by Dr. M. S. Bajwa
Agriculture in our country in general and Punjab in particular, is at crossroads economically, technologically and ecologically. In fact, the scenario has become dismal in the country in view of decline in growth rate of foodgrain output to 1.17% (a rate lower than that of population), a silent epidemic of malnutrition, decreasing profitability, deteriorating socio-economic conditions (even ecological-suicides by farmers) and opening up of competitive quality-conscious global market under the WTO regime. At a time when our agriculture must create "productivity-quality-economic revolution", complexities in improving farm-economy (at small and marginal farms, in particular) are increasing because of continuing over-exploitation of natural resources (biodiversity, soil, water, environment), inefficient management of inputs (seed, fertilizers, water, pesticides, energy) and rather inadequate market infrastructure. Since our agro-economic condition has reached a critical stage revamping of the conventional-farming system is paramount.
Agriculture has to be revitalized so that it becomes a commercial activity.
This calls for development of "technology (knowledge)-based farm-economy" through a paradigm shift from conventional-farming towards eco-region specific precision-farming strategies. The concept offers cost-effective and efficient adoption of micro farm-management technologies for integrated management of gene (for quantity and quality), soil-health, water, pests, energy, natural resources and eco-system. The selection and management of farming or cropping systems are to be specifically based upon site-suitability, keeping in view in-farm and in-region differences in crop-responses (over distance, depth and time) to variability in soil characteristics, water availability, groundwater behavior, pest problems and other sustainability factors. In each region adequate crop and product-specific modern infrastructure for harvesting, post-harvest handling (crop maturity standards, drying, grading, pretreatment, packaging, etc), processing, storage, quality control, and assured remunerative marketing will be the basic requirement. Some products like fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, basmati-rice, floriculture, soybean-products, honey, mushroom, etc. may be treated as "extreme focus items" and promoted for exports. For adopting precision-farming on a large scale, in addition to the present land-use and soil-survey systems, remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS) and other tools of information technology (IT) can be used to create different kinds of maps and computer models for guiding farmers on site-specific soil-water-fertilizer-pest-crop management and policy planners on setting up of post-harvest processing, marketing and other infrastructure. Such a farming system will ensure maximization of production-efficiency and profitability and minimization of negative impacts on agro-ecosystem.
Various issues related to agricultural diversification (rice-wheat, in particular) have already been amply debated. However, the generalized diversification schemes proposed earlier (for rice in particular) need to be restructured, in view of the fact that success of the alternative crops will depend upon (in addition to availability of remunerative market) crop-specific site-suitability and adoption of other precision-farming practices. For example: crops like maize, pulses, most of the fruits and vegetables, etc. can not replace rice in salt-affected, high water-table soils; cotton will not replace rice in high water-table areas unless adequate drainage is provided, soybean will not be successful in sandy, low-organic matter, high-concretion, saline soils; rice should be withdrawn from light-textured sandy soils and areas receiving poor quality saline irrigation water. It may also be emphasized that genetic-diversity must be maintained to prevent large-scale failures due to breakout (epidemic) of pest (insect, disease, weed) attack. The state should have a ?bio-diversity act? to effectively conserve and manage biodiversity not only of natural vegetation but also of the cultivated crops.
Though Punjab-Agro has given the initiation-push to the concept of contract farming for diverting some areas from rice-wheat to other cash crops. To commercialize the system of contract farming, different public and private sector and multinational agencies (under pro-actively declared public-policies) should supply quality seed or planting material of suitable variety or hybrid and other inputs, provide guidance to the farmers about cost and eco-efficient crop production and protection. They should also assure procurement at remunerative pre-negotiated prices and declared buy-back arrangements and take care of post-harvest handling and processing, quality control, brand development and marketing. Since the system will be highly input-intensive and exploitive, its long-term effects will have to be watched.
A global approach to produce high quality products (fresh or processed) is necessary keeping in view the fact that certain countries even conduct DNA tests to determine quality before allowing imports of agricultural products.
This calls for development and adoption of high yielding crops and varieties that have the consumer-acceptable and export-oriented quality traits. For example, Karnal bunt resistant wheat containing more than 12% protein, strong gluten basmati rice having length/breadth ratio more than 2, maize having high lysine and tryptophan, brassica oil seed having less than 2% erucic acid, potato for processing having less than 0.2% sugar, etc., etc.
Adoption of Hi-Tech horticultural technologies (protected cultivation in green houses, quick detection and control of diseases, appropriate post-harvest handling and marketing) is becoming a necessity to produce high-quality fruits, vegetables, flowers and medicinal plants. The fact that global standards of quality and bio-safety regulations have come to stay, farmers, entrepreneurs and traders have to be appropriately trained and given adequate quality control support through state-of-the-art quality control laboratories, which should be established in different regions. A sound rural agro-processing industrial base must be established through participatory efforts of workers (skilled and unskilled), entrepreneurs and policy-makers to ensure value-addition of agricultural produce, minimize post-harvest losses (about 5-15% in cereals and oilseeds, 20-30% in semi-perishable and 30-50% in perishable vegetables and fruits), provide gainful on-farm and off-farm employment to at least 50% of the rural men and women and control environmental degradation. To promote agro-processed products in the international markets, modern technologies have to be adopted in terms of production, post-harvest handling (crop maturity standards, grading, pre-treatment, packaging, transportation, etc.) and quality control. This will require restructuring of infrastructure, institutional, agro-industrial, bureaucratic, credit, market (domestic and export) and other support systems. Unnecessary requirements of getting licenses for installing agro-industry in rural areas (e.g. processing of basmati rice) must be withdrawn.
For revamping of agriculture to be globally competitive, development of modern storage facility is a pre-requisite. Public and private sectors should create large-sized professionally managed certified warehouse and silos storage capacities. The purchase of grains can be made and regulated (also payments to the farmers) right at the sites of warehouses or silos, where the produce is to be graded, dried, and stored. Small and micro-sized silos (100 tones capacity) can also be installed even at village level, and managed by the panchayat or farmers-association. This will efficiently check wastages, eliminate storage contamination/diseases, conserve the identity of different varieties and attract prospective domestic and global buyers because of the assurance about quality of the material being purchased. The state government will have to frame and implement the rules and regulations for efficient control and management of this system. Commercialization of agriculture will demand existing out-dated market-infrastructure and support services to be modernized to meet the requirements of entrepreneurs and farmers (bulk producers of agro-export products), exporters and other agencies. Establishment of ?commodity-specific market-promotion cell? and ?intelligence net-work? in each zone will ensure rapid dissemination of information to the producers about requirements of prospective importing markets, latest domestic and global production trends, domestic and foreign competitors, required commodity-specific quality standards and timely accessibility of the farmers to the global markets. Marketing of seasonal and perishable (horticultural and others) products would require systematization of appropriate on-farm post-harvest handling and processing, packing, brand development, cold storage, low cost environment-friendly cool chambers, refrigerated transportation and appropriate sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures. We have to be pro-active in adopting a "total market approach" (right from the sites of production till the product reaches consumers) keeping in view expanding global economy and challenges emerging with the removal of "Quantitative Restrictions" under the WTO regime.
Future calls for greater emphasis on developing multidisciplinary partnerships and symbiotic linkages between farmers, technology generators and disseminators, agro-industry, market system (promotion and intelligence) and public/private organizations. Particular areas in which partnerships can be strengthened include seed industry, bio fertilizers, bio pesticides, use of equipment, food processing and agro-industry, quality control, agri-business, market intelligence, etc. The system needs to have a declared policy for "public-private-farmer partnerships". Self-help farmer-associations involving educated rural youth and small and marginal farmers at village or zone level and giving them the required technical, public-policy and credit support, can help in rapid adoption of modern systems of management of inputs, post-harvest handling and processing, marketing/agribusiness, capital formation, infrastructure development at the farm.
The emerging competitive expanding global economy demands integration of agricultural productivity with economics and adoption of holistic knowledge-intensive integrated-farming systems approach. We must take advantage of the genetic, technological and information and communication revolutions in revitalizing the systems of farm-technology generation, dissemination and its efficient adoption. Adequate public and private financial investment in agriculture and allied activities will, however, be vital. Future technological recommendations to the farmers should be based on extra productivity and monetary returns per unit of financial investment or per unit of applied input. Our farmers (given proper training, support, incentives) have the potential to rapidly adopt the recommended technologies and help the country in facing emerging socio-economic challenges.
(Dr. M.S. Bajwa is former Director of Research, P. A. U., Ludhiana)
Friday, August 5
Thursday, August 4
Economic Challenges Before Punjab
Dr. Sucha Singh Gill
While discussing issues of growth with social justice in Punjab, it is in order to raise certain issues having bearing on Punjab economy. Punjab is located in the North West of India bordering Pakistan. The changes in the policy in recent years have put Punjab to the position of disadvantage being far way from the sea and sources of raw materials. The reversal of fright equalization by railways has hit very hard the economic activities which involves processing/handling of bulky products. Consequently the industrial towns like Batala (earlier ht hard by terrorism) and Mandi Gobindgarh, the centres of steel products have suffered heavily. The thermal power plants are also facing the same fate. The state is producing the lot of surplus grains, if they are to be exported abroad they suffer on account of high transport and handling charges and the exports become less profitable if not non competitive. Even today India's trade with Pakistan is largely via Mumbai and Karachi. Consequently, the state has not benefited in any way from globalization of the economy. Neither there is expansion of trade nor any inflow of FDI in spite of high level of economic and human development as well as better infrastructure compared to other states. To put an end to the discrimination/disadvantage to this state the opening up of Wagha and Hussainiwala land trade routes are of vital importance to the people of this region. Without this, the state would continue to be marginalized and deprived of the positive gains, whatever they are, of the globalization process.
The present cropping pattern in the state is not independently chosen by farming community. It has been promoted by the Union Government to meet food shortages in the past. The state has become grainary of the country. This cropping pattern has destroyed the ecosystem of the state. The subsoil water level has alarmingly gone down making several shallow tubewells ineffective requiring estimated investment of Rs. 3000 crore by farmers. Besides, excessive use of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, weedicides, pesticides etc. and very high cropping intensity with mono cropping pattern for decades have deteriorated quality of soil with serious imbalance in micronutrients leading to declining soil fertility. At the same time sub soil water has been polluted by excessive dose of chemicals and poisons used to kill pests and insects harming agricultural crops. These have not only raised fast increase in cost of production vis-à-vis slow rise in prices but have led to declining profits/returns and income to farming community. The present cropping pattern (wheat-paddy) is becoming uneconomical and unsustainable with serious ecological consequences. The efforts of the Punjab Government for the last three years (since 2002-03) to change the cropping pattern away from wheat-paddy under crop diversification has not produced desirable results for obvious reasons such as lack of viable alternative crops, absence of MSP and procurement system for new crops. The involvement of private corporate sector in this programme has not made any substantial impact. Exclusion of Punjab Government's crop diversification in the Tenth Five Year Plan and lack of central support has put farmers and farming in the state in very difficult situation. It is a case of leaving the region in lurch which helped country to come out of chronic food shortage. This is generating a feeling of alienation and discrimination. This requires immediate intervention by the union government and the Planning Commission.
The economy of the state is growing at a rate much below national average (3.84 per cent during 1997-98 to 2001-02 compared to national average of 5.20 per cent during this period). The growth rate slipped to 1.65 per cent during 2001-02 and 1.38 per cent during 2002-03 and recovered to 5.20 per cent during 2003-04 compared to national average growth rate of 5.77 per cent during 2001-02, 4.00 during 2002-03 and 8.10 per cent during 2003-04. If the current growth trend persists for another decade at least four major Indian states viz: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu would have higher per capita income than that of Punjab (World Bank, 2004).
A survey of Punjab Government brought out that in 1998 that there were 14.72 lakh unemployed youth (between the age group of 18-35 years) in Punjab. 70.69 per cent of them belonged to the rural areas. Now, Punjab Chief Minister has been starting this number to be more than 20 lakh. This work workout to be 21.19 per cent of the total workforce (91.91 per lakh in 2001) in the state. This is obviously very high. With declining labour absorption capacity of the agriculture and very slow employment generation in secondary and tertiary sectors especially suited to Punjabi youth, there has come into existence the "reserve army of unemployed" in the state. The secondary and tertiary sector being based on small and medium enterprises and mostly unregistered the quality of the employment generation is very poor which suits only migrant labour (which is anything between 15 to 21.00 lakh). The Punjab youth is trying to leave the country. During 2004-05 Chandigarh office of Canadian High Commission issued family visa to 25,000 families. A large number of them are trying to migrate through illegal channels causing tragedy like that of Malta boat and many of them are landing in jails in other countries. The policy of no recruitment by the government for the last five years and absence of major large private sector employers, the educated and talented youth is leaving the state. Those who are left behind are highly frustrated and alienated lot. Majority of them are falling pray to drug abuse which is rampant in the state. Such a situation can prove to be socially explosive anytime and can be exploited by various forces. The state has already passed through such turmoil in the decade of 1980s.
The rural urban divide is turning into that of have and have nots. Under present policy dispensation a clear discrimination is going against the rural population. Rural education and health have totally collapsed. Most of the rural schools are without teachers. 25,000 posts of primary school teachers are lying vacant. Those in position are not performing their duty properly. The monitoring and supervisory machinery and teachers remain busy officially in work other than that of education. The same is the case with doctors and para medical staff positions which are mostly vacant (nearly 50 per cent) in the rural areas. The space vacated by the public sector withdrawal/collapse has not been occupied by private service providers. This has led to sharp differences in quality of human resources in the rural and urban areas. The rural population (66 per cent of the total) has lagged much behind and is being bypassed by development process. It is very well known that after 1993-94, no student with genuine rural background has been admitted in Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. The same is the case with other universities. The urbanized students are cornering all admissions in the professional colleges (engineering, medical, agriculture, law etc.). The dairying is next to agriculture in the rural areas. The veterinary doctors positions have not been replenished since 1997-98 (for the last 7 years) and more than half are unfilled. Consequently, there is no one to attend to milch cattle falling prey to diseases, causing lot of risk to milk economy of the state and to individual farmers.
The economic transition in the state is becoming very painful. A large number of small and marginal farmers are becoming unviable. Many among of them are facing threat to their existence as farmers. Some among them at margin are committing suicides. Many such cases have been reported from the state. Several others are hysterically trying for escape routes such as emigration abroad which is very risky and costly causing a lot of agony and pain for the families. The principles of social justice require support and help for such families of poor cultivators, agricultural labourers and those escaping the state especially going abroad through unscrupulous agents. Such support would not come if national average formula is applied. As per national average, the state has lowest incidence of poverty and high income level, making the state undeserving for any special package.
These issues are mentioned here to draw attention of the Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Vice-Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Punjab State Planning Board. One is pained to say that even after restoration of democracy and peace in the state in 1992, the state has lost 13 years, but development orientation of the administration which got distorted during 1980s, has not been restored till this date. Neither bureaucracy and nor politicians are sensitive to the painful ground reality and the economy is steadily moving towards deceleration and decline in its ranking at the national level.
(The article has been taken from a longer article 'Planning and social justice' by Dr. Sucha Singh Gill, Professor, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala)
While discussing issues of growth with social justice in Punjab, it is in order to raise certain issues having bearing on Punjab economy. Punjab is located in the North West of India bordering Pakistan. The changes in the policy in recent years have put Punjab to the position of disadvantage being far way from the sea and sources of raw materials. The reversal of fright equalization by railways has hit very hard the economic activities which involves processing/handling of bulky products. Consequently the industrial towns like Batala (earlier ht hard by terrorism) and Mandi Gobindgarh, the centres of steel products have suffered heavily. The thermal power plants are also facing the same fate. The state is producing the lot of surplus grains, if they are to be exported abroad they suffer on account of high transport and handling charges and the exports become less profitable if not non competitive. Even today India's trade with Pakistan is largely via Mumbai and Karachi. Consequently, the state has not benefited in any way from globalization of the economy. Neither there is expansion of trade nor any inflow of FDI in spite of high level of economic and human development as well as better infrastructure compared to other states. To put an end to the discrimination/disadvantage to this state the opening up of Wagha and Hussainiwala land trade routes are of vital importance to the people of this region. Without this, the state would continue to be marginalized and deprived of the positive gains, whatever they are, of the globalization process.
The present cropping pattern in the state is not independently chosen by farming community. It has been promoted by the Union Government to meet food shortages in the past. The state has become grainary of the country. This cropping pattern has destroyed the ecosystem of the state. The subsoil water level has alarmingly gone down making several shallow tubewells ineffective requiring estimated investment of Rs. 3000 crore by farmers. Besides, excessive use of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, weedicides, pesticides etc. and very high cropping intensity with mono cropping pattern for decades have deteriorated quality of soil with serious imbalance in micronutrients leading to declining soil fertility. At the same time sub soil water has been polluted by excessive dose of chemicals and poisons used to kill pests and insects harming agricultural crops. These have not only raised fast increase in cost of production vis-à-vis slow rise in prices but have led to declining profits/returns and income to farming community. The present cropping pattern (wheat-paddy) is becoming uneconomical and unsustainable with serious ecological consequences. The efforts of the Punjab Government for the last three years (since 2002-03) to change the cropping pattern away from wheat-paddy under crop diversification has not produced desirable results for obvious reasons such as lack of viable alternative crops, absence of MSP and procurement system for new crops. The involvement of private corporate sector in this programme has not made any substantial impact. Exclusion of Punjab Government's crop diversification in the Tenth Five Year Plan and lack of central support has put farmers and farming in the state in very difficult situation. It is a case of leaving the region in lurch which helped country to come out of chronic food shortage. This is generating a feeling of alienation and discrimination. This requires immediate intervention by the union government and the Planning Commission.
The economy of the state is growing at a rate much below national average (3.84 per cent during 1997-98 to 2001-02 compared to national average of 5.20 per cent during this period). The growth rate slipped to 1.65 per cent during 2001-02 and 1.38 per cent during 2002-03 and recovered to 5.20 per cent during 2003-04 compared to national average growth rate of 5.77 per cent during 2001-02, 4.00 during 2002-03 and 8.10 per cent during 2003-04. If the current growth trend persists for another decade at least four major Indian states viz: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu would have higher per capita income than that of Punjab (World Bank, 2004).
A survey of Punjab Government brought out that in 1998 that there were 14.72 lakh unemployed youth (between the age group of 18-35 years) in Punjab. 70.69 per cent of them belonged to the rural areas. Now, Punjab Chief Minister has been starting this number to be more than 20 lakh. This work workout to be 21.19 per cent of the total workforce (91.91 per lakh in 2001) in the state. This is obviously very high. With declining labour absorption capacity of the agriculture and very slow employment generation in secondary and tertiary sectors especially suited to Punjabi youth, there has come into existence the "reserve army of unemployed" in the state. The secondary and tertiary sector being based on small and medium enterprises and mostly unregistered the quality of the employment generation is very poor which suits only migrant labour (which is anything between 15 to 21.00 lakh). The Punjab youth is trying to leave the country. During 2004-05 Chandigarh office of Canadian High Commission issued family visa to 25,000 families. A large number of them are trying to migrate through illegal channels causing tragedy like that of Malta boat and many of them are landing in jails in other countries. The policy of no recruitment by the government for the last five years and absence of major large private sector employers, the educated and talented youth is leaving the state. Those who are left behind are highly frustrated and alienated lot. Majority of them are falling pray to drug abuse which is rampant in the state. Such a situation can prove to be socially explosive anytime and can be exploited by various forces. The state has already passed through such turmoil in the decade of 1980s.
The rural urban divide is turning into that of have and have nots. Under present policy dispensation a clear discrimination is going against the rural population. Rural education and health have totally collapsed. Most of the rural schools are without teachers. 25,000 posts of primary school teachers are lying vacant. Those in position are not performing their duty properly. The monitoring and supervisory machinery and teachers remain busy officially in work other than that of education. The same is the case with doctors and para medical staff positions which are mostly vacant (nearly 50 per cent) in the rural areas. The space vacated by the public sector withdrawal/collapse has not been occupied by private service providers. This has led to sharp differences in quality of human resources in the rural and urban areas. The rural population (66 per cent of the total) has lagged much behind and is being bypassed by development process. It is very well known that after 1993-94, no student with genuine rural background has been admitted in Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. The same is the case with other universities. The urbanized students are cornering all admissions in the professional colleges (engineering, medical, agriculture, law etc.). The dairying is next to agriculture in the rural areas. The veterinary doctors positions have not been replenished since 1997-98 (for the last 7 years) and more than half are unfilled. Consequently, there is no one to attend to milch cattle falling prey to diseases, causing lot of risk to milk economy of the state and to individual farmers.
The economic transition in the state is becoming very painful. A large number of small and marginal farmers are becoming unviable. Many among of them are facing threat to their existence as farmers. Some among them at margin are committing suicides. Many such cases have been reported from the state. Several others are hysterically trying for escape routes such as emigration abroad which is very risky and costly causing a lot of agony and pain for the families. The principles of social justice require support and help for such families of poor cultivators, agricultural labourers and those escaping the state especially going abroad through unscrupulous agents. Such support would not come if national average formula is applied. As per national average, the state has lowest incidence of poverty and high income level, making the state undeserving for any special package.
These issues are mentioned here to draw attention of the Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Vice-Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Punjab State Planning Board. One is pained to say that even after restoration of democracy and peace in the state in 1992, the state has lost 13 years, but development orientation of the administration which got distorted during 1980s, has not been restored till this date. Neither bureaucracy and nor politicians are sensitive to the painful ground reality and the economy is steadily moving towards deceleration and decline in its ranking at the national level.
(The article has been taken from a longer article 'Planning and social justice' by Dr. Sucha Singh Gill, Professor, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala)
Wednesday, August 3
The taste of sustainable development
by Patralekha Chatterjee
It is early evening in January 2005. A foreigner driving down the National Highway in this border state in India's North West, and unfamiliar with newspaper headlines could be forgiven for thinking the country was at war. There is a virtual blackout in town after town, and in the adjoining villages. All around are vast swathes of darkness till one chances upon a 'marriage palace' where a wedding is in progress. All of a sudden, there is a riot of lights. Red, green, orange and blue bulbs, intricately arranged in floral patterns along the approach road and on the walls of the building, pierce the darkness.
In nearby Nabha town, a young woman studying for her Bachelor of Education degree flaunts a large torch. Part of her survival kit, she says, helping her to complete her course work every evening.
In town after town in Punjab, and in the countryside, electricity is increasingly being viewed as a luxury to be enjoyed in restricted doses. Farms and factories tide through the crisis on diesel-driven generators. But powerless Punjab is only one of the paradoxes of the State that won accolades last year as the 'best performer' in a nationwide survey of States and federally administered Union Territories. Home to the Green Revolution from the 1960s and 1970s, food bowl of India, the Punjab today is a totem of an aspiring India as it seeks closer integration with the global economy.
Everywhere, there are signs of affluence and symbols of the global consumer culture ? luxury cars, glitzy malls, upmarket motels, five-star marriage palaces and resorts. The lustrous vignettes of globalization from the town to the countryside of the Punjab, as elsewhere in India, are captured in the national media and prime time TV. What gets pushed to the inside pages or remains invisible are images of a Punjab where the Green Revolution has turned sour.
Punjab's relative prosperity has a lot to do with the head start it gained with the much-trumpeted Green Revolution and its diasporas scattered across the world. But today, even those who laud the State?s enterprise and achievements admit that Punjab is suffering from a stunted growth syndrome. The Green Revolution has hit upon bottlenecks. Overuse of pesticides has ruined the soil. The water table is going down drastically and the capacity of the earth to produce is plummeting. In this bastion of plenty, every other farmer has a massive debt, and in the cotton belt, in the district of Bhatinda, dozens have committed suicide, unable to repay the loans they have incurred to buy fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural equipment.
The Green Revolution was formulated partly by the US Government, and transmitted to India through the World Bank mission in the mid sixties. It was meant to be the new strategy for developing the agrarian economy of the country, and piloted in Punjab, a fertile and dominantly agrarian province. The Green Revolution was based mainly on modern, semi-dwarf, short duration high yielding varieties (HYV) and chemical fertilizers. As agriculture analyst Sutapa Lahiri points out "The short duration of the new varieties permitted multiple and intensive cropping that become possible with increased use of machines, particularly tractors, and a new set of cultural practices. The Green Revolution in Punjab was essentially a revolution in wheat production technology. With the success of the HYV wheat seeds in Punjab, the Punjab Agricultural University started its rice-breeding programme, and soon they developed new dwarf rice varieties with good yield potentials and short duration ripening. With the availability of high yielding rice varieties the farmer in Punjab brought more area under rice.'
The Green Revolution's pluses included a sharp rise in food production, an accelerated pace of modernisation and urbanisation in the State, strengthening of the economic base of the rural hinterland, and increased value of the land and growth in the educational level of the farmers' children. Its losses are serious ecological damages, regional imbalances in the production of cereals, a growing pauperization of the marginal and poor peasants, and sharper social cleavages.
Today, Punjab, like much of India, is at the crossroads with prosperity and poverty existing cheek by jowl. More than half of all children under the age of four in the country are malnourished and 30 percent of newborns are significantly underweight. India, however, as viewed through the pages of its glossy magazines, is increasingly a monoculture of mass consumerism. Fast food here is not merely cheap or convenient, but a fashion statement, an aspirational leitmotif.
As a section of India's population becomes more affluent, global chains are flooding into the country. As many as 75 McDonald's outlets are reportedly operational, as are up to 40 Subways. Domino?s Pizza is present in about 100 locations, and Pizza Hut is catching up. Coke and Pepsi are omnipresent.
India's fast-food industry is, on the whole, growing by 40 percent a year, and child obesity is on the rise, even as millions remain under-nourished.
The perils of consuming fast food, much of it junk-food, are well known. What is not so well known are the perils that the fast food industry poses to the primary producers of that food, the farmers. These perils are worsened due to the huge difference in the relative bargaining powers of the farmer and export corporation or the fast-food company that buys from that farmer. In rural India, education and awareness about interplay of local and global forces are still woefully inadequate, and that only makes matters worse.
With rice and wheat yielding less and less profit, farmers in the Punjab were told that salvation lay in diversification, specially growing produce for the export market. But many a farmer who was hoping to reap rich dividends through contract farming and exports is sadly disillusioned today.
Meherban Singh, a farmer from Punjab?s Saholi village, speaks about his experiences with Punjab Agro Export Corporation a few years ago. "We were told everything we grew would be exported. I started growing baby corn. I had a contract that said that I would get Rs 35 per kilo. But when I took my produce to the Corporation, they offered Rs 3 a kilo. The produce could not be exported and when I tried to sell it in the local market, I found there was no demand. I know five star hotels in big cities use baby corn but I did not have the connections or resources to tap that market. Another time, many of us were given seedlings to grow sweet chillies. But after six months we discovered that the climate in Punjab was not suitable for the growth of this vegetable. We lost a lot of money, but when we asked for compensation for the costs we had incurred, the managing director of the Corporation turned round and said it was our fault. We took the matter to the consumer courts but nothing happened."
Bacchan Singh, another farmer from Rohti Mauran village in Patiala district in Punjab, and a former village headman, also has similar stories. He has been a 'contract farmer' for almost a decade. But Singh's experience in growing vegetables for the global market has not been a happy one. "It is always a one-sided contract. That has been my experience. I grew tomatoes on a contract with the Punjab Agrofood Export Corporation. But one year, if the open market was flooded with tomatoes and the price came down, the Corporation found fault with our produce and rejected them. If tomatoes were in short supply in the open market, then we had fewer rejects. It was the same story with green chillies. Last year, and the year before that, though we had a contract, 50 quintals of tomatoes and green chillies we grew were rejected. We had no choice but to sell them at throwaway prices in the open market. So much for a contract!" As an 'experiment' he has entered into a contract this year with Pepsi Co to grow potato saplings for chips marketed under the brand name ?Lays' in a part of his land. "We are growing seeds. Not the potatoes that will be used in the chips; and the rate is good. But this is also a game of chance. You have to trim the leaves of the plant after 75 days and then again after 20 days. Then, you are likely to get the right sized potato. Pepsi with whom we have a contract, closely monitor the growth,? says Kuldeep Singh, Bacchan Singh's son. Father and son say they would like to go back to growing wheat and rice if the experiments with contract farming come a cropper once again. To minimise potato supply constraints, Frito Lay, a subsidiary of Pepsi Co, has already extended its contract-farming programme beyond Channo, in Punjab, where it works with farmers who grow the potatoes that make the chips.
As one takes leave of the Singhs, Bacchan Singh insists on showing us his spanking new two-storey mansion and adds in a low voice that Punjab's affluence is misleading. Singh has a debt of Rs 16 lakh and knows many others who are in a similar situation.
The despair among the dazzle is driving many farmers in Punjab back to traditional farming practices, such as organic farming. They say the state faces not only 'an ecological, but also a civilizational crisis.'
To them the answer lies in going back to nature and to a life-style that contrasts sharply with the global culture being promoted through mass media.
At the heart of the current debate surrounding globalisation lies the much used and abused words 'sustainable development.' Like globalisation, which The Economist called "the most abused word of the 21st century," 'sustainable development' is at once a profound truth, jargon, and a cliché.
Inderjit Singh does not follow the global discourse on sustainable development. He explains the term with a few simple observations from the world around him. Every morning, the 50 year-old farmer from Saholi village, Punjab, drives up to the wholesale vegetable market in a neighbouring town, carting organically produced mushrooms, tomatoes, radishes and other vegetables from his farm. Once in the market, he hands over the produce to his agent. In the market, his produce has to compete with other chemically produced vegetables and often he makes a loss. The market for organically produced fruit and vegetables is still miniscule in smalltown India, but Singh, the President of Kheti Virasat, believes he is on the right track.
Singh comes from a farming family. The family had been using chemical fertilisers since 1967 to grow wheat. "I saw how the soil was getting addicted to fertilisers. One needed to put in more and more fertilisers to get the same yield. And the soil kept getting destroyed. Globalisation is supposed to have opened up all these opportunities, but our produce has higher than acceptable pesticide content and no one wants it. Four years ago, I decided I would not grow poisonous food"
Today, Singh is one of the most vocal proponents of organic farming, though he concedes that in the short term, organically grown fruits and vegetables have less yield and earn less profit. "The market for organic produce may be limited at the moment, and it is more labour intensive. Out of my four and half acres, I get half the yield compared to the time I used fertilisers and pesticides. I am making much less money and my wife does not like it. But I believe that this is the way to go in the future, and we have to stop using pesticides if we are to save our children and grandchildren. Even if you want to export, organic produce has a better chance. Of course, we need to do a lot more to promote organic farmers in the country."
Inderjit Singh believes that given low levels of education and awareness among farmers in India, contract farming is likely to be exploitative. "Multinationals cannot solve the problems of farmers. Uneducated farmers are being taken for a ride in the name of contract farming" Every time there is an oversupply of a product, the terms in the contract are ignored and the farmer is paid less. Sometimes his entire produce is rejected. If there is an undersupply then more than the contracted amount is taken. So it is no different from the open market. And contract farming uses pesticides."
Rajesh Jindal, a rice mill owner in Nabha town in Punjab and one of the leading lights of the local chapter of 'The Art of Living' a spiritual/lifestyle group, says organic food has a great future. In Nabha itself, 1000 families who attend 'The Art of Living' gatherings regularly, will be willing to buy Singh's organic produce. "It is about saving our lives and our future," says Jindal.
The case for going back to nature is also powerfully articulated in India's only 'slow food' café located in a South Delhi neighbourhood. Inaugurated last October by Carlos Petrini, the Italian founder of the movement that tries to counter the consumption of fast food worldwide, the Navdanya slow food café offers millet tabouleh, dhoklas and apple amarnath crumble to name a few delicacies. Vandana Shiva, the internationally-renowned green activist and director of Navdanya, says the café will double up as "a place for food literacy for the young who are in the 'McDonalds-Coca Cola' culture."
For those trying to fight the extraordinary imperialism of the American hamburger, the café offers the ultimate weapon , a burger which looks much like any other but is prepared from naturallygrown chickpeas!
(Patralekha Chatterjee is a Delhi-based journalist and photographer with a special interest in contemporary development issues)
It is early evening in January 2005. A foreigner driving down the National Highway in this border state in India's North West, and unfamiliar with newspaper headlines could be forgiven for thinking the country was at war. There is a virtual blackout in town after town, and in the adjoining villages. All around are vast swathes of darkness till one chances upon a 'marriage palace' where a wedding is in progress. All of a sudden, there is a riot of lights. Red, green, orange and blue bulbs, intricately arranged in floral patterns along the approach road and on the walls of the building, pierce the darkness.
In nearby Nabha town, a young woman studying for her Bachelor of Education degree flaunts a large torch. Part of her survival kit, she says, helping her to complete her course work every evening.
In town after town in Punjab, and in the countryside, electricity is increasingly being viewed as a luxury to be enjoyed in restricted doses. Farms and factories tide through the crisis on diesel-driven generators. But powerless Punjab is only one of the paradoxes of the State that won accolades last year as the 'best performer' in a nationwide survey of States and federally administered Union Territories. Home to the Green Revolution from the 1960s and 1970s, food bowl of India, the Punjab today is a totem of an aspiring India as it seeks closer integration with the global economy.
Everywhere, there are signs of affluence and symbols of the global consumer culture ? luxury cars, glitzy malls, upmarket motels, five-star marriage palaces and resorts. The lustrous vignettes of globalization from the town to the countryside of the Punjab, as elsewhere in India, are captured in the national media and prime time TV. What gets pushed to the inside pages or remains invisible are images of a Punjab where the Green Revolution has turned sour.
Punjab's relative prosperity has a lot to do with the head start it gained with the much-trumpeted Green Revolution and its diasporas scattered across the world. But today, even those who laud the State?s enterprise and achievements admit that Punjab is suffering from a stunted growth syndrome. The Green Revolution has hit upon bottlenecks. Overuse of pesticides has ruined the soil. The water table is going down drastically and the capacity of the earth to produce is plummeting. In this bastion of plenty, every other farmer has a massive debt, and in the cotton belt, in the district of Bhatinda, dozens have committed suicide, unable to repay the loans they have incurred to buy fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural equipment.
The Green Revolution was formulated partly by the US Government, and transmitted to India through the World Bank mission in the mid sixties. It was meant to be the new strategy for developing the agrarian economy of the country, and piloted in Punjab, a fertile and dominantly agrarian province. The Green Revolution was based mainly on modern, semi-dwarf, short duration high yielding varieties (HYV) and chemical fertilizers. As agriculture analyst Sutapa Lahiri points out "The short duration of the new varieties permitted multiple and intensive cropping that become possible with increased use of machines, particularly tractors, and a new set of cultural practices. The Green Revolution in Punjab was essentially a revolution in wheat production technology. With the success of the HYV wheat seeds in Punjab, the Punjab Agricultural University started its rice-breeding programme, and soon they developed new dwarf rice varieties with good yield potentials and short duration ripening. With the availability of high yielding rice varieties the farmer in Punjab brought more area under rice.'
The Green Revolution's pluses included a sharp rise in food production, an accelerated pace of modernisation and urbanisation in the State, strengthening of the economic base of the rural hinterland, and increased value of the land and growth in the educational level of the farmers' children. Its losses are serious ecological damages, regional imbalances in the production of cereals, a growing pauperization of the marginal and poor peasants, and sharper social cleavages.
Today, Punjab, like much of India, is at the crossroads with prosperity and poverty existing cheek by jowl. More than half of all children under the age of four in the country are malnourished and 30 percent of newborns are significantly underweight. India, however, as viewed through the pages of its glossy magazines, is increasingly a monoculture of mass consumerism. Fast food here is not merely cheap or convenient, but a fashion statement, an aspirational leitmotif.
As a section of India's population becomes more affluent, global chains are flooding into the country. As many as 75 McDonald's outlets are reportedly operational, as are up to 40 Subways. Domino?s Pizza is present in about 100 locations, and Pizza Hut is catching up. Coke and Pepsi are omnipresent.
India's fast-food industry is, on the whole, growing by 40 percent a year, and child obesity is on the rise, even as millions remain under-nourished.
The perils of consuming fast food, much of it junk-food, are well known. What is not so well known are the perils that the fast food industry poses to the primary producers of that food, the farmers. These perils are worsened due to the huge difference in the relative bargaining powers of the farmer and export corporation or the fast-food company that buys from that farmer. In rural India, education and awareness about interplay of local and global forces are still woefully inadequate, and that only makes matters worse.
With rice and wheat yielding less and less profit, farmers in the Punjab were told that salvation lay in diversification, specially growing produce for the export market. But many a farmer who was hoping to reap rich dividends through contract farming and exports is sadly disillusioned today.
Meherban Singh, a farmer from Punjab?s Saholi village, speaks about his experiences with Punjab Agro Export Corporation a few years ago. "We were told everything we grew would be exported. I started growing baby corn. I had a contract that said that I would get Rs 35 per kilo. But when I took my produce to the Corporation, they offered Rs 3 a kilo. The produce could not be exported and when I tried to sell it in the local market, I found there was no demand. I know five star hotels in big cities use baby corn but I did not have the connections or resources to tap that market. Another time, many of us were given seedlings to grow sweet chillies. But after six months we discovered that the climate in Punjab was not suitable for the growth of this vegetable. We lost a lot of money, but when we asked for compensation for the costs we had incurred, the managing director of the Corporation turned round and said it was our fault. We took the matter to the consumer courts but nothing happened."
Bacchan Singh, another farmer from Rohti Mauran village in Patiala district in Punjab, and a former village headman, also has similar stories. He has been a 'contract farmer' for almost a decade. But Singh's experience in growing vegetables for the global market has not been a happy one. "It is always a one-sided contract. That has been my experience. I grew tomatoes on a contract with the Punjab Agrofood Export Corporation. But one year, if the open market was flooded with tomatoes and the price came down, the Corporation found fault with our produce and rejected them. If tomatoes were in short supply in the open market, then we had fewer rejects. It was the same story with green chillies. Last year, and the year before that, though we had a contract, 50 quintals of tomatoes and green chillies we grew were rejected. We had no choice but to sell them at throwaway prices in the open market. So much for a contract!" As an 'experiment' he has entered into a contract this year with Pepsi Co to grow potato saplings for chips marketed under the brand name ?Lays' in a part of his land. "We are growing seeds. Not the potatoes that will be used in the chips; and the rate is good. But this is also a game of chance. You have to trim the leaves of the plant after 75 days and then again after 20 days. Then, you are likely to get the right sized potato. Pepsi with whom we have a contract, closely monitor the growth,? says Kuldeep Singh, Bacchan Singh's son. Father and son say they would like to go back to growing wheat and rice if the experiments with contract farming come a cropper once again. To minimise potato supply constraints, Frito Lay, a subsidiary of Pepsi Co, has already extended its contract-farming programme beyond Channo, in Punjab, where it works with farmers who grow the potatoes that make the chips.
As one takes leave of the Singhs, Bacchan Singh insists on showing us his spanking new two-storey mansion and adds in a low voice that Punjab's affluence is misleading. Singh has a debt of Rs 16 lakh and knows many others who are in a similar situation.
The despair among the dazzle is driving many farmers in Punjab back to traditional farming practices, such as organic farming. They say the state faces not only 'an ecological, but also a civilizational crisis.'
To them the answer lies in going back to nature and to a life-style that contrasts sharply with the global culture being promoted through mass media.
At the heart of the current debate surrounding globalisation lies the much used and abused words 'sustainable development.' Like globalisation, which The Economist called "the most abused word of the 21st century," 'sustainable development' is at once a profound truth, jargon, and a cliché.
Inderjit Singh does not follow the global discourse on sustainable development. He explains the term with a few simple observations from the world around him. Every morning, the 50 year-old farmer from Saholi village, Punjab, drives up to the wholesale vegetable market in a neighbouring town, carting organically produced mushrooms, tomatoes, radishes and other vegetables from his farm. Once in the market, he hands over the produce to his agent. In the market, his produce has to compete with other chemically produced vegetables and often he makes a loss. The market for organically produced fruit and vegetables is still miniscule in smalltown India, but Singh, the President of Kheti Virasat, believes he is on the right track.
Singh comes from a farming family. The family had been using chemical fertilisers since 1967 to grow wheat. "I saw how the soil was getting addicted to fertilisers. One needed to put in more and more fertilisers to get the same yield. And the soil kept getting destroyed. Globalisation is supposed to have opened up all these opportunities, but our produce has higher than acceptable pesticide content and no one wants it. Four years ago, I decided I would not grow poisonous food"
Today, Singh is one of the most vocal proponents of organic farming, though he concedes that in the short term, organically grown fruits and vegetables have less yield and earn less profit. "The market for organic produce may be limited at the moment, and it is more labour intensive. Out of my four and half acres, I get half the yield compared to the time I used fertilisers and pesticides. I am making much less money and my wife does not like it. But I believe that this is the way to go in the future, and we have to stop using pesticides if we are to save our children and grandchildren. Even if you want to export, organic produce has a better chance. Of course, we need to do a lot more to promote organic farmers in the country."
Inderjit Singh believes that given low levels of education and awareness among farmers in India, contract farming is likely to be exploitative. "Multinationals cannot solve the problems of farmers. Uneducated farmers are being taken for a ride in the name of contract farming" Every time there is an oversupply of a product, the terms in the contract are ignored and the farmer is paid less. Sometimes his entire produce is rejected. If there is an undersupply then more than the contracted amount is taken. So it is no different from the open market. And contract farming uses pesticides."
Rajesh Jindal, a rice mill owner in Nabha town in Punjab and one of the leading lights of the local chapter of 'The Art of Living' a spiritual/lifestyle group, says organic food has a great future. In Nabha itself, 1000 families who attend 'The Art of Living' gatherings regularly, will be willing to buy Singh's organic produce. "It is about saving our lives and our future," says Jindal.
The case for going back to nature is also powerfully articulated in India's only 'slow food' café located in a South Delhi neighbourhood. Inaugurated last October by Carlos Petrini, the Italian founder of the movement that tries to counter the consumption of fast food worldwide, the Navdanya slow food café offers millet tabouleh, dhoklas and apple amarnath crumble to name a few delicacies. Vandana Shiva, the internationally-renowned green activist and director of Navdanya, says the café will double up as "a place for food literacy for the young who are in the 'McDonalds-Coca Cola' culture."
For those trying to fight the extraordinary imperialism of the American hamburger, the café offers the ultimate weapon , a burger which looks much like any other but is prepared from naturallygrown chickpeas!
(Patralekha Chatterjee is a Delhi-based journalist and photographer with a special interest in contemporary development issues)
India sets a bad model
Praful Bidwai
There is something unwholesome, indeed distasteful, about the triumphalism in India over the nuclear cooperation agreement signed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush. This ends India's characterisation as a nuclear 'pariah' after the first Pokharan test of 1974. Following this, Washington walked out of its agreement to supply enriched uranium fuel for the US-built Tarapur reactors.
There has always been a special feeling of wounded pride among Indian policy-makers over the 'pariah' characterisation. Yet, the US wasn't the only country to stage a strong protest against Pokharan-I. Canada too protested. Their embarrassment and anger weren't contrived. Both had contributed substantially to designing, building, and providing critical materials to, the CIRUS 'research' reactor commissioned in 1960. Its spent fuel was the source of the plutonium used in the 1974 test.
Earlier, India had solemnly assured the US and Canada through bilateral agreements that CIRUS and its products would only be used for 'peaceful' purposes. The only way India could still claim not to have violated this commitment was to declare the explosion 'peaceful'. India, one could argue, hadn't done anything that many states with atomic ambitions wouldn?t do: use all kinds of devious means to fulfil those ambitions. But Indian policy-makers were distinguished by their uniquely self-righteous hurt over Washington?s reprimand.
They have ever since craved US approbation and India's acceptance as a 'responsible' nuclear power even as they have, to their disgrace, given up on the global disarmament agenda. The US now terms India 'a state with advanced nuclear technology' (a bad euphemism considering how primitive the Bomb technology is once you have access to some special materials/equipment).
The US has now stepped out of the box and agreed to accommodate India's nuclear ambitions by treating it as an 'exception' to the requirements of the global non-proliferation order. Under Monday's agreement, Bush has promised to sell nuclear materials and equipment to India and involve it in an experimental nuclear fission project, etc. He has also pledged to 'adjust US laws and policies' and 'work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes' to enable full civil nuclear transactions with India.
The flip side is that India would 'assume the same responsibilities' and 'acquire the same benefits? as the recognised nuclear weapons-states. This involves numerous steps: ?identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes'; declaring 'civilians facilities' to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)' and 'voluntarily' placing them under its safeguards; continuing the 'unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing'; and 'working with the US' for a multilateral 'Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty'.
India would also 'secure nuclear materials and technology through comprehensive export control legislation' and through 'adherence to Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) guidelines?, although it's a member of neither.
The fact that Bush has treated India as an 'exception' may impress many in the Pakistani elite. There will certainly be a clamour that identical treatment be accorded to Pakistan. But Islamabad would be ill-advised to demand such parity.
There are several problems with the India-US agreement. One is asymmetry. The overall agenda was laid down by Washington. India signed on the dotted line?except for bargaining over some words. The deal imposes no new obligations on the US. (Indeed, Washington is planning to conduct further nuclear tests.) But India agreed to extend its testing moratorium.
The US has only placed just four of its 250 civilian facilities under IAEA safeguards. India will probably have to subject many more installations to these. If the guidelines of the NSG, comprised of 44 states, are applied, the bulk of India?s civilian facilities, including its 15 operating reactors, will come under safeguards. True, safeguards are a matter of negotiation. But there, India and the US wield unequal power.
No time-frame is specified for the fulfilment of obligations/commitments by either side. This doesn't exclude pressure to rush through, say, separation of military nuclear facilities/activities from civilian ones. This is practically difficult and expensive. Often, the two activities occur in the same location.
Besides, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) scientists loathe 'external' safeguards and inspections. They were not consulted in advance about the deal, and are largely sullen about its execution.
The bitterest opposition to the agreement is likely to arise from within the US and the NSG. Influential politicians like Congressman Ed Markey threaten to block it because it will open the door to other 'exceptions'.
The US establishment is divided on the issue. While some security analysts (e.g. Ashley Tellis, formerly of the Right-wing RAND Corp.) favour the agreement, others like George Perkovich argue that the US 'should not adjust the nuclear non-proliferation regime to accommodate India's desire - to nuclear technology - The costs of breaking faith with non-nuclear weapons states such as Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden and others who forswore nuclear weapons [are] too high.'
Without broad consensus, Bush might not be able to sell the deal domestically. It will be even more difficult to get it approved by the NSG. Many NSG members will stoutly oppose any dilution of the group's tough guidelines.
It would be a near-miracle if the agreement is implemented within a reasonable period of time. Even if it is, the benefits to India would at best be marginal. Nuclear power accounts for under 3 percent of India?s electricity generation. It cannot be the key to anyone's energy security. It poses grave hazards both through serious accidents like Chernobyl, and through high-level wastes which remain active for thousands of years. Nobody has found a solution to the waste storage-and-disposal problem.
Nuclear power is 30 to 50 percent more expensive than electricity from other sources- even without accounting for the (high) cost of decommissioning old plants.
Contrary to myths, pursuit of nuclear power won't lower aggregate carbon emissions. Nuclear plants are extremely capital- and materials-intensive. Each step in the ?nuclear fuel cycle?, from uranium mining to reprocessing, emits greenhouse gases. As energy expert M.V. Ramana argues, "there is no empirical evidence that increased use of nuclear power has contributed to reducing a country?s carbon dioxide emissions".
Take Japan. From 1965 to 1995, its nuclear capacity went from zero to over 40,000 MW. But carbon dioxide emissions tripled to 1200 million tonnes!
It would be foolhardy for Pakistan to demand parity with India in this regard. In fact, some extremely cynical US leaders would only too glad to offer an identical deal to Pakistan so that its nuclear facilities are subjected to Iraq-style intrusive inspections. These could be justified in Pakistan's case, unlike India's, thanks to the history of Dr A.Q Khan's shady enterprise.
At its present level of nuclear technology development, which is probably lower than India's, Pakistan will find it even more difficult to separate civilian and military facilities and prevent interference in the former.
This is not an argument for nuclear proliferation or clandestine activities, but a warning against the US arrogating to itself a nuclear gendarme's role. India and Pakistan committed a huge blunder by crossing the nuclear threshold. They would be wiser to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle than to use it to drive dubious bargains involving bankrupt super-hazardous technologies like nuclear power, or even worse, to recover national 'honour' and 'prestige'
(Former senior editor of The Times of India, Praful Bidwai is a freelance journalist and regular columnist for several leading newspapers in India)
There is something unwholesome, indeed distasteful, about the triumphalism in India over the nuclear cooperation agreement signed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush. This ends India's characterisation as a nuclear 'pariah' after the first Pokharan test of 1974. Following this, Washington walked out of its agreement to supply enriched uranium fuel for the US-built Tarapur reactors.
There has always been a special feeling of wounded pride among Indian policy-makers over the 'pariah' characterisation. Yet, the US wasn't the only country to stage a strong protest against Pokharan-I. Canada too protested. Their embarrassment and anger weren't contrived. Both had contributed substantially to designing, building, and providing critical materials to, the CIRUS 'research' reactor commissioned in 1960. Its spent fuel was the source of the plutonium used in the 1974 test.
Earlier, India had solemnly assured the US and Canada through bilateral agreements that CIRUS and its products would only be used for 'peaceful' purposes. The only way India could still claim not to have violated this commitment was to declare the explosion 'peaceful'. India, one could argue, hadn't done anything that many states with atomic ambitions wouldn?t do: use all kinds of devious means to fulfil those ambitions. But Indian policy-makers were distinguished by their uniquely self-righteous hurt over Washington?s reprimand.
They have ever since craved US approbation and India's acceptance as a 'responsible' nuclear power even as they have, to their disgrace, given up on the global disarmament agenda. The US now terms India 'a state with advanced nuclear technology' (a bad euphemism considering how primitive the Bomb technology is once you have access to some special materials/equipment).
The US has now stepped out of the box and agreed to accommodate India's nuclear ambitions by treating it as an 'exception' to the requirements of the global non-proliferation order. Under Monday's agreement, Bush has promised to sell nuclear materials and equipment to India and involve it in an experimental nuclear fission project, etc. He has also pledged to 'adjust US laws and policies' and 'work with friends and allies to adjust international regimes' to enable full civil nuclear transactions with India.
The flip side is that India would 'assume the same responsibilities' and 'acquire the same benefits? as the recognised nuclear weapons-states. This involves numerous steps: ?identifying and separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes'; declaring 'civilians facilities' to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)' and 'voluntarily' placing them under its safeguards; continuing the 'unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing'; and 'working with the US' for a multilateral 'Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty'.
India would also 'secure nuclear materials and technology through comprehensive export control legislation' and through 'adherence to Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and Nuclear Suppliers' Group (NSG) guidelines?, although it's a member of neither.
The fact that Bush has treated India as an 'exception' may impress many in the Pakistani elite. There will certainly be a clamour that identical treatment be accorded to Pakistan. But Islamabad would be ill-advised to demand such parity.
There are several problems with the India-US agreement. One is asymmetry. The overall agenda was laid down by Washington. India signed on the dotted line?except for bargaining over some words. The deal imposes no new obligations on the US. (Indeed, Washington is planning to conduct further nuclear tests.) But India agreed to extend its testing moratorium.
The US has only placed just four of its 250 civilian facilities under IAEA safeguards. India will probably have to subject many more installations to these. If the guidelines of the NSG, comprised of 44 states, are applied, the bulk of India?s civilian facilities, including its 15 operating reactors, will come under safeguards. True, safeguards are a matter of negotiation. But there, India and the US wield unequal power.
No time-frame is specified for the fulfilment of obligations/commitments by either side. This doesn't exclude pressure to rush through, say, separation of military nuclear facilities/activities from civilian ones. This is practically difficult and expensive. Often, the two activities occur in the same location.
Besides, Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) scientists loathe 'external' safeguards and inspections. They were not consulted in advance about the deal, and are largely sullen about its execution.
The bitterest opposition to the agreement is likely to arise from within the US and the NSG. Influential politicians like Congressman Ed Markey threaten to block it because it will open the door to other 'exceptions'.
The US establishment is divided on the issue. While some security analysts (e.g. Ashley Tellis, formerly of the Right-wing RAND Corp.) favour the agreement, others like George Perkovich argue that the US 'should not adjust the nuclear non-proliferation regime to accommodate India's desire - to nuclear technology - The costs of breaking faith with non-nuclear weapons states such as Japan, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Sweden and others who forswore nuclear weapons [are] too high.'
Without broad consensus, Bush might not be able to sell the deal domestically. It will be even more difficult to get it approved by the NSG. Many NSG members will stoutly oppose any dilution of the group's tough guidelines.
It would be a near-miracle if the agreement is implemented within a reasonable period of time. Even if it is, the benefits to India would at best be marginal. Nuclear power accounts for under 3 percent of India?s electricity generation. It cannot be the key to anyone's energy security. It poses grave hazards both through serious accidents like Chernobyl, and through high-level wastes which remain active for thousands of years. Nobody has found a solution to the waste storage-and-disposal problem.
Nuclear power is 30 to 50 percent more expensive than electricity from other sources- even without accounting for the (high) cost of decommissioning old plants.
Contrary to myths, pursuit of nuclear power won't lower aggregate carbon emissions. Nuclear plants are extremely capital- and materials-intensive. Each step in the ?nuclear fuel cycle?, from uranium mining to reprocessing, emits greenhouse gases. As energy expert M.V. Ramana argues, "there is no empirical evidence that increased use of nuclear power has contributed to reducing a country?s carbon dioxide emissions".
Take Japan. From 1965 to 1995, its nuclear capacity went from zero to over 40,000 MW. But carbon dioxide emissions tripled to 1200 million tonnes!
It would be foolhardy for Pakistan to demand parity with India in this regard. In fact, some extremely cynical US leaders would only too glad to offer an identical deal to Pakistan so that its nuclear facilities are subjected to Iraq-style intrusive inspections. These could be justified in Pakistan's case, unlike India's, thanks to the history of Dr A.Q Khan's shady enterprise.
At its present level of nuclear technology development, which is probably lower than India's, Pakistan will find it even more difficult to separate civilian and military facilities and prevent interference in the former.
This is not an argument for nuclear proliferation or clandestine activities, but a warning against the US arrogating to itself a nuclear gendarme's role. India and Pakistan committed a huge blunder by crossing the nuclear threshold. They would be wiser to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle than to use it to drive dubious bargains involving bankrupt super-hazardous technologies like nuclear power, or even worse, to recover national 'honour' and 'prestige'
(Former senior editor of The Times of India, Praful Bidwai is a freelance journalist and regular columnist for several leading newspapers in India)
Tuesday, August 2
Peace with the Past
Krishna Kumar
The most obvious thing about the past is that it is past. No remarkable wisdom is required to notice this, yet it is difficult, especially in modern, literate societies, to overcome the temptation to live in the past. The construction and institutionalization of a national memory of the past necessarily implies imparting to the past a chronic half-life. Modern systems of mass education serve as a prime instrument of this process, and it depends on the quality of a system of education what kind of half-life the past will have, leaky or self-contained? A leaky half-life suggests the availability of the past as a resource for evoking passions and nostalgia. In the metaphor of radioactive waste I am using, 'self-contained' knowledge of the past would mean that it is accompanied by the awareness that the past is past.
My study (Prejudice and Pride, Penguin Books) of school textbooks used for the teaching of history in contemporary India and Pakistan shows that both countries transmit the knowledge of the past in a highly 'leaky' manner. This finding can hardly surprise anyone, given the backward and inefficient systems of education both India and Pakistan have, and also in view of the low priority they attach to the school-level teaching of social sciences in general, and history in particular.
In both systems of education, the teaching of history is perceived primarily as a means of citizenship-training for nation-building. Although this perception is not unique to India and Pakistan, the extent to which it influences the pedagogy of social sciences, especially history, is quite remarkable, in the sense that the nation-building role of history leaves no room whatsoever for pedagogic objectives, such as inculcating curiosity about the past and imparting intellectual skills to make sense of it. The pedagogic poverty of Indian and Pakistani textbooks becomes all the more influential, given the dominant role and recall-oriented character of the examination system and its linkages with the prescribed textbook.
My clubbing of India and Pakistan in the preceding paragraph must have hurt many readers, and I can fully empathize with them. As educated Indians, we have all been socialized to perceive the creation of Pakistan as an act of betrayal and narrowmindedness; and now, more than half a century after that act was accomplished, we are led to believe that Pakistan is a failed state. While comparing ourselves to Pakistan, we take pride in having survived so far as a democracy, and especially as a secular democracy. These assumed points of our superiority are grounded in the contours of our knowledge of history, particularly our knowledge of Partition and the decade preceding it.
School textbooks offer us a valuable means of analysing this common knowledge, bits and pieces of which are dispersed by the Indian and the Pakistani systems of education within their respective territories. My study of a sample of these textbooks reveals that they socialize children into the ideological perspectives of two master narratives. The clashing structures of the two master narratives explains why India and Pakistan perceive themselves as irreconcilable national projects, though they have been around as separate nation states for more than fifty years now.
The Indian master narrative is structured around the idea that secular nationalism and communalism were historically alien to each other, and that the former is politically and morally superior. In the binary that Indian textbooks use to narrate the story of independence, secular nationalism symbolizes an accommodative, rationally organized vision of social transformation, while communalism symbolizes regressive social forces seeking sustenance from primordial sources of inspiration, including religion.
The Pakistani master narrative denies that India?s independence struggle was secular. At the heart of this narrative lies the two-nation theory which claims that the urge to create Pakistan arose out of certain irreconcilable differences between Hindus and Muslims. The Indian narrative, of course, denies the validity of this theory, and by doing so, it disapproves of Pakistan, imbuing its existence, as the signifier of a regressive, divisive tendency, with suspicion.
The structural features of the two master narratives I have outlined above impose severe pedagogic restrictions on them. These restrictions pertain to what the narratives can include as relevant historical facts or happenings and also, to how the course of the happenings selected for mention or emphasis should be placed. These are among the features or symptoms which enable us to analyse the two master narratives in a comparative manner.
For instance, the secular/communal binary which the Indian school histories use to tell the story of freedom does not allow them to acknowledge that there were organizational and social overlaps between the two ideologies. That Hindu communalism had a substantial presence in the Congress, and that it exercised great influence on the political and cultural ethos of the thirties remain unmentionable for many Indian textbook writers, and those who mention them do not attach any crucial significance to these facts. Apparently, any emphasis on Hindu communalism, especially on its role within the Congress, would spoil the neatness of the secular/communal binary which gives the Indian master narrative a basic structure and also a moral overtone.
A simplistic separation of the secular from the communal outlook also affects the school historian?s ability to use biography, an important aspect of the learning of history during childhood, in a purposive and credible manner. All eminent leaders of the freedom struggle end up becoming examples of a homogeneous bag of values. History textbooks fail to show why, for example, Tilak, Gokhale, Lajpat Rai, Bose, Nehru and Gandhi must be regarded as distinct personalities and political figures. An undifferentiating label of greatness that these and others carry defeats any larger intellectual purpose that the inclusion of history in the school syllabus might serve. The much avowed inspirational role of history becomes a mere shell when any analytical details that might help children perceive great personalities as leaders engaged in a political struggle, are withdrawn.
History turns into a brochure, and the personalities involved in it become cardboard figures juggled around in the theatre of significant events. This applies to Gandhi and Jinnah in both Indian and Pakistani textbooks, especially towards the closing scenes of their respective narratives. Some lives are sliced into two halves, one acceptable to the Indian textbook writers, and the other to their Pakistani counterparts ? the fate of Syed Ahmad Khan and Iqbal.
Basically, both countries treat the history of the freedom struggle as a moral tale. The Indian version highlights the triumph of secular nationalism, and the Pakistani version shows how a cultural vision was realised despite gigantic political obstacles. Neither version has the capacity to accommodate complexities and ambiguities. The Indian version virtually forgets about Muslim politics after the hopes born during the short Congress-League collaboration over Khilafat had died. Here onwards, the narrative must avoid the news of all but pro-Congress Muslims; that is why the Nehru Report, the meagre participation of Muslims in civil disobedience, the discord over basic education during the late 1930s, and the Lahore Resolution are glossed over.
The Pakistani textbooks give the Nehru Report a key place in the story they present; even the most compressed accounts find room for Jinnah?s fourteen points. The controversy surrounding Gandhi?s proposal for basic education also gets elaborate attention. But then, the brush with which both these matters are portrayed is too thick to do justice to the ideological struggle that existed within the Congress. Ignoring Hindu revivalist influence on the Congress enables the Pakistani school historian to target the Congress more purposefully ? in terms of the larger orbit of meaning which Pakistan?s young citizens are supposed to inhabit psychologically ? by calling it a Hindu organization committed to establishing Hindu Raj in India.
Of course one can appreciate why the Indian narrative pays little attention to the course of post-1920s Muslim politics. The obvious reason is that the sub-plot of Muslim politics now onwards belongs to the story of Pakistan?s freedom, not India's. However, our appreciation of this simple nationalistic logic should not blind us to the pedagogic and, equally significantly, the political cost of the school historian's decision.
The pedagogic cost is that the 1940s must come as a surprise. Without the background of the social and political alienation of the Muslim landed elite and the intelligentsia of the northern plains, the student can hardly make sense of the sudden emergence of the Muslim League as a powerful actor in the early 1940s. Not surprisingly, the Indian narrative is extremely reluctant to go into the details of any event following Quit India. Textbooks jump from one mention to the next, rushing towards Partition which, from the point of view of the young student, begs for an explanation more substantial than what the British-Muslim conspiracy theory can provide.
The subjectivity of millions, as shaped by the socialization inherent in the fable of freedom, sustains the South Asian geopolitical order. By depriving children of any rational means to comprehend the overlap between secular and communal nationalisms, the Indian narrative of the national movement socializes the young to perceive Pakistan as an illegitimate achievement. The rival persuasion, to which the Pakistani narrative is dedicated ? both as a matter of educational policy and the structure of the story ? is to see India as a Hindu nation. The denial of India's claim to being a secular state is central to the 'Pakistan Ideology' that school textbooks are supposed to uphold and disseminate. It requires either complete avoidance or, in the case of steadier accounts, serious downplaying of any events and personalities marking the spirit of secular nationalism which opposed Partition on moral grounds though it could not stop it from becoming a political reality.
Between 1857 and 1947, we can find episodes where the two narratives converge and others where they diverge. In Partition, we find symptoms of both kinds. The two narratives come remarkably close in the cursory manner in which they deal with the violence associated with Partition. The horror and suffering that millions of ordinary men and women faced receive no more than a few lines of cold recording in most Indian and Pakistani textbooks. However, the treatment of Partition as a political event is completely different in the two narratives. For the Indian textbook writers, it was a terrible tragedy that marred the glory of independence. For the Pakistani textbook writers, it was a stunning achievement, marking an escape for the Muslims from the impending Hindu Raj.
By giving Partition the status of a great political, and not just human, tragedy, the Indian narrative fuses the secular and the communal perspectives which had so far stayed altogether separate from each other. Partition evokes an irreparable sense of national loss and victimhood in both progressive and conservative varieties of school historiography. The division of India becomes a memory that Indians must forever regret.
In turn, the Muslims who share the blame for this act with the British in divided India's national record must continue to serve as a stereotype of betrayers. No wonder, the word 'Pakistan' is used as the name of a tendency in cinema and literature; and in every recurrence of communal violence, the memory of the creation of Pakistan is inevitably invoked. It is also not surprising that when a visitor from Pakistan talks about peace, substantial parts of the audience slip into the fantasy of a future when the two nations will be reunited. The visitor is mystified to think why his learned Indian listeners don't realise that reuniting with India will mean death for Pakistan and its struggle to establish a separate national identity.
The Pakistani portrayal of Partition as a political event also suffers from a sense of irony. The uncertainty and anguish that Jinnah went through at the time of Partition cannot be represented, for it would diminish the superhuman image school textbooks give him. Textbook writers also find it hard to reconcile the idea that Pakistan was a vision preordained by destiny, with the role of manoeuvre in its actual birth. The Pakistani master narrative alludes to the two-nation theory soon after its coverage of the 1857 revolt, citing Syed Ahmad Khan as its earliest proponent. By the time the narrative reaches the early 1940s, it has already used the theory a few times to convey a sense of inevitability about the eventual creation of Pakistan.
So strongly and repeatedly does the narrative, in most textbook versions, refer to Pakistan as a goal recognized from the beginning of the freedom struggle, that the only curiosity it can satisfy in the final episode is about how the goal was ultimately attained. Yet, when it comes, the final episode conveys the message that Pakistan was the outcome of Hindu intransigence expressed in the unaccommodative attitude of the Congress.
For Indian children, not just the narrative of the freedom struggle, but history itself comes to an end with Partition and independence. As a constituent of social studies, and later on as a subject in its own right, history runs out of content in 1947, except for some of the events associated with independence, such as Gandhi?s assassination, making of the Constitution and the beginning of Five-year plans. What has happened in the last 55 years may filter through the measly civics syllabus, popular cinema and television; history as formally constituted knowledge of the past does not cover it.
Partition remains the last major event to have 'occurred' in India's long history, and as such it can be expected to maintain in the child's mind an evocative freshness - both as an item signifying the end of the freedom struggle and as a factor of children's socialization into a political legacy. Pakistan is a part of that legacy, and it is a highly significant political fact of contemporary South Asia that the last news Indian children get of Pakistan in the course of their institutionalized education is about its birth. For any more recent news they must depend on sources like Border and Ghaddar.
For Pakistani textbooks, Partition marks neither an ending nor a discontinuity, and the narrative smoothly moves on. In the post-independence history of Pakistan, India figures quite often, in the stories of wars, in the context of Kashmir, or simply as a Hindu neighbour. Not just the teaching of history, the entire curriculum is embedded in a masculine, war-oriented and anti-Hindu ideal of the nation state. Textbooks interchange the word 'Bharat' with 'India' in a seemingly unpatterned manner, but if one looks carefully, the former gets preference in contexts which are explicitly hostile.
If J. Krishnamurti's view that modern education constitutes a major threat to world peace needed any proof, India and Pakistan provide it in their daily teaching of history to the young. So long as they continue to resist the maturity that comes from feeling at peace with the past, they will keep on wasting incalculable psychic and physical resources in the name of security. This is no familiar plea by a peace-loving dove for cutting down the defence budget, for there is no room for such a plea in a democracy grounded in public illiteracy and poor quality education. For now, a plea for designing education, especially history, differently should suffice. This includes taking both education and history seriously
(Krishna Kumar is Professor, Department of Education, Delhi University)
The most obvious thing about the past is that it is past. No remarkable wisdom is required to notice this, yet it is difficult, especially in modern, literate societies, to overcome the temptation to live in the past. The construction and institutionalization of a national memory of the past necessarily implies imparting to the past a chronic half-life. Modern systems of mass education serve as a prime instrument of this process, and it depends on the quality of a system of education what kind of half-life the past will have, leaky or self-contained? A leaky half-life suggests the availability of the past as a resource for evoking passions and nostalgia. In the metaphor of radioactive waste I am using, 'self-contained' knowledge of the past would mean that it is accompanied by the awareness that the past is past.
My study (Prejudice and Pride, Penguin Books) of school textbooks used for the teaching of history in contemporary India and Pakistan shows that both countries transmit the knowledge of the past in a highly 'leaky' manner. This finding can hardly surprise anyone, given the backward and inefficient systems of education both India and Pakistan have, and also in view of the low priority they attach to the school-level teaching of social sciences in general, and history in particular.
In both systems of education, the teaching of history is perceived primarily as a means of citizenship-training for nation-building. Although this perception is not unique to India and Pakistan, the extent to which it influences the pedagogy of social sciences, especially history, is quite remarkable, in the sense that the nation-building role of history leaves no room whatsoever for pedagogic objectives, such as inculcating curiosity about the past and imparting intellectual skills to make sense of it. The pedagogic poverty of Indian and Pakistani textbooks becomes all the more influential, given the dominant role and recall-oriented character of the examination system and its linkages with the prescribed textbook.
My clubbing of India and Pakistan in the preceding paragraph must have hurt many readers, and I can fully empathize with them. As educated Indians, we have all been socialized to perceive the creation of Pakistan as an act of betrayal and narrowmindedness; and now, more than half a century after that act was accomplished, we are led to believe that Pakistan is a failed state. While comparing ourselves to Pakistan, we take pride in having survived so far as a democracy, and especially as a secular democracy. These assumed points of our superiority are grounded in the contours of our knowledge of history, particularly our knowledge of Partition and the decade preceding it.
School textbooks offer us a valuable means of analysing this common knowledge, bits and pieces of which are dispersed by the Indian and the Pakistani systems of education within their respective territories. My study of a sample of these textbooks reveals that they socialize children into the ideological perspectives of two master narratives. The clashing structures of the two master narratives explains why India and Pakistan perceive themselves as irreconcilable national projects, though they have been around as separate nation states for more than fifty years now.
The Indian master narrative is structured around the idea that secular nationalism and communalism were historically alien to each other, and that the former is politically and morally superior. In the binary that Indian textbooks use to narrate the story of independence, secular nationalism symbolizes an accommodative, rationally organized vision of social transformation, while communalism symbolizes regressive social forces seeking sustenance from primordial sources of inspiration, including religion.
The Pakistani master narrative denies that India?s independence struggle was secular. At the heart of this narrative lies the two-nation theory which claims that the urge to create Pakistan arose out of certain irreconcilable differences between Hindus and Muslims. The Indian narrative, of course, denies the validity of this theory, and by doing so, it disapproves of Pakistan, imbuing its existence, as the signifier of a regressive, divisive tendency, with suspicion.
The structural features of the two master narratives I have outlined above impose severe pedagogic restrictions on them. These restrictions pertain to what the narratives can include as relevant historical facts or happenings and also, to how the course of the happenings selected for mention or emphasis should be placed. These are among the features or symptoms which enable us to analyse the two master narratives in a comparative manner.
For instance, the secular/communal binary which the Indian school histories use to tell the story of freedom does not allow them to acknowledge that there were organizational and social overlaps between the two ideologies. That Hindu communalism had a substantial presence in the Congress, and that it exercised great influence on the political and cultural ethos of the thirties remain unmentionable for many Indian textbook writers, and those who mention them do not attach any crucial significance to these facts. Apparently, any emphasis on Hindu communalism, especially on its role within the Congress, would spoil the neatness of the secular/communal binary which gives the Indian master narrative a basic structure and also a moral overtone.
A simplistic separation of the secular from the communal outlook also affects the school historian?s ability to use biography, an important aspect of the learning of history during childhood, in a purposive and credible manner. All eminent leaders of the freedom struggle end up becoming examples of a homogeneous bag of values. History textbooks fail to show why, for example, Tilak, Gokhale, Lajpat Rai, Bose, Nehru and Gandhi must be regarded as distinct personalities and political figures. An undifferentiating label of greatness that these and others carry defeats any larger intellectual purpose that the inclusion of history in the school syllabus might serve. The much avowed inspirational role of history becomes a mere shell when any analytical details that might help children perceive great personalities as leaders engaged in a political struggle, are withdrawn.
History turns into a brochure, and the personalities involved in it become cardboard figures juggled around in the theatre of significant events. This applies to Gandhi and Jinnah in both Indian and Pakistani textbooks, especially towards the closing scenes of their respective narratives. Some lives are sliced into two halves, one acceptable to the Indian textbook writers, and the other to their Pakistani counterparts ? the fate of Syed Ahmad Khan and Iqbal.
Basically, both countries treat the history of the freedom struggle as a moral tale. The Indian version highlights the triumph of secular nationalism, and the Pakistani version shows how a cultural vision was realised despite gigantic political obstacles. Neither version has the capacity to accommodate complexities and ambiguities. The Indian version virtually forgets about Muslim politics after the hopes born during the short Congress-League collaboration over Khilafat had died. Here onwards, the narrative must avoid the news of all but pro-Congress Muslims; that is why the Nehru Report, the meagre participation of Muslims in civil disobedience, the discord over basic education during the late 1930s, and the Lahore Resolution are glossed over.
The Pakistani textbooks give the Nehru Report a key place in the story they present; even the most compressed accounts find room for Jinnah?s fourteen points. The controversy surrounding Gandhi?s proposal for basic education also gets elaborate attention. But then, the brush with which both these matters are portrayed is too thick to do justice to the ideological struggle that existed within the Congress. Ignoring Hindu revivalist influence on the Congress enables the Pakistani school historian to target the Congress more purposefully ? in terms of the larger orbit of meaning which Pakistan?s young citizens are supposed to inhabit psychologically ? by calling it a Hindu organization committed to establishing Hindu Raj in India.
Of course one can appreciate why the Indian narrative pays little attention to the course of post-1920s Muslim politics. The obvious reason is that the sub-plot of Muslim politics now onwards belongs to the story of Pakistan?s freedom, not India's. However, our appreciation of this simple nationalistic logic should not blind us to the pedagogic and, equally significantly, the political cost of the school historian's decision.
The pedagogic cost is that the 1940s must come as a surprise. Without the background of the social and political alienation of the Muslim landed elite and the intelligentsia of the northern plains, the student can hardly make sense of the sudden emergence of the Muslim League as a powerful actor in the early 1940s. Not surprisingly, the Indian narrative is extremely reluctant to go into the details of any event following Quit India. Textbooks jump from one mention to the next, rushing towards Partition which, from the point of view of the young student, begs for an explanation more substantial than what the British-Muslim conspiracy theory can provide.
The subjectivity of millions, as shaped by the socialization inherent in the fable of freedom, sustains the South Asian geopolitical order. By depriving children of any rational means to comprehend the overlap between secular and communal nationalisms, the Indian narrative of the national movement socializes the young to perceive Pakistan as an illegitimate achievement. The rival persuasion, to which the Pakistani narrative is dedicated ? both as a matter of educational policy and the structure of the story ? is to see India as a Hindu nation. The denial of India's claim to being a secular state is central to the 'Pakistan Ideology' that school textbooks are supposed to uphold and disseminate. It requires either complete avoidance or, in the case of steadier accounts, serious downplaying of any events and personalities marking the spirit of secular nationalism which opposed Partition on moral grounds though it could not stop it from becoming a political reality.
Between 1857 and 1947, we can find episodes where the two narratives converge and others where they diverge. In Partition, we find symptoms of both kinds. The two narratives come remarkably close in the cursory manner in which they deal with the violence associated with Partition. The horror and suffering that millions of ordinary men and women faced receive no more than a few lines of cold recording in most Indian and Pakistani textbooks. However, the treatment of Partition as a political event is completely different in the two narratives. For the Indian textbook writers, it was a terrible tragedy that marred the glory of independence. For the Pakistani textbook writers, it was a stunning achievement, marking an escape for the Muslims from the impending Hindu Raj.
By giving Partition the status of a great political, and not just human, tragedy, the Indian narrative fuses the secular and the communal perspectives which had so far stayed altogether separate from each other. Partition evokes an irreparable sense of national loss and victimhood in both progressive and conservative varieties of school historiography. The division of India becomes a memory that Indians must forever regret.
In turn, the Muslims who share the blame for this act with the British in divided India's national record must continue to serve as a stereotype of betrayers. No wonder, the word 'Pakistan' is used as the name of a tendency in cinema and literature; and in every recurrence of communal violence, the memory of the creation of Pakistan is inevitably invoked. It is also not surprising that when a visitor from Pakistan talks about peace, substantial parts of the audience slip into the fantasy of a future when the two nations will be reunited. The visitor is mystified to think why his learned Indian listeners don't realise that reuniting with India will mean death for Pakistan and its struggle to establish a separate national identity.
The Pakistani portrayal of Partition as a political event also suffers from a sense of irony. The uncertainty and anguish that Jinnah went through at the time of Partition cannot be represented, for it would diminish the superhuman image school textbooks give him. Textbook writers also find it hard to reconcile the idea that Pakistan was a vision preordained by destiny, with the role of manoeuvre in its actual birth. The Pakistani master narrative alludes to the two-nation theory soon after its coverage of the 1857 revolt, citing Syed Ahmad Khan as its earliest proponent. By the time the narrative reaches the early 1940s, it has already used the theory a few times to convey a sense of inevitability about the eventual creation of Pakistan.
So strongly and repeatedly does the narrative, in most textbook versions, refer to Pakistan as a goal recognized from the beginning of the freedom struggle, that the only curiosity it can satisfy in the final episode is about how the goal was ultimately attained. Yet, when it comes, the final episode conveys the message that Pakistan was the outcome of Hindu intransigence expressed in the unaccommodative attitude of the Congress.
For Indian children, not just the narrative of the freedom struggle, but history itself comes to an end with Partition and independence. As a constituent of social studies, and later on as a subject in its own right, history runs out of content in 1947, except for some of the events associated with independence, such as Gandhi?s assassination, making of the Constitution and the beginning of Five-year plans. What has happened in the last 55 years may filter through the measly civics syllabus, popular cinema and television; history as formally constituted knowledge of the past does not cover it.
Partition remains the last major event to have 'occurred' in India's long history, and as such it can be expected to maintain in the child's mind an evocative freshness - both as an item signifying the end of the freedom struggle and as a factor of children's socialization into a political legacy. Pakistan is a part of that legacy, and it is a highly significant political fact of contemporary South Asia that the last news Indian children get of Pakistan in the course of their institutionalized education is about its birth. For any more recent news they must depend on sources like Border and Ghaddar.
For Pakistani textbooks, Partition marks neither an ending nor a discontinuity, and the narrative smoothly moves on. In the post-independence history of Pakistan, India figures quite often, in the stories of wars, in the context of Kashmir, or simply as a Hindu neighbour. Not just the teaching of history, the entire curriculum is embedded in a masculine, war-oriented and anti-Hindu ideal of the nation state. Textbooks interchange the word 'Bharat' with 'India' in a seemingly unpatterned manner, but if one looks carefully, the former gets preference in contexts which are explicitly hostile.
If J. Krishnamurti's view that modern education constitutes a major threat to world peace needed any proof, India and Pakistan provide it in their daily teaching of history to the young. So long as they continue to resist the maturity that comes from feeling at peace with the past, they will keep on wasting incalculable psychic and physical resources in the name of security. This is no familiar plea by a peace-loving dove for cutting down the defence budget, for there is no room for such a plea in a democracy grounded in public illiteracy and poor quality education. For now, a plea for designing education, especially history, differently should suffice. This includes taking both education and history seriously
(Krishna Kumar is Professor, Department of Education, Delhi University)
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