Thoughts of Chairman Mulayam

Though in the Athens Olympics the performance of Indian athletes paled in comparison with the Chinese, in the book publishing field India’s answer to the late chairman Mao Zedong is the unlikely figure of Mulayam Singh Yadav, chairman of the Samajwadi Party and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous — and perhaps most backward — state (pop. 166 million).

Right now a ten-volume biography incorporating the thoughts and utterances of Chairman Mulayam is in the process of compilation in Lucknow, and is all set to blitz the newsstands in October. The visionary publisher of this first-of-its-kind leather bound, all colour, ten-volume set featuring the brilliant insights of Chairman Mulayam is the Delhi-based Sarup & Sons while the authors are officials of the Uttar Pradesh government’s information department. "The volumes are actually a compilation of the statements, speeches and interventions made by Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav in the Lok Sabha from 1996 to 2003," Dr. Ashok Sharma deputy director of information in the state government informed a reporter of the Asian Age (August 17).

According to Sharma, each volume will be priced at Rs.400 and the initial print run of 10,000 sets is in grave danger of being pre-sold with orders having already been received from Bihar, Jharkhand and several other states of the Indian Union. Though the first edition of the biography is being published in Hindi, plans have already been chalked out to print it in several other languages besides English.

It’s significant to note that the voluminous set covers the period 1996-2003 when Chairman Mulayam was a member of the Lok Sabha, where he distinguished himself by leading numerous agitations and walkouts. Therefore given that Yadav has twice been chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and is a former Union defence minister, there’s unlikely to be a shortage of speeches and utterances of Chairman Mulayam and several other volumes will shortly be available for addition to the initial ten. Presumably the expletives for which this former wrestler turned chief minister is infamous, will be deleted.

Suffer little children

The free mid-day meals being provided by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to over 10 lakh children in corporation schools at a whopping cost of Rs.22 crore per year have failed to provide the intended cheer to students or their parents. Corruption is so deeply entrenched in the corporation that one scandal after another has dogged this overdue and worthy scheme. The latest case — which nearly brought the Delhi state legislative assembly to a stand-still following an opposition walkout in end July — followed widespread complaints of insect infestation in the food served to the national capital’s little ones.

According to one charge made in the legislative assembly, 1,500 students of the Municipal Primary School in Sector 18 Rohini, south of Delhi, were fed meals contaminated with roaches and worms. Following complaints, the headmaster reported the matter to MCD officials. But typically instead of accepting blame and launching an investigation, MCD bureaucrats mounted an investigation to undiscover a grand conspiracy theory. Fumed an incensed Indira Yadav, director primary education of MCD, "One agency prepares the food for 67 primary schools in Rohini. How come only one school’s meal was infected? It is clearly a case of sabotage."

But quite clearly realisation of the dream articulated in the Union finance minister’s budget speech to provide "a nutritious mid-day meal" to all children between ages six-14 in government schools is a long way off. Shortly after the brouhaha in Delhi, students of the Wathera Municipal Primary School in Chattisgarh reported the discovery of a serpent in the mid-day meal. As a consequence reports are trickling into the Union HRD ministry of even poor parents forbidding children from availing school mid-day meals. Little wonder that the theme song of prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh these days is improved quality of governance.

Meanwhile little children suffer.

Big and bigger surprise

Atwice-born officer of the Indian Administrative Service of the Uttar Pradesh cadre until recently widely hailed for his remarkable dedication to the cause of education and transforming 742,000 adult illiterates in the state into full literates within one year, has been outed as a fake. Vipul Kumar Varshney, IAS and former district magistrate, Lakhimpur Kheri district, has hit the headlines in UP for conspiring with the Lucknow based publisher, Akhil Bansal, to swindle the government of Rs.41 lakh. According to a vigilance report, Varshney misappropriated Central and state government grants under the Total Literacy Programme (TLP) to purchase 325,000 books invoiced for Rs.41.8 lakh from Bansal. The books bought three years ago never reached the intended recipients and some were fished out of the stores of the Kheri collectorate in rat-ravaged condition recently.

The other bigger fraud which Varshney pulled off was inflating the numbers involved in the TLP. He listed 7.42 lakh adult illiterates, 74,000 social activists and 78,920 trainers as having participated in phase one of the programme. These numbers suggest that the actual amount involved in the scam could be much larger — Rs.1.44 crore on illiterates, Rs.11.54 lakh on training teachers and several lakhs spent on purchasing literacy kits, stickers, slides, posters, most of which were never printed at all.

Surprisingly in a state where such ‘petty corruption’ is the rule, Varshney has been suspended and cases under ss. 419, 420, 468, 120B of the Indian Penal Code have been filed against him.

But a bigger surprise will be if he’s ever convicted.

Anything goes

Despite persistent efforts by child rights activists and educationists to abolish corporal punishment in schools in Tamil Nadu, the pernicious practice continues to prevail in some form or other with tacit government support. Adding insult to injury is the State Human Rights Commission’s recent recommendation to the Tamil Nadu government to retain corporal punishment in the statute book.

Recently several students of Chennai’s St. Antony’s School, a government-aided higher secondary with over 1,500 students on its muster roll were severely caned, forcing their parents to publicly protest in tandem with the Students Federation of India. Their misdemeanour? They purchased notebooks in the open market instead of the school authorities which had priced them higher. Though the local police admonished the school authorities and extracted a public apology from the management, there is still considerable resentment in this port city about the widespread practice of mandatory purchase of text and notebooks from school authorities which price them higher.

But in this Republic of Injustice, anything goes.