Chechnya comes to Moscow: WORLD VIEW

OVER the past year or so, many nations have been keen to lay claim to a September 11 of their own. Until last week, Russia had to make do with the apartment-block bombings of September 1999, which killed about 300 Muscovites. But now things have changed.

The apartment block attacks, which terrorized Moscow, were blamed on Chechen separatists. Last week’s events will help to reinforce that claim, but it remains unproven. There was speculation at the time that Russia’s security agency, the FSB, may have had a hand in the blasts. Vladimir Putin was Boris Yeltsin’s prime minister in 1999, and until his elevation he had served as the head of the FSB.

The former Russian media baron Boris Berezovsky, a one-time Putin supporter now charged with massive embezzlement and living in exile, claims that although Putin may not have personally ordered the bombings, he was certainly aware of the plan. The idea, according to this theory, was to create an atmosphere of insecurity, following it up with a crackdown that would be popular among voters and would help propel Putin to the presidency.

Such cynicism is not uncommon in Russia. It existed even before the demise of the Soviet Union, and has steadily multiplied since 1991. And not without cause. If it is indeed the case that apartment blocks were targeted with the intention of orchestrating anti-Chechen sentiments, it would follow that the second war against Chechnya was launched primarily to bolster Putin’s image as a man of action.

It is possible, of course, that the cynical interpretation bears little resemblance to reality. Perhaps the apartment-block mass murders were indeed the work of Chechen separatists. But even that scenario offers no reasonable explanation for the re-conquest of Chechnya, particularly in view of Yeltsin’s experience.

When Russian troops first blundered into the Chechen Republic in 1994 to put paid to General Dzhokar Dudayev’s declaration of independence, it was assumed in Moscow that the operation would take days, or at most a few weeks, to accomplish. Eight years on, the war is still raging. It doesn’t garner many column-inches in the international press. It can even be largely ignored from the Russian capital. Until it bursts into Moscow.

Although some Russian cynics were quick to dismiss the hostage drama in a Moscow theatre as a Kremlin ploy, there can be little doubt that the 50 or so terrorists who turned a musical comedy into a tragedy for more than 700 theatre-goers were indeed Chechens.

Although their action was completely indefensible, it may have served a purpose. Even before Russian security forces ended the siege last Saturday, there were demonstrations on the streets of Moscow. By and large, the demonstrators were not suggesting that the war in Chechnya be intensified; they were calling for its conclusion.

That was also the demand of the hostage-takers, although it is hard to believe that they could have expected the immediate pull-out of Russian troops as a result of their terrorist action.

That October 23 wasn’t Russia’s September 11 is also borne out by the fact that whereas most Americans responded to the actions of Mohammed Atta and his cohorts by waving the Stars and Stripes, the revulsion of Muscovites has been directed as much against their own government as against the Chechens. After all, Putin was supposed to be Mr Security. The fact that scores of heavily armed Chechens could drive up, unhindered and unchallenged, to a theatre no more than five kilometres from the Kremlin suggests that Moscow is anything but safe.

Atta’s name, incidentally, has not been mentioned in vain. According to evidence that emerged this month in the Hamburg trial of an Al Qaeda suspect, Atta was at one point determined to dedicate himself to the Chechen cause. He was told, however, that volunteers were no longer required in Chechnya. That, apparently, was when he began seeking alternative avenues for self-fulfilment.

The Russian regime as well as Islamists appear to have a common purpose in reinforcing the impression that resistance in Chechnya is essentially a jihadi phenomenon. This appears to be, at best, a heavily embroidered version of the truth. At the popular level, the Chechen struggle has always had more to do with nationalism than with religion, and Chechen society (if it can be described as such, given the fragmentation that has inevitably occurred over the past eight years) remains broadly secular.

However, the unimaginably brutal nature of the Russian occupation has created pressures that have been pushing some people towards confessional militancy. Not surprisingly, the international Islamist network has sought to exploit the opening made available in Chechnya. It considers itself on familiar ground, having previously taken on the Russian army in Afghanistan. Guerilla leader Aslan Maskhadov, the elected president of Chechnya who was once viewed as a moderate, has lately been less resistant to assistance from religious extremists as well as to Islamic symbolism. But reports suggest that the Wahabis, as the jihadis are locally known, inspire almost as much fear and distrust among Chechen civilians as do Russian forces.

Home-grown Islamists appear to have been behind the deplorable drama that ended in bloodshed last Saturday, although it has been claimed that at least some of the hostage-takers were of Middle Eastern origin. With nearly all of them now dead, that question may never be conclusively resolved. No one in their right mind can sympathize with the method they chose to highlight the nearly forgotten Caucasian war. But it is vital that pressure should be brought to bear on Putin, both from within Russia and internationally, to speedily bring that dehumanizing conflict to an end.

Among the scores of public figures and professionals who tried to act as go-betweens in Moscow last week was Anna Politkovskaya, one of the few journalists who has regularly ventured into the war zone to report on the everyday atrocities being perpetrated by Russian forces, as well as the effects of the conflict on young Russian conscripts.

Last year she published a book titled ‘A Dirty War’. Reviewing it in The Guardian, David Hearst wrote: “There is a corner of what is still geographically known as Europe where anything goes. Here you can raze cities to the ground and call it an ‘anti-terrorist operation’. You can round up the inhabitants of a village, shoot them in broad daylight, and come back for more the next day. You can chuck grenades into shelters packed with the sick and elderly... Russia’s return match for the humiliation it received in the first Chechen war of 1994-96 is of a ferocity that makes Macedonia, Kosovo, even Sarajevo at the height of the siege, pale in comparison.”

Earlier this year, in an article for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Caucasus Service, Politkovskaya related the sordid details of a Russian raid on a Chechen village: “Women were spared rape if they handed over earrings and necklaces. The poorest in Stariye Atagi suffered most, because they had nothing to give the Russians. Milana Kutsayeva was able to pay off the soldiers, but Markha and Taus weren’t...”

More recently, reporting for the Polish edition of Newsweek, Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich quoted a Chechen woman as saying that the Russian army’s latest tactic is blowing people up, dead or alive. “It was utilized perhaps most effectively on July 3 in the village of Meskyer Yurt”, she writes, “where 21 men, women and children were bound together and blown up...”

“Sometimes,” she goes on, “those who survive wish they were dead, as in Zernovodsk this summer, when townspeople say they were chased on to a field and made to watch women being raped. When their men tried to defend them, 68 of them were handcuffed to an armoured truck and raped too. After this episode, 45 of them joined the guerillas in the mountains.”

The seeds of Chechen rebellion were sown in the 19th century, when their territory was conquered by tsarist Russia. The wound of dispossession was deepened when Josef Stalin deported them en masse, along with other Muslim peoples of the Caucasus, to Central Asia in 1944. They were allowed to return to Chechnya under Nikita Khrushchev, but it is hardly surprising that most of them supported Dudayev’s bid for independence in 1991.

Barely a million strong to start with, tens of thousands of Chechens have been killed since Yeltsin opted for a military misadventure in 1994. Russia, too, has paid a heavy price, with a considerably higher casualty rate than during the Afghan war. There can be little question that Chechens deserve the right to self-determination. But what they as well as the Russians deserve more immediately is a ceasefire. Putin is certainly capable of delivering peace, but has yet to demonstrate the requisite willingness. And wisdom.

The siege in Moscow could have concluded more horrifically, had the terrorists carried out the threat to detonate their weapons. It may also have been possible to further minimize the loss of life, given that many of the more than 100 fatalities among the hostages appear to have been caused by the poison gas used in an attempt to incapacitate the would-be suicide bombers — and that most of the incapacitated terrorists were executed with shots to the head rather than disarmed and taken into custody. Because it happened in Moscow, questions are already being asked about whether a form of chemical warfare was the only viable option.

But at least the operation mounted in Moscow could justifiably be designated as an anti-terrorist effort. The on-going mass murder, rape and torture in Chechnya cannot possibly fit that description, and the Russian authorities must not be allowed any longer to get away with it.

Writer’s e-mail: mahirali@ozemail.com.au

Banking on Pyrrhic victory

The Bush administration’s battle to secure a tough new UN security council resolution on Iraq is approaching a climax. The word from the White House is that after over a month of discussions, it is time to wrap it up. Having been presented with the “final” US draft, the council met again last weekend. US diplomats are adamant that their government, having toned down some of the draft’s provisions, is unwilling to make further concessions to critics led by France and Russia.

One of three outcomes is possible in this high-stakes game of diplomatic poker; all are potentially hugely damaging on a wide range of fronts. That consideration prompts a more basic question about the wisdom of President George Bush’s approach. One possible outcome is that the UN will pass the resolution. On this scenario, permanent members such as France, Russia and China, despite their deep-seated misgivings, will reluctantly abstain rather than use their veto powers. But the US will still gain the required nine or more votes in favour from the Council’s total 15 members.

In theory, such a victory would satisfy the administration. It would certainly come as a great relief to the British government, which has backed Washington and helped frame the draft. Prime minister Tony Blair urged Bush to take the Iraq issue to the UN and seek its backing for any future action. On the other hand, hardliners within the administration may view such success with mixed feelings. They do not believe for a minute that resumed weapons inspections (which will follow a UN agreement) will eradicate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

The hawks fear that inspections will simply allow Saddam to gain time and that, as in the past, he will find ways to thwart the inspectors and bamboozle the international community. An inspection and report-back period lasting up to 135 days, as envisaged in the resolution, could seriously disrupt the Pentagon’s timetable and regional preparations for military action. A second possible outcome is that the draft resolution is put to a vote and is vetoed by either France or Russia, or both, or otherwise fails to attract the crucial nine votes in favour. The third possibility is that, realizing that it lacks sufficient support, the US decides not to force a vote at all and ends the discussion.

Bush and his officials have already made crystal clear what will happen if either of the above outcomes result. The US, they say, is prepared to go it alone and take all necessary measures, including military action, in pursuit of its national security interest. They will try to assemble a “coalition of the willing”. And they will condemn the UN for its inability to stand up for itself and enforce its own, previous Iraq resolutions. This, they will say, indicates a fundamental lack of backbone. It can thus plainly be seen why any of these three possible conclusions to the current UN debate are potentially damaging.

If the resolution as drafted is passed, and an inspection process resumes, parties to all three sides of the dispute may immediately begin to undermine it. France and Russia will continue to express the opinion that the resolution amounts to a “green light” for war and that its terms make it almost certain that Iraq will be unable to comply.

They will continue to argue that the UN should have been able to consider and vote on the issue again, if and when Iraq’s non-compliance is asserted. As permanent council members, they may even try to ensure that that the UN does get a second bite. They will not support Bush’s coalition and their example may lead others to follow suit. This may be particularly true of Arab countries that supported the Paris-Moscow stance. Iraq will try to exploit these divisions.

The administration hawks meanwhile will be looking for any chance to halt the inspection process and declare Saddam to be formally in “material breach” of his obligations, in defiance of the international community. Since Iraq has to accept the resolution unconditionally within seven days of its passage, and declare a full inventory of the weapons it says it does not possess within 30 days, the hardliners may not have to wait long.

The inspection conditions, meanwhile, are so onerous and inflexible that even if the inspections recommence, it may be only be a matter of time before the process breaks down. For example, US and British warplanes continue to engage in almost daily exchanges with the Iraqi military in the northern and southern no-fly zones, where inspections are to take place. Such incidents, which may become entangled with efforts to provide security for the UN, have explosive potential.

Lastly, the Iraqis — who have consistently insisted that there was no need at all for a new UN resolution — may decide to reject it outright. Or, more likely, they will ostensibly go along with the new inspection regime while trying to ensure that it does not succeed and appealing for solidarity against US “imperialism”. This may all be thought bad enough. But the damage caused by the possible vetoing of the US resolution, or its withdrawal, will be even greater.

A US decision to go ahead anyway means that war may be considered a certainty. That in turn will face people like Blair with an agonizing decision. It is no exaggeration to say that, given the state of British public and Labour party opinion, his support for US unilateral action could bring down his government. And much worse, in the longer term, the UN will have been perhaps fatally weakened.

A precedent will have been set, to all intents and purposes, that suggests that a member state, if it feels strongly enough about a given issue, can go ahead with pre-emptive military action without UN authority. That undermines the UN Charter and international law and the system of collective responsibility and collective self-defence that has been in place (and fully supported by previous US administrations) since 1945. It is a recipe for chaos in international affairs.

Perhaps there is yet a way out of this impasse but it is hard to see where it lies. And thus do these uniformly gloomy alternative outcomes raise a basic question about Bush’s approach. It is too late now, apparently, but Bush would surely have been better advised to put forward a resolution that could have commanded broad, positive international support. It may have taken a little longer. But the US would almost certainly have got what it wanted in the end, backed by firm international support.

Instead — by its aggressive and hasty approach and because of its previous, well-documented disdain for collective international policy-making, international treaties and consensual political action — the administration has divided its friends, alienated and undermined traditional allies, and now finds that its policies and motives (however well justified they seem to be) are widely distrusted.

This only strengthens America’s enemies, the foremost among whom is not Saddam but the many-headed terrorists of Al Qaeda and their global followers. It may be safely assumed that these thugs are observing the ructions at the UN with enormous pleasure.—Dawn-Guardian Service

Of government directives

THE ministry of religious affairs has circulated copies of an ordinance prohibiting eating and drinking in public during Ramazan and prescribing imprisonment and fine for those who break the law. Wasn’t God’s own law enough? Why create the impression that people will be more afraid of the state than of the Almighty?

Anyway, the government is welcome to its edicts and orders and directives. The advent of Ramazan reminds me of what Mian Nawaz Sharif once did as prime minister. He issued a directive that no iftar parties were to be held by officers and ministries at government expense; one of the few good and sensible things he did. Since, after that directive, officers were expected to spend their own money they chose not to spend it at all and so there were no official iftar parties. Let us see if General Pervez Musharraf follows that good example.

Bureaucrats are accustomed to receiving directives. If someone were to compile a collection of the directives issued by successive governments of Pakistan and the provinces during, say, the last forty years, the compilation may well rival the Encyclopaedia Britannica in size and volume.

These directives are born of decisions at the highest level of the administration, not only on matters pertaining to the day-to-day management of government business, and sometimes (though rarely) to problems of the people, but you’ll be surprised to learn of the non-official matters they also cover. They have talked about how officers should behave, dress and comport themselves, even in private. Though, thank God, there has never been one telling them how to treat their wife/wives. That may come with the next regime if the MMA is part of it.

I have a lifelong experience of seeing these directives being consigned to the waste paper basket, and have often laughed and wept at some of them. I must tell you of one issued by the Punjab Government, a masterpiece that I can never forget. It came out some time in 1989 and, in my opinion, takes the cake for silliness. As usual it went to all departments and agencies of the provincial government and advised them — in fact directed them — to improve their “working and their moral tone within thirty days,” otherwise to be prepared for “dire consequences”.

The thirty days passed many times over and those violating the directive waited in vain for the dire consequences, but there were not even ordinary consequences. Mian Nawaz Sharif was then chief minister. Either he couldn’t make head or tail of the directive when the draft came to him for approval (for actually it did emanate for him) or he was too busy dealing with the villainous People’s Party to pay attention to its contents. Or maybe he couldn’t decide on the consequences.

I remember there were caustic comments from the press, but the Punjab administration washed its hands of the directive by saying that the great exercise in senselessness had originated from the federal government. This was during the interregnum between General Ziaul Haq and Ms Benazir Bhutto when acting President Ghulam Ishaq Khan reigned supreme. On their part the officers warned to improve their working and moral tone within 30 days laughed heartily since, otherwise too, this was probably the 999th in a long series of directives and was not meant to be taken seriously.

The best joke about such directives is that the officer sending them downwards presumes that they do not apply to him. In actual fact therefore this particular directive was meant for the daftari (who keeps all office files) and the sweeper because it also warned them to shun “bureaucratic tactics” and “make the administration neat and clean”. These were the exact words used. Surely “neat and clean” indicated that they were aimed more at the latter functionary than anyone else, since he alone can bring about sweeping changes in office working.

The federal and the provincial governments take great pains to keep on reminding officers that they are not rulers but servants of the people. If a change in attitude has not come about it is not the fault of the officers. They try their hardest to look and behave like servants, but it‘s no good. You see, when they look at members of the public standing before them, humble and abject, and even grovelling, they forget the words that are dinned into their minds and start behaving like the rulers they have been since 1947.

There have been directives on every conceivable subject: on being properly dressed, on saying one’s prayers, on behaving like gentlemen, on treating MNAs and MPAs with respect, on eschewing waste of public money, on not living beyond one’s means, or not letting children drive staff cars, and on cleanliness, though never on godliness.

Others have exhorted officers to be punctual, conserve stationery, tour regularly, maintain office files properly, save office record from mice, not to have too much tea, use the telephone sparingly, allocate a separate hour for meeting members of the public and not to pay heed to sifarish. There was even one advising officers not to be corrupt. It sounds unbelievable but I swear it‘s true. I have yet to see an officer who stopped being corrupt on reading it. I suppose such an idiot is still to be born.

Directives are usually followed by sub-directives asking for reports on implementation. In the middle rung of the hierarchy a special officer is deputed for this work. He generally makes a nuisance of himself, and, but for the fact that his reports about non-implementation are never read, some officer might well be in serious trouble for making fun of directives.

A nice practical joke would be to somehow get the chief executive of the country to agree that copies of all the hundreds of directives issued so far be supplied to all officers and a test conducted after they have studied them for a month about how much they have imbibed of their contents. That this will achieve nothing is immaterial. What matters is that for a month all officers will remain busy in the exercise and not have to play at being servants of the people. Many public problems might get automatically resolved through this enforced inactivity.

I say this because I once knew an officer who used to put away in a special drawer any ticklish file on which he had nothing helpful to contribute. After a couple of months he used to find that the matter had got resolved somehow. Do you think a directive could be issued to senior government officers on the basis of this experience? No?

The hairsplitting poll

The Hairsplitting Political Poll, conducted by Carlton Hairsplitter, has just been released. It is the most important poll taken during an election year, and the candidates of the parties take it seriously.

Instead of conducting an exit poll after a person has voted, Hairsplitter takes an “entrance” poll before he or she goes into the voting booth. This gives everyone a chance to change his or her mind.

Hairsplitter reported, “Eighty percent of the people polled said they support President Bush if he wants to unilaterally send American troops into Iraq.

“Eighty percent of the people who have sons and daughters between the ages of 18 and 30 think it’s a lousy idea.”

Hairsplitter wrote, “Fifty percent of the people say we should bomb North Korea because they are a nuclear power, while 50 percent say we shouldn’t attack North Korea because they don’t have oil.”

He continued, “The Right to Life people voted 79 percent for killing Saddam Hussein, and if need be, all the Iraqi people, so they don’t engage in birth control.

“Twenty-one percent are still voting in Broward County.”

The poll also revealed that 1 percent of those interviewed said they went along with Bush’s economic plans to provide tax breaks for the rich. Ninety-nine percent said they would like to think if over.”

Hairsplitter reported when seniors were asked whether people believed they should be allowed to invest in the stock market with their Social Security money, they were split.

Half said if given the opportunity they would double their money in high-flying companies like Enron, WorldCom and Tyco. The other half said, “Is Bush out of his bleeping mind?”

They were queried as to how they felt when the president promised to get the Wall Street bad guys and then wouldn’t give the money to do it.

Thirty percent, mainly unemployed workers and people who lost their pensions, said fraud and corruption should not be a political issue. Seventy percent said, “Who cares?”

The respondents were then asked if they thought the Democrats had an economic plan. Forty-nine percent of the Democrats said they were certain they had a plan, but they couldn’t talk about it while still raising soft money for the election.

All those admitting they were Republicans said the Democrats’ economic plans would cause the country to have a deficit and they are only interested in wasting tax money on health plans that don’t work.

The difference between this and other polls is that Hairsplitter will not accept an “I don’t know” answer. If you say “don’t know” you cannot be trusted to go alone into a voting booth.—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

Whither model university?

THE model university ordinance has generated a lot of heat on the campuses all over the country. Although the draft of the ordinance has not been released, the structure it proposes is believed to be based on the report of the steering committee on higher education, which has been under discussion for the past several months.

What comes as a matter of serious concern is that the two sides are locked in a confrontation, which will not take them very far. The government will find it impossible to enforce an ordinance, which does not enjoy the support of the faculty. The continuing agitation by the teachers will destroy the public sector universities by interrupting academic activities.

The only positive aspect of this bleak situation is that the government has not promulgated the ordinance with immediate effect — though the federal cabinet has approved it. It claims to have entered into a dialogue with the teachers, though the latter deny that. It is strange that there in no public concern at the ongoing crisis.

From what has been stated — there has been a spate of statements, articles and interviews giving the points of view of the two sides — it appears that at the heart of the matter are three basic issues. Fears have been expressed that:

* The new system will result in the privatization of the public sector universities and an enormous increase in fees to meet the cost of education, which at present is officially subsidized. The increase in fees will make the universities unaffordable for a majority of students.

* The security of service of the teachers will be affected, since there is the proposal to introduce the tenure track system under which highly qualified teachers will be hired on lucrative salaries on contract and their performance monitored. The teachers fear that many of them will be thrown out of service on the slightest pretext.

* The decision-making role in the university managements will be assumed by the new governing bodies which will give excessive powers to the economic/corporate sector rather than the representatives of public opinion, who normally act in the broader interest of society and not to promote the profit interests of the entrepreneurs.

The government insists that these fears are unfounded. Dr Attaur Rahman, the minister for science and technology, in an interview even said “a lot of disinformation has been spread” about the ordinance. One cannot deny that there might be considerable exaggeration in what is being said and written on the subject. But some fears are not unfounded and should be addressed.

The apprehensions that the universities will be privatized appear to be baseless. Can one imagine the Karachi University, for instance, being sold to a private party? But the idea being bandied about the most in this debate is “privatization”.

The central issue is the fee structure. Under the ordinance one can expect an enhancement of the fees. This would not be something new since this process began nearly a decade ago. Initially, there was some resistance but over the years reasonable enhancements have come to be accepted every time they are undertaken.

An increase in fees within the existing parameters is therefore advisable if the university finances are to be improved. But the increase must be reasonable. It would be contrary to social justice if the authorities seek to recover the full cost of university education (claimed to be Rs 55,000 per annum) from the student. At present the average fee of a student at the Karachi University comes to about Rs 5,000. Those studying under the self-financing scheme or in the evening classes pay much more. By setting up endowments and comprehensive students’ loan schemes the universities can cover a considerable part of the deficit. The government would ease the situation by making a categorical public commitment to substantially bear the cost of educating university students.

The more practical approach would be for the authorities to streamline their spending on higher education by rationalizing its approach to university education. By allowing the proliferation of public sector universities with unnecessary duplication of many departments, the government has spread its resources too thin. The newest entrant in the field is the Foundation University in Islamabad to be headed by the chairman of the Fauji Foundation.

It is feared that under the ordinance, which will introduce the contract system, many teachers would be laid off. Even those hired on contract could find themselves ditched when the authorities decide in favour of downsizing for one reason or another. Hence the uproar.

It is time the teachers too realized that, generally speaking, they are held responsible for the declining standards of higher education. Whatever might be their arguments about universities being crowded and not enjoying autonomy, it is known that competent and dedicated teachers can work wonders to motivate their students and raise standards. The fact is that not all of them are qualified for their job and in the absence of an inbuilt process of scrutiny and evaluation a number of them are not doing as well as they are expected to. This is a very serious problem for which a solution has to be found. It is strange that the agitating teachers have not come out with any counter-proposal for their security of service while ensuring professional competence and requisite teaching standards. They must propose a system of confidential assessments of their performance if they want to be seen as having a good and credible case. It is also important that provision is made for the in-service training of teachers, most of whom are themselves the products of the present system that has long been in need of revitalization.

Autonomy for universities is an important issue, and not a new one. It has been the unfulfilled demand of the academics for decades. Although the present ordinance assures independence for the universities, it seeks to restructure their decision-making bodies in such a way that it is feared that the control of the corporate sector would be enhanced. It is difficult to comment on this because amendments have been made time and again to the provisions relating to the governing bodies, senate, syndicate and academic council. It is not very clear what the precise position is at the moment.

Some broad guidelines can be enunciated, however. Whichever body is to govern the universities, it is important that representation of a wide spectrum of society be inducted into it. No single authority or group — be it big business, donors, or the government — should have decisive control over decision-making. At the same time the academics’ participation should also be ensured in right proportion and under statutory guarantees.

Can one presume that the government has decided not to ride roughshod over the universities and wants to initiate a dialogue? If that is so, the first step it should take to create greater confidence and trust between the two sides is to make public the draft of the model university ordinance and invite a meaningful debate on it. In this way the ill feelings being created by speculation and disinformation can be avoided.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that without the cooperation of the academics no model university can be created. Neither can university standards be raised in isolation — without addressing the wider crisis afflicting the education sector. It is appalling that nothing is being done to reform the school system from where the malaise arises. If our schools continue to produce students who have little knowledge of their subjects, how can they be expected to be transformed overnight to fit into universities imparting quality education.

It is a different matter though, if the idea is to create elite universities to educate the children of a small section of our population who have studied in high-priced elite private schools. They are the privileged ones who can afford to study in private universities and hold their own in a competitive environment. It is the interest of the common man that the government must seek to protect and promote. Unfortunately this it has failed to do.

True, the steering committee’s report speaks of education being a continuum and concedes that the quality of education in schools will affect the quality of higher education. Yet no visible effort has so far been made to improve the standards of government schools where the bulk of our children are enrolled. Will the common man’s child who studies in a government school ever be in a position to compete for the limited university seats with the children of the rich who have attended elite private schools?