Editorial
Feeble flood forecasting
After a relative lull for a day or two, the heavens opened up again on Friday, quite generously one may say. The Met Office says, according to the report in New Age Xtra on June 21, that such moderate to heavy rain is likely to take place in most places of the country at least till the end of this month. The forecast is not happy, to say the least. Moderate to heavy showers that swept the country in the past couple of weeks caused flash-floods in a number of districts, especially those in the coastal belt. Many people were made homeless and standing crops were washed away. Meteorologists have already started talking about the possibility of a full-fledged flood this year. The Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre seems rather reluctant to make any prediction as to whether the intensity or scope of the flood this year will be more or less than, say, that of 2004. The fact of the matter is: it cannot.
The centre, as the New Age Xtra report says, is not adequately equipped, both in terms of personnel and equipment, to make such predictions. The personnel and logistics constraints hamper almost every stage of the centre’s work, from data collection to data processing to extrapolation. It has been learnt that the centre does not have enough observatories to monitor the weather pattern. Also, the method the centre uses for flood forecasting can give a lead time of three days, i.e. it can forecast a flood only three days before it hits the country. Forecasting is an integral component of the overall flood management exercise and thus it makes little sense not to enhance the centre’s capacity. Regrettably, the successive governments have made little effort to upgrade the country’s flood forecasting and warning system in line with the changing pattern of weather and climate. Talks about enhancing the centre’s capacity, as a result, have never made it past the confines of seminars and symposia into the realm of reality.
Flood is a reality that the country has to live with as it has for so many centuries. As one expert has told New Age Xtra, it would rather be a cause of concern ‘if the floodplains were not flooded’. Floods are a blessing in the sense that they wash away the tired soil and deposit alluvial silt carried down from the mountains. No wonder there are bumper crops after most floods. But this beneficial side-effect does not prevent many floods from being catastrophes.
We cannot simply wish away natural disasters like flood. Therefore, the focus should be on mitigation of the various sorts of damage wrought by floods to an affordable limit. The stronger the forecasting and warning system, the more effective the disaster management activities! The first step in that direction will be to increase the lead time, i.e. the Flood Forecasting and Warning Centre should be equipped to forecast a flood many days, if not weeks, before it hits the country, so that the government and its agencies can take adequate preparation to minimise damage to life and property.
Quality of education
The quality of education is a complex subject. It is not easy to ensure it and yet to ensure it is the raison d’être of an institution of higher learning. Level of acquisition of knowledge, competitiveness, employability in national and international market, broadening of outlook are the obvious goals, and perhaps moral and aesthetic excellence will also be expected to be part of a truly good education. The president, Iajuddin Ahmed, did not omit to mention the moral aspect of higher education when, at the convocation ceremony of the University of Science and Technology, he stressed the need for achieving quality of education. The president’s observation that it was important to give more importance on quality and morality in education so that the present generation and the posterity could make themselves more able and worthy to face the challenges ahead is not less relevant for appearing trite and sententious. But then a wish list is one thing, the ground reality is something else.
With all respect to the performances of individual students, scholars and select institutions, the general order of higher education – of education as a whole – is distressing. Maybe the quantitative growth is phenomenal – there is a ‘university’ at every street corner. What the chairman of the University Grants Commission himself said sometime ago about students of these private universities is a telling judgement on the quality of education they receive. That does not mean that the public universities are way ahead. The core strength of tertiary-level education lies in basic education and secondary-level education. The standard has not only fallen but remains singularly uneven. Every year it is seen that while a few elite institutions have cent per cent success rate, in hundreds of others not a single student passes. Time was when a student after completing 16 years study in this country could directly join PhD course in a reputable university abroad; but now they have to complete MS and also give proof of proficiency in the English language before being considered for doctoral studies. This happens after the ‘session jam’ at the university has already delayed a student’s academic career by two years. When every student loses some years, the aggregate national loss is staggering, yet there is no serious attempt to straighten the so-called session jam, least of all by university teachers. The independence granted to teachers under the university ordinance does not go to enhance academic excellence but is used to protect incompetence, negligence and party politics on campus. Few research works of durable value come out of the university. Thus part of the woes of higher education results from mismanagement and absence of accountability. In this context some quarters are pressing that the UGC should have more teeth.
Quality of education at university is the cumulative result of education at all tiers. Therefore the approach must be holistic although, as noted above, universities have their own maladies also.
Plassey: remembering 1757 without bias
June 23 marks the battle of Plassey in 1757, when despite having a superior army, Nawab Siraj-ud-Doula lost, as his chief commander stood immobile against the English. But, as we denounce Mir Zafar and others and canonise Siraj, we often refuse to accept the whole picture of Plassey including the aftermath, and rely on a film that twisted a lot of facts, writes Towheed Feroze
JUNE 23 is always painful for us because it was on this day that the Battle of Plassey was lost and the foundation of
the colonial power secured in the subcontinent. Siraj-ud-Doula, the nawab of Bengal, lost the battle due to the treachery of his commander in chief and the rest we all know. But, have we ever asked whether what we know about Plassey, its main players and its aftermath are free of prejudice? In fact, for years we have grown up with what books have fed us on the battle and the people associated with it, but hardly did we get a chance to look at the event from a dispassionate perspective. In truth, much of our idea about Plassey revolves around the famous film where Anwar Hossain gives a powerful and passionate portrayal of Siraj. And, not surprisingly, the film shows Siraj to be a ruler with a halo. We were and, perhaps still are, so obsessed with the movie portrayal of Siraj that no matter how we tend to look at June 23, we cannot go beyond what is ingrained in us. In fact, for ages, the tale of Siraj being deceived and killed has gathered layers of patriotic spice and whenever we think of the event, we are unanimous in denouncing the British, Mir Zafar and his acolytes, Ghasheti Begum and others. And, so much is our hatred that Mir Zafar, the name has come to be included in the language as a double-faced deceiver. Of course, this is not say that he was not a villain but in the 21st century when so many historical facts and evidence come to us via the net, it is about time we started to look at Plassey, not with a jingoistic view, but with a neutral one.
Now, history is always the view of the historian and, therefore, never unbiased and so, what we need to do is to study a bit more and stop relying on the tales that came to us through our textbooks. Sadly, the history of Plassey that we get in our schoolbooks paints a one-sided story and, obviously, we cannot blame the young generation for forming incorrect ideas about the whole incident. Firstly, there must be the effort to remove the halo from Siraj, who according to many reliable accounts was uxorious, weak and unbelievably impetuous. And, he was 23. Naturally, this fact is hard to reconcile to the image that we have plastered in the back of our psyche — that of a mature Anwar Hossain playing the nawab in the film. Books, especially ones in Bangla, just categorise the characters of Plassey as either saintly or villainous and hence, the real follies of the nawab are lost.
In fact, no book ever tries to look at why the East India Company, which came with the sole purpose of trade, gathered so much strength. The truth is that the English, Dutch, French and the Portuguese were always locked in battle to get the upper hand in trade with India and their rivalry resulted in the foreign powers mustering up military strength in India. But, why were they allowed to gather military strength in the first place? The answer lies in the avaricious nature of our rulers who permitted fortification, armament of foreign powers in exchange of money and, also military help. Relevant to mention that, during the battle, most of the nawab’s artillery was French made under the command of a French officer, Sinfray. If foreign powers had become strong by the mid-18th century then the fault was with our rulers because they allowed it. The Seven years War in Europe also had an impact here in India and all the foreign powers, especially the French and the English, were in a confrontational mood. Though it never comes out from a cursory glance at Plassey, the battle was in disguise a competition between the English and the French. Before the war, the English noticed that French influence was getting stronger in the nawab’s court and the French governor-general, Dupleix, was slowly securing their presence. There were French soldiers in the nawab’s army as well as French-made weapons. Obviously, the English saw this as a threat and after the defeat of the nawab decreed that French factories would be handed over and they would never be allowed to resettle in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. In the film and in the books the French were shown as trusted friends and though we are indebted to them for their support it cannot be denied that it was all about domination and very little about friendship. Regrettably, in emotional outbursts and frenzied beliefs we fail to acknowledge that.
Come to Mir Zafar and we get a military chief who refused to fight because the English had offered him the position of the nawab. Now, this trait of turning against the ruler is not a new one. In fact, the irony is that when we talk about Mir Zafar’s treachery we conveniently forget that treachery of even more diabolical forms were perpetrated by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who murdered his brothers and imprisoned his father to get the throne. Jahangir, another Mughal emperor, had his son Khasru rise against him and at one point the latter planned to murder his father. Eventually, Khasru, the eldest son, was murdered by his younger brother, Khurram, who later became Mughal emperor Shahjahan. Pity, when we remember Shahjahan we embellish him as the emperor of love but forget how he murdered his elder brother and the right heir to the throne. Now, these machinations of the Mughal Empire never bother us and we write elaborately on the grandeur, benevolence and the expansion of their empire. Incidentally, the Mughals also invaded this part of the world and before that it was the Sultans. To be honest, the true rulers of this part were the Hindu kings (Palas, Senas, Guptas).
Come back to Mir Zafar and we find a man eyeing the throne. And, to be downright frank, what he did had been going on for ages in India. But, though we know of Mir Zafar’s deception and his ungratefulness, we do not know that after he was put to power he became irritated with the English. So much so that, he summoned the Dutch East India Company to come to his aid. Eventually, seven ships sent by the Dutch were engaged and defeated by the English at Chinsura in 1759. So, just a gap of a fact makes Zafar look like an English puppet. The English deposed him and put his son-in-law, Mir Kasim Ali Khan, to the throne and he also was too independent declaring war against the foreigners. He too was defeated in the Battle of Buxar in 1764. So, we see that the sun of our independence did not go down with the Battle of Plassey because there were efforts after that to curtail English power. Unfortunately, these facts are not known by most and thus, history becomes fiction. Siraj did fight the English but as a ruler he was incompetent, otherwise, he would have attacked the company officials planning the whole Plassey betrayal in the ship, Fort William, on the Bhagirathi River. But, destiny had it that a new superpower would gain foot and so the English methodically cleared all opposition and became the empire where sun never sets.
Be that as it may, as we remember the Plassey day, let us not get carried away and be prejudiced in our views. Let’s get a true picture of what happened and, let’s stop calling Mir Zafar the ultimate traitor because the history of Mughals and Sultans of India are replete with people trying to resort to all kinds of deception tricks to cling on to power.
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