India’s response to the ill-effects of a toxic pesticide has been slow and inadequate

Endosulfan, a pesticide, has been poisoning villagers in India over the past two decades. Its use has caused physical and mental ailments among thousands of children and adults and deaths of many hundreds. In 2011 India agreed to ban endosulfan, and, more recently, it offered compensation to its victims. But now it is falling short to keep both those promises.

The pesticide, once commonly used, damages the central nervous system and causes hormonal changes in mothers and babies. It leads to many birth defects including cerebral palsy, a condition that causes physical disability. Worse still, it lingers in the environment without degradation, leading to its accumulation in the food chain and causing lasting ill-effects.

Commitment to ban?

In 2011 at the Stockholm Convention 128 countries, including India, added endosulfan to the list of pollutants that they agree to phase out of use. Following India’s commitment at Stockholm and after years of effort by the Democratic Youth Federation of India, a non-governmental organization, in May 2011 the Supreme Court banned the use of endosulfan in the country but allowed its exports to exhaust remaining stocks. At present India has 2000 tonnes of the pesticide and raw materials enough to make a further 4000 tonnes of it. As international demand for the pesticide has plummeted, the government has been forced to dispose this stash.

In July, because the Indian government was not ready to foot a $40 million bill for the disposal of endosulfan’s raw materials, it asked the Supreme Court to lift the ban on making the pesticide. In November the Supreme Court’s expert committee requested giving in to this demand. Citing that the treaty that Indian signed allows it up to six years to phase out endosulfan, so it could allow endosulfan’s manufacture and use without breaking its commitment. This recommendation was made even though the committee accepts that endosulfan is harmful to human health.

Sadly, endosulfan remains popular among farmers too. Manufacturing of the pesticide, if allowed, will be greeted with strong demand. Before the ban, India was the largest producer and consumer of endosulfan. It is cheap, easily available and curtails a variety of pests. For those unaware of its environmental consequences, there is little reason to not use it.

Studies show ill-effects of endosulfan use across the country. Kerala is the worst affected state. A 2012 state report linked the pesticide to 4000 afflicted and 700 deaths, many of whom suffered the fate because of aerial spraying over nearby cashew plantations. In some villages 50% homes have a child or an adult with severe disabilities.

In May the Kerela government, based on the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission, agreed to pay compensation to the victims of endosulfan in Kerela. The amount varied from Rupees 300,000 ($5,500) to 500,000 ($9,500) depending on the victim’s suffering. But despite protests in September and December, the government has only paid 101 out of the 2453 victim families.

The request to allow manufacturing of endosulfan exposes the government’s inability to dispose the raw materials. If undisposed, the chemicals lie in poorly maintained warehouses. A task force setup to inspect one such warehouse in Periya, Kerala, after locals complained of foul smell, found endosulfan leaking from rusted steel drums. The warehouse also lacked storekeepers, fire safety equipment and first-aid kits, posing a serious threat to nearby villages and water bodies.

Endosulfan rehabilitation project, setup by Kerala last year to help the afflicted, started an operation to deal with such cases. Their first task was to contain the leaking drums. They are now hoping to get help from the government for disposal and detoxification, said Mohammed Asheel, the project officer.

Far too little, far too late

Pratibha Patil, former President of India, promised to double public spending on health care to 2.5% of the GDP by 2017. Among its first steps is a $5 billion free drugs plan, the implementation of which began in October. Surely then the Indian government can, apart from preserving the ban, also afford to stop poisoning its own people for a mere $40 million and also compensate those already poisoned.

First posted on The Allotrope. Image from here.

The rape of a 23-year old physiotherapist, at 9:30 pm, in a Delhi public transport bus, on a busy route, on a busy day, in spite of the presence of an accompanying male friend, spotlights the shocking magnitude of the failure of India’s law and order situation. But even as we take to the streets with candles and placards, and even as the country’s most powerful figures angrily write letters and seek the imposition of fast-tracked capital punishment, the extent and frequency of the crime begs two very important questions: What took us so long to demand concerted action when such incidents have littered national headlines so many times over the past two decades? And by writing to authorities or demanding capital punishment, why are our elected representatives demanding action from others, instead of spearheading it themselves?

It takes a lot to stir our collective conscience. We are not easily moved – we are so busy living aspirational lives that we are too spent to worry about such mundane things as rapes, that occur according to one estimate, every 22 minutes in India. What’s more, this undying spirit, this unquenchable thirst and need to get on with our lives no matter the odds is a celebrated feature of the ‘New India’ we supposedly inhabit. We have all been representatives, at different times, of the spirit of Mumbai and of Delhi and Kolkata and Bangalore and Jaipur. So when we step out en masse to protest spontaneously, the brutal rape of a 23 year old, we must be really shocked. How else do we explain taking time out from our very busy schedules, to do something that is more than just an outraged Facebook post? Yet, we are all equally culpable in the crime we want punished.

As citizens, we failed our duty to demand change when a sixteen year old girl was raped in Haryana in September this year, allegedly by as many eleven men in unrelated incidents, three separate times, as she tried to escape one set of rapists after another; or when ASI Ravinder Pal Singh died protecting his daughter against an eve-teaser; or when in October alone, Haryana recorded 19 rapes, almost every other day between October 4 and October 30; or for each of the 909 cases of rape reported so far in Delhi and Haryana this year; or when a staggering 22,172 women were allegedly raped all over India in 2011; or when at least 2,13,585 women suffered gender-based crimes across the country in 2010; or when, in 2008, we recorded the third largest number of rape cases anywhere in the world. That these are reduced to mere statistics and that not one of these crimes stirred our conscience enough to demand action as we do now, contributed equally to the fate of the latest victim of our collective indolence.

In April this year, two undercover news reporters spoke to police officers in NCR – Delhi on the issue of the disconcertingly high number of rapes in the capital. In a shocking revelation, most officers revealed deep prejudices that calls into question their very continuance as law-enforcement officers. A majority of the officers suggested that family background, deals gone sour and provocative dressing, were the ‘real reasons’ for the rape. Some called into question whether such incidents were actually rapes – suggesting that in most instances, the victim desired some form of assault or at any rate, provoked it. One officer, mirroring comments made a few years ago by the Chief Minister, proposed a blanket curfew of 8 pm as an absolute time limit beyond which girls should not venture outdoors – so that women must remain indoors after hours, while potential rapists are free to roam the streets. As yet another report surfaced of the rape of a five-year old in Haryana, one must wonder which of these many reasons may have been responsible.

What these responses reveal however is an attitude that suggests that the offense of rape can be mitigated by proof of provocation. Worse, it places the subjective test of provocation on the whim of the accused, so that it becomes the prerogative of the victim to not provoke. Apart from highlighting its sheer inhumanity, these responses betray an attitude amongst the law-enforcement that its duty to protect is secondary to the victim’s duty “not to get raped” so that neither the rapist, nor the law-enforcement is to be blamed when a victim herself contributes to her rape by her choice of dress or her presence outdoors at particular times; an attitude which in other words seems to say, “this country is for rapists – save yourself if possible but don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

Equally guilty are our elected representatives. Their reactions following the incident does little to mask their collective failure. For years now, the people we elected have failed to rise above petty politics to enact tough new laws: on rape – despite a Supreme Court judgment suggesting changes in 1999 and a Law Commission Report setting out the nuts and bolts of how to achieve it, in 2000; on sexual harassment at the workplace – despite a Supreme Court directive following an equally shocking gang-rape of a social activist in Rajasthan in 1997; on stiffer penalties for assaults motivated by communal sentiments; and on the changes to the manner in which rape cases are investigated and the speed with which they are tried.

There is much that Parliament can do which goes beyond letter writing and capital punishment demands. (See this link for two informative posts on Law and Other Things by Mrinal Satish and Prateeksha Baxi) For instance, Bills to sharpen the anti-rape law and enact an anti sexual harassment law are still pending Parliamentary approval. A Human Rights Watch report in 2010 suggests that despite a Supreme Court finding of irrelevancy, the unscientific and degrading “two-finger test” to determine whether the victim was “habituated to sexual intercourse”, continues to remain standard forensic procedure across hospitals in India. And the findings of this test continue to aid defense lawyers in open court proceedings, adding to the humiliation of victims. Enacting laws to make this practice a punishable offense and providing for mandatory in camera proceedings for rape cases is another change Parliament can bring. Finally, there is an urgent need to usher police reforms to bring home that message that no matter the supposed instigation, howsoever provocative, there exists no right to rape and public spaces are not out of bounds for women, at any time of the day or night. As another victim of our collective failure succumbed, the responsibility to bring lasting change lies with us alone.

[The cover photograph is in the public domain and is sourced from the US National Archives and Records Administration]

FDI has been thrown like a ball from one side to another in the Parliament. The debate of whether FDI in retail or FDI in general should be allowed in India has been a long-stretched one. With political incentives contaminating economic decisions, our politicians seem to focus more on the words they speak and how they rhyme rather than on the content itself. After much hoo-hah, I am glad that the final decision has been in the right direction, whether by parties politically bailing out the government or by actively supporting the reform, it doesn’t matter.

The big question still remains – will FDI be for the good or for the bad? As with everything else, one can argue in both directions. However, in my opinion, if we want to prosper over the longer term, we have to let go of our attachment to existing systems. The benefits from FDI in multi-brand retail has immense first and second order effects which should not be ignored. Improved infrastructure, increased choice, greater stability and a stronger placement in the global market are just a few of those. India has done well so far in producing respectable growth following the 1991 reforms. But it is time to move on, more forward and higher.

Why are some politicians so against it?

It seems like the politicians who are against this reform are thinking more about themselves than the common man. They have played around with words to show that they are thinking about the public, but it seems like they are more concerned that these foreign companies will not entertain corruptive behaviour, and will not co-operate with political incentives. If Secretary General, Mr. P Chengal Reddy of Consortium of Indian Farmers’ Association, himself says that approximately 50% of the food that farmers grow go to waste due to a lack of infrastructure, and that Tescos and Walmarts would improve the existing system, why are they ignoring him?

So what really are the economic benefits of this?

To start, the larger retail chains are most likely to bring in greater warehousing facilities. One of the major concerns of farmers in the past have been their fluctuation in income due to reliance on weather conditions. During high monsoon periods, many of the crops get destroyed, while during pro-longed dry conditions, crops do not grow. The Tescos and the Walmarts will be able to effectively store crops during times of excess supply, and release them during times of shortage. This will help stabilise the supply of food products, thereby stabilising food prices, both for the farmers (in the form of revenues) as well as for end consumers (in the form of expenditure). We all know that inflation is one of the most important issues facing Indian policymakers today. Given the significant contribution of food inflation to WPI in India, this predictability of food prices will benefit the economy and its people over the longer term. The RBI will be able to focus monetary policy on more constructive issues, rather than scrambling to keep inflation under check. And hopefully, the foreign media will finally stop resisting India due to its ’unpredictable’ inflation.

As for the consumers, traditional economic theory suggests that more variety leads to higher utility and happier consumers. Products currently unavailable at a reasonable cost in India would become available through these multi-brand retailers. In a previous post on C20sit was recognised that the fear that multi-brand retailers would increase prices after driving the kirana stores out of business does not conform to international experience. In my opinion there is enough competition within the global multi-brand retail market, that market forces would not allow excessive prices to persist. And in the end, its the consumer’s choice. If they prefer their ’kirana’ stores, they may still go there.

What are people scared about?

That these multi-brand retailers will drive out the ‘kirana’ stores? The kirana stores are spread across the city and town, within residential areas and cater to families who need their groceries fast, nearby and at short notice. It is always going to be easier to go down the road to pick up a packet of daal or a few vegetables rather than travel to a multi-brand retail shop. We already have domestically owned supermarkets like Spencer’s and Food Bazaar which are co existing with the kirana stores. So why now with the introduction of Tesco and Walmart would these stores go out of business? If anything, the inefficiency and lack of customer relationships displayed by Spencer’s and Food Bazaar would be improved as a result of competition in multi-brand retail. And for those who prefer the personal touch when buying their groceries, they could still go to the kirana stores.

These were only the first-order benefits. The second-order benefits extend to the wider economy. Improved infrastructure, increased employment, increased investment, increased productivity, stronger Rupee, more stable inflation…the list goes on.As a final thought, if there are concerns about farmers getting the stick while the foreign investors keep the carrot, it is possible for the government to introduce regulation which protects the farmers to some extent while giving the investors enough scope for making the investment commercially viable. One policy option is to introduce minimum prices multi-brand shops have to pay farmers. This would provide a revenue floor for the farmers, protecting their income levels. It should however be preferred that market forces determine prices.  More details and recommendations on policy options will follow in my next article.

Last week, the Delaware Supreme Court issued, what the New York Times termed as an “unusual rebuke” to Chancellor Strine of the Delaware Court of Chancery, arguably one of the most influential corporate courts anywhere in the world. For decades now, corporate jurisprudence emerging from Delaware has shaped corporate law in the United States and influenced corporate policy and commercial courts across the globe. Last week though, Chancellor Leo Strine, Jr., the first amongst equals on the Chancery Court bench came under heavy fire from the Delaware Supreme Court for using one of his opinions as “a platform from which to propagate individual world views on issues not presented.” In a no-holds-barred attack, the Delaware Supreme Court criticised the Chancellor for abusing the purpose of a judicial opinion by using it to express his ruminations on the proper direction of Delaware law, an act better reserved for “law review articles, the classroom, continuing legal education presentations, and keynote speeches”. While at least one news network attributed the hectoring stricture to the personal differences of opinion between Chief Justice Steele of the Delaware Supreme Court and Chancellor Strine, the move, apart from spotlighting Chancellor Strine’s colorful courtroom persona, raises important issues on the extent to which judges may use judicial dicta to comment on legal policy.

Of the many illustrious judges to have served on Delaware’s famous court, Chancellor Strine justifiably lays claim to being amongst the most visible and recognised chief judge in recent memory. Having started his career as a corporate litigator at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, he became Counsel to Delaware Governor Thomas R. Carper, who appointed him to the Chancery Court where he eventually rose to become Vice-Chancellor before rising to the top spot. Known for his sharp wit and sharper analyses, Chancellor Strine lays claim to authoring more than one landmark decision in a relatively short span of time, including the decision IBP v Tyson Foods where he crafted a holistic (read deal-friendly) review standard for determining when undisclosed adverse financial information qualifies as having a deal-breaking material adverse effect. But apart from his meteoric rise, this isn’t the first time Chancellor Strine has expressed his world views in a judicial opinion.  In Cox Communications, another outstanding decision, he attempted to make sense of the two divergent standards frequently invoked for reviewing transactions involving takeovers by controlling shareholders. That digression, in a case which was actually concerned with the appropriate quantum of legal fees to be paid in such deals, now forms the basis for most contemporary discussion on the issue and is regarded as an outstanding contribution to legal doctrine. Notwithstanding the strategic implications of the Supreme Court’s unmitigated diatribe therefore, Chancellor Strine’s reputation as one of America’s foremost corporate minds is firmly secure and deservedly entrenched. And as someone who attends his marquee Mergers and Acquisition class at Harvard, I can attest, that his incisive legal analysis combined with a quirky sense of humour make for an outstanding classroom experience.

But behind the more interesting story of Chancellor Strine lies a less snazzy legal issue of comparative importance. In publicly hauling up the Chancellor of the country’s most celebrated corporate court, the Delaware Supreme Court has sent out a clear message – dicta, even when judicial, is not appreciated. The Supreme Court would much rather have Delaware judges express their personal views in law review pages and classroom presentations, than in their written opinions. As a relative outsider to the American legal world, three thoughts immediately come to mind.

First, the Supreme Court’s advice is testament to the extent to which the law review culture is entrenched in American legal thought and training. As a rule, the best American legal minds appear to write extensively. Academic writing in general and writing by judges in particular, far from being frowned upon, is welcomed as being the apposite place for discussions on legal standards as against judicial opinions, which must express clear, actionable legal rules.

Second, a statement by the Delaware Governor’s official spokesman reiterating his faith in Chancellor Strine was immediately after the Supreme Court’s rebuke. That the Governor should comment on what is essentially an issue of judicial discipline, is an indication of how closely the political class appears to follow the judicial process even in the case of tenured appointees.

Third, the robust and incisive news reporting that followed, indicates an informed and a fearless media, which apart from being accurate, is not hemmed in by fears of being in contempt of arguably two very powerful courts. The day when knowledge of individual judicial predilections, will inform non-legal news analysis, seems a disconcerting distance away in India. But there are important lessons of institutional checks and balances, for our legal system in each of these trends. Lessons, on what a well functioning polity should look like, even when the real issue at hand perhaps stems from little more than a principled difference in opinion.

I am certain pollsters, analysts and anyone who observes American politics closer than I do, will find some plausible, rational and  entirely unconvincing explanations for this inexplicable voting behaviour. So, on the strength of my ignorance of American politics coupled with my favourite hobby of Indianising the world and its events, I offer two convincing ‘Indian’ insights into the 2012 election. First, why the election results demonstrate America’s version of multi-party coalition politics, a trend in modern politics, popular the world over, born, nurtured and cherished in India. Second, why America, in alternating between two parties in successive elections, is doing today what Tamil Nadu has done in every single election in my living memory. Obama’s victory isn’t exceptional or inexplicable, it’s just a case of  America’s desire to have something the world already does, achieved by copying the salutary precedent offered by Tamil Nadu.

Coalition politics is a staple of our times. Not only have coalition governments been a fairly widespread phenomenon in developing countries, but even in countries such as Britain, where single party governments are the norm and the polity not particularly fractious, a coalition government has come into power. Now, a number of reasons underlie such developments, some of which are country-specific. However broadly speaking, two reasons stand out universally: First, a shrinking of differences between political parties and second, the lack of standout leaders, who by the dint of their leadership can inspire the confidence of the masses to run the country single-handedly. It is evident that both these reasons hold true as much in the USA today as anywhere else.

While the Republican and Democratic parties may be distinct in terms of perception and their support bases, in terms of actual policies that they espouse, there is hardly very much to distinguish the two. In fact, as William Saletan argues in Slate, the Republican party should be happy about the fact that the country elected Obama, a Democrat undoubtedly, but certainly far from the rabid socialist he’s made out to be, and in fact, a man, whose policies when scrutinised, looks astonishingly like a moderate Republican (if such a thing exists today!).  Not closing down Guantanamo, the troop surge in Afghanistan, offering millions of dollars of debt reduction and finally an unstinted and unquestioned belief in American capitalism, all make him look fairly Goppy.

Again, despite his stirring rhetoric, his passionate oratory and his foreign policy vision, Obama has been a singular failure in using his leadership as a way to dispel doubts about his policies. His leadership skills, which he undoubtedly possesses a great deal of, are on their finest displays in non-settings such as Cairo, Oslo and election acceptance speeches in Chicago. In his domestic Presidential avatar, Obama comes across as a brooding academic, more given to careful diplomacy rather than passionate advocacy of his own beliefs. Little wonder then, that the overwhelming trope in the news coverage of the current election has been how polarised America has become, which, in some part, is a reflection of the limitations of Obama’s appeal as a President for a United America.

Despite the presence of the two factors largely responsible for the perpetuation of coalition politics worldwide, instituting a coalition in America’s presidential form of government is a complex matter. There are only two real candidates and you can’t really choose a combination of various parts of Obama’s and Romney’s anatomy and create the first coalition President of the United States (in case you’re wondering, [which I’m certain you’re not] what the most significant difficulty to achieving such a combination would be: It would of course, in USA, be the argument that doing such a thing would be akin to playing God.). But at the same time, the United States of America, the self-anointed leader of the Free World can’t not have what other, lesser countries in the Free and Unfree World have, i.e. a coalition government. So, the obvious answer is to vote for one party in the presidential elections and another in the House elections. The result: a gridlocked Washington with ‘ambition checking ambition’ to such a degree that Madison would be wishing that he hadn’t ever tom-tommed the phrase as the guiding principle of American government, so literally were his countrymen to construe it two centuries later.

A phrase which more accurately describes the American elections than Madison does, would however be: ‘What Tamil Nadu does today, the USA does tomorrow’. For every single election in living memory, the electorate in Tamil Nadu has voted in and out, the DMK and the AIADMK in painfully routine succession.  The DMK comes to power in Tamil Nadu, followed by the AIADMK sending most of its MPs to Delhi, followed by the AIADMK coming to power in Tamil Nadu, followed by DMK sending most of its MPs to Delhi… you get the drift. There is very little to separate the two parties in terms of policy, less still in terms of ideology in the present day. Their leaders of course are vastly different, a middle-aged Tamil Brahmin starlet who runs her party by dint of her close association with the party founder and original Tamil superstar, opposed by the superstar’s nemesis, a shrewd poet-politician, lyricist for several of his movies, an octogenarian leading an overtly non-Brahminical party.

In re-electing a Democratic President after giving him a shellacking in 2010, the American electorate has taken a leaf out of the manual of Tamil Nadu politics. Two parties with vastly different leaders, but similar views on a number of key issues and policy questions are bound to be rotated by an electorate caught between a rock and a hard place or, as the Economist put it, between ‘the devil we know’ (and the one we don’t).  So look forward to more chopping and changing, more inconsistency and more gridlock in the elections to come, along with more rational, yet unconvincing explanations from political observers of a puzzle that has only one right answer. An answer that lies 8500 miles away in Tamil Nadu, whose electorate has singularly masterminded Obama’s re-election as the Puratchi Thalaivar, oops, the President of the United States of America.

[Puratchi Thalaivar (Tamil): Translates literally as: Revolutionary Leader (English)]

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/nationalpolitics/barack-obama-the-44th-puratchi-thalaivi-of-the-usa/feed 5 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/economicsocialpolicy/blundered-pride http://www.criticaltwenties.in/economicsocialpolicy/blundered-pride#comments Sat, 29 Sep 2012 14:02:13 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=5088 [What a current alcohol advert featuring Priyanka Chopra says about India- Ashish Jaiswal, Associate Fellow, Oxford Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, reflects.]

That I am writing this with revulsion, anger and on top of it a humble request will be an understatement – more as a father of a young child and less as a social scientist working in the field of education. The emotions emerged after watching an advertisement in which a leading Bollywood actress sways with seductive expressions in unexplainable settings to the tunes of Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit right in the middle of the ongoing T20 world cup.  The facial expressions and gestures of the actress convey sentiments open to multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, with little doubt, they convey, keeping with the ‘spirit’ of the brand, a sense of pride, a feeling that India has arrived, that we now rightfully deserve to enter inside those Soho or Mayfair clubs which were once the territory of the dark ones of the English aristocracy.

What is original in the advertisement that brings us pride?

First, I am actually amazed with the intensity of the confidence or ‘pride’ exhibited in the advertisement, an expression that I normally associate with a creator or a contributor to the general good. Neither the White rabbit track nor the equipment by which the ad is shot or edited seems the creation of an Indian.  Actually, to me everything in the ad appears alien, copied and fake – the expressions, the gyrations, the clothes, the glitz, the setting, the camera angles, the pout, the aesthetics, the pole and even the hair. The fact that we can be so confident without owning an inch of the research that brought that ad alive is one of the key reasons why none of the Indian universities featured in the top 200 universities of the world in the recent survey (nor that we should confide in the ranking business) or that our recent submission ‘Barfi’ will not (should not) make it even to the short list of the Oscars.

Who cares for the pride of our children?

Further, I wonder whether India has a television content rating system. If there is one, it will be worth asking whether a surrogate advert with such themes and expressions should be allowed for unrestricted public exhibition unless we now consider that the ‘na tameez se khela jaane waala’ cricket is only suitable for adult viewing. In fact, it is appalling to note that advertisements with adult themes keep propping up unashamedly during family-oriented shows, not to mention the double meaning laced comedy show clippings served endlessly in the disguise of news.  Sexaulisation of children through glam dolls and glam shows is a hot topic in countries which we so blatantly copy from, but as things take time to arrive in our country, I am waiting for the day when these topics will take the center stage in our country.

What should we be proud of anyway?

In my opinion, it is only in originality that we should derive our pride from. Not that I have an iota of contribution to Gurudev’s ‘Where the mind is without fear’, still when I found the poem hanging in one of the GP surgeries in Oxford, I felt like holding my head high. Similar emotions run through my veins whenever I fail to get an admission ticket to a Dr. Amartya Sen lecture or when someone orders chicken tikka masala in any London restaurant. What went wrong in the land that gave the mother language to the world, the fundamentals of mathematics and philosophy, that was once termed as the ‘cradle of the human race’ by Twain or the only ‘place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men found a home’ in the words of French scholar, Romain Rolland?

Certainly, neither the alcohol selling company nor the leading actress is to be blamed for this subservience of knowledge. It is only we, whose pride is now dependent on the clutches of someone else’s creation, who are responsible.

]]> http://www.criticaltwenties.in/economicsocialpolicy/blundered-pride/feed 4 http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/anil-kapoor-and-the-changing-face-of-india http://www.criticaltwenties.in/mediapopularculture/anil-kapoor-and-the-changing-face-of-india#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:29:01 +0000 Arghya http://www.criticaltwenties.in/?p=4835 India is changing. The rich are getting richer, the poor poorer, mills are becoming malls, Delhi auto drivers are using their meters and Calcutta is turning blue. But nowhere is the evidence of changing India as clearly discernible as the changes in the last three decades to the contours of Anil Kapoor’s face.

First, sample the image below:

This is Anil Kapoor in 1985. Long dishevelled hair, the compulsory 80s moustache, the leather jacket with steel shoulder buttons, epitomising the aspirational apogee of male machismo and an innocent smile, longing for something unattainable yet content. Much like a smile of happiness on seeing someone you love but who you know will never be yours.

Now take a look at the next image:

This is Anil Kapoor in 2009. Gelled hair, styled impeccably, black tie and tuxedo, the signature outfit of male Hollywood filmstars at any event that matters, hands spread wide taking in the applause for an uninspiring cameo in Slumdog Millionaire and a smile which says ‘I’ve arrived’. Oh and perhaps a botoxed face as well.

The changing face of Anil Kapoor in the last two-and-a-half decades is as accurate a reflection as any, of the changing face of India, pre and post-liberalisation. Awkwardness and innocence replaced by an easy conviviality, a seamless integration into the ways of the world and a constant quest for global recognition. With a growing economy has come an unquestioning assertiveness, with liberalisation a chutzpah loudly declaring India’s arrival on the world stage, and with fame, success and the world’s attention, a constant desire for gratification based on the flattery of others, fueling at times into a self-righteous rage in not getting one’s due, or a vicious one-upmanship to show who’s boss.

Take the BCCI in world cricket. The recent independent governance review of the ICC by Lord Woolf, suggested large-scale changes to the governance structure of the ICC so that it is not dominated by a few powerful boards with vested interests, but rather becomes optimally independent so that it can fulfil its role as “the leader of the international game”.  The suggestions, while certainly provocative, have considerable merit especially given the universal recognition of the flux that world cricket is in currently with three formats competing for time and attention and the increasing feeling that something is going to give. At the very least it deserved the BCCI’s fullest consideration. However the BCCI Working Committee, unsurprisingly, viewed the report as a threat to their dominance of the game and rejected it outright without going into which of the proposals it was against, let alone explaining why it took such a stand. This increasing proclivity to play victim while being the bully, epitomised by the BCCI, is a curious and defining trait of 21^st Century, post-liberalisation India.

Again, take a look at how the Indian media discusses success stories of Indians abroad. Particularly striking in recent memory was the euphoric coverage in sections of the Indian media regarding the appointmnet of Nikki Haley as Governor of South Carolina. The fact that a person of Asian origin, that too a woman, became Governor of a state in the deep South is certainly news anywhere. But in India it was not just news; it was a cause for celebration because Nikki Haley, originally Nimrata Randhawa was born to Sikh parents, and thus her victory was India’s victory. Never mind that she is as Indian as Barack Obama is Muslim and is constantly at pains to point out her Americanness, exemplified by her unimaginative and convenient change of name. The Indian media’s desire to seek out such success stories, to crave for the world’s attention through imagined notions of achievement is not its sole doing: it’s rather an incident of the operation of the market, reflective of what the middle-class Indian consumer wants to read, and the sort of stories that make him happy.

Underlying this new India, like the new Anil Kapoor is an excessive desire to be accepted on the world stage. Otherwise why would Kapoor agree to an unchallenging role of a lecherous, skirt-chasing Indian millionaire who appeared on screen for a sum total of four minutes only to be made a fool of ultimately, in Mission Impossible 4, one of the most mindless action films to be made in the history of cinema? Clearly, Kapoor himself or the Indian film fraternity didn’t think the same way since post-MI4 he became the toast of tinseltown, celebrated as India’s first real crossover star. Key to this ‘new and improved’ Kapoor and the new India, is a pervading sense of falsity, a pretence of being something or someone that one is not. Much like India’s standard story to the world today of being a country of exceptional growth whose teeming poor, despite leading desperately woeful existences are suffused by the hope of a better, brighter tomorrow.  Nothing could be further from the truth. And unlike Kapoor’s wrinkles, there’s no botox to cure this one.

This is not to suggest that pre-liberalisation India was a beautiful place where everyone was poor but happy, innocent and contented. There is a natural tendency to look at history with rose-tinted glasses, harking back to the past as a ‘golden age’ where everything was perfect. Pre-liberalisation India was anything but. Like Anil Kapoor in 1985, it was all over the place, a trifle cheesy, unambitious and easily satisfied. But its one redeeming feature though was that it was comfortable with its own identity, not chasing false hopes and basking in global encomiums that are clever disguises to tap into India’s ever bulging middle class wallets.

So what should we do about it? Well, nothing except hope that soon Anil Kapoor realises in real life, like he did on screen 25 years ago, that it’s best for India if he becomes invisible.

The Invisible Mr. India

[Photo sources: Here and Here]

It is no secret that cricket is the most popular sport in India. Its reach is so far that it is impossible for any other sport to even dream of being the number one sport in the country. But number two? That’s what everyone is fighting for. As less as the reach is compared to cricket, it is still, as an absolute number, remarkable to be in second position. In recent years, with the slow death of hockey, football and basketball have emerged as leading candidates eager to catch that spot. Within the next five years, basketball is headed in all the right directions to make that spot its own in the country.

To grow as a sport a lot of things need to click, and at the same time. Awareness, internal growth, funds just to name a few. It is not often this is said about governing bodies in the country, but the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) is an organization that is well aware of the growth bubble and is making all the right moves to try and cement that second spot. A lot of it goes down to a man named Harish Sharma, who recently expired. Mr. Sharma was a visionary, not only with respect to ideas, but also with execution. He tried to build a model that was beneficial to all parties involved – players, coaches, as well as potential investors.

Investors is the biggest key word here, and the one that will tip things in favour of basketball by a long way. In the last couple of years, Indian basketball has been significantly improved by two major deals. The NBA, by far the world’s best basketball spectacle, has signed up a deal with the BFI to promote the sport in the country. Being the lucrative market that India is, the NBA wants to make the most of it, much like they did with China 15-20 years ago. The effect of its work in China is there for everyone to see. Be it medal winning performances, or Yao Ming, or just the sheer interest in the sport the country has, a lot of it is attributed to the NBA’s work. The NBA has partnered with Mahindra to start community leagues, and school leagues to target both the casual fan, as well as the grass roots hence covering both potential markets. The NBA has also committed to refurbishing and building state of the art infrastructure in multiple places across India.

In addition to the NBA memorandum, sports entertainment leader IMG has signed up long term with Reliance to kick start a professional league. Two years into the deal, both parties have made press releases to confirm that everything is on track, and we are rather close to a well planned professional league. It is important here to take note of the careful planning going in to make it a worthwhile venture that also has longevity. As we have seen with the likes of PHL, poor planning can yield immediate results but fail in the long run. The positives that a professional league ensures are mouth watering. On one hand it gives players a chance to take up the sport seriously, and for a living, and on the other hand it provides for multiple revenue sources like media rights, merchandising and so on.

The rise in popularity and the investments from abroad are not going unnoticed. Television channels are making the most of the bubble. In the last couple of years the amount of telecast of the NBA has gone up tremendously. From two games a week not too long ago to, up to six games a week shown live, not forgetting to add replays and extra programming, the NBA fan in India is watching a lot more hoops than he or she used to.
All is not about money and corporate bigs, the sport per se is also making huge progress. More progress that it was in previous years, as well as more progress than most other competitive sports. More emphasis at all levels is going on all round player development. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that an Under-18 team of today is far superior to one from say, five years ago, be it at club, state or national level. The difference in the senior team will of course not be that high, because the benefits of what is sown now, will only be reaped in time to come. The BFI hired two top class, experienced coaches from the USA to coach the national men’s as well as women’s teams. The progress is evident in our teams finishing in positions higher than they normally do in international tournaments conducted by the governing body of the sport FIBA.

All of this progress will be truly elevated to the next level, if an Indian makes it big on the international stage, and for the moment, the country’s hopes rests on the shoulder of a young Punjabi lad named Satnam Singh Bhamra. A quick Google search will tell you about the potential of this immensely talented 16 year old that has now been handpicked by IMG and BFI for a sports scholarship. Satnam plays for the U-16, U-18 as well as the senior national team. The 7 foot giant was awarded for his performances in the FIBA Asia tournament where his performances made waves all around the world. The best part? He was playing against kids older than him. And he is still considered really raw. There are multiple prospective careers like this that have gone bad with one mistake, but so far so good for the way the BFI have handled his growth. You can be sure that if he makes it big, he will have the same, if not a bigger impact than what Yao Ming had for China.

Going by all these things, and how carefully the development is planned, along with the support from organizations with expertise as well as reach, things look very bright for basketball in India. In two to three years time, it would be a safe approximation to state that basketball will be well and truly the clear number two in Indian sports.

[Photo Credit: The Hindu]

The good news

First, the good news. The funding scenario for science in India is better than ever, with lots of infrastructure, startup funds and facilities provided to young aspiring professors. A major recent initiative has been the creation of the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) whose primary goal has been to meld undergraduate education with research, something that’s traditionally been almost completely missing in India. Expensive new centers including a neutrino observatory, a clean nanotechnology lab and most impressively, an open-source tuberculosis drug discovery project are highlighting India’s ambition and capabilities to focus on relevant and cutting edge fields.

In addition there’s a surplus of faculty positions at some top institutes that will make faculty candidates in Western countries feel jealous. A great example is the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore which provides a premier research environment. Many of these institutes have year-round hiring. There are also a few lucrative fellowships designed to attract expatriate Indians back to their country to set up their labs. Some of them allow you to start a lab anywhere that you want in the country. Purely in terms of facilities and funding, this is a good time to do academic science in India. And after a long, fallow period of scientific entrepreneurship, there are finally opportunities for Indian scientists to turn their discoveries into profits, although time would tell how efficient the system is in reality.

In addition, being an assistant professor (or any higher middle-class working professional for that matter) in India has its perks; one gets cheap access to maids who will cook and clean for your family and a driver who will drive you around. The maids will also double as baby-sitters and will occasionally shop for your groceries. Science institutes in India often offer highly subsidized housing and meals. Adjusting for these perks and for purchasing power parity, it’s not a big exaggeration to say that being an assistant professor in a top Indian research university is a comfortable prospect.

The bad news

Now the bad news, which unfortunately points to some rather deep structural problems which have beset Indian science education and research since its post-independence conception. To gain some insight into these it’s worth looking at some history.

For a developing country India has always been pretty big on science. Nobel Prize winners like H. G. Khorana (who died a few months back) and C. V. Raman emerged from the old education system which was modeled after the British system. In some fields like statistics India has consistently produced world-class researchers. After India became independent in 1947, science was one of the top priorities for the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Cambridge-educated lawyer. Even today Nehru remains India’s most scientifically literate leader and he was instrumental in establishing both the well-known Indian Institutes of Technology and several leading federal research laboratories.

Unfortunately, Nehru’s undoubtedly visionary outlook on science was severely crippled by his equally fervent belief in Soviet-style socialism. While this did not lead to the genocidal horrors seen in the Soviet Union and China, it did lead to forty years or so of socialist “reforms” and “five-year plans” modeled on the Soviet system of education under which science and especially basic science floundered. Constraints were tightly imposed both on funding and on financial incentives for Indian scientists. Scientific entrepreneurship leading to intellectual property was virtually non-existent. Keeping in line with the Soviet system however, there was heavy investment in both atomic energy and the space program and India emerged as a leading power in these sectors. Today there is a nuclear weapons complex, but more promisingly there is advanced nuclear reactor research trying to produce electricity from thorium. And as the article notes, the advanced status of the space program has led India to make ambitious plans for a manned moon landing.

But basic science has been neglected, and even after the opening up of Indian markets in the early 90s, the old system remains deeply ingrained in Indian science primarily in two debilitating ways.

Indian education: A riddle wrapped in a straitjacket

One huge hurdle is in the form of extremely limited undergraduate science education that still heavily relies on rote memorization without true understanding, discourages teamwork and most importantly, is almost completely uncoupled from research. As the articles note, this is most obvious in the large number of state-run universities in India that provide the bulk of the science education in the country. Almost no Indian state-run university offers decent research opportunities for undergraduates, a pronounced oversight that is starting to be remedied by institutes like the IISERs but still on a very small scale. An interesting contrast is that compared to top science institutes which can be awash in funds and facilities, state-run schools remain not just woefully under-equipped but blatantly ignorant of safety regulations. It is not uncommon to find chemistry labs even at respectable colleges without a single fume hood inside them.

In addition, the curriculum in most of these places is outdated. For instance, much of the biology curriculum still asks students to memorize intricate details of invertebrate anatomy and physiology. Physical chemistry courses include outdated textbooks from the 1950s by Samuel Glasstone and Bruce Mahan (these are classics and were excellent textbooks for their time, but they cannot be part of a modern chemical education that is supposed to prepare students for a research career). Physics is full of tuning forks, inclined plains and Wheatstone bridges. The notebooks of organic chemistry students still devote reams of paper to structure determination by chemical degradation of the kind that was done before spectroscopic techniques became available. A similar situation exists in the laboratory, with many experiments and apparatus looking quaint and outdated. To be sure there are chapters on molecular biology, protein chemistry, NMR spectroscopy, quantum chemistry, combinatorial chemistry and other modern topics, but they are mostly reserved for graduate level courses, and one wonders why undergraduates are expected to be steeped in all that outdated material.

However, the bigger problem in the Indian education system may not even be this lack of research opportunities for science undergraduates but the more general blinkered education that Indian college students are forced to endure. To begin with, the system has defined an extremely strange and regressive compartmentalization of education that seems to dissuade any kind of flexibility in learning, let alone in interdisciplinary study. It is no secret that ever since India opened up its markets and globalization brought West and East under the same economic umbrella, there has been a steady demand for Indian engineers and technical professionals in the West. But this has also led to a highly skewed bias toward engineering, medical and business education in the country. Importantly, it has manifested itself in the proliferation and segregation of professional universities from those offering science and humanities courses. This means that an engineering schools teaches only engineering, and a medical school teaches only medicine. So once you are out of high school you are forced to pick your major and your career. Get into an engineering school and you are pretty much shut out from being able to study psychology or chemistry or economics. For that you need to get into a school more akin to liberal arts colleges in the US. But even there you have to pick your major right in your freshman year; you can’t study both the sciences and the humanities. If you want to take chemistry you won’t be able to take philosophy. In fact the situation is so bad that in most places students cannot study even biology and mathematics together!

Needless to say, this system places a newly-minted high-school student into a draconian straitjacket where he or she has to pick a career and then stick with it for the next four years with absolutely no flexibility in changing a major or adapting one’s talents to one’s profession. It should also be obvious that this strict compartmentalization affords almost no opportunities for developing interdisciplinary research skills, a staple of today’s complex research problems. The result is predictable; an alarmingly large number of students who when they graduate from college are either unhappy with their major or incompetent at it or both.

Compounding these problems is perhaps an even bigger one; the social perception of professional education at the expense of relegating the sciences and humanities to the dustbin of mediocrity. The great demand for engineers, doctors and businessmen has placed these disciplines on a pedestal. As a result, the standards for admissions to these professional courses are much higher than those for the sciences or humanities. This typically means that spots in these professional courses are reserved for students who graduate from high school with the highest grades. Conversely, left to study the sciences and humanities are the scum of the earth, high-school graduates who are usually at the bottom of the pile. Since almost nobody from the top is going to fill out the science or humanities application, the liberal arts colleges relax their admission criteria to accommodate the most mediocre of the lot. The bottom line: engineering colleges tend to be populated with smart, articulate, ambitious students while the liberal arts colleges fill up with students who are studying sciences or the humanities pretty much because they aren’t good enough to get into any other place. No wonder that many of these state-run colleges are filled with mediocre and unhappy students who would rather be doing something else. This is unfair both to the students but more fatally to the disciplines themselves which suffer from active neglect at best and a constant assault of mediocre minds at worst.

It needs no imagination to perceive the effect of this segregation on the occasional outlier who, in spite of getting top grades in high school, consciously stays away from engineering or medicine because he actually wants to study chemistry or physics. For one thing he will have a very hard time finding intelligent, like-minded peers who can provide intellectual companionship, and we all know how influential the peer environment in college can be. In addition, the segregated system will virtually ensure that most of his peers outside his college will look down upon him; they will think that the reason he is not studying engineering is because he wasn’t good enough and more generally, the fact that he is not studying engineering means that he isn’t really worth paying attention to. In addition to the lack of research opportunities cited above and the mediocre faculty at state-run colleges combined with the poor employment outlook for scientists compared to other professionals, it is hardly surprising that many bright science students quickly leave science and get into better-paying professional fields. Now there’s a reason for the common complaint cited in the article, that Indian students are not studying the sciences anymore.

There is also a related social reason not discussed in the article which I just alluded to; the lack of societal respect for science and the humanities. Partly because of the educational segregation outlined above and partly because of a curious mentality that equates monetary success with intelligence and capability, Indian parents are loathe to encourage their kids to study anything other than professional disciplines. One theory I have about this has to do with the environment that many of these parents grew up in, that of socialist India. If you were an Indian parent who could not make money because of government constraints and if your son or daughter were growing up in a new, more market-friendly India, you certainly wouldn’t want your children to forgo the opportunities that you didn’t have. In this sense, many Indian parents who want their kids to become affluent are living the dream that they themselves couldn’t live. This is reasonable within limits, but it’s also creating a significant social bias towards all kinds of other professions including the sciences, humanities and the arts. In turn, the kids are judging other kids by the same standards that their parents have applied to them. In their worldview, any other kid who is not doing the same thing that they are doing must be unintelligent, misguided in his ambitions or both. This attitude feeds upon itself and perpetuates and has created a manifestly unhealthy peer environment. If India is to attract its best minds to science, it must create a society where science is respected for its intrinsic value at all levels, from parents to kids to teachers.

In India, B doesn’t stand for ball

One of the distinguishing features of all socialist countries and especially the old Soviet Union was the ubiquitous bureaucracy that pervaded every aspect of life. Indian bureaucracy and red tape are famous and recalcitrant, so recalcitrant that it seems that even twenty odd years of free-market reforms have been ineffective in undoing them. There has undoubtedly been much progress; for instance, getting a simple telephone line installed in your office in the 1980s could take up to a year. Other simple services could results in unacceptable delays and a trail of paperwork that would put a rainforest conservationist to shame. Setting up a small business in India was a nightmare and to some extent it still is; by one account you need 165 licenses to open a hotel in the country. But things have changed. Wireless companies have flooded the market and ensured that the Indian telephone experience is no different from anywhere else in the world, and Mumbai today probably sports a more diverse collection of cell-phone models than Los Angeles. Setting up a business is still not easy, but you don’t have to spend your entire life waiting for it.

Yet science seems to be straggled by unacceptable bureaucracy. But before we move on to its more predictable effects, we should first note its most startling aspect: the lack of a tenure system in Indian academia. For the longest time, even in top Indian institutions, there was no tenure review process and mediocre performers essentially hung around for life. Sometime in their 40s or 50s they would be bumped up from “assistant” to “associate” position by virtue of “seniority” alone. But institutions would naturally be obliged to pay their salaries and benefits even as they were producing little noteworthy research and blocking positions for younger scientists. A mandatory retirement somewhat compensated for the problem, but the effect of this accumulation of deadwood cannot be underestimated. The renewal of scientific blood and constant assessment of existing personnel is an essential condition for scientific productivity. Without tenure, not only was there no replenishment of the stock but there was a constant, general sense of malaise that spread to other faculty members and students. This factor is so obviously important that it’s not even worth elaborating on it too much. Whatever the merits and drawbacks of existing tenure systems in the West, it goes without saying that there should be some system of periodic evaluation and tenure. Thankfully some institutes like the NCBS have now instituted tenure reviews, but this is still a drop in the ocean compared to the vast majority of Indian science institutions.

Then there are the more prosaic but undoubtedly debilitating effects of bureaucracy. Senior Indian scientists cited in the Science articles remember the 60s and 70s when they had to wait months for simple chemicals and equipment and were asked to justify the details of every single purchase. State-of-the art equipment is now found at many top Indian institutions, but the justification part has largely stayed the same. Funding for Indian science may have grown, but every rupee is watched with a fervor that would evoke Big Brother. The article quotes an Indian scientist lamenting this situation and saying that he feels stifled by a system that asks him to submit a detailed report on his work every 3 months. It’s one thing to ask for detailed progress reports, it’s another to almost dictate the direction of someone’s research by scrutinizing every detail. Bureaucracy also engenders a lack of transparency, with officials conveniently hiding their responsibilities and mistakes under layers of obfuscatory paperwork. It’s pretty obvious that open science and freedom of inquiry can never thrive under such constraints.

The red tape also dissuades existing scientists from striking out in new directions; as the Indian Institute of Science’s director Prof. P. Balaram puts it in one of the Science articles, “Even the best of intentions can disappear without a trace in the quicksands of officialdom”. This is especially stifling for expatriate Indian scientists who have been exposed to a different kind of research environment for many years and are now seeking to starts their own labs back in India. Unfortunately the experiences of scientists coming back to India after a long time seem all too alike; almost any effort by these scientists to institute progressive practices and cultures ingrained during their experience abroad can be construed as elitism and an insolent effort to rock the boat. It’s pretty clear that unless bureaucracy is seen as a culture-independent, fundamental barrier to scientific progress, research aspirations will continue to disappear into the “quicksands of officialdom”.

The battle hymn of the old guard

Many of the problems riddling Indian science could be distilled down to one factor; what’s been called the Indian “scientocracy”. This may well be the hardest hurdle to surmount since it really reflects a problem endemic in Indian society as a whole. Although it has been rapidly changing in the past few years, Indian society remains hierarchical at all levels, from the family to private organizations. Traditionally society has been organized, at least implicitly, by class, caste and official titles. The caste system may have been largely shaken off, but other layers remain.

India has a very strong paternalistic streak in its many organizations and scientific organizations are no exception. Hero-worship is a rather deeply ingrained part of Indian culture, although the young generation seems to be showing some promising signs of shaking it off. Age usually commands great respect and obedience. “Senior” scientists who have done especially noteworthy work can be virtually worshipped. Some are treated akin to Gods. Students are explicitly or implicitly encouraged not to talk back to professors or ask them probing questions. I have heard too many cases of students being “shown their place” when they tried to be too inquisitive in class. In most cases even younger scientists are not addressed on a first-name basis. In the lab the PI reigns supreme and most labs are run as minor fiefdoms. Even minor decisions and ideas may have to be approved by the PI. Irreverent inquiry is almost always squished, even if it may lead to productive science. This is the case even in private companies.

All this has led to a rather conspicuous lack of open inquiry of the kind that fosters efficient scientific communication and the dispersal of ideas. Science especially is the quintessentially egalitarian system, where the only thing that should matter is how good someone’s ideas are and not how old or distinguished they are. Last year in an Op-Ed in Science, a previous director of India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (the Indian counterpart to the NSF and the NIH) bemoaned the lack of irreverence in Indian scientific culture, although he must have been aware that his generation has played an active role in perpetuating it. He gave examples of famous scientists – Feynman, Watson, Crick, Feigenbaum, Venter – whose playful irreverence and lack of automatic respect for the “elders” in their field has led to both revolutionary ideas and a strong culture of innovation. The implications are clear; an Indian Feynman would probably be silenced and perhaps even cast out of the scientific establishment for daring to question his superiors. The Indian scientocracy dissuades bold, probing questioning.

The articles in Science don’t address this aspect of Indian science which I believe is of paramount importance. One does not create a scientifically fertile environment by surrounding himself with yes-men. There are countless cases to prove the contrary; the Manhattan Project and Bell Labs being only two examples of organizations where thinking outside the box led to great advances. True breakthroughs can only arise from individuals, and especially young individuals, questioning the status quo and boldly treading the boundaries of knowledge. Indian science clearly has to catch up.

The future?

The articles in science seem to strike a note of cautious optimism. India is certainly paying much more attention to its scientific landscape than it ever did and it is clearly eager to leave its mark. Whether symbolic or real, its aspirations for a moon shot signify its ambitions. The hurdle as I see it is that the problems outlined above run very deep and their roots extend through many generations. They are not problems which can be resolved in one year or even in ten. Plus, as some scientists in the article say, the sheer magnitude of the issues is such that even with all these efforts Indian science has not reached a critical mass; a startling statistic says that the total number of biologists in India is less than the number in Boston alone. So what can be done?

It is clear that the solution will have to come from multiple fronts. Some problems are easier to address than others. The syllabus will have to be overhauled and this can be accomplished at least locally at some places by convincing the administration of the value of including modern topics. The compartmentalization problem is more entrenched since it depends on demand for professional versus scientific jobs, a situation that’s unlikely to change in the near future. But at least in some cases it could be accomplished by driving home the conceptual and commercial value of cross-dsciplinary topics like neuroscience, biophysics and biostatistics.

The centrality of science in human progress and thinking must be driven home by the media, by educated intellectuals and most importantly by the senior scientists who seem to command public attention; perhaps some of them can put the hero-worship to good use. As upholders of the scientific status quo and guardians of the purse-strings, they can do a lot. This might generally improve the standing of science in the public consciousness. It might lead more top students to study science and it may lead their parents to support their ambitions. A lot of Indian scientists have blamed lucrative IT jobs for presumably drawing away scientific talent. It is clear that a nation full of IT professionals cannot fulfill its scientific destiny and demonstrate real progress, but this situation is unlikely to change any time soon, and as they say, it’s much better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. The new scientific initiatives melding undergraduate education and research and offering thousands of scholarships to bright high-school students are certainly a step in the right direction, but the fact that these initiatives have not yet touched the preponderant state-run universities leaves much to be desired.

Ultimately the transformation will take time, probably a long time. Young Indian scientists including homegrown researchers and expatriates have to work together and implement positive changes in scientific culture, lab safety and communication. They will start anew and there is no doubt that we will have to wait perhaps twenty or fifty years to see truly significant changes. They will nonetheless face resistance from some of the old guard , but one can always remember Max Planck’s statement: “A new scientific theory does not prevail because it convinces its detractors of its validity, but rather because its detractors die and a new generation grows up on it and recognizes its value”.

Renewal can be the only true catalyst for fundamental change.

[Image Credit: By Pérot [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

There were fleeting displays of brilliance in the first two tests from Sachin Tendulkar – who is still in search of the vaunted 100^th international ton – but he has consistently fallen short of imposing his will. Rahul Dravid, magnificent in England when no one around him rose above mediocrity, has looked grotesque every time he’s batted in the series. That he’s been bowled, often through the gate, in each of the tests doesn’t help either. But with Dravid it has never been only about technical perfection – some of his greatest innings have, in fact, lacked textbook purity. It has been his ability to come on top through a mighty struggle against all adversities, whether it is playing on the wickedest of wickets or against the fiercest of opposition that has been his most outstanding quality. In Australia, not only has his batting looked ugly, but he’s also seemed incapable of rising above some of these adversities. V.V.S. Laxman, one of cricket’s most artful match-winners, has scarcely made runs away from home in the last two years, and his celebrated hand-eye coordination is certainly not what it once was. Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir have likewise been less than ordinary lately – yes, India have struggled for many years to find a consistently good opening partnership, but the pair has been anything but consistently good in recent times.  Away from home in the last three years, Sehwag averages a meager 32.55, while since the beginning of 2010, Gambhir has recorded only a single century, averaging just 32.05. Numbers can of course be misleading, but these are certainly not figures that help teams win test matches.

The time for mere introspection has passed. The time to enforce a seamless transition has also passed. Where youngsters could have once been eased into the eleven, they now need to be thrust into it. Laxman’s place in the pantheon of greats may be assured, but it has been reported that he may not even make the team for the fourth test at Adelaide. It shouldn’t have come to this; he has performed a terrific service to Indian cricket, and in the ideal circumstances he would deserve a proper farewell. But there is no place for sentiment in sport, certainly not when you are down 0-3 in a four match series. It continues to baffle the mind that Rohit Sharma is yet to make his test match debut – had the transition been more structured, he’d have been playing a pivotal role in this series. But regardless, he must be given his chance in the fourth test in place of Laxman, whether or not Laxman chooses to retire. Ajinkya Rahane, Sharma’s teammate at Mumbai, who has made oodles of runs in domestic cricket, must also be accorded a place in the team. This, though, would entail a tougher decision of dropping one of Sehwag, Gambhir or Dravid – something, which I doubt, the authorities would be prepared to take responsibility for.

The root of India’s problems, though, goes far deeper than issues of selection, and is entrenched in the shortsighted, supercilious attitude of the B.C.C.I., exemplified by its president, N. Srinivasan’s reported remarks after the defeat at Perth: “Next New Zealand is coming to India and it will be followed by England and Australia. We will beat these three teams on our own soil. They cannot beat us here and we will feel very happy.” That the president of India’s cricket board is willing to virtually forego its games away from home shows the incredibly myopic vision of the game’s governing authority in India.

This is a real pity for India is not lacking in talent, certainly not as far as the batting – which has been in shambles in Australia – is concerned. Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Abhinav Mukund, Subramaniam Badrinath and Cheteshwar Pujara have all performed with aplomb in domestic cricket, and certainly deserve a sustained chance at the highest level. Dravid’s performance in 2011 – in which he scored five test match centuries – notwithstanding his display in Australia, perhaps, indicates that he still has runs left in him. But if he is to be retained, he must be pulled down the order, and Virat Kohli – who showed that he has the temperament for test cricket with his displays at the WACA – must be allowed a continued run at one-down. India also needs to think of Rahane and Mukund as viable successors to Sehwag and Gambhir, who cannot be carried on for too much longer solely on the basis of their reputations. Sachin Tendulkar in whatever time he has spent batting in Australia still easily looks India’s best batsman, but nobody should be considered bigger than the team, not even Tendulkar. I am not suggesting that India should, at once, axe Tendulkar and Dravid, but if you’re going to suffer such mammoth defeats as India has in Australia, you might as well do so with youngsters in your team.

Just as worrying as the batting displays has been M.S. Dhoni’s captaincy. Dhoni has always had a laid-back, casual approach to the job – when it works he looks cool and brilliant, and when it doesn’t he looks unconcerned and uninspiring. But the demeanor apart, neither has he looked like a good leader of men nor has his tactics been up to scratch. That he’s batted like a hapless tailender hasn’t helped either. Virender Sehwag who is the vice captain for the current tour has never showed any interest in the job, and in any event his form with the bat scarcely helps further his case. Gambhir is, perhaps, the only other contender, but his batting form has been worrying too, and his long-term future in the side is by no means settled. This then leaves us with Virat Kohli – who for all his indiscipline – has, since his Under-21 days, been considered as a future captain. In recent times, transition to test match captaincy has generally occurred via the ODI path. There has indeed been nothing to complain about Dhoni’s performance as captain in the shorter format, but assuming India wants to prioritize test cricket – which it admittedly doesn’t, but nontheless – it may not be the worst of ideas to consider Kohli, at first, for the ODI vice-captaincy with a view to him taking on the job in the not-so-distant future.

In a series in which the batsmen have given the bowlers so little to play with, it may be unfair to heap much blame on them, but Ishant Sharma’s form, in particular, has been worrying. The verve and the talent that the displayed the last time he was in Australia has been completely non-existent. It is difficult to point a finger at the exact reasons for Ishant’s decline, but none of the consistency in line and length that he once displayed has been evident. Umesh Yadav, while terrific in phases, does not have the reliability of a James Pattinson, who is three years junior to him. That said, Umesh’s raw pace and aggression means that his bowling can certainly be worked upon. What India doesn’t want to see, though, is a regression on lines akin to what Ishant has gone through. Zaheer Khan still retains a lot of his magic, particularly when bowling with the old ball, but it’s doubtful he has too many years left in him. Sreesanth and R.P. Singh who have played important roles for India in away victories have fallen by the wayside, but it is encouraging to see that Irfan Pathan is beginning to make a comeback into the side. Managing the fast bowling group is far harder with the depth in India’s coffins not as rich as its batting talent. But the BCCI’s decision to pick a fast-bowling pool and identify bowlers who would form the bench strength has been one of the more encouraging ones in recent times.

For the average Indian fan, the displays in England and Australia have been far more disappointing than the consistent mediocrity of the early nineties, where the expectations on the team, at any rate, were lower. As daft as it sounds, India went into both these tours as genuine contenders, but perhaps, the team has needed these poundings to grasp the malaise that has slowly been building up. But all things considered, if these defeats do result in relatively wholesale changes, as they should, India are certainly in for an exciting, even if, potentially, painful phase. Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma are two of the finest young batting talents in the world and I am looking forward – as I am sure many others are – to see their fruition as test match batsmen. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.