In the Opposition ranks loom L.K.Advani and in the  third front Mayawati, Mulayam Singh or even Chandrababu Naidu?

There is one difference this time, that is, on the eve of the next general elections. That is the most mysterious silence on the part of  everyone in the Congress on the next Prime Ministerial candidate!

Will Manmohan Singh be the obvious choice? Very unlikely.
Given the current groupings within the Congress, those who  seem to be close to Sonia Gandhi or others who might not be so close but they will also play a role. Men like Arjun Singh and persons like him are known party intriguers.

There are circles within circles within the party.
Every other Sonia Loyalist is a known sychopant, so everyone would push for the name of Rahul Gandhi, in the hope of positioning  themselves firmly within the power structure.
And yet, the outcome of the election results is anybody’s guess.
For one thing, the current incumbent of the South Block is extremely shrewd and he wont let go his opportunities.

So, he might upstage all his potential rivals in singing the praise of Rahul Gandhi or the virtues of the Madam with the fervent hope that such gesticulations would pay dividends.

Already there is  talk, within the current UPA partners themselves, as to who should be the next Prime Minister. Sharad Pawar for one is eyeing the job for very long. He has everything going for him except perhaps the trust factor. Having let down Sonia Gandhi so openly on the foreigner issue and formed his own party, it is extremely difficult for Pawar to win the Congress backing, unless other extraneous factors come into play.

The Left is now left out of the power-brokering and yet the Left’s hold on certain individual leaders is taken seriously by the leaders themselves.

So ,everyone seems to be courting the Left. In the list are the leaders, from the DMK chief to Sharad Pawar and Chandrababu Naidu to of course, the new found messiah of the Dalits, Mayawati.

So, the Left would play a role, one cant say whether this role would be decisive, in the formation of the alliances and also post-elections in the formation of the next government.
Given the present rupture, the Left might not favour Manmohan Singh. But the Left might not have much room for maneuver but once the numbers favour the third front, then the Left might become active in projecting Mayawati or  some dark horse even.

Will Sharad Pawar be the dark horse? It seems he is positioning himself for all such eventualities. Perhaps, he is the only person in politics, who can match an Amar Singh in terms of resources, both  the big corporates as well as the smaller Opposition votes.
What we found in the trust vote debate, before and after the voting, it is the raw power play that matters even  in a democracy like Indian one where the weakness of the average individual MP for money and other temptations of office and perks or sheer lack of any commitment, is overwhelming.

See the plight of a Sibhu Soren who defected to Congress and yet he is  to be rewarded for the services rendered.

Such experience  would only drive many of the smaller parties towards some over-ambitious and even adventurist players like Pawar.

The Congress, left to Sonia, might opt for some known weaklings within the ranks and there are too many of them now in the close circles of the Gandhi family.
Anyway, the mystique that is created around Manmohan would be burst in the emerging restless all over the capital.

Delhi is tired of the old style over-bureaucratising of the government machinery.
The government is no more a favourite of the people at large, netiehr the farmers are pleased with the debt write-offs and the follow-up measures.

There are no follow-up measures in fact. Banks are becoming more bold and demand government to pay it back, its interest on the loans waived etc. The lack of enthusiasm of this government to reach out to farmers and the villagers is so blatant. The government is Delhi-centric and bureaucracy-centric.

Farm sector or for that matter the rural India would  not surely opt for a lacklusture, faceless and wooden administration that is disconnected with the people at the grassroots.
Who knows? There could be surprises in the elections. A third front candidate, supported by the weakened or reduced UPA might become also a possibility.

After all, Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh duo wont let go the opportunity.
The next battle for the  Prime Minister’s post might be fought as an essentially UP battle!
After all, it is the UP where the strong contenders are based and well-positioned. Mulayam Singh and Mayawati are the two such contenders. So, who knows the two main alliances, one centered around the Congress and the other around the BJP might   be pushed  or forced to support either one of the UP antagonists. It all depends upon how the election scenario builds up.

One thing that would make a great difference is that the vote banks this time would be calculated as to how the traditional Dalit votes would join together to vote for Mayawati at the all India level or get divided around the local politics.

Mayawati would surely bring about a new dimension to the government formation at the Centre.
The Left, now left out of the mainstream party of the Congress might be left with not much room for maneuver but have to settle with the hotchpotch of the third front and  might sail with the winds that might blow as opportunistic alliances are made on the eve of the election of the leader of the third front as Prime Minister.

As for the individuals and their merits, a democracy like India must also openly debate as to the need for a new type of a leader to take India  forward.

Surely, Manmohan proved to be extremely weak in many respects.
Even the Indo-US nuclear deal, even if it is made to India’s desires  would not make Manmohan as a great leader. He is a self-effacing leader or a nominee. That is all.
India needs surely a leader with some vision. Some clear articulation. He or she must be a politician, a political animal so to say-so that he or she must reflect the aspirations of the youth and the weaker sections.

The Indian youth, winning  the Olympic  medals signifies a new generation change.
Shall we say the country suddenly finds itself a new younger generation, this generation is  even all post-Rahul generation also! All in their teens and post twenties. Abhinav Bindra is just 24, our boxer and wrestler all in their early twenties!

This is the India we are now suddenly confronted with. Both the privileges and the under privileges with which this new youth are growing up might not have the patience to listen to tired and retired and completely  out of date old men and very bureaucratic men.
We need young achievers, we need also much idealism of the youth in our political play, and it is a p [political morality play. What we find in the sort of political culture we have been confronted with the Singh regime is one of utter cynicism and also utter irreverence to any sense of morality.

So, we must have a new political culture, a robust sense of honesty, not taking recourse to fudge records and receipts to become MP or elected as PM. We needn’t pay bribes to win trust vote. We needn’t sign the nuclear deal without a sense of pride in India’s own inherent moral stances.

Even now, India must sign the CTBT even if we win the deal and go for nuclear energy generation. India should not be seen in the company of Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. What is good for the world, 179 countries have signed and India holding out is  neither in the Gandhi an or Nehruvian tradition, right?

Even Vajpayee is quoted very approvingly and admiringly, in renouncing future  nuclear tests. What is the stand of Dr.Singh? Has he himself any personal stand? Personal beliefs?
Should India have such a person with no commitments, as Prime Minister? And gather  all sorts of unfounded claims on his stature or commitments?

India must become a mature democracy and must know how to express its opinions on momentous issues. This is now missing in the scheme of things, to put it mildy!
The point is that India’s nuclear energy programme is not a sudden discovery of Manmohan Singh.

The most crushing thought we have   a  Prime Minister who is projected as an expert but we don’t know any of his views on any of the substantive issues any better clearly!
But if we have a leader like, say, Chandrababu Naidu we can be sure he can be expected to put India on the world map. We need  leaders   like him.

Or, even  Mulayam Singh can be expected to make a different type of a mass leader.
If it is the choice of a communalist leader like Advani or a  blatant casteist like Mayawati, the voters of India, specially the youth of India would make a clear and responsible choice, I am sure.

So, the next elections must be fought not on any secrecy clause, as one can suspect between the Congress and the unreliable opportunistic allies like the DMK just for the sake of perpetuating  themselves in power.

Let us hope that the 2009 elections would be seen as a post-Olympic India of youthful dreams.

Let our leaders not betray the hopes and aspirations of the millions of the new generation, we mean the post-Rahul youngsters of the new and bubbling enthusiasm as we witness in places like Biwandi and across the nameless villages and small towns of India.

Yes, the 24-year young man’s win is India’s great moment of triumph!
The Beijing Olympic Games  was held for the first time outside Europe, the West. So, the whole of the world, including the West, UK, in particular saw the Beijing Olympic as a test for the East vs. the West.

In a way, the entire world  press too saw the Games  from nationalist points of view only. The UK tested the Chinese capacity to stage the greatest show on the earth. How the Chinese organised 15,000 strong people to conduct the opening ceremony  in a military drill fashion.
The Indian people, if not the press, didn’t fail to notice that we couldn’t even organise our 57-strong contingent in time, it was said. Even the costumes for the marchers  were found to be not in style. Our contingent, led by Rathore, the Athens Silver medalist, a bit tiresome and everyone was commenting why the DD only dewed Sonia Gandhi cheering the Indian rallists. Why didn’t the Indian government send our own stars like P.T.Usha and others at least for the sake of giving aboost to our rally?

So, from day one India looked despondent and utterly crushed for lack of past track record.
So, when Bindra, the young man won the gold here was India emerging from the shadow of a non-entity to a nation to be watched from now onwards.

What is the message? In fact, this win sends out many messages.
One, our education system as it is a mass of mindless crushing of young minds, young spirits into a mindless mass of  mere labour!

We need mass education. But this is at another level.

What we need now is a sort of class education. An education that reaches out to identify talent and nurture the talents in whatever fields it blossoms.

Now, sports are India was all about the highly commercialised and  also politicised cricket. This pretension to class in cricket to golf hadn’t taken the country anywhere. This is clear from what India failed to do in the truly heroic and even sacred and noble game of Olympics.
Olympics has so many games and sports, this is the first time Indians would take note of the many beautiful games the Olympics honours and rewards. Even simple looking wrestling, pole vaults and the very sprinters have created history and the greatness of the Olympics is that it had brought to the attention of the world, even the poorest countries threw up gold winners, Ethiopians, Kenyans  and the Jamicans.

So, our education system must make room for sports in a systematic way.

We have to identify schools, say in every district, with Olympic level infrastructure. Concentrate on particular sports in each of these schools. If it is wrestling or boxing, then, it must be Bhiwandi in Haryana. Our Haryana  youngmen have done India proud. Wrestling will no longer be the same.

So too our runners, our Anju Bobby Georges and P.T.Ushas now will get international level coaching and training.

Bindra got the best equipment, his rifles cost Rs.2 crores. He had four coaches, one for coaching, a Swiss coach, herself a world champion. He also got a physiotherapist, a psychologist to give him calmness of mind and other such coaches.
Yes, says Raja Randhir Singh, secretary general of the Indian Olympic Association: When Bindra became  world junior champion the Centre should have put him on the elite training programme.

Yes, there are some private efforts. The Olympic Gold Quest Foundation, the Steel magnate Laxmi Mittal 10 million dollar Champion Trust all have taken up training promising young talents. P.T.Usha is training the runner, Tintu Luka, there are dedicated coaches, physiotherapists and others.

All this involves funding.
It is only right that Indian government must create some levels of spotting talents, training them  upto one more level, then, senior levels where the winners will get ideally everything free.

This is real education goal. Nurture the best talents to reach the Olympic gold!
Why not?

India is a fine country, a great democracy.
We are much better than China, we are a democracy.

So, instead of talking about skills development for the IT industry, we talk about nurturing talents in Olympic Games.

Winning the Olympic Gold, as Bindra did ,was a bigger achievement than winning the Nobel Prize!
Now, Indian education must look at itself as a changed conception.

It is a pity no one of any significance, neither the PM nor the intellectuals or the elite, leaders or thinkers have come forward to  explain the full significance of the Olympic Gold  for making India a confident nation.

The Red Fort speech of the incumbent Prime Minister is always an occasion for celebration and also a momentous time to reflect and seriously ponder over the state of our nation. It is stock taking time, in a more dignified sense.

The speech of that day is always made by the individual who makes it.

Of course, every one of us can’t aspire to be Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru!  Nor aspire to infuse that supreme quiet confidence exuded by a Lal Bahadur Shastri.

One doesn’t know whether Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh was ever either inspired by Nehru or by Shastri. He never told us.

Nor do we know the workings of the mind of Dr.Singh. He also doesn’t let anyone of us, the ordinary citizen mortals ever know!

What we know for sure seems to be the typical Dr.Singh. Low key, low demeanour, of course very utterly emotionless routine man, the archetypal bureaucratic- minded person who he is.
This is not a disadvantage. But surely for a country of the size and stature of India, a country that is poised to move forward and to be compared and contrasted with China, this is a positive disadvantage!

That disadvantage showed clearly when we saw him walks and ascend the steps and reach out to the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15th.

What was galling was to see the vast empty chairs staring at the PM as he was reading out, like a dutiful government servant, the many promises, he claimed to have fulfilled!
He was certainly out of touch, if not out of tune with the mood of the crowd that had assembled there that morning or the crowd or mass of people who had gathered everywhere in the vast stretches of the country at large.

First, there was just this Olympic Gold medal won by the 24 year old Indian youth, Abhinav Bindra. That was a momentous occasion. Everyone expected, we are sure and at any rate we expected for one, the Prime Minister would start his address with the mention of an Indian youth of 24 winning Gold and that too for the first time in 108 years of modern Olympic history. Alas! The PM didn’t even seemed to have cared for it or seemed to have remembered it to make a mention and get a thunderous applause from the dutiful audience that had assembled there.

Is this not a measure of the apathy the rulers have about their charge, the ruling and governing of the great nation?

It is and it rankled as the PM was seen reading out some very dull passages, the claims and statistics to impress his audience and the nation. Neither the audience nor the nation was impressed.

One noticed so conspicuously that L.K.Advani, the Prime Ministerial candidate for one was seen yawning, so bored and so unimpressive a speech the PM sought to make and impress.
More ironically, the PM was seen referring to the neta, Sonia Gandhi and he seemed to have clearly given the impression that he was  where he was thanks to the nod he got from a Sonia Gandhi who was seated in the front row.

This was clearly seen as an act of sycophancy and if not anything else.

And pray what the Prime Minister was eying on such a momentous occasion?

August 15 is our Independence Day. August 11th was the day when the Indian youth of 24, won the Olympic Gold. The PM was out of touch or didn’t care for the achievement?

How he imagines he is entitled to preside over the country’s affairs as the Prime Minister? He who couldn’t connect himself with the aspirations of the entire youth of the country touched and awakened by that one rare Gold?

What political legitimacy he had got to speak to the nation narrating his achievements?
The most crushing feeling we got as we listed to the PM’s speech was the repeated reference to krishi and rural India! All the promises, including a new deal to rural India!
The mouthful terms of the schemes were too much for the listeners. Procurement of 50 per cent wheat, 30 per cent of rice, bank loan, debt waive-off etc.

The narration was getting on the nerves and the terms like inclusive and equitable growth etc was a bit jarring when the news that day was all about downslide in growth and doubling of inflation rate in his own years in office!

Obviously, the PM is sitting in a cocoon. That is obvious. He never invites or receives strangers into his room. He is comfortable with retired bureaucrats that are why the economist’s advisory council is a bit too much in the talking mode these days!

What are not talked about are the findings of the various farmers bodies, for instance. The Consortium of the Indian Farmers Association (Cifa) has made a representation to the PM and it has quoted the Arjun Sengupta Commission to show that the take home incomes of the farmers are worse than with that of the comparable civil servants. And consider the PM’s mood when he takes pride in announcing the pay rise for civil servants on Independence Day and this news of the Cifa contradicts the PM’s mindset. We don’t know what the Pm really has to say on this ground level reality?

The lowest paid government employee is Rs.10,000 a month, while the average farm household gets anything from Rs.1,578 to Rs,8,321 for the small farmers, as per the Sengupta Commission on unorganised  sector workers. The Planning Commission studies also confirm the Sengupta contention.

Of course these are all known facts. The PM also knows well his many claims would only evoke skepticism or at worst simple ridicule.

Newspapers have given wide publicity to the Cifa representation and also some have editorially supported with new additional inputs.

Unfortunately, the Government, the various ministries are not driven by any vision. The PM himself is no visionary. Everyone, given the compulsion of coalition politics, is minding his or her business. That seems to be the impression.

Nor, can we rest content with M.S.Swaminathan commission recommendations or the advice by economists, bureaucrats.

When we say vision, we mean some dedicated vision. Vision comes to one who is dedicated.
For instance, the Bangladeshi visiting Nobel Laureate, the Grameen Bank founder, Prof.Mohamad Yunus, was in Bangalore the other day. He said by looking at the bankers: banking must have a vision, its business is not to lend and  recover loans. It is to empower people. Give people that power to uplift themselves.

Yes, this is vision.

We have to create new institutions, co-ops, SHGs and many more at the national and state and regional level. So that farming takes place as a natural way of living for the vast majority of the people, the farmers, right?

Can the Indian people trust only Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukerjee?
What are the Prime Minister’s true beliefs on the nuclear deal?

Yes, India seems to be pretending a lot. We seem to be innocent and at the same time very smart! That is what both the PM and his long-time colleague in the Cabinet, the foreign minister, both together seem to give the impression to the country.

What is the credibility of these two gentlemen?
Someone should ask them like this!
If  the 23PM  doesn’t help to clear the many doubts or helps to instill confidence in his moves on nuclear deal, then, his  regime might prove to be less than truthful in  the running of the government.

Democratic governments win on public trust. More than the trust votes. More so in the case of the Manmohan Singh government.

This government is not centered on any one’s clear leadership. More so, when it comes to the deal like the highly technical and also highly controversial (even within the international community) deal.

And when it comes to Dr.Singh’s leadership, it is less than a typical democratic leadership. He doesn’t enjoy the confidence of the country at large, he might be a good man, a humble self and yet he derives his authority not from the people but because of Sonia Gandhi’s peculiar predicaments!

So, more than ever, the Prime Minister has a bounden duty to educate and explain to the people and must win the trust of the country at large.

Anyway, let us place on record he has not done so yet.
With this qualification let us see what the other issues are now.

On the future of nuclear power and also nuclear weapons -free world?
Yes, the Indo-nuclear deal is moving to its successful conclusion. The USA is committed to see that India signs the deal and becomes a member of the nuclear weapon states.

That is openly, not as at present only “clandestinely”
Yes, it is the question of who wants to become openly nuclear weapons states and those who secretly seek that status!

Unfortunately, the world is so unequal and iniquitous. Also, the world is driven by so many illusions of strength and status, while also countries losing credibility and trust of the world’s peoples.

USA, the most powerful country is also so unpopular in the world.

China, the most populous country but a dictatorship and also aspires for world recognition!
India? I fail to see what Dr.Manmohan Singh and his colleague, Mr.Mukerjee wants the people to believe?

Believe them as gentlemen or believe them as natural leaders?
What are their legitimacy and their credibility? Do they have any clear beliefs for themselves? On the very many issues?

Or, they just do their jobs as they come?
Yes, I may sound a bit uncharitable. But these questions came naturally to me.
What India would gain? It would gain in many ways as a mature democracy with equal access to what is called nuclear commerce. That is the apartheid status of India would end and India can import nuclear technology and fuel and would go ahead in its nuclear power generation programme?

No, the question is not so simple.
There are hard realities. And unfortunately, the people are kept in the dark and even   the majority of the politicians, even the Chief Ministers and even the members of the Central Cabinet,(I suspect including the Prime Minister!) can be said to be really  confused as to the future scenario of the developments arising out of the signing of the nuclear power treat.
I talk like an ignoramus and I am! Now my questions, almost directed almost pointedly at the Prime Minister is this:

1. Are we really believing that nuclear power is going to come out of their agreement and if so from what point of time? Or, timeframe?

2. Are we not misleading the people of this country to make them believe that nuclear energy is going to solve even in some small way, our total energy needs?

If the early believers, from Homi Bhabha to Pandit Nehru to the galaxy of scientists kept us in the dark and asking us to believe them and they all fooled us, yes that is the harsh language I like to use as it has been so well explained by no less an insider than Anand Parthasarathy who worked under Indira Gandhi and he exposed it all, all these bogus claims, in great detail in a book that is for all to see.

Now, we haven’t succeeded and now after the current treaty signing, we are going to produce enough quantity of nuclear energy to fee our energy grids? No one has said so clearly any answer to this basic doubt.

The only scientist expert I seem to believe is R.Chidambaram who is also the science adviser to the government. As I have seen his observations that the promise of the nuclear power, the promise of the nuclear technology to produce clean energy lies in the distant future, not in any near-term, right?

And of all these mundane considerations, what are really controversial are our nuclear weapons making programme.

Will we explode a nuclear “device” or an explosion, as we did first in 1974 and then in 1998?
Now Atul Behari Vajpayee has given a solemn promise at the UN general assembly and so we are bound to honour such a promise. Not to explode one more time but unilaterally we renounce that option, right?

Now, what is really Prime Minister Manmohan Singh government’s agenda?

India talks always for peace, nuclear disarmament and in June on the 9th India also celebrated Rajiv Gandhi’s 20th year of UN address in which proposed a gran disarmament programme by 2010.Alas! The world is where it was very much for the better, if not worse.

The world nuclear weapon powers, US have   4,075 active nuclear warheads, Russia, 5,830, France 200 and UK 350. It is also believed that India, Pakistan and Israel and North Korea also possess warheads.

Now, the June “conference” saw absence of key disarmers, the great Gorhachev, a close associate with Rajiv Gandhi and also the US veterans, former secretaries of state like Kissinger, US defence secretary and one more secretary and one prominent disarmament Senator, Sam Nunn.

They all know, India is just a talker, we have no credibility, we haven’t signed the NPT and we are in the company of such suspects and discredited regimes like Pakistan and Israel!
So, even India’s best friends like Egypt and others are not enthusiastic and Iran is so.
The point is: is India serious to sign the non-proliferation treaty and abide by the international rules and conventions?

Of course, the answer can’t be so easy and straightforward, we know.
There is China, notorious for its secret deals with Pakistan, in exporting fuels and technology and also missiles.

Also, there is the discriminatory nature of the NPT, even when the countries that have signed them, some of them violate in their own ways.

India’s headache would always be Pakistan and China.
So, one reason why we should welcome our new co-operation with the USA is that only the USA can deter the two troublesome neighbours of India, China and Pakistan.

The CTBT and the FMCT are also treaties that India has come to terms with and in my humble view India must sign them as a role model in order to win credibility in the international foray.
India has to sign all the safeguards mechanisms and surely India should also play a role in preventing the clandestine ways in which countries develop ambitions to become nuclear weapons states. Some are plain rogue states and India, knowing well there is envy and prestige associated with nuclear weapons must resist and think of actively making the world a safe place.

Yes, this is a tall task and sees what even humble and unostentatious individuals like Jimmy Carter was able to do and win the Nobel Prize for Peace. In fact, even the Peace Nobel is now losing its track, it is for holding peace Congresses and reducing the standing armies and such direct arms reduction only Peace Nobel was established.

So, there is much work for a true peace lover. It can take so many new forms from canvassing for Peace Nobel, Literature Nobel to holding genuine international peace Congresses and propagating new international Peace Corps Volunteers and such initiatives that would impact and capture the imagination of the world.

There are more genuine countries which see the nuclear non-proliferation more like a religious commitment than the land of Gandhi! Countries like Austria and New Zealand and some more.
India is position somewhat has become more distorted after the BJP and the Congress agreed with the US agreement but for their own egoistical reasons hid the real disagreements in terms of party politics. The Left did blunder for their sheer blindness to hate USA.

It is really silly to take an anti-US stand from blind prejudices as the Left did.
USA is not only the biggest economy and also biggest democracy and a deterrent for any adventurist nations like Pakistan and China.

So, simple common sense dictates us ailing with the USA in nuclear co-operation.
But winning credibility for what Manmohan Singh has chosen to do to move closer to the USA, it would be a test for anyone less than great leaders or great minds.

Unfortunately Dr.Singh is not a man for the moment. He might sign and get out. Then, he might fall back on his own routine.

This wont in any way raise the stature of India in the eyes of the more cynical world.
Dr.Singh is neither a natural leader nor a visionary. He is just a routine low-key official who served the government for long in various ministries and departments.
An international initiative for nuclear disarmament or nuclear weapons-free world or promoting peace in conventional and non-conventional means calls for great minds and great leaders.
India should come out with such initiatives.

That is a different subject altogether.

I have just noted down some of the names of the eminent historians now writing in India. This I do for the simple reason that many of the readers of this magazine might not have heard of their names. I have read and still continue to read them whenever I want to seek some clarification of some details on some aspect or some points in Indian history.

Here I like to limit myself to certain few points on which an average Indian reader might seek some clarification or some overview of India’s history.

As far as I am concerned, the important point in Indian history writing or for that matter how reading or writing of Indian history might help us, as individuals or as citizens or as a country as a whole is what is the approach to write or study history.

Even the latest book by Upinder Singh(A History Ancient  and Early Medieval, From Stone Age to the 12th Century), historian and daughter of  the Prime Minister all, as far as I know, don’t ask any of the questions people like me, the very generalists as against the specialists might be asking.

My questions are: what use writing history unless you really don’t have anything new to say on how the present Indian would be impacted by your new specialist knowledge in history?

So, I have come to a stage in life when I like to share what agitates my mind. I was recently in Delhi and had taken some time off to go around and see the old Mughal monuments, Qutb Minar complex, Fatehpur Sikri, of course, Agra and Taj Mahal and the Delhi monuments, from Red Fort to Humayun’s Tomb etc.

As I was moving through the monuments where in their complex lie hundreds of tombs and they all evoked a sense of the past and the lives that had gone by.
Will India ever remain a one country?

There have been repeated attacks and wars and I just now read through the pages of Sir Jadunath Sarkar’s ‘Military History of India”. The 21 chapters made me saddened me greatly and I fell silent at many places when I read through the pages.

Then, I recalled the observations made by Prof.Sabyasachi Bhattacharya’s lecture at the Bombay University Kosambi Birth Centenary Address.

Will India remain a Civilization? Was it always a one Civilization? Was it always one country? One nation?

Such questions were not raised by the learned  professor, except he recalls Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj writing where he, the Mahatma asks: Indian civilization for Gandhi was something he saw as based not on material civilization as in the West and in India it was, as according to Gandhi, based on something like  a spiritual basis. Though it is not made clear in the professor’s lecture.

I am, to say the obvious at the very beginning, a bit tired of this uncritical way of using some expressions and some words.

First, the very word, the very expression and the conception of civilization.
Yes, Arnold Toynbee has asked this question and he himself had given some explanations. The rise and fall of civilizations as cycles of rice and fall.

This view was of course contested by professional historians and they did this kind of thing when I was a student Oxford. The galaxy of historians in my time, A.J.P.Taylor and Hugh Trevor Roper and many others were doing this. Even I suspect Sir Isaiah Berlin and E.H.Carr were subscribing to this scpeticism. They had their own reasons.

In India we pay the usual respects to our great nationalist leaders and Prof.Bhattacharya, just does this by quoting approvingly Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru.
Yes, they were great mind, creative minds but their view of India as being a distinct civilization, India being a country of diverse and yet united into one whole and Indian civilization has this distinct spiritual(not ever well-defined) and we always discarded and disregarded the claims to any material basis to our civilizational beliefs.
Now, D.D.Kosambi comes in as his birth century came(he was born on July 31,1907),Gandhi wrote his Hind Swaraj in 1909.

Kosambi I haven’t read as a student. But I have read others on him. Recently, the Economic and Political Weekly (July 2008)brought a special issue and I read through the articles with some attention. Romila Thapar, a Marxist historian, says all when she tackles such topics like “outstanding Exponent of Marxist interpretation”, Tribe and Caste, Clan-based  Society and State, The Aryan Question, Use of Iron Technology, Buddhism and Trade, Roman Trade and on Modes of Production and Feudalism, Slaves in the Indian context, Feudalism from Above and Below, Indian version of Feudalism, and European models.

I don’t want to test the patience of readers and would just conclude my remarks saying this much:

Gandhi ,yes, he wrote much and talked much. All his theories and programmes didn’t lead to a happy end. India got freedom after getting itself divided into two halfs!
Is this a great outcome of a great wisdom?

Nehru read a lot and wrote  a lot on history, Indian history and world history.
But did he live to see his  dream fulfilled? No, alas, he lived to see before his eyes, his great hopes for unity of India and China(remember vividly every time when he came to Santiniketan) and this he did every year as he was the chancellor of Santiniketan, he used to tell us, students, that India and China are world’s  two great civilizations and the world is safe and the world  would live through a peace process. Alas, the very friends he believed and promoted, Chou-En-Lai and his countrymen betrayed India and China invaded India on flimsy grounds!

I remember Nehru telling us, the listeners in the convocations,(he used to ramble and speak long and  for hours even) that it is not the fault of the Chinese people but that of the China’s rulers ,that China did the mistake.

My own Chinese professor, a great man and a friend and close associate of the  poet, Tagore himself, sitting in the audience, he cried and wept  openly in the midst of distinguished guests!

Yes, even the great Tan(Prof.Tan Yun Shan, the founder of the Cheena Bhavan where I was his favourite student),an friend and ally of the great Chiang Kei Sheik and his eminently talented wife and also of Mao, when they were great in their times.
All this and all the visits of India-China bhai-bhai goodwill visits didn’t pay!
China invades and that led to Nehruji’s premature death! What a pity and what an irony of history!

Yes, we, in this day and time of the present world,(I say to myself at any rate)have to become more skeptical and more circumspect when we start talking on big topics and big themes like civilization, the unity of India, unity in our diversity and also India as a distinct nation.

I am skeptical on every aspect of this debate.
History doesn’t give us any lessons in these respects.

For each question, we have start separately and we have to ask specific questions and also stop with some specific answers suited to those specific contexts.
This is what I have learnt about history.

In my humble opinion, professional historians, we need and we need to study them.
But when it comes to making judgments we, the individuals, depending upon the “station in our life” we have to become bold to express them and stick to them, boldly, as leaders and as spokespersons.

A demonstration of the collective consciousness of the people
Cutting across regions and religions and over-coming the many divisions and small-mindedness of small-time politicians and the conspirators!

Who gains and who loses?
What gains and what losses?

The USA, the world’ most powerful democracy, is moving closer to the world’s largest democracy, India. The world is sure to sit up and take note of India’s many strengths and its potential for a more stable world.

The July 22 trust vote saw the standing of the Prime Minister soar high. He became, as many tend to say, a man of his own and a man in his own right. The trust vote certainly gave Dr.Singh an aura of some new stature which he was lacking before the vote. The PM was, as he himself admitted, a bonded labour at least in the hands of the Left allies and after the vote he had not only become stronger, he also became a far more a man of his own at least he can be expected to express more clearly what his own thinking is on many of the crucial political and economic issues are for the party and the government in the days ahead.

So, there are very clear gains for Dr.Singh and for the Congress party and also in a sense for the many players who in the months before the next general elections might expect to firm up their own political goals and targets..

The real winner and the real gainer in this new situation are ,one can see. Amar Singh and Mulayam Singh. They have become not only a bi freer, the cases against Mulayam Singh would go now and also they would get their electoral alliance in  UP  with the Congress firmed up. What remains to be seen is the hard bargaining the Samajwadi Party might make against the Congress hopes for a better deal.

This is unlikely to come ,given the UP political arithmetic is firmly staked against the Congress getting an upper hand  in the foreseeable future.

So, who would control the maximum number of MPs from the politically crucial state? More likely, it is Mayawati and then followed by Samajwadi party. The BJP already weak and  the Congress weakened further by the new alliance.

So, the real gainers after the trust vote are the Samajwadi leaders and their followers. And what is unsaid so far is the more important fact that the Samajwadi party is also aligned with the country’s powerful industrialists and also with the Bollywood icons, the Bachans and therefore Amar Singh & co is likely to strike hard bargains by way of industrial policy changes, economic reforms through the prism of the Samajwadi party is in a way would acquire more political overtones and partisanship and also political glamour would acquire new dimensions, besides Indian politics being just Sonia Gandhi and son focused activity and public attention. To that extent, the very dull and drab bureaucratic style of politics we see in Dr.Singh and his team might also change for the good, we believe.

The other and even much more greater gain, as noted by many observers, is that for the first after a long time we see a new sense of maturity displayed by the hon’ble Members of  Parliament. We or the  entire country watched the proceedings of the trust vote debate, it was very engrossing, with all its usual interruptions and shoutings, Parliament at the moment of voting for a deal of which not many MPs really understood the very many stakes at issue, voted for an overwhelming strengthening of the country. National interest prevailed over any other partisan and narrow interests. This was the most decisive gain for the country at large. Any other voting pattern, either for the parties and their whips or for the defeat of the motion would have certainly sent a wrong message to the outside world.

After all, the nuclear deal, at the end of the day, didn’t originate with the Congress party, strictly speaking. It originated with the Vajpayee government and a friendship with the USA also started and matured during the Vajpayee regime, the visit of Bill Clinton to India saw a new turn in the American policy and in fact Clinton himself saw the immensity of India and when he visited the neighbouring Pakistan, he became more blunt and almost warned  the neighbour about entertaining any illusion of parity with India. From that moment onwards American policy towards India became more principled, based on mutual sharing of a joint vision for the world and at home. Indian democracy started to impact the American imagination and it should be said to George Bush’s honour he at least and at last saw virtues in building up close relations with India. This was a real breakthrough and seen in this light what Dr.Singh did in concluding the deal with the USA is only a natural process of keeping our word and this is India’s word, not as the Left and in particular the guileless Prakash Karat’s charge of keeping the promise made by Dr.Singh to Bush, as a person to person promise.

This is simple non-sense and needs to be dismissed as such.
Now, the real losers are many. First, it is the BJP which now stands exposed as a party with no discipline, too weak to hold its ranks, supposed to be a highly disciplined party and also a party with no real commitment. The BJP messed up matters on many fronts.

For a party that is given to garrulous speakers and meaningless orators and even sensational writers of many hues, the party when it came to the debating table  was found to be dumb-founded almost wonder-struck by the noisy debates and the various speakers, we didn’t see Advani at his best. He was almost without any arguments except to attack the Prime Minister personally on many counts. This in fact, disappointed even Advani’s many admirers in other parties. The Leader of the Opposition didn’t make a strong case for opposing the deal.

Perhaps, everyone knows that the BJP in fact believed in the deal and hence was weak in its attack. Where were the other speakers, inside and outside? Sushma Swaraj and others. Arun  Jaitley or Arun Shourie, supposed to be the brain trust of the party. Or, the others we used to see on the TV screens,  the various spokesmen? No, they were all nowhere or not noticed by the TV viewing public.

So, the BJP not only gave up the fight midway as it were and also it almost let the momentum pass on to other players in the dram of the day.

The real and almost heavy losers are the Left.
They blundered from one step to the other.
They antagonised the Lok Sabha Speaker and thus exposed themselves as immature leaders and their parties seemed  to have any substantial ideological case against the nuclear deal. They seemed to be one-agenda party, they didn’t have anything substantial to say on inflation or price rice.

The Left is either foolish or totally blind. What is big deal about the price rise and the inflation. Everyone is concerned about price rise and inflation and also fuel prices. This is common talk everywhere. And also, even the aam adhmi know that these are caused by extraordinary  forces, by forces outside the country, these are world-wide issues and just  India alone cant do much about it and also India is not sitting idle either. So, to make a song and dance about the not so unusual developments, as the Left did, is to leave a very poor impression on the imagination of the common man. That is what the Left did and  what the Left had achieved.

The Left’s case became a non-starter, the withdrawal of support didn’t produce the expected  crisis, we saw the Samajwadi party almost ready  waiting in the wings to jump into the national scene like a true saviour of the nation and national interest.
That is why Amar Singh, almost alone, single-handedly, handled the ciris and emerged as a hero of sorts.

Yes, give the devil the due, mar Singh has emerged as a savvy politician and we can see more of him from now onwards.

The other gainers were many. Even the other allies of the Congress conducted themselves with great dignity and the speeches, even by Lalu Yadav had its own merit.

It is the smaller parties and the younger leaders, namely,  Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti, Asaduddin Owaisi and Sangeethan Singh emerged as the new generation leaders and hopes of the future. Abdullah’s speech was rated the best by the TV channels and rightly so, we heard from the ringing words of the young leader all the  articulations of the new generation, a strong emphasis on secularism, one India and a strong and united India and where everyone, the majority and the minority communities found a unifying force.

The other smaller, one party MPs, from North Eastern India rose up to the occasion and captured the attention and imagination of the people.

So, India, it seems ,seems to have come of age, Rahul Gandhi was also heard for the first time and he made an impression.

All the interruptions, all the noise and din and the unruly behaviour on the part of MPs, and the final irony and the comic drama, of  bring in currency notes in bundles all lost their relevance.

The very many antics that followed didn’t impress the country and the government won the day handsomely.

Yes, the negative symbols were also there. One, the rise of Mayawati and the hastily formed Third Front with Karat, Naidu and Deve Gowda and others and  the prospect of Mayawati as the real alternative to the BJP is predicted by many. Given the number of SC/ST MPs in the Lok Sabha something like 120 now and 130 after the elections, one cant say how the caste consciousness among the SC/ST voters and  MPs would lead to a new alignment.

Deve Gowda, Ajit Singh, even Congress allies like the DMK and the PMK  became irrelevant. They have nothing to offer to the country, except their own selfishness! What a fall for a former Prime Minister, son of another Prime Minister! The two ironically  symbolised the kisan issues, shame on their part to tag with the brave kisans of the country whose interests and the two  leaders didn’t tally at all!
So, the country after the trust vote  gives rise to lots of optimism and it is optimism that matters for a country like India ,given the democratic pulls and counter-pulls.

Yes, it looks like an open season for the unprincipled politicians of India. Even the veterans, the former Prime Minister and the CPI veterans are forgetting that history won’t forgive and forget!

They are expected to show the right path, the right means, and their own articulations of what is their stand on the Indo-nuclear deal. They haven’t cared for doing their duties. All they care for is jobs for their sons and if possible for themselves as ministers or at best as power-brokers.

So, the Indian people would get the opportunity how the prospects of power change men and their colours.

Where is L.K.Advani, the BJP’s own candidate for the next Prime Ministership? He is intriguely silent. So too the other talking heroes and heroines of the BJP!
One thought that Mr.Jaswant Singh, the sauve face of BJP would articulate the Indo-US nuclear deal, the original author of the Indo-US dialogue. He is also surprisingly speechless!

What sorts of political parties and their leaders!
What Prakash Karat has and Deve Gowda doesn’t!
What Sibhu Soren wants and Ajit Singh doesn’t?

Sometimes even coalition governments need the no-confidence motions!
Only on such occasions, we or the people do find out the sorts of political parties we have and the types of leaders and their mentalities in the working of our political system. Why blame democracy or the Constitution?

We have men like Prakash Karat and Deve Gowda and also even in the bigger parties we have leaders ,Chief Minister and others who are not even plain wheeler-dealers like Amar Singh but we have still more shadowy characters.

These men(luckily, we don’t have  women leaders of such types, even in other countries including the USA we have great women leaders like Hillary Clinton who are ambitious, right but not shadowy like our men leaders!) are not  leaders in the strict sense of the word or any respectable definitions.

Take Prakash Karat. What does he want to achieve by these threats and withdrawal of support? What does Deve Gowda former Prime Minister and a Chief Minister at that, and what he achieves by keeping silence with just two MPS? Doesn’t he have any principles and beliefs? What are they? Nobody knows! Is not his great stature at stake? Please, at least you speak out and say your perception of things? What great stakes you are playing for? What threats to the country’s future you are grappling with? Nothing! Plain nothing? But then is the silence any indication of any great issues? Unfortunately not! All you want is some petty issues to be settled with? Is this all to your politics, politics in which you rose up to great and unexpected heights?
Now Karat, the great Communist. What do you have expect some unexplained irrational anti-Americanism?

Please don’t expect us, the very humble and the not so humble a people! We have our own reservations of cultivating friendship with the USA. But then we have our own perceptions and our own capacity to explain and cultivate the USA, as a people, as a great power and also as a great strategic alliance partner. What is wrong to have strategic partnership with the USDA?

Do you at least explain to the people of the country what are your perceptions of the so-called risks or threats from cultivating the USA? Or, the widely-held belief and suspicion of your own perceptions of the threats from China? What do you want India to do? Not just for nuclear fuel, nuclear power but also for strategic relationships?
Do you want India to stand alone? Or get isolated?

On another level, Mr.Comrade Prakash must at least conduct a survey of the public opinion, from the middle class opinion at least about how to go about getting the many critical industries like the IT integrated with the US economy.

Doesn’t the comrade want the Indian new generation to become closer to the American ways of lifestyle?

No one would imagine that even the youth of West Bengal and Kerala would want India to lose the many advantages that would flow from this deal.

Now, as for Karat he has no legitimacy to advocate for such a total disengagement of India with the USA. He is not even a popularly elected leader, not even an MP. All he had got by way of experience was the JNU student politics where he contested and even didn’t win that election, and he had been a loner and this shows from the sort of reactions that his sudden withdrawal drew from fellow comrades in Bengal and Kerala.

There is a healthy and mature debate that had broken out in these two Communist-ruled states. First, the Lok Sabha Speaker “revolted”! Next, the other ministerial leaders in the two states differed from Karat line. Then, a whole lot of honest debate had broken out.

The wisdom of the opposition to the deal and also the likely consequences for the party and the government.

The CPI (M) owes a lot of explanation to the nation about its advocacy of opposition to communalism. You now seek out and openly align with Mayawati, an embodiment of casteism and your voting with the BJP makes a neither willing nor unwilling ally of the very communalist forces!

So, you don’t have your own ideological clarity, all you have is the same raw and unvarnished opportunism of the kind we are now seeing with Deve Gowda or Ajit Singh or the poor Sibhu Soren.

We needn’t have leaders like Ajit Singh, US educated and widely experienced and you have to practice politics, yes from the lineage of Choudhury Charan Singh, but you must evolve into a next generation, secular and modern politician. At least pitch your case along with the farmers or the rural cause! This, you haven’t done. All you seem to care for is just as narrow parochialism as the Southern Dravidian parties.

The great shame for the Dravidian parties is that they have no word, no view or no stand on the nuclear deal, it seems! All they have is sheer opportunism, verging on sheer cynicism of the worst kind. They are the new version of the old Ayarams and Gayarams! They are always on display! They have pitched their tents! They are ready for any cash or kind deals!

Indian democracy under Manmohan Singh had reached a new nadir!
This is no service for the great people of India. You, leaders, are bargaining. Not bad. But at least you stand up like men and women and show yourself as people with some credible principles and beliefs.

This, you haven’t done. All the same, greater shame on the politicians of this round of politics and politicking!

There was this ceremony to lay the foundation stone for the ICAR auditorium in the name of C.Subramaniam. And another to commemorate Annasheb P.Shinde, the two who presided over the Krisih Bhavan and did much good work that saw the Green Revolution to change Indian’s agriculture. All this is well-said, many times before.
The point we want to highlight here is the sort of speeches we have come to hear on such occasions. More so, when it comes to agriculture, we see still a sort of tendency and even plain ignorance and even sheer callousness towards the reality and even speaking the truth.

We live no more in times where people would take our public speeches and more so, our public postures especially when it comes from high Constitutional office holders any more seriously.

This is very critical a time when people are taken for rides by ruthless operators whose another name is politicians!

We see the high Constitutional office holders are no more inspiring the people and we see the holders of such high offices also don’t live up to the expectations of the people.

These offices no more command such awe as they did in earlier times.
The President of India is the highest office under our Constitution. The Prime Minister of India is  the real power wielder and as such people expect and there is the tradition  that the Prime Minister is always elected by a deliberate process that brings out the best and sometimes, as in current times, the worst in our polity!

Yes, unless you get elected to such high offices then people become cynical and every word or posture of such high Constitutional office holder is looked upon with suspicion and often with certain disdain and even derision!

Now, we see the Lok Sabha Speaker is also being dragged into controversy, by none other than the very same CPI (M) and his name was submitted to the President as one of the MPs to support their withdrawal of support.

What sort of a political wisdom is this?
So too the authority of the Prime Minister is also undermined by the fact that he was elected to the Rajya Sabha by a process suspect by many well-known authorities as dubious and that is one reason there is so much lack of legitimacy in our political system when we talk of  reforms etc.

Now, why we have taken up the ICAR ceremony is the fact that our Excellency, the President of India has spoken about ushering in another “evergreen revolution” to solve the agriculture crisis in India.

As shrewd readers of the newspapers and the news reports must have known that this sloganeering type of speeches, speech is the very cause of our lack of serious effort to address the very many issues in our agriculture.

The very expression, Green Revolution, itself was not favoured by many as it hides and also hinders the need for clarity that is lacking in our policy making in agriculture.
So, when the President uttered the word, evergreen revolution, we have reasons to suspect who the author of the President’s speech might have been.

Anyway, the President, as the people know, comes from Vidarbha that has now come to symbolise the very failure of the Green Revolution! A spate of unprecedented number of farmers’s suicides has come to characterise our agriculture scenario. So, what morality we have to speak of another evergreen revolution when the very government in all its near full term is not able to stem the on-going suicides, even after the Prime Minister’s visit and sanctioning of a special debt -relief package?

There must be lot of heart searching and also the President’s speeches on such occasions must be carefully drafted so that every word from the highest authority must reach out to the hearts and souls of the very bottom of the society.

There is another cliché. It is about women in farming. What is great about this, new about this? What do you do for them?

This is a pointless, tired cliché. Look after the farmers, small and marginal and the not-so marginal and yet all farmers who are now caught in a vicious circle of inaction, sudden action as in the case of massive farm debt  waive-ff and now, no clue except to sing the praise of monsoons that have created a record harvest.

Mr.Sharad Pawar goes into an over-drive, advertises himself all over the TV screens as if he had achiev3ed the near impossible.

Anyway, the big time speeches  like the one we have taken up for illustration must come out with a more sober and yet ground-breaking serious talk.

We have to create a new agriculture growth strategy that has to take into account the current malises.

Consult the great scientists like Norman Borlaugh who has some sound advice as to the need to evolve new seeds with productivity potential?

Our research bodies like ICAR must be socially audited by farmers groups!

There are no on-going institutions, from co-ops to state level governance mechanisms, so that from credit to seeds supplies to other inputs to extension (that is almost non-existent) and also a well-designed marketing agency, a sort of PPP, the participation of the state marketing board and also farmers representatives and also the middlemen (let us kill the thought we can ever abolish them) and also the other interest groups.

So that whenever there is a boom in supplies the price dips and leads to farmers dumping their produce on the roads and blocks the highways! As they did recently in Kolar in Karnataka when they sat near heaps of tomatoes for the travellers to see and shrugg their shoulders helplessly!

These sights must be changed to one of rational administration.

The President of India must be seen speaking for the common man, the common farmers. Not just to sit near some self-seekers, seekers of publicity.
Please avoid clichés, we pledge!

One can’t say it any better! One can’t excel also the Western countries when it comes to culture and what it means culture promotion. Amjad Ali Khan is a great Indian musician, a great sword player with an illustrious leneage. Perhaps, he is only next to the great Ravi Sankar and the other great Kahan, son of the legendary Alaudin Khan of the Maihar gharna.

Only those who have listened in a sustained manner to the strings of the Sitar and Sarod could appreciate the greatness of these two streams, of course the vocal music of the Hindustani is another unbeatable genre.

India is home to these great traditions, both the Hindustan and Carnatic music streams have evolved in their own two distinct manner.

I would divide the history and evolution of the Indian music as that what we had before independence and what we have after independence. Even here, it is very useful to take note of the recent developments, just after we have been witnessing the globalisation spin-offs in the culture field, in the music in particular.

There is so much music traffic from the West and so too in a way from the East, from India to the West. Now, we hear too many times the music celebrations in Celeaveland, USA, than from Indian cities! So too the music masters, from rock to what have you, the classical musicians and instrumentalists are travelling from the West to perform in India.

Bangalore for instance is witnessing a new trend in presenting these many streams in an increasing manner.

The other day there was this six day festival of Indian and African music, at the sangeetha sabha near our home. Yes, the greats were all here, the Madras Music Academy president was there and so too the others like S.A.K.Durga, the musicologist, in fact, the lady is called ethno-musicologist, so much the better! That brings to our understanding of music something more than the particular music stream. Such an expression raises our imagination to a higher level, I felt.

I also read with interest that as for promotion of Carnatic music, of course there is much to write about promotion of Hindustani music, the Madras Music Academy comes to mind often. But now, I learn that in Bangalore, the Gayana Samaja was the first to take up the promotion of Carnatic music in the country. This was news for me, at any rate. It was for the serious ‘gayana’ the Gayana Samaj was established in 1905!This was much earlier than the Madras Music Academy, which came into being ,I think, in 1927,soon after the   session of the Indian National Congress in Chennai. I also think it was Satyamurthy, the first Congress leader with an interest in theatre who must have taken up the project for the  Congress session had surplus funds and the funds were utilised by the enthusiasts, among whom was also, I also guess rightly, the founder of the Hindu newspaper, may be Rangaswamy Iyerngar.

The Gayana Samaj, the Madras music Academy and now the Indira Nagar-based Sangeetha Sabha have all been doing the promotion of classical Carnatic music and dance. The origins of these sabhas read very humble beginnings. Always very middle class, in fact, very lower middle class, often government clerks in some unglamorous depts. like railways or chartered accountants and others like teachers and others. But for some unexplained (or unasked reasons?) the very many sabhas tend to migrate towards Chennai and that too to the Music Academy to claim some legitimacy and recognition!

I don’t know why?
And it is always some orthodox, (god-fearing of course!)and very pro-government, small time professional persons only become music sabha presidents. In Chennai, lately, after the scandal of the court cases and resolving the same, it is Mr.N.Murali, the Hindu editor and owner who lords it over the Music Academy. The once severely contested post for the president of the Academy went to Mr.Murali only and the once who didn’t make it, namely, the redoubtable, Mr.Nalli Kuppusamy Chetty of the Saris fame of the same name, emerged as a the alternative centre of music promotion. But somehow, it is Chennai with all its orthodoxy and its own middle class mentality that doesn’t see music and dance beyond the purview of this very same god-fearing small time class and its existence!

Thus, I find music promotion in the South and perhaps for the North too remain as a small-time profession and entertainment.

It is at this time, I find the writing of Amjad Ali Khan about the high status of music promotion in the Western countries.

I was glad to find that as he says that in London there is the Royal Albert Hall, Southbank Centre which are gigantic, beautifully architecture and also a beautiful ambience. For that matter, the very many private and public halls and music and theatre buildings, like the Barbican Centre and also at Shakespeare town of Stratford upon Avon are all halls that are in themselves as an aesthetic experience and also the productions and performances inside are a lifetime experience.

I was lucky to have visited these halls and enjoyed the very many plays and concerts, also on the Continent, in Paris and Berlin and Bonn and I used to wonder often: why in India there is no realisation that we too must have such big and comfortable music and culture halls and complexes.

Amjad Ali Khan has much to say about the need in India for such Western-type, Western-scale halls and complexes. I can’t but endorse his plea in all this seriousness.
I am glad Amjad Ali Khan has thought of speaking out his mind. If only more of our senior artistes start talking only we can hope that such efforts would bear fruit.
This is not a job that can be done by private efforts or private corporate sector efforts.
The state must play a role and a decisive role at that.

State governments have now depts. to promote languages and culture. But they seem to be doing some small-time parochial things.

It is time our Chief Ministers and at the Centre our Central Ministers wake up. They should really be doing much more than what is being done now. Our tourist promotion work is also very weak and hesitant.

We don’t understand our heritage’s worth.
In TN I have much grievance how they have neglected the culture potential. From Tanjore to Tranquebar, it is long culture corridor that cries for development and promotion. So, I can go on and on…!

Anyway, the point is that promotion of serious Carnatic music started earlier in Karnataka capital and the 103 year old organisation is now going strong and it plans to celebrate its centenary in a grand manner. Semmangudi, D.K.Pattammal and many other greats are household names in Bangalore music sections. Though I have now lived in Bangalore for over a decade I regret I had never been to the Gayana Samar premises and I should take the earliest opportunity to get to know things in a more systematic manner.

I know that localities like Malleswaram and Rajaji Nagar and Basavangudi are the predominantly Brahmin localities and it is these localities where you see regular classical music programmes.

Anyway, after listening for a very long time Balamurali Krishna during my regular morning regime of treadmill sessions, I have now turned to discovering new talents in Carnatic music. Some of my new discoveries are: Vasanatha Madhavi, a rare new discovery. Her rendering of Thyagaraja kritis, Endaro mahanubavalu, Nagumogu have me endless pleasure. The others, Gayathri Girish, Gayathri Venkataraghavan are other new discoveries. Of course, when it comes to rendering Abheri Raga and the Nagumogu set in that raga, there is no match for Balamurali!

May be there wont be another singer to ever rise upon to Bala, the great! Long live the great musician!

The minister doesn’t display both these assets.

All we can hope to remember about the minister is his penchant for playing his card as a pro-Marxist minister. That is why we heard for some time his obsession with the “detoxification” of the BJP-written Hindutva distortations in the school textbooks. Unfortunately for Mr.Arjun Singh, he is now presented with a new distortion of history as demonstrated by the Kerala government’s newly distorted history text books. The  Kerala social science textbook is a great shame for Kerala’s otherwise highly skilled writers! The textbook in Malayalam itself came for severe criticism by educators. Ksert’s English version, it is said, to have altered Nehru’s own will in butler English! The English version, as presented by Kerala education minister, M.A.Baby is full of “howlers, worse than the original, Pidgin English, malapropisms and would have shamed Sheridan, the great writer whose masterpieces are quoted for these original jokes. Even A.K.Gopalan, the spiritual ancestor of these new-fangled rich Communists! His own autobiography is badly written in English. Etc, etc.

Now, Arjun Singh finds himself totally clueless when it comes to the emerging trends in higher education.

Gross commercialisation of higher education. Most private sector engineering, medical and other para-technical and medical training schools are plain cash cows! No standards, no infrastructure and the persons engaged in this trade are highly unqualified.

Now, Mr.Arjun Singh had come to Bangalore and had participated at a “private university”s function. Her he had spoken about the indispensability of such institutions.

Very soon, foreign private universities are going to set shops here. So too private sector in the country too investing in new university-like institutions. Already the so-called deemed to be universities are mushrooming. The deemed status is not for upgrading faculty or infrastructure for world class institutions. For the simple common-sense reason of milking dry the helpless parents and students for a ride! Yes, it is as simple as that!

The HRD minister has some powers to regulate the universities. But from seeing what he has done in the last four and a half years, he has only given to the pressure from the bureaucracy. The HRD bureaucrats neatly carved out a domain for themselves in the name of another university for education research. If the NCERT also turns itself into a university, no one should be surprised. The UGC has no clear role in the current environment. It has not enough funds, so the UGC doesn’t do any of its mandated jobs. Neither enough funds for all the universities nor any power to control and regulate the university standards.
In some of the reputed universities, we have visited, Visva Bharat in the North and Gandhigram rural university in the South, you cant have any more a badly run and badly motivated universities in the country!
One is headed as the chancellor by the Prime Minister. The other is headed by the Vice-President!

None seems to have remembered these titles that come with their high offices!

Even the Vice-Chancellors are not selected and appointed in time. One is also not clear where the states Governors come in as visitors or chancellors do!

Nor the HRD minister has any idea of what an ideal university should be like!

There is no university in the country, we can dare say, where university autonomy is an example!

There is simply no conception of an all India university, the Central universities are functioning like local district universities (Visva Bharati is an example again).

A Central university, by definition, must make provision for all Indian student intake and also all India based faculty recruitment.
Can the HRD minister point to one university over which he can take some pride?

Then, what for a second-time minister is staying in the job?

Yes, these are all not very pleasant scenarios, as far as the standards of our university education are concerned.

But India must move forward.

India must aim for world class education, at least at some of the select universities.

Will the HRD minister please stand up and be counted?