Yesterday’s Failures are Today’s Successes

typo:

I meant to say ``failure of today is the success of tommorow.``

or in other words : `failure of yesterday is the success of today`

silly#5:
``In my opinion the blame for the failure of basic education/literacy should be placed on the local state level governments not on the central government. ``
You are right, in a strict jurisdictional sense, as primary education is the responsibility of the state governments. But you have to remember that the state governments were run by the Congress party whose leaders were nothing more than the faithful dogs of Nehru. After all, land reform was also under state jurisdiction and it was carried out by the states. The only state where the Congress was not in power, Kerala, happens to be also the state which laid the greatest emphasis on improving literacy.

Pankaj, Dost mittar,

In my humble opinion:

That confidence , positive image, or identity will either:

1) Accentuate the communal divide... the confusion of Hindu civilization with Indian civilization... whether that is true or not is an another question.

2) or more success will help the youth of minority communities associate with the Majority community.. thereby abandoning their hang ups and taking pride in common hindu heritage.

Either way ... I see a more cohesive, successful, and captialistic India emerging... tolerance and coexistence I am not too sure about.

-YLH

nasah:
``Yesterday`s Successes are Today`s Failures?.. :-) ``

Definitely yes! In fact, I initally wanted to write an artile which would have included ``and successes become failures, too!) and added some examples of the opposite side. But the article would have become too long. Maybe, you could highlight some of these here.
One of the greatest successes that has turned into a failure is secularism and tolerance. With all its fault, Nehru`s India was a secular India and a tolerant India, at least in the matter of religious identity. But here again, in my opinion, the pseudo-minorityism of those days, such as haj subsidies, separrate laws and educational institutions, without taking the needed measures to improve their socio-economic conditions, created ideal conditions for the backlash against muslims that we are seeing today. Another unintended consequence!

khotasikka:
``Consumerism is related to ecological problems - directly and indirectly, yes.``
Environment is the key threat to India today and is not sufficiently considered. There have been two fortunate developments in India in recent years. The high levels of pollution causing several diseases in New Delhi which affected both the rich and poor made Indians realise the real cost of pollution, thus forcing the courts to impose stringent laws on gas emissions. The result is that everybody expects the ruling Congress party in Delhi to score a landslide victory this week, much against the general anti-incumbency factor which works in India.
Secondly, India is also fortunate that its growth is taking place in the service producing industries which generate less pollution than the old-type manufacturing factories.

Fosa#13
For a change, your post was quite easy to comprehend this time!
The purpose of this article is not to present a balanced picture of India today, nor is it to celebrate her well-known successes in certain fields. It is in fact to point out to the irony of the situation that things dont always turn out to be the way they were meant to.

mantolives:
``Whatever his flaws and blindspots Nehru was a great visionary ... and India will be forever in his debt, no matter what his detractors say.. or how much they want to take him apart.``

I agree with you that India owes a lot to Nehru. His contribution towards building institutions - and I am not thinking here of only the brick-and-mortar variety - is well recognised even by those of us who do not agree with the development model he chose for India. But more than anything else, he presented to India in his person, the model Indian. Here was a Hindu Kashmiri Brahmin from Uttar Pradesh who was probably more comfortable with english language and food; yet nobody could think of him as a hindu or a brahmin or a Up-ite, but simply an Indian. This was as much true of a Tamil brahmin as of a Luckhnow muslim.

``I disagree with dost mittar on the issue of national language. Nehru was right in making Hindi the national language. ``

Hindi was more alien to south Indians than Urdu was to East Pakistanis. If the policy to impose Hindi had been persisted, it is doubtful if India would have survived.

Ref yagacho #7

[in my opinion nehru laid the foundation of a strong india. however indra and rajiv did not build on that foundation otherwise india would have been a stronger nation today.]

Nehru didn`t lay much emphasis on Family Planning. This led to the disastrous rise in population that could not be easily supported.

Mush as I dislike Indira Gandhi, she must be given credit for the Green Revolution. It was after the 1962-67 monsoon failures -- and the consequent dependence on PL480 food aid -- that spurred Indira Gandhi into setting up fertilizer and pesticide plants. This, coupled with the increased use of newer varieties of rice and wheat with shorter time to maturity and greater yields, has made India a food-surplus nation. Traditional methods of agriculture that were prevalent up to the late 1960s are no match for the growth in population.

Indira Gandhi also was responsible for setting up certain industries and the direction of the future. It would be doubtful if we would have a Bharat Dynamics if we had Nehru or Lal Bahadur Shastri leading the country.

Dost-Mittar,

Excellent article sir.

Here is a heart warming and relevant article:



{{Pretty impressive for a place that just four years ago was a fallow plot of land. Even more impressive, the Bangalore operation has become vital to the future of one of America`s biggest, most profitable companies. ``The game here really isn`t about saving costs but to speed innovation and generate growth for the company,`` explains Bolivian-born Managing Director Guillermo Wille, one of the center`s few non-Indians.

The Welch center is at the vanguard of one of the biggest mind-melds in history. Plenty of Americans know of India`s inexpensive software writers and have figured out that the nice clerk who booked their air ticket is in Delhi. But these are just superficial signs of India`s capabilities. Quietly but with breathtaking speed, India and its millions of world-class engineering, business, and medical graduates are becoming enmeshed in America`s New Economy in ways most of us barely imagine. ``India has always had brilliant, educated people,`` says tech-trend forecaster Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, Calif. ``Now Indians are taking the lead in colonizing cyberspace.``}}

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/b3861001_mz001.htm


(I love the fact that India`s adoption of economic reforms and free market capitalism is making the socialists squirm...oh we are so uncouth now, oh we are so consumerist now, oh we are so barbarian now...as opposed to the socialist Arcadia of the 1950`s and 1960`s and 1970`s...Marxists are truly so clueless.

And while they moan whinge and whine, more Indians are being pulled out of poverty and aspiration is transforming the possibilities of lives across India. Dont these socialists have any shame?)

Hindi the national language

May be it was indira gandhi, made a speach in hindi to a large gathhering of malayalees at calicut. She concluded by saying that hope that some day in future when you all learn hindi, there will be no need for a translator. A subsequent speaker remarked that it would be sensible for you, one person to learn malayalam, rather than we the thousands to learn hindi, so that there is no need for a traslator.
It is part of the folklore that since then no hindi wala has ever dared to say something like that in kerala. By the way karala since independance has a three language policy, hindi id compulsary from class three onwards and many choose hindi as second language at 11 and 12 as it is easier to get marks in hindi than in malayalam with tougher standards being the mother tongue.

This is yet another pathetic article reaking of ignorence of pakistani kind. This comes from an ignorence of countries that followed the US open economy model, none so claasix as the ex-US colony of the philippines.
Today Coco cola is the latgest business corporation, they also make the famed san meugal beer. The crony capitalism is the only type that could survive and flourish in a country where the social instituions are not develped, and every newly independant country has to create a large public sector till the checks and balances to guide the capitalism are developed.
Again take philippines that opened up labour exports, the so called educated, english speaking variety that emerged after independance. There were no educational istitutions of IIt variety, and eventoday most philippinos are cooks and maids all through the world with sexual exploitation to top it< claasic case of female liberation in a poor country.
In all of the delings with the philippnes at the govt levels, one can see the lack of competance, the lack of experience in dealing with large organisations and they get trampled over by what dist mitter calls as the wasted talents of the IIT graduates from india.

The types of dost mitter with the paktype mind set cannot see the reality of india and its historical moorings, like the book of devine origin for the pakistanis, it is the american capitalist giospel for the diost mitters, repeated quoted and applied at in appropriate settings.

Dear Dost-Mitter:

I do not want to eulogize Nehru`s socialism. But Hindi provision, IIT and education, and industrial policies you have questionably portrayed as result of failed policies. Policies goals may be flawed, but results are rarely what policies are set out to achieve.

Hindi provision in Indian constitution was drafted by Amabedkar on insistence of Rajagopalachari, then Indian governor general of India. It was Gandhi and Rajgopalachari, not Nehru who saw it as the uniting force. In late 1969, as an engineering student, I was in Bangalore for industrial training, and the ferver of opposition was very strong, even though Shastri, a strong proponent of Hindi, from Banares, had amended the constitution to delay implementation of Hindi provision. I remember a distinct incidence, a bangolre three-wheeler scooter wala was fighting with his passenger, everything except the gaali`s were in kanada, but gaali`s were in hindi. We three students had nothing better to do after the training, so stayed on to watch this interesting fight. Afterwards, the scooter wala laughed and said it was all hindi movies.

Today if you go to Bangalore, you will find hindi as a link language in the lower rank. Economic reason and Bollywood effect.

Elite education was always very close to elitist hindus of pre-independence time. They sent their kids to England for the studies. In fact I have read HBS case study which compared and questioned India`s elitist education vs. Korea`s basic education to create workforce for the industrial needs. Galbraith, a Harvard Professor, and a powerful liberal economist, had access to Nehru. Nehru chose Galbraith and got him to be the U.S. ambassador of the tim. Nehru, himself being the second generation product of elitist education, knew its catalytic and leveraging effect, if made meritocracy at its heart, it will bring the best out of the middle class who will then be the catalyst.

Nehru knew through his interactions with Einstein at Princeton, Bertrand Russell and many others the advantage meritocracy in education created for the U.S. over aristocracy based education of then Europe. In fact Bertrand Russell in one of his essays in 1900`s, very early had written that the U.S. broke ahead of Europe due to meritcocracy in Education system. European capital then chased by J.P. Morgan creator of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, started pouring in, as a shelter from W.W. I, and the talent pool of America.

Nehru sought elitist educatio and got it too. He did not do it to feed the socialist engine. He brought the best from the U.S. (IIT Kanpur), England (IIT Delhi), Germany (IIT - Chennai), and Soviet Union (IIT-Bombay). IIT Kharagpur was already functioning on Indian lines by then. He did it, because he was elitist. I am sure, if Jinnah had lived, and not seen the power going to the fuedals, he would have done it in Pakistan as well.

I was fortunate to be taught by a professor at HBS, who was appointed to host Nehru on his first trip to the U.S. He and Galbraith (also of Harvard) were given a blank check to show and offer Nehru the best of capitalism in the U.S. Geo-politically, with Korean war raging, India was very important to the U.S. They lined up meetings for him with the best of the Wall Street, and corporate America, who were told in advance, that the U.S. would guarantee return on their invesments in India. I met one of the directors of Intel, who spent time, in 50s in India to India nuclear technology to counter balance China. Nehru did not accept it, instead chose Canada. The U.S. allowed Canada to offer India.

Interestingly Nehru simply wanted to meet the workers of Steel Plants in Pittsburg. He did not even care for Car manufacturer, but wanted to meet the manufacturer of bicycles.

For a long time, according to this professor, a debate raged about India v Korea v Turkey at HBS, which remained inconclusive whether the U.S. would have sufficient FDI to offer India a solid development when it was reconstructing, Europe (Marshall Plan), Bombed out Japan and fighting a war in Korean Penninsula. Without FDI, a school of thought could have seen a Pakistan like situation, a blurb in Ayub era, and no ability to sustain and give continuity. Nehru`s vision of independent line and coexistence of private and public sector had its flaws but it uses the capital more efficiently than say China or Japan at the similar stage of the game. He certainly relied on flawed socialist model. I think, history of a nation is not measured in ten or 15 years. He will be remembered as a grand visionary who got involved in building a nation. Even Advani in his recent trip to the U.S. acknowledged the contributions of Nehru. I also believe that Vajpayee will be remembered for managing devolution of power through coalition. I think the alternative to BJP coalition will come from Laloo and not from Congress.

My conclusion is what was right for India at that time. Nothing else would have worked. He from his Shanti Van is happily meditating (not turning in his grave) that India is moving toward entreprenuer-driven growth, and not policy-driven growth.

How about writing on contribution of Liberal Education, Bollywood, and Cricket as the unifying force in India, and these would be the forces of the future in entire South Asia.

Thank you.
ANIL KAPURIA

re: Dost-Mittar

Interesting article.

Nehru was an aristocrat and he ruled India in that mold of mind and when the aristocrats rule with the best of intentions, people suffer.

Ciao

Dost,
You are correct in saying that the state level congress leaders are just faithful dogs of Nehru family. No wonder even to this date the Andhra Pradesh (state whre i am from) Congress leaders talk about bringing the glorious days of Nehru and Indira Gandhi if they come to power without specifying any details and never realising that those days were not great for the poor of India. They ruled the state for 30 or so odd years yet they don`t put forward anything they did in those 30 yrs before asking for votes.

khotasikka, dost-mittar sahib:

It is not consumerism, per se, that I find to be the problem. In my inital post, #1, I referred to the `love for consumerism` that d-m used in his artice, and in my second, I said ``unbridled consumerism.``

However consumerism as charachter trait-- national or individual, is, IMHO, as innocuous, or insiduous, as alcoholism. Add to the general mindset of the consumeristically oriented individual the concerted--and unrelenting-- efforts by producers to make yesterday`s luxuries today`s `necessities`, and you have some notion of the danger that consumerism poses. A couple of weeks ago, we had a chowkie of a middle class Indian background, now in an Ivy-league business chool, suggesting that a family of four could not get by on a $90K salary!! And he thinks in all earnestness he`s a moderate in his tastes.

To be sure, this has litte to do with the idea of spending or splurging, that khotasikka mentioned. I`m all for spending and re-investing assets. It`s simply a question of WHAT and WHERE! You can spend Rs 3,000 a month on new imported gadgets from China, or on the products that keep the local baker and actor honest. Now THAT is comsumerism (if it can be called that at all) with a heart.

rgds,
PM

Anil -- great post -- should have a separate board --

what India is TODAY is mostly BECAUSE of -- Nehru of Yesterday -- despite the BJP vultures -- who no doubt also serve a great purpose in the `cleaning up` process -- somebody has to do the dirty work...

your are right -- may be if Jinnah would have lived -- his old Congress instinct would have revived -- and he would have reformed into a modernizing Nehruite -- but I doubt it because the opputunistic League was no grass root Congress --

even if Jinnah could have who can be sure his vision of secular Pakistan could have survived a bullet -- like his deputy Liaqat Ali......

You are right Nehru was all for English --

Hindi -- besides Ambedkars -- was a Upiite and Bihari baggage as well -- that of the Sapurnanadis and Tandonite hordes...and that of the first President Rajendre Prasad JP and Ram Manohar Lohias .........

nasah ji

Allow me to explain why I think choice of ``equality`` over freedom is disastrous even theoretically, whta to say about its application.

When socialists talk about ``equality``, they primarily mean economic equality. Now as I discussed before people differ in their ability to generate wealth, just as they differ in their ability to write poetry or academic excellence. In other words, people are born unequal; they are born equal only so far as right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness is concerned. As a matter of fact, economic vitality of any society is determined by barely 5%(rhetorical estimate) of its members who are energetic enterpreneurs and wealth creators, remaining 95% ride that wave. The only way to impose economic equality upon a society would be to erect barriers in the path of this energetic core and prevent them from generating wealth. Then all that remains is the distribution of poverty, and not distribution of wealth. You can argue why this energetic core is not selfless and gives up its wealth to poor . Lets face it- this group is selfish and not made up of Mahatmas.The beauty of capitalism is that this group will let wealth trickle down to the increase purchasing power of the people so that market for its own goods widens. Thus it is the same old ``invisible hand`` that drives overall prosperity in a capitalist society even though each member of that society is selfish.

Another way to make myself clearer by choosing an example from chowk itself. Arguing about economic equality is like aguing that I have the same capability to write poetry as temporal. If Chowk staff was socialist/communist, it would allow my trash to be published exactly at the same frequency as temporal`s and insist that the members give my trash same respect they give to temporal`s poetry or Sameerjb/Khamkhwa`s shayari. It wont be long before this farcical arrangement collapses and the people would stop visiting chowk. That individuals are ``unequal`` in their capabilities is pure commonsense and a common person on the street knows it but somehow intellectuals deny its existence. Equality is only possible by extermination of the most dynamic and vibrant core of the society through a murderous and totalitarian regime, and that is what Communism does.