Communitarian Circular Water Management

 India faces the dual problems of inadequate potable water supply and pollution from untreated used water. This is mainly due to the colonial legacy of centralised water management that ignores the economically and ecologically sustainable household and community level circular water management, which is schematically depicted in the accompanying graphic.

The key to circular used water treatment and reuse is the separation of grey water (from kitchens and bathrooms) and black water (from toilets):

· Grey water accounts for nearly 85% of total used water and is easier and cheaper to treat.
· Low-cost methods such as filters filled with 25 mm brick pieces and with canna plant roots can clean grey water to prescribed standards.
· Black water treatment is costly due to the faecal matter in it. When grey and black water are mixed, as in centralized systems, costs rise significantly due to transportation, treatment in Sewage Treatment Plants (STP), sludge management, and infrastructure for reuse of treated water. Sewers need a greater water flow to prevent deposition of the faeces in transit and so it is imperative to mix grey and black water in centralised systems.
A very good example of circular grey water management, in this sordid context of its overall neglect in this country resulting in polluted water bodies, is the newly commissioned grey water treatment and reuse system at the Swami Vivekananda Vidyapeeth campus in Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh (https://lnkd.in/dw6NGFEE) run by the NGO Parivaar shown in the picture below.

This circular grey water treatment and reuse system has the following features:

· Daily inflow of 7,000 litres (with a peak of 5,000 litres in the morning).
· Three treatment chambers with 25mm brick pieces hosting beneficial microorganisms.
· Canna plants in the second chamber absorb nutrients and enhance purification.
· Hydraulic retention time of 3–5 days ensures that for the treated water collecting in the fourth chamber, all the important parameters such as ph, Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Dissolved Oxygen (DO), Total Suspended Solids (TSS), Total Nitrogen (TN), Phosphorus (P) an d Faecal Coliform (FC) are as per the standards prescribed by the Central Pollution Control Board as shown in the  table.

·  Automated disinfection with bleaching powder (5g per kilolitre) before reuse.
·  Treated water reused for toilet flushing and gardening, replacing costly potable water.
The installation cost of this system is only ₹30000 per kilolitre and the operating cost is ₹3 per kilolitre without the need for any electricity. Whereas, centralised used water transportation through sewers and treatment in STPs has a combined installation cost of ₹100000 per kilolitre and a combined operating cost of ₹25 per kilolitre. The cost of reusing the treated water in this localised circular system is low as the point of reuse is near to the treatment plant. Thus, Parivaar has set an example that should be replicated widely.

पारंपरिक भील आदिवासी संस्कृति का प्रसार

 संयुक्त राष्ट्र महासभा ने 2022 और 2032 के बीच की अवधि को स्वदेशी भाषाओं के अंतर्राष्ट्रीय दशक के रूप में घोषित किया है, "कई स्वदेशी भाषाओं की विकराल स्थिति की ओर वैश्विक ध्यान आकर्षित करने और उनके संरक्षण, पुनरोद्धार और प्रचार के लिए संसाधनों और उत्साहियों को जुटाने के लिए।"  पर भील आदिवासी कार्यकर्ता वाहरू सोनवने कहते हैं, “भारत सरकार ने अभी तक इस संबंध में कोई कार्यक्रम संबंधी निर्णय नहीं लिया है। अफसोस की बात है कि आजादी के बाद से आदिवासी भाषाओं की उपेक्षा की प्रवृत्ति रही है। ”

अलीराजपुर जिले में भील आदिवासी जन संगठन, खेदुत मजदूर चेतना संगठन (खेमचेस) चार दशकों से भीलों की संस्कृति की पारंपरिक समृद्धि को फिर से जीवंत करने के लिए सक्रिय है और अब भील वॉयस नामक एक इंटरनेट रेडियो और वीडियो चैनल शुरू किया है संयुक्त राज्य अमेरिका के एरिज़ोना स्टेट यूनिवर्सिटी के साथ मिलकर।

अपनी समस्याओं को स्पष्ट रूप से अभिव्यक्त करने में सक्षम हुए बिना किसी समुदाय का विकास संभव नहीं है। लिखित भाषा और संहिताबद्ध संस्कृति की कमी के कारण भीलों का विशाल समुदाय आधुनिक भारत में हानिकारक रूप से प्रभावित हुआ है। भले ही आदिवासियों को विभिन्न सामाजिक समस्याओं से मुक्त रखने में इसके अपने फायदे हैं, लेकिन आज की वाणिज्य, उद्योग और शासन की जटिल प्रणालियों को देखते हुए इसका मतलब यह है कि भीलों की आकांक्षाओं को सम्पन्न वर्ग की उपभोग की पूर्ति के लिए, लगातार हाशिए पर रखा गया है।

वाहरु सोनवने कहते हैं, "हमारी संस्कृति, रीति-रिवाज और विश्वदृष्टि हमारी भाषा में व्यक्त की जाती है। हमारे बहुमूल्य ज्ञान की रक्षा तभी हो सकती है जब हमारी भाषा को संरक्षित रखा जाए। जब कोई भाषा संरक्षित नहीं होती है तो वह मर जाती है और उसके साथ जुड़ी संस्कृति और जीवन शैली भी मर जाती है। इस संस्कृति से जुड़े मानवीय मूल्य भी, भाषा के साथ-साथ, तबाह हो जाते हैं। ”

खेमचेस के सचिव शंकर तडवाल कहते हैं, "वर्तमान में विकास के विचार और इसके कार्यान्वयन के बारे में बहस उन भाषाओं में हो रही है जो भीलों के लिए विदेशी हैं और इसलिए वे इसमें योगदान नहीं दे पा रहे हैं। वास्तव में, भीली बोलियों में इन विचारों पर चर्चा करने के लिए शब्दावली का अभाव है। खेमचेस ने इस कमी को दूर करने की कोशिश की है और एक समृद्ध नई लिखित भाषा और साहित्य के निर्माण कर और अपने पारंपरिक संगीत और नृत्य को बढ़ावा देकर क्षेत्र और राष्ट्र के विकास में भीलों को वैचारिक रूप से शामिल किया है। आधुनिक विकास और सांस्कृतिक संदेशों को व्यक्त करने में हमारे पारंपरिक मिथकों और धुनों का उपयोग करने के अनुभव ने दिखाया है कि वे इस उद्देश्य के लिए बेहद प्रभावी हैं। इसके अलावा, ब्रिटिश काल से भील आदिवासी विद्रोह का इतिहास भी बहुत प्रेरणादायक है और खेमचेस द्वारा भील युवाओं को उत्साहित करने के लिए इस का प्रचार किया गया है।"

पश्चिमी मध्य प्रदेश क्षेत्र के विभिन्न सामाजिक और राजनीतिक विकास के संगठनों द्वारा अब तक इस तरह का नवाचार छुटपुट ढंग से किया गया है। पर अब खेमचेस द्वारा यह काम को व्यवस्थित ढंग से आगे बढ़ाया जा रहा है। रानी काजल जीवन शाला की एक शिक्षिका रायटीबाई कहती हैं, “खेमचेस ने क्षेत्र के कई अन्य आदिवासी जन संगठनों को आदिवासी शहीदों की जयंती मनाने की पहल करने के लिए प्रेरित किया है और आदिवासी इतिहास और संस्कृति पर हिंदी में कई ग्रंथों को प्रकाशित करने में मदद की है और आगे संपूर्ण भीली लोककथाओं का प्रतिलेखन भी होगा। खेमचेस ने सन 1990 के दशक में महान टानटिया भील, जो अंग्रेजों के हाथ शहीद हुए थे, को एक स्वतंत्रता सेनानी के रूप में मान्यता देने की प्रक्रिया शुरू की, जिसे अब वैधता और आधिकारिक मान्यता मिल गई है।“

लोकगीतों के रचनात्मक व्याख्या से वैकल्पिक, सामुदायिक और सतत विकास के सिद्धांत और व्यवहार के समर्थन में प्रचुर सामग्री निकाला जा सकता है। उदाहरण के लिए, नर्मदा नदी के पास के गांवों में गाया जाने वाला एक धरती के सृजन मिथक है, जिसमें विस्तार से बताया गया है कि कैसे भगवान अचानक ब्रह्मांड के निर्माण के विचार से घिरे हुए थे और उन्होंने जंगल में जाने और लकड़ी लाने के लिए जंगल में रहने वाले रेलू कबाड़ी से मदद मांगी। इस तरह से शुरू होती है पूरी कहानी कि कैसे धीरे-धीरे सभी जानवर और पौधे बनते हैं और अंत में नर्मदा और ताप्ती नदियाँ। ये नदियाँ विवाह में दूदु हमड़ सागर से मिलती हैं और उनकी यात्रा की प्रक्रिया में सभी विभिन्न गाँव, पहाड़ियाँ और घाटियाँ बनती हैं। पूरा गीत प्रकृति की विशालता और प्राकृतिक प्रक्रियाओं की ताकत का आभास कराता है और इनके लिए श्रोता में सम्मान पैदा करता है।

रानी काजल जीवन शाला के प्राचार्य निंगू सोलंकी कहते है, "हमारी जीवन दृष्टि आधुनिक मनुष्य के अभिमान के सीधे विपरीत है जिसने प्रकृति को अपने स्वयं के अधीन करने की कोशिश की है और आज उसके कारण गंभीर पर्यावरणीय समस्याओं को जन्म दिया है। आदिवासी इस प्रक्रिया के शिकार रहे हैं। इस प्रकार, यह हमारा फर्ज है कि हम हमारे सृजन मिथक को लोकप्रिय बनाय और इस बात पर बल दें कि हमारी आदिवासी विश्वदृष्टि वर्तमान काल में कहीं अधिक "तर्कसंगत" है।“

इसी तरह, एक महाकाव्य में एक महिला के बारे में एक और कहानी है जिसे अपने पति द्वारा किए गए अत्याचार पर सवाल उठाने के लिए दोषी ठहराया जाता है। उसे पंचायत के सामने लाया जाता है जहां पंचों द्वारा आदेश दिया जाता है कि उसकी जीभ काट दी जाए और पति को निगलने के लिए दे दिया जाए। पर वह जीभ पति के गले में फंस जाती है।

इस कहानी दर्शाता है कि भील समाज किस हद तक पितृसत्तात्मक रूप से महिलाओं का दमन करता है। साथ ही, यह तथ्य कि जीभ पति के गले में फंस गई है, महिला को अवसर प्रदान करता है कि वह अपनी जुबान को वापस खींच लें। अपने हकों के लिए बोलने का अधिकार स्थापित कर भील महिलाओं को घर के अंदर और बाहर विविध पितृसत्ताओं के खिलाफ लड़ने के लिए इस कहानी के द्वारा प्रेरित किया गया है।

साहित्य, विशेष रूप से अलंकारिक चरित्र के धार्मिक साहित्य में लोगों को उनकी सामाजिक आर्थिक स्थिति को बदलने के लिए प्रेरित करने की जबरदस्त शक्ति है। दुर्भाग्य से खेमचेस को छोड़कर मध्य भारतीय क्षेत्र के आदिवासियों और विशेष रूप से भीलों के लिए उनके समृद्ध मौखिक साहित्य को लिखने और उपयोग करने का कोई महत्वपूर्ण प्रयास नहीं किया गया है।

अब खेमचेस के इन प्रयासों को एक बड़ा समर्थन मिला है क्योंकि इस प्रयास में अमेरिका के एरिजोना स्टेट यूनिवर्सिटी के ह्यू डाउन्स स्कूल ऑफ ह्यूमन कम्युनिकेशन के प्रोफेसर उत्तरन दत्ता इससे जुड़ गए हैं। उल्लेखनीय है कि एरिजोना स्टेट यूनिवर्सिटी विगत आठ वर्षों से लगातार अमरीका के विश्वविद्यालयों में नवाचार में प्रथम स्थान पर है। प्रोफेसर दत्ता ने अलीराजपुर जिले में नर्मदा नदी के तट पर ककराना गांव में खेमचेस द्वारा संचालित आदिवासी बच्चों के लिए आवासीय विद्यालय रानी काजल जीवन शाला में एक आधुनिक रिकॉर्डिंग स्टूडियो स्थापित करने में मदद की है, जहां भीली भाषा में व्याख्यान और संगीत रिकॉर्ड किए जाते हैं और फिर इंटरनेट रेडियो और यूट्यूब चैनलों पर अपलोड किया जाता है।

स्टूडियो में एक स्वतंत्र रिकॉर्डिंग सुविधा है और युवाओं को मीडिया उत्पादन में कुशल बनने के लिए प्रशिक्षित किया जा रहा है 

यह स्टूडियो भील आदिवासियों की पारंपरिक स्थापत्य शैली में बनाया गया है। खेमचेस के सचिव शंकर तड़वाल ने कहा, "चार पश्चिमी भारतीय राज्यों, राजस्थान, गुजरात, महाराष्ट्र और मध्य प्रदेश के भील आदिवासियों द्वारा यहाँ श्रव्य दृश्य सामग्री तैयार किया जाता है और स्टूडियो युवाओं के लिए एक प्रशिक्षण सुविधा के रूप में भी काम करता है। स्कूल के लड़के-लड़कियां मीडिया प्रोडक्शन में दक्ष हो रहे हैं।

1 जुलाई, 2022 को हुए उद्घाटन के बाद से भील वॉयस यूट्यूब चैनल ने हजारों व्यूज हासिल कर लिए हैं और यह समय के साथ बढ़ता जाएगा जैसे जैसे सांस्कृतिक कायाकल्प प्रक्रिया और मजबूत होती है।

The Ambedkar of Modern Indian Science

 The Golden era of modern Indian Science in the first three decades of the twentieth century had a Dalit star also in the form of Meghnad Saha. His contribution to astrophysics, made while he was still in his twenties, was path breaking, as it made it possible to study the spectra of radiation from the stars to know more about their composition. So important was his contribution that he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1927. He rarely specifically raised the issue of caste oppression, even though he suffered from it to a great extent throughout his life, as  he believed that this would be better overcome by the spread of science in Indian society and so he strove all his life to achieve that.

He was born in a village, in what is now Bangladesh, in 1893 in a poor Dalit family. In those days there was no free schooling and so his father, who was a small time grocer, was reluctant to send him to school. However, a relative provided some help and he went to school first in his village and later in Dacca and thereafter got scholarships on the basis of his excellent results to study mathematics in Presidency College in Kolkata. He switched to physics after completing his masters and thereafter went to the United Kingdom for further studies and research. After coming back to India he got a job as a teacher in Kolkata University and began working in the area of astrophysics making seminal contributions in that field. He was of the opinion that path breaking fundamental research in science can only be done if the scientists made their own research equipment instead of importing them from abroad. This brought him into conflict with the Nobel Laureate C V Raman who not only opposed sanction of university funds for his instrument making but even prevented the American Nobel Laureate physicist, Robert Millikan, from giving funds to Saha. So Saha accepted the offer of the University of Allahabad to head its department of physics and began his research and instrumentation there. The mass spectroscope that he built there is still in use today. 

Throughout his school and college days Saha had often to suffer untouchability and this continued even after he became a teacher and researcher. He had a particularly tough time in Allahabad because of the greater casteism that prevailed there as compared to Bengal. So unlike other Indian scientists he did not remain content to do scientific research only but drawing from his own difficult experience of school and college, began working to popularise teaching and research in science. He said that given the very low level of education right from schools to colleges, India had a very poor scientific base and human power and this could be rectified only by universalising state sponsored free quality education. He believed that the problems of social and economic oppression and the medieval mindset from which they emanated could be eradicated by the spread of science education at all levels even more than by social and political mobilisation. He also believed that modern industrial development would be necessary for removing poverty but cautioned against a total discard of the traditional methods of agriculture and rural cottage industry.  To this end he founded The National Institute of Science in 1935 and began publishing the journal "Science and Culture" to propagate his views.

Right from his school days he was involved in politics and he took part in the freedom movement and was rusticated from school on a couple of occasions. However, his excellence in studies got him admission in other schools on both occasions. After coming to Kolkata he got involved with the "Anushilan Samiti" which was bent on armed insurrection against the British. Later, he dissociated himself from this organisation because he disliked the casteism that was rampant in its leaders. Instead he joined the Indian National Congress and began lobbying within it for modern industrial development as opposed to Gandhi's insistence on village industry. He said that while village industry and traditional agriculture would have to continue and be modernised but without modern industrial development, India would fall behind even further from the rest of the world and would not be able to eradicate poverty. So he prevailed upon Subhash Chandra Bose to constitute a National Planning Committee (NPC) within the Congress in 1938 with Jawaharlal Nehru as the Chairperson. This NPC, which had scientists, industrialists and economists, including the Gandhian J C Kumarappa, as members in it, drew up detailed reports for comprehensive planning covering all sectors for self reliant development, which would also ensure the improvement of the economic condition of the masses. Saha was well aware of the fact that industrial development invariably resulted in displacement of people and caused misery to them and so advocated that people living in proximity to the sites of industrial plants must be taken into confidence and compensated and rehabilitated well by the state.

However, after independence the NPC reports were sidelined and instead the recommendations of the "Bombay Plan" proposed by a group of Mumbai industrialists which stressed on Government investment in industrial development at the expense of the masses, who were to be exploited to contribute the surpluses for this development, was pursued. Saha found that his proposals for self reliant development based on a massive expansion of science education to create a wide scientific and technological base were rejected. The industrialists were only interested in earning super profits from the opportunities for import substitution created by tariff barriers and not in ploughing those profits back into research for self reliant developmentt and this greatly disgusted him. Unfortunately, despite many letters written to Nehru criticising these retrograde developments, he could not influence him to adopt his suggestions. 

Disillusioned by this, like Ambedkar, he resigned from the Congress and stood for election to the first Lok Sabha in 1951 from the Kolkata Northwest constituency. Unlike Ambedkar who too stood for election from a constituencly reserved for the Dalits in Mumbai and lost, Saha won with a huge majority against the Congress candidate from an open constituency. He  continued his crusade for the spread of scientific education and self reliant technological development in Parliament. He said that the policy of funding exclusive research centres and laboratories while depriving the universities of adequate funds for carrying out research and the lack of a policy of building instruments for conducting this research in India itself, would result in a slow growth of science in India. Later developments have borne him out as India has not been able to produce even one Nobel laureate after independence, has a very low patent count and none of its universities feature in the top two hundred in global rankings. People of Indian origin who have won Nobel Prizes or gained international renown in scientific research, have done so while working in universities abroad. He also suggested that all agreements for building modern steel mills, fertiliser plants, thermal power plants and the like with foreign firms must include a technology transfer cum training component so that India could develop its own expertise in these fields. This too was ignored. He died a disappointed man in 1956 from a cardiac arrest.

Thus, Saha, like Ambedkar, was a crusader for the establishment of an oppression free modern India but unlike the latter he believed more in the power of science than in political organisation and struggle for achieving this. While Saha is well known as a giant of modern Indian science, very few people know that he was a Dalit and that he was perhaps the greatest visionary of modern development in India whose ideas were ignored. Indeed I too came to know that he was a Dalit only last year on reading a book on the history of Indian science. Unfortunately, Saha was unable to get implemented his path breaking ideas for building a self reliant and oppression free India and so we as a country are still languishing at the bottom of global rankings in many per capita human development indicators. 

Postscript: There seems to be some confusion with regard to Meghnad Saha being a Dalit because the surname Saha in Bengal is used by both the Savarna Vaishya caste and the Dalit castes. What adds to this confusion is that Saha's father Jagannath was a small time grocer which is what the Savarna Sahas are - a trader caste. There is quite a bit of evidence that Saha faced untouchability right from school to the time he was a professor in Allahabad. However, while this is enough to say that he was certainly not a Savarna, it is not conclusive evidence that he was a Dalit as the Brahmins practiced untouchability against other backward classes also sometimes. However, since the Sahas in Bengal are either Vaishyas or Dalits and since it is confirmed that he was not a Vaishya, so it can be inferred that Meghnad Saha was a Dalit. Matters have been compounded by the fact that Saha himself never discussed his caste background except in some Bengali articles that are difficult to access now. Moreover, as a matter of principle, Saha did not register himself and his children as Scheduled Castes after independence because he felt that he had overcome his caste disadvantages through his scientific prowess and he had said that that was the best way to achieve social justice.

The Night Meeting

What I miss most from my early years of activism in Alirajpur are the night meetings. They started off as a necessity initially but evolved into an art eventually. Given that Adivasi farmers are busy throughout the day working on their fields or as wage labourers, the only time for holding political meetings was at night after dinner. In the early 1980s in Alirajpur, very few adult Adivasis in the villages were literate and generally they had no idea that India was a constitutional democracy in which they had considerable rights and special provisions. Therefore, it became necessary to hold political meetings in each and every village to raise the level of knowledge of the workings of a modern democracy among the people.
Not that the people were very keen to attend these meetings. After a hard day of physical labour most people would prefer to hit the bed after dinner (Now that I work through the day on our farm I realise how tiring it is and feel apologetic for having scolded some of the people for falling asleep during the night meetings!!). However, the fact that mass organisational agitation had secured some rights for them and improved their condition and since this had been possible because of the intervention by us activists, the medicine men of grassroots politics, they would heed our call and come to these meetings. So initially, as I said, these meetings were the result of necessity and it used to be a challenge to teach the people the inner workings of a modern democracy based on the rule of law. However, Adivasis being Adivasis, they soon transformed these meetings into something that was more akin to their culture - song and dance!! The younger Adivasis composed lyrics based on the political discussions and sang them to the traditional Adivasi tunes. Even though this started off in fits and starts, it soon became the norm and so the night meetings would, after beginning with political discussions, gradually turn into performances of emancipatory song and dance. One of our activist colleagues, who had had formal training in music at one time before coming to Alirajpur, Amit Bhatnagar, excelled in adapting the songs of the Telengana revolutionary singer, Gadar, to the local situation and also in transforming the traditional epic singing of the Gayana into an emancipatory musical performance. He composed songs of his own in Bhili also.

Later still in the late 1990s these songs became a craze and then many new Adivasi singers emerged not only composing political songs but also newer love and farming songs sung to the accompaniment of modern musical equipment like keyboards and with sound systems. The Adivasi Ekta Parishad was also formed in the early 1990s to promote and conserve traditional Bhil Adivasi culture and also to synthesise it with modern culture in a positive manner. So strong is this Adivasi cultural revival and synthesis now that Hindi film and pop music finds no place at all in the lives of the new generation of educated Adivasi youth. They dance to the tune of their own songs as they have been doing for centuries together but the songs are now different and modern in more ways than one.
The enactment of the Panchayati Raj Act in 1992 after the constitutional amendment making it mandatory and the spread of literacy and education among the Adivasis, alleviated the need for night meetings and so they gradually faded away by the end of the twentieth century. Moreover, the advent of mobile telephony with its huge media content in the twenty first century made it near impossible to hold night meetings as people were more interested in watching or listening to stuff on their phones than sitting in meetings discussing politics. The urgency to organise and agitate for immediate livelihood problems also has gone. Many of the things that we had to fight hard for in the 1980s and 1990s have now become easily accessible due to laws like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Forest Rights Act, Right to Education Act, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act and Food Security Act.
So these days we have workshops instead during the day where we try to understand things like neo-imperialism, fascism, patriarchy, climate change and casteism with a new generation of Adivasi activists who are bent on establishing a strong Bhil Adivasi identity to counter the majoritarian homogenising thrust of the Sangh Parivar. Even though there is singing of songs and dancing in these workshops also but they do not have the same flavour of the singing and dancing that we used to do in the night meetings in Alirajpur.

The Bottom Up Perspective

The most fascinating aspect of India is its ethnic and cultural diversity. Throughout the millennia, even when there were from time to time strong and large empires covering the whole of the subcontinent, this diversity remained as these centralised states had only administrative and military control through outsourcing to feudal lords and kings at various levels, while day to day life and culture went on in a myriad ways across the Indian subcontinent. Thus, even if there was a centralised emperor ruling the whole of India there was no centralised monolithic bureaucracy extending from the centre of power to the remote villages and instead there was a system of autonomous units which paid taxes to the next higher level. That is why, even the long period of Mughal rule of over two centuries could not dent this autonomy and diversity at the grassroots. However, the British changed all that with the Government of India Act of 1858 transferring the power to rule India from the East India Company to the Crown. The British were clever enough to see that the revolt of 1857 had come so close to kicking them out precisely because many Indian kings and queens (The Rani of Jhansi being the great example of female valour) had retained considerable autonomy under Company rule. Therefore, through the Government of India Act, the British imposed a strong centralised bureaucratic system all over India and subsequently through other legislations like the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code, Indian Forest Act and Land Acquisition Act, grassroots autonomy was severely curtailed. Strict surveillance of the hundreds of autonomous princely states was also done to see that they followed the same principles of centralised governance that the British introduced in the provinces directly ruled by them. An education system dominated by English was introduced which further marginalised diverse vernacular cultures.

The Savarna elite, which tasted the power of this centralisation after limited governance was given to them by the 1935 version of the Government of India Act, and the nascent Indian capitalist class which had made their millions through exploitation of the workers and peasants facilitated by the centralised British rule, saw virtue in continuing with this centralised system and so after independence it was adopted without any changes whatsoever for the running of the country. A highly centralised state apparatus was put in place and a "trickle down" approach to development was adopted completely sidelining the provision of universal school education, primary health, rural development and employment. Indigenous knowledge systems were ignored and local ecosystems were devastated for modern industrial development and instead of development trickling down what we have had in over seventy years of development is the appropriation of resources and labour for capital accumulation in cities and towns to the detriment of the vast rural areas of this country.

This complete neglect of a bottom up view of governance and development has resulted in a continuous botching up of policies and programmes, as I have detailed in many earlier posts and never more so than in the management of the COVID 19 pandemic recently. Very little was known of the disease when the first cases were detected in early March other than that it was highly infectious and fatal. Epidemiologists had on the basis of statistical modelling begun predicting that there would be millions of cases that would overwhelm the country's ricketty health infrastructure and so a national lockdown was imposed post haste on March 25^th in a typically top down decision without taking into consideration what this would entail for 95 per cent of the population of this country who survive on daily wages and marginal agriculture. While the plight of the migrant workers eventually gained considerable media attention because of their desperate attempts to return home, those of the local workers did not because they at least had a place to stay and so remained invisible. In fact such a big decision as to completely close down a country, something that has never been done before, cannot succeed when taken in such a hasty and dictatorial manner. There should have been discussion and debate in which all the pros and cons of such a lockdown should have been weighed.

It became quite clear within a week of the lockdown that the disease was spreading only in a few cities and was absent elsewhere and especially in rural areas. Under the circumstances there should have been a review of the national lockdown and instead the decision to lockdown or not should have been left with the local governments and not even the state governments. Even within cities where the disease was spreading fast, only areas that were forming clusters should have been marked as containment zones and the rest of the city areas should have been freed. Instead the lockdown was continually extended again and again for a total period of nine weeks. By the end of this time the spread of the disease was not controlled by the lockdown as had been predicted by the epidemiologists but the economy, both of the country as a whole and  especially that of 95% of its households who do not have regular incomes, had been completely devastated. Governments, both at the centre and even more in the states, were faced with empty coffers, as without any economic activity they were not getting any taxes. So the lockdown had to be lifted and the spread of the disease has increased substantially over the last month since. A selective lockdown strategy containing only the hotspots right from the beginning as tried in Sweden would have been much more effective by concentrating resources and allowing economic activity to go on with proper distancing safeguards.

What is of even greater concern is that the police had been given extraordinary powers to keep people forcibly indoors and they misused it to their heart's content. There were innumerable instances of the police beating up and incarcerating people. I go out for a run in my colony in Indore at 5.30 am every day. Our colony and in fact the whole south eastern part of Indore where our colony is situated has not had a single case of COVID 19 even though there were several cases in the more central parts of the city. Yet one day two cops on a motorbike came to our colony at 5.30 am in the morning and threatened to beat me up with a baton if I did not go back into my house. Absurd as it is, the motto of the police was to beat up first and ask questions later. The most horrendous of such incidents is the beating to death of a father and son duo in Tamil Nadu recently allegedly for violation of lockdown rules and then the whole of the administration and government backing up the police who had committed this atrocity. 

It is only after the press and the High Court have taken cognisance that action has now been initiated against the guilty policemen. The fate of Jayaraj and his son Bennicks who have laid down their lives to this police brutality will haunt every thinking citizen of this country for quite a while. I at least have been deeply disturbed by their deaths as never before and I have seen quite a few brutalities in my time as an activist.

Thus, it is high time that we free ourselves from the malevolent British legacy of centralised rule, enforced through draconian policing and adopt a bottom up democratic perspective of governance and development which respects the immense diversity and knowledge that is there at the grassroots.  

What Ails Indian Science

Indian Science is currently languishing. Nothing illustrates this better than this chart below.

This chart has been taken from a new book, "Pathology of Modern Indian Science", by Dr Rajiva Bhatnagar, a retired scientist of the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology under the Department of Atomic Energy, which analyses with facts and figures why Indian Science is currently in the doldrums and has been ever since independence. Clearly, over the past two decades while the number of patent applications from China have soared and far outnumber those from any other country including the USA, India has stagnated near the zero mark. 

The book puts the blame for this fairly and squarely on cronyism which started in the British colonial era itself and assumed cancerous proportions after independence. At the root of this cronyism is the selfish ambition of a few of the leaders of science in this country at the time of independence. 

Despite the reluctance of the British, scientific education and research took off with a bang in the initial years of the twentieth century due to the efforts of Jagdish Chandra Bose, Ashutosh Mukherjee and Prafulla Chandra Ray who, imbued with a nationalistic spirit, went to great trouble to not only conduct experiments but also set up institutions and universities which could nurture scientists. Consequently, by the 1920s Indian scientists had made a mark on the international scene and C V Raman became the first Asian scientist to get the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the scattering of light by a transparent medium. Others like Satyen Bose, D.M Bose and Meghnad Saha made lasting contributions to physics which have become part of its fundamental backbone.

However, from the 1930s onwards, cronyism and regionalism began to take hold of the scientists and instead of charting out a path that would lead to the greater expansion of science both in the universities and in the population in general the eminent scientists began to selfishly further their own interests. This was further compounded by the involvement of the Tatas in the development of science under the garb of philanthropy but actually for furthering commercial and financial interests of their own.

Matters deteriorated even further after independence instead of improving. Contrary to the worldwide practice of pursuing scientific research in universities, which results in a diverse and broad base of science through teaching and research, India chose to follow the Soviet model of setting up stand alone research institutions and centres of excellence and concentrated research funds on them to the neglect of the universities. These research institutions in turn were dominated by a few career minded people who themselves did little innovative science and also discouraged others from doing so. 

This resulted in a situation where the more talented researchers chose to leave the country and go abroad. Even those who remained in the country preferred to publish their research in foreign journals and so the discussion and dissemination of science in the country was further debilitated.

This book details all these developments in graphic detail with well researched data and narration of events many of which are not known to the common people. One very interesting revelation is why despite Raman getting the Nobel Prize for the Raman Effect subsequently so named in his honour, very little work on this important scientific discovery was later done in India and most of the later developments and applications of this were done in the west. The book has been written in the style of detective fiction and so the reader's attention is riveted on the narration to know what is to come next. 

It ends with an interesting analysis of the debilitating effect that religion has had on the development of science since christianity came to dominate, which led to the dark ages and extends it to the relationship between religion and science in modern India which has now come to a head with the present ruling dispensation. 

The School Education Waste Land

Possibly one of the most difficult subjects both conceptually and mathematically in modern science is Quantum Mechanics, which plays a major role these days in Physics, Chemistry and Biology and in many cutting edge technologies. The Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education, in its wisdom, has decided to include it in its syllabus for the Physical Chemistry course in Class Eleven at the higher secondary level. The treatment of the subject is at a fairly high level and there are also mathematical problems to be solved based on the various formulae. Generally the Physics and Chemistry courses have a considerable amount of mathematics in them and so the Physics course in class eleven starts off with a chapter on dimensional analysis followed by another on differential and integral calculus before going on to other subjects. And all this is in very sanskritised Hindi.

The Government High School in Pandutalab village where our centre is, offers the Physics, Chemistry and Biology combination to those students who want to opt for science at the higher secondary level leaving out mathematics, the syllabus for which is very difficult. However, given the preponderance of mathematics in both physics and chemistry and also to some extent in biology which has genetics in the prescribed course at the higher secondary level, the students and teachers have to contend with it. And there lies the rub. 

At the coaching class that we run for students at our centre in Pandutalab, we have students from nursery to class eleven. Right from the fifth class students to those in class eleven, not a single one had any understanding of factors and multiples, fractions, decimals and basic algebra.  So initially we sat all the students from class five to class eleven together and made them understand and solve problems on factors, multiples, fractions, decimals and basic algebra. After doing this for about two weeks, we then went on to other subjects thinking that their basics had been cleared. However, since nothing was being taught at school, as the teachers themselves did not know any of these and just taught mechanically from guide books without solving any problems, we found that every time there was a need to use any of this basic mathematics in solving the higher level science problems, the students would stare blankly. So once again we would have to go back to revising the basic mathematics. Thus, now it has become a routine that the first hour or two of each coaching class is spent on revising basic mathematics before we go on to some other subject!!

This brought back the original problem that we have been facing ever since we have tried to do coaching in Pandutalab. Given that very little of mathematics is being taught in the schools nearby, not just the government schools but the private ones also, the students find the rigour and hard work required in our coaching classes a bit too much and tend to bunk them or stop coming altogether!! Then we have to go and speak to their parents and try to explain to them that their children should come to our weekend coaching classes regularly and also revise what we teach them there during the rest of the week. Even this does not work and from about twentyfive children who initially came to the coaching classes, eventually we are now left with around ten students from nursery to class eleven as shown below.

 Its a huge challenge to teach mathematics and science to these children who are all first generation Adivasi learners given the fact that even I find the sanskritised Hindi texts difficult to understand. I have to refer continually to the corresponding English texts to decipher what exactly the Hindi means to be able to explain it to the students!! The children first have to understand the problems after reading them and then set them up in mathematical terms before solving them. Its a big ask and requires a lot of hard work from them which they have never been used to in their school previously and even now very little is being done. At present the only solution is to repeatedly do the same problems over and over again because the kids say that when they go home and go over the way the problems have been solved they often can't follow what has been done. 

The Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) has been continually showing this sorry state of affairs, which is in fact deteriorating further with every passing year, with regard to school education in the country but it does not seem to have any effect on the policy makers. Millions of children are learning very little in schools, both government and private, across the country. The syllabi are made tough because a miniscule few elite children have to study at a higher level and compete to get into the top colleges in the country and abroad but this is taking a heavy toll on the rest of the children. The teachers themselves have come out of this kind of schooling and do not understand the tough texts so what will they teach. In fact the ASER should test the teachers' skills also and then it will become clear why the kids aren't learning. Its a school education waste land and I can only forlornly paraphrase T S Eliot - 

I sat upon the shore Teaching, 

with the arid plain in front of me

Without much hope of setting my lands in order.

Whither Higher Technical Education

Last month a student in final year of Computer Science and Engineering in a Government Engineering College in Indore committed suicide. He left a note saying that he had wasted a lot of money of his family and was unable to fulfill their expectations that the investment they were making in his education would result in a good job and so instead of wasting any more of their money he thought it better to take his own life. Many such suicides take place and so it is necessary to delve into this phenomenon to understand the desperate situation that faces the youth of this country.
The student in question belonged to the Scheduled Caste category. He hailed from one of the smaller towns of Madhya Pradesh where his father makes a marginal living as a motor repairer. Therefore, his selection for admission in this government engineering college in Indore for computer science through the competitive entrance examination was welcomed by his family with great enthusiasm. They and he thought that this would put them eventually on the path to prosperity.

Unfortunately, the reality that confronted this boy and which confronts most students coming from humble vernacular backgrounds these days, is very harsh. The first barrier they face is that all teaching in Engineering colleges is in English. Therefore, they are not able to perform well and end up with low cumulative grade point average scores. Finally, when the time comes for campus placement they are not able to achieve the cutoff score of 7 CGPA that is demanded by the visiting companies for eligibility to be interviewed by them. Therefore, these students never get placed from campus interviews conducted by private concerns. There was a time when there used to be Government jobs for such people but those too have dried up these days with very few government institutions and those that are there, outsourcing most of their work to private concerns. So eventually these students attend coaching classes for competitive examinations for jobs in the government administrative services, public sector banks, railways and the like. Those who don't succeed in either getting placed through campus interviews or getting selected for government jobs through competitive exams have to eke out their living in low paying and insecure private jobs which cannot lift people out of poverty.
This is why a huge number of low income background students in engineering colleges are frustrated. Their aspirations have been raised that a degree in engineering will result in a well paying and secure job. So their parents spend a huge amount to get them educated in this hope. But eventually they find that this is not the case because late capitalism has drastically reduced well paying and secure job opportunities both in the private sector and in the government and so only those with good grades succeed in landing these jobs and the poorer students are left with low paying insecure jobs.
Even though there are scholarships provided to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students for their college studies, they do not cover all the costs of tuition and hostel residence. Therefore, the parents of these students have to make a substantial outlay in addition to what is provided through scholarships by the government. After that due to the load of these expenses which often push poor families into debt there is pressure on the students to deliver which they cannot. Even if only a few commit suicide, there is general depression and desperation among them.
Thus, even technical education is now not able to provide a leg up out of poverty for those who are poor and liberal arts education had stopped doing so much earlier. The problem of course is not with education so much as with the capitalist system which creates aspirations among the people for good high paying and secure jobs on the one hand and continually decreases the number of such jobs on the other hand. Even though this adversely affects the large proportion of students coming from weaker socio-economic backgrounds more, the adverse impact on those from more privileged backgrounds is also quite high. These students have to spend a lot more on their education, even when it is in government colleges, anything from 5 to 10 lakhs if not more. After that the pay packages that are offered are on an average about 5 lakhs a year which are insufficient for staying in metro cities at the luxurious level they are accustomed to in their homes as the cost of living and rent are very high. Therefore, in many cases where students have taken loans which have to be repaid, they find it difficult to make ends meet and have to borrow further from their parents at the start of their careers.
There is also the question as to why so many engineers are being produced when clearly there is not enough demand for them. In fact for quite some time now most engineers do not pursue careers in engineering and are instead serving as managers and administrators. The answer is that the huge number of engineers pushes down the wages of these engineers in the market. The remedy could be to redesign these courses to suit the needs of the masses of the country in the areas of sustainable communitarian development but that would not suit the rapacious drive for capital accumulation and so the youth are being misled into becoming engineers who are not needed by the capitalist development juggernaut.
All this makes the mass struggle against capitalism so much more difficult. The contribution of organic intellectuals from the oppressed classes and justice minded intellectuals from the privileged classes to provide support to the struggles for justice is very important. However, the way in which aspirations have been created and then throttled by capitalism, most of the educated youth these days whether from the oppressed classes or from the privileged classes, are least inclined to rebel against the system and are instead either trying to somehow progress in it or are falling by the wayside in depression. Those of the youth who do make it, become aggressive defenders of the oppressive status quo. Some youth do want to rebel but are scared of the consequences of penury and possible incarceration and so are afraid to take the leap into the uncertain world of activism.

WHITHER ADIVASI GIRLS' EDUCATION

I set out four decades ago to try and improve the situation of Adivasis but unfortunately have mostly met with failure. However, nothing hurts more than the most recent in this series of failures because it is related to Girls' Education.
My wife Subhadra is a Dalit whose family had less than two hectares of unirrigated land from which they could hardly make ends meet. She had to study in a government school and also work at home on meagre food and almost no money. She somehow passed her higher secondary school examinations and then to escape her poverty joined an NGO as an Anganwadi (creche) worker and later by dint of persistence became a land rights and gender activist. Later she decided to pursue higher education and is currently enrolled for a Phd.
This personal experience made her think about the education of girl children from poor families. She felt that if girls from poor families are to study then they must be provided hostel facilities because if they stay at home then their parents tend to make them work and so they are not able to study. Moreover, the government school system in Madhya Pradesh has now become moribund with close to zero teaching and learning. Therefore, without extra tuition it is not possible to educate girls just by sending them to a government school.
However, running hostels and schools for girls is not an easy matter. The Right to Education Act has now made it mandatory for all schools to be registered and a considerable amount of paper work has to be done continuously regardless of the quality of the actual education being imparted. Secondly due to the grievous malpractices by NGOs running girls' hostels there is also a considerable amount of monitoring of such hostels. Moreover, running a full fledged school and hostel requires good quality staff which is almost impossible to get in rural areas these days. Those few from rural areas who have somehow learnt something from the dysfunctional government school system and have attained some quality have invariably migrated to cities for better livelihoods. Therefore, those that remain in rural areas know next to nothing despite having become graduates.

So Subhadra decided two years back to informally run a hostel with about five or six girls of class six at the Pandutalab centre of Mahila Jagat Lihaaz Samiti. The girls would be enrolled in the Government Middle School in the village and would reside at the centre and get coaching from Subhadra and I in addition to whatever they were taught at school. Once the hostel stabilised other people also could come and spend a few days and teach them whatever they were good at. The idea was that the girls would get a holistic education as they would also work on sustainable farming at the centre and understand the forest, soil, water and energy conservation work being done there.
Initially, it was difficult to get these girls as both the girls and their parents were not ready. So in the first year we started a weekend coaching class at the centre for girls of all classes from Pandutalab and a few nearby villages so that they and their parents would get an idea of the huge difference in education quality that we were planning to provide. There were quite a few girls who came to these coaching classes in the beginning where we taught them English and Mathematics the two main bug bears of school children in rural areas. However, after some time the interest of the students flagged despite their learning immensely in the classes. Investigations revealed that the problem was that they were being taught next to nothing in the schools and they were also not being given any time to study at home by their parents. Thus, while they would learn a lot in the coaching class on one weekend, they would forget everything by the next weekend and be back to square one. Also the girls did not see why they should work hard to understand a subject in the coaching class when nothing was being taught in the school.
This reinforced the logic that the girls would have to be kept in the hostel and taught intensively. But that is easier said than done given the fact that girls are made to do a lot of work at home even when they are studying in school and so keeping them in hostels is not generally favoured by parents. Anyway, this year Subhadra began canvassing for girls to join the hostel from the month of April itself when the last year's session came to an end. She went around nearby villages convincing parents and talking to the girls who could be enrolled for the hostel. Once the girls were identified, she went and met the teachers of their schools to facilitate their transfer to the Government Middle School in Pandutalab.
The interaction with the teachers brought to light the sorry state of public primary education in Mahdya Pradesh in tribal areas. The primary schools are mostly single or double teacher schools teaching five grades all seated together. All the children of school going age are enrolled in these schools regardless of whether they are attending regularly or not. This is because there is a strict order from the higher ups that there should not be any child out of school. Since there is a no detention policy so not only are these children marked present they are also declared passed in the examinations. Moreover, since the funds and materials for the midday meal to be given to the children are according to the attendance in the school so also all are marked present regardless of whether they are taking the meals or not. The Unified District Information System for Education, which is the online data base for the primary education system thus paints a very rosy picture of the status of primary education. There is of course an unofficial tally of the actual attendance and the number of dropout children with the teachers but try as she might Subhadra could not get this from them.
After much effort parents of about eight girls agreed to put their girls in the hostel at Pandutalab. They were told to get the transfer certificates from the old school so that they could be admitted to the school in Pandutalab. Two girls were even put in the hostel by their parents pending the formal transfer and we began teaching them. These girls despite being in the sixth class did not know the Hindi alphabet or the numbers let alone write in Hindi and do sums.
When the girls' parents went to try and get the transfer certificates they came up against a barrage of questions from the teachers as to why they wanted to shift their girls to a private hostel and the government school in Pandutalab and that such hostels are wholly unreliable and that they would be jeopardising the future of their girls. One parent did manage to get the transfer certificate but the Head Master of the Pandutalab Middle School refused to admit the girl giving him the same kind of warning that putting the girl in the private hostel would jeopardise her future. Basically no teacher wants to lose a student even if he himself is not teaching anything because it reduces the number of students for the midday meal. Also instead of trying to improve pedagogy and learning achievements in his school he is wary of private schools and hostels which reflect on his incomepetence and the shoddy state of the Government School System.
This then created a difficult situation for us. The only two girls who had come to the hostel began crying given the lack of company. The increased pressure of proper studying also made them feel more home sick. The fact that the girls would not be enrolled in the school in Pandutalab also resulted in a situation wherein Subhadra and I would have to take on the full responsibility of teaching them. Since these girls would in any case remain enrolled in their village schools formally this was not much of a problem in formal terms. As they could go and give the examinations there. There was also the possibility of getting these girls to give the tenth class examinations from the National Institute of Open Schooling a few years down the line as this is the first formal educational certification these days after the RTE Act's no detention provision. However, convincing the parents to follow this kind of informal arrangement became difficult as they felt that their girls might get penalised in future. Also there is a general reluctance to send girls to study away from home because there are now a spate of cases where the girls elope with other boys often of a different sub tribe of the Bhils from the one to which they belong even while studying in school. So there is a malevolent and dysfunctional public education system on the one hand and patriarchy on the other which are seriously putting girls education in jeopardy.
Consequently, we have had to send the two girls who had joined the hostel back and put this project in abeyance for the time being. We will try again next year with greater preparation as we now know what we are up against.