that their outrage is not regarding the fact that Bollywood keeps ripping off posters from obscure Portuguese singers, but because Mr. Khan is a Muslim and he made fun of cows.

But by Shri Shri Hanumanji and Maa Kali, that is a contradiction by Lord Rama's line of reasoning. Hence, apasanskritik(or whatever).

1. Mr. Khan is a Muslim.
2. Mr. Khan's film is offensive because he's Muslim(I.e. Not Hindu).
Taking the contrapositive of 2., we get-
2'. Mr. Khan's film would not be offensive were he not Muslim.

A. Mr. Khan is an Indian. (For Ganesha's sake! He teaches you about being a good Indian on a frickin' Star Plus show)
B. All Indians are Hindus.
A. and B. imply
C. Mr. Khan is Hindu.

Now C. taken with 2' give us a contradiction.
So either PK is just offensive, irrespective of the religious identity of its lead actor OR Muslims are not Indians.

Also, a happy and sanskari New Year to you all!
Remember, no partying or sex outside marriage, or Lord Indra will strike you down with fire and brimstone.

Hyperreaction

Much of the outrage regarding the 'Taxi Sexual Assault' in New Delhi last week is centered around a belief that a proper background check on the driver wasn't done, one that would have revealed his past crimes as a sex offender.

What the media and the other Batmen and Robins tend to forget is that the concerned individual was acquitted of previous charges. In other words, the court of law found him to be innocent after assessing the evidence and questioning the witnesses, and there's no reason why he shouldn't have been employed as a taxi driver.

Allegations are simply not enough to deny a man or woman employment, or indeed, enough to boycott them socially or culturally. That's not to say that whoever so is let off by the courts is indeed innocent, but that more often than not, there exists reasonable doubt to question their guilt. Even so, mistakes do happen. These mistakes can go either way; guilty men may walk free, while the innocent may be in prison. Does your doubt regarding the efficacy of the judicial system translate into a belief that someone who has been condemned to a life in prison was perhaps wrongfully convicted?

And if we are turning into a society that presumes guilt before a proper examination of witnesses and evidence, our idea of justice is truly twisted beyond belief and it is rather fortunate that our judicial system does not have a provision for a jury. Else, we'd be condemning people to prison, or even the gallows, merely on the basis of suspicion and not actual evidence. 

CET 2014

So the news is in........ Mamata Banerjee agrees to have West Bengal join Kapil Sibal's pet project, the CET for admission to courses in science and engineering, by 2014.

The intention is to make life for students much, much easier, but the way I see it, it will make life miserable for the students of West Bengal.

The first clarification that one requires is what languages will the exam be offered in..... So far, Mr. Sibal has stubbornly refused to accede to the demands of various state governments in holding the examination in 'regional languages', i.e. the exam shall only be held in English and Hindi.

At present, the majority of students in West Bengal study in Bengali-medium schools, even at the higher secondary level. The standard of English in this large student population is quite variable, to put it mildly.

'National' exams like the IIT-JEE, AIEEE, AIPMT etc. are only held in English and Hindi. This puts students from Bengali-medium schools at a severe disadvantage as compared to their English-medium counterparts. Moreover, it also puts them at a severe disadvantage as compared to students who come from Hindi-medium schools.

Now obviously, those who come from a Bengali-medium background will be forced to take the exam in their second language, English, as their knowledge of Hindi would be theoretically next to nothing(and practically much, much worse than their knowledge of English).... On the other hand, students from a similar background, but from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh or Bihar would take the examination in their first language. In case you were wondering why West Bengal doesn't have any 'Super 30' stories, this may be a huge contributing factor.

Institutes like the IITs, IISERs, NITs etc. are supposedly 'National Institutes', but in reality, they cater to a particular section of the nation's population...... Students from any system, whose language of instruction is not English or Hindi, are effectively excluded from these 'National Institutes'....... In my opinion, this is open discrimination and I am quite surprised that no one raises this issue at all, instead lamenting how students from Bihar are 'smarter' than their Bengali counterparts.

With the doors already shut to these institutes, most students of West Bengal train their sights on the institutions that are under the aegis of the state government, institutions that wouldn't openly discriminate against them on the basis of their mother tongues....

But now, with the CET on the horizon, the hopes of thousands of students across the state may be dashed, if the test is conducted in Mr. Sibaal's languages of choice...... Of course, this is not the first time Sibaal has openly expressed his partiality to a particular part of the country, even though he is supposedly a Minister of the Union. Around 3 years back, he proposed something that is bigoted, chauvinist, discriminatory and if implemented, would effectively be cultural genocide........ I won't go through the trouble of explaining it, but I think the link will suffice-
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Sibal-wants-all-schools-to-teach-Hindi/506424/

So what were to happen if the state adopted the new CET(Sibal's version)? Let's assume an overwhelming majority of seats would be reserved for students of the home state. Under these circumstances, a selective advantage would be enjoyed by the students studying in English-medium schools, who usually come from well-off family backgrounds, especially in urban areas. Students from smaller towns and villages would be left out.

If we assume there is little or no reservation of seats(which is less likely), the students from poorer and/or rural backgrounds would be totally marginalised by their urban counterparts along with people from other parts of the country. Not a very encouraging thought.

Many of the most successful engineers, doctors and scientists from West Bengal have come from the villages and/or from very poor backgrounds...... This would effectively stop were the government to go ahead with its plan of action.

However, if the Central Government did agree on holding the exam in 'regional languages'(How I hate this term! Bengali is an international language, more so than Hindi), it would open a new chapter in equality for all racial and linguistic groups in the country. This would effectively open the gates of the IITs, IISERs and NITs to students from non-English, non-Hindi educational backgrounds and somewhere down the line, this MUST happen.

But there will always be the Hindi-chauvinists who'll consider it a Fundamental duty of every Indian to learn Hindi, and if he/she suffers because he cannot or will not(on principle, such as myself), he/she deserves it. They would have us all learn Hindi, even at the cost of our Mother tongues and English. To them I'd like to point out that the name of the country is 'India' and not 'Hindia', the nation is supposed to represent all of us, not just the North. You must remember, that in principle, we have the same rights that you enjoy, among which is our right to have our language and reject yours. You should not forget that we are not your colonies, but an integral part of this country. In my humble opinion, our students deserve the same rights and opportunities that your students enjoy......