Saturday 19 May 2018
Friday 18 May 2018
A Sick Society That Manufactures Failures – the True Face of Education in India
Avjit Pathak in The Wire.IN
To gain awareness of the presence of things other than “me and what is mine”, in other words to develop sympathy for the outside world is a way to liberate oneself from egocentricity. To have such a character is the sign of good education. – Devi Prasad, Art: The Basis of Education
Board exams… Entrance tests for medical/engineering colleges… College admissions: where are the youngsters moving? What does growing up mean with the euphoria of success and the stigma of failure? What is the experience of walking through a path defined by others – regimented schools and market-driven forces?
Let me begin with the story of a young boy I have been interacting with for quite some time. Yes, he is in the ‘science’ stream; what is popularly known as PCM (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) is his religion and possibly a road to what the aspirational middle class society regards as ‘success’ – or the moment of being ‘settled’.
With a series of private tutors, coaching centres and exam after exam for getting entry into any of the engineering/medical colleges, there is no breathing space in the life of this 17-year old boy. He is anxious; his parents are worried. Sometimes I feel like talking to him about poetry and cinema, literature and travelogue; he thinks it is useless and his parents too are not very interested in these ‘softer’ dimensions of life. Every moment, they are compelled to think, has to be utilised for achieving ‘success’.
With my sociological sensibilities, I know that he is not alone – he symbolises a social fact, he is the product of an oppressive reality characterised by a faulty pattern of education, parental ambitions and the aggression of hyper-competitiveness resulting from the increasing gap between the number of aspirants and availability of opportunities in an over-populated and uneven society like ours.
Let us try to understand the resultant malady destroying the possibilities innate in the young mind.
‘Success’ has failed them
What is the nature of the mythical ‘success’ they are striving for?
First, in the age of trade and economic utility, it is based on the hierarchy of disciplines. Science/commerce is seen to be superior, practical and lucrative, but a negative orientation is attached to arts/humanities – these ‘soft’/’feminine’ disciplines, it is thought, have no ‘future’, and ‘intelligent’ students are not supposed to opt for these branches of knowledge.
Anyone familiar with school education in India knows how parents and teachers pressurise children to opt for science/commerce even if they are not inclined to it. In fact, many of them are never given the space to look at themselves, and understand their unique traits and aptitudes. This is the beginning of alienation in the child’s life. This alienation is further intensified when the societal pressure restricts their imagination, and forces them to believe that life is necessarily dark and bleak without medical science/engineering/management.
In this reckless preparation for ‘success’ their alienated selves find no joy, no ecstasy; coaching centres have no humour, guide books are devoid of creative imagination, ‘success mantras’ require war strategies, not the spirit of wonder, and the joy of learning is replaced by the neurotic urge to be a ‘topper’.
Second, this ‘success’ is centred on the hierarchy of professions. Money, technocratic sleekness and state power – these three factors play a key role in the making of this hierarchy. In fact, if one is courageous enough to decipher the folk tale of the ‘IIT-IIM syndrome’, one would realise that a mix of money and technological sleekness transforms their ‘products’ into corporate professionals with a good pay package.
In fact, ‘placement’ (your destiny is to find yourself as a well-fed/well-paid employee of the gigantic corporation) is the success index in a society that sanctifies technocratic capitalism; everything revolves around it. No wonder, in popular imagination a youngster – hardly 23-years-old – working as an IT professional in a multinational company and living in a gated community in Bengaluru is considered to be more ‘successful’ than, say, a 50-year old college teacher living in the suburb of Mumbai, and writing a scholarly book on medieval Indian history.
Furthermore, state power still has its aura. In our society, it reinforces the legacy of feudal aristocracy. No wonder, as the UPSC phenomenon suggests, the job of a district collector or a superintendent of police or an income tax officer (imagine their bungalows, office vehicles with red lights, and the brigade of police constables saluting them) continues to fascinate the young mind, particularly from the small towns.
No wonder, like the IIT/IIM entrance test, the UPSC civil service examination seems to have become one of the major national events – the most dominant evaluator for certifying one’s ‘success’ in life.
However, this ‘success’, as I wish to argue, has its own discontents. The reason is that, for most of them, it is an immensely alienating experience. It kills one’s creativity; it makes one one-dimensional; it robs one of the spirit of positive life-energy. Writing all sorts of mock tests conducted by the coaching centres endlessly, or transforming everything – be it the Olympics or the installation of a nuclear reactor or an international conference on climate change – into a typical ‘general studies’ stuff of the UPSC type is by no means a life-affirming experience.
See the march of the other-directed crowd at Kota in Rajasthan – a notorious site of inflated expectations and broken dreams. Or, for that matter, visit the tiny rooms in the narrow lanes of Mukherjee Nagar and Katwaria Sarai in Delhi, and meet the tired/exhausted youngsters from Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh trying to grapple with the Rao’s IAS notes. You realise that to achieve this sort of ‘success’, one fails as a creative being.
Students attend class at a coaching institute in Kota, Rajasthan. Credit: Reuters/Ahmad Masood
No wonder, corruption is rooted in this ‘success manufacturing machine’. The heavy cost of coaching centres, the exorbitant tuition fees in many of these medical/engineering/management colleges, and above all, the burden of donations and capitation fee: from where do you compensate the money you have spent? Is it the inflated dowry rate in a society that has not yet eradicated its patriarchal ethos? Or is it the normalisation of bribery and other malpractices in workplaces—from hospitals to construction sites, from block development offices to police stations?
Likewise, the very nature of this race is that your ‘success’ is assured at the cost of someone else’s failure. The fact is that most of the applicants would fail in this race. Imagine every year the number of ‘failures’ we create. They acquire a sense of stigmatised identity; this affects severely their life-trajectories filled with psychic wound and a sense of loss.
Finally, in this system, there is actually no winner; everyone is a loser. It redefines failure; everyone suffers from a sense of lagging behind. Hence, these days if you get 90% in the board exam, you are sad and depressed because your friends have got more than 95%. Likewise, if instead of pursuing economics at Shri Ram College of Commerce, you do Physics at Hindu College, you are a failure. Or for that matter, despite being in IIT, if you could not make it to the United states, you have failed in life.
In a way, ‘success’ has failed them.
Redefining the calling of life
It is not easy to come out of this trap. As the spectre of unemployment or the notion of a superficial notion of ‘social prestige’ haunts the young mind and their over-protective parents, it becomes exceedingly difficult to strive for meaningful education. Yet, I would insist that no social transformation is possible without the creative spark of human agency; and even in difficult times, we need to try our best to give the young a different vision of life.
It is in this context that I wish to make three points. First, as teachers/educationists/adults we all need to tell them that nothing matters more in life than inner fulfilment. There is no external marker of success – to be truly successful in life is to find joy and meaning in whatever one does, be it farming, nursing and teaching. One need not become like somebody else, one need not be ‘big’ and ‘gorgeous’. One has to be oneself – simple, authentic and confident of one’s own path.
Second, it is important to appreciate the plurality of skills/intelligence/sensitivity needed in diverse modes of occupational and vocational engagement. There is no reason why everyone has to think of joining the IIT; there is no reason why every science student should think of becoming an IT professional. A mature society is one that needs a spectrum of possibilities – engineers as well as filmmakers, doctors, historians, economists and art critics. The task of teachers is to make the child aware of his/her potential.
Third, fear has to be overcome. Youngsters ought to be encouraged to think differently, to take ‘risks’, and experiment with life. Nothing meaningful in life is possible if one is continually pressurised to remain ‘normal’, and opt for a ‘safe/tasted/secure/non-risky’ path. Living meaningfully is to understand the call of the puzzling curves and turning points in life. Karl Marx did not live as a ‘respectable’ employee in a company; Mahatma Gandhi did not end his life as a lawyer; G.M. Muktibodh, despite economic hardships, did not give up poetry; and Medha Patkar did not become a professor of social work in a university.
As adults, we would betray our children if we do not offer anything positive to them, if we metamorphose them into, as Franz Kafka indicated in one of his heart-breaking short stories, ‘insects’ roaming around the four walls of an office cubicle.
To gain awareness of the presence of things other than “me and what is mine”, in other words to develop sympathy for the outside world is a way to liberate oneself from egocentricity. To have such a character is the sign of good education. – Devi Prasad, Art: The Basis of Education
Board exams… Entrance tests for medical/engineering colleges… College admissions: where are the youngsters moving? What does growing up mean with the euphoria of success and the stigma of failure? What is the experience of walking through a path defined by others – regimented schools and market-driven forces?
Let me begin with the story of a young boy I have been interacting with for quite some time. Yes, he is in the ‘science’ stream; what is popularly known as PCM (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) is his religion and possibly a road to what the aspirational middle class society regards as ‘success’ – or the moment of being ‘settled’.
With a series of private tutors, coaching centres and exam after exam for getting entry into any of the engineering/medical colleges, there is no breathing space in the life of this 17-year old boy. He is anxious; his parents are worried. Sometimes I feel like talking to him about poetry and cinema, literature and travelogue; he thinks it is useless and his parents too are not very interested in these ‘softer’ dimensions of life. Every moment, they are compelled to think, has to be utilised for achieving ‘success’.
With my sociological sensibilities, I know that he is not alone – he symbolises a social fact, he is the product of an oppressive reality characterised by a faulty pattern of education, parental ambitions and the aggression of hyper-competitiveness resulting from the increasing gap between the number of aspirants and availability of opportunities in an over-populated and uneven society like ours.
Let us try to understand the resultant malady destroying the possibilities innate in the young mind.
‘Success’ has failed them
What is the nature of the mythical ‘success’ they are striving for?
First, in the age of trade and economic utility, it is based on the hierarchy of disciplines. Science/commerce is seen to be superior, practical and lucrative, but a negative orientation is attached to arts/humanities – these ‘soft’/’feminine’ disciplines, it is thought, have no ‘future’, and ‘intelligent’ students are not supposed to opt for these branches of knowledge.
Anyone familiar with school education in India knows how parents and teachers pressurise children to opt for science/commerce even if they are not inclined to it. In fact, many of them are never given the space to look at themselves, and understand their unique traits and aptitudes. This is the beginning of alienation in the child’s life. This alienation is further intensified when the societal pressure restricts their imagination, and forces them to believe that life is necessarily dark and bleak without medical science/engineering/management.
In this reckless preparation for ‘success’ their alienated selves find no joy, no ecstasy; coaching centres have no humour, guide books are devoid of creative imagination, ‘success mantras’ require war strategies, not the spirit of wonder, and the joy of learning is replaced by the neurotic urge to be a ‘topper’.
Second, this ‘success’ is centred on the hierarchy of professions. Money, technocratic sleekness and state power – these three factors play a key role in the making of this hierarchy. In fact, if one is courageous enough to decipher the folk tale of the ‘IIT-IIM syndrome’, one would realise that a mix of money and technological sleekness transforms their ‘products’ into corporate professionals with a good pay package.
In fact, ‘placement’ (your destiny is to find yourself as a well-fed/well-paid employee of the gigantic corporation) is the success index in a society that sanctifies technocratic capitalism; everything revolves around it. No wonder, in popular imagination a youngster – hardly 23-years-old – working as an IT professional in a multinational company and living in a gated community in Bengaluru is considered to be more ‘successful’ than, say, a 50-year old college teacher living in the suburb of Mumbai, and writing a scholarly book on medieval Indian history.
Furthermore, state power still has its aura. In our society, it reinforces the legacy of feudal aristocracy. No wonder, as the UPSC phenomenon suggests, the job of a district collector or a superintendent of police or an income tax officer (imagine their bungalows, office vehicles with red lights, and the brigade of police constables saluting them) continues to fascinate the young mind, particularly from the small towns.
No wonder, like the IIT/IIM entrance test, the UPSC civil service examination seems to have become one of the major national events – the most dominant evaluator for certifying one’s ‘success’ in life.
However, this ‘success’, as I wish to argue, has its own discontents. The reason is that, for most of them, it is an immensely alienating experience. It kills one’s creativity; it makes one one-dimensional; it robs one of the spirit of positive life-energy. Writing all sorts of mock tests conducted by the coaching centres endlessly, or transforming everything – be it the Olympics or the installation of a nuclear reactor or an international conference on climate change – into a typical ‘general studies’ stuff of the UPSC type is by no means a life-affirming experience.
See the march of the other-directed crowd at Kota in Rajasthan – a notorious site of inflated expectations and broken dreams. Or, for that matter, visit the tiny rooms in the narrow lanes of Mukherjee Nagar and Katwaria Sarai in Delhi, and meet the tired/exhausted youngsters from Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh trying to grapple with the Rao’s IAS notes. You realise that to achieve this sort of ‘success’, one fails as a creative being.
Students attend class at a coaching institute in Kota, Rajasthan. Credit: Reuters/Ahmad Masood
No wonder, corruption is rooted in this ‘success manufacturing machine’. The heavy cost of coaching centres, the exorbitant tuition fees in many of these medical/engineering/management colleges, and above all, the burden of donations and capitation fee: from where do you compensate the money you have spent? Is it the inflated dowry rate in a society that has not yet eradicated its patriarchal ethos? Or is it the normalisation of bribery and other malpractices in workplaces—from hospitals to construction sites, from block development offices to police stations?
Likewise, the very nature of this race is that your ‘success’ is assured at the cost of someone else’s failure. The fact is that most of the applicants would fail in this race. Imagine every year the number of ‘failures’ we create. They acquire a sense of stigmatised identity; this affects severely their life-trajectories filled with psychic wound and a sense of loss.
Finally, in this system, there is actually no winner; everyone is a loser. It redefines failure; everyone suffers from a sense of lagging behind. Hence, these days if you get 90% in the board exam, you are sad and depressed because your friends have got more than 95%. Likewise, if instead of pursuing economics at Shri Ram College of Commerce, you do Physics at Hindu College, you are a failure. Or for that matter, despite being in IIT, if you could not make it to the United states, you have failed in life.
In a way, ‘success’ has failed them.
Redefining the calling of life
It is not easy to come out of this trap. As the spectre of unemployment or the notion of a superficial notion of ‘social prestige’ haunts the young mind and their over-protective parents, it becomes exceedingly difficult to strive for meaningful education. Yet, I would insist that no social transformation is possible without the creative spark of human agency; and even in difficult times, we need to try our best to give the young a different vision of life.
It is in this context that I wish to make three points. First, as teachers/educationists/adults we all need to tell them that nothing matters more in life than inner fulfilment. There is no external marker of success – to be truly successful in life is to find joy and meaning in whatever one does, be it farming, nursing and teaching. One need not become like somebody else, one need not be ‘big’ and ‘gorgeous’. One has to be oneself – simple, authentic and confident of one’s own path.
Second, it is important to appreciate the plurality of skills/intelligence/sensitivity needed in diverse modes of occupational and vocational engagement. There is no reason why everyone has to think of joining the IIT; there is no reason why every science student should think of becoming an IT professional. A mature society is one that needs a spectrum of possibilities – engineers as well as filmmakers, doctors, historians, economists and art critics. The task of teachers is to make the child aware of his/her potential.
Third, fear has to be overcome. Youngsters ought to be encouraged to think differently, to take ‘risks’, and experiment with life. Nothing meaningful in life is possible if one is continually pressurised to remain ‘normal’, and opt for a ‘safe/tasted/secure/non-risky’ path. Living meaningfully is to understand the call of the puzzling curves and turning points in life. Karl Marx did not live as a ‘respectable’ employee in a company; Mahatma Gandhi did not end his life as a lawyer; G.M. Muktibodh, despite economic hardships, did not give up poetry; and Medha Patkar did not become a professor of social work in a university.
As adults, we would betray our children if we do not offer anything positive to them, if we metamorphose them into, as Franz Kafka indicated in one of his heart-breaking short stories, ‘insects’ roaming around the four walls of an office cubicle.
Struggling with revision? Here's how to prepare for exams more efficiently
Abby Young-Powell in The Guardian
If you’re one to put hours into revising for an exam only to be disappointed with the results, then you may need to rethink your revision methods. You could be wasting time on inefficient techniques, says Bradley Busch, a registered psychologist and director of InnerDrive. “You get people putting in lots of effort, but not in a directed way,” he says. Here are some of the common ways students unwittingly waste study time, and what experts recommend you do instead.
Re-reading and highlighting notes
Re-reading and highlighting notes may feel like work, but it often won’t achieve much. The same goes for spending hours drawing up a revision timetable. Instead, psychologists recommend a technique called retrieval practice. This is anything that makes your brain work to come up with an answer. It can include doing quizzes, multiple choice tests, and past papers. “To really learn something, you’ve got to transfer information from working memory into long term memory, where you can store and later retrieve it,” says David Cox, a neuroscientist and journalist. “Committing something to long term memory isn’t easy, so it shouldn’t feel easy.”
Last-minute cramming
Beware of the planning fallacy, which is our tendency to underestimate how much time we really need to do something. It leads to sitting outside the exam hall with two hours to spare, desperately cramming. This is not an effective way to learn. “The information you gain quickly, you can lose quickly too,” says Busch.
The opposite of cramming is spacing, which is the practice of spacing out your revision over time, doing little and often. So one hour a day for seven days is better than cramming seven hours into one day, for example. It’s also good to incorporate interleaving into your revision. This is a fancy way of saying you should mix up your subjects during a revision session. “It forces you to think about the problem and the strategy you come up with,” says Busch.
Making a study playlist
Sifting through the recommended study playlists on Spotify, trying to work out which songs will help you to concentrate, is usually a waste of time. But while listening to music can help you relax, and some students may have “trained” themselves to concentrate with it on, it’s still better to study in silence, Cox says. “You’re never going to be as productive having music on in the background, because it’s preventing your brain from acting at maximum capacity.”
Checking your phone
We may check our phones as often as once every 12 minutes. Obviously, this is a major distraction. That’s not all: research has shown that just having your phone in sight when you revise is enough to negatively affect your concentration, even if you don’t use it. And it’s a common trap to fall into. “I usually have my phone on silent mode, but to be honest, if it’s there I always check it,” says Chiara Fiorillo, who studies at City, University of London. Ideally it’s best to banish your phone to another room altogether.
If you’re one to put hours into revising for an exam only to be disappointed with the results, then you may need to rethink your revision methods. You could be wasting time on inefficient techniques, says Bradley Busch, a registered psychologist and director of InnerDrive. “You get people putting in lots of effort, but not in a directed way,” he says. Here are some of the common ways students unwittingly waste study time, and what experts recommend you do instead.
Re-reading and highlighting notes
Re-reading and highlighting notes may feel like work, but it often won’t achieve much. The same goes for spending hours drawing up a revision timetable. Instead, psychologists recommend a technique called retrieval practice. This is anything that makes your brain work to come up with an answer. It can include doing quizzes, multiple choice tests, and past papers. “To really learn something, you’ve got to transfer information from working memory into long term memory, where you can store and later retrieve it,” says David Cox, a neuroscientist and journalist. “Committing something to long term memory isn’t easy, so it shouldn’t feel easy.”
Last-minute cramming
Beware of the planning fallacy, which is our tendency to underestimate how much time we really need to do something. It leads to sitting outside the exam hall with two hours to spare, desperately cramming. This is not an effective way to learn. “The information you gain quickly, you can lose quickly too,” says Busch.
The opposite of cramming is spacing, which is the practice of spacing out your revision over time, doing little and often. So one hour a day for seven days is better than cramming seven hours into one day, for example. It’s also good to incorporate interleaving into your revision. This is a fancy way of saying you should mix up your subjects during a revision session. “It forces you to think about the problem and the strategy you come up with,” says Busch.
Making a study playlist
Sifting through the recommended study playlists on Spotify, trying to work out which songs will help you to concentrate, is usually a waste of time. But while listening to music can help you relax, and some students may have “trained” themselves to concentrate with it on, it’s still better to study in silence, Cox says. “You’re never going to be as productive having music on in the background, because it’s preventing your brain from acting at maximum capacity.”
Checking your phone
We may check our phones as often as once every 12 minutes. Obviously, this is a major distraction. That’s not all: research has shown that just having your phone in sight when you revise is enough to negatively affect your concentration, even if you don’t use it. And it’s a common trap to fall into. “I usually have my phone on silent mode, but to be honest, if it’s there I always check it,” says Chiara Fiorillo, who studies at City, University of London. Ideally it’s best to banish your phone to another room altogether.
The many instances of ‘resort politics’ in India
Sruthi Radhakrishnan in The Hindu
From a fractured electoral verdict, the natural progression is towards political impasse. And in the case of Assembly elections in India, it is then a question of whom the Governor sides with. When the numbers are touch-and-go, political parties often get into horse trading and poaching of MLAs. In such instances it becomes the responsibility of party leaders to ensure that their MLAs are not baited by others
Enter ‘resort politics.’ Over the last few decades, party leaders have taken to squirreling away their MLAs to vacation spots or other hideaways to stave off poachers.
Here are some of the instances when parties ‘resorted’ to this practice:
Haryana
Haryana in 1982 saw the rise of the Indian National Lok Dal, a regional challenger to the Congress.After the elections, despite not having enough seats, Governor G.D. Tapase invited the Congress to form the government, ignoring the INLD-BJP combine. Reportedly, the then-INLD chief Devi Lal grabbed the Governor by his neck for his decision, and promptly took his 48 MLAs, both from the INLD and the BJP, and holed up with them in a hotel in New Delhi. This didn’t stop a dissenting MLA from escaping, Shawshank Redemption-style, by slithering down a water pipe. The Congress went on to form the government anyway.
Karnataka
Although herding MLAs to resorts has been done in many States, Karnataka seems to hold the top spot in the number of times this has been done. Beginning with Ramakrishna Hegde in 1983, who sought to save his government from being dissolved by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to B.S. Yeddyurappa in the period between 2009-11, and also in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2012. During a crucial trust vote in the Assembly, around 80 BJP MLAs were taken away to a luxury resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru; and this happened multiple times in the 2009-11 period.
Andhra Pradesh
N.T. Rama Rao had to go to the U.S. for an open heart surgery in 1984, but in his absence, Governor Thakur Ramlal installed N. Bhaskar Rao as the Chief Minister. The actor-turned-politician took the TDP’s legislators to a resort in Bengaluru, and then to Delhi. The government in Andhra Pradesh collapsed, NTR took out the TDP equivalent of a rath yatra, and came back to power in two months, by which time, Indira Gandhi had installed Shankar Dayal Sharma as the State’s Governor.
N. Chandrababu Naidu took a page out of his father-in-law’s rule book in 1995 when he wanted to oust NTR from the party. MLAs loyal to Mr. Naidu were sequestered in a Hyderabad hotel until he could pull off a coup and take over the party.
Gujarat
In 1995, Shankersinh Vaghela rebelled against the BJP leadership with 47 MLAs on his side. Mr. Vaghela took them to a high-end hotel in Madhya Pradesh, where they were kept for seven days. Eventually a compromise was worked out and the then Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel was replaced with a Vaghela supporter, Suresh Mehta. Even this didn’t help as Vaghela, soon after losing his Lok Sabha seat, left the party with his loyalists in tow, bringing down the State government.
Uttar Pradesh
Governor Romesh Bhandari dismissed the Kalyan Singh-led BJP government in 1998 during the Lok Sabha elections, and Jagdambika Pal, who was then with the Congress, was appointed as Chief Minister for 48 hours. Pending a floor test, the BJP flew its members to a secluded place, after which Mr. Singh came back and won the confidence vote. Mr. Singh also challenged the Governor’s decision in the Allahabad High Court, and armed with the High Court’s ruling in his favour, he was re-appointed as Chief Minister.
Bihar
The Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal sent their MLAs to a hotel in Patna in 2000, afraid that JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar, who had been invited to form the government, would lure their legislators. Mr. Kumar was Chief Minister for seven days before he lost the trust vote. In 2005, Lok Janshakti Party MLAs stayed in a hotel in Jamshedpur to provide the JD(U) with the requisite numbers to form a government, with support from the BJP.
Maharashtra
To ensure that his MLAs were not won over by the Shiv Sena-BJP opposition in 2002, then Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh packed them off to a luxury resort in Bengaluru, and visited them to make sure they didn’t jump ship. When asked by The Hindu why the MLAs had been flown to Bangalore if he was so confident of their loyalty, Deshmukh said it had been done to prevent “street fights” in Mumbai.
Uttarakhand
In 2016, after the Congress government in Uttarakhand booted out rebel MLAs, the BJP flew its legislators to a hotel in Jaipur ahead of a confidence vote by former Chief Minister Harish Rawat. A protracted war of words ensued, with the Congress and the BJP accusing each other of horse-trading. The Centre decided to impose President’s Rule in the state, an order that was overturned by the High Court. The Congress then lost the Assembly elections in 2017.
Tamil Nadu
After O. Panneerselvam resigned his Chief Minister-ship in 2017 and accused the then AIADMK leader V.K. Sasikala of forcing him to do so, Sasikala took matters into her own hands and sent loyal MLAs to a resort near Chennai. The rebel faction under Mr. Panneerselvam and the Sasikala-led Edappadi K. Palaniswami faction eventually joined hands after she was convicted in a disproportionate assets case.
Enter ‘resort politics.’ Over the last few decades, party leaders have taken to squirreling away their MLAs to vacation spots or other hideaways to stave off poachers.
Here are some of the instances when parties ‘resorted’ to this practice:
Haryana
Haryana in 1982 saw the rise of the Indian National Lok Dal, a regional challenger to the Congress.After the elections, despite not having enough seats, Governor G.D. Tapase invited the Congress to form the government, ignoring the INLD-BJP combine. Reportedly, the then-INLD chief Devi Lal grabbed the Governor by his neck for his decision, and promptly took his 48 MLAs, both from the INLD and the BJP, and holed up with them in a hotel in New Delhi. This didn’t stop a dissenting MLA from escaping, Shawshank Redemption-style, by slithering down a water pipe. The Congress went on to form the government anyway.
Karnataka
Although herding MLAs to resorts has been done in many States, Karnataka seems to hold the top spot in the number of times this has been done. Beginning with Ramakrishna Hegde in 1983, who sought to save his government from being dissolved by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to B.S. Yeddyurappa in the period between 2009-11, and also in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2012. During a crucial trust vote in the Assembly, around 80 BJP MLAs were taken away to a luxury resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru; and this happened multiple times in the 2009-11 period.
Andhra Pradesh
N.T. Rama Rao had to go to the U.S. for an open heart surgery in 1984, but in his absence, Governor Thakur Ramlal installed N. Bhaskar Rao as the Chief Minister. The actor-turned-politician took the TDP’s legislators to a resort in Bengaluru, and then to Delhi. The government in Andhra Pradesh collapsed, NTR took out the TDP equivalent of a rath yatra, and came back to power in two months, by which time, Indira Gandhi had installed Shankar Dayal Sharma as the State’s Governor.
N. Chandrababu Naidu took a page out of his father-in-law’s rule book in 1995 when he wanted to oust NTR from the party. MLAs loyal to Mr. Naidu were sequestered in a Hyderabad hotel until he could pull off a coup and take over the party.
Gujarat
In 1995, Shankersinh Vaghela rebelled against the BJP leadership with 47 MLAs on his side. Mr. Vaghela took them to a high-end hotel in Madhya Pradesh, where they were kept for seven days. Eventually a compromise was worked out and the then Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel was replaced with a Vaghela supporter, Suresh Mehta. Even this didn’t help as Vaghela, soon after losing his Lok Sabha seat, left the party with his loyalists in tow, bringing down the State government.
Uttar Pradesh
Governor Romesh Bhandari dismissed the Kalyan Singh-led BJP government in 1998 during the Lok Sabha elections, and Jagdambika Pal, who was then with the Congress, was appointed as Chief Minister for 48 hours. Pending a floor test, the BJP flew its members to a secluded place, after which Mr. Singh came back and won the confidence vote. Mr. Singh also challenged the Governor’s decision in the Allahabad High Court, and armed with the High Court’s ruling in his favour, he was re-appointed as Chief Minister.
Bihar
The Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal sent their MLAs to a hotel in Patna in 2000, afraid that JD(U)'s Nitish Kumar, who had been invited to form the government, would lure their legislators. Mr. Kumar was Chief Minister for seven days before he lost the trust vote. In 2005, Lok Janshakti Party MLAs stayed in a hotel in Jamshedpur to provide the JD(U) with the requisite numbers to form a government, with support from the BJP.
Maharashtra
To ensure that his MLAs were not won over by the Shiv Sena-BJP opposition in 2002, then Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh packed them off to a luxury resort in Bengaluru, and visited them to make sure they didn’t jump ship. When asked by The Hindu why the MLAs had been flown to Bangalore if he was so confident of their loyalty, Deshmukh said it had been done to prevent “street fights” in Mumbai.
Uttarakhand
In 2016, after the Congress government in Uttarakhand booted out rebel MLAs, the BJP flew its legislators to a hotel in Jaipur ahead of a confidence vote by former Chief Minister Harish Rawat. A protracted war of words ensued, with the Congress and the BJP accusing each other of horse-trading. The Centre decided to impose President’s Rule in the state, an order that was overturned by the High Court. The Congress then lost the Assembly elections in 2017.
Tamil Nadu
After O. Panneerselvam resigned his Chief Minister-ship in 2017 and accused the then AIADMK leader V.K. Sasikala of forcing him to do so, Sasikala took matters into her own hands and sent loyal MLAs to a resort near Chennai. The rebel faction under Mr. Panneerselvam and the Sasikala-led Edappadi K. Palaniswami faction eventually joined hands after she was convicted in a disproportionate assets case.
Forget the Markles – who in their right mind would want to marry into the royal family?
Mark Steele in The Independent
Oooo it’s so exciting, the great day is nearly here! For weeks the news has been full of stories such as “Residents at a nursing home in Keswick have joined in the celebrations by selling all their hearing aids and dialysis machines so they can afford the ingredients to make a giant apple crumble in the shape of Harry and Meghan”.
Kay Burley will tell us on Sky News: “You can see as you look around Windsor, even the flies are buzzing with a joyful air. The worms in the park are giving off a distinct glow this morning – they know this is a very special day indeed.”
Then Nicholas Witchell will report: “Prince Louis, one month old, is said to be ‘extremely thrilled’ about the wedding, and the palace has confirmed his poos have been especially runny the last couple of days in anticipation of the wonderful day.”
Every single broadcast of anything will be in honour of events at Windsor. The shipping forecast will go: “Finisterre, gale force 7, rising to 8, waves cascading like Meghan’s beautiful dress, undulating with magisterial glory. Hurricane later.”
Porn channels will mark the occasion by showing films in which the participants grunt the top 100 people in line to the throne during the action, timing the climax to coincide with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
One typical story was a report from Reuters that “a bakery in the picturesque town of Windsor, where Britain’s sixth in line to the throne will marry his American fiancée on Saturday, is serving up cappuccino and latte coffees topped with a frothy portrait of the couple”.
It’s delightful how many businesses have joined in the celebrations in this way, so you see adverts such as: “Celebrate the joy of the royal wedding by buying a commemorative garden fork from Homebase. What better way to be reminded of this magical day, than to be jolted back to that perfect moment every time you turn over the soil in your garden?”
Maybe Windsor’s drug dealers can produce a royal wedding special edition skunk that gets you so out of your tree you imagine you’re Princess Caroline of Brunswick.
In a charming gesture, the homeless of Windsor are being moved out of their usual shop doorways for the occasion, and you can’t help imagining the joy of being homeless in Windsor and hearing the local authority tell you: “I’m afraid there aren’t any empty rooms in Windsor at the moment. There’s a dreadful shortage of property round here.”
But this royal wedding has attained a special feature, because it turns out the Markle family haven’t all behaved in the idyllic way we might expect. Luckily, our newspapers have reacted calmly, and soothed the situation with headlines such as “WEDDING CRISIS, FRUITBAT DAD RUINS EVERYTHING, WAR NOW CERTAIN”.
One Daily Mail columnist informed us Thomas Markle “seems to live off chicken tacos and six-packs of beer”. The evidence for this is he was photographed coming out of a shop holding a plastic bag. So you can understand the concern, because anyone who has ever come out of a shop with a plastic bag was clearly carrying something in that bag, so the most likely products were chicken tacos and a six-pack of beer, which they live on, exclusive to any other items.
Thomas Markle, like Meghan herself, has been divorced, and it is a dreadful worry that a dysfunctional family is being blended into a normal harmonious one.
This is why I’m sure newspapers will announce the Markles are “extremely concerned” about the family that Megan’s marrying into. And they’re “especially perturbed” that a prominent place in the ceremony has been given to Harry’s father, who demands someone runs his bath for him and insisted on dragging his mistress around with him throughout his first marriage. So maybe it’s for the best if he doesn’t go.
Instead many British newspapers are furious with Thomas Markle, and you can understand why, as they can’t bear anyone who might exploit this glorious occasion just to make some extra sales.
The behaviour of Megan’s dad must be particularly upsetting for the Windsors, as they’ve never taken the slightest interest in preserving their wealth, affecting a happy-go-lucky air, whose motto is “what’s mine is yours”.
Thomas Markle is also accused of using a royal marriage to attract publicity, and no one has ever stooped this low before. For example, Pippa Middleton’s column in Vanity Fair is nothing to do with the fact she’s Kate’s sister – she got the job because of her incisive analysis of the Japanese economy.
But to maintain the glory, we have to promote the idea these characters are special. They weren’t just born into a certain line – they’re in place through merit. The Queen is the monarch because she toiled so hard, starting out as a humble princess and working her way up.
Then we get the tales of how wonderful they are, so politicians give us snippets such as: “Did you know Her Majesty is a marvellous snooker player? Her safety play is simply marvellous.”
Then there’s calamity and disbelief if it turns out they’re like any other family, full of flaws and chaos, except even worse because they’re supposed to be divine. Maybe this is the trouble with royalists; they can’t stand the royal family. If they really cared for them, they’d be like the 52 per cent of the country who say they’re not interested in the wedding, and leave them alone to get married in Windsor Town Hall, with a reception above a gastropub where Thomas Markle could make a hilarious embarrassing speech, and present a buffet of chicken tacos and unlimited six-packs of beer.
Oooo it’s so exciting, the great day is nearly here! For weeks the news has been full of stories such as “Residents at a nursing home in Keswick have joined in the celebrations by selling all their hearing aids and dialysis machines so they can afford the ingredients to make a giant apple crumble in the shape of Harry and Meghan”.
Kay Burley will tell us on Sky News: “You can see as you look around Windsor, even the flies are buzzing with a joyful air. The worms in the park are giving off a distinct glow this morning – they know this is a very special day indeed.”
Then Nicholas Witchell will report: “Prince Louis, one month old, is said to be ‘extremely thrilled’ about the wedding, and the palace has confirmed his poos have been especially runny the last couple of days in anticipation of the wonderful day.”
Every single broadcast of anything will be in honour of events at Windsor. The shipping forecast will go: “Finisterre, gale force 7, rising to 8, waves cascading like Meghan’s beautiful dress, undulating with magisterial glory. Hurricane later.”
Porn channels will mark the occasion by showing films in which the participants grunt the top 100 people in line to the throne during the action, timing the climax to coincide with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
One typical story was a report from Reuters that “a bakery in the picturesque town of Windsor, where Britain’s sixth in line to the throne will marry his American fiancée on Saturday, is serving up cappuccino and latte coffees topped with a frothy portrait of the couple”.
It’s delightful how many businesses have joined in the celebrations in this way, so you see adverts such as: “Celebrate the joy of the royal wedding by buying a commemorative garden fork from Homebase. What better way to be reminded of this magical day, than to be jolted back to that perfect moment every time you turn over the soil in your garden?”
Maybe Windsor’s drug dealers can produce a royal wedding special edition skunk that gets you so out of your tree you imagine you’re Princess Caroline of Brunswick.
In a charming gesture, the homeless of Windsor are being moved out of their usual shop doorways for the occasion, and you can’t help imagining the joy of being homeless in Windsor and hearing the local authority tell you: “I’m afraid there aren’t any empty rooms in Windsor at the moment. There’s a dreadful shortage of property round here.”
But this royal wedding has attained a special feature, because it turns out the Markle family haven’t all behaved in the idyllic way we might expect. Luckily, our newspapers have reacted calmly, and soothed the situation with headlines such as “WEDDING CRISIS, FRUITBAT DAD RUINS EVERYTHING, WAR NOW CERTAIN”.
One Daily Mail columnist informed us Thomas Markle “seems to live off chicken tacos and six-packs of beer”. The evidence for this is he was photographed coming out of a shop holding a plastic bag. So you can understand the concern, because anyone who has ever come out of a shop with a plastic bag was clearly carrying something in that bag, so the most likely products were chicken tacos and a six-pack of beer, which they live on, exclusive to any other items.
Thomas Markle, like Meghan herself, has been divorced, and it is a dreadful worry that a dysfunctional family is being blended into a normal harmonious one.
This is why I’m sure newspapers will announce the Markles are “extremely concerned” about the family that Megan’s marrying into. And they’re “especially perturbed” that a prominent place in the ceremony has been given to Harry’s father, who demands someone runs his bath for him and insisted on dragging his mistress around with him throughout his first marriage. So maybe it’s for the best if he doesn’t go.
Instead many British newspapers are furious with Thomas Markle, and you can understand why, as they can’t bear anyone who might exploit this glorious occasion just to make some extra sales.
The behaviour of Megan’s dad must be particularly upsetting for the Windsors, as they’ve never taken the slightest interest in preserving their wealth, affecting a happy-go-lucky air, whose motto is “what’s mine is yours”.
Thomas Markle is also accused of using a royal marriage to attract publicity, and no one has ever stooped this low before. For example, Pippa Middleton’s column in Vanity Fair is nothing to do with the fact she’s Kate’s sister – she got the job because of her incisive analysis of the Japanese economy.
But to maintain the glory, we have to promote the idea these characters are special. They weren’t just born into a certain line – they’re in place through merit. The Queen is the monarch because she toiled so hard, starting out as a humble princess and working her way up.
Then we get the tales of how wonderful they are, so politicians give us snippets such as: “Did you know Her Majesty is a marvellous snooker player? Her safety play is simply marvellous.”
Then there’s calamity and disbelief if it turns out they’re like any other family, full of flaws and chaos, except even worse because they’re supposed to be divine. Maybe this is the trouble with royalists; they can’t stand the royal family. If they really cared for them, they’d be like the 52 per cent of the country who say they’re not interested in the wedding, and leave them alone to get married in Windsor Town Hall, with a reception above a gastropub where Thomas Markle could make a hilarious embarrassing speech, and present a buffet of chicken tacos and unlimited six-packs of beer.
Bread-makers, Brexit and the power of the least-bad option
In politics, as in marketing, offering a third choice can be a game-changer writes Tim Harford in The Financial Times
Imagine that you sell bread-making machines. Your task is complicated by the fact that most people have only a hazy grasp of what a bread-making machine does, let alone the joys and sorrows of owning one.
Nevertheless, there is a simple trick that will help these machines to fly off your shelves: next to what seems to be a perfectly adequate $150 bread-maker, place a $250 bread-maker with a long list of bewildering extra functions. Customers will think to themselves: “I don’t need all that nonsense. The cheaper, simpler bread maker is the better option.” Some of them will buy it, even though they would not have otherwise.
Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford University, attests that the kitchenware company Williams-Sonoma doubled their sales of bread-makers in the early 1990s using this sort of technique. Mr Simonson, along with Amos Tversky, one of the fathers of behavioural economics, demonstrated similar preference reversals in a laboratory setting.
Mr Simonson and Tversky showed that when people are wavering between two options, you can change what they choose by offering a third, unattractive option. A $1,000 camera might seem extravagant unless there’s a $5,000 camera sitting next to it. The grande sized cup at Starbucks seems restrained when put next to the venti, a Brobdingnagian vat of flavoured warm milk.
All this brings us to Brexit. What we voters feel about different flavours of Brexit (hard, soft, train-crash) depends in part on facts, in part on propaganda, and in part on our prejudices. But it also depends on the comparisons that come readily to mind.
That means that the re-appearance of the European Economic Area is an intriguing development in the debate. The House of Lords recently voted to keep the UK in the EEA, and therefore the single market, after leaving the EU. This “Norway option” seems a popular enough plan: a BMG opinion poll in January found 52 per cent of people in favour of staying in the single market, and only 14 per cent of people against. In these polarised times that is as decisive a margin as one might expect for anything. Nevertheless, both prime minister Theresa May and the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, have rejected the single market option, making it unlikely.
This might seem illogical. Why not go for a popular compromise that respects both the close vote and the fact that the Leave campaign won the referendum? But, remembering the tale of the bread-maker, it makes perfect sense that Mr Corbyn and Mrs May, both Euro-sceptics, should fear the Norway option being placed in front of voters.
To most voters, the EU is like a bread-maker: we don’t really understand what it does and we don’t know what to think about it. The Norway option clarifies matters in a way that does not help Leavers. It is very much like being in the EU, except just a little bit worse. If it becomes a salient possibility, it makes staying in the EU look rather attractive by comparison.
A hard Brexit will probably go quite badly for the UK, but it does have the merit of being a very different path to remaining in the EU. A Norway-option Brexit might well work out smoothly, but it is almost guaranteed to underperform the option of not leaving at all. No wonder Brexiters — so cavalier about having their cake and eating it before the vote — are now determined to ensure that the Norway option is taboo. They realise that if the British public decides that staying in the single market is a plausible plan, they might eventually reach the conclusion that staying in the EU itself would be even wiser.
This sort of preference reversal can occur in other circumstances, too. A hard Brexit offers temptations to many voters: control over immigration; an independent trade policy; no more membership fees to Brussels. It also offers obvious risks: leaving the largest single market in the world; damage to the political settlement in Northern Ireland; setbacks to scientific and diplomatic collaboration. Staying in the EU merely offers business as usual.
Do we tend to find a mix of stark risks and clear rewards appealing? That depends on whether the costs or the opportunities seem more salient. During the referendum campaign, the opportunities opened by Leavers seemed expansive, while the costs (“lower GDP by 2030!”) were vague and dull. During the negotiation process, it is the opportunities that are starting to seem vague while the costs are becoming vivid, at least to the small number of people who are paying attention.
None of this makes it likely that Brexit will be reversed. The simple fact that Leave won the referendum is likely to be proof against all sorts of psychological subtleties. Yet these seem to be nerve-racking times for the Brexiters.
It was always clear that asking an absurdly simple question about an absurdly complicated decision was unlikely to work out well. There is one ironic consolation: however befuddled our referendum decision might have been, the divided cabinet is now doing its best to make us, the great British public, seem like philosopher kings by comparison.
Imagine that you sell bread-making machines. Your task is complicated by the fact that most people have only a hazy grasp of what a bread-making machine does, let alone the joys and sorrows of owning one.
Nevertheless, there is a simple trick that will help these machines to fly off your shelves: next to what seems to be a perfectly adequate $150 bread-maker, place a $250 bread-maker with a long list of bewildering extra functions. Customers will think to themselves: “I don’t need all that nonsense. The cheaper, simpler bread maker is the better option.” Some of them will buy it, even though they would not have otherwise.
Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford University, attests that the kitchenware company Williams-Sonoma doubled their sales of bread-makers in the early 1990s using this sort of technique. Mr Simonson, along with Amos Tversky, one of the fathers of behavioural economics, demonstrated similar preference reversals in a laboratory setting.
Mr Simonson and Tversky showed that when people are wavering between two options, you can change what they choose by offering a third, unattractive option. A $1,000 camera might seem extravagant unless there’s a $5,000 camera sitting next to it. The grande sized cup at Starbucks seems restrained when put next to the venti, a Brobdingnagian vat of flavoured warm milk.
All this brings us to Brexit. What we voters feel about different flavours of Brexit (hard, soft, train-crash) depends in part on facts, in part on propaganda, and in part on our prejudices. But it also depends on the comparisons that come readily to mind.
That means that the re-appearance of the European Economic Area is an intriguing development in the debate. The House of Lords recently voted to keep the UK in the EEA, and therefore the single market, after leaving the EU. This “Norway option” seems a popular enough plan: a BMG opinion poll in January found 52 per cent of people in favour of staying in the single market, and only 14 per cent of people against. In these polarised times that is as decisive a margin as one might expect for anything. Nevertheless, both prime minister Theresa May and the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, have rejected the single market option, making it unlikely.
This might seem illogical. Why not go for a popular compromise that respects both the close vote and the fact that the Leave campaign won the referendum? But, remembering the tale of the bread-maker, it makes perfect sense that Mr Corbyn and Mrs May, both Euro-sceptics, should fear the Norway option being placed in front of voters.
To most voters, the EU is like a bread-maker: we don’t really understand what it does and we don’t know what to think about it. The Norway option clarifies matters in a way that does not help Leavers. It is very much like being in the EU, except just a little bit worse. If it becomes a salient possibility, it makes staying in the EU look rather attractive by comparison.
A hard Brexit will probably go quite badly for the UK, but it does have the merit of being a very different path to remaining in the EU. A Norway-option Brexit might well work out smoothly, but it is almost guaranteed to underperform the option of not leaving at all. No wonder Brexiters — so cavalier about having their cake and eating it before the vote — are now determined to ensure that the Norway option is taboo. They realise that if the British public decides that staying in the single market is a plausible plan, they might eventually reach the conclusion that staying in the EU itself would be even wiser.
This sort of preference reversal can occur in other circumstances, too. A hard Brexit offers temptations to many voters: control over immigration; an independent trade policy; no more membership fees to Brussels. It also offers obvious risks: leaving the largest single market in the world; damage to the political settlement in Northern Ireland; setbacks to scientific and diplomatic collaboration. Staying in the EU merely offers business as usual.
Do we tend to find a mix of stark risks and clear rewards appealing? That depends on whether the costs or the opportunities seem more salient. During the referendum campaign, the opportunities opened by Leavers seemed expansive, while the costs (“lower GDP by 2030!”) were vague and dull. During the negotiation process, it is the opportunities that are starting to seem vague while the costs are becoming vivid, at least to the small number of people who are paying attention.
None of this makes it likely that Brexit will be reversed. The simple fact that Leave won the referendum is likely to be proof against all sorts of psychological subtleties. Yet these seem to be nerve-racking times for the Brexiters.
It was always clear that asking an absurdly simple question about an absurdly complicated decision was unlikely to work out well. There is one ironic consolation: however befuddled our referendum decision might have been, the divided cabinet is now doing its best to make us, the great British public, seem like philosopher kings by comparison.
Pakistan - Pity The Nation
Najam Sethi in The Friday Times
If the Miltablishment is the irresistible force, then Nawaz Sharif is becoming an immovable object. Indeed, the more the Miltablishment engineers political change to suit its designs, the more Nawaz Sharif strengthens his narrative of “victimhood” in the popular imagination by exposing its past machinations.
Mr Sharif is being branded a “traitor” and “Indian agent” by the Miltablishment and its minions for publicly challenging its national security paradigm in which non-state militant actors continue to play a central role in asymmetric strategies at home and abroad. It is interesting, however, that he is not the first, and he certainly won’t be the last to admit or challenge this fact. General (retd) Hameed Gul (ex-ISI) boasted of the fact while General (retd) Mahmud Durrani (ex-NSA) and General Pervez Musharraf (ex-COAS/President) candidly admitted it. Asif Khosa (ex-IGP/ex-FIA) and Imran Khan have both publicly criticized this national security “contingency” as proving harmful to the cause of Pakistan but they have done so without arousing the ire of the Miltablishment. Indeed, every academic, local or foreign, worth his or her salt has penned reams on the subject, almost always in critical mode, but no book or article has been banned in Pakistan for articulating such views. More specifically, everything about the Mumbai attack of 2008 has been revealed, either in Pakistan or in India and the USA, in the media or during various court trials of various accused, including the role of the “hidden hand” of the deep state. So, what’s the big deal about Nawaz Sharif alluding to much the same thing today?
In 1964, President General Ayub Khan accused Fatima Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam’s sister, of being “pro-India and pro-America” when she stood up to challenge his legitimacy at the polls. Ironically enough, Nawaz Sharif is now faced with the same allegations when he is seeking to challenge the Miltablishment’s favourites in the forthcoming elections. General Ayub rigged the 1965 elections and but didn’t last long enough to enjoy the fruits of his victory. Will the current front runners meet the same fate?
The Miltablishment may be arrogant and self-righteous but it is not unaware or uncritical of the negative role and dire consequences that these non-state actors have spawned in domestic and foreign affairs. It claims to be seeking ways and means to minimize the militant role of “some” of these actors without directly provoking them and destabilizing the state in unmanageable ways. Its anger at Nawaz Sharif is directed not so much at his challenge of their strategic national security narrative but at his refusal to seek their advice on how to decommission these non-state actors or exploit them tactically in the realm of policy. Therefore, while it may be kosher to privately admit that Mumbai was a blunder that badly backfired, doing so in front of Pakistan’s adversaries is not okay because it is bound to extract a heavy penalty.
The Miltablishment is also angry at Nawaz Sharif for trying to diminish its predominant role in national life by “defaming” its institutional chiefs. General Musharraf’s “treason” trial is the original sin, followed by attempts to degrade General Raheel Sharif’s personal credentials.
The Miltablishment’s outrage over Mr Sharif’s latest remarks is in line with its indignation over Dawnleaks. It did not take umbrage when he expressed negative sentiments in the NSC meeting about the role of these non-state actors controlled by the Miltablishment. But it saw red when he leaked it to the media because it suspected that the leak was aimed at endearing himself to the international community at the cost of the Miltablishment instead of effecting a united civil-military front against it. It may be recalled that its reaction was much the same against Mr Asif Zardari following the Osama bin Laden-Abbotatabad affair in 2012 when it accused Ambassador Hussain Haqqani in Memogate of acting “treasonably” against the “interests of Pakistan” (read Miltablishment). It is once again in the same angry reaction-mode: it sees Nawaz Sharif as trying to save his skin at home by appealing to the international community as the good guy and portraying the Miltablishment as the evil empire.
The Miltablishment felt humiliated and resentful when Nawaz Sharif sacked COAS General Jehangir Karamat three months before his retirement in 1998 for merely supporting the idea of a National Security Council. It hit back in 1999 when he tried to sack General Musharraf for his irresponsible Kargil adventure. The two sides mended fences to jointly take up cudgels against a common PPP foe in 2012. Now they are at each other’s throats again, with the Miltablishment making common cause with former adversaries. And so it goes on.
The Miltablishment has eliminated anyone who has dared to cross its path and its national security policies have only wrought fear and instability. The politicians, too, without exception, have been corrupt, incompetent or authoritarian. Pity the nation that has been so trampled upon by its custodians since independence.
If the Miltablishment is the irresistible force, then Nawaz Sharif is becoming an immovable object. Indeed, the more the Miltablishment engineers political change to suit its designs, the more Nawaz Sharif strengthens his narrative of “victimhood” in the popular imagination by exposing its past machinations.
Mr Sharif is being branded a “traitor” and “Indian agent” by the Miltablishment and its minions for publicly challenging its national security paradigm in which non-state militant actors continue to play a central role in asymmetric strategies at home and abroad. It is interesting, however, that he is not the first, and he certainly won’t be the last to admit or challenge this fact. General (retd) Hameed Gul (ex-ISI) boasted of the fact while General (retd) Mahmud Durrani (ex-NSA) and General Pervez Musharraf (ex-COAS/President) candidly admitted it. Asif Khosa (ex-IGP/ex-FIA) and Imran Khan have both publicly criticized this national security “contingency” as proving harmful to the cause of Pakistan but they have done so without arousing the ire of the Miltablishment. Indeed, every academic, local or foreign, worth his or her salt has penned reams on the subject, almost always in critical mode, but no book or article has been banned in Pakistan for articulating such views. More specifically, everything about the Mumbai attack of 2008 has been revealed, either in Pakistan or in India and the USA, in the media or during various court trials of various accused, including the role of the “hidden hand” of the deep state. So, what’s the big deal about Nawaz Sharif alluding to much the same thing today?
In 1964, President General Ayub Khan accused Fatima Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam’s sister, of being “pro-India and pro-America” when she stood up to challenge his legitimacy at the polls. Ironically enough, Nawaz Sharif is now faced with the same allegations when he is seeking to challenge the Miltablishment’s favourites in the forthcoming elections. General Ayub rigged the 1965 elections and but didn’t last long enough to enjoy the fruits of his victory. Will the current front runners meet the same fate?
The Miltablishment may be arrogant and self-righteous but it is not unaware or uncritical of the negative role and dire consequences that these non-state actors have spawned in domestic and foreign affairs. It claims to be seeking ways and means to minimize the militant role of “some” of these actors without directly provoking them and destabilizing the state in unmanageable ways. Its anger at Nawaz Sharif is directed not so much at his challenge of their strategic national security narrative but at his refusal to seek their advice on how to decommission these non-state actors or exploit them tactically in the realm of policy. Therefore, while it may be kosher to privately admit that Mumbai was a blunder that badly backfired, doing so in front of Pakistan’s adversaries is not okay because it is bound to extract a heavy penalty.
The Miltablishment is also angry at Nawaz Sharif for trying to diminish its predominant role in national life by “defaming” its institutional chiefs. General Musharraf’s “treason” trial is the original sin, followed by attempts to degrade General Raheel Sharif’s personal credentials.
The Miltablishment’s outrage over Mr Sharif’s latest remarks is in line with its indignation over Dawnleaks. It did not take umbrage when he expressed negative sentiments in the NSC meeting about the role of these non-state actors controlled by the Miltablishment. But it saw red when he leaked it to the media because it suspected that the leak was aimed at endearing himself to the international community at the cost of the Miltablishment instead of effecting a united civil-military front against it. It may be recalled that its reaction was much the same against Mr Asif Zardari following the Osama bin Laden-Abbotatabad affair in 2012 when it accused Ambassador Hussain Haqqani in Memogate of acting “treasonably” against the “interests of Pakistan” (read Miltablishment). It is once again in the same angry reaction-mode: it sees Nawaz Sharif as trying to save his skin at home by appealing to the international community as the good guy and portraying the Miltablishment as the evil empire.
The Miltablishment felt humiliated and resentful when Nawaz Sharif sacked COAS General Jehangir Karamat three months before his retirement in 1998 for merely supporting the idea of a National Security Council. It hit back in 1999 when he tried to sack General Musharraf for his irresponsible Kargil adventure. The two sides mended fences to jointly take up cudgels against a common PPP foe in 2012. Now they are at each other’s throats again, with the Miltablishment making common cause with former adversaries. And so it goes on.
The Miltablishment has eliminated anyone who has dared to cross its path and its national security policies have only wrought fear and instability. The politicians, too, without exception, have been corrupt, incompetent or authoritarian. Pity the nation that has been so trampled upon by its custodians since independence.
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