Category Archives: People

Do you know for what reasons?
In house plot ownership trouble!
Let us appoint foreign faculty in Indian universities!

Who doesn’t know Prof.Amartya Sen, the second Nobel Prize winner from that remote, desolate land of Santiniketan, which every Indian knows and feels proud of – as an innovative university founded by Rabindranath Tagore? The Nobel Laureate now lives in the US at Harvard University. Santiniketan is no more as the one seat of learning universally adored and admired!

Why recall his name now right at the fag end of his academic career? Simply because he criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government policies as a public intellectual. This in India right now is considered as a great sin and as everyday events. Those who don’t want their names to be dragged in are in a silent mode, and the country pays heavily in terms of rare opportunities to grow and prosper.

Sen is an old friend, since we were contemporaries in the late 1950s at Santiniketan!
Now, his name is dragged by the Santiniketan administration. The situation is so bad that at the recent celebration of the Santiniketan centenary celebration, the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was not invited. Many others were left out including its famous student Prof.Amartya Sen himself. What a shame, we might say. But who cares these days for refinement and restraint. When everyone in politics and outside can speak on any topic and even call names and all that will be acceptable and passes on! Now, shall we say something about education? On the present-day education?

The so-called New Education Policy (NEP) is neither new nor is a policy as such!
Why do we say this? Since independence, India became an independent nation with such a history and legacy. India didn’t pay as much attention to its education and reforms as we should have. Why? It is a big question. First, Mahatma Gandhi’s legacy, his own views on education, called Basic Education, was left unquestioned even now. How can we question the views and basic beliefs of the Father of the Nation? Second, the successive education ministers. Today the education portfolio is managed by people, especially now by people who can’t even speak in English. So the status of education in the states where the language patriotism leads to an obstacle to modernise the syllabus and the mother tongue is also a problem, especially in demands for teaching in the mother tongue. The whole thinking on education is problematic in terms of any issues we can’t go into right here!

As for our own view, we are publishing this journal for almost half a century, and readers might see our old issues to know how we have started to change Indian education. Now, we like to draw the attention of Indian educators of the present times about where is the current scenario moving?

As per a recent account in the London Financial Times dated 22 April 2020, overseas students studying in the USA, UK, and other countries are from India 2,11,015, from China 5,46666, in Canada 36,326, also from other countries like Mexico, Japan, Saudi Arabia (66,408), South Korea(,69,659) and so on. This year there is a steep decline because of Covid. The drop is 4 billion dollars. The so-called developed countries receive about 5 million overseas students. Now, take India. We are sending more than 2 lakh students every year to the UK and the USA. Do you know the cost for an Indian student is Rs 55 lakhs! For inland, domestic students in the UK, it is only some Rs.10 lakh only. Let us think of Indian history. We have been taught under the British Raj to rate everything British superior to whites Indian, be it education or teach for truth! Our simple submission here is that we seek to revise this foreign obsession, be it education or culture. Let us provide world-class education right here in India.

Let our new education policy draw a policy to appoint high-class foreign faculty to teach in our universities, starting with new private universities, then going to public universities. The education market in India is almost exploding. So, this is the right moment. The so-called new education policy is not new at all. It is just a failure to stand up and think and look out at the new world. Enough for this time, we think!

What chance for corporate governance in India?

Role of Independent Directors falls flat!
India is a poor country, we have to realise first.

World bank, Tendulkar Committee Report and the subsequent Rangaran committee have also fixed poverty line in India fromRs.27.2(in 2009) to Rs.32.3(urban India),Rangarajan :Rs.32 to Rs.47 and the total number of poor resulting in 270 million. So too the rising inequality, India is at the top in the world!

And we are a very talking nation. Here we have all the world’s contradictions!
We have the world’s second rich list.

In such a contrasting nation, we now see many of the traditionally respectable notions of our living styles and talking style, not the least our writing styles are so hypocritical indeed!

Take the latest Tatas’s corporate battles. Tatas? Once the name spelt awe and respect all round, among the rich and the poor alike. Now, we see all the skeletons in the cupboard tumbling out.

Now, we have seen one after another the various companies board meetings. Tata Sons, Tata Trusts and other operating individual companies. Tatas never talked small. They always talked big. No Small is beautiful. It is always the big is beautiful!

We have here a small personal recollection. In the 1980 when the great JRD was alive and other big names too (like N.A.Palkhivala) were very much there we wrote a small letter pointing out some injustice to another big name in the art and culture world. First the Tata person concerned didn’t see the merit of the letter. He wanted to find out how important, small, we were!

So, that is the test it seems even now that prevails there. May be not.
Anyway, now the many concerns that raise questions of ethics, morality, leadership and what have you in the venerated Harvard Business School have all been thrown overboard, it seems. Some of the Independent Directors at any rate didn’t perform as per the expected governance norms.

There are so many conflict of interest cases. Here we restrain from mentioning names. But one name that stands out is that of Nitin Nohria, Dean, and Harvard Business School.

He has been a great name and as the Dean of such a great institutions, troubling questions arise as he has written much on ethics. The dean’s stoic silence is understandable. On October 24 Tata Sons abruptly ousted Chairman Cyrus Mistry after a messy fight! And Nohria was sitting on the board of Tata Sons as a non-executive Director! First, Mistry claims there “was a total lack of corporate governance” at the Tata group. Second, Mystery names Nohria as one of the two directors who were reduced to “mere postmen”! Simply following the orders of his predecessor, namely, Ratan Tata!

Third, Tata Sons is now seeking removal of another independent director at some of its separately listed operating companies who has backed Mistry.
A top Proxy advisory firm IiAS notes, allowing large shareholders to remove outside non-executives undermines the point of having those independent directors and hurts minority interests.

Nohria is recognised as an authority when it comes to ethics! He has publicly mused that “it is easy for people to believe in their own sense of moral responsibility but what happens when they are put under pressure by bosses or tempted by large short-term gains?”He has insisted that “character is something one has to work at forming”.

Anyway, despite his teachings and his own reputation, Nohria seems to have had no impact when it comes to fostering good governance at the Tatas. Sorry to say such things. But then how to convey to the common man and that too in a poor country where the very inequality is so huge and so intractable.

Here we don’t want to go further into the details but for record we have to note that Ratan Tata in his former avatar had given Harvard Business School a huge donation, 50 million dollars and when Noria was named dean this took place and a few months later Tata inducted Nohria on the board of the Tata Sons. Incidentally, When Tata gave the 50 million dollars donation to the Harvard Business School; it was considered the biggest contribution in the School’s 102 history!

Not to speak of Tats big power and influence on the various institutions in the country. Tatas came for adverse comments when the 2-G scam broke out and his PR machine then could swing the very government of India when the Tata PR machine could manipulate the media and others to even name the Cabinet ministers and even the choice of portfolios!

We leave the readers to make their own perceptions and let the public opinion take some serious lessons in citizens’ duty. Let us create a committed public opinion when it comes to corporate governance. Not just that. Even our political leaders’s moral worth when they yield to corporate pressures to save their offices!

Rotten in the state of Denmark?  Horror stories

That is how one is tempted to ask when we read the continuous stories of human depravity, total loss of a sense of belonging and whether people there care to worry about their what is seemingly their daily on-going increased neglect of the people by the government and the elite classes?

48 deaths of encephalitis in four weeks?

In Kalahandi, daughters dismantle roof for mother’s funeral. Then of course the repeated news about the lack of ambulance to carry the dead or the ambulance abandons a body on the way to hospital….

Can anyone hear such horror stories from a state ruling by a party and a leader who can’t speak his mother tongue and only English he speaks and yet he is loved by his people and repeatedly elected for the many terms!

This is from a state which is so rich in so many resources, minerals and other resources where the foreign investors love to invest and where there are so many opportunities to give a good governance and yet this sadly is missing and hence to series of such heart-rending, heart-breaking stories.

The Central government authorities be it the health department or the other departments that must have acted to set things right. So far as we are able to make out no further critici9sm from the larger public or the tech savvy Prime Minister who sends out dime a dozen tweets on all sorts of issues did it seem to have expressed his own horror.

Are we creating a health infrastructure, the latest developments in telemedicine and policies that must enable even the poorest must be able to access modern facilitieis, must be able to utilise the services like ambulances.

A minimum and decent healthcare must be at the disposal of the poor, right?
We have so much expertise, so man y experts and so much technological tools.
Why not the Odisha government call for experts like Dr.Devi Shetty or the IT wizards like Nandan Nilekani to give some blueprint like a total coverage and emergency services that would go to help everyone at the remotest of the parts of the country.

Surely, there must be a special package of help in health emergencies in states like Bengal too where too we hear often horror stories in infant mortality.
Eastern Indian states are poorly served.

That is clear. We are just outsiders and we don’t know much of the ground reality.But from the many statistics that are published from the mainstream media India’s health sector needs urgent priority. Niti Aayog is doing some very wonderful initiatives and it has to turn its attention to healthcare issues in the rural Indian space. Telemedicine is one tool that must be at the disposal of the primary health centres.

Panchayat Raj ministry also must be brought in when it comes to medical emergencies in the panchayats.As of now, more so in the South and may be this is also true of the North, Panchayat raj bodies are more revenue-departments controlled?

There is no other way except to involve and entrust the grassroots institutions to take care of the core health emergencies at the grassroots.
There is no virtue, we say, when one political party gets elected term after term.These parties often leave back a legacy of much wrong, not just corruption alone.

Bad governance has many facets. This one instance of health emergencies at the grass roots is one such bad legacy.

Please do something!

Rotten in the state of Denmark? Horror stories!

That is how one is tempted to ask when we read the continuous stories of human depravity, total loss of a sense of belonging and whether people there care to worry about their what is seemingly their daily on-going increased neglect of the people by the government and the elite classes?

48 deaths of encephalitis in four weeks?

In Kalahandi, daughters dismantle roof for mother’s funeral. Then of course the repeated news about the lack of ambulance to carry the dead or the ambulance abandons a body on the way to hospital..

Can anyone hear such horror stories from a state ruling by a party and a leader who can’t speak his mother tongue and only English he speaks and yet he is loved by his people and repeatedly elected for the many terms!

This is from a state which is so rich in so many resources, minerals and other resources where the foreign investors love to invest and where there are so many opportunities to give a good governance and yet this sadly is missing and hence to series of such heart-rending, heart-breaking stories.

The Central government authorities be it the health department or the other departments that must have acted to set things right. So far as we are able to make out no further criticism from the larger public or the tech savvy Prime Minister who sends out dime a dozen tweets on all sorts of issues did it seem to have expressed his own horror.

Are we creating a health infrastructure, the latest developments in telemedicine and policies that must enable even the poorest must be able to access modern facilities, must be able to utilise the services like ambulances.

A minimum and decent healthcare must be at the disposal of the poor, right?

We have so much expertise, so man y experts and so much technological tools. Why not the Odisha government call for experts like Dr.Devi Shetty or the IT wizards like Nandan Nilekani to give some blueprint like a total coverage and emergency services that would go to help everyone at the remotest of the parts of the country.

Surely, there must be a special package of help in health emergencies in states like Bengal too where too we hear often horror stories in infant mortality.  Eastern Indian states are poorly served.

That is clear. We are just outsiders and we don’t know much of the ground reality. But from the many statistics that are published from the mainstream media India’s health sector needs urgent priority.

Niti Aayog is doing some very wonderful initiatives and it has to turn its attention to healthcare issues in the rural Indian space. Tele-medicine is one tool that must be at the disposal of the primary health centres.

Panchayat Raj ministry also must be brought in when it comes to medical emergencies in the panchayats. As of now, more so in the South and may be this is also true of the North, Panchayat raj bodies are more revenue-departments controlled?

There is no other way except to involve and entrust the grassroots institutions to take care of the core health emergencies at the grassroots. There is no virtue, we say, when one political party gets elected term after term.

These parties often leave back a legacy of much wrong, not just corruption alone.Bad governance has many facets. This one instance of health emergencies at the grass roots is one such bad legacy.

Please do something!

A successful debut Indian poet would be deported. Is he one among the 40,000 skilled Indian workers?

New UK immigrations rules to deport 40,000 Indians

Skilled Indian workers to be sent home! See the irony of the Indo-British Empire and its twists and turns. Indian skilled workers range over a wider field of human skills. Teachers, business and IT professionals, health sector workers, charity workers, majority of them from India are to be deported.

There is a young Indian poet, named, Daljit Nagra whose second volume of poetry is just out and this second volume, ironically titled, ‘Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine is awarded another prestigious poetry prize. England, a land that had fascinated the world, particularly, the Indians who were over-awed when the first white man set his feet in India and then, as we know the story, finally went on to conquer and subdue us to helplessness. Yet, there is this love-hate relationship between Indians and the British. Now, the Brits, as they are called with rather a contemptuous tone, don’t want to leave Indians to their own devices. With Mr. Narendra Modi being courted and the Indian Prime Minister is having another makeover, this time with his wax model being erected at Madame Tussauds in London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok next month. Modi is being portrayed as the global leader along with others in the famous museum in London.

Those who had visited London would know how expensive the museum is and how really purposeless is this venture. The Brits, now broken, they need money, lots of them to balance their budgets and one way they do it is to charge the tourists by almost fleecing them with exorbitant entry fees even to simple literary figures like Samuel Johnson in Central London.

The Brits also has raised their visa fees recently, the UK visa fee is one of the most expensive one in the world, you know? Now, a bombshell for the thousands of Indian workers there.
There is now a new rule that says that unless you earn more than 35,000 pounds, whatever be your skills, you are liable to be deported, yes, deported and this rule comes into effect on 6th, April. Under this new rule those who earn less than 35,000 pounds, excluding over-time and second jobs, come under this category. Skilled workers from non-EU countries, on Tier-2 visas will face deportation after five years unless they can show minimum annual earnings of 35,000 pounds.

For long it was believed that the UK rows youngsters for study and work. Now, they invite for study but not for employment anymore. UK economy is no more an empire-based economy. Now, it is a shrunken small island. Unlike the USA which draws workers from overseas, more so from India. After 2008 world economic crisis, there is crisis in the USA too. So, the UK home ministry says the new rule will break the link between study and staying in the UK permanently. But whatever be the new realities the Indian love for UK and specially the English language is likely to remain unaffected. One example is the successful lives of poets and writers of Indian origin in English language.

Daljit Nagra is a new thrilling voice in English poetry. Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating-Tiger Tipu-machine is the eighteenth century Mysore ruler’s pastime, to have mechanical toys symbolizing a tiger savaging a British soldier, at the throat of the old British Empire.
This small little book of hardly 50 pages, published by the famous Faber and Faber, has poems that are hard-hitting, passionate, and satirical. Daljit Nagra, obviously from Punjab, has brought a new twist to the many ironies that mark the rise and fall of the British Empire. India and Indians have a stake in such new poetical outpourings.