India: back to the future

By their very nature, financial markets are not people-friendly - or at least they are very discerning about the sort of people they befriend. Profits for the few are their holy grail, and any deviation from the straight and narrow excites their wrath.

Or at least their discomfiture. Which helps to explain why Indian markets threw a bit of a tantrum after it became clear that the nation's next government would be formed by the Congress party and its allies, with the support of the communist parties.

Such an alliance, it is widely assumed, will be a lot less enthusiastic than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) about the privatization of public assets. One can only hope that the assumption is not ill-founded.

Although the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has indicated it would oppose the disinvestment of any state-owned units that are not a dead loss, it is worth remembering that the leap towards what goes by the name of rationalization (which invariably means, among other things, the opposite of nationalization) occurred under the previous Congress government.

A government led by the second Mrs Gandhi may well be a rather different kettle of fish from the Narasimha Rao variety, even though the latter's neoliberal finance minister, Manmohan Singh, is expected to be resurrected.

Besides, the Congress will for the first time be at the helm of a varied and quite possibly unwieldy coalition, and it will presumably be disinclined to ignore the concerns of its partners and allies.

This scenario is what appears to have prompted the Bombay Stock Exchange's nosedive at the start of the week. It could be described as a pre-emptive strike, the message being: Don't mess with neoliberalism.

Will the new government submit to blackmail by the rich or keep its promises to the poor. Going by its track record, the Congress cannot be relied upon to make the right choice. But it can ill afford to disregard the lessons from its remarkable performance in the recent elections.

Analysts of virtually every stripe agree that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance floundered mainly because far too many Indians were excluded from the economic "success story" on which the NDA prided itself.

Not very surprisingly, the disheartened and the dispossessed didn't take a shine to the ruling coalition's supposedly feel-good election slogan. There's too much hunger and bleakness - and too little being done about it - for "India Shining" to have resonance beyond the middle classes.

It's telling that the first serious indication of the NDA's reversal of fortune came with the humiliating defeat in the simultaneous state election of its Andhra Pradesh wunderkind, Chandrababu Naidu - a man reputed for his closeness to the three Bills: Gates, Clinton and the greenback.

The trouble was that despite Hyderabad's reinvention as an information technology hub, beyond the perimeters of Cyberabad, poverty, hunger and illiteracy still flourished.

Apart from IT, the Telegu Desam Party's Naidu also championed genetically modified crops - which may have endeared him to Monsanto, but left Andhra farmers less than delighted. The Congress offered them free electricity instead. They made their choice on election day.

Apart from economic growth (ill-distributed, naturally) of about eight per cent, the NDA was also counting on the spurt in relations with Pakistan and India's decisive triumph in the consequent cricket series to spur its fortunes. It did not quite work out that way.

Even though Atal Behari Vajpayee made it appear that he had a personal stake in improving ties with Islamabad, almost every party to the left of the BJP found his initiative unobjectionable.

The revival of full-fledged cricketing ties between the neighbours, and India's supremacy in the field, did no doubt enthuse many Indians, but the cricketers were not running for election.

So the prime minister's ploy in calling elections six months before they were due has backfired. Vajpayee remains the convenor of the NDA and leader of the BJP, but perhaps not for long. At 79, a career that began some decades ago with a flirtation with communism, followed by an association with its reverse, the RSS and the Jan Sangh, appears to have reached a natural end.

Although rich tributes have been paid to Vajpayee's attributes as a prime minister, history may remember him primarily as someone who blurred the BJP's close links with Hindutva - personified by Rath Yatra veteran and Ram temple advocate Lal Krishna Advani.

The biggest stain on the BJP's record was the 2002 pogroms in Gujarat - and it appears Gujaratis did not lose sight of those atrocities when registering their votes, because the Congress won almost half of the seats in the state. However, just as the vote wasn't split strictly along urban-rural lines - the Congress did very well in New Delhi as well as Mumbai - it would also be unfair to designate it as chiefly a negative vote. The electorate could very well have offered a verdict against the BJP without endorsing the Congress.

The fact that it did not suggests that the Congress, written off in recent years by some observers as all but unelectable, must have done something right during its campaign. The pundits and the pollsters didn't get it, but a sufficient proportion of the electorate evidently did.

A substantial proportion of the credit for the revival goes to Sonia Gandhi, who wisely rejected an offer to accept the party's leadership following her husband's assassination in 1991, but agreed to step into the breach when the organization, by now in dire straits, implored her once more in 1998.

It couldn't have been an easy decision, given that Sonia was vociferously opposed to Rajiv's political take-off back in the early 1980s, following his unpleasantly ambitious younger brother Sanjay's death in an air crash. Rajiv himself wasn't very keen on the rough and tumble of politics, but was unable to resist a mourning mother's importunations.

Considerably closer to her mother-in-law than the abrasive Maneka, Sonia must have felt her direst nightmare come true when Indira Gandhi was murdered in 1984. But there was worse to come. After Rajiv's brutal assassination, Sonia effectively went into seclusion.

Precisely what made her change her mind is open to conjecture. Perhaps she came to the conclusion that, having married into such a family, abandoning the Congress would be akin to avoiding her destiny. Perhaps her children helped to persuade her.

Rahul is now a member of parliament, having won his father's former seat in Amethi by a margin of 100,000 votes. And, as her mother's campaign manager, Priyanka - vividly reminiscent in many ways of her grandmother - figured prominently in Congress propaganda.

Dynasties are an unfortunate, ostensibly undemocratic and chiefly Asian phenomenon, attributed by some to political immaturity. A less condescending explanation may lie in the region's feudal traditions.

It stands to reason that all is not well with parties whose identity is wedded to a family name - be it the Congress, the Pakistan People's Party, the two main parties in Bangladesh, or the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, to cite the most obvious examples.

However, no one can seriously accuse Sonia Gandhi even of having been an over-eager contender for the Congress leadership. She is at the helm today only because the party failed to come up with a credible alternative leadership.

Besides, whatever reservations one may have about the revival of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty are in this instance considerably mitigated by the prospect of India's emergence from what has been described as a pre-fascist situation.

Democracy doesn't always make a difference. But it can. And there's a lesson somewhere in there that ought not to be lost upon Pakistan. Meanwhile, it is not just the share markets that have given notice of their intent to subvert Indian democracy.

The forces of the political right, rejected by the masses across large swaths of the country, have for the past week been harping on Sonia Gandhi's Tuscan origins, trying to make a post-election issue of what proved to be of little use at the polls.

The Congress leader has been an Indian citizen since 1983, and the electorate appeared to be more interested in what she had to say than in where she came from. The Italian press has, understandably, shown a great deal of interest in Sonia's ascendancy, and it could indeed be cited as an example of the sort of globalization that most people would find unobjectionable.

But the BJP and its far-Right allies, who appreciate globalization only when it involves the exploitation of Indians by transnational corporations, are likely to press the "foreigner" charge until they can extract some dividends. And it wouldn't be surprising if the lot of them suddenly turn suspicious about moves to improve relations with Pakistan.

It is important for both nations not to let the momentum flag. On the face of it, an India comfortable with its secularism ought to be easier to deal with (and it would be better still if Pakistan had the courage to shake off the shackles of fundamentalism, preferably by democratic means), but it is never that simple. In opposition, the Congress as well as the communists supported Vajpayee's gestures towards Pakistan. In government, they can't expect the same courtesy.

It is, however, primarily on the domestic front that the new government will find itself endeavouring to strike a fine balance between reordering developmental priorities and maintaining growth, assisting farmers and peasants without antagonizing investors, and so on - while fending off the inevitable attacks on secularism by RSS's embittered offspring. It's an unenviable, but not entirely impossible, task.

The second Mrs Gandhi is something of an unknown quantity, but there is little harm in extending to her our goodwill. She will need bucketloads of it in the months ahead.

E-mail: mahirali2@netscape.net.

Academic lawlessness

Since Prof Pirzada (not his real name) became the chairman a few years ago, his department has improved considerably in terms of facilities for faculty staff and students. Computers, internet facility and printers are now readily accessible to all faculty staff and students.

The department has also got better furniture and fittings in its lecture rooms, better equipped seminar and conference rooms, and a better stocked library. Faculty staff members also got increased salaries.

All this was made possible in large part by the government's policy of greater spending in higher education, particularly for infrastructural improvement in this sector.

This together with the provision of more scholarship programmes for MSc and PhD studies by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) are resulting in increased student enrolment in Prof Pirzada's department.

But the professor soon realized that increased funds, facilities and student enrolment did not necessarily ensure quality of research work and teaching in his department. Rather, certain chronic practices are damaging merit and competence both amongst students and teachers.

One such practice is favouritism by teachers in students admission tests. Gross overmarking of one question by a teacher had helped a student, who otherwise would not have qualified for admission, to be admitted into the department.

Continued favouritism thereafter by a (male) teacher towards the (female) student in subsequent examinations has enabled the latter to reach the final semester of her studies.

Another practice, sifarish from influentials outside, has also been responsible for the admission of some students, who otherwise would not have been admitted because they could not satisfy one or the other of the required conditions for admission.

The professor also discovered that some faculty staff and students copied or rehashed the work of other authors in their research papers and dissertations, and yet such non-original research work by students is being highly graded.

His attempts at censuring such actions only met with stiff opposition and calls for him to be more "lenient" and "accommodating". A particularly interesting case of academic corruption in the department involves productive faculty members who "sell" their work to both students and teachers to earn their friendship and cooperation for vested interests.

In the name of collaboration these productive teachers offer to include the names of non-productive teachers in their research papers, even though the field of research may not be the same.

Such "one-sided collaboration" and "joint research papers" have helped teachers who do not qualify to supervise PhD students under the HEC's PhD scholarship programme (because they do not fulfil HEC's conditions regarding the number and quality of research papers), to technically qualify to do so.

This is a compromise on merit because academically these teachers are not qualified to supervise PhD students, and besides they are also getting more research papers to their credit than they are actually capable of producing - alone and through genuine collaboration.

During the recent exercise to recruit candidates for the HEC-sponsored PhD programme, many teachers in Prof Pirzada's department scrambled to get the maximum students to do PhD under their supervision (because a teacher can now earn a maximum of Rs25,000 extra per month supervising a maximum of five PhD students at a time at the rate of Rs5,000 per student per month).

They seem least concerned about the fact that they are accepting more PhD students than they can actually cope with academically, and hence they will be compromising on quality.

Worse of all, Prof Pirzada has had to face increasing indiscipline in his department, from both faculty staff members as well as students. Arrogant and abusive behaviour, and even manhandling, have become common practice, particularly by faculty staff members who are part of a mafia within and outside the institution who indulge in favouritism, sifarish, plagiarism and other such practices. These faculty members in turn set a bad example for the students, influencing and encouraging them to behave in a similar manner.

Little wonder that tertiary institutions are churning out out below standard, incompetent but "highly qualified" manpower who are not conversant with their subject and who have never really done research work on their own.

Last week, at the first meeting of the university chancellors committee, which was attended by the president and prime minister, the governors of the four provinces, the president of AJK and the HEC chairman, it was announced that the government was currently spending Rs10 billion per annum on recurring and development budget in higher education, and that the government's target expenditure on higher education was one per cent of GNP within five years.

It was also announced at the meeting that the government was aiming at enhancing enrolment in tertiary institutions from the present 2.9 to 5 per cent, and later up to 10 per cent in the 18- 23 years' age group.

Impressive projections indeed, but looking at the academic lawlessness in Prof Pirzada's department, the government will need to focus on much more than just the tangibles like facilities and scholarships if it really wants to improve the quality of higher education.

A simultaneous improvement on intangibles like the management of and the discipline in higher educational institutions is necessary if the quality of this sector is to improve at all.

Academic practices of the sort in Prof Pirzada's department will only help to guarantee poor quality in higher education, the amount of money, facilities and scholarships being pumped into the sector notwithstanding.

Iftekhar Arif honoured

Noted poet Iftekhar Arif was honoured at a reception held by Qalam Dost, at the Pakistan Arts Council on Monday. A brainchild of Ms Khushbakht Shujaat, vice-president of the council and Shujaat Beg, Qalam Dost is a newly-formed literary body meant to promote literary activities in the city.

While introducing the organization, Ms Shujaat welcomed the chief guest, speaking about his academic carrier. Mr Arif is also the chief of Edara Adbiat Pakistan.

Another attraction of the evening was the presence of acclaimed humorist Mushtaq Ahmad Yusafi, who had come to present a paper on Iftekhar Arif, about his personality and art. The council's hall was packed to capacity on the occasion.

Three full-length papers were read out by Mobin Mirza, Tajdaar Adil and Ms Shaheda Hasan, while Mehtab Akbar Raashdi, Secretary Information, Sindh, also made a brief speech.

The papers were well received by the audience, but the person conducting the event, ignoring the audience, who were becoming impatient to hear Iftekhar Arif and Mr Yusafi, invited Ms Zohra Nigah to speak.

Ms Nigah, a brilliant poet, who had many things to say about Mr Arif, as they both had lived in London for many years, simply welcomed the guests and the host. Mr Arif, in his simple and informal manner delivered his speech and recited many ghazals and verses to the delight of the audience.

Mushtaq Yusafi, in his paper presented a character sketch of the poet and told about his association with him, which spread over many decades. His paper was hilarious as usual, while the hall was ringing with cheers and clapping.

The event, which started at 7.45pm, almost two hours late, concluded at 11pm, to much annoyance of those who had no transport as the buses had stopped playing by that time. Aniq Ahmad conducted the evening.

Dhaka's man for the OIC

Bangladesh's candidate for the post of secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Conference, Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, shares the concern of Muslim states that the OIC has become ineffective and toothless over the years.

"This is an organization that has no departments for conflict resolution and disaster management. We need to focus on poverty alleviation and investment in the social sector, particularly healthcare and education.

The OIC should be projected as a political organization, representing the interests of the Ummah," says the 55-year-old politician-turned-diplomat who, after canvassing 30 countries over the past six months, came to Pakistan last week and called on the president, prime minister and foreign minister.

Reports indicate that Mr Chowdhury's candidature has the blessings of Islamabad which, thanks to its close ties with Saudi Arabia, maintains a high profile in the 57-member organization, which was established following the desecration of Al Aqsa Mosque by an Israeli extremist in 1969.

Mr Chowdhury's father, Fazlul Quader Chowdhury, who hailed from Chittagong in East Bengal, was a prominent leader of the Pakistan Movement. One-time speaker of the Pakistani National Assembly, his father disappeared after being incarcerated following the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971.

Employing the tactics of a hard-selling salesman, Salauddin Chowdhury asserts that Bangladesh's candidature for the post of OIC secretary-general has an edge over those of Malaysia and Turkey, both of which also have extremely cordial relations with Pakistan.

"One really wonders what prompted the Malaysian government to reduce the position of the secretary-general to the rank of an ambassador - because that is what their candidate is.

As far as Turkey is concerned, their candidate is a bureaucrat. He is at present the director-general of an OIC subsidiary. Again, they have brought down the position of a secretary-general to the rank of a director-general of a subsidiary," he argues.

Alluding to his own political career marked by many ups and downs, he mentions that he has been in Bangladeshi parliament since 1979 and is currently the prime minister's adviser on parliamentary affairs.

Mr Chowdhury says he is too hard-bitten to be fazed by the campaign which his detractors are running against him, especially on the Internet, in relation to his candidature. "This is part of politics.

I remember that Sheikh Mujeebur Rahman, who was very friendly with my father, would come to our house and have meals with us. He would then go to a public meeting and tear my father to bits.

One day when he spoke at a public meeting after having a hearty lunch at our place, a supporter sitting next to him tugged at his kurta, urging him to rail at my father. The audience broke into laughter when he said that he would speak against my father only after he had digested his food," Mr Chowdhury recalls.

An abundance of poetry

Despite a feeling that the 14th aalmi mushaira might not go through, it was finally held last Friday. But its postponement had taken the fervour out of event. Poets had come from abroad for the mushaira and there was no reason to keep them idle.

So mini-mushairas were held in various parts of the city including one at the Karachi Gymkhana another at Azizabad hosted by the All Pakistan Mohajir Students' Organization. Thus, many of the poets had been heard by the time the aalmi mushaira took place.

Earlier, a poetry collection by Dr Mohammad Haroon Siddiqui, a medical doctor and chief of a pharmaceutical company, was launched. He already has a collection to his credit and a third one is said to be in the making, as revealed by his mentor, the reputed 'ustad' Raghib Moradabadi.

The Arts council hall on that day was over-crowded and not a seat was found vacant, mostly occupied by, one suspects, Dr Siddiqui's company colleagues. Raghib Muradabadi, known for his generous help to his disciples, said in his brief speech that 25 per cent of the well-known poets in and outside the country were not genuine poets, but basked under the glory of "borrowed verses".

He seemed to imply that this was the case even with many 'sahib-i-diwan' poets - poets with published collections to their credit. Our doctors have most often a set clientele. This was Dr Khalid again proved a day later when another doctor came to the Arts Council - this one with an English language novel.

Many doctors were among the speakers and their presence in the audience was also conspicuous. Presentation of an English literary piece at the council is a rare occasion. Speeches were made in both English and also Urdu. Those who spoke in Urdu were not apologetic about it.

One speaker, an Urdu writer, with an obviously inflected sense of self-confidence, delivered his comments in English and repeatedly uttered the word "portrayted" as if 'portray' was not enough. English reading and writing is one thing but when it comes to speech making, it may be embarrassing to those who are not accustomed to it.

Since English has now become such an important medium of communication, particularly since, the arrival of the Internet, more people should join centres which, in the words of Prof Saher Ansari promise to teach you "fur, fur English speaking.

Thanks to globalisation, nations are coming closer and English to them is a common medium of communication, writers, if they deem proper may join any language learning centre in the city for a short course in English speaking not the one as sarcastically referred by Prof. Saher Ansari promising "fur fur English speaking" in three months."

* * * * *

"Amroha is not a place; it is the name of a culture", said Dr. Farman Fatehpuri while speaking at a reception held to honour Dr. Mohammad Ali Siddiqui at Markaz Sadaat-i-Amroha on Saturday.

He praised Dr Siddiqui as a writer with immense knowledge and a sharp social consciousness. The evening was cool and pleasant, the seating and lighting arrangements were well done and the audience was receptive.

It heard three full-length papers - from Mr Jamal Naqvi, Mr Hasan Abid Zaidi and Dr Jaafer Ahmad - on the person and erudition of Dr. Siddiqui. It may be recalled that Dr. Siddiqui was awarded the Presidential Award in August and since he originally came from Amroha, the officials of the Anjuman Sadaat-i-Amroha, Shah Wilayat Educational Trust and Shah Wilayat Public School thought it proper to honour him.

Amroha, Dr. Siddiqui said, was the Muslims' first seat of culture in northern India and was known as "the subcontinent of Amroha." Founded by the noted spiritual personage, Hazrat Shah Wilayat, this land had a long history going back several hundred years.

Responding to the speeches made in his honour, Dr. Siddiqui emphasized the importance of humanities in education. There was a conspiracy to subjugate South Asian nations by destroying their literature. A land without literature was left with nothing, he said.

Dr. Jaafar Ahmad told the audience that since 1976, Dr Siddiqui had published nine books and around 47 'esharia' (commentaries). Saher Ansari, with an association with Dr Siddiqui spread over four decades, praised the latter's status as a "modern progressive writer." The articles from Hasan Abid and Jamal Naqvi were informative and lively.

The guests were welcomed by Syed Mohammad Abbas, chairman of the Anjuman, and Prof. Syed Mumtaz Saeed introduced the Markaz Sadaat-i-Amroha he heads. Dr. Siddiqui's latest collection of literary essays, 'Jehat', appeared at the function. He is at present associated with the Hamdard Institute of Education and Social Services. Earlier, he was director of the Pakistan Study Centre and before that director, Quaid-i-Azam Academy.

* * * * *

Aslam Gurdaspuri, the poet from Lahore, was in the city last week. He belongs to the tradition set by Faiz and Habib Jalib - a poet of defiance and resistance:

Zindagi itni ghaneemat to nahi jis key liye
Ahd-i-kamzarf ki har baat gavara kar lein

The poet had come to attend a conference being held in Karachi under the aegis of the monthly Badalti Dunya. But the prime mover of the conference was the historian, Dr. Mubarak Ali.

Despite his taste for literature, the doctor I guess, is not a poet-friendly person. But he was the chief guest at the reception held in honour of Aslam Gurdaspuri on Friday (May 14), showing how Gurdaspuri appeals to both ideologues and lovers of poetry. Poet Khalid Alig was in the chair.

Aslam Gurdaspuri was with the Pakistan People's Party in the late 60s as one of its founding members. He suffered for a cause and gave sacrifices, but never wavered. A blend of revolutionary thought and romantic sensibility, his poetry has a large following. He once said:

Jis pe likha hai aik daam faqat
Mein abhi tak usi dukaan mein hoon

Aslam was saddened and depressed by the turn of events, but he has never lost his hope and longing for a better future:

Safar tamaam hua zindagi ka khaabon mein
Hamari kishtian chalti raheen suraboon mein

Critic Riaz Siddiqui and poets Hussain Majrooh and Sazver Javed gave their appreciation of Aslam Gurdaspuri and his work. He too was tempted to make a speech, recalling his periods of imprisonment during General Ziaul Haq's regime.

He recalled with sadness that his party had come into power not once, but thrice, and while many party loyalists and journalists were given residential plots, he had got none. He worked with the party's mouthpiece, the daily Musawat, but felt ignored.

Such a personal note of complaint on the part of a man of principles sounded a little out of place, but Aslam Gurdaspuri was quick to add that resistance poetry had its own rewards for him. Writers all over the world have given immense sacrifices during despotic regimes: this too is a way of life.