Dispatching Despatches

Last week, The Telegraph started a Bihar edition from Patna. I started reading The Telegraph from its inaugural issue some twenty years ago, when it stood up to challenge the staid Statesman, which was every Calcuttan’s breakfast read at the time. It is wonderful to see the familiar Broadsheet at my doorstep every morning, this time from Bihar.

And that triggered memories about my own days as the Gangtok Correspondent of The Telegraph, when I was in the Northeastern India in the mid eighties and early nineties. In those days, there was no internet, and so we newspaper correspondents had to depend on the old wire services provided by the Postal Department. We would write or type our stories out in longhand, and then toodle off to the nearest post and telegraph office to submit them at the counter for telegrams. In those days regular telegrams cost fifty paise a word, so the members of the Press had special ‘P&T’ cards that allowed us to send telegrams to our newspapers on credit. The special ‘newspaper rate’ was four paise per word.

We would have to write our stories in duplicate, and keep a carbon copy. When we arrived at the post office, we would have to submit both the copies at the counter. The despatch ( a very official sounding word, I loved it) would be recorded, and the carbon copy stamped and handed back to you. The chap receiving the telegrams wouldn’t be wearing a smiley face. He’d stare glumly at the paper and say something like , “Seven hundred words! I’ve got to type seven hundred words, and that UNI fellow has handed in a report six hundred words long!” How quickly the telegram would reach Calcutta from Gangtok would depend entirely upon how enthusiastic and skilful the telegraph operator was, and we pressmen had to keep the fellow in good humour if we wanted our despatches to be ‘first off the block’.
In 1989, the fax machine made its appearance, and what a wonder it was. The first time I saw a fax machine was in the office of the UNI Bureau Chief in Shillong. He really showed it off. In fact, he invited all of us 'hick journalists' in Shillong to his place to ogle at it over a couple of swigs of cheap rum!

I dug up a couple of my old ‘Telegram cards’: the yellow one is the one for The Telegraph, and the other one is the telegram card for The Times of India, which I wrote stories for while in Shillong. As I turned them over in my hand, I heard a song play inside my head.. “Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, we’d sing and dance forever and a day….”

Author: Frank Krishner

Forgotten short story

 Almost two decades ago, one of my short stories was published in The Illustrated Weekly of India.
It was typed on an old 'Brother' typewriter and sent off by good old  India Post from Gangtok.
I didn't think it would be published, but it was.
Since then, I've lost the carbon manuscript and even the copy of the published story, which a friend 'borrowed' and forgot to return many years ago.
On rummaging through some old papers, I discovered this acceptance letter.

It says

Dear Mr Krishner

This is with reference to your letter dated January 17, 1992 --- which I found on my desk only a few days ago, since I was on long leave. Anyway, this is ust to inform you that we have neither a shredder nor a lady in high heels in our outer office mailing rejection slips. Yes, we do have one in our inner office, but that bit of information is rather irrelevant, since your short story will not have to go by that route. Look for it in the Weekly issue dated February 29, 1992.

With best wishes,

Radha Rajadhyaksha

Assistant Editor.

Now these were the times before the e-mail and the SMS invaded our lives and made communication terse, functional, or merely banal.
Author: Frank Krishner

Abhivyakti: Subaltern Voices

As usual, the 9th Ravi Bharati Bihar Low Cost Film Festival featured a few films that provoked responses. One of these films was Debaranjan Sarangi's  'From Hindu to Hindutva'. This film revisited the scenes of the worst ever anti-Christian riots in Orissa and presented the various voices and viewpoints around the Khandamahal carnage. The film was mis-named.

Several people visited the festival with the sole purpose of seeing the film, and one of them was Mr Patrick John, a fairly well known commentator in the Patna Church media. He expressed his appreciation of the film and said that  it showed how religion is being use as an excuse to wipe out the minorities. He called for the Christians to find ways to heal the wounds. A pious thought, no doubt.

Rajinder Dash a former administrator who has handled some of the worst communal conflicts in Bihar during his time, mentioned that the film clearly stated the complexity of the problem: the clash between the militant missionaries on both sides of the divide: Hindu versus Christian; the other issue of it being a Dalit versus Adivasi conflict over land and resources, a third angle being the adivasi communities pitted against the mining companies, and a fourth angel being the political angle: administration, its political alliances with the mining lobby. The root of the clashes were mainly economic, he pointed out. Rajinder Dash, being an Oriya and familiar with the langage of the film and the area, said that the area was so remote that it was no surprise that the adinistration took a couple of days to repond to the violence.

If  Debranjan Sarangi's film [screened on the first day] presented the complexity of religious hatred and manipulation in the name of religion to commit murder and genocide, Arzoo, directed by Shashi Ghosh Gupta [screened on the last day] was the story of a young Muslim girl who rose above the hatred and trauma caused by the Gujarat genocide, and did something beautiful for children. the film was rated the most outstanding of the evening. Arzoo, agreed many participants, was the answer to all the Kandamahals and Gujarats. The courage of conviction of the protagonist of Arzoo shone through the film. Young people took an instant liking to the film. One participant said that the film should be shown in all the colleges of Bihar.

Morality TV or Living a Jehad – Ek manohar Kahani by Paromita Vohra sparked off a lot of reactions - outrage, disgust, incredulity, and wide eyed amazement at the blatant way in which human rights are violated in small town India, how news is manipulated and how myth and lies masquerades as news, the way the small town media of Indore panders to the Hindutva Brigade, and how the police and society targets women. Even women policemen are hand in glove with this regressive repression. Someone said.. "Just look at that sickening display of corruption and coercion... nothing like that would happen in Bihar....and yet they give Bihar a bad name!

The beauty and pace of Do Din ka Mela by Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayashankar took many viewer's breath away, and discussions ranged around the beauty of the shots, and certain sequences, the subtle humour, the nuanced editing.

Student films also sparked off debates and appreciation. BRIDGE THE GAP by Sharanya Gautam & Shilpi Gautam was appreciated for its very interesting use of symbols to argue for holistic primary education. Inside Out by Divya Cowasji and Shilpi Gulati sparked off a considerable discussion about a woman's right to space, a woman's right to her body, how the burkha has been portrayed as  a symbol of liberation, as a means for a girl to access spaces within the city, how the burkha isn't really a symbol of freedom, as a woman she should be able to claim the spaces without hiding behind the burkha and so on.

The films from Bihar were noticed for their portrayal of themes that many of the residents of Patna were not aware of - the beauty of Bhagalpuri silk, the forgotten wedding and birth songs from Mithilanchal, and so on.

Author: Frank Krishner

Bihar's RTE Dilemma

Background

The Right to Education Act, 2009 is a path-breaking piece of legislation that has widespread ramifications on the primary education delivery system. This Act will come into force on the first day of April, 2010. The Act calls for a substantial reworking and remodelling of the institutions and procedures at State level, as well as for the framing of rules under the Act that will ensure Primary Education coverage for every child in the state.

Objective

In order to effectively formulate the State Rules under the Act, a series of consultations have been organised by the Bihar Education Project Council with national experts, state implementation partners and decision makers and stakeholders.

The first consultation was held at State level on 18th and 19th February 2010 at Hotel Patliputra Ashok, Patna.



Mr Anjani Kumar Singh, IAS, Principal Secretary, Department of Human Resource Development introduced the aims and objectives of the Consultation.

Addressing the stakeholders present, he pointed out that the Act was an ambitious one, specifically in the context of Bihar. He stated that in the past decade and a half, the kind of development expected on the elementary education front didn’t happen due to multifarious reasons.

“We can see that, in respect to other states, our state was quite backward in student-teacher ratio, school rooms, quality, teacher training, and facilities for disabled children. In the past three to four years, we have taken some measures which have resulted in the improvement of the situation to a small extent, but the ideal platform for us to launch such an ambitious Act does not exist at present,” he said.

The RTE Act had already been passed and was expected to come into force on the first of April. Bihar would have to do a lot, and do a lot of new things to implement the provisions of the Act.

The Principal Secretary HRD urged the participants to examine the ramifications of the Act carefully and try to come up with solutions. He highlighted some of the challenges.

Parameters have changed a lot. For example it was quite difficult to bring the teacher-student ratio to 40:1. In the recent past, the government had appointed more than two lakh teachers, but even more teachers need to be appointed to attain that standard. If, in conformity with the Act, the ratio is made to 30:1, the question would be from where would three lakh teachers come? The Act calls for trained teachers, where would these teachers come from, he asked.

[The Act stipulates that EVERY child betweeen 6 and 14 MUST access school Compulsorily, and the STATE shall ensure this as the Act comes into force April 2010 ]

There are different categories of teachers at present, but under the Act all teachers would have to be trained and meet a nationally determined standard.

Stressing on the fact that the law had been passed and that there was no room to debate the provisions of the Act, he said that the Model Rules were a guideline along which individual states would frame the rules taking into consideration the local conditions, possibilities, and constraints.

He drew attention to the existence of implementation time frames within the Act, and asked the participants to deliberate on the ways and strategies that could be used to handle these time frames.

The Act calls for all schools to be registered with the Government, and the good thing about this would be that a minimum standard would have to be maintained in all schools. If these minimum standards were not maintained, then the schools would have their registration cancelled. He pointed out that there was a danger of harassment for private schools and complications in this context, and stresses the importance of evolving a system whereby implementation would be smooth and transparent.

It would be necessary to prioritise the areas of implementation, taking into consideration the priorities in the State. A workable time frame for the implementation of each aspect would have to be worked out.

One of the major challenges would be the fiscal aspect. Financial resources and allocation for different components would present a challenge.

He pointed out that currently education spending was about 15 percent over the budget allocation. The implementation of the new Act would weigh heavily on the state exchequer, and the challenge would be mobilising resources to meet the projected expenditure of approximately Rs 28,000 crore. He mentioned that even the developed states were finding it difficult to muster the resources required to implement the RTE act, and that it was generally felt that the Centre should contribute towards 90 percent of the resources required for implementation.

Mr Anjani Kumar urged the participants to come up with an implementable road map taking into consideration the ground realities of the State. He said that even though the issues thrown up by the RTE looked huge, it was not a time to be disheartened.

He said that the participants present represented a wide range: NGOs and pressure groups for educational reform, private schools, and stakeholders and it was his belief that the two day consultation would throw up useful recommendations that would help in a viable and priority based implementation road-map for Bihar.


Author: Frank Krishner
Frank Krishner documents several educational initiatives for UNICEF, the State Government agencies, and other International Organisations. This post and subsequent ones on the consultation are for the purpose of general awareness and for the response of the enlightened public.