There’s something seriously wrong with the mental make-up of India’s political class and the middle class which is its major supply pool. Right now even as the final touches are being given to the Union Budget 2012-13 in North Block, New Delhi, by stating that the proposed increase of Rs.27,000 crore in the Centre’s food subsidies outlay with the imminent passage of the Food Security Bill is giving him “sleepless nights”, Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has hinted that next year’s budget, scheduled to be presented to Parliament on March 16, is likely to be another pedestrian exercise with the thrust on reducing the fiscal deficit.
This is not to say that reduction of the Rs.412,817 crore fiscal deficit is not a laudable objective. But the moot point is that the fiscal deficit has to be reduced by intelligently taxing the rich (and the relatively rich middle class) to guarantee food, clothing, shelter, education and healthcare to the socio-economically disadvantaged. This seems to be the blindspot of the Union finance ministry.
After 65 years of getting and spending, the plain truth is that contemporary India’s pathetic human development indices — pervasive child malnutrition, 53 percent dropouts from primary school, low calorie intake of the majority, shortage of 40 million homes — are evidence that all finance ministers in post-independence India have failed to formulate budgets the country needs. Mukherjee, who in his much-too-long career in Indian politics has fashioned and presented six budgets to Parliament and the people, is no exception.
The voices of justice, fair play and equity demand that the finance minister accords top priority to finding ways and means to plug the loopholes, incentives, concessions and tax shelters availed by India Inc which cause a revenue loss estimated at Rs.425,000 crore per year to the national exchequer. This is a far more equitable alternative to slashing food, fertiliser, rural employment, education and health subsidies for the poor which aggregate a relatively modest Rs.255,000 crore per annum. Moreover by pruning overt and covert unmerited middle class subsidies (electricity, water, higher education, cooking gas etc), the finance minister could substantially increase the pathetically inadequate budgetary outlays for public education and healthcare.
In Indian history and culture, there was a tradition of enlightened rulers and viziers venturing among the multitudes in disguise to ascertain the condition of the people. In the unlikely event of Mukherjee doing so, he might discover that five-star hotels charging the equivalent of the national income per capita for a meal, are choc-a-block with patrons; urban India’s streets are choked with expensive automobiles and 15-20 million citizens travel abroad on vacation every year. Quite obviously conspicuous consumers provide rich tax mobilisation opportunities. The point is that the finance minister needs to increase the revenue of government and devise ways and means to deploy it efficiently, rather than slash the already grudging subsidies given to the poor. But this won’t happen without irresistible pressure of informed public opinion being exerted upon him.
Concerted effort needed to curb student violence
The brutal daylight murder of class IX teacher Uma Maheshwari by a 15-year-old student in Chennai on February 9, is perhaps the most shocking act of child violence in recent times. Although instances of ill-trained teachers inflicting corporal punishment upon children — despite the law forbidding it — are routinely reported, this is perhaps the first instance of a school student stabbing his teacher to death.
This unprecedented act of classroom violence reminiscent of campus shoot-outs and carnage in the US and most recently Norway, has rightly prompted intense debate and introspection within the academic community, and has once again highlighted the myriad infirmities of the K-12 education system fashioned by slapdash and uncaring bureaucrats and academics at the Centre and in the states.
For a start, it’s hardly a secret that the academics-focused school education system single-mindedly designed for exam success, imposes tremendous stress on school children and has sucked all joy out of teaching-learning. Moreover the obsession of board examiners with standardised word-perfect answers, and the disproportionate importance accorded by colleges and universities to high exam percentages, imposes further strain on vulnerable school children.
Classroom pressures apart, the overwhelming majority of India’s unfortunate children have to also bear the burden of sky-high parental expectations of examination results. In this particular case if the teenage boy had been confident of parental support, he wouldn’t have reacted with such brutal violence. It’s high time the parents’ community became aware that academic achievement is not the be-all and end-all, and that they themselves need to play a greater role in the cognitive and emotional development of their children by creating supportive learning and life skills development environments at home.
In the wider context, it’s also instructive to bear in mind that Indian children are exposed to horrific violence from a very young age through cinema, television and the media. If the adult citizenry exhibits little care for maintenance of law and order, improvement of the dysfunctional justice system, and graphic violence routinely depicted in cinema and television as ‘entertainment’, it’s hardly surprising that children resort to violence to settle every day problems and disputes. Quite clearly if children go berserk as in this ghastly case, teachers, parents and society need to share the blame. Teachers need to equip themselves with formal training in how to manage children. Parents need to lower their expect-ations of children and build happy families while nurturing the compensatory intelligences of their children. And right-thinking members of society need to press for greater investment in education, reform of the school and higher education systems so that children receive real rather than the ritual anxiety-inducing education thrust upon them today.
Unless there is a concerted societal effort to cleanse the augean stables of Indian education, classroom violence of the type witnessed in Chennai on February 9, will become dangerously common.