NEthing, NEwhere: To be a Northeasterner

By Utpal Borpujari

Northeast India has been the flavour of the season in the metropolitan media in the last couple of weeks, both print and electronic. The reason is obvious — the unfortunate deaths of two youngsters from the region, Dana M Sangma of Meghalaya in Gurgaon/Manesar abutting Delhi and Richard Loitam of Manipur in Bangalore. The former committed suicide and the latter died after a ‘fight’ with hostel mates. The background of both the cases is too well known to be recounted here again. And the media have found an issue to debate on, the Parliament has got shaken up and there have been candlelight marches in various parts of the country demanding punishment for the abettors and perpetrators of the two deaths. Thanks mainly to the power of social media, the traditional media have been forced to take up this debate about the sense of alienation of people from the Northeast. Union home minister P Chidambaram, speaking in Parliament after a host of MPs led by BJP’s Arun Jaitley in Rajya Sabha raised the issue of discrimination against people of the Northeast in the rest of India, even spoke about an advisory to all the states asking them to be vigilant against any such incidents. With Dana Sangma being the niece of Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma, the issue got a bigger profile as Sangma himself took the lead in raising a strong political pitch in Delhi. This has been followed by allegations from C P Singh, an additional director with Delhi’s Forensic Science Laboratory, of racial discrimination by his colleagues.
But the fact of the matter is, after a few days, things will be forgotten, as it has always been in such cases, and life will return to normal —except for the families of those who died —till the next such incident of death, molestation, rape, happens. And the whole debate will then take place again, and the cycle will be repeated. Everyone forgetting amidst all the cacophony that if one has to put an end to what is described by many as almost ‘racial’ targeting of communities on the basis of their looks, eating habits and lifestyle, then the need of the hour is to find ways for long-term solution to this, instead of crying hoarse everytime such things happen.
So, what are the areas that need to be looked into for removing all the perceived or real prejudices against people from Northeast India by the people of so-called ‘mainland’ India? There are many ways to deal with, and it does require a multipronged approach, to remove the various misconceptions about our region. Some of the possibilities that need to be urgently looked into by the Centre and the states of the region, as well as community organisations, intellectuals and other leading citizens from the region, especially those who have lived outside the Northeast, are the following:

Education/curricula

Soon after the deaths of Richard and Dana, an online petition calling for inclusion of information about the Northeast in the school curricula across the country, especially in the NCERT books, was activated. When I put that on my Facebook status, one noted educationist from Assam commented that it was not the answer (to end the misunderstandings). I beg to differ —and differ strongly. Almost 100% of the incidents of discrimination against the people of the region in the rest of India happen because people have virtually no inkling about us. They don’t know our history — just to cite one example, the strong role played by people in the Northeast in India’s freedom struggle — our culture, our ethnic diversity, and our contemporary societies. For them, the Northeast is one remote geographical entity where all the people look the same, are busy being insurgents and eat dog meat. Even so-called intelligent people carry that image in their minds. For example, a couple of years ago, in an article by one animal rights activist, Ambika Shukla (who is also Maneka Gandhi’s sister) had written disparagingly about the ‘dog eating habits of Northeasterners’ in Deccan Chronicle and The Asian Age newspapers, in a column following the alleged killing of a dog by a Naga student in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Yes, some communities in the Northeast eat dog meat, and it is part of their culinary tradition that one has to respect. But that does not mean the whole of the region eats dog meat. How many people outside the region know that there can be excellent spreads of purely vegetarian meals in Manipur or Assam? One must look at long-term ways to tackle such misinformation. And the sure way is to include chapters on various facets of the Northeast in school curricula all over India. Young minds are always prejudice-free and once they start knowing about — and thus understanding — the region, perceptions will change for sure. Perceptions do not get created or changed overnight. Education is one way to bring about a change.

Advocacy

This is one area where the Centre and the region have failed miserably. The region as a whole, for so-called administrative reasons, is conveniently called the “Northeast”. That may be alright as far as only formulating and implementing government policies are concerned for a backward region. But this has irreparably harmed the region as far as projecting the individual states and their peoples outside is concerned. For most outsiders — and this fact has been brought home by a recent survey among professionals in the media, corporate communications, HR and PR professionals (professionals who because of the nature of their jobs need to have a wide information base) carried out by Delhi-based Northeast India Image Managers (NEiIM), a group of young professionals from the region working in the media and communications industry —a Mizo and an Arunachali and a Manipuri and a Khasi are the same. And I am not even talking about various tribal communities in each state! The central government, and its wings like the ministry of home affairs and the ministry for development of north east region (Doner), have huge funds to spend on advocacy, which means to create awareness about Northeast in the rest of India using various advocacy tools, such as conferences, audio-visual media, cultural events and so on. A large chunk of the allotted money, if not all, gets spent in such endeavours, but the results are for everyone to see. This needs to change. Whatever advocacy is done must bring in results in the long term. The culture of organising “seminars” for the sake of it, where people talk, eat and go back home, does not serve any purpose unless the discourse is taken to the next level of publishing the edited version of the speeches and taking action on the recommendations. Instead of just painting the whole region as ‘Northeast’ at every platform, individual states need to be highlighted for each of their uniqueness. In this context, I remember how Bhabendra Nath Saikia, Jahnu Barua and Aribam Syam Sharma had boycotted a joint press conference at one of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) editions in the late 1990s in New Delhi because they had not been given individual slots to speak but were clubbed under a ‘Northeast directors’ category. Their argument was, “We as individual filmmakers have our own individual points to make.” This is the philosophy that the states of the Northeast should adopt to their advantage. As the four southern states are called South India, the eight Northeastern states should be known as Northeast India just for their geographic location and maybe for certain strategic matters, but not for everything and anything.

Ghettoisation

While a discriminatory attitude bordering on racism towards people from the Northeast in many parts of India is a fact of life, it is also a fact that there is an attitude of ghettoisation among many from the Northeast. This might sound sensational in the present context, but it is a fact. An obvious pointer to this is the community-based student organisations in Delhi University. Like in the Northeast, here too, instead of forming state-wise student bodies, there are student bodies reflecting ethnic identities, and each group of student mostly stick within themselves instead of mingling with others, barring during one of the ‘Northeast’ events. You would see hardly any from other Northeastern states if there is a Bihu celebration of the Assamese community, and likewise for any other festivity involving different communities. We keep complaining that the rest of India does not understand us, but how much effort do we make to create awareness among them about us? And it seems it suits the governments also to keep people from the region as a special, exotic category. Or else, why are there special, separate hostels for students and working women from the Northeast in Delhi? Yes, to a great extent women from the Northeast require a great amount of protection against prying male eyes in North India. But that is the case practically for any women from anywhere in North India. The government, particularly the relevant ministries such as Doner, women and child development and home claim great credit for these initiatives, but if they want to actually help develop a sense of understanding about the Northeast, they should build hostels where probably a 60:40 or even 50:50 ratio of students or women from the Northeast and rest of India are housed. To tell a bitter truth, even if there are exclusive hostels for students and working women from the region, there will be groups according to ethnicities, leaving aside personal level friendships. In such a hostel, will a Kuki and a Naga stick together just because they are from the Northeast? And anyways, when one goes out to study and work, one has to share space with people from all over, so why not the same where one is staying?

(To be continued…)

(published in the Seven Sisters Post, http://www.sevensisterspost.com, 16-05-2012)

http://sevensisterspost.com/?p=12474#

NEthing NEwhere: We don’t need no education?

By Utpal Borpujari

When The Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar recently remarked at a function in Jaipur that “Government ko koi school nahi chalana chahiye. Aksar paya jata hai ki government school se padhe hue bacche hi is tarha naxalvad me hinsa ke marg me chale jate hai (Government should not run any school. It is often found that boys studied in government schools go into Naxalism and violence)”, the asinine comment rightly drew strong rebuff from almost all quarters. Even the silky-voiced godman’s ardent followers found it hard to defend it. The self-styled spiritual leader, who has been trying to play the peacemaker in Afghanistan as well as with the Naxalites, had further said, “I feel that all the schools and colleges should be privatised and handed over to some other Sanstha (organisation). Such things are not in the boys of private schools and they move ahead with an ideal and teachers are responsible for it.” He had further said that “private school students have a very progressive and spiritual attitude towards life. They are nurtured with values, principles and dedication required for an ideal citizen.”

Of course, as reactions came in hard and fast, the guru retracted. “I did not say that all the government school breed Naxalism. Great talents have been emerged from these schools and I would never generalise. I specifically referred to sick government schools in Naxal-affected areas. Many who have turned to Naxalism have come from these schools,” he said.

The comments by the spiritual healer for mainly the well-to-do needed retelling because while what he had originally said was absolute nonsense, a large number of government-run schools all over the country, including Assam, are in such a state that he might not be far off the mark in his comments in terms of quality of students and teachers. The fact is, the condition of some of the government schools is so bad that they would be hard put to churn out real, ideology-driven insurgents or ultra-Left wing activists like the Naxalites are, because the quality of education they impart would not equip them with the wherewithal to gain all the propagandist-plus-ideological knowledge. Of course, they would be able to produce a lot of half-educated, semi-literate youngsters who, because of their inability to actually go for any higher education, would be the right candidates for recruitment to various organisations whose cadre base do not have a clue to what they are fighting for but are still fighting because that ensures that they have a regular income through extortions.

Sri Sri’s argument would have held water if he had come down on the general quality of education provided at government schools these days – and their condition (anyone passing by the Cotton Collegiate Higher Secondary School in Guwahati, where I had studied, would not fail to notice the run-down look of this glorious institution that is over 175 years old, for example, and it is in the heart of Guwahati, not in some back-of-the-beyond village) – rather than calling them an extremist-breeding ground. But while jet-setting spiritual gurus often goof up while speaking on issues beyond their usual domain, more so because they are accustomed to getting away with anything during their sermons to blind followers, recent facts and figures do point to the lack of quality education and infrastructure in government schools in the states, including Assam, even though on paper the government has been spending quite a lot of money on particularly primary and tertiary education.

Take for example the latest Planning Allocations Institutions Studies and Accountability (PAISA) report on rural schools. An eye-opener on how the government’s efforts are actually not bearing fruit, obviously because of lack of proper implementation mechanism on the ground, the report, a collaborative effort of the Accountability Initiative of the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research and ASER Centre, says that while the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) infrastructure budget increased by 137 per cent between 2009-10 and 2011-12, almost three years after the Right to Education (RTE) Act came into effect, the RTE indicators have largely remained unchanged.

The report says that 60 per cent schools in Odisha, Karnataka and Jharkhand do not have a functional toilet, and 48 per cent primary schools have a pupil-teacher ratio greater than the mandated 30:1. “Proportion of schools with shortfall in teachers, classrooms, drinking water facilities, kitchen/shed, playground, complete boundary wall, separate room for headmaster has remained more or less unchanged between 2010 and 2011,” the report says. Incidentally, the SSA budget increased from Rs 26,169 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 42,926 crore in 2010-11 and to Rs 55,746 crore in 2011-12, which means that the per-child allocation in these years went up from Rs 2,004 to Rs 3,287 to Rs 4,269.

The survey, carried out in 14,283 rural schools across the country, has indeed indicated a negative learning graph despite increased outlays in elementary education. In 2009, 79 per cent of students in Standard I & II were able to read letters, words and recognise number 1 to 9, but in 2011, the figure dropped to 72%. While 56% of students in Standard III & IV students could do subtraction in 2009, the figure fell to just 47% in 2011. In other words, 28% of Standard I & II students were NOT able to read letters, words and recognise number 1 to 9, and 53% of Standard III & IV students COULD NOT do subtraction in 2011. In 2009, 64% students of Standards III to V were able to read Standard I text, but the figure declined to 58% in 2011.
These figures make one thing clear – that while the governments at both the Centre and the states are spending money and are increasing the enrolment figures, the quality of education being imparted in government schools in actually going from bad to worse. No wonder, the survey also found out that ‘children’ and ‘quality’ were the least prioritised areas when it came to spending of the grants under the SSA scheme – ‘children’ (textbooks, uniforms, transport provision, remedial teaching) received just 10 per cent in 2011 (down by four per cent from that of 2010) and ‘quality’ (innovation and learning enhancement programme) received a laughable four per cent in 2011. On the other hand, ‘teachers’ (salaries, training, learning material and school development grant) continued to receive the largest share of SSA resources at 44% in 2011, followed by ‘schools’ (civil works, maintenance). The government spent just 70% of the funds allocated for SSA and Right to Education in 2010-11 as against 78% the year before that.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal says that the actual impact of the spending on SSA would be visible in five years, but the figures do not instil any sense of confidence on the minister’s views, especially when the quality of education is compared with the ministry’s figures that say that enrolment at elementary level has increased to 192.8 million in 2010-11 from 179 million in 2006-07, and that the number of teachers in government schools has increased to 4.19 million in 2010-11 from 3.6 million in 2006-07.

When one looks the scenario in North-East India, it’s a fact that private educational institutions, especially those run by various Christian Missionary organisations, have traditionally offered quality education up to the high school level. Unfortunately, a large number of government schools in states like Assam, which have had a glorious history of quality education, are now but pitiable shadows of themselves. That space has been taken up by the mushrooming private schools in cities like Guwahati and elsewhere, who lure students with catchy ad campaigns but many of which have doubtful – and more importantly unverified – quality credentials. But parents of young children are obviously choosing these schools to send their children to because the condition of neighbourhood government schools is there for everyone to see.

The PAISA study makes some telling comments on the condition of rural schools in Assam too, and the figures make the story quite stark. The SSA allocation for Assam went up from Rs 594 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 1539 crore in 2011-12 (it was Rs 1134 crore in 2010-11). In 2009-10, Assam spent 86% of its total allocation. In 2010-11, it could spend just 78% (the figures for 2011-12 will be known after this fiscal comes to an end). School infrastructure received the largest share of SSA Resources between 2009-10 and 2011-12, while entitlements such as textbooks, uniforms and transport provisions, along with mainstreaming out-of-school children, remedial teaching, etc., got the next most important attention. But the actual story is – while student and teachers’ attendance hovered between 69-71% and 85-93% respectively in 2011, the quality of education being imparted is actually pathetic if one goes by the figures. Just to give one example, in 2011, 50% children in standard III-V COULD NOT read Class I text and a humongous 74% of students of the same levels COULD NOT do even basic arithmetic.

If that surely reflects on the teaching capabilities of the teachers, the fact is also that there is still a huge gap in the student-teacher ratio, with 62% and 53% shortfall in categories where there should be one teacher per 30 students and 35 students respectively as in 2011. Alarming facts, for sure.

(Published in Seven Sisters Post, http://www.sevensisterspost.com, 02-04-2012)

http://sevensisterspost.com/?p=2434#