Teaching the really underprivileged

By Sakuntala Narasimhan

28th March 2013 07:31 AM

Right?” I say, to the ten-year-old Veda, and wait for her answer. “Left!” she says, beaming  proudly. “No, the opposite of right is wrong,” I say, because that is the word in the list given in her work book. Her face falls as she pouts with indignation. “You only taught me ‘right’ and ‘left’ yesterday!” she argues. She is right, I did.
“There are two meanings to right,” I explain, even as I mull over the inconsistencies of the English language. Veda is the daughter of the watchman in our high-rise building, and comes to me for help with her school lessons, especially English, as both her parents are illiterate, and she wants to do well in studies and “travel  in a rocket like Kalpana Chawla”. She is intelligent and learns fast, but there are times when I wonder whether I am also not learning much in the process of teaching her.
“OK, but this word in the lesson I doesn’t understand,” she says. “You should say ‘I don’t understand,” I correct her, but quick comes the retort, “You said when there are many people I should use ‘don’t’, they don’t, we don’t, but I am only one person, no ? So it should be doesn’t ? I doesn’t, you doesn’t, they don’t.”
Touche. How come no one has thought of rationalising spellings and archaic grammar,  despite so much technological sophistication in recent decades?
The word ‘so’ rhymes with ‘go’ and ‘no’, but ‘do’  and ‘to’ don’t. Logic apparently doesn’t rule everywhere, there are dimensions that fall outside the purview of reasoning. Which is something I had never given thought to, in all my post-graduate studies, but confronts and confuses someone like Veda.
One folk tale in her  textbook says “God appeared  before a devotee in the guise of a  mendicant”. “Do you know what ‘guise’ means ?” I ask her, and quick comes the reply, “ Yes ! My friends in class all say, Hey guys, let’s go play basketball, so ‘guys’ means children.”
“That ‘guise’ is different from ‘guys’,” I explain. “Then why they say it the same way?” she wants to know. Good question.
For a craft project, I offer to teach her to make lace. “Yes? I love Lays, it is very tasty chips, it costs `10 for a packet in the store,” she says, leaving me giggling over the quick connections she makes.
Being an immigrant family from Andhra Pradesh,  she speaks Telugu, the local language in Bangalore is Kannada, and my mother tongue is Tamil. That makes for hilarious linkages — I explain an English word, she looks it up in her  English-Telugu dictionary, and I end up learning as many Telugu  words as she learns English. Even as I admire her enthusiasm and lofty dreams, I wonder where youngsters like her from underprivileged backgrounds will end up, under the proposed UPSC guidelines and controversies, regarding the language issue for aspirants to the administrative cadre.

Every right gives rise to a corresponding duty

By Soli j Sorabjee

31st March 2013 07:29 AM

There is growing perception that excessive emphasis on exercise of fundamental rights by citizens diminishes the importance of performance of correlative duties. The co-relation between rights and duties has been recognised by the Bhagavad Gita which teaches us that “your duty is your right”. Gandhiji summed up the matter admirably: “I learned from my illiterate but wise mother that all rights to be deserved and preserved come from duty well done.” Similar thought has been expressed by Einstein who stated, “every day, on hundred occasions, I remind myself that my mental and physical life depends on the toil of other persons, living or dead. So I must try to repay whatever I have received and am receiving”. Walter Lippman, the philosopher-journalist, was emphatic that “for every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfil”.
It is interesting that the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man of May 2, 1948, prescribes in Chapter 1 the rights and in Chapter 2 the duties. Interestingly, one of the duties prescribed is “the duty to pay taxes”. The African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights of June 26, 1981, prescribes along with guaranteed rights duties one of which is “every individual shall have duties towards his family and society, the State and other legally recognised communities and the international community”. Again it is interesting that Article 29(6) prescribes the duty “to pay taxes imposed by law in the interest of the society”. Apparently, tax evasion has been a problem.
The thinking that every right gives rise to a corresponding duty is based on the premise that freedom without acceptance of responsibility can destroy the freedom itself, whereas when rights and responsibilities are balanced, freedom is enhanced. Our Constitution, as originally framed, did not prescribe duties to be performed by citizens. It was only in 1976 after the June 1975 Emergency that a specific Chapter IV-A was incorporated in the Constitution by a constitutional amendment and Article 51-A was enacted which lists 10 duties expressed in elegant language to be performed by citizens. Unfortunately, because of the timing, this was viewed with suspicion and regarded as an attempt to curtail fundamental rights by way of imposition of fundamental duties listed in the article. These misgivings were misplaced. A fair reading of the article reveals that the underlying philosophy is that discourse on fundamental rights cannot be divorced from fundamental duties or else we do a disservice to both.
One of the fundamental duties prescribed is to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood among all the people of India transcending religious, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities; to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women [Article 51-A(e)]. There are other fundamental duties which deserve emphasis viz. the duty to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform and the duty to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity, so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement [Article 51-A(h) & (j)].
There is divergence of opinion among the high courts about judicial enforceability of fundamental duties. The Supreme Court in its decision in AIIMS Students’ Union vs AIIMS ruled that fundamental duties though not enforceable judicially, every citizen of India is obligated to perform those duties. It significantly observed that though Article 51-A does not expressly cast any fundamental duty on the State, the duty of every citizen of India is the collective duty of the State. The legal sequitur would be that persistent non-performance of fundamental duties by the State would tantamount to misgovernance and arguably could warrant imposition of President’s Rule under Article 356 of the Constitution on the ground that the government of the State is not carried in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution. I shall stop here and refrain from further indulging in provocative musings.
Solisorabjee@gmail.com
Sorabjee is a former Attorney General of India

Boss, read the true history before speaking

By S Gurumurthy

06th April 2013 07:41 AM

Nine years after advent in public life, Rahul Gandhi addressed the Confederation of the Indian Industry [CII]. Media conferred on him the title ‘Boss’. The Boss told captains of industry: “They used to look at India and say, Boss, the Hindu rate of Growth. They have been saying like this for 3,000 years. Now the Hindu Rate of growth is like the European rate of growth’. This less serious comment calls for serious response. Otherwise illiteracy about India will continue to persist for lack of literacy among Indians who speak for India. But, it calls for a peep into the world and the Indian economic history which most Indian academics, particularly economists, seem to be least interested in and therefore less aware of.
The label ‘Hindu rate of growth’ was coined by Professor Rajkrishna, a socialist establishment economist, in 1978 to rationalise why India was growing ‘slowly’ despite following the socialist prescriptions. Raj Krishna’s label was original but its philosophy was borrowed. It all originated in the colonial discourse on India. A notable victim of colonial discourse on India was Karl Marx. Even before he brought out his magnum opus Das Kapital, Karl Marx wrote an article on the Indian economy [June 25, 1853] in New York Harold Tribune. In his article, he was generally positive about the distinct ‘Hindoo’ India’s village system of agriculture and manufacturing which, he said, gave to people their independent organisation and social life. But he said that that had made India changeless for two thousand years. So the British, he said, were doing the right thing, though painful, causing a social revolution by demolishing the village system which Marx described as ‘semi-barbarian and semi-civilised’. Why semi-barbarian and semi-civilised?
Not because the village economic model was wrong per se, but, because, Marx said, the Hindoos were worshipping cows and monkeys and were even claiming antiquity greater than Christianity’s! Karl Marx, who never came to India, never met any informed Indian, nor read any worthwhile Indian literature dismissed India as a semi-barbarian. His knowledge about India was limited colonial records on India. Then came Max Weber. He had theorised that only Protestant Christian societies could progress under modern capitalist model since Protestantism alone promoted individualism and enterprise. He was entitled to his comment because he had studied the rise of America and European protestant nations as compared to the Catholic countries which had stagnated. But he impertinently wrote in late 1920s that India and China, which followed Hindu-Buddhist faiths, would not succeed under capitalist model because they believed in karma, rebirth and caste. He too never went to India, perhaps never met a proper Indian, but still adversely commented on Hinduism and Buddhism. Studies have established that the Marx and Weber theories had exerted the greatest influence on Indian academic, sociological and economic thinking. In the same stream of thought, Winston Churchill called Indians anarchic and barbaric. After freedom J K Galbraith described India as a functioning anarchy. Professor Rajkrishna’s remark was the Indian affirmation of this thought stream that held Hinduism guilty for keeping semi-barbaric and under-developed. This is what the Boss also has recalled in his CII speech.
But this colonial theory was proved fake in 1983 -- exactly five years after Rajkrishna trashed Hinduism for India’s low growth. In that year Paul Bairoch, a Belgian economist, came out with his study of the world economy and his findings astounded the West. He said that in 1750 India’s share of world GDP was 24.5 per cent, China’s 33 per cent, but the combined share of Britain and the US was - believe it - just two per cent. Yes only two per cent!
India’s share, Bairoch found, fell to 20 per cent in 1800; to 18 per cent in 1830; and finally crashed to 1.7 per cent in 1900, while China’s crashed to 6.2 per cent from 33 per cent. In these 150 years, the combined share of Britain and the US rose to from 2 per cent to over 41 per cent. Bairoch shook the West by saying that in middle 19th century, the West had a lower standard of living than Asians - read Indians and Chinese. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], network of rich nations, forthwith constituted a Development Institute Studies under Angus Maddisson, a great economic historian, to conduct a comprehensive research into economic history - the implied agenda was to prove Bairoch wrong.
Angus Maddisson postulated, ‘if Bairoch is right, then much more of the backwardness of the third world presumably has to be explained by colonial exploitation’ and ‘much less of Europe’s advantage can be due to scientific precocity, centuries of slow accumulation, and organisational and financial superiority’. After two decades of hard work, Maddision published his studies titled ‘World Economic History - A Millennial Perspective in 2001’.
His study confirmed Bairoch’s study of 150 years and more, as Maddisson studied the entire 2000 years economic history. Maddisson showed that India was the leading economic power of the world from the 1st year of the first millennium till 1700 - with 32 per cent share of world’s GDP in the first 1000 years and 28 per cent to 24 per cent in the second millennium till 1700.
China was second to India except in 1600 when China temporarily overtook India. India again overtook China in 1700. The global economic play was in the hands of India and China till 1830. And two nations disqualified for development by Weber for following Hindu and Buddhist religions. Maddison confirmed, actually confessed, that [Hindu] India fell only due to colonial exploitation. Now the Maddisson study, endorsed by OECD, is the most authentic economic history of the world. What does it prove? The Hindu rate of growth had kept India going as the most powerful economy of the world for 1850 years out of 2000 years. That is why William Dalrymple described the rise of India ‘as the empire striking back’ -- meaning that India’s rise was not rags to riches story.
The Bairoch-Maddisson studies have sealed the discourse decades back. Their studies have also been corroborated by other studies and records. Some of them are: studies into the Mayuran export-led economic Model Hindu India [American Journal of Economics and Sociology April 1993]; study into consumption during Akbar’s regime as being higher than in Europe by Centre for West Asia Studies Jamia Milia Islamia University; the Economic History of Greco-Roman World which described how two thousand years ago India was bankrupting Roman Egypt of its gold reserves by its export surplus; the history of Indian merchant navy which had a fleet strength of 40,000 ships in Akbar’s time and as many as 34,000 ships before the British arrived and the Bank of International Settlements [BIS] Annual report of 1934-35 which said that between 1493 and 1930 India absorbed 14 per cent of world gold production - which meant that it earned that much export surplus for five centuries continuously.
QED: Hindu rate of growth had made India super power. Colonialism did India down to poverty. Nehruvian socialism made it stagnate even after freedom.
The slow growth of India was due to Nehruvian socialism. But thanks to Rajkrishna the label Hindu rate of growth was globalised by the World Bank President Robert McNamara in 1980s. He said that India would always be in need of aid and it would ever be a burden on the world.
Another person who carried on the tradition of Marx-Weber-Rajkrishna-McNamara to trivialise Hindu India was Montek Alhuwalia who endorsed Rajkrishna’s description of India even after the 21st century opened. The only exception in the present establishment is Shiv Shankar Menon, the National Security Adviser, who profoundly called India’s rise “re-rise”. Will the Boss begin learning the true history of Hindu rate of growth, not repeat the spurious history when he talks to the FICCI or elsewhere later?