Who should get the Bharat Ratna? By Markandey Katju

Ghalib, Sarat Chandra and Subramania Bharati deserve the honour. We tend to ignore our real heroes, and hail superficial ones.

These days, the issue of awarding the Bharat Ratna on Republic Day is in the news. When I appealed for the Bharat Ratna to Mirza Ghalib and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya, some people objected, saying that such awards should not be given to people who are no more.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong in giving awards posthumously, provided they are given to the right persons. The Bharat Ratna has been conferred posthumously in the past. Two examples are Sardar Patel and Dr. Ambedkar.

Mirza Ghalib is a modern figure, not a legendary one like Lord Rama, or an ancient one like Gautam Buddha. Though he was brought up in the feudal tradition, he often broke through that tradition on perceiving the advantages of modern civilisation.

Thus, in one sher (couplet), Ghalib writes:

Imaan mujhe roke hai, jo khenche he mujhe kufr

Kaaba merey peechey hai, kaleesa merey aage

The word 'kaleesa' literally means church, but here it means modern civilisation. Similarly, 'kaaba' literally refers to the holy place in Mecca, but here it means feudalism. So the sher really means: "Religious faith is holding me back, but scepticism is pulling me forward; feudalism is behind me, modern civilisation is in front."

Ghalib is hence rejecting feudalism and approving of modern civilisation. And this in the mid-19th century when India was steeped in feudalism.

Urdu poetry is a shining gem in the treasury of Indian culture (see my article, 'What is Urdu,' on the website www.kgfindia.com). Great injustice has been done to this great language. Before 1947, Urdu was the common language of the educated class in large parts of India – whether the person was Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian. However, after 1947 some vested interests created the false propaganda that Urdu was a foreign language and a language of Muslims alone.

Mirza Ghalib is the foremost figure in Urdu, and the best representative of our composite culture. Though a Muslim, he was thoroughly secular, and had many Hindu friends. He no doubt died over a century ago, but our culture, of which Urdu is a vital part, is still alive.

I first appealed for the award of the Bharat Ratna to Ghalib at the Jashn-e-bahaar Mushaira in Delhi in April 2011. My appeal was supported by many prominent persons in the audience. They included Meira Kumar, Speaker of the Lok Sabha; Salman Khurshid, Union Law Minister; and S.Y. Quraishi, the Chief Election Commissioner. However, soon thereafter a leading journal described my appeal as 'sentimentalism gone berserk.'

As for Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya, at a recent function in Kolkata I appealed for the award of the Bharat Ratna to him. Sarat Chandra in his stories launched a full-blooded attack on the caste system, against women's oppression, and superstitions (see Shrikant, Shesh Prashna, Charitraheen, Devdas, Brahman ki beti, Gramin Samaj, etc.), evils that plague India even today.

In his acceptance speech at a meeting organised in the Calcutta Town Hall in 1933 to honour him, Sarat Chandra said: "My literary debt is not limited to my predecessors only. I am forever indebted to the deprived, ordinary people who give this world everything they have and yet receive nothing in return, to the weak and oppressed people whose tears nobody bothers to notice. They inspired me to take up their cause and plead for them. I have witnessed endless injustices to these people, unfair, intolerable injustices. It is true that springs do come to this world for some — full of beauty and wealth — with its sweet smelling breeze perfumed with newly bloomed flowers and spiced with cuckoo's songs, but such good things remained well outside the sphere where my sight remained imprisoned."

This speech should inspire writers in India even today when 80 per cent of our people live in horrible poverty, when on an average 47 farmers have been committing suicide every day for the last 15 years, when there are massive problems of unemployment, and problems in the areas of health care, housing, education, and so on.

I also appeal for the Bharat Ratna to the great Tamil poet Subramania Bharati, who a hundred years ago wrote against women's oppression and was a thorough nationalist and social reformer.

Here is a verse from Bharati, who wrote powerfully in favour of women's emancipation. This was cited in a March 14, 2008 judgment of the Supreme Court of India, written by Justice Markandey Katju, in Hinsa Virodhak Sangh vs Mirzapur Moti Kuresh Jamat & Ors:

Muppadhu kodi mugamudayal

Enil maipuram ondrudayal

Ival Seppumozhi padhinetudayal

Enil Sindhanai ondrudayal

(This Bharatmaata has thirty crores of faces! But her body is one. She speaks eighteen languages! But her thought is one.)

Here is another verse from Bharati:

Gummiyadi! Tamizh Nadumuzhudum

Kulungida kaikotti gummiyadi!

Nammai pidiththa pisasugal poyina

Nanmai kandomendru gummiyadi!

Yettaiyum pengal thoduvathu theemai

Endrenni irundhavar maaindhu vittaar;

Veettukkulle pennai pootti vaippom endra

Vindhai manithar thalai kavizhndhaar.

(Dance and celebrate, so/the whole Tamil Nadu reverberates/that all evil forces which/surrounded us are driven away for ever. Those who declared it was evil/for women to get educated are dead and gone;/The strange men who were for sequestering women/have left the scene in disgrace)

How many people in India have read Ghalib, Sarat Chandra and Subramania Bharati? There are demands to give the Bharat Ratna to cricketers and film stars. This is the low cultural level to which we have sunk. We ignore our real heroes, and hail superficial ones. I regret to say that the present generation of Indians has been almost entirely deculturised. All that they care for is money, film stars, cricket, and the superficial.

Today India stands at a crossroads. We need persons who can give direction to the country and take it forward. It is such people who should be given the Bharat Ratna, even if they are no more. Giving it to people who have no social relevance, such as cricketers and film stars, amounts to making a mockery of the award.

(Justice Markandey Katju is Chairman of the Press Council of India. For the second translation from Tamil, the book Bharathiar Kavithaigal, published by Bharathi Puthaka Nilayam, Madurai, 1964, was consulted.)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2732614.ece?css=print

Get passionate about life! Vinita Dawra Nangia

Sunday TOI, 18 Dec 2011

Why are some people bounding with energy, while others get exhausted just dealing with everyday life? Where did Dev Anand's indefatigable energy spring from?

 Say 'Dev Anand', and the first words that come to mind are "energetic", "evergreen", "forever young" -- epithets associated with the thespian through his life. When he passed away, headlines proclaimed that Bollywood's 'youngest' actor had died at 88!

Sometimes your own reputation can dictate the path of your life, and Dev Anand loved his evergreen, youthful, energetic image, working hard at living up to it. When he was diagnosed with hernia, he reveals in his autobiography Romancing with Life (Penguin), he  refused to get operated in India fearing his fans would think that the "'evergreen', 'forever young' man of unstinted energy, gifted by the Gods with eternal youth…..was but an ordinary mortal like them all..!"

Extraordinary mortal that he was, where did Dev Anand's seemingly limitless energy resources come from? What made the man tick and kept him going till the very end? Indeed, why is it that some people seem to have boundless energy, while others struggle to even get through daily life?

I would say the answer lies in one word – passion. And of course in what you do with that passion.  It is passion that spells the difference between existing and living life to the hilt, for passion allows one to plunge the depths and reach the heights of life. It gives an intensity and an edge to experiences that mere existence could never do. It stirs up creative juices and creates a buzz around you, thus attracting positivity and more action. This is what creates those extra reserves of energy that some people seem to possess.

Most of us lay claim to some passion, but creating the right resonance with it depends on how you choose to deal it. Obviously a passion enjoyed piecemeal and intermittently will not yield the same benefits as one that you allow to completely take over your life. Most of us do not allow ourselves to be swept away by our passion, allowing reason and an ingrained sense of balance and commitments to overwhelm passion.  And then comes that one man who allows himself to be subsumed, indeed totally consumed by his passion. He is the one who ends up leaving a mark …..his footprints in the sands of time. He is the genius, the inventor, the discoverer or the enduring artist…

 Dev Anand was one such man who lived his passion out completely. He gave in to the luxury of indulging his passion to the exclusion of all else. He lived to make films and said so openly, not seeing any reason to live beyond this indulgence. Family, friends, money – everything else seemed to take second place for him.  In his words, he always swam in a current that was both "energizing and intellectually stimulating…", "forever on a plateau of excitement and eternally riding the crest of an optimistic wave." In his autobiography, Dev Anand says, "I have been working ceaselessly for over sixty years with all my creative energies at my command, the excitement of creativity sprouting all the time inside me like so many seedlings, just the way they used to when I first launched myself…"

Surely this is the bottomless well that Dev Anand's eternal youth and boundless energy sprung from? With such excitement stirring you all the time, who needs external stimulants! Allegiance and dedication to a passion gives meaning, excitement and energy to life. Describing his passion bordering on obsession, Dev Anand says in his book, "…when I'm writing, time ceases to be. I forget all about thirst and hunger. The flow of words dictated by the onrush of thoughts is food and drink to me. My excitement is what sustains me."

If passion sustains and feeds energy, what are the factors that sap one of energy? Stress and depression do a good job of enervating one. Other energy zappers are lack of good sleep or food, too much work, grief, negative people, disorganized life, messy spaces, unfinished tasks, jealousy, resentment, anger…

A creative passion is always a good escape from the negative effects of all these enervators.  If one is in love with life and totally absorbed with one's passion, there is no time to regret the small stuff. Dev Anand never wasted time mourning a movie that didn't do well at the box office. His nephew Shekhar Kapur gives a rare glimpse into Dev's response to the box office disaster of  Ishq, Ishq, Ishq. "He was sad. Reflective. For all of five minutes. …..Ten minutes later ……his eyes were vibrant. His face excited. He was unable to sit down for his excitement." He had got an idea for his next film! Shekhar also talks of how money held no meaning for Dev except to be used for his films. Truly Dev's art was for art's sake, as his romance was for romance' sake!

"One of the significant traits of my character is that I am always in a hurry, and hate laziness of any sort," he wrote in his autobiography. "There is always a terrific pace bubbling inside me. I think fast, I move fast with my decisions. I talk fast and I walk fast."

That's energy for you! A constant flow that feeds upon itself to create yet more energy and positivity, lending beauty to all around!

Dev Anand signed off his autobiography and now, his life too, I'm sure, with the words…."Gaata rahe mera dil…My heart is singing, like it always has been --This is a beautiful world!"

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/O-zone/entry/get-passionate-about-life

Quality education still elusive (The Hindu Edit)

The key finding in a recent study that even top schools in major cities in India suffer from the entrenched tendency to impart rote learning may have some shock value to those who believe that private educational institutions place greater emphasis on quality and holistic education. However, for those closely observing the school education scenario, it is a re-affirmation of a bitter truth: schools in our country are, by and large, quite far from seeing education as a process of learning with understanding, acquiring knowledge through self-discovery and conceptualisation; rather, education remains a mere transmission of information in a rigid classroom atmosphere, where the emphasis is on memorisation and the objective is to rush through a pre-determined syllabus and prepare children for examinations. While on the scholastic side the WIPRO-Educational Initiatives 'Quality Education Study,' which covered 89 schools, shows a fall in learning standards among students in classes 4, 6, and 8 over the last five years, it also flags a disturbing deficit of social sensitivity on the part of a sizable section of students. Responses to some questions relating to the education of girls and attitudes towards immigrants, the disabled, and HIV-positive patients, indicated biases that could, over time, grow into prejudices. Exploring the mind of the young at a formative stage in this way, which some might consider methodologically challengeable, is a particularly valuable part of this study. It will be a serious mistake to ignore the broad trend that indicates misconceptions of early years being carried on to a higher age and the possibility of these children imbibing biases they see in their family atmosphere or social milieu.

Over the years, there have been some serious efforts to put in place a national curriculum framework. For instance, the Yash Pal committee's progressive report of 1993, Learning without Burden, demonstrated how the curriculum load was a burden on the child and highlighted the defects of the examination system. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 was a game attempt to provide a vision of education as a pursuit of both quality and equity. Yet, despite increasing awareness that learning is not mere information accumulation and that teaching ought to be recast into a facilitation of children's discovery of their own potential and understanding, the emphasis in practice continues to be on textbooks and exams. Conceptual understanding is not encouraged anywhere near enough, and sport, art, debate, and cultural activity are kept at the distant periphery. It is time not merely for fostering greater awareness about the need for holistic education but also to chalk out more imaginative pedagogic means to make education an inclusive and quality-centric epistemic process.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article2717948.ece?css=print  

लहरों से डर कर नौका पार नहीं होती Inspiring Poem by Harivansha Rai Bachchan

लहरों से डर कर नौका पार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती।

नन्हीं चींटी जब दाना लेकर चलती है,
चढ़ती दीवारों पर, सौ बार फिसलती है।
मन का विश्वास रगों में साहस भरता है,
चढ़कर गिरना, गिरकर चढ़ना न अखरता है।
आख़िर उसकी मेहनत बेकार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती।

डुबकियां सिंधु में गोताखोर लगाता है,
जा जा कर खाली हाथ लौटकर आता है।
मिलते नहीं सहज ही मोती गहरे पानी में,
बढ़ता दुगना उत्साह इसी हैरानी में।
मुट्ठी उसकी खाली हर बार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती।

असफलता एक चुनौती है, स्वीकार करो,
क्या कमी रह गई, देखो और सुधार करो।
जब तक न सफल हो, नींद चैन को त्यागो तुम,
संघर्ष का मैदान छोड़ मत भागो तुम।
कुछ किये बिना ही जय जय कार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की हार नहीं होती।

-हरिवंशराय बच्चन

FDI in Retail Debate (Online shopping is the real threat to small shopkeepers: Swaminomics)

STOI, 11 December 2011

Faced with opposition from its own allies like Mamata Banerjee, the government has shelved its proposal to allow Walmart and other multibrand foreign retailers to have majority stakes in Indian hypermarkets. Critics have accepted the bogus claim that foreign retailers will kill small Indian shopkeepers. 

In fact, the Walmart model is a 20th century concept that's rapidly becoming obsolete in the 21st century. Internet shopping now threatens the hypermarket, which may survive in small towns with low land prices, but looks doomed to becoming a minority player.

In the massive annual shopping spree during the Thanksgiving season (end of November) in the US, 39% of consumers said they bought goods mostly through the internet, against 44% who mostly bought from brick-and-mortar stores and hypermarkets. A small proportion also made purchases through catalogues. The internet proportion keeps rising.

Arvind Singhal, a top marketing guru, says that in Britain, no less than 4,000 megastores have been closed in the last seven months because of competition from e-commerce (internet sellers). That shows what the future holds. 

In the US, small booksellers were decimated in the last two decades of the 20th century by large book chains like Borders and Barnes and Noble. But these chains in turn are now threatened by Amazon, the giant internet book-seller. Amazon offers the lowest prices, and also offers second-hand books at steep discounts. Borders has gone bust and Barnes and Noble is desperately seeking a saviour. 

The Indian left highlights resistance in many communities in the US and Europe to the opening of new Walmarts, to preserve small shops. They ignore the fact that Walmart has been a saviour of the poor, by increasing their purchasing power. Indeed, while Walmart kills neighbouring shops, the extra money it leaves in the pockets of consumers finances extra spending by them in unrelated areas. This more than offsets the shrinkage of neighbouring shops, according to some studies. These are, of course, hotly contested by Walmart's critics. 

Many US municipalities refuse to allow Walmart to open new hypermarkets because of the threat to local shopkeepers. Yet the real threat now comes from internet shopping, which municipalities are helpless to ban. New technology and convenience are overcoming traditional regulations.

Walmart's so-called Big Box or hypermarket model will fail in India. The Big Box requires acres of parking space, and so is typically located on the outskirts of a city or in small towns where land prices are low. Even poor Americans own cars and will drive 20 miles to a distant Walmart. But Indian land prices are astronomical even in city outskirts, making low-cost hypermarkets impossible. Only a small minority of Indians has cars, and because of traffic jams they will not spend hours to drive 20 miles to the outskirts of towns for shopping.

Small Indian shopkeepers do not have the discounting capacity of a Walmart. But they often evade sales tax and income tax, which hypermarkets can't. Consumer theft does not hit small shopkeepers but can hale profits at hypermarkets. India is a world leader in consumer theft.

Thanks to cheap labour, small shops can provide home delivery at low cost. Many shopkeepers know their customers personally and extend them credit. For all these reasons, the aam bania will easily compete with hypermarkets in most locations. If India continues to grow rapidly, after some decades labour will become too expensive for small shopkeepers to offer home delivery. Other developments like a Goods and Services Tax may also reduce their ability to evade sales tax and income tax. 

But long before these developments reduce the shopkeeper's edge over hypermarkets, e-commerce will swamp both. E-commerce is still constrained today by limited credit card usage, but this is expanding very fast. US experience shows that e-tailers may legally escape sales tax. Municipalities cannot ban e-commerce. 

The same will be true in India. Fifty million small shopkeepers went on strike to scotch foreign hypermarkets. But neither they nor Mamata Banerjee can stop e-commerce. That's no disaster. The traditional bania is willing to stand in his shop 12 hours a day, but not his educated children. Just as the children of farmers want to get out of farming, the children of shopkeepers want to get out of retail. 

We need economic reform to help them get jobs in new areas. The "Doing Business" studies of the World Bank show that India is one of the worst countries in the world in which to start a new business, get a building permit or get contracts enforced. Reforms to remove these obstacles are even more important than reforms to bring in foreign hypermarkets.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Swaminomics/entry/online-shopping-is-the-real-threat-to-small-shopkeepers 

Democracy won but the people lost Gurcharan Das

STOI, 11 December 2011

The past two weeks witnessed a remarkable spectacle in which India's democracy won but India's people lost. On November 24, the government announced a bold reform to allow 51% foreign stake in retail. It triggered off a storm of protest across the political spectrum, and eventually forced the government to back down and suspend the reform. During the entire debate, no one asked why China and dozens of countries welcome foreign investment in retail. The defeat of the government means that Indian consumers have lost a chance for lower prices, India's farmers have lost the prospect of higher returns, a third to half of India's food will continue to rot, and millions of unemployed rural youth have been denied jobs and careers in the modern economy. It is also a severe blow to the future of reforms in India.

It does seem odd that democracy should win and people lose. But democracy's great flaw is that it is easily captured by vested interests. In the 1980s, labour unions captured it to ban computers in government offices, banks and insurance companies. Today the powerful kirana trade has succeeded by funding opposition to a policy that was patently in the nation's interest. The kirana lobby created an atmosphere of fear. The same fears were expressed during the 1991 reforms. If the government had given in then, India would not have lifted 200 million people out of poverty; not raised 300 million into the middle class and not made India the second fastest growing major economy.

Indians today are victims of the primitive "mandi system" which escalates food prices by 1:2:3:4, resulting in the world's highest gap between the price a housewife pays and what the farmer receives. What a farmer sells for 1 is sold at the mandi for 2, which becomes 3 at the kirana store and 4 to the consumer. When you pay Rs 20 per kilo for tomatoes, the farmer gets only Rs 5. As tomatoes travel from the farm to the mandi to the bania, each middleman gets his cut. The price spread varies by commodity and season, but studies show that the gap is less in countries with modern retail. This is because large foreign retailers usually buy directly from farmers without middlemen. Thus, they can pay Rs 8-10 to farmers for the same tomatoes and sell them for Rs 15-17 to consumers, and still make a profit. Some middlemen will lose out but P Chengal Reddy, secretary-general of Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations says, "India has 60 crore farmers, 120 crore consumers and half a crore traders. Obviously, government should support farmers and consumers. FDI in retail will bring down inflation."

It will also save food from rotting. Global retailers have perfected a cold distribution system. By investing in thousands of cold storages and air-conditioned trucks, they will reduce farm wastage, and bring a revolution in transport, warehousing, and logistics, as they have done in major countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, and Thailand, which have allowed 100% FDI in multi-brand retail since the 1990s.

In none of these countries have small stores been wiped out; nor are there complaints of predatory pricing by supermarkets—the two fears expressed in the past two weeks. According to a recent study, small outlets have grown by 600,000 in China since 2004. "In Indonesia, after ten years of opening FDI in multi-brand retail, 90% of the business remains with small traders, while employment in the retail and wholesale sectors grew from 28 million to 54 million from 1992 to 2001". Kirana stores continue to succeed because they offer personalized service, give credit and deliver to the house.

This issue goes beyond shops and supply chains to whether India's democracy can throw up the sort of leaders who can reach out and persuade opponents about much needed reforms. This was a test for the Prime Minister. He made a bold decision to usher in a retail revolution. He gave a choice to the states to opt out of the reform. He may have failed this time but if he is courageous he will persist and win the next time because he is doing the right thing for the nation.