Convocation address at NIT, Rourkela Jan, 16, 2010 by APJ Kalam ex presiednt of India

7th Convocation Address to the Students of NIT Rourkela
16/Jan/2010 : Rourkela

Entering into knowledge society

I am delighted to participate in the 7th Convocation of NIT Rourkela in this famous Steel city. I congratulate all the graduating students for their academic performance and the faculty members for shaping the young minds. My greetings to Chairman Board of Governors, Director, Faculty Members, Staff and Students of NIT Rourkela.

NIT Rourkela – Mission

Dear friends, I was going through the mission which this institute has set for itself. It states “Every faculty, staff and student of NIT Rourkela is passionately committed to the mission of making India a world leader in technology and science, and nurtures this commitment with honesty, hard work and team spirit.” This is indeed a great vision which the institute has evolved for all its members and my best wishes to you all for its achievement.

During the last five decades, NIT Rourkela has contributed significantly to the techno-economic growth of the country by providing quality human resource who are functioning in the industry in various capacities both in India and abroad. Large number of alumni of NIT Rourkela have become entrepreneurs, and thus employment generators. The government of India has recognized the institute as a premier institution of repute. The modernization of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering departments and Computer Science and Electronics departments will substantially enhance the research capability of the institute. I congratulate the pioneers both present and past who have strived hard for laying a robust foundation for technical education in this institute. Today, I would like to talk on the topic “Entering into knowledge society”.

Friends, when I see you all graduating today, I was thinking what thoughts I can share with you. First and foremost, any establishment, any organization, you will be joining or you create, your own enterprise becoming an employment generator, always one demand that will come in front of you, that is: the experience of system design, system integration, and system management of the assignment or the task to be undertaken by you. I would like to present my experience of learning system design, system integration and system management while I was studying aeronautical engineering in MIT, Chennai, (1954-57) during the third year of my course.

Learning integrated system design

I was assigned a project to design a low-level attack aircraft together with six other colleagues. I was given the responsibility of system design and system integration by integrating the team members. Also, I was responsible for aerodynamic and structural design of the project. The other five of my team took up the design of propulsion, control, guidance, avionics and instrumentation of the aircraft. My design teacher Prof. Srinivasan, the then Director of MIT, was our guide. He reviewed the project and declared my work to be gloomy and disappointing. He didn’t lend an ear to my difficulties in bringing together data base from multiple designers. I asked for a month’s time to complete the task, since I had to get the inputs from five of my colleagues without which I cannot complete the system design. Prof. Srinivasan told me "Look, young man, today is Friday afternoon. I give you three days time. If by Monday morning I don’t get the configuration design, your scholarship will be stopped." I had a jolt in my life, as scholarship was my lifeline, without which I cannot continue with my studies. There was no other way out but to finish the task. My team felt the need for working together round the clock. We didn’t sleep that night, working on the drawing board skipping our dinner. On Saturday, I took just an hour’s break. On Sunday morning, I was near completion, when I felt someone’s presence in my laboratory.
It was Prof. Srinivasan studying my progress. After looking at my work, he patted and hugged me affectionately. He had words of appreciation: "I knew I was putting you under stress and asking you to meet a difficult deadline. You have done great job in system design”.

Through this review mechanism Prof Srinivasan, really injected the necessity of understanding the value of time by each team member and brought out engineering education has to lead system design, system integration and system management. I realized that if something is at stake, the human minds get ignited and the working capacity gets enhanced manifold. That’s what exactly happened. This is one of the techniques of building talent. The message is that young in the organization, whatever is their specialization, be trained to systems approach and projects, which will prepare them for new products, innovation and undertaking higher organizational responsibilities. Friends you should get ready to acquire knowledge in an integrated way for using multiple disciplines towards product development and its management.

The second aspect, I would like to discuss is, what type of India you are going to see within the next ten years. What are the challenges you will undertake and participate? I am going to visualize the type of India in the year 2020, so that you can build the capacities to participate in this movement.

Distinctive Profile of India by 2020

1. A Nation where the rural and urban divide has reduced to a thin line.
2. A Nation where there is an equitable distribution and adequate access to energy and quality water.
3.A Nation where agriculture, industry and service sector work together in symphony.
4. A Nation where education with value system is not denied to any meritorious candidates because of societal or economic discrimination.
5. A Nation, which is the best destination for the most talented scholars, scientists, and investors.
6. A Nation where the best of health care is available to all.
7. A Nation where the governance is responsive, transparent and corruption free.
8. A Nation where poverty has been totally eradicated, illiteracy removed and crimes against women and children are absent and none in the society feels alienated.
9. A Nation that is prosperous, healthy, secure, devoid of terrorism, peaceful and happy and continues with a sustainable growth path.
10. A Nation that is one of the best places to live in and is proud of its leadership.

Integrated Action for developed India

To achieve the distinctive profile of India, we have the mission of transforming India into a developed nation. We have identified five areas where India has a core competence for integrated action:

(1)Agriculture and food processing

(2) Education and Healthcare

(3) Information and Communication Technology

(4) Reliable and Quality Electric power, Surface transport and Infrastructure for all parts of the country.

(5) Self-reliance in critical technologies.

These five areas are closely inter-related and if progressed in a coordinated way, will lead to food, economic and national security.

I have given you, how you have to transform yourself to meet the professional challenges as system technologist and contribute in realizing any one or more of the ten pillars, I have described.

Mission in life

While entering into such type of mission in life, you need unique traits for achieving success in your missions.

First of all, you have to have an aim in life. You have to set a goal.

Second one, you have to acquire knowledge continuously as a life-long autonomous learner.
Third you have to put in honest hard work and fourth is: you have to have perseverance in life. Here I would like to give an example of a-visually challenged young boy, who was not deterred by his physical challenge.

I can do it.

Friends, when I was the President of India, on 28 Aug 2006, I met the group of tribal students from Lead India 2020 movement. I asked all of them one question: “What you want to become?” Out of many responses,
one visually challenged boy studying IX class got up. His name is Srikanth, he answered me "I will become visually Challenged first President of India". I was very happy to see his vision and ambition.
Small aim is a crime. Hence, I congratulated him to realize his vision and told him to work for realizing the vision.

There after he worked hard got 90% in Xth class and 96 % in intermediate and he set a goal to study Engineering in MIT, Boston USA. His relentless hard work not only secured seat but he got full fee waiver from MIT, Boston. Srikanth’s achievement has brought changes in many change agents of Lead India 2020 and inspired to set high vision. Lead India 2020 training has set a high vision for every student who undergoes the training process. Seeing this impact of Lead India 2020 training, GE volunteers have funded Mr. Srikanth for his
travel to USA. Today he is pursuing his studies at MIT, Boston. When the GE offered him a job on his completion of graduation, he told them that he would certainly come back to GE, if I couldn’t become the
President of India. What a confidence that boy has amidst of difficulty and the challenges in his life by being visually challenged. What a great transformation that has brought into a visually challenged boy’s life by Lead India 2020 movement through value based education intervention.

Diligent and sincere evaluation

Another important quality is, the ability to work with knowledge acquisition constantly for an aim and convert it into a certain outcome. To achieve this, you will need to constantly practice and evaluate your own actions and ideas at all moments. Only when they pass the most rigorous and honest tests, you can be certain of the
outcomes of every action you take. This would require great diligence and sincerity in all your efforts. Let me give you an example. When Lockheed introduced the Tristar 1011 plane, the company decided to determine the efficiency and safety of the plane by a process of rigorous tests. These evaluations lasted for 18 months and cost more than $1.5 Billion, putting the various parts of the plane through a simulation stress equivalent to 36,000 flights which is equivalent to almost 100 years of service. It was only when the plane passed all these tests, without a single malfunction, was the aircraft given the seal of approval. Dear students, all of you must derive a lesson from this example – practice and constant evaluation will make your ideas and actions perfect and inject the self confidence in you that “I can do it”.

Now I would like to share with you the life of two great personalities who could combat all the challenges and succeed in their mission through their creativity and passion.

Birth of Creativity in a difficult situation

Mario Capecchi had a difficult and challenging childhood. For nearly four years, Capecchi lived with his mother in a chalet in the Italian Alps. When World War II broke out, his mother, along with other Bohemians, was sent to Dachau as a political prisoner. Anticipating her arrest by the Gestapo, she had sold all her possessions and given
the money to friends to help raise her son on their farm. In the farm, he had to grow own wheat, harvest; take it to miller to be ground. Then, the money which his mother left for him ran out and at the age of four and half years, he started sometimes living in the streets, sometimes joining gangs of other homeless children, sometimes living in orphanages and most of the time hungry. He spent the last year in the city of Reggio Emelia, hospitalized for malnutrition where his mother found him on his ninth birthday after a year of searching.
Within weeks, the Capecchi and his mother sailed to America to join his uncle and aunt.

He started his 3rd grade schooling afresh over there and started his education, interested in sports, studied political science. But he didn’t find interesting and changed into science, became a mathematics graduate in 1961 with a double major in Physics and Chemistry. Although he really liked Physics, its elegance and simplicity, he switched to molecular biology in graduate school, on the advice of James D Watson, who advised him that he should not be bothered about small things, since such pursuits are likely to produce only small answers.

His objective was to do gene targeting. The experiments started in 1980 and by 1984, Capecchi had clear success. Three years later, he applied the technology to mice. In 1989, he developed the first mice with targeted mutations. The technology created by Doctor Capecchi allows researchers to create specific gene mutations anywhere they choose in the genetic code of a mouse. By manipulating gene sequences in this way, researchers are able to mimic human disease conditions on animal subjects. What the research of Mario Capecchi means for human health is nothing short of amazing, his work with mice could lead to cures for Alzheimer’s disease or even Cancer. The innovations in genetics that Mario Capecchi achieved won him the Nobel Prize in 2007.

Noble laureate Capecchi life indeed reveals: -

“When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you.”


A genius well ahead of time: Failure did not deter him

Ramanujan, born and raised in Erode, Tamil Nadu, first encountered formal mathematics at the age of ten. He demonstrated a natural ability at mathematics, and was given books on advanced trigonometry by S. L. Loney. He mastered this book by age thirteen, and even discovered theorems of his own. He demonstrated unusual mathematical skills at school, winning many awards. By the age of seventeen, Ramanujan was conducting his own mathematical research on Bernoulli numbers and the Euler–Mascheroni constant. He received a scholarship to study at Government College in Kumbakonam. He failed his non-mathematical coursework, and lost his scholarship. Srinivasa Ramanujan lived only for 33 years and did not have formal higher education or means of living. Yet, his inexhaustible spirit and love for his subject made him contribute to the treasure houses of mathematical research – some of which are still under serious study and engaging all-available world mathematicians’ efforts to establish formal proofs. Ramanujan was a unique Indian genius who could melt the heart of the most hardened and outstanding Cambridge mathematician Prof G H Hardy. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that it was Prof. Hardy who discovered Ramanujan for the world. Professor Hardy rated
various geniuses on a scale of 100. While most of the mathematicians got a rating of around 30 with rare exceptions reaching to 60, Ramanujan got a rating of 100. There cannot be any better tribute to either Ramanujan or to Indian heritage. His works cover vast areas including Prime Numbers, Hyper geometric Series, Modular Functions, Elliptic Functions, Mock Theta Functions, even magic squares, apart from serious side works on geometry of ellipses, squaring the circle etc. One of the tributes to Ramanujan says that, ‘every Integer is a
personal friend of Ramanujan’. He was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society (F R S) in 1918.

Ramanujan used to say “An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God”. For him the understanding of numbers was a process of spiritual revelation and connection. In his investigations into pure mathematics, he drew extraordinary conclusions that mystified his colleagues, but were usually proven, eventually, to be right. He opened a universe of theory that still today is reaping applications. The landscape of the infinite was to Ramanujan a reality of both mathematics and spirit. His love for numbers led Ramanujan to number theory. Despite being affected by chronic health problems, he was breathing Mathematics throughout his short life and his genius was recognized internationally. So friends you saw, how great creative minds, gave problem to the problems to succeed through the instrument of knowledge.

Dear friends, let me take you to the type of society we are entering and challenges.

The knowledge society in 21st century

The world in the 21st century will be a knowledge based society with multiple opportunities. I was reading a book, “Empires of the Mind” by Denis Waitley. This book gives, what type of the new world which we are facing now? What was yesterday and what is today. I have modified certain points of the author to suit our conditions. I have also added a third line which relates to action of educational institutes.

It specially says that “what worked yesterday, won’t work today”.

1.Yesterday – natural resources defined power
Today - knowledge is power
Educational Institutions will be a powerhouse for knowledge

2.Yesterday - Hierarchy was the model
Today- synergy is the mandate
Educational Institutions will be enabler of intersection of mutiple faculties towards mission goals

3.Yesterday – leaders commanded and controlled
Today – leaders empower and coach
Potential Leaders will be empowered through exposure to the needs of sustainable development

4.Yesterday - shareholders came first
Today – customers come first
Education should inculcate sensitivity to “customer” needs

5.Yesterday - employees took order
Today – teams make decision
Educational Institutions can inject team spirit

6.Yesterday - seniority signified status
Today – creativity drive status
Educational Institutions is the breeding environment for creativity

7.Yesterday – production determined availability
Today – Competitiveness is the key
Competitiveness is powered by research and university has to have the motto of “teaching-research-teaching”

8.Yesterday - value was extra
Today – value is everything
Objective Value judgment to be introduced in education

9.Yesterday – everyone was a competitor
Today – everyone is a customer
Educated customer is also from Educational Institutions

10.Yesterday - profits were earned through expediency
Today – Work with integrity and succeed with integrity.
Education with value system is the need of the hour

I am sure, the curriculum and the method of teaching in the institute has been designed to cater for the needs for 21st knowledge society.


Conclusion

Friends, finally I would like to ask you, what would you like to be remembered for? You have to evolve yourself and shape your life. You should write it on a page. That page may be a very important page in the book of human history. And you will be remembered for creating that one page in the history of the nation – whether that page is the page of invention, the page of innovation or the page of discovery or the page of creating societal change or a page of removing the poverty through development of PURA complexes (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Area) any part of the country or the page of fighting injustice.
I will be happy if you could write this page and mail it to me (apj@abdulkalam.com).

With these words, I once again congratulate the graduating students. My best wishes to all the members of NIT Rourkela success in the mission of developing quality technological human resource for the nation.

May God bless you.

Eight point Oath for Graduating Students

1. Engineering and Technology is a life time mission. I will work, work and work and succeed.
2.Wherever I am, a thought will always come to my mind. That is what process or product I can innovate, invent or discover.
3. I will always remember that “Let not my winged days, be spent in vain”.
4. I realize I have to set a great technological goal that will lead me to think high, work & persevere to realize the goal.
5. My greatest friends will be great scientific and technological minds, good teachers and good books.
6. I firmly believe that no problem can defeat me; I will become the captain of the problem, defeat the problem and succeed.
7. I will work and work for removing the problems faced by planet earth in the areas of water, energy, habitat, waste management and environment through the application of science and technology.
8. My National Flag flies in my heart and I will bring glory to my nation.

The Hindu: Voting in Maoist Land - Jean Dreze

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/01/10/stories/2010011050120400.htm

ISSUES

Voting in Maoist Land

JEAN DRÈZE

Why do poor people in rural areas vote when they know the whole system is against them? JEAN DRÈZE talks to some voters and observes the voting process during the recent Assembly elections in Latehar district, Jharkhand, and comes away with some pointers...

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At one booth (Rankikalan, Booth No. 69) a BJP activist was trying to influence voters before they entered the booth, under the guise of helping them.

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Photos: MITHILESH KUMAR

A surprising show of faith:Voters at the Tumbagara Booth, Latehar.

Latehar district in Jharkhand is one of India's so-called “Maoist-infested” areas, where people are said to live at the mercy of Naxalite terrorists. On the surface, it is quite peaceful. I have never felt unsafe when I moved about rural areas of Latehar over the years. But the stillness is deceptive. Over time, one learns to feel the heavy yoke of structural violence under which people live: economic exploitation, social discrimination, police repression, and so on. Most of the time, the violence does not surface, because people learn to stay in their place. But if they step out of line, there is swift repression: beatings, arrests, false cases, even killings if need be. Maoism is the least of people's fears. But they live in dread of the police, the court, the forest officer, the “security forces”, and other arms of the State.

I was curious to see how voting takes place in these areas, so I spent a day in Latehar on October 18, the last day of the Assembly elections in Jharkhand. I went around half a dozen villages and booths of Manika Block, with two accredited observers.

Election day was an occasion of sorts in the area. People headed for the booths in large numbers. The voter turnout rate was around 60 per cent, a respectable figure by international standards. Most people were quite disciplined, and queued patiently at the booths.

Massive security arrangements were in place. On the main road to Daltonganj, for miles on end, there was an army jawanin full battle gear every 20 metres or so. In the interior villages, every booth was heavily guarded. But people were moving about in groups, so they were not afraid of the “forces”. Nor did we see any sign of the army or police interfering with the election process.

Procedures observed

I was impressed with the administrative preparations that had been made. Voter ID cards (with photograph) had been distributed in advance, and reams of matching identity slips were ready at each booth. The prescribed procedures seemed to be observed. Voters were allowed one at a time into the booth, and the anonymity of their vote was respected. We did not witness any incident of rowdiness or disruptive behaviour.

However, we did observe some serious irregularities. For instance, at one booth (Rankikalan, Booth No. 69) a BJP activist was trying to influence voters before they entered the booth, under the guise of helping them. And we found no active booth after 2 p.m., even though the official timings stretched to 3 p.m. The departing officials claimed that voting was “over”, but what about people's right to vote after 2 p.m. if they so wish? On my way back to Daltonganj, I also met a young man who claimed that when he reached the polling booth, he was told that someone had already voted under his name. This was an isolated but disturbing sign of the fact that the system may not be as fool-proof as it looks. Having said this, considering that this is one of India's most troubled areas, in a state where all semblance of a functioning administration has virtually disappeared, the entire operation looked reasonably credible.

So much for the good news. On a less cheerful note, most people's vote seemed to be little more than a shot in the dark. At each booth, I asked a few men and women who they had voted for and why. Most of them were quite happy to tell me who they had voted for, but found it difficult to explain why. “Someone told me to vote for the lantern, so I voted for the lantern”, “I always vote for the hand”, and “this candidate is from our area” are some examples of their responses.

Focus on personalities

Most of the respondents were unable to relate the symbols to political parties. They know about the flower, the lantern, the banana, and so on (there were about 20 different symbols on the machine), but ask them which party the lantern stands for and you are unlikely to get the correct answer. I also noted with interest that the voting machines don't mention any political parties. Against each symbol is the name of the candidate, and nothing more. When most people are unable to relate symbols to parties, as seemed to be the case in Latehar, this arrangement reinforces the focus on personalities at the expense of issues.

In larger villages on the main road, the situation was a little different. There, the mainstream parties had conducted intensive campaigns, and people's education levels were also higher. Some voters there refused to tell me who they had voted for, arguing — quite rightly — that it was a private matter. Others did tell me, and were able to associate symbols with parties. Even there, however, there was no evidence of specific parties being identified with specific issues.

To understand how poor people vote in these areas, we must remember that most of them live in a very hostile environment where the whole system (the contractor, the landlord, the police, the BDO) is against them. In this system, what people need is a “strong man” who can help them to get things done and come to their rescue in times of trouble. It may not matter much if that man (or woman) is corrupt, or communal, or an opportunist. And it certainly does not matter much that he or she belongs to the privileged classes. On the contrary, a strong man, by definition, must be rich and powerful.

So how do people pick their preferred “strong man”? It's hard to guess, based on a single day of observation. Some voters may identify with the caste or community of a particular candidate, or with the fact that she is “from our area” as one respondent told me. Some were said to have been given liquor or money to vote for a particular symbol. Some may have gone by rumours that so-and-so was the person or symbol to vote for. And quite likely, many others just followed the advice of someone who matters. It is these influential middlemen, more than the voters themselves, who are wooed by the political parties.

A different candidate

All this helps to explain why Jitendra, a “different” candidate who talks about people's rights and social justice, had a sad face on October 18. Jitendra looks much like any other villager of the area, and certainly not like an MLA or future MLA (no special outfit, no gizmos, no bodyguards). He took a leading role in a successful struggle against forced displacement in the area, and thought that this would give him a good chance in the Assembly elections. Around his own village, Jitendra had a lot of support, and many people were voting for the banana. But beyond that, he didn't' seem to count for much. His defeat was assured.

At the end of the day, I wondered why people vote at all. Knowing that their own vote makes no difference, and that the whole system is against them anyway, why do they bother? One answer is that they clutch to the little they have — the faint hope that they can do something to bring change into their circumstances. There are other answers too. To some extent, it may be a form of “herd behaviour”. Voting is also a social event of sorts — a distraction that brings fleeting excitement in people's monotonous lives.

Yet another answer is that people think of voting as a collective rather than an individual act. When they vote, they feel part of a collective effort to back a particular candidate. This point was vividly conveyed to me last year by a young man in Rewa (Madhya Pradesh), who said: “had I voted for the flower while others in my village voted for the hand, my vote would have been wasted”.

I believe that there is some truth in all these answers. And in a sense, we don't really need an “explanation”: voting just requires the sort of minimal public-spiritedness that is readily found in most societies (with some pathological exceptions, such as the United States where the odd act of voting is confined to a small minority).

In the evening I left for Ranchi by train from Daltonganj. Hordes of loutish jawanswere crowding the platform, waiting for the same train. The brief moment when they had a specific duty, and strict orders to behave themselves, seemed to be over. Seeing this, my friend Shailendra, who was due to board the same train, decided to catch the morning bus instead. I smiled at this panic reaction, but understood it better when I saw the behaviour of the jawanson the train. No wonder poor people live in fear of the security forces. One of the jawanstold me apologetically, “this is India”. I replied “no my friend, this is the army”.

Professor Jean Drèze is now with the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad.

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Amartya Sen interview in The Telegraph in Kolkata

http://telegraphindia.com/1100101/jsp/frontpage/story_11931247.jsp

At 10, into the twenties

The Sen interview: Nothing wrong with seeking change. The central question is what kind of a Bengal do we want?

Now you can say twenty10 and so on for 89 years -SPECIAL ISSUE

Amartya Sen at his Santiniketan home on Christmas Day. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya The first decade of the millennium proved to be a study in contrasts. It began on a doomful note with the war on terrorism, followed by a series of terrible highs and lows. The global economy looked up, then plummeted. In various parts of the world, people lost, won or lobbied for their human rights. With the advent of global citizenship, climate change became a serious talking point on the highest international fora. On Christmas Day, during a long car ride from Pratichi in Santiniketan to Dum Dum airport in Calcutta, Nobel LaureateAMARTYA SEN spoke to Somak Ghoshal of The Telegraph on the shape of the decade gone by as well as the challenges that lie ahead of India, and the world, in the next 10 years. Excerpts from the interview: Q: What is your assessment of the last decade? A: The last decade has seen a lot of exciting things, both positive and negative. The negatives are probably more dominant. We saw 9/11 and the accentuation of global terrorism. On November 26, 2008, there was a ghastly incident in Mumbai. There was also organised violence of a non-terrorist, but sectarian and communal, kind. Perhaps the pre-eminent example of that would be the Gujarat killings of 2002. There were other such events around the world, as in Sudan, which saw the targeting of the southern Christian population by extremists from the north. There was the completely misconceived war in Iraq, based on the hypothesis that Iraq had an alliance with al Qaida, which was not true, and that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which was also not true. But it was certainly true that Iraq had a dictatorial regime. However, there are many other countries with dictatorial regimes. So it was an oddly ill-conceived war, which put the fight against global terrorism back rather than forward. There was also an intervention in Afghanistan, though with more logic to it; it did lead to the displacement of the Taliban. This, too, was one of the consequences of 9/11, and certainly had some positive effect in Afghanistan in preventing the busting of girls’ schools and the punishing of people with any kind of non-orthodox view. But such activities are still going on, partly fed by the deflection of American concentration on Afghanistan, thanks to Iraq. A confrontation that began early in the decade is still continuing. There have, however, been some positive achievements as well, of which an understanding of the need to take internationally co-ordinated action on global warming is a very important example. There is also a greater understanding that terrorism cannot be dealt with by any unilateral approach. No country, not even the US, can plausibly dictate to other countries how they should think. The fact that unilateral approaches, including the US-led policy of military intervention in Iraq, have been so problematic has made the importance of multilateralism much better understood. There was also an important positive change in America in the form of moving away from ignoring the views of the rest of the world to a position in which Barack Obama takes a much more world-friendly view. It is also a social change in which issues of domestic justice, including medical benefits for all American citizens, have become important in American politics. Indeed, America was the only rich country in the world which did not have medical insurance automatically provided for every citizen or legal resident. That it still doesn’t have. But, by the recent changes that are going on, there would be a much greater opportunity for the American citizen or legal resident to make use of the medical facilities that the country is able to offer. So there have been some positive changes, including a better recognition of the need for global thinking, whether it be on multilateralism in tackling terrorism or in addressing global warming. Also, some progress has been made in advancing the understanding of the need for more global justice, and specifically for the elimination of some huge cases of global injustice, such as rampant illiteracy, ill-treatment of women, and people dying of diseases without medicine or any medical attention even though effective treatments are known and appropriate medicines are inexpensive to produce. On these issues there is much more vocal and informed discussion today than in the previous decades. I would regard these as substantial achievements. But we have to see how these recognitions translate into policies and public actions over the next decade or so. Q: While taking office for the second time last year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke of the “decisive decade”. In what ways do you think it would be decisive? A: I think Manmohan may have been partly talking about the world, but he was also talking about India in this. In India, there was a kind of popularity of the communalist approach, led by the Hindutva movement, which seemed to be in ascendancy in the last two decades. But in the decade that’s just finishing, what had seemed like a relentless march towards greater and greater sectarian understanding of Indian politics had a big setback. I think Manmohan’s first prime ministership in 2004 came at the end of a marginal victory on the part of the secular parties led by the Congress. Since then, secularism as one of the major planks or platforms of Indian democracy has been consolidated, including in the 2009 elections, when the Hindutva-oriented parties had a further setback. So I think it is possible that in making the statement you quote, Manmohan might have been concerned about putting Indian secularism on a very firm footing in the coming decade. Manmohan must have been also concerned, in the quoted remark, with the economic development of the country. India’s growth has been quite high over the last decade, even though the sharing of the gains of that development has been quite unequal. There is a huge potential for doing much more with the resources that are generated by high growth. And I think that when he described the next 10 years as the “decisive decade”, he was thinking both of maintaining India’s high growth and departing from the past in making the results of development much more equitably shared than what happens at the moment. And there, in my judgement, he could sensibly begin with extending basic education and basic healthcare to all. Whether the policies that will come will entirely live up to the expectations generated by the demands would be important to watch. Also, the role of India in the world is something, I do know, worries Manmohan, and he will welcome the fact that India seems to have a much better reception in the world now as a global actor. He would want that to be further strengthened and consolidated. Amartya Sen. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya Q: What are the likely pitfalls that lie ahead of India? A: Pitfalls are always difficult to guess because you can typically perceive that you are in a pitfall only when you actually fall! So I’m not sure that it would be easy to predict what the potential pitfalls are. But certainly, India has had a role in the past of voicing concerns that are not only its own but also of the underdogs of the world. After India became independent in 1947, for many years after that, India was maddening the rest of the world by being hugely moralistic about its own role in championing the cause of the underdogs of society. But even though that vocal level was probably not sustainable, and not entirely fair to the other countries, the fact remains that there was a strong sense of global concern in India’s position. India has been very successful in some ways in terms of domestic expansion of the economy and in terms of the global recognition of its importance (even though it has not been terribly successful in other respects, for example, in expanding healthcare and basic education for all Indians). There is, however, a danger in the possibility that India has become — or at least has given the impression of having become — less concerned with fairness to the underdogs of the world and much more concerned with its own self-interest. Now, any nation making its policy will naturally put some of its self-interests in a special position: in some ways that is indeed what the government is, among other things, charged to do. But then, that’s not the only thing that a government is charged to do. We are not only citizens of a country, we are also citizens of an interdependent world. Take the case of global climate. It is right that India should point out that the Americans and Europeans have polluted the world in the past for a long time. That’s a justified complaint. But I think historical restitution never quite works. The lines taken by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King Jr. saying “Forget trying to get justice for the past, but bear in mind the inheritance of the injustice of the past in injustice today and try to do something about it” — that I believe is the right approach. Therefore, wanting a global contract that is fairer to the interests of the poorer parts of the world, including India, China or Brazil, is appropriate. But then to say that there is no contract we will ever sign if it’s binding, seems to me to assume that we have an exemption from our global citizenship role that other countries in Europe or America cannot have. I think our attitude requires a critical evaluation because after all it is the job of every country to decide what it can fairly do to reduce a global danger that the entire humanity is facing today. To say that we will under no circumstances accept a binding contract isn’t a very good way of beginning to talk. A much better way of beginning is to say that we will indeed be party to accepting a contract, even a binding contract, provided the contract itself is fair and takes into account our legitimate concerns and those of other countries that are poor. The second point I’ll make is that there are still other countries which are very poor and which are not having the economic growth rate of China or India or Brazil or South Africa. That includes the bulk of the continent of Africa and some of Asia too. So there is an issue of fairness to the world, and India should not savour the role of doing to Africa today what Europe and America have done to India in the past, namely fill up what may be called the “global commons” — that is the global atmosphere — with its own muscular presence while leaving very little room for Africa’s economic development. As Africa starts developing, it will still have the same kind of problems that India speaks about today, namely, the need to have some emissions that go with economic growth, which would be a part of Africa’s attempt to expand its living standards. So we have to take a wiser and a fairer view of the world community and the globality of our moral concerns. There is a certain danger that in the flush of nationalist rhetoric our moral understanding may be lost. I know this is not a popular call. After talking about all this in a meeting in Delhi, I can see from the Internet that I’ve been comprehensively attacked by many for being against India’s interests. Well, I’m not being against India at all! I’m just pointing out why we must try to stand up for the interests of the poor in the world, and that includes us. We have to stand up also for the poor who are not having even the benefit of growth now, or an opportunity to expand their living standards (with more emissions right now). We have to take into account the future, and the future particularly of countries that are often even poorer than India is. There is nothing anti-Indian in reviving the spirit of a global sense of fairness, which has been a part of our national thinking — it was quite central to our national movement right from the beginning. What Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru articulated again and again was part of what fired our national movement. It is important that we (I speak here as a proud Indian citizen) do not lose the rich heritage of global awareness that we have. Q: You have already extensively articulated your thoughts on primary education in India. Where do you see Indian higher education going in the next decade? A: I bore everyone silly by talking again and again of primary education. Even though your invitation to me is to talk of higher education, I won’t get there without first talking about primary education. This is because India has expanded its higher education at least quantitatively in a very dramatic way, in some ways qualitatively too, while primary education, despite some expansion, is still relatively neglected. We still have a high proportion of illiteracy, a high proportion of schoolchildren who actually don’t go to school for one reason or another — because of the lack of facilities, the lack of school sometimes, or the lack of quality teaching. As you know, the Pratichi trust, which was started with my Nobel money about a decade ago, has been very concerned about how to increase the coverage as well as the quality and effectiveness of primary education. In my judgement, that remains a bigger challenge than higher education. Having said that, since you’ve asked me about higher education, I’d say that there has been a kind of differential success in some areas like in technical education, where quality control has been quite well observed, as in the IITs, the IIMs, and also in some elite colleges connected with the sciences and the arts and traditional higher education. So in patches, we have produced very good higher education, but there are also a whole lot of higher educational institutions in which quality needs much greater attention than expansion. We have already had a lot of expansion, now we need consolidation. There is more need to pay attention to quality today than earlier when the number of universities was small. It’s very good that we have so many universities now and so many people get doctorates, but it is critical that the quality of education be enhanced to make it commensurate with the promise that higher education offers. Q: Is there a fair way in which the issue of land for industry could be resolved over the next 10 years? A: There’s always a fairer way than other ways because that is the nature of these judgements. If there’s no solution that you regard to be really fair, then you have to see that among the ones that are not really fair, which is the least unfair of them all. And that will be the fairer solution under the circumstances. That’s one of the arguments in my book, The Idea of Justice, namely that you don’t look for a perfect system, but you look for how to remove injustice and unfairness in the world to the extent we can and as speedily as possible. Are there ways of enhancing the land policies that exist now? I would suggest three different aspects of the land question, which is a very misunderstood question and polarises people. This question has not been as well thought through as it could be, given the tradition of cerebral politics in India, of having very high quality analysis that goes into economic thinking, which forms the backbone of political issues. The ways and means of expanding education, healthcare and land reform have always had an intelligently and decently worked out intellectual basis. There have been arguments and counter-arguments and the pros and cons of policies on education and healthcare are fairly well understood now. The land question remains rather fog-bound, if I may put it that way, in loudly articulated pronouncements — on different sides. So what are the problems that need special attention? There is, first, the political issue. If you take land with the object of it being used for industry, that object could be effectively frustrated by opposition by political groups if they see in it their interest to do just that. A policy that cannot be implemented — no matter how fair in itself — cannot be a very good policy. There is no such thing as some policies being “right in theory but not in practice”, because if they are not right in practice, then they are not right in theory if that theory is concerned with practice. Central to the political issue in a democracy like India, where any party can make a huge mess by organised protests, there is need for political maturity on all sides, and the necessity of a certain understanding among political parties to see that if something is in the interest of the region or the country then that should be allowed to go ahead rather than stopping it by using the means that a democratic structure tends to allow. It is easy enough in Indian politics to bust up pretty much any arrangement through an enormous amount of agitation and sometimes even through violence. There is a need for those who institute these policies to take into account the likely political impact, including that of land acquisition. Take Singur, which was such a big political event last year. Bengal does need industries (and the general approach into which Singur fits was not wrong in that general perspective), but there was a case for not regarding the acquisition of land as the first resort. Indeed, my argument, which I have spelled out in two articles in The Telegraph more than a year ago (The Industrial Strategy, Dec. 29, and Policy by Discussion, Dec. 30, 2007), has been that forcible acquisition of land should not be the first resort — it can only be the last resort when much of the land has been freely bought by the industrialist in question. (I have to note some frustration here that some critics of my alleged views like quoting me “second-hand” but citing from an interview I gave – preferring to rely on what a reporter thought I said – rather than examining what I actually said in my own essays!) You can buy a lot of land just on the basis of market prices and they are not a very crippling part of the investment cost for industry. Try to use as much of the market as possible in acquiring land, because industries operate on market principles and there’s no reason why that should not also apply to land. However, it may turn out that much of the land has been secured but there are small bits that are holding up the whole project. People can make a huge amount of money by holding a key to the feasibility of a factory. That may be a moment, with the consent of the population and with the help of public discussion, to say that now we have reached the stage of last resort, where we have to acquire. The public can understand that argument much better than a first-resort acquisition of land. The second issue is not just political feasibility, but that of fairness to the owner. If you have actually purchased the land in the market, then at least the concern that was very dominant in Singur, namely, whether people were getting a fair compensation for their land, would not have arisen because they would have sold the land only if they had reason to sell it. As a last resort, if you have to acquire some land because some people are demanding astronomical prices, using their blackmailing ability in preventing a factory, then the case for acquisition may well arise. So I think in terms of the interests of doing justice to the owners of land, the policy that I’m suggesting would have features not only of political feasibility but also of fairness to the owners of land. The third aspect is very important, and often neglected: that the people whose interests are affected are not only the owners of land. They are, positively, those who would benefit from the industrial development, and negatively, those who may be dependent on agriculture without owning the land. Bhaagchashi would be a good example of the latter. In that case, there would be a need to see that justice is done to them. That has to be a part of the public policy of the government, namely the interest of the community. The interests of the non-landowning population have to be considered taking into account both what is being lost and what is being gained — and for whom. In the case of Singur, there were interests of the general population in industrial expansion that the rhetoric of the oppositional movements tended to ignore: there are economic benefits in getting jobs either in the factory or through economic expansion in the surrounding area connected with the factory. Singur, which I often pass when going by car between Santiniketan and Kolkata, now stands like a ghost town. If it had developed there would have been a booming economy around it, and that would have given an enormous amount of jobs to the people. That issue cannot be brushed away even if the political rhetoric of the oppositional movements did not favour that concern. On the other hand, there is a further question about the interests of the peasants and of the local population. Would the displaced people have been able to get jobs in the factory? How much would they benefit from the local business boom that would have undoubtedly accompanied industrial development in Singur? There are good reasons, based on economic reasoning, to think that the local boom — now sadly lost — would have been substantially beneficial to the local population in and around Singur, but we do need a critically scrutinised confirmation that this general economic expectation is indeed correct and robust. These issues are not only for the government to think about, but also for the media as well as Opposition parties. As far as the general issue of justice to the people at large is concerned, it is very important for all the parties — the government, the Opposition, the protest leaders — to consider, with seriousness and sincerity, the interests of the diverse community that make up any particular regional population. It would certainly be helpful for the government to have public discussions on these subjects with other parties to arrive at some conclusion on what would be the right thing for the government to do. Q: So what is your overall “take” on the Singur events and their aftermath, and the general demand for “change” that has become so popular in West Bengal since those days of agitation around Singur? A: My take on the Singur issue is that the basic idea of industrial development is right (and West Bengal does need many more industries for rebuilding a prosperous economy), and in that respect, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s basic policy was correct. And yet there were two major lacunae in the governmental implementation of the industrialisation strategy. One was in treating land acquisition as the first resort rather than as the last resort, and the other in not having adequate public discussion with other parties to arrive at some agreed conclusions. Now, it’s sometimes said that if the Opposition does not want to sit down with you, you can’t force them. If there is a tremendous amount of effort to try to get the Opposition to sit down with you and even then you don’t succeed, then, of course, an intelligent voter will pay attention to the fact that there was a real effort on your part to do that. The public does pay sympathetic attention to genuine efforts. Given the way that West Bengal politics has developed in recent years, there’s so much disaffection now with the ruling CPM leadership, people tend to think that nothing else matters but what is called “change”. But we have to ask what kind of a “change” would be able to generate economic development, social stability and fairness to the people. Would a mere change in the political party in power ensure the rule of law and order, which is absolutely essential for economic development as well as for social peace and security? Bengal has been one of the most industrialised parts of the world since long back. Even Ptolemy wrote about the prosperity of the region through industrial development. Traders from country after country, the British, the Danes, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Flemish, the Dutch, were competing with each other in the 17th and 18th centuries to do trading in this part of the world, mainly getting industrial products. Our prosperity was based on industry, in addition to a flourishing agriculture, between which there need be no rivalry. When Britain occupied India, Bengal was the richest part of the country, and today it’s become one of the poorer parts. In this the de-industrialisation of Bengal — in the British colonial period and also after Independence —has played a big part. The CPM policies of the past also contributed to this condition, not just because of the intransigence I was referring to, but through giving industrial leaders the impression that this was a not very friendly state to base your industries in. The CPM has reversed its obstructionist policies now — indeed quite strongly —but by the time the policies were reversed, the general disaffection with the CPM was such that people wanted it to go. (Many of the opponents of the government — both on the Right and on the Left — seem strangely unsure now about the critically important role of industrialisation, which need not be at all harmful to agriculture in general.) There has been a growing and increasingly vocal demand for “change” – and only for “change”. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting change, if we think through what kind of a change is needed. Now there’s an odd alliance of some who are much more to the Left of the CPM joining hands with those who are much more to the Right of the CPM. What they have in common is opposition to the CPM. And one would say here that to some extent, in the dialectics of West Bengal politics, the CPM has contributed to this disaffection around it, whereby both at the Right and the Left people may be opposed to it and united against it. But this is also a time for the population of West Bengal in general to rethink where they are actually going. Simply to say “we want change: full stop!” is not itself a very articulate view. It depends on change of what kind, in what form — what constructively do we want? The most articulated part of the policy of “change” on which a consensus is sought between the Right Opposition and the Left Opposition is to say that we want to displace the ruling party from office. Then, there will be different people occupying those offices. Well, that’s not an adequate policy, even if it tends to appeal to those who are fed up with the Left Front being in office for so long. The question is when you yourself come to office what are you going to do? How are you going to establish law and order? How do you propose to remove injustice to the neglected underdogs of society? How would you reverse Maoist violence without ignoring the sense of injustice, especially to tribal people, from which that violence draws its strength? How would you prevent the CPM from doing to you what you may be doing to the present government — by busting governmental plans of economic transformation? How would you develop industry? How would you re-establish the sense of security that is essential for social life as well as for economic expansion? I wish the dialogue about change would take more note of the diverse issues that have to be addressed and not just of changing those who sit in office. The central question is: what kind of a West Bengal do we want? Q: Do you think India would be ready to take some tough, even unpleasant, decisions to sustain its rate of economic growth? A: I’m not a great believer of unpleasantness being a way for high growth rate or for economic development in general. I think economic development is not like fighting a world war. Churchill may have been right to promise nothing other than “blood, sweat and tears”, but bloodshed and tears are not very effective ingredients of economic development. Indeed, in that reading lies a huge possibility of counterproductive policies. In the past, this approach has been used to say “let’s think of democracy later but we must have economic development earlier”, which is a completely unsound reasoning. Without democracy, you’re not in a position to make sure that the underdogs who have been neglected get the attention they deserve. We might, through good luck, get a ruler who is very good, like Akbar, or we might get a ruler who is very far from good, and then we get a terrible policy. Akbar or Asoka was not controlled by democracy, but we were lucky to have emperors like that at that time — but we can’t rely on luck. So we do want a systematic influence on the priorities of governance, through democracy, particularly in the form — I discuss that idea in my book The Idea of Justice — of “governance by discussion”. Similarly, it has often been said that you cannot remove poverty until the time when there is a huge amount of national wealth and prosperity. This is ridiculous because the poor are living their lives right now, rather than waiting to live a life in the future, and a lot of things can be done for them here and now. So we have to think about how to make human lives better with more freedom and well-being — right now, as well as in the future. So I don’t think “blood, sweat and tears” are very high contributors to economic good. But your question is still sensible, because sometimes decisions have to be taken that may be unpleasant to some. Even though the demands may sometimes come from a small section of the community, and they may be against the interests of others and of poorer people, those demands may be hard to resist if the small group demanding them happens to be very powerful. You may then have to stand up against them. Quite a lot of policies of subsidising commodities, which are used by the rich rather than the poor, have played their part in generating pressure groups that are very active. The basic question to ask is not how to take an unpleasant decision, but how to take a good decision. And if the good decision turns out to be unpleasant for some part of the community, which is small but powerful, and if that makes those good policies unpleasant for the government to execute, well then, you have to have the courage to take unpleasant decisions of that kind. However, the general cultivation of militarist unpleasantness is not a part of my understanding of economic development at all.

WHAT SEN SAID On Manmohan The role of India in the world is something, I do know, worries Manmohan, and he will welcome the fact that India seems to have a much better reception in the world now as a global actor On climate Wanting a global contract that is fairer to the interests of the poorer parts of the world… is appropriate. But then to say that there is no contract we will ever sign if it’s binding seems to me to assume that we have an exemption from our global citizenship role... On bengal It is time for the population of Bengal to rethink where they are actually going. Simply to say ‘we want change: full stop!’ is not itself a very articulate view

Times of India: Bard Medicine

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDEwLzAxLzAzI0FyMDA1MDA=

The Telegraph: Social Banditry - Ramchandra Guha

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091222/jsp/opinion/story_11866566.jsp

SOCIAL BANDITRY - Rereading Hobsbawm to understand the Indian Maoists

POLITICS AND PLAY

Ramachandra Guha

The novelist and critic, C.S. Lewis, said he had no time for those who thought that since they had read a book once, they had no need to read it again. The great works of literature were to read again and again. The urge to go back to a book was prompted sometimes by aesthetics, the desire to savour once more its artful or elegant prose; and, at other times, by the sense that one would learn something new on a second reading. Thus, it is said that War and Peace makes one kind of impression when read while young, quite another when read in middle age. My own tastes run in the direction of non-fiction, but at least in this sphere I think I am exempt from C.S. Lewis’s strictures. Among the books I go back to are autobiographies, such as those written by Neville Cardus, G.H. Hardy, Mahatma Gandhi, Verrier Elwin, Salim Ali and Leonard Woolf. I have also read Tagore’s tract on nationalism three or four times, and C.L.R. James’s Beyond a Boundary at least once every other year. These return journeys have chiefly been undertaken for pleasure. However, I recently reread a book for instruction. Like some other Indians, I have been thinking a great deal recently about the rise of the Maoist movement in the country. Who or what are these Maoists? Are they, as the home ministry tells us, a bunch of thugs and murderers, or are they, as some left-wing intellectuals claim, idealistic and high-minded revolutionaries who shall create a society free of evil and exploitation? In search of answers, I went back to a book I had first read 25 years ago. In the 1980s, while writing a doctoral thesis on peasant resistance in the Uttarakhand Himalaya, I had read the works of British social historians who had written about lower-class protest in early modern England. Within that vast and once very influential literature, I thought that one study in particular might help clarify my ideas about the Maoists now active in central and in eastern India. This was E.J. Hobsbawm’s book, Bandits. And so I read that book again. I learnt (or learnt afresh) that there is an important distinction to be made between the ordinary criminal and what Hobsbawm calls the “social bandit”. Whereas the former is despised by poor and rich equally, the latter “never cease[s] to be part of society in the eyes of the peasants (whatever the authorities say)”. “The point about social bandits,” writes Hobsbawm, “is that they are peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders for liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported.” Hobsbawm was writing about another continent and another century. Still, his book does seem to speak somewhat to the India of the present. In an evocative passage, he writes of social bandits in medieval Europe that “they lived their wild, free lives in the forest, the mountain caves, or on the wide steppes, armed with the ‘rifle as tall as the man’, the pair of pistols at the belt…, their tunics laced, gilded and criss-crossed by bandoleers, their moustaches bristling, conscious that fame was their reward among enemies and friends.” This description, with a word or phrase changed or modified, could fit the current bête noire of the West Bengal state government, the Maoist leader who uses the nom de plume, Kishenji. To be sure, he wears a cloth mask rather than a moustache, while, to broadcast his fame (and notoriety), he uses those very modern devices, the cell-phone and the television camera. However, the way he speaks and the manner he affects bring to mind the swagger and self-regard of the medieval social bandit. Like that character, Kishenji will be wild, and he will be free — and he thinks the police will never catch him. Hobsbawm observes that in several countries and historical epochs (as for example, early-20th-century Mexico), bandits had joined revolutionary political struggles, “not because they understood the complexities of democratic, socialist or even anarchist theory…, but because the cause of the people and the poor was self-evidently just, and the revolutionaries demonstrated their trustworthiness by unselfishness, self-sacrifice and devotion — in other words by their personal behaviour”. Then, he continues, “That is why military service and jail, the places where bandits and modern revolutionaries are most likely to meet in conditions of equality and mutual trust, have seen many political conversions.” Once more, the parallels with the current crop of Naxalites are not hard to detect. What they have going for them is their lifestyle — they can live with, and more crucially, live like the poor peasant and tribal, eating the same food, wearing the same clothes, eschewing the comforts and seductions of the city. In this readiness to identify with the oppressed, they are in contrast to the bureaucrat, the politician and the police officer. And to take Hobsbawm’s other point, from the late 1960s onwards, the jail has indeed been a crucial site for the transmission of Maoist ideology in India. Historical comparisons are never exact. In some respects, the Indian Maoists are like the social bandits of early modern Europe. They too emerged in response to inequalities in society and the manifest corruptions of the State. With the government indifferent to the needs of the poor, a band of motivated individuals have come forward to identify with their interests. Here, the parallels break down. For the Maoists seek not justice for a single individual or village, but a wholesale re-ordering of society. Their ambitions are far larger than, for example, those of the late Koose Muniswamy Veerappan, he of the bristling (and outsize) moustache. Whereas the gang of that Tamil Robin Hood operated in a single hill range, the Maoists have a network stretching across several states. Hobsbawm wrote of the bandits he studied that “they are not activists and not ideologists or prophets from whom novel visions or plans of social and political organization are to be expected”. The Maoists, on the other hand, see themselves as ideologists and even prophets, although it must be said that their vision and plan are not novel but wholly derivative. They hope that, in time, they will prevail by the force of arms over the Indian State, thus to capture power in New Delhi much as their revered hero, Mao Zedong, had captured power in Beijing 60 years ago. This larger aim marks them out from the likes of Veerappan, as, of course, does their access to more deadly weapons such as AK47s, dynamite and land mines, not to speak of their practice of a virtual cult of violence which takes pleasure in blasting transmission lines and railway stations and beheading policemen and alleged informers. As it happens, however, the revolutionary dreams of the Maoists are a fantasy. The Indian State is far more powerful today than the Chinese State was back in the 1940s. And in spite of all its manifest faults and failures, most Indians prefer our current, multi-party democracy to a one-party state to be run by the Maoists. For these, and other, reasons, we must withhold from them their own preferred appellation, that of “revolutionaries”. They are considerably less than that, but also far more than ordinary criminals. Should we then see them as social bandits for a post-modern age, capable, like their medieval counterparts, of irritating the hell out of the government of the day, if ultimately incapable of overcoming or replacing it?

ramachandraguha@yahoo.in

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DAWN.COM -Science, poetry and prejudice

DAWN.COM | Sci-Tech | Science, poetry and prejudice
(On Dr. Abdus Salam)

Science, poetry and prejudice

By Kunwar Idris
Sunday, 06 Dec, 2009

Abdus Salam receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics from King Carl Gustav of Sweden in 1979.

World

A Nobel for Obama

A Nobel for Obama

Abdus Salam’s 15th death anniversary went unnoticed recently. The 25th death anniversary of Waheed Murad that fell on the same day was celebrated with fanfare. They say nations which do not honour their great men cease to produce them.

Pakistan, for sure, has produced no scientist of Salam’s stature nor perhaps an actor of Waheed’s popularity. Whether it is serious research or playful acting, the national scene remains barren.

Forgotten or celebrated, Pakistan’s few great men were born of accident. In the case of Abdus Salam it was not just one but a series of accidents. More strikingly, in converting accidents into opportunities, help to Salam came not from friends but from strangers. Ironically, when the people who should have been helping him created hurdles even that opened the door to new opportunity.

Having earned every degree that he could, setting new records before he was 19, Salam’s urge to go for research abroad would have remained unfulfilled had Sir Chhotu Ram, Punjab’s revenue minister and a benefactor of the rural poor, not arranged a scholarship for him at Cambridge. That was the first accident with help coming from an unexpected quarter.

As a Cambridge wrangler (first class of the mathematical tripos) and PhD in theoretical physics, Salam came back to teach at his alma mater. He thus seemed set on a course which, with luck, would have some day made him principal of Government College unless he was persuaded to join the ICS. Then came a second accident. He had gone to Bombay to attend an international scientific conference with the permission of the principal. He defied an order to return, leaving the conference halfway, because the education minister had not approved of his participation.

He resigned rather than face the charge and went back to teach at Cambridge. Three years later he became the youngest ever professor at London’s Imperial College and fellow of the Royal Society. There he freely debated with atheist Bertrand Russell the existence of God and with Albert Einstein the Islamic view of the unity of forces.

In 1959, there was to be yet another accident. India’s high commissioner in London brought to him an invitation from Pundit Nehru to visit India. There Nehru offered him a minister’s rank at a salary he would himself name with no questions asked about money spent or wasted on particle research. Taken unawares, Salam sought time to think it over, came back and reported to President Ayub what had transpired. He declined a similar offer from Ayub, but agreed to act as his scientific adviser while remaining at Imperial College. That was the period when the foundations of Pakistan’s atomic energy commission and nuclear power plants were laid.

He also advised the president to establish an international research centre in Pakistan where scientists from across the world would meet to exchange ideas and knowledge. The finance minister opposed the plan because he felt it was tantamount to setting up a five-star hotel for Salam and his friends. Again declining an Indian offer to host the centre, whatever the cost, he founded the centre at Trieste with a major contribution coming from the Italian government. Thousands of scientists have since passed through Trieste — no less than 500 from Pakistan. The centre is now named after Abdus Salam. Surely, by now Pakistan would have been a hub of scientific research had Ayub’s finance minister not ridiculed Salam’s plan.

After winning the Nobel Prize in 1979, Salam was not invited to his own college. He did not even figure in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s count of distinguished old Ravians. It was Pakistan’s darkest period of prejudice and intellectual sterility. By contrast when he went to Aligarh Muslim University to receive an honorary doctorate, the whole city turned up to greet him and students pushed his car for a mile to the campus. The scene at Guru Nanak University was no less exhilarating.

Salam’s repeated pleas to Islamic countries to contribute just one per cent of their export earnings to a research fund went unheeded. No wonder that Salam is the only one from the Islamic world ever to have won the Nobel Prize in the physical sciences.

Scientists who benefited from Salam’s Trieste centre — Mujahid Kamran, Ghulam Murtaza and Pervez Hoodbhoy among them — now struggle to make up for the lost time and opportunities. A school of mathematics named after him is fast gaining recognition. LUMS too has established an Abdus Salam chair.

Even the people at large are fast shedding the prejudices fostered by politicians. The scientists and citizens of today alike would go along with what Prof Ahmad Ali of Aligarh had to say in 1979: ‘Abdus Salam is not the name of a person but of a movement that seeks to wipe out poverty and ignorance. It is a movement for knowledge and wisdom, action and endurance, to restore pride in our own culture and to wage jihad against prejudice, tyranny and exploitation’.

When Salam came to deliver the Faiz Memorial Lecture at Lahore, people wondered what a hard-nosed scientist and a romantic poet had in common. ‘We both are persona non grata in our own country,’ Salam explained. Then he showed to the audience the couplet Faiz once wrote in his own hand in Salam’s diary when they met at a foreign airport: Nisar mein teri galiyon pe ai watan keh jahan chali hai rasm key koi na sar utha ke chaley (My life is dedicated to the streets of the motherland where custom demands that no one should walk with head held high). It is a sad thought that Pakistan’s most brilliant scientist and most popular poet should have been the prime victims of that custom.

Finally, here is an example of Salam’s humour and humility thrown into one. Asked whether Jhang, the village of Heer, would henceforth be known as the village of Salam, he replied: ‘Remember there is only one Heer, Nobel laureates are many.’ Indeed there are but only one came from Pakistan. When we can walk the streets with our heads held high will be the day to remember Salam and Faiz. It would not be possible without them.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com