Outsourcing policy to foreign NGOs (PO)

M D Nalapat

After a gap of more than six years, your columnist is once again in the country that a century ago ran half the world. For years, indeed decades, he has been fascinated with the way in which a small island nation expanded across the globe to secure territory and resources to fuel its prosperity. Some say that much of the cause can be attributed to the spirit of democracy that pervaded the United Kingdom. However, this may be a simplistic view, for the reality is that the UK of the Empire period was a class-ridden nation, where the nobility (both economic and ancestral) had privileges denied to the many. Unlike in France or Russia, where there was a revolution against the aristocracy, the English never revolted against their nobility, except for the brief spasm of republicanism led by Oliver Cromwell four centuries ago. Of course, the difference between Britain and Russia was that in the former, it was much more easy for a low-born person to become wealthy than during the reign of the Tsars. When the nobility monopolised top positions the way the upper castes did in ancient India.

Inequality of income is a fact of life, but if this is accompanied by as severe an inequality in opportunity, then the society concerned becomes brittle and easy to break. In any country where a “caste” system develops, in which power and money get monopolised by a small segment on the basis of birth, there will come a period when such a society can no longer meet the needs and begins to fall apart. Such a danger exists even in the country that is today well on the way to becoming the next superpower, China. Should the Communist Party of China (CCP) get dominated by “princelings” (the children of top party leaders), then the hold of the party over the people will slacken, as will morale and motivation inside the party, which would change into an instrument for the retention of privilege created by birth. Already, a disproportionate share of the top echelons of the CCP comprise of cadres who were lucky to be born of influential parents. If this segment grows at the expense of those (such as current CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao) who were born from humble stock, the rapidly-evolving population of China would begin to lose respect and loyalty towards a party that has made China once again a Great Power.

A people drowning in red-tape (PO)

M D Nalapat

Under its energetic Vice-Chancellor, Seyed Hasnain, the venerable University of Hyderabad has sought to improve both its image as well as its performance. As a part of the process of modernization that he has initiated, the Vice-Chancellor decided to award honorary doctorates to mathematical wizard David Mumford and World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand. In India, the Ministry of Human Resource Development seeks to control every operation of a university except perhaps staff visits to the canteen, hence its permission was sought for the award of the honour. Strangely, some within the gargantuan HRD Ministry bureaucracy objected to the award of a doctorate to “that foreigner Anand”, forgetting both that Anand was an Indian citizen and that the other awardee was British. In the arrogant style copied from earlier colonial masters of India, the ministry demanded that Anand “prove that he was Indian”, a step that enraged the chess grandmaster’s many fans in India. Finally, a media outcry led to the HRD Minister himself apologizing for the error. HRD Minister Kapil Sibal is a well-meaning and capable son of the Punjab who is seeking to unshackle Indian education from a ministry that retards rather than promotes human resource development, but instead finding that the reverse is taking place, with more and more controls getting established.

Although the HRD ministry has, in the way usual with the Indian bureaucracy, been secretive about just who was the (hitherto faceless) official who sought to question the nationality of “Vishy”, hopefully this information will soon become public knowledge, once Right to Information queries get filed and processed. However, it is unlikely that the culprit will be punished, or even rebuked, for seeking to humiliate an Indian icon. While power is plentiful in the Indian system of governance, accountability is almost totally absent. For example, none of the many officials who slept for four years over the corruption now exposed in the organisation of the Commonwealth Games has been subject to disciplinary action. Only a handful connected with the Games themselves have been forcibly sent on leave or retired, mainly to ensure that the public stain does not reach higher than them. A country that has 200 million people going to bed hungry each night is estimated to have spent $6 billion on a sporting extravaganza that seems likely to get drenched in unseasonal monsoon showers. Certainly, several well-connected people must have gained immense benefit from such a waste of taxpayer rupees.